{"id":26851,"date":"2016-06-25T08:18:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-25T06:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=26851"},"modified":"2016-06-25T08:18:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-25T06:18:45","slug":"malawi-hell-on-earth-for-albinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2016\/06\/25\/malawi-hell-on-earth-for-albinos\/","title":{"rendered":"Malawi: Hell on earth for albinos"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a series of four stories, RICHARD CHIROMBO documented the nightmare which people living with albinism have been facing in the country in the past year. The stories, which were published in The Sunday Times on February 7 2016, won him the 2016 Misa Malawi Human Rights Journalist of the Year Award. Here, we republish one of the stories <\/strong><\/p>\n

Malawi has become hell on earth for people with albinism as, according to Amnesty International and reports carried in local media, killings, attempted killings, abductions and attempted abductions have become an everyday routine.<\/p>\n

A compilation of such incidents by Amnesty International, in a statement titled \u2018Malawi: Ritual murders of people with albinism must end,\u2019 has revealed that in 2015, a shocking \u201c45 incidents including killings and attempted killings, and abductions and attempted abductions, as well as opening of the graves of people with albinism\u201d were reported in Malawi.<\/p>\n

Officially, however, only 32 criminal offences committed against albinos were reported to police, according to Malawi Police Service publicist Nicholas Gondwa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the year 2015, about 32 criminal cases that include killings, abductions, and being found with bones of albino persons and trespassing grave yards of albinos were reported,\u201d Gondwa said in an interview yesterday.<\/p>\n

By November last year, according to Association of Persons with Albinism in Malawi (Apam) executive member, Overtone Kondowe, 20 cases of abductions, killings and abuse of persons with albinism had been reported. And 95 per cent of the victims were women and children.<\/p>\n

Kondowe told media practitioners at a training workshop that Apam had been informed of seven deaths by November 2015, two of the victims being women aged between 60 and 40 years, and three were girls aged between three and eight years.<\/p>\n

Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare, Isaac Katopola, was quoted in June last year as telling the media that, since the spate of attacks escalated in December 2014, six albinos were officially known to have been killed. This contrasted sharply with UN agencies\u2019 findings, which put the number at nine.<\/p>\n

This means, if we add the case of Eunice Phiri, 53, whose body was found in Kasungu National Park on 28 January this year, and 43-year-old Prescot Pepuza from Mphafomba Village, Traditional Authority Kaponda, in Mchinji [whose limbs were recovered in January this year, though the whereabouts of the body are unknown], at least 11 people with albinism have been killed as of February 6, 2016.<\/p>\n

The worrying aspect about the trend of killing, assaulting and abducting albinos is that, for relatives of the victims, discovering the remains of their loved ones has become a \u2018privilege\u2019 as, in some cases, the victimised are disappearing without trace. Amnesty International says in its statement that, \u201cSome of those who were abducted have never been seen again\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to Apam executive director, Boniface Ophiyah Massah, ignorance is one of the factors fuelling violence against people with albinism. But, Amnesty International says the government\u2014 and not ignorance\u2014 is to blame. It cites the recent discovery of the mutilated body of Phiri on 28 January this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is deeply worrying that there\u2019s poor security for people with albinism in Malawi despite an increasing number of attacks against them,\u201d said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International\u2019s Director for Southern Africa, adding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government\u2019s human rights obligations require them to protect everyone\u2019s right to life. They must ensure that the police have the resources to protect those at risk of attacks. These crimes must be investigated and those suspected of responsibility brought to justice without recourse to the death penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Gondwa said the responsibility of stemming cases of albino killings and abductions lies in the hands of police and citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Malawi Police Service is not failing to tame those behind killings of albino people but [the issue is] that members of the general public are failing to fulfill their obligation to report and tip the police of suspected perpetrators. Remember that police officers cannot be found everywhere. We also depend on people to get information. These killings are happening within the communities and no strange person can come from a far and start terrorizing people without someone close or from within the community taking lead. But people choose to hide criminal suspects,\u201d said Gondwa.<\/p>\n

Gondwa said, among other strategies, police has intensified day and night patrols, citing the deployment of armed police officers in strategic points, erection of road blocks, among other strategies aimed at increasing their visibility.<\/p>\n

However, Gondwa also asked people with albinism to be on the alert.<\/p>\n

\u201cSafety begins with oneself. People living with albinism have their immediate relatives who should be in the forefront protecting them because, at present, they are endangered species…. Any suspicious movement of people happening close to an albino should be reported to police or any other authorities without delay,\u201d said Gondwa.<\/p>\n

Blood traces <\/strong><\/p>\n

Apart from the murder of Phiri in Kasungu, cases of albino killings, attempted killings, abductions, and attempted abductions have been so commonplace that they are disturbing.<\/p>\n

In January this year, a nine-year-old girl was rescued from the jaws of death in Machinga when a 24-year-old man, identified by police as Mandela Paipi, attempted to abduct her. Paipi is said to have offered the girl\u2019s brother K500, 000 in order for him to facilitate the move.<\/p>\n

There have been many incidents of such horrors.<\/p>\n

These developments last year prompted Inspector General, Lexen Kachama, to instruct police officers to shoot-to-kill those caught in the act of abducting or killing albinos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people are ruthless, have no mercy and, therefore, need to be treated like that [shot at].\u201d<\/p>\n

Efforts <\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2015, a two-month probe supported by the United Nations (UN) Children\u2019s Fund and UN Women was launched with the aim of discovering the market for body parts in Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique.<\/p>\n

On March 18 2015, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), in a statement, expressed worry that \u201cthe human dignity of albinos is being denied as they are being reduced to an exploitative functional value of being a source of wealth for some people\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCCJP is similarly worried that the belief in sanctity of human life for all people is being denied from albinos with the belief that their body parts can be a source of wealth or healing powers. CCJP is further worried that in the contemporary world where science and biology have already given us many positive strides, we are failing to see that there is no difference between the body parts of an albino and non-albino.<\/p>\n

\u201cCCJP has painfully noted that closer relatives and communities of albinos are also abusing the albinos by not providing proper care and in some cases are accomplices in the abduction cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a series of four stories, RICHARD CHIROMBO documented the nightmare which people living with albinism have been facing in the country in the past year. The stories, which were published in The Sunday Times on February 7 2016, won him the 2016 Misa Malawi Human Rights Journalist of the Year Award. Here, we republish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26851","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\/26851","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=26851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26856,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26851\/revisions\/26856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}