I weep for this story ........ Rape in Nigeria

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061128...aamnestyrights


The rights group Amnesty International released a scathing report on Nigeria, saying that rape by security forces is "endemic" with more than 13,000 victims since 1999, while the government turns a blind eye to the crime.

"Rape by police and security forces is endemic in Nigeria," pointing also to "the abject failure of the Nigerian authorities to bring perpetrators to justice," Amnesty officials said in Lagos in presenting the 40-page report, entitled "Nigeria: Rape - the silent weapon."

The report draws upon the testimony of survivors and identifies disturbing trends of rape and sexual violence against wowen and girls at the hands of police and security officials.

Amnesty, which quoted a recent survey carried out by the CLEEN Foundation, a Nigerian non-governmental organisation, said that a total of 13,852 cases of rape and indecent assault were reported between 1999 and 2005, with the highest figure of 2,284 cases recorded in 2001 alone.

Over the years, because of shame, fear, rejection or stigmatization by society, victims of rape in Nigeria do not publicly report their experience but one of them braved it on Tuesday when she spoke of her alleged rape to journalists.

A woman from Ogoniland in southern Rivers State claimed that she was raped on May 25, 1994, in her Gokana home by some soldiers deployed to the area following bloody unrest.

"They came in the night, broke my door, shouted at me and slapped me. They held me down with a gun in the presence of my two small children. Three of them came inside me from the rear. I was seven months pregnant and yet they raped me till I bled," said the woman simply identified as Grace.

The soldiers then allegedly shot dead her two children and took them away into the bush, the woman said, sobbing.

In a further interview with AFP, she explained that she "lost two things in that incident. My two children who were shot dead and my husband rejected me after the rape," she said.

"He rejected me because the Nigerian army have raped me. Traditionally, (ethnic) Ogoni women do not meet (have sex) with outsiders (strangers) because they may not be circumcized like us," Grace told AFP.

The 45-year-old mother, who has eight children that are still alive, demanded compensation from the government for her two dead children, as the government did, according to her, for the families of the 13 Ogoni "martyrs" who died or were executed in the aftermath of the unrest.

Writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his companions in the Movement for the survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) were hanged in November 10, 1995, after a military tribunal convicted them of the murder of four Ogoni chiefs.

The Amnesty report indicted the government for allegedly failing in its "obligation to exercise diligence," a situation which leads to perpetrators escaping punishment while victims of rape are denied any form of redress.

It also outlined obstacles to the reporting and prosecution of rape in Nigeria, including corruption and incompetence.

Among Amnesty's findings was the use of "rape and sexual slavery by the Nigerian security forces to intimidate communities in the Niger Delta" as means of torture to extract confessions from suspects in custody.

The report also found that an estimated 10 percent of rape cases are successfully prosecuted.

The Amnesty document to which some local human rights organisations also contributed, detailed other cases of rape allegedly committed against woman and girls by soldiers and policemen deployed in the past to various parts of the country to maintain law and order.

Nigerian Army spokesman Colonel Ayo Olaniyan told AFP that the "issue was being overflogged."

He declined further comment until he has read the Amnesty report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061128/...f/nigeria_rape


Nigerian police and soldiers are using rape to intimidate restive communities and "as means of torture to extract confessions from suspects in custody," Amnesty International said Tuesday.

Amnesty accused the government of failing to prosecute those who carry out the sexual assaults and said most victims are afraid to report the crimes.

The London-based rights group documented cases of soldiers raping women in front of their husbands and children, detainees being sodomized with broken bottles, and toddlers assaulted after their parents had been arrested.

"If you are a woman or a girl in Nigeria who has suffered the terrible experience of being raped, your suffering is likely to be met with intimidation by the police, indifference from the state and the knowledge that the perpetrator is unlikely to ever face justice," said Kolawole Olaniyan, Africa Director at Amnesty International.

Nigeria's police spokesman Haz Iwendi acknowledged rape was a problem within the country's security forces, but said the government was already working to overcome it, citing a police workshop on sexual violence held Tuesday in the capital.

Theoretically punishable by a life sentence — or death by stoning in the Muslim north — most rapes are never reported because victims fear the security forces or fear being rejected by their families or communities, Amnesty said.

When rapes are reported, "widespread failures throughout the judicial system result in only an estimated 10 percent of cases ever being successfully prosecuted," the report said. "The perpetrators invariably escape punishment, and women and girls who have been raped are denied any form of redress for the serious crimes against them."

Only a few policemen and no members of the armed forces have been convicted, Amnesty said.

Amnesty said rape had become "endemic" among the security forces, but did not provide statistics. The group said stigma, corruption and a chaotic legal system make reliable figures hard to find.

The report cited two teenagers it said were kidnapped and gang-raped by three policemen for several hours in Enugu state in 2004. Nigerian courts have yet to pass judgment on the case and the girls and their families said they have received death threats.

In another case, a policemen convicted of rape and ordered to pay compensation was been allowed to remain on the force.

One woman described an assault on her, her mother and her 9-year-old daughter.

Nigeria returned to civilian control in 1999 after decades of military regimes and coups, but many former military men remain powerful.

In areas like the oil-rich but volatile Niger Delta, large-scale attacks on civilians by members of the police and armed forces still occur.

In northern Nigeria, the introduction of Islamic Sharia law means that rape victims, or their families, can be punished for reporting the crime if they fail to provide sufficient evidence — including four male witnesses. According to the report, a mother and father received 80 lashes each after failing to prove their daughter had been raped by a village leader.

[Boss]

sad...but happens/happened everywhere...still very inexcusable tho'.

[tomapep]

Rape is actually a weapon of war. Terrible.

this is nothing new, thats why i hate it when people decide to riot mostly led by men, when the government is called in it's the women that are raped and the youth killed

[manilah]

oga oo