The Plight of African Albinos continues

Every day, normal Africans get up and complain of either partiality, discrimination, unfairness, lack of love or partners, segregation etc etc. But what if you were born an Albino in Africa? Maybe with a little thought and consideration, normal Africans should look into the mirror and thank God for not being in the shoes of an African Albino especially in countries such as Tanzania.

While we may from time to time complain of some kind of discrimination, African Albinos suffer the worst form of discrimination and persecution…its an extreme tragedy. While Albinos suffer discrimination in many countries, a few other countries have allowed Albinos to be openly persecuted, killed like animals and their body parts used for rituals and superstitious practices. Read on to learn about some countries in Africa to avoid if you're an albino.

Worst Countries to be an Albino in

Tanzania has been listed as one of the worst, if not the worst country in Africa for an Albino to live in. Tanzania has one of the highest, if not the highest rate of Albino Persecution, discrimination and killings in Africa followed by countries such as Burundi, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo etc. In Tanzania and countries such as Burundi and DRC Congo, to a lesser extent, Albinos are persecuted, killed, dismembered and at times their graves are dug up and desecrated based on the belief that certain of their body parts transmit magical powers. The main people in East Africa promoting these evil superstitions are the witch doctors and others who use such body parts as ingredients in rituals, concoctions and potions with the claim that their magic will bring prosperity to the user.

Body parts reportedly used for such evil rituals include: feet, blood, sexual organs, fingers, bones etc. Think for a moment… the idea of killing another human being just to use some parts of his body for your own convenience or because Witchdoctors want the parts for potions they claim make people rich or healthy, especially when there is no evidence that this is true.

In Tanzania and Burundi, “Albinos are being treated as an expensive commodity because of their body parts. They are basically being hunted down and at times there is the trafficking of albinos across borders for sale” or the illegal trafficking of their body parts across borders as people would traffic drugs.

In other countries with little or no killings of albinos for witchcraft or ritual practices, people with albinism have also been ostracized or even killed for exactly the opposite reason. While they are killed in countries like Tanzania and Burundi because their body parts are claimed to make people rich, in other countries, they are killed because they are presumed to be cursed and therefore are claimed to bring bad luck.

In a number of African countries e.g Nigeria, Albinos are classified amongst the vulnerable groups of society, which includes people living with various kinds of physical disabilities. According to the “Albino Foundation of Nigeria” over two million albinos live in Nigeria. The foundation states that statistics show that over 600,000 Nigerians living with albinism suffer discrimination from their families, schoolmates and peers. In some cases albino babies are killed after birth by family members. If not, they are deliberately neglected; abandoned; never educated; and sometimes isolated. Nigeria is not an exception. Cameroon too has seen this phenomenon, just like other black African countries.

What is so true about this tragedy is that so few people know about the plight of Tanzanian and other African albinos. Those who know only pay lip service to it. The torture and murder of albinos is such a low priority item in the grand scheme of pain and suffering that calls attention to the world.

The greatest irony in this saga is that the Governments of  African countries allowed this to happen. It was mainly after the killing of albinos in Tanzania on 4 September 2008 as investigated and reported by the BBC that the European Parliament strongly condemned the act. This was followed by a resolution (codenamed: H. Resolution 1088) introduced by Representative Gerry Connolly (Democrat from Virginia) passed by the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 418 to 1 on February 22, 2010 condemning the attacks and killings of those Albinos. This resolution categorized the wicked acts as human rights violations, and urged the governments of Tanzania and Burundi to vigorously prosecute such cases and to conduct educational campaigns to combat the superstitious beliefs that underlie the violent attacks.