AN OPEN LETTER TO CHIEF OF BOKO HARAM

                                                                                       14^th May 2014

Dear Abubukar Shekau,

NAMASTE!

I am not sure whether you have heard the word Namaste. This is an Indian word to greet others which means “I bow before the goodness in you”. And that is what I want I want to do right now, before I express the reason for writing to you an open letter.

My name is Sunitha Krishnan, I am an anti-trafficking activist, based in Hyderabad a city located in South of India.  In the last two decades I have rescued and rehabilitated over 10,100 girls from sexual slavery.  I am a Hindu by faith, but a humanitarian by religion.

Last night I was watching all the videos that you have sent. And what stuck me the most is that we are both very much alike. Both of us are passionate and madly obsessed with our convictions. We have worked very hard to convince others of our beliefs and have been successful in getting a lot of people believe in our convictions. Both of us similarly think that there are oppressive forces that is destroying this world and there is an immediate need for radical intervention from every human being to change the situation.    

But the method you have chosen to actualize your convictions is something that I cannot endorse. I am sure the reason for which you are doing all this has a strong background and your objective is based on deep-rooted pain that you have experienced.  But nothing can justify mindless violence and force. What is the logic of kidnapping 272 girls and keeping them in captivity and threatening to sell them as sex slaves.

Do you think any of these people actually care when million out there are already getting sold every 10 minutes for sexual slavery. Come see any of the prostitution places across the world….millions of girls from all over the world are sold every minute to satisfy the libido of men across the world….children….girls…adults all of them traded so that there bodies can pecked by vultures….the world is SILENT…it does not matter to them that across the world predators are moving in different garbs…offering jobs, marriages…love anything to exploit vulnerability and then trade them…thousands of girls from Nigeria are also languishing in different parts of the World like Italy, German, Austria, ...

Who cares a damn? Does not the world community know about it…believe me everybody knows. But very few want to fight the organized criminal syndicates who are doing this. These are criminals who have no other agenda other than making “money”….using these innocent bodies…

Nobody is questioning ‘men all over the world’  who pay money to have sex with little children, girls….women…Why should they care? They think it will never happen to their near and dear ones. Let me tell you something, these men are not coming from another planet….they are sons, brothers, husbands, fathers of all of us here…. Does Anybody Care…Afraid NOT!  

Why do you want to be clubbed with these criminals? From what I heard you speak…to me it appeared you had a strong reason for your action. By letting your action become same as what any other criminals do…you are forcing the world to call you a ‘terrorist’. No matter how right your thoughts are but if your actions are wrong.....then you also will become ‘wrong’.

Please do not demean your thoughts further by resorting to actions that any human being will definitely condemn.

Children or any human being are not playthings…that you do anything that catches your fancy…Using violent methods, kidnap, forcing human beings to follow another religion under duress cannot bring any change in the world. On the contrary you are creating a situation where you will be more and more excluded. 

I was aghast when you laughingly proclaimed on your video that you will sell those innocent girls as “sex slaves”…Do you even understand what you are talking about? Do you have any idea what it is to a woman to be violated…again and again. Believe me…Allah will never forgive you even for a having a thought of that nature…He the merciful is compassionate and will never laugh at the pain and suffering of others…He will never EVER endorse forcible abduction and rape for the gratification of individual needs.

You have no right to kidnap those girls….and definitely no rights whatsoever to blackmail anybody so that they are forced to release your colleagues.

Do you realize that your action can motivate other evil & criminal forces to do similar things and that if your act is not stopped right away…children across the world are at risk to a similar plight but albeit to satisfy other agendas which may not be as “noble” as yours…Do you see the damage that you are party to…This mindless act of yours has shaken all the efforts of humanitarians across the world. STOP IT…BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE…YOU CANNOT BE THE REASON FOR HUMANS BECOMING SATANS.

I am fighting an organized crime….you are also claiming to fight oppressive forces…and I want to tell you ‘cultures’ are not oppressive…but “actions” can be oppressive…And the act that you have committed right now is downright unacceptable for anybody following any faith from any part of the world.

Anybody including ‘you’ if you act in a way that is destroying others…you are as oppressive as anybody else. You then lose the moral right to preach anything.

Please open your ears…and listen to the cries of the mothers wailing for their daughters who are now in your captivity…Please open your eyes and see the millions like me anguished by your act…

I demand to evoke the ‘goodness in you’…to let go the girls to their families. I say this as a passionate fighter like you who wants to bring change in the world…a new world order which is free of all forms of sexual slavery….Please do not become part of the Oppressive forces which brings in slavery….You are different….and I trust the goodness in you….the merciful Allah in you will guide you to do this rightly.

Believing that collective goodness will destroy evil anywhere in the world…and having faith in your ‘goodness & godliness’ to take the right decision.

With love & prayers,

Sunitha Krishnan

India