The Case to Intervene and Stop East Timorese Killing ‘Witches’
Original Citation: 2009 ETLJ 7 The Case to Intervene and Stop East Timorese Killing ‘Witches’
Wright’s fascinating article published in the East Timor Law Journal documents recent cases of killings of alleged witches in East Timor as instances of traditional justice (Witchcraft and Murder in East Timor 2009 ETLJ 6). He cites the “anti-democratic” and “maladaptive” nature of such killings as evidence for the claim that outsiders should sometimes intervene and stop certain cultural practices.
However, as an anthropologist who is unsure about intervening in other societies, I would like to analyse his case to intervene and stop ‘witch’ killings. In this short essay, I recap Wright’s argument and then point to three areas where the case to intervene could be strengthened. First, I point to complexities in the anthropological position on relativism. Second, I indicate problems with intervening. Last, I suggest the need for criteria for a legal system which are not cultural specific. Rather than disproving the case to intervene and stop witch killings, these three objections indicate ways in which the case to intervene could be strengthened.
Wright documents four cases of attacks of alleged witches in East Timor: a 1999 torture of a woman; the killing of three ‘witches’ in 2008; an anecdote about a man advised by a United Nations police officer to deal with witchcraft in the ‘traditional’ way, and who subsequently killed the ‘witch’; and an anecdote about hot coals being fatally placed on a ‘witch’s’ back for punishment.
Wright finds these attacks “draconian” and “anti-democratic”. He appears to be targeting “overly relativist anthropologists” who he implies would support these attacks. Wright criticises “many anthropologists who lack a comprehension of the concepts of democratic secular law and justice” and “are ardent supporters of traditional justice systems”. He implies that there is no role for traditional justice such as ‘witch’ killing. Nevertheless, he feels that traditional justice “will play an important role” if “we know how to take advantage” of its “positive aspects”. The grounds for this claim seem to be established if the traditional legal system is open, accessible, not draconian, respecting of human rights, and is secular and democratic. Wright’s argument that one can judge and also intervene in another society thus runs against relativism. I suggest three weaknesses in this case in the following.
Wright critiques many anthropologists for being relativists who fail to understand democracy. However, relativism has been the subject of persistent debate in anthropology with regard to two issues.
First, with regard to writing about or recording culture, anthropologists have debated whether they should merely describe (if that is possible) other cultures, or prescribe what they should do. Battle lines have been drawn over issues such as the wearing of a veil by Muslim women, clitorectomy and other forms of genital mutilation, the Hindu sati, cannibalism, and so on. To quote one undergraduate text book, “There is no easy answer to the question of when or if it is proper to judge the beliefs and practices of others to be right or wrong”. The same text also warns against the dangers of the “relativist fallacy”—“the idea that is impossible to make moral judgments about others” (Robbins 1997:11-12).
Second, if moral judgments are accepted, it is debated whether outsiders (such as anthropologists often are) have the right or responsibility to tinker with society. This is the great debate as to whether anthropology should be “pure” (for knowledge’s sake) or “applied” (achieving practical results) (Keen 1999:33-5). In view of this, I suggest that it is not simply the case that “many anthropologists” misunderstand secular law or are ardent supporters of traditional justice systems, rather, there is much debate and subtlety with which they approach the issue of relativism. As the debate regarding relativism is well documented in anthropological writings, I will focus on problems with intervening specific to ‘witch’ killings in Timor Leste.
One problem with stopping witch-killing is that it can cause consternation for local people and upset the balance of relations within the community. This has been the experience of some colonial and post-colonial regimes. For the Lozi of Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the 1940s, sorcerers…were “patent criminals protected by British law” (Gluckman 1955:159). The Bimin-Kuskusmin of PNG perceive that the nearby Oksapmin people attack them with witchcraft, yet they “can no longer stage revenge raids against Oksapmin, because the government has outlawed warfare” (Zelenietz 1981:9).
In Cameroon, “the State appeared as the objective ally of the witch (Rowlands and Warnier 1988:127). This was also observed among the Navaho: “white courts refuse to acknowledge the existence of witchcraft…Hence, “witches” are in a highly favourable position to practice indirect extortion—they are feared and yet almost immune from punishment, for white governmental agencies exert every force to prevent the killing of witches” (Kluckhohn 1944:116).
