Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE

PNG firm to recruit 800 Fijian workers for Lae-Madang

MIKA LOGA | Fiji Broadcasting Corporation

BETWEEN 500 AND 800 FIJIANS will be recruited to work on Papua New Guinea’s new economic corridor to be constructed between Lae and Madang.

Aleena Limited, a wholly-owned indigenous PNG company, has expressed interest in recruiting Fijians for the project which is estimated to cost K2 - 4 billion.

“The workers required have their skills in infrastructure development, building construction, roads and civil and mechanical engineering, plant operators and so forth," said Fiji’s High Commissioner to PNG, Romanu Tikotikoca.

Tikotikoca says Aleena Ltd will also look at issuing contracts to Fijian companies.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 17 – I’m missing my butler

KEITH JACKSON

SUNDAY 19 MAY – SORRENTO, ITALY. Look, there’s no easy way to break this news to you, but I’m really missing my butler.

Yes, a few mocking readers will take this the wrong way and think travel has gone to my head and that I've developed a hopeless fantasy that I was stolen as a baby from a royal crib.

But, that strong possibility aside, I have of late been indulging in a glorious butler experience and, having kept the truth from you since Dubai, it’s about time I confessed.

Pacific trade talks 'waste of time' says PNG minister

SAMISONI PARETI | ABC

OFFICIALS FROM PAPUA NEW GUINEA say they are considering withdrawing from free trade negotiations between Pacific Island countries and Australia and New Zealand.

PNG's Trade Minister, Richard Maru, today told a meeting of trade ministers from the Melanesian Spearhead Group that his country was considering withdrawing from Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) negotiations.

"My country is not interested in PACER Plus, our focus is the MSG Trade Agreement," Minister Maru told a press conference convened at the end of the meeting at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa in Nadi.

Are Papua New Guinea’s provinces really necessary?

PHIL FITZPATRICK

THERE ARE SOME INTERESTING PARALLELS between the way the systems of government operate in Australia and Papua New Guinea.  Not least is the fact that both have their problems.

In both countries there are three tiers of government.  In Australia it is federal, state and local; in Papua New Guinea it is national, provincial and local.

Australia effectively gained its independence from Britain in 1901 when the states and territories became a federation.  Prior to 1901 the states were largely autonomous entities.

If you were droving cattle from southwest Queensland to the market in Adelaide you had to go through customs at the South Australian border.

PNG’s death penalty plans a ‘major setback’: UN

UN HIGH COMMISSIONER ON HUMAN RIGHTS

THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICE has expressed serious concern over Papua New Guinea’s announcement that it will resume the death penalty more than half a century since it last carried out an execution, stressing this would represent “a major setback” for the country.

“The High Commissioner has written to the prime minister stating her concerns about the planned resumption of the death penalty, and is calling on the Government to maintain its moratorium,” said Rupert Colville (pictured), spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, during a press briefing in Geneva

Colville said there is growing number of UN member states that have abolished the practice, including 11 in the Pacific.

1967: The Administrator gets boycotted at Angoram

DAVID WALL

“IT’S JUST AMAZING what turns up from time to time,” said my old Angoram friend.

“Here’s another one for your history lessons! It’s the invitation for cocktails with the Administrator, which we all declined, and to which Bob Mackie sent his Africa Star.

“I can’t even remember what the incident was all about, but I do remember all on the booze, and uptight at the Club.”

The invitation (pictured) and foregoing comments refer to PNG Administrator David Hay’s official visit to Angoram in 1967. It referred to a reception that was most definitely not to be held at the Angoram Club.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 16 – Glimpses from my mind

KEITH JACKSON

SATURDAY 18 MAY – MESSINA, ITALY.  Nautica was scheduled to anchor off the spectacular cliff-top town of Taormina (which Ingrid, pictured here at Santorini, and I had visited twice before) in Sicily.

But the swell is too great for tenders and, there being no harbour, the ship relocates north to the sickle-shaped port of Messina just across the strait from the boot of Italy.

Messina is an ancient city without ancient buildings because of periodic destruction by war, pestilence and natural disaster.

The most recent earthquake and tsunami of December 1908 killed 120,000 people and destroyed most of the precious antiquities collected in the city’s museums and galleries; some surviving works and useful remnants being dug up from beneath eight metres of rubble.

