Bougainville Police are investigating the brutal killing of a family of six over sorcery allegations.
The Post Courier reports that the six included two uncles, two brothers, their sister and a nephew from Pakia village, just outside Arawa and on the road to Panguna mine.
They were taken away by the community leaders and executed after one of them allegedly announced at the funeral service of a late Pakia chief that ‘his family was made up of sorcerers’.
Bougainville Police Minister Boso Ragu confirmed the killings this week.
Ragu said two suspects were apprehended by police and locked up at the Arawa Police Station but due to demands by relatives to release them, a fight broke out.
Chief of Bougainville Police Services Deputy Commissioner of Police Francis Tokura has stated that “seeking justice by taking the law into our own hands is uncalled for.”
DCP Tokura appealed to communities facing sorcery related cases to report the matter to police to address these issues.
In the Pakia village incident, the village became aware of the alleged sorcerers after they buried one of their chiefs.
One member of the family armed with a bushknife arrived at the funeral and demanded to know who called his family “sorcerers”.
It is alleged the man said “you all know that my family is responsible for the deaths of everyone in this area since 2001? We are sorcerers”.
This angered those in attendance, and they went after the man, they held him as a hostage for several days while his family home was torched.
The mob went after his two uncles, the man’s brother, his sister and a nephew and began questioning them on the allegations of sorcery spoken by their relative.
The villagers then killed the six and disposed of their bodies at sea and in the jungles of the community.
When government officials asked why they did what they did, their response was “the government cannot intervene because the law will not recognize the charges against the family, and they will be released back into the community”.
Government sources confirmed that the community went into three days of customary obligations by cleaning what was used to kill the six members of the family.