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The BBC Radio 4 Today programme produced a remarkable
investigative report on Kindoki (Witchcraft) that may have led to the death of
a man, Nzuzi Mayingi, found hanging from a tree in Crystal Palace Park in July
2005. The man was part of a 400 strong congregation of a Congolese Christian
Cult led by Pastor Dieudonne Tukala who also lives in South London.
It was alleged that Tukala declared women and children
to be possessed by the devil. This led to one man beating and branding his 9
year old with a steam iron and led Nzuzi to commit suicide. The BBC report
showed how the children were terrorised into admitting they were possessed. If
they refused it was said that Tukala encouraged the families to send the
children back to the Congo where he could pray for them to die.
Nzuzi Mayingi and his pregnant wife and son arrived in
the UK as asylum seekers in 2002. They began attending Pastor Dieudonne
Tukala's church in North London. Tukula diagnosed the wife, boy and unborn
child to be Kindoki (possessed). Nzuzi believed this and, according to a church
elder was encouraged by Tukala to beat his family and witnessed the child's
wounds. Nzuzi eventually threw his family out onto the street. Members of the
congregation pursued the wife with abusive calls calling them witches "who will
choke on your dead husband's flesh".
Within 18 months Nzumi was dead. The family have fled
to the north of England. The BBC investigation detailed other allegations of
Tukala taking money, jewellery and credit cards.
4 hours after the BBC broadcast Scotland Yard said
officers from its Child Abuse Investigation Command had arrested a man, 40, in
south London on suspicion of inciting child cruelty.
Last June three people in another Kindoki case were
convicted at the Old Bailey on Friday on child cruelty charges, after an
eight-year-old African girl accused of being a witch was tortured in East
London. This is part of growing concern in London by the exploitation of
vulnerable Congolese and Angolan refugees by Christian fundamentalist
evangelical cults.
- An MP3 of the BBC broadcast can be downloaded <here>
- Old Bailey (June 2005) case BBC report <here>
sdg
12/01/06
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