Four people accused of witchcraft and allegedly tortured in Papua New Guinea
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Version 0 of 1. Four people have been accused of witchcraft and allegedly tortured in a Papua New Guinea village, following recent deaths in the community which locals suspected were caused by sorcery. Human rights defenders, church groups and police were preparing to stage a rescue should a spiritualist, known as a “glass man”, be brought in to the village of Kaiwe and “confirm” the accusations. One older woman had already been rescued by relatives and taken back to her village, as were two men, who were the women’s husbands, according to Kamane Wauga, an Oxfam senior program officer in the highlands. However, one woman was still being held hostage by the village, while they tried to locate a glass man. “The fate of the young lady depends on the glass man’s feedback,” Wauga told Guardian Australia. “If he assesses and sees sorcery, this woman will probably be killed or something else, but if he does not then they might leave the young woman alone and they might look for someone else.” The glass man’s assessment depends largely on the people who accused the group, said Wauga. “The glass man is just to formalise,” he said. Waugu, who is monitoring the situation and liaising with his officers and other agencies, said the church group has talked with communities to warn them not to take the law into their own hands but it has been resistant. “We want to do something but we really can’t do much because, say for example the police go in, the women are moved around the community,” said Waugu. All four accused were allegedly tortured under interrogation over the deaths of a number of people in the community. “They are still alive, they have been beaten up and burned, but they are still alive,” Sister Maggie Turwai, of the Mount Hagen based Catholic family life group, told Guardian Australia. Turwai, who had been working on the case for the past two days with human rights groups and local police, said her organisation had been trying to negotiate entry into the village but said the situation was tense and people would not allow them to come in. “The church is working together to closely monitor the situation and if the glass man comes in and confirms sorcery has taken place, before anything happens we will go in and rescue them. The police are already alerted.” Supernatural beliefs remain strong in the very traditional highland regions of PNG, and sorcery accusations against local men and women often follow unexpected deaths in communities. In January four people were rescued from a village in Enga province after they were accused of witchcraft following a measles outbreak, and in 2013 a 20-year-old woman was stripped and burned alive after she was accused of sorcery. Numerous people, including a high proportion of women, have been violently attacked over sorcery accusations. PNG is routinely described as one of the worst places in the world for violence against women. “In the community, it’s part of customary belief,” said Turwei. “Slowly, slowly the church is trying to teach them not to believe in sorcery but because it’s a cultural thing the mindset of people is hard to change.” Human rights groups and churches have been battling to work with communities to dispel the entrenched sorcery beliefs, or at least to separate them from violence and acts of retribution. Church groups use shared beliefs in spirituality to draw people away from the violent acts associated with sorcery. The PNG government has been pushing legislation aimed at curbing sorcery-related violence, but it is recent work and slow going. A law which provided a defence to violence if it was done to “stop witchcraft” was only repealed in 2013. |