Nigerian women assaulted

ABUJA: In Nigeria, being a young woman "is a crime", said a 25-year-old beautician, arrested two weeks ago while walking home in the capital Abuja.She says she was detained, assaulted and then raped by those meant to protect her. "Around 9:30 pm, or 10:00 pm, I was walking back home," she said. "The police arrested me in the street, accusing me of ‘being out late’."The officers demanded she pay 4,000 naira but she did not have the cash. So the officers grabbed her, she said. "They took me to the bush behind a building," she said, her voice cracking with emotion. "There were four of them. They molested me."Several other women reported similar assaults that night. In two dramatic raids last month, dozens of women were dragged out of nightclubs, hotels and bars -- or simply taken off the streets -- in Abuja.They were arrested for prostitution, a charge many furiously denied. The sweeping police crackdown in the federal capital has sparked outrage in the news and on social media in Africa’s most populous nation.Prostitution, although illegal in Nigeria, is still widespread in the cities and often tolerated in the Christian south, but less so in the Muslim north where sharia law applies in some states. Abuja -- situated slightly north of Nigeria’s centre -- is a mix of southern and northern tribes and traditions.Testimonies from women given to AFP provide shocking stories of multiple and brutal sexual assaults. The women accuse officers from the federal police force. Lawyer and activist Martin Obono happened to be at the Utako police station in Abuja on the night of April 26 for another case."I was there when the girls got out of the vehicles, screaming, and some of them were bleeding," Obono said, adding the women said they had been attacked in the vehicles as they were brought to the police station."They told me the policemen used objects, like sticks," Obono said. One of the women was a mother with a two-month-old baby. "She wasn’t allowed to breastfeed her, despite continuous crying," Obono said. "It took the intervention of a female police officer for that."

from The News International - World http://bit.ly/2Y7Kd4z