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Witches' tortured over AIDS deaths in PNG
MOUNT HAGEN, Papua New Guinea - The
way a woman walks can be a death sentence in Papua New Guinea,
where the ancient world of witchcraft has collided brutally with
the modern plague of AIDS.
Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered
by mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable
deaths of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and
researchers say.
How the women are singled out for such a fate can be as cruel as
their treatment, said Joe Kanekane of PNG's Law and Justice
Sector Secretariat.
"People believe a witch would behave in a certain way, would
walk in a certain way. That's all the basis that they have and
there's realistically no tangible substance to it," he told AFP.
"They don't actually see the woman transform herself into a
python or whatever it is (witches are reputedly capable of).
Witchcraft is embedded in people's perceptions, embedded in
their way of life."
Less than a lifetime ago some tribes in this rugged South
Pacific island nation off the northeastern tip of Australia had
never had contact with the outside world.
It remains one of the most intriguing lands on earth, with more
than 800 languages spoken by a population of just six million
spread thinly through rainforests, tropical islands and
mist-shrouded mountains.
But a recent United Nations report said PNG was facing an AIDS
catastrophe, accounting for 90 percent of HIV infections in the
Oceania region.
HIV diagnoses had risen by around 30 percent a year since 1997,
leaving an estimated 60,000 people living with the disease in
2005.
High levels of sexual violence against women and poor access to
sex education had helped the virus ravage PNG's population, the
report said.
For some, ancient beliefs have provided an instant and brutal
answer to the bewildering new disease.
"Sorcery, witchcraft and other supernatural forces are widely
blamed for causing HIV/AIDS," the Centre for Independent Studies
in Australia said in a recent analysis.
Torture and murder
"Accusations of sorcery have resulted in torture and murder. The
mysterious' deaths of relatively young people, thought to be
deaths from HIV/AIDS, are being blamed on women practicing
witchcraft.
"There are reports of women being tortured for days in efforts
to extract confessions," wrote research fellow Miranda Tobias.
"Women have been beaten, stabbed, cut with knives, sexually
assaulted and burnt with hot irons. One woman had her uterus
ripped out with a steel hook.
"It is estimated that there have been 500 such attacks in the
past year," the independent think tank said.
In one recent example in the port city of Lae, two alleged
witches blamed for a young man's death were tortured and then
set on fire by an "animalistic and inhuman" mob, said regional
police chief Giossi Labi.
"This is a city and one would think people would be more
civilised," said Labi.
PNG's only female member of parliament, Carol Kidu, has spoken
out strongly against witch killing.
"Sorcery permeates many societies in Papua New Guinea, and these
young deaths from HIV/AIDS are unexplained and so they attach it
to sorcery, they make it witchcraft," she told AFP.
Ancient belief in the supernatural sits comfortably with
Christianity for many Papua New Guineans, whose forefathers were
exposed to US and European missionaries as soon as first contact
was made with the isolated tribes.
"It (witchcraft) does exist," said military doctor Roselyne Wia.
"I'm a Christian and I do say there's a God and there's the
devil - it does exist."
The only way to end the killing of "witches" blamed for AIDS
deaths, however, would be to "educate the village leaders and
get the message down to the grassroots," said Wia.
The 32-year-old doctor said that as a Christian who does not
believe in sex outside marriage she has had to overcome her own
initial reluctance to promote the use of condoms by soldiers to
combat the spread of HIV.
"Then I realised, hey, I'm not protecting the women and the
children. Every soldier has a condom in his pocket now - I call
it body armour," she laughed.
Wia is frank about the strains caused by the rapid transition
from the tribal warrior's life lived by her grandfather to her
own place in the modern world as a qualified doctor and captain
in the army.
"It's just leaving us totally confused. The developments are so
fast and we're not given time to adapt," she said.
 
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