The Department of Justice and Legal Services in Bougainville is aiming to craft a government policy to deal with violence related to sorcery accusations.

The Post-Courier reports that a forum, which wrapped up on Wednesday, aimed to dissect the roots of sorcery/witchcraft beliefs and the severe violence stemming from accusations.

An initial forum was held in Arawa last month.

Central Bougainville’s Director of Justice and Legal Services, Dennis Kuiai, said the forums’ ultimate goal is crafting a government policy.

Further consultations are planned for South Bougainville next week and a regional forum in Arawa later this year.

“This policy will be deliberated and developed into law to address sorcery and [sorcery accusation-related violence] in Bougainville,” he said.

“We aim to provide an effective legal mechanism.”

Targeted 3 key areas
He said the future law’s structure was to target three key areas: the violence linked to accusations, sorcery practices themselves, and addressing the phenomenon of “glass man”.

A glassman or glassmeri has the power to accuse women and men of witchcraft and sorcery.

Papua New Guinea outlawed the practice in 2022.

The forum culminated in the compilation and signing of a resolution on its closing day, witnessed by officials.

Sorcery has long been an issue in PNG.

Those accused of sorcery are frequently beaten, tortured, and murdered, and anyone who manage to survive the attacks are banished from their communities.

Saved mother rejected
In April, a mother-of-four was was reportedly rejected by her own family after she was saved by a social justice advocacy group.

In August last year, an advocate told people in Aotearoa – where she was raising awareness – that Papua New Guinea desperately needed stronger laws to protect innocents and deliver justice for victims of sorcery related violence.

In October 2023, Papua New Guinea MPs were told that gender-based and sorcery violence was widespread and much higher than reported.

In November 2020, two men in the Bana district were hacked to death by members of a rival clan, who claimed the men used sorcery against them.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It was at the end of a long day of walking back and forth over the dusty roads of Goroka town in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea that I first met Evelyn.

I’d spent the morning interviewing three inmates in the regional penitentiary, Bihute Prison, about their participation in the murder of three people who they believed had killed a relative.

That afternoon I interviewed a policeman and a government official about the increasing impact of sanguma — sorcery violence — on the people of the region.

Everyone I talked with agreed that sanguma was a serious issue. I ended each interview by asking the men, what can be done to quell the violence and halt the spread of this growing problem.

Not one of them was able to provide an answer. “The problem was simply too big” and “there are no resources to help”, they said. As I climbed into the back of a rust-filled Econovan, the wife of one of the officials who had lingered in the background during the last interview, rushed to hand me a piece of paper.

She handed over the torn note, saying: “You must find her.”

The note contained the hastily written name “Evelyn Kunda” and a phone number. By the time I climbed out of the Econovan, back in the centre of Goroka, I’d made contact and walked directly to the Catholic mission.

There I found Evelyn Kunda. She looked like many other women in Goroka, dressed in a Meri blouse –- a Mother Hubbard style dress. Her hair was deep back and densely curled.

Warmth and intelligence
She looked to be in her early 50s but life in the Highlands towns and villages can make it hard to tell. What struck me the most about her appearance was the warmth of her smile and the intelligence in her eyes.

I didn’t know why the official’s wife had to told me to find her, I struggled to find a place to start. I told Evelyn, that I was researching sanguma in the Highlands, and asked what she might know.

WILDFIRE from Paul Wolffram on Vimeo.

Kunda explained that she, along with other volunteers of the Catholic Church, worked to hide, rehabilitate, and eventually — where possible — relocate the survivors of sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV).

As trucks expelled oily exhaust fumes, pushing dust down the road behind us, she described how difficult and dangerous the work had become for her and other volunteers in Goroka.

“In one instance we were looking after a woman whose husband had beaten her. He wanted to kill her. I took her to my house. Then her husband wanted to kill us as well,” Kunda said.

For a time, the Catholic church provided Kunda with a house in their compound but that soon became problematic, and the women were asked to leave. Now Kunda runs an unofficial safe house hidden among the shanties on the outskirts of the town.

‘They’re traumatised’
Kunda does her best to provide for them, but she explains: “They often can’t talk with us, they find it very difficult to talk about what has happened, they’re traumatised”.

She provides them with a place to sleep, food from her tiny garden, and whatever she can afford from the markets and trade stores.

At the end of our interview, I posed the same question to Evelyn Kunda that I’d asked the officials earlier that day.

“What can we do to stop sorcery violence?” Kunda’s response was immediate and practical, “We do all we can with whatever we have. Solutions can’t be found by sitting on our hands.”

