My Diary

Where is our humanity?

On Wednesday, the country woke up to news that a 14-year-old boy had been abducted from his home while his parents and sister were sleeping.

The tragedy of this news is not just the abduction itself but the person who has been taken. The teenager, Goodson Makanjira, has a condition called albinism. He bleeds like every human being and his bones contain no magical portion whatsoever.

But people like Makanjira, 18-month old Eunice Nkhonjera and 56-year-old Yasini Phiri, who have been abducted and so many others who have been killed at the hands of ignorant barbaric individuals deserve justice.

Since 2014, the number of people with albinism who have either been abducted or killed has reached 23. That is 23 innocent lives lost. It is 23 of our citizens whose only crime has been to be born different.

Apart from pronouncements at political rallies professing to offer protection to these innocent Malawians, the political leadership of this country should go a step further.

In Tanzania, killings of people with albinism ended when the president adopted a child with the condition. What has the President of Malawi done?

President Peter Mutharika should feel shame to his very marrow that all these killings started under his watch. From the moment of the first killing and desecration of a graveyard of a person with albinism in 2014, his administration should have been moved to act.

It is rightly believed that a president has at his disposal security intelligence, the Police and even defense forces: All arsenals that would have provided a lasting solution to this problem. But there has been nothing.

If President Mutharika cared, he would have put the intelligence body to better use than peeping into people’s bedrooms. The government machinery is capable of tracing and identifying the source of the demand for bones of persons with albinism.  Organisations like Amnesty International have made such an appeal to the government but it has gone unheeded.

The Police should not be moved to act only when a child, a mother or someone’s father is

chopped into pieces right in front of a son’s eyes.

The challenges that our security agencies face on a daily basis notwithstanding, one murder should have galvanised the whole police service to act.  This is an institution that has the manpower to post its personnel on the roads of Malawi, from Nsanje to Chitipa stopping vehicles willy-nilly. The trained officers can be put to better use protecting people with albinism than checking for driving licenses.

How has it not occurred to the Inspector General of Police that presence of its officers in places concentrated with people of albinism would deter these murders and attacks?

What happened to the love of the community, communities that would have each other’s backs and defend each other no matter what? It would be hard to imagine that there isn’t a Malawian who is not aware of the danger that people with albinism are facing.

The communities, with traditional leaders inclusive, can see a person with albinism; they see the condition of the house that this person is leaving, a house without reinforcements. It would only take a few households to mobilise each other and provide protection that would go a long way in deterring would be abductors.

Every person should feel ashamed that Malawi’s own citizens are rejecting this country and everything it stands for. Each Malawi should do self-searching for that grain of humanity left in us and do something about these killings, now.

Related Articles

Back to top button