Campbell beware: There are tricks & traps for Qld cops

JOHN FOWKE

CAMPBELL NEWMAN, PREMIER OF QUEENSLAND, is an ex-Army officer known far and wide in his state as “Can-Do” Campbell.

The agreements to exchange police and to provide a large number of cattle to Papua New Guinea are very much in keeping with Can-Do’s way of working: decisive, battlefield-like commands to attack physical problems or threats.

These offers are positive in intent and I would not argue otherwise. But as always there’s more to setting up an interaction between Australia and PNG than even a battlefield commander is likely to foresee,

Whilst it has been long obvious that PNG’s police need urgent help, I don’t believe that sending Australians, whose experience and training is entirely Australian, to be mentors to PNG policemen is a valuable exercise. Indeed it is not even valid.

Papua New Guinea’s constitution: the fatal flaw

CHRISTINE STEWART | Outrigger Blog | Excerpt

WHEN PAPUA NEW GUINEA’s new government was first installed in 2011, it had gained widespread support.

The PNG public was largely fed up with the entrenchment of the Somare-led government for nearly two terms of parliament, secure in the protection of OLIPPAC which had prevented any MP from voting against his party on any matter whatsoever, including a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister.

But events early in 2012 saw this support start to dissipate. There seemed to be no remaining constitutional checks on Parliament.

Twice, the Supreme Court constitutional rulings had been ignored with impunity. How could this parliament be controlled or eliminated? The new government had only a few months left to hold office before fresh elections were scheduled. But some in government were even starting to threaten to defer these elections.

Half of PNG child sex abuse victims are kids

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

THE FAMILY SUPPORT CENTRE at the Angau Memorial General Hospital in Papua New Guinea reports that more than half the victims of sexual violence and abuse that they see are children.

The officer in-charge of the facility, Anastasia Wakon, says in the first four months of this year, they have attended to more than 100 cases of violence and sexual abuse where the victims are children.

She told a gathering in Lae protesting against violence towards women and children that the national government must take responsibility and pass stricter laws to deter people from committing these crimes.

The Lae event was one of several Hauskrai (grieving ceremonies) held throughout PNG last week.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 15 – On communication

KEITH JACKSON

FRIDAY 17 MAY – AT SEA BETWEEN GREECE & ITALY. Like you, I’ve been a communicator for a long time. Yes, like you, dear reader.

But unlike most of you, I guess, I also communicate for money. That being my profession.

(Not that PNG Attitude, my loss leader extraordinaire, is in any way a part of this grand get-rich scheme more's the pity.)

Yes, we are all communicators from birth. Fresh from the womb we screamed that first unintelligible cry. A communication of being alive if ever there was one.

Australia and PNG: maintaining the momentum

JENNY HAYWARD-JONES | The Interpreter | Lowy Institute

PAPUA NEW GUINEA has been the beneficiary of an awful lot of love from Australia of late.

Our nearest neighbour has been treated to visits from the Governor-General, new Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Matt Thistlethwaite, Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and this week Queensland premier Campbell Newman.

This much attention lavished on one country in such a short space of time suggests a crisis in the relationship, but these visits were more about a belated recognition of PNG's growing economic importance to Australia.

Julia Gillard's first visit to PNG as Prime Minister put some substance around her promised new chapter in the bilateral relationship between Australia and PNG. It may not have been particularly startling, but was vital nonetheless.

Carr cancels 457 visa of PNG’s ‘most wanted’ man

NICK McKENZIE & RICHARD BAKER | The Age

AUSTRALIA'S FOREIGN MINISTER BOB CARR has used his special powers to cancel the 457 visa issued by the Gillard government to an alleged crime boss wanted in Papua New Guinea over the theft of $30 million.

Senator Carr's decision to revoke the visa of Eremas Wartoto comes a week after Fairfax revealed that the powerful PNG businessman - accused of being one of PNG's most corrupt figures by anti-graft authorities - was using his 457 visa to avoid arrest and prosecution.

Sources in PNG confirmed that Mr Wartoto and his immediate family members in Queensland were contacted by immigration authorities late this week and told that the federal government was cancelling their visas.

Australian woman dies from drug resistant TB

NATHAN PAULL | AAP

A TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER WOMAN has died from an apparent drug resistant strain of tuberculosis, becoming the first Australian in several years to succumb to the disease.

Queensland's chief health officer Jeanette Young yesterday confirmed the 20-year-old's death on 25 April.

