Willard Mikaele, a 28-year-old Thyolo man who brutally murdered an albino teenager Mphatso Pensulo, 19, in 2017, will be hanged after the High Court sentenced him to death, signaling a tough stance Malawi is undertaking after a re-surgence of albino attacks.
Mikaele had killed Pensulo in order to use his body parts in rituals that would get him rich, using a Mozambican witchdoctor.
“The motive behind the killing was as devilish as it is primitive. He planned to kill an albino so as to get rich fast as advised by a herbalist,” High Court Judge Maclean Kamwambe, said in his sentencing of the accused. State prosecutors had asked for the death sentence.
“I want to agree with the State that death sentence is appropriate as it reflects a sense of justice in the circumstances,” the Judge said.
Kamwambe said the public will feel relieved with the death sentence “after so much anxiety.”
“A message should be sent to would-be offenders that once arrested [and tried], they should expect a stern punishment of death.”
Nobody has been hanged in Malawi since the country’s first multi-party poll in 1994 after former President Bakili Muluzi refused to sign for death warrants. He commuted all death warrants to life imprisonment.
“I am watching with keen interest, what seems like an awakening on the part of the government of Malawi vis-a-vis the terrible crime spree that has been going on in the country against persons with albinism,” Ikponwosa Ero, the United Nations expert on albinism, was quoted by international media.
Malawi has seen a spike in violent attacks on people with albinism (PWA) since late 2014.
In many cases those with albinism are targeted for their body parts to be used in witchcraft rituals meant to bring wealth and luck.
President Peter Mutharika in March appointed a commission of inquiry to stem the tide of atrocities faced by PWAs and announced a raft of tough measures that may lead to the root of the vice and find perpetrators who have eluded all intelligence networks to be nabbed.
Malawi has an estimated 10,000 PWAs, but since 2014, up to 150 cases, 25 murders and scores of abductions have been recorded by APAM, leading to a United Nations expert to warn in 2016 that witchcraft threatens the PWAs with extinction and the situation “constitutes an emergency and a crisis disturbing in its proportions.”
PWAs—who have a hereditary genetic condition which causes a total absence of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes– are targeted because of beliefs that their body parts can increase wealth, make businesses prosper or facilitate employment.
The Mutharika’s administration has since rolled out the K3.1 billion and 2018-2022 National Action Plan on the killings and abductions of PWAs.
As part of the plan, the President announced some of the following key directives and interventions:
. Government will set up a commission of inquiry and procure 3,000 personal security alarms to be distributed to PWAs to alert police when faced with abduction threats.
. A K5 million reward awaits anyone who can provide police with information leading to the arrest and prosecution of people to abduct or kill PWAs.
. Malawi will engage foreign investigators to probe the whereabouts of the body markets from PWAs.
Several opposition politicians have ramped on the PWAs plight to promise safety and end of the killings once voted into power, but Mutharika said: “No one should use people with albinism for political campaign.”
“It’s an evil act and inhumane, it reduces the dignity of our fellow citizens with albinism. I repeat…stop politicising albino killings and let us join hands to protect them,” the President said.
“It is a tragedy that has befallen us that needs collective solutions. We will not be able to solve the current problems by finger pointing.”
Ero warned in 2016 that PWAs in Malawi render them “an endangered group facing a risk of systematic extinction over time if nothing is done to stem the tide.”
Ero, a Nigerian national and herself a PWA, said the “frequent involvement of close relatives in cases of attacks is highly disturbing and persons with albinism are unable to trust even those who are supposed to care and protect them.”
She added: “Even in death, they do not rest in peace as their remains are robbed from graveyards. Attacks against a few of them constitute a danger to all of them.”
Source: MBC Online
