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Oil Spain grants asylum to albino fleeing witchdoctors
December 23, 2009 Edition 2
Sapa-AFP, AP
MADRID: Spain has granted asylum to an African albino for the first time after a 22-year-old Malian said he was persecuted by witchdoctor kidnappers in his home country, reports said yesterday.
Abdoulaye Coulibaly, who reached Spain's Canary Islands illegally in March and was granted asylum status on Friday, says he escaped several kidnap attempts in the Malian capital Bamako, El Pais newspaper reported. "Twice they tried to kidnap me to use my body," Coulibaly told El Pais. "I know they cut off the fingers and the hands of other albinos to use them in rituals. Here my life is not in danger."
Coulibaly hopes to be joined in Spain by two of his brothers, also albino.
His asylum bid was backed by the Malian albino singer Salif Keita, who campaigns for better protection of albinos in Africa's Great Lakes region.
Beliefs surrounding "white-skinned blacks" have been entrenched in some African communities for centuries, and albino body parts, used in lucky charms, can fetch tens of thousands of dollars.
More than 50 albinos have been killed and dismembered in a spate of gruesome murders in Tanzania and Burundi in the past two years.
Tanzanian police estimate that an albino's body parts - limbs, genitals, ears, nose and tongue - can together fetch $75 000 (R579 000).
At least 10 000 have been displaced or gone into hiding since the killings began, according to a report released this week by the International Federation for the Red Cross and Crescent societies.
East Africa's latest albino murder happened in Tanzania's Mwanza region in late October, when albino hunters beheaded 10-year-old Gasper Elikana and chopped off his leg, the report said.
Elikana's father, who tried to defend his son, was seriously injured.
The chairman of the Albino Association of Kenya, Isaac Mwaura, called the murders deplorable, but said the killings had given albinos a platform to raise awareness.
Almost 90 percent of albinos living in the region were raised by single mothers, Mwaura said, because the fathers believed their wives were having affairs with white men. "When I was born, my father said his family tree doesn't have such children and left us," Mwaura said.
Some believe that albinos are harbingers of disaster, while others mistakenly think albinos are mentally retarded and discourage their parents from taking them to school, he said. Due to a lack of education, many albinos are illiterate and are forced into menial jobs, exposing them to the sun and skin cancer.
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