By Dreogan M. Eleor[1]
April 21, 2011


With this article, I, as Head of the Muggle Affairs Office, announce the launch of its LUMOS Campaign, an international effort with Ministries in Africa and the Near East in aid of victims of witch hunts and witch trials.  LUMOS aims to promote:

Literacy
Unification
Mediation
Organization
Service

One of the greatest obstacles to addressing a problem is not knowing it exists. After some rather pointed backlash from my November 2008 article, I write to you again about the state of witch hunts and executions that plague our world. I have written before: witch hunts are not a thing of the past. What is more, I will make the following case:



Let me be clear. This article does not question the Statute of Secrecy—merely points out where it is ailing, if not failing, and where we need to redouble our efforts to protect those in our purview. What I want to address is how we are beholden to our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters in our community. You do not know them yet. That can change. Consider this an introduction to four of the hundreds in recent memory who have or are suffering.


And it continues.

I have heard other heartbreaking accounts, some within our own borders:[7]

• a 13-year-old girl, tied up with chicken wire and starved and beaten for two weeks
• a 14-year-old girl, burned with acid before her mother attempted to bury her alive
• a 17-year-old, left brain-damaged after having a three-inch nail driven into her skull

Currently, witchcraft is punishable by death in over 13 countries. The most notable players lie in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Amazonas. Most of these efforts are persecutions center on women and children. Female children are doubly cursed and are lucky to survive. If they do, they are maimed, mutilated, and cast out into the wild. If human rights groups do not find them in time, they die of exposure.

For obvious reasons, those formally accused plead not guilty of witchcraft. In a town I recently visited, a boy of 8 holds a cardboard sign: “We are not witches or wizard [sic].” This has an uncomfortable consequence for our Wizarding World. In short, the question can be asked: which of these children are our own kind? Who do we have the obligation to protect?

The answer is all. The existence of our community—known more broadly in some areas than others—has led to the ultimate climate that is coming to a head.  In the past 10 years, witch-related persecution of children has exponentially increased on the African continent--and has been noted even by Muggle news sources as increasing in frequency in the UK.[8] A Gallup Poll found in 2010 that up to 95 percent of the Muggle populations in Cote d’Ivoire believed in “sorciellerie” – the French word for witchcraft.[9] This means that witchcraft is more or less a ‘national religion.’ Almost everyone in the country thinks as a matter of fact, not fantasy that witchcraft is real in its conception and consequences, that people can harm others using mystical means. As they would say in the Ivory Coast: C'est la vie. But the fate of those who suffer from accusations of witchcraft need not be. I repeat my appeal to you: We have a moral obligation to help those who suffer with us, for us and because of us.



In ways, the failure of the Statute in these area is demonstrated not by the knowledge of Muggles of magic but instead, of the suffering of those because of magic. Let us not forget, this was the reason the Statute was established. If anything, the Statute is proof that we need to be protective of our own. Protect those who suffer at the hands of Muggles ill-informed of our ways.

There is much work to be done. Let us be not complacent in the suffering of others on our behalf. Let us bring light.[10]

1.	Breaking the fiction-fact divide here to state the sad fact that every single piece of information in this article is based on accounts data in our real, Muggle world. I've included some references, for those interested. This issue is as important for us to learn as it is our AO characters.
2.	“Fawza Falih,” Wikipedia
3.	“Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” Dispatches.
4.	Ibid.
5.	”The Victoria Climbié Case,” Crime and Investigation, UK.
6.	See this Huffington Post article from just last month about the current state in the UK.
7.	"Channel 4's Dispatches to investigate Nigerian 'witch children'," The Guardian[/url] October 2008.
8.	"Toil and Trouble," The Economist, December 2015.
9.	"Child Witchcraft Accusations in the Ivory Coast," Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, July 2015.
10.	For real-life organizations functioning in the UK, see The Witchcraft & Human Rights Information Network, Safe Child Africa, and the UN's white paper on the issue.