Amnesty International said on Tuesday, a year on from the mass
abduction of 219 Nigerian schoolgirls.
>Photo: A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014, from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. Boko Haram released a new video on claiming to show the missing Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had converted to Islam and would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed. A total of 276 girls were abducted on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok, in Borno state, which has a sizeable Christian community. Some 223 are still missing.
The kidnapping of the teenagers from Chibok, in the northeastern state
of Borno, on April 14 last year brought unprecedented world attention
to the brutality of the insurgency.
But the human rights group said it had documented 38 cases of
abduction by the Islamists, based on testimony of dozens of
eyewitnesses as well as women and girls who eventually escaped.
"It is difficult to estimate how many people have been abducted by
Boko Haram," Amnesty said in the report, "'Our job is to shoot,
slaughter and kill': Boko Haram's reign of terror".
"The number of women and girls is likely to be higher than 2,000."
On the Chibok girls, Amnesty quoted a senior military source as saying
they had been split into three or four groups and held at different
Boko Haram camps.
Some were in its Sambisa Forest stronghold in Borno state, others
around Lake Chad, in the Gorsi mountains in Cameroon while about 70
girls were thought to be in Chad.
Nigeria's military has previously said it knows where the girls are
but ruled out a rescue operation as too dangerous.
The 219 teenagers have not been seen since Boko Haram released a video
message in May last year, showing about 100 of the girls in Muslim
dress and reciting verses of the Koran.
Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has said all of the teenagers had
converted to Islam and been "married off".
Amnesty reports provides fresh testimony to Boko Haram's use of mass
kidnapping, cataloguing the frequent abduction of young women and
girls, as well as the forced conscription of men and boys.
Women and girls interviewed recounted being held in atrocious
conditions, including in overcrowded prisons, being forced to cook and
clean for as well as marry Islamist fighters.
One human rights activist who interviewed more than 80 abducted women
and girls after their escape said in 23 cases, they had been raped
either before arrival at camps or after forced marriage.
One 19-year-old woman who was abducted in September 2014 said: "I was
raped several times when I was in the camp. Sometimes five of them.
Sometimes three, sometimes six.
"It went on for all the time I was there. It always happened in the
night... Some were even my classmates from my village. Those who knew me
were even more brutal to me."
One woman said Boko Haram fighters came to her house in the border
town of Gamboru to rape her lodger, a woman in her late 20s, and that
fear of HIV was widespread.
Elsewhere others spoke of being forced to train to shoot guns and make
bombs, while one said she was sent on operations, including to her own
village.
Amnesty, which wants Boko Haram investigated for war crimes and crimes
against humanity, estimates that more than 4,000 people were killed in
2014.
At least 1,500 civilians lost their lives in the first three months of
this year, it added.
--Vanguard
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