British Labour MP Kate Hoey has condemned the mainstream media for ignoring the “slaughter” of over 100 Christians in Nigeria by Muslim militants over the past three weeks.

“Christians slaughtered in Nigeria — a Commonwealth country! Is MSM [mainstream media] reporting?” the Labour MP wrote on Sunday.

“The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Post reported,” Ms Hoey continued, apparently quoting from Breitbart News’s coverage of the murders.

A Labour MP for Vauxhall in London since 1989, Ms Hoey comes from the working class, ‘Old Labour’ school of the party, backing Brexit, stricter immigration controls, and individual liberty.

Her criticism comes after Western networks and publishers have given extensive coverage to the murder of 50 Muslim worshippers who were gunned down in an attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday, but comparatively little to the African Christians killed in a spate of attacks by Fulani herdsmen Islamic extremists in the predominantly Christian Adara chiefdom of southern Kaduna in recent weeks.

Considered to be a greater terror threat to Nigerian Christians than terror group Boko Haram (West Africa’s branch of Islamic State), the Fulani killed 52 Christians last Monday in the villages of Dogonnoma, Inkirimi, and Ungwan Gora. The day before, 17 people were killed in Ungwan Barde.

In the first week of March, 32 Christians were killed in Karamar with the Muslim extremists setting fire to homes and a church, and at the end of February, 38 Christians were killed in Maro, where a church and homes were also burned.

The Fulani militants, part of a 20-million strong Fulani minority of Sahel and West Africa, were found to be responsible for 321 deaths and 72 attacks in 2017 and were responsible for more deaths than Boko Haram in 2016.

Breitbart News’s Rome Bureau Chief and faith correspondent Dr Thomas Williams condemned the “media silence” on the massacres, criticising the New York Times, Washington Post, and other major outlets for failing to cover the story at all in the United States. Dr Williams wrote:

Without exception, the mainstream media gave top billing to the shootings, with newspapers carrying the story on their front pages and television news channels leading off their broadcasts with the story.

The bizarre aspect of the coverage was not, in fact, the attention paid to a heinous crime committed in New Zealand, but the absolute silence surrounding the simultaneous massacre of scores of Christians by Muslim militants in Africa.

A report published at the beginning of this year found that up to one in nine Christians suffered from “high levels of persecution” — some 245 million people worldwide.