When Richard Ciza was alerted by neighbors last week that a posse was looking for him, he ran and hid for two days in the forest of eastern Burundi.
The 19-year-old is an albino and knows exactly what kind of death he would have suffered if the hunters had caught up with him.
“Some neighbors came to warn me that a group of killers was after me and so I ran like the wind, completely terrified,” said Ciza, who lives in Ruyigi Province.
PHOTO: AFP
In recent weeks, Ruyigi has seen a gruesome string of murders and mutilations of albinos, whose body parts are sold to witch doctors.
“People say that the body parts taken from albinos are sold in Tanzania. They put them on gold mines and that brings the gold to the surface, then you just need to collect it,” said Ciza, fear evident in his pale blue eyes.
“Some fishermen also use the parts to bait large fish they think have gold in their bellies,” he said.
Still in shock, Ciza spoke from the safety of Ruyigi Province chief prosecutor Nicodeme Gahimbare’s home.
The official’s home has been turned into an albino safehouse, surrounded by a 3m wall, where some 25 albinos from all over the region have taken shelter.
“We held a crisis meeting with the administration, the police, local MPs and people representing the albinos. We’ve decided to gather all 45 known albinos in Ruyigi to guarantee their security,” Gahimbare said.
On Sept. 22, a 16-year-old albino girl named Spes was attacked in her village of Nyabitsinda.
She was dismembered and her body parts disappeared. A few days later, the same happened to a man in the village of Bweru. Officials have reported two other recent murders elsewhere in the country.
Police have established that the limbs, organs and blood of the albinos were smuggled into Tanzania and sold to local sorcerers who use them to concoct lucky charms.
Northern Tanzania has been plagued by grisly incidents involving witchcraft. The phenomenon has reached such proportions that the country’s president has had to launch a special protection program.
Demand is such in Tanzania that albinos across the region now feel threatened.
Albinos in Ruyigi Province, where witchcraft is deeply entrenched, are more at risk than others.
Ephrem, an eight-year-old boy from Nyabitsinda, walked more than 10km with his father to reach the prosecutor’s safe house in Ruyigi town.
“Just because of their skin color, they are being hunted on the grounds that they have a commercial value in the eyes of some people,” said his father, Protais Muzoya, a father of 10, two of them albinos.
“Not very far from our home, some criminals killed a young girl who looks like my children. They cut her arms off and collected all her blood and I’m very scared for my children,” he said, holding his son’s hand.
As the worried father recounted the girl’s death, a car pulled up in front of them to offer a lift to Ruyigi but Ephrem panicked, kicking and screaming, refusing to get into the stranger’s vehicle.
“My son is in a constant state of terror since he heard what happened. When he walks in the street, some people say things like ‘Our fortune goes by,’” said Protais, politely turning down the perplexed driver’s offer.
The handful of albinos in the region have had to close ranks and often exchange stories and survival tips.
Albinism is a congenital lack of the melanin pigment in the skin, eyes and hair, which protects from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Albinos in Africa are vulnerable to medical complications as well as social discrimination.
But while they once had to hide only from the sun and jeers, albinos in Tanzania and Burundi are now running from a more macabre menace.
“The threat against albinos is very real. Richard Ciza for example was chased by four murderers armed with rifles and had to hide in the forest for two days,” Gahimbare said.
“These people say they can earn 600 million Tanzanian shillings [US$500,000] for the body of one albino,” he said.
“The fate of albinos should become a national preoccupation because it has spread far beyond the borders of our province. What is happening is terrifying because albinos are now looked upon as a commercial good,” he said.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS