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Cholera Sets Off Witch Hunt In Haiti
December 03, 2010

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Port-Au-Prince. Terror over a fast-spreading cholera epidemic has triggered a violent witch-hunt in rural Haiti in which locals have murdered at least 12 people on accusations they used “black magic” to infect people, police say.

The fast-killing infection is new to Haiti and there is widespread confusion and fear about it. In less than six weeks since the first-ever case was confirmed in the country’s rural center, nearly 1,900 people have died and more than 84,000 have been infected.

Rumors began to spread last week in the remote southwestern Grand Anse region, where the first cases of cholera are only now being seen, that Vodou practitioners had fashioned a magic powder to spread the infection.

Machete-wielding mobs have since lynched and killed a dozen people accused of practicing such witchcraft, burning the bodies of their victims, said national police spokesman Frantz Lerebours.

Vodou is a widely held faith in Haiti that combines elements of African religion with Roman Catholic Christianity.

It includes deeply held tenets of magic, both good and evil, and its priests are especially influential in rural populations.

In response to the killings, the government said on Thursday: “Cholera is a microbe. The only way to protect oneself against cholera is to observe the principles of hygiene.

“There is no cholera powder, nor cholera zombie, nor cholera spirit” and Vodou priests “can neither treat cholera, nor make a powder that gives cholera.”

Confusion over how the disease spreads has also prompted attacks on treatment centers.

The origins of Haiti’s cholera epidemic have not been proven. Public health experts believe the bacteria, which matches a South Asian strain, was imported from a cholera-endemic country.

Much speculation has centered on a base of UN peacekeepers from Nepal with documented sanitation problems, which was located on the river where the outbreak began. Riots have been held against the peacekeepers.


Associated Press