Woman burned alive for 'sorcery' in Papua New Guinea

[Something completely different]

Papua New Guinea is here, in case you ask:

The woman, a mother aged 20 named as Kepari Leniata, was stripped, tied up and doused in petrol by the boy's relatives in Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands, said the National newspaper.

She was then thrown onto a fire in front of hundreds of people.

Police and firefighters were unable to intervene, the paper said.

The Post Courier newspaper said they had been outnumbered by the crowd and chased away. Both newspapers published graphic photos of the incident on their front pages.

Provincial police commander Supt Kaiglo Ambane told the National that police were treating the case as murder and would arrest those responsible.

In parts of the Pacific nation deaths and mysterious illnesses are sometimes blamed on suspected sorcerers. Several reports have emerged in recent years of accused people, usually women, being killed.

In 2009, after a string of such killings, the chairman of PNG's Constitutional Review and Law Reform Commission said defendants were using accusations of witchcraft as an excuse to kill people, and called for tougher legislation to tackle the issue.

Local Christian bishop David Piso told the National that sorcery-related killings were a growing problem, and urged the government "to come up with a law to stop such practice".

The US embassy in the capital, Port Moresby, condemned the killing as a "brutal murder", the AFP news agency reports, and evidence of "pervasive gender-based violence" in Papua New Guinea.

"There is no possible justification for this sort of violence. We hope that appropriate resources are devoted to identifying, prosecuting, and punishing those responsible for Ms Leniata's murder."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21363894



I didn`t post the existing pics and dont think they should.

[CapnAwesome]

It's crazy how superstitious the third world is. It just goes to show that education cures religion everywhere.

[downbeatplumb]

I don't know that education helps.
if I miss the bin with a crumpled up paper it means I will have a shit day. I know this is silly but hey its human nature to read more into things than there is right.

[Minimalist]

It's crazy how superstitious the third world is. It just goes to show that education cures religion everywhere.

Yep.







When you're right, you're right.

[CapnAwesome]

When you're right, you're right.

There are religious people in the first world. Almost the entire third world is religious. Anybody get burned to death for witchcraft in norway lately?

[Psykhronic]

It's crazy how superstitious the third world is. It just goes to show that education cures religion everywhere.

Yep.







When you're right, you're right.

WOW, RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE GATHERING. Easily the same as burning someone to death.

[Minimalist]

Just remember, it isn't "religion" that stops these excesses in the west. It is a secular society which will not tolerate their bullshit. This is why we must be vigilant about the growth of these superstitions.

[Anomalocaris]

A little background.

Papua New Guinea was populated by HSS very early, at least 60,000 years ago. The topography of Papua New Guinea is such that original population rapidly fragmented into many thousands of smaller, geographically highly isolated populations, that have remained essentially isolated from each other for the last 50,000 - 60,000 years.

So lengthy have been the isolation of different population that more linguistic families have evolved on that island as in the rest of the world combined. So extreme have been the isolation that two tribe in adjacent vallies might speak languages much more fundamentally different than Norwegian and Chinese.

As a result of this, no communication except sporatic skirmeshes existed between even bordering tribes. Most Papua New Guinean tribes' concept of "people" is literally restricted only to their own tribe. Anyone not from their own tribe is considered to not be merely disagreeable "others", but fundamentally evil spirits, demons, really, that must be killed on sight. This state of affaires persisted into the 1950s.

[KichigaiNeko]

A very vertical country.

They also have a religion based on Prince Phillip (Liz's hubby) I think.

[Drich]

Was she a sourcer or whatever they accused her of? Did she present herself that way?

Just saying if that region was known to burn witches then why be a witch? If she was a witch then she knew the risks involved. If a police officer gets shot and killed in a specific community for doing his job, does the BBC or any other self rightous group/person comdemn that whole community? Or do we seek justice by looking for the person or people who comitted the actual crime? Why should this be any different? Oh that's right the 'self righteous are on an ironic witch hunt to persecute the religious!