Pacific Islands Fear Spread of Sorcery Killings

Dang, they still burn "witches" in the 21st century.

Poor 20-year-old Kepari Leniata was burned alive after a young boy died in a hospital and for some reason relatives blamed her for the death, accusing her of witchcraft.  Her husband is missing and thought to have somehow been involved with the accusations. She herself was the mother of an infant. No arrests have been made.

As a result of the increased violence, there is a conference being held in Australia to deal with what people believe could become a maor problem if it spreads from PNG to other regions of the Pacific.

Sri Lankan In Saudi Arabia Faces Beheading For "Casting Spell" On 13-Year-Old Shopper

In Saudi Arabia dabbling in witchcraft will get you beheaded. Trouble is, the definition of what constitutes 'witchcraft' is vague, at best.  One Saudi woman in her 60s, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser,  was executed last December for  'witchcraft and sorcery".  There were no specific details regarding the case other than the fact that she allegedly took money ($800, so they say) from people claiming she could heal them. Did she give them herbal remedies, or just wave a magic wand or wiggle her nose and say they were cured?  And how many people actually accused her?  It only takes one person to finger an individual as a witch in Saudi Arabia and they can face execution.  That's what's happened to a poor woman after a Saudi man claimed she cast a spell on his daughter at a shopping mall.

A Sri Lankan woman could face the death penalty by beheading after she was arrested on suspicion of casting a spell on a 13-year-old girl during a family shopping trip, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The daily Okaz reported that a Saudi man had complained his daughter had "suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, and that happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman" in a shopping mall in the port city of Jeddah.

"He reported her to the security forces, asking for her arrest and the specialised units dealt with the situation swiftly and succeeded in arresting her," Okaz reported.

What?  So, let me get this straight- a Sri Lankan woman is in a mall, minding her own business I assume, and this Saudi man's little girl starts acting up (as 13 year-olds are apt to do) as she walks by, and the woman could lose her head over this?

Ironically, although Saudi Arabia has no penal code (it's a monarchy, and a backwards one at that), according to Peter Luther of Amnesty International:

"The charges of 'witchcraft and sorcery' are not defined as crimes in Saudi Arabia and to use them to subject someone to the cruel and extreme penalty of execution is truly appalling."

Amnesty also states that  charges of witchcraft are often a means of  punishing people ".. after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion." And according to Human Rights Watch, it's foreigners who are usually the major targets "... because of their traditional practices or, occasionally, because Saudi men facing charges of sexual harassment by domestic workers want to discredit their accusers."

But it's all so very arbitrary, and anyone can get the short end of the stick.  A Sudanese man was also executed in 2011 for sorcery. Then there's Ali Sibat, the Lebanese fortune-telling TV personality, who almost lost his head, while on a pilgrimage to Mecca. And Mustafa Ibrahiman, an Egyptian pharmacist working in Saudi Arabia, executed in 2007  for trying "to separate a married couple, through sorcery."

God knows why anyone visits there.

Saudi Arabia Beheads Old Woman Convicted Of 'Sorcery and Magic'

The preferred method of execution in Saudi Arabia is beheading. No, I'm not talking about some random terrorist chopping the head off  some captured infidel, I'm talking about the method in which the Saudi Arabian government executes those sentenced to death. And they happen to enjoy making many of those executions a public spectacle, like Abdul Hamid, the Sudanese man who was beheaded in a parking lot this past September for allegedly agreeing to cast a spell for a man who was working for the Saudi religious police. Entrapment or not, it is thought that Hamid was coerced into admitting to sorcery after he was arrested and then beaten.  You see, thanks to Shariah Law, witchcraft, sorcery and fortune telling, are punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, along with apostasy, adultery, drug use and the usual murder, rape and armed robbery. But in the not-so-magic Kingdom, you are more likely to have your head chopped off  with a charge of witchcraft and sorcery (or stoned to death for adultery) than for murder or rape.  Take this Saudi man who raped his young daughter for 7 long years- he got to keep his head, and will be out after a 13 year jail sentence plus 2,080 lashes to be meted out throughout his prison stay.

But fortune telling and sorcery (as undefined as it is in Shariah law) is obviously far more un-Islamic than rape, given the amount of people who have been sentenced to death and executed for it.  One of the more celebrated cases was the famous Lebanese TV psychic, Ali Sibat, who on a pilgrimage to Medina in 2008 was arrested in his hotel room after religious police recognized him from his show. Sentenced to death in November, 2009 after a secret trial, he was scheduled to be beheaded on April 2, 2010. But after a major outcry from the international human rights community, the sentence was eventually overruled, and a retrial in Medina was ordered, along with a recommendation for deportation.  But there has been no news regarding the outcome, other than a small mention in this September 2011 NPR article that claims he was deported.

Amina Bint Abdulhalim Nassar, a 60-something year-old woman, wasn't so lucky. Nassar was just beheaded for "practicing witchcraft and sorcery". No specific details were mentioned regarding the nature of her 'crimes', but according to British-based al-Hayat daily, the head of the Saudi religious police, Abdullah al-Mohsen, said the old woman had been bilking people out of $800 with claims she could treat their illnesses. $800 is a lot of money for quackery, but does a person deserve a death sentence for fraud?

The Salem Witch Trials took place in the late 1600s in this country.  Saudi Arabia is still stuck there, thanks to Shariah law.