Despite Legal Moves, PNG’s Terrifying Witchcraft Killings Look Set to Continue
One step forward and several giant steps back. That’s how the U.N.’s human-rights office described the reintroduction last week of the death penalty in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the concurrent repealing by parliament of the country’s bizarre 1971 Sorcery Act. ?Straight off a script for Game of Thrones, the act’s preamble recognized that various forms of sorcery existed and criminalized the practice of “evil sorcery” or sanguma. While disputes over sorcery seldom came before the national judicial system, they are common in traditional village courts, where the belief that somebody is practicing sanguma has been used in defense of murder.
The law’s demise, and the reintroduction of the death penalty as a bid to curb sorcery-related killings, followed international outcry over a series of gruesome deaths earlier this year: the burning at the stake in February of a young mother in front of large crowd...