Police go on alert as anti-Asian uprising continues

Madang, Goroka shops looted

 

By PISAI GUMAR in The National

 

THE anti-Chinese traders’ sentiment that started in Port Moresby and flared in Lae last week reared its ugly head in the Madang and Eastern Highlands provinces at the weekend.

Elsewhere, police in Wewak, East Sepik province, and Mt Hagen in Western Highlands were patrolling the streets to prevent any rioting against Chinese traders.

In Port Moresby last Friday, acting Prime Minister Dr Puka Temu had instructed police to immediately investigate the incidents and deal with the ring leaders (see accompanying story).

He had also instructed the Department of Commerce and Industry to investigate claims that a number of the Chinese shops hit were operating illegally.

Four Chinese-owned shops in Goroka were emptied of goods and an undisclosed amount of cash in a nasty Sunday reveille when men, women and children ran riot at 6.30am.

At the gateway to the Eastern Highlands, Kainantu, the atmosphere was palpable but nothing happened as police kept a close tab.

In Madang on Saturday, however, in another morning raid, three shops were attacked by hordes of people believed to be squatters, at 7.30am.

Looters cleaned out one while three were left just as badly damaged when police arrived.

The incidents, like Lae where rioters came from Saw Dust, Kamkumung, West Taraka, 1 to 12 Miles settlements, were attributed to people from the sprawling squatter settlements of Parara, Pis Wara, and Genoka in Goroka and Sisiak 3 and Bukbuk settlements in Madang.

The Sisiak and Bukbuk settlers were joined by hundreds of other settlers in a force numbering hundreds to attack two new Chinese shops and a kai bar in the heart of Madang town.

Other shops, Asian and national, were forced to close doors.

According to Eastern Highlands provincial police commander Chief Insp Augustine Wampe, women, children and men, numbering in the thousands, flocked onto the streets and prevented traffic flow.

Police and private security guards were also outnumbered.

Mr Wampe said the people walked into four Asian shops and completely emptied them of deep freezers, radios, TV screens, washing machines and groceries.

The looted shops, which estimated their losses at K250, 000, were PMK restaurant and retail, Kim Restaurant, Saveu retail and wholesale and the Goroka Yacht Club.

Others that were damaged included Hot Spot, Bintangor, SP Brewery and Trukai Industries.

In Madang, provincial police commander Chief Insp Anthony Wagambie said police apprehended 15 youths.

He said settlement youths took cue of the Lae and Port Moresby incidents last week and mobilised and entered J&Z Trading as it opened for business at 7.30am.

Last Friday, Chief Insp Wagambie said he had warned all shop owners in town not to open before 8 o’clock on Saturday morning to give time for police to prepare.

So as soon the doors were opened and the youths rushed in and emptied the shop, a routine patrol police responded immediately, he said.

A back-up police Mobile Squad arrived and dispersed the crowd and apprehended 15 suspects.

The looters ran into the market and took refuge among the crowd, stopping police from shooting.

Meanwhile, the Madang town market will remain closed today to control further trouble, ousted governor Sir Arnold Amet said last night.

Sir Arnold also went on Radio Madang to appeal for calm in the province, urging citizens to refrain from causing any further trouble.

He said the provincial government, the Madang Urban local level government and police decided yesterday to close the market to business and appealed to citizens to keep gatherings of people to a minimum to avoid any possibility of trouble.

Traffic in and out of Madang was also being closely monitored, Sir Arnold said.

 

Media Pool Competition

Click http://2008telikommediapoolcompetition.blogspot.com/ to visit the site of the Media Pool Competition in Port Moresby, which keeps Port Moresby journalists, their friends and supporters occupied every Saturday.

I do play for a team called Freelancers, however, remain strictly off the grog.

 

Malum

 

Still waiting, and waiting and waiting for an apology and compensation from Timothy Bonga

Now that Timothy Bonga has been recycled as MP for Nawaeb, and made chairman of the Powerful Public Accounts Committee, perhaps he can apologise to me and compensate me for the beating that I received at his hands in 2007 before the elections.

The Taiwanese government and media have also implicated Timothy Bonga and Dr Florian Gubon in the US $30 million deal from money that was supposed to come to Papua New Guinea.

Apart from that scam, the good people of Nawaeb and the rest of Papua New Guinea should know that for no apparent reason, outgoing Eda Ranu executive chairman Mr Bonga harassed, insulted, and then assaulted me at the Lamana Gold Club on Friday evening, May 4, 2007.

