from EMEKA OKONKWO in Abuja, Nigeria
Nigeria Bureau
ABUJA, (CAJ News) – THERE is concern over the recurrent killing and abduction of Catholic Church members in southern Nigeria.
In the latest such incident, two Catholic sisters were murdered in the Cross River State last Saturday.
Some youth, yet to be identified at the time of publishing, allegedly tortured and then killed the women reportedly accusing them of witchcraft.
The women were reportedly coming from a morning mass.
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), the civil rights group, documented that a few weeks ago, four reverend sisters of the Catholic Church were kidnapped along a highway in Imo State.
They were on their way to the church for mass.
HURIWA reported that some kidnapped Catholic priests had been gruesomely murdered just for being Catholics.
“This must stop forthwith,” Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA’s national coordinator, said.
He called on police to apprehend the suspects and ensure their prosecution.
Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) national coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko
“Jungle justice is alien to any civil society and should be stamped out using all constitutional provisions,” Onwubiko said.
The ethnically diverse Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country of over 200 million people, is synonymous with violent crime.
Crimes have taken a religious dimension and abductions by kidnap-for-ransom games prevalent.
– CAJ News