Dr Young says it is yet to be determined how the woman contracted the illness but she frequently visited Papua New Guinea which has one of the world's highest incident rates.

She says it is likely her particular infection became resistant to medication because she probably had a lapse in treatment rather than contracting a super-strain from somebody else.

Fiji declares its solidarity with PNG women

NASIK SWAMI | Fiji Times

FIJI SAYS IT HAS HAS JOINED THE FIGHT to stop sorcery-related murder and torture of women and girls in Papua New Guinea.

The Fiji Women's Crisis Centre has presented a petition to the PNG High Commission in Suva calling for the PNG government to take drastic measures.

Centre director Shamima Ali said the petition was in solidarity with the women and girls of PNG and aligned the centre with protests in PNG against sorcery-related murders.

Oops, we did Westminster. Sorry PNG, too late now

JOHN FOWKE

BEING A KIND-HEARTED old pundit, I won’t belabour you too much with the reality that the Papua New Guinea situation we witness daily was inevitable and foreseen by many people.

PNG’s path to becoming a really fair and well-managed modern society was always going to be a long and tortuous one. PNG was not a well-driven, fully-functional carriage drawn by a team of the best Shire horses.

This despite perceptions to the contrary expressed by some of those old colonials who are “disappointed,” “disgusted,” and “saddened” by what has gone on in PNG.

Two major historical factors are responsible for the present dilemmas. One was an inexplicable, apparently blind, decision made by Australia to let go the reins in 1975.

The other was the function of the mismatch between PNG’s readiness for independence and world sentiment about colonialism in the 1960s and 1970s, which impelled Australia to grant independence as and when it did.

Jesus: Beyond hauskrai & capital punishment

DAVID GONOL

WE CAN INTRODUCE STRONG LAWS to deal with criminals; we can conduct hauskrai over brutal rape and murder of our innocent women and children; we can impose death penalty on the worst criminals; we can complain bitterly against corruption - but these are all in vain.

They won't solve the problems we are facing in our country. The real problem lies in the human heart.

The human heart is depraved. When the heart is morally corrupt, the results that it produces are also corrupt.

The results of a depraved heart are repulsive and obnoxious to society. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it. There is no drug under the sun that can be prescribed for the cleansing of the heart.

Bougainville warrior’s song

LEONARD FONG ROKA

Bougainville
My pot of myths
My voice of legends and folklore
My tale of creation and gods
You my civilization

Oh Bougainville, you so beautiful

Bougainville
My land and honey
My breath and love
My wisdom and inspiration
My day and future
You are my song

Keith’s intimate travel diary 14 – Island of peace

KEITH JACKSON

THURSDAY 16 MAY – SANTORINI, GREECE. It was in April 2007 that we were last in Santorini, all whites and blues and one of the lovelier of the beautiful and peaceful Greek islands.

On that occasion, Ingrid and I walked up the 680 steps from the boat harbour at the bottom of the volcanic caldera to the town of Fira [population about 2,000] on the ridge above.

The track is, in fact, a donkey trail. Which means where go donkeys, there trails donkey shit.

So it wasn’t one of the most scintillating walks I ever committed to. Though it was, you could say, scentillating.

Chinese businesses pose problems for PNG

ISHMAEL PALIPAL

CHINESE BUSINESSES ARE FLOURISHING in all parts of Papua New Guinea and are gradually encroaching upon Bougainville.

The Chinese population and their businesses are increasing. Many Chinese are illegal immigrants and, every year, they come and go as though Papua New Guinea is their home.

The government gives them a visa for a six-pack of beer and citizenship for living here only three years. In my view, these Chinese businesses should be removed from the country for they sell low quality goods, pay low wages to locals, operate filthy shops and send money out of the country.

Let me expand upon each of these points in turn.

PNG protests highlight violence against women

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

A SERIES OF SIT-INS AND PROTESTS were held across Papua New Guinea through Tuesday night to highlight the issue of increasing violence against women.

The Haus Krai (mourning or grieving ceremony) was a response to a series of recent murders of women, including some accused of sorcery.

RNZI correspondent, Todagia Kelola, said the sit-ins at and around Sir John Guise stadium in Port Moresby featured cultural performances and prayer through the night.

They continued until late morning when a petition is handed to prime minister Peter O’Neill, who was said to have spoken eloquently.

