Rights group accuses government of letting religious killers off hook

The Nigerian government deserves much of the blame for waves of religious violence that killed more than 900 people in 2004 and a year on it has still not prosecuted the civilians and police responsible for the deaths, an international human rights group said on Wednesday. In a report on two waves of killings in Plateau and Kano state in February and May 2004, Human Rights Watch said the government's failure to punish the killers was feeding the cycle of violence. "The authorities need to send a clear message that those responsible for these killings will be arrested and prosecuted. The impunity protecting the perpetrators has only encouraged further violence," Peter Takirambudde, the head of the group's Africa Division, said in a statement. Central Nigeria lies on a religious fault-line dividing the mainly-Christian south and the predominantly-Muslim north. Tension has been heightened by the adoption of the strict Islamic or Shari’ah by several state governments elected with the end of military rule in 1999. In rural areas, the divide between Muslims and Christians often coincides with a conflict over land use. This pitches predominantly Christian ethnic groups that have been farming for centuries in central Nigeria and Muslim livestock herders who have moved south in recent decades to escape the drying up of the Sahel. Violence in Plateau dates back to 2001 when around 1,000 people were killed in less than a week in September during religious riots in the state capital Jos. Over the next two years there followed a series of tit-for-tat attacks by Muslim and Christian communities in the hinterland, that escalated into large-scale violence again in 2004. Human Rights Watch said that in February last year, more than 75 Christians were killed in Yelwa in Plateau state, 48 of them inside a church. Christians retaliated at the beginning of May 2004, killing around 700 Muslims and abducting scores of women, some of whom were raped. This, the U.S.-based rights group said, prompted attacks on Christians further north in Kano where 200 people died, some killed by rioters, others by the police and soldiers deployed to quell the violence. Human Rights Watch said that many of the people who died in 2004 could have been saved had the government and security forces done their jobs properly. "The warning signs were there for a long time. But the government chose to do nothing about it until the situation spiralled out of control," Takirambudde said. Absent during massacres "The Nigerian government bears a heavy responsibility for the massive loss of life in these eruptions of violence fuelled by religion," he added. "The security forces were absent while hundreds of people were being massacred in Yelwa. Instead of protecting those at risk and trying to arrest the perpetrators, police and soldiers shot people on sight in Kano." The Nigerian authorities were quick to defend their men on Wednesday. “The only people killed by the police were rioters, and this was to protect innocent citizens,” police spokesman Emmanuel Ighodalo told IRIN. Army spokesman Mohammed Yusuf also denied that troops deployed to Kano had killed anyone without valid grounds. “That claim by the report is not correct,” Yusuf told reporters. Police spokesman Ighodalo said dozens of rioters had been arrested and sent to court. However, Human Rights Watch argued that those who planned the violence had been let off the hook, along with trigger-happy policemen and soldiers. "Local leaders on both sides have cynically manipulated religion with disastrous consequences," said Takirambudde. "Dozens of people have been arrested but those responsible for planning and organising the violence have still not been prosecuted. Neither have the police or the soldiers responsible for the killings in Kano." Human Rights Watch said President Olusegun Obasanjo's government also needed to remove the distinctions between “indigenes” or initial inhabitants of an area and “settlers” who came later. "As long as this distinction is given official recognition, the potential for further conflict remains," the report said. Africa’s most populous country, with more than 126 million people and over 250 distinct ethnic groups, is prone to bouts of ethnic, religious and communal violence. These have claimed thousands of lives since Obasanjo's election in 1999 brought an end to 16 years of military rule which had kept a lid on such tensions.