Assailants stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday after one of the highest profile sorcery-related murders in this South Pacific island nation.

Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old who had a child, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before, police spokesman Dominic Kakas said.

She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, then set alight on a pile of car tires and trash in the Western Highlands provincial capital of Mount Hagen, Kakas said.

Sorcery has traditionally been countered by sorcery in Papuan New Guinean culture. But responses to sorcery allegations have become increasingly violent in recent years.

[link to abcnews.go.com]


This is ridiculous. I know Papua New Guinea is underdeveloped, but burning women alive for supposed witchcraft? And here I thought this was 2013. It's like Salem all over again. But this time I'm assuming they don't have ergotism. ( [link to en.wikipedia.org]

There are plenty of diseases the boy could have died of that are in no way related to witchcraft. At lease the government doesn't approve of the crime, so that's good, but still, it's pretty disturbing...