Malawi condemns albino killings

Malawi has warned that the law will soon clamp down on people engaged in “criminal and barbaric” acts of killing, kidnapping or harassing albinos.

Information,Tourism and Culture Minister Kondwani Nankhumwa issued the warning on Monday  in an interview with The Nation in Lilongwe when he gave an update on government’s reaction to increasing incidents of albino-harassment in Nsanje, Blantyre and Machinga districts recently.

Over the past two months, perpetrators have brazenly targeted albinos in their unsubstantiated belief that the victims’ body parts are a catalyst for enriching people through traditional medicine men’s rituals.

“As government, we are leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that every person involved in these criminal and barbaric acts against albinos, faces the law soon. The police are on high alert and are investigating all those unfortunate incidents of albinos being killed, kidnapped and harassed and it is just a matter of time before the perpetrators are arrested,” he warned.

“The truth is that these criminal elements live in our communities and their odd activities include exhuming graves where albinos were buried, in their macabre search for the body parts. Let us work together, and with the police, to expose these criminal elements.”

The minister expressed regret that some people still seem to live in the stone-age, where belief in magical and rituals drives them to take other people’s lives, as is the case with those targeting albinos.

He added: “Such barbaric and satanic acts have no place in a developing and a democratic Malawi. The reliable and straight-forward route to richness is hard work and strategic thinking and every albino, like every other Malawi, has a right to life and security that the government is determined to give at all times.”

Meanwhile, Malawi Police Service (MPS) national deputy public relations officer Mable Msefula said up to five suspected culprits have been arrested and will be tried in various areas where incidents occurred.

Commenting on the developments, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) executive director Timothy Mtambo lamented the fact that Malawi had picked up the albino-targeting trends that had earlier been rife in neighbouring Tanzania.

“We, at CHRR, are outraged. we condemn these senseless acts of brutality in the strongest terms,”he said.