UK film on witch-hunts in Zambia hoped to curb attacks on women

NAIROBI: An award-winning British film about witch-hunts in Zambia could play an important role in curbing violence against women if translated into local languages and distributed widely, according to human rights campaigners.

The film "I Am Not A Witch" - which tells the story of an eight-year-old Zambian girl accused of being a witch - was named the most outstanding debut film on Sunday at Britain’s top film awards, the BAFTAs.

Welsh-Zambian director Rungano Nyoni spent a month in a so-called "witch camp" in Ghana to research the low budget film about a girl banished from her village to stay with other women also branded as witches.

Campaigners said films about often overlooked abuse of women - such as female genital mutilation and child marriage - helped raise awareness about the reality of these practices and could help bust myths and false narratives spanning decades.

"Films on under reported or little known gender abuses are very important as they can bring these often hidden issues to the public’s attention and force them into the light," said Shelby Quast, director of the charity Equality Now.

"Bringing these stories to light can help survivors, civil society and communities to hold their government and duty bearers to account." Millions of women and girls in countries ranging from India to Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria are still branded witches - often by their relatives or neighbours - in a bid to usurp their land or inheritance, say campaigners.

In many cases, victims are elderly widowed women who are humiliated, beaten, stripped and ostracised from their communities. Sometimes they are lynched. Children are also targeted with their parents and communities misled into battering, maiming, drowning, burning and abandoning them.