ICC Note: Shortly after converting to Christianity, sisters Namwase Aisha, 16, and Nabagabana Fatuma, 14, paid greatly for their faith. When the sisters returned home from church to tell their uncle of the good news, he began to beat the girls and locked them inside the house for three days without food. It was only when a friend visited the house while the uncle was away that the situation was realized and the girls were freed.
02/06/2015 Uganda (Morning Star News) – The uncle of two Muslim girls in eastern Uganda who put their faith in Christ on Sunday (Feb. 1) beat them and locked them in a room without food for nearly three days, sources said.
Nabagabana Fatuma, 14, and her 16-year-old sister, Namwase Aisha, need trauma counseling and medical care after the Muslim uncle who has custody of them, Kakongoka Ahamadah, mistreated them at their home in Nasenye village, Pallisa District, because they had converted to Christianity, sources said.
“My uncle became so furious because we had embraced Jesus,” Aisha told a Morning Star News source. “He locked us inside the house and began beating us with a wooden stick, and then we were left for three days without food. At the third day, we felt as if we were going to die, and we began crying for help.”
Ahamadah had taken custody of the sisters after the death of their father five years ago. The girls’ father had retained custody after divorcing their mother two years before he died, sources said.
Aisha said that she and her sister had been attending classes at an Islamic school (madrassa) where they had been taught about jinn, or supernatural creatures from another world, which they said were oppressing them.
“We were always troubled by the Islamic jinn, and on many occasions we missed sleep during the night, and we then decided secretly to attend the Christian prayer meeting to seek to be set free,” she said.
They went to a worship gathering at a church in the area whose name is withheld for security reasons.
“Before leaving he church, we told the pastor of our problems, who first prayed for us to be followers of Jesus and later prayed that the evil spirits will not torment us again,” Aisha said. “After the prayers, we felt as if a big burden had been rolled away.”
