6-year-old Baraka Cosmas
This is the picture of a six-year-old boy whose hand was
savagely hacked off by hired assassins who collect albino body parts for
witchdoctors to turn into charms and potions for their rich clients.
Baraka Cosmas was attacked on Saturday evening by a group
of men, who stormed into the home he shared with his parents in western
Tanzania.
The young boy was held down while the gang chopped off
his right hand, before beating him and his mother Prisca Shaaban so badly both
have been hospitalised.
Shockingly,
Baraka was the third child to be attacked because of the colour of his skin in
just over three months.
Eighteen-month-old Yohana
Bahati was snatched from his home less than a month ago, while four-year-old
Pendo Emmanuelle Nandi was taken at the end of December.
Yohana's
mutilated body was found a few days later, while Pendo has never been seen
again.
All three cases
are linked to a trade in albino body parts, fuelled by the high prices they
fetch and a belief in the 'magical' properties of the skin and limbs, said to
bring wealth and luck.
The men who
viciously attacked Baraka at the weekend are likely to have been little more
than petty criminals at worst, carrying out the bidding of a witchdoctor.
The
witchdoctor will have paid a significant amount for the limb - but who paid the
witchdoctor is likely to remain unclear.
Jonathan
Beale, managing director of Standing
Voice, a charity working to protect Tanzania's albinos, says until these
people are rooted out, government efforts to curb the attacks and killings are
likely to have little impact.
Culled: Dailymail
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