Probe Jos Massacre, Rights Group Tells Jonathan

Probe Jos Massacre, US Rights Group Tells Jonathan

HUMAN Rights Watch (HRW), a United States based global human rights federation, has called on Nigeria's Acting President Goodluck Jonathan, to probe the massacre of at least 200 Christian villagers in Jos, the troubled Plateau State capital, on March 7, 2010.

A report by AkanimoReports says the US rights group while pushing for a thorough and prompt investigation of the incident with a view to prosecuting those responsible, claimed that Nigeria is deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines.

According to them, ''more than 13,500 people have died in religious or ethnic clashes since the end of military rule in 1999. The outbreak of violence south of Jos on March 7 is the latest in a series of deadly incidents in and around Plateau State''.

In an e-mail to the editor of AkanimoReports on Friday, Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch added, ''the acting president should also ensure that the military and the police act swiftly to protect civilians of all ethnicities at risk of further attacks or reprisal killings, including by conducting regular patrols throughout the vulnerable region''.

The latest killings in the country's restive Plateau state took place in the early morning hours of March 7, when groups of men armed with guns, machetes, and knives attacked residents of the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Zot, and Ratsat, 10 kilometers south of Jos. The dead included scores of women and children.

"This kind of terrible violence has left thousands dead in Plateau State in the past decade, but no one has been held accountable," said Corinne Dufka, the HRW senior researcher . "It's time to draw a line in the sand. The authorities need to protect these communities, bring the perpetrators to book, and address the root causes of violence."

Witnesses interviewed by the rights group said the attacks were committed by Muslim men speaking Hausa and Fulani against Christians, mostly of the Berom ethnicity.

Civil society leaders in Jos said that the attacks appeared to be in retaliation for previous attacks against Muslim communities in the area and the theft of cattle from Fulani herdsmen. On January 19, more than 150 Muslim residents were killed in an attack on the nearby town of Kuru Karama.

The witnesses said that groups of armed men attacked the largely Christian village of Dogo Nahawa at around 3 a.m. After surrounding the town, they hunted down and attacked Christian residents, killing many as they tried to flee and burning many others alive. The witnesses said they believed some of the attackers had previously lived in their villages before fleeing during inter-communal tension in 2001, 2008, and earlier in 2010.

Witnesses to the killings, community leaders from Jos, and journalists who visited the villages told Human Rights Watch that they saw bodies, including corpses of young children and babies, inside houses, strewn around the streets, and in the pathways leading out of the villages. A Christian leader who participated today in a mass burial of 67 bodies in Dogo Nahawa said that about 375 people are dead or still missing. Journalists and community leaders who visited the town said that many homes, cars, and other property were burned and destroyed.

"These attacks we see as reprisal attacks from the crisis in January," the Plateau State police spokesperson, Mohammed Lerama, told Human Rights Watch. According to official police figures, the police have so far arrested 98 people in connection with the attacks.

Goodluck Jonathan, who on February 9 was named acting president by Nigeria's National Assembly, responded to the January violence by deploying additional troops to the streets of Jos and surrounding communities.

''The military presence and patrols have been largely limited to major roads and towns and have not protected many of the smaller communities'', HRW said

After the worst of the mid-January violence in and around the nearby town of Kuru Karama, Jonathan pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice. "Those found to have engineered, encouraged or fanned the embers of this crisis through their actions or pronouncements will be arrested and speedily brought to justice," he said. "We will not allow anyone to hide under the canopy of group action to evade justice. Crime, in all its gravity, is an individual responsibility, not a communal affair."

While Jonathan's commitments are a step in the right direction, they need to be followed with credible investigations and prosecutions, the rights group said.

ENDS