ICC Note:

Morning Star News is reviewing the top persecution stories from 2014, and the rise of the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria has their attention. In 2014 alone, Boko Haram killed an estimated 1,800 Christians, abducted, forcefully converted to Islam and sold as child brides into domestic and sexual servitude 276 schoolgirls, and displaced tens if not hundreds of thousands of believers from their homes, land, communities, churches, families, friends and loved ones. Unfortunately, 2015 promises only more devastation wrought by the hands of Boko Haram’s murderous Islamic militants.

01/12/2014 Nigeria (Morning Star News) – The kidnapping of more than 300 high school girls from the predominantly Christian town of Chibok, Borno state by Boko Haram in mid-April rightly outraged the world and later helped to bring attention to the larger, underlying story: the Islamic extremist group’s effort to carve out a caliphate echoing that of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) in the Middle East.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau declared in an online video that the group, whose name is roughly translated as “Western education is a sin,” was establishing an Islamic caliphate in Borno state’s Damboa and Gwoza towns and Yobe state’s Buni Yadi, including their surrounding villages.

With cruelty rivaling that of ISIS, heavily-armed Boko Haram insurgents seeking to establish sharia (Islamic law) throughout the country took 20 towns in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states by the end of the year. The Nigerian military was often reported as ill-equipped and unmotivated to confront Boko Haram, which has ties to Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, and some accused soldiers of complicity with the terrorists. Boko Haram attacks have displaced an estimated 1.5 million people internally, with another 150,000 fleeing to Chad, Niger and Cameroon; church buildings that were not burned down were deserted.

Designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Boko Haram invaded predominantly Christian villages in northeastern Nigeria and slaughtered large numbers of people, shooting some and slitting the throats of others while shouting “Allahu Akbar [God is greater].” In Open Doors’ ranking of countries where persecution was most severe in 2014, Nigeria jumped to 10th place from 14th the previous year.

…