A Nigerian journalist will head to trial in Nigeria after he was arrested for reporting about attacks against predominantly Christian communities.
According to The Christian Post, Luka Binniyat, a Catholic journalist, was arrested in November 2021. He will go to trial on September 6 on charges of "cyberstalking" and aiding and abetting the offenses of cybercrime.
Binniyat has denied the charges.
Binniyat worked for The Epoch Times, and desk editor Doug Burton said the arrest likely stemmed from an October 29, 2021, article he wrote titled, In Nigeria, Police Decry Massacres as 'Wicked' But Make No Arrests.'
The article detailed the persecution of Christian farming communities in Nigeria.
According to reports, Christians in Nigeria's Middle Belt are constantly targeted and sometimes killed by radical ethnic Fulani militants. The U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said that many Christians in the Middle Belt are farmers and many Fulani are nomadic herders. In many cases, the violence is categorized as farmer-herder conflict and not true Christian persecution, the ICC said.
"Binniyat's arrest and trial are an attempt to silence journalists who speak out about attacks on Christians in Nigeria," CNA quoted Robert Destro, a law professor at The Catholic University of America and a former assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor during the Trump administration, as saying.
"No politician likes criticism, but most understand that a reporter's job is to find the facts and report them honestly," Destro said.
The Nigerian government has denied that a religious genocide is happening, but a recent study from the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law found that at least 60,000 Christians have been killed in the past 20 years in Nigeria.
The group also said that hundreds of churches were targeted or destroyed in 2021.
This is the second time Binniyat has been arrested. He was previously arrested in 2017 for "breach of the peace."
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Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.
