WUNRN
Persecution
of Witches, 21st Century Style
Credit Bill Bragg
Most
people believe that the persecution of “witches” reached its height in the
early 1690s with the trials in Salem, Mass., but it is a grim paradox of
21st-century life that violence against people accused of sorcery is very much
still with us. Far from fading away, thanks to digital interconnectedness and
economic development, witch hunting has become a growing, global problem.
In
recent years, there has been a spate of attacks against people accused of
witchcraft in Africa, the Pacific and Latin America, and even among immigrant
communities in the United States and Western Europe. Researchers with United
Nations refugee and human rights agencies have estimated the
murders of supposed witches as numbering in the thousands each year, while
beatings and banishments could run into the millions. “This is becoming an
international problem — it is a form of persecution and violence that is
spreading around the globe,” Jeff Crisp, an official with the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees, told
a panel in 2009, the last year in which an international body studied the
full dimensions of the problem. A report
that year from the same agency and a Unicef study
in 2010 both found a rise, especially in Africa, of violence and child
abuse linked to witchcraft accusations.
More
recent media reports suggest a disturbing pattern of mutilation and murder.
Last year, a mob in Papua New Guinea burned
alive a young mother, Kepari Leniata, 20, who was suspected of sorcery.
This highly publicized case followed
a series of instances over recent years of lethal group violence against
women and men accused of witchcraft.
“These
are becoming all too common in certain parts of the country,” said
the prime minister, Peter O’Neill. Last year, Papua New Guinea finally repealed a 1971 law that
permitted attackers to cite intent to combat witchcraft as a legal defense. But
progress is slow. Although the police charged a man and woman in connection
with the 2013 killing of Ms. Leniata, no one has faced trial, a fact that drew
protest from Amnesty International in February.
One
of the ugliest aspects of these crimes is their brutality. Victims are often
burned alive, as in Ms. Leniata’s case and a 2012 case
in Nepal; or accused women are sometimes beaten to death, as
occurred in the Colombian town of Santa Barbara in 2012; or the victims may
be stoned or beheaded, as has been reported
in Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa.
It
is tempting to point to poverty in the developing world, as well as
scapegoating, as the chief causes of anti-witch attacks — and such forces are
undoubtedly at work. But while Africa and the southwestern Pacific have a long
history of economic misery, much of this violence, especially against children,
has worsened since 2000. The surge suggests forces other than economic
resentment or ancient superstition.
In
some communities, it is chiefly young men who take on the role of witch
hunters, suggesting that they may see it as a way to earn prestige by cleansing
undesirables and enforcing social mores. That many of the self-appointed witch
hunters are men highlights another baleful aspect of the phenomenon: The
majority of victims are women. The Rev. Jack Urame of the Melanesian Institute,
a Papua New Guinean human rights agency, estimates
that witchcraft-related violence there is directed 5 to 1 against women,
suggesting that witchcraft accusations are used to cloak gender-based violence.
Another
factor, particularly in Central Africa and its diaspora communities, is the
advent of revivalist churches, in which self-styled pastor-prophets rail
against witchery and demon possession. They often claim to specialize in the
casting out of evil spirits, sometimes charging for the service. Many of those
congregations have emerged from Western evangelizing efforts.
One
of Nigeria’s most popular Pentecostal preachers, Helen Ukpabio,
wrote that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is
always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.” As
that implies, children in those communities are especially likely to be
identified as possessed. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights reported
that most of the 25,000 to 50,000 children who live on the streets of Kinshasa,
the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, were abandoned by family
members who accused them of witchcraft or demonic possession.
The
etiology of this epidemic is complex, but human rights observers point to
overpopulation, rapid urbanization and the hardship of parents forced to
relocate to seek work, as well as the sheer stresses of raising children amid
dire poverty. Superstitions are stoked by local “healers,” who charge parents
to exorcise evil spirits.
Witch
hunting is far from limited, however, to acts of sadistic vigilantism or
profiteering. Some legal systems even sanction the killing of accused witches.
In
2011, courts in Saudi Arabia sentenced
a man and a woman, in separate cases, to beheading after convictions for
sorcery. In 2013, Saudi courts sentenced
two Asian housemaids to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison on charges of
casting spells against their employers.
