For more than a decade, Africa’s soil has been soaked with innocent blood; the blood of black men, women, and children who are being slaughtered simply for being Christian. In Nigeria alone, what began as an insurgency in 2009 has evolved into one of the deadliest ongoing persecutions in the modern world. Boko Haram and ISIS-affiliated groups have torn through villages, burning homes, desecrating churches, and abducting families, leaving a trail of unimaginable devastation.
Reports estimate that more than 1,25,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the rise of these extremist movements. Each statistic conceals a story of pain a mother searching for her kidnapped child, a priest murdered at the altar, a village erased overnight. Yet, despite the horror, the world remains silent, and the blood of the black Christian continues to flow unnoticed.
Nigeria, the largest nation in Africa, stands today as the most dangerous place on earth to be a Christian. The terror reigns strongest in the northern and central states, where groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) operate with impunity. They invade towns during the night, slaughter entire families, and leave churches smouldering in ashes.
Villages in Borno, Kaduna, and Benue have been turned into graveyards, and clergy are frequently targeted priests kidnapped, tortured, and executed for refusing to renounce their faith. Christian women are kidnapped and sold into slavery; children are indoctrinated into militant camps. The chilling echoes of the 2014 Chibok abductions still haunt the conscience of the world or at least, it should. But that conscience, it seems, has turned numb.
Beyond Nigeria, the storm of persecution spreads like wildfire across Africa. In Mozambique, militants tied to ISIS have terrorized the Cabo Delgado province, beheaded villagers and destroying Christian missions. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Islamist militias have massacred hundreds of worshippers in the Ituri and North Kivu regions. In Sudan, Mali, and Somalia, the fragile Christian minorities live under the shadow of violence, often denied the right even to exist.
Churches are reduced to rubble, and crosses are replaced with the black flag of terror. The world that rallied for Ukraine and Palestine has no space for these forgotten victims. Their blood is not photographed, their cries are not televised, and their pain is not politicized enough to trend on global media.
In Kerala, we often pride ourselves on being the torchbearers of secularism and social conscience. We fill our streets with rallies for distant wars and chant slogans for oppressed peoples across borders and rightly so. But the question burns: when will our compassion become consistent? Why do our cultural leaders and political activists, who are swift to condemn violence elsewhere, remain silent about the Christian genocide in Africa?
Why do we cry for justice in Gaza but not for the children massacred in Kaduna or Benue? Why do we weep for the women of Palestine but not for the young Christian girls enslaved in Boko Haram’s camps? If our secularism is selective, if our compassion depends on the color of skin or the geography of suffering, then it is not humanism it is hypocrisy.
The blood of a black Christian child is no different from that of a Palestinian, an Israeli, or an Indian. It is red. It carries the same pain, the same sacredness of life. To ignore one while amplifying another is a moral failure that erodes the very foundation of human solidarity. Kerala, a land that boasts of education and enlightenment, must awaken to this truth.
We must use our platforms, our pulpits, and our pens to speak for those who have been silenced. The churches and seminaries of Kerala should echo with prayers and awareness campaigns for the victims of religious extremism in Africa. Our student unions and human rights groups should raise this issue with the same passion they show for other global causes. The media, which finds time to dissect every Western debate, must dedicate its space to the forgotten Christians of Africa.
True secular humanity is not about choosing whose pain is convenient to protest; it is about standing for every victim of violence, regardless of race or faith. If we can take to the streets for Palestine, we must also raise our voices for Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and every land where innocent lives are crushed by fanaticism. The measure of our morality lies not in our slogans but in our silence and today, that silence is deafening.
The world cannot afford to be blind to this ongoing genocide. Every Christian slaughtered in Nigeria, every child orphaned by Boko Haram, every priest executed for his faith each of them is a testament to the global failure of conscience. As citizens of a world that claims to be civilized, and as people of Kerala who claim to be secular and just, we must reject selective outrage. Humanity is indivisible, and suffering knows no color or creed.
The question that haunts the conscience of this age remains: Isn’t the blood of a black man and a Christian red? Until we answer it with truth and courage not just with words but with action, we remain guilty of silence before the grave of our own humanity.