This week Life Matters is discussing superstition in Papua New Guinea, to coincide with a major conference on witchcraft and sorcery hosted by the Australian National University. The ANU's Dr Richard Eves and Dr Miranda Forsyth say that despite the intervention of western health organisations, unexpected deaths in Australia's nearest neighbour are often blamed on vengeful spirits and suspects are brutally punished.

In February this year, people around the world were deeply shocked when a young Papua New Guinean woman, accused of being a witch and causing the death of a six-year-old child, was stripped naked, brutally tortured, doused with petrol and set on fire in front of hundreds of assenting onlookers.

Both Amnesty International and the United Nations rebuked the government of Papua New Guinea for its failure to protect its citizens or to uphold the international human rights conventions to which the country is a signatory. The United Nations Country Team in Papua New Guinea urged 'the Government to take urgent action to end these harmful phenomena and to conduct fair and thorough investigations to arrest and prosecute perpetrators through the Criminal Code, and in accordance with its international obligations'. Many Papua New Guinean citizens expressed their deep-felt shame that this could occur in their country, and the prime minister Peter O’Neill condemned the killing as 'barbaric and inhuman'.

This situation has not been helped by the 1971 Sorcery Act, which many believe gives credence to sorcery and witchcraft. Moves are being made to repeal the Act, but in any event considerable thought needs to be put into deciding upon an alternative regulatory response.

This brutal event has renewed interest in finding solutions to the problem of attacks on alleged witches and sorcerers. Sorcery and witchcraft are still very widely accepted in Papua New Guinea as effective and powerful forms of magic, despite many years of exposure to western education and biomedicine. In many parts of the country, all deaths except for those of the elderly are strongly suspected of having been caused by a malevolent agent, in the form of a sorcerer, witch or vengeful spirit. The serious decline of the health system, despite the efforts of donor agencies such as AusAID, means that people are often unaware that other reasons for an illness or death exist.

The decline of the health system also means that outbreaks of preventable diseases can reach epidemic proportions. A clear connection exists between epidemics of illness and epidemics of sorcery and witchcraft accusations. The anthropologist Inge Riebe has argued that the emergence of witchcraft beliefs in the late nineteenth century was a consequence of the epidemics of diseases that have been introduced into Papua New Guinea by Europeans. Recently, an Australian National University anthropologist, Dr Nicole Haley, observed that an epidemic of AIDS-related deaths in the highlands region where she worked led to an epidemic of witchcraft accusations and their horrific consequences.

During the colonial period, when Papua New Guinea was administered first by Britain and Germany and later by Australia, attacks on accused sorcerers and witches were largely suppressed, but today they are frequent. Police in one of the worst affected highlands provinces, Chimbu, have estimated that the death toll is approximately twenty people per month. The recent attacks are not to be understood simply as a vestige of tradition in the modern world for they have several new features. They are increasingly taking the form of public spectacles in urban spaces; there is increasing preponderance of women victims, who are subjected to forms of sadistic sexualised violence; the perpetrators are acting with impunity, and in some cases the police stand by while the accused are subjected to torture before being killed. Previously, the accused were killed in a far less sadistic manner.

Witchcraft in Papua New Guinea Listen to Life Matters' discussion of witchcraft in PNG.

The reach of the PNG state, and particularly of those who are meant to be upholding the law, the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC), barely extends beyond the cities and towns. The RPNGC is severely understaffed and under-resourced for the size of the population. Compounding this, many police have little desire to confront the perpetrators of these vicious attacks because they subscribe to the same beliefs themselves. This situation has not been helped by the 1971 Sorcery Act, which many believe gives credence to sorcery and witchcraft. Moves are being made to repeal the Act, but in any event considerable thought needs to be put into deciding upon an alternative regulatory response. Belief in sorcery and witchcraft is so deeply embedded in Papua New Guinea that the problem will not be solved so easily as repealing a piece of legislation. One proposal put forward by the Constitutional Law Reform Commission, which has been tasked by the Government to propose a new Act, is that alleged sorcerers should be dealt with by village courts using customary law. However, the risk is that if this proposal were to be adopted, the vigilante attacks and killings would continue with impunity. Clearly this is a complex problem that will not be solved by legislation alone.

The Papua New Guinea state is failing miserably in its duty of care to protect its citizens, but increasing numbers of courageous individuals are acting to try to prevent these human rights abuses. At the forefront is the Highlands Women Human Rights Defenders Movement, who with the support of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and international non-government organisations such as the International Women’s Development Agency and Oxfam, are risking their lives to speak out against these crimes and to offer protection to the victims of attacks and to the accused.

Dr Richard Eves is a Senior Fellow in the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program and Dr Miranda Forsyth is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Regulatory Institutions Network, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU. They are organising the Sorcery and Witchcraft-Related Killings in Melanesia: Culture, Law and Human Rights Perspectives conference at the Australian National University, June 5-7, 2013. Find out more at Life Matters.