Hundreds flee new religious violence in Nigeria

[LAGC]

JOS, Nigeria -- A Red Cross spokesman says hundreds have fled from the central Nigerian city of Jos after a spate of new religious violence in nearby villages.

Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo says the military moved into three villages to the south of Jos on Sunday afternoon. Waubo says the aid organization does not know how many people may have died, though he says they fear there have been more deaths in a region that saw more than 300 killed in fighting between Christians and Muslims in January.

A Red Cross official in nearby Bauchi state says more than 600 people have fled into makeshift camps there since Sunday morning.
Click here to find out more!

Sectarian violence in this region of Nigeria has left thousands dead over the past decade.

http://www.bnd.com/2010/03/07/1163727/hundreds-flee-new-religious-violence.html

Makes you wonder if there would still be such bloodshed if there weren't the petty arbitrary religious differences separating the two sides... while religion is by no means the only form of ideology that pits people against each other, it certainly seems to exacerbate the problem quite dramatically in so many parts of the world...

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Update - over 200 dead, many women and children

at the same link.

JOS, Nigeria -- More than 200 bodies - many of them women and children - lay in the streets of a central Nigerian town after a renewed spate of Christian-Muslim violence, witnesses said Sunday, just months after religious violence tore through a nearby city and left hundreds dead.

Yemi Kosoko, a reporter with the independent Nigerian news network Channels, told The Associated Press most of the bodies appeared to be women and children killed by blows from machetes. Kosoko said the dead lined the streets of Dogo Nahawa, a village about three miles (five kilometers) south of the city of Jos.

Kosoko said he made the count Sunday afternoon with an official from the state government. Military units began surrounding the affected villages around the same time, said Red Cross spokesman Robin Waubo. Waubo said the agency did not know how many people may have died in the the fighting, though officials have been sent to local morgues and hospitals.

Witnesses said the violence began in the mostly Christian village at about 3 a.m. Sunday - an hour when the area should have been under curfew and guarded by the military. Jos has remained under a curfew since violence in January left more than 300 people dead - the majority of them Muslims.

[DeSwiss]

2. Maybe they should start giving odds.....

...in Vegas over the outcome of religious strife.

- At least that way some "good" would come of it.

K&R

[Odin2005]

3. Africa seems determined to throw herself into a dark age.

It was all so promising in the 1960s...

[laconicsax]

4. But clearly this has nothing to do with religion.

:eyes:

[struggle4progress]

5. How are you sure that religion differences are an informative explanation?

Nigeria has hundreds of distinct ethnic groups, speaking hundreds of different languages. It has groups that are traditionally nomadic pastoralists and groups that are traditionally settled village dwellers. Modernization has created a small prosperous upper class, together with a large number of desperately impoverished people displaced from their land. A number of homeless people sereve as migrant workers. As expected in such a social situation, crime rates are high. The taking of persons for sale in the slave trade is not uncommon. In short, there are many material sources of social conflict

... hundreds of herdsmen launched coordinated attacks about 3 a.m. on three villages Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot, about six miles south of Jos. The herdsmen charged the villages, firing in the air, then cut down villagers as they fled their huts, witnesses said. "Some people, whom we believed to be pastoralists attacked three villages including our own with machetes, killing and burning people," said Fidelis Tawkek, of Dogo Nahawa village in a phone interview yesterday afternoon. "They burned down most of the houses. They killed many women and children ...
Nigerian massacre kills 120 ...
By Robyn Dixon Los Angeles Times
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100308/NEWS03/3080321/1013

... Witnesses said they were suspecting the invaders to be Fulani pastoralists because they were heard speaking in Fulfulde as they attack the villagers ...
200 Killed in Jos Villages Raid
Andrew Agbese, Ahmed Mohammed and Misbahu Bashir
8 March 2001
http://allafrica.com/stories/201003080018.html

