Tanzania

There have been more than 50 murders of albinos in Tanzania since 2007. Publicity and protests led to a flurry of police work and some convictions. And for a while there was a lull in the attacks. But then they started up again in February, according to Vicky Ntetema of the advocacy organization Under the Same Sun.

“One person, a little boy of 4 was murdered. A man lost a hand, the hand was chopped off. A little girl who is now in hospital, her hand was chopped off and there was an attack with severe injuries when a woman of 33 years of age and a little girl of 12 months old were attacked.”

Ntetema says the attackers sell the body parts to witchdoctors who use them for rituals and potions. Ntetema is a former BBC journalist whose reporting on the albino killings won her awards but also death threats. The security at her office is the tightest I encounter anywhere in Tanzania during ten days of reporting. Ntetema wants Tanzania’s witch doctors put out of business.

“These witch doctors have turned into small gods. All over the place people fear them, people believe them. People trust them. If you say to a Tanzanian you don’t have to go to witch doctor to be successful you don’t have to go to a witch doctor to solve your problems they will look at you and say are you coming from Mars? Most of them believe in witch doctors.”

A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life backs that up. 93% of the Tanzanian respondents told interviewers they believed in witchcraft. Even before this recent spate of killings, life for the estimated 200,000 albinos in Tanzania was not good. They have long been stigmatized and shunned and denied access to health care and education. Member of Parliament Al Shaymaa Kwegyir, an albino herself, is trying to change that.

Al Shaymaa Kwegyir. Photo: Jeb Sharp

I meet Kwegyir at her apartment in downtown Dar es Salaam. She’s getting ready for a trip to Zanzibar later that day to meet with albinos on the island. She’s taking boxes of sunscreen and sunglasses with her:

“Our skin is very weak its weak it doesn’t resist sun rays therefore if you get sun rays you get cancer disease.”

People with albinism lack the pigment melanin and the protection it affords against the sun. Al Shaymaa Kwegyir shows me the wide-brimmed hat she wears outside. She’s mystified by the atrocities.

“About the killings to my side, it’s really; it’s really cracking in my head so much. I wonder a person killing someone for the need of success or wealth or something like that, it doesn’t make sense in my head but this is the problem of ignorance and poverty.”

If it’s a problem of ignorance and poverty then the solution is education advocates say. The international non-profit Under the Same Sun is now offering scholarships to Tanzanians with albinism. Again, Vicky Ntetema:

“If we empower persons with albinism, it means that they will go to school, they will enjoy the same opportunities that people without albinism enjoy. They will know their rights, their responsibilities and their duties and they will be able to compete anywhere with other persons without albinism and that way, the society will see them as human beings. Because right now they don’t see them as human beings.”

“People would always look at you differently.” Abdallah Possi is a Tanzanian with albinism.

“But if you compete with them, or you do more than them, they respect you that way.”

Abdallah Possi. Photo Jeb Sharp

Possi understood early on that he would have to excel to be taken seriously. He was lucky to have parents who cherished him and taught him to ignore schoolyard taunts. Today he’s a successful attorney and law professor. Possi says he doesn’t experience problems in his day to day life. But since the attacks began, he’s been fearful when he travels around the country for his work:

“You are only happy when you are around. You are within your neighborhood. But when you travel, you go into places you do not know, you don’t know what is happening. We are fearful. When you stay alone somewhere, lonely, you get some funny feelings.”

Possi wants to see more protection for people with albinism but also more services, including better health care. He and other advocates are optimistic about changing attitudes over the long term. But in the short term they fear the discrimination–and the violence–will continue.

For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

Web extra

Tanzanian attorney and law professor Abdallah Possi talks about growing up with albinism in Dar es Salaam.

