Killing spree leaves albinos living in fear

It is a sanctuary on the vast waters of Lake Victoria, a safe haven amid a gathering storm of killings. White-skinned albinos, known here as "ghosts", are being hunted down by their own people, harvested for body parts by those who believe they will add potency to black magic rituals. The remote island of Ukerewe, several hours across Lake Victoria and two days overland from the capital of Tanzania, is the one remaining shelter, a place where albinos can live in relative safety. "Life is better here on the island," says Alphonce Kajanja. Elsewhere, the killing continues. Recently, two more Tanzanian albinos were murdered. Elizabeth Hussein was hacked to pieces by men with machetes in Shinyanga province. She was just 13. Then Ezekiel John, 47, was shot and had his arms and legs cut off near the city of Kigoma on Thursday. Their deaths bring the toll to 35 murders in just more than a year. There is similar violence throughout east and central Africa. And even in west and southern Africa, albinos face persecution and discrimination. The campaign is being orchestrated by witch doctors who claim they can make people rich using limbs and blood from their white-skinned neighbors. In some areas, albino children go to school with bodyguards, others hide at home, and distraught relatives pile rocks on their dead loved ones to deter grave-robbers. Ukerewe is believed to have the highest concentration of albinos in the world. No one here is sure why there are so many zeru, the Swahili word for "ghosts". Some believe an unknown mineral in the fish the islanders live on makes mothers have albino babies. Others say intermarriage has bred an increased minority compelled to stick together. Whatever the cause, among the tin shacks, fishing dhows and tropical fruit trees of Lake Victoria's largest island there are an extraordinary number of people with the distinctive white skin, gingery blond hair and pale eyes. Albinism is an inherited disorder. It derives from a congenital lack of the melanin pigment which protects the skin, eyes and hair from the sun's ultraviolet rays. Some have very poor vision, though not all have red eyes as myth often suggests; most have blue, others have hazel or brown eyes. But all forms of albinism are associated with vision problems and those who have the condition are "legally" blind. What all albinos have in common is that they are rare. In most parts of the world, only one person in 20,000 has some form of albinism. In Denmark, the prevalence is one in 60,000, but in Africa it is thought to be about one in 5,000. In sub-Saharan Africa they are immediately visible; too white to be black. In Tanzania, an east African giant of a country that stretches beneath the equator from the Indian Ocean to the great lakes of Victoria and Tanganyika, people are five times more likely to have some form of albinism. Estimates of the numbers of albinos in the country differ, some are as high as 200,000, all of them complicated by the stigma attached to their condition which in many cases makes their family hide them from the outside world. But the prevalence has led many researchers to consider whether the original genetic variant may be traceable to this region of East Africa, or even to Ukerewe itself. In an already impoverished community, access to the goodwill and charity of the extended family or clan is vital to most peoples' survival. For albinos, a lifetime of social exclusion and abject poverty is all that awaits. Many albino children, uneducated about their condition, are left to a life of harsh labor in the sun: the result is catastrophic skin damage, agonising side-effects and an early death. Skin cancer means a life expectancy of just 30. Beyond the shores of Ukerewe, an even worse fate awaits. The one-time zeru are hearing a different nickname called to them now, "money": they are seen as walking bank notes. Jospehat Torner is attempting to document the horrific killing spree that has left albinos feeling "terrified and hunted". An albino himself, his outfit is designed for maximum protection from the sun. A baseball cap is pulled down tight to shade his face, and a suit and tie defy the soaring temperature. Despite these precautions, he looks much older than his 34 years. Torner is a leading campaigner with the Tanzanian Albino Society, an organization set up to fight discrimination that has found itself fighting for life itself. He says the recent murder of the 13-year-old girl was typical. She had been tempted to leave the safety of her home to see a film about Jesus being shown on a projector near to her village. All the local children went. On the way back is when those he calls the "greedy people" got her. "They chopped off her legs and her arms," he adds, gesturing with a look of pain as if he was losing his own limbs. The question, he says, is, "Who is the consumer of these body parts? When you go to the traditional healers they say it's the fishermen; when you go to the fishermen they say it's the miners. And they blame the traditional healers." In fact, the evidence already points in one direction alone, the healers or witch doctors who have started to market albino bones, skin, hair and blood as ingredients in potions that will make people rich. One man was caught trying to enter DRC with the head of an albino child in his luggage. He said he was taking it to a businessman in Congo who was going to pay for the head according to its weight. The severed limbs of Elizabeth Hussein were found on the premises of a local witch doctor. But he was tipped off and escaped police. Like many members of TAS, Torner has been trying to make himself more visible at just the time where it is most dangerous to do so. Everywhere he goes, he must register with the local police and district commissioner to let them know he is there. His mobile phone, which he must hold inches from his face to see who is calling, so poor is his eye-sight, has been ringing with death threats. "They say to me, 'Where are you? We want to kill you'. And I say, 'fine, let's meet'." The Tanzanian government – appalled to see the country's cherished reputation as a haven of stability and development collapsing – has been scrambling, after an acutely slow start, to look busy. Practising witch doctors have been arrested by the score and death sentences threatened to those found guilty; so far, no one has been successfully prosecuted and the killings continue. The fear has reached Ukerewe. In Masahonga, at the end of a 100km dirt road that connects the nearest paved road with the ferry to Ukerewe, a crowd had gathered recently. The district commissioner used a megaphone to hammer home the message that albino murders must stop. In angry Swahili, she denounces the witch doctors as "liars". But the deadly cocktail of traditional beliefs and modern avarice will not be easily neutralized. Torner has an even darker view. He believes the murders may have been going on unnoticed for many years. Countless numbers of albino babies die in childbirth. "What's to stop a nurse killing an albino baby and saying that it died of natural causes." Nobody knows how many disappeared before people started keeping count. The lives of many albinos have been lived in total seclusion. Inside some homes, albino graves have been dug and marked. People have grown up, he says, being told albinos are ghosts. "We don't die," he says. "We just disappear."