Eradicating sorcery backfires on villagers

Focus, Main Stories
Source:

The National, Friday 13th July, 2012

SOME people living in the Tangu area of Yawar local council  inland of Bogia, Madang, were sick and tired of paying exorbitant fees charged by sorcerers (Sanguma) so they formed a group to weed them out .
In Tangu, sorcery is part of a cultural belief system that guided and prevented locals from abusing traditional and customary values, for example, in the areas of land claims, adultery and theft.
According to villagers, the introduction of a Western lifestyle saw the tradition develop into profiteering by sorcerers who began to charge exorbitant fees.
Asking a sorcerer to reveal the causes of deaths or cast evil spirits out of sick people could cost as much as K1,000 cash, a pig and a bag of rice to obtain a charm.
A villager, Blaise, said that “eventually the sorcerers became rich by creating a business.
“(But) despite how much the families and relatives spent, deaths continued to occur.”
The demands for payment did not stop at cash and material goods.
According to a local leader, if a person could not pay, the head of the family was obliged to allow the sorcerer to have sex with his wife or teenage daughter as payment.
 “It’s against our traditional ethics and morals for a sorcerer to have intercourse with a man’s wife or teenage daughter.
“That was the main cause of frustration that led to the forming of a group to hunt down sorcerers,” he said.
Although people suspected of being sorcerers were brought to the police, villagers saw them being released for lack of evidence.
 “Over time, as suspects were released to carry on as sorcerers, we got tired and fed up,” the local leader said.
Authorities such as police and relevant Government agencies also failed to recognise the growing levels of frustration over sorcerers in the area.
Bogia has only 12 under-resourced policemen stationed at district headquarters.
Bogia police station commander head Sgt Sawaer Adolf said that the only vehicle available broke down seven years ago.
“Police were handicapped and could not conduct patrols into the two inland LLGs of Yawar and Almami.
“We also had no dinghies to patrol Yabu LLG of Manam Island,” Sawaer said.
There were no police outposts in those LLG’s.
 “Bogia needs a highway patrol unit to support the highway patrol unit from Sumkar.
“A police check point is needed to be established at Bogia to monitor travellers running drugs and guns.
 “The heart of the district is a Wild West ruined by drug addicts and homebrew consumers,” Sawaer said.
The lack of police in area meant rape and murder was common, Sawaer said.
As a result, some locals took the law into own hands to break the cycle of debt and sex by forming an anti-sorcerers group.
The initiator and chief trainer of the cult movement is allegedly from Sereken village in Almami LLG within Bogia who initiated the hausman ideology.
Members of the group were trained in six hausman for three months before receiving their “magical” bush knives on graduation.
These hausman were located in the jungles of Biam, Mangigum, Ambunk, Visiaput and Sereken villages.
After “possessing the spirit”, these anti-sorcerers go around in groups, using their bush knives to detect sorcerers.
“The knife floats when it senses the presence of a sorcerer and guides us to the sorcerer for us to kill,” one of the group members says.
 “We cannot identify a sorcerer just by looking at one.”
The group recently struck, killing four men – Soni Tumba, 47, from Imbeya village; Richard Wakarum, 42, Patrick Dariki, 30, and Max Dariki, 26, from Ambunk village as they walked home after casting their votes in the general election.
The incident happened on June 29 at Ambunk, some metres away from Tangu St Mary’s Catholic mission station along the Tangu-Josephstaal highway.
Three others killed earlier by the group were the elder brother of a Biam village councillor, John Wayne, and two women.
 “We ate their brains raw and took body parts such as livers, hearts, penis and others back to the hausman for our chief trainers to create other powers for the members to use,” the member said.
The killings sparked police into action.
During a dawn raid at Biamb village, 29 suspects, eight of them women, were netted.
A local expert said the systems used by this group of anti-sorcerers was different from usual Papua New Guinea traditional hausman built in villages.
“Culturally in Tangu, specific people were trained to hunt a sanguma down,” he said.
“These people never kill sorcerers in broad daylight, mutilate and eat sorcerers’ flesh, livers, and hearts or make soup from the penis of sorcerers. This is insane and the cannibalism (of this group) goes beyond Tangu culture.”
Madang provincial police commander Anthony Wagambie Jnr cautioned followers of the group, believed to be more than 1,000,  to surrender.
“It is the tip of the iceberg and more needs to be done to educate locals to eradicate the movement.
“Police cannot do it alone. It requires collective effort from government, responsible agencies, non-governmental organisations and the churches to work together,” Wagambie said.
Madang police task force commander Snr Sgt Daniel Kapen said: “We need to learn from this experience, and it requires district administration to take the lead to mobilise and allocate resources to allow responsible agencies to move in swiftly to educate the locals.”