A week after he put his faith in Christ, Gobera Bashir, 27, says his relatives took vengeance on him by attacking him with hot cooking oil.
The tragic incident that left him with serious burns on nearly half his body occurred in Kakoli village, Naboa Sub-County in Budaka District on March 10, less than a week after he had attended church with a friend and converted to Christianity.
According to Morning Star News, he received Christ as Lord and Savior on March 4 and a pastor gave him a Bible and counseled him before he left.
“Be cautious when reading the Bible, since your family is a Muslim family,” the pastor told him after praying for him, Bashir told Morning Star News.
Four days later he was reading the Bible in his room when his younger sister entered.
“Why are you reading the Bible? You know our family only reads the Koran,” she said, according to Bashir.
He told his sister that he was just reading the Bible to gain knowledge. Soon word spread that he had a Bible, and on March 10 at about 9:30 p.m. a group of people knocked on the door of his house.
He refused to open the door, he said, but they forced their way in.
“As they entered the house, they found me in the sitting room and began tying my arms and legs with robes and shouting, ‘Shame! Shame! You are bringing a bad omen to the family with your bad Christian religion. Our family is a Muslim family,’” he told Morning Star News. “There and then one of them poured a hot liquid from a thermos flask on me, and then they dragged me out of the house.”
They took him to a nearby swamp, he said.
“As they pulled me, I felt a lot of pain and screamed for help as one of the attackers blocked my mouth, and there I lost consciousness,” Bashir said. “I only gained consciousness around midnight.”
Christians from a nearby house surrounded him when he came to in the swamp, and they took him in, he said.
The following day, Bashir was taken to a Naboa health center, where he received treatment for four days, and then a Christian widow and her grown children took him into their home.
The woman, whose name is withheld for security reasons, told Morning Star News that doctors have suggested he be taken to a specialized hospital for further treatment.
“Bashir has wounds all over his body, and his clothes have stains from an oily substance, suggesting that what was poured on him is a kind of oil,” she said. “He sleeps under very strong pain killers, hence he spends sleepless nights. The burns cover about 40 percent of his body.”
Most of the burns are on his legs, buttocks and hands as the assailants forced him to sit on hot cooking oil, she said.
Initially Bashir didn’t recognize the assailants as their faces were covered, but he heard one of them calling another Paata, his uncle’s name, and Bashir determined that at least some of them were relatives, he said.
Two days after being discharged from the health center, family members discovered the home where he had taken refuge, and he was taken to another location.
“Please pray for quick recovery for Bashir, as some of the skin burns are rotting with a very bad smell,” a local source said. “He needs urgent attention and specialized treatment, which might be very costly.”
A source from another village visited Bashir on Thursday (March 22) and confirmed that his burns still require urgent medical care.
Bashir has not reported the attack to police as that would expose those hiding him to attacks from his immediate family and other relatives, sources said.
Additional Reporting by Agencies.
