Nigeria
Christian leaders in Nigeria call it “pure genocide” and an “Islamic war of expansion.”
Militant Islamists have massacred more Christians in Nigeria than ISIS killed in Iraq and Syria. Government forces are accused of assisting through negligence or actively supporting violent Islamists.
Boko Haram attacks Christian villages, killing men and abducting young women to forcibly convert and rape in forced marriages. It aligned with ISIS, then splintered after its brutality was too much even for ISIS.
Leah Sharibu was kidnapped at age 14 with 109 classmates in 2018. Leah is the only girl who has not been released because she refuses to deny Jesus and convert to Islam.
Militant Fulani herdsmen raid villages armed with sophisticated weapons, massacre Christians, burn homes, and storm churches during services.
Over 6000 people, mostly children, women and the elderly, have been maimed and killed in raids by Fulani herdsmen, who are predominantly Muslim.
Analysts say the Muslim Fulani strategy follows a pattern: migration, settlement, occupation and control through forceful conversion, abduction, deception and early marriage and then the demand for independent chiefdom.
In one attack, "over 200 persons were brutally killed and our churches destroyed without any intervention from security agencies in spite of several distress calls made to them."
"There is no doubt that the sole purpose of these attacks is aimed at ethnic cleansing, land grabbing and forceful ejection of the Christian natives from their ancestral land and heritage," Church leaders stated.
In an open letter, Nigerian Church leaders say the perpetrators always get away "scot-free".
Five Christian youth were sentenced to death for defending their communities. They were accused of killing a Fulani herdsman, who allegedly had killed 48 Christians. "No armed herdsmen has ever been arrested for prosecution even when they are caught in the act," the Church leaders said.
Christian survivors of a village attacked by Boko Haram made their way to a safer area in Nigeria. They bought land to start a new village and are planting crops.
Christian Freedom International provided for Christian survivors of Islamists' attacks:
Trainings for widows to start small businesses.
Trauma healing workshops for teens.
Farming supplies for families.
A center for youth to live and find healing from homelessness and substance abuse, symptoms of trauma.
