Christians defend attacks on Muslims in Nigeria

Craig Timberg

Posted Dec 25, 2006      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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Christians defend attacks on Muslims in Nigeria

by Craig Timberg


ONITSHA, Nigeria — Mobs stopped killing and looting in this battered Nigerian city on Thursday and turned to disposing of the evidence in the crudest of ways.

With smoldering bonfires fueled by pieces of wood and old tires, men burned the remains of their Muslim victims on downtown streets, leaving charred remains that motorists swerved to avoid.

As the city’s thousands of surviving Muslims struggled to return to their northern homes or huddled at police stations, Christian residents expressed little remorse for their role in five days of religious violence sparked by anger over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

At Onitsha’s ruined central mosque, one of two reportedly destroyed Tuesday, Ifeanyi Eze, 34, picked up a piece of charred wood and scrawled on a wall: “Muhammad is a man but Jesus is from above.”

On the blackened walls of the abandoned mosque itself, others had written “No Muhammad, Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Eze expressed anger at Muslims for last year’s terrorist attack in London and other troubles. “We don’t want all this mosque any more,” he said. “These are the people who cause problems all over the world ... because they don’t fear God. We don’t want Muhammad anymore.”

Nigerian authorities have not announced a definitive death count, but witness accounts made clear the dead in Onitsha numbered at least 42 and perhaps far higher. The Civil Liberties Organization, a respected independent group in Nigeria, meanwhile, said its volunteers had counted more than 70 bodies over two days in Onitsha. They also witnessed police gathering bodies for disposal.

Deaths in other Nigerian cities totaled 50 from five days of religious rioting, according to news reports, and many Nigerians were bracing for what they feared would be more retaliatory attacks.

The violence has revealed yet again the deep ethnic, regional and religious differences in Africa’s most populous nation, split nearly evenly between a Muslim north and a Christian and animist south. In the past decade, Nigeria has seen at least 20,000 deaths from political, ethnic and religious violence.

Nigeria is home to more than 200 distinct ethnic groups drawn together in a volatile mix by European colonial mapmakers in the 19th century.

 

 

 

 

 

The recent rioting began Sunday in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where Muslim mobs attacked churches and Christians. The violence spread to a second northern city, and then to the mostly Christian, southern cities of Onitsha and Enugu.

The violence was most intense and widespread here in Onitsha, alongside the historic trading route of the Niger River. It has has long been a commercial center.

Though the city is considered part of the homeland of the heavily Catholic Ibo ethnic group, thousands of northern Muslims, mostly members of the Hausa ethnic group, have moved here in search of work.

Muslim refugees, mostly from the Hausa ethnic group of northern Nigeria, described how mobs of Christian men wielding guns and machetes burst into shops, looted goods and money, then began attacking.

The Muslims fled on foot, mostly across the bridge over the wide Niger River. Some were caught, cut to death and burned. Others, said survivors, were thrown into the river.

Government health crews began collecting the bodies near the bridge Wednesday afternoon. Police removed many others in the city, according to witnesses.

Yet some bodies remained. A few yards from the corpse of a charred man, lying naked on his back in the middle of the road, a group of Onitsha traders said they had no choice but to attack the Muslims living here.

“We have to retaliate,” said Justin Ifeanyi, 24. “It is a shame to us if we don’t kill them.”

 

Originally published on the Seattle Times at http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2002825506_cartoons24.html

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