Accused witch burned alive in Papua New Guinea as crowd, including kids, watch

Bystanders watch as a woman accused of witchcraft is burned alive in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen in Papua New Guinea, Feb. 6, 2013. / AP

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea A mob stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of horrified witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday. It was the latest sorcery-related killing in this South Pacific island nation.

Bystanders, including many children, watched and some took photographs of Wednesday's brutal slaying. Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country's biggest circulating newspapers, The National and Post-Courier, while the prime minister, police and diplomats condemned the killing.

In rural Papua New Guinea, witchcraft is often blamed for unexplained misfortunes. Sorcery has traditionally been countered by sorcery, but responses to allegations of witchcraft have become increasingly violent in recent years.

Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before.

She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, and then set alight on a pile of car tires and trash in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen, national police spokesman Dominic Kakas said.

Deputy Police Commissioner Simon Kauba on Friday blasted Mount Hagen investigators by phone for failing to make a single arrest, Kakas said.

The public were apparently not cooperating with police, and police carrying out the investigation were not working hard enough, Kakas said.

"He was very, very disappointed that there's been no arrest made as yet," Kakas said.

"The incident happened in broad daylight in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses and yet we haven't picked up any suspects yet," Kakas added.

Kakas described the victim's husband as the "prime suspect" and said the man fled the province. Kakas said he did not know if there was a relationship between the husband and the dead boy's family.

He said more than 50 people are suspected to have "laid a hand on the victim" and committed crimes in the mob attack. While many children had witnessed the killing, there were no child suspects, he said.

Kakas said onlookers were shocked by the brutality but were powerless to stop the mob. Police officers were also present but were outnumbered and could not save the woman, he said. There is an internal investigation underway into what action police at the scene took.

Police Commissioner Tom Kulunga described the slaying as "shocking and devilish."

"We are in the 21st century and this is totally unacceptable," Kulunga said in a statement.

He suggested courts be established to deal with sorcery allegations, as an alternative to villagers dispensing justice.

Prime Minister Pete O'Neill said he had instructed police to use all available manpower to bring the killers to justice.

"It is reprehensible that women, the old and the weak in our society should be targeted for alleged sorcery or wrongs that they actually have nothing to do with," O'Neill said.

The U.S. Embassy in the national capital Port Moresby issued a statement calling for a sustained international partnership to enhance anti-gender-based violence laws throughout the Pacific.

The embassy of Australia, Papua New Guinea's colonial ruler until independence in 1975 and now its biggest foreign aid donor, said: "We join ... all reasonable Papua New Guineans in looking forward to the perpetrators being brought to justice."

In other recent sorcery-related killings, police arrested 29 people in July last year accused of being part of a cannibal cult in Papua New Guinea's jungle interior and charged them with the murders of seven suspected witch doctors.

Kakas could not immediately say what had become of the 29 since their first court appearances last year in the north coast province of Madang.

Police alleged the cult members ate their victims' brains raw and made soup from their penises.

The killers allegedly believed that their victims practiced sorcery and that they had been extorting money as well as demanding sex from poor villagers for their supernatural services.

By eating witch doctors' organs, the cult members believed they would attain supernatural powers.

Murder is punishable by death in Papua New Guinea, a poor tribal nation of 7 million people who are mostly subsistence farmers. But no one has been hanged since independence.

[SaraKirchheimer]

When superstition has a tight hold on a culture, it is not merely the extreme actions such as this murder that oppress and control the people. Instead, there is everyday, everyday, everyday, every hour, every minute the conditioned expectation of harm by imagined evil spirits that bullies individuals from within themselves, plus the outward threat of accusations of witchcraft from within the group that force the people into a narrow pattern of obedience and conformity. With that said, let's keep in mind that at Massachusetts Bay Colony, the witchcraft accused and accusers had a past history of real estate disputes.

[antoniof123]

You know I was trying to think of words to say that were as vile as this but instead I am not because there are no words that can describe what these people deserve.

Not just the guilty because they are all guilty they stood around and watched took pictures.

Just no words, at least the girl is no longer in pain.

Rest in peace.

[verysimplesimon]

this torture killing was a nightmare and yes the guilty should be hunted down and given death sentences..won't happen. I saw pictures similar to this atrocity right here in america of black people wrapped in barbed wire fastened to a telephone pole surrounded by a hatefilled mob of white people including white women staring angrily at the dead black man held up on the pole by the barbed wire he was so savagely disfigured by the barbed wire run through his mouth and face and his busted up body and face it was horrible not one of those whites was punished let alone napalmed on their "village" and this was not even one of those bull conner deep south towns..remove the beam from your own eye before you quibble about the mote in your brothers eye

[krisinal]

I guess she weighed the same as a duck. (had to say it)


But back to reality.....This is a prime example of just how far a mob can be ginned up and then do something like this.

[Swingmanic]

Just for the record, Papua New Guinea's mining and resource sector has led to it becoming the sixth fastest-growing economy in the world as of 2011..Despite this, many people live in extreme poverty, with about one third of the population living on less than US $1.25 per day..It would seem to me that all these multinational resource companies are quite happy to extract the minerals from the land but in return give very little back in the form of education for these people!.One can only hope that such a brutal killing of this poor woman who had an 8-month-old baby, just might trigger a campaign in Puapa New Guinea, which could lead to appropriate legislative and educational reform, and to a tough response from the police and courts as has the rape and torture of the 23-year-old female medical student in India.

[presclayiii]

Just when does witch craft or religious designation warrant, being abused with a iron rod and burned alive.call in an air strike no intelligent life there. just barbaric. And so sad RIP....K....GOD BLESS HER...... HUNT HER HUSBAND.K.......

[kcreligion]

I studied these people in Anthropolgy back in 1972. We aw a film that was from an expedition with Rockerfellers grandson in it. He never made it back it. they found his canoe and the film but believe he was eaten.
Their ideas on life and death are totally different from us. They had a war of atrition going on for hundred of years where whenever they battle the opposing tribe they would stop after one death or injury. Then the losing side would burn their dead and kill a pid to feast and feed the village. Very remote and primitative. The world saves people like this so as not to spoil their culture. I question that logic.

[Foxfire55]

Perhaps this is what we have to look forward to after they take our guns. Mental illness and ignorance abound.

[erasmus111]

What are you talking about? You already have mental illness and ignorance abound. Who do you think owns all the guns?

The people doing the mass killings have all been mentally unstable. These killings would not have happened if every dimwit in America wasn't allowed a gun.

[erasmus111]

Nobodyhasthisname

We are allowed guns. We just aren't paranoid and feel the need to have them. Which makes us safer because most of the criminals don't have them either.

We don't have the mentality that because we can have them , we MUST have them!

[anothermorgan]

ORGAN DONORS... their hearts and brains seem to be unused !

[randomites]

Apparently Papua New Guinea is not a great place in which to practice witchcraft.