(Nairobi) The body of a young four-year-old albino kidnapped on Saturday in Bujumbura, the main city of Burundi, was found dismembered on Tuesday in the northeast of the country, we learned from the association Albinos sans borders and from an administrative source.
Posted at 12:49 p.m.
“A four-year-old albino named Abdul was abducted on Saturday afternoon by a group of three killers in a taxi while he was playing with other neighborhood children in the neighborhood de Kinama”, on the outskirts of Bujumbura, spokesman for the association Albinos sans frontières (ASF), Chadrack Nahumuremyi, told AFP.
His captors then took the road to the province of Cankuzo, located 230 kilometers from Bujumbura, where they killed and “dismembered” the little boy, said Mr. Nahumuremyi and a local administrative official, who requested anonymity.
“Abdul was killed, then his executioners cut off his arms and legs before deboning them and dividing his bones. Then they went to throw his remains in a forest in the commune of Kigamba on Sunday, ”detailed the official.
“A child herder saw them and sounded the alarm, resulting in the arrest of two of the three criminals with each of the child’s bones in a bag,” he said.
Frequent ritual
In many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, albinos are hunted down and killed, and their limbs and organs removed to be used for witchcraft-related rituals believed to bring wealth and luck.
Twenty albinos have been killed in Burundi since 2008 and their bones sold in Tanzania where this kind of ritual is common, the administrative source said.
The latest case dates back to 2020, according to Chadrack Nahumuremyi, who is calling on the authorities “to toughen the penalties for crimes against albinos like in Tanzania, where these criminals are publicly executed to deter others who might think of doing the same”.
“We also call for enhanced protection for albinos in the country, because all the albinos I have spoken to and their families are terrified and do not dare to leave their homes,” he added, also calling for “awareness of the population so that they understand that albinos are human beings like them, who must be respected like any other person”.