Papua New Guinea – praag.org

Father murders daughter, eats flesh

A Papua New Guinea man described as a vampire has been arrested after allegedly murdering his young daughter by biting her neck, eating her flesh and drinking her blood, a report said on Friday.

Police called the grisly incident that occurred on Wednesday at a settlement near Lae “an act of cannibalism”.

The PNG Post Courier cited local councillor John Kenny, who was one of the first on the scene, as saying the three-year-old child and her mother were visiting the father when he grabbed the girl and ran off into nearby bushes.

Kenny said the man allegedly held the toddler close to him, bit deep into her neck, ate the flesh and sucked her blood.

Two boys who were climbing a coconut tree nearby saw him and ran quickly to raise the alarm.

“He was just laughing at the boys and continued eating the flesh and sucking the blood,” Kenny told the newspaper.

“The boys were scared and ran quickly to alert the people.”

When people arrived to investigate the man reportedly dumped the body in the bushes and ran away before being caught and turned over to police.

PNG is a sprawling nation where black magic, sorcery and cannibalism sometimes occur.

Last year police arrested dozens of people linked to an alleged cannibal cult accused of killing at least seven people, eating their brains raw and making soup from their penises.

There have been several other recent cases linked to cults, witchcraft and cannibalism, with a man in 2011 reportedly found eating his screaming, newborn son during a sorcery initiation ceremony. – Sapa/AFP

‘Frenzied bloody massacre made no sense’

A third man has died from injuries suffered during a bloody ambush on foreign trekkers in Papua New Guinea which has rocked the tourism industry, police said Monday.

The man, a porter for the group of Australian and New Zealand hikers on the remote Black Cat track, sustained machete wounds in last week’s violent assault and died in hospital in Lae, police spokesman Superintendent Dominic Kakas said.

Two other local guides were hacked to death with machetes in the harrowing attack in Morobe province on September 10, and several others were taken to hospital with serious wounds.

Four of the eight tourists were also hurt, including one who was speared in the leg.

PNG police arrested four men on Sunday — three in the town of Wau and a fourth in nearby Salamauan — in connection with the attack but two other suspects are still on the run.

“They are being interviewed now,” Kakas told AFP of the four, adding that no further arrests had yet been made.

PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has warned that the crimes will attract the death penalty, and the family of one of the slain porters, Kerry Rarovu, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation they felt “the criminals must die the same as Kerry died”.

Christie King, the Australian leader of the hiking group, has described the attack as a “frenzied bloody massacre which made no sense”.

“I am so sorry for these men to have received such terrible injuries,” she told the ABC, which reported that it was doubtful any of the injured porters would walk again.

“I’m worried about my future. I’m going to be paralysed maybe, I don’t know,” one of the wounded men told the broadcaster.

Crime in Papua New Guinea is rampant, including in the capital Port Moresby where in June four Chinese nationals were hacked to death, with one reportedly beheaded and the others dismembered.

Peter Vincent, chief of PNG’s Tourism Promotion Authority, has condemned the attack and told The Post Courier that the Black Cat trail was closed “until further notice”. – Sapa/AFP

Trekkers attacked by Papua New Guinean bandits tell of horror

Hikers on the Black Cat Track in Papua New Guinea

A group of Australian and New Zealand trekkers brutally attacked by bandits in Papua New Guinea told Thursday of their harrowing ordeal and horror as two porters were butchered.

The eight tourists were in their tents on the remote jungle-clad Black Cat Track in the lawless Pacific nation’s northern Morobe province when a mob of six armed men struck at dusk on Tuesday.

Two porters were hacked to death with machetes and four of the Australians were injured, including one who was speared through the leg.

“It started to rain and some of us were inside the tents when there was a whole lot of noise, shouting. I thought the boys had found a bush kangaroo, an animal or something like that,” one of the survivors, Nick Bennett, told Channel Nine after arriving in the capital Port Moresby.

“Next thing, I thought ‘what’s going on’, I put my head outside tent and smack — I thought I’d been shot actually,” he said of being hit with a rifle butt.

“Blood just erupted out of my head and I looked up and I saw this guy with a mask on standing over me, and then the whole thing unfolded.

“They were laying into the porter boys. I realised they were butchering the porters. It was just appalling and we’re very fortunate.”

Another survivor, Peter Stevens, told Australian Associated Press he and the rest of the group were forced to lie on the ground as the men ransacked their backpacks, stealing passports and other items.

“They then laid into us with bush knives, hitting us with the flats of the knives,” Stevens said.

“You can’t tell whether they’re going to hit you with the flat side. Some people were cut.”

Stevens said two of the attackers were clearly on drugs and “they did the most damage”.

The group managed to hike some four hours back to safety, reportedly carrying the porters’ bodies.

Papua Prime Minister Peter O’Neill vowed the tribesmen responsible will face the death penalty if caught and convicted.

“I make no apology whatsoever for the death penalty being the punishment available to be applied for such crimes,” he said in a statement.

While the attack was believed to be a robbery, some reports suggested it could also stem from growing resentment that the booming trekking industry is not giving back to local communities.

Crime in Papua New Guinea is rampant, including in Port Moresby where in June four Chinese nationals were hacked to death, with one reportedly beheaded and the others dismembered.

Brutality against women is particularly endemic, with high rates of domestic violence. In April, a US academic was gang-raped while she was trekking along a jungle trail with her husband and a guide.

The Black Cat Track runs between Wau and Salamaua in northern PNG through leech- and snake-infested jungle with precarious drops and potentially dangerous river crossings.

It was the scene of bitter fighting in 1943, pitting Australian and US troops against Japanese forces. – AFP

Papua New Guinea considers death penalty for medicine murders, rape

Papua New Guinea is considering introducing the death penalty for sorcery killings and rape after a spate of horrific crimes against women drew international condemnation, reports said Monday.

Attorney-General Kerenga Kua said public opinion had swung in favour of capital punishment after a series of brutal sorcery-related murders including beheadings and torchings, and the gang rape of a US academic.

The crimes have prompted an international outcry and Kua said he had received more than 100 petitions from human rights and other groups across the globe calling for urgent action on the violence against women.

“Those horrific, brutal, gruesome killings of the type that a woman was burnt alive to her death should attract death penalty,” The National newspaper reported Kua as saying.

“Most of the people are ready for it and they want it now as they are fed up of the law and order problems in this country and they want to see a more liberal use of the death penalty.”

In February a 20-year-old mother accused of witchcraft was stripped and burned alive in front of a crowd at a village market. Earlier this month an elderly woman was beheaded after being accused of black magic.

Also this month, an Australian was murdered and his friend sexually assaulted by a group of men, followed barely a week later by the ambush of the US researcher, her husband and their guide on a wilderness track.

She was stripped, had her hair cut to the scalp and was gang-raped by a group of nine men armed with rifles and knives before a sound in the forest frightened them away.

Kua said he had been monitoring the public mood on the issue and it was time the government “did something radical” to halt the crimes, which have undermined PNG’s standing as a tourism and investment destination.

“My job is simply to do what the people want me to do. I cannot shut my eyes to the people’s request. I’m not deaf, I’m listening; if they want it we will give it to them,” he said.

The offences of treason, piracy and wilful murder are already punishable by death in the impoverished Pacific nation, but the country has not carried out an execution since 1954.

The Catholic Church condemned Kua’s remarks as “giving in to the same vengeful streak in PNG culture that is part of our current problem”, and said the death penalty would not be a deterrent to violent crime.

“Those who commit these offences do not believe that they will be caught and even less be actually sentenced,” said Archbishop Douglas Young in a statement.

“The major deterrent to crime is not the severity of punishment but its certainty.”

Young said the government needed to strengthen police capacity to “find, arrest and prosecute offenders”.

“Give the clear message, if you do this you will be caught and you will be punished. Change cultural norms that encourage the protection of offenders,” he said.

“Let’s turn our attention to policies that will genuinely address the plague of violence in PNG, not those that serve only to further brutalise the nation.” – AFP