Amid mounting concern of an anti-Christian “genocide” in Nigeria, a human rights group has accused the country’s security forces of being more concerned with protecting cows than Christians and other non-Muslims.

In a new report, the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law also accused security forces of engaging in disappearances and extra-judicial killings.

A principal cause of sectarian violence in Nigeria has been tension between largely Muslim herdsmen from the Fulani ethnic group, and sedentary farmers who tend to be mostly Christian. A series of attacks by Fulani gunmen on Christian targets over the Christmas holidays, for example, left an estimated 300 people dead.

According to the report, whenever there’s a perceived threat to cattle owned by Fulani herdsmen, Nigerian security forces swing into action.

The rapid military response results in “arrests, abductions, disappearances and ‘neutralisation’” against the killers or attackers, according to the report, but a similarly aggressive response doesn’t occur when Fulani herdsmen and bandits, often dressed in black and shouting jihadist slogans, attack Christians and other non-Muslims.