Transcript
Under-resourced policing and a lack of evidence remain obstacles to cases of sorcery-related attacks reaching PNG's courts. Father Victor Roche of the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG says stronger laws and better protection for law enforcement officers are needed.
"When they have any cases of sorcery-related killings or prosecution, the village judges should make sure that it is done properly, handled well. But they tend to say 'no, that is a matter for the community, we don't want to deal with it'. That's not the way to go. Because if it's not dealt with immediately then the people take the law into their own hands and they go ahead and kill them."
Women Arise PNG, a movement working to counter violence against females, says it's proving difficult to change the mindset of many PNG communities. People easily become suspicious about the cause of deaths, and attribute them to sorcery-related, or supernatural, causes. The NGO's representative Esther Igo says a lot of innocent people have been accused of sorcery, but that also many are seen to willingly take up practicing it.
"Poverty is a driver, more for younger people and the people who now believe and are engaged in sorcery. They are acquiring the powers, witchcraft or sorcery powers, because for them it's a means of making income. People are going to them and saying 'look, I don't like this person, here is some money, kill them'."
Four years ago, parliament repealed the 1971 Sorcery Act which had criminalised sorcery and recognised the accusation of sorcery as a defence in murder cases. Ms Igo says moves to establish a new Sorcery Act to adequately define the problem have stalled, partly because the nature of sorcery makes it difficult to prove it has happened.
"Because in a court system it's evidence based. And because sorcery is very difficult to actually prove that there is a cause, that there is a direct relationship or a direct occurrence, or an event that led to a death, that has been difficult for the government to actually pass an Act."
A Lutheran missionary who has worked with sorcery-related cases in PNG, Anton Lutz, says that while remote communities still take the law into their own hands, education can help address this pattern.
"As society becomes more educated, people will stop relying on explanations such as sorcery and witchcraft for deaths which have natural causes such measles, typhoid or AIDS. And when people start realising that sickness has a natural cause instead of a supernatural cause then they will stop blaming each other and attacking each other."
Anton Lutz admits few people are willing to testify in sorcery-related cases, but that PNG is working on it. He says the Justice Department is looking at what the quality of evidence needs to be in such cases, to develop a legal system which is able to arrest, prosecute and convict those behind the attacks.
