During a recent #BringBackOurGirls meeting at the Unity Fountain in Abuja, Nigeria, parents reportedly agreed that they want the government to go ahead and return the bodies of their daughters, because they believe they are already dead, reports Vanguard.
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With the missing girls of Chibok missing for months, the parents expressed that they no longer had faith that the girls were alive.
Vanguard reports:
Since the girls have been missing for more than four months, the parents said they presumed the students to have died for which their funeral rites have already been performed in their (parents’) minds according to their custom.
“All they said they want is their corpses to bury them honourably,” the group said.
In order to underscore their demand, the parents are reportedly planning a “mega-protest” that may include up to 200 groups; at press time, 135 groups had reportedly responded favorably to the protest.
While most have focused on the plight of the missing girls since they were abducted on April 9th, the predicament of the parents seems to have fallen by the wayside. Sadly, it took the request of Pakistani girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai to finally get Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to meet with the traumatized parents — nearly three months after the students were taken from their schools during exams.
And while the President did finally meet with the parents a week later, critics say he made a number of empty promises to the parents and then instituted a gag order on all who attended.
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Almost a dozen parents have died since the girls were kidnapped.
Eleven parents of the kidnapped girls have reportedly perished, with 7 of them being killed during a Boko Haram raid and another 4 reportedly dying from the grief.
“Seven parents were killed during a raid by Boko Haram on Kautakari, a village close to Chibok, earlier this month, the Associated Press (AP) quotes a health worker as saying.
“Another four parents have died of heart failure, high blood pressure and other illnesses blamed on the trauma caused by the abductions, Chibok community leader Pogu Bitrus told AP.”
The parents have also reportedly added the hash tag #NotWithoutOUrDaughters! to their cause when asked if they will stop their campaign.
Adding insult to injury, Boko Haram leader Abubaker Shekau didn’t mention the state of the girls in his latest video that he released on Sunday. Instead, he declared that he had a new Islamic caliphate in Gwoza. He and his terrorist group have been terrorizing that area incessantly, forcing residents in to the bush and hills.
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