Police save 'sorcerers' after mob try to burn them alive


The women were accused of killing an eight-year-old girl in Mount Hagen, the same city where a crowd burnt a 20-year-old mother last week after stripping her naked and beating her in a killing that shocked the world.
A police commander, Teddy Tei, said an angry crowd claimed two elderly women had killed the eight-year-old, but that police believed she had been "gang-raped and killed by two known suspects".
The suspects were among the crowd attacking the women, who were tied to poles and about to be burnt. Also present was a "glassman" - a man who claimed to have supernatural powers and who had identified the luckless women as sorcerers and claimed they were responsible for the child's death.
About 20 people were arrested.
The incident follows the killing two weeks ago of Kepari Leniata, 20, who was reportedly tortured with a branding iron and tied up, doused with fuel and burnt on a pile of rubbish topped with car tyres, while a crowd including children looked on. She was accused of using sorcery to kill a six-year-old boy.
he United Nations denounced the killing and called on the government and authorities to prevent attacks on alleged sorcerers.
"We urge the government to put an end to these crimes and to bring perpetrators of attacks and killings to justice through thorough, prompt and impartial investigations in accordance with international law," said Cecile Pouilly, a spokeswoman for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Belief in sorcery and witchcraft is widespread in the poverty-stricken Commonwealth nation, which has a controversial Sorcery Act aimed at preventing attacks on people accused of practicing black magic.
The act is under review and the PNG Constitutional and Law Reform Commission has recommended that it be repealed.


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