Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of geography at UCLA, is the target of a $10 million lawsuit.
The plaintiffs, Hup Daniel Wemp and Henep Isum Mandingo from New Guinea have charged Diamond with defamation for falsely accusing them of committing criminal acts, including murder, in an article Diamond wrote for the New Yorker in April 2008.
Diamond declined to comment on the matter.
“It is not prudent to talk about a lawsuit that may be filed,” he said.
The article at the source of controversy, “Vengeance is Ours,” is about Wemp’s alleged role in an ongoing war between two rival clans.
“In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan,” Diamond wrote.
According to the article, Wemp was charged to take revenge against Mandingo, the Ombal leader who was blamed for Soll’s death.
Diamond wrote that from 1993 to 1995, six battles took place in which 30 people were killed. In the last battle, Mandingo was allegedly stuck with an arrow in the back, leaving him paralyzed.
Mako Kuwimb, the lawyer representing Wemp and Kuwimb, called these facts “totally rubbish.”
Kuwimb said Diamond’s article was written based on casual conversations he had with Wemp while he was bird-watching in New Guinea.
“Diamond constructed and published the article without (Wemp’s) knowledge, consent or even proof-reading of it,” Kuwimb said. “Consequently, the article contains information that paints (Wemp) and our clans as criminals who have raped women, murdered people and stole(n) pigs from other clans.”
Kuwimb said Diamond mixed up a number of stories that Wemp had told him and failed to fact-check his information. Kuwimb said he sent a letter to the New Yorker seeking an apology but has not heard back.
A New Yorker spokesperson said the magazine stands by the facts presented in Diamond’s article, but cannot comment further due to the ongoing nature of the lawsuit.
Rhonda Shearer, an independent journalist who investigated the accuracy of Diamond’s article, said she is “mystified and saddened” by what she believes to be Diamond’s neglect to report the truth.
Shearer said she contacted Wemp, Mandingo, a number of anthropologists and members of the two supposedly warring tribes mentioned in Diamond’s article. She presented her findings in a report titled “Jared Diamond’s Factual Collapse.”
In the report, Shearer accuses Diamond of making a number of serious factual errors.
Diamond is now required to answer the complaint filed by Hemp and Mandingo within 30 days of April 20, according to his summons.