PNG finds a drug market in New York

By Frank Senge

NEW York drug traffickers refer to a certain brand of cannabis as New Guinea Gold. In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the most probable source of that particular brand, where the temperate climate provides high quality marijuana, youngsters ask for Maria or Spak Brus (spark Tobacco). In Port Moresby, the capital of this resource-rich nation, law enforcement officers are mak ing major drug busts.

Eleven tonnes of New Guinea Gold was recently impounded in Hawaii, said PNG Police Minister Matias Ijape. He would not give details, saying investi gations were continuing. But his revel ations and subsequent big drug seizures in the country this year have heightened fear that Papua New Guinea has become a largescale exporter of marijuana. What is more worrying to law enforcement officers is the inadequate penalties cur rently available in the courts to deal with drug offences.

For example, on Monday, June 1, acting on a tip-off, officers of the drug squad watched 14 large plastic cylinders being off-loaded in Port Moresby from an Air Niugini flight from the Eastern Highlands township of Goroka. The cylinders were addressed to TNT air cargo and bearing ‘Urgent’ Talair (third level airline) tags. The cylinders were stored at the TNT shed at Port

Moresby’s Jackson Airport. The next day a TNT truck took the cargo to the Papuan Hotel where the bags were unloaded under the supervision of a white expatriate man.

Police placed a 24-hour watch on the hotel. On the evening of the third day, police burst into Room 44 and confis cated most of the cylinders. They found the rest of the cylinders in an adjacent room.

Police arrested and chaarged two expatriates; New Zealand South Islander, John Wilford Gibson, 44, and Australian Mario Collin Sebastian, 31, of Tinaroo, Queensland. Gibson was self employed and had been living in Goroka since 1969. Sebastian was found to be really Mario Sebastianelli, of a PNG mother and Australian father who kept his father’s citizenship.

The 14 cylinders contained 160 kilo grammes of dried marijuana leaves. The packaging indicated the leaves were for export nd police believed they had busted an international drug operation.

It is the biggest single drug haul is the country and police estimated the drug to be worth millions of dollars on the streets overseas.

Gibson was found guilty of possession of the drug and sentenced on October 29 to two years imprisosnment, the maxi mum penalty allowed under PNG Law.

In Malaysia, he would have been sentenced to death. Presiding magistrate

Post Courier

Caught: A policeman in Port Moresby shows a suitcase of marijuana that came down from Goroka

Arnold Joseph described the sentence as too lenient, but he pointed out he was bound by the law. He called for changes to the law to enable stiffer penalties for drug offences.

The court was told Gibson had obtained a new passport and could have been planning to leave the country.

Sebastian was yet to appear in court at the time of writing.

Other arrests suggest that the drug operation in Papua New Guinea, par ticularly for export, is established and extensive. In August, four Papua New Guineans, two men and two women, also from the Eastern Highlands, were ar rested while trying to airfreight a large bag containing 11 tightly packed bags of dried marijuana leaves. Police estimated each bag would cost nearly K 30,000 in PNG. But the packaging suggested they were for export.

On October 10, another Goroka man was jailed for a year for possessing nearly 50 kilograms of marijuana. On the same day, police reported that marijuana was being smuggled into the PNG/Indonesia border township of Wewak from the Papua New Guinea highlands. They confiscated 21 plastic bags of marijuana packed in a travelling bag when they searched passengers disembarking from a

ship.

Raids in the Eastern Highlands have found farms and more dried leaves ready for the market. This is coffee-growing country. But because world coffee prices have been diving, some farmers are growing marijuana as a side crop.

An Eastern Highlander, Gai Duwabane, said marijuana, which grows wild in the area, was used as a magical cure for sickness; the smoker would incant strange words and go into fits!

Today, Duwabane said, people are growing marijuana all over the place, even as an intercrop in vegetable gardens.

Marijuana is not only for export. High school students are also smoking it and the habit has been linked to the increase in the number of high school students being raped. And while the country basks in the celebrations for the recent boom in natural resources, the highlanders, reeling from diving world coffee prices, are rediscovering a different kind of gold. □