Terrorists killed more than 2,000 people in Nigeria last week

Terrorists killed more than 2,000 people in Nigeria last week. Why didn't the world care?

Thousands of miles from the anti-terror marches in Paris, another crisis went largely ignored by global media outlets: Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria committed a massacre of unbelievable proportions in Borno State, killing more than 2,000 people in the town of Baga, as well as 16 neighboring towns and villages, burning entire communities to the ground. Amnesty International described it as the terror group's "deadliest massacre" to date, and the Guardian reports that local defense groups said they gave up counting the bodies left lying on the streets. The media silence, writes Mic's Mikael Owunna, is not accidental. "There is a clear double standard when talking about Western vs. non-Western and Muslim vs. non-Muslim victims of terrorism," Owunna writes. "Terrorist attacks on the West, and against non-Muslims in particular, are sensationalized in the media, while those afflicting non-Westerners and Muslims are normalized and treated as business as usual ... Reports about non-Western victims of terrorism are generally overlooked or ignored unless they fit particular narrative of freedom and civilization under assault from Islamic extremism."