Bid to Stop the Killing of Albinos In East Africa - NYTimes.com

Peter Ash grew up as an albino. Last spring he said he began to hear about albinos in Tanzania being murdered for their body parts. Some Africans believe potions made with albino blood, shoes made of albino skin, tendrils of albino hair woven into fishing nets and amulets with albino body parts will make people rich. Ash decided not to to nothing. Traditional healers have told an undercover BBC reporter posing as a businesswoman that they could get her an albino corpse for $2,000. Ash was horrified. Last year, Mr. Ash founded Under the Same Sun, a charity devoted to defending albinos and to embarrassing the Tanzanian government into stopping the killings. But because Tanzania has an estimated 170,000 albinos, it would be a huge undertaking. Albinism is common among East Africans; 1 birth in 3,000 is albino, versus 1 in 20,000 in the United States. That enmeshed the issue in domestic politics. On a visit to Tanzania last year, Mr. Ash accused the Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees the police, of not taking the killings seriously. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda took up the cause, saying that if the police did not act, vigilantes should kill would-be killers on the spot. That led to protests by human-rights groups. Now the government, worried about tourism and its image, “is trying to keep a lid on this,” Mr. Ash said. Mr. Mluge, who lives in the capital, Dar es Salaam, told of his fear at seeing cars full of men waiting outside his house at night. He and his wife have five albino children. In a country where the average income is $800 a year, Mr. Ash said, “that’s a lot of temptation.” When he was in the capital, standing on a corner with other albinos, young thugs started laughing and taunting them with shouts of “Deal! Deal!” — the joke being, he explained, that killing him would be a bargain. Read more at Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/health/17albi.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

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