World

Boko Haram Kidnaps Hundreds, Tells Stories of Chibok Girls

Published

10 years ago

February 11, 2015

In this photo taken Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. Dorcas Aiden, 20 years old, speaks to a journalist in Yola, Nigeria. Dorcas Aiden was another of the girls caught in Boko Haram’s siege. She had finished high school and was living at home when the war came to her village. Fighters took her to a house in the town of Gulak and held her captive for two weeks last September. The more than 50 teenage girls crammed into the house were beaten if they refused to study Quranic verses or conduct daily Muslim prayers, she says. When the fighters got angry, they shot their guns in the air. Aiden finally gave in and denied her Christian faith to become Muslim, at least in name, she says. (AP Photo/Lekan Oyekanmi)

CHIKA ODUAH, Associated Press

YOLA, Nigeria (AP) — When Islamic extremists snatched more than 270 girls from the Chibok boarding school in Nigeria in the dead of night, protests broke out worldwide. The U.S. pledged to help find them, and the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag was born.

Some 10 months later, most are still missing. The Boko Haram extremist group sees the mass kidnapping as a shining symbol of success, and has abducted hundreds of other girls, boys and women. The militants brag to their new captives about the surrender of the Chibok girls, their conversion to Islam and their marriage to fighters.

“They told me the Chibok girls have a new life where they learn to fight,” says Abigail John, 15, who was held by Boko Haram for more than four weeks before escaping. “They said we should be like them and accept Islam.”

The kidnappings reflect the growing ambition and brazenness of Boko Haram, which seeks to impose an Islamic state across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Some 10,000 people have died in the Islamic uprising over the past year, compared to 2,000 in the previous four years, according to the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations.

“It’s devastating,” said Bukky Shonibare, an activist in Abuja, of the kidnappings. “It makes you wonder, what is being done?”

John was among three girls interviewed by The Associated Press who recently escaped from Boko Haram. While their stories could not be independently verified, they were strikingly similar, and all spoke of their captors’ obsession with the Chibok girls.

The girls had no idea whether the militants were telling the truth or making up stories to taunt their victims. John says the fighters enjoyed relating how they had whipped and slapped the Chibok girls until they submitted.

When the Nigerian air force dropped a bomb on the house where John was confined, she tried to escape, she says. She wrestled with the fighters, but they broke her am and hauled her off to another house.

At the end of last year, the Nigerian army liberated the town where she was held. She is now in Yola with her father, sister and six brothers, in a house overcrowded with refugees. She finally was able to get medical attention for her fractured right arm, which remains in a cast.

The kidnappings of the Chibok girls in April brought Boko Haram to the world’s attention in a way the group could not have imagined. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls was tweeted more than 480,000 times globally in early May, and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama held it up in a sign to television cameras. She said at the time, “In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters …we can only imagine the anguish their parents are feeling right now.”

Yet in the 10 months since, Boko Haram has increased the tempo and ferocity of its insurgency. In August, it began seizing and holding towns, and — copying the Islamic State group — declared it would recreate an ancient Islamic caliphate in the region. The fighting has since spilled across Nigeria’s borders, and the African Union this month authorized a multinational force of 8,750 troops to try to stamp it out.

Dorcas Aiden, 20, was another of those caught in Boko Haram’s siege. She had finished high school and was living at home when the war came to her village. Fighters took her to a house in the town of Gulak and held her captive for two weeks last September.

The more than 50 teenage girls crammed into the house were beaten if they refused to study Quranic verses or conduct daily Muslim prayers, she says. When the fighters got angry, they shot their guns in the air. Aiden finally gave in and denied her Christian faith to become Muslim, at least in name, she says.

One day, the fighters stormed into the room where she was kept locked up with a dozen other girls. They showed a video of the Chibok girls, dressed in hijabs, with only their faces visible through their veils. Aiden says she was so overwhelmed that she cried.

The fighters said the Chibok girls were all Muslims now, and some were training as fighters to fight women, which Boko Haram men are not supposed to do.

Aiden’s captors boasted about how they had married off the Chibok girls, she says. One fighter said he would marry her. She balked.

“I said, ‘No, I will not marry you,'” Aiden recounts. “So he pulled out a gun and beat my hand.”

Aiden says the insurgents threatened to break the legs of any girl who tried to escape, but she and six others ran anyway. As she made her way through abandoned farm fields, she noticed that Boko Haram had filled about 10 other houses with kidnapped girls and women.

Aiden, who is now in Yola with tens of thousands of other refugees, dreams of going to university, in defiance of the extremists’ insistence that girls should be married, not educated. The nickname Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden or sinful.”

Another escapee, a shy 16-year-old captured in September, begs that her name not be published because she escaped only a few weeks ago and believes the fighters are actively searching for her. After the girl’s village was attacked four times, she fled to a great-aunt. Then that village also was targeted, she says.

The fighters held her for four months. When she escaped, she walked through the bush and across the border into Cameroon to avoid areas under Boko Haram’s control. She is now taking refuge in a Catholic church in Yola.

All the girls say they were not raped, despite the fears of some villagers. Instead, the fighters said they wanted the girls to remain virgins until they were married off.

“They said they are doing the work of God, so they will not touch us,” the 16-year-old recounts.

As she tells her story, she fidgets and looks down at her hands, clasped in her lap. She recounts how one fighter, nicknamed “Tall Arab,” was set on marrying her. She pleaded that she was too young, but was told, “Do you think you are better than those Chibok girls that we kidnapped?”

The man told her the Chibok girls were “enjoying their matrimonial homes,” she remembers. He also said the Chibok girls had turned against their parents, and were “ready to slit their parents’ throats” if they ever saw them again.

Some never will. Even if the girls are released, people in Chibok say at least 13 of their parents have died since they were seized, in Boko Haram violence or possibly stress-related illness.

While dozens of Chibok girls escaped on their own after their kidnapping, 219 are still missing. Nigeria’s military initially feared any action could lead to the girls being killed. But villagers reported last week that air force jets have begun bombing the Sambisa Forest — the area where fighters told Aiden some girls still are held captive.

AP writer Michelle Faul contributed to this story from Dakar, Senegal.

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COMMENTARY: Will a Dictator’s Loss Change Trump’s Tune?

What’s happened in Syria has the potential of reshaping the politics of the entire Middle East. The U.S. can’t afford to sit back and do nothing. Now is the time to exert peaceful, diplomatic influence on how Syria maintains stability and goes forward with a new democracy.

Published

2 days ago

December 24, 2024

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Emil Guillermo

In our polarized country, half of America can’t wait, while many of us still wonder, “where’s Kamala?”

I hope President-elect Trump — who famously said during the campaign that he’d be a dictator on day one — eats his words.

Dictators aren’t doing so well these days.

Last weekend, the dictator Bashar al-Assad was run out of Syria and sought exile with his puppet master/dictator Vladimir Putin of Russia. In just about two weeks, a coalition of rebels applied enough pressure to end a family regime in Syria that lasted 50 years.

al-Assad’s wealthy family dictatorship plundered Syria and ruled in terror.

It sounds all too familiar to Filipino Americans, many of whom came to the U.S. fleeing the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

al-Assad’s end was different from the Filipinos who forged a peaceful People Power movement that chased the Marcos family to Hawaii where they sought refuge from their U.S. puppet handlers.

But as in Manila, there was cheering on the streets of Syria. Men, women, and children. Christian, Muslims, different sects and ethnicities, all united against al-Assad.

al-Assad has been described as a genocidal narco-trafficking tyrant, whose friends were America’s biggest enemies, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, on CNN.

Moustafa said it was amazing that there would be no more Russian airstrikes, no more al-Assad gulags torturing civilians. “To see good triumph over evil is an amazing thing,” he added.

But last weekend has some trickle down.

Consider that we are talking about al-Assad, the one Tulsi Gabbard consorted with and hyped to her colleagues when she was in Congress. Now Assad has been shamed into exile with his puppet master Russia, and Gabbard wants to be the U.S. director of national security? Given her wrongheaded judgment on al-Assad, can she be trusted with any national secrets?

