Nigeria

Police accused of arbitrary Muslim killings

Article published on the 2009-07-21 Latest update 2009-07-21 12:45 TU

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua in Sharm el-Sheikh this month.
(Photo: Reuters)

More than 700 people died in two days of clashes in Plateau State last November, Human Rights Watch said Monday. It urged the prosecution of security force members it accuses of "arbitrary killings”.

Security forces deny the accusations. The death figure stated by HRW is three times that given by the government. Security forces were sent by the government to restore order in Jos after a disputed election triggered fighting between Muslim and Christian gangs.

The HRW said in a submission to the Plateau State Judicial Commission of Inquiry on the crisis that Muslim and Christian authorities had documented the deaths of more than 700 people, and that the “Nigerian police and military were implicated in more than 130 arbitrary killings”.

A HRW expert for Nigeria, Eric Guttschuss, testified before a committee yesterday and is now calling on the Nigerian government to arrest and prosecute those responsible. He told RFI it was time for the Nigerian government to end the cycle of impunity in Nigeria.

"One of the concerns is that this is not the first time that this has happened. In 2001, one thousand people were killed during clashes in Jos," he said. "The problem of discrimination against various ethnic groups in Nigeria persists and the federal government has failed to take action."

 

The clashes started as a political feud over a local election, and later degenerated into bloody confrontation between Muslims and Christians in Jos, the capital of Plateau State.

They were triggered by a rumour that the majority-Muslim All Nigerian Peoples Party had lost in a local election to the mainly Christian Peoples Democratic Party. The HRW said youths armed with rifles, machetes, knives, petrol bombs and rocks were behind the violence.

Muslims and Christians for the most part live peacefully in Nigeria. But Jos, which rests between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly Christian south, witnessed deadly clashes between the two religious groups in 2001.