Perpetrators not prosecuted despite reports: Official

PERPETRATORS of sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV) have not been successfully prosecuted despite the many cases reported around the country, says PNG Tribal Foundation president Gary Bustin.
He said violence was a “soft word to describe what was happening to women and children” in PNG.
He told a special parliamentary committee inquiry into gender-based violence yesterday that “it was beyond torture, it was brutal, barbaric, and horrific and even beyond what an animal would do savagely to another animal”.
Bustin said women had been beaten, cut, hanged, raped, burnt and some had hot irons inflicted on their bodies to force them to admit practicing sorcery.
“The 200 women accused of SARV we have dealt with knew nothing about sorcery (sanguma),” he said.
“They were not sorcerers but they were tortured and some were killed.”
He accused the so-called glass man/meri (witch doctors) of playing on the fears of people to make money.
When someone dies, people ask the glass man/meri to name the sorcerer who caused the death.
“And, unfortunately, the most vulnerable people including women and children are named which then lead to SARV which is mostly a community-sanctioned crime,” he said.
“We paid for the post mortem, we know the names and faces of the perpetrators including the glassmen, but no prosecution was made on the SARV cases we have dealt with unfortunately.
“There is no law to prosecute these glass man/meri.”
He said while people were now more educated, some still clung to cultural beliefs and believed what the witch doctors told them.