A report from Open Doors International dated September 1 called No Road Home: Christian IDPs Displaced by Extremist Violence in Nigeria details the dire situation faced by Christians who have been hunted to the verge of extinction by the Islamic State, the jihadis of Boko Haram, and groups of Muslim militants known as the Fulani.
It is not easy to say which Islamist faction is winning the competition to kill and displace as many Christians as possible, but Nigeria’s Christians are definitely losing. Thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been rendered homeless by militant attacks. One Nigerian Christian said he and his brethren have become an “endangered species.”
Open Doors noted that other groups also suffer at the hands of Nigeria’s vicious warring factions, including Muslims, but Christians are targeted more aggressively, and they have a much harder time returning home after they are displaced.
Islamist militants have been able to destroy churches permanently, because the former parishioners are afraid to return home and rebuild them. Muslims fill the gaps by resettling areas Christians were forced to abandon.
Although some Nigerian Christians have been aided and protected by Muslim neighbors, many others say they were betrayed by Muslim villagers who sold them out to militant groups in order to gain a little protection for themselves.
Groups of Christian IDPs have refused to be settled in refugee camps with heavy Muslim populations, fearing further violence and discrimination. Some Christians told Open Door they were so desperate they dropped their Christian names, or outright converted to Islam, to gain entry to refugee camps.
Another problem is that Boko Haram is particularly aggressive about identifying and eliminating the leaders of Christian communities. A rash of targeted murders has left Nigerian Christians feeling voiceless and leaderless.
Attacks on these vulnerable communities by Boko Haram, ISIS, and the Fulani can be equally vicious, with hundreds of fatalities inflicted in a single day. Survivors of these massacres report that Muslim villagers were quietly given advance warning to clear the area before the gunmen rolled in.
Christian IDPs living across Nigeria told Open Doors that government security forces offered unreliable protection, sometimes responding to pleas for help only after mass slaughters, other times not bothering to respond at all.
In “extreme cases of lack of protection,” Christians suspect Nigerian security forces actively worked with Fulani militants to wipe out Christian villages.
“Soldiers who were stationed in that village withdrew shortly before the attack happened. We still don’t understand why the soldiers acted that way,” said the survivors of one Fulani attack.
Survivors of militant attacks accused Nigerian troops of refusing to protect camps for IDPs, leaving them to be displaced all over again – with less access to food and medicine every time they moved.
The Open Doors report quoted the U.N. International Organization for Migration (IOM) data that showed 66% of IDPs in northwestern and north-central Nigeria have been displaced at least twice. North-central Nigeria is an especially brutal region for displaced persons, as refugees living there have a great deal of difficulty accessing humanitarian aid from international organizations.
“Last year alone, in Nigeria there were more people that were killed because of their Christian faith than all other places in the globe combined,” Open Doors U.S. CEO Ryan Brown told Fox News on Tuesday.
“To be specific, there were 4998 Christians that were killed because of their faith in Nigeria last year,” he added.
Brown accused the world of “turning a blind eye” to Christian persecution in Nigeria.
“People are not talking about it. People are not aware of the realities, and therefore people aren’t doing anything about it,” he said.
The U.S. State Department responded to the Open Doors report by telling Fox News it was “deeply concerned about the high levels of violence in Nigeria, including intercommunal violence and attacks by non-state armed groups on religious communities of all religions and beliefs.”
The State Department at no point conceded there was anything particularly terrible or extreme about Christian persecution, pointedly inserting references to oppressed Muslims and targeted mosques in every paragraph of its statement.
The State Department said it has “urged the government of Nigeria to intensify efforts to address the drivers of conflicts in Nigeria,” and is “working with Nigerian security services to help them respond more effectively to threats,” but had little to say about reports of Nigerian security forces actively colluding with Islamists to enable Christian massacres.
Boko Haram launched another savage attack in northeastern Nigeria on Tuesday, roaring into the town of Mafa with a motorcycle-riding death squad that butchered at least 81 people using rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
A local police spokesperson described the attack as revenge for “the killing of two Boko Haram terrorists by vigilantes from the village.”
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