By now it’s become public knowledge that two members of the Vision family, Rudy Rochman and Noam Leibman, together with journalist David Benaym, were abducted by the Nigerian Department of State Services (DSS) on July 9.
After nearly a week of trying to contain the story in order to assist our friends and the efforts of their families through back channel negotiations, the story broke on Tuesday that Rudy, Noam and David are being detained in the Nigerian capital of Abuja for allegedly making contact with anti-government separatists calling for an independent state of Biafra.
In truth, however, Rudy and Noam have been working for over a year to create a documentary series titled “We Were Never Lost” (David joined the team to assist with production) and traveled to Nigeria with no real understanding of the local politics or any desire to involve themselves in the Biafra movement.
The purpose of the documentary is to educate people about the cultural experiences of lesser-known Jewish communities across multiple African countries, as well as places like India, China, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
As part of their visit, Rudy, Noam and David had visited the Igbo community, including the Igbo King Eze Chukwuemeka Eri on July 7, which Rudy had posted on his social media accounts.
Members of the Biafra movement, however, who largely come from the Igbo community, have hijacked the images of the filmmakers gifting a Torah scroll to the community in an attempt to connect it to their own political objectives. Anyone familiar with the nature of the film project knows that no such connection exists and that the Biafra activists have twisted a simple gesture in an effort to promote their own agenda.
The Biafra movement, led by the country’s minority Igbo community, has deep historical roots. In 1967, following intense regional violence, the Igbo people formed the secessionist state of Biafra, triggering a brutal two-year civil war during which the Nigerian military imposed a blockade of the territory that caused between 500,000 to 2 million civilians to die of starvation. Biafra ultimately surrendered to the Nigerian government but nationalist anti-government sentiment remained among the Igbo people and has increased in recent years.
Conflict erupted again inn 2021, with fighting between Nigeria and separatist forces in the Biafra region.
The families and friends of the detainees are asserting that their work in Nigeria carries absolutely no political motive. They went to Nigeria solely for the purpose of creating an educational film about lost Jewish communities and do not support the actions of any political groups that have attempted to attach their own agendas to the project.
We hope that the Nigerian authorities will speedily come to the conclusion that Rudy, Noam and David have no political motives and that the three should be immediately released from custody and allowed to return home.