Her work is proof that she’s a woman of action.

The following year, in 2019, I visited Evelyn Kunda’s safe house. A small two-room dirt floored hut that she’d built with offcuts of timber, bush materials, and sheets of old corrugated iron.

At the time she had two women living with her. One had escaped a violent partner and the other had been beaten as an accused witch. Kunda is desperate for support.

Working on a film
We began working together on a film, with the aim of showing the extent of the impact of sanguma in the Highlands. I also wanted to show the world the incredible work Kunda is doing to resist the violence, rescue survivors, and educate others against gender and sorcery-based violence.

I was to return to Goroka in 2020 to complete the filming and to bring Evelyn Kunda back to New Zealand to work with us on the post-production but, like so many other plans, co covid-19 interrupted them.

The last two years have been more difficult than usual in the dusty frontier towns in the Highlands. As covid-19 swept through communities in Papua New Guinea and the morgue at Goroka hospital filled to overflowing, the amount of sorcery accusation-related violence rose too.

Local researcher Fiona Hukula said that there was a lack of clear communication about covid-19 available in PNG and significant amounts of disinformation. The National newspaper reported about a 45-year old woman and her daughter who were accused of sorcery and tortured by their relatives after her husband died of covid-19 in April last year.

Emma Dawson, Caritas Australia’s Pacific manager, described increasing domestic violence reports and sorcery accusation-related violence in July last year.

The violence occurs when a community blames a death or illness on sorcery. They identify a local man or woman as a witch and torture and kill them in shocking scenes of mob violence.

Earlier in 2021 a young boy died suddenly in the Highlands province of Hela. Within a few days a woman’s body was left by the side of the road. She’d been lynched and killed by her own community.

No cultural background
Ruth Kissam who works for a local NGO, the Tribal Foundation, told the ABC that violence like this didn’t have a cultural background, even in areas where belief in sorcery was traditional.

“Sorcery accusation-related violence picked up about 10 to 15 years ago. Culturally, there is a deep belief in sorcery in many parts of PNG but it was never violent.” Kissam said that this was a law-and-order problem.

Back in Goroka there were other instances where people were known to have died from covid-19 but the community and family refused to accept the diagnosis and in one case a woman was burnt with hot irons and thrown from a bridge. She survived, but her daughter and other family members were also targeted.

For Evelyn Kunda at the grasruts, running a safe house in a community where her presence and work are not always supported by landowners, life has become even more tenuous. Over the last two years I’ve maintained constant contact with her. At one time she had eight adults and children living in her tiny house.

Last week, Kunda was accosted by a group of women who beat her because of the work she does with the community’s most vulnerable.

Evelyn Kunda has no government support; she is not linked with any national or international NGO or aid organisation. She volunteers for this work out of compassion. Despite these difficulties, she is making a real difference to the lives of the women, men and children she houses and supports.

How long she will be able to continue this work is unknown.

Dr Paul Wolffram is a film maker and associate professor in the Film Programme at Te Herenga Waka. He has been working with communities in Papua New Guinea for more than 20 years.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In Papua New Guinea, some already disenfranchised women have to face an added burden of sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV). However, a global initiative by the United Nations with support from the European Union has recently conducted a consultation on a proposed Human Rights Defenders Protection bill aimed at supporting groups and community leaders in ending this violence.

SARV cases remain high in the highland provinces of PNG despite a national action plan intended to eradicate the crime. Most victims of SARV are women elders in poor communities who are blamed for practising sorcery as the cause of the mysterious illness or death of a family member.

SARV cases rose during the pandemic, which reflects the lack of information about the coronavirus.

SARV was tackled by PNG legislators during a Special Parliamentary Committee in August 2021. The committee report was explicit in condemning SARV:

“This type of violence is absolutely unacceptable: it is not excusable as part of PNG’s culture but rather, arises from the misunderstanding (and sometimes the deliberate manipulation) of traditions and religion to harm innocent people, in particular women and children.

“SARV against women is often particularly brutal and sexualised, with the violent acts specifically targeting the victim’s womanhood.”

‘388 people’ accused of sorcery each year
The committee also tried to ascertain the number of SARV cases while noting that the incidents could be higher since many victims are reluctant to file a legal action against family members:

“An average of 388 people are accused of sorcery each year in the 4 provinces combined. A third of these led to physical violence or property damage. Amongst those accused, 65 were killed, 86 suffered permanent injury and 141 survived other serious assault and harm, such as burning, cutting, tying or being forced into water. Overall, 93 cases involved torture: 20 lasted several days and 10 lasted a week or even longer. The submission used that data to estimate the number of violent SARV incidents between the year 2000 and June 2020 to be over 6,000, resulting in an estimated 3,000 deaths nationally.”

