Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Call for action against sorcery-related killings in PNG

Posted at 03:20 on 07 February, 2013 UTC

The head of the Gut Nius Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea says the government needs to come up with a law to stop sorcery-related killings.

The call from Bishop David Piso comes as a 20-year-old mother was tortured and burnt alive in front of hundreds of people in Mt Hagen in Western Highlands province yesterday.

Relatives of a six-year-old boy she was accused of killing through sorcery, tortured her with a hot iron rod, stripped her naked, tied up her hands and legs and threw her onto a pile of burning tyres.

Police and hospital staff who arrived at the scene could not save her.

The newspaper, The National, reports Bishop Piso as saying sorcery and sorcery-related killings are growing and that many innocent people have been victims.