Just when you thought the Dark Ages were over, read this Al-Jazeera report. The news network previously reported on albinos in danger in Tanzania, killed so that their body parts can be sold to witch doctors. Now the violence has spread to Burundi, and the albinos are taking cover in ramshackle hideouts:

“Jeremiah began to tell us how one night his brother, Daniel, also an albino, was visited by their older non-albino brother, accompanied by a group of unfamiliar men.

That night Daniel was slaughtered by the older brother who sold his body parts for $240, Jeremiah later discovered.

‘I saw my brother’s dead body. All his limbs, arms and legs, were chopped off and gone. Afterwards my brother and my sister-in-law were overheard fighting over the money they had received selling his body parts.

‘Furthermore, we have evidence that the murderers came through my older brother’s compound and spent some time in his house discussing how they were going to kill him. I was lucky not be home at the time,’ Jeremiah said.

Jeremiah’s non-albino brother then fled with the body parts, police suspect, to neighbouring Tanzania and has not been seen since.”

East African governments are trying to figure out a way to protect the albinos, but albino groups would like them to work to eradicate superstition that fuels the trade to the witch doctors in the first place.