Nigerian officials admitted they mislead the media regarding an attack by Islamic extremists Boko Haram where they invaded a girl’s school and carried off the students.
Security officials had initially said that 85 girls were taken but now admit the terrorist group seized 234 girls.
The admission from the regional military officials came after the governor of Borno state demanded to be taken to the site of the attacks and be allowed to question troops that were supposed to be protecting the school.
Military police say they are in “hot pursuit” of the kidnappers but none of the girls have been found. The girls, between 16 and 18, were reportedly science students at the school undergoing physics exams.
Boko Haram has pledged to kidnap Christian girls in the region to force into conversion to Islam and forced marriages. Girls who have been rescued from previous Boko Haram kidnappings say they were forced to be cooks and sex slaves.
Boko Haram has increased their actions this year, with over 1,500 people killed and thousands kidnapped.
In a first of its kind collaboration, leaders of the Christian and Muslim faiths are banding together to take a stand against slavery.
The new Global Freedom Network has the support of Pope Francis & the Vatican, the Church of England and al-Azhar, the Cairo based center of Sunni Muslim learning. It’s the first time the leaders of all three major religious groups have worked together with a single goal.
The GFN says that over 30 million people around the world are trapped in slavery and Pope Francis said it was a “crime against humanity.”
The group has vowed to make sure no organization under its control has tied to slavery-related business or groups and they will press governments to work to eradicate slavery within their borders.
“We are struggling against evil in secret places and in deeply entrenched networks of malice and cruelty,” said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
The Global Freedom Network will be coordinated by Australian based anti-trafficking charity Walk Free Foundation.
Nigerian Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram has taken to a new tactic to try and boost the morale of their soldiers. They are kidnapping Christian women, forcing them to convert to Islam through violence and then are forcing them to marry terrorist fighters.
A 19-year-old woman identified only as Hajja escaped from the group after four months of captivity. The Christian woman said she was forced multiple times to kneel and beaten while her captors yelled at her to worship Allah. She said she eventually pretended to go along with them because a fighter told her she was about to be beheaded.
She told reporters that she was forced to be a slave for a group of fourteen terrorists and was used as bait to lure in civilians working with the military so that the terrorists could slit their throats. She reported being forced to watch multiple murders at the hands of her captors.
Hajja now lives in the nation’s capital city of Abuja and is free to worship Christ. She says that she has trouble sleeping at night because of nightmares related to her captivity.
Pope Francis called a meeting of experts to the Vatican to discuss the problem of forced labor and prostitution around the world and called for the church to step up in the fight against modern day slavery.
The Pope also said that organ trafficking and people smuggling were issues that needed to be eradicated.
Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, told reporters that the pope was heavily invested in the subject of fighting slavery due to his years in Latin America. The pope had invited two experts on human trafficking that he worked with in Buenos Aires to come to the Vatican.
The group that met with the Pope released a statement saying that one of the biggest worries in Latin America is children being used by drug dealers to move product.
The group also said that the church needs to have “zero tolerance” when it comes to prostitution because it is linked to other problems like drugs and violence.
A new report on human trafficking and slavery worldwide shows that around 30 million people are enslaved, nearly half of them in India.
The survey by Australian-based group Walk Free said that the found human trafficking in all 162 countries surveyed.
“Today some people are still being born into hereditary slavery, a staggering but harsh reality, particularly in parts of West Africa and South Asia,” the report states. “Other victims are captured or kidnapped before being sold or kept for exploitation, whether through ‘marriage’, unpaid labour on fishing boats, or as domestic workers. Others are tricked and lured into situations they cannot escape, with false promises of a good job or an education.”
India, where almost 14 million people are enslaved either in bonded labor or commercial sex exploitation, was the clear leader in the statistics. China was second with 2.9 million people in slavery, followed by Pakistan (2.1 million), Nigeria (701,000) and Ethiopia (651,000).
The survey also listed countries based on slavery totals per capita. Moldova, where Stella’s Voice is located, was in the top 6 nations of slaves per capita.
