Secretary of state John Kerry urges government troops to remain disciplined in latest offensive against Islamic terrorists
Nigeria has the right to defend itself against an Islamic terrorist group threatening the country's north, but it must not condone human rights violations committed by its own forces fighting the Boko Haram Islamist group, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said last Saturday.
Kerry, in his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office in February, addressed what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, have charged is a campaign of violence, harassment and killing carried out or abetted by government forces fighting in the north.
"Boko Haram is a terrorist organisation, and they have killed wantonly and so we defend the right completely of the government of Nigeria to defend itself and to fight back against terrorists," Kerry said as he attended an African Union summit.
"That said, I have raised the issue of human rights with the government … We have talked directly about the imperative of Nigerian troops adhering to the highest standard and not themselves engaging in human rights violations and atrocities."
Boko Haram militants are accused of terrorist attacks primarily against Nigerian police and Christian civilians. The group is a fundamentalist Islamist movement that seeks to establish sharia law. It is accused of hundreds of killings in Nigeria.
Boko Haram is not on the state department's list of designated foreign terrorist organisations, although US officials have called it a terrorist group before. It is described as such on the National Counterterrorism Centre website.
Kerry was likely to see the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, on the sidelines of the gathering here celebrating the organisation's 50th anniversary, but no formal meeting was set. Oil-rich Nigeria is a key US partner both on and off the African continent, but the relationship is often troubled.
Although Kerry issued a statement this month accusing Africa's most populous country of "gross human rights violations" following Jonathan's declaration of a state of emergency in three northern Nigerian states, Kerry did not repeat the strong language last Saturday.
"To their credit, the government has acknowledged that there have been some problems" in the sparsely populated and partly ungoverned territory, Kerry said. "They're working to try to control it. It's not easy."
The Nigerian government offensive launched against Boko Haram this month is the widest since the group emerged three years ago. News agencies reported that warplanes had destroyed several Boko Haram training camps and that dozens of accused terrorists had been arrested.
"One person's atrocity does not excuse another's," Kerry said.
A senior state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US is monitoring what it calls "heavy-handed" tactics by some Nigerian forces. The rights abuses continue, the official said, despite US and other international objection.
The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that 2,400 people have fled the region for neighbouring Niger.
"Issues of national security and the state of emergency do not give the military carte blanche to do whatever they want," Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa, said in a statement.
Amnesty accuses Nigerian government forces of executions, unexplained detentions or disappearances and the torching of homes over the entire three years of the fight against Boko Haram.
Human Rights Watch says satellite images reveal wide destruction of civilian land after a military raid on the Nigerian town of Baga last month. The military claims only 30 houses were destroyed.
Kerry was also meeting representatives of Sudan and South Sudan to encourage co-operation on oil transport and border issues.
This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post