Alert: Luka Binniyat Ordered To Appear In Court Over Charges From 2017

By Christian Solidarity International (CSI)
Luka Binniyat has been imprisoned for his journalism three times since 2017.
Luka Binniyat has been imprisoned for his journalism three times since 2017.

Christian Solidarity International has learned that Nigerian authorities have resurrected long-dormant charges against the journalist and human rights activist Luka Binniyat.

Binniyat, 57, will appear in court this Friday, 13 May, before Judge Binta Balogun of Kaduna High Court 5, to answer for charges related to his reporting on violence against Christians in his home state of Kaduna.

Binniyat has been jailed three times since 2017 for two separate cases related to his reporting. Binniyat has won several awards for his reporting, including the 2018 Press Freedom Award from the Nigerian Union of Journalists.

Binniyat's most recent imprisonment, which lasted for three months, ended on 3 February, when he was released on bail. He had been charged with "cyberstalking" for publishing criticisms of Kaduna state's security commissioner.

But now Binniyat has been summoned to appear in court in connection with his 2017 case, which has been dormant for over a year. Binniyat's supporters fear that he will be imprisoned again.

“I am told that the state government is saying that I have not learnt any lesson from my detention, because I have continued my revelations of the atrocities committed against our people,” Binniyat told CSI.

The new legal proceedings against him come as violence in southern Kaduna is reaching crisis levels. Fulani militias have killed hundreds of people in attacks on Christian villages in the last two months, in addition to attacking Kaduna state’s airport and waylaying a train running between Kaduna city and Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

Binniyat and many other local voices describe these atrocities as a campaign of ethnic cleansing and demographic replacement. According to Binniyat’s research, over the past decade, some 145 Christian communities in southern Kaduna have been occupied by Fulani militias, accounting for nearly 10% of the region’s land.

“This is a clear attempt to intimidate and persecute individuals who dare to raise the alarm about the incipient genocide in southern Kaduna,” said Franklyne Ogbunwezeh, CSI’s senior research fellow for Africa. “Rather than protecting their people, Governor Elrufai and his allies in the federal government are harassing Kaduna state’s human rights defenders, to keep them from being effective and to discourage others from speaking out.”

Since his inauguration in 2015, Kaduna’s governor, Nasir Elrufai, has waged a campaign against journalists and human rights activists covering the anti-Christian violence occurring in his state.

CSI calls on the Nigerian authorities to unconditionally dismiss all charges against Luka Binniyat, and to protect the constitutional and human rights of all journalists and whistleblowers.

Read the full report at nigeria-report.org.

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