In 2014, some 122 men, teenagers, and even children as young as 10 raided a village in Papua New Guinea, burnt down houses and killed seven people. Among those murdered were two infant girls who were snatched from their mothers' arms and hacked to death with machetes. The Marauders were witch-hunters!

The abuse of the rights of children as a result of one superstitious belief or another are numerous and are not so new in Africa. Stories abound of people being tortured on the accusation of one superstitious thing or another. Many children end up dying, every year while undergoing such tortures.

These stories abound because parents of most of these children are deep in superstition found in most religious beliefs.
These beliefs range from witchcraft, parents-suffering-reincarnating children believed to die at birth or after some time and then return to be born again.

Below is a list of cases of abuses meted to children for one superstitious belief or another.


1. PAPUA NEW GUINEA, 2017

In 2013, Leniata Kepari from Mount Hagen, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea was accused of witchcraft and was summarily convicted by a 'court of the angry mob'.

They stripped her naked, sexually abused her with weapons while people looked on. Eventually, they killed and burnt her body. She had a daughter whose story is the reason we are even reading about her mom.

Fast-forward to November of 2017, Leniata's daughter went visiting another village called Tukusanda (in Papua New Guinea) with her father, where she was immediately identified as the daughter of the 'witch' who was killed in 2013.

The people concluded that, as the daughter of a witch, the girl, who was merely 6-year-old, must have inherited witchcraft from her mother and was, therefore, capable of killing them.

They caught the girl and started torturing her (maybe to extract a confessional statement from her) for up to 5 whole days.

Using machetes previously heated with fire, they peeled off the child's skin which made her suffer first-degree burns.

While this was going on, the child's father was securely held so he was unable to get help or make phone calls to relevant authorities.

Luckily for the girl, she was rescued by members of a local charity organization (Papua New Guinea Tribal Foundation) and Chilean Missionary, Anton Lutz.

See the rest here: http://www.listclan.com/2018/01/10-cases--child-rights-abuses-superstition.html

Some hair-raising stories up there!!

How about tribal marks given to some children because they believe they are abiku or ogbanje?

debolayinka:
How about tribal marks given to some children because they believe they are abiku or ogbanje?

They count as abuses too