Socially Acceptable
God almighty. There’s just no end to it. Hell and damnation.
A BBC reporter went to Angola to look into links between witchcraft, poverty and the spread of churches that mix ‘traditional African beliefs and evangelical Christianity.’
Stepping inside Mr Kitoko’s “clinic” was like entering Bedlam. Many of the so-called patients were chained to the walls and floor. A boy of 15 had been shackled here since January…In a darkened room, six men were chained to the walls and floor. A fight broke out over food. One man tried to stab another with a shard of glass.
And it gets much, much worse.
Lying on the floor of the main hall was the limp, bloated body of an eight-year-old boy. Domingo Jose was barely conscious, his face, belly, arms, legs, even his fingers gorged and inflamed. He was barely alive. Mr Kitoko took a large swig from a glass bottle and spat water into Jose’s face. The child winced, too weak to cry out. Mud was smeared on his belly. The priest grabbed and twisted at Jose’s groin.
The BBC crew tried to get help – but it took a few days for help to arrive.
On the dusty streets of the Palanca Township, we stumbled upon a small Pentecostal church. Entering a small concrete out-house, we found a shocking sight. Sitting on the floor was a terrified, near naked girl of eight, her head shaven. She cowered as her mother and a pastor shouted at her. This was an exorcism, the pastor told us. The mother’s marriage had broken down, it was the child’s fault as she was possessed with Kindoki. Something had been rubbed into the girl’s eyes as part of this ritual. Her ordeal had already lasted three days, and there was another 24 hours to go. The pastor dismissed the risk the child could die from such treatment. He said: “Why should the child die? If the child dies, it means the child is evil.”
Shit. It has everything, doesn’t it. The child is stripped, shaven, on the floor: humiliated. She has her mother and the pastor shouting at her – she’s rejected and reviled by her own mother and by the holy guy. And then the physical torture just for good measure. And she’s all of eight years old – just like the child in London who was tortured the same way. It’s enough to make you scream.
Angola has been wracked by nearly 30 years of civil war. Many children have been orphaned, cared for by aunts, uncles, the extended family. But they can’t afford to keep them. It is socially unacceptable to push a child out because of poverty. But if they are possessed, it’s a different matter.
Custom is a wonderful thing. It’s socially unacceptable to push a child out, but it’s just fine to chain him to a wall, strip her, shave his head, shout at her, spit in his face, rub peppers in her eyes. Humans, humans, humans – the things we come up with.
Happened to catch the broadcast of that and one of the most horrifying things can’t be conveyed in the text version. While with the eight-year-old who died a few days later, you hear the reporter, live and not in a later voice-over, questioning why the healer finds it necessary to spit in his face and twist his groin and you know he knows he’s witnessing a slow murder and can do nothing about it. Nightmarish, not tossed off as a casual adjective, but like the worst dreams you’ve ever had, except no one wakes up from this.
God almighty. A slow murder with as much pain and cruelty as possible – on a young, probably orphaned, isolated child. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
C’mon! Be fair. Christianity is incompatible with all this.
Here’s your proof.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10335791
Yikes. I thought you were serious until I read the article.
“Graham Capill completed a spectacular fall from grace today when he was jailed for nine years on child sex charges.
As Christian Heritage Party leader, Graham Capill spoke out against sex before marriage and spent almost 14 years espousing “pro-family” policies.”
Pro-family…hmm…I never thought of it that way before, but I wonder how many of these ‘pro-family’ bozos are ‘pro-family’ because they want a steady supply of children to…do things to.
It was the most moving thing I have seen in a long time; the team responsible deserve some kind of award. No agenda, just reportage of the most unspeakable inhumanity. I drew my own conclusions; let’s hope thay anyone hitherto protecting this sort of evil in Europe either through ignorance or malpractice will now have no recourse but to put a stop to it…
Interesting data here.
I am hearing about these exorcisms all over the world but really taking off in the states with all forms of torture, isolation, dehydration and food withdrawal, nakedness, humiliation and even chains as well for children who have ‘strayed from the path’.
The only person I met who seemed decidedly possessed was someone who was abused by religion in the first place, belting him and screaming at him ‘if you don’t believe in Jesus that he died for your sins then your going to hell’ which he repeated every nigh which irritated the crap out of me…. So I think its the parents and the church doing all the evil and trying to pass it on to their children through dark hearts and cruelties like this.
Later of course they grow up to say stuff like ‘if you don’t have jesus your all stuffed’ ..;.. so check this out, I look up Jesus Christs own words to people who were asking rhetoriical / tautological questions, Jesus or JC simply said “you yourself have said it” or plural “you yourselves are saying it”….
What that does is shut them up without affirming or denying anything – is a non vexing way to throw their meaningless crap back at them and there is no come back…. because the issue of meaning lies with them and that’s what they are concealing, their lack of understanding what it means anyway