PNG doctors call for compulsory post-mortems to stem sorcery killings – Asia Pacific Report https://t.co/C1YgZakANu pic.twitter.com/lYSfrkPp0M

— Trupla PNG (@truplapng) January 30, 2018

Writing for the DevPolicy blog, Anton Lutz and Miranda Forsyth highlighted the long-term impact of SARV on survivors, especially women and children:

“In our 4-year study, we found that only 15% of victims die, leaving more than enough scarred, traumatised, unsupported, fearful people to seek redress in court. But they don’t. They move away. They go into hiding. They bounce around from safe house to safe house. They wait. They hope they don’t get attacked again.”

SARV cases were still being recorded even after a nationwide campaign was launched against the crime. In an editorial published in January, the Post-Courier pressed for urgent action:

“Is murder and terrorism crippling society that we blame sorcery as the easy way out and ignore it?

“This matter has been raised before.

“But no one is changing because lives are being lost or ruined and no one seems to care.

“Women especially are being targeted so there must be people who have deep hatred for women.

“They could be sick in the head.

“It would also appear that tribal enmity is creeping into the so-called sorcery killings and it is a payback in disguise.

“Payback killings are well known in PNG so why are we naive about it?”

Call for better government response
Father Giorgio Licini of the Catholic Bishops Conference echoed the call for better government response to this complex social problem: “The traditional reaction to sorcery in old Europe and current PNG appears to be largely irrational, based on suspicion and fear, retaliation and pay-back, opportunism, lies and business. The legislation is poor, insufficient, practically inexistent for an issue that is complex. It involves murder but is more than common criminal behaviour.”

Dominic Kanea, a SARV survivor, asked for tougher penalties against those who commit SARV:

“We need the MPs from the upper Highlands region to work in unity to fight against sorcery accusation-related violence.

“Introduce tougher penalties for the cowards who prey on innocent people and go on the spree of destroying properties worth millions of kina [PNG currency] and killing of innocent people.”

Women’s rights advocate Dame Carol Kidu insists that SARV is a recent phenomenon and cautions against associating it with any PNG traditions or history:

“In no anthropological writings have I seen reference to anything barbaric as this. This is not part of the ancestry of PNG as we are far more a caring society. I do not know why it has emerged like this, because we know that sorcery is part of PNG’s society, but SARV is not part of the society. SARV killings are premeditated murder and encouraged by friends and relatives.”

Fiona Hukula of the PNG National Research Institute warns about how the ongoing pandemic is fueling fear and even increasing instances of SARV:

“…there is a risk that the health crisis posed by COVID-19 has the potential to precipitate economic and social crisis. This in turn may well involve violence, as people look to allocate blame and find protection in uncertain times by scapegoating others.

The government and society at large needs to act fast to prevent the spread of fear that is a catalyst for violence and social unrest.”

• Watch this video on how the proposed Human Rights Defenders Protection bill can boost the work of women community leaders in fighting SARV in PNG:

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Nine years ago widespread publicity given to the public execution of Kepari Leniata, who was falsely accused of sorcery and burnt by a mob in broad daylight in Papua New Guinea’s third-largest city Mt Hagen, shocked people around the world.

The tragic death also highlighted the problem of Sorcery Accusation Related Violence (SARV) in the country.

Leniata was a 20-year-old mother of two accused of sorcery. She was stripped naked, doused in petrol and burnt alive in front of hundreds of people on 6 February 2013.

She was wrongly accused of killing a six-year-old boy that died at Mt Hagen General Hospital and the boy’s relatives tortured her with a hot iron rod, stripped her naked, tied her hands and legs and threw her into a pile of burning tyres as hundreds watched.

The gruesome photos of Leniata being burnt alive were featured on the front pages of both the country’s national dailies.

Policemen at scene
Several policemen were at the scene but were helpless to do anything to save the women because they were outnumbered by the perpetrators.

Four years later, in November of 2017, Leniata’s six-year-old daughter was tortured in Enga by several men after one of her friends became sick.

She was tortured for a week before word spread and she was rescued.

Her only crime was being the daughter of a woman accused of sorcery and burnt to death.

To this date, the perpetrators involved in both cases still remain at large.

Rebecca Kuku is a senior PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz