US urged to recognize Nigerian extremist group as terrorists
August 22, 2013: Several U.S. religious liberty groups are renewing calls for the
federal government to officially recognize Nigerian Islamic extremist group Boko Haram
as a terrorist organization for its violent attacks against Christians.
“Those
who continue to wantonly kill Christians solely because of their faith should not
be tolerated when available steps can be taken to curb this kind of genocidal terror,”
Benjamin Bull, chief counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, said Aug. 20. “Boko Haram
is eminently qualified to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization. We encourage
the State Department to make that designation sooner rather than later so that fewer
people will lose their lives needlessly.”
Alliance Defending Freedom, based
in Washington, D.C., co-authored a July 25 report and formal petition on Boko Haram
with the Virginia-based Jubilee Campaign, which defends the rights and freedoms of
religious minorities overseas. The report and petition were sent to Secretary of State
John Kerry.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,”
has committed at least 168 acts of violence against Christians in 2012 alone. The
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism’s 2012 report
ranked Boko Haram the second most deadly terrorist group in the world, surpassed only
by the Taliban of Afghanistan.
More than 2,000 deaths have been attributed
to the group since 2009, including citizens from 15 countries. Some of its victims
were beheaded, and reports have also found the group engaging in kidnappings, forced
conversions, church burnings, assassinations of policemen and the destruction of public
buildings. One attack on the city of Kano on Jan. 20, 2012 killed 200 people.
Fatou
Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said on Aug. 5 that
the group’s alleged crimes constitute crimes against humanity. The report from Alliance
Defending Freedom and the Jubilee Campaign said that the State Department has named
five “well deserving” groups as terrorist organizations. “However, Boko Haram is guilty
of much more,” it said.
The Nigerian group has called for the ethnic cleansing
and genocide of Christians in northern Nigeria. In 2011, a Boko Haram suicide bomber
attacked the United Nations local headquarters in Abuja, killing nearly two dozen.
The bomber said in a video before the attack that the action was intended as a message
to President Barack Obama “and other infidels.”
Emmanuel Ogebe, the Jubilee
Campaign’s legal expert on Nigeria, said Aug. 20 that Boko Haram has become “a highly
sophisticated, suicide-bombing terrorist group with global ties and aspirations. The
fact that the U.S. has not designated it a foreign terrorist organization has not
deterred Boko Haram from designating the U.S. a foreign target objective,” he said.
Official
designation of Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group would allow the U.S. government
to freeze or seize its bank accounts, to deport its members and associates, and to
sanction the group’s funders. Supporters of the petition and report include the Family
Research Council, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the American Center for
Law and Justice, the Igbo League, the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans,
and the Alliance for Democratic Republics in Africa.
The organizations have
also started a petition for the general public to sign on the White House website
charging that the U.S. government’s failure to name Boko Haram a foreign terrorist
organization “undermines U.S. credibility.” The petition states that through its terroristic
activities in Nigeria, Boko Haram “has killed more Christians in terrorist attacks
in 2012 than the total number of Christians killed in the rest of the world combined.”
The
Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram has “bombed, burned, or attacked” 50 churches
in Nigeria since January 2012, according to a new factsheet published by the US Commission
on International Religious Freedom. The 50 attacks have killed at least 366 persons.
According to the commission, Boko Haram has also engaged in “31 separate attacks on
Christians or [southern Nigerians] perceived to be Christian, killing at least 166
persons; 23 targeted attacks on clerics or senior Islamic figures critical of Boko
Haram, killing at least 60 persons; and 21 attacks on ‘un-Islamic’ institutions or
persons engaged in ‘un-Islamic’ behavior, killing at least 74.”