Lababa Bitrus
Taken from their homes by Boko Haram fighters, these Nigerian women were held captive for months — some even longer. They escaped. But going home is another matter.
Laraba
Bitrus was working in a small grocer’s shop in the northeastern Nigerian town
of Gwoza when Boko Haram militants invaded. With nowhere to run, the armed men
took her captive, beat her with a whip, and forced her to watch as they sawed
off her uncle’s head. After 11 days, she fled on foot, traveling through the
bush to Madagali, where she stayed until the extremists took over that small
town as well, forcing her to flee again: this time further south to Yola, the
capital of Adamawa state, where she now lives in the catholic St. Theresa's refugee
camp.
She was one
of the lucky ones.
More than
six years into their bloody campaign in northern Nigeria and the surrounding
Lake Chad region, Boko Haram extremists have killed around 20,000 people.
Entire villages have been razed to the ground; men and boys executed or
forcibly recruited to join the militants’ ranks; and women and girls taken
against their will as wives and household slaves. As part of the group’s brutal
effort to establish an Islamic caliphate ruled under a strict interpretation of
sharia, its militants have conducted mass rape.
And though
Yola is safer than the most besieged areas of the country farther north, it is
not free from the fear imposed by the group, which pledged allegiance to the
Islamic State in March 2015. Thousands of displaced people are still seeking
shelter in the city of 350,000 residents. Despite some critical military
successes on the part of the Nigerian government, and a regional taskforce
supported by Chad, Niger, Cameroon, and Benin, which have caused the group to
lose control of much of its territory (an area once estimated as
the size of Belgium), Boko Haram continues to terrorize parts of Nigeria.
Women are
especially vulnerable.
These
photographs were taken in a safe location in Yola, away from the St. Theresa's
refugee camp on a hot day in January. There was a single room set aside, where
these portraits — of some 40 women — could be taken in relative quiet from the
morning through the afternoon. Apart from the bits of conversation and
interview, the only noise was the audible click of the camera’s shutter. The
only source of light came from the room’s one window.
As these
women — the ones who chose to speak of their captivity — shared pieces of their
stories, an air of defiance permeated the room. It varied from woman to woman
in its intensity, but it never entirely disappeared.
Mary John
Ibrahim, a Christian woman in her early 50s, was working in the government
hospital in Gwoza when Boko Haram overran the area and burned down the
hospital.
With many
other residents, she fled in panic to the bush, only to be later captured by
Boko Haram and brought back to Gwoza, where she was held for two weeks. During
that time, she was forced to convert to Islam; when she refused, she was beaten
severely and starved as punishment. One night, she was able to flee and hide in
the mountains along the Cameroonian border, where, for one month, she was
hidden and fed by local Muslims, who later on helped her cross the border to
Cameroon.
During the
takeover of Gwoza, 60-year-old Tani Bitrus was captured alongside 50 other
women by Boko Haram. Her husband was executed by fighters.
During her
monthlong captivity, she and the other women were compelled at gunpoint to
learn Islamic teachings; when they confessed to being unable to read the Quran,
the women were beaten. One day, while on the way to the market, Tani and three
other women escaped, helped by Muslim women of the same Salidva tribe.
Eventually, they escaped to Cameroon and, after that, to the St. Theresa's camp
in Yola.
But
oftentimes, instead of returning to supportive communities, those women who
manage to escape Boko Haram return to an unexpected stigma. According to a
February report published
by UNICEF and International Alert, these women are often referred to as “Boko
Haram wives.” And for those who become pregnant after being raped in captivity,
their children are thought tainted because they have “bad blood.”
Many of the
women from Gwoza — like Laraba, Mary John, and Tani, who now live in the St.
Theresa's camp — are afraid to go home.
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