BBC News - June 1, 2011
Nigeria 'baby farm' girls rescued by Abia state police
Nigerian police have raided a hospital in the south-eastern city of Aba, rescuing 32 pregnant girls allegedly held by a human-trafficking ring.
Aged between 15 and 17 years, the girls were locked up and used to produce babies, said Abia state's police chief.
These were then allegedly sold for ritual witchcraft purposes or adoption.
But the hospital's owner denied running a "baby farm", saying it was a foundation to help teenagers with unwanted pregnancies.
The UN organisation for the welfare of children, Unicef, estimates that at least 10 children are sold daily across Nigeria, where human-trafficking is ranked the third most common crime after economic fraud and drug-trafficking.
But the BBC's Fidelis Mbah in the southern city of Port Harcourt says it is very rare for traffickers to be caught and prosecuted.Male babies prized
Abia state Police Commissioner Bala Hassan said four babies, already sold in an alleged human-trafficking deal but not yet collected, were also recovered in the raid on The Cross Foundation hospital.
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (Naptip), the organisation charged with fighting human-trafficking in Nigeria, says their investigations show that babies are sold for up to $6,400 (£3,900) each, depending on the sex of the baby.
Male babies are more prized, our correspondent says.
In some parts of the country, babies killed as part of witchcraft rituals are believed to make the charms more powerful, he says.
Human traffickers also put the children up for illegal adoption.
Poor, unmarried women face tough choices if they get pregnant in Nigeria, often facing exclusion from society, correspondents say.
Natip says desperate teenagers with unplanned pregnancies are sometimes lured to clinics and then forced to turn over their babies.
Some of the girls rescued in Aba told the police that after their new-born babies were sold, they were given $170 by the hospital owner.
The police said the proprietor of The Cross Foundation, Dr Hyacinth Orikara, is likely to face charges of child abuse and human trafficking.
Our correspondent says the buying or selling of babies is illegal in Nigeria and can carry a 14-year jail term.
The police carried out similar raids on such clinics in neighbouring Enugu state in 2008.
Three years ago, a Nigerian woman was jailed in the UK for trying to smuggle a baby into the country in order to get on the list for a council flat.
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AlterNet - June 10, 2011Teens Locked Up and Forced to Give Birth to Kids Sold into Slavery -- How Can This Happen, and What Can We Do About It?
By Jessica Mack, AlterNet
Last week, BBC broke the story of what has been dubbed a “baby farm” in southern Nigeria. Nigerian police raided the grounds, “rescuing” more than 30 poor teenagers who had reportedly been locked up and forced to bring their unwanted pregnancies to term, only to relinquish their babies to human traffickers or purveyors of body parts for witchcraft. It’s the stuff of a horror film, and, oddly enough, it is.
Except this is really happening, to real women, in real time. BBC first reported a “baby farm”raid in a nearby Nigerian city back in 2008. Clearly, there is something very wrong here – both in what’s happening to these women in Nigeria, but also in the way that these issues are being conveyed in the global media.
Human trafficking remains an outstanding problem in Nigeria, despite earning the US State Department’s “stamp of approval” on its anti-trafficking efforts. Since 2009, the annualTrafficking in Persons Report has ranked Nigeria as a Tier 1 country, signifying the government’s full compliance with the US’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Though “compliance” doesn’t necessarily mean effective prevention of or protection from trafficking. With this “baby farm” situation, we see the tenuous value that such rankings have for reality on the ground. While the Nigerian government has stepped up its anti-trafficking efforts in recent years, increasing prison sentences and fines still won’t address precipitating factors.
To start, women in Nigeria, and especially young women, are undervalued. There is a dearth of ready access to affordable and high quality reproductive health care services, and moreover social and cultural taboos about accessing such services. Early marriage and early pregnancy remain common, and you can guess that maternal mortality is also quite high. Abortion is restricted almost entirely, and highly stigmatized beyond that.
BBC writes, “Desperate teenagers with unplanned pregnancies are sometimes lured to clinics and then forced to turn over their babies.” Horrible, and it gets worse. Desperate teenagers with unwanted pregnancies also seek fatal care from quack abortion providers. Women regularly play Russian roulette with concoctions (bleach and ground glass) and gruesome instruments (knitting needles) just to preserve some semblance of reproductive choice.
