Biafra Protests - Nigeria Police in Mass Arrests

Afrik Update

News,Africa

 

At least 100 people have been arrested in south-eastern Nigeria after a march supporting independence for the former breakaway state of Biafra.

Members of the Biafran Zionist Movement raised the Biafran flag and then marched through the streets of the region's main town, Enugu.

One of the group's leaders told the BBC that 500 people had been detained but a police spokesman put the number at 101.

More than one million people died during the 1967-70 Biafran conflict.

Most of the deaths were caused by famine.

The BZM first gathered on Sunday to mark the birthday of former Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, who died in March.

Enugu police spokesman Ebere Amarizu told the BBC that those arrested had been remanded in custody but he declined to say what charges they would face.

The BBC's Will Ross in Lagos says that 45 years after the Biafran flag was first raised - an action which sparked Nigeria's civil war - a small number of separatists still keep their dream alive, despite the threat of being charged with treason.

Our correspondent says the war has been put back in the spotlight as the renowned Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has just released his memoirs of the conflict.

He also notes that as the novel Half a Yellow Sun by the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is being made into a film, this traumatic period of Nigeria's history is set to reach a wider audience.