Ama Hemmah: Murdered in the Name of Christ
This will certainly be the most sickening story you’ve ever read on ConBab (and maybe ever will). We guarantee it will disturb you as it has us — and we warn you now that the more senstive reader should probably turn away. On the other hand, we cannot think of a more devastating story to illustrate the very real dangers of fundamental Christianity (or any form of fundamentalism), especially when it has been warped so badly, so beyond any similarity to its presumed original message.
If you do read this, just don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Tema, Wikipedia tells us, “population 209,000 (2005), is a city on the Atlantic Ocean coast, east of the capital city of Accra, in the region of Greater Accra, in Ghana, West Africa. Originally a small fishing village, it grew after the construction of a large harbour in 1961 and is now is the nation’s largest sea port. … Tema is also the only well planned city by Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. But in recent times, the beauty of the city is being destroyed by overpopulation stemming mainly from rural-urban migration.”
Overpopulation, however, is the least of its troubles. Ghana, like much of Africa, is a hotbed of superstition, the result of a widespread lack of education combined with the most perverted form of Christianity, which seems less concerned with eliminating irrational fears of witches and demons than with exploiting those fears to bolster its own agenda.
“[T]he reasons for the growth of Christianity in Africa significantly include the way the Africans have attempted to deal with their threatening fears, especially witchcraft,” writes Opoky Onyinah in “Deliverance as a way of Confronting Witchcraft in Modern Africa: Ghana as a Case History.”
In October, 2010, ActionAid UK profiled “Witchcraft in Ghana – the women cursed by superstition,” and the often violent and sometimes deadly exorcism rituals women accused of witchcraft (for the accused are almost always women) are forced to endure. “The prevalence of superstition, juju and black magic might sit uneasily in a country where Christianity and Islam are also practised, but regardless of imams and priests actively preaching against witchcraft, people here seem able to easily reconcile the two. …
“It’s no coincidence that spiritual beliefs are strongest in the poorest areas, where the majority of people have little or no access to education, healthcare or the power to have any sort of control over their own lives.
“Take away the smokescreen of witchcraft and you are left with basic human emotions and desires: power, jealousy and revenge, visited on those too vulnerable to resist.”
Among those too vulnerable to resist was Ama Hemmah, who lived in Ajumako Assasan — and died in Tema.
On November 26, 2010, the aptly-named Daily Graphic relayed the story, under the practically nonchalant headline: “Grandma Set Ablaze To Exorcise Witchcraft” (warning: graphic photo at link):
A 72-year-old grandmother suffered one of the most barbaric of deaths when she was burnt alive by a mob at Tema Site 15 after being accused of being a witch.A student-nurse, who appeared on the scene, attempted to rescue the old woman from her ordeal but she died of her burns within 24 hours of arrival at the Tema General Hospital.
Five people who allegedly tortured and extracted the confessions of witchcraft from Ama Hemmah before drenching her in petrol and setting her ablaze have been arrested by the Tema Police.
But the suspects, including an evangelist, denied the crime and claimed that they were rather praying to exorcise the evil spirit from the deceased, Ama, when the anointing oil they had applied to her body caught fire.
Two of the suspects are Samuel Ghunney, a 50-year-old photographer, and Pastor Samuel Fletcher Sagoe, 55, the evangelist. The rest are Emelia Opoku, 37, Nancy Nana Ama Akrofie, 46, and Mary Sagoe, 52, all unemployed. …
According to [police], the suspects claimed that Mad. Hemmah was a known witch in the area and subjected her to severe torture, compelling her to confess being a witch.
He said after extracting the confession from Mad. Hemmah, Ghunney asked Emelia Opoku for a gallon of kerosene and, with the help of his accomplices, poured it all over her and set her ablaze. …
In their caution statement, the suspects denied the offence and explained that they poured anointing oil on the old woman and it caught fire when they offered prayers to exorcise the demon from her. …
We don’t know what to say. Maybe there is nothing to say. But here’s some more to read, and to think about:
The photograph of Ama Hemmah, who had been doused with kerosene and set alight in the courtyard of a family home, was taken at a local hospital and showed her burnt from face to waist with scraps of clothing that barely covered her breasts melted to her skin. …[Pastor Samuel Fletcher Sagoe] pointed to the barred window that sat behind the countless items of damp clothing strung from lines crossing the walls in the tiny room. Sagoe said he was puzzled and could not comprehend how the woman had gotten through the gate, as it was locked and far too high for her to jump over it. The pastor took Hemmah into the courtyard and questioned her about how she managed to get in then called his family and friends in to witness the strange occurrence. Police believe the interrogation went on for as long as four hours. …
Pastor Sagoe’s account was full of inconsistencies as he claimed Hemmah said she was a messenger of the devil and spoke of flying and “spiritual things”, and then alluded to Hemmah refusing to confess to witchcraft after the group had surrounded her. …
Hemmah then left the house and stumbled down the road to a provisions shop where 27-year-old Deborah Pearl Adumoah, took her to the police station and the hospital. …
“She couldn’t speak and you could only hear her make sounds because her face had been burnt and she couldn’t move her mouth properly,” said Adumoah. “It was a cruel act. She reminded me of my grandmother: cute and smallish,” she added. …
— Clair MacDougall
“Ghana ‘Witch’ Killing Points to a Broader Culture of Fear and Superstition“
December 2, 2010
Hemmah’s son, Stephen Yeboah, 48, told the Daily Graphic: “Our mother was never a witch and had never suffered any mental disorder throughout her life, apart from exhibiting signs of forgetfulness and other symptoms of old age.”
