
Belief in black magic persists in Papua New Guinea - playhard
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/its-2013-and-theyre-burning-witches/558/
======
GuiA
This is horrific.

A good time to remember that if you're reading this, you are in the <0.001% of
humans privileged enough to live a life without having to worry about such
things on a daily basis.

Compared to things like that, our preoccupations seem so trivial, and I don't
know what we can do about it.

~~~
CamperBob2
There are several things you can do about it. Donate to <http://ncse.com>,
<http://ffrf.org>, <http://www.au.org> and/or similar orgs in your own
country.

Everything from witch-burning to the teaching of Creationist doctrines in
public schools is possible because we somehow still consider it not only
socially acceptable but _desirable_ to be superstitious in the twenty-first
century.

Civilization isn't a gift, and it didn't just happen. We had to _build_ it.
The people who are burning witches in New Guinea are not monsters, or aliens,
or mutants. They're us, and we're them. The only differences lie in the
decisions we make, as individuals and as a culture.

~~~
mc-lovin
Those organzations are nothing to do with the persecution of witchcrafit in
PNG. Did you even read the article.

If you want to stop these horrific acts of violence, it would be better to
give to the Catholic Church since it was a catholic nun who saved the woman in
that article.

Your prejudice against religion is as irrational as what you accuse religion
as being, since you put your secularist ideology ahead of the facts when you
lump completely unrelated phenomena together into the category of
"superstition".

~~~
jlgreco
What word do you prefer to superstition?

~~~
mc-lovin
It's the the word, it's the use of the category that I object to.

Imagine a person who says "everything from the holocaust, the the weathermen,
to Obamacare is possible once we accept collectivism". The problem with
statement is not that there is no such notion as collectivism, but that the
different manifestations of it are in no way comparable in terms of their
relationship to these forms of violence.

The person I was replying to was ignoring the important, immediate causes of
this event (which are described in the article), and focussing on the least
important factor, i.e. superstition in general.

~~~
jlgreco
Why would you say they are burning women as witches, if not superstition? "Why
could they believe that witches even exist?" seems like a pretty damn
important question to ask, but I suppose that is just my opinion.

Superstition must be fought with education if we are to fix these problems.
There are other ways to fight superstition, but they are almost universally
not palatable.

~~~
ceol
"Superstition" is just an outlet for these peoples' troubles, their fears, and
their anger. Coupled with truly despicable individuals who would take
advantage of this situation for power and pleasure, you can have such a mob
mentality in any of the "enlightened" communities.

Education certainly helps, and I'm not saying it wouldn't, but blaming this on
superstition as though that's the true cause is woefully misguided.

~~~
jlgreco
Despicable people will exist without superstition, but superstition has an
unprecedented ability to allow good people to feel okay about doing horrible
things. If superstition can be said to be a tool of the truly despicable, then
we must remove it.

Perhaps without superstition those men would find another way to rile up a
crowd into burning more women, but taking that tool from them is sure as hell
worth a shot. What is there to lose?

------
dylangs1030
_"She had dragged herself [...] into the clinic, her genitals burned and fused
beyond functional repair by the repeated intrusions of red-hot irons."_

 _What?_ This made me very angry. But how do we combat it if even law
officials are aware of it going on and don't do anything to stop it? There's
so much corruption, and the government legally acknowledges sorcery and
punishment for sorcery as valid.

In order for this to stop, the entire society and way of life would have to
change. Is the United Nations looking to do this? It needs to be done.

~~~
Cushman
> _What?_ This made me very angry.

And anger is what made this happen in the first place.

I'm not trying to draw any platitudes or grand truths here. Just... think on
that.

~~~
PavlovsCat
I don't even want to know on what planet mob lynchings and indignation at the
brutalization of a defenseless individual are the same thing, just "anger" --
but I suggest it be nuked from orbit, because one might just as well argue
it's sloppy thinking and the resulting stupidity that causes this crap. And by
crap I don't mean a group enacting punishment on an individual[1], but the
crooked ways in which they arrive at their judgement... because that a mob is
angry might be okay, great even; depending on what they're angry at, and how
they act on that anger.

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." -- Albert
Einstein

"Anger is a gift." -- Rage Against The Machine

[1] notice how even we have that, and that nobody is angry in the process does
not help someone who, say, has been framed and is sitting in prison for 20
years. Even if all inmates were excellent to each other all the time, even if
the prison food was delicious and varied and healthy, it would still suck, no?
How does anger even enter into any of it?

