(Harbinger’s Daily)—A shocking new report has revealed that the genocidal murder of Christians in Nigeria has reached unprecedented levels, with the number now reaching over 7,000 so far this year, more than doubling last year’s total with four months still remaining. Religious freedom advocates are begging the Trump administration to increase pressure on the Nigerian government to protect Christians and other religious minorities from rampaging groups of radical Islamist jihadists.
The report, released by the Nigeria-based International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety), recorded a total of 7,087 Nigerian Christians killed and another 7,800 abducted between January 1 and August 10. The number of murders represents a massive increase compared to last year, when Open Doors reported 3,100 Christians killed and over 2,000 kidnapped.
The brutal violence against Christians and other religious minorities largely began in 2009, when the jihadist group Boko Haram initiated a terror campaign in an effort to establish a caliphate in northeastern Nigeria. Other extremist groups like the Fulani herdsmen and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) have also contributed significantly to the killing. Intersociety estimates that over the last 16 years, 189,000 civilians have been killed, including 125,000 Christians and 60,000 liberal Muslims.
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has established itself as far and away the country with the highest annual number of Christians killed in the world. Despite this, in November 2021, the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), which catalogues the world’s most egregious violators of religious freedom. The move was notably taken just one day before then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to arrive in the country as part of a tour of the African continent.
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