{"id":132212,"date":"2020-12-12T21:11:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-12T18:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/nigerian-christians-fear-a-bloody-holiday-at-hands-of-terrorists\/"},"modified":"2020-12-12T21:11:07","modified_gmt":"2020-12-12T18:11:07","slug":"nigerian-christians-fear-a-bloody-holiday-at-hands-of-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/nigerian-christians-fear-a-bloody-holiday-at-hands-of-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"#Nigerian Christians fear a bloody holiday at hands of terrorists"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Nigerian Christians fear a bloody holiday at hands of terrorists<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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Their names haunt me: Patience, Revelation and Rejoice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Patience was 13. Revelation was 6. Rejoice was 4. They are the names of three of the youngest victims of a Christian massacre unfolding in Africa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They weren\u2019t the only young victims slain in the same attack in the Nigerian village of Gonan Rogo earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The terrorists killed at least 20 that evening as they went from house to house yelling \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d along the way. They also put a bullet in the head of a 3-month-old and hacked a 6-year-old to death. We don\u2019t know their names. We do know the name of a 14-year-old girl who was murdered along with her grandparents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her name was Blessing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This horror wasn\u2019t even the work of the infamous Boko Haram insurgents who\u2019ve long terrorized Nigeria\u2019s northeast. These massacres came at the hands of a group of radicalized Fulani tribesmen who \u2014 profanely inspired by Boko Haram and ISIS \u2014 have been summarily executing Christians in the center of Nigeria, not far from the country\u2019s capital, Abuja. In this democracy, almost no one is ever prosecuted for the crimes. According to Stephen Enada, executive president of the International Committee on Nigeria, there have been at least 63,000 victims<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Nigerian
Nigerian Christians gather at Church of the Nativity, which believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, to attend a Christmas ceremony.<\/figcaption>
Issam Rimawi\/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thousands of churches have been torched, scores of children slaughtered, countless women enslaved, pastors have been beheaded and Christian homes have been set ablaze by the tens of thousands. The victims are mainly Christian, with the terrorists determined to also kill or extort every single Muslim who attempts to stand in their way. Christmas is a particularly vulnerable time of the year for Africa\u2019s beleaguered Christians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, the Islamic State in West Africa marked Christmas in Nigeria by beheading 11 Christians on video. Two weeks later they picked up another young Christian as he travel<\/a>ed back home from a Christmas holiday with his family. The 22-year-old was last seen on a video being executed at point-blank range by a child whose terrorist overlord was issuing a warning to \u201call Christians in Nigeria\u2019s Plateau State.\u201d Another young victim I met in Nigeria in February had only recently escaped her Christmas kidnapp<\/a>ers. She had been picked up by Islamists 5 minutes after passing a government checkpoint. Before they carried her away to the bush they shot the Christian men she was traveling with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The situation in Africa\u2019s most populated country, with the continent\u2019s largest economy, is getting out of control and it cannot be neglected any longer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Men
Men march along a truck carrying the coffins of people killed by the Fulani herdsmen.<\/figcaption>
Afolabi Sotunde\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite the present US administration\u2019s unprecedented success in advancing religious freedom policies around the world, the current ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard, is one of many senior members of the career foreign service in the US Department of State who seem in total denial about the situation. During a meeting with myself in February, Amb. Leonard in Abuja actually downplayed the role of religion in the conflict, which she described as \u201cfundamentally a resource issue.\u201d A recent, cursory look at the Embassy\u2019s social media channels<\/a> in Nigeria didn\u2019t turn up a single acknowledgment of the victims of the conflict. It was business as usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The presumptive US Ambassador to the United Nations for a Biden administration is Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who served as a deputy and ally of former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson back when the Obama-Biden administration refused to even designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization. They were, apparently, concerned the designation would foster Islamophobia and give the Nigerian government an excuse to \u201clegitimize a heavy-handed crackdown by [their] security forces at a time when American officials were urging them to avoid human rights abuses,\u201d Carson told The New York Times<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The fact is that the present and pitiful condition in Nigeria represents a multi-year and bipartisan foreign policy failure. All of this in a country which receives approximately $1 billion in aid a year from the United States government, not to mention what it receives from many other countries including 800,000 pounds a day<\/a> from the United Kingdom, alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for a comprehensive rethink.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t let the poor starve, but we also shouldn\u2019t continue to donate the hard-earned support of the American taxpayer with no real strings attached.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we must ensure the victims no longer suffer in the shadows, even during a pandemic. We must be their voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As one pastor recently told the Nigerian press, leaning against his torched Christian school, \u201cThis issue of COVID-19: We don\u2019t know anything about it; our problem is Fulani who keep killing us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rev. Johnnie Moore is the author, with Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of \u201cThe Next Jihad: Stop the Christian Genocide in Africa<\/a>.\u201d He is the founder of The KAIROS Company, and the president of The Congress of Christian Leaders.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n