Tag: Albino

MacLeans on Albino Killings in Tanzania

MacLeans ran a brief summary of the current status of the prosecution of men accused of murdering albinos in Tanzania. Albinos are targeted in Tanzania and other African countries because it is believed their body parts have magical and/or medicinal properties. MacLeans reports that in October three men were sentence dto death for the killing of a 14-year-old albino boy whose body was then chopped up into pieces, presumably for sale on the black market.

It also reports on a particularly recently grizzly murder of a young albino girl,

An equally barbaric case is also garnering national attention: Mariam Emmanuel, a ?ve-year-old girl, was butchered by a group of machete-wielding men in Mwanza. The culprits divided the girl’s body up among themselves and drank her blood while her siblings watched.

Unfortunately, while this conviction (though not the death penalty) represents progress, this is apparently the first time since the wave of albino killing began in 2007 that anyone has been convicted of a crime related to the murders in Tanzania.

Under the Same Sun is the main organization currently addressing issues faced by albinos in Tanzania, including the horrific murders, and has a petition urging that more be done to stop the murders. It also accepts donations.

Murders of Albino Children in Burundi

Another disturbing story about the murder of albinos, this time in Burundi where police believe the albinos are murdered so their body parts can be smuggled into Tanzania where they are apparently used as part of religious/medical rituals,

An eight-year-old albino boy in Burundi was murdered and dismembered, an official said Monday, the latest victim in a string of grisly killings linked to witch-doctors’ use of body parts.

The boy was chopped up in Burundi’s northern Kayanza province, where another boy was reportedly dismembered alive last month.

. . .

The latest murder brings to at least nine the number of albinos killed in the small central Africa country in the past five months.

WTF.

Disturbing Attacks/Trade in Albino Body Parts In Tanzania

The BBC ran one of the more disturbing articles I’ve read so far this year, with its report on the murder of albino men and women in Tanzania by people who want to sell their body parts for use in ritual medicine.

According to the BBC, at least 40 albinos have been murdered since the middle of 2007,

The killers repordly sell albino body parts — including limbs, hair, skin, and gentials — to witchdoctors.

. . .

In the most recent case last Wednesday an albino man — named as Jonas Maduka — was killed in Sogoso village in the north-western Mwanza region.

He was reportedly eating dinner at home when people called and asked for his help.

When he went outside he was strangled, before his assailants chopped off his leg and made away with the limb.

The Tanzanian government has responded by revoking the licenses of all traditional medicine practitioners, effectively outlawing them, but there are apparently so many practitioners that the ban is being ignored.

Moreover, the BBC reports that at least some of the traditionalists feel they are being made scapegoats for a government that has been unable to stop the wave of albino killings.

Insanity.