Tanzanian police have charged 23 people with murder after seven villagers were burned alive on suspicion of witchcraft.<\/p>\n
Though the attacks in Murufiti, a village in the western Kigoma region, happened on Monday, reports only surfaced with the arrests.<\/p>\n
Five of those killed were aged over 60, the other two were over 40.<\/p>\n
A Tanzanian human rights group estimates that 500 suspected witches are killed in Tanzania annually.<\/p>\n
The suspects were arraigned in court on Friday and accused of murder. They remain in custody.<\/p>\n
Of the detained, at least one is a local leader, according to Kigoma police commander Jafari Mohammed.<\/p>\n
Empty village<\/strong><\/p>\n Witnesses say some of the victims were attacked with machetes and their homes burned.<\/p>\n The son of one of the victims, Josephat John, told Tanzania’s Mwananchi newspaper: “When I returned home in the evening, I found the body of my mother lying 10 metres away from our house, while the body of my father was burnt inside the house.”<\/p>\n Hamisi Richard, the leader of Murufiti village, told the BBC: “Men and women have run away from the village. Even children are not there… Everyone was scared of that event, and others feared police search.”<\/p>\n Belief in witchcraft is prevalent in many parts of Tanzania.<\/p>\n Between 2005 and 2011, reports say around 3,000 people were killed after being accused of being witches.<\/p>\n Several of the victims were old women but witch doctors – village healers who are sometimes involved in the witch hunts – have also targeted young children and albinos, the latter because their body parts are thought to bring prosperity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tanzanian police have charged 23 people with murder after seven villagers were burned alive on suspicion of witchcraft. Though the attacks in Murufiti, a village in the western Kigoma region, happened on Monday, reports only surfaced with the arrests. Five of those killed were aged over 60, the other two were over 40. A Tanzanian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":55297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-55296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}