Six people including two children have been rescued from a shrine in Mpigi District.
The police alongside Mpigi Resident Commissioner (RDC) Hassan Kasibante and leaders of Uganda’s traditional healers union carried out an operation on various shrines where two men, two women, and two children were found malnourished inside a shrine.
The victims who could barely talk and walk were inside a shrine located in Kawoomya village, Buwama Sub-county.
Two of the victims claimed that traditional spirits do not allow them to eat cooked food.
“We’re okay and not having any problems. We are just fulfilling the demands of our traditional spirits. They stopped us from eating cooked food and we are here to serve them. We stay inside the shrines and we are not allowed to be outside,” a man who was put on the stretcher claimed.
Kasibante directed police to put the victims in the Patrol vehicle and were taken to Mpigi Health Centre IV.
“You cannot put your life in danger on falsehoods that traditional spirits have stopped you from eating cooked food. That is wrong. Imagine these children are malnourished and need urgent medical attention. We are going to put the children in care homes,” Kasibante said.
Sophia Namutebi aka Maama Fiina who is the leader of one of the factions of traditional healers also refuted claims by the victims.
“These people are brainwashed by fake traditional healers. The public needs to be very careful. Someone cannot tell you that traditional spirits will make you rich when he is poor. Traditional spirits cannot stop from bathing or eating food yet the person telling you that is doing the opposite,” Namutebi said.
Mpigi is known as one of the districts with a huge concentration of shrines. Several people mostly women have been raped or even killed inside shrines in Mpigi district.
Police have often reported cases of girls who have been defiled by traditional healers inside shrines in Mpigi district.
The operation in the district comes barely 10 days after 17 human skulls were found in the shrine allegedly belonging to Lujja Tabula who is accused of hiring killers of Ndiga Clan leader Eng Daniel Bbosa.
Eng Bbosa was shot to death on February 25 by men on a motorcycle. Although one of the assailants was lynched by the community, one was spared to reveal who had hired them. The survivor said they had been hired by Tabula whom police are searching including putting a 20 million shillings bounty on his head.
Mpigi police working alongside leaders of traditional healers union have decided to comb all shrines and remove all whatever is suspected to be criminal.
Hannington Sebaya, the Secretary of Uganda traditional healers said Mpigi has become a center of all fake traditional healers and warned people to be very careful.
“Wherever we are going, we find people are just taking advantage of the public members’ ignorance and desperation. All whatever we have found in these shrines is fake. People are just being duped, they are just being threatened by fake traditional healers,” Sebaya said.
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