Some
of the 219 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped on April 14, 2014 have been forced to
join the fighters of the Boko Haram sect, the BBC has been told.
Witnesses
told BBC Panorama Programme that some of them are now being
used to terrorise other captives, and are even carrying out killings
themselves.
The
BBC cannot verify the testimony, but Amnesty International says other girls
kidnapped by Boko Haram have been forced to fight.
The
Chibok schoolgirls are still missing, more than a year after they were
kidnapped from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.
Three
women who claimed they were held in the same camps as some of the Chibok girls
told the BBC’s Panorama Programmeon Monday that some of them had
been brainwashed and are now carrying out punishments on behalf of the
militants.
Anna,
aged 60, is one of them. She fled a camp in the Sambisa Forest in December
where she was held for five months. She now sits beneath a tree close to the
cathedral in the Adamawa State capital of Yola. Her only possessions are the
clothes she ran away in. She
said she saw some of the Chibok schoolgirls just before she fled the forest. “They
had guns,” she said.
When
pressed on how she could be sure that it was the Chibok schoolgirls that she’d
seen, Anna said, “They (Boko Haram) didn’t hide them. They told us, ‘These are
your teachers from Chibok.’
“They
shared the girls out as teachers to teach different groups of women and girls
to recite the Koran,” Anna recalled.
She
added, “Young girls who couldn’t recite were being flogged by the Chibok
girls.”
Like
Miriam, Anna also said she had seen some of the Chibok schoolgirls commit
murder. “People were tied and laid down and the girls took it from there… The
Chibok girls slit their throats,” said Anna.
Anna
said she felt no malice towards the girls she had seen taking part in the
violence, only pity. “It’s not their fault they were forced to do it,” she
added.
“Anyone
who sees the Chibok girls has to feel sorry for them,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment