Woman Suspected of Witchcraft Burned Alive

More news stories on Curious Customs and Beliefs

Saeed Ahmed, CNN, January 8, 2009

A woman in rural Papua New Guinea was bound and gagged, tied to a log and set ablaze on a pile of tires this week, possibly because villagers suspected her of being a witch, police said Thursday.

Her death adds to a growing list of men and women who have been accused of sorcery and then tortured or killed in the South Pacific island nation, where traditional beliefs hold sway in many regions.

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Early Tuesday, a group of people dragged the woman, believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, to a dumping ground outside the city of Mount Hagen. They stripped her naked, bound her hands and legs, stuffed a cloth in her mouth, tied her to a log and set her on fire, Kauba [Simon Kauba, assistant commissioner of police and commander of the Highlands region] said.

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The country’s Post-Courier newspaper reported Thursday that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.

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The killing of witches, or sangumas, is not a new phenomenon in rural areas of the country.

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In recent years, as AIDS has taken a toll in the nation of 6.7 million people, villagers have blamed suspected witches—and not the virus—for the deaths.

According to the United Nations, Papua New Guinea accounts for 90 percent of the Pacific region’s HIV cases and is one of four Asia-Pacific countries with an epidemic.

“We’ve had a number of cases where people were killed because they were accused of spreading HIV or AIDS,” Kauba said.

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Original article

(Posted on January 9, 2009)

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Comments

1 — Michael C. Scott wrote at 6:41 PM on January 9:

“Papua New Guinea accounts for 90% of the Pacific region’s HIV cases.”

Nine times worse than all the rest combined, including the Philippines and Thailand. Why is this somehow not a suprise?

2 — William Hendershot wrote at 6:54 PM on January 9:

Emory University anthropology professor Bruce Knauft, who lived in a village in the western province of Papua New Guinea in the early 1980s, traced family histories for 42 years and found that one in three adult deaths were homicides — “the bulk of these being collective killings of suspected sorcerers,”

Some socities have different values than ours, and this one doesn’t care for sorcery and acts accordingly. We should try not to be so judgemental of their culture.

3 — Whiteplight wrote at 11:36 PM on January 9:

“Some socities have different values than ours, and this one doesn’t care for sorcery and acts accordingly. We should try not to be so judgemental of their culture.”

Posted by William Hendershot at 6:54 PM on January 9

> LIke conviction without evidence or trial? Like presumption that different cosmic outlooks are “of the devil” and its perpetrators ought to be found wherever they are hiding, like in the ring of a renegade pope (yes, that was claimed by a French King)? Once the stage is set for children to witness witchcraft, and people to make unfounded accusations, people who today only find Mary’s face in a potato chip or Satan’s work in popular music if you play it backwards are only one small step from this precious culture that we ought not to criticize too much.

Nuts.

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