My Heart grieves

Massacre of Christians in the Middle-Belt of Nigeria by Bruce Cerew

Today my heart grieves for Christians in the Middle-Belt of Nigeria. It’s becoming unbearable to sit and watch the continuing and seemingly endless killing, abuse, torture and beheading of innocent children, women, young and old.

I have been waiting in vain for an intervention from international organizations such as the U.N., Amnesty, EU, and ICC. They need to do something to stop this madness, but they are not doing anything. In fact, they have remained silent.

It is hard to sit back watching and waiting for Bishop Tutu and Pope Francis to go to Nigeria to tell President Buhari to stop the killings. These are killings that have targeted one group of people. In the past, religious leaders went to Myanmar to stop similar atrocities, but here they have remained silent. How hypocritical.

My heart grieves for the men and women, babies and children who have been brutally murdered in their homes with their heads chopped off like cows, while the military personnel who were supposed to help them watched in amusement.

My heart grieves for young children whose parents have been brutally murdered by well-armed herdsmen and will now become casualties left to hopelessness and despair for the rest of their lives.

Oh, my heart grieves at the injustices against a targeted group of people in Buhari’s Nigeria. Although the genocide is against a group, there are very real individuals behind this chapter in history.

My heart grieves for Liya Sharibu, a teenage Christain girl adopted from among one-hundred-ten Dapchi school girls in February 19, 2018 in Nigeria. This girl remains the only one in the hands of Boko Haram because she was reluctant to convert to Islam. The world media are not talking about her. No Western politician has called for her freedom, not even the U.N, Amnesty International or any human rights group. There have been no protests calling for her release. Why?

In 2016, over one-million immigrants were welcomed as kings and queens in countries throughout Western Europe. After the photo of a young Syrian boy swept the headlines, I saw countless demonstrations with banners proclaiming “Welcome, We Are One.” All of the human rights organizations rallied for free passage of over one million Syrian refugees to Europe. I watched as German Chancellor Merkel and many other Western European politicians opened their borders to welcome the Syrians, and even used the same slogan, “We are one people.”

But now, the same media, the same politicians, Amnesty, U.N, Merkel, and all the rest of the world have remained silent over the ongoing ethnic cleansing of an entire community in Nigeria’s Middle-Belt. The Western media are not reporting on the brutal killings of children, men and women in Nigeria.

My heart grieves for the hundreds of unarmed young IPOB members brutally murdered, tortured, drawn out and shot in the head for agitating for restructuring and self-governance in South-East Nigeria.

My heart grieves. To date, no Dutch politician, television channel, newspaper or radio station has dared to even carry the news. Why? Is it because this is happening against Christians and in Africa?

Why has the rest of the world remained silent while this atrocity continues? How can we say that we are one world, one people, when there is a clear favoritism of one race and faith against the other.

Mr. Buhari, Merkel, Mark Rutte, Bishop Tutu, Pope Francis, and the rest, how can you go to sleep tonight when these killings continue?

As for me, I’m not going to wait any longer. I’m not going to remain silent. I cannot go to sleep tonight knowing that by morning another village in the Middle-Belt of Nigeria will be wiped-out.

I do not want to be a part of the injustice and hypocrisy that is taking over our world today.

It’s time to stop these barbaric killings in Nigeria and to bring the perpetrators to justice. I’m saying enough is enough. Help me spread this message until all the world knows about it.

I will announce a date for peaceful demonstrations around the world.

