An 11-year-old albino girl from Swaziland was shot dead in front of her friends and then beheaded in what police believe was a ritual murder.

The murder is the latest in a series of albino killings in Sub-Saharan Africa, where sufferers of the rare skin pigmentation condition are concentrated.

Earlier this year, another 11-year-old albino child was killed close to the same spot in Swaziland and her hand was removed.

Police believe both children may have been targeted because of a belief by witch doctors that the blood and body parts of albinos – who lack pigment in their eyes, hair and skin – can bring good luck and fortune when used in potions.

Their value for black magic practitioners sees them often fall prey to human traffickers, one of whom was jailed for 17 years in Tanzania this week for abducting and attempting to sell a live albino man.

As many as 200 women are lynched every year in India after being accused of practising witchcraft, a study by a charity has found.

Avdhash Kaushal, chairman of the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra, said that most victims were single or widowed and were often targeted for their land or money.

When Pascal’s little brother got sick, his family accused him of witchcraft and took him to a pastor who forced him to drink pigeon’s blood and oil.

Denied food and beaten for three days, the ten-year-old managed to escape, joining some 250,000 other street children in Congo for three years until he was scooped up by a children’s centre in Kinshasa’s tough east end.

UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s charity, says accusing children of sorcery is a fairly new and growing trend in Africa, despite long-held traditional and mystic beliefs on the continent.

Prosecutors believe modern witchcraft drove a man to kill his girlfriend, dismember her body and scatter her remains around Snohomish County.

Eric Christensen told detectives Sherry Harlan took a “blood oath” to break off a relationship with another man.

Dozens of villagers in the Kenyan district of Kisii are falling prey to superstitious groups accusing them of witchcraft.

The poverty-stricken western district, known as Kenya’s sorcery belt, has seen an increase in mob attacks on individuals and even killings.

The poor and elderly in particular are being targeted. [video]

Witchcraft, more recently repackaged by some as Wicca, is a pagan and/or neo-pagan religion.

Sadly, as many of the items in our Witchcraft news tracker show, throughout much of the world both practitioners and non-practitioners of witchcraft are subject to persecution based on superstitious beliefs.

Of course it isn’t all that unusual for a pastor to claim healing powers. Witness the blow-dried televangelists of America and elsewhere, who often advertise their dramatic healing powers in infomercials.

But in western Kenya the belief in the supernatural is far deeper, and the line between Christianity and the occult is thin at best.

An increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.

Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

“It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity,” said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria. [video]

A memoir by George W Bush‘s former speechwriter claims that Bush administration officials objected to giving JK Rowling a presidential medal of freedom on the grounds that her Harry Potter books “encouraged witchcraft”.

Latimer, whose memoir Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor was published last week by Crown in the US, says that the “narrow thinking” of “people in the White House” led them “to actually object to giving the author JK Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft“.

See also: Harry Potter is converting Christian critics, Christian themes abound in Potter and How the boy wizard won over religious critics — and the deeper meaning theologians now see in his tale

GENEVA (Reuters) – Murder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is spreading around the world and destroying the lives of millions of people, experts said Wednesday.

The experts — United Nations officials, civil society representatives from affected countries and non-governmental organization (NGO) specialists working on the issue — urged governments to acknowledge the extent of the persecution.

Aides to U.N. special investigators on women’s rights and on summary executions said killings and violence against alleged witch women — often elderly people — were becoming common events in countries ranging from South Africa to India.

And community workers from Nepal and Papua New Guinea told the seminar, on the fringes of a session of the U.N.’s 47-member Human Rights Council, that “witch-hunting” was now common, both in rural communities and larger population centres.

ADAMSTOWN, Pa. — In the rolling hills of deeply religious rural Pennsylvania sits Stoudtburg Village, a tiny hamlet modeled on a German town. On weekends, tourists come here to visit shops on the ground floors of closely set three-story houses painted bright colors on pedestrian-only streets.

But this weekend, plans for a nature-worshipping group of modern pagans and witches to hold a festival in this picturesque section of Adamstown are getting a mixed reception, with some shop owners welcoming the visitors but others saying they plan to close.

In many African countries, as in other parts of the world, children are blamed for causing illness, death and destruction, prompting some communities to put them through harrowing punishments to “cleanse” them of their supposed magical powers.

Pastors have been accused of worsening the problem by claiming to have powers to recognize and exorcise “child witches,” sometimes for a fee, aid workers said.

Today’s edition of RNB’s Religion News Roundup includes two items about witchcraft, one somewhat funny, and one seriously disturbing.

The funny item involves the believe in Tanzania that by use of witchcraft one can transport crops from one farm to another (i.e. stealing in order to save oneself lots of hard work).

The serious item comes from Nigeria, where hundreds of children falsely accused of witchcraft have been killed.

There are also news items about faith healing, a link to resources for religion reporters covering the on-going torture debacle, and more…

Victims of a purge on witchcraft in the secretive west African state of Gambia have told of horrific ordeals including rape after being force-fed potions inducing hallucinations.

According to Amnesty International and anonymous police sources in Gambia, as many as 1,000 people have been kidnapped and held by so-called witch hunters backed by armed men carrying out orders from the Gambian authorities.

Lawrence Harris, 26, who had an interest in witchcraft, told police his two stepdaughters had died when a spell he cast to protect their teenage brother reversed itself, killing them. His attorneys attempted to prove he was legally insane.

But after two weeks of testimony, jurors took only a couple of hours Thursday to find Harris guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.

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