Rebels against

Footnotes WITH PERCY CHATTERTON in Port Moresby Rebels against a cruel society

THE riot which followed the Papua v New Guinea rugby league football match in Port Moresby in July has received its fair share of attention from the news media, and “explanations” have been as plentiful as blackberries as everyone with an axe to grind rushed in to use it as a grindstone.

A very similar riot occurred after a simi lar match in 1968. On that occasion I suggested in PIM that if we were really serious about national unity it might be a good idea to drop Papua v New Guinea sporting events, but of course no one took any notice. Now a lot of people are clamouring for such a ban.

These two riots, five years apart, seem to have had similar origins and to have followed similar courses. In each case New Guineans with a dislike for Papuans appear to have planned beforehand to exploit the occasion to work off some of their dislike in

a practical way by bashing up Papuans, their homes and their cars.

The close similarity of the two riots discounts the claim that the second one was pro voked by Miss Abaijah’s Papua Besena Movement. At the most, it may have been a minor contributory factor. But if the riot was aimed at Miss Abaijah’s movement, its most likely effect will have been to strengthen it.

The origins of New Guinea dislike for Papuans goes back to the between-the-wars period, when Papua and New Guinea, though both under Australian rule, were administered as two separate territories, which had inherited on the one hand a British and on the other a German tradition of colonial rule.

In Papua education was entirely, and in New Guinea almost entirely, in the hands of the missions. In Papua, while basing their cur ricula on the local vernaculars, the missions were teaching their pupils a modicum of

Rebels against a cruel society

English, and with the encouragement of Sir Hubert Murray’s administration the quality and quantity of this teaching was being stepped up In New Guinea, except for one or two Eng lish teaching administration schools in the Gazelle Peninsula, “church languages” and Pidgin were taught and used in the schools From the point of view of the greatest good for the greatest number this was a sound policy, but it was later to handicap the pupils of those schools in the rat race for jobs in the burgeoning western-style economy.

As a result, when, following the outbreak of the Pacific war in 1942, the two territories

were amalgamated, first under a military and later under a civil administration, Papuans and young Tolais got a head start over the rest of young New Guineans.

Not only did they monopo lise the first post-war adminis tration school at Sogeri, near Port Moresby (actually estab lished by the military adminis tration before the war was over), but they tended to monopolise the best jobs in

fast-growing Port Moresby. Worse still, en terprising Papuans began to migrate to New Guinea, something which they had never been able to do before, and there too, thanks to their better schooling, to mop up the best jobs, New Guinean resentment of this situation was natural enough, and its flames were fanned by expatriates who found the Papuans less subservient than the New Guineans and quickly dubbed them “big-heads”.

Since those early post-war years things have changed a lot. There are now many very able

Young New Guinean mainlanders and highlanders occupying middle and upper level public service positions, and there is at least one highlander among our embryo diplomats, but a look around Konedobu reveals that all the indigenous heads of departments appointed to date are (unless I have missed one and I don’t think I have) either Papuans or Tolais.

It looks as if they have maintained the lead which chance gave them in the 1950s.

However, this is a situation which should iron itself out within the next few years, without any need for abandoning the principle of appointment by ability in favour of the regional apportioning of top jobs demanded by the Highlands Liberation Front.

So New Guinean resentment of Papuans may be described as a hangover, abandoned by most of the educated, but kept alive by the hordes of unskilled New Guineans, mainly from the Highlands, who are lured to the bright lights of Moresby only to find themselves either menially employed or jobless. It becomes increasingly clear that no method of maintaining law and order in Papua New Guinea’s urban areas can succeed without some kind of control over movement into those areas, however repugnant such an idea may be to those who regard freedom of movement as a basic human right. In retrospect I think that those who persuaded me to leave this “right” out of my Human Rights Bill in 1971 were wise.

But the Highlanders in our midst, though ...ectacular, are perhaps not the greatest threat to the maintenance of law and order in Port Moresby. A more insidious threat comes from within.

Recently a police spokesman told us that cost of the “breaking and entering” cases which are an almost nightly occurrence in Port Moresby nowadays are carried out by gangs of boys ranging in age from eight to fourteen, schools are among their favourite targets, hundreds of dollars worth of equipment is often stolen, and much damage done that is sheer vandalism.

Most of these youngsters have been born and have grown up in the city, completely

estranged from traditional culture and tradi tional sanctions. Some never managed to get into school at all. Others received a schooling which only fitted them for the ranks of the unemployed. They are a rootless, motiveless generation, and there are more and more of them every year. Their parents have little or no control over them, and some are not averse from converting to their own use the booty their children bring home, though they must know that it has been stolen.

Basically these kids are not so much thieves as rebels, in bitter revolt against a society which has given them a raw deal and con demned them to frustration. “Savage” Papua New Guinea, for all its cruelty, was not as cruel as this.

Perhaps this is why the targets for their malice are so frequently schools.

In those parts of the city where people are living in compact, uni-tribal groups, as they are in the Motu and Koitabu villages and in many of the shanty settlements, much could be done, as Nigel Oram has suggested, by giving com munity leaders responsibility and authority to handle law and order problems within their communities.

Such a plan would be much more difficult to implement in the tribally and racially mixed suburbs, but initiatives taken by Port Moresby’s well clued and well staffed Com munity Development Group in the new no covenant suburb of Morata suggest that it need not be written off as impossible.

In the meantime, the Port Moresby City Council is doing its best to make us good by regulation. Newly promulgated council rules make it an offence to ignite fire crackers in the streets or to fly kites in the vicinity of power lines. We must not, between the hours of 10 pm and 7 am make noises which distress, annoy or irritate other people. Nor must we harbour dangerous reptiles, fowls or weevils on our premises.

What will our worthy councillors frown on next?

Bed-bugs perhaps!