Outcry as 1,000 'witches' rounded up and given hallucinogens

Published on Wednesday 18 March 2009 21:39

ABOUT 1,000 people have been rounded up and forced to drink hallucinogens as part of a witch-hunting campaign in Gambia.

The authorities began inviting "witch doctors" from nearby Guinea after the death this year of an aunt of Gambia's president, Yahya Jammeh. Mr Jammeh is said to believe witchcraft was involved in her death.

Since then, the "witch doctors" – accompanied by police, soldiers, intelligence agents and the president's personal guards – have forcibly taken about 1,000 alleged witches from their villages and spirited them to secret locations, according to Amnesty International. It said about 300 of them had been taken to Mr Jammeh's personal farm.

The rights group said victims were "forced to drink unknown substances that cause them to hallucinate and behave erratically. Many are then forced to confess to being a witch. In some cases, they are severely beaten, almost to the point of death".

The mysterious liquid has caused serious kidney problems among many, and two people are known to have died, Amnesty said.

Only last week, in the village of Sintet, about 300 men and women were forced at gunpoint into buses that took them to Mr Jammeh's farm. A witness said that, once there, they were stripped, then bathed with and forced to drink "dirty water" made from herbs that caused diarrhoea and vomiting.

Amnesty has called on the government of Mr Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup and has claimed he can cure Aids, to halt the campaign and bring those responsible to justice.