Voodoo and trafficking  

The practice of voodoo rituals has assumed relevance in the Italian legal system primarily in the criminal sphere, where it has often played a role in the configuration of certain crimes such as enslavement (Article 600 of the Criminal Code) and trafficking in human beings (Article 601 of the Criminal Code). In these contexts, in fact, voodoo rituals are used to seal a real loyalty agreement between young women (usually Nigerian) and certain individuals who, with the false promise of procuring an honest and well-paid job in Europe, lure the young women into their sphere of subjection and then initiate them into prostitution once they arrive in Italy. The rituals in question are celebrated in the land of origin, before departure, and usually involve the removal of biological material (hair, hair, small parts of skin), the ingestion of concoctions or raw meat, or even the execution of certain cuts on the body with the subsequent removal of drops of blood.[1] Often in these cases, judges have considered these rituals as elements capable of accentuating the victims' situation of vulnerability (indicated in the European Union's framework decision of 19 July 2002 on combating trafficking in human beings, implemented by Law no. 228 of 11 August 2003.), but also capable of implementing a real form of "mental slavery", an "inescapable and stringent condition of subjection" with respect to the exploiters, perfectly corresponding to the elements of the aforementioned cases of enslavement and trafficking, because they determine a significant impairment of the self-determination of the offended person. On the basis of the results of the psychological and anthropological investigations sometimes used in the proceedings, the rituals, inserted in the religious-spiritual context of origin of the victims, have the capacity to strengthen the position of dominion over them, both from a physical and psychological point of view, facilitating their coercion into prostitution: the ritual, by the manner in which it takes place, recalls the sensation of physical pain and in some way its threat; from a psychological point of view, possessing parts of one's body induces victims to fear a form of control over their whole person. For the judges, the bond of subjection, combined with the other conditions of destitution and the lack of resources, continues to determine a real conditioning of the will that resists even in the presence of a spatial distance actually existing between the victim and the exploiter, which does not affect the relationship of domination.[2]

Voodoo and international protection
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In the field of international protection, indirectly, the voodoo ritual as an instrument of subjugation and coercion has assumed a role in the recognition of refugee status for victims of trafficking.[3] Outside of these hypotheses, the cases that usually come before the courts concern individuals who shy away from holding the position of voodoo priest inherited from their father, being intimidated or persecuted by other members of the community, individuals who fear the physical or psychic repercussions of the same rituals, performed by other family members often because of disagreements and quarrels, or again, cases in which initiation into the practice is refused because they belong to other religions. In the latter cases, the applicants are mostly male. Apparently, there could be a greater harm potential of the ritual for female victims of trafficking than for male individuals. In this regard, however, it should be emphasised that the subjugating power of rites is rooted in the structure of society as a whole, in a social and cultural substratum that is the same for women and men, and this consideration could be useful to avoid differences, albeit without disregarding the assessment of the concrete case.
In both cases, in fact, individuals from the same cultural backgrounds require the host systems to operate forms of protection 'from culture'.
Although it is not possible to speak of a clear-cut majority position on the matter, it is possible to find in jurisprudence a form of recognition of such situations of 'subjection', at least as potentially damaging to the sphere of human rights. In fact, the jurisprudence of legitimacy has often identified subjection or fear of the rite as potentially falling within the figure of humanitarian protection, now abrogated and partly replaced by special protection, inviting the courts of merit to make the appropriate investigations.[4] In fact, in some rulings such elements are recognised as having the capacity to increase the individual's condition of vulnerability, especially in the event of repatriation. The Court of Cassation creates a thin thread of connection between these situations and the inviolable rights of the individual protected by the international protection system (art. 2 and art. 3 of the Constitution), and consequently also, with the protection of private and family life (art. 8 of the ECHR).
A particularly sensitive issue in the field of international protection is that of credibility. In cases concerning voodoo rites, applicants are often not considered credible because they are not able to report the exact configuration of the ritual they fear, the typical elements of that religious system, nor the powers that the figure of e.g. the 'priest' holds, nor do they indicate real 'persecutors'; moreover, they are not considered to be in real danger due to the fact that they have not requested state protection.[5] In this regard, it is useful to recall a ruling by the Court of Cassation concerning the case of an individual who had requested international protection in Italy because he had been the victim of numerous acts of intimidation in his country of origin, due to his refusal to hold the position of voodoo priest, inherited from his father. In this ruling, the applicant's appeal is upheld. In fact, the Court of Cassation found a flaw in the procedure for assessing the credibility of the applicant, and in the case in question, it highlighted a violation of the duty to cooperate in the investigation (Legislative Decree No. 251 of 2007, Articles 3 and 5). For the Court of Cassation, the judges of the merit examined the applicant's case on the basis of an apodictic reconstruction based on their own subjective perception of the facts. In the present case, there is no direct recognition of the applicant's situation in one of the categories defined by international protection, but there is nevertheless an invitation to re-examine the issue on the merits, according to a different point of view, closer to the applicant's cultural context. As far as these events may be shown to be "far" from the perceptions of the majority culture, to which the judiciary practitioners themselves belong, a greater effort seems to be required in assessing them - no less than in the presence of other facts that seem more plausible and closer to the judge's cultural context - which goes beyond the mere lack of objective evidence, precisely because of the particularity of the context, but also takes into account "the individual situation and personal circumstances of the applicant.”[6]

