Papua New Guinea police in Eastern Highlands are investigating a bomb threat that was sent via an email to the Goroka courthouse yesterday morning.

Goroka police station commander Chief Inspector Timothy Pomoso confirmed the incident and threat.

According to information received by the PNG Post-Courier, the email from someone by the name of “Adams Jailer” stated in the email that a “bomb will detonate at Goroka Court house today”.

The email also said: “I am innocent, justice not served.”

The threat added: “You don’t believe me, try mock me and see”.

The email was signed off as “Kumul” — a bird of paradise in Tok Pisin.

Chief Inspector Pomoso said: “Someone sent a threatening email that there’s a bomb planted at the Goroka courthouse.”

“Police were deployed including our local task force and criminal investigation division units to clear the courthouse area by first removing everyone out.

“We are investigating,” he added.

More than a month ago, a bomb threat was also sent to another organisation which was attended to by police in Port Moresby.

A senior police officer said that a new trend of sending threats electronically was now occurring in Papua New Guinea.

Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The man being touted by the opposition as the next leader of Papua New Guinea says the first thing his administration would do is put more focus on law and order.

East Sepik governor Allan Bird is being put forward as the opposition’s candidate for prime minister with a vote on a motion of no confidence likely in the last week of May.

Bird is realistic about his chances but he said it is important to have such a vote.

“I think the first thing we would do is just restructure the Budget and put more focus on things like law and order, bring that right to the top and deal with it quickly,” he said.

He spoke about what he aspires to do if he gets the chance.

Don Wiseman: Mr Bird, you had been delegated to look at the violence following the 2022 election, and it is clear that resolving this will be a huge problem.

AB: Not necessarily. It’s currently confined to the upper Highlands part of the country, but it is filtering down to Port Moresby and other places. I guess the reluctance to deal with the violence is that I’d say 90 percent of that violence stems from the aftermath of the elections.

From our own findings, we know that many leaders in that part of the world that run for elections actually use these warlords to help them get elected. And obviously, they’ve got like four years of downtime between elections, and this is how they spend their spare time. So, it’s hardly surprising.

I think our military and our police have the capability to deal with these criminal warlords and put them down. How shall I say it – with extreme prejudice. But you get a lot of interference in the command of the police and the Defence Force. I suspect that changes the operational orders once they get too close to dealing with these terrorists.

DW: Police have been given the power to use lethal force, but a lot of commentators would say the problems have more to do with the the lack of money, the lack of opportunity, the lack of education.

AB: The lack of education, opportunity, and things like that will play a small part. But again, as I said, I come from a province where we don’t have warlords running around heavily armed to the teeth. I mean, you have got to remember an AR-15, or a 4M, or anything like that. These things on the black market cost around 60,000 to 70,000 kina (NZ$20,000-25,000).

The ordinary Papua New Guinean cannot afford one of those things and guns are banned in public use — they’ve been banned for like 30 years. So how do these weapons get in? Just buying a bullet to operate one of these things is hard enough. So you got to ask yourself the question: how are illiterate people with perhaps no opportunity, able to come into possession of such weapons.

DW: The esteemed military leader Jerry Singarok compiled, at the request of the government about 15 years ago, a substantial report on what to do about the gun problem. But next to nothing of that has ever been implemented. Would you go back to something like that?

AB: Absolutely. I have a lot of respect for Major-General Singarok. I know him personally as well. We have had these discussions on occasions. You’ve got smart, capable people who have done a lot of work in areas such as this, and we just simply put them on the backburner and let them collect dust.

DW: The opposition hopes to have its notice for a motion of no confidence in the Marape government in Parliament on 28 or 29 May, when Parliament resumes. It was adjourned two weeks ago when the opposition tried to present their motion, with the government claiming it was laden with fake names, something the opposition has strenuously denied. Do you have the numbers?

AB: Obviously we’re talking with people inside the government because that’s where the numbers are. Hence, we’ve been encouraged to go ahead with the vote of no confidence. The chance of maybe being Prime Minister per se, is probably like 5 percent. So it could be someone else.

