Tanzanian witch doctors arrested over albino killing

BBC News, 14 May 2014

Albinos in Tanzania have become targets for body-snatchers
seeking to sell them to witch doctors

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Two witch doctors in Tanzania have been arrested after a woman with albinism was hacked to death, police say.

One of her legs and several fingers were removed in the attack on Tuesday.

Albinos have suffered widespread persecution in Tanzania, where witch doctors say magic potions made with albino body parts can bring good luck.

Such killings have declined in recent years, but this latest attack has prompted a human rights group to call for all witch doctors to be banned.

At a press conference on Wednesday, the group, Under The Same Sun said the current regulation of witch doctors was clearly not working.

The BBC's Leonard Mubali in Dar es Salaam says that currently all witch doctors have to apply for a certificate from the ministry of health and welfare to practise.

The attack occurred in the village of Gasuma, in Simiyu province - a remote rural area in the north-west of the country where there have been killings of albinos before, our reporter says.

The woman's left leg, two fingers from her left hand and a nail from one of her thumbs were removed.

According to Under the Same Sun, which campaigns against the discrimination of people living with albinism, the last killing of an albino in Tanzania was in February 2013.

In recent years, the government has been also been trying to address the problem, and an albino MP was appointed several years ago.

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“… Even though parts of your physical being might shift a bit, the cellular structure shift we are discussing today will not become common knowledge for several years. The current human interior model required the study of thousands, if not millions, of humans. As is now true for those humans with achromatism (albino), the first Lightworkers will merely be noted as unusual.

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