Papua New Guinea’s government has condemned “horrific” allegations of cannibalism – one tribal warrior was seen “licking” a severed human foot while another lifted a severed hand in a gruesome video from the country’s remote jungle highlands .
The images show a group of men armed with bows, arrows and machetes while holding severed body parts.
One of them smiled at the camera as he put his foot to his mouth and said: “We are the mafia. We have cut it off.”
According to local media reports, one of the men said: “This is our meat.” We will cook it and eat it.’
In one photo, a man holds a bloody body part while another licks his lips.
Creepy still images from the video were published on January 6 on the front page of PNG’s Post Courier newspaper.
The video shows a group of men armed with bows, arrows and machetes holding severed body parts and one of them smiling as he puts his foot in his mouth and says ‘we are the mafia, we have cut it off’.
According to local media reports, one of the men said: “This is our meat.” We will cook it and eat it
The video was filmed about a month ago in Saki village, Goilala district in central PNG province, north of the national capital Port Moresby, after a fight between two brothers turned fatal.
The video was filmed about a month ago in Saki village, Goilala district in central PNG province, north of the national capital Port Moresby, after a fight between two brothers turned fatal.
The younger brother allegedly killed his older brother and the violence escalated, leaving seven dead.
Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili said he was deeply concerned by the images which appeared to depict “horrific acts of cannibalism”.
“Such barbarism does not define us as a people or as a nation,” he stated.
‘These barbaric actions by a group of young people not only shock our collective conscience but also pose a serious threat to the social values that unite us as a nation.
“There was a violent confrontation between two brothers that led to a heartbreaking result,” he told AFP.
“In the conflict, the villagers took sides and ultimately the end result was the gruesome murder of the elder brother at the hands of the younger brother.”
Police have now traveled to Goilala, where communities are clustered around an alluvial gold mining camp and five years ago was the scene of a catastrophic landslide that buried people alive.
The president of the Law Society of Papua New Guinea, Hubert Namani, condemned the barbarism after seeing the horrible images.
“I condemn the horrific acts of violence, mutilation and cannibalism circulating on social media,” he said.
“These acts of inhumanity are a stark reminder that the law and order situation in the nation requires immediate attention.”
Historically, cannibalism has been documented among a small number of tribes in remote areas of Papua New Guinea.
One group, the Fore people, practiced cannibalism in ceremonies in the 19th century and into the 1950s.
Women cut, cooked, and distributed body parts to their relatives, who often shared them with their children. The brain was a special delicacy.
But when the Australian authorities took over the administration of Papua New Guinea and one of their first acts was to prohibit cannibalism.
Goilala, where communities are clustered around an alluvial gold mining camp, is located north of Port Moresby, in a remote jungle that was the scene of a catastrophic landslide five years ago that buried people alive.
PNG Law Society president Hubert Namani expressed his horror at the incident in a press release.
In response to Hubert Namani’s statement on the latest incident, the PNG member for the Goilali region responded by saying that it discredits PNG and its community (above).
Open feasting on bodies subsequently declined and the practice disappeared (at least publicly) in the early 1960s.
US President Joe Biden made a mistake in 2024 when he joked that his uncle, a fighter pilot, may have been eaten by cannibals after being shot down during World War II.
“They shot him to death in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, really, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape later dismissed the gaffe as “lazy” talk by the President.
Responding to Hubert Namani’s statement on the latest incident, the PNG member for the Goilali region responded.
Casmiro Aia called on Mr Namani to apologize to his community, saying he had misused the word “cannibalism” to describe an isolated and unverified incident.
He said the actual incident was simply a violent altercation between brothers when one was killed and dismembered and that calling it cannibalism brought PNG into disrepute.