By Bruce Fein and Aloy Ejimakor -
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
On Dec.
21, President Trump sanctioned
52 human rights archvillains under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights
Accountability Act (GMHRAA). It empowers the president to deny visas and freeze
the assets of foreign officials complicit in extrajudicial killings, torture or
other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights to retaliate
against persons for seeking to expose government lawlessness or to exercise
internationally recognized freedoms, including freedoms of religion,
expression, association, and assembly and the rights to a fair trial and
democratic elections.
Mr.
Trump erred in refraining from sanctioning the archvillain of human rights
archvillains: Nigeria’s President and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.
Among other things, he has turned Nigeria into a Gethsemane or
Golgotha for 50 million Biafran Christians. They are more endangered in Mr. Buhari’s Nigeria than in any other country
in the world.
Mr. Trump affirmed earlier to
Christian Broadcasting Network anchor David Brody that helping Christians
abroad was a “priority.” Last May 11, speaking at the World Summit in Defense
of Persecuted Christians, Vice President Mike Pence singled out Nigeria as a
nation where Christians “confront intimidation, forced conversion, abuse,
assault, and worse” for practicing their religion.
Mr. Buhari has
welcomed sharia law in twelve northern Nigerian states. According to the United
States Commission on International Religious Freedom, “Christian leaders in the
northern states continued to report to USCIRF that state governments
discriminate against Christians by denying applications to build or repair
places of worship, access to education, representation in government bodies,
and employment. They also reported that Christian girls are abducted by Muslim
men to be brides.”
The USIRF recommended that Nigeria be
listed as a Country of Particular Concern; and, that President Trump invoke the GMHRAA to sanction Nigerian
officials complicit in violations of religious freedom.
Mr. Buhari balked
at the request of the Christian Association of Nigeria to withdraw Nigeria from
the Organization of Islamic Countries, which makes Christians second-class
citizens.
In addition to persecuting
Christians, Mr. Buhari is
complicit in extrajudicial killings, torture, and gross violations of the right
of peaceful assembly and protest. Biafrans have been Mr. Buhari’s prime victims, especially members
and supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). It employs Mahatma
Gandhi-like peaceful methods in support of restructuring Nigeria to remedy the
longstanding persecution of Biafrans because of their religion and ethnicity
from the Muslim Hausa-Fulani controlled central government. (In 1960, Great
Britain handed the reigns of power in Nigeria to its toadies and denied
Biafrans a self-determination vote required by decolonization mandates of the
United Nations.)
According to the State Department’s
Human Rights Report, since January 2016, in response to peaceful restructuring
agitation by pro-Biafra campaigners, Nigerian security forces arbitrarily
arrested and killed at least 100 members and supporters of IPOB. Some arrestees
were subjected to enforced disappearance.
On Feb. 9,
soldiers and police officers shot at about 200 IPOB members who had gathered
for a prayer meeting at the National High School in Aba, in Abia state. Video
footage showed soldiers shooting at peaceful and unarmed IPOB members; at least
17 people were killed and scores injured.
On May 29 and 30, at least 60 people
were killed in a joint security operation carried out by the army, police,
Department of State Security (DSS) and navy. Pro-Biafra campaigners had
gathered to celebrate Biafra Remembrance Day in Onitsha. No investigation into
these killings had been initiated by the end of the year.
Without due process, Mr. Buhari ordered
the dissolution and punishment of IPOB as a terrorist organization, a ludicrous
characterization disputed by the United States. Mr. Buhari disappeared
IPOB’s de facto leader Namdi Kanu after the Nigerian Army attacked his home
with live bullets and lethal weapons. In sum, Mr. Buhari is
blocking all avenues of peaceful redress for Biafrans.
The Trump administration has vocally
condemned gross human rights violations in Burma, North Korea, and Iran. Under
the GMHRAA, it has listed Maung Maung Soe of the Burmese Army’s Western Command
under the for military operations in Rakhine State responsible for widespread
human rights abuse against Rohinga civilians; and, former President Yahya
Jammeh of Gambia for employing a terror and assassination squad to cow or kill
his political opponents. Mr. Buhari’s human rights crimes against
Christians, Biafrans and Namdi Kanu are indistinguishable.
But instead of listing Mr. Buhari for
sanctions, President Trump has sold him $600 million in
high-technology attack planes and equipment ostensibly to use against the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in West Africa and Boko Haram. Depend
upon it. Those weapons will be diverted in whole or in part to terrorize
Biafran Christians and IPOB.
• Aloy
Ejimakor is counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra.
Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC.
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