New Guinea Worries Over

Strife In Rabaul

From JOHN RYAN, in Port Moresby Seven thousand of the 69,000 Tolai people of New Guinea are rebelling against local government, the Australians and the influential elders of their tribe.

The 7,000 —the Mataungan Asso ciation—unleashed a brief wave of violence on December 7 to try to beat the Tolai elders into submission.

Almost all the elders attacked are members of the Gazelle Multi-racial Local Government Council, which Mataungan is trying to discredit.

Now, most of the Mataungan hierarchy is in gaol. When the Mataungan hot-heads began the beatings-up on December 7, they played right into the hands of the patient central government in Port Moresby; they broke the rule of law, and Port Moresby and its police force knew exactly how to deal with them.

Police protection

At month’s end, the victims of the brutal attacks (they included the highly respected Vin Tobaining, MBE, former member of the Legisla tive Council) were still under police protection, after coming out of hospital.

And on January 28, patron of Mataungan, the member for Kokopo in the Papua-New Guinea House of Assembly, Mr. Oscar Tammur, goes into court again, charged on a Gazelle Council summons with fail ing to pay his annual Sl6 council tax.

The council is now busily issuing hundreds of other summonses, solidly backed by the central government.

As each day passed after the December 7 attacks, control of Mataungan seemed to be shifting hands from Mr. Tammur to Mr. John Kaputin, 33, the former teacher, parliamentary interpreter and long time student who tried—and failed— at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and came home to a Gazelle Peninsula job managing the Savings and Loan Societies move ment.

A few days before he went to Rabaul on December 7, Administra tor Hay confided that “Rabaul is still very tense”. Observers here are wondering if he began touring the Gazelle deliberately on December 7, to flush Mataungan out of hiding.

Whether by design or by accident, this is just what Mr. Hay achieved.

When Mataungan began its attack, Mr. Hay was in the thick of it. A punch thought to have been aimed at him, hit the senior Local Govern ment adviser at Rabaul, Mr. Jim Fenton. All over the Gazelle, young Mataungans arrived in trucks for attacks on carefully chosen Gazelle councillors and supporters.

By mid-month, Magistrate Walters had sent some Mataungans (includ ing the president, vice-president and secretary) off to gaol, one for 12 months, some for eight and most for six months. And police dogs from Port Moresby were flown in, after Mr. Tammur boasted that when he went to court on the tax-evasion charge, “thousands of Mataungans will be there with me”.

Very few turned up and later, at Queen Elizabeth Park, John Kaputin shouted to 700 Mataungans; “We won’t pay a cent towards a lawyer for Oscar Tammur—we didn’t pay for any lawyers for the other Mataungan men—we won’t pay for Tammur”.

And, reacting to the arrival of police dogs: “We are not animals . . . we are not pigs ... we are human beings, and they (central government) have sent dogs to fight you. . . .”

Helicopters

A few weeks ago, university lecturer Mr. Ikenna Nwokolo, was defending Mataungan in court. The Biafran lawyer was then given a VIP Tolai dance-exhibition, for his court room support of Mataungan.

Helicopters whirled overhead on the Gazelle to try to pinpoint any further troublespots, hundreds of police patrolled the town in riot gear, and others made dawn-raids on villages to grab those involved in the December 7 attacks.

In Port Moresby, the Minister for External Territories, Mr. Barnes, flew in briefly to get support from the six elected native members of the Administrator’s Executive Council, or an all-out campaign to halt the lawlessness at Rabaul. “We will keep

the law”, said the Minister, to re assure Rabaul and a worried Papua- New Guinea.

Behind closed doors, he discussed with other elected New Guinean and European MHA’s the real Rabaul problem: how to win over Mataungan peacefully, and how to avoid allow ing the gaoled Mataungans to be c o m e martyrs. Some MHA’s suggested a new committee of inquiry, with Mataungan being offered a committee seat.

But Minister Barnes was not impressed. His Commission of In quiry—Brisbane QC P. D. Connolly and two respected Tolai men—had already reported on the Gazelle strife, and Mataungan should accept the anti-Mataungan finding.

Reaction against Mataungan has spread, and is stronger. Most acknowledge that Rabaul has a land and youth problem, and that Mataungan, when Mr. Tammur was using it as a peaceful, political vehicle, had a large number of supporters.

The December 7 violence seems to have cut a swathe through these supporters. Even the educated Tolais working on the mainland—many were early, secret supporters of Mataungan—have now begun to wilt

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away . . . with the shadow of the Police Special Branch hovering to watch their every move.

What is the Mataungan Associa tion?

In 1934, in the middle of the world depression, the young men of the Tolai community rebelled against tradition and their elders, and estab lished their “Kivung”, or young men’s meetings.

They were tired of their “un educated” elders telling them what to do.

The newly-formed Mataungan As sociation of young men and middle age allies is seen by some at Rabaul as an aggressive, “new look” type of “Kivung” with Tolai independence as the long-term goal.

Many will argue the real purpose of Mataungan and Mataungan mem bers themselves differ greatly in try ing to explain exactly what they want.

But one thing is certain: they are dangerously angry over the growing shortage of land on the Gazelle Peninsula, the “lordly” attitude of some Australian businessmen, planters and government men, and the attempts by Tolai elders in the Gazelle Council to placate them by dubbing them “educated young men who think they know everything”.

What began at Rabaul in Decem ber as a vicious war between young and old—and Tolai power in the balance—has escalated (because of the Mataungan viciousness) into a head-on clash between Mataungan and the central government.

Like Tommy Kabu in the late 1940’s in the Gulf of Papua, Paliau Maloat on Manus in 1950, the Navunerams near Rabaul in 1958, John Teosin on Buka Island in 1962 and Bosmailik and his brother on New Hanover in 1964, it’s now a battle of pyschology and tactics be tween central government and John Kaputin.

Perhaps the only real answer —if Mr. Kaputin is seriously concerned with the self-government future of the Tolais—is for Australia to try something new in local government in New Guinea. To do this, Mr.

Kaputin will have to be able to sit down calmly at a round-table con ference, and the Mataungan hot heads will have to accept some responsibility, instead of venting their frustrations on old men of their own tribe.