It’s still not over in Syria, as now there will be a scramble to see what kind of governing democracy emerges.

Predictably, Donald Trump has said, “The United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.”

Nouveau isolationism?

Overall, the ouster of the dictator should give Trump pause.

If by nominating MAGA loyalists like Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel, Trump’s testing the evolution to strongman rule in the U.S., he should consider what happened before last weekend.

In South Korea, a weak president tried to declare martial law and was voted down by Parliament. That’s a faux strongman.

Let’s hope Trump learns a lesson from the week’s news.

The next president sets the tone for a politics that’s already toxic.

He needs to remember the joy in Syria this week when an autocrat was dumped in the name of freedom and democracy.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is an award-winning Bay Area journalist. His commentaries are on YouTube.com/@emilamok1. Or join him at www.patreon.com/emilamok

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Black History

Biden acknowledged America’s ‘Original Sin of Slavery,’ Pledged Infrastructure Dollars and Long-Term Financial Aid

“Our people lie at the heart of a deep and profound connection that forever binds Africa and the United States together. We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains and subjected to unimaginable cruelty,” Biden said in remarks at the National Museum of Slavery, which is built near the chapel where enslaved individuals were forcibly baptized before being sent to America. The museum was built on the property of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, one of the largest slave traders on the African coast.

Published

3 weeks ago

December 8, 2024

Oakland Post

President Biden met today with President João Lourenço to highlight the transformation of the U.S.-Angolan relationship and reaffirm our joint commitment to continue working together to address global challenges.

President Biden met with President João Lourenço to highlight the transformation of the U.S.-Angolan relationship and reaffirm our joint commitment to continue working together to address global challenges.

Will Biden’s aid for an above-the-ground Railroad help ease the pain for the African Americans’ Underground Railroad?

By Post Staff
And news dispatches from the Guardian, CNN and AP

When President Joe Biden went to Angola this week the purpose was ostensibly to advance the Lobito Corridor, an unfinished 800-mile railway project meant to facilitate the transfer of critical minerals from interior countries to western ports for exports.

But in a visit to the country’s slave museum, he acknowledged America’s dark past and its connection to Angola in the presence of three descendants of the first captives who arrived in Virginia from Angola in 1619.

The child of two of those captives — Antony and Isabella — was William Tucker, born around 1623. Three of his descendants were present when Biden spoke at the country’s slave museum and humbly acknowledged how the horrific history of slavery has connected the United States and Angola.

“While history can be hidden, it cannot and should not be erased. It should be faced. It’s our duty to face our history,” he said. “The good, the bad and the ugly. The whole truth. That’s what great nations do,” he said.

“It was the beginning of slavery in the United States. Cruel. Brutal. Dehumanizing. Our nation’s original sin. Original sin. One that’s haunted America and cast a long shadow ever since,” Biden spoke as he honored the Tucker family.

After introducing Wanda Tucker, Vincent Tucker and Carlita Tucker, he delivered a hopeful vision for the future in a major speech from the country that was the point of departure for millions of enslaved Africans.

(Wanda Tucker now serves as the faculty chair of psychology, philosophy and religious studies at Rio Salado College in Arizona.)

The museum was built on the property of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, one of the largest slave traders on the African coast.

Biden told the attendees that he’s proud to be the first president to visit Angola and that he’s “deeply optimistic” about the future relationship between the nation and the US.

“The story of Angola and the United States holds a lesson for the world. Two nations with a shared history, an evil of human bondage,” Biden said. “Two nations on the opposite sides of the Cold War, the defining struggle of the late part of the 20th century. And now, two nations standing shoulder to shoulder working together every day. It’s a reminder that no nation need be permanently the adversary of another.”

Biden’s trip aimed to highlight U.S. investments in Angola and the continent in the face of deepening Chinese influence in the region, as Beijing has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative.

Biden took a swipe at China’s moves, without calling out the country by name, and argued the US presents a better alternative.

“The United States understands how we invest in Africa is as important as how much we invest,” Biden said.

