By Norm Dixon
Claiming that tough measures are required to impose "law and order" in Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister Paias Wingti recently announced controversial measures which will severely restrict previously accepted human and civil rights in that country. Green Left Weekly spoke to Brian Brunton, Director of the Individual Community Rights Advocacy Forum and a former National Court judge and chairperson of the PNG Law Reform Commission, in Port Moresby about the implications of these and other draconian changes to PNG's law.
"The laws the PNG government is proposing to bring in are very much like the laws that were used in racist, apartheid South Africa, in the old Stalinist countries and military dictatorships such as Indonesia", Brunton said. "These laws will turn PNG into a police state."
The proposed laws restrict freedom of movement with the introduction of an identification card system — "basically a system of internal passports" — and reverses the presumption of innocence for Papua New Guineans before courts charged with serious criminal offences. These measures require amendments to the constitution. Cabinet also announced a reduction of offences for which bail would be granted. The new repressive measures have been rejected by PNG's trade unions and churches.
"These proposals attack a fundamental right in a democracy," Brunton told Green Left Weekly. "Democracy and freedom mean that you can move around your own country, make business, find work, visit friends and relatives without having to ask the permission of the government. Efficient business and commerce depends on the free movement of people — of labour, of goods, of capital — and of course PNG is meant to be a democratic, free enterprise country. These moves are going to attack the very essence of PNG."
Brunton dismissed claims by the Wingti government that the changes would were necessary to reduce crime and suggested that their were more more sinister motives behind the changes.
"This legislation is meant to keep rural people back in the rural areas. People move into the towns because there are better services. The towns do not have tribal fighting, the towns have a water supply, health services, schools, electricity, shops and entertainment. The real motive of the people who come into the town is a better life.
"The government has failed to deliver the goods in the rural areas ... there are land shortages because garden land has been given over to cash crops ... The government has failed to bring development to the people.
"Another reason behind these measures is that the elites want to get hold of urban land to make real estate deals, subdivisions and profits at the expense of the poor people."
Brunton pointed out there is no reliable and authoritative evidence that rural migrants cause crime. "The stories and anecdotes that say it is settlers and migrants that cause crime is not backed up."
These latest proposals come hard on the heels of the passage through the national parliament of the Internal Security Act (ISA) which gives PNG's ruling politicians the power to imprison people and ban organisations they don't like, Brunton told Green Left Weekly. "It's written so that a wide range of people and organisations can be called 'terrorist' d ... The ISA is a tool by which the government can destroy those who oppose it politically. There is no need for this legislation. Serious disturbances in PNG can be dealt with under existing laws including the provisions in the constitution for states of emergency."
He explained that the government was concentrating power in the hands of the executive at the expense of the judiciary. However most people in PNG have more faith in the judiciary than they do the politicians: "Put simply, you can't trust the PNG politicians with judicial power. Politicians have behaved irrationally in the past, some have been sent to jail for being corrupt ... Some the politicians are supporting their own clans in tribal fighting, some of them are involved in supplying them with guns and ammunition. They are part of the conditions that promote the attacks on themselves."
Continued on page 19.