People were always looking for someone they could look up to. You had a person here who escaped a blockade. He devastated union commerce. In the free world or other parts of the world understand, commerce back then was ships. No planes, stuff like this. Highat he did it on the seas, he captured the imagination of people in england, france, everywhere. People were constantly writing about him. Up north, were from you hated him. Just like anybody, you were going to label him if you hate him, the lowest names that you can think of, which they did. He was a very honorable man, and he hated that his name was being was not beingthat honorable to him or his family. United States Government and all governments frown upon this are disturbing the ability to fight a war. You are also disturbing their semmes countered with that, saying he was doing nothing that had not been done before professionally by the United States during the war of 1812 and especially during the american revolution. There were people since the government could not pay these made them, if you will, privateer private individuals who would go out and disrupt the british british fleet, and thats crackly what they did. Learn about the rich history and literary life of mobile, alabama, on booktvtv and American History tv throughout the weekend on cspan2 and cspan3. Next a look at the islamic terrorist group, boko haram, and the kidnapping of more than 200 girls last month. One of the speakers includes a survivor of the organization. From the hudson institute, this is just under an hour. Good afternoon. I am john walters, chief operating officer of the hudson institute. I would like to welcome you to the betsy and wally stern conference center. Hudson has had a long history of working on humans rights and one of the people responsible for that work is nina shea. She is chairing todays session. I want to thank her for her work. I want to thank her for her courage. I want to mention that nina and her colleagues at the center for religious freedom have been doing this for a number of years and telling the stories that need to be told and bringing greater attention to the suffering that we all need to Pay Attention to and act to reverse. I want to thank her for her work and dedication. Do, i will letr a t her take over the panel. Thank you all for coming. Especially on short notice. Is a privilege and honor for me to be introducing this panel. We have a friend of ours who is a human rights lawyer for the jubilee campaign. He has been on this podium before. In november. He brought another survivor of the boko haram to washington to tell about his ordeal. That man was shot in the head after refusing to deny his faith. And he lived. He survived and came here i and brought the xrays. If you want to look at our video stream on our website, the video of his testimony is there. Today we are also honored to have deborah peter. I am sure she is hudsons youngest speaker ever. She is 15 years old. She is from Northern Nigeria and her family moved. Her family roots are in the 300some girls were abducted and enslaved. She is the sole survivor of her household. It was a boko haram attack that she will tell you about today. It is a terrible story. But it is an extremely important one for americans to hear stop hear. Ricans to she is doing it and it is very painful for her to tell. She is doing it because there are 300 girls her age who are suffering today in nigeria. Please join me in giving them a warm welcome. [applause] deborah, can you start by telling us what happens on the night of december 22, 2011 . And where you were. Just bring it close. Yeah. On december 22, 2011, me and my brother rode home. At 7 00 p. M. , me and my brother were at home. We heard a gun shooting. My brother called my dad and told him not to come home. They were fighting. My father told him to forget about it. Because it is not the first time that he has come home and they were fighting. He came back home and he told us that he wants to take a shower. He went to the bathroom to take a shower. At 7 30 p. M. , three men knocked on our door. My brother opened the door for them. They asked him, wheres your dad . I said that he is in the bathroom, taking a shower. So they waited on my dad about three minutes. They dragged him out of the bathroom. They said he is wasting their time because they did not have time to wait for him. They take them out of the bathroom and they tell him that he cannot deny his aid. Faith. They said they would kill him if he didnt deny his faith. He told them that he would rather die than go to hellfire. God said that anyone who denied him, he would deny them. My dad refused to deny his faith and they shot him three times in his chest. My brother was in shock. He said, why did you kill him . They told him to be quiet. Or they would shoot him too. There were three that came in that night. When my brother kept quiet, the first there were three and one is the leader. One is the person close to the leader and the other is a servant. The servant told them they should come her brother, but the leader said no because hes too young. The leader told them that if my brother stayed, he would grow up and become a pastor like my dad. They said to kill him too. So they shot him twice in his chest. So he fell. When he fell, he started moving. They went ahead and shot him again in his mouth. And then he fell down and died. I was in shock. I did not know what was happening. They put me in the middle of my dad and my brother. The next day, they took the to the hospital. The next day, the army came and took them