The Queensland - PNG police exchange

PAUL OATES

“Queensland plans to send police officers to serve in Papua New Guinea and host officers from the neighbouring country. Premier Campbell Newman, who is in PNG, says up to 150 police officers will be exchanged to improve policing operations and protocols in PNG.” (AAP, 15 May)

GOOD NEWS? BUT WAIT! While this is great in theory, the devil will certainly lurk in the details.

Let me, through the Socratic method, expose some of those skulking details.

1. What arrangements have been made for familiarisation training for those going and those coming?

2. What accommodation will be offered to the PNG police and where?

Keith’s intimate travel diary 13 – Existential threat

KEITH JACKSON

TUESDAY 14 MAY – HAIFA, ISRAEL. Wael Bader is 25 and has nearly completed a master’s degree in business and economics which he dropped out of medical school to pursue.

“A much more flexible qualification,” he says, as he spins his small car through a Haifa roundabout.

Wael is from Israel’s Druze minority – a religion based on Greek philosophy which emerged from Egypt 1,100 years ago. (I’m surprised when he tells us there are 150,000 Druze in Australia.)

He’s guiding us on a tour of Haifa and the nearby age-old town of Akko, during the last millennium a much fought over hub of trade between east and west as well as an important staging post on the crusaders’ road to Jerusalem.

Novel for its lack of novelty: Gillard in PNG

JONATHAN SCHULTZ

PRIME MINISTER JULIA GILLARD returned from her first official visit to Australia’s nearest neighbour and former colony Papua New Guinea on Saturday with little to show for it.

Reports of the visit – the first by an Australian prime minister since Kevin Rudd’s visit months after his election in 2007 – focused on PNG prime minister Peter O’Neill’s complaint about the difficulty of obtaining Australian visas and the $16 billion Australian investment in PNG.

This was set against a background of horrific stories of the treatment of women accused of sorcery.

Short story: I am going back to my roots

LEONARD FONG ROKA

BALI BRIS, KIMBE. It is here, by the soothing sounds and smell of the sleepy Bismarck Sea, I am beseeching my soul to tell me ‘where is my Bougainville?’ Where am I heading to after all the years in the Solomon Sea?

But here I am, I have taken a step with a stinging pain in my heart to carry on across this unpredictable sea in the cover of the falling night.

I am going to Bali, West New Britain, the birthplace of my father. I am going to see my broken hearted grandmother whom has being wishing and weeping to see me before she follows her dear son to the tomb. But I am going empty handed and not with the remains of my father whom I have killed on Bougainville.

I am going, after years of weeping silently to see and set my feet on that mystery in the Bismarck Sea. I am going with a broken heart.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 12 – Thoughts of home

KEITH JACKSON

MONDAY 13 MAY – NEARING HAIFA AT DAWN. It’s still dark at about half past five as I write these notes on Nautica’s top deck in a lounge above the bow sitting at a small round table.

The sun is just rising over a gunmetal sea and promises a fine day. Straight ahead, approaching quickly now, is Israel – a land I have previously not touched.

The port of Haifa, in which we will spend two days, I can see through this grey light as a number of high rise buildings and container derricks silhouetted just left of the imposing bulwark of Mount Carmel which guards the harbour.

The land of the misdirected: a necessary history

JOHN FOWKE

IN APPARENT CONTRADICTION of the sense of what I said yesterday, I want to respond to Barbara Short’s comment on my Melanesian Way piece.

Answers from Papua New Guinea voices may be more interesting but may I step in to address what Barbara said, that "something has made them powerless; I need a PNG person to explain.”

The thing which has disempowered the ordinary people of PNG is the first of Australia’s two great mistakes in its guardianship of the nation-to-be, TP&NG.

I have drawn attention many times to the fact that political education in TP&NG was confined almost entirely to the example presented wherever a Local Government Council (now an LLG) was established.

Mysterious disease with the strange-sounding name

PAUL OATES

WITH A NAME LIKE CHIKUNGUNYA, surely most people would know it when they come across it? Yet that’s the problem. Not many people have ever heard about it or know what it is.

The name comes from an African language from Tanzania called ‘Makonde’. It means ‘that which bends up’ and describes what happens physically when people contract this particular disease, sometimes referred to as ‘Chicken Malaria’ or 'Tiger Malaria’.

The limbs of the sufferers of this disease are so affected with severe arthritic joint pains that their limbs actually contort at odd angles.