The operative issue here is “desperate teenagers with unwanted pregnancies.” Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, no small claim, and almost 45% of the population is under the age of 15. This is not some measly minority; young people comprise the mitochondria of the nation and are the future of this emerging country. Yet their health and rights needs are so often cast aside.
In a 2009 report, the Guttmacher Institute maintained that national policies to protect the reproductive health and rights of young people have not been sufficiently implemented or enacted. Why hasn’t there been more done to address the unique health and rights needs of this set?
Perhaps it’s a little like national anti-trafficking efforts: there on paper, mysteriously absent or positively ineffective on the ground. This vast divide between vision and reality is what local and global advocates should push the government to reconcile. The recent presidential election, for example, might have been an opportune time to raise these neglected issues. Sure there’s a lot else going on, but there always is. The sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people are chronically marginalized, so perhaps it’s time to force the issue.
There are amazing national and international reproductive health advocates and providers doing work to counteract the heaps of risks and vulnerabilities which too often complicate women’s lives in Nigeria, but the battle is uphill. It is past due that the government put some muscle behind this. The US should hold more accountability, too, than simply superficial compliance on trafficking. They should urge the Nigerian government to examine the intersection of healthcare system failures and trafficking vulnerabilities.
These might have been salient points for the BBC to touch upon in its coverage of this issue, especially since four years after they first reported on baby farms, here we are with no discernible change. Alas.
Given rightful sensitivities about how Africa and Africans are portrayed by almost everyone else in the world and/or especially the global media, the BBC needs to check the caliber of their coverage. For starters, the 2011 article on “baby farms,” includes at least one typo, and a sentence cribbed verbatim from the 2008 piece. It’s not clear where or when the awful phrase “baby farm” was coined, but I must say that’s macabre marketing genius right there. BBC’s use of the term in its title is sensationalistic – link baiting even – and distracts from the complexity and gravity of the issue.
Human trafficking, human rights abuses, false imprisonment, reproductive choice, I mean there’s a lot to take in here. This is a highly disturbing scenario, but only further perverted by the use of this phrase. While there are human rights and human lives at stake here, the term caricatures a complex set of issues, and objectifies those involved – the babies, the young women, and even Nigeria itself.
For some readers perusing this eye-catching article (also covered in the New York Daily News, natch), this may be their first introduction to social justice or health issues in Nigeria. Let’s see what they’ll get: baby farm, witchcraft, desperate, poverty, corruption, crime, and savagery. The article “otherizes” these issues, painting Nigeria as a horrid place where such a ghastly things occur.
Yet, this notion of using pregnancy as a fulcrum for manipulating women is not so “other,” not so savage and foreign after all. It happens all over the world, and it happens right here in the US. For instance, increased discussion and examination of crisis pregnancy centers is revealing just how manipulative and coercive their tactics can be. Who do they often target? Poor, desperate young women with unwanted pregnancies. In addition, one could argue that, in fact, no one is more immersed in finding ways to manipulate women via reproductive rights than the US Congress.
BBC states the obvious: “poor, unmarried women face tough choices if they get pregnant in Nigeria.” Um, yes. I think we can safely substitute any country in the world in that sentence and it would read just as true. In fact, we can say that young women face tremendous reproductive health challenges all over the world. Now that we know this, what are we going to do about it?
This article was found at:
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Posts
Where child sacrifice is a business
ReplyDeleteBy Chris Rogers BBC News, October 11,2011
Kampala -- The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda's capital, Kampala, are gripped by fear. Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home from school. In playgrounds and on the roadside are posters warning of the danger of abduction by witch doctors for the purpose of child sacrifice.
The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until about three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country's economy. The mutilated bodies of children have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of human sacrifice.
Many believe that members of the country's new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth. At the Kyampisi Childcare Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called Heal Our Land, End Child Sacrifice. To hear dozens of young voices singing such shocking words epitomises how ritual murder has become part of everyday life here.
"Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer," the pastor says. "They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business."
The pastor and his parishioners are lobbying the government to regulate witch doctors and improve police resources to investigate these crimes. According to official police figures, there was one case of child sacrifice in 2006; in 2008 the police say they investigated 25 alleged ritual murders, and in 2009, another 29. The Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, launched in response to the growing numbers, says the ritual murder rate has slowed, citing a figure of 38 cases since 2006.
Pastor Sewakiryanga disputes the police numbers, and says there are more victims from his parish than official statistics for the entire country.
The work of the police task force has been strongly criticised by the UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign. It says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources.
