Barrick Gold refuses to relocate villagers who suffer murder, rape and house burning

This past July a young man was murdered deep in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea, and Canadians should care.

Why?

Why concern ourselves with this one act of violence in a far away corner of the Pacific, at a time when there is so much violence in the world?

After all, there is lots of killing closer to home that could concern us, starting with the Ukraine (quiet for the moment) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). That latter group has even compelled U.S. President Obama to take serious military action, with Canada's Prime Minister Harper tagging along behind, calling out: "Me too! Me too!"

ExxonMobil’s New Guinea Nightmare

This report was produced in association with Project Word and made possible by grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. Research assistance: Nick Sexton, Shruti Banerjee and Hannah Rappleye.

Monday, January 23, 2012, was a routine day for 15-year-old Jackson Piwago. Like every other weekday, his father met him after school, and the two walked hand in hand back to their home in Tumbi, a small village in the remote, mountainous Hela Province of Papua New Guinea. There, at the foot of the Gigira Mountain Range, Jackson went about his chores: looking after the family’s pigs, collecting firewood, fetching water and cooking sweet potatoes. He chatted with some of his father’s nine wives, as well as his many brothers and cousins. As on most evenings, dinner was boisterous and joyful.

Ebola Kills Dozens In Guinea, May Have Spread To Sierra Leone

CONAKRY, March 22 (Reuters) - Guinea has received confirmation that a mysterious disease that has killed up to 59 people in the West African country, and may have spread to neighbouring Sierra Leone, is the haemorrhagic fever Ebola, the government said on Saturday.

Cases of the disease - among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans, with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent - have been registered in three southeastern towns and in the capital Conakry since Feb. 9. It has never before been recorded in Guinea.

Woman accused of witchcraft tortured, burned alive by mob

PORT MORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA—A mob stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of horrified witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday. It was the latest sorcery-related killing in this South Pacific island nation.

Bystanders, including many children, watched and some took photographs of Wednesday’s brutal slaying. Grisly pictures were published on the front pages of the country’s two largest newspapers, The National and the Post-Courier, while the prime minister, police and diplomats condemned the killing.