A most disturbing video
18 June 2008 by StardustThe Atheist Jew pointed me to this. I cried afterwards and I don’t cry easily. This actually happens in today’s world, and this is the first I have heard of it. Every year, hundreds of children are buried alive in the Amazon, all because of superstitious belief that still exists in their primitive tribes.
A rare documentary insight into how tribal superstition, ritual and ignorance evolved into worship.
An elder of a primitive Stone-Age Amazon tribe performs a sacrificial ritual.
“He must die! For the good of the tribe!”
Could this be the origin the Judeo-Christian crucifixion/scapegoating myth?
Is this ritual, in part, the basis of modern religions?
The following video contains indigenous nudity and some very disturbing footage…VERY disturbing, so if you are quite sensitive, pass on it and take my word for it.
Below the video are links to find out more, and where you can go to try to help stop this horrific practice of infanticide.
Voice of a survivor: Hakani
Additional info:
This is not a hoax, this really happens:
Here is a story from the UK Telegraph
Babies born into some Indian tribes in the Amazon are being buried alive, a practice that is being covered up by the Brazilian authorities out of respect for tribal culture.
The tradition is based on beliefs that babies with any sort of physical defect have no souls and that others, such as twins or triplets, are also “cursed”.
Infanticide has claimed the lives of dozens of babies each year, say campaigners fighting to end the practice.
Babies who are girls, who have some disability or who have unmarried mothers are all in danger of an early death in a shallow grave in the rainforest. Others are suffocated with leaves, poisoned or simply abandoned in the jungle.
According to Dr Marcos Pelegrini, a doctor working in the Yanomami Tribe Health Care District, 98 children were killed by their mothers in 2004 alone.
Campaigners say that the true figure is obscured by officials who often record cases of infanticide as simple malnutrition. At the same time, family anguish over infanticide has led to many adult tribal members committing suicide.
18 June 2008, on 5:53 pm
Here is a video that explains what the hell is going there.
I still don’t believe it. Could it be a hoax?
18 June 2008, on 9:28 pm
No, beaj it’s not a hoax. There is still a tribe in the Amazon called the Korubo and apparently have a violent nature. However, the tribe in the video is the Suruwaha tribe, the tribe of the girl who survived named Hakani. Here is her story at the UK Telegraph
18 June 2008, on 10:34 pm
I’m grateful to be an old man. I’ve been a member of this species for 75 years now, and I’ve seen just about all I care to.
18 June 2008, on 11:00 pm
Stardust…
As I suspected; that’s not, apparently, the whole story….This outrageous scenario also seems connected to a Christian Ministry group…YWAM…Youth With A Mission…. located in Colorado.
Go here, and click on “WHO WE ARE”:
http://www.ywamsf.org/pages/campus/Page.php?SP=MAIN
If you noticed, in the linked video (in text) there’s reference to “Missionaries”; which is what alerted me. That’s not to say that the story is not based on some actual fact; but I, personally, suspect a religious agenda going on here as well; specifically Fundamentalist Christian.
The two guys in Atheist Jew’s linked video seemed awfully ‘glib’ in the way they talked about the matter. there’s something a little ‘fishy’ (bumper sticker-like?) about the whole story.
Call me cynical?
I could be totally wrong, of course. I suggest Googling further…?
18 June 2008, on 11:07 pm
ChuckA, I have googled some sites to check further, one being the Telegraph newspaper in the UK that reported on Hakani’s story, and other credible news sources report (mostly in other western countries in Europe) that the issue of Infanticide amongst primitive tribes in the Amazon is being considered by the Congress in Brazil (whether they should interfere or just let them be and “respect” their “culture”.
Muwaji’s Law – Project for Law 1057
The video was produced by an organization called Global Voices…”Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.”
Here is from their website telling about them:
These primitive places in the Amazon are not the only places where infanticide still exists. Infanticide among the Autochthone people in the Oceania islands is widespread. Ayoreo in Bolivia and Paraguay persisted until the late 20th century. In spite of the fact that it is illegal, in Benin, West Africa, parents secretly continue with infanticidal customs. The practice has continued in some rural areas of India. According to a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) up to 50 million girls and women are missing in India’s population as a result of systematic gender discrimination. In India there are less than 93 women for every 100 men in the population. The accepted reason for such a disparity is the practice of female infanticide. The northern states of India have the lowest female ratio in India, purportedly due to female infanticide.
While we mostly disagree with Xian missionaries and their interference in other cultures, we must agree that if they rescue these children from this awful fate, then it’s a good thing. However, it’s a shame that they are being rescued and taught to embrace another ludicrous religion. We need more secular groups to get involved.
18 June 2008, on 11:49 pm
Why is the above so hard to believe when we have nightmares like this going on?
Somalis flee terror, pour into Kenya refugee camp
It’s like we are on some galactic insane asylum.