A
Lebanese television psychic, Ali Hussain Sibat, was arrested in 2008, while on
pilgrimage to Medina, by the Saudi religious police for hosting a television
show in his native Lebanon, “The Hidden,” where he would make predictions and
prescribe love potions and spells. After an outcry by Amnesty International and
others, the Saudi courts stayed Mr. Sibat’s execution by beheading, but
sentenced him in 2010 to a 15-year prison term.
As
in Africa, the wave of anti-witch activity in Saudi Arabia is fairly new. The
Saudi religious police devised an Anti-Witchcraft
Unit in 2009, resulting in the arrests of 215 alleged “conjurers” in 2012.
Some observers attribute this sudden interest in witchery to the royal family’s
attempts to appease its religious inquisitors by keeping them busy targeting a
handful of vulnerable individuals.
A
final motive driving modern witch hunting may be more venal than spiritual: The
police in Indonesia, where there were about 100 suspected witch killings in
2000, point
to fraud and graft directed against vulnerable women, who, lacking family or
community protection, fall prey to banishment or murder on slim pretexts, while
their homes and property are seized by their accusers.
Globalization
means that paranoia over black magic and spirit possession are no longer
confined to developing nations. Mass migration has made this a pervasive
problem. In January, a Queens, N.Y., man was arrested
for beating to death with a hammer his girlfriend, Estrella Castaneda, 56, and
her daughter, Lina Castaneda, 25; Carlos Alberto Amarillo told the police that
the women were “witches,” who had been “performing voodoo and casting spells”
on him. (Voodoo, more properly known as Vodou, is an authentic Afro-Caribbean
faith based in deity worship and ritual, practiced in New York and many
American cities. Other belief systems that retain or reinvent ancient nature
worship and spell practices sometimes go under the names of Wicca or
neo-paganism.)
It
has not been confirmed whether the Queens victims had ties to Vodou (neither
they nor the suspect were Afro-Caribbean). Accusations like those made by Mr.
Amarillo, who is under psychiatric evaluation, often prove unreliable or are
misreported in a sensationalist way. But the theme has nonetheless become
alarmingly familiar in Western news coverage.
In
2012, The Guardian reported
that London police had during the last decade investigated 81 cases of “ritual
abuse” of children accused of possession or witchcraft, a phenomenon that
British social agencies fear
is on the rise, particularly within African immigrant communities. In 2010,
a 15-year-old boy, Kristy
Bamu, was tortured and killed in East London by his older sister and her
boyfriend, both Congolese, who had accused him of sorcery after he wet his bed.
In the wake of that case, the British police started to receive special
training on witchcraft-related abuse.
Because
anti-witch violence is rooted in the belief systems of traditional societies,
it would be easy to slip into the fatalistic view that this crisis is a tragic
repetition of ancient aggressions. But where local superstitions explode into
violence or migrate across a wide range of settings and societies, we can and
must act.
Western
branches of Pentecostal and charismatic Christian congregations must work
closely with the more fervent ministries of their denominations among African
and immigrant communities to foster an understanding of how “exorcisms” can
spiral into deadly abuse. No African congregation wants to feel dictated to by
the West, but there is a place for exchange and cultural pressure. Western
ecclesiastical bodies can specifically enact prohibitions against for-profit exorcisms.
Laws
should be enacted against accusing children of witchcraft throughout the
countries of Africa and the southwestern Pacific, as one Nigerian state has
already done. And countries like the Solomon Islands that still criminalize
witchcraft should strike down those statutes.
Police
indifference to crimes of witch hunting must also be tackled, especially in
societies where police officers themselves may share in traditional beliefs
about “black magic.” A 2012 British government report
on combating faith-based violence against children provides a valuable guide to
instructing the police on signs of abuse, asking religious leaders to condemn
violence and protecting vulnerable witnesses.
Legal
efforts must be paired with increased social awareness. In a promising model, a
2010 Oxfam International report
noted that some Catholic parishes in Papua New Guinea have been teaching
congregants about the natural causes of death and illness (common triggers for
anti-witch paranoia), providing shelter to accused witches and denying the
sacraments to those who accuse others of sorcery.
Crucial,
too, is that the United Nations and international human rights organizations
start compiling yearly statistics on these crimes. We’re severely hampered in
understanding the scale of this crisis when our most recent global data are
already five years out of date.
Most
important, witchcraft-related violence should be branded as hate crimes by
international courts and by all jurisdictions where anti-hate statutes exist.
This is vital to gaining wider recognition of this criminality and preventing
it.
In too many places, the accusation of witchcraft has become an incitement to mob violence. It is time to lay the ghosts of Salem to rest.