Newspaper pictures showing the woman’s injuries have caused anger in Ghana. …
Comfort Akosua Edu, of the country’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, said: “The commission finds the action of the perpetrators of this atrocious crime as very barbaric and one that greatly dims the nation’s human rights record.
“That they came and met her in their room does not in any way warrant branding her as a notorious witch who deserved to be subjected to such an ordeal.”
She added: “It is very disheartening that some men of God, whose responsibility it is to help save lives, could orchestrate the killing of innocent souls, all in the name of God.”
— “Ghanaian woman burned to death for being a ‘witch’“
The Guardian
November 29, 2010
This story makes us take a leap back several centuries, in the most miserable religious obscurantism. … It is a macabre joke, but a terrible truth that comes from Ghana. Among the “inquisitors” of the poor there is also an evangelical pastor apprehended along with four others for the murder.
… The Church, particularly the Catholic … has always fought magical beliefs… [But] if, on the one hand it has produced over the centuries, various documents against superstition, there are other bubbles of acceptance of the reality of witchcraft, yet not “renounced”. “Of all the heresies, the biggest is to not believe in witches and with them, and the sabbath in devilish pact” provides the Malleus Maleficarum, a book published in 1486 by Dominican friars Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer Institor in order to meet the urgent need to suppress heresy, paganism and witchcraft. In that climate, obviously, had to be a fervent heartfelt evangelical pastor who stirred up in “the name of God” four other men and women against 72-year-old Ama Hemmah…
Who are the possessed? …
— “Bruciata come strega in nome di Dio“
(”Burned as a witch in the name of God”)
Giornalettismo
November 29, 2010
Years ago the killing of the alleged witch would have been a normal thing whether in the rural or urban area. But in 2010 there are dramatic outcry against witchcraft-induced killing and intellectual face-off from Ministers, women organizations, the mass media, educationists, lawyers, human rights organizations, public and private institutions, and ordinary Ghanaians. …
Witchcraft [belief], mired in inhumanity, is a real danger to the survival of the African civilisation, and mixed with poverty could be the end of Africans’ attempt to progress. Africans who believe in witchcraft do so with arbitrary rules and a hatred of freedom and rationality. Critical faculties are warped and that makes witchcraft believes rule supreme in the affairs of the African. …
In Africa, witchcraft [belief] is difficult to discuss. African elites, also entangled in the witchcraft believe do not venture into this area to refine it despite the fact that it impinges on Africa’s progress. The supposedly educated African mind resists it. The subject is amorphous. Why is the 72-year-old woman a witch? How did her accusers know she is a witch? For you have to be a witch to see a witch! …
At the centre is the battle between irrationality and rationality. … The “irrationalists” who look at witchcraft from within the soul of the Ghanaian/African culture are in majority. The “rationalists” (or the realists) who gaze at witchcraft within the criminal justice system and locate witchcraft in the conditions of peoples’ lives are in minority. …
Pretty much of the witchcraft nonsense are perpetuated by the religious groups, especially the spiritual churches that feed on superstitious Ghanaians’ spiritual insecurities most of which come from their culture and their poverty. …
— “The combat against forces of irrationality“
Ghana Web
November 29, 2010
Man’s inhumanity to the fellow being has been chronicled over the years. But, this would take some doing to overtake, in terms of the callous nature of the treatment meted out to a fellow being.
Christianity has done a lot to bring good tidings to the needy. It has also done its worst in encouraging men and women of evil, wearing the cassock, to visit sufferings on their fellow human beings. Fake characters parading as men of God have raped women, extorted money from the innocent, and caused all kinds of harm to other human beings. Invariably, the perpetrators quote the Bible to justify their misdeeds. …
This is murder in the name of Christ. …
We are getting to the stage when in the name of the Bible, evil men and women are bringing their fellow human beings to harm. In prayer camps all over the country, men, women and in some cases children, are chained to trees and stones, and made to sit for hours on end in the scorching sun and pouring rains, just because someone has devised some clever means of extorting money from worried relatives of people whose diseases could be treated, if properly diagnosed.
We grieve with the bereaved family of Madam Ama Hemann. The Grand Old Woman died needlessly at the hands of people who are feeding fat on the word of God. …
— “Editorial: Murder in the name of Christ!“
Joy Online
November 30, 2010
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While the account is horrible, it is not surprising: Sarah Palin was prayed over by a famous witch hunter; Lou Engle’s ties to Uganda and the “Kill the Gays” bill only strengthened is resolve back in the U.S. to rid the world of gays; Rick Warren’s influence in Uganda and Rwanda is unsurpassed compared to local evangelicals. It’s simple: the Christian Right in this country exports hate.
And remember this: the Southern Baptist Convention has NEVER had a faith-based AIDS agency in this country, but is PROUD to point to the ones they’ve sponsored in Africa. Why? 1. to them, in the U.S. AIDS=gay, 2. Africa is a much more fertile ground for hypocrisy than the U.S. and 3. they have a better chance of “keeping them stupid” in Africa.