The ‘protection’ of the perceived sorcerer or witch creates problems. This can be seen among the Korowai, who live to the east of Timor Leste, in New Guinea. Bereaved survivors of witch attacks, until recently ambushed and killed the alleged witch outright. Otherwise they took the witch to a third-party who would assemble to execute the witch and eat his body. The consumers of the witch ‘transferred’ the witch back by hosting a sago-grub feast and providing brides to the witch’s people, to paraphrase Stasch (2001). Attempts by Indonesian police to stop this interrupted this exchange. For the Korowai, giving up this homicide at the state’s behest “is tied to recognition of a larger transformation in the very make-up of the world” (Stasch 2001:47).
Tinkering with one element of the system may cause larger, unintended, transformations. Intervening also risks denying indigenous people the ‘right’ to act according to their own will. Missionaries, colonial and neo-colonial states have attempted to eliminate witchcraft beliefs and recriminations (as well as many other apparently abhorrent cultural practices).
Timor Leste’s struggle for freedom has more often than not been an attempt to stop foreigners telling its population what to do. Of course, the missionaries, colonisers, and neo-colonisers might have been right and the anti-colonialists wrong in some cases; but if this is to be asserted, the grounds for distinguishing what is right and wrong must be established. Such intervention can also come from within societies.
Wright cites Xanana Gusmao’s antipathy to witchcraft and other feudal elements of traditional laws. It could be argued that this socialist critique of the killings of witches is typical of the modernising ideas of ‘indigenous’ elites in post-colonial societies. Indeed the first case of witch killing Wright refers to led to prosecutions of the alleged witch killers.
However, even this kind of intervention can be harmful. For instance, government attempts to modernise and assimilate indigenous peoples has caused suffering and hardship throughout the world (Gomes 2007:2-4). This is part of a wider problem of states’ well-meaning attempts to modernise and improve populations with devastating results (Scott 1998). Before intervening, we should be sure that it would not damage Timor Leste’s societies or that it would damage Timor Leste’s societies but should be undertaken anyway.
The final problem with the case to intervene and stop East Timorese killing witches, is that the criteria Wright provide are themselves susceptible to a relativist critique. He advocates, for example, the criterion of “non-draconian”, implying a good legal system is not draconian. For some Aboriginal people living in traditional communities, the formal justice system which incarcerates them (often with fatal results) is more draconian than their system, which might resort to spearing an offender. For many Whites, traditional Aboriginal justice of spearing is draconian.
Another problematic criterion for Wright’s legal system is “democratic”. Killing ‘sorcerers’ where I did fieldwork was the wish of almost all local residents – often the ‘sorcerers’ own family, friends, and neighbours. In the sense that it is the will of the majority, it is thus democratic. If a trial by jury were established, I strongly suspect that ‘sorcerers’ would be similarly condemned. I suspect that most villagers in Timor Leste would also wish to kill witches. To the extent that this is true, it appears that democracy is not antithetical to witch killings.
It might be that we are justified in morally judging and intervening in other societies. I suggest that engaging with the long debate over relativism in anthropology would be a good place to begin this debate. In any case, we should be wary that intervening in societies, even with the best of intentions, most often has a damaging effect.
Finally the criteria we assert for changing a society – such as making the legal system “democratic” and “non-draconian” – should be defined in a manner which is not culturally specific. The case to intervene and stop witch killings in East Timor could be strengthened by taking this step.
References
Gluckman, Max 1955 The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Gomes, Alberto G 2007 Modernity and Malaysia: Settling the Menraq forest nomads. London: Routledge.
Keen, Ian 1999 The Scientific Attitude in Applied Anthropology. In Applied Anthropology in Australasia. S. Toussaint and J. Taylor, eds. Pp. 27-59. Nedlands WA: University of Western Australia Press.
Kluckhohn, Clyde 1944 Navaho Witchcraft. Boston: Beacon Press.
Robbins, Richard H 1997 Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach. Itasca, Illinois: F.E. Peacock.
Rowlands, Michael, and Jean-Pierre Warnier 1988 Sorcery, Power and the Modern State in Cameroon. Man 23(1):118-132.
Scott, James 1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Stasch, Rupert 2001 Giving up Homicide: Korowai Experience of Witches and Police (West Papua). Oceania 72(1):33-52.
Zelenietz, Marty 1981 Sorcery and Social Change: An Introduction. Social Analysis 8:3-14
Dr Nicholas Herriman
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Centre of Southeast Asian Studies
Monash Asia Institute
Monash University
http://arts.monash.edu.au/mai/staff/nherriman.php
First published on the East Timor Law Journal on 31 May 2009
I comment on the report of the murder of an alleged witch in Maubisse reported on Radio Timor Leste 21 December and in The East Timor Law and Justice Bulletin online on 22 December, and which follows on the debate between Wright and Herriman, and builds upon Harrington’s accurate capturing of the dispute mechanism process.
