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 were quoted in reports of the incident.
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.
The victims are often scapegoats for someone else's unexplained death, and bands of tribesmen collude to mete out justice to them for their supposed magical powers, police said.
"We have had difficulties in a number of previous incidents convincing people to come forward with information," said Simon Kauba, assistant commissioner of police and commander of the Highlands region, where the killing occurred.
The country's Post-Courier newspaper has reported that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.
In a well-publicized case last year, a pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl while struggling to free herself from a tree. Villagers had dragged the woman from her house and hung her from the tree, accusing her of sorcery after her neighbor suddenly died. Luckily, she and the baby survived.
Unfortunately, the killing of witches, or sangumas, is not a new phenomenon in rural areas of the country. 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," he wrote in his book, "From Primitive to Post-colonial in Melanesia and Anthropology."
No comments:
Post a Comment