Dozens kidnapped in northwest Nigeria after bandits invite them to talks

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By Reuters and Posted by TOE Armed bandits in northwest Nigeria abducted dozens of villagers whom they invited to a meeting ‌about potential peace negotiations, authorities and residents said on ‌Monday, highlighting the region’s worsening security. Police said 39 people were seized on Sunday ​when they went to a meeting in the forest near Magamin Diddi village in the Maradun municipality of northwest Zamfara State. Some local residents and officials said the number could be as ‌high as 50. According to ⁠a Zamfara State Police Command statement, the victims were meeting relatives of a bandit leader in ⁠an attempt to broker peace and ease restrictions on movement imposed on the community. Zamfara is at the centre of a long-running security ​crisis in ​which armed groups, locally referred ​to as bandits, carry ‌out mass kidnappings, killings and village raids. The violence has disrupted farming and displaced thousands. Security forces have deployed personnel and...
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One Salvadoran goes missing each day under security crackdown, NGOs say

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El Salvador, a small Central American nation whose government has spearheaded a brutal crackdown on criminal gangs, is seeing one person go missing each day, according to a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) citing prosecutors’ data.

The attorney general’s office counted 366 people who went missing in the 12 months to May 31 this year, the Working Group for Missing Persons in El Salvador, an association of nine NGOs, reported on Wednesday.

El Salvador’s government, meanwhile, reports more than 650 days without any homicides since President Nayib Bukele came to power in June of 2019.

Bukele launched a so-called state-of-exception in March 2022, under which certain civil rights are suspended, suspects have been sent to mass trials and a “mega-prison” has been built.

He has won widespread popularity for improving security, securing re-election with a landslide 85% of the vote this February, but human rights groups have reported dozens of deaths in custody and said children have been arbitrarily detained, tortured and beaten.

Bukele has affirmed that El Salvador is the “safest country in the Western Hemisphere.”

Idalia Zepeda, a member of the NGO association, said the 366 missing people reported in the last year would mark an almost 10% increase compared to United Nations and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates for the previous year.

The NGOs launched a portal for citizens to register missing people online, in order to better measure the figures and support victims’ families.

Representatives for the NGOs said this registry should not replace the work of government in providing accurate information to the public.

They also criticized government human rights commissioner Andres Guzman for lack of transparency on El Salvador’s missing people.

Neither Guzman’s office nor the attorney general’s office immediately responded to a request for comment.

SOURCE: REUTERS AND AGENCIES



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/qbH3O0z

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