Loading...

NIGERIA: Nigeria and The World Remember Missing Schoolgirls

One year after it was perpetrated, the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by a jihadist group in Nigeria remains a crime almost too ...

A screengrab taken on May 12, 2014, from a video of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram obtained by AFP shows girls, wearing the full-length hijab and praying in an undisclosed rural location. Boko Haram released a new video on claiming to show the missing Nigerian schoolgirls, alleging they had converted to Islam and would not be released until all militant prisoners were freed.  A total of 276 girls were abducted on April 14 from the northeastern town of Chibok, in Borno state, which has a sizeable Christian community. Some 223 are still missing. AFP PHOTO / BOKO HARAM 
RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / BOKO HARAM" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTSHO/AFP/Getty Images

One year after it was perpetrated, the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by a jihadist group in Nigeria remains a crime almost too horrifying to comprehend: Hundreds of teenaged girls, just finishing school, destined perhaps for significant achievement -- kidnapped, never to be seen again.
"This crime has rightly caused outrage both in Nigeria and across the world," the country's President-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, said Tuesday in marking the anniversary. "Today is a time to reflect on the pain and suffering of the victims, their friends and families. Our thoughts and prayers, and that of the whole Nigerian nation, are with you today."
The girls were abducted on the night of April 14-15, 2014, in the town of Chibok, in northeastern Nigeria, about a two-hour drive from the border with Cameroon.
The Government Girls Secondary School had been closed for a month because of the danger posed by Boko Haram militants, who are opposed to Western education, particularly for girls. But students from several schools had been called in to take a final exam in physics.
    The militants stormed the school, arriving in a convoy of trucks and buses and engaging in a gun battle with school security guards. Then they forced the girls from their dormitories, loaded them into trucks and drove them into the forest. Most have never been seen since, except in a photograph in which they sat on the ground in a semi-circle, clad in Islamic dress.
    They were between 16 and 18 years old.
    Police said the militants kidnapped 276 girls in all. About 50 managed to escape soon after they were abducted. Those who did not, it is feared, may have been raped, brutalized, enslaved and forced to convert to Islam.
    Nigeria 7442123731291871521

    Post a Comment

    emo-but-icon

    Home item