Hollywood, CA ( The Hollywood Times) 10/23/2018 – “They killed her mommy and daddy in order to take her. They took her and locked her in the room. About ten men then raped her. We heard her screaming and crying. We couldn’t sleep that night. The next morning one of the girls was asked to bring some food to her room. When I went back to collect the plates… her whole body was covered in blood and she couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t talk. I asked her what happened and she told me and cried. Then I was asked to leave the room. Nobody was allowed to go into her room. That’s how she died, alone in that room, “ says Zahra, one of the Forgotten Girls who was kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group.
Boko Haram is an Islamic terrorist organization and was ranked as the world’s deadliest terror group by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015.
After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram’s increasing radicalisation led to a violent uprising in July 2009 in which its leader was summarily executed. Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja. The government’s establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.[1]
In 2016 they abducted 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. Parents and others took to social media to complain about the government’s perceived slow and inadequate response. The news caused international outrage against Boko Haram and the Nigerian government. On April 30th and May 1st, protests demanding greater government action were held in several Nigerian cities. Major Western cities followed soon after.
In 2017, three years after the abduction 82 Chibok schoolgirls were released in exchange for five militant leaders. The documentary follows their paths and recovery. They are not allowed to talk about what happened while they were captive due to safety reasons but we get a chance to look into their Personal Diaries- never heard or published before.
Unfortunately Chibok girls are not the only victims- there are hundreds of thousands unreported girls nobody talks about- Forgotten Girls. They did not receive the same attention and support from media, celebrities and the government, instead they live in refugee camps, not being able to afford the help that they need and being estranged from their families because of fear that during their time with Boko Haram they had been radicalized.
Stolen Daughters premiered on HBO on Oct. 22 and it is a very saddening glimpse into a completely different world that unfortunately is very real.
