Nigerian Atheist Forcibly Hospitalised

Nick Park

In an appalling human rights abuse a Nigerian atheist, Mubarak Bala, has been forcibly detained in a mental hospital in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. This is despite a doctor having declared him to be healthy.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-28010234

Freedom to practice religion is a basic human right, as is the freedom not to practice religion. Evangelical Alliance Ireland has written to the new Nigerian Ambassador to Ireland asking the Nigerian Government to intervene and ensure that Mr Bala is released. The Ambassador just took up her post recently, indeed she presented her credentials to President Higgins just yesterday.

If you want to write to support Mubarak and to request his speedy release then please address your letters to:

Her Excellency Bolere Elizabeth Ketebu
Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
56 Leeson Park
Dublin 6

RoiSoleil

The sad thing is, I'm not surprised. We live in a world where the guy who doesn't believe in a magic sky wizard is seen as the crazy one..... sigh.

Nick Park

Just sharing an update on this case. The BBC is reporting today that Mubarak has been released from his forced detention.

However, the release does not appear to be a result of international pressure, but rather because the doctors at the mental hospital in Nigeria are on strike, so the hospital has had to release all the patients. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Cabaal

Nick Park wrote: »

Just sharing an update on this case. The BBC is reporting today that Mubarak has been released from his forced detention.

However, the release does not appear to be a result of international pressure, but rather because the doctors at the mental hospital in Nigeria are on strike, so the hospital has had to release all the patients. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Pretty messed up country

shruikan2553

Nigeria sure loves its strikes. I knew it was an issue with colleges but a place like that can just let everyone out? Although their version of insane is a bit different to ours

recedite

Just reading an update on this, and I am starting to think that the guy's father is a very dangerous man indeed. The guy now wants to get out of northern Nigeria, but he also wants to reconcile with his father first.
But by publicly admitting to being an atheist, he is posing a threat to the father's position in government.

In a blog, the father describes himself as a journalist and director general of Kano state's Directorate of Societal Reorientation, one of the bodies that enforces Islamic sharia law.

That reminds me of The Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984, and it seems the father is head of their Thought Police.
The father is not just some bumped up peasant Imam, he is educated and well travelled, partly in UK and in Egypt, and apparently is an Islamic fundamentalist who has been given a lot of State power.
According to this profile, he is expert in "mass communications" and speaks 3 or 4 languages. As an expert on propaganda, it is not surprising that he has chosen not to speak on this issue. His best plan now is to lie low until the story dies.
As for the atheist son, he will also have to "disappear" either voluntarily, or involuntarily.

Cabaal

recedite wrote: »

As for the atheist son, he will also have to "disappear" either voluntarily, or involuntarily.

No doubt somebody will murder him while he's on release, either that or he'll apparently kill himself because he can't live with the shame or whatever sounds good