Warning: This article discusses violence against women.
A Catholic priest says a community-led shift in how Papua New Guineans handle grief could de-escalate sorcery-related violence in the country.
An elderly woman was rescued from a mob torturing her over allegations of practicing sorcery – locally known as sanguma – in Enga Province recently. It is estimated that up to 200 people are killed due to sorcery violence in PNG every year, with thousands more severely injured, tortured, mutilated and exiled.
Grief counselling key to ending sorcery related violence in PNG
Pacific Waves
Conversations about sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV) and the human rights issues surrounding it, have started again after the incident.
Sorcery related violence has been a social issue in the isolated highlands going as far back as the 1980s.
According to a 2024 study by the PNG National Research Institute, PNG’s legal system has struggled significantly to contain the issue.
The research found that although PNG repealed its colonial-era Sorcery Act to ensure attackers face standard murder and assault charges, enforcement remains incredibly weak.
Father Philip Gibbs, who has been in the highlands for over five decades, said what drives the violence is a cultural belief that nothing is ever coincidental.
“I think what’s behind it is a general feeling in Papua New Guinea that they don’t accept just accidents or something happening by chance. Usually, there’s a sense that there’s a personal grievance or someone’s behind it,” Fr Gibbs said.
“It’s not just a person that was suffered the the violence themselves, but sometimes it’s their close relatives, especially children, who are now suffering,” he said, as he recounted Papua New Guinean children begging and dying on the streets due to their mothers being accused as sorcerers
Fr Gibbs said awareness workshops by groups like Caritas, an arm of the Catholic church for humanitarian efforts, had been helping reduce the violence in Enga before this latest case.
“We’re kind of a bit hopeful that trying to discuss the reality of it and to get people to make some decisions that they really don’t want this sort of violence in their communities. That it will catch on, will spread,” he said.
He said more education needs to be done in areas like healthcare, where western and traditional worldviews collide.
“To be able to try to explain to people a scientific reason why someone would be ill or why someone died, rather than just telling them, ‘Well, it’s a village problem’, as they say in Pidgin, ‘Samting bilong ples’.
“But we try to convince the nurses and the doctors not to use that argument because that easily leads to accusations of sorcery.”
PNG Prime Minister James Marape has previously issued several strongly-worded statements, condemning sorcery related violence, calling it a “national shame”.
But advocates say the government is not doing enough to protect the victims and have called for tougher laws to address the issue.
According to Fr Gibbs, community-led conversation about how to deal with grief is the solution he has seen work.
“We’ve got to find other ways, rather than pointing to some person, often an older person, person who’s not well liked in the community, for instance. They’ve just got to realise that they’re really scapegoats, and they’ve got to do something about it,” Fr Gibbs said.
Enga Police commander Steven Harris has told local media that police would not tolerate SARV in any form.
However, the low rate of prosecutions for sorcery accusation related violence show there is a lot of work still to be done to reduce the tolerance of communities for this violence.
