Globe Trot: Kerry silent on violence against Christians in Nigeria

NIGERIA: A Muslim mob killed eight Christian students at a technical college in Zamfara state—a day before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met nearby with the sultan of Sokoto. Sokoto and Zamfara are two of nine Sharia states in northern Nigeria. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the killings, but Kerry did not mention Islamic-led violence against Christians in his speech at the sultan’s palace.

Kerry highlighted a Boko Haram death toll of 20,000 in Nigeria and the kidnapping of more than 250 Chibok schoolgirls without acknowledging that the schoolgirls are Christians forced to convert to Islam and forced into marriages via rape. He said Boko Haram has “a nihilistic view of the world” and “boasts no agenda other than to murder teachers, burn books, kidnap students, rape women and girls, and slaughter innocent people, most of whom are Muslims.”

In a report published prior to Kerry’s visit, Boko Haram said it would focus on attacking Christians: “booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all of those [Christians] who we find from the citizens of the cross.”

Another report has surfaced suggesting Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau and his top commanders were killed or wounded in airstrikes. Shekau wrote repeatedly to Osama bin Laden and pledged “allegiance to the Caliph of the Muslims,” ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

SUDAN: The trial of two Sudanese church leaders is underway, who are among four pastors accused of “fabricating” evidence of persecution and genocide of Christians by the Islamic-led Khartoum regime.

SYRIA: A battle is underway for Hasakeh province between U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels and the Syrian government. Assyrian church leaders warn that the area’s ancient church communities are again under siege. Christian churches and homes became targets of foreign-led rebel groups as early as 2013, and in 2015 ISIS attacked 35 villages in Hasakeh, abducting 250 Assyrians. Last October ISIS beheaded three of them.

JAPAN: Typhoon Mindulle’s direct hit on Tokyo has killed two and continues to snarl transportation across the region.

UNITED STATES: Two eminent foreign policy and political analysts have posted a worth-reading treatise on why they will not vote for Donald Trump—or Hillary Clinton—for president. Will Inboden, a former member of the National Security Council who holds the national security chair at the University of Texas at Austin, also has written extensively on the importance of religious freedom. Peter Feaver, a Duke University political science professor who also served on the National Security Council, along with his wife, gave early guidance on religious freedom issues to former U.S. House Rep. Frank Wolf (WORLD’s 2014 Daniel of the Year). The case against Trump is well rehearsed, but they make a strong case against Republicans who have come out in favor of Clinton.

My takeaways:

Those on the right who support Clinton have to acknowledge she has thus far done nothing to accommodate their positions, moving if anything, to the left of President Obama.

Not enough has been made of Clinton’s incompetence (given her corruptibility is so strong). They note her tenure as secretary of state “could be summed up thus: Where she was right on policy (for instance, the need to arm the Syrian rebels earlier) she was not very influential, and where she was influential (intervening in Libya) it did not turn out so well as a policy.”

Not enough is being made of the importance of Senate and House elections, where a Republican majority is essential as a counterweight for a likely Clinton administration. In that vein, the two say they will be writing in Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., as their presidential pick on Election Day, who “has taken a courageous position against Trump, and stands as an articulate voice for conservative internationalism.”

An in-depth analysis by The Associated Press concludes, more than half of the people outside government who met with Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state were Clinton charity donors—“an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Combined, those donors alone contributed $156 million to Clinton entities.