Nigerian police and soldiers are using rape to intimidate restive communities and as means of torture to extract confessions from suspects in custody, Amnesty International said Tuesday.
Amnesty said rape had become “endemic” among the security forces, but did not provide statistics. The group said stigma, corruption and a chaotic legal system make reliable figures hard to find.
Amnesty accused the government of failing to prosecute those who carry out the sexual assaults and said most victims are afraid to report the crimes.
The London-based rights group documented cases of soldiers raping women in front of their husbands and children, detainees being sodomized with broken bottles, and toddlers (småbørn) assaulted after their parents had been arrested.
– If you are a woman or a girl in Nigeria who has suffered the terrible experience of being raped, your suffering is likely to be met with intimidation by the police, indifference from the state and the knowledge that the perpetrator is unlikely to ever face justice, said Kolawole Olaniyan, Africa Director at Amnesty International.
Nigeria’s police spokesman Haz Iwendi acknowledged rape was a problem within the country’s security forces, but said the government was already working to overcome it, citing a police workshop on sexual violence held Tuesday in the capital.
Theoretically punishable by a life sentence or death by stoning in the Muslim north most rapes are never reported because victims fear the security forces or fear being rejected by their families or communities.
When rapes are reported only an estimated 10 percent of cases are ever being prosecuted,” the report said.
Only a few policemen and no members of the armed forces have been convicted, Amnesty said.
Nigeria returned to civilian control in 1999 after decades of military regimes and coups, but many former military men remain powerful.
In areas like the oil-rich but volatile Niger Delta, large-scale attacks on civilians by members of the police and armed forces still occur.
In northern Nigeria, the introduction of Islamic Sharia law means that rape victims, or their families, can be punished for reporting the crime if they fail to provide sufficient evidence _ including four male witnesses. According to the report, a mother and father received 80 lashes each after failing to prove their daughter had been raped by a village leader.
Kilde: www.pushjournal.org
