Police in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo have cracked down on sorcerers after a wave of alleged penis snatchings.
The victims, some of whom have also been hauled in by police, claimed the witch-doctors shrank or outright stole their penises merely by touching them. Girlfriends of the alleged victims merely rolled their eyes.
Rumors of the penis-snatchings set off a firestorm on Congo talk radio, a boon to famed Congo right-wing radio icon Rush Limbabwe, who warned his paranoid listeners not to sit on subways next to men wearing gold rings or Barack Obama buttons.
The panic became so frenzied that citizens began seeking out sorcerers and trying to lynch them. "You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you," explained Kinshasa police chief Jean-Dieudonne Oleko. "We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten."
The police crackdown came over concerns of a massacre like the one that happened in Ghana 10 years ago, when 12 alleged penis-snatchers were beaten to death.
Amazingly, some in Kinshasa are skeptical as to the legitimacy of the victims' shrunken-penis claims.
"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," police chief Oleko said. "But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it?'"
Dr. Phil has reportedly already boarded a plane.
