The United Nations has pulled staff out of two districts in southern Malawi where a vampire scare has triggered mob violence in which at least five people have been killed.
Belief in witchcraft is widespread in rural Malawi, one of the world’s poorest countries, where many aid agencies and NGOs work. A spate of vigilante violence linked to vampire rumours also erupted in Malawi in 2002.
“These districts have severely been affected by the ongoing stories of blood sucking and possible existence of vampires,” the UN Department on Safety and Security (UNDSS) said in a security report on the Phalombe and Mulanje districts that was seen by Reuters.
Of course this type of superstitious fear does not stop with Vampirism.
You may have read recently about the murder of numerous children in Africa accused of being witches.
It was so widespread that they had to found a relief effort just to rescue children accused of witchcraft.
This is why I bang the drum so hard against religion on this blog.
You may think that modern Christianity has nothing in common with this type of mass hysteria, but if so then you have not attended a fundamentalist church where talk of demonic possession, fights with the devil, and the ongoing battle between good and evil are peppered throughout Sunday sermons as if they are as common as household pets.
When you tell people that perfectly natural phenomena have a supernatural basis you are potentially disconnecting them from a reality based existence and plunging them into a world of terrifying possibilities which could quite easily convince them that their neighbors, friends, and even children, are demons, witches, and yes, vampires.
Source http://ift.tt/2yd0xrs
