Church facilitates kidnapping of albino boy

Written by Ebou Sohna, News Team | 02 April 2012

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An albino boy was abducted from a church in Kenya in March 2012.  He was taken while the people in the congregation had their eyes closed as prayers were being recited.

The congregation’s suspicions fell on the pastor who was interrogated and apparently confessed to facilitating the boy’s passage to Tanzania, a country known for ritual killings of albinos.  The pastor is said to have been ordered to bring back the boy – he left, but returned a few days later without the young albino boy.  Subsequently a mob descended on the church.

Lawrence Nyagah, a humanist activist and an albino himself, said”images of an enraged mob burning and tearing the church into pieces was aired on one of Kenya’s TV stations [which] spoke more than words could have said about the anger of the crowd, but it further said more: that by perpetuating superstitions the church as an institution was complicit in such incidences of human rights abuse.”  The matter is (allegedly) being pursued by the Kenyan police.

Lawrence said he is “attracted to humanism because of the work humanists are doing to end belief in superstition.  Lawrence said he converted from Catholicism to humanism about two years ago after reading about Leo Igwe and the IHEU, and expressed Africa’s need of more courageous people committed to the fight against belief in and practice of superstitions.