to the mortuary and took me to the hospital. Deborah, thank you for sharing that. That is not easy to talk about. Can you tell us why they singled out your family . Why did these men did you know them . Who were these men . Why did they come to your house . Why your house . I know one of them. The other one lives close to our house and i do not know his name. I dont go close to the muslim kids in the muslim people. The reason why they came to our house was because my dad was a pastor. And they warned him, and my dad refused, so they went ahead and came to him and killed him. In november, they burned his church. But still he did not give up. ,and build the church again. They said they would kill him. They came to the house and killed him. Your father was a christian pastor and he had a church and that was burned down. The month before. Boko haram is closing in on the area. This area is in northeastern nigeria. Your familys connection to the area . My dad and my mom are from there. You came to the United States to come to a summer camp. Yeah. , i know, help you. Helped bring you here. It was a 9 11 foundation. Help children of terrorism, as i understand it. You have not talked about your story before. This is the first time that you are starting to talk about it. Why is that . Why are you coming here to talk about it . Because i want to help the other kids and i want to help people from what is happening. They told me that i should help them. So i am willing to help them. What are you hoping will come of your talks . What do you hope will happen . I hope that if people hear my story, i think they will understand and they will know more and more of what god said. They will understand what it means to stand strong. Thank you very much. We are learning now in the papers that these girls, at least 100 of them, have been forcibly converted. They were christian. Is that your understanding would there be christians there . Yeah it is a small group of , people. There are a lot of christians there. Most of them are really christian. They are related to each other. They do not normally fight. It is the boko haram i dont know if you are aware, but the u. S. Government finally designated nigerias boko haram as a terrorist organization. In november, last november. Before that, the state department had been saying that the boko haram had nothing to do with religion. This was the assistant secretary for africa who was saying that. I remember i was dumbfounded. It was after an attack on another church. He gave the speech. After an attack on another church in 2012. He gave a speech saying that it had nothing to do with religion. Thank you so much. Emmanuel . Do you want to take over . Emanuel just returned from nigeria on friday. He has been in the northeast in cameroon for three weeks, collecting stories from boko harams victims. Yes thank you for having , me. Thank you very much, everyone, for turning up to this lunchtime event where we are not serving lunch. [laughter] we have seen the headlines and we thought it would be a good idea to drill down a little and put a face to the reality of the atrocities that are going on. This is important. We face a major wall of denial. Not from the soviet or the traditional establishment, but from the state are met. State department. Deborahs story is one that we have known for a few years since we found her during a factfinding mission. I should point out that she was denied a visa twice by the u. S. Government. The reason she was denied a visa was they said to her, and you cannot make this stuff up, they said to her, you do not have family ties. They essentially traumatized a girl whose family was exterminated by terrorists just because she wanted to come to america. For a terror survivors camp. The good thing about the story is that it is a story of what is good about america. A foundation of 9 11 victims, the children of people who died in 9 11, decided to have a camp for other child victims around the world. It was that program that we got deborah enrolled in. We brought her to the states. When she was heading back to nigeria, some folks said, lets find a school here so she can go to school. That is how deborah ended up in this part of the country. We tactically decided not to put her in the public space because she was very frightened. She was very fragile. She still has nightmares and all of that. Even though we were facing an administration that was denying the religious genocide going on against christians in nigeria, we felt that we could not sacrifice the Mental Health of this young child just to get one up over the administration. That changed a couple of weeks ago. The terrorists went to deborahs village and abducted about 300 girls. Literally, you know people she , has played with. Her mother graduated from med that school. In a normal world, she might have gone to that school. We reached out to deborah and said, do you want to speak out and put a face to this travesty . She was kind enough to say, yes, i will do the. This brings us to a point we are at now. Let me give you a bit of context for what boko haram has been doing. Boko haram are gentlemen terrorists. I say that obviously tongueincheek. The point is that boko haram says they do not kill the elderly or the young or women. Those are the three exceptions they have. The christians, jews, and muslims dont count. They will kill them. A story from a couple years ago is classic. They came in, they killed the pastor. Then they made sure that his son, who was an exception to the targets, should be killed, he might grow up to become a