Open Door reports.
Extremists believed to be Boko Haram insurgents have released a graphic video depicting the beheading of four people abducted from Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State.
This latest attack comes as authorities in Nigeria are resettling people who fled the insurgency back into Borno under a widely criticised resettlement programme, which has also seen displacement camps close.
In the video, an armed terrorist, dressed in fatigues and speaking Hausa, told onlookers how one of the people he would behead was his younger sister.
“She’s part of the infidels we will annihilate today,” he said. He went on to say that he would do the same if it were his mother or his own child – anyone ‘who goes against our religion’.
Before killing the people in the video, he said: “Wherever there is an infidel, we will go and find them out by ourselves and execute them.”
It is not clear if the people killed in the video were Christians although it is likely. Open Doors Australia has warned that Christians are especially vulnerable to extremist attacks as they are key targets, prioritised under the extremist’s definition of ‘infidel’.
Some 35,000 civilians have been killed and more than two million have been displaced in the northeastern region, according to U.N. numbers.
John Samuel*, Open Doors Legal Expert for sub-Saharan Africa, said: “In and amongst these attacks by Boko Haram, the Borno state government has pushed for internally displaced persons (IDPs) to return home.
“The authorities have offered incentives to returnees, such as food parcels or one-off payments.
“Displaced Christians are very reluctant to return because of ongoing insecurity and unexploded mines planted in their villages. Some Christians who did return were attacked by militants and fled again.
“Boko Haram extremists have clearly said time and time again that they are waging a jihad against people they call ‘infidels’ – that is anyone who does not sign up to their extreme interpretation of Islam. Some of the people at the top of this list, then, are Christians who are clear targets because of their faith.”
In 2024, an Open Doors team of researchers visited northern Nigeria, including an area near where this latest attack took place, to interview Christians about their displacement experience. The report ‘No Road Home’ found that mass displacement in Nigeria has been driven by deliberate attacks on Christian communities and state failure to protect them.
As of December 2023, the International Office of Migration reported that 1,711,481 IDPs are hosted in Borno state alone – Borno hosts 74% of IDPs in the northeast region of Nigeria.
Nigeria is number six on Open Doors World Watch List 2024, an index published annually where Christians face the most extreme persecution for their faith.
Image: Boko Haram Image Credit AK Rockefeller/Global Panorama/Flickr