…
An old woman is accused of stopping a nursing mother from lactating. The people beat her to drive out evil. When she is confronted with the allegation, and asked if she is a witch, she replies yes; similarly, when asked if she had stopped the mother’s milk, she admits that she has. This is her role in society, and she fulfils that function.
On a charge of witchcraft, an entire family and lineage may be killed (Schulte Nordholt 1971:367). It was believed that witches passed their craft down through their daughters.
As East Timor’s justice system and Police Service (ETPS) was forming, existing dispute resolution mechanism may have been more respected and held more legitimacy locally; but summary justice is not acceptable on legal or human rights grounds: there are some cultural practices which are universally not on – and some which are made up.
Change cannot be instituted immediately; it requires a generational shift. The rule of law is now established in Timor-Leste which can deal with alleged cases of witchcraft that can be tried in court according rules of evidence that satisfy the requirements of that system.
At present, UN police have a specific mandate, which as it prepares to leave has been reduced to an advisory role, so the UN officer (Wright 2009) would have been correct in the current context, and the complaint referred to local police; however, the reference is from 2000 (Edgerton), in the early days for the UN in Timor, with little knowledge of the place.
So to dismiss the complaint does seem inappropriate, and there was not yet then even the semblance of a nascent police. In its formative stages, the role of the Timorese police was somewhat confused: there is the oppressive and corrupt examples from Portugal and Indonesia, and the police had never been incorporated into the social structure. That some police had come from the Indonesian system confounded the whole thing.
During the Indonesian occupation, the Timorese people had no real recourse to justice in the state system, either because perpetrators of state violence were effectively immune from prosecution; or for those in the resistance, a parallel system existed, and the use of customary law to settle disputes between Timorese thrived.
There is no traditional role of police as such; it is a community responsibility, and regulation – proscription as well as prescription – is by way of tara bandu. Any other institutional framework is not recognised. Some police try to assert authority, others defer to respective roles in community. Some illustrations:
Land is the most common cause of conflict, and while the belief in witches is real, and the cause of death and illness is attributed to witchcraft (or speaking the words of the lianain without the ritual authority), often the accusation is cast to give solemnity to the situation and exacerbate the blame attributable to antagonists involved in the dispute.
In one instance, the UN police were conducting the investigation, with ETPS acting as interpreters. A person had returned to land on which coffee was growing, title for which his family had been granted by Portugal and acknowledged by Indonesia.
The Timorese considered it communal land, and during the interview with locals, the Timorese police left out of their translation the detail about chasing the owner with machetes and burning down his house. ETPS said the dispute should be settled by traditional methods, and believed traditional ownership rather than title should prevail.
The acceptance of people back into the community follows the traditional methods for
resolution, and it is interesting to observe whether the same processes can be adopted as an adjunct to the justice system at a state level. After 1999, there were reconciliation processes to accept returning militia; and after the 2006 Crisis, a Simu Malu process was implemented to reintegrate people into communities.
There was always the problem of political appropriation of defence and police, as well as former combatants and clandestine expecting or demanding roles in the current structure. The lack of jobs, and the physical hardship and psychological trauma these people have suffered as a result of their sacrifice meant that they may not be fit for the scarce positions in the new security sector; and having trained in an atmosphere of opposition to an occupying force, how would they make the transition to democratic civilian rule?
This case of permanent hostility is itself a dyadic system, an acknowledgment that peace cannot exist without war, ‘that life would be impossible if this relationship were broken’ (Schulte Nordholt 1971:388). McWilliam (1989:155) notes that disputes ‘are an endemic feature of social life’. If you don’t have a problem, then create one, such as blaming someone of – or deflecting blame to – witchcraft. War and death are a condition for life and marriage (Schulte Nordholt 1971:331, 356). And as someone who is married to a Timorese, I can vouch that war is indeed a condition of marriage, and that blame is part of being: going to work is construed as having an affair (I’m not the only one!)*
People ‘may use the opportunity of a land dispute to vent their anger over other silent feuds’ (McWilliam 1989:252). If an enemy burns your house down, the land is considered cursed; for example, a sacred house that was burnt to the ground 1999 was rebuilt, then collapsed (this may be more to do with the fact that the house was rebuilt using green wood, which is subject to mites). However, if a friend burns down you house, then it’s quite safe to rebuild on the same site.
A dispute concerned a stockpile of Teak from a barge washed ashore in 1998. Fields nearby were strewn with logged teak, and sale of teak had been banned, so ownership and disposal became an issue of contention, and a dispute resolution meeting was called.
