Where is the outrage for Nigeria?

Two tragedies have received completely different responses.

Last week a terrible massacre was carried out in Baga, Nigeria. Amnesty International estimates anywhere from hundreds to 2,000 people may have been killed.

Daniel Eyres of Amnesty said images of Doron Baga and Baga show, “devastation of catastrophic proportions in two towns, one of which was almost wiped off the face of the earth”. Survivors describe bodies strewn for three miles surrounding the village. Desperate villagers fled in canoes, only to be ambushed and killed, turning the muddy water red.

No marches were held, no rallies organized, no world leaders vowed solidarity. After all, this was not an attack on “Western” soil. This was not an attack on freedom of speech, this was not an “assault on our values.”

This was not a red-shirt moment. This was plain old butchery. This was a mother murdered as she was giving birth. This was children cut down as they fled into the bush. This was a death cult playing their favorite tune of mayhem. Yet, we hardly heard it.

When asked about the attack in Baga, a Nigerian Defense official began by offering his condolences to France. He then went on to dispute that a massacre had even occurred in Nigeria. He must have been watching CNN, or maybe Fox News.

Without a doubt, the attack last week in Paris was despicable. There are many brave journalists, but few brave publications. Charlie Hebdo was one such paper. They refused to be cowed by the spectre of evil. Sometimes courage carries a terrible price. Twelve lives paid the bill in Paris. The world responded with the largest outpouring of emotion and support since 9/11. Meanwhile, Baga was merely a footnote. A bloody, 30 second blurb at the end of the newscast.

The mainstream media is not entirely to blame. They feed us what we eat. And our tastes lean toward the familiar. Nigeria is so far away, so foreign. But terrorists attacking the freedom of the press, that hits home. Black clad men storming an office strikes fear in the heart of Americans. A rag-tag bunch of murderous extremists in a desolate country, led by a crazed zealot on a power trip, how could that ever effect us at home?

Perhaps it was just bad timing, with everything going on in the world, it would have taken Ebola to get airtime for Baga, not some run of the mill African massacre. “Black Lives Matter” has been a popular slogan lately, don’t African Lives Matter? Don’t human lives matter? How many lives does it take to earn a hashtag? Or, is it not the number of lives, but rather where those lives were lived that matters?