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The Graves Are Not Yet Full
by Philip Emeagwali
www.emeagwali.com
Walk with me down memory lane. The time: 1968. In 30 months, one million dead. The setting:
a dusty camp in Biafra where survivors waited and hoped for peace. The survivors: Refugees
fleeing from the “Dance of Death.” My mentor: One of the refugee camp directors, whom I
called “Teacher” out of respect.
“Martin Luther King has been killed,” Teacher said, with a pained voice and vacant eyes. I
looked towards Teacher, wondering: “Who is Martin Luther King?” I was a 13-year-old refugee
in the west African nation of Nigeria, a land then called Biafra. Martin Luther King. What did
that name mean?
Eight out of ten Biafrans were refugees exiled from their own country. Two years earlier,
Christian army officers had staged a bloody coup killing Muslim leaders. The Muslims felt the
coup was a tribal mutiny of Christian Igbos against their beloved leaders. The aggrieved
Muslims went on a killing rampage, chanting: “Igbo, Igbo, Igbo, you are no longer part of
Nigeria!” In the days that followed, 50,000 Igbos were killed in street uprisings.
Killing was not new to us in Biafra. I was 13, but I knew much of killing. Widows and orphans
were most of the refugees in our camp. They had survived the Igbo “Dance of Death” – a
euphemism for the mass executions. One thousand men at gunpoint forced to dance a public
dance. Seven hundred were then shot and buried en masse in shallow graves. When told to
hurry up and return to his regular duty, one of the murderers said: “The graves are not yet full.”
A few days later, with only the clothes on our backs, we fled from this “Dance of Death.” That
was six months before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Teacher and I were eventually
conscripted into the Biafran army and sent to the front, two years after our escape.
After the war, Teacher – who had taught me the name of Martin Luther King – was among the
one million who had died. I – a child soldier – was one of the fifteen million who survived.
Africa is committing suicide: a two-decade war in Sudan, genocidal killings in Rwanda,
scorched-earth conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and Liberia. The wars in modern Africa
are the largest global-scale loss of life since the establishment of the Atlantic Slave trade, which
uprooted and scattered Africa’s sons and daughters across the United States, Jamaica, and
Brazil.
Africa’s wars are steering the continent toward a sea of self-destruction so deep that even the
greatest horror writers are unable to fathom its depths. So, given our circumstances, Martin
Luther King was a name unknown, a dead man among millions, with a message that never
reached the shores of Biafra.
Neither did his message reach the ears of “The Black Scorpion,” Benjamin Adekunle, a tough
Nigerian army commander, whose credo of ethnic cleansing knew nothing of Martin Luther
King Jr.’s movement: “We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces move into
Igbo territory, we even shoot things that do not move.”
As we heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s call, and march together across the world stage, let us
never forget that we who have witnessed and survived the injustice of such nonsensical wars
are the torchbearers of his legacy of peace for our world, our nation, and our children.
by Philip Emeagwali
www.emeagwali.com
Walk with me down memory lane. The time: 1968. In 30 months, one million dead. The setting:
a dusty camp in Biafra where survivors waited and hoped for peace. The survivors: Refugees
fleeing from the “Dance of Death.” My mentor: One of the refugee camp directors, whom I
called “Teacher” out of respect.
“Martin Luther King has been killed,” Teacher said, with a pained voice and vacant eyes. I
looked towards Teacher, wondering: “Who is Martin Luther King?” I was a 13-year-old refugee
in the west African nation of Nigeria, a land then called Biafra. Martin Luther King. What did
that name mean?
Eight out of ten Biafrans were refugees exiled from their own country. Two years earlier,
Christian army officers had staged a bloody coup killing Muslim leaders. The Muslims felt the
coup was a tribal mutiny of Christian Igbos against their beloved leaders. The aggrieved
Muslims went on a killing rampage, chanting: “Igbo, Igbo, Igbo, you are no longer part of
Nigeria!” In the days that followed, 50,000 Igbos were killed in street uprisings.
Killing was not new to us in Biafra. I was 13, but I knew much of killing. Widows and orphans
were most of the refugees in our camp. They had survived the Igbo “Dance of Death” – a
euphemism for the mass executions. One thousand men at gunpoint forced to dance a public
dance. Seven hundred were then shot and buried en masse in shallow graves. When told to
hurry up and return to his regular duty, one of the murderers said: “The graves are not yet full.”
A few days later, with only the clothes on our backs, we fled from this “Dance of Death.” That
was six months before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Teacher and I were eventually
conscripted into the Biafran army and sent to the front, two years after our escape.
After the war, Teacher – who had taught me the name of Martin Luther King – was among the
one million who had died. I – a child soldier – was one of the fifteen million who survived.
Africa is committing suicide: a two-decade war in Sudan, genocidal killings in Rwanda,
scorched-earth conflicts in Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, and Liberia. The wars in modern Africa
are the largest global-scale loss of life since the establishment of the Atlantic Slave trade, which
uprooted and scattered Africa’s sons and daughters across the United States, Jamaica, and
Brazil.
Africa’s wars are steering the continent toward a sea of self-destruction so deep that even the
greatest horror writers are unable to fathom its depths. So, given our circumstances, Martin
Luther King was a name unknown, a dead man among millions, with a message that never
reached the shores of Biafra.
Neither did his message reach the ears of “The Black Scorpion,” Benjamin Adekunle, a tough
Nigerian army commander, whose credo of ethnic cleansing knew nothing of Martin Luther
King Jr.’s movement: “We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces move into
Igbo territory, we even shoot things that do not move.”
As we heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s call, and march together across the world stage, let us
never forget that we who have witnessed and survived the injustice of such nonsensical wars
are the torchbearers of his legacy of peace for our world, our nation, and our children.