WUNRN
CONGO - CHILDREN/GIRLS TARGETED AS
WITCHES
November 22, 2009
Many homeless children in the Democratic Republic
of Congo are living on the streets after being accused of witchcraft. Some say
that more girls than boys are targeted in Bukavu. A shelter in the city
provides a home for children labeled as witches.
BUKAVU, Democratic Republic of
the Congo (WOMENSENEWS)--Chance Chubaka's family lives in Chimbunda, a suburb
of this bustling, impoverished town on the south shores of Lake Kivu. But by
the time Chance was 9 years old, she no longer shared their home.
"I found that the easiest place to live was on the
street," said the poised 13-year-old.
Following the death of her father and grandfather,
neighbors accused her of being a witch and causing the deaths.
Her uncle agreed. He tied her hands together with plastic
bags and burned them, a common technique in the Democratic Republic of Congo to
illicit confessions from children tagged as witches. The scars on Chance's
hands remain.
Her uncle also burned her legs, she says, and finally
kicked her out of the house.
"Every time I tried to go home, I was beaten,"
Chance said.
She tried five times.
Chance's story is achingly familiar.
Most of the thousands of children living on the streets
in the nation's capital city of Kinshasa have been accused of witchcraft,
according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And earlier
this year, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child found that in the
Congo violence against children accused of witchcraft is on the rise. Neither
finding singled out girls.
Although attention to the problem is often focused on the
country's west--Kinshasa and the area around Mbuji-Mayi in particular--the
east, and certainly Bukavu, is far from immune.
More Girls Targeted
Although cases of boys who are accused of being witches
are common and boys are usually considered at equal risk as girls, authorities
and others who work with accused children in Bukavu find that in their area
more girls are targeted.
Maj. Honorine Munyole, Bukavu's police commander in
charge of children's protection, women and sexual violence against women, says
because girls are traditionally responsible for housework more than boys, and
are therefore at home more, they have greater interactions with family members.
This makes them targets of witchcraft accusations more frequently, she says.
Munyole's office began collecting statistics on the
number of children accused of witchcraft in Bukavu last year. At that time, she
says, police started seeing a growing number of girls on the street, many
working as prostitutes, who said they'd been kicked out of their homes because
of being called witches. Up until September of this year, 174 cases in town had
been reported to the police, says Lt. Paul Murdibuha, Munyole's second
assistant.
"It's a community problem," said Munyole.
"They usually scapegoat the child. For example, the parent says, 'I was a
doctor or a pastor in a former life, but now I am jobless because of the
child's witchcraft.'"
Accusations of witchcraft used to be directed primarily
at elderly women, according to a 2009 report released by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees. But since the early 1990s children, especially
those in urban centers, have increasingly become the focus of such allegations.
It is an additional threat to the more than 50 percent of
the Congolese population under the age of 18 whose lives are already tenuous.
One in five Congolese die before their fifth birthday and more than half of
school-age children do not go to school, according to Save the Children.
Children who are accused of witchcraft often experience
horrific abuse at home and in revivalist churches that perform
"exorcisms." This can include burning, starvation and severe
beatings.
Poverty Propels Accusations
The witchcraft charges usually follow a death,
illness or other unexplained misfortune that befall families. They are
intimately tied to the deep poverty that afflicts most Congolese, about 70
percent of whom are impoverished, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Having fewer mouths to feed can be an incentive to accuse a child of sorcery
and expel him or her from the home. The U.N. child's rights committee has urged
the Congolese government to criminalize accusations of witchcraft against
children.
Families divided by deaths and displacements, often
associated with Congo's ongoing and brutal conflict in which more than 5
million people have died since 1996, may render children who end up in the care
of stepparents or extended family members more vulnerable. This is especially
true when the guardians are already coping with poverty. In a 2006 report,
Human Rights Watch found that it was rare for a child living with both
biological parents to be accused of witchcraft.
The report also found that behavior considered unusual,
such as bed wetting, aggressive behavior, sleep walking, nightmares or simply
sharing food with neighboring children, can trigger sorcery accusations.
Children who suffer from chronic or severe mental and physical illnesses are
also sometimes singled out.
Although the problem remains serious, some children do
get help. In the four years since Chance was on the street, she has been living
in Ek'Abana, a home run by the city's Catholic diocese that shelters children
accused of being witches. Perched on the bend of a deeply rutted and hilly mud
road overlooking Lake Kivu, Ek'Abana, which means house of children in Mashi, a
local language, is a tranquil refuge.
Inside the tidy home, each child has a shelf of neatly
folded clothes and small beds with clean sheets are lined up in rows. The
grassy courtyard is dotted with blooming trees. The 31 mostly female children
now living there, aged 7 to 15, milled about calmly after school one weekend in
October. Some girls sat together knitting washcloths. As mid-day came and went,
they prayed together in the home's outdoor chapel and then headed to the dining
hall for lunch.
A Better Life
"My life is better here," said Sara Yakokya,
11, a newer resident who has lived at the home since September. "I think
they try to take care of me. I am not too much stigmatized."
Only two of the children at Ek'Abana are boys.
Ek'Abana opened its doors in 2002 with nine children,
said Dieudonne Muhanano, the home's receptionist and staff member charged with
speaking to the media. All the children living at the home receive religious
teaching and some counseling. They all attend school and, even after leaving
the home, Ek'Abana continues to cover their school fees.
Sister Natalina Isella, an Italian nun who established
the home, said there is no formal budget. "If we receive $100, we spend
it," she said, noting that they always ultimately get by.
Muhanano said he felt the incidents of sorcery
accusations have been decreasing in the South Kivu province since 2008, at
which time Ek'Abana started a program with the police and area priests to visit
local parishes throughout the region and educate community members about the
problem. The program targets Catholic parishes but Muhanano said members of
other denominations are welcome to attend the awareness-raising sessions.
Ek'Abana also mediates with the families of children
living at the home in an effort to reunify them. Chance said she expects to
return home soon as a result of these mediations. She's been going home on
weekends to test the waters.
"Those who called me a sorcerer, no longer do,"
Chance said. "I go back home every weekend and my family welcomes
me."
Finding Forgiveness
Chance said with the help from staff at Ek'Abana she's
even been able to forgive her family for their cruelty. And she's learned to
put the problem of witchcraft accusations in perspective.
"I would tell people that it's a false
concept," she said. "It is only a way to mistreat people and deprive
them of their rights."
Ek'Abana, however, is still receiving children like Sara,
who had only been at the home for about one month when she spoke with Women's
eNews. Sara, who will soon turn 12, is paralyzed in one leg. She said a failed
operation to heal her, in conjunction with her father's death several years
prior, led neighbors and then her mother to accuse her of witchcraft. Her
mother then expelled her.
"I don't feel like I miss her because she denied
me," Sara said of her mother, a soldier in the army.
Although at Ek'Abana Sara is now surrounded by those who
accept her, the emotional wounds are fresh. In the midst of telling her story
she paused, buried her head in her hands and cried. She held firmly onto a
plastic blue rosary, fingering it continually.
"I know I did nothing wrong," she said after a
while.
Though staff from Ek'Abana have already reached out to
her mother for mediation, Sara said so far her mother has refused to talk.
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