© Byelikova Oksana | Shutterstock
In villages throughout Papua New Guinea, accusations of witchcraft can lead to torture and murder, a growing trend that has authorities alarmed.
The witch hunts and subsequent killings that took place in colonial New England are considered a dark chapter in U.S. history.
But across Papua New Guinea and in other places around the world, accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are on the rise, with tragic results.
In April, an elderly school teacher was beheaded in Papua New Guinea after her neighbors accused her of witchcraft,
TIME reports. A few days earlier, seven people were kidnapped and tortured with hot irons over suspicions of sorcery in Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands province.
Last year, 29 people in the poor island nation located north of Australia were arrested for killing and cannibalizing the brains and genitals of seven people accused of sorcery.
And in February, Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother in Papua New Guinea's Western Highlands region, was accused of witchcraft by the family of a 6-year-old boy who had recently died.
Leniata was stripped, bound, tortured with a hot iron, doused with gasoline and burned to death on a pile of trash in broad daylight in front of hundreds of onlookers,
The Associated Press reports.
The brutal killing was condemned by officials, including Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, but no arrests of Leniata's killers were made.
