Posted on 04/22/2008 8:23:11 PM PDT by LonghornFreeper
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis 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.
Rumours of penis 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.
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.
"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.
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 penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.
"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.
"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.
Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.
"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.
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/ )
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)
Don't get cocky kid.
Hillary takes no prisoners.
South Park already did it!!!!
http://www.tv.com/south-park/eek-a-penis!/episode/1193240/summary.html
I just hate it when that happens.
A thread that screams for your attention.
Darks, do you have an alibi?
ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL
Admitting a problem is the first step.
We now have evidence that global cooling is taking place.
Now THERE's the new phrase of the year!
That does is, I’m taking the Congo off my vacation wish-list.
I would say global warming, but it's cooler weather that makes things shrink...
Where is Jessi Jackson to denounce the racism?
Elect Obama, have him send Bill Clinton to Zaire as the US Ambassador!
The headline got my attention. Sounds like what happens in US prisons, and US playgrounds. Also happens in the biased feminist courts, gender feminist homes, and feminist classrooms. Sorcery, eh?
I’m half expecting Sally Struthers to have an infomercial pleading for more penises in Congo.
They still stealing those things?
His lady friends don't want him going near that place either.
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