Nigeria family forces atheist son into mental ward, lawyer says

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nigeria-family-forces-atheist-son-into-mental-ward/

June 25, 2014

LAGOS, Nigeria -- A staunchly Muslim family in northern Nigeria has forced their son into a mental hospital for declaring himself an atheist, according to a lawyer and supporters who have started an online campaign to #FreeMubarak.

Chemical engineer Mubarak Bala, 29, alerted people to his plight with tweets allegedly from a smuggled phone that he used in the toilet of Kano city's Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, where he says he is being drugged and held against his will in a psychiatric ward.

In his tweets, Bala said on Friday his father and three uncles beat him up and his brother injected him with a sedative. He woke up 30 hours later in the hospital.

"My neck still hurts from the stranglehold of my father, and the beat(ing) of uncles dislocated my finger and arm," he said in one message.

Lawyer Muhammad Bello Shehu said Bala's father told him he committed his son for his own safety.

"He said that the reason he had to take him to the hospital is for his own security because once people got glimpse that he is denouncing the existence of God ... he could be lynched and the house set on fire," Shehu said.

Bala said that while he was sedated his family used his phone to post on Facebook that he had returned to the Muslim faith. He described his father as an Islamic leader who "can't afford to have a non-Muslim family member, so he declared me insane."

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Adeneye said the case is just one example of how passionate many Nigerians are about religion - be they Christians or Muslims. He said he reached out for help to a legislator and a civil rights activist but they ignored his appeal, he believes "because of the stigma, they believe that an atheist gets what he deserves."

So Adeneye turned to friends abroad and Bala's case now is being pursued by the London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union, which has started an online petition.

"It appears that a warped notion of family honor is the motivation to pressure Bala in this appalling manner, to conform to religious views that he simply doesn't hold. This is an abhorrent violation of his freedom of thought and belief," the union's Bob Churchill said in a statement posted online.

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