Sorcery-related violence a police issue, official says issue

SORCERY accusation related violence (Sarv) is a policing issue so there is a need to increase the number of police personnel in the country to help address it, an official says.
Director of development at PNG Tribal Foundation Ruth Kissam said: “In the space of Sarv what we found out is that it’s actually all the time a policing issue.”
Kissam said this was because the whole community knew it as a crime.
She said the current ratio of one policeman to 1,200 Papua New Guineans was pretty bad and if only the active police were considered, the ratio would be worse.
She said there were only 100 dedicated family sexual violence unit (FSVU) officers in 39 of the 89 districts in the country which around half of the population of the country would need. Kissam said that disparity in numbers was preventing the implementation of the laws that are in place to help most of the women and girls.
“It’s not only a gender-based violence problem; it is also a policing problem, (and) a problem of law and order,” she said.
“Communities knowing that if they burn a woman they have the right to tell policemen and human rights officers like me to take one and leave the other because they know that they outnumber us.
“So you have volatile, angry villagers with their guns and machetes looking at four police officers and two human rights defenders telling them that you can leave the three women but you can take one.