'Pure Genocide': Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria and the Great Press Cover-Up

'Pure Genocide': Christians Slaughtered in Nigeria and the Great Press Cover-Up

The "pure genocide" of Christians in Nigeria, as it has been characterized by several international observers, is reaching unprecedented levels, according to two separate reports.

"Countering the myth of religious indifference in Nigerian terror (10/2019 – 9/2023)," a comprehensive, 136-page report published by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa on August 29, 2024, found that Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year — or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours.

More than half of these killings (55%) were committed by radicalized Muslim Fulani herdsmen, who over the last decade have become greater persecutors of Christians than more internationally recognizable terror groups, such as Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) — although the ISWAP, too, are playing their part in the genocide: Fulani killed 9,153 Christians between 2019 and 2023; all other terrorist groups killed 4,895.

The second report, "NO ROAD HOME: Christian IDPs displaced by extremist violence in Nigeria," published by Open Doors on September 1, 2024, states that the persecution, slaughter, and displacement of Christians in Nigeria is "unrelenting" and "a time bomb." Because "militant Fulani groups have deliberately targeted Christians or Christian communities, their livelihood, faith leaders and places of worship," Christians are becoming "an endangered species" in Nigeria, where they once amounted for more than half of the West African nation's population (the other half being Muslim).

The violence has reached the point, the report says, that many traumatized Christian children sleep in trees to try to avoid being butchered during the night, when Fulani are most prone to attack. "My children," a parent is quoted, "each time they hear anything, they panic or go into hiding because it triggers the trauma. The terror of the attacks has not stopped, rather it has increased."

In just the last decade, the amount of people to be displaced by the havoc and chaos caused by the Islamic groups has tripled: in 2014, there were 1.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria; as of 2023, there are 3.4 million.

One of these displaced persons, a Christian Pastor, Benjamin Barnabas, who has been living in a tiny tent for five years, shared his story. He and his family were working on their farm when Fulani militants "came with guns, machetes and sticks," thrashing the pastor and his family: "We lost everything that I had. Everything in my home and village was burnt, I was left with nothing... We are displaced because of violence. The news doesn't care about it, we are remaining in darkness—being forgotten, being disregarded."

That the media is indifferent, or worse, concerning the plight of Christians — and that it obfuscates the identity of their tormentors — was emphasized by the Observatory:

"For over a decade atrocities against civilians in Nigeria have been downplayed or minimized. This has proved a major obstacle for those seeking to understand the violence. Misleading euphemisms, such as 'armed herdsmen' and 'cattle grazers' are used to describe continual waves of invasion, torture and killing in rural communities. Descriptions of attacks as 'ethnic clashes', 'farmers-herders clashes' or retaliatory attacks are seriously misleading. The use of the phrase 'bandits' to refer to militias carrying out mass kidnaps, and enforcement of serfdom on communities, is another case in point. And a policy of concealing the religious [Christian] identity of victims also serves to distort the true picture."

Behind all these misleading euphemisms, the facts remain: the murderers are Muslim and their victims are overwhelmingly Christian. Although the Observatory report focuses mostly on Nigerian media's distortion of events, Western mainstream media has also been devoutly refusing to use the most obvious, bottom-level identifiers of both the attackers (Muslims) and the attacked (Christians).

When Muslim terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 Christians last Christmas, the Associated Press failed to mention the identities of the assailants and their victims. Rather, it presented the atrocity, as so many now do, as a regrettable byproduct of climate change—which is, ostensibly, forcing "herders" (Muslims) to encroach on the lands of "farmers" (Christians).

In another AP report, on the 2022 Pentecost Sunday church bombing that left 50 Christian worshippers dead, the words "Muslim" and "Islam" — even "Islamist" — never appear. Rather, readers were told, "It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church." To maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to mention that Islamic terrorists have stormed hundreds of churches and slaughtered thousands of Christians "for sport" over the years in Nigeria—a fact that just might have offered a hint as to "who was behind the attack."

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21033/christians-slaughtered-in-nigeria

[TBC: As believers, our focus is not that the world hates us. Rather, with the approach of the man of sin (2 Thessalonians:2:3Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
See All...), we know that whatever sufferings believers may face, “The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming” (Psalm:37:12-13 [12] The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth. [13] The LORD shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.
See All...). The Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “Brethren, pray for us” (1 Thessalonians:5:25Brethren, pray for us.
See All...). Let us also remember to pray for our brethren in this present age.]