Before last week, all I knew about Papua New Guinea was that its capital was Port Moresby and that it was that island on top of Australia. But I've been writing a music series over at Dagblog and while I was searching the internet for examples of the country's musical offerings, I was fascinated to learn that over 700 languages are spoken there, that most of the island doesn't have access to television and can only be reached by airplanes, and that there is an incredible diversity of flora and fauna in the mountains and rainforests.

I watched one particularly interesting video about a still-existing tribe of cannibals. In the video diary, a group travels to the far interior of West Papua, which shares the island of New Guinea with PNG, but is under Indonesian control. There, they encounter a tribe that has never before laid eyes on any Caucasians. The video is about sixteen minutes long, and, at the end provides some insight into why there are reports this week about an increase in witch hunting in PNG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTRvcROcWHg

Amnesty International reports:

Authorities in Papua New Guinea are being urged to take greater action to prevent further killings related to allegations of sorcery.

A father and son became the latest victims on Sunday. Local men in Ban village shot dead 60-year-old Plak Mel Doa and threw his body into a fire. His son, Anis Dua, was dragged from his home and burnt alive. Local people had accused them both of causing the death of a prominent member of the community by sorcery.

There has been an increase in reports of sorcery-related killings over the last year. According to the media there were over 50 such deaths in 2008.This is either because of an actual increase in such incidents or that more incidents are now being reported.

According to another report, this happened close to the city of Mount Hagan, which is the capital of the Western Highlands province and also where the Papua Tribe Festival featured in my PNG music blog takes place each year.

If watched the entire video, you learned that when there is an unexpected death, the Korowai tribe, ignorant of modern science and medicine, attributes the death to black magic, or khakhua. Relatives of the deceased exact revenge for the death by killing and eating the witch deemed responsible. How they determine the identity of the witch seems a little bit arbitrary.

On the east end of the island, in PNG, the witch hunting continues, without the cannibalistic aspect but by the same rationale. People place the blame for untimely death onto black magic, declare a witch, and then brutally murder her or him.

Crazy, right?

Maybe not. All of us look for something or someone to blame when things go amiss. At the moment, I'm fairly certain that, if someone wanted to burn one or two of those Wall Street bankers at the stake, I'd have to take a long, deep breath before suggesting that maybe it's not such a great idea.

When cause and effect is too complicated to be easily understood, we all want a scapegoat toward whom we can direct our anger and pain. Please don't get the idea that I think witch hunting in PNG should be allowed to continue because the grieving need to feel better. I'm with AI on this one, and maybe we could get the PNG Highlands some science textbooks while we're at it.

But why is it such a strong human desire to attribute blame and exact revenge? It's food for thought, hopefully only metaphorically speaking. 

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Cross posted at Dagblog.com, where we promise not to hunt you down and cook your brains if you piss us off.