In addition to severe arthritic pain, the other reported symptoms that indicate someone has contracted Chikungunya are high fever, rashes that break out over areas of the body, swelling of the legs, headaches and possible sensitivity to light.

PNG Attitude reader poll on the death penalty

Click here to take survey

Do you believe the death penalty should be introduced in Papua New Guinea?

Yes          33 (40%)
No           48 (60%)

Do you think Australia should advise PNG on what to do about introducing the death penalty?

Yes          15 (19%)
No           64 (80%)

81 respondents

Julia spends a pretty banal 3 days in Moresby. Why?

KEITH JACKSON

I’M ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD but, by reading the lines and between the lines, I’m going to analyse Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s just completed three-day visit, nominally but not substantively to Papua New Guinea.

Strangely, Ms Gillard's first visit to PNG was spent entirely in Port Moresby.

I wonder who was the last national leader to visit Australia to spend all three days in Canberra.

Ms Gillard had her visit preceded by a succession of underlings - the increasingly impressive parliamentary secretary Matt Thistlethwaite and the consistently unimpressive foreign minister Bob Carr. Clearly some issues were on the table and some ‘announceables’ ready to release.

But none turned out to be truly earth-shattering.

Let's kill the sacred cow of the Melanesian Way

JOHN FOWKE

I CAN TELL YOU THE REASON for the story of declining services, declining prosperity and declining well-being in Papua New Guinea (Service delivery? It’s all mauswara, Post Courier, 7 May).

It’s very simple. As coined by a group of Papua New Guinean intellectuals in the 1980s, the problem is “The Melanesian Way”.

There. It’s been said. The big, silent, grey elephant which has loomed in the background, nameless but recognised by many, is out in the open.

Tackle this elephant, or at least recognise it, everyone. Recognise it for the handicap that it has become in the struggle for modernity and fair distribution of the nation’s wealth.

Who is our neighbour?

ISHMAEL PALIPAL

GEOGRAPHICALLY, THE ISLAND OF SHORTLAND, Faul Island (Kariki) and the mainland of Choiseul Province of Solomon Islands are very close to the North Solomons mainland of Bougainville, whereas the islands of Papua New Guinea are so far away.

Some of the spoken languages are similar and people from North Solomons can communicate with these people freely compared to New Guinea Islanders.

This poem is written with that ideology in mind.

 

Keith's intimate travel diary 11 – Accident at sea

KEITH JACKSON

FRIDAY 10 MAY – SAFAGA, RED SEA. Ugh, what can you say? If I’d fallen off a camel, been charged down by a donkey or even slipped on a cocktail olive, I’d have a reasonable tale to tell.

But taking a step down on a stationary ship in port to test the strength of my surgically-intervened left Achilles tendon and feeling a sudden pain and weakness across my right knee as it twists to bear the weight… well what can you say about that except, “stupid”.

I am consoled only by the knowledge, dear readers, that we’ve all been there or somewhere like there, and we all can be stupid. Sometimes very stupid.

Kami Raymundus of Torembi - mankimasta & friend

DAVID WALL

“I HAVE NEVER KNOWN FINER GENTLEMEN than some well-born Malays whom I am proud to call my friends.” Thus spoke Warburton, one of Somerset Maugham’s characters in his story, The Outstation.

Replace ‘well-born Malays’ with Sepiks and the above quotation exactly reflects my thoughts.

A story of mine, The phone rings, tells of the reappearance of my late brother, James, in a dream.

He talks to me of the afterlife and mentions, “Oh, I almost forgot to tell that your houseboy [mankimasta], Kami, from Papua New Guinea wondered how you were.

"He was telling me he had received a lot of credit for the thousands of cups of tea he had made for you. Anyhow, he’s doing well now. But he is a bit worried about his family in Torembi, a village in the Sepik.”

Mother - luminescent new PNG poetry

EMMA WAKPI

Her eyes;
Pools of liquid amber
An oasis;
Deep, mysterious, tender

Reflections of emotions
Glisten on the surface clear
Admonitions, exhortations
Expressed, so I see to hear

Her smile;
A gleaming crescent moon,
Bathing every
Being; present in her realm

Luminous glows and beams
Stir emotions with their rays  
Cooling tempers, lifting burdens
Laughing, our souls embrace

Some haiku for Mothers Day - poetry with a PNG flavour

PETER KRANZ

A woman, old legs
Hands spins with twisting
A bilum is made

Recurring pain
Mother, remember my birth
A painful joy

My wife grows mature
Her thoughts are my cradle
Love learns to know

Women are the earth
Born of volcanoes
Givers of life

An evil stalks here
Voice loud with screaming
Mothers can protect

Keith’s intimate travel diary 10 – Night drive in Egypt

KEITH JACKSON

THURSDAY 9 MAY – SAFAGA, EGYPT. The three-hour drive from the desolate port of Safaga to the green and ancient Nile city of Luxor is through unremitting, unrelenting desert and conducted by ramshackle minibus.

