{Malawi’s President Peter Mutharika has told the BBC he feels ashamed by the attacks on albinos his country.}<\/p>\n
He said that as a leader he “felt terrible” and called for the church to speak out about the attacks.<\/p>\n
Malawi has recorded at least 65 attacks on people with albinism, including murders, in over a year, the UN says.<\/p>\n
Attacks have been driven by the belief – advanced by some witchdoctors – that albinos’ body parts have properties that confer wealth and good luck.<\/p>\n
Mr Mutharika said that this belief was surrounded by “superstition, foolishness and ignorance”.<\/p>\n
“The people who are telling people that it makes people rich are not even rich.They are wearing rags. How can a person like this make your rich if he himself cannot make himself rich?” he told BBC Focus on Africa TV.<\/p>\n
The president said that he had not rejected the idea of increasing prison sentences for people behind the attacks – but that he would not introduce a death penalty as it already exists for homicide in Malawi.<\/p>\n
He added that he was sending officials to neighbouring Tanzania to learn how they had dealt with similar attacks.<\/p>\n
Tanzania’s government banned witchdoctors last year as part of its efforts to prevent further attacks and kidnappings targeting people with albinism, who lack pigment in their skin and appear pale.<\/p>\n
UN expert Ikponwosa Ero warned in April that Malawi’s estimated 10,000 albinos face “extinction” if they continue to be murdered for their body parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Malawi’s President Peter Mutharika has told the BBC he feels ashamed by the attacks on albinos his country.} He said that as a leader he “felt terrible” and called for the church to speak out about the attacks. Malawi has recorded at least 65 attacks on people with albinism, including murders, in over a year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25730"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25730"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}