In April, 2014, 276 schoolgirls were abducted in Nigeria by Boko Haram. But there was a bigger kidnapping that you probably didn’t hear about. More than 300 schoolchildren were abducted from the town of Damasak in March 2015. Damasak is the largest documented school abduction by Boko Haram militants but unfortunately far less public attention was brought to it. A parent says, ‘even now we don’t know where our children in primary school were taken’. Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch Mausi Segun says, ‘three hundred children have been missing for a year, and yet there has been no word from the Nigerian government. The authorities need to wake up and find out where the Damasak children and other captives are and take urgent steps to free them’.
Boko Haram attacked the village of Damasak, a trading town about 2000 kilometers northwest of Maiduguri, on November 24, 2014 and held the residents captive for months. Boko Haram insurgents blocked all four roads leading into the town and trapped residents and traders. They occupied Zanna Mobarti Primary School and locked inside more than 300 students aging from 7 to 17. They then used the school as a military base, bringing scores of other women and children as captives from the town. A woman who was at home in Damasak told what happened that morning to Human Rights Watch in February 2016. ‘I heard gunshots and chaos. My husband had left for the market so I grabbed my two children, a boy age four and a girl age two years and ran. But we ran into Boko Haram and they detained us in the middle of the town. They took all of us to Zanna Mobarti Primary School, I have not seen my children since then.’
The militants separated the women from the children and the boys from the girls. Over the following weeks they forced the captives to learn Quran; they refused to allow the children to be taught in English. A number of women and children died after they were fed putrid food, which caused severe vomiting and diarrhea. A teacher who had escaped said, ‘A lot of people were shot and thrown into the river. It was as we were carrying corpses to go and throw into the river that I was able to escape by falling into the river’.
Between March 13 and 15, 2015, soldiers from neighboring Chad and Niger advanced on Damasak as part of a cross- border military operation against the insurgents, as they approached Boko Haram fled with around 300 kids and about 100 women. Boko Haram has committed widespread abuses during its six-year conflict with the Nigerian government. It has destroyed villages, towns and more than 900 schools. Apart from that, it killed civilians indiscriminately along with abducting children.
Transcripted By Benazir Elahee Munni