Monday - March 08, 2010

Africa Sucks, Part 4261

I really don’t want to run this story. Not only is it awful, it’s awfully repetitive. How many times have we seen essentially the same thing happen? What is it with the people on this continent? Tribalism? In the modern world? It’s hard to accept that any one person could be this brutal, much less a whole village or tribe full. Or several tribes full.

And yet ... here we go again.

Nigeria’s security forces have been put on high alert after a new burst of sectarian violence left over 500 people dead, most of them women and children hacked to death by machete wielding gangs.

The attack happened before dawn on Sunday morning when gangs of men descended on several mainly Christian villages near the central city of Jos, firing guns as they approached. Witnesses of the attack, which centred on the village of Dogo-Nahawa, described how victims were caught in animal traps and fishing nets as they tried to flee their attackers.

A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said that the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village, to lure their victims out of their houses. “The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes,” said Peter Gyang, who lost his wife and two children .

Dan Manjang, a state government advisor, confirmed that 500 people had been killed. “We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act ... by Fulani herdsmen,” Mr Manjang said in a telephone interview.

An aid worker with the Christian charity Stefanus Foundation, Mark Lipdo, told the BBC he went to the villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa after daylight on Sunday and recorded the names of 77 victims. He said that there were at least two dozen more bodies. “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,” he said, adding that Zot had been almost wiped out.

An unnamed government official said that over 100 people had been killed, mostly women and children. ”Some of the children are less than one year old,” he added.

But analysts said that the attack seemed to be in reprisal for the violent clashes in Jos between Christians and Muslims in January, which claimed the lives of at least 300 people and displaced thousands of others.

...

This central region of Nigeria had been a regular ethnic and religious flashpoint.  [ no kidding. I’d call it more of an ongoing fireball. ]

...

In November 2008, the federal government sent in the troops after Christians and Muslims fought each other using firearms and machetes in clashes that followed a contested election in Jos.

Official figures put the death toll [ for that fight then ] at 200, but rights groups Human Rights Watch said it was more than 700.

Lovely place. Lovely locals. Charming culture. Remind me to visit ... on the 12th of NEVER.  At least 1000 dead in 3 major incidents in just 16 moths. And who knows how many more died in minor skirmishes, random individual murders, and mysterious disappearances.

Muslims vs. Christians? Or is it that one tribal group is one faith, and their enemy tribal group is another faith, and both tribes just continue to murder in the most heinous ways possible. Keep the vendetta going forever. Because that’s their way, and they’ll never change.

The killings 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. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

“In the last decade”? Please. It never stops. It’s forever. Anybody old enough to remember the genocide in Biafra? That happened when I was a kid. Guess where Biafra is? (or was?) In Nigeria. 1967. 100,000 dead in battle, and 2 million dead by torture, reprisals, and starvation. At the hands of the Fulani. It can’t just be “blood for oil”.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/08/2010 at 10:00 PM   
Filed Under: • Africa • Religion •  
• Comments (7) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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