Posts by whrin_admin

Uganda: How My Son Escaped Child Sacrifice

19th October: Thirty-sevenyear old Hudson Ssemwanga had just received news that the head of his seven-year-old son, Allan Ssembatya, had been severed in Kayunga district. The day was October 21, 2009. As strangers passed by, a neighbour, whom Ssemwanga only knew as Joshua, approached. “He asked what the problem was, but I was tongue-tied. He noticed my phone was ringing and he picked it up. The caller reiterated: “Tell Ssemwanga that his son’s head has been cut off,” recalls Ssemwanga. Joshua helped him up and found a car to take them to Kayunga. Half way through, Ssemwanga’s phone rang again. “This time the caller said Ssembatya was still alive and was admitted to Kayunga Hospital.” The duo got to the hospital at 1:00am. When he saw his son, Ssemwanga thought he would not survive. He looked lifeless. He had a drip on and the doctors said he needed more blood. Unfortunately, there were only two bottles of blood group O left, yet he needed four. Read more here.

South Africa: ‘Witch’ Killers Get Twenty Year Jail Terms

17th of October: Three men who battered to death two women they suspected of practising witchcraft were each jailed for 20 years by the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Thursday. Judge Rishi Seegobin said that in modern South Africa a person’s subjective belief that another practised witchcraft did not justify that person’s murder. The sentences should reflect society’s indignation at the murders, he said. Read more here.

Policy Mic: The Human Rights Tragedy You Don’t Know About in East Africa

16th October: In East African nations like Tanzania, albinos have to deal with both the medical issues they face and something which may be much more deadly: witch doctors. Witch doctors work from the superstition that an albino’s body parts can lead to power and wealth. Read more here.

Nigeria: Woman Abandons Three ‘Witch’ Children in Rehab Centre

15th October: A middle age woman, name withheld, has abandoned three of her children near the CRARN Children Centre, Eket. The children who were in good health, apart from minor injuries and scars of old wounds inflicted on them as a result of intermittent torture and wild exorcisms performed in churches, said their mother brought them to a nearby market, adjacent to the centre and ran away with a bike man who brought them there. Read more here.

India: Woman Killed Over Witchcraft Suspicion in Odisha

15th October: A 55-year-old woman was hacked to death by a youth who suspected her of practicing black magic on him in Odisha’s Sundergarh district. The police arrested Nayak Munda (28) who allegedly committed crime in highly intoxicated condition. The accused was under the impression that he suffered due to the black magic being done by the woman. Read more here.

Nigeria: Police Rescue Two Children from ‘Witch’ Killers

October the 17th: The Police Divisional Headquarters in Eket Akwa Ibom State have rescued two children  from the hands of ‘witch’ killers who are in the habit of attacking and killing children abandoned on the streets by parents after being dubbed witches in the churches. The children who were male and female, age 8 and 6 are from Ibeno Local Government Area were rescued by the police on a tipoff by some concerned citizens  who witnessed how the children were tied up in a for hours stake  and beaten with sticks and cables were later  taken to the Child’s Right and Rehabilitation Network (CRARN). Read more here.

India: Child Found Murdered, ‘Sacrifice’ Angle Not Ruled Out

15th October: A three-and-a-half year old boy’s body was found inside a sack dumped in a village in Sirsa district with police suspecting it to be a case of ‘sacrificial killing’ by some “tantrik” (witch doctor). Arun went missing under mysterious circumstances when he was playing near his house. Read more here.

India: In Assam village, 35 ‘witches’ await ‘purification’

October the 16th: A tribal village on the Majuli island in Assam has kept 35 people — several of them women — virtually under house arrest for the past 10 days before a “purification” ceremony absolves them of sins ranging from alleged killing to harming fellow residents through witchcraft. Read more here.

India: Cops Reject Human Sacrifice Theory

15th October: On Sunday morning, people in the area found Rathinasamy dead and mistook it as a human sacrifice as the man’s body had many cuts and injuries. The rumour of a human sacrifice at Mettur spread in the area among the people, causing panic and fear. Since, the presiding deity of the temple was Muniappan, people started believing that it could have been a human sacrifice. Read more here.

Congo-Kinshasa: UNHCR Helps Young Albino On the Run From Witchcraft

Anaclet smiles and looks lovingly at his young son, but the wind blowing off nearby Lake Tanganyika can’t cool his feverish mind. He worries deeply about the safety of Jeff, who is different from most people. Father and son are refugees from Democratic Republic of the Congo, but they haven’t fled arbitrary violence or war like most of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the Great Lakes region. They are on the run because bad people want to kill six-year-old Jeff, so that they can harvest his organs for witchcraft. Read more here.

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