Posted on 04/23/2008 5:09:35 AM PDT by Leisler
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.
LOL..now that would be ‘hugh and series’!
“We thought you was a toad”
Diamonds, gold, and uranium. Those poor people would be better off with nothing of value to developed countries. Uramium mining is a worldwide security concern and it's why we are there to observe penis stealing customs. It's like a whole nother planet. Every time I watch the movie "Idiocracy" I think of the continent of Africa.
And getting further away all the time.
Maybe it’s just pissed off women cutting men’s penises off because it’s clit for tat.
They’re still ten times the size of ours... ;(
“Pure Alabama Blacksnake” -Platoon
The man’s just making up excuses -
“I was in the pool!”
Remember not to be too critical. All cultures are equal. (/sarc)
It looks like the Nigerian’s should quit sending me spam and concentrate on these folks.
I knew they shrunk “heads” in Africa, but I didn’t think this is what they meant!
Not if we invade their countries and convert them to Christianity.
If that happened, I’d give them one or two generations to be ready.
Do you mean "phallusy"?
Yeah ol Jimmah must have been one of their first targets during shakedown tests. Hence the word Jimmied.
mc :-)
Hey! This isn’t funny.
Good Point.
This is one way to cure the aids epidemic....which we should not be paying one penny for.
We have those kinds of people in the U.S. too. One look from them and...
...shrink
If penis theft panic has set in within the enlightened people of the nation’s capitol, imagine the panic in the uninformed, uneducated rural countryside...........
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