Western media silent on Nigeria Shia carnage: Commentator

Press TV has conducted an interview with Massoud Shadjareh, the head of Islamic Human Rights Commission from Tehran, to investigate a new report  by Human Rights Watch (HRW) saying that the Nigerian army slew Shia children earlier in the month, opening fire on the unarmed youngsters with no provocation.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Mr. Shadjareh first of all give us your thoughts on all the details that have been transpiring as the result of the Nigerian army raid on the Islamic Movement of Nigeria on December 12?

Shadjareh: First of all I really have to show my delight that other human rights organizations are beginning to expose this massacre which is really one of the worst massacres that we have actually witnessed in our life time. In matter of 28 hours, more than one thousand men, women and children totally unarmed, without throwing stones or showing any violence or whatsoever, were shot in cold blood and the destruction of the Hussainiya completely razed to the ground. The home of Sheikh Zakzaky is completely razed to the ground, even they destroyed the trees and this is a barbaric sort of action and we now have got very credible evidence of mass graves and we have actually published a photograph of one and we have much more evidence regarding those. All these highlight that what we are seeing in Nigeria is not an army at work, it is bunch of thugs who have been dressed up in the military uniform and they are given total go-ahead to commit one of the worse massacres as I have mentioned. Children have been sort of targeted. Many women have been targeted and then with regards of three children of Sheikh Zakzaky in cold blood, two of them were shot in the head and one in the chest. The Sheikh himself has been receiving four bullets, his wife has got shot gun injury in stomach and we don't have any access to him. Nobody, neither the lawyers, their family, or the international bodies have been given any access to Sheikh Zakzaky or even any of the injured. We are seeing death among the injured because they are not being given proper medical attention.   

Press TV: Mr. Shadjareh there are two aspects that are causes for concern and have raised our question. First being how vague the Nigerian army has been giving details to why it carried out the massacre and the second, the fact that Western mainstream media have remained quite silent on covering what happened in Zaria ?

Shadjareh: Absolutely. I think... everything that the Nigerian army is saying is not credible and even they had to change their word. First, they said that there was assassination then they said it was sort of car incident of a camera hitting the general’s car. In any case, no excuse whatsoever should actually allow them to go and commit massacre of killing more than one thousand of people. Destroying houses and leaving them to the ground is so outrageous and then on top of that the international community and the media have been so silent on this which we see yet again that obviously human lives do not matter and it only matters when it is in Paris, or London, or New York where you have people being the victim of this sort of barbaric actions and the whole world has to light candles and cry but when it happens in Africa or Syria or Iraq or in Lebanon no one cares and this is the heart of the issue of what is happening with the human rights and across the world and we need to challenge it and I like to say one other thing that all the evidence now shows through Wikileaks that Saudi Arabia has been planning and pushing for exactly this type of thing in Nigeria for quite some time since June at least and we need actually to investigate that sort of involvement as well. 

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