Bomana war cemetery

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MARSHALL:  On the outskirts of Port Moresby, a tribute to fallen heroes.

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MARSHALL: Bomana war cemetery is the resting place of diggers who repelled the Japanese advance on the capital.

They’re buried on foreign soil and the Australian government spares no expense in honouring the names etched in stone.

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Music

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Torn flags/ Headstones

MARSHALL:  But no more than a kilometre down the road there’s another resting place.

This one is somewhat shabby and not nearly as well kept.

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Crosses

Many of those buried here had no life experience at all. Some didn’t even make it to their first birthday.

The infant mortality rate here hasn’t changed much in years. Papua New Guinea is letting its children down.

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Shanty towns on edge of Port Moresby/ Mothers with kids

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MARSHALL:  PNG is just a few kilometres off the Australian coast, but the two countries are worlds apart.

Despite the hundreds of millions of aid dollars spent here,  common, preventable illnesses claim too many lives.

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MARSHALL: None are more vulnerable than PNG’s young. For every one thousand babies born here, more than 70 will die before their fifth birthday. That’s a mortality rate fourteen times higher than in Australia.

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Kidu. Super:  Dame Carol Kidu
Community Services Minister

DAME CAROL KIDU:  I say it constantly -- that the most valuable resource of PNG is the children.

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Face of child

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02:00

Port Moresby morgue

MARSHALL:  This is Port Moresby’s one and only morgue.

The building can house 60 – yet it’s always overcrowded.

The abandoned bodies of babies are piling up.

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Tessi with bodies

TESSI:  You’ll see that some of the name tags have got unknown mother and these are children that were found outside somewhere in the suburbs  and brought in, or just brought into our dead on arrival room without any identification.

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MARSHALL:  Social worker Tessi Soi and her volunteers have arrived to make some room at the morgue.

Now these infants will have some dignity in death.

Today, twenty four of them will be buried in a mass funeral. 

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Tessi puts bodies in coffins

TESSI:  These ones are actually twins, they’re triplets, but one has survived, these two have unfortunately not, so make sure that they are put together in the grave.

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MARSHALL:  Some of these bodies have been here for months.

In many cases mothers died giving birth. Other parents simply can’t afford to pay the funeral costs.

Tessi Soi’s final gesture is to give the babies a name before their burial.

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TESSI:  This is young Bradley and this is young Rarua. Where you’re going it’s nice that you should have a name and an identity. So God bless my babies.

03:28

Sign: ‘No smoking & chewing of betelnut’/ Men chewing

Music

03:45

Men on buses

MARSHALL:   PNG is also a society in rapid change.

Each day people pour into the settlements and shanty towns of Port Moresby, looking for a better life few will find.

Many leave behind the traditions and support of village life. 

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TESSI:  Something is going wrong somewhere, you know and this is where we are losing our culture.

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Tessi. Super:  Tessi Soi
Friends Foundation

We’re suppose to react, especially in death, we all come together no matter what your differences are.

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Children’s faces

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MARSHALL:  This is also the domain of Tessi Soi and her volunteer organisation, Friends Foundation.

And it’s another testament to a society breaking down.

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Mothers and children inside room

This is a weekly session for HIV positive parents and their children.

Each has a terrible story.

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Frederick and his mum

TESSI:  This was little Frederick whose Mum unfortunately had been raped  and found that she was pregnant, then only to be told a couple of months later that she was HIV positive.

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MARSHALL:  In his first 18 months of life, Frederick has carried his mother’s antibodies, and so doctors couldn’t tell if he too was HIV positive.

But with his birthday approaching. he’s just been tested.

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TESSI:  Frederick here is going to be two years old tomorrow, the result is negative.

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Birthday cake

Singing

05:47

Tessi serves cake

TESSI:  When Frederick’s diagnosis was HIV negative it moved me, and it always moved me because I think thank God, you know, we have one child we’ve been able to save, but

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Tessi. Super:  Tessi Soi
Friends Foundation

we’ve got to keep the mother going, or the parents going, because of the fact that these children need this parental guidance for as long as you know they can.

