Author: Wicasta

A 13-year-old girl named Anothando Willie left her community and school shell-shocked after she took her own life prior to being called a witch. 

The suicide comes only months after Lathitha Nako, a Bhisho High School pupil in Grade 10, killed herself after being bullied for similar reasons.

Xolani High School’s principal is said to have tried to educate pupils, but two teachers are said to have called Anothando names.

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from DispatchLIVE, South Africa

Police have described how an 81-year-old woman was stripped naked, tied with rope and assaulted in an open field in Mount Fletcher in the Eastern Cape last week after being accused of witchcraft.

Police spokesperson Brig Tembinkosi Kinana said six people had been arrested in connection with the incident.

Kinana said police had been summoned to the scene by a concerned community member. Police arrived with municipality officials, traditional leaders and officials from the social development department and tried to rescue the elderly woman from the mob.

“Eventually, the elderly woman was taken away from the mob and to a place of safety. Police opened cases of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, kidnapping and imputing witchcraft. They arrested six suspects aged between 30 and 40. All six suspects remain in police custody and are expected back in court on June 22 in Mount Fletcher for formal bail applications,” said Kinana.

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Excerpts follow from an article by Marc Ellison

The stigmatization of children as witches is a recent phenomenon in the Niger Delta region, which suddenly exploded in the 1990s. By 2008, it was estimated that 15,000 children had been branded in the southeastern states of Akwa Ibom and Cross Rivers. According to research from that period, cases that had been documented included children and babies who had had nails driven into their heads, been forced to drink cement, set on fire, scarred by acid, poisoned, and even buried alive.

Bassey recalls how two girls were accused by a pastor two years ago at the Divine Zion of God Church in the small town of Akpabuyo in Cross River State. A pregnant congregant had gone past her due date by several weeks, and the seven and 10-year-old girls were held to be responsible and branded witches. The woman had approached a pastor at her local church and paid for a consultation. Although she gave birth successful shortly after, the damage had been done. A week later, Bassey heard the girls’ screams as he returned from his fields. They had been tied to a palm tree, and were being beaten with canes and machetes by three men.

Ebe Ukara, a desk officer for the Child Rights Implementation Committee in Akamkpa, says that 60% of the child abuse cases that cross her desk are witchcraft-related, and more often than not prompted by a pastor’s declaration. Those pastors, she says, can make a tidy profit from people who turn to them for help, although she stresses that not all Pentecostal churches are out to hoodwink their followers.

Judging from the billboards that adorn roundabouts – from the capital of Abuja to the Niger Delta – beer and salvation are big businesses in Nigeria, commodities to be bought and sold.

A handful of Nigerian organisations such as the Basic Rights Counsel Initiative (BRCI) and Way to Nations try to do more than just rescue youngsters accused of witchcraft – they try to reunite them with the very relatives who have ostracised them. Such attempts are rarely successful, even with extended family members.

“How do we break the news to these children that your aunties, your uncles are not willing to even see you?” says Lawyer and child advocate James Ibor. “These kids then maybe start to even think that they are witches.”

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In India, the Gunupur District Court on Friday sentenced nine people to death for brutally murdering three members of a family in 2016 after suspecting they were practicing sorcery. The murders in September last year in Rayagada district reportedly involved severe beating, injection of chemicals in the victims’ eyes and private parts, following which they were buried alive. The accused allegedly exhumed the dead bodies and burnt them in an attempt to destroy evidence after the police were informed.

The deceased included a couple and their eldest daughter. The younger daughter, who had witnessed the crime, was threatened to not speak up. Around seven days after the incident, the survivor, locked up in the house of one of the accused, escaped and lodged an FIR. “I am glad they have received death by hanging,” said witness Melita Sabara, who is also with the Rayagada District Child Protection Unit. “The nine accused have been sentenced to death by hanging by Additional District Judge Subhendu Kumar Pati,” said Additional Public Prosecutor Krushna Chandra Senapati.

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A Zimbabwean woman was wrongly accused of killing a young boy and lynched by an angry mob in a shanty town near the South African capital, Pretoria. The woman was burnt alive while another man, also from Zimbabwe, managed to escape after police officers intervened.

“The woman died when she was burnt alive by a mob [while] the man was rescued by police and taken to hospital,” local police spokeswoman Katlego Mogale told Agence France-Presse.

“He was discharged Monday night,” she added.

The incident took place Friday near Pretoria after several days of tensions, which were sparked by the death of an eight-year-old boy. The Zimbabwean pair had been accused of killing the boy through witchcraft. A probe revealed that the boy had been electrocuted.

Three people were arrested over the woman’s murder, but they currently face only charges of public violence, because “there were 500 people and more evidence is needed” to accuse the trio of lynching the victim, Mogale said.

Police reinforcements were sent to Laudium after an angry crowd attacked the local police station Sunday night, demanding the release of the three suspects.

_{Excerpted from an article by Kimberly M. Aquilina}

People with albinism lack pigment in their skin and appear pale. In Tanzania, this condition makes them targets. They are killed “like animals” and their body parts are used in potions believed to bring wealth and luck. Over 70 albinos have been murdered in the last three years alone, but there have been only 10 convictions.

Alfred Kapole, chairman of the regional Tanzania Albinism Society, had to escape to Mwanza city when a village leader tried to kill him for his hair. Another attempt on his life was made this year.

“He was among the first person with albinism whose case reached the courts,” Vicky Ntetema, head of Under the Same Sun, told the BBC.

“I had gone to the lake to fish,” said Mtobi Namigambo, relating to the BBC how his then 3-month-old son, May Mosi, who has albinism, was attacked when Namigambo had gone to work for the day. “They were all alone in the house when the attackers struck. My wife jumped out of the window and ran to safety with May, leaving the two children behind, who were not harmed at all.”

“After jumping out of the window,” Namigambo’s wife, Sabina, said, “they still came after me and I was screaming for help. They only backed off when I woke up the neighbors.”

Namigambo lives on Ukerewe Island, which used to be a sanctuary for albinos.

“We would urge the government to do more in educating the community here,” Namigambo told BBC. “The government once held seminars about albinism. It made a lot of difference, but not anymore.”

A campaign has been launched by the Tanzania government to urge communities to stop targeting albinos, but the biggest threat comes from rural areas, where television and radio has no reach. Mashaka Benedict, a representative of the Sengerema Albino Society, told the BBC that it is the educated, wealthy businessmen and politicians of the country that seek out the body parts of albinos. Benedict believes that is why the arrest and conviction numbers are so low.

“How can a poor man offer $10,000 for a body part? It’s the businessmen and politicians who are involved,” he told BBC.

The police say they are doing their best. “These cases are complicated because most incidents happen in very remote areas where there is no electricity, for example, and that makes identifying perpetrators at night very hard,” Mwanza police commander Valentino Mlowola told the BBC.

_{SOURCE: Headlines & Global News}