The incident happened as I was about to leave Lamana after a few 'Happy Hour' drinks with workmates.

Mr Bonga confronted me as I was leaving – out of the blues - and accused me of working together with Lae MP and New Generation Party leader Bart Philemon to bring him down.

He made reference to the recent newspaper reports about his payout from Eda Ranu.

I denied this, saying that I was no longer working as a fulltime journalist (at that time, I was working with the government), and walked out to catch a taxi, but Mr Bonga followed me outside where he punched me, pushed me to the ground, and then proceeded to kick me in full view of security guards.

I suffered a black eye, a sore face and a painful back.

This was a criminal matter, which I wanted to pursue further with police, but decided not to, lest his election chances be jeopardised.

I met him in late 2007, at a Port Moresby supermarket, and he made a verbal committment to sort me out, however, this has not been the case.

In true Papua New Guinea style, it is only fitting that Mr Bonga compensate me, my family, and my friends, given that he has already received his big pay cheque from Eda Ranu , is now Nawaeb MP and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and has publicly confirmed benefiting from Taiwanese money.

Malum Nalu

Port Moresby

Boonah Show 2009 (Chapter 2)

From Paul Oates in Queensland, Australia

Boonah Show 16th May 2009 ( Chapter 1)

From Paul Oates in Queensland, Australia

We have been very busy with the annual Boonah Show and here are a few pictures from yesterday. The rest are in Ch 2.

Pacific Media Summit (please click to enlarge)

Pacific Storms Art Exhibition June 3-July 12, 2009

Artwork by Laban Sakale

Artwork by Mairi Feeger featuring various social ills such as sorcery, violence and alcohol. It will go on show in Bundaberg

Joycelin Leahy (centre) with artists Winnie Weoa (left) and Daniel Waswas - both of whom are involved in the Australian exhibition - at Gerehu in Port Moresby last week

Winnie Weoa (left) and Daniel Waswas - both of whom are involved in the Australian exhibition - at Gerehu in Port Moresby last week

Curatorial statement by Joycelin Leahy

Pacific Storms explores the spirit, life, and challenges of the contemporary Pacific peoples. Pacific Islanders are proud of their resources, ocean, land, environment, culture, arts, languages and their traditional knowledge.
The Pacific remains one of the few regions in the world where you can find many hundreds of languages spoken, diverse cultures and some of the most vulnerable communities on the globe.
Being rich in both tangible and intangible heritage provides Pacific people with an endless source for artistic expression.
The unique art forms are evidenced in museum and gallery collections all over the world, collected over centuries.
It is from this valuable artistic source that a selection of well-known and emerging artists across nine countries was challenged to use their heritage to create a contemporary Pacific expression.
In their interpretation of who they are and how they feel about their societies, these new works were developed. In Pacific Storms, the challenge was to draw away from mainstream society’s categories and stereotypes of what is Pacific art and who Pacific people are, to explore new aesthetics.
Pacific Storms is also a platform of contemporary creativity which integrates and addresses the real issues of the modern Pacific society.
The Pacific region is marked by exceptional cultural and biological diversity within spectacular physical landscapes; thus each has their own unique way of building resilience to climate change, globalisation, security and civil unrest, HIV-AIDS and many other social issues.
These expressions are exhibited in hope that wider audiences understand the complex issues through the diversity of art across the Pacific.
In addition, staging Pacific Storms in the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery links contemporary Pacific expression to the region’s significant history through the Australian sugar industry.
Australia’s sugar industry was founded on the sweat of men and women, some kidnapped and all enticed from more than eighty Melanesian islands including the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Loyalty Islands of New Caledonia, and to a lesser extent, the eastern archipelagoes of Papua New Guinea, and Tuvalu and Kiritabati.
Today’s Australian South Sea Islanders are descended from indentured labourers in the nineteenth century.
In the nineteenth century this form of human trafficking was historically known as ‘Blackbirding’ and the individuals were called ‘Kanakas’.
There were about 50,000 Islanders and 62,000 indenture contracts.
Under the White Australian Policy, between 1901 and 1908 Australia ended this migration and deported most of those remaining.
Some were exempted from repatriation, and along with a number of others who escaped deportation, about 2,000 remained in Australia to form the basis of what is today Australia’s largest non-indigenous black ethnic group.
The question of how many Islanders were illegally recruited and how many chose to come remains controversial.
Bundaberg is a major centre for Australian South Sea Islanders.
Pacific Storms re-unites these communities with their ‘wantoks’ (relatives and friends) through a collaborative community engagement at the Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery.