Christian Witch Hunters

[barbaro]

And now another "peaceful" religion with a peaceful history and peaceful practices: Christianity.

There are similar groups in the US, that believe Harry Potter should have been executed as a War Lock. It was in the "Jesus Camp" thread in US Domestic.

But now, children are being harmed, for real.

On a Visit to the U.S., a Nigerian Witch-Hunter Explains Herself

Michael Stravato for The New York Times
Helen Ukpabio preached to a group during a visit to Houston on May 13.

By MARK OPPENHEIMER

Published: May 21, 2010

HOUSTON — At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known.

So well-known, in fact, that Ms. 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 made 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.

Their fellow villagers have often seen DVDs of “End of the Wicked,” Ms. Ukpabio’s bloody 1999 movie purporting to show how the devil captures children’s souls. And some have read her book “Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft,” where she confidently writes that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.”

Visiting Houston last week to lead a four-night revival for a local church, Ms. Ukpabio, 41, had no idea that “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” which brought protesters out to greet her in London, was about to be shown in the United States. But she was eager to defend herself.

“Do you think Harry Potter is real?” Ms. Ukpabio asked me angrily, in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express where she was staying. “It is only because I am African,” she said, that people who understand that J. K. Rowling writes fiction would take literally Ms. Ukpabio’s filmic depictions of possessed children, gathering by moonlight to devour human flesh.

Still, “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” makes clear that many rural Nigerians do take her film seriously. And in her sermons, Ms. Ukpabio is emphatic that children can be possessed, and that with her God-given “powers of discernment,” she can spot such a child. Belief in possession is especially common among Pentecostals in Nigeria, where it reinforces native traditions that spirits are real and intervene in human affairs.

In Nigeria, many preachers not only identify possessed children but charge dearly to perform exorcisms. To redeem their children’s souls — and to keep the child from being killed or banished by neighbors — parents scrimp or borrow to pay the preacher.

Ms. Ukpabio argued that “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” exaggerates or invents

LInk & Entire: A Nigerian Witch-Hunter Defends Herself - NYTimes.com

[billy the kid]

sadly all these religious types are stark raving bonkers . they are fokin everywhere contaminating people with their bullshit . the world needs to have a fokin series look at all this propaganda horse-shit .
unfortunately the politicians lap it all up .
makes their job so much easier. when peoples heads are full of shit.

[Fuzzy Bob]

[StrontiumDog]

^^^I'd say this lady has some serious issues...

Probably abused as a child, or had a very traumatic childhood...she has become quite the sadist.

Very nasty.

If anyone is possessed, it is her.

[slackula]

You know who else believes in witch hunters?

[Stinky]

Channel 4 Dispatches did a very disturbing report on the Nigerian child witch hunter problem a couple of years ago.
It is truly barbaric and such inhuman acts I have rarely seen.
It's 48 minutes long but it is well worth watching, it does of course have some very disturbing scenes.

Dispatches - 4oD - Channel 4

A short clip from the program

[barbaro]

Please watch this: