Another embattled religious “freedom”
And speaking of tensions between religious freedom and other rights – Helen Ukpabio is another who is attempting to use the law to make her “religious rights” trump other rights.
Since “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” was first shown in Britain, in 2008, Mr. Itauma’s home state has adopted a law against accusing children of witchcraft. But Ms. Ukpabio went on the offensive by suing the state government, Mr. Foxcroft, Mr. Itauma and Leo Igwe, a Nigerian antisuperstition activist.
In the lawsuit, Ms. Ukpabio alleges that the state law infringes on her freedom of religion. She seeks 2 billion naira (about $13 million) in damages, as well as “an order of perpetual injunction restraining the respondents” from interfering with or otherwise denouncing her church’s “right to practice their religion and the Christian religious belief in the existence of God, Jesus Christ, Satan, sin, witchcraft, heaven and hellfire.”
In other words, in the name of religious freedom, Ms. Ukpabio seeks a gag order on anyone who disagrees with her.
Anyone who disagrees with her and who wants to protect children from accusations of “witchcraft” and the resulting abandonment and/or torture and possibly death. She wants the “freedom” to tell people that some children are witches and that she can detect them.
Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks. Her culpability is a central contention of “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” a documentary that will make its American debut Wednesday on HBO2.
Those disturbed by the needless immiseration of innocent children should beware. “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” follows Gary Foxcroft, founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.
A freedom too far.
Oh, but this doesn’t count, because Ukpabio isn’t practicing real religion. I’m sure if she sat down and had a nice chat with, say, Karen Armstrong, Ukpabio would realize that she was corrupting the nice, nebulous, huggable version of Christianity that the Bible really tells us about (you just have to read it right).
(I know this is kind of off-topic, but Armstrong and her ilk have been driving me batty lately.)
Perhaps this woman should be given freedom from breathing.
This is so utterly perverse. But really, it’s different from the bleating of “oppressed Christians” in the west only by degree, not in kind. That’s meant to be an indictment of western Christians who characterize their religious freedom as including the right to harm/persecute/lie about other people, mind, not as a defense of Ukpabio’s depravity.
It’s more a freedom of speech issue, and of course this is exactly the sort of situation where there should be an exception to the general presumption of freedom of speech.
“Speech” that is essentially action – in this case, incitement to murder and to maim children – doesn’t deserve the legal protections to which mere “free speech” is ordinarily entitled.
It’s an appalling story, but surely the real problem is: why do people in that society take it seriously? Are they really _that_ uneducated and backward?
Or perhaps they’re afraid of the preachers.
Exactly my point, Jeff. This is exactly where freedom of speech runs out.
This is exactly the sample of inability to think and empathize of others. I guess there is something wrong in her education… or her brain nerves
Another thing. If she has special witch-detecting powers, then she is a witch too. No?
She may well have some kind of mental illness. There are such people everywhere, but, returning to my above point, if nobody took her seriously, it wouldn’t matter, so why are these people so credulous?
It looks as though B&W’s correspondent Leo Igbe has an uphill fight on his hands.
Funny, I said almost exactly that yesterday to a correspondent – that Leo is fighting an uphill battle.
Uphill and very damn dangerous for him – we know he’s already been physically attacked and framed on a murder charge along with his father. Ukpabio is now citing that charge to discredit him. (Why was he framed? Because he helped a girl who was raped by a powerful local honcho, to press charges.)
About a year ago I saw this online and brought up the problem with Africa’s “witches” to my liberal, feminist, New Agey friends, expecting them to condemn the idea of witches. Thought it would be a no brainer. They’re killing women and children for being witches. Like in the Middle Ages.
No. Turns out there are witches with real powers to cast spells and bring down illness through curses, and, instead, it was “western science” which was condemned for its illiberal failure to respect and believe ancient native wisdom.
One of my friends knows, from personal experience, that there are witches, because she got very sick when living temporarily in Brazil, and turns out she had been cursed by a witch. Getting very sick when living temporarily in Brazil is otherwise hard to explain.
She eventually got better after she finally made gifts and apologies, and the curse was lifted. Which, otherwise, would not have happened.
This is one of the *very* rare occasions where references to shouting FIRE! in a theatre are appropriate.
God, Sastra!
It’s so hard to remain minimally civil in such situations…
My apologies for mis-spelling Mr. Igwe’s name.
Hey Sastra, next time one of these friends gets ill, tell them that I lift curses too, and that an infallible cure is to make a transfer into my bank account. Fifty-fifty?
It is unlikely that there is anything wrong with Ukpabio other than that she is a completely amoral power seeker. As in other religious situations it is all about power to control and manipulate other people. I’m sure she makes a good living at it and has no pangs of conscience whatever, just as those good churchmen of history tortured and killed witches and burned heretics.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, sailor1031, but I’m not sure it matters much. That is, whether Ukpabio is a madwoman or a more ordinarily deluded true believer or an amoral, power-seeking con artist is, while not entirely beside the point, only a small slice of the picture: The key to genuinely understanding this sort of thing lies on the other side of that power equation. Ukpabio could not be a manipulator without those she manipulates, her faith-blinded followers, all willing to take her seriously just because she drapes her wildly unbelievable claims in the cloak of a nonexistent God’s nonexistent will.