Shinyanga killings shock Lowassa
 
2006-02-01 07:55:30
By Boniface Luhanga, Bariadi

	Prime Minister Edward Lowassa.

Ignorance and lack of education are to blame for the frequent murders of old women in Shinyanga Region, according to Prime Minister Edward Lowassa.

Lowassa said this after he was briefed about the killing of old women linked to belief in witchcraft during his tour of Bariadi District on Monday.

District commissioner Cleophas Rugarabamu told the prime minister that an average of four old women were brutally murdered in the district each month.

A vividly shocked Lowassa said ignorance was largely to blame for the atrocities and directed Shinyanga regional authorities to ensure that education was given the priority it deserved if entrenched belief in witchcraft was to be permanently stamped out in the region.

If four old women are brutally murdered each month, it means that 48 women are killed each year. This is unacceptable.

This trend can be reversed only if we educate the people.

People are killing one another out of sheer ignorance…they believe whatever traditional medicine men tell them, the prime minister said.

He added that he would see to it that more secondary schools were established in the region during his tenure as prime minister, saying the current younger generation must be educated in order to end senseless murders that had blighted the region’s image.

Lowassa said, however, that ignorance was no excuse for murder, and added that the government would hunt down the perpetrators of the atrocities and bring them to justice.

’No person has the right to end another person’s life, and the government will pursue the killers and ensure that justice is done,’ he said, and cautioned people against taking the law into their own hands.

Earlier, Rugarabamu told Lowassa that there were clans which specialised in killing old women after they had been identified as ’witches’ by medicine men.

He said the killers were hired to eliminate the alleged witches and were given a down payment prior to carrying out the killings before receiving the balance after the job was done.

The killers were usually given concoctions which they believed made them invisible as they carried out the killings.

Meanwhile, Lowassa expressed his surprise at the failure by the Bariadi District Council to act against a contractor who had failed to complete a 1.2bn/- water project on time.

The prime minister was responding to information that the project had stalled, and that the contractor was giving ’flimsy’ excuses.

He commended the council for devising a scheme under which peasants would be supplied with seeds of drought resistant crops free of charge as part of efforts to fight famine in the area.

Rugarabamu said the council would spend 5.1m/- on the seeds which would be distributed free of charge.

• SOURCE: Guardian