Posted on 03/11/2004 9:08:03 PM PST by Destro
NIGERIA: Islamic Radicals Massacre Christians
March 1, 2004: Religious violence is getting more organized in central Nigeria, along the invisible border that separates the largely Moslem north from the largely Christian south. While over 10,000 have been killed in religious strife since 1999, most of that was during riots and general disorder. What's happening now is an organized Moslem group in the Plateau State that is going around massacring dozens of Christians at a time. At least a hundred are known dead so far. Four police have been killed by this group as well in the past month. The Islamic group has not identified itself, but Christians in central Nigeria are terrified.
February 29, 2004: Police arrested 59 suspects over the bloody attack on a farming community in central Nigeria's Plateau State. The situation in Yelwa was reportedly calm, days after the attack by nomadic fighters who slaughtered residents who had taken shelter in a church. The fighting was triggered by tribal and religious feuds between Hausa/Fulani and Taroh (who are doing the raiding recently).-- Adam Geibel
February 28, 2004: At least 40 people have been killed in fresh round of sectarian fighting in central Nigeria, bringing the death toll in two weeks of tit-for-tat violence to 150. Christians in Plateau State turned on their Muslim neighbors on the 26th, to avenge the killing of about 90 people on the 24th by Islamic fighters in a nearby town (including 48 butchered at a church). The attackers in both incidences used cutlasses and swords, slashing their victims' throats and then burning their bodies. There were also reports of AK-47 toting youths in the area, adding to the mayhem.
The army and police units had moved into the area to evacuate about 3,000 Muslims from Gerkawa to Yelwa, now deserted by Christians who have fled to Shendam for fear of fresh attacks. Troops and riot police also put up roadblocks, to try to stop the fighting from spreading as threats of more reprisals raised the potential for fresh violence. An estimated 10,000 people have been killed in communal and religious violence in Nigeria since 1999, 15 years of military rule ended with President Obasanjo's election. - Adam Geibel
"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" Matthew 27:45-46
Who are these armed and educated Americans you speak of?
Biafra's shadow: 30 years after Nigerian war, Ibos still live amidst suffering
Monday, March 13, 2000
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS -- The Associated Press
Biafran children have bloated bellies in this August 1968 photo showing the effects of starvation during a catastrophic three-year civil war in Western Africa, in which more than a million people died. (AP Photo/Church World Service)
ENUGU, Nigeria (AP) -- The statue of a Nigerian soldier raises a gun in triumph in front of the state legislature in this hot, dusty town -- a humiliating reminder of defeat in a catastrophic civil war.
It has been 30 years since the Republic of Biafra surrendered after just 31 months of independence from Nigeria. But to the Ibo people, the discrimination and neglect are as real today as when they seceded from a country dominated by the Hausas of Nigeria's north and the Yorubas of the south.
Enugu, once the proud coal-mining capital of independent Biafra, is now a sleepy backwater, plagued by power outages, fuel shortages and mounting unemployment.
Three of the town's four mines have closed. The few tar roads are riddled with potholes. When word gets out that a gas station is expecting a fuel delivery, hundreds of cars line up.
Every family here has its tale of loss from the Biafra days -- relatives killed, homes destroyed, property seized in what was at the time Africa's bloodiest war.
It began in early 1966 when five Ibo army officers toppled the national government in a violent coup, killing the premier and kidnapping several senior Cabinet ministers.
The Muslim tribes of the north viewed the uprising as a conspiracy by the Christian Ibos to wrest control of Nigeria and rose up. Tens of thousands of Ibos living in the north were massacred and their churches burned -- scenes wrenchingly like those from Muslim-Christian fighting that has erupted across Nigeria in recent weeks.
"People were being slaughtered all over ... Trains were arriving every day with dead bodies," says Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, a prominent Ibo military official who in May 1967 proclaimed southeastern Nigeria as the sovereign Republic of Biafra.
"Biafra was about setting a line to tell Ibos that no matter what you are suffering, what persecution there is, once you have crossed this line, I can protect you," he says.
But during the three-year war that followed, the federal army blockaded Biafra, and more than a million people died, most from starvation and disease. Biafra surrendered in ignominious defeat.
