On the first anniversary of the abduction of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls by terrorists, two survivors joined human rights advocates and members of Congress on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ensure their classmates’ plight is not forgotten.
The group dressed in the color red, which they said represented the girls, wore purple ribbons as a symbol of stopping violence against women and held signs that read “#BringBackOurGirls” as a call to spread the word on the Internet.
Nearly 300 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Nigeria, were kidnapped last April by Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group based in northeast Nigeria that’s pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. More than 50 victims escaped, but the rest have not been found.
“Boko Haram is physically and psychologically abusing girls,” said Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., who traveled to Nigeria to urge the release of the girls. The militants are “forcing them to get married, forcing religion conversions and are even using women and girls as human bombs.”
About 10 of the girls who escaped are in the United States now, attending school.
“When I came to America, I (found) that American people say that ‘give me liberty or give me death.’ When I heard that, I remember the time that I decided to jump out of the truck that I’d rather die than live,” said Saa, one of those who escaped. She used a pseudonym and wore sunglasses to conceal her identity, for fear of retaliation against her family in Nigeria.
She and her friend jumped out of a truck carrying hundreds of the kidnapped girls and crawled into a forest to look for help.
“Here I am now, free and continued with my studies,” said Saa. “But my class are still in the hands of the terrorists. I’m pleading everybody from all of the world to bring the girls back to school.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who traveled with Wilson to Nigeria and met families of the victims, noted that Boko Haram has displaced 1.5 million people – including 800,000 children, according to a recent UNICEF report – from their homes in Nigeria. “This should not be a life of children,” she said.
Wilson said there would be classified briefings for Congress to share information with the State Department about the kidnappings.
President Barack Obama and the international community called on the new president-elect of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, to use the military to tackle Boko Haram.
Wilson said she was working on a bill that would urge the Nigerian government to collaborate with the international community to defeat the group.