MOUNT HAGEN, Papua New Guinea, 27 August: The way a woman walks can be a death sentence in Papua New Guinea, where the ancient world of witchcraft has collided brutally with the modern plague of AIDS.
Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered by mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable deaths of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and researchers say.
How the women are singled out for such a fate can be as cruel as their treatment, said Joe Kanekane of PNGs Law and Justice Sector Secretariat.
– People believe a witch would behave in a certain way, would walk in a certain way. That is all the basis that they have and there is realistically no tangible substance to it, he said.
– They do not actually see the woman transform herself into a python or whatever it is (witches are reputedly capable of). Witchcraft is embedded in peoples perceptions, embedded in their way of life.”
Less than a lifetime ago some tribes in this rugged South Pacific island nation off the northeastern tip of Australia had never had contact with the outside world.
It remains one of the most intriguing lands on earth, with more than 800 languages spoken by a population of just six million spread thinly through rainforests, tropical islands and mist-shrouded mountains.
But a recent UN report said PNG was facing an AIDS catastrophe, accounting for 90 percent of HIV infections in the Oceania region.
HIV diagnoses had risen by around 30 percent a year since 1997, leaving an estimated 60.000 people living with the disease in 2005. High levels of sexual violence against women and poor access to sex education had helped the virus ravage PNGs population, the report said.
For some, ancient beliefs have provided an instant and brutal answer to the bewildering new disease. “Sorcery, witchcraft and other supernatural forces are widely blamed for causing HIV/AIDS,” the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia said in a recent analysis.
“There are reports of women being tortured for days in efforts to extract confessions,” wrote research fellow Miranda Tobias.
“Women have been beaten, stabbed, cut with knives, sexually assaulted and burnt with hot irons. One woman had her uterus ripped out with a steel hook. It is estimated that there have been 500 such attacks in the past year,” the independent think tank said.
Kilder: The National (Papua New Guinea) og The Push Journal
