{"id":6495,"date":"2022-10-25T14:57:37","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T11:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/?p=6495"},"modified":"2022-11-22T12:48:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T09:48:11","slug":"high-court-hears-jehovahs-witness-trio-harassed-and-ostracised-for-refusing-to-participate-in-rain-making-ritual-convicted-by-village-headman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/high-court-hears-jehovahs-witness-trio-harassed-and-ostracised-for-refusing-to-participate-in-rain-making-ritual-convicted-by-village-headman\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court hears Jehovah\u2019s Witness trio harassed and ostracised for refusing to participate in rain-making ritual; convicted by village headman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">THREE members of the Jehovah\u2019s Witness church recently won a case at the Mutare High Court where they were challenging forced participation in a traditional rain making ceremony, which was against their conscience.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6496\" src=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Mutare_Court1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"546\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Mutare_Court1.jpg 728w, https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Mutare_Court1-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 728px) 100vw, 728px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The court ruled in favour of Tobias Gabaza, Wonder Muposheri, and Jabulani Sithole, who suffered discrimination for refusing to participate in a religious ceremony that violated their beliefs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In October 2020, the trio was summoned to appear before a village court presided over by a headman after another official insisted that they contribute to an indigenous ceremony.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The event involves invoking the spirits of the dead with the intention of bringing seasonal rain, and each villager is expected to contribute.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOur brothers made the decision, based on their Bible-trained conscience, to decline participation in the ceremony,\u201d said the church on its official website, JW.org.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cThe village chief ruled against our brothers and threatened them, attempting to coerce them to comply. Our brothers chose to appeal to the Magistrate Court in Chipinge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cOn January 5, 2021, the Magistrate Court ruled in favour of our brothers. However, the village officials refused to obey the court\u2019s decision and continued to pressure our brothers. Additionally, other villagers began to ostracise and mistreat them.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cSince the brothers continued to face discrimination, they appealed to the High Court. The Court acknowledged that the village officials violated the brothers\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIt also ordered the village officials to exempt our brothers from any traditional activities that violated their consciences and to pay them damages.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIt is expected that this ruling will benefit brothers and sisters living throughout Zimbabwe, as these traditions are observed throughout the country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THREE members of the Jehovah\u2019s Witness church recently won a case at the Mutare High Court where they were challenging forced participation in a traditional rain making ceremony, which was against their conscience. The court&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6496,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6497,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6495\/revisions\/6497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}