Woman burned alive by mob for 'sorcery' in Papua New Guinea

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Tequila
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08 Feb 2013, 10:46 am

Quote:

Papua New Guinea: 'Witch' Burned Alive By Mob

The killing has been condemned by the country's prime minister who described it as "barbaric and inhuman".

A young mother was stripped, tortured with an iron rod and then burned alive on a pile of tyres after being accused of being a witch in Papua New Guinea.

Hundreds of bystanders, including many children, looked on as Kepari Leniata, 20, was doused in gasoline and set alight. Some took photographs.

Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country's biggest circulating newspapers, The National and Post-Courier.

What a horrible, horrifying, way to die. She must have been in unimaginable fear and agony as people were treating it like a sick spectacle by taking photos of her pain and terror.

I'm so pleased that we've mostly left this kind of unbelievable barbarism behind in the West.

RIP, Kepari.

Fnord
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08 Feb 2013, 11:00 am

According to Wikipedia...

Quote:

Religion in Papua New Guinea

The courts and government practice uphold the constitutional right to freedom of speech, thought, and belief, and no legislation to curb those rights has been adopted. The 2000 census found that 96% of citizens identified themselves as members of a Christian church; however, many citizens combine their Christian faith with some traditional indigenous religious practices.[*] The census percentages were as follows:

Catholic Church (27.0%)
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (19.5%)
United Church (11.5%)
Seventh-day Adventist Church (10.0%)
Pentecostal (8.6%)
Evangelical Alliance (5.2%)
Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea (3.2%)
Baptist (0.5%)
Church of Christ (0.4%)
Bahá'í Faith (0.3%)
Jehovah's Witnesses (0.3%)
Salvation Army (0.2%)
Other Christian (8.0%)

There are also approximately 4,000 Muslims in the country. Non-traditional Christian churches and non-Christian religious groups are active throughout the country. The Papua New Guinea Council of Churches has stated that both Muslim and Confucian missionaries are active, and foreign missionary activity in general is high.

: : Papua New Guinea is 91.5% Christian.

Citizens of Papua New Guinea are superstitious and burn people alive.

Correlation or causation?

Reference;

* - "US Department of State International Religious Freedom Report 2003". Retrieved 2006-03-23.

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Tequila
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08 Feb 2013, 11:07 am

It sounds like a barbaric Christian hellhole, all right.

If you want to see why us secularists and atheists despise religion, you may look at cases like this. Christian vermin were responsible for this murder, too, so it shouldn't upset the terminally tolerant too much by pointing this out.

Fnord
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08 Feb 2013, 11:11 am

Paging Torquemada ... paging Torquemada ...

Article on Tomás de Torquemada.

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Tequila
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08 Feb 2013, 11:12 am

Fnord wrote:

Paging Torquemada ... paging Torquemada ...

The ghost of European Christianity's mass murdering, torturing, raping past.

Misslizard
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08 Feb 2013, 4:49 pm

I'm glad I don't live there.The climate does not sound healthy.

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naturalplastic
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08 Feb 2013, 8:35 pm

Where does the article say that "christians are responsible for this"?

And how can a pagan nonchristian culture be a "christian hell hole"?

Im not an apologist for christianity - but I dont see how this incident can be blamed on christianity.

New Guinea was so isolated that its inhabitants lived in isolated stone age tribes, ignorant of the outside world, until the mid 20th centurey.

Like every pre modern culture the Papuans believed in sorcery for tens of thousands of years. And believed in witchcraft before they ever heard of christianity. They also practiced headhunting and canibalism in living memory.

Papuans have adopted a thin veneer of christianity from their recent encounter with western missionaries ( hense those religious stats). But this incident was obviously despite christian influence -not because of what missionaries told them to do-the result of the veneer falling away- and the old beliefs coming out.

If anything they would be burning more people if not for western missionaries telling them not to.

This, and the backsliding to canibalism and head hunting the article talks about, are all obviously despite christian influence -not because of it.

Apparently in the old days witchcraft was dealt with privately through counter sorcery. But apparently the old beliefs are breaking down (hardly surprising in a place where they are trying to vault from the Neolithic to the 21st centurey overnight), but new more modern beliefs have not taken root yet- so things are out of balance and getting ugly.

