TRADING IN HUMAN SKINS

A cross border business in human skins has reportedly been booming along the border with DRC, Malawi and Zambia. It has been recalled that human porchers export human skins in Malawi, where the commodity is in high demand to the witch doctors. The police in Tanzania was informed that human skins were hunted by witchdoctors under the superstitious belief that the same has power to protect houses from evil spirit and agents of witchcraft. Moreover, it is reportedly superstitiously believed that human skins are used in special rituals for increasing harvests and attracting customers to local pombe clubs and shops.

As a result of the desire to reap money from the trade some people have been killing others and skinning them. This practice has been pronounced in Mbeya, the Southern region of Tanzania bordering the Republic of Malawi. The police reported several murders, where human dead bodies were found with their skins missing.

Reportedly skinning exercise, is carried out while victims are alive as the condition for the material to have the required superstitious power. In one such incident a 13 year old standard five pupil by the name of Jacob Kajange fell victim of skinning. Yet in another incident in the same region, a youth who was held by the residents in that locality for allegations of theft, got disappeared. It was shortly reported that, his body was found in a bush with its skin missing.

The police is trying hard to track on the human skin porchers and the witchdoctors. In the exercise, several suspects have been apprehended and charged and the interstate co-operation between Malawi, Tanzania and the DRC has been called for.

This criminal practices are one of unprecedented abuse of people’s basic rights to life, needless to say it is offending the very essence of human dignity.