albino in africa

In many African nations - but most commonly in Tanzania - albinos are butchered in the street.

Their remains are used in the macabre human potions used by traditional healers to treat the sick.
Believing it will bring them good luck and big catches, fishermen on the shores Lake Victoria weave albino hair into nets.

For unknown reasons, Tanzania is believed to have Africa' s largest population of albinos - a genetic condition caused by a lack of skin pigmentation - and has an incidence seven times higher than elsewhere in the world.
Although those with the condition suffer higher than average levels of skin cancer and blindness, most albinos live full, happy lives - and can have healthy children of their own.

But those born with white skin in parts of Africa often pay a terrible social price for their condition.
Such is the stigma, albino children used to be killed at birth.

In recent times, they have been spared by their parents - but they are usually kept indoors, hidden by their families to protect them from 'human poachers' and abuse on the streets.
Shunned from normal village life and barred from many jobs, these 'white ghosts' are also widely believed to provide a cure for Aids, the scourge of this continent.
Indeed, many Africans believe that having sex with an albino will cure them of the disease. This has subsequently led to countless rape cases against albino women, leaving them HIV positive, too.
The white skin of albinos is also highly sought-after. There have been scores of cases of albinos in Tanzania and neighbouring Kenya being murdered and then skinned.
Investigators have found albino skins from Tanzania being sold in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa.
No wonder, then, that the relatives of dead albinos are also careful about burial arrangements, which are often held in private at secret locations to prevent grave-robbers digging up and selling their loved ones' body parts.



Bones are ground down and buried in the earth by miners, who believe they will be transformed into diamonds. The genitals are made into treatments to bolster sexual potency.
Despite the increasingly modern appearance of many African towns and cities, where almost everybody carries a mobile phone and the young bid to wear the latest Western fashions, many educated people still believe in black magic and traditional medicine.
And treatments made from albino body parts are believed to be particularly powerful, even by rich urban dwellers.
In fact, the eyes, blood and organs of albinos can now fetch thousands of pounds - unimaginable sums in East Africa, where millions live on less than £2 a day and where this shocking trade is most common.
Indeed, the colossal sums involved have spawned a new breed of freelance killers, often protected by the police, who harvest albino body parts for massive profits.

Some governments are trying to stamp out this vile business.

This week, courts in Tanzania, where there have been 90 such killings in the past two years, handed out death sentences to a group of men who had slaughtered and dismembered an albino boy - the first such punishment for albino killers.

The court in the north-west Shinyanga District, near Lake Victoria, ordered three men to hang for their part in the slaughter of Matatizo Dunia, a 14-year-old albino.
He had been bundled out of his home in the dead of night - and cut into pieces.
One of the accused was caught with the boy's leg. The remainder of the corpse was found hidden in bushes. The guilty men admitted they planned to sell the 'white meat' to witch doctors.

The gang is believed to have been responsible for 'hunting' albinos throughout the region, before trading their organs across this vast continent. And many are relieved that they now face the gallows.
'They killed an innocent and defenceless albino and they, too, deserve to die,' said Grace Wabanu, an albino university student who attended the court.

'I hope this judgment will serve as a deterrent to people who intend to kill albinos in the belief that their body parts will make them rich.
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