From uploader: Known as the "Zeru Zeru", or ghosts, Tanzania's albinos have put up with the name-calling and the stigmatisation of being "black in a white skin" for years. The unluckier ones have even been kicked out of their home by relatives who see their condition as a curse on the whole family. Now albinos in the east African nation face an altogether more deadly threat. They have become the favoured prey of traditional healers, who kill them to harvest their body parts for get-rich-quick concoctions.


In the most gruesome of a spate of albino murders in the north-west region around Lake Victoria, one corpse was exhumed with all its limbs cut off. Others have been found minus tongues, genitals or breasts.

"In the past, albinos have been killed after being accused of witchcraft but this is a new phenomenon. This time they are being targeted by the witchdoctors themselves," said Simeon Mesaki, a sociologist at the University of Dar es Salaam.

The problem has reached such proportions that Tanzania's President, Jakaya Kikwete, used his monthly television address to announce a crackdown on the traditional healers as well as plans to register albinos to improve their safety. "These killings are shameful and distressing to our society," said Mr Kikwete in his Wednesday night speech to the nation. "I am told that people kill albinos and chop their body parts, including fingers, believing they can get rich."