by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - An evangelical team found a teenager in eastern Uganda to have been locked up and nearly starved to death by his Muslim father because he had become a Christian, Morning Star News (MSN) reports. While Christianity is legal in Uganda, former Muslims who become Christians are vulnerable to attacks by Islamic extremist relatives and community members.
The 17-year-old son of Musobya Aramanzani from Nankoma, Bugiri District, became a Christian earlier this year after hearing the Gospel preached in Iganga, MSN reports. The youth’s name is withheld for security reasons. The boy attended a boarding school in Iganga, and one of his teachers informed his father that he was now a Christian.
A local pastor whose name is withheld for security reasons was leading a team of evangelists in the area, asking residents if they could pray for them, MSN reports. Aramanzani allowed the group to enter the house to pray briefly for the family.
“As we were praying, there was a very strong, bad smell in the house,” the pastor told MSN.“Since we were many, we forcefully entered the inner room where the smell was coming from and found a teenage boy in a dilapidated state.”
A photo of the boy obtained by Morning Star News shows him “in a starving condition with skin clinging to bones,” MSN said in its report. Members of the evangelical team then forcibly took the boy out of the home and into a hospital for treatment.
“The mother used to sneak in with only water, but when her son fell sick, she didn’t bring him medicine but insulted him by calling him an infidel to the family religion, and that he should die,” the pastor told MSN.