At the White House, an ambitious effort
has been launched by a team of several US groups led by Jubilee Campaign and
supported by the Christian Association of Nigerian-Americans (CANAN) to
mobilise thousands of Americans to sign a petition addressed to President
Obama, demanding the designation.
According to the petition, already
posted on the White House website, the organisations and the petitioners
observed that despite all the uncontested evidence on the activities of Boko
Haram, “the US has refused to designate Boko Haram a Foreign Terrorist
Organisation.”
The petition, which has to get 25,000
signatures by December 29, to have the US President respond to it, stated that
in the last three years, Boko Haram has killed an estimated 3,000 Nigerians,
adding, “they have directly targeted helpless Christians, and any Muslims who
dare to disagree with their genocidal ambitions.”
CANAN in a statement said it was
mobilising the over 1,000 US-based Nigerian churches to get their members to
endorse the petition within the time limit, so as to get a response from the
White House.
Opening up the White House website to
Americans to petition the US government is one of the initiatives of President
Obama to bring the US government closer to the American people. But his
administration has been reluctant to go after Boko Haram as a group.
Rather in June, the US government
designated three leaders of the group as terrorists, but fell short of
declaring the entire group an FTO, a situation the President of the Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor described in July at the
US Congress as “hypocrisy.”
Similarly, at the US Senate late last
week, an amendment to a bill sponsored by Senator Scott Brown, a
Republican from Massachusetts State, was passed demanding that the US State
Department should “report on the designation of Boko Haram as a foreign
terrorist organisation, and for other purposes.”
The US House of Representatives version
of the same bill, sponsored by Congressman Pat Meehan, is being revived,
according to the Congressman’s office, which is working with CANAN, to shore up
national support for the bill .
However, the Nigerian Ambassador to the
US, Prof. Ade Adebowale, is known to be working closely with members of the US
Congress to avoid the designation of Boko Haram.
He is arguing to US Senators and
Representatives that while Boko Haram must be stopped, a designation may not be
the right approach.
It will require both US houses of
Senate and Representatives before the bill can be forwarded to White House for
signing into law.
But one of the US groups working with
Senator Brown’s office and in Congress generally to push the bill, Frontline
Missions International, is expressing optimism that with the passage of the
bill in the Senate, a new onslaught has been launched against the indecision of
the US State Department on the issue of designating Boko Haram.
According to John Hutcheson of
Frontline Mission International, “we have been lobbying the US Congress on this
matter since the State Department has been unwilling to designate Boko Haram,
and this is great news,” (passing of the bill in the Senate recently).
Legislative Aide, Michael Spierto, said
Congressman Meehan is seeking co-sponsors to reintroduce his concurrent
legislation in the US House, demanding designation of Boko Haram by the State
Department as an FTO.
Spierto added that Meehan and CANAN
would soon do a joint press statement “in order to call attention to Boko Haram
and why the Congress bill on the matter is necessary.”
The US groups pressing the issue of
Boko Haram are, however, not focusing only on the petition drive and lobbying
the US Congress to legislate; a number of them have also submitted a legal
brief to US Secretary of State Clinton, showing how legally Boko Haram has met
the US legal requirement for designation as an FTO.
The group includes Advocates
International, Alliance Defending Freedom, CANAN, Jubilee Campaign, American
Centre for Law and Justice, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institution, Igbo
League, Family Research Council, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Justice
for Jos Plus and the Westminster Institute.
The legal brief running into 66 pages
says, “Boko Haram has threatened US interests and attacked US citizens,” already.
The brief noted that one American, who
is a UN official, survived the attack on the UN Building in Nigeria in August
2011, while another US official escaped.
Source: Guardian
No comments:
Post a Comment