Read this report in the Daily Mail on December 5.
A Boko Haram commander in northern Nigeria claimed that witches caused the deaths of his children.
Women were rounded up. On November 15, about 26 of them were murdered.
This kind of murder is common enough that a citizens' group in Nigeria has been founded: Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW). The group called on Nigeria's president to do more to protect women.
On the website SaharaReporters.com, AfAW explains that
accusations happen when people attribute misfortunes to occult or supernatural causes or when people are not satisfied with ordinary, natural, or commonsensical explanations of ailments and deaths.
These murders occurred just two weeks after our American holiday of Halloween, when we dress up ourselves or our children as witches; we display pumpkins and witches in our yards.
Perhaps it's time to stop making fun of a serious problem, both in the present and in history.
Until men around the world stop using superstition to kill women, jokes about witches should be just as off-limits on Halloween as nooses hanging from trees.
To make things worse, some people are using religion to promote ideas about demon possession and witchcraft. One such person in Nigeria is Helen Ukpabio, "widely accused of causing large-scale harassment and violence against children accused of witchcraft," according to a Wikipedia report.
Dr. Leo Igwe is a founder of AfAW. His book Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective was published in 2008.
He writes:
In particular, we need to check the activities of our so called pastors and other self styled men and women of God who use the Bible or Holy books to perpetrate and justify atrocious acts and human right abuses. These religious charlatans continue to act and preach in ways that reinforce the belief in witches and provoke acts of witch accusation, persecution and killing.
Thank you to Andre Berthou in Sevres, France, for calling my attention to this problem.
