TANZANIANS URGED TO NAME ALBINO KILLERS IN PRIVATE

Tanzania’s president has urged the public to identify the killers behind a spate of ritual albino murders that have tarnished the reputation of the east African nation.

Police and officials will deploy in 22 regions next week and offer people the chance to confidentially name the culprits. At least 40 albinos have been killed in Tanzania since mid-2007, mostly in the remote northwest near Lake Victoria.

“Even the officer in charge … will not know who you named,” President Jakaya Kikwete said in a speech seen by Reuters on Wednesday. “I am urging you to help us in stopping these cruel acts and this shame on our country.”

The murders are embarrassing for the government which wants to capitalise on its image as a stable destination for foreign investment in otherwise volatile east Africa.

At least 90 people, including four police officers, have been arrested in recent months for involvement in the killings or the trade in albino body parts — which witchdoctors tell their clients will bring them luck in love, life and business.

The violence has also spread to neighbouring states, with at least one albino murder each in Burundi and Kenya last year. Police in those countries say Tanzanians ordered the killings.

SOURCED FROM REUTERS

MOTHERS WOUNDED IN ALBINO ATTACK

Two mothers in western Tanzania have been attacked by gangs who were after their children who have albinism. The women were hacked with machetes when the attackers failed to find the two children.

Albinos have been targeted in a series of killings around the country due to a belief their body parts can make magic potions more effective. At least 30 people with albinism have been killed since March, including a seven-month old baby.

On Wednesday, attackers forced a woman to take them to her home, looking for her nine-year-old daughter in Kibondo District, close to the Burundi border. The girl was not in the house and so the men attacked the mother.

In the second attack, a gang of four men broke into a house at the Lugufu camp in Kigoma, which hosts refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, looking for a child with albinism.

The child, aged two, escaped kidnap after falling under the bed unnoticed. The women are undergoing treatment for their injuries.

SOURCED FROM BBC

ALBINOS IN BURUNDI FLEE FROM RITUAL KILLINGS

Albinos in Burundi have been taking refuge after three of them were killed by gangs apparently seeking to sell body parts in neighbouring Tanzania. Four albinos were moved to a provincial centre on Thursday in Ruyigi, Burundi, where police were protecting them, the BBC’s Prime Ndikumagenge reports.

Authorities have arrested six people in connection with the murder of an albino teenage girl in August. The attacks follow the killing of 26 Tanzanian albinos in less than a year.

A BBC correspondent’s investigation there revealed that witchdoctors were behind the killings. They sought albino body parts for potions that they claimed could make people rich.

Two of the albinos killed in Burundi – a man and a teenage girl – were reportedly found dead with their legs and arms missing. Police said the tip of the girl’s tongue was also removed.

Neighbours of another teenage albino girl killed in Ruyigi in August chased away her attackers, six of whom were later apprehended as they came to retrieve her body parts.

They are said to have told police that they were planning to sell the body parts in Tanzania. Our correspondent says that albinos in Burundi – estimated to number around 200 – are now living in fear for their lives.

SOURCED FROM BBC