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- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Albinos in Africa slaughtered for witchcraft
12:37 | 
Posted by
JanDeKlerk |
25 Albinos have already been murdered in Tanzania over the past eight months - and their body parts harvested for 'traditional medicine'...
Pictures by BBC
October 3 2008 -- Twenty-five people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania since March 2007, a BBC investigation has found. Albinos are targeted for body parts that are used in witchcraft, and killings continue despite government efforts to stamp out the grisly practice, the BBC's Karen Allen says.
Known as the "Zeru Zeru", or ghosts, Tanzania's albinos have put up with the name-calling and the stigmatisation of being "black in a white skin" for years. The unluckier ones have even been kicked out of their home by relatives who see their condition as a curse on the whole family. Now albinos in the east African nation face an altogether more deadly threat.
They have become the favoured prey of traditional healers, who kill them to harvest their body parts for get-rich-quick concoctions.
Also see:http://www.wunderkabinett.co.uk/damndata/index.php?/archives/1372-Outbreak-of-albino-muti-murders.html
Once, albinos used to seek shelter from the sun. Now they have gone into hiding simply to survive, after a series of killings linked to witchcraft. In Tanzania, 25 albinos have been killed in the past year.
The latest victim was a seven-month-old baby. He was mutilated on the orders of a witchdoctor peddling the belief that potions made from an albino's legs, hair, hands, and blood can make a person rich. Sorcery and the occult maintain a strong foothold in this part of the world, especially in the remote rural areas around the fishing and mining regions of Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria.
- Nobody seems to know why the killings are happening now, but Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete is now putting pressure on the police to identify where albinos live and offer them protection.
This is not an easy task when BBC investigations suggest that some police are being "bought off" in order to look away when such appalling crimes are committed.
Slaughtered alive: 'We want your legs'
The last adult albino to be murdered - just a few weeks ago - was Nyerere Rutahiro.
Picture by BBC: Nyerere Rutahiro's body was laid to rest in a cement-sealed grave ...
He was eating dinner outside in his modest rural compound, when a gang of four strangers burst in, and threatened to arrest him. As his wife Susannah looked on helplessly, the men began to hack at Nyerere's arms and legs with machetes ( while he was alive)...
"We want your legs," they shouted, "We want your legs," his wife recalls, still deeply traumatised by what she saw. Nyerere was clearly being targeted for being albino - but in every other respect he was an accepted part of his community. A father of two in his 50s, farming cassava - just like everybody else.
His body was laid to rest in a cement-sealed grave to protect against grave robbers who often steal body parts of the dead to give to witchdoctors. A builder had been hired to do the job.
Looking on as the funeral came to a close, is Nyerere's sister Winifrida. She too is albino. Terrified, she pulls her six year-old-son closer to her. Though he is black (the gene that causes albinism is a recessive gene), he too is vulnerable. It is all too clear what is going through Winifrida's mind. Will they come for her next?Squinting her pale eyes against the midday sun, Winifrida whispers in a barely audible voice: "Please, ask the government to take me away from here, I dare not come out of the house since my brother was killed."
BBC investigation
This is the work of organised gangs, according to Tanzanian police in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
'PICTURE BY BBC: When Amina was born my husband and the older two children moved away. They were so ashamed and thought Amina would bring us bad luck... but I am not leaving her,' said Ashura, mother of nine-year-old albino Amina said (left).
Witchdoctors, middlemen and the clients who pay for albino body parts are among the 173 people in custody so far for these macabre killings. None has been prosecuted.
The BBC sought to investigate how sorcerers' tales of albinos are being channelled into gruesome crimes. An intermediary posing as a "client" with mining and fishing interests seeking to get rich quick, visited a prominent witchdoctor on our behalf at dusk. They were told that albino body parts could be obtained without difficulty, for a price.
The police are now investigating these claims.
Since then, a seven-month-old albino baby was killed nearby. http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2403814,00.html
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