Nigeria: 162 People to be Prosecuted for March 7 Massacre

Reuters is reporting that 162 people face prosecution, of which 41 face the death penalty, for the March 7 massacre of about 500 Christians, mostly women and children, in the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Rasat and Jeji near the city of Jos:

"Forty-one of the suspects are to be charged with terrorism and culpable homicide, which are punishable by death," police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said.

The remaining detainees would be charged with unlawful possession of firearms, rioting and "mischief by fire" for the burning of buildings during the attacks.

Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly triggered unrest in central Nigeria's "Middle Belt" over the past decade.

The "Muslim settlers from the north" are Fulani nomadic cattle herders. Those attacked were Berom.

For more context, see these posts on the 2008 riots in Jos:
Media Reporting on Muslim Violence in Jos
Christian Leaders Believe Jos Riots Were Coordinated and Planned

++Orombi responds to increase in child sacrifice in Uganda

Churches through out Uganda are planning 40 days of prayer and fasting over the increase in human sacrifice. Traditional African healers and herbalists have turned to sacrificing children in their rituals, the practice referred to as Muti, or medicine murder.

The Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi is joining with Pentecostal, Orthodox, Catholic and the Seventh Day Adventist churches in this united prayer campaign. The New Vision website reports:

He said the drive was aimed at making Ugandans repent and ask God to forgive and heal the land.

“There is greed, corruption and an inhuman thirst to spill innocent blood because our society is degenerating owing to greed, Godlessness and moral corruption,” he said.

Orombi appealed to head teachers to make convenient reporting time for children and let them go back home before dark.

The Ugandan government released statistics in January 2009 that showed a 600% increase in ritual murder:

The state minister for internal affairs, Matia Kasaija, regretted that there was a 600% increase in ritual murder, from the three reported in 2007, up to 18 cases last year.

Kasaija noted that the problem was compounded by the increase in other crimes affecting children like kidnapping, abduction and child stealing.

In 2006, there were 230 such cases. They dropped to 108 in 2007 but shot up to 318 last year. He said sensitisation of the public on the vice, team work, strengthening the child and family protection unit and setting up a dedicated counter-trafficking unit would curb child sacrifice and human trafficking.

In November, the Ugandan government reported that a ten year old girl had been abducted to be sacrificed by witch doctors, but was released:

According to the police spokesman Kampala extra region Simeo Nsubuga the child, Rebecca Sylvia 10 years old was abducted three weeks ago from Makula Foundation school in Mukono by Robinah who pretended to know her parents.

He says Robinah persuaded the child to go with her promising to take her to her aunt who wanted to see her.

She was taken to Nakasongola at night to a dark grass thatched house and given a mat to sleep on as she waited to be sacrificed.

At night two men examined the child but fortunately told the lady who had brought the girl that it was a bad deal.

She was later put on the Bodaboda to a trading center in Nakasongola where a Good Samaritan picked her to Central Police station in Kampala.

Nsubuga appealed to parents to be careful with children especially those who are ten years old and below because they are potential targets for witchdoctors.

Hat Tip: Virtue Online

An Atheist on Christian Conversion in Africa

Matthew Parris does not believe in Christianity, but he know a lot about it. And he is amazingly honest, even when what he thinks or sees does not support his ideology. In 2003, although he is a gay man, he wrote a column on why God would not approve of gay bishops. Now in his latest column in The Times, he has written on why he believes Africa needs Christianity.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

Parris takes the risky step of criticizing tribal group think:

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Read it all here.

Hat Tip to Titus One Nine and to Karen B in comment #3.

Christian Leaders Believe Jos Riots Were Coordinated and Planned

The Anglican Archbishop of Jos has been providing information that the Muslim attacks on Christians was carefully planned and the election results were only a pretext. In my early post on media reporting on the Jos riots, I wrote that it seemed to be a spontaneous outbreak of religious/ethnic hatred by Muslims against Christians. I want to correct that now based on this from the Barnabus Fund:

Coordinated and planned

The Archbishop of Jos, Rt Rev. Ben Kwashi, issued an urgent plea for prayer on the first day of violence. “Please pray for us in Jos, we are being attacked by Muslims.” Mentioning the link with the local elections, he added, “Why Christians must pay for this I do not know.” On Saturday, he reported, “The Muslims are attacking and burning this morning. It looks well coordinated. They are well armed with AK47 and pump machine guns. This morning they have been at Dogonduste. Quite a number of Christian homes have been burnt. We do not know how many have been killed.”

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has denied allegations that its group started the attack, and appealed to all the people of the state to be calm. Most Rev. Ignatius Kaigama, the chairman of CAN in Plateau State, commented, “We were taken aback by the turn of events in Jos. We thought it was political, but from all indications it is not so. We were surprised at the way some of our churches and property were attacked and some of our faithful and clergy killed. The attacks were carefully planned and executed. The questions that bog our minds are why were churches and clergy attacked and killed? Why were politicians and political party offices not attacked if it were a political conflict? Why were the business premises and property of innocent civilians destroyed? We strongly feel that it was not political but pre-meditated act under the guise of elections.”

