14 DAY TRIAL // While this may come as a shock to many people, there are still countries out there in which witchcraft and black magic are not considered relics of the Dark Ages, but parts of everyday life. In these nations, most of which are located on the African continent, the mere suspicion that you may be involved in rituals and placing curses on other people's heads is enough to land you a death sentence. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen at the hand of a judge, but of a mob. In Africa, mobs are particularly interested in lynching people based on flimsy pieces of evidence and suspicions, LiveScience reports.
Witchdoctors are still the go-to people in many villages, and people not only see them for curing their own diseases, but also for placing curses on enemies, or having curses removed. Naturally, results are mixed. If you're a believer in this type of things, then they act just like organized religion – you learn to see patterns where there are none. But, as it stands, the people there are so uneducated, that they never even get the chance to question the authority of witches, shamans, magic wielders, and so on.
Even politicians stand to gain from using magic, or at least manipulating people's fear of magic, for their own political, economical and religious purposes. A population that is frightened a curse may fall on it for a certain reason is very easy to manipulate and control, a situation that we unfortunately often encounter disguised in sheep's clothing in more developed countries around the world as well. But Africa is by far the worst off. As an example, the Red Cross reports that more than 50 albinos were killed for body parts last year alone. Albinism is a rare genetic condition in which people have no pigment in their skin, hair and eyebrows, and therefore appear to be completely white.
The thing is that muti – the practice of using human body parts for rituals – is so widespread on the African continent, that even the police, politicians, and judges are too afraid to pursue whoever commissioned the albino murders too seriously. They fear a large uproar from the population, international observers say. Fear, hatred, and ridicule are what await albinos on the African continent. A largely ignorant general population sees these sick people as a source of good-luck charms, and miss little opportunities to show their cruelty.