Cannibalism in CAR: Cruelty or Sorcery?

[Gotham Witch]

I'll be the first to admit I'm no expert on African folk magic, and I'd like to forewarn that this isn't an attempt to sensationalize, but this story illustrates a disturbing twist on a current event: magic in warfare.

This of course isn't the first time such a thing has happened. Similar happened in the late 1800s between Congo Free State and several Swahili-Arab states. In the 1980s, humanitarian groups documented ritual cannibalism in Liberia. The Lord's Resistance Army also engaged in ritual cannibalism, possibly of a magical nature.

Perhaps, he agreed with me, this atrocity was simply the act of an unbalanced individual. Or it might be the result of sectarian hatreds.

Or - his final explanation - this had something to do with sorcery.

Many of the Christian fighters we met - the anti-balaka - believe in magic. They go into battle wearing a variety of amulets. A group of fighters at a checkpoint told me some of the amulets contained the flesh of men they had killed.

"We are bullet-proof," their commander told me, chuckling.

There has been, as far we know, no other act of cannibalism is this conflict. There is, however, precedent in the Central African Republic.

Congolese soldiers from the African-led International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) stand guard in a street where people burnt tyres following the killing of a man by an ex-Seleka member, on 12 January 2014, in Bangui.

The "Emperor" Bokassa, who ruled from 1966 to 1979, was accused of having his enemies cooked and served at state dinners. Paris Match published photographs it said were of the body parts of children in a fridge at his palace. (After he was deposed, Bokassa was tried. While he was convicted of murder, he was found not guilty of cannibalism.)

I wonder how much of this is magical efficacy and how much is retributive brutality.

[Ron Caliburn]

Supernatural beasts apparently run rampant in times of unchecked violence and cruelty, often creating groups of servants and thralls. The perpetrators or ring-leaders of this might not have been human.

[Gotham Witch]

While supernatural predators wouldn't surprise me, I find the notion of deliberate wartime cannibalism in and of itself to be a more unsettling event.

More grimly, I truly wonder whether there is any arcane or supernatural benefit at all, or if it's a superstition that perhaps justifies and spreads the popularity of the act.

[Nemesis]

Blood magic is a thing. We should not quickly dismiss the possible mystical or ritualistic applications of cannibalism. Not to practice ourselves so much as to know, understand and counter it.

[Gotham Witch]

It's less dismissal and more skepticism. Even if the majority of cannibalism committed had no mystical efficacy whatsoever, you wouldn't admit it. Still, there could be legitimate ritual behind many of these cases.

The issue of where the news originates - not to mention current humanitarian and political crises - makes meaningful research at least on our end difficult.

[Last Moon]

In my previous research I found that reports of cannibalism and reports of theiranthropy often overlap.

Of course this doesn't mean that all who eat human flesh are actually therianthropes and that all therianthropes eat human flesh, but there does seem to be a substantive overlap.

[Phoenix]

It does seem to be a common curse for humans who eat the flesh of other humans. It would be interesting to see if there's some naturalistic element at work there or perhaps divine intervention in the form of curse as punishment.

[Ron Caliburn]

Some action in Nigeria as well as the CAR

Cannibal Caterers: The Nigerian Hotel Shut Down for Serving Human Meat – and Other People-eating Stories

Acting on tip-offs from locals, police in the Nigerian town of Onishta raided a hotel and shut it down after discovering that its cannibal caterers were serving dishes made from human meat. The police made eleven arrests and recovered at least two fresh human heads from the establishment.

Onishta, in the state of Anambra in south-west Nigeria, is known locally for its busy Ose-Okwodu market – close to which, the unnamed hotel is situated. It is not clear what kind of information the police received or how long the hotel has been serving human flesh to its patrons. Entering the establishment Thursday, they arrested four men, six women and the hotel’s owner. In addition, they discovered at least two blood-soaked human heads wrapped in cellophane, two army caps, two AK-47 rifles and a small quantity of ammunition. The heads have yet to be identified.

Clearly, activities around the hotel had caught the attention of locals. One man who sells vegetables at the bustling market told the Osun Defender “I always noticed funny movements in and out of the hotel; dirty people with dirty characters always come into the hotel.” He went on to say that the grisly discovery did not really come as a surprise.

One of the people who came forward was a pastor who had eaten at the hotel earlier in the year. “I was told that a lump of meat was being sold at N700,” the pastor, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “I was surprised. So I did not know it was human meat that I ate at such expensive price.” How the pastor discovered that he had been served human meat is not clear. 700 Naira is equal to a little over four US dollars.

Nigeria, which is located on the west coast of Africa, is one of the continent’s most populous nations. Covering an area about one-third larger than the US state of Texas, Nigeria has a population of more than 150 million people and is, perhaps, best know in the United States for having an unusually large number of princes, politicians and attorneys who – for reasons known only to themselves – appear eager to deposit huge sums of money into the accounts of total strangers – for a “small” fee, of course.

Cannibalism is not a new horror for Nigeria: In 2012, Joshua Akindele, a 56-year-old man, was arrested after being reported to police for allegedly practicing cannibalism. During questioning, Akindele admitted to practicing cannibalism and also to selling human body parts for ritualistic purposes. He described how he would hit his unsuspecting victims over the head and drag their bodies into a hole that served as his hideout. ”I then…use a knife to cut them into parts which I sell to some churches and some ready buyers who indulge in ritual killing for easy money, and some times when I feel hungry late in the night, I eat some parts for food.” He confessed. Akindele provided a startling price-list for human body parts: A head will usually fetch about N7,500, hands and legs go for N3,500 and a penis will cost N1000. Cannibalism is certainly not an accepted practice in Nigeria and Joshua Akindele was spared a gruesome death at the hands of angry locals only by the timely arrival of a police unit.

Apart from Akindele and the cannibal caterers at the Nigerian hotel, another grisly people-eating story recently came to light in the war-torn Central African Republic (CAR). Ouandja Magloir, known as “Mad Dog,” publicly ate the leg of a Muslim man who was dragged from a bus in the capital, Bangui, by a mob of Christian youths. Magloir told the BBC that his pregnant wife and her sister were murdered by Muslims, during the horrific sectarian violence that has paralyzed the country. Magloir gathered a machete-wielding mob to pull his victim from the bus; the man was then beaten and stabbed, before being set on fire. ”‘I poured petrol over him. I burned him. I ate his leg, right down the white bone.” Onlookers did not intervene but recorded the attack on cell phones. According to accounts, witnesses were horrified, with some vomiting.

The CAR’s former dictator, Bedel Bokassa, was said to have practiced cannibalism and allegedly put human flesh in meals that were served to visiting officials. Bokassa was a brutal ruler who led the country from 1966 to 1979, when he was deposed by French troops. He died of a heart attack in 1996.

The word “cannibal” comes from “Canibales,” the Spanish name for the Carib Indians, who had been known to eat human flesh. The caterers at the Nigerian hotel shut down for serving human meat are, it appears, not unique – although this gruesome practice is, by no means, wide-spread in Africa; the vast majority of Africans are as horrified as anyone else, when such stories surface.