Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 3:31:30 PM
People in Congo are currently
lynching each other over claims that sorcerers are shrinking male genitalia.
Remember that the next time someone tries to tell you no culture can be better than any other, and that it is wrong to impose Western culture on others.
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's pen1ses after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called pen1s snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
I'd love to see any trial. Televise it!
Rumours of pen1s theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
And you thought the stuff on
Coast to Coast AM was hard to believe.
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
I understand Bill Clinton complains that Hillary has this power.
Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected pen1s snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.
This has to be good for tourism.
"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.
Imagine a support group for the victims of such sorcery. Where is Loraina Bobbit?