Police in Ikongo, Madagascar, fatally shot at least 19 people on Monday after a 500-person-strong lynch mob overpowered a local police station holding four people suspected of kidnapping an albino child and murdering the child’s mother, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported Tuesday.
The government of Mozambique launched a new conference and training session initiative in partnership with an albino rights NGO Wednesday urging citizens to cease killing, raping, and using the body parts of people with albinism in witchcraft ceremonies.
South African Bishop Sithembele Sipuka has denounced the epidemic of violence against albinos, calling on the African church to employ all its resources to bring the practice to an end.
The archbishop of Blantyre, Malawi, has blamed the country’s government for failing to stop a wave of ritual killings of people with albinism, generated by belief in the healing power of the bones of albinos.
The killing of a 54-year-old albino man in Malawi on New Year’s Eve have triggered concerns of a resurgence of murders, rapes, and mutilations against people with albinism in the country and greater region, where witch doctors claim potions made out of albino body parts can bring good luck.
A judge in South Africa sentenced a man to four life sentences in prison on Tuesday for the murder of his nieces and nephews – whose ears, the court found, he planned to sell at a high price to a witch doctor for use in potions.
