December 28, 2015
“In the West, witch hunts have coincided with periods of change and instability. They can occur when one sociological, economic, religious or political framework displaces another. The decline of feudalism, the waning of the Roman Catholic Church, the decimation of Europe’s population by the plague, the threat to the American way of life posed by independent women on the frontier, the threat to the American way of life posed by Communism—all of these things precipitated witch hunts.”
In Papua New Guinea it is a time of great change. And possibly as a result of this, witch hunts are becoming more commonplace.
Read this (disturbing) article to get a unique view into the way one PNG woman, Monica Paulus, herself once accused of witchcraft, is attempting to stop this type of violence against women.