Release launches petition urging Nigeria to protect Christians under attack

Release International

As international outrage builds following the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian school girls Release International launches a new campaign to protect Nigerian Christians from extremist violence. The petition also calls on Nigeria to root out rogue elements in its security forces.

Release International, which serves the persecuted Church worldwide, has launched a campaign to press Nigeria to step up security. It calls on the government to protect its Christian citizens who are coming under increasing attack.

Islamist terror group Boko Haram has finally claimed responsibility for kidnapping hundreds of school girls in Borno State on April 14. Armed gunmen posing as soldiers abducted around 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, a mainly Christian area of northern Nigeria. According to the police, 223 are still missing.

In a video made all the more chilling by his laughter, the group's leader Abubakar Shekau told the world: 'I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah. There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell.'

Boko Haram has also claimed responsibility for planting a car bomb in the capital Abuja, last Friday, killing 19. They set the bomb to go off within yards of a recent blast that killed at least 70.

Boko Haram's stated aim is to impose Taliban-style Sharia law across the whole of Nigeria. Their full name is Jamāʻat Ahl as-Sunnah lid-daʻwa wal-Jihād, which translates as the Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad.

To that end, the group has declared war against both the government and Christians. They are more commonly known by their nickname, Boko Haram, which means 'Western education is forbidden.'

'Let's not forget that Boko Haram intends to set up an Islamic state,' says Release Chief Executive Paul Robinson, who adds: 'The religious dimension to this insurgency is often notably absent from media coverage.

'But when you have an AK47 pointed in your face and asked whether you are a Christian, that shows there is a fundamental religious aspect to this violence.

'Time and again we interview Christians who have lost loved ones at the hands of Boko Haram and it is very clear they have been targeted because they are Christian. When the Northern States Christian and Elders Forum released the names of 180 of the abducted girls, it showed that 165 were from Christian homes.'

According to CNN, Boko Haram boasted a year ago that it intended to abduct and sell girls. The Chibok abductions, while largest in scale, are neither Boko Haram's first nor their most recent kidnappings.

Last November, Boko Haram seized dozens of Christian women in Maiduguri, Borno State. When the military managed to rescue the women, some were pregnant, others had been married off against their wills and forcibly converted to Islam.

According to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram went on to abduct 25 women and girls in the first two months of 2014, before staging their most audacious raid in Chibok, where hundreds of girls, aged mainly between 16 and 18, were sitting their exams.

Some observers fear the girls may already have been smuggled across the porous borders into Chad and Cameroon to be sold for sex, or forcibly married and converted to Islam.

According to press reports, eight more girls, aged between 12 and 15, were abducted on Sunday night in Warabe village, Borno state.

Boko Haram is not the only threat facing Nigerian Christians. Minority communities have been attacked in the north in a programme of religious and ethnic cleansing.

And attacks have been spreading further south, as villagers come under armed assault from well-armed Fulani militants. The Christian villagers tell their stories in the latest edition of Release magazine, which is available for download. At a conservative estimate, thousands of Christians have been killed and driven from their homes.

There are ongoing reports that the Islamist militants in Nigeria are being supported by jihadis and mercenaries from Niger, Chad and Cameroon. And there are frequent accounts that security forces, who have been drafted in to protect Christian villagers, are instead collaborating with the attackers.

Observers believe the militants are attempting to destabilise Nigeria ahead of the presidential elections in 2015.

Release International's No More Sorrow! campaign implores the Nigerian government to 'take immediate, decisive and comprehensive measures, while there is still time, to provide effective protection to these vulnerable people.' And it calls for Nigeria to 'root out elements in the security forces that are either ineffective or even complicit in the violence.'

Details of the campaign and petition forms are available from the Release International website: www.releaseinternational.org Release will present the petition to the Nigerian High Commissioner in London.