By Joseph Dumbula.
The Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM) has condemned the abducting and tormenting of a Catholic nun in the Southern African nations former capital city Zomba.
The Catholic ministers say that on Thursday 11th April 2024, obscure individuals in a car halted the nun imagining to be great Samaritans but afterward took the religious woman to a different place altogether.
Meanwhile, a man with psychiatric problems has been arrested by the Blantyre police in relation to the violence committed the offence.
According to the police, the arrested person is a patient at the Zomba psychiatric hospital. On the day he allegedly attacked the nun, the suspect also disrupted the Eid al Fitr celebrations, the holiday that ends Ramadan, which was being held at the Kamuzu stadium in Blantyre.
However, in a statement, the Episcopal Conference of Malawi reported that on the morning of 11 April in Zomba a Catholic nun had been abducted by unknown persons who had offered her a ride in their car.
But the occupants of the car attacked and tortured her.
“The attackers told the nun that the violence was due to the fact that they did not agree with her faith and her religious identity, and they demonstrated their intolerance by tearing off and throwing the rosary and cross she was wearing out of the car window. They then abandoned her wounded, helpless and traumatized,” the note states.
“Every peace-loving Malawian knows that the Supreme Law of our Nation, which is our Constitution, provides for freedom of religion and therefore every citizen has the right to belong to any religious group of his choice and cannot therefore be prevented from practicing and even manifesting the religion of your choice anywhere in the country.”
“We hope that, since this specific matter has been left in the hands of the police, they will diligently investigate this horrendous attack on the Catholic nun and other similar cases, so that justice is done and that these degenerate hateful tendencies of intolerance religious are reduced and resolved once and for all” states the Episcopal Conference.
Until now, the incident has also been condemned by the Muslim Association of Malawi whose Spokesperson, Sheikh Dinala Chabulika, has appealed to the Police to investigate and establish the truth and apply the necessary law.
