Hunt for Albinos in Malawi on the rise for their organs

UN independent expert Ikponwosa Ero

Under the blazing East Africa sun Chikumbutzo Massina gazes hollow eyed across the baked and barren ground where his brother Fletcher once tended his tomato crop. Any plants that remain are withered and brown.
‘Here is the spot where I spotted Fletcher’s blood trail,’ he says, his voice devoid of emotion, as he moves further across the field.
‘And here is the ridge where I found what was left of his mutilated body.’
In a monotone he tells how he found little more than his brother’s torso: all four limbs had been chopped off with a machete, his genitals cut off, his teeth torn out and all his vital organs – brain, liver, heart, lungs and kidneys - gone. For Chikumbutzo, Fletcher’s brutal murder has barely yet registered. But one gets the impression from his dazed expression that he has long known it was only a matter of time before his brother, an Albino, was killed. Here in Malawi, where the condition is more common than almost anywhere in the world, witch doctors hire ‘hit men’ from among the impoverished rural communities to murder then mutilate sufferers so they can use their organs for ‘medicines’ that are sold at huge prices.  Their bodies are considered to contain ‘healing properties’ and can increase wealth and influence. It is common for attacks to increase shortly before elections in rural areas.

Vice President of the Albino Association of Malawi Alex Michila

Now, in a major new investigative documentary on BBC2, one British doctor who has Albinism himself, has uncovered the true extent of this barbaric practice and shone a spotlight on this shocking trade in human body parts. Dr Oscar Duke, 30, an NHS doctor in London explores why these terrible crimes are taking place and who is responsible.  He visits Tanzania’s ‘protectorates’ where children with albinism and young adults are housed in squalid conditions and protected by armed guards.
In a country where more than half the population believes in witch craft these potions are bought as charms to win riches or influence.  A single one, made from the organs and limbs of albinos, can sell for 20m shillings, around £7,000 in sterling.
In Malawi, where more than 70 Albinos have been attacked, abducted or murdered in the past two years, the situation is even more perilous, leading one UN expert on the subject to warn that Albinos could eventually become extinct in East Africa. Malawi’s problem that has been exported from across the border, in neighbouring Tanzania, which has one of the highest rates of albinism in the world.
In Tanzania, charities have recorded 170 attacks on people with albinism since 2006, of which 70 were fatal. Trekking across Tanzania and Malawi, Dr Duke meets child victims whose limbs have been mutilated and the families of those murdered, as well AS travelling to a Malawian prison to meet the man who admits killing Fletcher Massina for money.