~~~
Cushman
> I don't even want to know on what planet mob lynchings and indignation at
> the brutalization of a defenseless individual are the same thing, just
> "anger"

It is the planet Earth, your home, and it is not as simple as you wish it
were.

Men who do and wish violence upon others -- and women, but mostly men -- claim
to for various reasons: money, power, fun. But it's blatantly obvious that we
live in a universe where escalation to violence is almost never the best way
to attain your desires.

But us mammals, we grew up in a much more dangerous world. We grew a brain
function to overrule _our own better judgment_ , to make us look tough when we
feel our weakest, to make us fight when we would retreat. Anger is the feeling
of wanting to do violence and _not knowing why_ , because there was no time to
ask questions.

But we have time now. Something unconscionable has happened, and we should ask
questions like "How do we fix the damage? Why did this happen? What could we
have done?" But anger seizes the thoughts of men -- and women, but mostly men
-- and transforms this into: "Who should suffer for this?"

Of course, no one in this thread is going to raise their hand because of this
(nor, I imagine, does anyone here have anything more productive to do). But
I'm not asking anyone here to change their behavior; just to think on it.

------
incision
Where/how does ritualized abuse/murder originate?

This article talks about PNG, but I recall reading of similar incidents in
various parts of Africa while the US has it's own fairly recent history of
lynching [0].

0: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States>

~~~
mynameishere
Huh? Most lynchings, both against either whites or blacks, were a result from
vigilante justice. It was completely illegal, but a result from accusations of
rape or murder, not witchcraft.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Most lynchings, both against either whites or blacks, were a result from
> vigilante justice. It was completely illegal, but a result from accusations
> of rape or murder, not witchcraft.

The fact that the _accusations_ were of rape or murder doesn't make the murder
any less ritualized.

~~~
tekromancr
I would argue that the United States death penalty is a form of ritualized
murder.

~~~
jlgreco
It is highly ritualized. The last meal, final words, gathering others to
watch... really the only way that you could say that it _isn't_ ritualized
murder is if you want to nitpick about _"when the government does it, that
means it is not murder"_.

~~~
Dylan16807
It's not about who does it, it's about whether there is a sufficiently fair
establishment of guilt. In a developed country anyone calm and reasonable
enough to be part of establishing a trial is extremely likely to let the
government handle the trial. But it's entirely possible to have a fair hearing
without involving the government. Once you've shown guilt of a sufficiently
heinous crime beyond reasonable doubt then from my point of view it's not
murder to kill them. It doesn't matter _who_ is doing that killing.

There are other, simpler circumstances where you can show guilt to a
reasonable degree, such as self-defense. If someone is shooting at you you can
shoot back, for example. No murder.

~~~
jlgreco
As I said, you can object to the terminology "murder", but that is as far as
the objections can go.

~~~
Dylan16807
My objection is to comparing it to lynching. Not on a technicality based on
who is performing the act, but based on the existence of a fair trial. Versus
a mob acting on mere accusation.

~~~
jlgreco
Fair enough, though it is essential to remember that the problems with
lynching are not just that the court system is not used. There have been many
lynchings that occurred after the trial and a guilty verdict (for example, the
infamous lynching of Jesse Washington, where he was dragged from the courtroom
immediately after being sentenced to death.)

Of course trials at that time and place were anything but fair, but we don't
generally refer to those state-run executions as lynchings (perhaps we
should).

~~~
Dylan16807
Well, if the mob wants to drag a guilty person out of the courtroom and kill
them via firing line or guillotine or proper hanging or some other quick
method, it's less than ideal but acceptable. Torture is a completely different
issue, and can never be justified as punishment.

~~~
jdotjdot
How could that possibly be acceptable? Not just the fact that it remains mob
justices, post trial or not, but what about appeals? Errors? New evidence?

And how is any of that not torture? Seems like your definition of torture is
just "doesn't result in death."

~~~
Dylan16807
Sometimes appeals are needed but that's getting far too into the picky details
of the court system. And if the evidence was wrong somehow it's probably not
going to get fixed: justice is wrong sometimes and the only solution is to
never jail anyone, that is not a debate for this conversation.

Anyway torture, simply defined, is an act causing extreme pain in someone. And
not just for five seconds. Hanging-done-wrong can be torture. Many ways of
killing someone are torture. But the fast methods are not. Tell me your
definition if it can somehow apply to the use of a guillotine.