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Abdallah Possi: “When I grew up it was a bit interesting because there were some funny things and some harsh realities too. There is a good thing about children when they grow up together you are all the same. You will be facing some problems if you go to another neighborhood when they see you differently. When I’m with my fellow children from the same neighborhood everything was OK. But the moment I would step to another neighborhood it would be difficult but the good thing is my friends would always be protecting me. My mother, my father, my sister would always say don’t argue with them, they have bad manners. And for us when we were a kid if Mum tells you that person has bad manners you would simply ignore that person right away because you don’t want to be like him. So it worked, but when I got to school, you know I was a bit naughty sometimes. People who would provoke me, I would fight them back. While knowing fighting’s not good but anyway it was a way of stamping my authority. The good thing is I could do some little drawings, some little paintings. I made friends that way because I could do some things that many other people could not do.”

Jeb Sharp: “Tell me a little bit about the painting you do.”

Abdallah Possi: “The painting. You see, when I was a little boy, my Mum was lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam. She would never buy me toys. She would buy me paints. And I would paint for fun. And at times, one day when I was at the University, I decided to sell my paintings somewhere and see if they would face market. I can sell! After that I became happy so after that when I’m not very busy, when my mind is settled, I do paint.”

Jeb Sharp: “What do you paint?”

Abdallah Possi: Natural paintings. I would like to paint about natural environment. But sometimes I do kind of imaginative painting. For instance one of those paintings I just painted some trees, which were leafless. And I put some kind of golden khaki background on it, it was wonderful.

Related Stories

• Albinism worldwide
• Color Initiative
• Rick Guidotti’s photographs of those with albinism in Tanzania
• Rick Guidotti’s website: Positive Exposure

“I can tell you that throughout the whole area of Africa, beliefs exist that people with albinism are cursed, that the mother had sex with the white man, that she had sex with a European ghost, that these people are evil, that they’re possessed, that they’re substandard, that the disease is contagious.  There’s a host of myths that prevail for hundreds of years for people with albinism in large parts of Africa.”

Listen to Part 1:

Download MP3

To see more photos from Tanzania, click here.

In part two of Phillip Martin’s series on albinism worldwide, he surveys global efforts to show albinos in a more favorable light. Martin interviews Rick Guidotti, a fashion photographer who, in 1999, photographed a young albino woman named Christine (at left) for a Life Magazine photo essay entitled “Redifining Beauty.” Guidotti remembers:

“She walked into my studio with her head down, shoulders hunched, eyes down as well, one word answers, no eye contact.  This kid had zero self esteem because of being teased her entire life because of her albinism.  So I thought, well I’m going to photograph her in respect to the way I would photograph anyone, Cindy or Claudia.  So the lights went on, the music the fan. I grabbed a mirror, and was like, ‘Christine look.’   This kid looked in the mirror, and for the first time, saw a beautiful girl.”

Listen to Part 2:

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For see more of Rick Guidotti’s pictures, click here, or visit Rick’s website, Positive Exposure.

To hear more of Phillip Martin’s reporting, visit The Color Initiative.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Albinos lack pigmentation in their skin and their hair. It’s for this reason alone that Albinos have been the victims of mutilations and ritual crimes, especially in Africa. Human rights advocates have documented the slaughter of more than 40 Albinos in Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya. Philip Martin reported yesterday on the sometimes deadly prejudice against Albinos. Today he surveys global efforts to show Albinos in a more favorable light.

PHILIP MARTIN: For years, Manhattan based Rick Guidotti made his living as a fashion photographer, shooting pictures of beautiful women who are known by their first names only – Cindy, Claudia and Tyra. Then one day he was introduced to a young Albino woman named Christine.

RICK GUIDOTTI: She walked into my studio with her head down, shoulders hunched, eyes down as well, one word answers, no eye contact. This kid had zero self esteem because of her being teased her entire life because of her albinism. So I thought well I was going to photograph her with respect the way I would photograph anyone, Cindy or Claudia. And so the lights went on, the music, the fan. I grabbed a mirror and was like, Christine, look. And this kid looked in the mirror and for the first time saw a beautiful girl.

PHILIP: That photograph became the centerpiece of a 1999 award winning photo essay in Life Magazine called “Redefining Beauty”. Soon Rick Guidotti was being asked by people all over the world to photograph their Albino children, families and entire Albino communities.

