skip to main |
skip to sidebar
BY CLAIR MACDOUGALLGhanaian leaders and congenial correlation groups met in the nation's income, Accra beyond this week to usage a plan to raze the witches' camps in the northern zone, where chief a thousand women and children who support been accused of sorcery are in recent times living in expatriation.Standby Minister for Women and Secondary Family Hajia Hawawu Boya Gariba made-up the ministry would be behave everything that it might to investigate the practice of families and neighbors banishing women from communities whom they suspected of foundation witches is abolished by rural legislation that would make it illicit to associate someone of foundation a witch and little by little closing down camps and reintegrating women back now their communities."This practice has become an rush on the sense of right and wrong of our correlation," Ms. Gariba made-up at the gossip called Towards Exclusion "Witches" Camps. "The labeling of some of our kinsmen and women as witches and wizards and banishing them now camps where they postpone in brutish and woeful set is a open of their pioneer possible internship."Matchless Panel Legality Rose Owusu furthermore made-up that the practice desecrated go to regularly clauses in splinter group 5 of Ghana's 1992 Work of art. That splinter group protects possible internship and outlaws cultural practices which "dehumanize or are lethal to the physical and mental well-being of a separate." Ms. Owusu furthermore called for the come out of new legislation to refuse the camps and the practice.The witch camps of Ghana's northThere are in recent times spherical 1,000 women and 700 children living in 6 of the witches' camps in Ghana's northern zone.Numerous of them are long forgotten women who support been accused of inflicting death, disaster, and calamity on their neighbors and villages absolute sorcery, witchcraft, or "juju," a plea cast-off in the course of West Africa.The women take a hop pennant of protection within these camps, placed some detach from their communities in which they might be tortured, aching to death, or lynched, but the set of the camps are commonly indigent. The "accused witches," as they are sometimes referred to, postpone in miniature thatched mud huts, and support full permeate to feed and need pay for water from loving streams and creeks.Artificial to fleeAn long forgotten being named Bikamila Bagberi who has lived in Nabule witch quarters in Gushegu a area in the Northern Matter for the in the same way as 13 existence, told the story of how she was edgy to set her town. Proper in a headscarf, faded Top, and cotton hop, Ms. Bagberi laugh at softly with her manager bowed as a area assemblyman translated for the gossip delegates.Bagberi's nephew, her brother-in-law's son, had died by accident and what time the town prophet made-up she caused the death of the child her ancestry tried make her acknowledge to murdering him absolute sorcery. She made-up that formerly she refused she was aching with an old motorbike progress, and successive her nephew's ancestry members rubbed Ghanaian dash paste now her eyes and open wounds.The same as asked whether she might return back to her town she made-up the ancestry couldn't bring her back now the community equally of the fear that she incentive harm others. Bagberi made-up she rumored to lavish the rest of her life in the quarters.Facilitator for actionHuman internship groups support been nervousness for the layer of the witches' camps to the same degree the 1990s, but support had sharply revolution in abolishing the practice of method women suspected of witchcraft now expatriation, in part equally of lack of fan incentive and the occurrence of the belief in witchcraft in the course of Ghana. But the violent wipe out of 72-year-old Ama Hemmah in the built-up of Tema in Novermber of disappearing go out with, theoretically by six human resources, amid them a Pentecostal cleric and his neighbors who are accused of dousing her with kerosene and location her rest, caused societal dislike and ready headlines across the world. For instance Hemmah's death, notions pieces and articles about the subject support featured in Ghana's grand newspapers, along the length with publish stores on national facts programs.Emmanuel Anukun-Dabson from Christian Outreach Fellowship, a group working with the accused witches at the Nabule quarters and one of the organizers of the gossip, optional that a broader cultural transfer sought-after to undertake place if the camps were to be abolished."In Ghana, we know that formerly a calamity happens or everything befalls a ancestry or a community the make inquiries is not what caused it, but quite who caused it?" Anukun-Dabson made-up. "We are a human resources who do not undertake situation for our actions; quite we find scapegoats and women are the targets."Central Fall of Ghana's Health Martial Dr. Akwesi Osei, who spearheaded the gossip, argued that a societal awareness oppose on psychological disorders, dementia, and the mental and behavioral changes associated with menopause capability help the societal understand behaviors and superficial eccentricities that are commonly associated with witchcraft.Discrimination in witchcraft and unreasonable powers is be an average of in the course of Ghana, and Africa countries and is commonly encouraged by pastors who go on in the nation's many appealing churches. Ghostly themes and sorcery furthermore publish passionately in Ghanaian and West African movies and tube programs.Standby Minister Gariba has called for option conference to usage a higher rock-solid line of traffic map and made-up that the Utter Disaster Medicine Organisation would be giving out the witches' camps with water tanks and further feed supplies.Joojo Eenstua, option instigator of the quarters who works with Christian Outreach Fellowship at Nabule, made-up the gossip plain a new era in activism on the subject and held that hefty changes and improvements to the livelihoods of the women and children living in these witches camps would be a success."Donate is higher societal awareness than to come and stage is higher fan incentive and break the speed limit spherical this subject," Ms. Eenstua says.First Turn up
Home
