Afterthoughts

[?]Ith Percy Chatterton

Is freedom of movement a luxury that PNG can't afford?

Freedom of movement was the one commonly accepted Tight’

I left out of the Human Rights Bill which I successfully spon sored in Papua New Guinea’s House of Assembly in 1971.

A few years on, the framers of our constitution saw fit to in clude it therein.

Since then, it has become increasingly apparent that com plete freedom of movement is a luxury that PNG may not be able to afford, and that anyway a large number of Papua New Guinean leaders, particularly at provincial level, don’t want. They are apprehensive of the effects on their own people of an uncontrolled influx of people from other provinces, and particularly of the problems created by an uncontrolled influx from rural into urban areas.

It is worth noting that freedom of movement within PNG was a colonial achievement; it was the Pax Britannica and later the Pax Australiana which made it possible. In pre colonial PNG, for reasons of inter-tribal enmity, there was hardly any freedom of movement at all, except along well defined traditional trade routes; and in post-colonial PNG freedom of safe movement is steadily dwindling, whatever the constitution may say. Indeed in the national capital, Port Moresby, as a letter writer in our national newspaper, the Post- Courier , recently pointed out, the only people who enjoy unre stricted freedom of movement, especially at night, are the ‘rascal’ gangs. The rest of us cower in our houses.

I mentioned last month that my house had been repeatedly stoned. Since then a local gang, disappointed at being unable to force my front door open, hurled the crowbar with which they had been making the attempt through the fly-wire and louvres, with such force that it flew across the lounge and all but, though fortunately not quite, penetrated the wall of the bathroom, within which I was enjoying a shower. Had it come right through, I might not have been writing this article. As

it was, the sudden appearance of a hole in the wall and a resounding crash outside came as quite a shock. Although they may not have actually meant to scupper me, it was definitely aimed at the part of the house in which they knew I was.

My Papuan neighbours, alerted by the noise, were mar vellous. Before I had dried myself off and pulled on some clothes they were erupting on to the verandah clamouring to know if I was all right. Several of them stayed with me until the police arrived an hour and a half later, and one of them stayed with me for the rest of the night.

For the benefit of my old friend Josephine Abaijah and her Papua Besena cohorts, who have recently been campaigning for the repatriation of New Guineans from Port Moresby. I must emphasise that this attack was made by an all-Papuan gang, drawn from an old-established migrant group in whose welfare I have taken considerable interest over the years.

Now I have had my house securely wired all round, some thing I’ve always declared I would never do. But when the alternative was sleepless nights, I gave in and added one more to the tally of Port Moresby’s cage-dwellers.

I’m not grumbling. Compared with some the robbed, the bashed up and the raped I’ve been very lucky. Compared with some of my low-wage-earning neighbours who have come home to find that their houses have been broken into and all their meagre belongings taken. I’ve been lucky. But I do get just a bit rattled when one of our city councillors tells us that this is just something we’ve got to learn to live with.

Have we?

Admittedly the task facing our national and municipal leaders is a formidable one, and anything they do may be too little too late. That’s another reason why I’m not grumbling.

But it’s worth a try.

First and foremost, a larger, better trained and better organised police force. I don’t think that extra police powers are needed, rather more clues and more determination in using the powers they’ve got already. Perhaps identity cards would help. A curfew? If not an all-over one perhaps one that could be clamped on to a particular area to cope with a local upsurge of crime. Repatriation of law-breakers to their home areas where this is possible; but where they are second or third gen eration migrants, as were the ones whose target I became, that’s not practicable. Above all, on the positive side, more job train ing and more job opportunities - hard to achieve perhaps, but the only long term solution. In the meantime I would like to see more support and more funding going to school-leaver centres, whether vocational or recreational.

Finally, to the constitution framers, the law-makers and the starry-eyed I would like to say: Let’s have a bit more freedom of movement for the law-abiding and a bit less for the law breakers.