pastor. This is an example of boko haram shifting the goalposts of those they will not kill. What happens with all be factfinding missions we have conducted is a christian response to the genocide that they would move the men out and leave the women behind. We found that there are many camps of christian men who left town and left the women behind. Boko haram said that they do not kill women. That changed last month. Boko haram realized, we have killed all the men. Or we ran them out of town. We are going out of the terrorism business. We need to have a new game plan. The next thing we have is 300 young women abducted. Taken to this camp and they have become slave brides. And so we illustrate this to say that deborah dodged a bullet three years ago when boko haram was operating on that rules of engagement. But now, the story has changed. If she was in her village that day they would not have done the gentlemanly thing to stop they would not have left her overnight. This is how this this resident evil is evolving. I want to quickly share a few of the trends we have noticed from this recent trip to nigeria. The first one i shared is the obviously gender based targeting of women now that they have essentially decimated the male population of many part of nigeria. The other trend that i would of course want to mention is the fact that boko haram is becoming tactically more superior than the Security Forces on the ground. We have noticed that they are bringing in more sophisticated techniques. In response to the global outcry over the abduction of the girls, we have seen reports saying that americans are sending us a assistance, the french are sending assistance. What happened last week while we were out there is that boko haram blew up bridges. This is a group that is taking preemptive strike action. U. S. Drones or French Forces or anyone else comes in. That shows you how resilient and deadly they are. I want to mention another concern that we noticed. I do not know whether to call it a trend. It is the humanitarian impact of the crisis. It is such that we are seeing population displacement from nigeria in tonight care into into niger, into chad, into oon. Ra and camera we are seeing entire villages, i was at a refugee camp last week in cameroon. Ed pastor explained to me how entire villages woke up at night and they marched across the border. Boko haram had retreated from the capital. Where the military was in gauging them to the rural areas, and they were killing people in their homes. This mass operation and displacement has been going on for almost a year. But what is particularly disturbing is that last week while we were in cameroon, boko haram struck a village. They killed close to 300 people. Then there was population displacement. 3000 people fled again across the border. We have this going on for a year. You begin to wonder, where is the humanitarian response to this crisis . Let me mention two things that concern me. One of them is the u. S. U. N. Refugee camp. We visited. We noticed that they were distributing grains to the people who had fled there from nigeria. When we interviewed them, they say to us, this is the first time that we have been given food in 49 days. This is the people at the official u. N. Camp. They have not been fed for the 49 days. There are other unofficial cabs. You can only imagine how bad the conditions are there. There is an ineffective military response to terrorism. Then we have an ineffective humanitarian response. To the victims of the terrorism. We are at the point where the International Community needs to respond effectively to what is going on in nigeria. Maybe i should also add at this point that one of the trends of boko haram attacks that we have been seeing, the one i referred to earlier, about gender and victimization, we have actually the Jubilee Group has jubilee campaign, the group that i am affiliated with, has actually encountered a couple of brides. Child slave the stories that they narrate are chilling and harrowing. On one of our trips in september , we literally were told that the terrorists are striking right now. They are burning three churches. You have to turn back. You have to turn back. So we asked, why are they striking right now . There was a girl to terrorist captured. She escaped from the cap, and they are looking for her. We suddenly became unexpected, mildmannered superheroes because we realized that the only thing for us to do was get her out of there. We got her out of there. Some of you may have seen her on cbs news yesterday. I think she is the only escaped child bride to give an interview. We were able to move her out of that location. Initially, we thought, this is a one off thing. But we now realize that this is personal. Part of their systematic agenda of boko haram to attack women. Because most of the men are gone. I will say in a nutshell that some of the atrocities this girl shared with us was that boko haram takes you back to the camp. I will speak specifically to her case. That was on cbs news yesterday. I do not think i am doing much harm if i go into details. In the camp she was taken to in the mountains of nigeria and cameroon, every day for a week she was asked to renounce or renounce her faith or die, and she refused. On the seventh day, one of the terrorists who was related to her came up to her and said, today is the final day. They will slit your throats. Im going to ask you to do yourself a favor just accept islam. Spare your life. Even if you do not believe it. When they came on that seven day, she accepted islam. They put her in the bunker