Witchcraft

A criminal offense, historically widespread and still codified in the law of a number of countries today, consisting of the practice of, or the accusation of practicing, sorcery or malevolent supernatural harm against another person, distinguished as a matter of secular criminal law from witchcraft as a religious, folkloric, or cultural belief and practice. Historically the offense was most infamously prosecuted during a wave of witch trials across early modern Europe and colonial North America, including the 1692 Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, in which accusation and prosecution, rather than any actual demonstrated act of harm, was itself typically sufficient for conviction; a related modern concern, witchcraft accusation or witch-hunting, remains documented as a significant human rights issue in a number of countries, particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, where an accusation of witchcraft, especially against an elderly woman or a child, has been documented as a trigger for banishment, torture, or mob killing, prompting some of these countries to specifically criminalize the act of accusing or targeting a person as a witch.