Nigeria: Evangelikaler Hexenwahn

Kinder werden mit Säure und kochendem Wasser übergossen, von ihren Eltern verstoßen und ausgesetzt. Ihre Angehörigen bezahlen für Teufelsaustreibungen.

And it is being done in the name of Christianity.

The Observer berichtet:

Evangelical pastors are helping to create a terrible new campaign of violence against young Nigerians. Children and babies branded as evil are being abused, abandoned and even murdered while the preachers make money out of the fear of their parents and their communities.

Die Kinder müssen nichts besonderes Tun, um als Hexen bezeichnet zu werden. Ganz normales kindliches Verhalten kann dazu führen, eine Hexe ‘zu werden’.

My youngest brother died. The pastor told my mother it was because I was a witch.

Rita told her mum she had dreamt of a lovely party where there was lots to eat and to drink. The belief is that a witch flies away to the coven at night while the body sleeps, so Rita’s sweet dream was proof enough: she was a witch and because she had shared food with her sibling - the way witchcraft is spread - both were abandoned.

Und dann beginnt die Tortur:

Three men came to my house. I didn’t know these men. My mother left the house. Left these men. They beat me.’ She pushes her fists under her chin to show how her father lay, stretched out on his stomach on the floor of their hut, watching. After the beating there was a trip to the church for ‘a deliverance’.

A day later there was a walk in the bush with her mother. They picked poisonous ‘asiri’ berries that were made into a draught and forced down Mary’s throat. If that didn’t kill her, her mother warned her, then it would be a barbed-wire hanging. Finally her mother threw boiling water and caustic soda over her head and body, and her father dumped his screaming daughter in a field. Drifting in and out of consciousness, she stayed near the house for a long time before finally slinking off into the bush. Mary was seven.

Gerry was picked out by a ‘prophetess’ at a prayer night and named as a witch. His mother cursed him, his father siphoned petrol from his motorbike tank and spat it over his eight-year-old face. Gerry’s facial blistering is as visible as the trauma in his dull eyes. He asks every adult he sees if they will take him home to his parents: ‘It’s not them, it’s the prophetess, I am scared of her.’

Hinter diesem Hexenwahn stecken Evangelikale Christen.

Although old tribal beliefs in witch doctors are not so deeply buried in people’s memories, and although there had been indigenous Christians in Nigeria since the 19th century, it is American and Scottish Pentecostal and evangelical missionaries of the past 50 years who have shaped these fanatical beliefs. Evil spirits, satanic possessions and miracles can be found aplenty in the Bible, references to killing witches turn up in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Galatians, and literal interpretation of scriptures is a popular crowd-pleaser.

Die Ortsgeistlichen bieten gegen Bezahlung Teufelsaustreibungen an.

The chief’s niece, Mbet, was declared a witch when she was eight. Her mother, Ekaete, made her drink olive oil, then poison berries, then invited local men to beat her with sticks. The pastor padlocked her to a tree but unlocked her when her mother could not find the money for a deliverance.

Das sind keine Geschichten aus dem Mittelalter. Es spielt sich im Jahr 2007 ab; jeden Tag auf’s Neue. Und was machen die anderen Menschen, sich sich ebenfalls Christen nennen? Sie machen dass, was sie immer tun, wenn sie gefordert sind: Sie schauen weg!