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Incident on 1 May 2012 [+] Print this page

Location: Kawar Maila, Maiduguri [+]

Country: Nigeria [+]

Violation types: House Burning [+] Violation of the Right to Adequate Housing [+]

Location


This incident took place in Kawar Maila, Maiduguri, Nigeria [+]

Description


According to Amnesty International: "On 1 May 2012 another person was killed by suspected members of Boko Haram, followed by an explosion nearby. The JTF returned with containers of petrol and set several houses on fire.150 H.I.’s house was burned down that day. She was at her nearby shop selling fruit at the time but several of her children were at home. On 1 May the JTF returned and set fire to her shop. H.I. has eight children, aged between 22 and five and had lived in her home for 30 years. The family now rent two rooms in a different area. They are over an hour away from where they used to live and the children no longer attend school. H.I. does not know why her house was burnt down, “No one came and explained anything. You dare not even ask them why and no one took the trouble to explain why they are burning the houses.” The residents did not receive any compensation. “What else will I do? I have just left everything to god.”151 G.I. (46) is a civil servant with 10 children and separated from her husband. She had lived in Kawer Maila for 12 years. She told Amnesty International she was at work when the JTF came to her community. When she got home the soldiers were at the other side of the ward so she was able to remove her belongings and put them outside her house, but she was unable to get a vehicle to collect them. When the soldiers started to get close the residents were forced to flee. She returned the following day but found that some of her property was missing and the rest had been smashed to pieces. She lost everything. The tyres of her car had been shot and the windows broken. G.I. is still looking for an alternative place to stay. Initially she was staying with relatives, but for the past two weeks she and her children were sleeping at her workplace. G.I. wants to go home but the area remains closed with heavy security force presence. “The place is very scary now, nobody goes there.”152 A human rights defender told Amnesty International: “I visited the area a day after the incident. Along the main road and off the main road I saw many houses burnt and some few still burning, some household members were migrating out en masse with their properties and children loaded on pickup vans and small tricycle open trucks... I [collected info on] 33 household heads whose houses were burnt down.”" [+]

Perpetrator units

Name Other Names Classification
Joint Task Force Operation Restore Order I [+] JTF
JTF ORO
JTF Operation Restore Order
JTF in Borno State
JTF in Maiduguri, Borno State
JTORO
Joint Special Task Force in Maiduguri
Joint TASK Force MAIDUGURI
Joint Task Force (JTF) tagged "Operation Restore Peace"
Joint Task Force in Borno
Joint Task Force in Borno State
Joint Task Force in Maiduguri, Borno State
Joint Task Force, Operation Restore Order
ORO I
operation restore peace
Air Force [+]
Army [+]
Joint Task Force [+]
Military [+]
Navy [+]
Police [+]
State Security Service (Internal Security) [+]

Sources

List of all sources used to evidence the data in this record Click the "+" symbol next to every data point in the record to see the sources used for that data point.

Publication Date Publisher Publication Title Access Date Archive Link
01 November 2012 Amnesty International Trapped in the Cycle of Violence. AFR 44/043/2012. 27 September 2018