Sorcery: a menacing scourge

ANYONE WATCHING MEDIA REPORTS OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS would not miss accounts of sorcery related violence. For some reasons sorcery allegations and violence associated with such allegations have been on the rise with startling frequency. This menacing threat is rampant throughout many of the island countries of Melanesia and cases have been reported in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Sorcery accusations has given rise to people to fight and kill, steal and destroy.

Lives have been lost, properties destroyed and some have been left homeless because of allegations relating to acts of sorcery. Whether an act of sorcery has been committed is beside the point. What has been happening is that a sorcery accusation is a powerful mover of peoples sensibilities and once such an accusation has been fixed on someone or some group of people, the accusation has the power to legitimise its own course of belief and action. This has caused state governments and policy makers to express great concern about menacing sorcery.

In Papua New Guinea, for example, a leading law academic and now Secretary to the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission, Dr Lawrence Kalinoe, has this to say. Problems associated with sorcery

is big and needs consultation from everyone concern….the govrnment has recognised the problems associated with sorcery and has tasked the Constitutional and Law Reform Commission (CLRC) to conduct a review on the current Sorcery Act and come up with a more effective law in the next 18 months. The proposed legislation would attempt to to justly handle the current problems associated with sorcery. Sorcery is a serious problem and is widely affecting PNG communities hence and the Law and Justice Sector Ministerial Committee has directed the Minister for Attorney General to issue a reference to CLRC to review the Act and come up with a more comprehensive and effective one in the next 18 months.

This is a welcome initiative and we await to see what kind of ammendments would be made to the existing Sorcery Act in Papua New Guinea. I am sure other Melanesian countries would also be doing something similar to issues revolving around the threat of sorcery as a menacing scourge.

I do not know the current terms of references under which the CLRC in Papua New Guinea is undertaking its review. I would be curious if it moves beyond issues of criminality and probe the epistemological nature of evidence that is bound up with practices of sorcery and sorcery accusations. Sorcery is a curious intellectual object because it cuts across the logic of science and magic, faith and belief as well as tradition and modernity and we await to see what can come out of the current review that is being undertaken by the CLRC in Papua New Guinea.