Bruce Cerew, author and activist is a Dutch African writer of the books Long Road, or in Dutch (De Lange Weg), War Child and European Spring,( Europese lente)

Kindness is the ability to love people more than they really deserve, and love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Bruce Cerew

http://www.youtube.com/v/OTCScRZPG0s?version=3&autohide=1&autohide=1&showinfo=1&feature=share&autoplay=1&attribution_tag=mUxbvFeBKwMOBIO5-gzLMw

Kindness is the ability to love people more than they really deserve, and love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

montage weesp 3 min-YouTube sharing.mov

Kindness is the ability to love people more than they really deserve, and love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Nigerian witch-hunt: by Bruce Cerew

History of witch-hunts and child infanticide:

Between 1479 and 1700, an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people were executed in North America and Europe for being “witches.”Many Westerners would be shocked to know that , in this present day, more and more of their contemporaries are embracing witchcraft as a viable expression of their” own spirituality . However marginal or far out it may have seemed in the past, it is clear that witchcraft is becoming progressively more mainstream throughout the world. But why are witchcraft and other ancient practices becoming big issues again in these modern days?

Some scholars argue that a fear of witchcraft started among intellectuals who believed in maleficium: that is, harm committed by magic. What had previously been a belief that some people possessed supernatural abilities (which were sometimes used to protect the people) now became a sign of a pact between the people with supernatural abilities and the devil. Infanticide often occurs among peoples whose food supply is insecure (e.g., the Chinese, the Eskimo and the Amazon). Female infanticide was common in some traditional patriarchal societies. In certain societies children who are deformed or are believed tainted by evil (e.g., twins) may be slain at birth. In Greece and ancient Rome a child was practically its father's chattel-e.g., in Roman law, the Patria Potestas granted the father the right to dispose of his offspring as he saw fit. In Sparta the decision was made by a public official. Child sacrifice occurs in many traditional societies for religious reasons, but human sacrificial victims were generally appreciated members of society, unlike victims of infanticide, who were devalued.

In many African societies the fear of witches drives periodic witch-hunts during which specialist witch-finders identify suspects, even today, with death by mob often the result, especially in the rural areas. In 2010, a heartbreaking documentary of witch-children in Nigeria was broadcast all over the world forcing many world leaders and human right watch to speak out against these barbaric acts of inhumanity. Christianity, like Islam and Judaism, condemns witchcraft and infanticide as murder, and in all countries the act is a crime. If infanticide served as a means of limiting family size, as many anthropologists believe, then the introduction of contraceptives, abortion, and other methods of population control may have rendered it obsolete.

While Christianity, Judaism and Islam alike with its proxy secular institutions deemed witchcraft as being associated to wild Satanic ritual parties in which there was much naked dancing, orgy sex, and cannibalistic infanticide, it was also seen as heresy for going against the first of the Ten Commandments (Thou shall not have no other gods before me).

The term witchcraft evokes diverse images for different people. However, in the Western nations, the practice of witchcraft involves knowledge and skill in appropriating the rituals that are believed to harness and focus these energies. But, another staggering fact is that many Western politicians, sports men and women etc, had in some ways acknowledged the powers of these practices and had applied them in their daily appraisals!

Africa and witch-hunt:

In 1999 Congo and Tanzania responded to attacks on women accused of being witches for having red eyes. A lawsuit was launched in 2001 in Ghana, where witch-hunts are also common. But, in my own personal experience as one of the abandoned children of Nigeria, I believe whole-heartedly that some of these practices are often led by poverty, social exclusions by the visionless regimes and could also be attributed to relatives seeking revenge or the property of the accused.

Other facts on witch-hunt around the globe:

India

In India, labeling a woman as a witch is a common ploy to grab land, settle scores or even to punish her for turning down sexual advances. In a majority of the cases, it is difficult for the accused woman to reach out for help and she is forced to either abandon her home and family or driven to commit suicide. Read Jharkhand case!

Saudi Arabia

On February 16, 2008 a Saudi woman, Fawza Falih, was arrested and convicted of witchcraft and now faces imminent beheading for sorcery unless the King issues a rare pardon. And on November 9, 2009, the Lebanese TV presenter Ali Sibat (who was arrested in Medina in 2008) was sentenced to death on charges of witchcraft. According to Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, "Saudi courts are sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police." Also according to Human Rights Watch, two other people have been arrested on similar charges in November 2009 alone.

