Tanzania tells witch doctors to stay away from albinos

Sunday 25th January, 2009

Traditional healers have been banned in Tanzania, in an effort to stop then using the body parts of albinos. To be born albino - like this woman Winifrida Rutahiro - in Tanzania is a terrible fate. A horrifying BBC report by Vicky Ntetema (now in hiding, fearing for her own life) tells how the belief that their body parts have magic properties has led to the murder of at least 25 people in the Lake Victoria zone this year. "They are being killed because local witchdoctors say their body parts provide the potent ingredient for magic charms, which many local people use to bring success in business and love." reports Ntetema. "The bodies are left limbless and sometimes with a huge hole in the neck, from where blood would have been drained." Earlier in the month the New York Times also ran a report on the problem. In a recent murder, an albino man was knifed in a remote area bordering Lake Victoria, where superstitions are entrenched.

Albino rights groups claim the killers sell body parts including limbs, hair, skin and genitals to witch doctors for use in rituals.

40 albinos, so-called because they lack a pigment in their eyes, skin or hair, have been found murdered in Tanzania since mid-2007.