Witchcraft is the manipulation of powerful substances or words through magic to cause harm (McGarry, Karen. 2016. Manipulating the spiritual: witchcraft. Lecture given in Anthropology 1AB3, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, January 25th). Witch accusations and sorcery aren't new among the highlands and small villages in Papua New Guinea, there is a connection with religion and this topic. Africa is largely known for witchcraft and sorcery which gives this stigma to it, most cases of illness, bad luck/ misfortune, killings and political unrest is usually traced back to witchcraft in Africa. No one really questions biological/ socio-economical aspect of these problems, it is most of the time if not always traced back to witchcraft. Popularly,
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The witchcraft violence has its own acronym “SRK “which stands for Sorcery Related Killing (Jorgensen 2014. 2). at a span of three years, there were reported cases of killings. According to Jorgensen who was close to most of these victims and was aware of the stories behind the killings, they would torture and kill these people and tell lies to their family meanwhile their bodies had been dumped somewhere remote in the village, this led to their families escaping the village through air transportation because that was the only means of transportation out of the village. The men behind the killings were known as “The Boys”, According to Jorgensen, the first description he heard of them was that they were “useless” young men that didn’t attend school, had no jobs and no gardens to grow their marijuana but instead smoked marijuana all day (Jorgensen 2014, 11). An interesting subject that stood out was that all the victims had something in common be it high school students, family men, outstanding men in the society and they were everything the boys weren’t, so I ask this question, were the victims brutally murdered out of envy/ jealousy and hatred? Were they wrongly accused which gave the boys a reason to kill them? In that case, witchcraft killings/hunting isn’t really the subject matter of such violence and actions, it’s a personal affair. According to James L. Brian, those who were accused of witchcraft were people they were jealous of, that is the case in this situation. During the period between 2004 and 2011, Organ theft rumors began making the people of New Guinea suspect cases of witchcraft were someone kills another individual, drains the blood and sells the organs in Europe. Now the main question here is, why do these people believe in
The witchcraft violence has its own acronym “SRK “which stands for Sorcery Related Killing (Jorgensen 2014. 2). at a span of three years, there were reported cases of killings. According to Jorgensen who was close to most of these victims and was aware of the stories behind the killings, they would torture and kill these people and tell lies to their family meanwhile their bodies had been dumped somewhere remote in the village, this led to their families escaping the village through air transportation because that was the only means of transportation out of the village. The men behind the killings were known as “The Boys”, According to Jorgensen, the first description he heard of them was that they were “useless” young men that didn’t attend school, had no jobs and no gardens to grow their marijuana but instead smoked marijuana all day (Jorgensen 2014, 11). An interesting subject that stood out was that all the victims had something in common be it high school students, family men, outstanding men in the society and they were everything the boys weren’t, so I ask this question, were the victims brutally murdered out of envy/ jealousy and hatred? Were they wrongly accused which gave the boys a reason to kill them? In that case, witchcraft killings/hunting isn’t really the subject matter of such violence and actions, it’s a personal affair. According to James L. Brian, those who were accused of witchcraft were people they were jealous of, that is the case in this situation. During the period between 2004 and 2011, Organ theft rumors began making the people of New Guinea suspect cases of witchcraft were someone kills another individual, drains the blood and sells the organs in Europe. Now the main question here is, why do these people believe in