Witch hunts

The witch is a generally depicted as an ugly and evil woman who has malignant supernatural powers. As we all know there have been massive witch hunts in the Europe back in history, most victims were women. A book named Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the The Hammer of Witches was public in 1486 and became extremely popular for its content – identify witches and torture them appallingly. It is a typical misogyny book that may result in thousands of deaths of women. In America, the Salem witch trails in 1692 also caused many deaths of women, even children. It seems the witch is everywhere.

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All of this seems like buried in history now, but the witch hunts still exist today, and may be closer and larger than we imagine. People in Ghana still believed in witchcraft very much. They exiled those women who were accused of being witches to these witch camps. There are at least six of them, housing a total of around 1000 women. The life in those witch camps is miserable. They lived in poverty and hunger. Akua Dentah is a 90 year old woman in Ghana, where she was accused of using witchcraft. She was captured and tortured to death by the people in her village. A Saudi woman was convicted of practicing witchcraft, including casting an impotence spell, and sentenced to death by beheading.