19 June 2008, on 12:32 am
We have the same insane shit going on here in California. Demons in children under 2 years of age. The parent decides to kill the child to get rid of the demons. Two links below from this year. Where do these folks learn about demons. Can anyone say RELIGION?
http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/19301424.html
http://blog.t1production.com/killer-dad-said-he-had-to-get-the-demons-out
All I can say is that cop is one great shot. Way to go.
I also can’t imagine how hard it must be for the people who are family members of these killers.
19 June 2008, on 8:13 am
Could this be the origin the Judeo-Christian crucifixion/scapegoating myth?
Is this ritual, in part, the basis of modern religions?
Whether this infanticide amongst Amazon tribes is greatly exaggerated or not (number-wise), I can see how this may have been the origins of the resurrection myths, including Xianity. Burying someone alive and they come back to life. Sometimes natives were thought to be dead and buried and then were only in a coma or unconscious and they dug their way out of the ground after being buried and the natives thought the person came back to life …resurrected from the dead.
Some have said this story/documentary is an attempt to force the Amazon natives out of the rainforests because they are in the way of “progress”. I am doing more research. If anyone finds any more information, we would all like to know.
We have the same insane shit going on here in California. Demons in children under 2 years of age. The parent decides to kill the child to get rid of the demons.
Jimmer, it’s appalling that infanticide is carried out right here across our country. People killing children for all sorts of reasons, but bizarre that in this country with all of our advances that some people still believe in demon possession and kill their offspring for some crazy-ass superstition.
19 June 2008, on 8:15 am
This is slightly ot, but have you seen anything about this?
“Brice McMillan, 41, told Edgecombe County deputies last week that he tied his son to a tree in the family’s yard at 1110 Felton Farm Road and forced him to sleep outside Tuesday and Wednesday nights because he was misbehaving, the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office said.
Stepmother Sandra McMillan, 36, found Tyler unresponsive around 4:30 p.m. Thursday after being tied to the tree since Wednesday night. He was pronounced dead at Heritage Hospital in Tarboro.”
Of course the child attended KKKristian schools.
19 June 2008, on 8:15 am
The Christian groups just want them to change the practice to stoning to death. They would be OK with that.
19 June 2008, on 8:18 am
The Christian groups just want them to change the practice to stoning to death. They would be OK with that.
I still say that if there weren’t any laws against it here, that there would be regular stonings by the religious whackadoos.
19 June 2008, on 8:22 am
Another news link to support this story
The Earth Times – World News Editor Sat, 23 Jun 2007 01:28:00 GMT
And then I found this discussion via reddit
One commenter tried to rationalize this horrible “custom”
And another responded with:
There is no rationalizing away cruelty and infanticide.
19 June 2008, on 9:51 am
Part of me- the objective, anthropological part presumably, wants to say that this is none of our business, that the tribe(s) has been living this way for thousands of years, that, as brutal and callous as it may seem(as it may be), this is merely a method of self-limiting their numbers to what their environment makes feasible.
Of course it’s heartbreaking and seen through the lens of our society, it’s completely inexcusable. But these folks aren’t Gacy or Hannibal Lecter. There’s no joy- or sadistic thrill, achieved by the administrators of this practice. For all we know, that one less mouth to feed, that contribution to the greater good of the tribe by the one adult freed from tending to the infirm may make the difference between survival and extinction, especially looked at over multiple seasons.
They are not us and we ought not judge them by our standards and this has nothing to do with tolerance of their ethnic whatnot. But unless we are prepared to completely remove them from their current way of life; to somewhere that existence isn’t a daily struggle, where food doesn’t have to be stalked with stone age technology, where potable water comes from a tap, where covering one’s body is the norm, and where healthcare exists to insure that disability is not such a threat or burden, we really have no right to hold them to our comfortable standards.
On the other hand, things like the massacres in Rwanda or Darfur, the slaughter in Kosovo, the results of the one child policy in China, the killing of women for infractions against a bronze age code, the killing of noncombatant innocents in the name of some psychological problem writ large, and the like in a theoretically civilized world where we should know better? That’s worthy of our scorn- and of our action in insuring it doesn’t happen again.
Back to the issue at hand, there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between their practices and the place where we’ll eventually get to with an aging population and the needed universal healthcare- care rationing. I’d be less squeamish about this tribe’s practice if their method of sacrifice were a little more humane- a palatable poison of some sort, maybe…
19 June 2008, on 10:14 am
I’d be less squeamish about this tribe’s practice if their method of sacrifice were a little more humane- a palatable poison of some sort, maybe…
The same thought went through my head. Why the necessity of doing this at all is bad enough, but to make the little ones suffer in horror as they slowly suffocate to death while trying to dig their way out is just plain brutal.
In this day and age I still am opposed to this sort of thing at all. Imagine certain far-out religious sects of people here trying to use the excuse that it is “just their way”. Aren’t where they live under some sort of jurisdiction and the same laws as regular citizens of Brazil? One would think so.
19 June 2008, on 12:37 pm
Nuke the rain forest!
19 June 2008, on 1:19 pm
Why didn’t the cameraman do anything? I would’ve kicked that jungle dudes ass, if I saw that!
