Policing PNG
Broadcast: 17/08/2004

Reporter: Shane McLeod


Transcript

MCLEOD: More than 2000 metres above sea level, the highlands around Mt Hagen are a cool, picturesque contrast to the sweltering capital Port Moresby. But the clouds hide more than the postcard views. Fear and revenge have become part of every day life.

Right now they should be harvesting the coffee. The regions number one crop should be delivering cash to thousands of families. The country’s largest plantation at Gumanch lies idle. The cause is clan rivalry.

What’s happening here at Gumanch illustrates the impact of PNG’s law and order problem. The school is closed, the church is virtually empty and this year’s coffee harvest is going to waste, all while rival tribal groups argue over who owns the plantation.

Father Jozef Repelewicz’s parish is caught in the middle.

FATHER REPELEWICZ: Many people cannot come because they are afraid to come again because there’s a conflict to get the plantation. The school has been already shut for five weeks and who knows how long it’s going to be now.

MCLEOD: Scores of families have been driven from their land. Seven people have been killed. Thirty years ago a fight like this wouldn’t have been so lethal. What’s changed, is the arrival of high powered guns. Some of the weapons are former police and military issue. The Mt Hagen mobile squad is use to dealing with tribal fights and knows how difficult intervening can be.

So Simon these are all confiscated weapons?

These are some of the guns police have confiscated at the Gumanch plantation.

SNR CONSTABLE WAKALA: This SLR goes for about fifteen to twenty thousand Kina and this M16 goes for eighteen thousand Kina.

MCLEOD: That’s around nine thousand dollars. Police admit they don’t know how many more of the weapons there might be or whether they might be on the move.

SNR CONSTABLE WAKALA: Now we see the tribal fights in the highlands, we come across more of those firearms in the hands of the warriors.

SUPER INSPECTOR KUA: What they usually do, is hire people with firearms from another tribe to come here to fight. So it’s sort of a, they call them “hiremen”, yeah. They help them fight. After they pay them with money and pig.

MCLEOD: So sensitive is the situation at Gumanch that police forced us to leave the fighting zone. Peace negotiator Paul Omba travels the district, trying to reconcile the warring parties.

PNG MAN BY ROADSIDE: [Talking to Omba] Yes my real brother died. They all know he is my real brother and his child too, he died.

MCLEOD: Paul Omba worries that police don’t have the resources to deal with the problem.

PAUL OMBA: The police don’t have the guns. I mean strong guns - so you know, police are human beings too. The people involved have high powered guns so they’re afraid to go and arrest them or get the people who have the guns - the strong guns.

MCLEOD: The highlands present an enormous challenge for policing in PNG, tying up scarce resources and manpower in a rugged environment. Life in the highlands is far from ideal for many and that’s driving them to move to the nation’s capital.

PNG WOMAN: What’s going on?

PNG MAN: Why you come at night? Listen brother I don’t operate in the night. Only devil does. Put that bloody thing away. Who are you? You are a foreigner! Take this foreigner…

PNG WOMAN: No, no, no they’re television.

PNG MAN: Turn it off. You are accusing me of doing illegal things without being charged?

MCLEOD: A raid tonight for police in Post Moresby.

PNG WOMAN: We have nothing to hide.

PNG MAN: In Jesus name.

PNG WOMAN: We are not waiting for Ausaid to help us.

MCLEOD: They’ve moved in on the premises of a fast money scheme that’s been ripping off investors.

POLICEMAN: This warrant allows to search for any of these documents. If you what to hear that alright?

MCLEOD: For the police it’s a rare victory. Even their minister says they’re losing the war against crime.

POLICEMAN: Please make sure that nothing sure nothing walks.

PNG MAN: If there is any file missing, you guys will be in court.

KIMISOPA: The picture is quite alarming, it’s quite frightening. You’ve got shops that are being robbed frequently, people being held up, homes being broken into and it’s not a good place to live in.

MCLEOD: This time the guns aren’t required, yet more and more police are finding themselves up against well armed criminals. Here in Papua New Guinea, police come up against weapons like these almost every single day. Son they’ll be working alongside Australian police more than two hundred coming to join the fight against crime.