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Music

06::15

Rarua at home

MARSHALL:  It was here I met 9 year old Rarua.

She isn’t lucky as the birthday boy. Rarua has tested positive to the virus.

HIV/AIDS claimed both her parents when she was a baby.

Now, she lives with her aunt on the edge of Port Moresby.

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Lahui with children

LAHUI DADARAI:  When we say grace before eating we don’t forget about her, we always pray for her.

She doesn’t know, all she knows is she’s sick, but she doesn’t know what kind sickness she has got.

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Children play with blocks

MARSHALL:  Rarua’s Aunt believes the little girl contracted HIV through her mother’s breast milk.

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Lahui with Marshall. Super:  Lahui Dadarai
Aunt

LAHUI DADARAI:  I felt sad and worried, because when I found out that the mother was positive the time Rarua was still a baby the mother was breastfeeding her, I regret that I should have taken Rarua for a check up before the mother closed her eyes but it was already too late.

07:10

Mother and baby at clinic

MARSHALL:  It’s a common way for babies to become infected.

Here an untreated HIV positive woman has about a 30% chance of passing on the virus to her baby -- either during pregnancy or through breast feeding.

But infected or not, in Papua New Guinea all mothers are still urged to breast feed.

07:35

Su Su Mama counsellor visits village

Encouraging the nursing mothers of PNG are these women.

They’re counsellors from the voluntary Su Su Mamas organisation.

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In local pidgin language, Su Su means milk.

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COUNSELLOR:  We all have two breasts each, not three breasts or four breasts, two only.

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MARSHALL:  The instruction is in very simple language.

Even though motherhood is so important to these women, the nurses find a disturbing ignorance.

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COUNSELLOR:  It’s best to give baby the breast, huh? You don’t have to boil it, you don’t have to clean it, it’s there, ready, OK?

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MARSHALL:  Despite the risk of HIV transferred through breast milk, medical authorities say it’s still safer than bottle feeding in developing countries.

The head of Su Su Mamas, Tiff Nongor agrees.

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TIFF NONGOR:  The number one cause of infant mortality in Papua New Guinea is dehydration and

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Nongor. Super:  Tiff Nongor
Susu Mamas

that is usually as a result of diarrhoea as a direct result of incorrect feeding practices.

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Mothers and babies in settlement

MARSHALL:  Modernity has brought these mothers plastic bottles, but it hasn’t brought them clean water – making it hard to sterilise the babies’ bottle.

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TIFF NONGOR: Urbanisation has a lot to do with these incorrect feeding practises. Women are in the settlements, they’re out of traditional role settings, they

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Nongor. Super:  Tiff Nongor
Susu Mamas

resort to bottles because they believe it is a better mode of feeding, it’s probably more nutritional or it’s more convenient.

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Woman bottle feeds baby

But the problem is that the very bottle feeding that s what’s killing the children.

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Music

09:53

Grace sterilising bottle

MARSHALL:  Sterilising a bottle in Grace John’s household is painfully difficult.

She has two young children.

The youngest is still breast fed, but her eldest Tony has already been weaned.

GRACE:  Tony won’t like to drink su su again,

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Grace holds baby

because he’s used to the bottle already.

10:15

Women breast feeding babies

MARSHALL:  PNG has gone to great lengths to keep its babies off the bottle.

10:21

Hidden camera. Pharmacy.

It’s illegal to buy one without a doctor’s prescription, but most pharmacies flout the law.

CHEMIST:  Thank you, you have a nice day.

10:31

Connie outside pharmacy

MARSHALL:  How did you go?

CONNIE:  Yeah I bought a bottle. I didn’t need a prescription to buy it, it only cost ten kina.

10:45

International Children’s Day concert

Kids singing

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MARSHALL:  It’s International Children’s Day, and the message here is give the kids a chance.

PNG is an unforgiving place to be brought up in.

Each day, it’s estimated that diseases kill 35 children under the age of five.

But  there’s another peril threatening PNG’s young.

