Up Front

with the Editor

It’s too early yet to know if a law recently passed in Papua New Guinea will have its intended effect in reducing the number of tribal revenge killings, but the fact that the law is needed at all is a reminder of the variety of social problems that face that territory.

In the next three months Papua New Guinea will hold general elec tions that will enlarge the legislature to 100 elected members and prepare the country for full self-government by 1976, possibly earlier. It’s natural in these circumstances that we should hear a lot about the territory’s political problems rather than its social ones. The Australian news papers are filled with stories on new political parties, or old ones given a new direction, of fears by the Papuans that New Guineans will dominate the government, of secession moves on Bougainville, New Britain and Lord knows where.

But while this inevitable politicking goes on among the elite, out in the bush the population has no concept of government, let alone self-govern ment. I can never fly over those mountainous New Guinea landscapes without pondering the enormity, per haps the improbability, of getting any political coherency from the people covered in pig grease who occupy the scattered hamlets below.

The vendetta is still a way of life in too many of those hamlets. The term New Guinea uses for it is “pay back killing”, and most of the 60 to 70 convictions for murder in Papua New Guinea every year stem from paybacks. Traimya Kambipi, member for one of the rugged Highlands areas, Kompian-Baiyer, explained the pay back system eloquently in the House of Assembly a few months ago: “Western societies live in larger com munities and have a common culture, whereas here we live separately in tribal groups and have varying or completely different cultures. For in stance, during my grandfather’s time a member of his tribe was murdered, but owing to difficulties at the time a payback was not carried out. My father took over from his father. He

would remember this and if he failed to do it, this responsibility for revenge would fall on me”.

Thus murder becomes a tribal custom, with the killer earning the gold honour badge for upholding tra dition. Traimya Kambipi again: “This was part of our culture long before Europeans penetrated our land. When a tribe wronged another tribe the solution was payback, whatever the offence. Payback is still in the minds of the people of Papua New Guinea.

A portion of our present generation is aware of the foreign-introduced law and order and fear it, but those who have not gone very far away from our traditional activities still carry on with payback killings.

“Those of us who have known two cultures may try to deny the fact, but it is not very easy for our tradition oriented people suddenly to drop all traditional ways of thinking and do what modern people do. Even some of us tend to be involved in payback killings in an indirect way by telling or encouraging our traditional tribes men to cany out a payback killing.

This practice has remained with us even as we grew and learnt new things”.

Because of the tradition, one of the major problems of the government in dealing with paybacks is that often the man who does the killing is not the instigator, but simply somebody selected by the tribal leaders to do the job. The new law (the Criminal Code Amendment Bill 1971) makes it an offence for anybody to encourage an other person to kill, or to withhold the information that a killing is planned, or to hide knowledge of a killing that he knows took place. The new law thus gives the government greater opportunities to break the sys tem down. Nevertheless, nobody believes that the payback system can

be eradicated as simply as that. The new law is merely an extra weapon for fighting it.

Paybacks won’t stop until the people who support the tradition are convinced that it is not worth their while to carry on with it. Most New Guinea politicians believe the best way of convincing people is to stiffen penalties for murder. It is probably true that most Assembly members would like to see New Guinean mur derers hanged, or at least sentenced to life imprisonment. Short sentences they believe, rightly, are a holiday.

The killer gets well fed and clothed and often comes home fatter and more prosperous, wth his reputa tion enhanced.

Papua New Guinea, like most Aus tralian states, does not believe in capi tal punishment, thank heaven. The problem faced by New Guinea courts is to know what a fair penalty is for bush kanakas whose daily life is so tough that prison is a welcome im provement. In those circumstances, iustice is neither done nor appears to be done to the friends and relatives of the man or woman whose head was bashed in by an axe, and thus the payback cycle continues.

The government currently is look ing at another possible weapon for its armoury—that of supporting by the force of law the tradition of com pensation which would make it legally mandatory for compensation to be paid by the killer’s group to the vic tim’s group. As a weapon it would hardly be the deterrent that nuclear warheads currently are to the people of the West —but then, when you are dealing with Stone Age philosophies, solutions are not nearly so simple.

It's worth remembering that while some sections of Papua New Guinea are ready for self-government, the problems will come from that vast silent majority in the hinterland ham lets who are going to get it whether they understand it or not. —Stuart Inder