Malawi issues warrants for 'vampire' attackers
January 14, 2003 Edition -1
Blantyre - Malawi President Bakili Muluzi has ordered police to arrest attackers who stoned a ruling party official last week, after accusing him of harbouring vampires.
"I authorise the police to arrest everybody involved ... even if it means 150 people," Muluzi told a rally in the capital Blantyre in his first comment on the incident yesterday.
"You can't go about beating my governor and get away with it," he said.
Vampire stories have swept through Malawi on the back of rumours that the government and several unidentified international organisations have been taking blood from the poor in return for food.
More than 3-million of Malawi's 11-million people are currently in need of food aid because of crop failures.
Muluzi has denied the rumours, accusing the opposition of contriving them to tarnish his government's image.
Erick Chiwaya, of the ruling United Democratic Front , was attacked and stoned by a group of around 200 residents from Manase shantytown on the outskirts of Blantyre, where he lives.
Several people have already been arrested and are likely to be charged with causing bodily harm and breaching the peace.
This is not the first time "blood-stealing" stories have surfaced in Malawi.
The government of former dictator Kamuzu Banda was accused of murdering people to send their blood to apartheid South Africa in the 1970s.
Muluzi insisted his government would not be involved in a "primitive" plot to take people's blood, adding the blood would be useless as many Malawians are infected with HIV. - Sapa-AFP
