News Desk
ISLAMABAD/MAIDUGURI: Nigerian military has been running a secret and illegal mass abortion camp in its headquarters in Maidugur to terminate pregnancies of girls and women, mostly rescued from the custody of Boko Haram militants.
In the Nigerian military camp, since 2013, around 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls — who got pregnant after they were kidnapped and raped by Boko Haram militants in their camps — had been terminated without their consent after they were rescued from the custody of the militants, according to a report by Reuters.
Almost every victim girl and woman said that their pregnancies were ended by the Nigerian military either at gunpoint or drugged into compliance.
Maiduguri, where the mass abortion programme is run, is the headquarters of Nigerian army’s military war against insurgents. At the Maidugru camp, girls and women had been forced to undergo abortions
One of the victims, Fati, 20, who was rescued from the custody of Boko Haram militants in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state, told Reuters that she had been forcibly married to insurgents and she was repeatedly raped, resulting in a pregnancy. Fati was rescued from militants’ custody before she found herself in a dark room at a military barracks in Maiduguri, where uniformed gave her and five other women pills and injections to terminate their pregnancies.
Fati, who was about four months pregnant, said that the soldiers allegedly threatened to kill them if they did not cooperate. She said that the soldiers terminated their pregnancies without asking and telling them. She said that the soldiers warned that “they will seriously beat us if we shared this with anyone”.
Mass abortions without consent
The victims and witnesses said that the mass abortions were carried out without consent and without their prior knowledge. The victim women and girls ranged from a few weeks to eight months pregnant, and some of them were as young as 12-year-old.
Around 33 women and girls interviewed by Reuters said they underwent mass abortions while in the custody of Nigerian soldiers and other government employees, who escorted the women and girls to the camp under tight security for forced abortions. The campaign mostly relied on deception, threat and physical force against the women and girls,who were then kept in military custody for days or weeks during the whole process.
The soldiers lied to the victim women and girls that the pills and injections given to them were to restore their health and fight diseases such as malaria.