------
nemo
In Papua New Guinea the prion based disease, Kuru, transmitted by cannibalism
was last reported in 2005. There is still cannibalism among the Korowai tribe.
Papua New Guinea has many corners that are a far, far different place from the
modern Western world.

~~~
rsync
Go ahead and peruse wikipedia for "prion diseases" ... it's a fascinating
subject with some very scary subtopics. Of particular note:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia>

... and the account of one patient who valiantly struggled to prolong his life
in the face of this disease.

------
fiatmoney
To be fair, the US was imprisoning witches as recently as 30 years ago.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse>

------
Nux
Take a good read, people. This is who we are.

Just different manifestations of the same problems, at a more archaic level.

I felt disgusted reading the article, but before pointing the finger look
what's happening in OUR "modern" society:

\- fanatic belief in all sorts of superstitions and stuff (christianity, islam
etc)

\- mass savage violence (war) against each other, even when above belief
forbids (love your neighbour, don't kill your neighbour etc)

\- incredible abuse against our mothers, sisters and daughters (rape, gang
rape, FGM, murder, beatings etc); not to mention abuse against children!

\- mass scale butchering of other species so we can be a race of fucking obese
creatures

That's how fucking elevated we are.

Our only hope, if any, is a good education.

------
Julianhearn
Sounds like guantanamo bay

"Two days earlier she had tried to rescue Angela (not her real name), an
accused witch, when she was first seized by a gang of merciless inquisitors
looking for someone to blame for the recent deaths of two young men. They had
stripped their quarry naked, blindfolded her, berated her with accusations and
slashed her with bush knives (machetes). The “dock” for her trial was a rusty
length of corrugated roofing, upon which she was displayed trussed and
helpless."

------
prawn
Belief in a lot of ridiculous stuff persists and is very mainstream depending
on your stance on general religious belief. It's hardly isolated to PNG.

I read an article recently about suggestions that the Japanese PM wasn't
moving into the prime ministerial home because it had a macabre history and
was thought to be haunted by ghosts. The official response was a denial, but
there seemed to be comments from other politicians suggesting that this was
not a ridiculous position to hold.

------
wildgift
What's with that headline. The real story seems to be that they are out of
control of their environment. It's been heavily invaded by modern society,
which is extracting natural resources. As people are harmed by modernity, they
can't figure out the reasons.

There are people in the US like this, too. Look at the lunatics in the
Westboro Baptist Church.

Or the Tea Party for that matter.

------
yannis
I am amazed as to how similar the word "sanguma" is to the Zulu word for a
traditional healer (and also an area of witch burning) "sangoma". Anyone can
offer some enlightenment on the linguistics?

------
Kekeli
Gruesome video of witch burning in Africa

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5qYhmf-
boE&bpctr=1369466...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5qYhmf-
boE&bpctr=1369466352)

Warning:Content is very Graphic

~~~
Fundlab
This was quite depressing to say the least. The fact that one is so helpless
against the hivemind and unable to defend oneself against such mob-driven
attacks makes me shrivel

------
codezero
Yes, let's go tell these backwards people their antiquated superstitions are
ridiculous. Emphasis on their... our own antiquated superstitions are
completely OK.

~~~
jlgreco
Who said that?

------
Hyrum_Graff
I lived in Papua New Guinea for over two years, teaching in a school not far
from a mining town. Sorcery was just a part of daily life. I remember a kid
telling me he would be off school for a week as he had to go back to his
village. When I asked him why he explained that one of his wantok's had been
killed by a sorcerer and he was going back to the village for payback.

Payback in general was very common. A kid was run over in our town and it was
all the police could do to stop the driver from being massacred by the kid's
family with bush-knives. It was lucky that most of our policemen were from
outside of the district so they had a disconnect from the local community. We
were advised that if we were ever driving and by accident ran over a dog or a
pig, we should get to the nearest police station as fast as possible, to
protect ourselves from payback.

What shocked me about the article was the torture that was described. I'd
never heard of this kind of thing back in 2000. Payback was usually brutal but
quick, whether it be retribution against a sorcerer or anyone else. I do have
to wonder where the concept of torturing victims has come from, as this seems
to be a fairly new development.

------
Muzza
I just want to take this moment to point out to all the good little leftists
of HN that we can learn so much from tribal life in Papua New Guinea:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/06/jared-
diamond-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/06/jared-diamond-
tribal-life-anthropology)

