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CWA Responds to Boko Haram Abducting Nearly 300 Girls in Nigeria

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Nigeria-FBCWA joins with concerned and outraged people from around the world to protest the inhumane and brutal actions of the Al Qaeda-associated group, Boko Haram in Nigeria. The terrorists who are abducting young girls and subjecting them to threats of child marriage and slavery must be stopped before Nigeria becomes another Sudan – where Christian women and girls are routinely abducted and abused by radical Islamists. These families have done nothing but try to provide the best available education for their daughters; decent people must stand against the type of persecution taking place in Nigeria. We must speak out to stop Boko Haram from their self-proclaimed goal of eradicating Christianity from Nigeria.

Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, is coming under increasing pressure as groups from around the world are rallying, demonstrating, using social media and calling on him to rescue the nearly 300 girls who were abducted during final exam week on April 14 by an Islamist group, Boko Haram. This insurgency group, whose name literally means “Western education is sinful,” objects to girls receiving an education. The Nigerian Task Force has been working for three years to have the State Department declare Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

Boko Haram, according to their leader, Abubakar Shekau, is threatening to sell the girls as child brides or to sell them as slaves for slightly over $10 per girl. Shekau, according to Reuters, “chuckled” as he bragged about abducting the girls. He stood in front of an armored vehicle with “two masked militants wielding AK-47s on either side of him.” Shekau, reports Faith McDonnell of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, released a video threatening further attacks on schools and warning the international community to not get involved in Nigeria. McDonnell added that Shekau claims western education is a “plot against Islam” and that his abductions are part of an agenda to eradicate Christians from Nigeria in order to produce a “pure” Islamic state.

On the same day they abducted the girls, Boko Haram is blamed for a “bomb blast” that killed 75 people in Nigeria’s capital; another, similar blast two weeks later killed 19 people and wounded 34 others as the terrorist group continues their attempts to “reinstate a medieval Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria.

These atrocious attacks are occurring just before Nigeria hosts the World Economic Forum (WEF), May 7-9. The government is bringing in some 6,000 troops for security during the WEF event. Three weeks after the abductions, the girls are still missing, the parents are distraught and the world is outraged. There’s been plenty of talk, but it is past time for some action, not just from the Nigerian government, but from decent people around the world who have had enough of such outrageous acts of terrorism and brutality toward women and girls.