Suppose you’re teaching school. A colleague dies. An angry mob decides you’re a witch so they decapitate you.
It’s an unimaginable horror that recently happened in Papua New Guinea. But the new prime minister has vowed to repeal the “Sorcery Act” after a string of brutal public killings.
Mr. O’Neill, responding on Thursday to a question from a reporter about that killing, pledged to repeal the 1971 Sorcery Act, which criminalizes the practice of sorcery and recognizes the accusation of sorcery as a defense in murder cases. Critics of the law say that it encourages violence against people accused of being sorcerers by codifying black magic as a legal phenomenon.
“We have quite a lot of issues on the table, so please give us a chance to work on it,” Mr. O’Neill told the reporter. “Realistically, a few sessions away, we will be able to put an act to Parliament to stop this nonsense about witchcraft and all the other sorceries that are really barbaric in itself.”
It’s refreshing to hear him call it “nonsense.” Small comfort for all the “sorcerers” killed and abused due to this archaic act. Plus, the horrific nature of this “nonsense” continues.
Last July, police officers arrested 29 members of a witch-hunting gang who were murdering and cannibalizing people they suspected of being sorcerers.
Unbelievable. We live in the 21 century. There’s no excuse for this.
