Grim measures in PNG

Pim Opinion

Assailed on all sides by cries of rage and fear, Mr Michael Somare has acted firmly against Port Moresby’s horren dous law and order problem by declaring a state of emergency and slapping a war-time-style curfew on the city, enforced by troops. His action followed yet another vicious pack rape in which a gang of “rascals,” as PNG calls its murderous villains, cut through a security fence and attacked a woman and her daughter in their own home. More or less concurrently several other girls were pack-raped at knife point in suburbs of the sprawling capital of 160,000 people.

In addition to the 10 pm to 5 am curfew the government has given the police much wider powers of search and arrest and has put the national capital district under a special controller with most of the powers of a military governor.

Violent crime “presents a real threat to the survival of our young country,” Mr Somare said in parliament as he announced his measures. “Public order has deteriorated to the point where the lives and safety of all law-abiding citizens is at risk.

“The threat these criminals represent has spread rapidly,” he said. “The police can no longer control it using their normal powers. Robbery, murder and rape have become almost commonplace events. The crime wave ... attacks the security of all.”

Earlier Mr Somare startled the world by saying he would seek to introduce castration and public floggings and hangings for violent rapists and murderers. Even as he spoke nobody believed he was likely to push such measures through, although in various demonstrations large numbers of people of all races have demanded such punishments. The last hanging in PNG occurred in 1958, and it was not public. Capital punishment was struck off the books in 1971.

But if, in sober thought, a majority of PNG’s honest citizens would likely recoil from the knife and the rope as weapons of the judiciary in what is, to a very great degree, a life and death struggle for the young country, most will welcome the state of emergency, but as a temporary measure while a real solution is found.

The problem now is to make it work without turning the night-time streets of Port Moresby into shooting galleries, like something out of the movies, “Mad Max” or “The Last Days of the World.”

The seriousness of the law and order problem in PNG cannot be over-estimated. It threatens to unravel the fabric of the society, it impedes investment and it drives away exactly the kind of skilled people whom the country needs if it is to enjoy the prosperity promised by its huge mineral and other natural wealth.

The state of emergency and the curfew are only way-stations on the road to victory over the marauders.

Mr Somare said he would set up an inter-party parliamentary committee to monitor the situation. One hopes that it will be more effective than other efforts by the politicians. Certainly little seemed to be done to implement the “49 steps” to combat crime proposed by Cabinet nine months ago. The streets of Port Moresby are now safer; there are still areas of the city, like Three-Mile Hill, where even armed police hate to go.

In such a situation it is very easy to offer advice, but it would

appear that despite what looks like a good, even masterful, beginning, the FM has yet to set about finding a real solution.

For example, he needs to discover what causes these violent and anti-social crimes among a people in whom the ethic of family and community is traditionally strong.

The general response is to say that criminality comes out of unemployment, and in his speech to parliament he proposed shipping back to their villages men without visible means of support. But a study of the “rascals” indicates that some of the worst of them have jobs, and that many see their violent crimes as thrilling diversion from the humdrum day, as a means of getting extra money, as an expression of their manhood, or as normal activity against ancient tribal enemies. Unemployment may be an element of the agony, but it is far from all.

The lawlessness and viciousness seem to be the result of what is a kind of time-warp in which the many, and very varied people of PNG are involved; the violent reaction of stone age with space age.

In this process the ancient rules of the tribes, through which society was controlled, by which vigorous and proudly independent peoples conducted their affairs, have crashed headlong into the bright lights, temptations and considerable pressures of the late 20th Century western, materialist world to which,by reason of its development and its ambitions PNG seeks to belong.

There are, in effect, two laws in the land. Those of the government, which are derived from the colonial administration of Australia, and those historic, unwritten, but just as powerful laws of tribal custom. It is these latter which are being eroded, and in many cases corrupted, by the new values and rules.

Tribal warfare is still endemic in the remote country areas of PNG. The battles run into hundreds each year, with lists of dead and wounded running into thousands. Property damage is enormous; development is set back. These disputes among the million or so remote tribesmen who met their first European only 40 years ago,and who, with the departure of the colonial haps, have returned full pace to their ancient arrangements, are essentially beyond the present powers of the police to control.

Again it is the clash of time, the conflict of loyalties a man might hold towards his tribal wantoks and his government which are at the root of it.

And yet the police are all the government has to handle not only the tribal wars, but also the much more pressing urban crime waves. Appealing to the better nature of the rascals is a waste of time. Many apparently vie to see if their excesses can get them on the front pages of the newspapers. Political speeches about castration and hanging bring cheers from the desperate, but no real progress. They do not address the problem at the grass roots, for that is where it is, not only in the community, but in the police. In fact they simply give Mr Somare’s political rivals further opportunity for speeches about a problem they probably couldn’t solve, either.

But what might start the clean-up, which undoubtedly will be painful and long drawn-out, is a top-to-toe restructuring of the PNG police to turn them into a proud, elite force, beyond the reach of tribal temptations, and above involvement in politics or anything other than sorting out what is one of the worst social problems in the Pacific.