At least four die in Miss World riots
Four people were stabbed or burned to death in Nigeria during a second day of violent demonstrations over a newspaper article suggesting Islam’s founding prophet might have chosen a wife from among Miss World beauty contestants.
Protesters set fire to cars and churches, and set up makeshift barricades in the northern city of Kaduna. Witnesses and human rights officials said at least four people, and probably many more, were killed.
Shehu Sani, an official with the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress, said he saw one young man being stabbed at a major crossroads by men who then forced a tyre filled with petrol around his neck and burned him alive.
Sani said he saw three other bodies elsewhere in the city.
Alsa Hassan, the 43-year-old founder of another human rights group Alsa Care, witnessed a commuter being dragged out of his car and beaten to death by protesters. The victim had apparently tried unsuccessfully to drive through the mob.
Other witnesses gave similar reports.
State government officials declared a dusk to dawn curfew.
Schools and shops hurriedly closed as hordes of young men, shouting “Allah akhbar,” or “God be praised,” ignited makeshift street barricades made of tyres and rubbish, sending plumes of black smoke rising above the city.
Others were heard chanting, “Down with beauty” and ”Miss World is sin.”
Police and soldiers riding in pick-up trucks fired tear gas at other protesters marching through otherwise abandoned streets waving tree branches and palm fronds.
A local businessman, Lateef Mohammed, said he saw young men smashing the windows of two small churches in Badarawa, a predominantly Muslim area. Two other witnesses interviewed separately gave similar reports.
“I just rushed to get to my home. It was very tense,” Mohammed said, explaining how he had shouted “Allah akhbar” in fear of angering the demonstrators.
An off-duty army officer witnessed youths with red bandanas around their heads setting fire to a Catholic church in Tudun Wada, another heavily Muslim neighbourhood.
Protests were also reported in the heavily Muslim neighbourhoods of Rigasa and Kabala Doki, where witnesses said mobs smashed windows of a number of parked cars.
A Kaduna state government official, Ben Toro, declined to comment on the violence and vandalism, insisting that ”calm had returned to Kaduna after a small incident.”
Nigerian government officials regularly downplay violence as part of efforts to prevent retaliatory attacks.
Previous riots in Kaduna, a largely Muslim city with a sizeable Christian minority, have escalated into religious bloodletting killing hundreds since civilian government replaced military rule in 1999.
The latest demonstrations began on Wednesday with the burning down of an office of ThisDay newspaper in Kaduna.
No one was in the building during the attack and the paper’s staff were subsequently placed under police protection.
On Saturday, the newspaper published an article under the headline The World at Their Feet, which questioned the reasoning of Muslim groups that have condemned the Miss World pageant. The contest is being held on December 8 in the capital, Abuja.
“The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity. What would (the prophet) Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them,” the article’s author, Isioma Daniel, wrote.
In the same issue, the paper published profiles and pictures of more than 60 Miss World hopefuls.
Muslim groups say the pageant promotes sexual promiscuity and indecency.
Kaduna state Governor Mohammed Makarfi called the article an ”act of unnecessary provocation.”
The Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, the country’s highest Muslim body, reacted by urging President Olusegun Obasanjo to cancel the pageant and sanction the newspaper.
On Monday, ThisDay ran a brief front page editor’s note apologising for sections considered offensive to Muslims, which it said had been mistakenly published after being removed by the supervising editor. The newspaper ran a second, more lengthy retraction today under the headline: "An apology to all Muslims."
The Miss World contest, which vies for global television audiences with Miss Universe, has been boycotted by participants from at least five countries because Islamic courts in Nigeria have sentenced several unmarried women have to death by stoning for conceiving babies outside wedlock.
The boycotting nations are Costa Rica, Denmark, Switzerland, South Africa and Panama.
Nigeria’s government insists none of the judgements will ever be carried out. However, the government has so far refused to intervene directly in the Islamic court system adopted by a dozen predominantly northern states.
