SOURCE: From Laolu Akande, New York
The United states
(US) president Barack Obama is getting tough on human rights violent atrocities
and widespread violence around the world.
Nigerians and
other nationalities identified by the American government perpetrating these
acts and supporting atrocities including book haram and religious violence
would be denied entry into the U.S.
According to a
recent white House statement, Obama has signed an executive order suspending
entry privileges to the U.S. any alien “who planned, ordered, assisted, aided
and abetted,
committed or otherwise participated in, including through
command responsibility, widespread or systematic violence and other against any
civilian population.
Specifically, a
white House official yesterday clarified that the order would affect Nigerians
against the backdrop of recent Boko Haram violence and other atrocities that
have already been and may be recorded in the country.
Answering
questions from the quadian whether this order has anything to do with Nigerian
and the country’s encounter with Boko Haram and religious violence, Caitlin
Hayden, Deputy Spokesperson of the national security council at the white house
answered in the affirmative and said Late Monday that “in answer to your
questions, the president’s executive Order applies globally”.
Hayden added
that the presidential order also empowered the secretary of state wijt the
“respo9nsibility for implementing the order, including identifying those
persons to which it applies.
According to the
president order released early in month – August 4-president Obama determined
that “that it is in the interests of the united states to take action to
restrict the international travel and to suspend the entry into the united
states, as immigrants or nonimmigrants of certain persons who have engaged in
the acts outlined in section 1 of this proclamation.
The section
lists violence against civilians, war crimes, crimes against humanity and
violations of human rights. Indeed the section says persons who even attempted
or conspired to perspetrate any of these acts would also fall under the
no-entry to the U.S. hammer of presidential declaration.
U.S. officials
explained that while the presidential order should not be seen as targeting any
specific individual or nation, recent acts of terrorism and widespread violence
in the Arab world and rising terrorism and violence in African may have
influenced the presidential declaration.
Late last month
while meeting with four African heads of state from west at the white House,
Obama personally expressed concern at the troubling rise of terrorism in
African.