March 31, 2004

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  Children in Angola tortured as witches

  
  

  By Paul Salopek Tribune foreign correspondent

  
  

  Many children seem to be cursed these days in the impoverished hinterlands of Angola - accused of witchcraft by their families, then systematically abused, abandoned and even killed for imagined acts of witchcraft.

  
  

  In Uige, a sleepy hill town near the Congo border, children's advocates said that a teenager accused of sorcery was set ablaze by a mob that included his own relatives. Another boy was buried alive, beneath the corpse of a man he allegedly hexed, rights workers said.

  
  

  Some blamed the recent proliferation of fire-and-brimstone evangelical churches in Angola, whose apocalyptic vision of the universe--and profit from exorcisms--meshes nicely with an epidemic of witchcraft.

  
  

   

  • 5:44 pm
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