But this is not some christian Taliban taking over.

You could call it a 'superstitious hellhole" perhaps- if you have to label it by creed.

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08 Feb 2013, 8:56 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

Where does the article say that "christians are responsible for this"?

According to available metadata (the source of which I've cited above), there is a 91.5% chance that each person involved in the murder was a Christian.

naturalplastic wrote:

And how can a pagan nonchristian culture be a "christian hell hole"?

91.5% of the people of Papua New Guinea are Christian, so it is not a pagan culture. what makes it a "Hell Hole" is the ignorance, fear, and hatred exhibited by the Christians of Papua New Guinea in their treatment of a woman who was accused of being a witch.

naturalplastic wrote:

I'm not an apologist for Christianity - but I dont see how this incident can be blamed on Christianity.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." - Exodus 22:18, from the Christian Bible.

The more you know, the more you grow.

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Tequila
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08 Feb 2013, 9:01 pm

Fnord wrote:

This. The actions of Christians are to blame here (and perhaps the culture that spawned such hatred), not pagans.

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08 Feb 2013, 9:13 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

I largely agree with naturalplastic on this one. People of a superstitious, hunter-gatherer culture, who happen to be Christians, did this. You can't replace an ancient, deeply rooted culture with modern ideas in a blink of an eye. It takes time and a couple generations. And regardless of who or what is responsible, it is still very tragic for the woman and her children. May Kepari rest in peace, and I hope someone looks after the little ones.

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09 Feb 2013, 2:20 pm

Dragoness wrote:

... People of a superstitious, hunter-gatherer culture, who happen to be Christians, did this...

No.

It was Christians who happen to be superstitious people of a formerly hunter-gatherer culture who stripped a woman naked, bound her, beat her, threw her into a stack of discarded tires, poured gasoline all over pile, lit it on fire, and then stood by and cheered while an innocent woman screamed for mercy as she burned to death.

It was Christians who did this.

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Tequila
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09 Feb 2013, 2:22 pm

Fnord wrote:

Dragoness wrote:

... People of a superstitious, hunter-gatherer culture, who happen to be Christians, did this...

This, this and this. Oh, and this again.

Dragoness
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09 Feb 2013, 2:33 pm

Tequila wrote:

This, this and this. Oh, and this again.

What do you mean by the above quote?

And, as far as I was concerned, the people of Papua New Guinea hadn't suddenly turned into a country full of cities and and tons of technology. They're still living as hunter-gatherers. They are Christians, but they are also hunter-gatherers, as far as I was concerned.

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09 Feb 2013, 2:35 pm

Why anyone would defend a religion that is based on torture, death, slavery and misogyny is beyond my understanding. Is it the will of the Christian god that such atrocities should occur? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" seems to be a damning indictment of the entire belief system.

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Tequila
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09 Feb 2013, 2:37 pm

Fnord wrote:

Is it the will of the Christian god that such atrocities should occur? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" seems to be a damning indictment of the entire belief system.

We in Lancashire have intimately personal experience of people carrying out that particular edict.

Christianity can stick its religion up its fundament if that's what it preaches.

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09 Feb 2013, 2:44 pm

Dragoness wrote:

Tequila wrote:

This, this and this. Oh, and this again.

And, as far as I was concerned, the people of Papua New Guinea ... They're still living as hunter-gatherers...

Wake up and join the real world.

Papua New Guinea is richly endowed with natural resources, including mineral and renewable resources, such as forests, marine (including a large portion of the world's major remaining tuna stocks), and in some parts for agriculture. Agriculture, both for subsistence and cash crops provides a livelihood for 85% of the population and continues to provide some 30% of their gross domestic product (GDP). Mineral deposits, including gold, oil, and copper, account for 72% of export earnings. oil palm production has grown steadily over recent years, with palm oil now the main agricultural export, but in terms of households participating coffee remains the major export crop, followed by cocoa and coconut oil/copra from the coastal areas, each largely produced by smallholders and tea, produced on estates and rubber.

Thus, 85% of Papua New Guinea's population is involved in farming, while the remaining 15% are involved in mining and governmental functions.

If there are any "hunter-gatherers" in Papua New Guinea, they are not in the majority ... Christians are, however ...

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