A new generation of Biafrans is now peacefully advocating for an independent Biafra. Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, is fighting the nascent independence movement with military force.
* “I saw one boy trying to answer a
question. He immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fire
…” — Witness to the shootings, to Amnesty International.
* As for IPOB’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu,
director of London-based Radio Biafra, he was arrested in October 2015
and has been held since, illegally, despite meeting bail conditions.
* It is noteworthy that a peaceful
situation, such as that of the pro-Biafra movement, apparently requires a
“military option”, whereas a lethal terrorist group, such as the Muslim
Fulani herdsmen, who murder innocent civilians, does not. This tactic,
furthermore, brings into question whether Buhari’s efforts at curbing
Boko Haram in the country are genuine or merely a play he puts on
half-heartedly for the benefit of the international community.
On paper,
the plight of Biafrans — whose state in what is today southeastern
Nigeria, lasted for only three years, 1967-70, before the Nigerian
authorities ended it with a genocide against them — should, for the
international community, be an open-and-shut case.
Journalists, human rights activists,
social justice warriors on campuses throughout the West, and
organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, all
ostensibly claim to care deeply about human rights, especially for
people whom the Europeans once colonized.
Biafra constitutes a textbook example of
British colonization. The country’s brief existence was cut short by
the Nigerian government’s genocide, which crushed all hopes for
independence and self-determination. Biafrans, today, are denied
their fundamental rights of assembly and free expression — rights that
are guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution. The Nigerian government
continues murderously to oppress them and their movement for sovereign freedom.
The international community, headed by
the UN, which preaches the gospel of human rights and
self-determination, persistently ignores their national aspirations.
The territories that constitute
present-day Nigeria came under colonial occupation as British
protectorates around 1903. Nigeria is essentially an artificial
construct, created as a colony by Great Britain in 1914, when it merged
the protectorates. The country is made up of a number of different
indigenous African peoples, among them the Biafrans, who are ethnically
predominantly Igbo.
After Nigeria’s independence from Great
Britain in 1960, Biafra seceded from Nigeria, and in 1967 declared its
own state. The Nigerian government refused to accept the secession and
responded by launching a war on Biafra. The assault included a blockade
of the nascent state, and resulted in the murder of more than two
million Biafrans, many of whom were children who starved to death
because of the blockade.
The Biafrans, watching the dissolution
of their young state, surrendered to Nigeria in January 1970. They
realized, perhaps, that the world’s abandonment of them did not warrant
any future for their cause.
Unlike others at that time, such as the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Biafrans did not engage in
hijacking and bombing airplanes, taking hostages and other forms of
terrorist attacks against innocent civilians to further their cause. The
international community responds obediently to terrorism. Whereas the
PLO has now become the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is among the
world’s largest
per capita recipients of international foreign aid, with a plethora of
“human rights activists” championing its cause (as well as a UN body,
UNRWA, exclusively for Palestinians), it would be hard to find a
diplomat at the UN who even knows how to pronounce “Biafra”.
The question inevitably comes to mind,
why the ostensibly anti-racist, pro-self-determination international
community of opinion makers and human rights advocates has neither the
political goodwill, nor the treasure to spare for the Biafrans.
Although the genocide effectively ended
Biafran independence, a new generation of Biafrans is now peacefully
pressing for an independent Biafra again. In an example of extreme
hypocrisy, Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, has declared
himself fully committed to a Palestinian state, while his military
fights the Biafran movement for self-determination with brutal force.
On May 30, Biafrans commemorated Biafra Heroes Remembrance Day. According to Amnesty International, the only major human rights organization that has interested itself in Biafra,
“An
on-the-ground investigation… has confirmed that the Nigerian army gunned
down unarmed people ahead of last month’s planned pro-Biafran
commemoration events in Onitsha, Anambra state.
“Evidence
gathered from eyewitnesses, morgues and hospitals confirms that between
29-30 May 2016, the Nigerian military opened fire on members of the
Indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB), supporters and bystanders at three
locations in the town.”
“Opening fire on peaceful IPOB
supporters and bystanders who clearly posed no threat to anyone is an
outrageous use of unnecessary and excessive force and resulted in
multiple deaths and injuries. In one incident, one person was shot dead
after the authorities burst in on them while they slept,” said
M.K. Ibrahim, Country Director of Amnesty International Nigeria. He
continued, “This is not the first time that IPOB supporters have died at
the hands of the military. It is becoming a worrying pattern and this
incident and others must be immediately investigated”.
Also, according to Amnesty, some of the
dead and injured IPOB supporters were shot in the back, an indication
that they were fleeing the scene when they were shot. In addition,
soldiers stormed St. Edmunds Catholic church, where hundreds of people,
who had come from other parts to participate in the pro-Biafran
commemoration events, were sleeping. According to one witness:
“At about
midnight, we heard someone banging the door. We refused to open the door
but they forced the door open and started throwing teargas. They also
started shooting inside the compound. People were running to escape. I
saw one guy shot in the stomach. He fell down but the teargas could not
allow people to help him. I did not know what happened to the guy as I
escaped and ran away.”
