Muti* killings are "Crimes Against Humanity"
(*Muti= traditional medicine, made from human tissue: victims were tortured to death)
“These matters can no longer be swept under the carpet and kept secret,” warns police commissioner Gnrl Riah Phiyega
#SouthAfrica
August 24 2014 Johannesburg - " Muti killings are serious crimes against humanity and a collaborative approach is needed to combat them", Police Commissioner General Riah Phiyega said on Saturday.
“We need to deliberate in detail on the truthfulness of what research on ritual murders depicts on issues such as the beliefs that particular body parts harvested through a particular process and from selected victims could enhance health, strength, wealth or power.
“These matters can no longer be swept under the carpet and kept secret,” she said at a crime awareness campaign on ritual murders and mob justice in Giyani, Limpopo.
She said a study prepared for the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on "extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions" in 2011, documented that witchcraft had been widely practiced in African societies since before the colonial time.
“Belief in how witchcraft is practiced varies from state to state, but the belief and practice of witchcraft is often to give a justification for why bad things happen to people.”
She said this led to accusations against certain individuals who were suspected of having been directly involved in the acts of witchcraft.
“Accusations of witchcraft can lead to violations of a wide range of human rights, including the right to life,” she said.
“If we are to make a progressive Limpopo a reality, a shift in our mind-sets and perceptions is of paramount importance. We feel that it is time to gather and talk about where these beliefs emanate from.”
She said it was time to call on traditional leaders, community police forums, community-based organisations and other community leaders to deliberate on these issues.
“We need to deliberate in detail on the truthfulness of what research on ritual murders depicts on issues such as the beliefs that particular body parts harvested through a particular process and from selected victims could enhance health, strength, wealth or power.
“These matters can no longer be swept under the carpet and kept secret,” she said. - Sapa http://www.sapa.co.za and http://www.sapa.org.za
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Self-admitted Witchdoctor arrested for muti-killings of two white farmers in the Free State:
Mokoena was handed over to the Kroonstad police on April 1 after he was discovered by local farmer Johan Engelbrecht and other volunteers of the Free State Agriculture's rural safety unit. When spotting them, the arrested man had allegedly been sweeping the porch. He had run inside the homestead and threatened the citizens’ farm-security detail with gardening shears. They were able to apprehend him, however, reported South African journalists Tom de Wet and Marisa Phillips of Beeld newspaper. see
The security team then found Van Wyk's mutilated body was found in the dining room of the house. One of the suspected murder weapons and beads covered in blood were also found buried in the fields next to a lion camp on Venter’s homestead.
According to the forensic evidence contained in the Bloemfontein court docket, Van Wyk, a retired policeman who only alone stayed on his farm over the weekends, was allegedly lured outside where he was bashed over the head with a shovel, dragged inside the homestead while still alive -- and then his genitals were mutilated. This is a clear indication that this was a 'murder to harvest body parts for ‘traditional medicine’, as this is inevitably done while the victims are still alive.
Engelbrecht said he and the security-unit had been with police, investigating the muti-murder of another neighbouring farmer, Basie Venter, 65, just a few hours before when another farmer had stopped him on the road and warned him that he ‘suspected trouble’ on the Van Wyk farm next door, too. “Van Wyk wasn’t on his stoep as he usually did early in the morning, reading his Bible,” Engelbrecht was quoted as saying.
There seems little doubt that the same man was also involved in the murder of Basie Venter. Venter's widow Mary, 68, had witnessed the attack against her husband around 21:15 from the outside, through a window in the house. Venter was attacked with an iron rod, police said.
Free State police spokesman Maselela Langa said Mokoena’s case, scheduled for a first hearing at the local Viljoenskroon magistrate’s court, was postponed to Friday, when the psychiatric report would be examined and the psychiatrist was scheduled to appear for testimony.
see
http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.nl/2009/05/african-witchdoctor-charged-with-muti.html
(link in April 2009) :
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2512907,00.html
DETAILS ON WITCHCRAFT:
http://altereddimensions.net/2013/african-muti-medicine-murders-hospitals-sell-body-parts-murderers-harvest-organs-from-live-victims-witch-doctors-black-magic-spells
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