Religious Scholars – What Can You Tell Me About This Witchcraft And The Occult?

imburne — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:59:25 +0000

Perilous Times, Witchcraft and The Occult
Witchcraft brings murder to Pacific paradise*
By Nick Squires in Goroka
Last Updated: 09/02/2007
Once hailed as an untouched Shangri-La, the mist-shrouded highlands of
Papua New Guinea are undergoing a dramatic resurgence in sorcery and
witchcraft.
Age-old beliefs in black magic and evil curses are back with a vengeance
in jungle-clad mountain valleys which were unknown to the outside world
until the 1930s.
Papua New Guinea tribesmen, Witchcraft brings murder to Pacific paradise
Tribesmen resort to old ways and rituals to ‘ward off evil spirits’,
including the murder and torture of those believed to be witches
Suspected witches – mostly women but including some men and even
children – have been subjected to horrific torture before being hanged
or thrown off cliffs.
A growing Aids crisis and the collapse of health services have sapped
villagers’ faith in Western medicine and prompted a return to ancestral
beliefs.
Barely educated villagers living in remote mountain valleys are blaming
the increasing number of Aids deaths not on promiscuity or a lack of
condom use but on malign spirits.
When Raphael Kogun’s uncle died two years ago, his family blamed a
middle-aged married couple who they were convinced had become possessed
by evil spirits. “We chopped their heads off with an axe and a bush
knife,” said the 27-year-old farmer from Goroka, in Eastern Highlands
province.
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“I felt sorry for them but they were witches, they deserved to die. If
they were still alive they could hurt people with their magic. We buried
the bodies but then the police found out and started digging them up.”
Two of Kogun’s brothers were arrested under the Act of Sorcery
incorporated into PNG’s criminal code, but the case collapsed because
witnesses were too afraid to testify. The number of witch killings has
been estimated at 200 a year in the neighbouring province of Simbu
alone, although definitive figures are impossible to come by.
A report by Amnesty International in September found there was a
“conspiracy of silence” surrounding the murders. Belief in evil spirits
is ubiquitous throughout Papua New Guinea, where more than 850 languages
are spoken by 5.5 million people.
In the highlands they are known as “sangumas” and can assume the form
not only of humans, but animals such as dogs, pigs, rats and snakes.
A surge in the illegal growing of marijuana in the emerald green valleys
has contributed to black magic paranoia, experts say.
A patient dying of HIV-Aids in a Papua New Guinea hospital, Witchcraft
brings murder to Pacific paradise
A patient dying of HIV-Aids in a Papua New Guinea hospital. Villagers
blame the deaths on malign spirits
“We’re seeing a big rise in witchcraft cases. We hear of a killing
almost every week,” said Hermann Spingler, a German Lutheran pastor who
heads the Melanesian Institute, a cultural study centre in Goroka. “They
take the law into their own hands and torture people to make them
‘confess’. They drag women on ropes behind vehicles, burn them with hot
wire, chop off hands, fingers. People have been buried alive.”
He expects more witch murders as PNG’s Aids crisis worsens. The country
has the highest rate of Aids in the Pacific region, with the government
estimating that around two per cent of the population is HIV positive.
That is almost certainly an under-estimate. “The problem is far worse
than the official statistics show. In some ante-natal clinics 30 per
cent of women are positive,” said Claire Campbell, an Australian Aids
campaigner working for the World Health Organisation.
“It’s only 75 years since the first white man walked over the hills,”
said Mal Smith-Kela, PNG’s only white provincial governor.
“I’ve flown into villages where they tried to work out what sex the
helicopter was by looking at the exhaust pipes.” Last month police in
Goroka uncovered the grisly killings of four women accused by villagers
of using sorcery to cause a fatal road crash.
After being tortured with hot metal rods and made to confess, they were
murdered and buried upright in a pit.
“The villagers believe they have to kill the ‘witches’, otherwise the
whole clan is at risk from black magic,” said Jack Urame, 38, a member
of the Dom tribe who has researched sorcery killings for the Melanesian
Institute.
“What is disturbing is that children are witnessing these things – the
belief in sorcery and witchcraft is being passed on to the next
generation.”

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Religious Scholars – What Can You Tell Me About This Witchcraft And The Occult?