Nigerian machete-wielding attackers kill 8 people

[djfearross]

17 July 2010 Last updated at 18:41 GMT

Nigerian machete-wielding attackers kill 8 people At least eight people have been killed in an attack by machete-wielding assailants near the city of Jos in Nigeria.

The unidentified attackers descended on a village on the outskirts of Jos, burning about 10 houses, early on Saturday, officials said.

Some reports said the dead included the family of a Christian priest.

Clashes between rival communities - Hausa Muslims and Berom Christians - have left hundreds dead this year.

Witnesses said the men attacked the family of Rev Nuhu Dawat in the village of Mazah, 12km (7 miles) from the state capital of Jos, killing his wife, two children and a grandson.

The priest ran for his life, later telling Reuters news agency: "I leave everything to God to judge."

Plateau State Police Commissioner Gregory Anyating told Reuters the authorities were trying to find out "the root causes of the violence", but it had not spread to other villages.

Deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and 2010 left hundreds of people dead.

Although the clashes take place between Muslims and Christians, observers say the underlying causes are economic and political

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I've noticed that nearly every article on the BBC website regarding Muslims killing Christians in Nigeria is played down by the BBC. The BBC have attempted at every angle to remove the fact that these people are Muslim and are regulary murdering Christians in Nigeria in their Holy War. (jihad).

Reuters;

JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) – Raiders armed with machetes killed the family of a Nigerian Christian priest and set fire to his church in central Plateau state Saturday, close to where hundreds have died in religious violence this year.

Residents said unknown assailants attacked the family of Rev. Nuhu Dawat in the early hours in the farming village of Mazah, around 12 km (7 miles) from the state capital of Jos, killing his wife, two children and grandson.

Dawat himself ran and hid when the attack occurred and was the sole survivor in his household. "I leave everything to God to judge," a sobbing Dawat told Reuters.

At least four other people were also killed in the attack, a military spokesman said. A Reuters witness said many of the bodies were slashed with what appeared to be machete blows and one was burned beyond recognition.

"Although the clashes take place between Muslims and Christians, observers say the underlying causes are economic and political" Funny that, whenever Muslims commits a murder it always seems to be due to anything apart from religion. Cultural, Poor, Uneducated, ethnic, reprisals.....

I've observed that the BBC have be doing this for a while with regards to Nigerian Muslims when Christians are murdered (for being Christian).

Here's another such article from when earlier this year 500 Christians were hacked to death... yes 500!! Where are the BBC?
Look at the coverage they give to NINE people dieing on a boat which has 500 people on board.

Page last updated at 21:47 GMT, Monday, 8 March 2010
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8555018.stm

Nigeria ethnic violence 'leaves hundreds dead'

Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation said he witnessed the massacre
Hundreds of people, including many women and children, were killed in ethnic violence near the city of Jos in Nigeria at the weekend, officials say.

They said villages had been attacked by men with machetes who came from nearby hills.

Troops have now been deployed in the area and dozens of arrests are said to have been made.

Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has ordered security forces to prevent more weapons being brought into the area.

He has also sacked the country's national security adviser, Sarki Mukhtar.

Jos has been under a military curfew since January when at least 200 people died in clashes between Christians and Muslims.


ANALYSIS

Caroline Duffield, BBC News, LagosAlready this is being described as retaliation for the outburst of killing in January in which hundreds more people were killed.

Back then the largest losses were suffered by the Hausa Fulani community. In the village of Kuru Karama more than 100 people were killed and their bodies thrown into wells and sewers. Grave accusations were made that the local government had stoked the violence. This time it is clear that the targets were Berom Christians.

For weeks there have been rumours of retaliation in these villages and people have been living in a state of anxiety. Many families left. These killings are often painted by local politicians as a religious or sectarian conflict. In fact it is a struggle between ethnic groups for fertile land and resources in the region known as Nigeria's Middle Belt.
The latest attacks, on members of the mainly Christian Berom community, are said to have been reprisals for the January killings.

The authorities say the villages are now calm after troops and military vehicles entered them.

An adviser to the Christian-dominated Plateau state government, Dan Manjang, told AFP: "We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act."

Another Plateau state official, Gregory Yenlong, urged people to "remain calm and be patient as the government steps up security to protect lives and property in this state".

Many of the dead in the villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa are reported to be women and children.

Chief Gabriel Gyang Bot, from nearby Shen, told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that people in his village feared more attacks.

He said he had received text messages from people who claimed responsibility for the weekend attacks and had threatened to return.

'Traps set'

Mark Lipdo, from the Christian charity Stefanos Foundation, said Zot village had been almost wiped out.

He said: "We saw mainly those who are helpless, like small children and then the older men, who cannot run, these were the ones that were slaughtered."

A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said that the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village before dawn on Sunday in defiance of a curfew.


