Sunday, March 13, 2016

HISTORICAL AND MODERN-DAY WITCH HUNTS: Exploring Political, Economic, and Gendered Explanations Part 2. Modern-day Witch Hunts: Africa and Asia-Pacific



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

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.

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 andas 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.



List of References



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Baker, Emerson W. (2014) Caught in Satan’s Storm [online]
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[30 December 2015]

Blumberg, Jess (2007) A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials, One town's strange journey from paranoia to pardon [online]


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Day, Christian (1992) The Vulnerability of Women to Witchcraft Accusations [online]
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Federici, Silvia (2008) ‘Witch-Hunting, Globalization, and Feminist Solidarity in Africa Today’. Journal of International Women's Studies 10(1), 21-35 [online]
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Fraser, Evan, Alexander Legwegoh, Krishna KC, and Marion Davis (How Conflict and Climate Change are Triggering Witch Hunts [online]
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Michelle, Angela (2016a) Witchcraft: Prejudice and Intolerance Targeted Gender during the Witch Hunts: Effects on Early Modern Women [online]

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Pavlac, Brian A.  (2015) Ten Common Errors and Myths about the Witch Hunts, Corrected and Commented. Prof. Pavlac's Women's History Resource Site [online] <http://www.brianpavlac.org/witchhunts/werrors.html> [8 February 2016].

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