Tag: Nigeria

Human Rights Watch Report on Nigerian Riots

Nigeria erupted into riots in November 2002 after a reporter opined that Mohammed would likely not only have approved of the Miss World beauty pageant, but would likely have taken one of the contestants for his wife. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and others castigated the woman who made that remark, causing her to flee the country for her own safety.

Now a Human Rights Watch report on the incident claims that the Nigerian police and military, among others, fanned the flames of the riots and used the outbreak of violence as cover for extrajudicial killings of political and ethnic opponents.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, Nigerian police did nothing to restrain Muslim protesters who reacted with violence to the newspaper article,

<blockquote.A group of protesters composed primarily of young Muslim men, believed to include students from Kaduna Polytechnic, arrived at the Kaduna office of ThisDay in three buses; others used motorcycles. They attacked and burned the newspaper?s regional office on Attahiru Road Malali, ransacked the newspaper depot and distribution centre and made bonfires out of piles of newspapers. There were no casualties, as the newspaper staff were not on the premises at the time. At no point did the police intervene to stop the violence by the protesters or make any arrests, despite the fact that the office of ThisDay was attacked in broad daylight and in full view of many residents and passers-by.

As to the extra-judicial killings by police and military, the Human Rights Watch report alleges,

Human Rights Watch uncovered detailed information on extrajudicial killings of civilians by both the police and the military during the three days of rioting in Kaduna. Instead of restoring law and order, in several instances members of the security forces turned against the very people they were supposed to protect. In some cases, the victims were boys or young men who were shot because they were caught breaking the curfew; in other cases, people were killed or injured when the police or military fired to deter rioting; other people were hit by stray bullets. In a number of instances, the police or military, taking advantage of the general chaos, targeted particular individuals with the specific intention of killing them. Overall, however, it was difficult to ascertain the exact reasons why members of the security forces shot particular individuals or groups of individuals. Despite several efforts, Human Rights Watch was not able to confirm the level at which orders were given for the police and the military to use lethal force. However, these cases form part of a well-documented pattern of extrajudicial killings by the security forces in the context of attempts to restore law and order in Nigeria.

Despite promises by Obsanjano that the perpetrators of the violence would be brought to justice and compensation paid to the victims of the violence, Human Rights Watch reports that neither promise has come close to being fulfilled. Not a single person, for example, was ever arrested in connection with the attack on ThisDay.

Source:

Nigerian police ‘fanned riots’. Alistair Leithead, The BBC, July 21, 2003.

The ?Miss World Riots?: Continued Impunity for Killings in Kaduna. Human Rights Watch, July 3, 2003.

Excellent Parody of Nigerian E-mail Scams

The other day I was thinking somebody needed to write up a SCO-oriented parody of those Nigerian scam e-mails. Somebody apparenly has, as this is making the rounds,

DEAR SIR/MADAM:

I AM MR. DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOUR BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.

MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS.

IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE KNOWN AS UNIX. UNFORTUNATELY THE LAWS OF MY COUNTRY PROHIBITED THEM FROM SELLING THESE SOFTWARES AND SO THEIR VALUABLE SOURCE CODES REMAINED PRIVATELY HELD. UNDER A SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT SOME PROGRAMMERS FROM THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY DID ADD MORE CODES TO THIS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCREASING ITS VALUE, BUT NOT IN ANY WAY TO DILUTE OR DISPARAGE OUR FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF THESE CODES, DESPITE ANY AGREEMENT BETWEEN AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH AND THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY, WHICH AGREEMENT WE DENY AND DISAVOW.

IN THE YEAR 1984 A CHANGE OF REGIME IN MY COUNTRY ALLOWED THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION TO MAKE PROFITS FROM THESE SOFTWARES. IN THE YEAR 1990 OWNERSHIP OF THESE SOFTWARES WAS TRANSFERRED TO THE CORPORATION UNIX SYSTEM LABORATORIES. IN THE YEAR 1993 THIS CORPORATION WAS SOLD TO THE CORPORATION NOVELL. IN THE YEAR 1994 SOME EMPLOYEES OF NOVELL FORMED THE CORPORATION CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, WHICH BEGAN TO DISTRIBUTE AN UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM KNOWN AS LINUX. IN THE YEAR 1995 NOVELL SOLD THE UNIX SOFTWARE CODES TO SCO. IN THE YEAR 2001 OCCURRED A SEPARATION OF SCO, AND THE SCO BRAND NAME AND UNIX CODES WERE ACQUIRED BY THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, AND IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL WAS RENAMED SCO GROUP, OF WHICH I CURRENTLY SERVE AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER.