It’s an ambitious plan. It will cost Australian taxpayers around one billion dollars over the next five years, on top of the money it already gives its former colony.

Port Moresby is a coastal city of more than three hundred thousand people. Isolated from the rest of the country, those lured here looking for opportunity usually find false promise. Most end up living in sprawling urban settlements where poverty breeds crime.

Well known as a haven for car thieves and robbers, Horsecamp community is trying to mend its ways. Local leaders have renamed their settlement “Joyce Bay” in an image makeover but crime still stalks the vulnerable.

DON OLE: A woman by themselves, if they want to go out they feel a little bit scared about themselves because people are looking for opportunities. Anything is happening, anywhere anytime.

MCLEOD: And while Horsecamp looks after it’s own, those not within the fold are fair game. Along this road not far away, Naomi Dadi and her fourteen year old son were attacked, taking their shopping home to their village.

NAOMI DADI: And I resisted. I didn’t want the bag to be released but I was hit on the head, at the back by a gun, the butt of it so I let go of the bags.

MCLEOD: When police recently reported a drop in serious crime the announcement was met with disbelief. People say it shows that victims have given up reporting crimes.

Bire Kimisopa is Papua New Guinea’s unconventional Minister for Police. He came into office a year ago inheriting a force compromised and on the brink of collapsed.

KIMISOPA: So how many cases would you be, cases of armed robbery in the city would you be dealing with?

PNG DETECTIVE: In a month it would be about thirteen, fourteen – armed robbery or major armed robberies.

KIMISOPA: Major armed robberies?

PNG COMMANDER: How many cares are allocated to this section?

DETECTIVE: One.

KIMISOPA: One care for how long?

DETECTIVE: For three years now.

KIMISOPA: For three years now one car!

MCLEOD: He’s set himself the task of turning things around and listening to police about the cause of the troubles.

PNG DETECTIVE: There were a few files were missing…

KIMISOPA: Missing! So you can’t bring the criminals to court? It’s a real mess.

Well basically it’s user pays these days in PNG. You front up to the police station and you tell the officer at the front desk I’ve just been robbed, my house has been broken into and then OK why don’t you pay for the fuel and we’ll go over there.

MCLEOD: The minister blames political interference for his failing force. He says poor pay and conditions have destroyed morale.

PNG CONSTABLE: This is where I sleep, my wife, my children. Just here on the floor. This is where I cook.

KIMISOPA: You see a constable married with three kids sharing one room, no toilet no shower, the kids are all sleeping on the floor. The father works a shift, late nights, can’t get to sleep because he is living in an overcrowded single quarters in the police barracks.

The bulk of the PNG police force are hardworking men and women who want better working environment, who are aspiring for greater opportunities within the PNGPF. They cannot sit back and allow the mess that PNG police force is going through.

MCLEOD: It’s clear that frustration is leading some police to take matters into their own hands. One of PNG’s most daring criminal acts was the so-called Millennium Robbery. Armed criminals hijacked a helicopter and landed it on the roof of the city’s largest bank. The robbers were ultimately unsuccessful, their helicopter shot down by police as it tried to make its getaway. The criminals seemed lucky that day. All five survived the crash but none would ever see the inside of a prison.

ANGELA DAVIS: I know he’s a criminal but if the police, if the law is there, in police hands, they could have taken him alive and taken him and send him to jail.

MCLEOD: Angela Davis’ son Jonathan was one of the robbers. Witnesses said he was alive when he was put in an ambulance to be taken to hospital but he was dead by the time Angela arrived.

ANGELA DAVIS: The policemen were there already so I went to check him and they said you cannot and they point a gun at me.

MCLEOD: Angela pressed for a coroner’s inquest, which found police responsible for the deaths of all five. Still no action has been taken against the officers involved.

GARY DAVIS: It’s something that happened, it got out of control. The police have a bad habit of beating, punching, hitting and shoot before they ask questions why.

