Witch hunts in Papua New Guinea are still occurring in the twenty-first century. They are attacks launched against predominantly female victims accused of using sorcery, commonly known as 'sanguma', with malevolent intent. In 2012 the Law Reform Commission concluded that since the 1980s sorcery-related attacks had been on the rise. For example, in the province of Simbu alone more than 150 cases of witch-hunting occur each year. Local activists also estimate that in total over fifty-thousand people have been chased from their homes as a result of witchcraft accusations. Although the nature of witch-hunting varies across Papua New Guinea, a very ethnically diverse country, in most cases, witchcraft accusations are triggered by the illness or death of a family member or friend, leading to relatives and other villagers seeking vengeance against the suspected 'witch' who they believe to have caused their misfortune. Attacks on those branded as witches are usually very violent, with victims often being subjected to prolonged physical, emotional and sexual torture. In serious cases, accused witches are killed by large mobs using brutal methods, for instance, burning alive is a still common form of execution. There are many underlying causes as to why witch hunts occur in Papua New Guinea. High rates of HIV/AIDS and increasing rates of diseases caused by drug and alcohol abuse, alongside a general lack of quality healthcare provision, have led to a rise in deaths in many Papua New Guinean communities, which usually form the basis of sanguma accusations. Migration and social dislocation caused by the use of land for extracting natural resources as well as new development and rapid modernisation have also led to disruption and the spread of sanguma beliefs, helping to make the country fertile ground for witch-hunting.
Overview A witch hunt is started after a victim is singled out by neighbours, relatives or other community members as a scapegoat for illness, death and other misfortune. Sometimes communities seek the help of a 'witch doctor', a person who practices sorcery but openly declares not to use it for malevolent purposes, to identify a witch. Being a witch doctor is a recognised occupation in many villages and practitioners are often paid well for their services. Although men have been known to be accused of witchcraft, women and girls are six times more likely to be branded as a witch than men according to Amnesty International. More vulnerable women are particularly at risk, such as single mothers, widows, the infirm, the mentally ill and women who have fewer male relatives who could advocate for and protect them if they were to be labelled a witch. One reason for this is the belief that the female body is more suited to host a 'witch spirit' than a man's as these evil spirits prefer to reside in a woman's womb. The likelihood of being branded as a witch also tends to increase if a family member has been accused of the same crime in the past as it is believed that the ability to perform black magic is passed down through generations. Once someone is suspected of witchcraft they can be tortured in order to extract a confession to 'prove' their crime. Methods of torture include beating (sometimes with barbed wire), hanging over fire, burning with hot irons, cutting, flaying and amputation of body parts and raping. For example, in November 2017 a young girl was blamed for the illness of a cousin, diagnosed as kaikai lewa (to eat the heart), where a witch uses black magic to remove and eat a person's heart. Shortly after, the girl was abducted and tortured for five days, being strung up by the ankles and flayed with hot machetes in order to force an admission of witchcraft and get her to 'return' her cousin's heart. In cases where an alleged victim of sanguma does not recover, accused witches can be killed by large mobs as a way of seeking revenge. Those branded as a witch can be executed in a number of brutal ways. For example, there are cases where victims have been hung, burned alive, hacked to death with machetes, stoned and buried alive in witch hunts across the country. Even if the accused survives, in most instances, the effects of physical, sexual and emotional torture caused by sorcery-related attacks lead to long-lasting trauma for survivors.
Causal factors
Rapid development Papua New Guinea is a country rich in natural resources and in recent decades it has undergone modernisation and industrialisation at a rapid rate. China, for example, invested approximately $5.9 billion in over two hundred different development projects between 2011 and 2019, according to Australian think-tank The Lowy Institute. The speed of development and its unevenness has led to significant social upheaval as more people leave their villages to seek employment or are forced off their land to make way for the extraction of natural resources. As a result, new communities of economic migrants have formed without traditional authority figures (village chiefs and elders) or tribal justice systems to address sanguma accusations, allowing unruly, angry mobs, often led by young men affected by alcohol and drugs, to target innocent people in witch hunts as scapegoats for their misfortunes. Furthermore, increased access to technology like mobile phones and the internet, and the construction of new roads have connected communities that were once isolated from each other to the rest of the country. Therefore, development has facilitated the spread of sanguma beliefs from traditionally isolated settlements in Papua New Guinea's remote highlands to its lowland towns and cities. Social media has also allowed witchcraft accusations to spread faster and with a wider reach. For example, in one case an alleged witch who was forced to flee her home because of her dangerous sanguma accusation was attacked in the community she relocated to after being recognised from a viral Facebook post.
Jealousy
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