Cannibalism 'not a crime'
2002-12-14 11:00
Cape Town - German cannibal Armin M has been charged with murder only as cannibalism is not listed as a crime in that country. Cannibalism is taboo in Western culture and therefore a rare phenomenon.
It is usually perpetrated together with sex crimes, Michael Osterheider, psychiatrist and director of the Lippstadt-Eickelborn forensic institute told the newspaper Bild.
"Cannibalism might be seen as the highest level of sexual perversion. This is closely related to the equally rare carving up of bodies, following sexual crimes and sadism."
Other experts hold that Bernd Juergen B's willingness to volunteer himself as a victim and for his penis to be cut off, indicates a sexual identity crisis (trans-sexuality). He might have preferred to see himself as a woman.
Murder
Cannibalism happens after murder. Jeffrey Dahmer received the death sentence in 1992 as "the cannibal of Milwaukee", and was later murdered by a cell mate.
Police found a human head in the mass murderer's fridge and human flesh in a saucepan. He murdered 17 people and partially ate them.
Fritz Haarman of Hannover, Germany, murdered 26 men between 1918 and 1924. He drank their blood and sold their meat.
Jean-Bedel Bokassa, a former dictator of the Central African Republic, was also fingered as a cannibalist after human flesh was found in his fridge after he was ousted.
Cannibalism as a widespread practice is a controversial subject among ethnologists. It surfaced occasionally in the diaries of explorers.
Christopher Columbus for instance wrote that the Arawak accused their neighbours, the Caribe, of regularly consuming their captives. The Caribbean coast of Central America is named after the small tribe.
Not hungry
Ethnologists hold that hunger has no bearing on cannibalism among "primitive" people. By eating their enemies, they want to ingest their power, humiliate them and assimilate their gods and good qualities. Cannibalism was mainly practised among South American Indians and in Africa.
No European explorer, however, had been an eye witness to cannibalism, the newspaper Die Welt reported on Friday. All descriptions reported by people like Marco Polo and Columbus had been based on hearsay.
Berlin historian Heidi Peter Krocher, published a comprehensive study on cannibalism in 1994, questioning whether the practice had ever been a widespread phenomenon.
In 1999 a team of French and American researchers discovered a cave in the Rhone valley with bones dating back 100 000 years, with indications they had been the remains of a huge Neanderthal feast.
Bones found in Atapuerca, Spain, in 1997 also pointed to cannibalism.