Totally OT... but had to share this

[Guest guest]

Yet another reason to be grateful we're girls! (Well, then there's

Gutter Boy, of course.... Don't take any trips to Congo!)

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it on the Reuters web

site. My favorite quote from the story: " How do you know if you

haven't gone home and tried it? "



Penis theft panic hits city..

Wed Apr 23 17:06:48 UTC 2008

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected

sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's

penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by

the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa,

where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains

widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts

still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa,

Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million

inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with

listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis

wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed

that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or

disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash

with the promise of a cure.

" You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you.

We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered

in marks after being beaten, " Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne

Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort

to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12

suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27

men have since been released.

" I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke, " Oleko said.

" But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still

there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become

impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone

home and tried it', " he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-

Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent

government crackdown on its members.

" It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We

saw. What was left was tiny, " said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who

sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.