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Was massacre much larger than earlier reported?
Compass Direct, a news service focusing on religious persecution issues, issued a stunning report this week by Obed Minchakpu in Jos, Nigeria. While reports last month noted the destruction of four churches torched by Muslim youths, Minchakpu reports that the violence continued. The final death toll, he reports is 1,500 Christians, including eight pastors. He also reports that 173 churches, not four, were destroyed in the violence, which spread into multiple states. Tens of thousands of others have been displaced by the violence.

Compass's main source was quoted by Nigerian newspapers, but their articles do not include most of the staggering figures. However, on at least one figure, the Nigerian media's numbers are higher than those of Compass. The Daily Times of Nigeria says that at least 60,000 people were displaced by the violence; Compass puts the number at "about 50,000." Still, Weblog hasn't found any media references to 1,500 Christian deaths. Any help from readers who monitor Nigeria?

In any case, while The Daily Times hopefully wrote, "60,000 displaced as Plateau clashes end," violence continues. Accusing a Christian youth ("suspected to be insane," says the Vanguard newspaper of Lagos) of desecrating a copy of the Qur'an, a Muslim mob on Saturday went on a fresh rampage. They destroyed 10 churches.

Sam Kujiyat, vice chairman of the Kaduna branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria, told Reuters that "foreign-funded Islamic extremism" was behind the attack. "We want to alert both the federal and state government that terrorists, hiding under religion, have invaded Kaduna state," he said at a press briefing. "Unless something urgent is done to identify and fish them out, what is happening in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Spain may be lurking around the corner."

"There is nothing to worry about," Kaduna State Commissioner of Police Muhammed Yesufu told Vanguard. "No life was lost."

Right. Absolutely nothing to worry about.

More religious violence:

• Iraqi Christians fear Muslim wrath | Some Iraqi Chaldean Christians say they fear that militants will attack churches in Baghdad on Easter Sunday (The Washington Times)
  
  
• Treasured churches in a cycle of revenge | "Kishe kaput; very good," said the smiling boy, using an incongruous mix of Albanian, German and English to describe the remains of St. Nicholas, Pristina's only working Serbian Orthodox church. Next to him the four walls of the church were smoldering (The New York Times)
  
  
• You're joking if you think this is satire | One can be pro-war or anti-war, but the notion that the fundamentalism that's threatening the world is Bush-Blair Christianity is so far off the mark as to be pathological (Mark Steyn, The Telegraph, London)
  
  
• Monks' murders cast shadow over Algeria election | A 1996 massacre by an Islamic terrorist group has become a taboo subject (The Telegraph, London)
  
  
• Priest 'in coma' after NATO raid | A Serbian Orthodox priest and his son, injured in a Nato hunt for war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, were reported to be in a coma on Friday (BBC)
  
  

Genocide:

• Remember Rwanda, but take action in Sudan | The genocide in Sudan is getting the same treatment that Rwanda's did 10 years ago: inaction. (Samantha Power, The New York Times)
  
  
• Remember the blood frenzy of Rwanda | Genocide prevention must become a foreign policy priority to avoid a repetition of those hideous crimes (Samantha Power, Los Angeles Times)
  
  
• As genocide occurs, we sit on our hands | Once again, we have found an opportunity to practice hypocrisy, and we have wholeheartedly embraced (Frida Ghitis, The Miami Herald)
  
  

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48