Sub-Saharan Africa – Page 3

UN International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances: Honouring Eritrea’s Missing Voices

Posted on 30/08/2024 by cswpress in Eritrea, Sub-Saharan Africa

On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, CSW shares a guest blog post from our friends and partners at Human Rights Concern-Eritrea (HRC-E).

As the world marks the UN International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, we stand in solidarity with the countless Eritrean families who have endured decades of pain, uncertainty, and fear. This day is a poignant reminder of the grave human rights violations committed by the Eritrean government, which continues to use enforced disappearance as a means to silence dissent and control its population.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive states in the world, where enforced disappearances are not isolated incidents, but part of a systematic campaign to quash opposition. Thousands of Eritreans, including political dissidents, journalists, religious figures, and ordinary citizens, have been forcibly disappeared—detained without trial, often in secret prisons, leaving their families in the dark about their fate or whereabouts.

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‘They realised their guns weren’t fast enough’

Posted on 05/06/202405/06/2024 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

As we mark the second anniversary of the Pentecost Sunday massacre in Ondo State, Nigeria, the UK government needs to be doing more to advance FoRB through its foreign policy commitments.

As Margaret is invited to speak, the room falls silent. We are in Parliament, off the side of Westminster Hall. It is the day of the Autumn budget and the news is flooded with discussion on whether a tax cut of 1% will be announced, how it will happen, and who it will benefit. Experts are pontificating on inflation and Conservative Party posing ahead of the 2024 general election. Seats to watch PMQs and the Chancellor’s statement are fully booked. The overflow queue stretches past the lobby and into St Stephen’s Chapel. There is no real possibility of those at the end of the queue getting in before the Chancellor is back at No. 11; but there is a small glimmer of hope, and so they stay.

But Margaret is not standing in the queue. In fact, she couldn’t if she’d wanted to. Margaret lost her legs in the massacre at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, Nigeria, on 5 June 2022 in the first ever terror attack on a church in the south of the country. This is her first time in the UK. She is supported by her husband Dominic to give a face to this year’s Red Wednesday, an event coordinated by Aid to the Church in Need aimed at raising awareness of Christian persecution.

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Twenty years is too long: The Eritrean government must release imprisoned church leaders

Posted on 23/05/2024 by cswpress in Eritrea, Sub-Saharan Africa

Twenty years ago today the Eritrean authorities arrested Reverend Haile Naizge and Dr Kuflu Gebremeskel. Both were prominent religious leaders in the country, the former serving as the chair of the Full Gospel Church, and the latter as chair of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance and a visiting lecturer at the former University of Asmara.

They have been detained incommunicado ever since.

The arrests of Reverend Naizge and Dr Gebremeskel are not the only anniversaries Eritrea marks this month. In May 2002 the government effectively outlawed religious practices not affiliated with Sunni Islam or the Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran or Orthodox Christian denominations. Since then, all other religious groups have been required to register in order to freely practise their faith, but the process to do this is onerous, intrusive and ultimately inconclusive, as the final step consists of the president’s signature.

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A criminal shouldn’t benefit from his/her criminal activities

Posted on 17/04/2024 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

This article was originally published on the CSW-Nigeria website.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide Nigeria (CSWN) came across an article written by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) titled: Nigeria’s Chibok Girls: Parent of Kidnapped Children Heartbroken – Again, dated 1st April, 2024. There was also an Arise News programme on April 3rd, 2024, on the morning show, titled: Freed Chibok Girls Wed Captors in Borno. The Arise news program dwells on the BBC article but expands it with more insight.

What the two media outlets were saying is that some of the freed/rescued Chibok secondary school girls, abducted on April 14, 2014, by Boko Haram, have chosen to remain with their de-radicalized, former insurgent husbands at an accommodation provided by the Borno State government under its de-radicalisation program.

The BBC article added that seven of such girls are staying in the government-provided accommodation with their de-radicalised insurgent husbands, while other girls are engaged to former fighters they met at the de-radicalisation camp.

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Ten years since the abduction of the Chibok Girls, the Nigerian government must finally protect vulnerable communities

Posted on 15/04/2024 by cswpress in Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa

Last month, 137 families in Kuriga in Nigeria’s Kaduna State breathed a collective sigh of relief as their sons and daughters returned home after over two weeks in terrorist captivity.

The children were abducted from their school on 7 March when armed assailants descended on the premises just as classes were about to commence. The school reported that 287 students were taken; however Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani has since attempted to dismiss the figure as being a ‘figment of someone’s imagination’, despite initially citing the same number himself.

Several questions emerge from this: what is being done to confirm that all of the students have indeed been freed? What about the thousands of other individuals who have been abducted by terrorist groups in recent years? And finally, how can this still be happening a decade after mass kidnappings in Nigeria first landed on the international agenda?

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