Lynchings in Congo as ***** theft panic
hits capital
Tue Apr 22, 2008 1:21pm EDT
By Joe Bavier
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected
sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's *****es
after
a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged
witchcraft.
Re****ts of so-called ***** snatching are not uncommon in West Africa,
where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread,
and
where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
Rumors of ***** theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic
Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They
quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of
fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Pur****ted victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that
sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear,
in
what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of
a
cure.
"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had
a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after
being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters
on Tuesday.
Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to
avoid
the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected
***** snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have
since been released.
"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.
"But when you try to tell the victims that their *****es are still there,
they tell
you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell
them,
'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.
Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo
province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government
crackdown on its members.
"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw.
What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone
credits near a Kinshasa police station.
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues,
visit: africa.reuters.com/ )
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)
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