A mind dismembered: In search of the magical penis thieves

Right: Supposedly, well, I don't know.


A must read if you are interested in penis thievery.

June, 2008 issue of Harper's magazine:

A mind dismembered:
In search of the magical penis thieves
By Frank Bures

West Africa: Ritually Stolen Penises and Vaginas - Not a Joke Here.

boingboing.net
Posted by Xeni Jardin, March 18, 2009

...there is an odd cultural phenomenon in West Africa involving panic over the belief that one's genitals have been "stolen" through witchery. Usually it's reported as "penis theft," but there's a female version too -- the belief that witches can also make "normal" adult female genitals shrivel up and dry "like old lady parts." I take umbrage to this.

...Bottom line, yes, these mass "penis theft panics" do happen from time to time. Seem to occur more often in Nigeria than anywhere else, but below, a scanned news article from one local newspaper in Benin about a craze in 2006 which left a number of people dead (large size here), and here, a news report about what was probably the biggest-ever penis-thievery-crisis in recent history, back in 2001.

...On a busy November day in a bustling public street market in Cotonou, some Beninese people started shouting that their man-junk had been stolen by a group of men nearby, who happened to be Nigerian. A mob soon formed, things got hysterical fast. The mob poured gasoline on the accused and set them on fire, killing them. BTW, the first rule of being accused here of witchcraft penis theft (or even regular old petty theft) is: run to the police as fast as you can, because a mob will form and try to kill you.

After this initial freakout, about 9 more copycat incidents soon followed, in which the accused schlong-stealers were either burned alive or hacked to death.

One of the expats in Cotonou Monday night told me the bittersweet punch line was -- the men who claimed their penises were stolen and caused all the mayhem were later apprehended by police, stripped of clothing, and paraded in front of television news crews totally naked, to show that yes, their wedding tackle remained intact and the whole thing was BS.

Someone (either a cop or a TV reporter) on camera asked one of the chained, naked, still-be-penised guys "So! What do you have to say for yourself! Obviously it's still there!"
To which the guy replied -- "Well, it was a lot larger before." Right...

Click here to see the entire article and other hilarious posts there...

Thanks to xena at boingboing.net

Penis theft panic hits city...

Right: African penis gourd.

By Joe Bavier
April 24, 2008

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.
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)