A woman has been tortured and burned
alive in Papua New Guinea after being
accused of using sorcery to kill a young boy,
local media report.
The woman, a mother aged 20 named as Kepari
Leniata, was stripped, tied up and doused in
petrol by the boy's relatives in Mount Hagen in
the Western Highlands, said the National
newspaper.
She was then thrown onto a fire in front of
hundreds of people.
Police and firefighters were unable to intervene,
the paper said.
The Post Courier newspaper said they had been
outnumbered by the crowd and chased away.
Both newspapers published graphic photos of the
incident on their front pages.
Provincial police commander Supt Kaiglo Ambane
told the National that police were treating the
case as murder and would arrest those
responsible.
In parts of the Pacific nation deaths and
mysterious illnesses are sometimes blamed on
suspected sorcerers. Several reports have
emerged in recent years of accused people,
usually women, being killed.
In 2009, after a string of such killings, the
chairman of PNG's Constitutional Review and Law
Reform Commission said defendants were using
accusations of witchcraft as an excuse to kill
people, and called for tougher legislation to tackle
the issue.
Local Christian bishop David Piso told the National
that sorcery-related killings were a growing
problem, and urged the government to "to come
up with a law to stop such practice".
The US embassy in the capital, Port Moresby,
condemned the killing as a "brutal murder", the
AFP news agency reports, and evidence of
"pervasive gender-based violence" in Papua New
Guinea.
"There is no possible justification for this sort of
violence. We hope that appropriate resources are
devoted to identifying, prosecuting, and
punishing those responsible for Ms Leniata's
murder. m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21363894