Young men are attacked and their genitals cut off while they are still alive; children's throats are slit and their organs removed; and border-crossers are caught with bags containing human heads and sexual organs.
These stories and more are contained in a horror report on the trafficking of human body parts in Mozambique and South Africa, which has unveiled a scary reality: body parts are frequently used in traditional medicine and there is a commonly held belief that such medicine is very powerful.
"Ritual killings are common here; it's like daily bread. We do not even get shocked when a person is found dead with body parts removed," said one of the South Africans interviewed. Twenty-two percent of those interviewed by researchers had first-hand experience of seeing a mutilated body or separate body parts. Furthermore, researchers could not find a single case in which someone caught carrying a body part had been prosecuted.
According to the Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH), which initiated the study, this is because there is no legislation - local or international - that criminalises the carrying of a body part without evidence linking the suspect to the actual murder.
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