Nigerian military and security forces killed hundreds of mostly Christian ethnic Igbo civilians advocating for self-determination, in massacres that took place from 2015 to 2017, according to the most comprehensive report to date, which took three years to make.
The NGO International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) released a new 85-page report this week that purports to highlight how Nigerian military and security forces are responsible for the deaths of 480 and the injuring of over 500 other “unarmed and defenseless” civilians in crackdowns targeting Igbo self-determination activists and members of the Igbo population.
The crackdowns were carried out through various internal security operations in Southeast and other southern regions of Nigeria that have drawn criticism from those warning that the Nigerian military is being “deployed against unarmed civilians.”
The new Intersociety report, titled “Under Buhari & Osinbajo: Many Have Gone & Crippled For Life In Eastern Nigeria,” is based on three years of research that includes interviews with survivors, relatives and victims.
“Most, if not all the slain, wounded or abducted victims are members of the Nigerian Christian Faith and other non-Muslim religions,” the report reads. “Hospitals, where the wounded were taken to for treatment, were also invaded by soldiers at night or late evening during which some of them were abducted to unknown locations where they must have been shot dead and remained untraced.”
The report lists 10 locations identified during the course of Intersociety’s investigations where the killings and massacres occurred.
The report also lists seven significant “graveyards or dumping sites” where “the slain were shallowly buried, or burnt to ashes, or lacerated with suspected raw acid substances.” Other dead bodies were reportedly either dumped in the open, thrown off a bridge or left in secret or isolated places to decompose.”
The alleged killings highlighted in the report occurred as there has been a revival in the call for Biafra independence in the Igbo population in Southeast Nigeria, most of which are Christian in faith.
According to the report, the segment of the general Igbo and other non-Igbo Christian population affected by the massacres and killings were “exercising their rights to self-determination using nonviolence” through democratic assemblies such as street protests, picketing, prayers and worship, and religious processions.
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