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To: sci.skeptic,alt.paranet.skeptic,alt.misc.forteana,soc.culture.african,alt.satanism,alt.magick
From: Dan Clore 
Subject: The Witchcraft Police
Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 22:54:23 -0700

Monday August 26, 10:12 AM 

Central Africa witchcraft cops fight sorcery boom

By Lucy Jones 

BANGUI (Reuters) - After eating soup cooked with a human
heart, 13-year-old Stephanie was told she would be able to
transform herself into a cat and cast magic spells. 

But Stephanie and the woman who inducted her into sorcery
got caught when they tried to creep up on the villa of a
member of the Central African Republic's presidential guard. 

Now she trembles in confession before Bangui's witchcraft
police, who treat cases like Stephanie's as all in a day's
work. 

"I know that it's not a good thing to try and kill someone.
But I trusted this woman because she is a friend of my
aunt," pleaded Stephanie, an orphan. 

Stacked beneath the dusty scales of justice at Bangui's
police station are long, thin sticks for beating children as
well as metal poles and a wooden beam punched with nails to
persuade adults to confess to witchcraft. 

Hundreds of men, women and children are charged every year
with practising witchcraft and police say the numbers are
shooting up. 

"We are seeing an increase in the problem," said the head of
police in Bangui, Jean Guenganno. "It's the result of
poverty." 

The witchcraft detectives are routinely "vaccinated" with
herbs prepared by witchdoctors to make them immune to
spells. 

"FLESH-EATING" 

In a cell next to Stephanie's at Bangui police station,
70-year-old Ermine Qualigon admits she buried a piece of her
daughter-in-law's miscarried baby in the hope of making the
woman infertile. 

"My son's wife never gave me any food. When my son and her
had meat, they only gave me soup," she said. 

He described to a police officer how his wife became
mysteriously thin and accused his mother of "eating" her
flesh. 

Blaise Damagoa, 13, told how he ate a neighbour's cake, and
was later told it contained human heart. 

"My manner has changed. My aunt calls me to go to the field
but I refuse. I refused to go to school. I told my brother
what had happened after he had beaten me up. He then
reported me to the police," he said. 

With some 17 percent of the country's adults thought to be
infected with the virus that causes AIDS, doctors believe
that many deaths attributed to sorcery should actually be
blamed on unprotected sex or infected blood transfusions. 

"If someone gets ill people believe it is due to bad spirits
and there is little one can do to overcome them," said
Marcel Massaga, head of the government's anti-AIDS
programme. 

Other people suspect that the bulging witchcraft case files
may actually be due to people making accusations through
jealousy or to eliminate rivals. 

WIDESPREAD BELIEF 

But few dare suggest that witchcraft is not very real in a
country where incoming presidents tend to build new palaces
and people firmly believe it is to protect themselves
against the sorcery of their predecessors. 

"People believe there is no such thing as an accident," said
Ambrose Balze, a sociologist at Bangui University. 

And local human rights groups in smart Western-funded
offices will not discount the powers of witchcraft. 

"In any case, witchcraft is so widespread that campaigning
to abolish the legal recognition of the crime is pointless,"
said Matthias Morouba, of the Human Rights Observatory in
Bangui. 

"But we are pushing for fair trials of those accused." 

"Truth herbs" are often used in court to make a suspect
confess. A name cried out by a sick person in his or her
sleep after taking a witch doctor's herbs is also used as a
way of identifying a witch. 

As spells often involve burying bits of clothing, snipped
clothes are often dangled before juries as evidence. 

But many cases never get as far as the police station once
someone is accused of casting spells. 

In M'baiki, a large town in the southwest, several women
accused of witchcraft were recently buried alive. Others
have been executed or had their houses burned down. 

Penalties for witchcraft, or being found in possession of
body parts for making spells, vary from hefty fines to
death. Sentences in the disease-ridden jails of the Central
African Republic often amount to the same thing. 

"I need my mother," said Stephanie as she washed her face in
the police station grounds, trying to ignore the stares of
watching soldiers. 

-- 
Dan Clore

Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
All my fiction through 2001 and more. Intro by S.T. Joshi.
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