Malawi\u2019s President Peter Mutharika has told the BBC he feels ashamed by the attacks on albinos his country.<\/p>\n
He said that as a leader he \u201cfelt terrible\u201d and called for the church to speak out about the attacks.<\/p>\n
Malawi has recorded at least 65 attacks on people with albinism, including murders, in over a year, the UN says.<\/p>\n
Attacks have been driven by the belief – advanced by some witchdoctors – that albinos\u2019 body parts have properties that confer wealth and good luck.<\/p>\n
Mutharika said that this belief was surrounded by \u201csuperstition, foolishness and ignorance\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who are telling people that it makes people rich are not even rich. They are wearing rags. How can a person like this make your rich if he himself cannot make himself rich?\u201d he told BBC Focus on Africa TV.<\/p>\n
The president said that he had not rejected the idea of increasing prison sentences for people behind the attacks – but that he would not introduce a death penalty as it already exists for homicide in Malawi.<\/p>\n
He added that he was sending officials to neighbouring Tanzania to learn how they had dealt with similar attacks.<\/p>\n
Tanzania\u2019s government banned witchdoctors last year as part of its efforts to prevent further attacks and kidnappings targeting people with albinism, who lack pigment in their skin and appear pale.<\/p>\n
UN expert Ikponwosa Ero warned in April that Malawi\u2019s estimated 10,000 albinos face \u201cextinction\u201d if they continue to be murdered for their body parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi\u2019s President Peter Mutharika has told the BBC he feels ashamed by the attacks on albinos his country. He said that as a leader he \u201cfelt terrible\u201d and called for the church to speak out about the attacks. Malawi has recorded at least 65 attacks on people with albinism, including murders, in over a year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25446,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25442\/revisions\/25446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}