Witches Are Real In Uganda: Witch Doctor Burned To Death After Child Abductions And Sacrificial Rituals

A man met an unfortunate and untimely death over the weekend when a mob burned him to death for allegedly practicing witchcraft in Uganda. The 57-year-old man, a butcher, was burned alive in his grass thatched house. Three suspects have been arrested for the crime, Ingenious Dragudu, the acting district police chief commander, told the Daily Monitor.

“We have arrested three people in connection to the killing and there should be no compromise on this because it is a barbaric act that should be condemned and should not continue in society,” he said.

Eye witnesses who said they were unable to stop the blaze. “Some of us never wanted the man to be burnt but the angry mob overpowered us, locked him inside the house and set it ablaze. By the time the police arrived, it was too late because the man had been burnt already,” an eye-witness told the Monitor anonymously for fear of retaliation from the community.

Witchdoctors have been the source of suspicion and concern in Uganda for quite some time. They are said to convince wealthy people that “sacrifices” will boost their wealth. Those wealthy people and businessmen pay thousands of pounds to then mutilate children, who are left to die without genitals and with slices in their heads.

Nowhere was that more visible internationally than during the 2016 national elections. That campaign season caused a spike of child abductions and mutilations as the February elections approached, charities in the country said. The blood and body parts were used in sacrificial rituals ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections. Between October of last year and the elections, a total of six incidents involving these rituals were reported to Kyampisi Childcare Ministries, an organization that works with survivors of attempted child sacrifice there, according to Newsweek.