CHILD-WITCHES OF KINSHASA
FOTOGRAFIA ETICA WORLD REPORT SHORT STORY AWARDS 2014 - DAYS JAPAN INTERNATIONAL AWARDS JURY SPECIAL PRIZE 2012 - PRIX SCAM ROGER PIC JURY SPECIAL PRIZE 2011 - EUROPEAN JOURNALISM FESTIVAL INVESTIGATION PRIZE 2011
Between 20 000 and 50 000 children live in the streets of Kinshasa. Organized in gangs, they get by, sometimes thanks to theft or prostitution. More than two third of them were chased away from their home in the pretext that they were child-witches and responsible of all the troubles of the family (death, unemployment, disease, etc.). The immense majority of the people living in Kinshasa are persuaded by the truthfulness of this curse. More than one hundred new "child-witches" are so discovered every month and thrown out in the streets.
The faith in witchcraft is profoundly rooted in the Congolese culture, but the phenomenon, which consists in abandoning children by accusing them of witchcraft, took a notorious scale only since the end of 1990s.
In this immense overpopulated shanty town that is Kinshasa, where 95 % of the population get by below the poverty line, the children are unproductive mouths to feed.
View of Kinshasa downtown, where thousand of children accused of witchcraft lives in streets, geting by thanks to petty theft, little jobs or prostitution.
Between 30,000 and 50,000 children live in the streets of Kinshasa. Most of them have been chased away after being accused of witchcraft.
Left to their own devices, the children are organized into bands. The boys survive through various odd jobs and begging. The girls prostitute themselves.
This 12 years old prostitute cries in a medical center in Kinshasa after she was stoned and stolen by an other child prostitute. Child prostitutes earn about 2000 Congolese francs (US$ 2,2) for a sexual intercourse.
The «little Michael», accused of witchcraft by his aunt after his mother died 2 years ago, practices his imitation of Michael Jackson dance, a show he performs every night to make a living in Kinshasa.
Children sleep in one of the few «open center» for street children in Kinshasa. An "open center" is a place where street children, often accused of witchcraft, can have access to water, spend the night and find a roof when it rains. But the centers do not provide food, medical care or education.
A mother and her three children accused of witchcraft are exorcised by bishop Vincent de Paul Nzumu, head father of the stevenist fransiscan fathers of the Gallican church of Kinshasa.
A session of deliverance in the Church of the Congregation of Jesus Christ by the the Prophet Simon Kibangu.
So that the children do not communicate with Lucifer any more, the prophetess of this church of kibanguiste inspiration blocks them eyes and their ears for their salvation.
This 7 month old child often has fever at night and vomits. In the center of the 'spiritual surgical unit', a «Holy Spirit doctor» extracts human flesh ingested by the child in the 'second world' and causing him to become a witch.
After completely covering this little girl with gasoline and salt, she is symbolicly cut with a machete near a fire where the prophetess through away her «devil parts».