A generation later, "The scars of war have not been obliterated," says Ojukwu, a large and charismatic man who is the son of one of Africa's first millionaires. He is still revered in Enugu, to which he returned in 1982 after 12 years in exile.
No compensation has been paid for the thousands of acres seized by the government or the millions of dollars lost when federal officials decreed Ibos could not have more than 20 Nigerian pounds (then about $25) in a bank account.
Despite a flurry of reconstruction during Nigeria's 1970s oil boom, part of national reconciliation efforts, the southeast has since been left to decline.
It's doubtful the region is any worse off than the rest of Nigeria, which is also plagued by unemployment, fuel shortages and power outages. But Ibos see their problems as particularly acute -- and a potent reminder of the marginalization they have suffered.
A complex financing formula for education, which is highly esteemed in Ibo society, ensures that less federal money is spent per student in the southeast than in the north.
And to this day, Ibos are excluded from the top echelons of the government and military.
"You see a Hausa man promoted over you, and he doesn't have the qualifications you have," says Godwin Ede, 52, who gave up a civil service career in frustration to work for a private bus company. "We are still being left behind."
And now there is bloodshed to contend with again.
Ibos in the eastern city of Aba watched in horror recently as corpses of local people arrived from the north, where fighting between Christians and Muslims in Kaduna state killed hundreds. Furious Ibos attacked Muslim Hausas living in Aba and burned the mosque. At least 200 people died.
This time, however, most Ibos seem determined to avoid war.
"We lost too much," says Eugenia Onyeima, 60, a market trader who spent the Biafra war fleeing from village to village after her five brothers and sisters were killed and their home destroyed in a government attack. "As you go on the road, you see dead bodies. Some compounds have no more people; everyone died."
With more than 200 tribes, Nigeria is riven with ethnic and religious divides and frequently torn by violence.
Hundreds have died in clashes since President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian Yoruba, was sworn in last May 29, ending 15 years of military rule.
While the latest clashes were sparked by calls to establish Islamic law in Kaduna state, they were interwoven with ethnic tensions -- Muslims are overwhelmingly Hausas or Fulanis from the north, while most Christians are Yorubas or members of other southern tribes.
The election of Obasanjo and his efforts to diversify the government and military have created unease among the Hausa and Fulani, who have traditionally dominated those institutions. Some Yorubas, in turn, fear Obasanjo is a stooge for the north because of his military background.
Among the Ibos, however, the restoration of civilian rule has renewed hope that old grievances will finally be addressed.
Obasanjo has appointed a panel to investigate human rights abuses dating back to 1966, and an Ibo group has demanded reparations of $86 billion.
"For 30 years ... we were regarded almost like lepers," says Igwe Uche, 53, a taxi driver who fought for Biafra. "But with democracy, I think things are getting better."
Even Ojukwu wants to work with the new government, saying democratization is Nigeria's best hope for unity.
As a young colonel in 1970, Obasanjo headed the troops to which the Biafrans surrendered. But Ojukwu now regularly speaks to the president, and sees himself as a wise elder statesman willing to leave the past behind.
"It is said that I was a brilliant 33-year-old," Ojukwu says, leaning back with a smile in one of the ornate Victorian-style chairs that fill his living room. "My ambition is to be a brilliant 66-year-old."
I'm not sure where you live, but in my locale everyone has quite an arsenal of guns & ammo and is very well educated on how to use them. The general couldn't have been more correct. In America there truly is a gun behind every blade of grass.
No populace is more greatly misunderstood than Americans. We are extremely tolerant, but once our patience runs out, we can and will wade knee deep in our enemies' blood. If Americans ever turn against the Muslims in their midst, it will not be in gradually escalating stages of violence. It will happen instantly, mercilessly, seemingly without warning, and on a massive scale. One moment there will be peace, then in the blink of an eye there will be nationwide slaughter.
We will take a multitude of slaps in the face, but once we've had enough, we will not slap back, we will utterly destroy our attacker.
Hudna. As in the warmongering pedophile Muhammeds treaty with the Quraysh.
See: The Agenda of Islam
If all else fails, the slaves of Islam can fall back on "taquiyah" where they are permitted to lie for their cult, to further the aims of the moon god worshipers "ummah."
... but from the sounds of things, I'm preaching to the choir. :o)
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