By Aaron Sseruyigo
BUDAKA – Police in Budaka district, eastern Uganda have launched investigations into a case of a 12-year-old Christian boy who was admitted at Budaka Health Centre unconscious after being attacked by muslim extremists in the area, who he says forcefully wanted him to convert to Islam.
Morning Star News, a leading Christian persecution watchdog, reported on Wednesday that Emmanuel Nyaiti was on Thursday (Oct. 25) going to pick up some plates from his grandmother’s house 200 meters from his home in Moru village, Kiryolo parish in Kaderuna Sub-County, Budaka District, when four area extremists ambushed him shortly after 9 p.m. and took him to a cassava plantation less than a mile away.
According to Morning Star News, Emmanuel was able to identify one attacker as Ali Lukuman and another as Abdul.
“Ali Lukuman tried to persuade me to become a Muslim, which I refused, and he slapped me and I started screaming,” Emmanuel said. “They continued threatening me that they will kill me if I will not convert to Islam.”
Emmanuel’s speech was made difficult from strangulation and possible chloroform the assailants used on him.
“There was a smell around his mouth that a doctor suspected was a kind of chloroform. Doctors also identified strangulation marks,” Emmanuel’s father, Mr Kauta Yokosofat, said.
Mr Yokosofat is a member of Kiryolo Church of Uganda.
“My son’s words could not be constructed well, as he looked confused and could not turn his neck with the strangulation marks,” Yokosofat told Morning Star News.
He and neighbors had formed a search team and were looking for the missing boy when they heard a loud cry from the cassava plantation, Yokosofat said. The assailants had already fled when they found the boy “unconscious and half-dead,” he added.
Yokosofat has reported the case to Budaka police, who say they are investigating while the assailants have yet to be found.
“I know the perpetrators will be caught and punished in the courts of law,” Yokosofat told Morning Star News.