MY ASSOCIATES AND I OF THE SCO GROUP ARE THEREFORE THE FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARES KNOWN AS UNIX. OUR ENGINEERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT NO FEWER THAN SEVENTY (70) LINES OF OUR VALUABLE AND PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODES HAVE APPEARED IN THE UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM LINUX. AS YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE, THIS GIVES US A CLAIM ON THE MILLIONS OF LINES OF VALUABLE SOFTWARE CODES WHICH COMPRISE THIS LINUX AND WHICH HAS BEEN SOLD AT GREAT PROFIT TO VERY MANY BUSINESS ENTERPRISES. OUR LEGAL EXPERTS HAVE ADVISED US THAT OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THESE CODES IS WORTH AN ESTIMATED ONE (1) BILLION U.S. DOLLARS.

UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY EXTRACTING OUR FUNDS FROM THESE COMPUTER SOFTWARES. TO THIS EFFECT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE MANDATE BY MY COLLEAGUES TO CONTACT YOU AND ASK FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE. WE ARE PREPARED TO SELL YOU A SHARE IN THIS ENTERPRISE, WHICH WILL SOON BE VERY PROFITABLE, THAT WILL GRANT YOU THE RIGHTS TO USE THESE VALUABLE SOFTWARES IN YOUR BUSINESS ENTERPRISE. UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT ABLE AT THIS TIME TO SET A PRICE ON THESE RIGHTS. THEREFORE IT IS OUR RESPECTFUL SUGGESTION, THAT YOU MAY BE IMMEDIATELY A PARTY TO THIS ENTERPRISE, BEFORE OTHERS ACCEPT THESE LUCRATIVE TERMS, THAT YOU SEND US THE NUMBER OF A BANKING ACCOUNT WHERE WE CAN WITHDRAW FUNDS OF A SUITABLE AMOUNT TO GUARANTEE YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS ENTERPRISE. AS AN ALTERNATIVE YOU MAY SEND US THE NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE OF YOUR MAJOR CREDIT CARD, OR YOU MAY SEND TO US A SIGNED CHECK FROM YOUR BANKING ACCOUNT PAYABLE TO “SCO GROUP” AND WITH THE AMOUNT LEFT BLANK FOR US TO CONVENIENTLY SUPPLY.

KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.

Polio Cases Increase Thanks Largely to Indian Outbreak

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in April that cases of polio worldwide increased four-fold in 2002 due largely to an outbreak of the disease in India.

In 2001 there were only 483 confirmed cases of polio which shot up to 1,920 confirmed cases in polio after an outbreak in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. That was the single worst outbreak of the disease since the World Health Organization began its campaign to eradicate polio in 1988. Cases from the Indian outbreak constituted 71 percent of all polio cases in 2002.

Afghanistan, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia also reported cases of polio in 2002.

Source:

Polio cases on the increase. The BBC, April 25, 2003.

Nigerian Journalist Gives Obasanjo, Others an Earful

The journalist whose article sparked the Miss World riots in Nigeria that ended up killing 220 people gave an interview to the BBC in March in which she lashed out at Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and others who often seemed to be angrier at her than the rioters — and all over a completely innocuous remark (at least innocuous in any country not beholden to religious extremists).

Isioma Daniel’s article in the newspaper ThisDay sparked riots because she said that Mohammed would not have objected to the Miss World pageant and would have probably taken one of the contestants for a wife.

Frankly living in a country where a man who immerses holy symbols in urine can get a federal grant, it’s a bit bizarre to imagine living in a country where people kill each other over whether or not Mohammed would have enjoyed seeing a little skin at a beauty pageant.

Obasanjo — who vacillates between saying he will crack down on Muslim extremists and appeasing them — said that the article should not have been published and suggested that Daniel could be prosecuted for what she said. Brother. Or as Daniel told the BBC,

I think he should have been criticizing the people who were out in the streets who were killing and rampaging in the name of religion. I think he should have been speaking out harder against the Northern Islamic religious leaders who had encouraged their followers to go out in the streets.

Yes, but this is the same Obasanjo who has managed to find a way to make gasoline scarce and expensive in Nigeria despite that country being one of the world’s leading oil exporters, so the man has a lot of experience with missing the obvious.

The Nigerian state of Zamfara did follow Obasanjo’s lead by issuing a fatwa calling for her death (the northern states of Nigeria have joined the defunct Taliban in adopting an extreme Islamic legal system).

For her part, Daniel said she doesn’t understand what all of the fuss was about,

The particular sentence, the Mohammed sentence, I added in as a last minute thing. I thought it was funny light hearted and I didn’t see it as anything anybody should take seriously or cause much fuss.

Source:

‘Riots writer’ attacks Obasanjo. The BBC, March 12, 2003.

The Lesson of the Nigerian Miss World Riots

As many as 500+ people are dead in Nigeria after Muslim extremists began rioting over what seems like a rather inocuous comment in a story by a Nigerian journalist — that if Mohamed were alive today, he would probably take one of the contestants as a wife rather than protest it being held.