“In too many places, 10 years after the so-called investment was made, workers are still coming home on a dirt road and without electricity, a village without a school, a city without a hospital, a country under crushing debt. We seek a better way, transparent, high standard, open access to investment that protects workers and the rule of law and the environment. It can be done and will be done,” the president said.

Biden’s speech comes during what likely could be his last trip abroad as president and as he seeks to deepen relationships with Angola and other African nations at a time when China has made significant inroads in the continent with hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investments, far outpacing the U.S.

During his remarks, Biden touted U.S. efforts to expand its relationships across Africa, including billions of dollars in investments in Angola.

He also announced over $1 billion in new US humanitarian assistance for Africans who have been displaced by historic droughts across the continent.

“But we know African leaders and citizens are seeking more than just aid. You seek investment.

So, the United States is expanding its relationships all across Africa,” Biden said, adding later: “Moving from patrons to partners.”

Ahead of his remarks, the president also met with Angolan leaders, including young people at the museum.

Biden started his day with a bilateral meeting with Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço at the presidential palace in Luanda.

The two men discussed trade and infrastructure, including the US and Europe’s investment in the railroad. They also discussed mutual security interests as Angola has played a key mediating role in the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In November, Angola announced their Incremental Production Decree of fiscal terms designed to enhance the commercial viability of developing oil and gas fields. The decree enhances the commercial viability of developing fields in mature blocks, underexplored areas and stranded resources, while encouraging exploration near existing infrastructure. The US Railroad infrastructure investments could play a major role in enabling increased recovery from producing fields and extending the lifespan of critical infrastructure, the decree is set to generate billions in offshore investments, create jobs and drive economic growth, solidifying Angola’s position as a leading oil and gas producer.

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Activism

South African Solidarity Committee Hosts 31st Annual Celebration

“We’re all together for each other celebrating 31 years of building international solidarity between the people of the United States and South Africa toward the implementation of the 1955 Freedom Charter and 2030 Sustainable Development Goals,” said COSAS Operations Manager Nicole Richards.Located in Berkeley, COSAS is dedicated to the continuing struggle by the people of South Africa’s need for independence.

Published

2 months ago

November 3, 2024

Oakland Post

Zimbabwean dance and music group performs at COSAS' 31 Year Celebration at the East Bay Church of Religious Science. Photo By Carla Thomas.

By Carla Thomas

The Committee of South African Solidarity (COSAS) celebrated its 31st anniversary on Saturday, Oct. 26 at the East Bay Church of Religious Science in Oakland.

Themed “Ubuntu,” a word in Zulu and Xhosa, which means “I am because we are,” the event brought together supporters and community members.

Located in Berkeley, COSAS is dedicated to the continuing struggle by the people of South Africa’s need for independence.

A soulful meal was prepared by Chef Rene Johnson and Blackberry Soul Catering along with live entertainment and speakers.

COSAS is an all-volunteer, private membership organization, made up of South Africans, Africans, students, professionals, clergy and others committed to building solidarity between the working people of the U.S. and the South African people still struggling for economic and political freedom.

Formed in 1993, the organization promotes the “real nature” of the changes and struggles taking place in South Africa and the African continent, according to Richards.

“COSAS counters ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ in the U.S. and Western mainstream media that creates division and distrust,” Richards said. “We produce the South African Beacon and organize and transport solidarity shipments of school supplies to South African grade schools requesting assistance,” Richards said.

According to organizers, COSAS is completely run by volunteers, free from the corporate and government agendas that continue to keep South Africa dependent on the West.

“We rely on the support of concerned individuals. Call us today about how you can get involved by sorting and packing supplies, donating office equipment, and supporting special events,” said Richards.

Earlier in the year, COSAS hosted its World Affairs film showing at Downs Memorial United Methodist Church. The screening featured a short film, “Feeding a Crisis: Africa’s Manufactured Hunger Pandemic,” exploring the hunger challenges African countries face and approaches to resolving the issues.

Contact the Committee for South African Solidarity, 1837 Alcatraz Ave., Berkeley, CA, 510-251-0998 for volunteer opportunities and event information.