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.