Thousands of children held in cells

NIGERIA’S military has arbitrarily detained thousands of children for suspected involvement with Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday.

“Children are being detained in horrific conditions for years, with little or no evidence of involvement with Boko Haram and without even being taken to court,” said children’s rights advocacy director Jo Becker.

Between January 2013 and March 2019, armed forces detained more than 3 600 children, according to the UN.

Children told the researchers about beatings, overwhelming heat and frequent hunger in overcrowded cells.

Nigerian authorities arrested the children during military operations, security sweeps, screening procedures for internally-displaced people and based on information from informants, according to HRW.

Many of the children said they were arrested after fleeing Boko Haram attacks on their village or in refugee camps.

“The soldiers were beating us with their belts, calling us names and telling us they will deal with us because we are Boko Haram wives,” a girl forced to marry a Boko Haram member and later captured by soldiers told HRW.

Children also described sharing a single, 10m² cell with 250 or more detainees. They said the stench from a single open toilet was often overwhelming and that detainees sometimes fainted from the heat.

Many of the children interviewed said they saw dead bodies of other detainees. Some had been detained for up to three years without any contact with their families.

Since January 2013, Nigerian authorities have released about 2 200 children from detention, nearly all without charge.

Boko Haram poses a steady threat to communities in the north-east of Nigeria and has also launched offensives in neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon. Since 2009, tens of thousands of people have died at the hands of the Sunni fundamentalists in the region and an estimated 2.5 million people fled their homes. | dpa