Criminals with suspected links to witch doctors murdered an eight-year-old boy in eastern Burundi and made away with two arms and a leg, a rights group and an official said Friday. Albinos have been routinely targeted in the small central African country, where 80 of them have now been gathered in centers under the protection of the authorities.
"Three men armed with machetes attacked a family on Muzenge Hill in the Cankuzo province which included an eight-year-old albino boy," Kassim Kazungu, who heads Burundi's Albinos Association, told AFP.
Kazungu said the latest murder, which occurred on Tuesday, brought to six the number of albinos killed in Burundi since September last year, while a seventh has been missing for months. "This time local residents were fortunately able to capture the three murderers the next day and took the law into their own hands by killing one of them before the police arrived," he said.
Criminals in Burundi are believed to smuggle albino organs and limbs to neighboring Tanzania, where witch doctors use them for lucky charms. In Tanzania, at least 35 albinos, mostly women and children, have been killed in different parts of the country in 2008, according to the Tanzania Albino society. |