Real Halloween horror - 'Vampires' lynched in Africa
In most parts of the world people are busy decorating their homes and buying costumes for Halloween. The scarier, the better! Vampire, witch or Grim Reaper outfits are carefully displayed in most shops and nobody bats an eye – as we all know it's just for fun.
With this in mind it is disturbing to read news reports coming out of Africa about people murdered after they were accused of being vampires. For over a month now, the southern part of Malawi has been gripped by a vampire hysteria. Nine people have been killed and many others, including foreign tourists, badly wounded. The rumors that started this episode of mass hysteria are said to have originated in neighboring Mozambique.
One man, suffering from epilepsy was dragged out of a police station and burned alive. Another was stoned to death. A mother and her son were beaten to death. Apparently the pair were found carrying a special drinking bottle that looked strange and unfamiliar to the lynching mob and deemed to be proof of blood-sucking activities.
The vampire craze has claimed nine lives so far
At first, one might be tempted to think it's some tribal community, surely some primitives, but no, the vampire rumors have now spread to Blantyre, the country's second largest city. Although Malawi is among Africa's poorest countries, this city has roads, cars, electricity, billboards. They have television and Internet, and yet some still believe in vampires and witchcraft.
In an effort to curb violence, a 5 pm curfew has been imposed and over 140 people associated with the attack have been arrested.
What we're dealing with is a clear case of superstition and lack of education and, amazingly, even those willing to put an end to violence fail to address the root of the problem.
The country's president Peter Mutharika has visited the affected areas and urged people to refrain from “taking the law into their own hands when dealing with a suspected blood sucker”. He would have done a much better job by blasting these old beliefs and explaining there is no such thing as vampires.
The same goes for the church. The Episcopal Conference of Malawi issued a statement today condemning the killings, yet refusing to “speculate on the validity of these (blood-sucking) claims”.
If the Church itself doesn't deny the existence of blood-suckers, if the President doesn't deny it, what are these poor people to believe?
Happy Halloween?!
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Oh wow! It's hard to imagine that there are things like this still happening in the world. I know superstition dies hard in older cultures and lack of education doesn't help matters any. It's sad to think that innocent people die because of suspicious drinking bottles, diseases or illnesses.