CULTURAL LESSON FOR FOREIGN ADVISORS

Updated briefing to defence officers at the RAAF School of Languages 1978-1992. Soldiers on posting to PNG were briefed on all aspects of culture. Status of women was one such topic.

This is a report written to explain the range of factors involved in the violence in Papua New Guinea between men-boys-women-girls.

It has been written in response to the plethora of reports in the media placing the blame squarely in the hands of men and necessitating an invasion of foreign lesbian advisors to put men and women in their place. Please click:

GOBBLEDEGOOK STATS ON VIOLENCE

The issue is not as simple as that. The violence has been growing for thousands of years when the nation was divided into clan areas. All strangers were the enemy except by special arrangement.

Men entered a clan area in raiding parties to kill men and steal women. Then the white man came to send kiaps into the clan areas to bring temporary peace and justice.

That lasted for 40 years before independence came and many clans slowly reverted to primeval times up to the present. But they drive Landcruisers to town, compliments of a corrupt politician.

Killings returned. But this time it was often on highways at the hands of raskols. Clans turned their outlook to putting a member into parliament by whatever means possible. They wanted the parliamentary funding to be turned only towards their clan.

The place of women was in the clan area looking after gardens and children. Now girls went to school while some sold their bodies to buy mobile phones and solicit for more sex. Older men waited for girls outside schools to obtain sex for money.

A new generation of girls has been born since independence with foreign ideas of rights with no responsibilities. They just wanna have fun.

But violence remains for women. Reports have been appearing in the media of highlands women and girls drinking homebrew and smoking marijuana.

This is the cause of much highlands violence on the part of men and women. Violence towards women and girls is rising.

Women in the highlands are becoming violent towards men to stop them from having other wives and leaving their original wife and children to starve.

There are often fights between women even in the streets of Port Moresby. Bomana prison has a section for women almost exclusively devoted to women who assaulted and killed other women.

Women and men are accused of sorcery and killed in village areas. It is very much the result of a lack of education of villagers on matters relating to health. Someone has to have caused deaths and be punished. 

The notorious UN Women has tried to turn the matter into a gender issue but that is false. Both men and women die in sorcery killings. It is certainly not an exercise in discriminating against women. Please click:

GENDER VIOLENCE IN SORCERY

The place of women has been set since the time of the ancestors. Women have to bathe down stream from men so that their menstrual blood does not contaminate the men. They may not cook food at that time.

Families in many churches do not sit together. Men and boys sit on one side of the aisle while women and girls sit on the other.

European churches stopped the practice in the Middle Ages 600 years ago. Having families sit together may be step one for some churches.

Boys and girls in the more backward rural schools still sit apart in class. They never learn to talk to one another.

The report in the The National of 23 November 2012 quotes the Head of Medicins Sans Frontieres as stating that violence is found as sexual in family, tribal and inter-family. That view is a little more comprehensive and balanced. There are many factors involved.

Dr Karunakara suggests that PNG is not in a war zone. That view is quite unbalanced. There are many places in the highlands that are involved in ongoing tribal war. He shows his lack of experience.

There is a massive increase in population that is causing pressure on land. Clans are killing members of other clans to take their land. In the Eastern Highlands, clan members have taken to poisoning one another for their land.

There are clan members in settlements of Port Moresby who are afraid of being poisoned even by their own clan members. Their wantoks are not allowed in the house for fear of sprinkling plates and pots with poison. They sit under the house.

There was a time when there was a prohibition of killing women, girls and boys in tribal fights. But that has fallen away.

Tribal fights swarming down hill tops have stopped and been replaced by automatic high powered rifles that kill young boys on the way to school and women at the river. The nation has not resorted to genocide.

How is all of this to be stopped? Who knows? The population will continue to rise and pressure on land will increase. Please click:

Is PNG’s growing population a threat to the region?

In traditional China, government workers could not be posted to their tribal areas. This precaution has been ignored in Papua New Guinea. Much corruption is at the hands of government employees living and working in their traditional areas.

Organizations like UN Women and Medicins Sans Frontieres have to be more honest and professional in their statistics that they make public. Or they will continue to be accused of having a gay, lesbian and paedophile agenda. Please click:

FOREIGN GROUPS PLAY MEDIA TRICKS