KAMPALA, Uganda — Forty Christian children in Uganda were rescued from an alleged trafficking scheme. Two people have been arrested in conjunction with the plot.
Police rescued the children on Feb. 2 from the Continental Hotel in Arua in the West Nile subregion of Uganda, reported Morning Star News. The children — some as young as 5 years old — were being held at the hotel. They were about to be transported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be sold to the Allied Democratic Forces, according to the report.
A pastor in Arua alerted police to the scheme after church members told him of a Christian group recruiting many children for scholarships to a school in Uganda’s Luwero District.
Police arrested two people, a male and a female. The male had falsely portrayed himself as the leader of a Christian charity that was offering the scholarships, according to sources.
Approximately 14% of Uganda’s population is Muslim. Uganda’s constitution and laws allow for freedom of religion, including converting from one faith to another. However, Christian churches increasingly have received threats of violence, and some Christian converts have been attacked, killed or excommunicated by Muslim family members, the World Atlas reports.
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