Boko Haram: Just another US terrorist brand to
suppress Islamic movement in Nigeria
- Dec 19, 2015
By Vanessa
Beeley*
According to the Nigerian Government forces, a traffic
infringement justifies the massacre of over 1000 Muslims who were performing
the religious ceremony of ushering in the new month of Maulud, honouring
the birth of the Prophet Mohammed of Islam [pbuh].
In a statement on Sunday the army said: “The
Nigerian Constitution guarantees the rights of any group of persons and Sheikh
El Zakzaky’s followers to hold a peaceful march or procession unhindered, but
it also guarantees other people’s rights of way on public highways.”
Claims of an attempted assassination of the Chief of
Army Staff, Lt-Gen. Tukur Buratai or even of the alleged attacks by the Islamic
sect on the military convoy are rendered questionable by the sheer lack of
reported casualties on the military side and the shockingly disproportionate
loss of life and bloodshed among the Islamic Sect supporters and leaders.
If indeed, this were a simple fracas over “right of
way on a public highway” which resulted in the shooting of unarmed Muslims, why
then did the same Nigerian government armed forces attack Hussainiyah, the
sect’s headquarters later the same evening, hours after the initial clashes?
Why did they deliberately target high ranking members of the
Shi’ite Islamic movement and execute Hamad Zakaky, son of the movement leader
Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky. Why did they attack and wound the Sheikh’s wife,
Zeenat? Why did they shoot the Sheikh himself, four times in his hands,
publicly humiliate and arrest him? Why, if this was not a premediated act of
aggression and suppression, had the Army ensured the presence of camera teams
at both attacks and why were women and children not spared the murderous hail
of bullets?
These are all questions that the mainstream media
should be asking, yet this massacre has been swept under the carpet of
indifference by Western media.
Sheikh Ebrahim Zakzaky is a man of peace, unity and
vision. These qualities alone represent a threat to the hegemony and
neo-colonialist strategy of the Axis of Empire in Africa and would justify the
repeated attempts to suppress and inhibit the growth of his Shia Muslim
movement and his popular, unifying influence that transcended the borders of
Nigeria and was taking root in many countries on the continent.
