Ritual Child Sacrifice

Walking through the front room this evening I was halted by the news report murmuring in the background. Alleged child sacrifice stopped. Not exactly the type of breaking news story I am used to hearing. Transfixed I stood watching as interviews and footage was shown of the boy, his mother and father who had arrived at her village home demanding his son. With no authority to refuse, the mother handed over her son who was supposedly to be taken to Kampala for some event, but was instead transported to a shrine for a ritual killing. Interrupted in process, the boys life was spared.

Researching the incident further I discovered that this case was only the tip of an ever growing ice burg in Uganda. A quick internet search brought up related articles such as “100 children go missing in one month”.

Sifting through the information it was disturbing to run across statistics and remarks such as the following paraphrase of why children go missing:
Several reasons children go missing – sacrifice, human trafficking, family breakups, child torture by stepmothers, child labour, negative peer pressure, and child neglect.

I was also surprised to discover that according to reports, the majority of children disappear at night and during holiday time. Not as surprising, but still saddening, many children who do go missing are often taken from rural villages where there is an extreme shortage of jobs and the economic downturn has made life nearly unbearable. Frequently a result of trafficking with the children being promised productive futures in major cities such as Kampala, few children ever see the prosperous promised life.

Apparently money is at the heart of the rise in child sacrifices as well. “The phenomenon of child sacrifice is mainly linked to some witch doctors who persuade their clients to bring along human body parts for use in macabre rituals allegedly as part of a get-rich-scheme.” According to reports, there have been 15 alleged children sacrificed from January to October. It is thoroughly sickening what some people will do for money.

Thankfully though, the majority of Ugandans are equally appalled by this practice and measures are being taken to severely prosecute offenders. Vigilanty justice is more often then not carried out before the police ever arrive as mobs of angry citizens enact an ‘eye for an eye’ legal system so to speak.

Even more troubling (if one could really weigh any of this on a scale) is the fact that these killings and selections are often carried out by family members. In one report a perpetrator was given 50,000 USH (just over $25 USD) to produce a child, so he handed over his own nephew.

Sitting here in this nation I wonder what more I could be doing to help stop this practice beside simply spreading awareness. I am shaken by the realization that there is nothing I can do (well, at least in the final 5 days I am here) as the majority of Ugandan’s cannot even keep this from occurring. General consensus seems to be that if you can intimate the potential killers by making public examples of those already convicted then the rates will drop. I would argue that what really needs to happen is a rethinking of beliefs and practices.