Another witness told
Amnesty that on the morning of May 30, he saw soldiers open fire on a
group of around 20 men and boys aged between 15 and 45. He said that
five of them were killed. “I saw one boy trying to answer a question. He
immediately raised his hands, but the soldiers opened fire…He lay down,
lifeless. I saw this myself.” The witness described how military
officers loaded men with gunshot wounds into one van, and what appeared
to be corpses into another. Later that morning, another witness
described how police shot a child bystander as a group of young men
protested the shootings.
According to Amnesty,
“Following the
shootings, the military told media sources that the soldiers only opened
fire after being shot at first, but Amnesty International’s research
has found no evidence to support this. All the people the organization
interviewed said that the protesters were not armed; one young man said
that he threw stones at the police and military after they shot teargas
at the IPOB members. He said the military then fired live ammunition in
return. Information gathered by Amnesty International indicates that the
deaths of supporters and members of IPOB was the consequence of
excessive and unnecessary use of force. International law requires the
government to promptly investigate unlawful killings with a view to
bringing the perpetrators to justice. Amnesty International is also
calling for those IPOB supporters still held in detention without charge
to be either immediately charged or released”.
Amnesty International began research
into the violence and killings of IPOB members and supporters in
southeast Nigeria in January 2016 and is expected to publish a
comprehensive report on the matter in the near future.
Thus far, Amnesty says , its research shows that,
“Since August
2015, there have been at least five similar incidents in Onitsha alone
where the police and military shot unarmed IPOB members and supporters.
Amnesty has documented cases of alleged unlawful killings by the
Nigerian army between August 2015 and May 2016. In August 2015, military
officers opened fire on peaceful supporters of IPOB calling for an
independent Biafran state. The killings and mass arrests of members and
supporters of IPOB by joint military and police operations continued….
On 17 December 2015, for example, the military killed five people when
they opened fire on members of the IPOB who were demonstrating in
Onitsha in a celebration of a court order for the release of their
purported leader, Nnamdi Kanu. In February 2016, the Nigerian military
used excessive force to disperse a peaceful gathering in a school
compound in Aba. At least nine people were killed and many more
injured…”
As for IPOB’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu,
director of London-based Radio Biafra, he was arrested in October 2015
and has since been held, illegally, despite meeting bail conditions.
According
to Buhari’s Minister of Interior, Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau, however,
by contrast, while President Buhari uses military force against the
peaceful Biafran movement, including at events as innocuous as Biafran
commemoration ceremonies, his government has stated that it will not
use military force against Fulani herdsmen. The latter comprise a
predominantly Muslim, semi-nomadic group, now deemed to be the
fourth-deadliest terror group in the world according
to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). Between 2010 and 2013, they killed
80 people in Nigeria, but by the end of 2014, this figure had risen to
at least 1,229 people, according to the GTI, which ranked the African
nation as the world’s third most terrorized country.
“This is a
non-military issue that borders on law and order. It is not every
security issue that you call in the military. It is the responsibility
of the police to maintain peace. I believe that if we put the police in
proper position in terms of discharging its functions, then there would
be no need for military option. The police are equal to the task…. In
any case, I do not even have the power to deploy the military for
anything. It is only when the situation gets out of hand that you invite
the military.”
It is noteworthy that a peaceful
situation, such as that of the pro-Biafra movement, apparently requires a
“military option”, whereas a lethal terrorist group, such as the Muslim
Fulani herdsmen, who murder innocent civilians, does not. This tactic
furthermore brings into question, whether Buhari’s efforts at curbing
Boko Haram in the country are genuine or merely a play the Nigerian
president puts on half-heartedly for the benefit of the international
community.
The situation should at least give
countries such as Germany serious reason to reconsider their involvement
in the region. Germany has said
that it will begin supplying military hardware to the Nigerian
government to address “security challenges in its North East and Niger
Delta regions” before the end of 2016. One has to wonder whether
Germany, a country that has invited migrants into its country in order
to show how tolerant it is, has considered that it risks supplying the
Nigerian government with military hardware that could well be used to
kill Biafrans.
Other countries in the process of selling, or planning to sell, weapons to Nigeria, include the United States, which refused — bizarrely, out of “human rights concerns”
— to provide the former Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, a
Christian, with weapons to fight Boko Haram, but apparently has no
qualms about helping Buhari, a Muslim, whose murder of defenseless
people in southeastern Nigeria is evidently considered unproblematic.
In short, the international community has a lot of explaining to do.
Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst. She tweets from @judithbergman. This article was originally published by Gatestone Institute. It is republished with permission.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
0 comments:
Post a Comment