Sorcery violence taking new ugly forms: Kwa

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, August 7, 2016 (PNG)

THE incidences of sorcery related violence in the country has taken new forms, apart from its increased occurrences since 2013 when the Sorcery Act was repealed.

Making the revelations, Secretary from the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission (CLRC), Dr Eric Kwa, said the evolving forms at which trials of suspected sorcerers has been prevalent due to many attributing factors.

“We think that it is not because of the repeal of the law, but because of the changing socio-cultural economic situation of the country,” Dr Kwa said.

“There is a lot more awareness and a lot more the country is being opened up and we think that increase in the incidence of sorcery related killings is attributed to so many other factors.”

“The government has now responded to these increasing incidents or sorcery related violence by setting up an inter-agency government committee that is managed by the Department of Justice.”

Kwa pointed out some of the forms in which sorcery related violence were being adapted to modern forms, but maintaining what he described as medieval hunts and propaganda in society.

“I can tell you that it has taken on a very ugly form now in the sense that now they have got hired people who can be hired to target sorcerers and kill them.”

“We’ve got someone who has now placed on Facebook on how to kill sorcerer and how to extract confessions, which is almost like going back to the medieval times, but its already on Facebook.”

“There are now small groups of people going around saying that we can do this thing for you. A lot of the victims are innocent particularly women.”

Kwa said at the government level, apart from police, the committee does not have the money to go out and deal with the issue head on.

He added, however, that CLRC as a part of the inter-agency committee is supporting the initiative through its own activities.

“The main one we want to be engaged with is the plan to have a national conference in November in Lae to see the response of the Church to this.”

“It seems like the government is the only one trying to respond to this, and the churches are doing it but maybe in their own denominational setups.”

“We are trying to bring them together and deal with it as a church-church response taking a common approach to this evil that is spreading throughout this country. That is our contributions to the bigger debate of the national strategy.”

“We are hoping that by next year the government will be able to give us sufficient funding for advocacy, a lot more follow up, a lot more prosecution next year.”