WItches abroad and on fire

[soul_warrior]

(CNN) -- A woman in rural Papua New Guinea was bound and gagged, tied to a log and set ablaze on a pile of tires this week, possibly because villagers suspected her of being a witch, police said Thursday.
Her death adds to a growing list of men and women who have been accused of sorcery and then tortured or killed in the South Pacific island nation, where traditional beliefs hold sway in many regions.
The victims are often scapegoats for someone else's unexplained death -- and bands of tribesmen collude to mete out justice to them for their supposed magical powers, police said.
"We have had quite difficulties in a number of previous incidents convincing people to come forward with information," said Simon Kauba, assistant commissioner of police and commander of the Highlands region, where the killing occurred.
"We are trying to persuade them to help. Somebody lost their mother or daughter or sister Tuesday morning."
Early Tuesday morning, a group of people dragged the woman, believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, to a dumping ground outside the city of Mount Hagen. They stripped her naked, bound her hands and legs, stuffed a cloth in her mouth, tied her to a log and set her on fire, Mauba said.
"When the people living nearby went to the dump site to investigate what caused the fire, they found a human being burning in the flames," he said. "It was ugly."
The country's Post-Courier newspaper reported Thursday that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.
In a well-publicized case last year, a pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl while struggling to free herself from a tree. Villagers had dragged the woman from her house and hung her from the tree, accusing her of sorcery after her neighbor suddenly died.
She and the baby survived, according to media reports.
Killings of witches, or sangumas, is not a new phenomenon in rural areas of the country.
Emory University anthropology Professor Bruce Knauft, who lived in a village in the western province of Papua New Guinea in the early 1980s, traced family histories for 42 years and found that 1 in 3 adult deaths were homicides -- "the bulk of these being collective killings of suspected sorcerers," he wrote in his book, From Primitive to Postcolonial in Melanesia and Anthropology.
In recent years, as AIDS has taken a toll in the nation of 6.7 million people, villagers have blamed suspected witches -- and not the virus -- for the deaths.
According to the United Nations, Papua New Guinea accounts for 90 percent of the Pacific region's HIV cases and is one of four Asia-Pacific countries with an epidemic.
"We've had a number of cases where people were killed because they were accused of spreading HIV or AIDS," Mauba said.
While there is plenty of speculation why Tuesday's victim was killed, police said they are focused more on who committed the crime.
"If it is phobias about alleged HIV/AIDS or claims of a sexual affair, we must urge the police and judiciary to throw the book at the offenders," the Post-Courier wrote in an editorial.
"There are remedies far, far better than to torture and immolate a young woman before she can be judged by a lawful system."

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i didnt think that people still did that.
now why would they do it?
more than 50 a year warrants Plague status, doesnt it?

 

[Phlegmak]

"There are remedies far, far better than to torture and immolate a young woman before she can be judged by a lawful system."

That's very strangely worded.

 

[Sharwood]

Read this story, didn't think it was worth posting. Knowing PNG, she was almost certainly murdered for giving someone HIV, not witchcraft. Most of the killings over witchcraft in Papua happen in the central jungle regions, and primarily on the Indonesian side, although it is known to occur in other areas.

The story here isn't the murder, which, sadly, is quite common in PNG, but the AIDS epidemic, which is growing to rival parts of Africa.

 

[soul_warrior]

Read this story, didn't think it was worth posting. Knowing PNG, she was almost certainly murdered for giving someone HIV, not witchcraft. Most of the killings over witchcraft in Papua happen in the central jungle regions, and primarily on the Indonesian side, although it is known to occur in other areas.

The story here isn't the murder, which, sadly, is quite common in PNG, but the AIDS epidemic, which is growing to rival parts of Africa.

didnt know that.
poor sods.

i also agree the story isnt the murder, horrible as it is.
its the burning alive.

 

[LucyDuke]

Read this story, didn't think it was worth posting. Knowing PNG, she was almost certainly murdered for giving someone HIV, not witchcraft.

Although nobody would bother to confirm whether or not she actually did spread HIV. And I doubt these people are aware of how HIV actually works and instead do attribute it to witchcraft. And burning someone alive isn't really a reasonable punishment for, well, anything.

Stories like this make me physically ill.

 

[Sharwood]

Although nobody would bother to confirm whether or not she actually did spread HIV. And I doubt these people are aware of how HIV actually works and instead do attribute it to witchcraft. And burning someone alive isn't really a reasonable punishment for, well, anything.

Stories like this make me physically ill.

No, they know where HIV comes from. That's why there's been a slight decrease lately, greater education. But she wouldn't have to be the actual source for them to pin the blame on her. They could just as easily have given it to her themselves, or she could be completely clean.

 

[LucyDuke]

No, they know where HIV comes from. That's why there's been a slight decrease lately, greater education. But she wouldn't have to be the actual source for them to pin the blame on her. They could just as easily have given it to her themselves, or she could be completely clean.

Well, that's good, but I'm no less disgusted.

 

[Sharwood]

Well, that's good, but I'm no less disgusted.

Oh, it's a disgusting way to die, let alone be murdered, no arguments there. There are few ways I'd least be interested in going out than burning alive.

 

[Sharwood]

Well, that's good, but I'm no less disgusted.

Oh, it's a disgusting way to die, let alone be murdered, no arguments there. There are few ways I'd least be interested in going out than burning alive.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Even in Medieval Europe they usually killed someone before they burned them publicly.

 

[Masquerouge]

Even in Medieval Europe they usually killed someone before they burned them publicly.

Though the killing usually involved quartering, flaying and other funny things.

 

[silver 2039]

It's good to see some nations are taking the War on Witchcraft seriously compared to those lightweights in the US who only burn Harry Potter books.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Though the killing usually involved quartering, flaying and other funny things.

...having ones entrails burned before them et al oh yeah, that was horrible fun. I can't imagine it being worse than being burned alive, though. After all, you were only alive for about half of the punishments themselves.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Even in Medieval Europe they usually killed someone before they burned them publicly.

My English professor (of a special section of English 1102 that focuses on science and technology of the Medieval Europe, and involves reading texts in Middle English) said that witch burnings were actually quite rare in the middle ages, and didn't become common until the Renaissance began.

 

[PeteAtoms]

off topic, but I just got the achievement in Left4Dead, where I had to light the witch on fire with a molotov cocktail.

 

[Masquerouge]

...having ones entrails burned before them et al oh yeah, that was horrible fun. I can't imagine it being worse than being burned alive, though. After all, you were only alive for about half of the punishments themselves.

Which reminds me of...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravaillac

On May 27, he was taken to the Place de Grève and was tortured one last time before being pulled apart by four horses, a method of execution reserved for regicides. Alistair Horne describes the torture Ravaillac suffered: "Before being drawn and quartered... he was scalded with burning sulphur, molten lead and boiling oil and resin, his flesh then being torn by pincers." Following his execution, Ravaillac's parents were forced into exile and the rest of his family was ordered to never use the name "Ravaillac" again.

Ahhhh, good times.

 

[Drewcifer]

In colonial New England it was more common to hang witches than to burn them but the cases of them being burned to death were more strongly impressed into the popular imagination. One of my ancestors was hung for witchcraft in Massachusetts.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

My English professor (of a special section of English 1102 that focuses on science and technology of the Medieval Europe, and involves reading texts in Middle English) said that witch burnings were actually quite rare in the middle ages, and didn't become common until the Renaissance began.

Yes, but they burned people other than witches.