RICK: So I started traveling.

PHILIP: Guidotti became an advocate for people with albinism, and formed a nonprofit called Positive Exposure. He visited places round the world where Albinos were shunned and persecuted. But he also discovered places where they are deified. And in the Cook Islands of New Zealand for example, he found that Albinos are revered in legend.

RICK: And it’s a legend about hate turning discrimination into prejudice. I mean awareness, education, acceptance, friendship, then love, and out of that love comes this first person with albinism.

MALE: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

PHILIP: This recording made by Rick Guidotti, is of a tribal leader in the islands of the Atlantic coast of Panama. It’s home to the Kuna, an indigenous people with one of the highest rates of albinism in the world. More than one in 200 of the islanders are Albinos. This man is a Kuna spiritual leader. He says Albinos are Godlike children of the moon, and they face no discrimination because they are his brothers and sisters.

PETER ASH: Panama is a rare example and we’ve heard of this and a few other indigenous tribes, where people with albinism are worshiped and revered.

PHILIP: Peter Ash is a successful businessman in Vancouver. He’s also a person with albinism. His Canadian nonprofit, Under the Same Sun, advocates for Albinos worldwide.

PETER: Obviously I’d certainly prefer that than having them killed. But I mostly just prefer that you treat us as anybody else. Because the problem with having them worshiped and revered is that if the chief of that tribe changes or the tradition of that tribe changes, it’s still undergirded by this notion that they’re somehow magical or different.

PHILIP: Ash blames popular culture for this widely held perception. For example, he believes African films that glorify witchcraft have fanned anti Albino superstition and violence in East Africa. And he says Hollywood is also to blame.

PETER: Even in North America, every single Hollywood portrayal of a person with albinism – think of Da Vinci Code, The Princess Bride, The Matrix Reloaded, Powder.

MALE: Afraid you’re going to get a little color on that marshmallow ass of yours.

MALE: Look man, you better get out of here. Johnny. How about it, huh?

PETER: Think of them all. When have you seen a person with albinism portrayed in a positive way? In every single instance the person with albinism is a villain, they’re evil, they’re twisted, they’re odd.

PHILIP: The portrayal of Albinos in popular culture including in film, is the focus of a recent documentary from South Africa called “White Negro”. [MUSIC]

FEMALE: I’m also what they call an Albino. It means that I have no pigmentation, but believe it or not, both my parents are black. My father was shot when I was four. He did not accept me as his child.

PHILIP: In South Africa, which has a relatively large Albino population, anti Albino prejudice including job discrimination, is widespread. Not according to Thabo Leshilo. Leshilo is editor of the Sowetan newspaper, which has led a campaign against anti Albino bias in this self-proclaimed racial democracy.

THABO LESHILO: Every year we run a writing competition, with the South African Albinism Society. This competition is aimed at helping people understand albinism, and also to help eradicate in a small way ignorance about albinism in Africa, and also in South Africa specifically.

[ANNOUNCEMENT]

PHILIP: Alberto Pascoal, the Brazilian jazz instrumentalist, is an Albino. Like other famous Albino musicians, notably Salif Kieta of Mali and King Yellowman of Jamaica, Pasquale sees himself as a global ambassador for people with albinism, even in places where anti Albino prejudice runs deep.

HERMETO PASCOAL: Because even in Africa, two years ago when we were on tour in Johannesburg, I was treated with great respect, even as the audience acknowledged that I was an Albino.

PHILIP: As a teenager growing up in Caru-aru, Perhambuco in Brazil’s northeast, Pascoal says he was always being stared at, and sought comfort in the company of other Albinos.

HERMETO: The name of the street where I lived was Black Street, and there was one section where only Albinos lived. There’s a black drummer I love who also lived on Black Street, who now lives not far from here in Curitiba. We used to hang out on Black Street and play music all night. Blacks and Albinos on Black Street.

