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Thousands of women from Nigeria's third largest ethnic group have threatened to stage a naked protest to press for the release of Biafran separatists standing trial for treason, the group said on Thursday.
LAGOS (Reuters) - Thousands of women from Nigeria's third largest ethnic group have threatened to stage a naked protest to press for the release of Biafran separatists standing trial for treason, the group said on Thursday.
The banned Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), said the action, which is a traditional way of shaming authority in parts of Africa, will follow a two-day stay-at-home protest next month.
"Thousands of women have vowed to protest naked if our leader and members of MASSOB are not released from detention," the group's director of organisation, Nnamdi Ohiagu, said at a news conference in Lagos.
"The two days stay at home call is only a warning signal. If our leader is not released or granted bail we will call on all Biafrans for an indefinite stay at home protest," Ohiagu said.
MASSOB leader Ralph Uwazurike and six other activists were charged earlier this month with plotting to overthrow President Olusegun Obasanjo and waging war against the world's eighth biggest oil exporting country.
The activists pleaded not guilty to the charges and were remanded in police custody. They are due to appear in court on Dec. 6 to argue their bail application. If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
The prosecution was the latest legal move by the government against the group, which campaigns for a peaceful secession of Nigeria's southeastern region by playing on ethnic sentiments that sparked a 1967-70 civil war in which more than a million people died, mostly from hunger.
Hundreds of activists have been detained since the group was formed in 1999, and many have been charged with treason. MASSOB says at least 4,000 members have been killed by state security forces in the last six years.
The authorities argue that membership of MASSOB amounts to treason because it implies waging war against the rest of Nigeria.
The MASSOB briefing was held in an uncompleted three-storey house in a Lagos surburb, where the black, red and green Biafran flag, coat-of-arms and other items in the purported sovereign state's colours were on show.
MASSOB said schools, markets and offices in the southeastern region would be closed during the stay-at-home protest on Dec. 5-6. Millions of ethnic Ibo in other parts of Africa's most populous nation would also stay at home in a show of solidarity.
A MASSOB stay-at-home protest in August 2004 brought most major southeastern cities to a standstill.