like the girls on tv. She was assigned to be the wife of one of the terrorists, the lead terrorist. However, and this is an interesting phenomenon. They said, she is an infidel. She needs to go through a purification process before she can become good enough to be the bride of the head terrorist. And so, they did not sexually molest her. They designated her on a 90day purification plant. The good thing is that she played along with them and she studied the koran and she was trained in arms. So on and so forth. But she realized that her window of opportunity was slipping. So, close to the end of the 90day grace period, she feigned illness. They got worried. What will we do . This is a problem. Someone has to go get her treatment. They would not have cared about the life if she had remade a remained a christian. But now that she had played along for 90 days and she had carried ammunition for them, she was one of the boys. They let her go out for treatment. An older muslim woman took her. When they got to the town, that is when she escaped. We were able to get her and whisk her out of there. There is a little more of the story that is very disturbing. Some of it is online. We were very disappointed that reuters wentfrom to nigeria and met her and took her photograph and splashed it on the internet and gave her name. It was so revolting. What we did is we had to relocate her again within the country. This is why we do not always bring victims out. Some people do not have intelligent discretion to realize that you can put this young lady at risk. This was a snapshot of a slave bride that we encountered. Since then, in the last eight months, we have encountered about five. This is the first time that we are seeing huge numbers. Were talking hundreds who have been abducted. Can i ask you a question . To take 300 girls all at once, what is going on . How arethey escalating, they escalating and what are you the west or that nigeria do about it. Traditionally they have consistently hes on sundays. When the military deploys to churches they switch it around and attack schools. Hat we noticed was in the last couple of years they attacked schools. Felt the need to protect schools the we they had been. Attacking habitat schools and killing kids. Terrorists are way more resilient than the state department. I wrote an article while i was the abduction t of the girls, and i think i asked that it should be you. Ulated to i dont know if it was done. Do so many horrible things girls and ict the said they are going to strike go for more girls. Within 48 hours after i wrote again icle they struck and took eight more girls. So, unfortunately this is a make break time for boko haram. If the world cannot unite and nuff them out they know what will get our attention and they are going to keep putting it in going forward. As far as recommendations go i think it is the state department waffling over p of whole theological basis this group. Rebel not an economic movement. They are anarchists and jihadists. Hen you frame it in the right context then you can have an response to that. The cure you cant call this ebowl lie. We do not have a cure for fanatical islamism. So containment. Ot appeasement, is the solution. Key point so one we understand how crazy these guys are. An he first place they want islamist tali islamist theocracy over Northern Nigeria. Achieve that in a country where the population is christian. We are talking about massive enocide to be able to achieve that. In Northern Nigeria where they re insisting or demanding sheria law. Was stoned to death for rape. Version is an extreme taliban style. To have to be able public beheadings in a stadium gather. Ople can this is a medieval sect. This is the sort of thing they want. They dont like the current a cess where you go into court and have trials. That is too slow and boring. The old to do it fashioned away. Savages the kinds of we are dealing with. And i will maybe wrap up on this y saying this is a threat of exexist extension supports to t inchoate systems in nigeria. Hen 9 11 occurred it fwas an instep into our privacy but in is a threat to the legal system and democracy. That ng says it well injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Should be of is grief concern to all of us. Thank you very much. Time for a we have few questions if anyone would like to ask a question. Please identify yourself. Second for the microphone. Thank you. Im from abc 7 news. Doing this. R im curious, debra, as we talk boko haram and how much it texts the community, this something you always feared . Is this a day that you go worrying fe without about boko haram . For us that dont necessarily like to bewhat is it n an area where they are so dominant . Yes, because we moved from because to another and attack. So my dad move but they keep following him. So, yeah. Then you said you were debra, that rlier, you got some help to move out of capital on into the from other pastor and what that pastor . He was killed by boko haram. Sorry rb, it was may 18 of l year. The pastor who paid for her to this very town and her,r who introduced me to boko haram came to his home in and killed him front of his kids. Hearing these stories you get a sense that boko haram is encircling these areas and argeting them pretty much sporadically but consistently in a way. It is not systematic but over time a lot of people are being affected. Well, they have had differences of strategy. In one state they were very systematic. The would go out and mark homes of christians with graffiti and come back at night nd kill off the christian