Attack on 11-year-old in Rio highlights fears of rising religious intolerance | World news | The Guardian

Dressed in the traditional white robes of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion, 11-year-old Kailane Campos, her grandmother and some friends were walking home from their temple in Rio de Janeiro, when they heard shouts from across the street.

“There were two guys holding Bibles, jumping up and down and shouting that we had abandoned God and that we were going to burn in hell,” she said. “Then one of them picked up a stone, threw it at us, and it hit me on the head.”

Bleeding heavily, Kailane passed out, while the two men jumped on a bus. The others in her group helped her back to their temple before taking her to the nearest hospital.

The attack has highlighted fears of rising religious intolerance among the more militant members of Brazil’s rapidly growing evangelical movement. With new churches aggressively competing for souls and space in the country’s poorer urban peripheries, many Afro-Brazilian worshippers have felt threatened by the extreme hostility of some of their pastors.


“I hope that what happened to me can serve as some kind of warning,” Kailane said.

Followers of Candomblé, which blends ancestor worship, spiritualism and Catholic cosmology, have long faced discrimination from an officially secular state.

But over recent years, reports of abuse, beatings and forced evictions from Afro-Brazilian places of worship have increased, according to Ivanir dos Santos, the president of the Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance.

Dos Santos argues that certain evangelical pastors are attacking these religions and their followers, partly as a way of boosting their own congregations.

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“Recent acts of aggression have happened as a result of the rise of non-traditional neo-Pentecostalist churches, some of which demonise Afro-Brazilian religions,” she said. “It’s not an organised persecution, but a rise in individual cases, many of which are mixed up with other issues.”

Attack on 11-year-old in Rio highlights fears of rising religious intolerance | World news | The Guardian