How Witch Trials Spread In Gambia
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoA victim of the Gambia witch hunt.
In 2009, Amnesty International announced a shocking revelation: some 1,000 people had been kidnapped by “witch doctors” in Gambia, taken to detention centers, and forced to drink a burning liquid.
This modern-day witch hunt was ordered by the country’s president, Yahya Jammeh. Like King James VI, Jammeh allegedly believed that witches had targeted his family. He suspected that witchcraft had been behind the death of his aunt and thus invited witch doctors into the country to eradicate the threat between 2009 and 2016, when he lost power.
In the village of Sintet, The New York Times found that soldiers descended, told the villagers that they were all witches, and started loading people into vans. One woman later testified that they stripped her naked and forced her to say she was a witch.
ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock PhotoVictims of the Gambia witch hunt, like Fatou Dibba (left), were forced to drink a liquid that made them hallucinate.
Elsewhere, people were taken to detention centers and forced to drink hallucinogenic concoctions. Many of them were then severely beaten. Some suffered from long-term health effects from the drink, including kidney and vision problems.
“A lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhea and vomiting whilst they lay helpless,” one eyewitness said. “I stayed there for five days. I experienced and witnessed such abuse and humiliation. I can not believe that this type of treatment is taking place in Gambia. It is from the dark ages.”
As such, witch trials are hardly a thing of the past. Though they certainly reached their peak hundreds of years ago, fear of witches hasn’t lost its potency — and neither has the desire for control and punishment.
After reading about some of history’s most notorious witch trials that didn’t take place in Salem, discover the surprising story of Tituba, the enslaved woman who may have used the Salem witch trials to win her own freedom. Or, learn how Giles Corey was crushed to death after he was accused of being a witch in Salem.
