Deborah Peter was
12 years old when gunmen from the Nigerian terrorist group burst into her home
in northern Nigeria and shot dead her father, a Christian pastor, and her
14-year- old brother Caleb, and then forced her to lie with their corpses.
She was attacked before Boko Haram’s abduction of more than
250 schoolgirls and young women in April finally drew international attention
and condemnation.
Deborah is from Chibok, the same small town where the girls
were kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group, whose name is interpreted as “Western education is forbidden.”
“I decided to tell the
world my story when the Chibok girls were taken because everyone needs to know
how horrible Boko Haram is,” Peter said in a statement. “They kill innocent
people who never hurt them.”#DeborahNPeter
Deborah, now 15 and attending a Christian school in rural
Virginia, came to the US Capitol to recount her ordeal for leaders of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.
Peter sat in the front row as House committee members, led
by Chairman Ed Royce, a California
Republican, pressed officials from the State and Defence Departments to do more
to aid the Nigerian government in the effort to rescue the abducted girls and
young women and step up efforts to help the Nigerian military fight Boko Haram.
Deborah spoke softly, without evident emotion, in recounting
the day she lost her father and brother and then fled her home and subsequently
her country.
Her father had been threatened before by members of Boko
Haram, beaten up and told to abandon his ministry, she said. On December 22,
2011, gunmen came to her home around 7pm, once more demanding that he renounce
his faith. “My dad refused to deny his
faith,” she said.
After he was shot, the gunmen debated what to do about her
brother, with one of them saying he should be spared because of his youth, she
said. Another man said he should be killed so he won’t grow up to become a
pastor, she said.
”I was in shock, so I
didn’t know what was happening” as the gunmen forced her to lie down
alongside her father’s and brother’s corpses, she said. That’s where Nigerian
soldiers found her the next day, she said.
Asked at the news conference what she now thinks of Boko
Haram, Deborah replied haltingly that “I
think they are bad” before her voice trailed off.
She now attends the Mountain
Mission School, a Christian school in Grundy, a small town in southwestern
Virginia near the state’s border with Kentucky.
Her story has been advanced by Christian religious-freedom
advocates, who focus on Boko Haram as anti-Christian in its terrorist
activities. Earlier this month, she spoke at the Hudson Institute in
Washington.
“Certainly, Boko Haram
has targeted Christians, and Nigerian officials believe that 85 percent of the
girls kidnapped at Chibok are Christians, and have been forced to convert to
Islam after their kidnapping,” Ms Sewall said. “We want to highlight, however,
that Boko Haram is a problem that affects Nigerians of every religion. Indeed,
the majority of Boko Haram’s estimated 4000 total victims to date have been
Muslim.”
Taken From Sydney Morning Herald
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