A literal witch hunt
When you see a headline that refers to a witch hunt, it is normally not a literal hunt for witches, but a more general crusade to find someone to blame for something.
But in the case of this headline in the Herald – African leader embarks on bizarre witch-hunt– it is literally true:
A state-sponsored witch-hunt has begun in Gambia where as many as 1000 people have been kidnapped from their villages and taken to “secret detention centres” then stripped, beaten and poisoned.
The campaign in the tiny West African nation is the latest manifestation of the increasingly brutal and bizarre rule of President Yahya Jammeh, who has claimed he can cure people of Aids. Now the President is thought to believe he is under attack from witches.
Witnesses and victims of the abductions told Amnesty International that the President’s personal guard, with armed police and intelligence agents, accompanied witch doctors to round up suspects.
Many of those taken from their homes were elderly people who were held for up to five days in appalling conditions, made to drink hallucinogenic concoctions and forced to confess to black magic powers.
It’s like an episode of Black Adder, but sadly not fiction. Other activities of the President:
Jammeh caused an international stir two years ago when he tried curing Aids.
Dressed in a white West African garb and plastic surgical gloves, he rubbed a green paste into patients’ bodies before making them swallow a “bitter yellow drink”.
He insisted the cure could only work on Thursdays and required that patients immediately stop taking anti-retroviral drugs. A UN official who dared to question his Aids “cure” was thrown out of the country.
Last year, the President said homosexuals should be beheaded.
It it at this stage I laugh at the piousness of the MFAT advice to the Government that having a policy of life with no parole for the very worst killers, will diminish our ability to influence other countries – such as Gambia no doubt.
Incidentally the President hasbeen inaugurated as 3rd Vice President of the International Parliament for Safety and Peace.