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Toi’s injuries from beating

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MARSHALL:  This is the face of domestic violence here.

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Toi Molly says she’s fourteen, but no one is sure how old she really is.

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MARSHALL: She was beaten and burned to with in an inch of her life by her husband. Toi  Molly was 6 months pregnant when it happened.

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Toi Molly in hospital

TOI MOLLY:  He locked me in the house and beat me again. He punched my breast, my chest and my stomach, while I was pregnant.  And the baby came out.

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MARSHALL:  It was a shocking assault, even in a country where violence is commonplace.

12:35

PNG Parliament

What happened to Toi Molly sparked anger across the nation.

And it was here, at the PNG Parliament where the public made a stand.

A petition deploring violence against women had attracted thousands of signatures.

Community Services Minister Dame Carol Kidu is a seasoned campaigned against domestic violence. But she had never seen such public outrage.

DAME CAROL KIDU: It was, I would say, a catalyst that mobilised the nation

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Kidu. Super:  Dame Carol Kidu
Community Services Minister

and started what is now bringing violence to be a matter of national importance.

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PNG Parliament

MARSHALL:  But domestic violence didn’t appear to be a matter of national importance for those who could make a real difference -- the law makers.

PNG is a man’s world,  and in her parliament Dame Carol is the only woman and a lonely voice.

DAME CAROL KIDU: I get very despondent. I feel that we’re sometimes hitting our head against a brick wall

13:21

Kidu

but there are cracks in that wall and we have to keep widening those cracks.

13:46

PNG Parliament

MARSHALL:  If there was little action in parliament over the Toi Molly case, there was no action from the law.

13:51

Tracking Toi Molly’s husband

Local police told me they didn’t know where Toi Molly’s husband was, so I went looking for him.

It took me only an hour to track him down in the Highlands bush where he was hiding with his mates.

13:57

Robert Ju

In an extraordinary explanation, Toi Molly’s husband Robert Ju said he was punishing his wife for not telling him about an earlier assault.

14:11

Robert Ju

ROBERT JU:  Some men raped her and they killed the baby in her stomach.

She didn’t tell me until three weeks later, and so I beat her. I was angry with her and I beat her.

MARSHALL:  When I challenged him, Ju said his wife actually

14:23

Marshall with Robert Ju

got off lightly.

ROBERT JU: We would have used bush knives to cut her into pieces, but I didn’t do that. I burnt her with fire and poured hot water over her. That’s all.

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DAME CAROL KIDU:   If a child lives with violence, they learn to be violent,

14:57

Kidu

and I think we are seeing a cycle of violence being established in Papua New Guinea more than was in the past.

15:00

Parade of coffins onto bus

MARSHALL:  It’s burial day for Tessi Soi’s Pauper babies.

A public bus doubles as a hearse for their final journey.

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Bus en route to cemetery

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MARSHALL:  The procession makes its way through the dusty streets of Port Moresby -- a city that’s let down many parents of these lost children.

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Cemetery

Their new resting place is where our story began.

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Music

15:49

Unloading coffins from bus

MARSHALL:  Once, these tiny bodies would have buried in the same hole with nameless adults. Now at least they’re with each other.

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Tessi Soi at grave

TESSI SOI:  Just because they died soon at birth or a few days later doesn’t mean that they are nobody.

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Everyone who is born is considered a person.

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Burial of babies

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MARSHALL:  Tessi Soi takes note where each baby is laid to rest. Any information she does have could be useful for parents who one day might show up.

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TESSI SOI:  Maybe in the future someone wants to look for them -- a brother or sister or an auntie, we will know where the child is.

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MARSHALL:  But Tessi Soi doesn’t hold out much hope.

Of the 300 babies she’s buried in the past three years, only two parents have come forward.

Papua New Guinea is losing its sense of family and is drifting away from what once really mattered.

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Music

17:07

Tessi graveside

TESSI SOI:  You’re happy now children, I hope.  I’m sure you are. Out of the cold. Now you’ve got a place to rest you can go out and play in the fields and come back to your own little home. God Bless you all rest in peace.

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Music

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