KIMISOPA: The PNG police force is like a boys club because of the lack of scrutiny on the performance of the police force. It hasn’t been enforced. You know you have rogue policemen out there belting up offenders, not reading them their rights and even before they’re brought to the station they are really wounded. It’s a major concern for us.

MCLEOD: If you want to know more about crime in Port Moresby you talk to Jobu Horror, a notorious figure. He was jailed for his part in the country’s first ever armed hold up involving a gun in 1978.

JOBU HORROR: Police station there.

MCLEOD: You’ve spent some time in there?

JOBU HORROR: Yeah seven times.

MCLEOD: Jobu believes police have lost the faith of the public.

You know more and more if a robbery happens the police don’t bother arresting people.

JOBU HORROR: Yeah cause they deal with them.

MCLEOD: Cause there’s been some involvement…

JOBU HORROR: Yeah.

MCLEOD: They’re now seen as part of the problem either for taking part in crimes or their reliance on violence.

JOBU HORROR: The police before, it was under Australian law and they had more respect for the people. They respected crime. When they arrested criminals, they wouldn’t kill or beat them up. The new police, they’ve been to Bougainville, they’ve had blood on their skin and it’s made them more mental. When they see rascals they just shoot them unnecessarily, even young offenders.

KIMISOPA: We have on record something like three to four million compensation claims simply from police negligence, brutality and so forth. It’s coming through the courts almost every month and police think that you can belt someone and get away with it.

MCLEOD: It’s a brave police minister who concedes his force needs outside help. That’s what Bire Kimisopa’s done in defiance of accusations of neo-colonialism. He’s been a key part of negotiations for a new billion dollar Australian aid package to boost law and order, a dramatic recasting of its role in its former colony.

It’s known as the Enhanced Cooperation Programme and it means a new hands on role for Australians in the day to day running of police, the courts, the national finances and border security.

ALEXANDER DOWNER: The Enhanced Cooperation Programme is to be a turbo-charged boost for the government’s reforms efforts and once that boost is finished then the momentum should be there for the process just to continue indefinitely into the future.

NAMALIU: We should have a much better performing police force. We will have a much more reduced level of crime generally throughout the country.

MCLEOD: The package is in addition to the three million dollars a year Australia already spends in aid to PNG. The bulk of the new money is going to police and for Australia there’s a fair bit of self interest involved with concern Papua New Guinea could be used as a staging ground for people smuggling, drug trafficking or terrorism.

NAMALIU: I think that most people in this country probably don’t realise these risks until, you know something major happens. You know we may be a peaceful and stable and all those things but anything can, you know, happen.

MCLEOD: PNG’s ability to control its borders has already been compromised. In a burglary last November at the Foreign Affair’s Department, the country’s entire passport making infrastructure was stolen, computer database, backups and blank passports. None of it has ever been recovered.

NAMALIU: That was a major breach. Fortunately we did not lose everything. Obviously it looked very much like an inside job.

MCLEOD: What the theft means for PNG and its neighbours is alarming.

NAMALIU: That could relate to possible involvement of people in drug trafficking or in gun running or in people smuggling or in acts of terrorism or in organising PNG as a stepping you know stone for people to come in with a view to going somewhere else like Australia and New Zealand which in fact has been the case.

MCLEOD: Australia is hoping its aid package and its presence can plug the security holes, yet for PNG dealing with law and order means dealing with grassroots problems.

KIMISOPA: Law and order is the hinge upon which the door hangs and you can talk about the roads and bridges. You can talk about the social indicators you want to pursue, you can talk about the economy, the interest rates, exchange rates and so forth but without the hinge the door will collapse.

MCLEOD: On both fronts the challenge is immense. The break down in law and order both damages the community and opens the door to outside threats. The hope is that the arrival of outsiders can help turn things around.

KIMISOPA: Well my biggest fear is that after five years if this thing doesn’t work properly then we’ll come back to the same position we are in or worse still, completely gone.

MCLEOD: The reality of policing in one of the world’s most diverse nations is likely to challenge those with even the best of intentions but the prospect of PNG descending into chaos is too horrifying to contemplate.