I don’t enjoy posting links to articles like this one. I wish the article didn’t exist, that it’s nightmarish tale was a demented horror story born in a sick man’s imagination, not a reflection of true human behavior.
But sadly, sickeningly, this story is real. We can’t ignore the gruesome and depressing reality of situations like this one, where people’s ignorance leads to unjust suffering by innocent children. Until the world is aware of what’s happening, these kids won’t be saved.
So much is wrong; where do we begin? It’s not a simple scientific misunderstanding, an old wives’ tale like eating too soon before swimming, that leads to torture and execution of humans. This is a fundamentally disrupted society, one based upon hideous dogma and a lack of real education.
Teaching people that witches, in fact, don’t exist will not repair the splintered holes in this society. The damage is so tremendous, the gap between reality and an ideal so large, I don’t know what tools will stand to do the repairs.
Excerpt:
EKET, Nigeria (AP) — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.
His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.
A month later, he died.
Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.
Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
