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 Jos crisis: US, Human Rights Watch
The United States Government has called on the Federal Government to bring those culpable in the recent crisis which engulfed Jos, Plateau State, to book.
A statement from the US Embassy on Wednesday said the violence was condemnable.
The statement read, “We urge the government of Nigeria to bring to justice, in accordance with Nigerian laws and international standards of due process, all those persons responsible for acts of violence.
“We condemn mob violence in the strongest possible terms, and take this opportunity to urge all parties to support efforts to promote inter-communal and interfaith harmony and peaceful co-existence in Jos and the rest of Nigeria.”
It said that the government and people of the US extended their sympathies to the people of Jos and to those who lost loved ones in the violence.
Also, the Empowered Newswire reported that a US-based international human rights group, Human Rights Watch, stated in a statement that the Federal Government should “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.”
“Enough is enough. Nigeria’s leaders need to tackle the vicious cycle of violence bred by this impunity,” an official of the US group was quoted as saying.
In a press statement released on Wednesday in New York and other global centres, the HRW also asked the Nigerian government to 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.”
The call for restraint in dealing with the Jos sectarian crisis is against the backdrop of the controversial killings that followed the Boko Haram crisis last year.
According to HRW, “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.”
The human rights group‘s Senior West Africa Researcher, Corinne Dufka, was quoted as saying, “this is not the first outbreak of deadly violence in Jos, but the government has shockingly failed to hold anyone accountable.”
HRW reckoned that more than 13,500 people have died in religious or ethnic clashes since the end of military rule in 1999.
It also said it has documented 133 cases of unlawful killings by members of the security forces in responding to the 2008 violence.
Stating that “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 group lamented that the Nigerian government has failed to hold anyone accountable for these crimes.
Recalling that ”President Umaru Yar’Adua set up a panel to investigate,” yet the panel only began hearings in December 2009, while the commission of inquiry set up by the Plateau State government only held hearings but did not investigate alleged abuses by security forces.
HRW added that ”the commission’s report, submitted to the state governor in October 2009, has not been made public.”
The press release continued:
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 minimise 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.
“Nigeria needs to act now to end discriminatory policies and hold accountable those who commit these terrible acts of violence,” Dufka said.
(2010/01/21 - The Punch) |
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