The Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) has alleged that for over five years, passengers travelling through military roadblocks in South East Nigeria have been subjected to degrading, dehumanizing, and disgusting treatment.
HURIWA urged the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, and the Service Chiefs “to immediately activate pragmatic mechanisms to stamp out all sorts of dehumanising treatments being meted out to travellers in the Southeast region by operatives of security services manning roadblocks.”
In a statement made available to THE WHISTLER on Sunday, HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, explained that such dehumanising treatments include personnel forcing passengers to disembark from vehicles and raise their hands “like slaves about to be sold into slavery.”
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These security operatives, according to Onwubiko, do not even bother to conduct any searches on the vehicles but simply derive joy in allowing passengers to go through embarrassing and disturbing ordeals.
The Rights group said that these mistreatments and dehumanizing conditions imposed on travellers by the military operatives who run roadblocks in the Southeast region are unconstitutional and illegal.
The human rights provisions enshrined in chapter four of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are binding on all authorities, civilians, or military.
“HURIWA further underscores the necessity of military operatives being made to observe the rules of engagement that will not go contrary to universal human rights laws, including those provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Covenants on civil and political rights, and the African human and peoples’ rights principles,” Onwubiko added.
Furthermore, HURIWA expressed excitement at the decision of the Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, to appoint a senior advisor on human rights with a full-fledged office within the institution.
The Rights group stated that “the decision could signpost a positive and constructive development that, if our analysis is correct, can only mean that the topmost serving military officer has the greatest inclination towards showing respect for the rule of law and respect for the human rights of citizens and members of the armed forces.”
Meanwhile, HURIWA called for broad-based consultative partnerships between security agencies and credible civil rights advocacy groups in the country so that Nigerians can be carried along to support the military in the war on terror and in carrying out other legal objectives through internal security operations.
HURIWA also threw its weight behind the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Abia State Council, which has recently stated, “Congress observes with perplexity and condemns in very strong terms the ongoing humiliation and dehumanization of commuters at some military checkpoints on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway, especially at the NNPC Mega Filling Station junction, Umuahia; Abia State University, Uturu (ABSU) junction; Onuaku Uturu near the border with Ebonyi State; among others.”
HURIWA said that the CDS should impress upon the other service chiefs, the Inspector General of Police, and the DG of DSS that treating citizens of any section of the country like slaves is totally unacceptable.
The Rights group also asked the Army to fine-tune its operational modalities in the Southeast, adopt law-based, rights-based, and intelligence-based strategic approaches in combating insecurity in the country.
“Besides, HURIWA said section 42(1) prohibits discrimination of citizens on the bases of their ethnic, religious, or political affiliations. It has tasked the Chief of Defence Staff to treat this complaint with the highest attention that it deserves because, according to the Rights group, segregating and treating Igbo travelers or other travelers within the Southeast like a conquered population is antithetical to the principles behind the setting up of the departments of civil and military affairs by the three tiers of the armed forces of Nigeria such as the Army, the Airforce, and the Nigerian Navy,” the statement added.