Does Amnesty International care about Nigeria?

SHAME ON YOU AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL!  -Yemi Olakitan

 

The most famous among Boko Haram sympathisers is Amnesty International (AI), which has become the “official defender” of the human rights of Boko Haram members while ignoring the rights of the victims of the sect’s atrocious activities. It appears AI would rather see the sect continue to carry out its mass slaughter of innocent people than the military succeed in eliminating them, and restoring order to the North-east of Nigeria. Its latest report with the mocking title: “Stars on Their Shoulders. Blood on Their Hands: War Crimes Committed by the Nigerian military”, chronicles the “atrocities” of the Nigerian military and conspicuously ignored the deadly killings, abductions, mass murder, torture, mass kidnappings, mass rapes, bloody massacre of entire communities, inhuman treatment and brutal executions of men, women and children in the thousands by the sect.

The second report was actually an assessment by officials of the United States Counter Terrorism - who emphatically declared that Boko Haram was “winning the war” because according to them, ‘’it still retains the ability and capacity to mount deadly lethal attacks and retreat afterwards.’’  America and some of its allies refused to sell arms to Nigeria in the heat of the war under the guise of human rights abuses by our military - a fallout of AI’s persistent accusations.

It is pertinent to point out here that Israel which has faced accusations of human rights abuses in its war of attrition with Hamas regularly gets restocked with massive military supplies of weapons by the same hypocritical United States, because it believes Israel is fighting an existential war with Hamas, which has sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state. But America plays the human rights card when it comes to Nigeria – a country facing an ominous prospect of being overrun.  

It is a shame that AI has committed itself to the defence of terrorists and their supporters, and at the same time, failed so spectacularly to take pictures and video of the horrific atrocities committed by the terror group as evidence of the sect’s inhumanity and war crimes. It has failed to document the mindless killings of so many innocent people whose only offence was that they were going about their normal lives - poor ordinary people savagely murdered for no cogent reason at all. It is granted that the Amnesty International will not make an impact if it accuses the terrorists of war crimes, but it will grab headlines around the world if it accuses the military of it. But must this be done at the expense of protecting the territorial integrity of Nigeria?

The truth here is that the shadowy group and its collaborators cleverly realised early that, “if you want sympathy for your cause, then you don’t call it terrorism - as that will turn off the West”.  So cleverly, they labelled it “insurgency” to make the group seem as if it has a legitimate cause it is fighting for. of course, insurgency is different from terrorism.

If you carry out checks, you will find out most of the establishment people, and even opinion moulders from a particular part of this country, avoid that word “terrorism”, instead they refer to it as “insurgency”. For the simple reason, I suspect is to carry the US and the West along and they have achieved that - to the extent that the US is now in the forefront of accusations of human rights violations against our military. Ironically, America has a poor record on human rights when dealing with terrorists who pose a major threat to its national interests. To achieve its goal of “degrading and destroying” the terrorists, America deploys Special Forces and all sorts of weapons: hi-tech weapons, massive ordinances, including hellfire missiles from drones to target and kill terrorists around the world - also killing and maiming many innocent people in the process with a great deal of property destroyed. We have seen the massive forces the United States and its Western allies deploy in the pursuit of terror groups and their affiliates; we have seen the US detain terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay for nearly 14 years without formal charges or trial, with “industrial-scale” torture of suspects in the prison. Although AI has drawn the world’s attention to the atrocities committed by America, we have never heard AI call for its military top brass responsible for those abuses/violations to be referred for trial.

If we are going to define the word “insurgency”, it is the Niger Delta situation that nearly approximates it, and clearly not the terrorists we have in the North-east. We didn’t see senseless killings or hear of whole villages burnt down - people were kidnapped quite alright and oil infrastructure was vandalised, but certainly not the kind of terror we have on our hands today. The Niger Delta militants were agitating for a larger share of the resources taken from their land, even though it also involved some elements of criminality. But the moment there was an understanding, the restiveness simmered.

. If eventually, the Muhammadu Buhari presidency endorses this indictment of the military or individuals who fought the sect, will it not jeopardise the war against terror? Will it not demoralise our forces? Would our soldiers who fought and died to liberate Nigeria from the terrorists not have died in vain? Beyond that, will it not divide an already divided military?

And more than anything else, is it not a contradiction of monumental proportion for the northern establishment, especially its intelligentsia to be rooting for the prosecution of military personnel on charges of human rights abuses that they are accused of committing against Boko Haram members, while at the same time calling for amnesty for members of the very sect - that has waged war on the country, its people and committed the worst forms of atrocities ever seen in our history? Need we remind ourselves of the unquantifiable plunder and destruction of infrastructure, socio-economic crimes, mass murder of thousands, beheadings, mass kidnappings, mass rape of women, destruction of entire communities and gleefully making a show of it? 
THIS REPUBLIC   By Shaka Momodu, Email: shaka.momodu@thisdaylive.com. Tel: 0811 266 1654