...
Pastor Sewakiryanga says without the full force of the law, there is little that can be done to protect Uganda's children from the belief in the power of human sacrifice.
"The children do not have voices, their voices have been silenced by the law and the police not acting, and the people who read the newspapers do nothing, so we have to make a stand and do whatever it takes to stamp out this evil, we can only pray that the government will listen."
read the full article at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15255357
Ritual to ‘exorcise girl’s demons’
ReplyDeleteby Neil Oelofse - Cape Times, South Africa November 21 2011
A Humansdorp priest and five of the African Gospel Church congregation have been accused of murdering a seven-year-old girl during a bizarre exorcism ritual, believing that her epilepsy was caused by demons.
Pastor Lonwabo Thando, 30, and Mhlabelesi Nodaka, 22, Unathi Norushu, 22, Nteboheng Thukani, 21, and Busisiwe Thukani, 24, appeared in the Humansdorp Magistrate’s Court last week charged with murdering Mihlali Mazantsi.
They will stay in jail till they apply for bail today, along with a 32-year-old man who was also part of the “prayer group” which apparently tried to do the exorcism.
Police spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Priscilla Naidu said the last suspect was arrested at the weekend. She said police would oppose bail for all the accused.
They are also charged with the attempted murder of a 25-year-old woman who was allegedly locked in a house in KwaNomzamo township for four weeks and repeatedly assaulted.
Mihlali was apparently sent from her home in Keiskammahoek to the church by her mother, Nomaxabiso Mazantsi, to be cured of epilepsy with a “healing miracle”.
Mazantsi told the Cape Times yesterday that her daughter started having epileptic fits in May.
“The fits stopped but started up again in September. We took her to the doctor and the traditional healer, but nothing helped.”
The church in Humansdorp was recommended by friends.
“We were told that other people were healed there. I put my faith in God. I wanted them to heal Mihlali.” Mazantsi said her father took Mihlali to Humansdorp and left her in the care of the church.
“They told us the fits were caused by demons which had to be removed through prayer.”
She travelled to Humansdorp a few days later to find her child vomiting and suffering from diarrhoea. She slept overnight in the same house as her child, but was initially not allowed close to her.
“They told me she was getting better. The pastor said she was vomiting because the demons were leaving Mihlali.”
Mazantsi said she was encouraged to attend a church service in a marquee tent set up by the church near the house where her daughter was being kept, and was later allowed to go to her bedside.
“Her face was swollen and her left eye was closed. There was a bruise over her eye. I tried to lift her up to me to hug her, but she said her body was sore. Then she coughed and started to vomit again.”
Mazantsi said Pastor Thando shook her daughter by the shoulders while calling out her name. “Then pastor took her to hospital in his BMW. I followed in our car.”
A doctor who examined the girl told the mother it was “too late”.
“The doctor was angry. He wanted to know who had done this. He said he was calling the police,” said Mazantsi.
She said a post-mortem examination had revealed liver damage and a number of external and internal injuries.
Naidu said the woman who filed the charge of attempted murder did not want to be named.
“She is a member of the community and fears for her life.” She was given a medical examination and found to have injuries and bruises all over her body.
According to reports, Kwanomzamo residents celebrated the arrest of the priest and the congregants.
They said church members often ran through the township after midnight making a noise and accused people who did not attend church of practising witchcraft.
http://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/ritual-to-exorcise-girl-s-demons-1.1182768
Americans Should Protest Nigerian Witch-Hunter's Visit
ReplyDeleteby Michael Mungai, Huffington Post January 11, 2012
If you live in the U.S. and you are:
•In bondage
•Having bad dreams
•Under a witchcraft attack or oppression
•Possessed by mermaid spirits or other evil spirits
•Barren and having frequent miscarriages
•Experiencing an unsuccessful life of disappointment
•Experiencing financial impotency with difficulties
•Facing victimization and a lack of promotion
•Experiencing a stagnant life with failures
...You need not wait for too long. Helen Ukpabio, a Nigerian evangelist, will be traveling to the United States in March where she will be preaching in Texas. All ye people in the U.S. who have been struggling with the possession of mermaid spirits no longer have to be like fish out of water, someone's finally coming to shore you up.