The narrow strip of bitumen road is only temporarily reclaimed from the moving sands, and road repair gangs are a constant presence; along with the numerous checkpoints along the way where police loll lazily in the cooler interior of their fortified buildings and are rarely seen.

Isolate Benny Wenda and stop the attention-seeking

YANTO SOEGIARTO | Jakarta Globe

INDONESIA SHOULD NOT HAVE MADE BENNY WENDA (pictured) and his campaign an issue by summoning the British ambassador to Indonesia, Mark Canning, to protest the opening of a Free Papua Movement (OPM) representative office in Oxford, England.

The more Indonesia reacts to Benny’s activism, the more he gains from the publicity. That was exactly what he wanted to get: the world’s attention.

There was no need to mention his support for Scotland’s independence from Britain. But as a British citizen, he has the right to express that opinion. Britain can’t act against its citizens. He can do whatever he wants.

Miners are reaping from the poor, say PNG NGOs

PNG MINE WATCH

PAPUA NEW GUINEA's major non-government organisations say their government and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community are continuing to ignore the wishes of Pacific people in their rush to allow experimental seabed mining (ESM).

"Most impact communities in PNG are still strongly against experimental seabed mining", says Rosa Koian from Bismarck Ramu Group, who has travelled extensively through New Ireland and New Britain talking to local people.

The PNG government has not provided a promised response to a community petition with over 20,000 signatures opposing ESM, which was presented to Mining Minister Byron Chan last year.

Peter O’Neill calls for easier Australian visa access

LIAM FOX | ABC

PNG PRIME MINISTER, PETER O’NEILL is now leading the charge for improved arrangements for Papua New Guineans seeking visas to enter Australia.

"Our people find existing visa arrangements very frustrating," he said. "Some regard them as insulting."

Addressing Australian PM Julia Gillard, he said: "Prime Minister I'm aware that citizens of around 40 countries can access what is known as the ETA visa, which enables them swift access for their trips to Australia.

"Unfortunately your closest neighbour, your best friend, is not one of the 40 countries on that list."

Alleged PNG crime boss on visa wanted over $30m theft

NICK McKENZIE & RICHARD BAKER | The Age

AN ALLEGED CRIME BOSS wanted in Papua New Guinea over the theft of $30 million has used a 457 visa issued by the Australian government to avoid arrest and prosecution.

Eremas Wartoto, accused of being one of PNG's most corrupt figures by anti-graft authorities, has been living in Cairns since mid-2011.

He obtained a 457 visa, the foreign skilled worker visa at the centre of a Gillard government crackdown, after learning PNG authorities planned to charge him in August 2011.

Since then, Mr Wartoto has claimed to be too ill to face trial in Port Moresby over serious criminal charges laid against him in absentia two years ago.

All commenters are being asked to submit a verification code before their contribution is accepted. This is because of a major spam attack against the site which we are trying to combat. Some comments may have not been posted due to the difficulty of separating them from spam. We hope to return the site to normal operation soon....

A Bougainville manifesto: (1) People and culture

LEONARD FONG ROKA

This is the first of a ‘Bougainville Manifesto’ series of writings that I am creating at my own initiative to explore the Bougainville conflict from the pre-colonial era; through colonialism and into the boots of Papua New Guinea. Later I will look into the peace process and the present autonomy era.

I consider my island and people were badly treated by colonialism and the state of PNG since its independence in 1975 resulting in the loss of 10-15,000 innocent people.

Irredentism is our right. Besides, we have being subject to relegation, exploitation, some forms of genocide and institutional indoctrination especially under PNG rule with its rootless humanistic lies. The Bougainville Peace Process and the Autonomous Bougainville Government have also failed my people. Most of their demands do not really uphold the will of the people.

I will attack what I see as wrong; create what I see is needed and indicate a direction which I see Bougainville must move towards.

