In 2008 a man died of malaria in Togoba, in Papua New Guinea’s highlands region. Doctors had treated him for malaria and the report on his death specified malaria as the cause. Neighbours who went to the hospital were told it was malaria that killed him.
But the residents of Togoba didn’t believe in malaria. He was killed by sorcerers, they said, specifically a woman called Thresia Hari and her mother-in-law, who must have killed him with their “powers”. Thresia was from Chimbu province, a region known for its sorcery, or sanguma.
To be certain, the villagers captured the two women and tortured them until they confessed, then set them alight in a horrific dispensation of summary justice.
Sitting in a quiet Togoba garden, amid the lush mountain rainforest, it is harrowing to hear Thresia’s widower, Hari Puri, describe the ordeal.
“When they interrogated them it was really brutal,” he says through a translator. “Both of them said they didn’t do anything. Then [the villagers] started getting knives, bashed them up, started to cut their arms and legs.
“They got the hot rods from the fire and put them on their skin. It was a hell of a thing they went through. It was really a terrible event.”
Puri says the two women lost consciousness.
“Both of them were locked inside the house – a traditional hut house – and they closed the door and burned the house.”
Puri tried to help his wife and mother when he heard what his neighbours were doing, but he was stopped from rescuing them.
“I couldn’t do anything, I was helpless. Because the majority of the community people were on the side of the person who died and they were thinking these two were behind the man’s death.”
Until recently, many remote places in PNG had little to no contact with the outside world. Now they have camera phones. The speed at which the highlands have modernised has swept away some old practices, but traditional beliefs in sorcery remain. The area around Mount Hagen does not have a reputation for sorcery among those who believe in it, but it has hosted some of the most gruesome murders.
Puri’s wife and mother were far from the first to die, nor the last.
Just a few days after the Guardian sat with Puri, PNG seemed to finally find a case brutal enough to shock the country. In Sirunki, Enga province, a six-year-old girl was accused of sanguma and tortured with hot knives.
She survived after Lutheran missionary and highlands resident Anton Lutz convinced the community to release her and her guardian. She was taken to hospital and treated for her injuries.
Pictures of her tiny burned body shamed the populace. Politicians stepped up and condemned the attack. Newspapers wrote strident editorials. Enough was finally enough.
The prime minister, Peter O’Neill, labelled the alleged torturers “cowards who are looking for someone to blame because of their own failure in life”.
“Let’s be clear, sanguma beliefs are absolute rubbish,” he said.
O’Neill invoked God, his nation’s reputation, and the rule of law in vowing action.
“In the modern day sanguma is not a real cultural practice, it is false belief and involves the violent abuse and torture of women and girls by pathetic and perverted individuals.”
The last time PNG had been this upset about a sorcery-accusation was in 2013, when the young girl’s mother, Kepari Leniata, was burned alive on a stack of tyres.
“Because of the mother, they believed the child was a probable suspect for anything that happened in the village,” Lutz says. “So when there were repeated illnesses in the village, and even a death, it was blamed on the child.”
The mother’s death prompted a long overdue change in PNG law – until that year suspecting someone of sorcery was a legitimate legal defence for murder. But since then little has changed. In fact the frequency of attacks appears to be increasing.
PNG is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women and girls, but a recent study by Oxfam and the Queensland University of Technology suggested sorcery violence also targeted many men.
The report looked at 232 incidents over three years, and found about 56% of victims were women. More than a third said they had some kind of disability. The study found 89% of perpetrators were men.
There are many theories about why the phenomenon is growing – PNG’s dysfunctional education system, the spread of beliefs through intermarriage between people from different regions or the fact that perpetrators know they will have broad public support.
“[The villagers] were very concerned the girl or her guardian would tell the police who had done the torture and the police would show up and arrest people,” says Lutz.
“There was a feeling in the village ... that boys who did this horrific torture were naughty, but certainly not guilty of a major crime for which they should be imprisoned or even killed.”
The PNG Tribal Foundation, which assisted in the young girl’s rescue, says she is recovering well, and will be supported in a place far from the village where the crime took place.
Only one man has been arrested and charged over any of the dozens of recent incidents. The director of the foundation, Ruth Kissam, has called for justice.
“Nothing will change as long as those who perpetrate accusation-based violence continue to be allowed to carry out their barbaric acts with impunity,” she says.
Enga’s acting police provincial police commander, Epenes Nili, has stood up publicly against sorcery-related violence. Because of his work he was appointed to jointly head a national taskforce, which – like many well-intentioned PNG bodies – has received little to no funding.
