The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is working with Burundian authorities to better protect the country's albino children after the brutal killing of a 6-year-old girl, the UN said Tuesday.
Media reports said the girl was shot and her head and limbs removed by attackers during the weekend in Burundi's eastern province of Ruyigi, near the border with Tanzania. The death was the latest in a series of killings of albinos in the region.
Albinos have long suffered discrimination and marginalization across Africa's Great Lakes region. They are also increasingly being targeted for death because of rumors spread by witch doctors that their blood can be used to prospect for gold and their body parts can be used to promote fishing.
UNICEF, which has strongly condemned the attacks, is working with the governors of some Burundian provinces to protect the albinos, provide them with non-food items and ensure the children can still go to school.
Olalekan Ajia, a communication specialist for UNICEF in Burundi, said the UN is working with the local government in an effort to break the myth that using body parts or blood can make a person rich.
The rumors, Ajia said, can be traced to Tanzania where the government made it a capital crime for anybody to kill albinos. Hesaid witch doctors there then moved to Burundi, and got some people who are dislocated mentally to hunt for the albinos.
Burundian authorities have responded swiftly to the recent wave of attacks, passing laws similar to those in Tanzania against such crimes and offering a safe house in at least one province for albino children, Ajia said.
No one has been arrested in connection with the weekend attack, but two male suspects related to an earlier case have been captured and taken to court.
Source: Xinhua
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