The report, released Monday, said at least 500 women and girls have been seized by the group since 2009 when the insurgency began.
Human Rights Watch said 30 women and girls who were once prisoners of Boko Haram, told its researchers how they were subjected to a variety of abuses, sometimes for refusing to convert to Islam.
The organization interviewed some of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by the group April 14, but who later fled or were released.
The students said that nearly all of those abducted from their school, located in a predominantly Christian area of Borno State, were Christian.
More broadly, the majority of the abductions documented by Human Rights Watch took place in the predominantly Christian area of southern Borno State.
Of the 30 victims of abduction interviewed by Human Rights Watch, 29 were Christian; most appeared to have been targeted because of their religious affiliation. Many were threatened with death if they refused to convert to Islam, the report adds.
The women suffered forced labour, including forced participation in military operations; forced marriage to their captors; and sexual abuse including rape.
According to Human Rights Watch, 14 women and girls who had either escaped or were released from Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa forest and Gwoza hills, as well as other witnesses, described how they and others at the camp were routinely forced to cook, clean, and perform household chores while in Boko Haram custody in the camps.
In 2010, a woman who had been abducted and held for three days by Boko Haram in 2009 was quoted as speaking about how she had been forced to wash the bloodied clothes of insurgents killed in the July 2009 violence.
Other abducted women and girls were forced to participate in military operations to support the group.
A 19-year-old who was held in several camps in the Gwoza hills for three
months in 2013 was forced to participate in attacks and to carry
ammunition for her captors.
The girl said her job in the camp was to cook for the 14-man group until
a month later when she was taken along for an operation.
“I was told to hold the bullets and lie in the grass while they
fought. They came to me for extra bullets as the fight continued during
the day,” she was quoted as saying.
“When security forces arrived at the scene and began to shoot at us, I
fell down in fright. The insurgents dragged me along on the ground as
they fled back to camp.”
During another operation, she narrated being asked to approach a group
of five men in a nearby village and lure them to where the insurgents
were hiding.
The woman said she feigned to be afraid and asked the young men, mostly teenage members of the Civilian JTF, for help.
“When they followed me for a short distance, the insurgents swooped
on them. Once we got back to the camp, they tied the legs and hands of
the captives and slit the throats of four of them as they shouted
‘Allahu Akbar.’ Then I was handed a knife to kill the last man. I was
shaking with horror and couldn’t do it. The camp leader’s wife took the
knife and killed him,” she said.
Another victim told Human Rights Watch that although she was spared work
because she had a three-month-old baby when she was abducted in April
2014, she saw others forced to work.
She described seeing some of the Chibok schoolgirls forced to cook and
clean for other women and girls whom the insurgents had chosen for “special treatment because of their beauty”.
Forced Marriage
Human Rights Watch said it spoke with six victims and witnesses who had
been forced to marry or had witnessed women and girls forced to marry
Boko Haram combatants.
Four Christian women and girls told Human Rights Watch how they had been
forced into marriage after their abduction in late 2013 in Gwoza.
One girl held by insurgents for one month told Human Rights Watch, “When
I insisted that I could not marry at 15, the leader, though already
married, declared he would marry me himself. He made us recite some
words in Arabic after him, handed us new veils, and declared we were now
married.”
A 19-year-old girl who was held in a Boko Haram camp in Gwoza told Human
Rights Watch that she was offered thousands of naira as dowry to marry
one of the insurgents:
When she refused, asking the money be sent to her father, an insurgent who knows her family accepted the money on her behalf.
She eventually escaped, and in anger insurgents burned down their family house.
Rape and Sexual Violence
Five victims, ranging in age from 15 to 22 years old, described their
ordeal, while the three other assaults were described by witnesses,
according to the report.
Insurgents took advantage of the absence of a commander and sexually abused abductees who had yet to be “married.”
A woman, who was raped in 2013 in a Boko Haram camp near Gwoza,
described how a commander’s wife appeared to encourage the crime:
“I was lying down in the cave pretending to be ill because I did not
want the marriage the commander planned to conduct for me with another
insurgent on his return from the Sambisa camp. When the insurgent who
had paid my dowry came in to force himself on me, the commander’s wife
blocked the cave entrance and watched as the man raped me,” she said.
A 15-year-old who was abducted in 2013 and spent four weeks with Boko
Haram was quoted as saying she refused having sex with one of the
fighters despite being forced to “marry” him.
“After we were declared married I was ordered to live in his cave but I always managed to avoid him. He soon began to threaten me with a knife to have sex with him, and when I still refused he brought out his gun, warning that he would kill me if I shouted. Then he began to rape me every night. He was a huge man in his mid-30s and I had never had sex before.
It was very painful and I cried bitterly because I was bleeding afterwards.”
A 19-year-old woman, who was married and had children, described how she
and one other woman were raped after having been abducted with four
other women in April 2014:
“When we arrived at the camp they left us under a tree. I managed to
sleep; I was exhausted and afraid. Late in the night, two insurgents
shook me and another woman awake, saying their leader wanted to see us.
We had no choice but to follow them, but as soon as we moved deep into
the woods, one of them dragged me away, while his partner took the other
woman in another direction.
I guessed what they had in mind and began to cry. I begged him, telling
him I was a married woman. He ignored my pleas, flung me on the ground,
and raped me. I could not tell anyone what happened, not even my
husband. I still feel so ashamed and cheated.
The other woman told me she was also raped, but vowed never to speak of
it again as she was single and believes that news of her rape would
foreclose her chances of marriage.
A 20-year-old woman, abducted in September 2013, told Human Rights Watch
that the insurgent she was “married” to wore a mask all the time, even
when he raped her.
Even though she had since escaped, she said,
“I am still afraid to go anywhere because he could be any one of the people around me. Every time I see a huge dark man, I jump in fright that it might be him coming to get me back. I stay awake some nights because I dream of those terrible weeks I spent in their camp.”
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