Malawi President cracks down on vampires, witchcraft after lynchings

“If people are using witchcraft to suck people’s blood, I will deal with them and I ask them to stop doing that with immediate effect,” Mutharika told a gathering of leaders in Mulanje, a district with the highest incidences.

On Monday, the United Nations pulled staff out of two districts that have been swept up in the violence.

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 a vampire rumor also erupted in Malawi in 2002.