Today,
in many parts of the world, people are being killed for allegedly being witches.
The 2009 UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions,
Philip Alston, concludes that present-day witchcraft frequently involves
systematic forms of discrimination on the grounds of gender, age, and
disability (OHCHR, 2009).
In
2013, the Witchcraft and Human Rights Network (WHRIN) claimed that there were
282 reports of witchcraft-associated cases documented from 41 countries, among
them, in Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. These cases involved high-level
violence, where the accused are attacked, striped, tortured, driven out of
their village, abandoned, beaten, or burned to death. Some cases also involved
children (WHRIN, 2013: 3–4). Furthermore, there are cases of witch-related
violence in Europe linked to practices of the growing African communities in
Europe (Gracia, 2013).
Cases of Modern-day
Witch Hunts
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| The Lunatic of Étretat, Hugues Merle (pinterest.com) |
Federici
notes that between 1991 and 2001, at least 23,000 “witches” have been killed in
Africa, which she believed emerged with the globalization of economic life in
the 1980s and 1990s, together with the debt crisis, structural adjustment, and currency
devaluation (Federici, 2008: 23). She does not view that these witch hunts
originate from the traditional beliefs of the community, she argues instead
that anti-witchcraft movements (which mostly target old women) only began in
Africa in the colonial period, with the introduction of cash economies which
changed social relations and created new forms of inequality. Situations that
may threaten existing social relations, such as widows claiming land ownership,
have also triggered witch accusations toward elderly women (Federici, 2008:
23–24).
In
Papua New Guinea witch hunts frequently target at women and there are witch
hunter mobs that consist of young men. In 2013, a 20-year-old mother was
executed in public. More recently, in 2015, a video of four women accused of
witchcraft being strip naked, brutalized, and burned is shown on social media. According
to official government figures, 150 women are killed each year because of witch
hunts (Channel NewsAsia, 2015). Scholars have pointed to economic displacement,
cultural shifts, and weak governance as the cause for these crimes (Hay, 2015).
In
2015, in Kinjia village, India, five women have been beaten to death by dozens
of villagers who accused them of practicing witchcraft and blamed them for a series
of misfortunes in the area, including the death of an infant. India is where
the largest number of witchcraft-related crimes was reported in Asia (WHRIN,
2013: 3), where around 2,100 people, mostly women, were killed between 2000 and
2012 on suspicions of practicing witchcraft. Belief in witchcraft is widespread
in some impoverished and remote areas in India, where women are sometimes
accused of being witches due to disputes or grievances (Mailonline, 2015).
In
the rural villages of Java, Indonesia, witch hunts have long been sited. In
2000, the local police said that there were at least 100 killings related to
the witch hunts that year, some of the accused were beheaded. However, some of
these killings, where a person convince people of the village that a person is
practicing witchcraft, were politically or economically motivated, or motivated
by dislike and social envy. Anthropologists note that witch hunts in Indonesia
date back to the colonial period and witch killings served as a
mechanism for rural villages to rid of antisocial behavior (Sims, 2001).
Although women are not the
sole target of these witch hunts, Indonesia
is among the countries cited as having communities that label, target, and
persecute women for being witches (WHRIN, 2014: 5). Vulnerable
women who lack family or community protection became target of witch
accusations, in some cases, as a cover up for a number of motives (.
In Nepal, violence as a result of
witch accusations are widely spread across the country, although it is not
reflected by official reports. This is concluded in the WHRIN 2014 Country
Report which also states that extreme poverty, lack of access to basic resources,
and the breakdown of social networks contributed by the civil war (1996–2006) provide a fertile breeding ground for witch-related
violence in Nepal. The lack of outlet to express grievances is fulfilled by
creating scapegoats. Witch accusations become a way of explaining life’s
misfortunes; hence maintaining the social order (2014: 6).
Exploring
the Causes of Modern-day Witch Hunts
Scholars have linked modern-day witch
hunts to economic oppression, poverty, and colonialism. In Africa and Southeast
Asia (and also Latin America), fear of witches occurred alongside political and
economic oppression (Hayes, 2007 in Tejeda-Moreno, 2015). The rise of witch-paranoia
were also found alongside the rise in unemployment within urbanized
immigrant communities (Munro 1976, in Tejeda-Moreno, 2015). Oster (2004) and
Miguel (2005), on the other hand link climate change, such as cold weather,
drought, and floods, which disrupted agricultural activities, to accusations of
witches as a means to find a scapegoat for the hardships in the community
(Fraser et al.).
Various cases show that witch hunts
can be orchestrated at the elite level or instigated by community members
themselves. In either case, the witch hunts reflect the struggle to maintain power or
survive amidst a time of political and economic instability or uncertainty.
These factors—inequality,
political instability, climate change, history of colonialism, asset ownership disputes,
and social envy and dislike—are
today
believed to be behind the historical witch hunts as well as modern-day
witch-hunts. However,
scholars differ on the degree to which witch hunts were or are triggered by
gender conflict.
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| designyoutrust.com/2010/04/spilt-ink/ |
Although
some Western scholars view the witch hunts as being sex-related rather than
sex-specific (Pavlac, 2015), many share the view that there is less reason to
look at the witch hunts as a crime against women as evidence are lacking. But this
view is getting harder to support, as more evidence suggests that acts of “witch”
killings which have continued until today are mostly (although not exclusively)
targeted at women.
It
is hard to completely overlook the gender-related factors that play a part in
the events of the witch hunts and accusations. Gender played an important role
in the early modern period where social cohesiveness greatly relied on
conformity to gender-ascribed roles. Because of the double standard, women who deviated
from their gender roles or could not carry out those roles were more likely to become
misfits or outcasts. These women were widows, the elderly, and independent
women (Levak, 2006 in Michelle, 2016a). The double standard imposed on women’s
sexuality founded the belief about sins and demons and how they evoke the
woman’s body as the weaker sex, while women were seen as the guardians of moral
standards (Waite, 2103; Michelle, 2016b).
These
gendered factors play an important part in witch accusations, the perception of
wrong-doing and threat to the community, and affect how women behave as
accusers or victims as women themselves internalize these values. These gender
norms still exist today in many societies and are shaped by local culture; they
influence perceptions about demons and evil doings. In line with this, children
become vulnerable to accusations due to cultural myths about how evil spirits can
control children.
Economic inequality and political
instability may be critical factors in causing hatred toward members of the
community and fear of witches. However, because in many cases women have become
the target of witch killings, these data suggest that cultural and gender norms
are somewhat significant factors in the forces that trigger witch hunting and the
killings of those accused.
Disruption of community cohesiveness
due to economic deprivation, political uncertainties, food insecurity, and vertical
and horizontal conflict, is an important element that triggers the fear of
witches and acts of violence toward “witches”. Some women in certain contexts can
be viewed as affecting community cohesiveness because of their social or/and
economic status or their ambiguous position in society.
Because more women tend to
be victims and—as evidence in modern-day witch hunts suggests—women are vulnerable
targets of these crimes, we cannot ignore the gendered dimensions involve in the
witch hunt phenomenon.
(How Conflict and Climate Change are Triggering Witch Hunts [online]
Sims, Calvin (2001) ‘Witch
Hunts in Java Called a Cover for Murder.’ New
York Times [online]
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