REVIEW ON SORCERY

Submissions can be made to erickwa@gmail.com

On the week before Christmas, a short half day conference was held by the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission to review Draft Report 7 on sorcery and sorcery related killings.

I went along to learn more and to raise the matter of gender violence against women as publicized in the media by the United Nations.

It was a key meeting with several high level people and many others with key input whom I was very pleased to meet.

One man from the Courts explained that those accused of sorcery are often poor men and women, widows and widowers who are unable to express or defend themselves.

Later he explained at tea break that killings are usually carried out by young men at the instigation of older men and women.

The accused were never landholders, businessmen, clergy or teachers. Just poor souls without family unable to defend themselves.

The report did mention gender violence against women in the Simbu (P.30). From Kundiawa hospital came a report that the numbers of men and women were roughly equal (P. 19).

I addressed the group briefly about defining the killings as gender violence against women. That is what the UN wants to fit their ideological bias about all violence being against women at the hands of men.

It was interesting to be approached by several people at tea break who agreed with the view expressed. The view was that PNG must not have a foreign agenda pushed down the throat of the nation.

There was much discussion about the practical problems of laying a charge for sorcery, travelling to the police station with witnesses and gaining a confession not to mention the fear of retribution from the sorcerer.

I raised to a group at tea break that the greatest sorcery genocide took place in Europe during the early to late Middle Ages when women were accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Millions died over several hundred years.

It was at the instigation of the church whose priests felt threatened by the village women who were mid-wives and herbalists, the forerunners of the modern doctors. So they were burned at the stake.

In the Papua New Guinea Post Courier 21 December, the report on the review stated that fom 2000 to 2006,  116 sorcery cases were reported in the media 55 from the highlands, 30 in Momase, 23 in the Southern region and 8 from the islands.

Out of 166 cases, 75 involved the torture and killing of 147 victims, 52 of which were male and 69 were female. This does not justify the UN claiming that the sorcery killings were gender based against women. But the killings should not have happened.

Comment: AIDS Holistics will send a submission as we have all been invited. We will make the point that PNG has been out of the stone age for less than a century. Some parts of the country are still in the stone age.

There was burning of witches in Europe for hundreds of years. What caused it to stop? Was it the break-down of rural society with the industrial revolution?

Was it the Black Plague that spared no one and was obviously not the work of sorcerers? Was it the Reformation that followed the Black Plague that reduced the presence of priests in Northern Europe and promoted salvation through grace.

Papua New Guinea has the HIV/AIDS pandemic that is far less genocidal and spares those who follow a life of abstinance and faithfulness in marriage.

Was it the changed world view of villagers who moved to the cities looking for work? Did sorcery killing disappear down the massive urban-rural melting pot?

Was it education? How many PNG men and women killed were not educated? How many young men were educated who killed them? Does education play a part? Or are people afraid of sorcerers? Perhaps the teacher is a sorcerer or the policeman or the doctor.

Sorcery killing is linked with HIV/AIDS. When people die slowly with HIV, it is easy to blame sorcery. How many villagers in PNG have never been given AIDS Awareness?

Now that the National AIDS Council is taking awareness into rural areas, will the level of sorcery killing drop? There is no one quick fix answer.