Papua New Guinea will toughen laws against sorcery-related killings after a surge in murders of people accused of witchcraft, reports said yesterday.
The Constitutional Review and Law Reform Commission will strengthen the laws after more than 50 people were killed in sorcery-related murders over the past year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said.
Commission chairman Joe Mek Teine said people in the country’s volatile Highlands region were using accusations of witchcraft to get rid of people.
“It’s the easy way out for someone to kill somebody else, and use sorcery as an excuse,” he told the broadcaster.
“And you would find that the victim is totally innocent,” he said.
Mek Teine said the new laws could force rural courts to be harder on defendants in cases involving sorcery-related killings.
The Post-Courier newspaper quoted him as saying “a lot of people are being killed on allegations of sorcery.”
The newspaper said that many victims of these crimes, especially women and older men, were murdered after being accused of causing deaths through sorcery.
“It is a problem that has been existing in the country before the arrival of Western influence and it’s deeply rooted,” Mek Teine told the paper on Thursday.
“The churches have done a lot to improve it but it’s getting worse every time,” he said.
Last week, a young woman was stripped naked, gagged and burnt alive at the stake in the Highlands town of Mount Hagen in what some speculated was a sorcery-related crime.
Reports said the victim could have been accused of sorcery, adultery or of passing on HIV/AIDS to one of her killers.
“If it is alleged she was a sorcerer, this is yet one more example of hysteria and superstition running rampant in parts of our country,” the Post-Courier said in an editorial at the time.
RE-EDUCATION: The ambassador to Australia told reporters that he understood there ‘might be a process for the people in Taiwan to have a correct understanding of China’ China’s ambassador to Australia yesterday said that Beijing is prepared to use “all necessary means” to prevent Taiwan from being independent, saying there can be “no compromise” on its “one China” principle. Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian (肖千) repeatedly told the National Press Club in Canberra that the US was to blame for the recent escalation in tensions, adding that China’s decision to launch ballistic missiles in live-fire exercises in response to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan was “legitimate and justified.” Xiao said that after a “good start” with the new government of Australian Prime Minister
Newly married and with his first child on the way, auto worker Wang (王) wanted to move into the apartment he bought in Wuhan three years ago, but those hopes were dashed by China’s ballooning property crisis. Saddled with nearly US$300,000 in debt and with his unit nowhere near completion, the 34-year-old decided he had enough and stopped making mortgage payments. He is among numerous home buyers across dozens of cities in China who have boycotted payments over fears that their properties will not be completed by cash-strapped, debt-laden developers. “They said construction would resume soon,” Wang said, only giving his surname. “But
PROPAGANDA LEAFLETS: Seoul voiced ‘strong regret’ as Kim’s sister threatened to eradicate South Korean authorities for sending the virus across the border North Korean leader Kim Jong-un suffered from a “high fever” during a recent COVID-19 outbreak, his sister Kim Yo-jong said yesterday, as she vowed to “eradicate” South Korean authorities if they continued to tolerate propaganda leaflets the regime blames for spreading the virus. Kim Yo-jong blamed “South Korean puppets” for sending “dirty objects” across the border in leaflets carried by balloons, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. The revelation of her brother’s illness marked an unusual admission for a regime that rarely comments on the leader’s health — and then only to show that he shares the struggles of
A landmark sexual harassment case in China yesterday returned to court after an earlier ruling dealt a blow to the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement. Zhou Xiaoxuan (周曉璇) stepped forward in 2018 to accuse state TV host Zhu Jun (朱軍) of forcibly kissing and groping her during her 2014 internship at the broadcaster. While the case of Zhou, now 29, inspired many others to share their experiences of sexual assault publicly and sparked a social media storm, a court ruled last year there was insufficient evidence to back her allegation. Zhou appealed, and returned to court for another hearing yesterday in Beijing. “I still feel
RSS