Every year an unknown number of children – most of them disabled in some way – are murdered in northern Ghana because of the belief that they are in some way possessed by evil spirits set on bringing ill fortune and bad luck to those around them. Children who were born with disabilities or deformities were believed to be harboring spirits.
The way to determine whether they would bring bad luck to the village was to make them drink a fatally poisonous herbal mixture that, if it killed them, would prove that they were possessed. The practice is the consequence of ancient traditions and customs and is shaped by poverty and ignorance in remote and often marginalized communities.
No one knows the exact number of these ritual deaths across Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, and parts of Nigeria, but some believe it could be in the thousands.
Children can be labeled spirit children for many reasons. For example, if a mother dies in childbirth if a
child is born deformed or with a disability, or during a particularly difficult period (where there is severe poverty in the home for example) or even if a child is born as a twin or triplet.
In certain circumstances, the child may be labeled a spirit and in extreme cases, the child may be killed. These children are believed to have brought bad luck to their family or community.
It’s usually the father who pronounces a child a spirit child. In this part of northern, rural Ghana, it’s men who make the decisions, and the mothers don’t have much say in the matter.
If there has been an unfavorable turn of events in the village, the mother might agree that her child has brought bad luck. Sometimes, when a mother is very sick, they say that the child is trying to kill her.
When it has been decided that a child is a spirit child, the community brings a ‘concoction man’; this is a traditional, local healer who treats diseases. He prepares a potion of poisonous herbs, which he g
ives to the child, and five minutes later the child is dead.
Spirit children are buried in a special place, far from where people are normally interred and well away from the village.
The family doesn’t mourn the child as a normal human being. In three days’ time, the concoction man will come back to perform rites – to suck away bad spirits from the house. If the child was a boy he brings four fowls, a guinea fowl, and a goat.
If it was a girl he brings three fowls and a guinea fowl. The people believe that unless he carries out this process the bad spirits will stay around their house.
Sometimes the women are very sad. It’s h
ard for them to be pregnant for nine months and then be told their child is bad luck and they have to hand it over to be killed. But what can they do? They can’t do much in this society because it’s the men who make the decisions and say what is happening in the family.
Sometimes, when a family is so poor that they are not able to take care of a child or if the child has become so malnourished that they can’t help it, they label the child a spirit child in order to relieve the burden on the family.
The belief can affect adults, too. Last year a 70-year-old lady was killed. She was accused of bringing bad luck to a family. The concoction didn’t work on her, however, and they had to use physical means to kill her: they knocked her over the head.
For years, NGOs and the Ghanaian authorities have tried advocacy and education in an attempt to eradicate the practice but with only marginal success. Well into the 21st century, Ghana’s so-called spiri
t children are still being killed because they carry the blame for the misfortunes of everyday life.
In 2013, award-winning Ghanaian investigative reporter Anas Aremeyaw Anas set out to track down and expose some of those responsible for the senseless killings – determined to bring them to justice and stop the practice.
Back then, he wrote: “When I first heard about this I could not believe it was happening in my country in the 21st century. The practice originally emerged as a way for poor families to deal with deformed or disabled children that they cannot look after. These families approach village elders kn
own as concoction men and inform them that they suspect their child to be a so-called spirit child.
The concoction man then takes the father of the child to visit a soothsayer who confirms whether or not the child is truly evil, without ever actually laying eyes on them. Once this confirmation has been received, the concoction man brews a poisonous liquid from local roots and herbs and force-feeds it to the child, almost always resulting in death.
Over time, this practice has become a perceived solution to any problems a family might be having at the time of a child’s birth. By blaming the child for sickness in the family, or the father’s inability to find work or provide money to support his dependants, these communities have found
an otherworldly explanation for their problems. But infanticide has always been a crime against humanity.”
Now, five years later, Anas, spoke to REWIND about why he doesn’t want to show his identity, the dangers of undercover journalism in Africa, and what has become of the concoction men that killed those children.
“Most African journalists who do investigations have a series of dangers pointing at them. You just have to be yourself and think about how to survive. I came up with the beads that I wear, so people don’t see my face. I’m sure that some of my colleagues, in Nigeria or Malawi have other ways to
protect themselves,” Anas told Al Jazeera.
Talking about the threats facing investigative journalists, he said: “Generally, people definitely want to point guns at you or some will try to kidnap you. And most of these things have happened; getting death threats and legal suits are normal, most of my colleagues in the continent suffer that.”
“There is nothing more frustrating than doing a story on someone and then walking on the same streets with that person. It is even more dangerous and that can easily end the life of any journalist.” “We don’t make stories so that people can just read them and smile in their bedrooms. We make stories that have an impact on society. For me, it is a good story when the bad guy is named, shamed, and put in jail. Many people have gone to jail as a result of my work and I’m proud of it.”
Anas also talked about the concoction men that he met during his Spirit Child investigation. “A legal process was started but they were too old, so at the time that the process could finish, some of them couldn’t even make it to court. But the key thing that happened in that story is that it told
the community that whoever you are when you attempt to do some of these things, you are going behind bars.”
“For the first time, those witch doctors were arrested and put before a court. That sends a strong signal to all witch doctors to be careful, that when you are dealing with the life of a child it’s a completely different matter. And we can’t sit down for these children to be killed in the way they are being killed.”
