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No amount of threats from military will dater us – AI

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6 years ago

June 7, 2018

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Amnesty International says Nigeria’s military smear campaigns and threats over its recent report indicting the military of gross misconducts against internally displaced persons at camps in the north east will not deter it from defending human rights in the country.

Recall that on May 24, the human rights group released a damning report which documented the prevalence of sexual violence against starving women and girls at internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in the north east.

The military had denied the report, accusing the agency of blackmail.

But in a statement made available to National Daily on Thursday, Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International spokesperson, said the military responded to its report by organising smear campaigns and threats.

He said threats are attempts to discredit the organisation from documenting the human rights violations committed by soldiers.

He quoted Osai Ojigho, country director of AI, as saying: “These diversionary tactics are a shameless attempt to avoid investigating the accounts of human rights violations which have been presented by Amnesty. The statements by the Nigerian military clearly show that they have not read our reports.

“Rather than taking action to address the issues raised in this report, like investigating countless allegations of rape and other war crimes, the Nigerian military has fallen back on its usual hostile tactics of denials and threats.”

Amnesty added that it always shares the findings of its investigations with the military before publication but that the authorities are used to evading inquiries.

“We ask detailed questions to ensure the military can provide its side of the story, but in all cases the military has either completely ignored these attempts to engage, or referred us to other arms of government, in a clear attempt to evade our questions,” the statement read.

“For example, while our recent report was based on remote satellite camps in places like Bama and Banki, the military took journalists to the wrong camps in Maiduguri in their attempts to prove us wrong.

“Amnesty International is a human rights organization and not a prosecuting agency – its role is to hold governments to their obligations to respect and protect human rights, and to ensure that anyone whose rights are violated has an effective remedy.

“Despite the military’s best efforts, we will not stay silent. In the face of efforts to evade responsibility or to smear our organization, we will continue to raise our voices whenever and wherever we see injustice, sexual abuse, discrimination against women, or any other violations of human rights in Nigeria.”

On Wednesday, the senate set up an ad hoc committee to look into the allegations AI levelled against the army.