“He was a huge man in his mid-30s and I had never had sex before. It was very painful and I cried bitterly because I was bleeding afterwards”.
This was the horrible account of 19-year-old girl who was held in a Boko Haram camp for four weeks in 2013.
Amazingly, other girls kidnapped by the Islamist group, Boko Haram have described life in the insurgents’ den as hell.
The victims claimed in separate interviews with Human Rights Watch that they were forced into marriage and labour, raped, tortured, psychological abused and coerced religious conversion.
HRW in its report, “Those Terrible Weeks in Their Camp: Boko Haram Violence Against Women and Girls in North-east Nigeria”, based on interviews with 30 women and girls abducted between April 2013 and April 2014, plus 16 people who witnessed kidnappings, said women and girls were held in eight different camps for periods ranging from two days to three months, after being taken from their homes, while working on farms, fetching water or at school.
The report said that abducted women and girls held by Boko Haram ranged in age from infancy to 65.
“They and many others they saw in the camps were subjected to physical and psychological abuse; forced labour; forced participation in military operations, including carrying ammunition or luring men into ambush; forced marriage to the captors; and sexual abuse, including rape,” the report said.
“In addition, they were made to cook, clean and perform other household chores. Others served as porters, carrying the loot stolen by the insurgents from villages and towns they had attacked.”
Narrating her ordeal in the hands of the bloodthirsty me, a 15-year-old girl, whose identity was hidden for obvious reason, said she was forced to marry a militant more than twice her age.
Hear her, “After we were declared married I was ordered to live in his cave but I always managed to avoid him. He soon began to threaten me with a knife to have sex with him, and when I still refused he brought out his gun, warning that he would kill me if I shouted. Then he began to rape me every night. He was a huge man in his mid-30s and I had never had sex before. It was very painful and I cried bitterly because I was bleeding afterwards.”
Another 19-year-old who was raped said: “I could not tell anyone what happened, not even my husband. I still feel so ashamed and cheated.”
Another woman with her, who was also raped, “vowed never to speak of it again as she was single and believes that news of her rape would foreclose her chances of marriage”.
Another victim, an aged woman said: “I was dragged to the camp leader who told me the reason I was brought to the camp was because we Christians worship three gods. When I objected to his claim, he tied a rope around my neck and beat me with a plastic cable until I almost passed out. An insurgent, who I recognised from my village convinced me to accept Islam, lest I should be killed. So I agreed.”
All of those interviewed by HRW said more could have been done by government security forces to prevent abductions and respond more quickly when they happened.
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