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.
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability
A Japanese city would urge all smartphone users to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school under a proposed ordinance that includes no penalties. The limit — which would be recommended for all residents in Toyoake City — would not be binding and there would be no penalties incurred for higher usage, the draft ordinance showed. The proposal aims “to prevent excessive use of devices causing physical and mental health issues... including sleep problems,” Mayor Masafumi Koki said yesterday. The draft urges elementary-school students to avoid smartphones after 9pm, and junior-high students and older are advised not
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
RSS