HRW Urges Nigeria to Reverse Ban on Islamic Movement
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Human Rights Watch (HRW) deplored a recent Nigerian court order that allows the government to label the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) a “terror” group.
“The sweeping court ruling against the Shiite movement threatens the basic human rights of all Nigerians,” said Anietie Ewang, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch.
On Saturday, a court in Abuja granted an order permitting the government to label the IMN as being involved in “terrorism and illegality.”
“The government should seek to reverse the ban, which prohibits the religious group’s members from exercising their right to meet and carry out peaceful activities.”
“Allegations of criminality do not present legitimate grounds to ban the activities of a religious group, including protests for justice and the release of their leader,” Ewang said. “The ban on the Shiite movement may portend an even worse security force crackdown on the group, which could have dire human rights implications throughout Nigeria.”
IMN members regularly take to the streets of the Nigerian capital to call for the release of their leader and prominent cleric Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, who has been held in detention since December 2015 and was charged just in April 2018 with murder, culpable homicide, unlawful assembly, disruption of public peace and other accusations. He has pleaded not guilty.
In 2016, Nigeria’s federal high court ordered his unconditional release from jail following a trial, but the government has so far refused to set him free.
The top cleric, who is in his mid-sixties, lost his left eyesight in a raid which was carried out by the Nigerian army on his residence in the northern town of Zaria in December 2015.
During the raid, Zakzaky’s wife sustained serious wounds too and more than 300 of his followers and three of his sons were killed. Zakzaky, his wife, and a large number of the cleric’s followers have since been in custody.
Recently, the UK-based Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) announced that it had received reports about Zakzaky’s health condition that it had further worsened.
The IHRC — which had sent a medical team to Nigeria in April to examine the health condition of Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife — has already said the specialist treatment they require can only be fully accessed outside the African country.