Who suffers?
Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay
by Anton Lutz
Come for a walk with me. This woman was tortured last night by a large group of men. They burned her skin, raped her, cut her, poked her with heated wires and threatened her with death. She suffers.
This child who is crying, with tears and mucous smeared down her face, who heard her mother screaming all night and knew there was nothing she could do? She suffers.
This young man, the son. He wanted to go and help his mother, but no one would help him. He pushed into the house where she was being tortured, his own home, and made eye contact with her, but she shook her head at him, telling him not to fight for her. He fled into the darkness and wept all night, helpless. Will he take revenge? Will he seek reparations in the court? He suffers.
This man, the husband. This man, the father.
This woman, the old mother.
When someone is singled out and attacked, violated like this, not only does he or she suffer, but the whole family suffers.
Come walk with me. This man has been called a sorcerer by his community. He is a quiet man, a pastor. His eyes are sad. Is it his fault that his wife died of cancer? The children laugh at him when they see him: “See the sorcerer!” He suffers.
Come walk with me. This community is full of beautiful children. They cannot read and write because their school was burned to the ground and their teacher left. Why did she leave? Because one of the parents accused her of witchcraft. A generation of children in this village has zero chance of going to university because of the ignorance of one parent and the laziness and fear of the rest of the village who would not stand up to defend the teacher and their school. They all suffer.
Come walk with me. This community is engaged in a tribal fight with that community. Why? Someone waved a bamboo stick in the air and said that the other fellow did sorcery and made the other fellow die of coronavirus, so they chopped him into pieces. But his brothers didn’t appreciate that, so they burned the other fellows’ village down, so now they’re all homeless and trying to get revenge. Their wives and children suffer. They all suffer.
Come walk with me. This road is closed. This business has failed. This airstrip is unusable. This family is afraid to go back to the village. This parent is afraid to take her child to the clinic. This public servant is unwilling to go to work over there because those people might do sorcery on him.
Why? Why? Why? Because of Sorcery Accusation Related Violence. The beliefs that fuel it and the behaviors it generates are disastrous to individuals and communities.
We could go on and on.
How police who are afraid of sanguma don’t go help the citizens of PNG who need their help.
How pastors who should be bringing hope and light into the darkness are instead fueling the fantasies of heathens by telling them that witches are really real.
How politicians and corporates and internationals stand on the sidelines, shocked and perplexed and unsure of how to engage, unsure of what will help, unsure of whether it is their place to say something.
Who suffers? We all suffer. The human rights defenders. The nurses and doctors who have to deal with broken bodies. The care coordinators who try to find safe places for victims and their families to go. This is not easy.
Who suffers? The nation. Papua New Guinea sees itself as blessed by God. Yet how long will this blessing continue if justice is not done for innocent blood spilled? How long will the world turn a blind eye as Papua New Guineans build bonfires to burn the living bodies of their fellow citizens? The universe is watching what this generation is doing and what it is not doing. This era will be recorded in history, how the leaders of provinces, the leaders of churches, the people of Papua New Guinea either did, or did not, rise to the occasion and stand together to protect the citizens against Sorcery Accusation Related Violence.
But, I hear you say, how many people can this really be? I mean, come on.
1,553 cases in 4 years in 4 provinces
/4 = 388 per year in 4 provinces
/4 = 97 per year per province
x 22 provinces = 2,135 per year in PNG
This number: 2,135, is a rough calculation of how many people are being killed, tortured, chopped, chased out of their communities each year in Papua New Guinea. The direct victims of sorcery accusation related violence.
We need to add a huge unknown factor into this calculation, of course, and that is a diversity factor.
When the research was done on only 4 provinces, it found 97 cases per year per province. Obviously this does not mean that all the other provinces have 97 cases per year too. But almost all of them will have some. Morobe and Simbu might have more. East Sepik and Eastern Highlands might be about the same. Gulf and Central have no problems with sorcery related accusations and violence, or do they?
How many people are directly impacted and negatively affected by these accusations and violence in a year in PNG? No one knows because the research is not being done and the systems for reporting it are not in place.
For the sake of argument, I will set my diversity factor quite low, at only 30%. Some provinces may have more than 97 cases, and others may have fewer. If you don’t like my number, you can set up reporting networks in all 22 provinces over ten years and do the research and set the record straight.
2,135 per year x 30% diversity rate = 640 cases per year in PNG
x 10 people in an immediate family = 6,400 people directly affected by SARV annually.
This is 6,400 people in Papua New Guinea who feel unsafe in their own community each year.
6,400 people who are not sure if they will be attacked again. 6,400 more will be in the same situation next year. And the year after that.
This ever-growing crisis will not go away until we stand together and end the accusations and violence.
Only then will people be safe to live in their own communities. To raise their children there. To feel that they have a secure future where they do not have to worry about who will attack them.
To be truly free, however, we must also end the fear which stems from the ignorance and the false beliefs.