... Residents said the killing was perpetrated by members of the Fulani tribe. Like the Hausas who were the principle targets of January’s violence, the .. Fulani trace their roots to the north and are regarded by some elements of the Berom – the majority in Jos and its environs but a minority nationally – as interlopers who have prospered at their expense ...
Hundreds feared dead in Nigerian violence
By Tom Burgis in Lagos
Published: March 7 2010 19:07 | Last updated: March 7 2010 23:25
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5a791f4-2a00-11df-b940-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Why is religious conflict a better explanation than conflict between oldtimes and newcomers, between pastoralists and village dwellers, or between Fulani and Berom? Perhaps it is a matter of one group of people, displaced from their traditional lands, coming into conflict over material issues with another group, as a result of relocation

[laconicsax]

8. While I don't assume that it is the entirety of the conflict, it is a component.

That divisions tend to occur down religious lines can't be dismissed and while the religious divisions clearly aren't the root cause of violence, they certainly play a role in fostering in-group solidarity.

[laconicsax]

10. ..And on a related note, I'm surprised at you.

After posting a critique of my sources in the Evangelical attack of a Vodou service because of anonymous witnesses and law enforcement officials, you post these three sources.

Your first source relies on claims made by anonymous participants of revenge for an unverified event.

Your second source similarly cites witnesses whose accounts are unverified and whose involvement (and agenda) is unknown. Those witnesses fail to clearly identify the perpetrators of the violence. Moreover, a named source describes the event as 'ethinc cleansing.' When a significant, if not crucial identifier of the different ethnicities is religious, it is clear that religion played a role.

Your third source relies on claims made by more anonymous 'residents' whose involvement (and agenda) is unknown.

[struggle4progress]

11. Land disputes, politics at root of Nigeria violence: experts (AFP)

09/03/2010 13:17 LAGOS, March 9

... "It's ethnic and political, nothing to do with religion," said Washington-based Sulaiman Nyang, a specialist on African and Islamic studies at Howard University ... "It's a feeling of unfair practices, domination of one group by another," said Akanji. Survivors of the weekend massacres and some officials said fighting was over land ... "It is a classic conflict between pastoralists and farmers, except that all the Fulani are Muslims and all the Berom are Christians," Catholic archbishop of the Nigerian capital Abuja, John Onaiyekan, said. A senior Islamic clergy Lateef Adegbite said the weekend clashes were "more ethnic than religious. People are not fighting because of place, time or right of worship". The UN's human rights chief Navi Pillay also insisted it was wrong to label the violence as purely ethnic or sectarian. "What is most needed is a concerted effort to tackle the underlying causes of the repeated outbreaks of ethnic and religious violence which Nigeria has witnessed in recent years, namely discrimination, poverty and disputes over land," she said ... http://www.africasia.com/services/news/newsitem.php?area=africa&item=100309131733.ope0s35w.php

[struggle4progress]

12. Nigeria's deadly land clashes (January | Pulitzer Center)

Religious and ethnic groups battle for access to farmland
By David Hecht - Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Published: January 21, 2009 22:05 ET

... The violence is always between various ethnicities and religious groups but its cause is over competition for diminishing resources in what is Africa’s most populous nation of more than 140 million. Food production is not keeping pace with a population growth of more than 2 percent a year. Herders are moving southward in search of new grazing land as the Sahara Desert expands while crop farmers struggle to sustain production levels as water and fertile land become ever scarcer. The competition for land is provoking the deadly clashes.

"We didn't have this kind of violence when I was growing up" said Rabo, the chief. "Nigerians of all creeds used to be able to share resources. Now we see each other as a threat to our survival."

Government policies are also exacerbating tensions, say many observers. In Jos, for example, Christians in the area are officially classified as “indigenous” which entitles them to jobs in government and the military and makes their children eligible for scholarships. Muslims, who are mostly from the Hausa ethnic group, are categorized as "settlers" even though many have lived in Jos for generations. They resent that they are denied the benefits that Christians enjoy ...