The Minister for Agriculture made the point that as it was Portuguese land, which the Indonesian government had taken over, concluding that ownership of the land should pass on to the East Timorese government. The people disagreed, insisting that it is community land, and complained that the government does not treat the people with the same respect that it expects for its laws and demands from them. Furthermore, they added that the government should not be able to dictate what is legal or otherwise regarding the use of land and disposal of trees or wood or goods from people’s land.
The difference between the state and customary systems, most noticeably in criminal matters, is that in the traditional mechanism, restitution must be made to the victim, whereas the state will merely punish the perpetrator, and pocket for itself any fines it may impose.
An argument in favour of the state system over the customary law is that the state protects all its citizens. On the other hand, the customary system may be seen as quicker and cheaper alternative to the cumbersome and overloaded state system, so that justice may give way to expediency.
More serious problems arise where someone who might want a case brought before the courts is coerced into accepting local mediation. This is more likely with more vulnerable members of that community, such as rape victims. If the laws and decisions of the courts reflect the views of the influential people in society, rather than community standards, the result may be similar to the problems encountered in the customary system.
Lack of confidence in both the police and the courts has not only resulted in continuance of local dispute resolution systems, but has caused some groups to form their own security organisations, but in effect are sometimes no more than standover thugs, whose activities range from protection rackets to threatening to kidnap judges unless a suspect is released. Some of the gangs forming out of resistance said that they were doing so to honour their parents who had fought for freedom. There have also been cases of armed standoffs; one in which the inadequately armed UN forces reverted to slingshots to defend themselves (pers. comm).
Dispute resolution used to involve gift exchange, but now it’s just a matter of sitting and talking (nahe biti). Decisions are made by sitting by the families sitting with the elders, who have authority to adjudicate; the church is sometimes involved, but I’m yet to hear of a case of exorcism in Timor.
A more positive perspective is perhaps provided in the way that the community in Manufahi decided to choose its representatives to the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. Firstly, there should be a gender balance. Secondly, representatives shall be chosen from legitimate members of the former resistance groups, which were in the process of transforming into the incipient civil society.
A personal perspective
When my daughter became ill with seizures at 2AM I ran to the clinic to get an ambulance; when I returned was surprised to see an accumulation of thongs and an ensuing throng inside who blocked me from taking my daughter to hospital while they administered traditional medicine, which to me was obviously not only useless, but deleterious – what I consider to be witchcraft.
My wife led the charge, telling me I was a stupid malae and didn’t know anything and should go back to Australia. Her sister argued that if I took her to hospital, they would give her an injection which would kill her; I countered that her not having the injection would kill her.
After a prolonged standoff, we got to hospital, and as the paediatrician was trying to stabilise my daughter so she could fly to Darwin, my wife’s father insisted on taking my daughter home. The doctor explained that if she were to stay at the hospital, she might live; if she were to go to Australia, she might recover; but if she were to go home, she would certainly die; but my wife’s father was adamant that he was the grandfather, and what he said is what would happen, and that when she died, he would bring her back ‘pronto’ – the use of Portuguese supposedly lending some credibility to local utterances.
We went to Darwin, then Adelaide, where my daughter had neurosurgery to remove a tuberculoma from her right hemisphere, and three months intensive physiotherapy to learn to walk and use her left side to see, hear, chew and smile again (she still has only limited use of her left arm). I had brought my daughter and her mother to Australia before, and have since, and on the last trip the marriage disintegrated, and my wife returned to Timor with our daughter; so now I worry that my daughter with her white skin and seizures may well be considered a witch.
References
Edgerton, Robert B.. “Traditional Beliefs and Practices –Are Some Better than others?” in Laurence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, eds. Culture Matters. How values shape human progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000)
Harrington, A, 2006 ETLJ 7 INSTITUTIONS AND THE EAST TIMORESE EXPERIENCE
Herriman, N, 2009 ETLJ 7 The Case to Intervene and Stop East Timorese Killing ‘Witches’
McWilliam, A (1989), Narrating the gate and path: place and precedence in southwest Timor, Canbera: ANU
Schulte Nordholt, H (1971), The Political System of the Atoni of Timor, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff
Wright, W, 2009 ETLJ 6 Witchcraft and Murder in East Timor 2009 ETLJ 6
*My wife was in Santa Cruz cemetery, aged nine, when the Indonesians opened fire, and fled Dili on foot in 1999 to escape marauding militia, and in 2006 had to flee once again the violent confrontations that divided east and west. She is afraid of witches. And ducks, and insists she has seen witches hovering in the night, a common thematic representation.