Season of the Witch
In Papua New Guinea's highlands,
misfortune is often blamed on magic-and the killing of alleged
sorcerers is on the rise
By
MICHAEL WARE Goroka
Joe jomani
has not killed a witch for four years, but he knows there
are more out there. Like the rest of his village in Papua
New Guinea's Eastern Highlands province, he lives daily with
the specter of witchcraft, carefully disposing of food scraps
and collecting his cut hair and nails for fear they might
be used in sorcery against him. Jomani is a married man with
children, a practicing Christian and a respected member of
his community. But he believes witches, or sangumas, are everywhere.
Dressed in brown slacks and a worn North Sydney rugby league
jersey, he sits cross-legged on the grass outside his thatched
stilt home and talks candidly of murder. He reminisces about
the night he and other men from the tiny hamlet of Mondo One-less
than an hour's drive west of Goroka, the provincial capital
-butchered four women they believed were sangumas. They were
neighbors whose families Jomani knew well, yet he speaks of
the murders as if he's discussing a chore as mundane as weeding
his gardens.
Sometime
in 1997, Jomani and fellow villagers hauled the women from
their homes and questioned them about deaths in the village,
including that of an 18-year-old youth whose brain the men
believed had been replaced with water by a sanguma. In villages
where belief in witchcraft lingers, such interrogations are
brutal: hot metal may be applied to genitals, flesh incised
with machetes, or the accused strung up by an arm or leg.
In the end, the Mondo One women were killed: three with homemade
shotguns, the fourth with knives, because the men ran out
of bullets. Jomani says the women had all confessed to being
sangumas. Asked why they would do that, he replies coolly:
"Because we stab them until they do." And if they hadn't admitted
to sorcery? "We stab them anyway."
Jomani's
village is not unique. Yauwe Riyong, an M.P. from nearby Chuave
district, in Simbu province, told Parliament last December
that as many as 15 women had been "chopped to pieces" as suspected
sangumas. He said similar killings had taken place in other
highlands areas and in P.N.G.'s capital, Port Moresby. Police
Minister Gabia Gagarimabu asked for details of the alleged
incidents, but said there was little his officers could do.
Two months
before Riyong's speech, a band of tribesmen attacked a remote
village in Simbu's Gumine district, burning houses, wounding
residents and killing three men suspected of sorcery. Police
deputy commissioner Sam Inguba says that when officers went
to investigate two days later, they were shot at and a skirmish
erupted, leaving one man dead. Chief Superintendent Simon
Kauba, who is investigating the most recent sanguma killing-which
took place in Simbu just two weeks ago-says few killers are
caught and even fewer convicted. "During an investigation
the whole village refuses to cooperate," he says. "Either
no one will provide statements or the entire village will
claim they participated in the killing."
Blaming
witchcraft for unexplained events is common in rural P.N.G.
"Just let your mind wander," says Jim Tanner, a missionary
who spent almost three decades in a highlands village and
is now an administrator for the U.S.-based New Tribes Mission.
"Consider what you would think if you had no scientific knowledge
and someone suddenly died. I tried to tell people about germs-tiny
things you can't see which cause harm-and they thought I must
have some kind of white magic to see them." Says Chief Superintendent
Kauba: "If a person dies, villagers believe somebody should
be held responsible. They accuse someone of sorcery and the
whole village decides what should happen to them."
In the early
1980s, American anthropologist Bruce M. Knauft studied the
lowlands village of Gebusi, in Western province. He recorded
"inquests" conducted through spirit mediums, and the belief
that the presence of a witch among villagers paying their
respects to the dead caused a corpse to gurgle or split open
(though these are natural stages in decomposition). "It can
be said Gebusi [people] attribute all natural death to some
form of human agency," Knauft wrote in 1985. "The resulting
sorcery attributions lead to an extremely high rate of killing."
Tracing family histories over 42 years to 1982, Knauft found
that almost 1 in 3 adult deaths were homicides; of these,
he estimated, 86% were related to sorcery. Villagers who were
female, elderly, or had few relatives ran the greatest risk
of being murdered as witches.
These patterns
are not universal; in some regions and most urban centers,
traditional ideas of puripuri (magic) are fading. Nor is there
a single sanguma tradition: the powers and practices ascribed
to sorcerers vary from place to place. Witches are said to
turn into creatures-bats, possums, birds-to move about at
night (near Henganofi, in Eastern Highlands province, dogs
are jokingly referred to as sangumas' "buses"). Their powers
may be vested in their person, or derived from a location,
like a river bank or grove. They may use twigs or leaves in
their rites, or they may take personal items such as leftover
food or excrement, parcel them in leaves and curse them, making
their targets ill until the bundle is found (curing them)
or destroyed (killing them). Some sangumas are said to eat
the dead, or replace the organs of the living with grass or
stones. The traditions are as diverse as the tribes that adhere
to them.
There are
signs of a new surge in sanguma killings. Missionary Tanner
says that in his 26 years living in a highlands village there
were no such lynchings; in the five years since he left, there
have been four. Says Garry Trompf, a professor of Religious
Studies at the University of Sydney: "A worrying trend since
European contact, with roads and improved communication, is
lethal forms of sorcery traveling, or being exported, from
one region to another." There is concern about a possible
link between increased fear of witchcraft and the hiv epidemic
sweeping P.N.G.: a U.N. fact-finding team has recorded 12,000
new infections in the past six months, and Prime Minister
Sir Mekere Morauta says the rate is increasing by 50% a year.
Many citizens will find witchcraft a more plausible explanation
for aids than a virus. "We're already seeing things go backward,"
says Tanner. "aids will make it [witch killing] worse."
P.N.G. is
a mesh of contradictions, with threads of modernity woven
into an ancient fabric. It is a country where women are still
seen as property and prospective husbands must compensate
a girl's parents for the loss of her labor; where the wantok
system of mutual assistance saddles the political culture
with nepotism and corruption; and where community ties are
still strong enough to make orphanages and retirement homes
unnecessary.
Ten years
ago, Arnold Roy and others from his Simbu village burned alive
four women they believed were witches; he says they hid the
remains in caves, among the bones of World War II soldiers.
Like Joe Jomani, Roy says he would kill again to stop sorcerers.
Both men grew up in modern P.N.G., with electric light and
airplanes, trucks and canned beer, antibiotics and elections.
But 60 years after white explorers first penetrated their
highlands home, the grip of ancient fears remains as powerful
as ever.
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May 7, 2001 | No. 18
COVER
STORIES
Haunted
by Vietnam
Former U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey confesses under pressure to killing more
than a dozen innocents in 1969. In his sadness, shame and decades-long
silence, fellow vets see themselves-and the rest of America confronts
war's wrenching ambiguity
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
SOUTH
PACIFIC
PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Murder in the Dark...
The still potent fear of sorcery is leading to vigilante killings
THE
ARTS
ART: Andrew Sayers reframes Australia's
view of itself...
THEATRE:
The RSC takes on Shakespeare's histories..
BOOKS: Inside the domestic interior of
Vermeer
MUSIC: Irish boy band Westlife goes transatlantic
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