Part of a pattern

Plateau State lies in Nigeria’s troubled “Middle Belt” where Christians and Muslims are in roughly equal numbers and there is a history of large-scale sectarian rioting. These riots often appear to be pre-planned attacks, with young people being paid tiny sums to participate in the violence and promised heavenly rewards for killing people. The Berom ethnic group is indigenous to Plateau State, whereas the Hausas are settlers; there have been tensions for decades between the indigenous minority groups and the Hausa settlers.

Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, International Director of Barnabas Fund, comments: “The apparently pre-planned anti-Christian violence in Jos would be shocking enough if it were a single incident on its own, but is far worse given that it forms part of a pattern of repeated rioting in Nigeria, usually started by Muslims against Christians. It is tragic when Christians respond with violence, as seems to have happened this time. Please pray that Christian leaders in Nigeria will be able to help the Christian population to react in a Christ-like way to such provocation.”

You can read it all here and also find information on donating to help.

Media Reporting on Muslim Violence in Jos

Update: I no longer believe the Muslim rioting against Christians was spontaneous. See here and here.

Original Post: There have been three Islamic attacks against those of other religions this week: in Mumbai India, in Jos Nigeria, and in Cairo Egypt. While the horrific attack in Mumbai appears to have been carefully planned, the rioting in Cairo and in Jos seem to be spontaneous outbreaks of religious/ethnic hatred by Muslims against Christians. For the reporting in Jos, I noticed that the news stories seemed to be shifting shape over time to obscure the Muslim instigation.

The early Reuters report of the rioting in Jos attributed the outbreak of violence to Hausa youths, but did not explain that the Hausa are Muslim until the final paragraphs of the story:

JOS, Nigeria, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Youths with machetes hacked to death a policeman and burned tyres in the central Nigerian town of Jos on Friday in protest over the outcome of a local government election, witnesses said.

Demonstrators from the Hausa ethnic group began protesting overnight after a rumour spread that their ANPP party candidate had lost the local government chairmanship race to the ruling PDP party.

As the death toll escalated, a later AP report began by attributing the violence to both sides:

JOS, Nigeria (AP) — Feuding Muslim and Christian mobs burned homes, churches and mosques Saturday as the death toll rose to 35 in Nigeria's worst sectarian violence in years.

After a night of assault-rifle fire and explosions, 20 bodies with fresh wounds arrived at the city's main mosque for quick burial in keeping with Islamic precepts.

The article in today's New York Times began the report at the location of a mosque so that the story begins with the Muslims as the victims:

JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) — More than 200 bodies have been brought to the main mosque in Jos in central Nigeria after ethnic and religious clashes, and the final death toll is likely to be higher, the Red Cross said Saturday.

A senior Nigerian Red Cross official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that 218 bodies were lying in the main mosque here awaiting burial.

“There are many other bodies in the streets,” the official said. That death toll did not include hospital figures, victims already buried, or those taken to other places of worship, meaning the final count could be much higher, officials said.

When Did You Stop Beating Your Wives?

It appears that the Integrity wing of TEC has moved on from accusing the African bishops of polygamy to accusing some bishops attending Lambeth of wife beating. In the Tuesday July 29 edition of the Lambeth Witness, the daily newsletter of the LGBT Anglican portal, (which is produced by Integrity), Bishop Catherine Roskam, from the Diocese of New York is quoted in the lead article as saying:

We have 700 men here. Do you think any of them beat their wives? Chances are they do. The most devout Christians beat their wives ... many of our bishops come from places where it is culturally accepted to beat your wife. In that regard, it makes the conversation quite difficult.

Talking Point #2 , Right on Cue

Why hadn't the GAFCON leadership been prepped before the Press Conference on how to respond to the predictable a gay rights advocacy Talking Points?

The question from the gay rights advocate associating the conservative Anglicans with violence against gays and lesbians was a classic example of Talking Point #2 from Soul Force:

2. Historically, people's misinterpretation of the Bible has left a trail of suffering, bloodshed, and death.

As Iain Baxter, Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement phrased it:

One of the things in “The Way, the Truth and the Life,” one of the key points that you’ve written is to “prepare for an Anglican future in which the Gospel is uncompromised and Christ-centred” But the gospel is already compromised by bishops who support the jailing of lesbian and gay people throughout Africa, which then leads to rape, which leads to torture of people and yet they are not prepared to speak out against this and change the laws in their countries.

The question requires a three part response that communicates the Gospel but does not cede that unverified claims of violence have occurred:
1)immediately and forcefully condemn violence,
2) ask for further information regarding the specific accusations of violence or violent language,
3) conditionally condemn the unverified violence or violent speech claimed.

In this case, African bishops can condemn violence in prisons without condemning prison sentences for homosexual behavior. The gay rights advocate question made the unsubstantiated claim that jailing people inevitably leads to rape which leads to torture.