Category Archives: Papua New Guinea

Behrouz Boochani, voice of Manus Island refugees, is free in New Zealand

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Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist – a multiple award-winner for documenting life in Australia’s offshore detention system – has left Papua New Guinea

•The story behind Behrouz Boochani’s flight to freedom

Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist who became the voice of those incarcerated on Manus Island, has landed in New Zealand and says he will never return to Papua New Guinea or Australia’s immigration regime.

“I will never go back to that place,” he told the Guardian, shortly after leaving PNG. “I just want to be free of the system, of the process. I just want to be somewhere where I am a person, not just a number, not just a label ‘refugee’.”

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The ‘Lost Rambos’ of Papua New Guinea: how weapons and Hollywood changed tribal disputes – video

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Tribal fighting has long been present in the Papua New Guinea highlands but the influx of modern automatic weaponry in the 1990s turned local disputes into lethal exchanges that threatened to permanently reshape highlands culture. Bootleg copies of the US film Rambo circulated in remote communities, becoming a crude tutorial on the use of such weaponry. The film's influence was so pronounced that the term Rambo is used in Papuan dialects to describe hired mercenaries who are paid to support local combatants in violent tribal disputes. Here we meet the fighters and peacekeepers trying to navigate a path between tradition and modernity

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Papua New Guinea’s PM given a Bentley bought for Apec summit

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All 111 members of parliament will get vehicles from the Apec fleet, but the fate of 40 Maseratis is not yet known

Papua New Guinea’s prime minister will receive one of the Bentley cars controversially purchased by the government at taxpayers’ expense for the 2018 Apec summit, officials have confirmed.

James Marape became PM in May with promises to crack down on corruption. The finance secretary, Ken Ngangan, has told the Post Courier newspaper that all 111 members of parliament will get vehicles from the Apec fleet for their electoral duties, though no one apart from the PM will receive a Maserati or Bentleys.

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Asylum seekers approved for medevac transfers detained in Port Moresby

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More than 50 men, including Benham Satah, who witnessed murder of Reza Barati, have been held for two months

Asylum seekers who have been approved for medevac transfers to Australia are among 52 men who have been locked up in Port Moresby detention without access to phones or lawyers for the past two months.

Among those detained is Benham Satah, the Kurdish Iranian man who witnessed the murder of Reza Barati in 2014, and who was allegedly about to be transferred to Australia for care.

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Collapse of PNG deep-sea mining venture sparks calls for moratorium

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Papua New Guinea out of pocket $157m from failed attempt at mining material from deep-sea vents as opponents point to environmental risk

The “total failure” of PNG’s controversial deep sea mining project Solwara 1 has spurred calls for a Pacific-wide moratorium on seabed mining for a decade.

The company behind Solwara 1, Nautilus, has gone into administration, with major creditors seeking a restructure to recoup hundreds of millions sunk into the controversial project.

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Asylum seekers held in Papua New Guinea blocked from talking to lawyers or doctors

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Inquiry hears that asylum seekers detained in PNG do not have access to phones, preventing medical evacuation

Asylum seekers held in a Papua New Guinean detention facility are being prevented from talking to lawyers and doctors, blocking them from medical evacuation to Australia approved under new medevac laws.

David Manne, the executive director of Refugee Legal, told a Senate inquiry on Monday that he had lost contact with one client who had been approved for urgent evacuation weeks ago but was then detained at the Bomana detention facility in Papua New Guinea.

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The asylum seekers held in a PNG prison have a choice: return to death or literally rot in jail | First Dog on the Moon

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They have already been suffering in inhumane conditions for six years. All this is well known and makes no difference

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British jetski fugitive who fled across Torres Strait sentenced

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Convicted drugs supplier David James Jackson left Queensland armed with crossbow

A British fugitive who made it across the Torres Strait on a jetski trying to flee a drugs supply charge in Australia has been sentenced for the audacious escape attempt.

Armed with a crossbow and supplies for the 90-mile journey, David James Jackson, 57, took off from the tip of Queensland and made it to Papua New Guinean waters.

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Torres Strait search: child’s body in PNG probably not one of missing five, police say

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Queensland police say group that set off in boat for Dauan Island on 31 July are unlikely to be found alive

Queensland police have concluded the child’s body found on the Papua New Guinea mainland is unlikely to belong to one of five people missing from an empty boat found floating in the Torres Strait.

The search operation continued on Sunday with police vessels and aerial surveillance.

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Children in Pacific suffer ‘shockingly high’ levels of violence, report finds

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Aid organisations call out ‘dramatic underinvestment’ by Australia and other donors in tackling ‘endemic’ problem

Violence against children in the Pacific region has reached “endemic” levels, with children subject to brutal physical discipline in the home, as well as sexual violence, a new report has found.

