Police state powers in PNG
Continued from page 32.
Giving police more repressive powers will not solve the "law and order problem", Brunton added. "The police have very little credibility in PNG because they illegally raid villages, they burn houses, they shoot people, they bash people up. They are inefficient detecting crime and they don't respect the ordinary people of this country. The police as an institution has to be cleaned up and made directly responsible to the community.
"It is said that these laws are needed to solve the crime problem in PNG. The banning of individuals and groups who oppose the government will not solve the problems of unemployment, social unrest, crime, state violence and domestic violence that are the main worries of the people — problems made worse by the government's own development policies which help foreign investors at the expense of the PNG people. They are made worse by the government's trickle-down theory of development by which people only get the leftovers after big business and the elites have taken the profits. They are made worse by the politicians unjustly enriching themselves."
The change in the onus of proof would fall heaviest on the poor, Brunton explained. "The concept of 'beyond reasonable doubt' is going to go out for those major crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and arson ... Those crimes are class specific. They are the crimes generally of the poor. The crimes of the rich and elites are misappropriation, theft and white collar crimes." Presumption of innocence will remain for the crimes of the rich. "Innocent people are going to be convicted, particularly of the willful murder charge which has a death penalty at the end of it."
Brunton predicted that PNG politicians would increasingly use false criminal charges to attack their opponents and tie them up in the courts.
The trend towards greater repressive laws in PNG was clearly a response to the Bougainville rebellion and growing demands by traditional landowners in other parts of PNG for a greater share of wealth generated by PNG's natural resources. The ISA was introduced because the PNG government was "unable to control the situation using existing laws ... Parliament refused to reinstate the state of emergency back in 1990. They have had to conduct the Bougainville campaign since without proper legal authority.
"They are trying to circumvent the emergency provisions in the constitution which require regular reporting to parliament before it reenacts a state of emergency ... they are bringing in this type of legislation to do indirectly what the constitution forbids them to do."
The repressive laws are for the benefit of foreign investors. "The big Australian miners are a quite sophisticated lot, they keep their mouths closed on internal political matters in public. What they do on the cocktail circuit and what they do privately of course is a completely different matter. The pressure for these laws is coming from PNG politicians who recognise that they are not going to have lots of foreign investment unless they 'solve' the law and order problem.
"Of course they can't solve the law and order problem because it is their system of investment, and their system of development that sustains the social problems in PNG."