Boko Haram recently kidnapped 30 children from a village in Nigeria, pushing the
total number of people kidnapped by Boko Haram since 2009 to well over 500.
Over the
past year, a number of these victims have managed to escape, meaning we now have a
glimpse into what living as a captive of Boko Haram is really like.
The first thing to note is that the vast majority of Boko Haram’s captives are female.
This is important because Boko Haram is a Muslim extremist group.
And as such, their
goal is to establish an extremely antiquated and strict version of sharia law.
One that
in the best case scenario, still strips women of their human rights and treats them as
completely subservient to men.
The kidnapped women who have since escaped, report rampant physical,
psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of Boko Haram fighters, including rape.
There are reports that some commanders try to protect the girls from such acts, but
even that protection ends when the girls are sold into marriage against their will and
forced into bed by their new husbands; a practice that’s common for Boko Haram.
Anecdotally, one of the now free girls claims that a Boko Haram commander married
off his own daughter to another man when she was only four years old.
In addition to
this mistreatment of women, Boko Haram is also forcing captives to renounce their
religions.
According to one of the now free girls, fighters put a noose around her neck
and threatened to hang her unless she renounced her Christianity and converted to
Islam.
Those are the norms for women in captivity, but they’re not the only human rights
violations being committed.
Some factions of Boko Haram also use captives in their terrorist operations.
Girls
have been used to lure Boko Haram’s enemies into ambushes.
They’ve also been
forced to carry ammunition on the front lines, and they’ve been forced or manipulated
into killing on behalf of the terrorist group.
Human Rights Groups even fear that Boko Haram may be using some of these girls
as suicide bombers.
But authorities can’t know for sure if the girls were being forced to
carry out these acts or were indoctrinated to do so.
Boko Haram and Nigeria reportedly struck a recent cease-fire deal, but that seems
to be having little effect on the ground in Nigeria.
The 30 children mentioned at the
beginning of the video were kidnapped after the agreement was established, in addition
to another 60 women and girls in two separate Christian villages.
These girls will most
likely be forced into motherhood, sold into slavery, or killed.
And without international
intervention, there’s no reason to believe that Boko Haram will slow down their
kidnappings or bring back the girls.
To find out more about Boko Haram and how they originated, please check out
our early video profiling the group.
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