More than 4 million children across the region had experienced violent discipline in the home and in Papua New Guinea 27% of parents or caregivers used physical punishment “over and over as hard as they could”, the report by leading NGOs working in the region found.

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Australia must help protect Pacific from climate change, PNG prime minister says

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James Marape says Australia, with New Zealand and PNG, has a moral obligation to listen to the voices of smaller island nations

Australia has a responsibility to protect the Pacific region from the impacts of climate change, PNG’s newly appointed prime minister has said.

James Marape told the Guardian Australia had “a moral responsibility … to the upkeep of the planet”, particularly given the extreme effect it was having on smaller Pacific nations.

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The Karida massacre: fears of a new era of tribal violence in Papua New Guinea

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The shocking killing of 18 people in a highlands village may have ‘changed everything’, warns police minister

The pictures that came out of a remote highlands village in Papua New Guinea two weeks ago were not, at first glance, particularly graphic: bulging cocoons of blue mosquito nets hanging from wooden poles propped along a roadside.

But the story they told was gruesome.

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At least 15 women and children killed in tribal massacre in Papua New Guinea

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Pregnant women among victims of killings in small village of Karida, in an area beset by internecine violence

At least 15 women and children have been killed in a massacre in Papua New Guinea’s Hela province, in one of the worst outbreaks of tribal violence in the country for years.

The killings happened on early Monday morning during a raid on Karida, a village of about 800 people in the interior of the country.

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Former Manus Island detainee tells UN ‘human beings are being destroyed’

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Abdul Aziz Muhamat delivers a plea for urgent action to the Human Rights Council

Since Abdul Aziz Muhamat left Manus Island for the last time, he has climbed a mountain in his new home of Switzerland, and then returned to advocating for the resettlement of the hundreds of men and women he left behind.

The Sudanese refugee spent more than six years in Australia’s offshore processing and detention system in Papua New Guinea, before he was granted residency in the European nation earlier this month.

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Paladin contract for Manus Island should be cancelled, PNG’s new PM says

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James Marape says foreign contractors should not be doing work that locals can do

Papua New Guinea’s newly appointed prime minister wants Australia to cancel its controversial contract with Paladin to deliver services on Manus Island.

James Marape, who became prime minister after the resignation of Peter O’Neill last month, told PNG’s parliament on Tuesday he would summon Australia’s diplomatic head of mission “to provide an explanation”.

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Australian-based company’s PNG mine could pose big environmental risk

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Gold and copper project for Sepik region also has potential to cause social conflict and unrest, report says

A gold and copper mine proposed for the Sepik region in Papua New Guinea by an Australian-based company threatens to destroy the health of a major river system, poison fish stocks and cause violent unrest, a report has found.

The Chinese-owned company, PanAust, says the Frieda river project could have a 45-year life span and generate A$12.45bn in tax, royalties and production levies for the PNG government and landholders.

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Papua New Guinea’s most divisive PM is gone – his successor must learn from his mistakes | Stephen Howes

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Peter O’Neill struggled with tackling corruption, shoring up the economy and a refusal to share power

It has been just two weeks since Papua New Guinean politics erupted. The dramatic events saw politicians in our nearest neighbouring country camping out in two hotels, shouting matches in parliament, and threats of no-confidence motions, before eventually, realising he had lost the support of his colleagues, the prime minister Peter O’Neill resigned.

The subsequent transition has been smooth. The new prime minister James Marape has succeeded O’Neill and his newly-appointed cabinet has begun work.

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Papua New Guinea in chaos as PM shows no sign of resigning

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Furious opposition calls to remove speaker fail and parliament is swiftly adjourned after stormy opening

Papua New Guinea’s parliament descended into chaos on Tuesday as prime minister Peter O’Neill showed no signs of stepping down, despite his promise to resign on Sunday.

Parliament resumed for the first time in three weeks, after a tense period in PNG politics during which a number of high-profile ministers defected from the government to join the opposition bloc, which is pushing to remove O’Neill and replace him with one of their own MPs.

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Papua New Guinea in turmoil as opposition vows to install new PM

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Resignation of Peter O’Neill triggers political confusion in Port Moresby as his opponents plot to block anointed successor

Papua New Guinea is braced for a political reckoning after a tumultuous week that has seen prime minister Peter O’Neill announce his resignation following high-level defections from his party.

On Sunday, O’Neill, who has been prime minister since 2011, told a news conference in Port Moresby that he would be resigning and handing over the leadership to Sir Julius Chan, himself a former prime minister, whom O’Neill described as one of the nation’s “founding fathers”.

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Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, Peter O’Neill, resigns

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Parliament in turmoil as O’Neill speaks of a ‘need for change’ after series of high-profile defections

Peter O’Neill, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, has resigned after weeks of high-level defections from his ruling party.

O’Neill told a news conference in Port Moresby that recent changes to political allegiances in parliament had shown a “need for change”.

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