PHILIP: Pasquale says he has no problem with any race, and believes Albinos can do pretty much as they please in Brazil. They also have one clear advantage, he jokes. They’re all beautiful. As internationally acclaimed artists like Hermeto Pascoal talk openly about their lives, they’re challenging popular notions of what it means to be Albino.

MURRAY BRILLIANT: Albinism teaches us I think a lot about our assumptions about race.

PHILIP: This is Dr. Murray Brilliant, a geneticist and expert on albinism at the University of Arizona.

MURRAY: We define race primarily by pigmentation, and so any change in that pigmentation could change our perception of race, because when we see people who have different skin pigmentations and hair color, we make certain assumptions about them. And then when you see people with albinism those assumptions are not there anymore.

PHILIP: Thabo Leshilo, editor of the Sowetan newspaper of South Africa, agrees.

THABO: It also shows you I mean just how ridiculous it is, an obsession with color. To find some people with albinism, actually being whiter than a lot of white people that I know.

PHILIP: In fact, many non Albinos still don’t understand the truth of albinism, which explains why anti Albino prejudice remains pervasive in many parts of the world. But human rights advocates say education and the promotion of positive images of Albinos in popular culture is slowly helping to turn that prejudice around. For The World, I’m Philip Martin.

LISA: Our reports on Albinos were edited by Anthony Brooks. You can find photos and more on Albinos worldwide at our website. Just visit theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. Albinos in much of sub-Saharan Africa are in danger.  Albinos are people who lack the pigment melanin in their eyes, their skin, and their hair. It’s a genetic defect, but in much of Africa, it’s also reason for extreme and deadly prejudice. Phillip Martin has been reporting for us about race and color around the world. Today, Phillip has the first of two stories about the growing threat to albinos.

PHILLIP MARTIN: In a musty apartment building in central Madrid, human rights lawyer Javier Ramirez says he’s fighting to save a man’s life.  This past April, 18-year-old Moszy, as he calls himself, was among 60 African refuges that came ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands.  But with a face as white as chalk Moszy stands out.   He’s an albino, a condition that makes life in much of Africa miserable and dangerous. Moszy is locked away in a Spanish immigration detention center, so Javier Ramirez speaks for him.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: Albinos face persecution in terms of the Geneva Convention for Refugees because these people suffer personal persecution.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez is with the Spanish Commission for Refugees.  He says Moszy is seeking political asylum in Spain because albinos face persecution in his native Benin, in West Africa.

JAVIER RAMIREZ: They suffer violence.  You know, so they face a huge discrimination in their country for origin. And they suffered persecution not only by a few, but also by the huge majority of the community and the society.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Ramirez says across most of Africa, discrimination against people with albinism runs wide and deep, particularly in under-developed rural areas where people are less educated.  Thabo Leshilo is editor of the South African newspaper, The Sowetan, which has reported on human rights abuses against albinos in Southern Africa.

THABO LESHILO: ‘Cause there’s still a lot of ignorance. People still believe, for example, that people with albinism don’t die.  That they actually disappear, and don’t get buried.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Leshilo says over the past 19 months, these prejudices have taken a deadly turn. In Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya some 60 albinos have been victims of ritualistic murders in which their body parts have been hacked off and sold.  The buyers are witch doctors acting on behalf of often wealthy, sometimes educated businessmen seeking to improve their fortunes with so-called albino magic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You bring bones here and an albino’s hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How will that help?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Help?

PHILLIP MARTIN: This is a recording from A BBC investigation last year that exposed the business of killing albinos for their body parts.  It found that an arm fetches 800-dollars, and a leg up to a thousand dollars.   This conversation voiced over by actors is with a witch doctor in Northern Tanzania.  It was secretly recorded by the reporter posing as a businesswoman in search of albino body parts

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the albino’s hands?

WITCH DOCTOR: We use the potion from that, for your fishing nets.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: What about the legs?

WITCH DOCTOR: The legs will help you in the mining business.

REPORTER POSING AS BUSINESSWOMAN: If I can’t bring these body parts can you help?  I can’t do these things alone because, you know, I’m a woman.

