For almost three weeks, nobody spoke about the girls kidnapped by an extremist group in Nigeria. Today a protest movement and the international press are trying to fill the void of interest and information.
"When a pretty blonde girl goes missing, wire services send helicopters and journalists to the scene; but when hundreds of black girls are kidnapped in a distant country, the news barely gets a mention." These words come from American Time journalist Charlotte Alter, who wrote an article titled How we failed the lost girls kidnapped by Boko haram to address the kidnapping in Nigeria of more than 270 girls between the ages of 15 and 18.
In the night between 14 and 15 April, rebels affiliated with the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram stormed the dormitory of a school that housed hundreds of female students from across Nigeria, in West Africa. The dormitory is located in Chibok, in the north-east of the country. There, the rebels loaded the girls onto vehicles — trucks and off-road cars — set fire to the school and left without encountering any resistance. During the transport, around 50 girls managed to escape and return home, confirming how events had unfolded.
Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, stated in a video released on 5 May that the students had been kidnapped in Nigeria to be used as slaves or sold as brides "in the name of Allah." Unofficial sources claim that some of the girls have already been transferred and sold as brides for $12 in Chad and Cameroon.
Beyond the lack of interest from the international media and governments, what struck people most was the disorganisation and complete disorientation of Nigerian law enforcement and rescue teams. President Goodluck Jonathan spoke publicly about the incident for the first time on 4 May, during a television broadcast. He said the government does not know where the girls are and appealed for help from their families and the international community, in particular the United States.
The extremist group Boko Haram was founded in 2002 in the Nigerian state of Borno. For years it has been making life difficult for the government in Abuja through a series of actions and attacks aimed at imposing sharia law across the whole of Nigeria, including its predominantly Christian regions. Partly for this reason — the government's inadequacy — members of Nigerian civil society launched a movement and a Facebook page called Bring back our girls to protest against "official" lies and keep attention on the matter alive, as well as to assist in the search effort.
Among the international figures who joined the movement is Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who became a symbol of the right to education after she was shot in 2012 by a Taliban gunman while she was boarding the bus that was taking her home from school.