While it is laughable that there are credulous people in this world who believe in such fishy claims, the real issue that should trouble every American is that their impending guest is also a notorious child-witch hunter. Ukpabio alleges that Satan constantly manifests himself in the bodies of children through demonic possession, turning them into witches and wizards. Condemned as witches, these children are splashed with acid, buried alive, immersed in fire or expelled from their communities. According to Nigerian humanist campaigner Leo Igwe, Ukpabio "is a Christian fundamentalist and a Biblical literalist. She uses her sermons, teachings and prophetic declarations to incite hatred, intolerance and persecution of alleged witches and wizards." Ukpabio, we learn from Igwe, claims to be an ex-witch, who later founded her own church to pursue her "anointed mission" of delivering people from witchcraft. Her ministry's services include deliverance sessions that identify and cast out demons. Her church has extended witch- hunting branches all over Nigeria and even to other countries.
This won't be Ukpabio's first trip to the United States. In her last visit to Houston, Texas in 2010, she defended herself by arguing that her critics pick on her because she is an African. She cited J.K Rowling's Harry Potter series, arguing that if Westerners do not take Rowling's work seriously, then she (Ukpabio) is a hapless victim of Western racism. However, while Rowling's readers tend to buy brooms, hats and "magic wands" for their children to play with, parents inspired by Ukpabio are more likely to buy machetes and physically confront the alleged demons living in their children's bodies. Also, citing Western interference and racism has now become the mantra for many unscrupulous Africans pursuing self-serving ends. They unfairly take advantage of Africa's injurious history with the West, a topic that elicits sentimental reactions from most Africans whenever it is invoked.
"If a child under the age of two screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan," Ukpabio writes in her book, Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft. In many rural African settings, these symptoms are common in almost all babies. In a country where more than 10 percent of children die before they reach five years, what these babies need is immediate medical attention. By instructing gullible Nigerian parents to persecute their own children, she continues to enrich herself, through her books and remittances from exorcisms. In this, she joins the growing list of televangelists who are fleecing poor Africans all over the continent, promising "miracles" for a fee.
continued in next comment:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-mungai/americans-should-protest-_b_1191387.html
continued from previous comment:
ReplyDeleteI first learned of her nefarious campaign in the heartbreaking documentary, Dispatches: Return to Africa's Witch Children. For the past nine years, I have worked with street children in Kenya, most of them coming from abusive backgrounds. I have watched over young boys who occasionally experience dreadful nightmares due to the trauma they endured under violent parents, guardians or relatives. This distress haunts the children for a long time and their suffering has caused substantial inhibition of their psychological and intellectual growth. It therefore disturbs me to see Ukpabio, hiding behind the immunity of religion, inflicting even worse torture on Nigerian children.
My appeal to rational Americans is to ensure that Ukpabio, with her hateful campaign against defenseless children, knows that she is not welcome in their country. She should be met with hostility similar to the protests against the Pope's visit to the United Kingdom. While we should all respect the freedom of everyone to practice their religion, this respect should stop where it starts harming those around them. Like in the popular phrase attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. In the name of religion, crimes against children continue with no justice or accountability from relevant authorities. However, protesting against Ukpabio's visit to America would be a step towards the right direction in giving a voice to her unfortunate little victims.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-mungai/americans-should-protest-_b_1191387.html
Nepalese woman accused of witchcraft and burned alive
ReplyDeleteAttack witnessed by her 9-year-old daughter
From Manesh Shrestha, CNN February 18, 2012
Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- A 40-year-old mother of two was burned alive in central Nepal after she was accused of being a witch, police said Saturday.
Dhegani Mahato was attacked and set on fire by family members and others after a shaman allegedly accused her of casting a spell to make one of her relatives sick, Police Officer Hira Mani Baral said.
The attack occurred Friday in Bagauda in Chitwan district, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, Baral said by telephone.
Police arrested 10 people, including two shamans, five women and an 8-year-old boy, in connection with the burning.
"Those arrested have confessed to their crime and will be charged with murder," Baral said.
Mahato had just finished cleaning a cowshed early in the morning when she was attacked, Baral said.
She was beaten with sticks and rocks before being doused with kerosene and set afire, an attack witnessed by her 9-year-old daughter, according to the local police report.
Neighbors told police they were alerted to the attack but by then it was too late to save her.
Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai appealed to the people not to heed to shamans and faith healers.
The government announced 1 million Nepalese rupees (about $14,000) in compensation for Mahato's two children.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/18/world/asia/nepal-witchcraft-burning/index.html