08/27/2007
People with AIDS Said Buried Alive in Papua New Guinea
Ignorance about AIDS in Papua New Guinea has led to women being murdered by mobs accusing them of witchcraft, and worse:
"Margaret Marabe, who spent five months carrying out an AIDS awareness campaign in the remote Southern Highlands of the South Pacific nation, said she had seen five people buried alive. One was calling out 'Mama, Mama' as the soil was shovelled over his head, said Ms Marabe, who works for a volunteer organisation called Igat Hope, Pidgin English for I've Got Hope. 'One of them was my cousin, who was buried alive,' she said. 'I said, 'Why are they doing that?' And they said, 'If we let them live, stay in the same house, eat together and use or share utensils, we will contract the disease and we too might die'.' Villagers had told her it was common for people to bury AIDS victims alive."
In July, I posted a story reporting that lawmakers in Papua were considering the use of microchip implants to track HIV carriers.
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Papua Considering Chip Implants for HIV Carriers [tr]
Posted 3:00 PM EST by Andy in AIDS/HIV, News, Papua | Permalink
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Are there even words for a story like this?
I'm speechless...
Posted by: Wes | Aug 27, 2007 3:08:46 PM
Um... WHAT?
To quote another blogger, I'd say that the international homo threat level has now been raised from "Girl, hold my gold" to "Aw, HELL no!".
I know it's a poor island nation, but that's no excuse for this kind of brutality. We need to ensure that this practice is halted immediately, then dispatch some Red Cross or WHO workers to provide education.
Posted by: Brian | Aug 27, 2007 3:14:27 PM
Well...add Papua New Guineau to the list of places on the globe where I never want to travel.
Posted by: peterparker | Aug 27, 2007 3:17:19 PM
From the article:
"Women accused of being witches have been tortured and murdered by mobs holding them responsible for the apparently inexplicable deaths of young people stricken by the epidemic, officials and researchers say."
They are most likely increasing risk of spreading the disease through contact with the blood of victims whom they 'torture and murder'.
And so it is a continuing cycle. The more people they murder amid the hysteria, the more they actually spread the disease.
Such is the price of ignorance. Makes men into monsters.
Posted by: Wes | Aug 27, 2007 3:18:15 PM
Literally just read this on Yahoo. This is from the article up there:
"One was calling out "Mama, Mama" as the soil was shoveled over his head..."
Posted by: Alex Krycek | Aug 27, 2007 3:41:11 PM
Oops... sorry! Didn't realize that was the same quote Andy put up...
Posted by: Alex Krycek | Aug 27, 2007 3:43:44 PM
and I bet a lot of it has to do with the christian missionarys that converted them to ignorance
Posted by: anon | Aug 27, 2007 3:55:25 PM
this is just so depressing. there is no god.
Posted by: nic | Aug 27, 2007 3:58:11 PM
Roman Catholic Church (27.0%)
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (19.5%)
United Church (11.5%)
Seventh-day Adventist Church (10.0%)
Pentecostal (8.6%)
Evangelical Alliance (5.2%)
Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea (3.2%)
Baptist (2.5%)
Church of Christ (0.4%)
Salvation Army (0.2%)
Other Christian (8.0%)
total 96.1% christian
that is a HUGE christian population for a nation
Posted by: anon | Aug 27, 2007 3:59:39 PM
This is straight up barbaric.
Posted by: michael | Aug 27, 2007 4:08:43 PM
ANON - where did you get the statistics from?
Posted by: Gregg | Aug 27, 2007 6:29:19 PM
When I hear shit like this, I just hope an asteroid wipes us all out.
Posted by: Zlexar | Aug 27, 2007 6:40:24 PM
gregg wikipedia papua new guinea
scroll down to religion section.
Wiki sucks but is the best at grabbing quick bits of info.
Posted by: anon | Aug 27, 2007 7:27:51 PM
Does anyone have any contacts at the UN who could investigate this hideous, nauseating allegation?
Posted by: David | Aug 27, 2007 8:09:57 PM
Religion should be ban, only then will they have any hope over such ignorance.
Posted by: vinny | Aug 27, 2007 8:42:24 PM
This is an atrocity!
Why? Why does this happen?
Posted by: ShirleyHeezgay! | Aug 27, 2007 10:40:48 PM
Nic & Vinny, I totally agree with you. This is so depressing it is beyond words. And most likely, religion played a huge role (as it does in most human horror stories).
An asteroid or a global thermonuclear war is what I pray for sometimes daily, but there seems to be nothing to pray to. And with stories like this daily, no hope for mankind.
If God abandoned someone like Mother Teresa (like was reported in this week's Time magazine, & even if there is a god), what chance do you think those people have? Maybe in 500 years they will be evolved, just like maybe, just MAYBE in 1,000 the Middle East will be civilized (yeah, right).
Posted by: Jordan | Aug 27, 2007 11:00:20 PM
Christianity sucks.
Posted by: SC | Aug 28, 2007 1:15:07 AM
Your reporting is a bit confusing. Your first article on micro-chips in Papua referred to the Indonesian part of Papua. This article seems to indicate this is happening in Papua New Guinea, which is its own country. Can you please clarify exactly where you are talking about?
Posted by: gwyneth cornrow | Aug 28, 2007 11:49:25 AM
Proud FM 103.9, a Toronto based gay and lesbian commercial radio station (North America's first) is reporting on this story.
This story is getting out there!
Posted by: ShirleyHeezgay! | Aug 28, 2007 5:08:12 PM