You are all advised not to travel to Mozambique, whether you are naturally bald, have shaved your head, or are the former pretending to be the latter.
Well, that’s some policy
The country in East Africa welcomes visitors for honeymoons, luxurious vacations, and adventures thanks to its tropical environment and a wide coastline studded with beaches.
Even though its description seems more tempting than a rainy weekend on your local boardwalk, police in the nation were compelled to issue a caution for potential visitors after a series of violent occurrences in 2017.
In the country’s Milange district’s center area, five men were killed, including three in a week in what the authorities suspect may have been ritual attacks.
Afonso Dias, a police commander in Mozambique’s central Zambezia region, noted at the time that there is a strange concept surrounding what is contained beneath a bald man’s glossy dome, so police warned bald men may be attacked.
The idea is that a bald man’s head contains gold, he explained.
Jose Tembe of the BBC said that police in Maputo, the nation’s capital, thought the notion that money was hidden inside a person’s skull was a trick concocted by witch doctors to entice clients to remove a person’s head to be examined.
The local society believes bald people are wealthy, thus that is their motivation, Commander Dias said at a press conference in Maputo.
Following the 2017 killings, police detained two suspects, both young Mozambicans around the age of 20.
Following the crimes, Miguel Caetano, a regional security spokesperson, informed AFP that one of the victims who died had his skull severed and his organs removed. According to reports, the suspects claimed that the organs will be used in rituals to increase the fortune of their clientele in Tanzania and Malawi.
The UK government continues to advise all tourists against visiting the Cabo Delgado province’s districts of Mueda, Nangade, Palma, Mocimboa da Praia, Muidumbe, Meluco, Macomia, Quissanga, and Ibo, including the islands off the coast, due to attacks by groups with ties to Islamist extremism. It is unclear if there have been any additional attacks against bald people since the initial killings.
Terrorists are “highly likely” to attempt to carry out attacks in Mozambique, according to the government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).