The prominent civil Rights advocacy group: - HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS
ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has condemned the reported widespread violent
attacks by armed soldiers of boys who wore dreadlocks in the commercial city of
Aba in Abia state.
HURIWA calls the actions of these armed security forces as the
clearest manifestations of criminal rascality and an elaborate attempts to draw
a wedge between the military and civilians in an era whereby the nation's
military is in need of winning the hearts and minds of civilians so as to build
formidable data bank of actionable intelligence to check the unprecedented
upsurge in violent crimes all over Nigeria.
HURIWA has therefore asked the chief of Army staff lieutenant General
Tukur Yusuf Buratai to immediately order the investigation and prosecution of
the soldiers who embarked on these sorts of violence against the civil populace
just as the Rights group expressed shock that these misconducts and criminality
can still go on amongst soldiers even when the current hierarchy of the
Nigerian Army has reportedly invested so much human and material resources to
build the capacity of personnel manning the human rights desks of the Nigerian
Army in the last couple of years. HURIWA reiterated her call that the Chief of Army
staff should upgrade the Human Rights desks of the Army into a full-fledged
department to be coordinated by a General just as the group calls for increased
collaboration between the Army and credible and independent minded civil
society organizations with track records of activities in the human rights
industry.
In a statement by the national coordinator comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko
and the national media affairs director Miss. Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA says the
attacks violates several provisions of the constitution of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria of 1999 (as amended).
HURIWA cited sections 38(1); 35(1) which states thus: “Every
person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,
including freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone
or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and
propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and
observance.” and “Every person shall be entitled to his personal
liberty and no person shall be deprived of such liberty save in the following
cases and in accordance with a procedure permitted by law”
HURIWA stated that “We have it on records that the commercial center
of Abia State, was on Saturday thrown into panic as masked soldiers reportedly
arrested, flogged and shaved off the hair of young men wearing dreadlocks and
those with bushy and tinted hair. It was
gathered that the soldiers also took the young men to an unknown destination."
Some residents, who witnessed the incident, said
they were afraid that another season of Operation Python Dance might have
commenced in the state, adding that the inhuman treatment meted out to the
young men and innocent youths was uncalled for.
HURIWA said: "We have been informed by our members in Aba that
the soldiers visited major streets in the city dehumanizing young men and
taking them to an unknown destination without any explanation. We were told
that the targets
of these marauding and lawless armed soldiers were young men, who wore
dreadlocks and those who tinted their hair. The masked
soldiers flogged many of their victims and used scissors to cut off the hair
and then threw the victims into their vehicles and zoomed off."
HURIWA said
it was nonsensical that professional soldiers can be let loose to go about
harassing the civil populace and misbehaving in these sorts of pathetic modes.
Dreadlocks are the choice of some persons even as some religious minded persons
keep dreadlocks for spiritual reasons. Nigerian constitution provides for Right
to freedom of Religion. The Rights group then condemns the misconducts of the
armed soldiers as primitive and unbecoming of a modern day professionally
trained armed forces. This show of shame must stop and the inducted soldiers
punished.
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