Since the attack on the young girl the government has launched another task force.
From a small and rundown office, Nili says his force does not have the resources to respond. He has repeatedly requested funding for an investigations desk devoted to sorcery and a dedicated vehicle.
In previous interviews with the Guardian, Nili has said his officers often don’t have petrol to pursue investigations. The PNG economy is in trouble and flagged budget cuts are reportedly not sparing the police force, although perhaps in response to the growing outrage the PNG government allocated about $4m in its recent budget for awareness campaigns.
Despite this, the lack of resources for police and health providers means emergency situations are frequently left to a grassroots network of first responders such as Lutz and Kissam.
Just hours after the interview with Nili, he and Lutz rescued three women about an hour’s drive from Mount Hagen. For their own protection, the victims were kept in police station cells for three days because there were virtually no support services for them.
They have more shocking tales of violence than one would care to hear. Lutz recounts one, describing it as “bloodlust hysteria”. He shakes his head recalling the callous and casual confession of a man who “chopped up” his own wife.
Some stories stay with him more than others. In September Lutz heard of two women, Yakol Anton and Shirley Kangup, who were kidnapped and detained by villagers in Wapanamanda.
Anton had been with a third woman and the woman’s child in Pompobus, Enga province, but shortly after they separated the child died. Villagers assumed Anton had caused the child’s death so they grabbed her and began torturing her.
At that moment Kangup was travelling home by bus from Wabag but was dropped off at the wrong stop.
“She had her market shopping over her shoulder, and she started walking down the road,” Lutz says.
“As she walked into the area where this woman was being tortured, they grabbed her and questioned her and said: ‘Why are you here?’. She was a grade 12 student with some kind of a speech impediment, so she was hesitating with her answers in a way they took to be suspicious. So they began torturing her too.”
Under torture the two women confessed to anything they were asked, Lutz says.
Lutz received word about the attacks late at night and tried to raise the police. The following morning – more than 24 hours after the torture began – a team of officers arrived, but it was too late for Anton.
Kangup was still alive – barely. She was taken to hospital, but then people yelled through the windows and she received no treatment. Lutz sourced a vehicle and moved her himself that evening. Kangup was still alive when she got medical help, but died almost a week later.
“Her mother, Miriam, had come with her, and she was still carrying the bag of shopping with some greens and a bit of rice and some tin fish. Like it was her evidence that ‘my daughter is innocent, she was coming home with her shopping, and now she’s dead, tortured’.
“She was carrying this bag around like a totem or something.”
There have been no arrests that Lutz is aware of.
While terrible crimes are still committed, local organisations and increased media support are having an impact, says Oxfam PNG’s programs director, Charlotte Kakebeeke. NGOs such as Oxfam and the Red Cross work with victims and communities.
The Red Cross focuses on inter-tribal violence, but in the PNG highlands this often involves – or is sparked by – sorcery accusations.
“People not from PNG find it mind-boggling,” says one man.
The Guardian asked to talk to someone involved in an accusation.
“Who? Like my uncle, or brothers, or father?” one man responds. “We’ve all seen our relatives accuse other people of sorcery.”
Highlanders see the violent consequences from accusations of sorcery, but they also say they have also seen “evidence” of sorcery itself. These contradictions mean those who work to stop the violence work in a strange space that still legitimises sanguma belief.
Many who rescue the victims and who seek to educate communities are Christians. How does someone of one faith tell others their belief is simply superstition? Is that even the most effective way to address it?
“There is a lot of conversation happening and there are two main strands of it,” Lutz says. “One is that people are horrified that this is happening in their country, and saying the people who are doing this are barbarians and cavemen, and they are quite derogatory in their comments. That’s both within Papua New Guinea as well as overseas.
“But there is also a strand of people saying: this is a spiritual problem and we can’t deny the reality of witchcraft and sorcery, and you as a Christian should know better, Anton, and you should shut up if you don’t believe in it.
“I’m not sure if the two sides are able to communicate with each other. I think they are talking past each other.”
Back in Togoba, Puri has no answers. Since the murder of his wife and mother, time has passed without consequence or justice.
Puri still lives in the community where they were killed, with three of his four children. The oldest child, the only one who was likely to remember their mother, died at the age of 15. He holds some fear the others could one day be accused on the basis of bloodlines, as Leniata’s daughter was.
Puri has no belief in sanguma, putting his faith in the Christian God and his own ability to raise his children.
“People die from other stuff and then people place blame,” he says. “I’ve been through it, I don’t believe in it. It’s zero. It’s just a word.”
• The Guardian travelled to PNG with the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
