FOR many years The National has written against the belief in sorcery in this country.
We have noted that sorcery belongs to a way of life and to a range of customs that Papua New Guineans have long since abandoned.
Yet, sorcery continues to plague our communities.
We have made the point that in our opinion many who have died because they have allegedly practised sorcery, have been the victims of straightforward murder.
We have spoken with people who believe in supernatural powers but who have attacked many of these savage deaths of alleged sorcerers.
They share our belief that some murderers are simply using the community’s deeply buried belief in sorcery as a way of getting rid of people.
A deeply moving letter in yesterday’s paper has again revived the issue. The letter came from a young woman whose parents had allegedly been tortured and killed as sorcerers.
She pointed out that the deaths of parents as sorcerers is often followed by the perverted abuse of their surviving children, and the labeling of those children as sorcerers themselves.
We continue to be gravely suspicious of many sorcery deaths.
First, too many deaths where the victims are accused of witchcraft, are occurring in urban areas and at the hands of youths.
We acknowledge that many of these youths are uneducated – but others are not.
It seems remarkable that there appears to have been a sharp increase in the number of killers of supposed sorcerers at the hands of youths.
It may be possible, at least in part, to explain this development as the result of their lack of both education and employment.
They suffer from a loss of identity. Their village social structures have crumbled and been replaced with a grim and uncaring urban vacuum.
But it also points to a paradox.
For while PNG is undergoing a wave of church building and dramatically expanded congregations, the apparent belief in sorcery appears to be expanding in tandem.
It is not uncommon to find some of one’s allegedly devout Christian friends prepared to admit that they also believe in sorcery.
These can be people with outstanding Western education, people holding highly responsible positions and people whose behaviour and reputations have earned them the name of community benefactors.
If exposure to the best of the imported education systems and to the tenets of that other import Christianity have failed to shake the foundations of a belief in sorcery, then it will take more than a few severe court findings to change matters.
And what of the countless thousands of us who believe in a different kind of sorcery, a positive system of spells and potions that we consider to be beneficial to our families and societies?
The payment of a chicken for a spell, perhaps backed by traditional medicine that cures little Obed’s hacking cough, or the best of the fish catch being gifted to the old man who has special knowledge and cured bubu Sinai’s rheumatism – these simple actions are as pervasive and generally as harmless as the daily gossip exchange that villagers relish from one end of the country to the other.
Yet they tap into the same well of belief in sorcery as their more sinister counterparts.
The elimination of systems of sorcery that see the appalling destruction of human lives must be halted by whatever means can be determined.
It may be time to simply label all deaths of alleged sorcerers as straightforward willful murder, and under our existing laws, hang those responsible.
But this is a no-win situation, for it is entirely possible that such draconian actions will simply be labelled as stronger and more powerful sorcery on the part of judges and the courts.
Reports of the death of sorcerers in the day of the kiap were markedly fewer than they are today; that may only mean that such killings were better hidden.
Or it may mean that fear of summary justice at the hands of the kiap proved a strong incentive to put these killings on hold.
The fact is that today’s killings of supposed sorcerers must be stopped, and our society needs to address the issue immediately.