Women tortured as witches and AIDS victims buried alive as fear grips Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea occupies the eastern half of the island New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Most of the area is mountainous. The country hosts hundreds of indigenous ethnic groups who speak over 800 different languages. The majority of the population lives in traditional societies and practice subsistence level agriculture. The country gained its independence from Australia in 1975.

The New Guinea nation is facing an AIDS catastrophe with HIV diagnoses having risen by 30 percent since 1997. The epidemic accounts for 90 percent of the HIV infections in the Oceania region.

The spread of the disease has sparked violence against women accused of witchcraft and being responsible for causing HIV/AIDS. The accusations have resulted in torture and murder. There were an estimated 500 such attacks last year.

This from The National:

The way a woman walks can be a death sentence in Papua New Guinea, where the ancient world of witchcraft has collided brutally with the modern plague of AIDS.

Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered by mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable deaths of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and researchers say.

How the women are singled out for such a fate can be as cruel as their treatment, said Joe Kanekane of PNG's Law and Justice Sector Secretariat.

"People believe a witch would behave in a certain way, would walk in a certain way. That's all the basis that they have and there's realistically no tangible substance to it," he told AFP.

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"Sorcery, witchcraft and other supernatural forces are widely blamed for causing HIV/AIDS," the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia said in a recent analysis."Accusations of sorcery have resulted in torture and murder. The mysterious' deaths of relatively young people, thought to be deaths from HIV/AIDS, are being blamed on women practicing witchcraft.

"There are reports of women being tortured for days in efforts to extract confessions," wrote research fellow Miranda Tobias.

"Women have been beaten, stabbed, cut with knives, sexually assaulted and burnt with hot irons. One woman had her uterus ripped out with a steel hook.

"It is estimated that there have been 500 such attacks in the past year," the independent think tank said.

In one recent example in the port city of Lae, two alleged witches blamed for a young man's death were tortured and then set on fire by an "animalistic and inhuman" mob, said regional police chief Giossi Labi.

The fates of innocent women accused of witchcraft are not the only ones suffering from the fear gripping the countryside. There are reports of AIDS victims being buried alive. This from the BBC:

Some people with HIV/Aids in Papua New Guinea are being buried alive by their relatives, a health worker says.

Margaret Marabe said families were taking the extreme action because they could no longer look after sufferers or feared catching the disease themselves.

Ms Marabe said she saw the "live burials" with her own eyes during a five-month trip to PNG's remote Southern Highlands.

PNG is in the grip of an HIV/Aids epidemic - the worst in the region.

An estimated 2% of the six million population are believed to be infected, and HIV diagnoses rise by around 30% each year.

International health agencies have warned action must be taken to prevent hundreds of thousands of people becoming infected.

Margaret Marabe, a known local activist in PNG, carried out an awareness campaign in the Tari area of the Southern Highlands earlier this year.

"I saw three people with my own eyes. When they got very sick and people could not look after them, they buried them," she told reporters.

She described how one person called out "mama, mama" as the soil was being shovelled over their head.

Villagers told her that such action was common, she said.