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)
Hillary’s revenge: Send Obama to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo!!!!!
Memo to self: Cancel trip to Congo.
I should’a read yours first!
Well, that's what happened to me, anyway.
I mean we have Art Bell but...
Nix the sorcery...if a picture of Helen Thomas can’t shrink it — nothing can!
LOL!
Maybe he just found a cooter with teeth.
Biological RapeX
South African Technological Solution ... migrating north?
Obviously a lesbian cabal of shamans...
The product description was priceless: "stainless steel thighs" and "Through the whole nutcracking process, her smile doesn't change a bit."
LOL!
Maybe we should send one to Obama after tonight's results...
What’s the Congolese phrase for “Funny, it was here a minute ago”..?
Oh, here are a few others I’ve seen. The two year old was wearing a key around his neck. His mom was asked if that’s where she kept the spare house key. She said that it was to keep his throat open so he wouldn’t choke and stop breathing. A baby girl was born with a crease across the bridge of her nose. That was due, her mom claimed, to having worn a belt too tightly during pregnancy. I suggested she should have gotten rid of the other two belts if that was the case. The women have membership in a sisterhood which tells them how to do all sorts of magical things. One of them is to put a cowry and bead belt on a young girl (like 6 months old) that she’ll wear her whole life and which will protect her from getting fat and getting a crooked back and will enhance her sexual attractiveness. Funny, though, the longer they wear it into adulthood, the fatter and less sexually attractive they become. That’s probably due to the unseen presence of Nigerian witches.
“So, it was Black Magic that did it too me.”
Wouldn’t “black magic” make the penis bigger? You know what they say...
Looks as though someone got a real cock(h)old. lol.
Whatever they do, don’t let them rub Crisco on it. Crisco is shortening.
Big black market for them in SF....
They teach this major at Welsey. Hillary got an A+ and graduated Magnacumlaud in this study.
It's a band...Stealing Penises.
Asama Obama better watch out, with Bills heart condition she may be in need of his services.
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