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WITCHCRAFT TRIALS AROUND THE WORLD
EUROPE
From 1347–1349 the Black Death and the bubonic plague, nearly destroyed the populations of European nations and greatly encouraged rumors of devil-worshippers who conspired with other heretics, such as Jews and Muslims, to invoke Satan to bring about a pestilence that would destroy Christianity and the West.
From about 1450 to 1750, somewhere around 40,000 to 60,000 individuals were tried as witches and condemned to death in Central Europe. Both protestant and Catholic religions were guilty of persecuting witches. Most judges were in government positions.
Of that number, as high as 80% of victims were women.
1484, Pope Innocent VIII claimed that Satanists in Germany were meeting with demons, casting spells that destroyed crops and aborted infants, so he established a new orthodoxy which held that Christians had an obligation to hunt down and kill witches. Some popes authorized officials to hunt out enemies who were protestant witches.
In Geneva alone five hundred persons were burned in the years 1515 and 1516, under the title of Protestant Witches.
26,000 in Germany10,000 in France1,000 in England
only four in Ireland******************************
German trials of 1629 - children made up 60% of those accused.
In Sweden in 1675, 65 women (1/5 the women in the area) and 6 men were beheaded and burned in a single day. It was one of the largest single mass killings in recorded history.
The Ministry of Safety and Security of South Africa’s Northern Province
created a
Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft, Violence and Ritual Killings.
The Commission issued a report in May 1996 showing thousands of people had been-1. accused of witchcraft 2. run out of town3. and lost property
•More than 300 killed by vigilante mobs over the previous ten years. Victims accused of:converting people into zombiescausing death by calling down lightning
Victims were accused of“shape-shifting” from human into
animal form.
The Congolese Human Rights Observatory recently announced more than 60 people burned or buried alive in that country since 1990 – including
40 in 1996.
* In Kenya, suspicious women are set on fire by angry neighbors.
*In Tanzania, albinos are hunted like prey for organs that supposedly work dark magic.
*In Gambia, the president once had hundreds rounded up, then ordered them beaten and questioned to locate and punish the witch he believed had killed his aunt.
Tanzania's Ministry of Home Affairs claimed that 5,000 victims of witch lynching were murdered between
1994 and 1998.
*July 14, 1995 - 250 documented cases of witch killings in the Northern Province
*December 27, 1995 - More than 70 people were killed in witch hunts in Northern Transvaal
*June 18, 1996 - First witchcraft summit met in Pietersburg-claims that 117 killed in witch hunts since January '96 (unofficial 300-500)
*September 27, 1996 - 52 youths, between the ages of 14 - 26 were charged in connection with the murder of 33 "witches."
INDIA
On July 29, 2002 five women hacked to death because they were believed to have been practicing “witchcraft.”
Between 2001-2006, police report over 700 women killed as witches in India. Numbers may be much higher.
.
ARABIA
2011 Saudi woman was beheaded after convicted of practicing "witchcraft and sorcery," according to the Saudi Interior Ministry, this is at least the second such execution for sorcery this year.
SALEM
20 people executedFollowing trials and executions, many involved, like judge Samuel Sewall, publicly confessed error and guilt. January 14, 1697 General Court ordered day of fasting, soul-searching for the tragedy of Salem. 1702- court declared the trials unlawful. 1711-colony passed bill restoring rights and goodnames of those accused granted £600 restitutionto their heirs.
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