Originally Written: October 2nd, 2022 By Afrin Pajulullah
For many years, humans have been killing female babies due to the blatant sexism that women are a disgrace or burden to society, that baby girls are worth less than dirt causing them to be buried alive. Nowadays, that ignorance still hasn’t changed; despite minor improvements, countries like India and China still have a suspiciously lower ratio of women compared to men, causing disruption in population data and leaving many men unmarried. Sometimes, doctors must hold back on informing parents of a baby’s gender as to prevent them from wanting an abortion for a girl baby. And that leads to an injustice similar but unnoticed is happening in parts of Uganda. Rather than discrimination of gender, it’s discrimination of disabilities. Children born with any form of disabilities are vulnerable to child sacrifice or mercy killing. Though mercy killing is illegal under Ugandan law, it still prevails in secret, putting many innocent children’s lives at stake. Certain Ugandan witch-doctors believe that using literal separated infant body parts in rituals help bring wealth and prosperity to their clients. Although this horrific child sacrifice is alarming, mercy killing is said to be worse, and on a much larger scale. Parents of disabled children use any means to kill them, such as starvation or refusing to give them medical help or direct murder so as to keep them from “suffering” their whole life. One mother, Akol, who had done this practice, states, “…I looked at him and picked him up from the ground and threw him down…I grabbed his neck, twisted it and I strangled the baby. I then listened to his heartbeat and it was not beating, he was not turning, not breathing.” This was after the baby was forced to starve; however that did not work so Akol chose to strangle him instead. It is sad to say society is tolerant of this practice, since people with disabilities face prejudice in society and are often cast away as outcasts, leading many to accept this practice as “mercy” rather than cruelty. It has also been accepted in society that disabilities equal fragile or weak masculinity, and with all these incorrect assumptions about disabilities cause families, especially mothers, with disabled children to be undermined in terms of social status and are excluded from society. The sometimes special needs for kids with disabilities also causes much pressure on mothers along with the societal pressure, causing many to end up wanting to “mercifully” kill these children instead. The birth of Akol’s baby is one example, as the doctors seemed ignorant of the baby’s condition, her husband abandoned her due to his assumption that the baby was cursed, she had felt pressure and isolation from her community as she had to deal with raising six kids in which one has disabilities, she had to find a source of income and then face harsh isolation and dark rumors from people close to her. All of this led to the breaking point and then the eventual death of her baby. This practice needs more awareness as it highlights really just how bad stigma for disabilities is presented in Uganda, and possibly many other countries. The root of the problem is the societal discrimination against individuals with disabilities, causing anyone with disabled family members or are disabled themselves to be ostracized in society. As a direct result of this outrageous standard, these mercy killings take place, taking the lives of many children, a quantifiable number unknown because of how unreported they are. And so for these children, we must act.
Citations: “The Untold Story of 'Mercy Killing' of Disabled Children in Uganda.” Monitor, Monitor, 1 Feb. 2021, https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/special-reports/the-untold-story-of-mercy-killing-of-disabled-children-in-uganda-1742278. Accessed 2 October 2022.
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