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(Dakar, Senegal) -
Nigeria should ensure that its security
forces use restraint and comply with
international standards on the use of
force in responding to the latest deadly
outbreak of inter-communal violence in
the city of Jos, Human Rights Watch said
today. The government should also
investigate and prosecute those
responsible for the killing of at least
200 people during the violence, the
latest of several deadly outbreaks in
Nigeria, and address the underlying
causes.
This latest violence
comes just over a year after Christian
and Muslim clashes and the excessive use
of force by the security forces
responding to the conflict left more
than 700 dead in Jos, the capital of
Plateau State in central Nigeria.
"This is not the first
outbreak of deadly violence in Jos, but
the government has shockingly failed to
hold anyone accountable," said Corinne
Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at
Human Rights Watch. "Enough is enough.
Nigeria's leaders need to tackle the
vicious cycle of violence bred by
this impunity."
Clashes between
Christian and Muslim mobs reignited in
Jos on Sunday morning, January 17, 2010.
There are conflicting reports of what
triggered the violence. Civil society
leaders report that it began with an
argument over the rebuilding of a Muslim
home destroyed in the November 2008
violence in a predominately Christian
neighborhood. The Plateau State police
commissioner, Greg Anyating, said the
trigger was an attack by Muslim youth on
Christian worshippers in the Nassarawa
Gwom district of Jos, an allegation that
Muslim leaders deny.
According to credible
reports from civil society leaders, and
national and international media, the
violence was carried out by sectarian
mobs armed with guns, bows and arrows,
and machetes. Roving gangs are reported
to have burned and looted houses, cars,
and shops, as well as several churches
and mosques. There are also several
credible reports that the military and
police used excessive force in
responding to the violence.
Muslim leaders reported
that 80 of the dead were taken to the
central mosque in Jos on Tuesday for
burial, in addition to 71 buried during
the first two days of clashes. One
Christian official reported that by
Monday, 50 Christians had died in the
violence and another 15 were killed on
Tuesday. The three days of clashes have
forced at least 5,000 people from their
homes. On Monday the state government
deployed additional military and
anti-riot police units to the streets of
Jos and on Tuesday morning imposed a
24-hour curfew in the city. Witnesses
interviewed by Human Rights Watch said
that gunshots could still be heard
around the city in the late afternoon,
and smoke was seen billowing from the
worst-affected neighborhoods.
Nigeria is deeply
divided along ethnic and religious
lines. More than 13,500 people have died
in religious or ethnic clashes since the
end of military rule in 1999. In Plateau
State, an unprecedented outbreak of
violence in Jos
claimed
as many as 1,000 lives in
September 2001;
more
than 700 people died in
May 2004 in inter-communal clashes in
the town of Yelwa in the southern part
of the state; and
at least
700 people were killed in
the violence in Jos on November 28 and
29, 2008.
Human Rights Watch
documented 133 cases of unlawful
killings by members of the security
forces in responding to the 2008
violence. Police officers and soldiers
gunned down residents in their homes,
chased down and killed unarmed men
trying to flee to safety, and lined up
victims on the ground and summarily
executed them. The government has failed
to hold anyone accountable for these
crimes.
President Umaru Yar'Adua
set up a panel to investigate, but the
panel only began hearings in December
2009. The Plateau State governor, Jonah
Jang, also formed a commission of
inquiry, which held hearings but did not
investigate alleged abuses by security
forces. The commission's report,
submitted to the state governor in
October 2009, has not been made public.
Human Rights Watch
called on the Nigerian security forces
to abide by the UN Basic Principles on
the Use of Force and Firearms by Law
Enforcement Officials in carrying out
their duties. State security forces are
required to apply nonviolent means as
far as possible before resorting to the
use of force, and where lawful use of
force is unavoidable, restraint is to be
used at all times to minimize damage and
injury and to respect and preserve human
life. Any order authorizing
indiscriminate use of violence by
security forces, such as
"shoot-on-sight" orders, would violate
these principles.
The government should
also take concrete steps to end the
discriminatory policies that treat
certain groups as second-class citizens
and that lie at the root of much of the
inter-communal violence in Nigeria.
Government policies that
discriminate against "non-indigenes"
- people who cannot trace their ancestry
to those said to be the original
inhabitants of an area - underlie many
of these conflicts. Non-indigenes are
openly denied the right to compete for
government jobs and academic
scholarships. In Jos, members of the
largely Muslim Hausa ethnic group are
classified as non-indigenes though many
have resided there for several
generations.
Human Rights Watch has
called on the federal government to pass
legislation prohibiting government
discrimination against non-indigenes in
all matters that are not purely cultural
or related to traditional leadership
institutions.
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