There are two important lessons from the rioting: a) placating religious extremism does not work, and b) nonetheless, there is no length to which some Western liberal-leftists will go to placate religious extremism.

Placating religious extremism does not work.

One of the issues being debated is who is responsible for the riots. The answer is simple — the blame rests with Nigerian President Obsanjano.

Obsanjano has tried to have his cake and eat it to. When talking to Western reporters he constantly says that he will not allow human rights outrages — such as the death by stoning sentences for adultery — to be carried out. But at the same time, Obsanjano has refrained from actually doing anything about the death sentences and other outrages because he doesn’t want to alienate Muslim voters ahead of planned 2003 elections.

This is why, for example, Obsanjano says that the death sentences will not stand, but he has not intervened at all to stop public floggings and other equally inhumane punishments imposed by states. It is also why Obsanjano has backpedaled into blaming the Nigerian media for the riots rather than confronting the problem of Islamic extremism.

In the West, we hear this constant refrain from some corners that we need to understand and accomodate religious extremism. The same people who are apoplectic (and rightfully so) when an Alabama judge displays the Ten Commandments in his court room turn around and insist that we need to identify with and accomodate theocratic Middle Eastern states. Thanks, but no thanks.

Some Western liberal-leftists will go any lengths to placate religious extremism.

In a Salon.Com piece, Andrew Sullivan does an excellent job of chronicling UK objections to moving the Miss World contest there. Much of it runs along the lines of this bizarre quote from London mayor Ken Livingstone,

After the violence and terrible loss of life in Nigeria, the staging of a Miss World event in this city is not welcome. It defies belief that after Miss World has brought tragedy and strife to Africa its organisers should think it appropriate to carry on with the razzamataz as if nothing had happened.

On this side of the Atlantic we call that blaming the victim. It defies belief that Livingstone thinks that the Miss World pageant is responsible for religious nut cases run amok.

Feminists also jumped on the blame-Miss-World bandwagon on both sides of the Atlantic with Jill Nelson outlining the oppression inherent in Miss World, “As far as I’m concerned it’s equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burkas in order to survive.” Muriel Gray added, “These girls will be wearing swimwear dripping with blood.”

Sullivan aptly sums up this bizarre situation,

Now imagine a scenario in which, say, the play “Corpus Christi” was produced in New York (as it was). The play was highly offensive to some fundamentalists because it depicted Jesus as gay. What if a mob of enraged Christians, after a holy sermon at a neighboring church, had decided to torch the office of the New York Times because they ran a favorable review, or to burn down the theater? What if they killed hundreds of innocent bystanders in their rage? What if they issued a call to all faithful Christians to kill playwright Terence McNally for his blasphemy? Do you think the rampage would be described as “atheist-Christian riots”? Do you think leftists would call on the playwright to be more sensitive in future? Would the mayor of New York blame the theater? Yet when it comes to a far, far deadlier menace to our freedoms than fundamentalist Christianity, much of the left is silent or, worse, making excuses for this Islamist threat.

Sullivan blames P.C. moral relativism, but a bigger problem is that liberal-left and feminist ideologies tend to romanticize and place non-Western “oppressed” peoples on a higher moral plane. Much of the post-9/11 analysis on the far Left, for example, implicitly accepts the view that Western democracies are sites of extreme decadence and corruption as compared to the more “authentic” lives of people barely surviving in the Third World.

Sometimes this occurs as admiration, such as when Leftists admire Cuba for its lack of commercial billboards, and sometimes it is condescending, such as the Chomsky-ite thesis that poor people have no choice but to turn to terrorism.

Nigeria: Adultery Death Sentences Will Be Stopped

Reacting to negative attention it has received on the subject ahead of the Miss World pageant, the Nigerian government this month reiterated that it will not allow death sentences to be carried out against woman convicted of adultery.

Twelve states in Nigeria’s Muslim-dominated North have adopted Islamic sharia law which calls for death by stoning for individuals convicted of adultery or rape. Several women have been sentenced to be stoned to death under the law, though none of these sentences has been carried out yet.

Nigerian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dubem Onyia said that Nigeria would use “its constitutional powers to thwart any negative ruling, which is deemed injurious to its people.”

Nigerian officials have said before that they the death by stoning sentences are unconstitutional, but they have also soft-pedaled their statements somewhat as they look ahead to nationwide elections in 2003.

Left unanswered was how northern Muslims will view the national government’s increasingly firm anti-sharia stance. Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo is a southern Christian, and violence between Muslims, Christians and animists has claimed more than 8,000 lives since Obasanjo’s 1999 election.

Source:

Nigeria vows to block stoning deaths. Glenn McKenzie, Associated Press, November 10, 2002.