United States of America

The McMartin preschool trial of 1984 to 1990 is the longest trial currently recognized in American history. The defendants were accused of child abuse and consequently of satanic ritual abuse in underground tunnels, involving flying witches, blood drinking, mutilated corpses, and human sacrifice. More than 350 people were involved in the fabrication of the allegations, which were taken seriously by the media, the public, the courts, and the prosecution. The jury did not believe the allegations, however, and the defendants were freed.

But, what do the holy books say about these practices?. The Hebrew Bible,in the book of Deuteronomy 18:10-12 states "No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one that casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord;" and Exodus 22:18 prescribes "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”; stories like that of 1 Samuel 28, reporting how Saul "hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land".

Could this be where many of the fake and self acclaimed religious leaders got their citations?

Finally:

Witchcraft exists, it is universal, but could kids be witches or they are just being prosecuted for other reasons?

About the author:

Author BRUCE CEREW-is one of the few African writers in the Netherlands whose exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension, selfless love for humanity is providing a precedent for more tolerance for asylum seekers in Europe and social-justice for African street children. Cerew's powerful story LONG ROAD begins in the witchhunt region of Nigeria, and is told through the eyes of Ray, his fictionalized alter ego. He is forced to leave home at the age of 12 years old!

Order your E-version of LONG ROAD for $7:50, Now!

www.therayoflightfoundation.org Email: info@therayoflightfoundation.org







"Kindness is the ability to love people more than they really deserve, and love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise".

African Iraqis want to be heard; In a land that officially denies bias, they begin to lobby for equal rights

“Black people here are living in fear,” said Jalal Dhiyab Thijeel, an advocate for the estimated 1.2 million African Iraqis in the country. “We want to end that.”

We learn to love Ray, admire his ability to look beyond his own plight to salvage the lives of his friends in a long road of despair. All this Bruce Cerew does with a writing style that is propulsive, rich in atmosphere, filled with energy, and always with an eye to the development of a story. It may be his memoir, but it is also a very fine novel that deserves a wide audience - from those who love thrilling historical novels to those who appreciate biographies of 'survive and conquer' heroes. Grady Harp

My journey to Nigeria

The people Ubong Akwa Community turned out today in mass as never seen in the past to grease the visit of Ray of Light Foundation team. The three (3) village with their teaming population of both male and female in different colours expressing their joy and enthusiasm to welcome the life and economic project proposed in their land.

The meeting which recorded over 500 male, female and youths with plate cards written on them, welcome RAY OF LIGHT FOUNDATION and pledging their support for such a long sort project/empowerment opportunity. In the midst of this band of intellects are Assistant Superintendent Nigeria Police force (AsP’s) Counselors, High Chiefs and grant Heads. Lots of questions were asked and answers provided satisfies their curiosity. There and then the people settled their minds with open hearts to receive and to yearn for the arrival of Mr. Bruce Cerew, the initiator of the project and his team from the Netherland .

The community was at its peak of celebration and prayer for what is coming, willing to partner, willing to give and willing to alleviate the looming poverty and unemployment in the land and to give the children born and unborn a future.

Another highlight was the free medical treatment that kicked off today 11th October, 2009. In the meeting the Grand Head and Chiefs expressed their esteem joy and gratefulness to the initiator of this project designed to rebrand their sick reptured system and pledged to turn out in mass as to receive the treatment as long as exercise last.

In their usual hospitality, the RAY OF TEAM where wormly received and celebrated, which was given the project and the expected guest from the airport either from Calabar or Akwa Ibom was promised by the ASP of Nigeria Police who was in attendance. He maintained that the security of the expected guests and their machine will be insured. Moreso, that the manual labour, or any service that will involve them contributing money to the project they will put in their best.

The Ray of Light free medicine treatment will be winding up by Friday 16th October 2009

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Kindness is the ability to love people more than they really deserve, and love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.