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Hundreds of bystanders, including many children, watched a 20-year-old mother accused of sorcery stripped and tortured, then burned alive in a Papua New Guinea Highland town of Mout Hagen.
Kepari Leniata was accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before.
More than 50 men participated, torturing her with a hot iron rod, binding her, and dousing her in gasoline before setting her ablaze with a pile of car tires and trash.
No one was arrested in the organized killing, said Deputy Police Commissioner Simon Kauba. He criticized Mount Hagen investigators for their inability to make a single arrest.
“The incident happened in broad daylight in front of hundreds of eyewitnesses and yet we haven’t picked up any suspects yet. I am very, very curious about that,” Kakas said.
There have been several reports in recent years of people accused of sorcery, in most cases women, being murdered.
In July 2012, police reportedly arrested 29 members of a witch-hunting gang who were allegedly murdering and cannibalizing people they suspected of sorcery.
In 2009, after a string of such killings, the country’s Law Reform Commission proposed to repeal the 1971 Sorcery Act, which criminalizes the practice.
‘Sorcery’ is also often used as a pretext to mask abuse of women, which was last year described as a “pervasive phenomenon” in PNG by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women.
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News category: Asia Pacific.
