Saving Africa’s Witch Children
May 26, 2010 by SocProf and tagged Activism, Collective Behavior, Environment, Human Rights, Mass Violence, Poverty, Religious Fundamentalism, Social Stigma, Structural Violence
This British documentary, airing on HBO in the US, is a horrific account of the plight of children designated as witches in parts of Nigeria, thanks to the rise of fundamentalist pentecostal churches. The pastors in these churches get wealthy by promising parents that they will deliver their children from possession. In these rural communities, parents and neighbors often take matters into their own hands and mutilate, torture, abuse and kill, burn or bury alive children designated as witches. Once stigmatized, there is simply no hope for these children.
The Nigerian government has passed a law protecting children from religious abuse but some of the states have not accepted the law and it is hard to enforce, especially with the lack of cooperation from local communities (something I touched upon in my post yesterday, the local as as potentially oppressive as any other level of governance. I would argue that stigmas are especially hard to shed in local contexts, especially small, rural communities where there is really no way out.
The movie also makes the point of how this ties up with poverty in the midst of riches in the Niger Delta and how pollution makes people sick, more likely to die young, and how these sudden deaths are blamed on witches.
Here is the video. It is not for the faint of heart.
Saving Africa’s Witch Children from Africa’s Witch Children on Vimeo.
Religious fundamentalism (mix of Christianity, traditional religion), extreme poverty and environmental degradation are a toxic brew that, as noted in Morin’s article, create a context of barbarism.
Yet another example of how structural violence often leads to interpersonal mass violence.
The organizations that rescue these children and mentioned in the film:
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