United States senators are asking President Donald Trump to protect Christians facing ongoing brutal persecution from Islamic groups in Nigeria.
Two Republican Senators, Iowa senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley recently sent the president a letter, asking him to consider deploying a special envoy to help end the Christian genocide in Nigeria, according to CBN News.
In their letter, the senators point to 40,000 Nigerian deaths tied to the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
Along with other Islamic militants known as the Fulani herdsmen, the Boko Haram has long threatened the lives of Christians in the West African country.
Two years ago during a meeting, President Trump asked Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to protect “innocent civilians of all faiths.”
But Ernst and Grassley want more done to protect the lives of Christians.
However, the mainstream media in the United States has remained largely silent as the Muslim terrorists’ merciless killing of Nigerian Christians rages on.
In what is being noted as a systematic direct war against Christianity in Nigeria, Pastors, Christian Leaders and Seminarians are either being kidnapped or killed every week.
Christians in Nigeria have been the target of many attacks by the vicious Boko Haram jihadist Islamist terrorists, herdsmen attacks and many other kidnappings in recent times.
Nigeria ranks as the 12th worst country in the world on Open Doors USA’s 2020 World Watch List of countries where Christians are most severely persecuted. Nigeria was in December, listed in the U.S. State Department’s special watch list of countries that tolerate or engage in severe violations of religious freedom due to the “lack of effective government response and the lack of judicial cases being brought forward in that country”.
An earlier report last month, revealed that around 620 Christians were killed in the African country by Islamic militants during the first five months of 2020 alone.
The International Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law (ISCLRL), a non-governmental organization, released the report which also warned militant Fulani herdsmen and the Boko Haram has intensified their anti-Christian violence in the old Middle Belt and Northeast regions of the country with the burning or destroying of Christian centers of worship and learning. In addition, hundreds of homes have been destroyed.
“The atrocities against Christians have gone unchecked and risen to alarming apogee with the country’s security forces and concerned political actors looking the other way or colluding with the Jihadists,” the report said.
The organization also estimated that more than 32,000 Christians have been killed there by Islamic militants since 2009. The killings are largely a result of increased terrorist attacks from Boko Haram splinter groups and overnight attacks carried out by radicalized Muslim nomadic Fulani herders against predominantly Christian farming communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt.