Official Witch Hunt in Gambia
Since it’s Africa, the words “witch hunt” are not a figure of speech:
Authorities in Gambia have rounded up about 1,000 people and forced them to drink hallucinogens in a witch-hunting campaign that is terrorizing the tiny West African country, an international rights group said Wednesday.
Amnesty International called on the government of President Yahya Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup and has claimed he can cure AIDS, to halt the campaign and bring those responsible to justice.
Authorities began inviting “witch doctors,” who combat witches, to come from nearby Guinea soon after the death earlier this year of the president’s aunt. Jammeh “reportedly believes that witchcraft was used in her death,” the London-based rights group said.
Since then, “witch doctors” — accompanied by police, soldiers, intelligence agents and Jammeh’s personal guards — have forcibly taken about 1,000 alleged witches from their villages and spirited them to secret locations, Amnesty said. About 300 of them were taken to Jammeh’s personal farm in his native Kanilai, east of the capital, the group said.
Victims are being “forced to drink unknown substances that cause them to hallucinate and behave erratically,” the group said in a statement. “Many are then forced to confess to being a witch. In some cases, they are also severely beaten, almost to the point of death.”
The mysterious liquid prompted serious kidney problems among many, and two people are known to have died after being subjected to the ordeal, Amnesty said.
In 2007, Jammeh declared he had discovered a cure for AIDS and began treating patients inside the presidential palace, using herbs and incantations. His dictatorial regime has cracked down harshly on critics, especially the press.
On March 8, authorities arrested Halifa Sallah, who has written about the “witch doctors” for the main opposition newspaper, Foroyya. Sallah, who was a presidential candidate in 2006, has since been charged with sedition and spying, Amnesty said.
I wonder if one hundred, or even one thousand, years from now, this will still be the kind of news one expects to hear from Africa.
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