A19 Father's house was burning

Name: David 0., 18, Nigeria Reporter: Karin Dangl

It happened in 2000, in Nigeria. Religious war broke out between Muslims and Christians. My father, who was a Christian pastor, lived in the northern part of Nigeria in Kano, which is mainly Muslim. And Muslims killed Christians, Christians killed Muslims, so my father was in great danger.

One day I visited him. Shortly later the fighting started again. One evening I went out with my friends to town. When my friends and I came home at 1 a.m. we saw that my father's house was burning all over. My father and all his people in the house were dead. We saw Muslim people with bow and arrow and machetes. We were afraid and we quickly ran back to another part of the city were some Christians live. I called more than 20 people and described them what had happened to my father's house. All of them, but me wanted to take revenge.

So our group went to the nearest Mosque. There were no people in it. We went into this Mosque and set the whole Mosque on fire. In the morning the Muslims saw that their Mosque was destroyed and started to take revenge. They started killing more and more Christians so my group and I went to the streets and started killing them with machetes and broken bottles.

The Muslims were looking for all the people who had set the Mosque on fire. They really found some of my friends and killed them. I was 15 years at that time and I had great fear that they would also kill me. So I ran away to our neighboring country Niger. This was the beginning of my escape to Europe.