Aisha Umar was forced to flee her hometown after a man, whose children
were killed by Boko Haram, threatened to murder her 2-year-old son, a
child she had after she was repeatedly raped by the terrorists.
The 28-year-old, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram, held for almost a year
in the town of Gwoza, and raped by several militants, could have been
forgiven for believing her ordeal was over when she escaped and returned
to her hometown last year. But the mother-of-four was forced to flee
her home in the town of Gwoza a fortnight ago when a man threatened to
murder her two-year-old boy Mohammed, the son of a Boko Haram fighter.
“He told me that if I didn’t take the child away, he would buy petrol
and set the boy on fire until he burned to ashes,” Umar told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation by phone from Madagali, 22 km (14 miles) away, where
she now lives with her brother.
The man, who saw Boko Haram kill three of his children, was one of many
people in Gwoza who made it clear to Umar that her son was not welcome
in the community since their return home.
“People didn’t want to play with the child … they called him Boko Haram
child,” Umar said, adding that she received the most abuse from those
who had lost relatives to Boko Haram.
Women who are former Boko Haram captives, and their children born out of
rape, face mistrust and persecution when they return home, according to
a report by peacebuilding group International Alert and the U.N.
children’s agency UNICEF
Many people fear those held by the Islamist militant group have been
radicalised and may recruit others when they return home, said the
report, which was published earlier this year. More than 2,000 women and
girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2012, many of whom have
been raped, trained to fight, or used as suicide bombers, according to
the report.
“There is a belief that the blood of the father will always run in a
child’s veins and therefore that these children will eventually turn on
their families and communities,”said Rachel Harvey, chief of child
protection for UNICEF in Nigeria.
Umar was kidnapped in August 2014 by Boko Haram militants who shot her
husband in the head before taking her into Sambisa Forest, a vast
colonial-era game reserve where the militants hide in secluded camps to
avoid the Nigerian military.
She believes the militant to whom she was married is the father of
her two-year-old son. He was named Mohammed Yusuf after Boko Haram’s
founder, who died in police custody in 2009. When she returned home to
Gwoza last year and learned that her three children from her murdered
husband had been taken in by a neighbour, the family were overjoyed to
be reunited.
“But people started telling them that their brother was a Boko Haram
child,” she said, adding that the three children became increasingly
reluctant to play with Mohammed. “My oldest daughter told me: ‘Mummy,
please, take this child to his father and come back to us’.”
Despite moving to Madagali in Adamawa state, Umar is facing fresh stigma
as people become aware of her son’s heritage. Her relatives do not want
to touch Mohammed while people point at her in public and keep their
distance, Umar said.
Recalling how she secretly plotted her escape from Sambisa with dozens
of other women, Umar talks of how she carefully strapped her toddler to
her back as she fled to keep him safe. Yet the abuse she has suffered
since escaping Boko Haram has pushed her to breaking point.
“If I had someone to take this child away from me, I would welcome the idea.”
Source: Thomson REUTERS FOUNDATION