The International

In a manner strangely reminiscent of the witch hunts in early modern Europe, Papua New Guinea is currently experiencing an increase in “witch” persecutions. The same phenomenon has been observed on the African continent, particularly in Nigeria.

Witch persecutions

In Papua New Guinea, the targeted individuals are prevalently women, but in Nigeria the persecutions focus on children. Despite the distance between the Papuan and West African cultures, the scenario is similar: the so-called witches are blamed for deaths or diseases in the community, or held responsible for social ills. Sometimes they are considered witches simply because their behavior is unruly or socially unacceptable.

The ‘witches’ are singled out usually by men that wield spiritual power in the community: Christian pastors in Nigeria, or elder tribal councilmen in Papua. The sentence is banishment, torture or death. In Nigeria, it is usually parents or community ‘vigilantes’ that enact the penalties, while in Papua there are organized groups of ‘witch hunters’ whose only purpose is to mete out the punishment.

The experience of Nigerian Mary Sudnad, 10, reported by The Guardian, is perhaps typical. Mary’s brother fell ill and died, and the Christian pastor told her mother that his death was caused by Mary’s witchcraft. In response, her mother left her to be beaten by a gang of three ‘vigilantes’. The following day, after an attempt at exorcism, the mother threw caustic soda in Mary’s face before abandoning her on a field.

Despite the harshness of the punishments enacted against the ‘witches’, the local community often condones or even encourages the practice. As a Papuan witch hunter puts it, “It is part of my culture, my tradition, it’s my belief. I see myself as a guardian angel. We feel that we kill on good grounds and we’re working for the good of the people in the village." A Nigerian mother who had abandoned her child for being a witch said that her daughter gave her a mysterious stomach illness: “It was my daughter who had caused this, she drew all the water from my body”. Similarly, Christian pastors in Nigeria explain their practices as containing evil perpetrated by witch malefactors.

Brief history of witchcraft

Belief in witches and witchcraft has been held by traditional cultures throughout the globe, including Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Today, these beliefs survive in regions such as Africa, parts of India and Oceania. Witchcraft beliefs almost always take the form of small or larger scale persecution. The most famous one for Westerners was the early modern Europe witch hunts, when thousands of people were tortured and killed for being witches. However, the scale of the European witch hunts has never been established.

As early as 1937, anthropologist Evans-Pritchard attributed witchcraft accusations and witch hunts to a belief system that seeks to explain misfortune. In that sense, witchcraft beliefs are a method of making sense of evil and human suffering. Indeed, as Pastor Jack Urame from the Melanesian Institute of Papua New Guinea points out, “natural causes for death or illness are just not accepted…So whenever someone dies in a village, a person must blamed.”

Witchcraft on the rise

Official statistics of the witchcraft phenomena are notoriously lacking. A World Health Organization report observed in 2002 that every year more than 500 elderly women are killed in Tanzania alone. Despite the lack of agreed statistics, anecdotal evidence and empirical observations seem to suggest that witchcraft persecutions, far from decreasing as 20th century anthropologists had predicted, are in fact on the rise. In Papua New Guinea, the police has complained that the increasing number of witch persecutions has put major strains on the police force.

In Nigeria, according to The Telegraph, the number of children stigmatized as witches has grown at an alarming rate in the past ten years and have reached an estimated 15,000 in the Akwa Ibom state alone. A reason claimed for this, at least in Africa, is the influence of Christian pastors of Pentecostal or evangelical roots.

Response to witch persecutions

Witch persecutions and hunts have been treated ambivalently by governments and outside observers. Western anthropologists have avoided the issue of witch hunt ethics by focusing on detached, scientific perspectives and the values of cultural relativism. Governments have also generally refrained from drastic actions. In 2007, a UK Channel 4 documentary on Nigerian children witches prompted the Nigerian government to arrest self-styled bishop Okon Williams, accused of killing more than 110 children accused of being witches.

In Papua, the government officially recognizes witchcraft beliefs under the 1976 Sorcery Act, but condemns witch branding and killings. The escalation in witch persecution deaths has recently prompted the Papuan government to organize a parliamentary commission to investigate the situation in the view of toughening the legal framework.

Witch hunt impact

Witch persecutions affect mainly women and children, although male witches have sometimes been reported. Many witch children suffer incredible abuse, from beatings, starvations, burnings by caustic soda or torturing by nails driven in their head. Others are never found, being killed in forests or buried alive. It is usually parents that perpetrate these abuses, prompted forward by the preachers. In Guinea, the ‘witches’ – usually old women with no siblings to protect them – are usually tortured into confessing their ‘deed’ and then killed.

The road ahead

The issue of witchcraft persecutions is a thorny one, as it touches on sensitive issues such as cultural tolerance, human rights and respect for regional beliefs. The matter also reaches deep into social and philosophical questions of whether ethics are universal or whether outside intervention may imply reverting to 19th-century cultural imperialism. Many influential 20th century anthropologists argued that witchcraft acts as a self-regulatory practice that resolves community conflict.

In response, there are other voices that contend that witchcraft persecutions are infringing on basic human rights. In light of the size of the phenomenon, a dialogue between the different sides may be a good place to start a discussion of the social impact of witchcraft today.