4052991244_e83ba961e6 At least 20 of the 60 albinos who fled their homes in rural areas to seek protection in and around the eastern Burundian town of Ruyigi are still living under police guard in improvised shelters. Ten men implicated in the trade in albino body parts for use as talismans are currently in the town?s central prison awaiting trial. As in its near neighbour, Tanzania?s Kigoma region, the Burundi Red Cross (BRC) Ruyigi branch played a lead role in coordinating the spontaneous local humanitarian response to the albino emergency last year, providing food, mosquito nets, clothes, building materials for toilets and moral support to the shelters. The BRC is now seeking external support for a broader operation to help reintegrate albinos into mainstream society and reduce their acute vulnerability to hunters, skin cancer, and educational and social marginalization. The picture shows Marie Niyukuri and her albino son, Ephreim, 7, who has an albino sister and eight black siblings. A suspected albino-hunter last year rode his bike straight at Ephreim in an apparent attempt to fake a road accident and make off with the boy?s body. But Ephreim was pulled back by his non-albino friends, and his attacker narrowly escaped being lynched on the spot by vigilant neighbours, jumpy since a small albino boy was snatched and killed in the neighbouring district.

Albinos in east Africa are fleeing to safe zones by the thousands to avoid being dismembered and having their body parts sold to witchdoctors.

In rural areas of Burundi and Tanzania the body parts of albinos are believed to be powerful good luck charms that will lead to wealth. According to a fascinating report by CNN, these charms are in such high demand that an entire industry has sprouted up. Hunters who capture an albino will chop off their captor’s limbs and pluck out his or her organs to sell to dealers, who in turn sell them to witchdoctors.

There are as many as 10,000 albinos currently in hiding, according to a recent Red Cross report.

Thousands more albinos across a huge swathe of countryside … are unable to move freely to trade, study or cultivate fields for fear of albino hunters,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

story Albinos in Hiding [Image via CNN]

Earlier this month a court sentenced four people to death in northern Tanzania for murdering an albino man and selling his body parts. According to Lucca Haule, assistant commissioner of police in Tanzania, seven people have been sentenced to death for the killing of more than 50 Tanzanian albinos over the past two years.

We don’t have the resources in those places … it is not easy, but we are trying to map out locations where albinos live so that we can better protect them,” [Haule] told CNN earlier this month.

All said, at least 44 Tanzanian albinos and 14 Burundian albinos have been killed and dismembered in the past three years.

[Via: CNN]