CSI provided emergency aid to victims of the Plateau State attacks in Nigeria. csi
It was on the night of April 13 as Palm Sunday gave way to Holy Week that suspected Fulani militants burst into Zike community in Nigeria’s central Plateau State, opening fire on villagers. Within a few hours, at least 56 people were dead from gunshot or machete wounds. The dead included 15 children – among them seven-year-old Nenche Steven.
Christian Solidarity International (CSI)’s project manager for Nigeria. Franco Majok. happened to be in Plateau State when the attack took place. A few days later, he met some of the survivors in hospital, including Nenche. The young boy had just suffered unimaginable loss: his parents and two siblings had been butchered to death. With a machete cut to the back of his neck, Nenche had barely survived.
“His relatives discovered him the following morning, still alive but gravely injured,” Majok said. “He is still in severe pain, crying out in agony and vomiting [from the pain].”
Attacks timed to coincide with holiday
The Palm Sunday slaughter was the bloody climax of a wave of attacks to hit Nigeria’s Middle Belt – which includes Plateau State – that began on March 24, as the mainly Christian villagers prepared to celebrate Easter.
The timing does not seem to be a coincidence, CSI’s Director of Public Advocacy Joel Veldkamp told CBN News. Prior to this spring, the largest recent devastating attack happened during Christmas 2023; and before that, on Pentecost 2022.
“The attacks on Christian villages become more ferocious” around Christian holidays, commented Veldkamp.
Call for Christian solidarity
CSI sent out a press release on April 17 condemning the Holy Week massacre of Christians in Nigeria. One day previously, CSI’s International President Dr. John Eibner had warned that what was happening in Nigeria’s Middle Belt was jihad. And he deplored the inaction of the West in the face of jihadist attacks on Christian communities.
“This massacre, like so many others of Christians and other non-Muslims, has been met mainly with indifference by the political and religious leadership of an increasingly post-Christian Western world,” Eibner said.
“We see elsewhere in the world what little value non-Muslim victims have today,” he continued, and highlighted the slaughter in March of thousands of Alawites by the new jihadist-led government of Syria, as well as Azerbaijan’s ethnic and religious cleansing of 120,000 Armenian Christians from their homeland in Nagorno Karabakh in September 2023.
“Christians and others of goodwill throughout the world should connect the dots and draw appropriate conclusions,” Eibner said. “Now is the time for Christian solidarity.”
Threat to Syria’s Christians
The risks to Middle Eastern Christians were the focus of a guest commentary on the CSI international website, published on April 22. Analyst Rachid Hmami pointed out that political unrest in the region was leaving Christians particularly exposed. Since the fall of the Assad regime last December, Syria’s Christians lack political backing, and they could face the same fate as the Christians of Iraq, whose numbers are now one-tenth of what they were before Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003.
In a video message to CSI, Georges Assadourian, the Armenian Catholic Bishop of Damascus, acknowledged that the “significant shifts” that had occurred in Syria since the takeover of the Islamist-led government had left Christians feeling “lost.”
“Previously, we lived in a secular country; now we live in a religious one dominated by Islam. This frightens us because we wonder where this will lead us,” said Assadourian. “Yesterday it was the turn of the Alawites—they were killed—and today Christians ask: “Will it be our turn next? Will they come to attack us?”
Despite that, Syrian Christians continue to have “hope in God, and hope in the universal Church,” he concluded.
Attacks follow Myanmar earthquake
Christians in Myanmar are also going through a time of testing. The 7.7-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 4,000 people on March 28 brought “unspeakable loss, pain, and suffering,” the leader of the resistance to the government told Christian Solidarity International (CSI) in an interview on April 10.
But the natural disaster merely compounds people’s misery as the military regime that took power in a coup in 2021 is continuing its violent assault on minority ethnic groups, Dr. Sasa said.
He noted that, although the military declared a ceasefire after the earthquake, it had carried out at least 20 attacks on its own people since March 28. On April 10, an air strike on a church in Chin State killed a pastor and his whole family. Another attack the same week in the majority-Christian Kachin State killed 20 people, including women and children.
In response to the earthquake, CSI has begun providing emergency aid to survivors through well-connected partners on the ground. CSI’s ongoing projects in Myanmar focus on the Christian Karen minority and include the distribution of aid to internally displaced persons and support for a school for refugee children in Thailand. By working with local groups, CSI’s partners are able to reach even remote parts of Sagaing region and provide essential items to families in need who might otherwise be overlooked in the distribution of aid.
