Africa securityNigerian army should be investigated for war crimes against civilians: Amnesty
A comprehensive new report by Amnesty International offers detailed evidence to support the charge that the Nigerian military, pervasively and systematically, committed gross human rights violations under the guise of fighting Boko Haram. Among the findings: the Nigerian military has arrested at least 20,000 young men and boys since 2009, some as young as nine years old. In most cases, they were arbitrarily arrested, often based solely on the word of a single unidentified secret informant. Almost none of those detained has been brought to court and all have been held without the necessary safeguards against murder, torture, and ill-treatment. More than 8,000 people were murdered, starved, suffocated, and tortured to death since March 2011 in military-run detention centers. More than 1,200 people were unlawfully killed in extrajudicial executions since February 2012. In order to combat the spread of disease and stifle the stench, over-crowded cells were regularly fumigated with powerful chemicals – with the detainees kept inside the cells during fumigation, leading to hundreds of deaths. Amnesty International calls for the new Nigerian government to ensure prompt, independent, and effective investigations of the top military and defense officials – named in the report – who authorized these measures for potential individual or command responsibility for war crimes. The organization also calls for new government to bring to an end the culture of impunity within the Nigeria’s armed forces.
Testifying before Congress in May 2014, a month after the abduction of nearly 300 girls from Chibu by Boko Haram militants, U.S. officials were unusually frank – and unusually public — in their assessment of the competence and effectiveness of the Nigerian military. The officials offered their analysis when they were questioned by lawmakers about whether the Nigerian military was capable of rescuing – or even locating – the abducted girls. U.S. military and intelligence officials said that even with international help, the Nigerian military was too corrupt and too incompetent to play a meaningful role in rescuing the girls. “We’re now looking at a military force that’s, quite frankly, becoming afraid to even engage,” Alice Friend, the Pentagon’s principal director for African affairs, said of the Nigerian military. “The Nigerian military has the same challenges with corruption that every other institution in Nigeria does. Much of the funding that goes to the Nigerian military is skimmed off the top, if you will.” There is another obstacle to U.S. military assistance to Nigeria: Friend told lawmakers that finding Nigerian army units which have not been involved in gross violations of human rights has been a “persistent and very troubling limitation” on American efforts to work with the Nigerian military (see “U.S. officials: Nigerian military too corrupt, inept to defeat Islamists, rescue girls,” HSNW, 21 May 2014).
Amnesty International two ago came out with a detailed, and troubling, report about the pervasive and systematic abuses of human rights committed by the Nigerian military in the last four years. The organization says that the Nigerian military, including senior military commanders, must be investigated for participating, sanctioning, or failing to prevent the deaths of more than 8,000 people murdered, starved, suffocated, and tortured to death, as detailed in a comprehensive report by the organization.
Based on years of research and analysis of evidence — including leaked military reports and correspondence, as well as interviews with more than 400 victims, eyewitnesses, and senior members of the Nigerian security forces — Amnesty outlines a range of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity committed by the Nigerian military in the course of the fight against Boko Haram in the north-east of the country.
The report reveals that since March 2011, more than 7,000 young men and boys died in military detention and more than 1,200 people were unlawfully killed since February 2012.
