Tag: Burundi

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.

Burundi Introduces Tax to Cope With Famine

In January, Burundi imposed a special tax of 8 percent on the salary of ministers and lawmakers and a 2 percent tax on lower-level civil servants in an effort to raise money to forestall famine in northeastern Burundi.

More than 650,000 people faced severe food shortages in the Burundi provinces of Muyinga and Kirundo due to drought. At least 100 people were reported to have died since November 2004 due to the food shortages.

In some parts of those two provinces, there have been effectively no crops due to the drought since April 2004. Additionally, disease apparently wiped out the normally drought-resistant cassava crop. According to the BBC, many people in the region are crossing into neighboring Rwanda for work and then bringing back food to feed their families.

Providing enough food to forestall more deaths could cost upward of $50 million.

Sources:

Burundi approves new famine tax. The BBC, January 13, 2005.

Burundi battles with food shortages. The BBC, January 19, 2005.

Medecins Sans Frontieres Releases List of Top 10 Underreported Humanitarian Stories

Medecins Sans Frontieres-USA released an interesting list of top 10 underreported humanitarian stories — stories with a major humanitarian angle that went practically unreported in the United States. The 10 stories they chose were,

  1. Tens of thousands seek refuge in Chad from fighting in Sudan and Central African Republic
  2. Ongoing oppression of Chechen civilians
  3. Unrelenting violence in Burundi
  4. Massive displacement and isolation in Colombia
  5. War and neglect in the Democratic Republic of Congo
  6. Malaria death count soars
  7. Punishing cycles of violence in Somalia
  8. Repression of North Korean refugees
  9. Trading away the health of millions (restriction of generic AIDS drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean by U.S.)
  10. Collapse of health care in western Ivory Coast

MSF-USA has more details on each story on its web site.

Sources:

The Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2003. MSF-USA, January 6, 2004.

MSF issues “Top Ten” list of the year’s most underreported humanitarian stories. Press Release, MSF-USA, January 6, 2004.