The case of a boy who survived a mutilation attack

On 5 December 2009, a case was aired by Mozambican National Television (TVM) about a 16 year old boy, in Niassa (northern Mozambique), who, on 26 November 2009, was attacked by three men who cut off his genital organs. Our team started an investigation and this is what we have discovered from several first hand Interviews.

The boy, who was 13 years old at the time of the attack, had been grazing goats when the three men approached the boy saying they would help him search for a goat he had lost. The boy explained, “they began hitting me, pulling me and I started screaming for help, but nobody showed up, they cut me in the head with a knife and I passed out. They took my pants off, they tied my hands and legs and put mud in my nostrils and mouth, They cut my genitals, they wrapped the organs and put them in a bag and ran away. A lot of blood was coming out of my head and nobody was coming to help me. So I stayed there for 2 days without eating anything and then I crawled to the road”.

The three men left him there to bleed to death. The boy lay in the field for two days, after which time he crawled to the nearest road (thought to be almost 1km away) and was found by the police and taken to the Provincial Hospital of Lichinga.

According to the doctor “the genitals were completely removed, it was a clean cut and they took all the genitals using a big knife, with one cut. This area was completely infected. It must have been someone very well trained or someone who is used to doing this kind of thing. Even a health professional would not be able to make such a clean cut without training”.

Two men have been arrested in connection with this case, they both claim they are innocent despite being identified by the victim. The boy says the men were guards from a kindergarten and he would normally see them when he went grazing the goats. The investigation is ongoing.

In January 2010, the boy was transferred to the Central Hospital of Maputo, where he is receiving medical attention. The Mozambican Human Rights League has been helping the boy with few basic needs such as food, clothes and some emotional support.

It is important to say that several child rights were violated in this short period. When TVM aired the news, they exposed the boy without his permission. They even showed the disturbing images of his wound. The boy also stated in the interview: “I even appeared in TVM and I didn’t like that”.

It seems unimaginable how someone can perform this gruesome act on a person, especially a child. However, in our project we have seen more cases like this one and it is evident that this is a frequent practice in the country, in which the body parts removed from the bodies are used by so called witchdoctors in several treatments allegedly to improve life conditions. The victim even stated: “They sell it to have money and cars, and they get rich”.

Cultural and psychological factors (part 1/4)

Historically, the peoples of southern Africa have used Traditional Healers (TH) to aid them in terms of health and to help them improve their life situation in various ways. Access to Government health services and ‘Western’ medicine remains low in many areas, and the use of TH is widespread and for many it remains a 1st choice. It has been documented that TH have developed many remedies using herbs and plants which alleviate their patients’ problems, although it is often dismissed by Western medicine. WHO challenges this, and calls for an integration of traditional medicine into the national health care system and also wants to promote the proper use of traditional medicine by developing and providing international standards, technical guidelines and methodologies.

WHO defines traditional medicine as follows “Traditional medicine as including diverse health practices, approaches, knowledge and beliefs incorporating plant, animal, and/or mineral based medicines, spiritual therapies, manual techniques and exercises applied singularly or in combination to maintain well-being, as well as to treat, diagnose or prevent illness”.

As seen in the WHO definition of traditional medicine, the use of human body parts are not considered part of traditional medicine. Rather, the use of body parts can be considered witchcraft and a harmful traditional practice. Yet, in practice, the terms witchdoctor and Traditional Healer are sometimes used interchangeably. 'Witchcraft' typically refers to malevolent or harmful magic, and is often considered to be a cultural ideology (Klaniczay, 2006). Some informants in this research project made a clear distinction between TH and witchdoctors as seen in a previous post.

Supply and Demand

The research performed by the Mozambican Human Rights League showed that there was a link between Muti and business, in other words, trafficking body parts is part of the supply and demand business of Muti. These Muti practices that are prevalent in South Africa and Mozambique are a cultural belief that body parts will make the medicine more effective and that it can solve any problem, ranging from poverty to health issues. The research interviews showed that so-called witchdoctors have a firm belief themselves that human body parts are needed for strong Muti. Witchdoctors, usually through a third party, actively seek human body parts from live victims.

Also, from the results of this research it seemed that, when linking Mozambique and South Africa, the movement of body parts was always from Mozambique to South Africa, which means that Mozambique acts as a supplier and South Africa as a recipient. A woman working as a stall holder on the South African side of the border said “I saw a human head on top of some vegetables that were inside those big bags they use to carry goods […] It was the head of a child […] someone was trying to take the head from Mozambique to South Africa”. There was also the account of an “old lady” who was attacked and beheaded in Mozambique. The head was found in “Tsatsimbe River where they crushed the head to remove the brain” which was said to have been taken to South Africa. The interviewer heard 3 separate firsthand accounts of this incident, from a Policeman, a Community Member and a Neighbourhood Secretary. And, finally, an informant confirmed that the three cases that she reported were about body parts being moved from Mozambique to South Africa.

Suspected Muti Killing

(Article from:The Phoenix and Verulam Sun Vol.7 No.30 – 30 July 2009. South Africa)

During the Human Rights League research (2008), male genitalia were found to be the body parts mentioned most during the interviews.

The interviewed Police officers stated that there are several cases of bodies being found missing body parts, however according to these informants, the parts are never found “But there are lots of cases in which the human organs are extracted but never found [...] We find many times bodies without organs or body parts” (MZ_Na_GI_2).

The informants interviewed in this research, when giving an example of an incident where body parts had either been taken or found, were asked what they thought the body part would be used for. Of the 62 informants who chose to answer this question, 93% believed they were either to be sold or used for activities relating to witchcraft and Muti. The objective of using body parts in the so-called ‘Muti murder’ is to create powerful traditional medicine based partly on human body parts. Traditional medicine has a wide range of purposes, for instance to heal illnesses, aid economic advancement or hurt enemies.

As part of Muti practices, some witchdoctors make use of the so-called ‘medicine murder’ or ‘Muti murder’, where body parts are removed from the bodies of living persons. The intention is not to kill the victims as such, but it is expected that they will die due to the damage inflicted (Ashforth, 2005). It is a deep founded belief of the witchdoctors that the body parts are necessary for the Muti to work and it is required that the victims are dismembered while they are still alive. The screams of the victims are believed to make the medicine more powerful by waking the spirits and empowering them, thus resulting in victims being mutilated alive (Griffin et al 2004, Labuschagne 2004). This research found some accounts where the victim was alive when the body parts were extracted, however a number of victims mentioned in this research were murdered and the body parts were removed post-mortem. An interviewed Doctor in Mozambique stated “The genital was removed with a very precise cut, or probably two cuts, one from each side removing the genitals. And the cuts were made after the person was dead […] no sign of bleeding. It means she was dead when the injuries were done” (MZ_MC_I_2).