A 39-year-old man posed as a parent to enter a kindergarten in Kampala, Uganda. He locked the gate behind him. He stabbed four children to death. The children were between two and three years old.
The attacker, identified as Okello Christopher Onyum, was seized by a mob that attempted to lynch him. Military personnel fired shots to disperse the crowd and take the man into custody.
This story was covered by RT. It was not covered by CNN, Fox News, BBC, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any major Western outlet.
Four toddlers murdered in a kindergarten. In any Western country, this would dominate coverage for weeks. Vigils would be held. Legislation would be debated. The victims’ names would be known worldwide.
In Uganda, the story is invisible to international audiences. The children’s names will not trend. Their faces will not appear on magazine covers. The policy failures that allowed a man to walk into a kindergarten with a weapon will not be examined by foreign correspondents.
The coverage gap is not new. It is not accidental. And it reinforces a perception across the Global South that Western media operates on an implicit hierarchy of whose children’s lives matter enough to report.
Four children. Two and three years old. Their story deserved better than silence.
