EFFORTPOST Papuan women being tortured for practicing witchcraft (2015) Video with subs, also news backstory, and a more general comment on the torture for sorcery in PNG!

On 23rd of October 2015 - ironically, a 70th anniversary of the United Nations - a new video emerged, showing women being tortured for witchcraft. The one you've seen in thumbnail was slightly edited, and so far I couldn't find a full version. The exact location wasn't given, just that it's a New Guinea Highlands (so a long chain of mountain ranges) and Enga province.

The video shows at least four women who have been stripped, tied up, burned and beaten. They are prodded and threatened with machetes while being questioned by a group of men. The Guardian has obtained an edited version of the video but has chosen not to publish it.

The Guardian was told by two PNG sources the women were accused of sorcery after a young man fell ill in a village in Enga province in August.

Social media posts said the women were accused of “invisibly” taking the man's heart, and then putting it back after they were tortured. In their attackers' eyes this would also prove their guilt as sorcerers.

I actually lack the Marsey retard emoji to describe the story to you, but let's try

According to the man who accused these women of sorcery, they invisibly took away his hurt, cut it to pieces, and then put back in his body. The man claims that he died, and people were already mourning and preparing the funeral. Then one of the witches came to the family's household. Family asked her to return man's heart. She denied that she took it, and the family 'was dealing with her till daylight' when the man was still lying dead. However, she returned his heart, saying: 'Son, I accidentally took your heart, but I was sent to do it. But now I have returned your heart, you may go home'. The man claimed that he came back to life thanks to the relatives and because he had no sin.

You can check the video below, here the policeman lets the guy talk about how he died but now is alive. Torture for alleged witchcraft is a common problem in Papua, and also proving it is hard, because the evidence is invisible

[...] said he was aware of many people sharing the video on their smartphones, including high school students, and said it wasn't out of horror but rather approval for the actions being taken against the four accused women.

“There's no logic going on in the matter … To try to talk logically, even to students, doesn't really get you very far. They say, we have evidence and you ask what kind of evidence and they say it's invisible evidence you can't see it,” he said.

An additional problem with the sorcery-related violence is their diversity. Beliefs related to witchcraft (or black magic, locally: sanguma) vary among the provinces, are logically contradicting, change over time and spread into the new communities, mixing with the pre-existing beliefs. The victims of the 'witch hunts' can be both male and female, including kids; usually they're women, though. They way of 'punishing' the witches also vary geographically:

Often associated with PNG's remote highlands, sorcery killings are allegedly occurring in lowland provinces too.

Milne Bay Police provincial commander, Peter Barkie, told the Guardian SARV occurred regularly, was widely known about, but rarely went unreported.

“The belief here about sorcery is so intense that they kill anyone they suspect is practicing it, but the practice here is different from that in Southern Highlands where women are beaten and tortured before being burnt alive.”

He said men, women and even children were accused. “They just slaughter them, no torture, no burning.

“But what is frightening about the practice here is that the first-born child of the person accused is also killed because they believe it is passed from the parent to the first-born child.”

Here's a basic map:

The police started an investigation into the case that surfaced in October 2015, and promised to arrest everyone involved in the crime (a rare occurrence). I didn't find any update on the man whose 'heart was eaten' or on the villagers from his community.

⠀A FEW COMMENTS AT THE END

Sorcery-related violence is still an ongoing problem, of which both the politics and the activists are well aware. In, ironically, mostly Christian country. There were recent legal changes, too. In January 2022, Papua New Guinea abolished death penalty - again, as the first time was in 1970. In 2013, PNG's Parliament reintroduced the death penalty for murder and repealed the controversial 1971 Sorcery Act. It allowed murderers to use the allegation of witchcraft as a legitimate defense. Motivation for this was a murder of a mother of a little girl, who was back then an infant, and fell into the abusers' hands herself a few years later. Justice is a nickname given to the girl.

Justice's ordeal began long before the mob arrived. In 2013, when she was just an infant, her mother was accused of being a witch in PNG's second largest city of Mount Hagen following the unexplained death of a local child. She was stripped naked, attacked with machetes and finally burned alive on a pile of tires. Hundreds watched the grisly scene unfold right opposite the church where Kissam's father was formerly pastor.

Then, the baby was under care of her uncle, in a village around 100 miles away from Mount Hagen. However, the gossips about Justice's mother reached the village, and she was treated as a pariah. Her behavior was odd: 'even months after her rescue, Justice seemed uncomfortable unless regularly scolded, and would act out in order to feel that familiar rebuke'. When the girl's cousin - Nancy - fell ill, the girl's brothers went after Justice. After seeing the angry mob, Justice's uncle was afraid about his own children's lives, so he let the girl out from the hut. CHILD WARNING to the description below.

They tied up Justice and began their torture. Believing the girl had stolen her cousin's heart and devoured it, they would bellow “give Nancy back her heart.” All the time Nancy lay nearby groaning, Justice recalls. When they hurt Justice, Nancy would momentarily recover; when they stopped, her condition seemed to worsen. Even today, Justice is angrier with her cousin and former friend, whom she accuses of faking her ailment to get attention, than her torturers. “She said that I took her heart, but she's a liar,” Justice says bitterly.

Justice was tortured until 5 a.m. the next morning. Afterward, her captors kept her bound for five more days while they observed Nancy's condition. Were she to worsen or die, then Justice's fate would be sealed. But during that time word spread about what was happening and reached Kissam, who was sitting at her desk in her Port Morseby office.

Ruth J. Kissam is a director of operations in Papua New Guinea Tribal Foundation, an NGO based in Port Moresby that 'provides education, health care and humanitarian assistance in Papua New Guinea's remotest communities'. Currently, she is a legal caretaker of Justice. The girl survived, here's how she looks today - to end this post with something positive!

⠀SOURCES

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/23/witchcraft-papua-new-guinea-students-share-video-appearing-show-torture

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/png-police-examine-torture-of-women-accused-of-invisibly-killing-man

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/14/they-just-slaughter-them-how-sorcery-violence-spreads-fear-across-papua-new-guinea

https://time.com/longform/papua-new-guinea-witchcraft-justice