Something happened twelve days ago that the world has largely ignored. On Thursday, April 2, gunmen stormed Garissa University College in Kenya and murdered 147 people. One hundred and forty two of them were students, promising university students like our own young people at UWI, UTECH, NCU and others. They may have been studying fields as diverse as engineering, law, medicine, English Literature, History, Math, Biology, Chemistry and Art. Young people just like the 350 who packed into UWI's Assembly Hall last Thursday to watch a man with a Muslim father from Kenya, Barack Obama. One hundred and forty two of Kenya's future leaders, slaughtered. Seventy-nine others seriously injured. Over 700 students were taken hostage, the Christians killed, the survivors traumatized and psychologically impaired for the rest of their lives. The university is now closed indefinitely. Survivors say they do not want to return. And who can blame them?
The killing is attributed to the militant terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, said to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. It was the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy, and the country's second deadliest overall. It was more deadly than the 2002 attacks in Mombasa, the 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall, last year's bus bombings in Nairobi, and 12 times more deadly than January's attack on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Yet, no one is saying Je Suis Kenya.
In Jamaica, we were so distracted the past two weeks by the visit of President Obama,
that we didn't notice the massacre in the country of his father, at a university a star like him may well have attended had he been raised in Kenya. Many of us are too quick to dismiss things that occur outside our small spheres of reality, our little island bubble. I'm very tempted to claim global apathy because the victims were Black. And worse, Black Africans, often the lowest of the low in global significance. I only go as far as saying "tempted", because it is also true that where violence is the norm, people become desensitized. In Jamaica, 1005 people were murdered last year. Our murder rate has long been at civil war proportions, but what would shock those in other countries barely makes the news here.
Today, April 14, also marks one year since Boko Haram kidnapped 270 school girls in Nigeria. When they were taken from school in Chibok last year, no one seemed to care. The Nigerian government wasn't even looking for them. American news was busy covering other things. Yet, when the attack on Charlie Hebdo occurred, everyone was quick with a response. Nigeria's own President, Goodluck Jonathan, took mere hours to issue a statement condemning the attack, but ignored the Chibok girls for weeks, refusing to even acknowledge that it had happened. It wasn't until several weeks later when the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls began trending on social media, that many finally paid attention. The global media took notice. Troops were supposedly sent in to find and rescue the girls. Talk shows talked about why they hadn't been talking about it before. But even that was fleeting. It's been a year. The Chibok girls are still not home, and most of us had forgotten all about them.
In response to the Garissa University attack, a social media campaign based in Kenya created the hashtag #147-not-just-a-number. I don't think it made as much of an impact as the organizers would have liked. Kenyans are now living in fear. On Sunday, one student at the University of Nairobi in the capital died in a stampede that left 140 others injured. A power transformer exploded on the campus, causing panicked students and teachers to flee, fearing another attack. Nightly curfews have been imposed from 6:30 pm to 6:30 am in Garissa and surrounding counties.
It is time for us to start paying attention to the world around us. The world is more connected than ever.
There is no reminder more sobering than last weekend's deportation of a 15-year-old Jamaican boy from Suriname, where he was said to be attempting to travel to Turkey, cross the border into Syria and join ISIS. From there, it is feared he would have become radicalized, traveled back to Jamaica, and carried out an assigned mission. Whatever that may have been, I shudder to think.
Terrorist groups are diversifying their appeal and their reach. The faces of terrorism are changing. Most of us are still visualizing terrorists as people who look like Osama bin Laden, olive-skinned, turban wearing Arabs. But Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab have overtaken Al Qaeda in terms of global significance. And ISIS is no cave dwelling Al Qaeda. They're a technologically sophisticated web with tentacles anywhere the Internet can reach, filled with young people searching for a cause, and black faces. Their methods demonstrate intelligence and high levels of education. Young people with cutting edge skills in videography and editing, planning, logistics, webmastery. Some of them look just like you and me. That 15-year-old boy from St. Mary is one of us, but he could also have easily become one of them, and that is frightening beyond belief.
Garissa, Kenya was considered one of the safest places in East Africa. It housed both military barracks and police headquarters. Americans felt safe inside the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Jamaicans feel safe on our borderless island nation. But who needs a plane now when terrorists are able to hide among us because they ARE us?
Je suis Kenya! Je suis Nigeria! Je suis Jamaica! Je suis humaine!
