Call for probe into Nigerian killings

THE US government and human rights activists called yesterday for Nigeria to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the deaths of more than 200 unarmed people in renewed violence between Christians and Muslims.

Acting president Goodluck Jonathan had promised that the fighting would stop after more than 300 people were slain in January. Jonathan fired his national security adviser late on Monday night following the weekend violence.

“After the January killings, the villages should have been properly protected,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said. “Clearly, previous efforts to tackle the underlying causes have been inadequate, and in the meantime the wounds have festered and grown deeper.”

Human Rights Watch also urged Jonathan to provide protection for those in the small villages surrounding Jos, a central Nigerian city that has become the fault line for religious violence in the region.

Those who survived attacks on Sunday in three mostly Christian villages said security forces never provided them any guards, even though Jos itself has remained under a dusk-til-dawn curfew since January’s fighting.

“It’s time to draw a line in the sand,” Human Rights Watch researcher Corinne Dufka said. “The authorities need to protect these communities, bring the perpetrators to book and address the root causes of violence.”

Police say they have arrested more than 90 people suspected of inciting the violence. Some described it as a reprisal attack for Muslim deaths in January, while others said Fulani cattlemen wanted to take over land on the dusty plateau.

The US embassy in Nigeria’s capital Abuja issued a statement calling on Nigeria’s federal government to seek justice “under the rule of law and in a transparent manner,” the embassy said.

The US also asked the state government to “to ensure that all citizens in the Jos area feel they are respected and protected”.

The killings on Sunday add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in Africa’s most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people, Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004 and more than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

Nigeria is almost evenly split between Muslims in the north and the predominantly Christian south.