http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/sorcery-killings...

Sorcery killings hurting PNG progress    by: Eoin Blackwell, AAP Papua New Guinea Correspondent  From:  AAP   June 06, 2013 4:57PM   

 WHEN Dame Carol Kidu first stood for Papua New Guinea's parliament 16 years ago, she had to hire a "Catholic sorcerer" to make it over the line.    "I'd gotten a sore throat during the campaign," she told AAP on Thursday.

"My team did not accept it as a rational thing, and we had to hire a counter sorcerer.

"They were convinced that the incumbent member had employed a sorcerer to do this to me." So the sorcerer - who blended traditional beliefs in magic with Catholicism - cast a counter spell to protect her.

"It wasn't for me, really. It was for my team," she chuckles.

"Still, my voice came back."

Such is the reality of the belief in sorcery in Papua New Guinea, Dame Carol's adopted home after she left Australia