Double threat for albinos
2009-02-05 09:30
Mwanza - When he walks down a street in northern Tanzania, Alfred Kapole knows that his legs, arms, skin, tongue and hair are worth thousands of dollars to local witch doctors.
As an albino, he used to have to hide from the sun but now he is also being hunted as an ingredient for "lucky potions" to make people rich, a macabre trade for which more than 40 albinos have been slaughtered over the past year.
"Once, we were walking down the street with the albino society's secretary and treasurer, heading to the hospital for a check-up and some builders started yelling 'Deal! Deal!'", said Kapole.
The chairperson of the Tanzania Albino Society in the Mwanza region said the men were arrested but a court later let them off, arguing that it could not be established whether they were guilty of abuse.
"There is too much impunity, this is why we live in fear," said the 46-year-old, his pale green irises flickering laterally behind Ray Charles sunglasses and a black felt fedora covering his hay-coloured hair.
Like many albinos in the East African country, he had to quit his job for fear of being kidnapped, murdered and dismembered.
String of murders
According to local residents, witch doctors use albino organs and bones in concoctions to divine for diamonds in the soil, while fishermen have been known to weave albino hair into their nets hoping for a big catch on Lake Victoria.
In February 2008, five-year-old Mariam Emmanuel was slaughtered in her bedroom, the youngest victim of a string of murders which has left 43 albinos dead in a year, not counting the newborns killed by their own parents.
Her 12-year-old sister Mindi, a diminutive girl with normal black skin pigmentation, was sleeping in the same room.
"In the middle of the night, three men came with a torch. They told me to shut up or I would suffer the same fate as my sister."
She recounted the story crouched against her mother's lap in front of the family homestead of mud huts, fumbling her filthy turquoise dress, her eyes turned earthbound, as if transfixed on a film on that fateful night.
"I peeped from under the blanket. They grabbed her then one of them pulled out a big knife. One of them slit her throat while the other was holding her down, she was struggling, her legs were like running in the air."
"They collected her blood in a tin, drank it and then cut both her legs off under the knee and clipped out her tongue. They put it all in a bag and ran away," she said.
Social discrimination
Her 76-year-old grandfather Mabula was supposed to look after the children but slept right through the butchery.
He buried her inside one of the huts and has since slept over her grave every night, in a gesture of mourning but also to keep away robbers who have been digging up graves across the country to find albino bones.
According to Under The Same Sun, a Canada-based NGO, there are at least 170 000 people with albinism in Tanzania, a country of 38 million inhabitants.
Albinism is a congenital lack of the melamin pigment in the skin, eyes and hair which protects from the sun's ultraviolets, making albinos vulnerable to medical complications.
They are shunned and subject to social discrimination in many parts of Africa, and murders of albinos have also been reported in Burundi.
In Tanzania, some have sought shelter in hospitals in the capital Dar es Salaam but many remain exposed in rural villages.
'Not ready for this'
A few kilometres from the lakeside city of Mwanza, Mitindo primary school for the blind has become a rare sanctuary for albino children.
Mariam's nine-year-old brother, kicking a makeshift football around the yard, is one of dozens of children enjoying the education and relative safety provided by the school.
"We have 68 children at the moment but numbers are increasing every day, we were not ready for this," said head teacher John Loudomya.
"We have put up a fence and the government is trying to improve security by stepping up night patrols," he said, adding that the school needed supplies of sun lotion for the albinos as well as footballs containing bells for the blind.
The authorities of the east African country have come out strongly against the attacks but the killings have continued and distrust among the victims is growing.
No one embodies this quandary quite like Shaymaa Kwegyr, who is both an albino woman and a member of parliament, appointed last year by the president.
Who are the real consumers?
"Who are these people who buy an albino hand for millions of shillings (thousands of dollars)? I don't understand. They are certainly not afraid of government," she told AFP by phone.
"During my tour of the affected regions in January with the prime minister, they killed three people," Kwegyr said.
Dozens of suspects have been arrested but none of the cases have significantly contributed to dismantling what has become a trade.
At least six albinos have been murdered in neighbouring Burundi and in one case investigators established that body parts were smuggled across the Tanzanian border by Congolese nationals.
Josephat Torner, who works for Under The Same Sun in Dar es Salaam, pointed out that no fisherman or diamond miner could afford the thousands of dollars needed to buy an albino limb at the current going rate.
"We know informants can receive $100 for identifying a vulnerable albino, we know that the actual killers get paid thousands but what isn't clear is who are the real consumers," he said.
"We are dealing with big business here and there is corruption in the police and in the courts, that is why the killings are still going on," he said.
Until the culprits are captured and evidence given that the ring behind one of the most horrific string of homicides the region has seen is cracked, no albino living in the Lake Victoria region will feel safe.
'One day it could be my turn'
Ukerewe island in Lake Victoria, the largest inland island in Africa, has a high proportion of albinos, the first of whom are believed to have been expelled from their community, brought to the island as into quarantine and left to die.
Missionaries saved them and generations later, their isolation is a blessing of sorts, since no albino has been killed there recently.
"Sometimes I feel appeased on this island," said Nema Kajanja, a 28-year-old mother of two, whose parents were both albinos, as are two of her brothers.
"But then I hear the news of a killing somewhere and I start panicking. Albinos are dying and if these killings don't stop now, I know that one day it could be my turn."