Patrick Matbob


Widespread violence against Asians has flared up across Papua New Guinea resulting in the destruction and looting of Asian shops and the death of three local people.
Police are on the alert for further violence as the nation is trying to come to terms with what caused the destruction which has cost millions of kina worth of damage throughout the country.
The rapid spread of violence beginning with a rampage at the Ramu Nickel Refinery site at Basamuk and followed by rioting and looting in six provincial capitals of the country has caught authorities by surprise.
The country’s National Parliament has set up a special bi-partitioned committee to investigate the unrest while leaders have tried to repair the damage done.
Acting Prime Minister Dr Puka Temu has condemned the violence and apologised to Asian businesspeople that have been victimised.
Dr Temu said: “While our Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare is overseas trying to lure investors to our country, here we have a handful of hooligans and opportunists doing the exact opposite.”
However, the national government is equally to be blamed for being insensitive to the resentment that has been building up against Asians in the country for a number of years now.
PNG has been experiencing an influx of Asians who have been setting up businesses throughout the country and also to work at the Ramu Nickel Mine project.
Four days before the riots in the capital city and towns, PNG workers and villagers at the giant Chinese-owned Ramu Nickel project in Madang went on a rampage following an accident that left a Papua New Guinean worker with permanent injuries.

Vanuatu’s anti-corruption office opens in Vila A Citizen Complaints Office against Corruption has opened in Vanuatu. It is one of the major tools fostered by Transparency International to empower citizens to fight against corruption. President of Transparency Vanuatu, Marie Noelle Ferrieux Patterson says the project was made possible with the assistance of  Transparency International in Berlin and other donors  including  the Department for International Development of UK. There are now 38 such centres in the world. In Vanuatu, this centre will receive and process complaints focused on corruption related matters.  The centre aims to establish a working partnership with public institutions such as the Ombudsman’s Office. Patterson said it is crucial to develop cooperation with public authorities in order to better represent the interests of citizens of Vanuatu and to help improve transparency, accountability and efficiency of these public authorities. “At the same time, we do not want to duplicate each other, but we want to reinforce each other’s work, for example the Ombudsman Act. Before people lodge a complaint with the Ombudsman Office, they lodge the complaint with the concerned department. Often people have difficulties lodging a legal complaint. The centre can be the legal office that can help them before they go to see the Ombudsman. “We are hoping to develop partnerships with other bodies like the police and the Public Solicitor,” says Patterson. This year Transparency Vanuatu intends to implement two other major projects. The EU Media Project aims at advocating the draft bill proposal of Right for Freedom of Information through consultation with the main stakeholders. The other is the Citizen Awareness project which will be implemented with the participation of the Ombudsman’s Office. The Ombudsman’s Office has agreed to send their representative to workshops which are to be organised and run by Transparency International in the outer islands.— By Hilaire Bule

The incident happened on May 8 when workers were trying to deliver some heavy reinforcement rods uphill on a tractor driven by a Chinese worker.
According to a relative of the victim, the heavy load stalled the engine and jerked the trailer throwing the victim off.
He fell down and the tractor ran over him, seriously injuring his lower abdomen and his genitals. The incident sparked a fight between the PNG and Chinese workers which was eventually stopped.
PNG workers then demanded the injured worker be airlifted to Madang for treatment. However, this did not happen, further angering the local workers. Four hours after the accident, he was finally ferried to Madang by boat which took another two and half hours.
Angry PNG workers and local villagers then went on a rampage for more than two hours smashing buildings, vehicles and construction machinery and looting office equipment such as computers and radios.
Five Chinese nationals were seriously injured, 33 received minor injuries, and the cost of the damage has been estimated at K11 million.
The seriously injured Chinese workers were airlifted by helicopter to Port Moresby for treatment at a private hospital.
PNG Mineral Resource Authority (MRA), which inspected the site after the incident, has criticised MCC, which owns Ramu Nickel, for its continuous poor safety work practices.
Managing Director of MRA Kepas Wali told a stakeholders meeting in Madang that the company’s safety record was not good enough.
MRA’s report to the Madang Governor’s office stated the incident would not have happened if there were proper safety measures on site.
The report highlighted the lack of safety culture and unsafe work practices.
Two years ago, the PNG Department of Labour and Industrial Relations threatened to shut down the operation because of breach of PNG labour and industrial regulations.
Meanwhile, four days after the Basamuk incident, a protest march was held against Asian owned businesses in Port Moresby which erupted into violence and widespread looting of shops.
A day later, mobs of local people in Lae, PNG’s second capital, attacked and looted Asian shops throughout the city in which a teenager was reported to have been trampled to death when police confronted the rioters.
The town of Madang was next to be hit by looters however, only one shop was looted and police intervened and controlled the situation.
The violence then spread into the Highlands region where Asians investments in the towns of Goroka, Mt Hagen and Wabag, came under attack.
Thousands of people broke into and looted shops owned by Asians and police had a hard time controlling the crowd. State radio NBC in Enga reported that two men were shot dead by police in Wabag and a number had been injured.
While the clashes at Ramu Nickel mine and the riots in the provincial capitals were not directly related, they had been caused by the same reasons.
Sentiments have been building up for a long time as Papua New Guineans watch an influx of Asians into the country to set up and run retail businesses in the major provincial capitals—especially businesses that by law should have been reserved for the local people.
Locals have also been concerned about how foreigners treat local employees over pay, working conditions and harassment of female workers.
There is also suspicion of bribery of government workers, agencies and local leaders to favour and protect Asian businesses while reports of a Chinese mafia operating in the country has not helped at all.
The government’s special treatment of Chinese workers brought in to work at Ramu Nickel has also upset many Papua New Guineans.
Majority of the Chinese workers in the country cannot speak English and therefore are breaching labour and immigration laws that state that non-citizens must be proficient in the English language.
Yet the workers have been issued work permits. The breach of these and other laws have been questioned by the Labour Department. However, the PNG government has ordered the department to overlook the laws.
A crack down by the Labour Department last year to arrest hundreds of Chinese workers at Ramu Nickel who had been in the country without proper work permits came to nothing when a PNG magistrate’s court released all the workers.
Chief Magistrate John Numapo handed down the decision to free the workers at the Madang District court after finding out that the workers came into the country to work under a government-to-government agreement between PNG and China.
Local landowners affected by the Ramu Nickel project also have their own issues with the PNG government.
Landownership disputes have remained outstanding for years and the national government has failed to convene a Land Titles Commission hearing to resolve the matter.
The lengthy delay in the review of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for the project caused by various reasons, has also been a major issue.
Without an effective MOA, landowners and stakeholders have been missing out on the spin-offs and compensation benefits from the project development.