The Nigerian military has burned and forcibly displaced
entire villages in response to a recent escalation in attacks by armed group,
Boko Haram, Amnesty International said on Friday.
The report was based on interviews with affected villagers
in Borno State and satellite data analysis.
The military also arbitrarily detained six men from the
displaced villages, continuing a pattern of violations Amnesty International
has documented throughout the country’s decade-long armed conflict in the
North-East.
The men were held incommunicado for almost a month and
subjected to ill-treatment before their release on January 30, 2020.
“These brazen acts of razing entire villages, deliberately
destroying civilian homes and forcibly displacing their inhabitants with no
imperative military grounds should be investigated as possible war crimes,”
said Osai Ojigho, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.
“They repeat a longstanding pattern of the Nigerian military
meting out brutal tactics against the civilian population.
“Forces allegedly responsible for such violations must be
suspended immediately and brought to justice.”
From December 2019, Boko Haram has increasingly carried out
attacks in North-Eastern Nigeria, particularly along the important road between
Maiduguri and Damaturu, the capitals of Borno and Yobe states.
A recent Amnesty International research mission to Borno
State shows that in response to the attacks, the Nigerian military had resorted
to unlawful tactics that have had a devastating effect on civilians and may
amount to war crimes.
Residents from Bukarti consistently described to Amnesty
International scores of Nigerian soldiers arriving during the late morning of
Friday, January 3.
They said soldiers went house to house and to surrounding
farmland, forcing everyone to gather under a tree and by a graveyard between
Bukarti and the main road.
Soldiers also rounded up people from neighbouring Matiri and
brought them to the same area.
Around 3:00pm that day, soldiers demanded everyone walk to
the main road, where the villagers were forced to board large trucks.
Witnesses said that as they were loaded into the trucks,
some of the soldiers returned to Bukarti. The witnesses then saw their village
burning.
“We saw our houses go into flames,” recalled a woman, around
70 years old, from Bukarti. “We all started crying.”
The trucks then took more than 400 women, men, and children
from Bukarti and Matiri to an internally displaced persons camp near Maiduguri.
The next day, soldiers went to Ngariri, a village across the
main road from Bukarti, according to three residents of Ngariri.
Soldiers assembled primarily older women and men, as younger
adults had already fled to surrounding farmland, and forced them board a truck
that took them to Maiduguri. Ngariri was then razed.
People who returned to check on Bukarti and Ngariri told
Amnesty International that everything was torched. Satellite imagery
corroborates both villages were burned in early January.
Witnesses interviewed by Amnesty International said they
could not bring belongings with them, so lost everything – their homes,
jewellery, clothes, and, most devastatingly, the crops they stored after the
harvest.
“Everything we harvested was destroyed, and some of our
animals died,” said a farmer in his 60s. “I had a year (of harvest) stored –
it’s what I would’ve sold to buy clothes and other things for my family.”
“Everything was burned, even our food – it could feed (my
family) for two years,” said another man, around 30, who snuck back weeks later
to see the destruction.
“Our clothes, our food, our crops, our kettles. Even the
trolley we used for getting water. Only the metal dishes are there, but
everything else is burned.”
As the military emptied Bukarti and Matiri and brought
people to the trucks on January 3, they separated six younger men and
blindfolded them, according to consistent accounts by relatives of two of the
men and other witnesses.
They said the soldiers did not seek the men out by name or
otherwise appear to come looking for specific people. Four witnesses said they
thought it was because those younger men had mobile phones.
The soldiers beat at least some of the men with large sticks
and put them in military vehicles. The military held the men incommunicado for
almost a month; relatives and village leaders were unable to determine where
the men were held. All six men were released on January 30. They have not been
charged with any crime.
Two of the detained men told Amnesty International that,
because they were blindfolded until reaching their cell, they did not know
where they were being held until their release – when they saw it was Maimalari
military barracks in Maiduguri.
They said they were chained in pairs and, other than being
questioned one day, never let out of the cell. They only received food once a
day.
“We had no food,” one former detainee described. “People
there are hungry. It was horrible.”
Throughout the conflict between the Nigerian military and
Boko Haram, Amnesty International has documented prolonged arbitrary detention
by the military.
Soldiers have also subjected detained men, women, and
children to torture and other ill-treatment, in violation of both international
human rights law and international humanitarian law.
Nigerian army statements, reported by the media, indicate
soldiers from Brigades 5 and 29, along with Special Intervention Battalion 2,
carried out the operations between Jakana and Mainok on January 3. The army
said it arrested six “suspects” and “rescued… 461 Boko Haram captives” from several
villages, including Bukarti and Matiri.
Witnesses interviewed by Amnesty International said Boko
Haram had not been in their village, and that they felt significantly safer in
their village than in the IDP camp where the military took them. “They say they
saved us from Boko Haram, but it’s a lie,” said one man, around 65. “Boko Haram
isn’t coming to our village.”
“If Boko Haram had been visiting our place, we have our own
animals, our own harvest – do you think they wouldn’t have taken those?” said
another older woman from Bukarti. “The (Boko Haram) boys aren’t close to us.”
Several Bukarti and Ngariri residents said their village was
so close to the main road that it wasn’t credible to think Boko Haram could
base itself there.
They said Nigerian soldiers came through the area regularly
and spoke frequently with village leaders.
Four witnesses told Amnesty International that Nigerian
soldiers staged photographs of the villagers walking to the trucks, to make it
appear as if the military had ‘saved’ them.
“The Nigerian government must not brush these violations
under the carpet. They must be investigated, and alleged perpetrators must be
prosecuted.
“Necessary steps must also be taken to ensure that military
operations do not further forcibly displace civilian populations,” said Ojigho.
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