Eighty-two of the schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram three years ago have been released.
They were among 276 girls taken from their school in Chibok in north-east Nigeria in April 2014.
The girls, most of them Christians, were forced into marriage with their Islamist captors. Some have given birth to children. It is believed that others had explosives strapped to them and were used as suicide bombers.
Boko Haram, which is affiliated with ISIS, is a fundamentalist Sunni sect opposed to the Westernisation of Nigeria. It aims to turn the country into an Islamic state.
Since the group was founded in 2002 it has abducted thousands of people, but the mass abduction of schoolgirls shocked the world. Of the 276, 113 girls are still unaccounted for.
The 82 young women, now around 20 years old, were released last week in a deal negotiated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, along with the Swiss government, in exchange for five Boko Haram leaders.
“This is very, very exciting news for us that we have over 80 of our girls coming back again,” Bukky Shonibare of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign told Sky TV.
Miss Shonibare said that the girls had suffered appallingly. “They have been starved, abused, and as we have seen before some of those girls have come back with children, and some of them have also come back with news of how they have been sexually abused.”
The young women were flown by military helicopter to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, where they met President Muhammadu Buhari in what Amnesty International called “a publicity stunt”. It is not known when they will be reunited with their families.
Bishops’ official accuses EU of hypocrisy on persecution
Church officials have accused the European Union of ignoring pledges to defend religious freedom, despite commitments set out in 2013 guidelines.Mgr Duarte Nuno Queiroz de Barros da Cunha, secretary-general of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE), said the grouping of 39 bishops’ conferences was disappointed by a lack of action.
“If officials talk about religious freedom, they usually do so abstractly and seem afraid or ashamed to name the communities actually suffering, especially in the Middle East,” he said.
“Freedom of religion is an absolute principle, and diplomatic and economic pressure should be used to defend it,” he said. “But the measures adopted four years ago are just words on paper, despite growing persecution. The EU should stop being hypocritical by saying one thing publicly and doing another behind the scenes.”
Mgr da Cunha said the ideology of secularisation “views religion as a private affair of the individual; it has difficulty understanding the public dimension of religious communities”.
The guidelines said the EU would consider suspending co-operation or aid when countries abused religious rights.
Melkite Patriarch steps down
Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the spiritual leader of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.Patriarch Gregory III Laham, resigned from pastoral office on May 6. Pope Francis thanked the 83-year-old Patriarch Emeritus, describing him as “a zealous servant of the people of God”, and paying tribute to his “generous service” to the Church, which included “keeping the international community’s attention focused on the tragedy of Syria”.