males. An entire neighborhood. All the males were killed in one night. Only survivor. Most of the wounds we see on are to the head because they shoot to kill and times it is at pointblank range. Several rked with survivors. Threespeak there are only survivors of boko haram who are we though of who came to the u. S. , i mean. Debra and one other in texas. The guy in texas also has trauma to the head. In the head. Boko haram killed his landlords. They came to the funeral and shot everybody. He is the sole survivor. He was medevacked to the u. K. The doctors worked on him a couple of years and they finally do theres nothing we can and lets send you to america and he came to the u. S. A few months ago. They all have gunshots to the head. That is their m. O. What is systematic and that yobi people fled inland. About buro state they are gone nd attacking the Rural Communities systematically. Hat is why they are fleeing yobi could go further inland but borno al people in literal run out of town on foot the border. So, there is a level of systematic annihilation. There is also sporadic assassinations like there pastor. Im brian murphy, retired state. He department of what would you have the International Community do that done so far please, particularly the United States . Well, the first ecommendation was a change in the paradigm they are using to look at this. In must be properly framed local jihad and we form appropriate responses. I think, for example, the u. S. As had extensive experience dealing with insurgencies of this nature in afghanistan and iraq. Let me point out that a u. S. Report says boko haram is the second deadliest errorist group in the world next to the taliban. So, who has the best experience with the taliban . Guess who. The u. S. So, we can make this thing work. There needs to be some of that actical intelligence cooperation that we have not seen much of. Again the aluminum terrapin the humanitarian response. Hen you have a country that is qually split 50 kreufpb and 50 muslim. If the christians get really wall, something will give. And that for me is the doomsday that i dread. There has been an amazing of grace and and ousness of taking it taking it and taking it but that is not exhaustible. Dam busts, we are talking about a country of 150 illion people and it will make bosnia look like childs play. One of the things we noticed while we were out there have ple who did not flee been revictimize d. Naomi and ow named boko haram came to their home. Husband in front of her and burned her home in front of her. She had nowhere to go. She said please kill me. Baby. D an eightmonthold you destroyed my home and killed my husband. Women. Aid we dont kill and so she went to live with her uncle. And some months later they came to her uncles house and killed again. Now, how shes not in vegetative state i dont know. But at some point people like there will say i cant take it and that is when we are going to have a bigger problem. O i think humanitarian assistance to the victims will he help. Hat is one thing we need to be looking at aggressively. Penney star e with c tphfrpblgnn. Difficulty bout her getting a visa. What is in place now for people and others who want to come to the United States . We talk about helping them. N afghanistan, for example, iraq people are brought to the United States. People . In place to help well, i wish i could say here is something in place but even after debra was denied the times, habila, the sole survivor of a neighborhood massacre was denied twice by the embassy. So we spent so much time fighting the administration on visa and all of that that we cannot devote enough to the actual work of assisting these people. Three tries we got involved with a congressman. Habila it took congressional intervention to able to come to the states. One of the problems is the state department has been even talk about this in terms of religious persecution. Back to the assistant secretary for africa where he eech in 2012 said that this was a problem of delivery of government services. That is what was motivating boko haram. And there was poverty and the responsibility of the u. S. Was economic at that time. And that was two years ago and to develop the north. I think, een, counterproductive in a way. And weve lost a decade. Unless the analysis starts kaeupgin i changing the visas will continue a problem because they dont recognize it as a human crisis. Ts maybe this incident with the girls will change that. To hear would like more about your family. Where is your mother and what to her, do you have other brothers and sisters . And you said you didnt play with the muslim children. Segregated . Are you divided into two communities . No my dad went together with my i pd my brother and said should like stay he always told me not to follow bad and if im with the muslim kids they always said my god is fake and i tried to avoid them so i dont talk to them any more. Nd when this happened my mom traveled to lagos and my brother person i have and i dont have any sister or brother. Did you have a question . Christian post. My question for the group is there have r years been atrocities in Northern Nigeria. I was curious why do you believe this particular incident, this mass abduction of school girls so much attention compared to other past incidents . Maybe i should pick up where she left off. It is not so much the question of segregation between Christian Muslim ies and communities. Her interesting because mom was muslim and dad was christian. Strange love hose stories that doesnt end very well. Then it got married