WITCH DOCTOR: There are ways. There are people who can get these body parts for you.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Over the past 19 months, 46 people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania, 10 in Burundi, and at least one in Kenya.  Because traditional healers require body parts from living beings, some victims, as young as 2 months old, have been attacked and hacked to pieces alive. Rick Guidotti, a former New York fashion photographer turned human rights activist, recently traveled to Tanzania to investigate the killings.  He fears that the attacks could escalate as economic conditions worsen in East Africa.

RICK GUIDOTTI: When there’s an opportunity to feed ten children when you bring the bones of one child with albinism, it’s greed but it’s also survival.  And these children, their lives are threatened, and it’s only going to get worse until people stand up and start prosecuting the people that are suspected of these horrifying crimes.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That may finally be happening.  Just last week, eight men who were convicted in connection with the murders of albinos in Burundi were sentenced to prison.  One was told he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. The sentences were seen as a major victory for albino human rights advocates in Burundi.  But so far, despite many arrests, there have been no convictions in neighboring Tanzania. Tanzanian government officials say they are moving as fast as they can, but not fast enough for Peter Ash.

PETER ASH: If I was born in Tanzania, my life would be in danger, because I have exactly the same genetic disorder they do, and I can’t sit by and do nothing.

PHILLIP MARTIN: For Peter Ash it’s personal. Ash is an albino, who lives in Vancouver.  He says he suffered prejudice growing up in Canada, but nothing prepared him for what he encountered in Tanzania.  On a recent trip there Ash says young men taunted him with chants of “Deal, deal, let’s make a deal!” suggesting they could cash in on his body parts.  Now Ash travels with his own security detail to Tanzania, where he says he feels a deep kinship with the country’s albinos.

PETER ASH: There was an almost instant connection that I had with the folks there, because I’m not black and I’m not African and I don’t speak Swahili, but the fact is they are my people.  They are my brothers and sisters because genetically in some ways, they have as much or more in common with me then they do their own people. And I was really gripped by Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” And I decided that was not an option for me.

PHILLIP MARTIN: So two years ago Ash founded Under the Same Sun, a Canadian charity to assist Tanzania’s albinos, who number nearly 200-thousand out of a population of 40 million people, one of the highest rates of albinism in the world.  Bill Oetting, a geneticist at the University of Minnesota, says albinos who escape the body poachers still face the prospect of shorter lives.

BILL OETTING: We have a situation where in Africa being light skin is going to be detrimental from a survival standpoint because you’re going to have a higher susceptibility to skin cancer.  And many individuals who have albinism within Africa do die early because of untreated skin cancer.

PHILLIP MARTIN: That motivated Peter Ash of Under the Same Sun to donate sunglasses, tanning lotion, and protective clothing for albinos in Tanzania.  He’s also funding cancer research and human rights monitoring in the country.  And he’s turned his attention to the albino asylum case in Spain.  While there is less information about the fate of albinos in Benin, where Moszy is from, Ash says he takes his claim of persecution seriously.

PETER ASH: I can tell you that through the whole area of Africa, beliefs exist that people with albinism are cursed, that the mother had sex with the white man, that she had sex with a European ghost, that these people are evil, that they’re possessed, that they’re substandard, that the disease is contagious.  There’s a host of myths that prevail for hundreds of years around people with albinism in large parts of Africa.

PHILLIP MARTIN: Even so, Spanish human rights advocates face an uphill battle proving that Moszy faces a real and deadly threat of persecution, if returned to Benin.  Meanwhile, 10′s thousands of other albinos continue to confront deadly prejudice across much of Africa. For the World, I’m Phillip Martin

LISA MULLINS: Tomorrow Phillip Martin examines efforts to generate positive images of albinos worldwide. For example, a group of South African journalists is sponsoring a writing competition.

SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALIST: This competition is aimed at helping people understand albinism, and also to help in educating in a small way ignorance about albinism in Africa and also in South Africa specifically.

LISA MULLINS: That’s coming up tomorrow on The World.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.