Reuters/Dar Es Salaam
Police in Tanzania said yesterday that they had arrested 32 witch doctors this week as part of a campaign against ritual killings of albinos.
Activists say that attackers have killed at least 75 albinos in the east African country since 2000 to use their limbs and other body parts as charms meant to guarantee success in love, life and business.
President Jakaya Kikwete last week vowed to stamp out the practice he said brought shame onto the east African country, and albino campaigners have called on the authorities to execute people convicted of the murders.
“The witch doctors were arrested in possession of different items, including potions and oil from an unknown source,” the police chief in the northwestern town of Geita, Joseph Konyo, told reporters.
He did not say whether they had been charged, or caught with anything relating to albinos, whose condition means they lack pigment in their skin, eyes and hair.
Seventeen people convicted of the murders are currently on death row, including four sentenced to death on Thursday – but Tanzania has not carried out an execution for two decades.
The four who were sentenced to death on Thursday include Charles Nassoro, the husband of the murdered woman.
Court officials in Mwanza, northwest Tanzania, said the victim had her legs and right hand hacked off with an axe and machete after being attacked while eating dinner in her village.
“The prosecution has proved the case beyond reasonable doubt,” High Court judge Joaquine Demello told state radio after Thursday’s verdict.
She also told the Citizen newspaper that the sentence had also taken into account “the escalating killing of people with albinism in the country”.
“We want all those convicted of killing persons with albinism to be hanged without delay in order to send a strong message that these attacks will no longer be tolerated,” the chairman of the Tanzania Albinism Society (TAS), Ernest Kimaya, told Reuters. “We made this appeal directly to the president during our meeting with him this week and he expressed his commitment to us that the government will expedite the process of carrying out executions of death row inmates convicted of such killings.”
Kimaya said the members feared the attacks, recently on the rise, would become even more frequent in the build-up to October elections, as some politicians turn to witch doctors to increase their chance of winning.
“It is true that there is a link between elections and a rise in attacks on persons with albinism. It is something that we are aware of,” Kimaya said.
Similar beliefs exist in other African societies about albinos, most of them easily recognisable as they lack pigment in their skin, eyes and hair.
But activists say attacks are particularly prevalent in Tanzania.
Albinism is a hereditary genetic condition which causes a total absence of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes. It affects one Tanzanian in 1,400, often as a result of inbreeding, experts say.
In the West, it affects just one person in 20,000.
Home Affairs Minister Mathias Chikawe told Reuters that the president had to give a written consent for an execution to be carried out.
Murders of albinos have been concentrated in gold-rich regions and fishing communities surrounding the country’s Lake Victoria area where superstitious beliefs are rife.
According to a UN expert, attacks on people with albinism have claimed the lives of at least 75 people since 2000, and that albino body parts sell for around $600, with an entire corpse fetching $75,000.