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Overlaps between voodoo and witchcraft 

​An analysis of the case law containing references to voodoo rites, especially in the field of international protection, has also revealed another fact: especially in cases where subjects report fear of the physical or psychic consequences of the ritual or claim to have already suffered them, there is sometimes a conceptual overlap between voodoo and the different cultural phenomenon of witchcraft (see the entry in this Guidebook "Witch Hunting and Witchcraft").
Although they are two different phenomena with their own characteristics (which is why individual fact sheets are dedicated to the two phenomena in this Guidebook), it sometimes happens that in judgments reporting asylum seekers' applications they overlap or become interchangeable,[7] due to the fact that the communicative tool used is often English, a secondary language for both the speaker and the listener, which increases the instability of the linguistic data. The fact that the boundary between the two phenomena often becomes blurred, however, should not be interpreted merely as a linguistic-lexical problem, but rather as a symptom that highlights how the two phenomena, although different, are at the same time intimately linked. If it is true that voodoo has a religious structure to all intents and purposes and on this it forges its capacity for awe with respect to the existence of individuals, witchcraft, understood as a spiritual force that governs human and natural events, insinuates itself into the faults that have in any case been created in that same spiritual substratum. Phenomena that are different, yes, but complementary, the result of a common interpretation of existence in which spirituality takes over and certain categorisations typical of western culture (life-death, man-nature, law-spirituality) are more nuanced.
The connection with witchcraft may be relevant to understand the real extent of subjugation, at times persecutory, that even the voodoo ritual is capable of having, giving rise to potential and multiple degradations of human rights.

notes

[1] Pronouncements describing the voodoo rituals of subjection: Cass. Pen. sez. I., 3/02/2022, no. 3796 (use of psychological and anthropological expertise); Tribunal sez. uff. indagini prel. - Turin, 12/08/2011, no. 1108.

[2] Cass. Pen. sez. I - 20/09/2021, no. 34858; Cass. Pen. sez. V, 12/01/2022, no. 690.

[3] Trafficking and slavery and international protection: Tribunale Bologna, 17/07/2019; Tribunale Lecce, 06/04/2021.

[4] Cass. Civ. Sec. I - 27/05/21, no. 14849; Cass. Civ., Sec. III - 5/10/21, no. 26983 and no. 26984; Cass. Civ. Sec. III - 14/12/21, no. 39906.

[5] On this issue, it might be useful to consider what is pointed out in the section of Guidebook No. 7 on the "sincerity of the subject.” See Decarli (2020) for a more in-depth discussion of the problems often encountered with regard to the knowability of the rites by potential affiliates themselves.

[6] Already cited. Cass. Civ. sez. I - 27/05/2021, no. 14849: "On the other hand, the assessment of the credibility of the applicant's statements is not entrusted to the mere opinion of the judge but is the result of a legal proceduralisation of the decision, to be made not on the basis of the mere lack of objective evidence but in accordance with the criteria indicated in Legislative Decree no. 251 of 2007, art. 3, paragraph 5, taking into account "the individual situation and personal circumstances of the applicant" referred to in paragraph 3 of the aforementioned article, without giving exclusive importance to the applicant's "personal circumstances" and the "individual situation and personal circumstances of the applicant" referred to in paragraph 3 of the aforementioned article.Decree no. 251 of 2007, art. 3, paragraph 5, taking into account "the individual situation and personal circumstances of the applicant" referred to in paragraph 3 of the aforementioned article, without giving exclusive and decisive importance to mere discrepancies or contradictions on secondary or isolated aspects of the story".

[7] Pronouncements in which the voodoo-juju/witchcraft phenomena overlap: Civil cassation, sec. I - 23.11.2021, no. 36313; Civil cassation, sec. III - 20.04.2022, no. 12644; Civil cassation, sec. I - 03.08.2022, no. 24133; Civil cassation, sec. I - 15.12.2022, no. 36753.