Imagine sitting in a crowded class room, surrounded by other girls all aged between 16 and 18, taking your final Physics examination, when a large group of men burst in and force you all to climb into trucks while they set the school on fire. That is what happened to over 200 girls on the 14th April this year in Nigeria. The actual number of girls taken has not been definitely confirmed, because all the school records were destroyed. The school had opened up specially to provide a venue for the examinations and the girls slept in dormitories on site because it was too far to return home.
The men who took them belonged to a group called Boko Haram ( meaning Western education is forbidden). One of the Boko Haram leaders, in a video link, said "I will sell them in the market, by Allah, I will sell them and marry them off. Women are slaves".In March, another rural boarding school had been attacked and at least 29 men were murdered while the girls were let free and told to go home and get married.
This group of insurgents are well organised, thought to number several thousand, with many armoured vehicles, and live deep in the forest. The Nigerian intelligence agency, despite attempting to infiltrate their ranks, have singularly failed to do so and the government will not send forces in to locate the girls for fear of causing their death.
Olusegun Obesanjo, a former president of Nigeria, has spoken out against President Goodluck Jonathan, accusing him of waiting too long to report this serious situation, and saying that we may not know the whereabouts of these girls for many years. Rumours abound that there has been a mass wedding among the Boko Haram supporters suggesting that the girls have been shared among the militants.
58 girls escaped, many by jumping off moving lorries. Several ran into the bush when they were sent to fetch water and hid until nightfall, making their way back to a local village. At least 2 have been thought to have died of snake bites.
On June 21st, Gordon Brown ( United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the UK) published an article in the Daily Mail which was illustrated with photographs of 185 of the missing girls. The leader of the community council in Chibok, the district from which the girls had vanished, had been painstakingly collecting information about each girl. But there has not been any real progress in finding them. Gordon Brown goes on to use the article as a platform to expand on the vast issue worldwide of young girls being forced into marriage and denied education. The 200 or so Nigerian girls we know about are but a tiny drop in the ocean against this backdrop. In Nigeria alone, ongoing raids on small local markets continue unreported to the media, with women and girls regularly being taken.
The Nigerian population are frightened to speak up, the Nigerian government is unwilling to act for fear of starting an outright civil war, and foreign agencies have limited ability to influence the situation. Despite help from the US, Canada, Britain, France and China, no progress has been made. I wonder when we will hear more about these girls. Like Olusegan Obesanjo, I think we may have to wait a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment