The brutality of Africa

IHT – Discrimination against albinos is a serious problem throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but recently in Tanzania it has taken a wicked twist: At least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts. Many people in Tanzania – and across Africa, for that matter – believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and affects about 1 in 3,000 people here.

Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich. As the threats have increased, the Tanzanian government has mobilized to protect its albino population, an already beleaguered group whose members are often shunned as outcasts and die of skin cancer before they reach 30. Police officers are drawing up lists of albinos in every corner of the country to better look after them. Officers are escorting albino children to school. Tanzania’s president even sponsored an albino woman for a seat in Parliament to show that “we are with them in this,” said Salvator Rweyemamu, a Tanzanian government spokesman. [snip] But the killings go on.

They have even spread to neighboring Kenya, where an albino woman was hacked to death in late May, with her eyes, tongue and breasts gouged out. [snip] The young are often the targets. In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives. [snip] When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in. “They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands. The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps. Vumilia died. Yusuph Malogo, who lives nearby, fears he may be next. He is also an albino and works by himself on a rice farm. He now carries a silver whistle, to blow for help.

If they want to keep these poor folks from the effing savages and their primitive ways, build lots of gallows and hang every piece of shit witchdoctor and murderer caught with albino body parts. Leave em’ swinging in the wind as an example, oh and since there aren’t too many albinos around to protect. Give em’ all guns and teach them how to use them, that ought to hold the savages with long knives at bay and as a bonus drag them into the civilized world. Many of us in the western world should remember this sort of thing before they are quick to slam and slur western civilization as dreadful, racist, xenophobic and no better than any other on this planet.