The genocide of Christians the world ignores
By Tom Lennie, TCW:
WHILE much of the world celebrates Christmas, it is of course a particularly special time for those who have a faith in Jesus Christ. This is no less true for believers in Plateau State, Nigeria, who a few weeks ago were greatly looking forward to commemorating the birth of their Lord and Saviour. Instead, a deja-vu season of mayhem, mass murder and deep mourning began to unfold.
And all the while the world remained virtually silent.
Beginning on the evening of December 23 and continuing till the morning of Christmas Day, Fulani Islamist militia groups systematically slaughtered scores of Christians in co-ordinated attacks in two districts of Plateau State, in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim Middle Belt. The dead were mostly women and children, and included a number of physically challenged individuals who were unable to run and who were therefore burnt alive.
Statistics gathered by Barnabas Fund have set the total death figure at nearly 300, the worst anti-Christian violence seen in Nigeria in years.
The carnage was unimaginable. Some 25 remote and widely scattered villages were targeted. In total more than 1,500 homes were burnt, eight churches destroyed, many hundreds of people injured and 30,000 displaced. This was one of the darkest days in recent Nigerian history.
Witnesses said that it took up to 12 hours after the attacks started for help to arrive. A former Nigerian chief of army staff said this was because government troops were working alongside the attackers. A number of others were killed in other northern Nigerian states during the same Christmas season.
Most of us did not hear about the more recent massacre until well after Christmas Day, and many of us not till after New Year’s Day, the main reason being that it received next to no coverage in the British mainstream media.
The Guardian was one of the few UK newspapers that reported on the mass killings. However, like almost all other secular news media that bothered to pick up on the story, it failed to note that the victims were mainly Christians.
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