USA Africa Dialogue Series - baga massacre

like human rights watch, amnesty international has issued reports that detail similar events of "heavy handed" policy brutality in events up north.
here is the Sahara Reporters article on it:

Nigeria: No Justice For The Dead, Says Amnesty International In New Report

Posted: February 5, 2013 - 02:13

By SaharaReporters, New York

Hundreds of fatal police shootings which each year leave families anguished and bereaved are not being investigated effectively because of a failure of the Nigerian justice system, Amnesty International says in a report released today.

Nigeria: No Justice for the Dead illustrates the gaps in the investigation of deaths following police action in Rivers State where basic techniques of crime scene protection and investigation are not applied and autopsies and inquests are either not carried out, or are inadequate.

Relatives are often left with no answers about the fate of their family members and rarely receive justice.
Amnesty International believes Rivers State is representative of other Nigerian states where violent deaths at the hands of the police are not investigated adequately.

Medical and legal sources revealed that there is a practice of doctors signing death investigation reports without examining the body properly.

In many cases the identity of the deceased is not known to the police and bodies are registered as “unknown”.  Little effort is made by police to identify them.

The lack of investigation in Nigeria means that many of the police officers who appear to have used unlawful lethal force enjoy impunity, seriously undermining human rights protections.

“To have one of your friends or family members killed by the authorities causes terrible anguish, but never to find out the truth of what actually happened to them causes a particular agony for relatives of the victims,” said Lucy Freeman, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Africa.
read the rest here: http://saharareporters.com/news-page/nigeria-no-justice-dead-says-amnesty-international-new-report
ken

--   kenneth w. harrow   faculty excellence advocate  distinguished professor of english  michigan state university  department of english  619 red cedar road  room C-614 wells hall  east lansing, mi 48824  ph. 517 803 8839  harrow@msu.edu