19 June 2008, on 1:21 pm
I don’t see any indication that this is population limitation. At least then someone could do a ‘necessary evil’ interpretation. This is about a superstition of children being born without souls.
19 June 2008, on 1:46 pm
I don’t see any indication that this is population limitation. At least then someone could do a ‘necessary evil’ interpretation. This is about a superstition of children being born without souls.
BD, That’s exactly and all what it is. Primitive superstition. They think they are warding off some kind of bad luck or evil omen. This is not about population limitation at all. There is no way to rationalize this.
Why didn’t the cameraman do anything? I
Travdawg, I was asking myself the same thing. I could not stand by and allow them to do that to those poor children. I would like to know if the camera man at least dug the children out after everyone left.
19 June 2008, on 7:04 pm
Stardust, the cameraman could have been Raindogzilla. It was none of the cameraman’s business:)
20 June 2008, on 11:02 am
This is as close to nature as humans can get. Anciant tribes living hand to mouth do what they need to do to survive in a punishing world. Does the mother bird who refuses to feed the weaker of her two chicks get blasted on YouTube for neglect? Cold, yes. But further proof that there is no god.
20 June 2008, on 11:18 am
Anciant tribes living hand to mouth do what they need to do to survive in a punishing world.
jesustookmyhair – This sort of killing is not for survival, it is mere superstition. A bird is not a human being. These are human children stuck in ancient ways and offspring of parents with dangerous beliefs.
Living off the land in primitive ways is one thing, but murder is still murder, infanticide is still infanticide. We cannot justify it just because they “living naturally.” I am sure the children do not want to be murdered by their own parents. That sort of logic says then that it is okay for crazy fundies to kill their children when they believe they are “possessed” because it is for the best for their culture…it’s just their way and thinning of their herd so we shouldn’t interfere.
(And this was a documentary, and in international news with international Human Rights groups trying to save these children. It is no little “oh well” thing. These children do not want to die, and their deaths are incredibly inhumane.)
20 June 2008, on 11:43 am
-Raindogzilla
I think Stardust has it right. Arrest the whole fucking tribe and civilize them! Jails have each and every amenity which Raindogzilla describes.
This “culture” has no right to exist. It has had the same amount of time to advance as the rest of the world and hasn’t been able to come up w/ anything better that infanticide?
Round ‘em up!
20 June 2008, on 12:20 pm
Arrest the whole fucking tribe and civilize them!
They should be free to live in the jungle if they so wish, but still be informed of and bound to the laws of Brazil just like every other person living there. Just as when we find these whackadoo religious sects here, live however you want to, but murder and infanticide is not allowed and no exceptions for “cultural/superstitious differences”. And when they break the laws of the land, they should be held accountable in the courts in the nation in which one resides. We do not make exceptions for crazy Fundie Mormon sects, nor should they for some primitive backwards peoples in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest. Live how they want to live…but killing is against the established laws of that nation in which they reside. They cannot be allowed to think that killing is okay…this is 2008, most of us know better.
When the children who are “thrown away” or victims of attempted murder are rescued, they do quite well in new homes where they are cared for and loved. Like Hakani
20 June 2008, on 5:29 pm
^ I like what you say in # 23, Star; I think that’s the best solution to this particular practice. In the past when these tribes rarely encountered any people from outside their immediate ecosystem and were completely isolated and self-reliant, whatever they did was basically the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it fall. Now that humanity is becoming a “global village” for better or worse, the knowledge of, attention to, and evolution of such societies is pretty much inevitable.
I agree with Raindogzilla that this practice perhaps started way back when from a need to keep a sustainable population, and not waste resources on individuals who probably wouldn’t survive or contribute to the tiny society living hand to mouth. Like all or most such practices, it accrued a religious significance and justification; a mother in such a society may rationalize going against her natural instinct to protect her child by giving in to her community’s “brainwashing” that it’s necessary for everyone to survive / ordained by the gods, etc.
What I find most disturbing but not surprising is the usual targeting of female children (not to mention the children of single mothers) for such disposal; gender and a mother’s unmarried status is not a birth defect or deformity and yet– My initial impulse is to believe that the practice did not start out singling out such kids, but developed that tendency along with patriarchal development in the culture – but I realize that could be reverse gender bias on my part, and I’m no anthropologist.
And of course similar practices in places by people who should know better are even worse; it all comes down to the danger we now perceive so much more clearly in these secularizing times of using religion, faith, and belief systems as excuses for human behavior. Once, a baby born with a harelip was a bad omen to be got rid of right away lest its survival bring down misfortune on its tribe; now we have the science to explain the harelip; the medicine and technology to fix it; and the knowledge to prevent the condition in the first place (of course, making all that readily accessible and available to all peoples is another story).
22 June 2008, on 3:03 am
[...] It was Stardust’s recent post that prompted this: while the three Abrahamanic religions forbid infanticide, there are far-reaching ramifications of this morbid meme we call religion. [...]