West Africa
In the 1980s, Médecins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity, supplied photographic
and other documentary evidence of ritualized cannibal feasts among the participants in Liberia's
internecine strife to representatives of Amnesty International who were on a fact-finding mission to
the neighboring state of Guinea. However, Amnesty International declined to publicize this material;
the Secretary-General of the organization, Pierre Sane, said at the time in an internal communication
that "what they do with the bodies after human rights violations are committed is not part of our
mandate or concern". The existence of cannibalism on a wide scale in Liberia was subsequently
verified.[152]
Eurasia
United Kingdom
See also: Category:British cannibals
In 2008, a British model called Anthony Morley was imprisoned for the killing, dismemberment and
partial cannibalisation of his lover, magazine executive Damian Oldfield. In 1996, Morley was a
contestant on the television programme God's Gift; one of the audience members of that edition was
Damian Oldfield. Oldfield was a contestant of another edition of the show in October 1996. On 2 May
2008, it was announced that Morley had been arrested for the murder of Oldfield, who worked for the
gay lifestyle magazine Bent. After inviting Oldfield into his Leeds flat, police believed that Morley
killed him, removed a section of his leg and began cooking it, before he stumbled into a
nearby kebab house around 2:30 in the morning, drenched in blood and asking that someone call
the police. He was found guilty on 17 October 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment for the
crime.[153][154][155]
China
Cannibalism is documented to have occurred in China during the Great Leap Forward, when rural
China was hit hard by drought and famine.[156][157][158][159][160][161]
During Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, local governments' documents revealed hundreds of
incidents of cannibalism for ideological reasons (e.g., the large-scale cannibalism during
the Guangxi Massacre[162]). Public events for cannibalism were organised by local Communist Party
officials, and people took part in them together in order to prove their revolutionary
passion.[163][164] The writer Zheng Yi documented incidents of cannibalism in Guangxi in 1968 in his
1993 book, Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China.[165]
Germany
See also: Category:German cannibals
Karl Denke, Carl Großmann, Fritz Haarmann, Joachim Kroll, Peter Stumpp are of the many known
German cannibals. Armin Meiwes, a former computer repair technician who achieved international
notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim in 2001, whom he had found via the Internet. After
Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim
and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh. He was arrested in December 2002. In January
2004, Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years and six months in
prison. In a retrial May 2006, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.[166] He
reported that there are over 800 active cannibals in Germany.[167]
North Korea
Reports of widespread cannibalism began to emerge from North Korea during the famine of the
1990s[168][169] and subsequent ongoing starvation. Kim Jong-il was reported to have ordered a
crackdown on cannibalism in 1996,[170] but Chinese travelers reported in 1998 that cannibalism had
occurred.[171] Three people in North Korea were reported to have been executed for selling or eating
human flesh in 2006.[172] Further reports of cannibalism emerged in early 2013, including reports of a
man executed for killing his two children for food.[173][174][175]
There are competing claims about how widespread cannibalism was in North Korea. While refugees
reported that it was widespread,[176] Barbara Demick wrote in her book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary
Lives in North Korea (2010), that it did not seem to be.[177]
Tibet
Flesh pills were used by Tibetan Buddhists.[178] It was believed that mystical powers were bestowed
upon people when they consumed Brahmin flesh.[179]
Eastern Europe and Russia
Cannibalism during the Russian famine of 1921–1922
In his book, The Gulag Archipelago, Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described cases of
cannibalism in 20th-century Soviet Union.[180] Of the famine in Povolzhie (1921–1922) he wrote: "That
horrible famine was up to cannibalism, up to consuming children by their own parents — the famine,
which Russia had never known even in Time of Troubles [in 1601–1603]".[180]
Cannibalism was widespread during the Holodomor (famine of Ukraine) in 1932 and
1933.[181][182] During the 1930s, multiple acts of cannibalism were reported from Ukraine, Russia's
Volga, South Siberian, and Kuban regions during the Soviet famine of 1932–1933.[183]
Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933
that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my
letter reaches you". The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute
themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died.
Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. ... At least 2,505 people were sentenced for
cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly
much higher.[184]
Solzhenitsyn said of the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944): "Those who consumed human flesh, or
dealt with the human liver trading from dissecting rooms ... were accounted as the political
criminals".[185] And of the building of Northern Railway Labor Camp ("Sevzheldorlag") Solzhenitsyn
reports, "An ordinary hard working political prisoner almost could not survive at that penal camp. In
the camp Sevzheldorlag (chief: colonel Klyuchkin) in 1946–47 there were many cases of
cannibalism: they cut human bodies, cooked and ate."[186]
The Soviet journalist Yevgenia Ginzburg was a long-term political prisoner who spent time in the
Soviet prisons, Gulag camps and settlements from 1938 to 1955. She described in her
memoir, Harsh Route (or Steep Route), of a case which she was directly involved in during the late
1940s, after she had been moved to the prisoners' hospital.[187]
The chief warder shows me the black smoked pot, filled with some food: "I need your medical
expertise regarding this meat." I look into the pot, and hardly hold vomiting. The fibres of that meat
are very small, and don't resemble me anything I have seen before. The skin on some pieces
bristles with black hair ... A former smith from Poltava, Kulesh worked together with Centurashvili. At
this time, Centurashvili was only one month away from being discharged from the camp ... And
suddenly he surprisingly disappeared. The wardens looked around the hills, stated Kulesh's
evidence, that last time Kulesh had seen his workmate near the fireplace, Kulesh went out to work
and Centurashvili left to warm himself more; but when Kulesh returned to the fireplace, Centurashvili
had vanished; who knows, maybe he got frozen somewhere in snow, he was a weak guy ... The
wardens searched for two more days, and then assumed that it was an escape case, though they
wondered why, since his imprisonment period was almost over ... The crime was there. Approaching
the fireplace, Kulesh killed Centurashvili with an axe, burned his clothes, then dismembered him and
hid the pieces in snow, in different places, putting specific marks on each burial place. ... Just
yesterday, one body part was found under two crossed logs.
India
The Aghoris are Indian ascetics[188][189] who believe that eating human flesh confers spiritual and
physical benefits, such as prevention of aging. They claim to only eat those who have voluntarily
willed their body to the sect upon their death,[190] although an Indian TV crew witnessed one Aghori
feasting on a corpse discovered floating in the Ganges,[191] and a member of the Dom caste reports
that Aghoris often take bodies from the cremation ghat (or funeral pyre).[192]