A Papuan answer to the Bougainvillean

JOHN FOWKE

IT IS EASY TO AGREE with every comment made about Leonard Roka's poem, A Bougainvillean song to the Papuan

And, as most of us have a fairly good understanding that the Bougainville crisis and what follows is the result of Australia's second of two great mistakes as caretaker of TP&NG, we can only empathise with what, in the circumstances, is actually a fairly restrained expression even if it highlights something that Papua's Motu-Koita are both frustrated and angry about in a way which may offend some.

As has been observed, this sort of pressure is felt in a number of places around the nation, especially in Lae, Goroka Mount Hagen and Madang. Much more may be said on this subject.

Tough issues for PNG education still unresolved

OXFORD BUSINESS GROUP

RECENT REPORTS THAT STUDENTS in some areas of Papua New Guinea are crossing into Indonesia for lessons provided a stark reminder of the challenges the PNG government faces in its bid to improve the education system.

Reforming PNG’s education sector is proving to be far from straightforward, with a controversial and heavily criticised teaching curriculum introduced in 2007 now set to be scrapped.

In March, a former PNG defence attaché to Jakarta, Colonel Tokam Kanene, told local newspaper The National that students from South Fly, Western, had been attending a school on the Indonesian side of the border since 2005.

Yo ho ho & a book – full speed ahead; damn the critics

PHIL FITZPATRICK

UNLESS SOMEONE HAS GOT a blockbuster ready to go and poised to spark a bidding war among international publishers, the way ahead for writers in Papua New Guinea is digital and web-based.

Get the book up there for the world to see and you never know, maybe one of those big global publishers will snap it up.  It’s happening already and e-books are morphing into million sellers everywhere.

We live in hope.

With that philosophy in mind Pukpuk Publications is proud to announce from its backyard headquarters that the following titles are now available on Amazon, the behemoth of internet booksellers.  You can buy them either as e-books for your Kindle or as a hardcopy.

Mining big part of Bougainville economy: Tanis

BEN JACKSON

FORMER BOUGAINVILLE PRESIDENT, James Tanis, has said that the reopening of the Panguna copper and gold mine is important to Bougainville’s economic independence.

“The Panguna mine is an important part in enabling Bougainville to meet one of its conditions of the peace agreement,” said Mr Tanis, who was president from 2009 to 2010.

“That is, on meeting financial self-reliance to demonstrate that Bougainville can survive as a nation.”

Mr Tanis, also a former guerrilla commander in the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and a key player in the 2001 peace agreement, said mining was already occurring on Bougainville without providing benefits to most of the people.

Graduates aim to improve Bougainville health services

ISHMAEL PALIPAL

POST CONFLICT BOUGAINVILLE NEEDS more workers to improve health services for a growing population. Health services on the island were shattered during the 10-year civil war and are currently in a desperate need.

A trio of graduating Bougainville female students told me: “We are looking forward to helping to develop our region by putting our skills in improving our health services back in Bougainville.”

The trio along with other Bougainvillean students graduated this year in different health fields with the aim to help develop the health service infrastructure in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.

Keith’s intimate travel diary 9 – Poverty & honesty

KEITH JACKSON

WEDNESDAY 8 MAY – AQABA, JORDAN. Readers Richard Jones and Martin Hadlow are well-travelled gentlemen and, to paraphrase Plato on Socrates, wherever I go, I seem to meet them coming back.

In our Recent Comments column both men advise me along the lines that to visit Aqaba without travelling overland to witness the antiquities of Petra is like taking a bath without soap and water.

My pressing problem, as diligent readers may have noticed, is that I have a recuperating Achilles tendon which restricts my walking to a kilometre or so at a time - although today I manage about two as I hobble slowly around the impoverished streets of Aqaba.

To walk five hours around Petra is more than the lacerated ankle could tolerate. So dry and dusty Aqaba it is that provides our locus of interest this day.

Julia Gillard can offer PNG one big thing – visas

KEITH JACKSON

OF COURSE IT’S NOT up to PNG Attitude to set challenges for the Australian prime minister, but let’s do it anyway.

If there was one friendly outcome that could be achieved by Julia Gillard’s three-day visit to Papua New Guinea that starts tomorrow it would be this.

Free up visa arrangements for Papua New Guineans who want to visit Australia.

This single issue is one that divides reality from Australia’s rhetoric that PNG is one of its most important international partners.