Violence Against Women Accused of Sorcery In Papua New Guinea

Every now and then a case of serious human rights abuse occurs that seems to capture the imagination of the global media and wider community. This has certainly been the case in Papua New Guinea, where the recent killing of Kepari Leniata was widely reported around the world. Kepari was accused of bewitching a six-year old boy and then stripped, tortured with a hot iron rod, doused in petrol, and burned on a pile of rubbish and car tyres. The photo taken of this terrible crime has been seen by countless people around the world and led to the government being petitioned by the UN and Amnesty, amongst many other groups. In response to this the government recently repealed the sorcery act and passed a new law to allow the death penalty to be applied to such cases.

Photographer – Vlad Sokhin – has captured some incredibly powerful images of this problem, which have been used by Amnesty to raise awareness of this issue. I thought that I was fairly resilient to being horrified by images after having seen some terrible cases of abuse over the years but even I was moved close to tears by seeing some of these shots.Please see brief report from Vlad below and feel free to contact him on vladsokhin@gmail.com or see his website www.vladsokhin.com if you need any further information on his work.

Sorcery-related-violence is widespread in Papua New Guinea. In the Highlands Region of PNG witch-hunts occur almost in every province. Locals believe in black magic, often accusing random women and men of causing the death of someone from the village.