I say that because in Papua New Guinea, it’s really difficult for someone with my background and my sort of discipline and level of honesty to become prime minister. It’s happened a couple of times in the past, but it’s very rare.

DW: You’re too honest?

AB: I’m too honest. Yes.

DW: We’ve looked at the law and audit issue. What else needs fixing fast?

Well, we’ve got a youth bulge. We’ve got a huge population problem. We’ve got to start looking at practical ways in terms of how we can quickly expand opportunities to use your word. Whatever we’ve been doing for the last 10 years has not worked. We’ve got to try something new.

My proposal is actually really keeping with international management best practice. You go to any organisation this is what they do. I think New Zealand does it as well, and Australia does, which is you’ve got to push more funds and responsibilities closer to the coalface and that’s the provinces.

If I could do one thing that would change the trajectory of this country, it’s actually to push more resources away from the centralised government. We actually have a centralised system of government right now.

The Prime Minister [Marape] has so much control to the point where it’s up to him to authorise the building of a road in a particular place worth, say, 5 million kina. The national government is the federal government, if you like, is looking after projects that are as low as say, 2 to 3 million New Zealand dollars in value all the way up to projects that are $500 million in value.

So the question is: there’s got to be better separation of powers, better separation of responsibilities and, of course, clearly demarcated roles and responsibilities. Right now, we’re all competing for the same space. It’s highly inefficient with duplicating a lot of things and there’s a lot of wastage of resources. The way to do that is to decentralise.

DW: What concerns do you have about MPs having direct control over significant amounts of these funds that are meant to go to their electorates? Should they?

AB: Well, I don’t think any of us should have access to direct funding in that regard. However, this is the prevailing political culture that we live in. So again, coming back to my idea about ensuring that we get better funding at the sub-national levels is to strengthen the operational capability of the public servants there, so that once they start to perform, then hopefully over time, there’ll be less of a need to directly give funds to members of parliament because the system itself will start functioning.

We’ve killed the system over the last 20 or 30 years and so now the system is overly dependent on one individual which is wrong.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Namah, the Vanimo Green MP, said he was dissatisfied with the response Marape presented in Parliament yesterday as the death toll from the Wapenamanda killings rose to about 70.

“He never answered any one of my questions,” he said angrily.

“I would have expected him to say, yes, we are putting together a special force from the police and the military to go in there and go after the warlords, go after the murderers.”

“We have funding allocated separately for that. We have the capacity, the policemen and women have enough uniforms, three sets of uniforms, they have allowance, these are the sort of preparedness I was looking for the PM to tell me when I was talking about combat readiness.

“We are sending the same old people, the soldiers and the police and they are fraternising with the tribal fighters, with the lot of people on the ground and not effecting any arrests.

“In fact, they are standing around with the warriors carrying their guns, soldiers and police carrying their guns, where are we heading?” he asked.

‘I wanted PM to go hard’
“I wanted the Prime Minister to come to the floor of Parliament and say my government is going to do this and do that, and go hard on these people.

“The death toll has gone up to 70, it’s not a small number, it’s hit news media everywhere in the world.

“It is not about this 70 only, it started in his electorate, in his province and I would have expected that he would put in place counter measures for this.

“He has not. Police have their own intelligence officers, military have their own intelligence, [and] the government has its own.

“They should be out there penetrating the tribal villages collecting information and then send in special forces — that’s what I mean by having the government ready to counter these kinds of activities.

“And if the force was in readiness, they would have put [it] forward.”

Namah said Marape’s response yesterday demonstrated that the government was not interested in sorting out the security issues in the Highlands-affected areas.

Police chief on notice
Prime Minister Marape told Parliament that Police Commissioner Davd Manning had been put on notice to ensure the country was secured.

Marape addressed the pressing issues of lawlessness raised during a parliamentary session this week, singling out that a plan to incorporate all suggestions by MPs –– including the Enga massacre and others.