JOS, PLATEAU STATE

Deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and 2010
City divided into Christian and Muslim areas

Divisions accentuated by system of classifying people as indigenes and settlers
:oHausa-speaking Muslims living in Jos for decades are still classified as settlers

Settlers find it difficult to stand for election
Communities divided along party lines: Christians mostly back the ruling PDP; Muslims generally supporting the opposition ANPP


In pictures: Mourning in Nigeria
Q&A: Jos violence
Your stories of the violent attacks
"The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes," Peter Jang told Reuters news agency.

Some witnesses said villagers were caught in fishing nets and animal traps as they tried to escape and were then hacked to death. Mud huts were also set on fire.

Mass burials took place on Sunday and scores more bodies were laid out in the streets of the three attacked villages, awaiting further burials on Monday.

Figures given for the death tolls in the ethnic clashes have varied widely, sometimes to achieve political ends or to reduce the risk of reprisals, or simply because victims are buried quickly.

Jos lies between the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria and its largely Christian south.

Analysts say the latest attack seems to be in reprisal for clashes in January, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people and displaced thousands of others.

Hundreds of people have fled from Jos in the aftermath of the fighting, the International Committee of the Red Cross says.

The clashes represent a challenge for Acting President Jonathan. He formally took over last month from President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has a heart problem.

Mr Yar'Adua returned from three months of treatment in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago but has still not been seen in public.

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Some nicely angled sentences to try to remove the fact that 500 CHRISTIANS were murdered by Jihadists.

How sad.

Read more here, see if the local Christians believe this is ethnic or a jihad. Of cause the BBC doesn't feel is worth bothering what they think, their lifes are nothing compared to a Muslim life.
www.persecution.org/slaughter/?p=1

[djfearross]

www.persecution.org/slaughter/?p=1

On Monday 8 march 2010 the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon on BBC World Service decried the so called reprisals killings in Jos while in the same bulletin one Richard Hamilton of the BBC Africa service was almost ‘justifying’ the gruesome murders as ‘reprisals’, another BBC reporter Caroline Duffield would almost by rote give the same ‘justification’ arguing that Christians committed same in January while all the time the evidence was there, ensconced conveniently in the famed Daily Trust, that the particular bloody incidence said to have been responsible for the Sunday, 7, March, 2010 attacks was not committed by the kin of those slaughtered.
This is in no way belittling the fact that Fulani were affected in what is erroneously pictured as a conflict between ‘settlers’ and ‘natives’ as gloriously tabulated by many ignorant and malicious western reporting. ‘Natives’ in almost any western vocabulary connotes savages, uncouth , unlettered , primitive savage people…settlers on the hand connoted rosy pictures of the Mayflower and its attendant historical entrapments and unfortunately that is the story the world is believing.

True these noble cattle rearers- not herders ,as also derogatively portrayed, are always affected whether in an all out civil conflict or as a result of seasonal altercations between them and farmers but the exploitation of the situation especially on the Plateau bears serious investigation and scrutiny

It would be pertinent to note that the BBC ,especially the Hausa Service has been questioned by many quarters not the least the Christian community on the Plateau as to their fairness , neutrality , impartiality and objective reporting as concerns the long standing issues on the Plateau- as one cleric put it “ there is an unholy relationship between a northern media interest and the BBC that if and when a situation for correlating a story arises the latter hardly think twice about fairness or balance in getting the story out, they just pick up the phone and call their northern Nigeria contact and the information garnered is ‘gospel’ truth…”

[Teddy Bear]

Super job - dj

[djfearross]

Page last updated at 07:03 GMT, Monday, 26 April 2010 08:03 UK

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8640796.stm

'Why I burnt my Nigerian friend's house down'


D-Boy (left) has now forgiven Vincent


By Caroline Duffield
BBC News, Jos


The first night of the January riots in the Nigerian city of Jos took Umar D'Adam by surprise and, as the gunfire and burning began, the 20-year-old - known as "D-Boy" - fled.

It was the beginning of a spiral of brutality in central Nigeria that has left hundreds dead.


My mum, she cooked for him. He used to come here to sleep, my mum would give him a key

Umar D'Adam or "D-Boy"
As he sheltered in the army barracks, someone handed D-Boy a phone. It was his close friend, Vincent Alaibe, a Christian.

"I just heard his voice telling me, it's my house, that he's burned it," remembers D-Boy.

"He was shouting. He showed other people my house, and they burned it, including him.

"He thought I was dead. I told him: 'I am alive.'"

Months later, the family home in the Anglo-Jos district is still in ruins: A blackened fridge, the melted remains of a TV, and once-treasured belongings crunch underfoot.

Christian men attacked the area with guns, cutlasses and petrol-bombs

"My mum, she cooked for him. He used to come here to sleep, my mum would give him a key," D-Boy says softly.

He has been in contact with Vincent, and offers to take us to meet him.

They know he is my friend. That is why they forced me to do it

Vincent Alaibe
The cycle of killing and revenge has changed the identity of whole neighbourhoods in Jos and arranging a simple meeting is not easy.

