‘Bald men’s heads contain gold’- Another man killed in Mozambique for his head

Police in Mozambique have reportedly launched an investigation following another murder of a bald man as authorities grapple with the belief that “bald men’s heads contain gold”.

According to BBC News, the bald head of the victim was removed by criminals who wanted to sell it to their client from Mali, who reportedly disappeared before the exchange could be done.

As a result, the criminals were forced to leave the bald head in the central town of Muandiwa.

“Some Mozambicans believe bald men’s heads contain gold,” said the publication.

In 2017, the country’s police warned bald men after the killing of five men for their body parts.

Afonso Dias, a police commander in Mozambique’s central Zambezia province, was quoted as saying at the time: “Their motive comes from superstition and culture – the local community thinks bald individuals are rich.”

Ritual murders in Malawi

Malawi has also suffered a wave of assaults against people with albinism from late 2014.

Amnesty International says more than 20 people with albinism have been killed in Malawi since 2014.

The assaults range from killings, tampering of graves, attempted abductions, and physical violence.

As in other countries in the region, their body parts are used in rituals to bring wealth and luck.

Some people with albinism are also accused of being “vampires” who seek human blood for rituals, sometimes triggering vigilante violence in retaliation.

In Dr Congo

In October last year, five headless bodies were exhumed at a house in the northeast of the DR Congo, Red Cross and civil protection sources said, one of whom said that ritual killings were suspected.

Musasa Sasaka, the local representative of the government’s civil protection service, described the gruesome exhumation on Sunday, saying the decapitated heads were placed between the victims’ legs — a posture suggesting a possible “ritual crime”.

Relatives had reported the victims missing a few days before the killings in Ariwara, a town of 60,000 people in Ituri province near the borders with Uganda and South Sudan.

One of the five was a radio personality, while another was a motorbike mechanic, according to Sasaka and Franco Envi, the local Red Cross coordinator.

READ MORE: Ritual killings suspected as 5 headless bodies exhumed in DR Congo

Additional reporting by AFP