ARTICLE - MOBS IN HAITI KILL 'WITCHES'

MOBS IN HAITI KILL 'WITCHES' ACCUSED OF INTENTIONALLY SPREADING CHOLERA
(New York Daily News) - By Jaime Uribarri

Fear and despair are making residents of cholera-ravaged Haiti turn on each other, as angry mobs have begun killing neighbors suspected of intentionally spreading the disease through witchcraft.

Up to 12 people accused of using "black magic" to infect others have been murdered as a result of the week-long witch hunt, with new cases being reported daily.

Local officials reported that six suspected witches in the town of Chambellan were stoned or hacked to death, a fate that an additional three people met in the city of Jeremie.

Prosecutor Kesner Numa told Agence France-Presse that the victims were believed to have planted "a substance that spreads the disease" throughout the population.

"Their corpses were burned in the streets."

The violent uprising comes at a time of political crisis for the impoverished Caribbean nation, after reports of fraud and vote-rigging plagued last week’s presidential elections.

Likely a result of the January earthquake that killed a quarter of a million people, Haiti’s cholera epidemic has claimed nearly 2,000 lives over the past two months.

With no end in sight to the problem and no one to blame, people are now looking for scapegoats.
"They [the mobs] really believe that witches are taking advantage of the cholera epidemic to kill," Numa said.