20091201

MISUNGWI, Tanzania (Reuters) - In remote northwest Tanzania, two parents sob for their 10-year-old albino son, who was beheaded to stop him screaming by men who then hacked off his leg in front of his father.

The family had previously tried to have their boy registered at a school where many albinos shelter but he was refused entry because it was full. His murder at the end of October marked an end of a three-month lull in the killings.

"When he was born I thought what kind of child is this, but then he turned out to be fine and happy," said Mwakami Kilijiwa, standing over the fresh grave of her son Gasper, who was buried in concrete so killers cannot return and steal his bones.

"I had been scared (for him) ever since another albino child was killed in a nearby village a few years ago."

An estimated 200,000 albinos live in Tanzania, although fewer than 8,000 have registered officially.

Ash, a pastor-turned-businessman who was bullied and beaten as a child for being albino, helps distribute sun screen, hats and sunglasses to albino children who risk cancer because their skin lacks protection against the hot African sun.

"This child died because of government refusal to take him into the school," he told Reuters.

"More needs to be done to provide security in the communities where albinos now live in terror," the International Federation of the Red Cross said in a report last week.