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UN sounds alarm over rise in PNG witch hunts
New York Times - February 10, 2013
The UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva said it was disturbed by the killing of the woman, Kepari Leniata, 20, who was stripped, tortured, doused in fuel and set on fire on Wednesday as hundreds watched.
The killing in Mount Hagen, the Western Highlands provincial capital, reportedly was carried out by relatives of a six-year-old boy who, they claimed, had been killed by her sorcery. The crowd blocked police officers and firefighters who had tried to intervene.
"This case adds to the growing pattern of vigilante attacks and killings of persons accused of sorcery in Papua New Guinea," a spokeswoman for the UNHCR Cecile Pouilly said in Geneva.
She said police were continuing their investigation of a case in Jiwaka province in November, when three women and two men were held for 20 days for allegedly using sorcery to kill another person. The five were tortured with iron rods and knives heated over fires before they were killed.
According to Amnesty International, violence against those accused of sorcery is endemic in Papua New Guinea. The UNCHR cited reports that, in July, the police arrested 29 members of a witch-hunting gang who were murdering and cannibalising people they suspected of sorcery.
A UN investigator who visited Papua New Guinea in March also found that women, particularly widows and those with no other family members to protect them, were disproportionately affected by the violence against suspected sorcerers, which included torture, rape, mutilations and murder.
"I was shocked to witness the brutality of the assaults perpetrated against suspected sorcerers," the investigator, Rashida Manjoo, said after her visit.
She claimed that many of the people she interviewed said sorcery accusations were commonly used to deprive women of their land and property. "Any misfortune or death within the community can be used as an excuse to accuse such a person of being a sorcerer," Ms Manjoo said.
Attacks often were carried out by young men and boys acting on the instruction of their community and under the influence of alcohol and drugs given to them, she said she was told.
They also often acted with impunity, she said, because witnesses feared talking to the police and followed a social tradition of "wantok" or solidarity.
In response to Wednesday's attack in Mount Hagen, the UNCHR and Amnesty International urged Papua New Guinea's government to implement the recommendations of a constitutional commission that called in November for the repeal of the country's sorcery law.
Human rights groups said the 1971 law, which criminalised sorcery and recognised the accusation of sorcery as a defence in murder cases, contributed to the violence.
The commission's report and recommendations, however, had not yet been presented to the country's parliament, Ms Pouilly said. "We don't know why nothing has been done since November," she said.
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