ICC Note: Three hundred children remain missing after Nigeria’s largest Boko Haram school abduction to date, and human rights groups are beginning to decry the government’s silence. The militant Islamist terror group kidnapped the students between the ages of seven and 17 along with 100 adults in Damasak, a town in the north near the Niger border, separating adults and children before carrying the hostages off into captivity. Media around the world are beginning to call the incident “the abduction you’ve never heard of,” because the Nigerian government has yet to comment on the event and people are beginning to take notice. While the Chibok abduction that happened in April 2014 garners global media attention and 219 mostly Christian teenage girls remain missing after that event, Boko Haram has kidnapped upwards of 2,000 people in their seven-year insurgency in northern Nigeria.
By Zacheaus Somorin
3/30/16 Damasak, Nigeria (AllAfrica) – Global watchdog, Human Rights Watch, has slammed the federal government over its unacceptable silence on the abduction of 300 children from Damasak, Borno State.
In a press statement made available to THISDAY on Tuesday, the organisation urged the government to “take urgent steps to secure the release of about 400 women and children, including at least 300 elementary school students, abducted by Boko Haram from the town of Damasak in Borno State a year ago”.
“Damasak is the largest documented school abduction by Boko Haram militants. Yet, it has drawn far less public attention than the group’s widely condemned abduction of 276 schoolgirls from a government secondary school in Chibok in April 2014. While 57 of those girls managed to escape, 219 remain captive almost two years later,” the statement added.
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