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Northern Governor Gary Juffa has joined Papua New Guinea’s police chief and the Prime Minister in calling for Papua New Guineans to lay down arms and cease acts of local terrorism.

“I stand with the Commissioner of Police, David Manning, and Prime Minister James Marape to apply the full force of the law to quell all forms of local terrorism in PNG and, particularly, in Northern Province.

“I am particularly concerned as a few weeks ago my Oro Bay RPSC [rural police station commander] Sergeant Terry Giwaya was ruthlessly gunned down only a few kilometres away from his station,” Governor Juffa said.

“I commend Commissioner Manning and his ACP Southern Clement Dalla for their swift action in responding to our plight, seeing through the proficient capture of the alleged thugs and the recovery of an alleged police firearm.

“The success of this operation is attributed also to the provincial police command, our local Northern police personnel,” Juffa said

“All gloves off” was not an order given lightly by any police commissioner or prime minister but with “our ignorance of the rule of law” and the disrespect to its enforcement machinery — the RPNGC — such an order was “timely and very necessary”.

Law and order priority
Juffa added that law and order in Northern Province would always be a priority on a par with health, infrastructure and education and had seen the Northern provincial government spending close to 1 million kina (about NZ$463,000) to date.

“Every citizen has a right to move freely without fear and to engage in commerce with the full covering of the laws of our country,” Juffa said.

“I stand with my prime minister and our police commissioner to clamp down on local terrorism and elements that fuel the atrocities.”

Governor Juffa indicated plans were afoot to take the body of Sergeant Giwaya back home, including an official programme scheduled to take place after the September 16 independence celebrations next weekend.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A curfew has been imposed in part of Papua New Guinea and extra police have been moved in to quell unrest over the shooting dead of 16 prisoners.

The prisoners attempted to escape on Sunday by cutting open part of the fence at the Lakiemata prison in West New Britain province.

One inmate is in hospital and a further seven are on the run.

PNG media reports in the aftermath of the shooting say angry relatives and opportunists looted several stores with police shooting two men inside a local hardware shop in Kimbe town.

Police commander Chief Superintendent Peter Barkie has confirmed the arrival of Mobile Squad 18 to assist in easing tensions in the province.

Provincial Chairman for Law and Order John Rova said: “We are trying to address the issue and allow normal businesses to commence and operate and allow for outside communities to travel in to receive basic services.

“After the PEC meeting, we have agreed that a curfew will commence at 8pm and go until 5am every day and we will try to monitor the movement of residents because of law and order issues.”

Full investigation promised

The PNG Post-Courier reports Internal Security Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr saying Corrections officers are mandated by law to ensure that the orders of the court are adhered to and that they are stopped.

But he said any death was regrettable, and he offered assurance that when seeking to prevent a prisoner from escaping, the last thing that anyone wanted was for loss of life to occur.

He promised a full investigation.

“There are several points that I think is important to I make,” he said.

“The first is that the men who escaped were in custody because of the crimes that they had committed.

“In Papua New Guinea, our criminal justice system is underpinned by the Criminal Code that mandates that when individuals commit certain crimes that they must serve time in prison.

“In this sense, those individuals in prison are re-paying their debt to society.

“The second point I would make is that our corrections system is focused on rehabilitation and preparing those detained for re-integration to society.

“It is a requirement that prisoners participate in rehabilitation and re-integration programmes before they can become eligible for release.

“Those that seek to escape custody before serving their term of imprisonment are demonstrating contempt for our laws.”

Some escapees on remand
However, Papua New Guinea’s Correctional Services Commissioner has confirmed that seven out of the 24 prisoners who tried to escape were not yet convicted of an offence.

Commissioner Stephen Pokanis said the ages of the prisoners who tried to escape was  between 22 and 40.

He said the court system was often slow, which meant someone could be on remand for years while they waited for their court session.

“Time spent in prison as a remandee sometimes goes up to even eight years. For them I do not know but I would think they would have been in prison for maybe two to three years or more,” he said.

RNZ Pacific is investigating reports that a number of the prisoners who were shot had already turned themselves into authorities.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz