Religious freedom advocates in Washington are protesting the jailing Nov. 4 of a reporter at the forefront of reporting atrocities against Nigerian Christians.

“This is an alarming development. If a journalist, reporting on the government’s refusal to prosecute those engaged in religious motivated atrocities has been arrested for his report, this would be further evidence that the government of Nigeria is complicit in the ongoing egregious and systematic religious persecution in Nigeria,” said Tony Perkins, a commissioner serving on the U.S. Council on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), to The Epoch Times.

The charge against Binniyat likely will be “injurious falsehood  and incitement,” according to Reuben Buhari, a fellow freelance journalist and friend, who visited Binniyat the afternoon of Nov. 6. According to Buhari, the arrest is likely linked to Binniyat’s most recent story in The Epoch Times, “In Nigeria, Police Decry Massacres as ‘Wicked’ but Make No Arrests.” Binniyat likely will face official charges at a court hearing on Nov. 8, according to Buhari. Police authorities did not respond to calls from The Epoch Times.

“It is an outrage against justice that Nigeria’s authorities let violent Fulani extremists who destroy village after village go scot-free without investigation, prosecution, or punishment, while being quick to fill the jail with the brave journalist reporting on these massacres of innocent civilians, said Nina Shea, Hudson Institute’s Director for Religious Freedom, in a text to The Epoch Times.

“The recent arrest of Luka Binniyat—after he reported on the massacres for an American media outlet—continues a systematic government cover up of Fulani atrocities against peaceful Christian villagers,” Shea said.

“This is further evidence that an ethnic-religious genocide is being carried out in northern Nigeria and is being done so with official collusion. Unless President Buhari, himself the son of a Fulani chieftain, ensures Binniyat’s immediate release and brings an impartial case against the terrorists, Washington must act,” Shea said.

The story in question centered on the fact that police and military officials have failed to make any arrests a month after a horrific massacre of 38 unarmed men, women, and small children in the village of Madamai in Kaduna State on Sept. 26.

“I have not been briefed about any arrest so far on the sad violence in Madamai last month,” Police spokesman Mohammad Jaliga told Binniyat for that story published Oct. 29. “If there was any arrest, it would be well celebrated by us and we would parade the suspects for the public to see so they can know that we cannot tolerate such acts of wickedness in Kaduna state,” Jaliga said.

Binniyat pointed out in the story that police spokesmen used the word “clash” to describe one-sided attacks of heavily armed men against unarmed men, women, and children. More than a month after the massacre, Kaduna police have no arrests, no prosecutions, and virtually no explanations.

Binniyat has been an embattled journalist since he was jailed in Kaduna State in 2017 on several charges, including “breach of the peace,” according to the Center to Protect Journalists, (CPJ).

“Charging a journalist with ‘breach of peace’ simply for informing the public is unacceptable, and arbitrarily throwing him in prison when he appears for a hearing is outrageous,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal, in July 2017.

The CPJ is following Binniyat’s current predicament as well, according to Jonathan Rozen, CPJ’s Senior Africa Program researcher.

Binniyat is among several working journalists known to be critics of the government who have been charged with “incitement.”  Some, like internet journalists Steven Kefas and George Makeri, file their reports from undisclosed locations in Nigeria’s Middle Belt states for fear of being arrested and held for months without bail.

Reporter Jones Abiri was held for two years in secret, underground prisons. Abiri tells The Epoch Times he is not at liberty to speak about his prison experience since a prosecution against him is ongoing.

When Kefas got out of a Kaduna prison in 2020 after a five-month stay, he was ill with tropical diseases, including malaria. Even the late Obadiah Malafia, formerly a high government official, was arrested in the Fall of 2020 and was filing his opinion pieces in 2021 while in hiding, until he passed away at a Jos hospital this year.

“Broadly speaking, freedom of the press in Nigeria is under threat when journalists fear that they will be detained for their work,” Rozen said to The Epoch Times.

Binniyat was credited as one of a handful of Epoch Times reporters whose factual reporting of atrocities caught the eye of Fox News war correspondent Lara Logan.

More than 43,000 Christian citizens have been murdered by radicalized Islamist mercenaries in the Middle Belt or by heavily armed insurgents tied to the Nigerian branch of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) since 2015, according to Logan’s documentary on Nigeria’s carnage that began streaming on the Fox Nation site Sept. 27.

The religious cleansing in Nigeria that Logan documented has gotten scant media attention in the wider world. On the other hand, Logan’s documentary may be bringing more attention from the West for the victims. “Lara Logan’s film mentioning the work of Binniyat and other Epoch Times journalists, may have gotten the attention of Nigerian authorities,” according to Prof. Dick Andzenge, an immigrant from Nigeria and today a professor of criminal justice and victimology at St Cloud State University.