uganda: two toddlers decapitated by "traditional healer" in witchcraft sacrifice

To: add1dda@aol.com <add1dda@aol.com>

Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2024 at 12:39:36 PM EST

Subject: From a 1950s song you're too young to remember.

Ooh Eee Ooh Ah Ah, Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang 

Uganda: Two Toddlers Decapitated in Witchcraft Sacrifice

Uganda: Two Toddlers Decapitated in Witchcraft Sacrifice Bianca Bridger What You Need to Know: Ugandan police arrested traditional doctor Sulaiman Sentongo, his wife, and his associat...

Lots of irony and unintended humor in this straight-faced report: 

As a result, a head count and identification program to register all traditional healers in the district is to be conducted, said Kiboga Resident District Commissioner Mariam Nalubega Sseguya. 

The program intends to "weed out the 'quacks' from the genuine healers", the Commissioner said.

We are told that a law was passed in Uganda in 2020 "to provide for fines and penalties for the offense of human sacrifice and related matters." [Fines and penalties for murder?]

The story continues:

Before the Bill was brought into effect, cases of human sacrifice would be tried under the Penal Code Act, meaning a person charged with human sacrifice could be charged with murder or manslaughter. 

The 2020 Bill thus 'provides for the offense of human sacrifice with specific ingredients as distinct from murder and related offenses' with the knowledge that 'the reported cases indicate that whereas the perpetrators of human sacrifice are mostly witch doctors and traditional healers, the financiers of the practice are often wealthy individuals who are never prosecuted.' 

The meaning of this word salad seems to be that the new law is aimed at patrons of witch doctors as much as the witch doctors themselves. But why was this law necessary at all? Was the concept of "accessory to murder" unknown to their legal system?

The fictional district commissioner Sanders created by Edgar Wallace would have made short work of this practice.

OT:  In India the real-life General Napier famously suppressed another kind of human sacrifice. To the objection that suttee was a "native custom," he replied that "When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed."