Beijing Bulletin Wednesday 25th June, 2014
• Family allegedly told son that all atheists have mental conditions
• They injected him with sedative and admitted him to mental hospital
• He raise alarm about his plight using a smuggled phone
LAGOS, Nigeria - A Muslim family in Nigeria has declared their chemical engineering graduate son mentally ill and forced him into a mental hospital after he rejected Islam as his religion and announced he was an atheist, his lawyer has said.
Media reports citing the lawyer said that the 29-year-old Mubarak Bala has been in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, in Kano State for the past nearly two weeks.
He raised the alarm about his forced detention in the mental institution from a smuggled phone that he used in the toilet of the hospital.
He said he was being drugged and held against his will in the psychiatric ward of the institution.
He said his father and three uncles on Friday beat him up before he was injected with a sedative. He woke up 30 hours later in the hospital.
"The biggest evidence of my mental illness was large blasphemies and denial of 'history' of Adam, and apostasy, to which the doctor said was a personality change, that everyone needs a God, that even in Japan they have a God," he wrote.
"And my brother added that all the atheists I see have had mental illness at some point in their life."
His Facebook profile was updated, apparently by his family, immediately after his detention claiming that he was now a Muslim again. However he has disowned the posts.
"The fact that immediately I'm sedated they could take my phone and post [on Facebook] the Islamic Shahada proved their real intent, and family members have been wailing that I'm bound for hell, so they had to make a move," he wrote.
The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) said Bala had declared before his relatives that he didn't believe in God. He was even taken to a doctor to see if he was mentally ill.
"His father is a politically powerful individual who has had him committed, against the advice of a medical professional. He is an Islamist supporter of Boko Haram," the IHEU said.
"The real reason for this outrageous and inhumane action is because Mubarak has renounced Islam and has openly declared himself to be an atheist."
IHEU communications officer Bob Churchill said that "a warped notion of family honour is the motivation to pressure Mubarak ... to conform to religious views that he simply doesn't hold".
A FreeMubarak twitter campaign and a Change.org petition have been set up to publicise the case and seek Bala's release.
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