Still on Tanzania where parents can sell their albino children for up to £50,000

Tanzania's albinos are being 'hunted down like animals' as greed for money and influence drives families to turn on their own loved ones in a trade allegedly fuelled by some of the country's most powerful people.

It is believed albino body parts will bring a person wealth, or luck - and for that, people are willing to pay as much as $3,000 or $4,000 for a limb, or as much as $75,000 - about £50,000 - for the 'full set', a whole body.

People with albinism are regularly attacked by people who chop their limbs off - an act which either leaves them severely mutilated, or dead.  

Albinism, a hereditary genetic condition which causes a total absence of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes, affects one Tanzanian in 1,400, often as a result of inbreeding in remote and rural communities, experts say.

 

In the West, it affects just one person in 20,000. Since people began collecting records of the attacks, there have been 74 killings and 59 survivors of attacks. Even the dead are not safe: 16 graves have been robbed.

And these are only the recorded cases. 

The most recent case saw four-year-old Pendo Emmanuelle Nundi abducted from her home in December.

Her father and uncle were both arrested in connection with her disappearance, but - despite rewards offered of £1,130 and promises of swift action from the police - she has not been found.

Charities working in the area do not hold out much hope she will be returned safely, but - listening to survivors' stories - it is likely her end is, or will be brutal. 

Mwigulu Matonange was just 10 when he was attacked by two men as he walked home from school with a friend.

They chopped off his left arm, before disappearing back into the jungle with their 'prize'. 

'I was held down like a goat about to be slaughtered,' he told IPP Media after the February 2014 attack.

In Mwigulu's case, the two men were strangers: he had never seen them before.

But it is understood suspicion turned on Pendo's father after he took half-an-hour to report her abduction, despite there being neighbours who could have helped as soon as she was taken. 

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