Getting their

Papua New Guinea

Getting their priorities right

Were the women and children the first to be rescued?

No.

So, the men got out first?

No, they were the second group.

There was a flood along the Wahgi River, in the central highlands, and PNG’s Emergency Service came to the rescue.

The village leadership, because of the prestige that the pigs give to their owners, decided that the community’s 200 pigs would get the first boatride out of danger. Next came the men, and finally the women and children.

First death sentence

to be carried out publicly

Public debate is hotting up in PNG after the country’s attorney general, Philemon Embel, announced that the first person in the country to be sentenced to death will be publicly on wooden gallows.

The death penalty was reintroduced in 1991, 53 years after the last hanging, as a reaction to PNG’s serious law and order problems. It would be enforceable for crimes including treason, piracy and wilful murder. So far no one has been sentenced to death.

Embel said that after the first public hanging, which would be carried out on wooden gallows by a hooded warder, other people found guilty for such crimes would probably be put to death in the electric chair. The last man to be hupg in PNG was Karo Araua, found guilty of wilful murder inf 1938. ***

Sir Buri Kidu

dies in Port Morseby

Leading PNG lawyer and the country’s first national chief justice, Sir Buri Kidu, died after suffering a heart attack at his Port Moresby home on January 30.