ShortHand: Papua New Guinea's Black Magic Murders

Hannah Maguire (0:12)

Hello, hello, and welcome to another ShortHand, you're welcome.

In the village of Tukisanda, Papua New Guinea, in November 2017, a seven-year-old girl named Lily, and Lily's not her real name, I changed her name so that we don't say it, was abducted from her home by an angry mob. They carried Lily to a nearby hut where they tied her up, and tortured the young girl for hours. They beat her, they flayed her skin with hot machetes, and screamed accusations at seven-year-old Lily that she had stolen her cousin's heart and devoured it.

All the while Lily's cousin lay in the hut, groaning in pain. Whenever Lily was being hurt by the mob, the cousin would fall quiet. But when Lily was left alone, her cousin would start shrieking as though she was being attacked. This all but confirmed it. Lily was a witch and a practitioner of Sangama, black magic.

Suruthi Bala (1:13)

It was decided that Lily must have used her dark powers to steal the other girl's heart, making her gravely ill. Because after all, as the saying goes in Papua New Guinea, no one dies a natural death.

And it's because of this belief and the ideas of black magic that go with it that horrifically, Lily's story is not a unique one. In fact, what's officially termed sorcery related violence, so quite literally witch hunts, have been on the rise since 2013 in Papua New Guinea, and they're now at epidemic levels. How's that happened? You're going to find out because here is the ShortHand.

Hannah Maguire (1:52)

So Papua New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific, is truly, and this is no exaggeration, a jaw-droppingly beautiful country of immense cultural and biological diversity. If you listened to last week's RedHanded episode on the Bane family murders part 1, you'll know that it is truly unique anthropologically speaking, with genetic testing showing that its inhabitants have involved separately from the rest of the world's population for at least 50,000 years, making its traditions, cultures, and languages totally distinct.

Suruthi Bala (2:25)

But Papua New Guinea is also one of the poorest countries on earth. Corruption and inequality are through the roof, alongside shocking levels of violence, particularly against women and children. In many cases, this violence is thanks to accusations of witchcraft. And while to many of us literal witch hunts may sound like a thing of the past, a grisly historic relic of times gone by, sadly, that's just not the case in Papua New Guinea.

And over the past 20 years, on average, 72 incidents of torture and 30 deaths have been reported every year. And it's not a huge population.

Hannah Maguire (3:05)

And I also don't think that's the real number.

Suruthi Bala (3:08)

Yes, we suspect that the real number is much higher. And we suspect that because when you consider that NGOs in Papua New Guinea state that they rescue and evacuate on average 10 people a week who are at risk of torture and murder because they have been accused of being witches and certain districts have said that some months, up to 30 women are attacked. It does seem that that number is probably quite a lot higher.

Hannah Maguire (3:34)

Yes, I just think it's very, very hidden. It's very hidden.

So yes, the real numbers are completely impossible to know. Who would risk reporting a witch related or sorcery related murder for fear that they would be next on the mob's hit list?

And even if someone wanted to make a report like this, who would they report it to?

Because 85% of PNG's population live rurally. And honestly, when I was writing this, I was like, rurally feels like a massive fucking understatement. Because the topography of the country, which is what makes it so beautiful, also makes it incredibly hard to traverse. So many of the communities live in what's better described as isolation. With over half of the population of PNG living in these sort of like very, very isolated, very like jungle surroundings, they have no access to electricity, no running water, basic healthcare or education. And this is particularly true in the country's vast highlands. There's also no official police presence. So you have here what you have in so many other countries that are similar to this. You have village elders who have total power. So they make the laws, they run the tribal courts, and they are the ones to dish out judgments and punishments.

Suruthi Bala (4:52)

And often these accusations of wrongdoing lead to exponential bloodshed. For example, when a person is accused and killed, their firstborn will become the next target. The fear being that the child has inherited the evil. And that is exactly what happened to Lily. Her nightmare didn't start with her abduction into Cassandra. It started back on the 6th of February 2013, with the incident that kickstarted the rise in witch hunts across Papua New Guinea.