LAGOS, Nigeria — Amnesty International said Thursday that police battling criminals and militants in Nigeria’s restive southern oil region are using increasingly violent means, including torture and illegal killings.
LAGOS, Nigeria — Amnesty International said Thursday that police battling criminals and militants in Nigeria’s restive southern oil region are using increasingly violent means, including torture and illegal killings. Nigerian security personnel have been trying to calm the Niger Delta, where various armed gangs operate throughout the massive swampy region, blowing up pipelines and taking oil workers hostage in a campaign to force the government to send more oil-industry funds to the region. The London-based rights group said, however, that it has noted an upsurge of enforced disappearances, torture and illegal killings by police in the area. "We are seeing what appears to be a worrying rise in the use of extreme violence by the police in the Niger Delta," Amnesty’s Nigeria researcher, Aster van Kregten, said in a statement. Amnesty cited the case of four unarmed men, including a former gang member, who were arrested by police and haven’t been heard from since. It said the ex-gang member had given up his weapon after reports that the government was working on a general amnesty for the region’s fighters. The group said police in the main oil hub of Port Harcourt denied any knowledge of the four men, and called on security forces to confirm the arrests and make public the men’s whereabouts. National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu had no immediate comment on Amnesty’s report, saying he would have to consult with his colleagues in the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s police and military have long been accused of brutality. Top officials generally acknowledge that their forces could use more training and better equipment, while several government-sponsored groups have filed official reports cataloging deficiencies in Nigeria’s criminal justice system. The security forces — drawn from across the country of 140 million and often unfamiliar with the Delta’s watery terrain — are the subject of frequent attacks by the region’s fighters seeking vengeance or sophisticated weaponry. The Nigerian government has said it is stepping up its activities in the Niger Delta, a region of creeks, swamps and rivers the size of Scotland where most of the crude is pumped in Africa’s biggest oil producer. Militants say their attacks on pipelines and hostage-takings are aimed at pressuring the government into sending more oil-industry funds to the region, which remains deeply impoverished despite its great natural bounty. But criminality and militancy are closely interlinked, and many of the armed gangs rely on the illegal overseas sale of crude oil tapped from the regions wells and pipelines — a practice in which many Nigerians assume government forces in the region are actively complicit. The Niger Delta region’s politicians have long used the armed gangs to rig elections and in some instances have created or armed the groups themselves — underscoring the complex interplay between criminality and officialdom in the region. ______ Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
About Post Author
