LYNCH mobs have killed hundreds of Tanzanians whom they accuse of witchcraft as black magic hysteria sweeps East Africa. Most of the usually elderly victims have been beaten or burnt to death by gangs of youths.
Some old women have been singled out simply because they have red eyes - regarded as a sign of sorcery by their assailants. The condition is actually caused by years of toiling in smoky kitchens cooking family meals. Tanzanian police have linked some of the recent killings, especially in the southern region around Mbeya, to a bloody trade in human skin and organs. The body parts are used in rituals to protect homes from evil spirits, increase harvests and lure clients to businesses.
Police have arrested several suspects, including one who was detained for chasing a small boy. A search of his clothing revealed he was carrying a bloody human jaw, tongue, nose and teeth. Police say 357 suspected witches have been killed in the past 18 months, but the Ministry of Home Affairs believes that the true figure is much higher. A departmental survey said as many as 5,000 people were lynched between 1994 and 1998.
Tanzania's minister of health, Dr Aaron Chiduo, blamed the killings on a lack of education in an overwhelmingly rural and poor society. Witch-hunting has a long history in Africa but the allegations of sorcery have also been used to cover up more prosaic motives for murder.
The upsurge in witchcraft killings in Tanzania comes as neighbouring Kenya is gripped by a frenzy of Satanist scare-mongering after an official report concluded that the country's government and business circles are riven with devil-worshippers.
The report, from the Presidential Commission into the Cult of Devil Worship, was written in 1995, but its contents had been kept secret until it was leaked to the press this month. There are now fears that its findings will trigger a wave of killings and mob attacks similar to those in Tanzania.
Presenting lurid but unsubstantiated testimony from witnesses who described human sacrifices, blood drinking and cannibalism, the commission concluded that Freemasons, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses were among the dozens of organisations guilty of Satanism. The report also condemned Rastafarians and loud music played by Kenya's thousands of taxi drivers.
Despite a failure to name individual suspects or provide convincing physical evidence to back its claims, the report has worried many ordinary Kenyans and fed the potentially dangerous rumour mill. In one secondary school in the western Nyando district this week students were sent home after threatening to riot when a newly-built pond was unveiled with a plaque showing it had been partly funded by local Freemasons.
At Homa Bay on Lake Victoria the municipal council was forced to scrap its colourful abstract logo after residents and employees complained they could make out the pattern of a snake - a Satanic symbol - in its design.
Even President Daniel arap Moi has entered the national debate, though he did little to ease concerns by failing to dismiss the report. However, many Kenyans have been outraged - and embarrassed - at the report's findings and the reaction they have provoked.
They say that the commission was staffed by conservative Christian clerics and that many of the organisations labelled as fronts for devil-worshippers, such as evangelists, are those most successful in taking support away from the mainstream churches.
However, the report's authors are standing by their claims. "The report is a reality. Let every Kenyan understand we did not get the report from the air, but from real people," said the Rev Bernard Muindi, a commissioner from the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.
. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml;$sessionid$FU1AS0YAAAB0LQFIQMFCFFOAVCBQYIV0?html=%2Farchive%2F1999%2F08%2F22%2Fwtan22.html
Yachyd Da
Kent
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