In places such as ‘Yardanko, all the inhabitants are Muslim so conflicts are between people of different ethnic groups and social strata. Most of the nomadic Fulani herders are stateless. They wander, as they have for centuries, across un-patrolled borders along vast migratory routes that circle through Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Nigeria. But the Fulani find their traditional grazing lands in Nigeria are being swallowed up by crop farming ...

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/nigeria/090105/nigerias-deadly-land-clashes

[struggle4progress]

13. I am sorry you did not like my question. I simply wondered exactly why you were so sure

that "religion" was a good and useful explanation of these events: surely if one takes the POV that the events are worth noting, then perhaps one can also take the POV that the events merit some effort towards understanding

[laconicsax]

14. I have you at a disadvantage and you don't yet realize it.

Nowhere in this or any other thread did I claim that I was sure of religion as "a good and useful explanation of these events." It seems that you simply assumed it to be my position in the absence of evidence and started off trying to prove false something I never claimed.

Spamming the board especially doesn't help your case when you're arguing against a figment of your imagination, but if it makes you feel better to post multiple comments with different articles on the subject of the OP, go right ahead. Just know that it's for a non-existent cause.

Thank you, however, for answering a question I never explicitly asked in another thread. I guess you're more than willing to accept things without a clear picture of the situation provided they fit your existing prejudices.

[Jim__]

6. Local cleric claims it's not a religious conflict.

(CNA/EWTN News).- Early morning raids on three villages near Jos, Nigeria by Muslim shepherds on Sunday morning left hundreds of Christian farmers dead. Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja emphasized on Monday that the source of the unrest is due to socio-economic concerns, not religion.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, the archbishop called the confrontations “the classic conflict between shepherds and farmers.”

...

Archbishop Olorunfemi said that international media often link violence between ethnic groups in Nigeria to religious roots, but, he explained, “this is not the case, because they don’t kill each other due to religion, but for social, economic, tribal, (or) cultural demands."

The Church’s reaction, the archbishop said, is that "we continue to work to promote good relations between Christians and Muslims and we seek also to come to an agreement in trying to curb the violence and work together to face concrete political and ethical problems."

more ...

[darkstar3]

7. Move along...nothing to see here...

Muslims killed Christians, but that doesn't mean religion is part of the driving force of this conflict. Not at all.

I smell bullshit.

[laconicsax]

9. The religious identification can be incidental...

...but it can also be a unifying force that motivates opposing sides. I'm sure there are certain individuals who would reject a religious motivation behind the Holocaust because it was promoted along multiple avenues.

[sam sarrha]

15. here is some info..>Link> this youtube video explains it pretty well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEbvxaqCEg0&feature=channel
the last half from the L in Flag is info beginning to leak out.

a pastor in Australia was charged and convicted of Sharia law violations.. charge could get him 2 years in prison for trying to tell the story above.. he was prevented from submitting evidence to the court, out of the koran by the muslim lawyers with the support of the judge. the muslims said reading out of the koran would vilify islam

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/06/australia-pastor-prefers-jail-over-apology.html
"A CHRISTIAN pastor who has been ordered to apologise for vilifying Muslims says he will go to jail rather than say sorry for his comments.
Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) deputy president Michael Higgins ordered two pastors of an evangelical order, Catch the Fire Ministry, to apologise for comments they made in a speech, on a website and in a newsletter.

In a landmark ruling, the tribunal found Muslims were vilified by claims that Muslims were training to take over Australia, encouraging domestic violence and that Islam was an inherently violent religion."

read Nonie Darwish's book om Sharia law, she suffered under it for 30 years.
http://www.amazon.com/Cruel-Usual-Punishment-Terrifying-Implications/dp/1595551611/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268452023&sr=1-1

the war in Nigeria is Jihad against non-believers, force Sharia law.. no media is covering it