Hunted Down & Sold For £50,000: Witchdoctors Believe Tanzania's Albino Body Parts Bring Luck

Tanzania's albinos are being 'hunted down like animals' as greed for money and influence drives families to turn on their own loved ones in a trade allegedly fuelled by some of the country's most powerful people. It is believed albino body parts will bring a person wealth, or luck - and for that, people are willing to pay as much as $3,000 or $4,000 for a limb, or as much as $75,000 - about £50,000 - for the 'full set', a whole body.

People with albinism are regularly attacked by people who chop their limbs off - an act which either leaves them severely mutilated, or dead.

Albinism, a hereditary genetic condition which causes a total absence of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes, affects one Tanzanian in 1,400, often as a result of inbreeding in remote and rural communities, experts say. In the West, it affects just one person in 20,000.

Since people began collecting records of the attacks, there have been 74 killings and 59 survivors of attacks. Even the dead are not safe: 16 graves have been robbed. And these are only the recorded cases.

The most recent case saw 4-year old Pendo Emmanuelle Nundi abducted from her home in December. Her father and uncle were both arrested in connection with her disappearance, but despite rewards offered of £1,130 and promises of swift action from the police - she has not been found.

Mwigulu Matonange was just 10 when he was attacked by two men as he walked home from school with a friend. They chopped off his left arm, before disappearing back into the jungle with their 'prize'. 'I was held down like a goat about to be slaughtered,' he told IPP Media after the February 2014 attack.

A 38-year-old woman with albinism was attacked with machetes by her husband and four other men while she was sleeping, according to a UN report. Those living with albinism in Tanzania fear the lure of making a couple of hundred dollars - three times the minimum wage earned in the country - is placing them in danger, even from their own families.

'Now we can see the parents who are involved in planning the attacks. What kind of war are we fighting if parents and family do this? Who can we trust?' Josephat Torner, who campaigns for albino rights, asked.  'You do not know who is your enemy.' 

Josephat, who himself is albino, added: 'People with the albinism are being hunted and killed for our body parts. It is because people want to become rich. We are still living in danger. It is because people, they have different ideas. Some people, they are thinking they should get our body parts and sell to different places. The question is, why? Why now? And who is behind the killings?'

Source: MailOnline | UN | IPP Media | AFP