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TITLE: Sharia Victim's Flogging Condemned |
AUTHOR: Sheila Franklin |
PUB: |
DATE: January 24, 2001 |
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The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has condemned the flogging of a teenage Nigerian mother for having had premarital sex, saying it violated a key international treaty federal government signed. "UNICEF's Position is clear: Under no circumstances should countries use flogging, lashing or any other type of violence as punishment for children," Carol Bellamy, the agency's executive director, said. "UNICEF" calls on responsible authorities in Nigeria to investigate this incident and make the amendments to its domestic legal system necessary to guarantee that this incident is never repeated," she said. Seventeen-year-old Bariya Ibrahim Magazu was given 100 lashes of the cane in Zamfara on Friday as punishment by Muslim authorities for having become pregnant outside marriage. She said her pregnancy was the result of rape. Magazu was given 100 strokes of the cane before a large crowd in front of the Islamic Sharia court in Gusau, a town in Zamfara. Bellamy said there were very few nations anywhere in the world whose justice systems allowed the flogging or lashing of children under the age of 18. UNICEF stated that the universal ratification of the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child means there is a global consensus on protecting children from violence and sparing them from forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. "Nigeria has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of flogging as a punishment for Children," it said. "Nigeria has undertaken the obligation to implement the principles of the CRC and ensure that the nation's legal order conforms to its principles," Bellamy added. On Tuesday, a Nigerian women's human rights group, Baobab, gave eyewitness accounts of the flogging of Magazu, who gave birth to a boy last month and is still breast-feeding. "The lashes were on her buttocks," Baobab spokeswoman, Ayesha Imam said in a statement sent to Reuters in Lagos. "She was crying. There did not appear to be any sign of a doctor present." Human Rights Watch condemned the flogging and urged the Nigerian government to protect those accused from "the arbitrary meting out of extreme and unacceptable punishments." "Nigerian officials rushed to impose this cruel and unusual punishment and ignored the court's review of Magazu's conviction and sentence," said Regan Ralph, who heads the group's women's rights division. There has been no official reaction from the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Although he has been trying to redress human rights abuses under past military rulers, Obasanjo is walking a tightrope over the sharia issue. In 1999 Zamfara State blazed a trail for northern Nigerian states by adopting the strict Muslim sharia legal system, which is opposed by many non-Muslims. The declaration of sharia law in some northern states led to Christian-Muslim fighting in march and May 2000 in the northern city of Kaduna in which hundreds of people died. END |