and executed oblem being and the mom had to move south just to avoid persecution. I should add here that after her brother and dad they sat down and said we got it wrong. State so spawn of the we should have killed her so revised their rules of engagement to make the examination that debra and her should be killed and that is why she is unsafe. Which. T me frame it this persecution in Northern Nigeria has been the new normal for decades. Every year, every couple of years, you know, a christian be a will be a duct converted to muslim. Terrorism. This happens every year. A friend of mine who is actually took her away and married her off to someone and published newspaper headline celebrated a top northern christian his daughter will a muslim. I grew up with that as a child. Happening now is this is persecution on steroids. Nigerian christians are used to being killed a couple of year. A kwraoer there is a Lunar Eclipse and you google this, there will be a be charges of l infidel because of the moon. Normal in Northern Nigeria. But for terrorists to be a duct kids, this is where Northern Nigerians say we didnt sign up for this. We have been second class born but ince we were you cant kill us all the time. A s is why this is gaining bit of international attention. The second reason is this. Timing of this event remember that we as a are going through the trauma of the loss of malaysia 370. Flight we did all we could. We couldnt save those souls. The horrific incident with the ferry in korea. This is the third traumatic xperience that our collective humanity is facing. Ut, unlike the other two, this is redeemable. Saved. Girls can still be i think we are trying to say what can we do to redeem the these girls save lives. So, i dont want to globe but i the think there is some element of hope within all of us that says come out of d can this. I also want to add that we abolish ed abolished slavery about 150 ears ago and and that has become the norm worldwide. Nd this was a really bold move of boko haram to say, no, we are to the bad old days and these are our slaves and we 12 going to sell them for apiece. It shocked the conscience of the world. Moderate muslims have southern nigeria and protested this. I know the nigerian muslim washington here has protest and it has caught on around the world. An escalation and something that is so shocking away. E cant turn faith mcdonald from the wisdom in n democracy. Ump talking about the fact that Nigerian Christians have been treated as second kind of izens and this makes even clearer the cognitive the state ance department lives under where they have said it is the muslims nigeria who are marginalized and impoverished the poor things do what they do. Isnt it true the state pressured also has the Nigerian Government to share people with people share people who were not elected . Yes. Has put a lot of pressure on the Nigerian Government, and some of that has been misleading and misdirected the government of nigeria. At the time when the nigerian overnment should have had a robust military response to the insurgenc insurgency, the state department is going this is economic and more money at ow the problem and so on and so forth. Wasnt until the terrorists had captured ignificant swaths of territory and some governments said you we are going s, under the Nigerian Government ealized that the u. S. Had been misleading it and sent in the troops in may of last year. We have seen some of , at misguidance from the u. S. Nd we do need to again unthe u. S. To properly reevaluate this situation. Poverty ckle the argument one more time. Here is the thing. Islam has some basic inbuilt for the poor wiand are some of the most contented human being i have ever met. They are allowed to believe if is gods will. O they are not malcontents as the state department is trying portray. Now, i interviewed an american the u. N. Bombing in igeria and she said to me exactly the same words to me. His is not economic because muslims are not the average materia material, you know, western model. On the t operate average material western model. Need to be a change in perspective. An unemployment though in young men Northern Nigeria. It may have been exacerbated by boko haram terrorism and ideology of being against education. There is master unemployment in Northern Nigeria and i will that we did not the militancy in the south. Was clearly economic in nature, clearly. The north is not the same. Secondly, i should point out unemployment the in Northern Nigeria is selfinflict in the sense that theological practice genuinely ay is not slamic where someone will have four wives and 40 kids and essentially dump them all on the in the hands of 35 mullahs. So, the Northern Nigeria is street nally growing kids. We literally have farms roducing unemployed and unemployable street kids. So, where it happens, for example, in the southeast d. C. Ere, you know, for whatever reasons, in Northern Nigeria it is intentional. Nd there is a bill in the Nigerian Congress they are trying to say send your kids to school. And, you know, muslims have been against it, no, this is part of religious practice. O, it is utterly hampering the ability of nigerian democracy to with these problems. O, that system is not because there are no schools for them but because they believe that they should leave the kids on streets to learn koranic instruction from these many times radical mullahs. And they are the ones who are responsible for a lot of christians. Inst that is not related to the terrorists. I think that our time is up. You all for nk coming and please