Growing up as an albino in Canada, Peter Ash had to endure taunts like “Snowflake” and “Snow White.”

Once, when he was squinting to read a padlock  most albinos have vision problems, too  someone rammed his head into his school locker. Another time, he was forced to play baseball and never saw the pitch that hit him in the face.

But it was all bearable, he said, because his mother told him God had made him that way. He grew up to be a Baptist minister, then gave that up to start a finance company in Vancouver that did very well.

Last spring, he said, he began to hear about albinos in Tanzania being murdered for their body parts. More than 40 have been killed since 2007, sometimes right in front of their families, by gangs of men who hack off legs, heads or genitals and run away with them.