Christian families narrowly escaped with their lives when a group of Muslims set their houses on fire, according to reports.
“For more than a year, Muslim youths from a neighboring village accused us of practicing witchcraft and told us to leave the village. They abused us in public and threw bricks at our houses,” victim Ramni Das tells UCA News. “They wanted to kill us by burning us alive, but we managed to escape. We have lost everything.”
The attack occurred Nov. 5 in Kamarpara in the Panchagarh district of Bangladesh.
Despite the differing religions, some Muslims are shocked at the attacks against the families.
“Personally, I know the victims to be good people. For the past year, I have tried to calm the situation and have publicly said the witchcraft accusations were false, but I didn’t think things would reach such an extreme,” the chairman of a local government body says.
Disturbingly, these Bangladesh families are far from the first to endure such torture.
In 2014, seven Christians—mostly elderly—were burned alive or hacked to death in Tanzania.
“‘They were attacked and burnt to death by a mob of villagers who accused them of engaging in witchcraft,’ the police chief for the western Kigoma region, which borders Burundi, Jafari Mohamed, told Agence France-Presse. … Among those arrested on suspicion of carrying out the killings was the local traditional healer, or witchdoctor,” Discovery News reports.
Also during 2014, Sajjad Maseeh and his wife, Shama Bibi, were attacked by a mob of at least 1,200.
“They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire,” a family spokesperson told NBC News. “And then they threw them inside the furnace.”
As for the Bangladesh families, the local church and leaders are working together to seek legal action against the attackers. It is believed the attackers have fled, so some are seeking to raise money for the families, who lost their livelihoods.
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