The young friends can only meet outside the neighbourhood; there is difficulty talking.

Slight and fresh faced, barely out of their teens, they sit awkwardly, eyes to the ground.

"If I don't do it, they are going to kill me," says Vincent, slowly.

'Forgiveness'

He describes how a gang of ethnic Berom Christian men were attacking the area, armed with guns, cutlasses and petrol-bombs.

Vincent - one of few Christian residents - was singled out, and made to go with them, to point out D-Boy's house.

"They know he is my friend. That is why they forced me to do it. They knew that I am a Christian, and he is a Muslim.

"I am looking for forgiveness," he chokes.

D-Boy stares straight ahead, listening.

"Don't do it again," he bursts out.

"If this thing happens again, don't put your hand in it. I know you are a good person."

D-Boy's parents have forgiven Vincent, and would like to see him again at the family home.

But violent threats of revenge, and fear of arrest, have forced him to move away.

"If I enter the area, they will kill me," he says.

Broken pacts

North of the city, people in the tiny Christian enclave of Chwelnyap, in Congo-Russia district, were also taken aback by the riots.

"There was an agreement," insists Chief Ibrahim Choji-Dusu.

His community is surrounded by four almost exclusively ethnic Hausa Muslim neighbourhoods.

Our people are being killed any time they pass in that area

Chief Ibrahim Choji-Dusu
The day before, he sat down with his Muslim neighbours to discuss the hostile mood.

"The agreement was, there should never be anybody from any of the communities that should attack anybody," Chief Choji-Dusu says, again and again.

But on morning of 17 January, 170 homes in Chwelnyap were torched.

Chief Chiji-Dusu and others recognised those they had spoken with the previous day among the attackers.

"We spoke: 'Ah! You! We made an agreement yesterday. Why do you attack us now?'"

"They said: 'No matter how used you are to your chicken, it will not stop you slaughtering it.'

"That is the slogan they use," he says.

The BBC contacted community leaders in those neighbouring areas.

Some said they had never attended the peace meeting on 16 January.

Others claimed that residents of Chwelnyap attacked first, breaking the agreement.

Others admitted that they had lost control of their own youths, as rioting spread elsewhere in the city.

Five people from Chwelnyap were killed - a number Chief Choji-Dusu considers a lucky escape.

'Silent killings'

Three months later, he says the people of Chwelnyap are ready to forgive. But the atmosphere has changed, and there has been virtually no exchange about what happened.

Because of the crisis, the Christians dare not come, and the Muslims are playing poker by themselves

Youth worker Emmanuel Nanle
"Our problem is, how do we come and sit together?" he asks.

"We can't go there. Our people are being killed any time they pass in that area.

"Once you go, you never come back. You will be a missing person."

The police and military continue to recover corpses dumped inside the city limits and in rural villages outside.

Victims of the so-called "silent killings" - both Berom Christians and Hausa Muslims - are being discovered every week.

"Rather than coming together, people are moving apart," observes Emmanuel Nanle, a Christian youth worker.

Beer parlours and Bible sellers

Jos - once a balmy holiday retreat enjoyed by British colonials - is being carved up into exclusive neighbourhoods.

Armoured military vehicles squat on the interfaces.

On the Christian side, beer parlours and Bible-sellers jostle for space.


JOS, PLATEAU STATE
Deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and 2010
City divided into Christian and Muslim areas
Divisions accentuated by system of classifying people as indigenes and settlers
Hausa-speaking Muslims living in Jos for decades are still classified as settlers
Settlers find it difficult to stand for election
Communities divided along party lines: Christians mostly back the ruling PDP; Muslims generally supporting the opposition ANPP

No end to Nigeria cycle of violence
Q&A: Jos violence
Women in brightly coloured hijabs and the ornate woven caps common in the north mark out the Hausa Muslim side.

"The whole of this street - Ajayi Street - used to be a poker street," explains Mr Nanle, smiling.

"You would find Christians and Muslims playing poker together, whiling away time after work.

"But now, because of the crisis, the Christians dare not come, and the Muslims are playing poker by themselves."

Areas of Jos that were once ethnically and religiously mixed - Dogon Dutse, Genta Adamu and Nassarawa Gwom - are now becoming exclusive.

Chief Choji-Dusu believes the shifts in geography are barring local discussion of what has happened.

"The truth is, we need to rub minds, and reason," he says.

"We, the Christians, we don't want to fight. But if we are destabilised in Plateau State, it will affect the country. It will shake the country.'"

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Have a look at this. Here, when you find that a Christian group attack Muslims, the BBC don't use the same technique that the attacks are due to ethnicity, reprisals* etc when the attackers are Muslims. In fact, they put a lot of emphasis on the fact the attackers were Christians and cause they are Christians they attacked the Muslims.

Just look at the BBC website today where Islamic terrorists are blowing up innocent women and children and you will find little reference to the word "Islam" or "Muslim".

*a month on after 500 Christians were hacked to death.