Karen Fredericks, Port Moresby
A violent raid by Port Moresby police on an alleged brothel on March 11 has galvanised women's groups, community and church organisations and aid workers in a new coalition to call for a public and independent commission to investigate human rights abuses by police and security forces.
The police raid on the Three Mile Guest House in Boroko — Port Moresby's main hotel and nightclub area — appears to have been conducted without a warrant. The raid took place on a busy Friday afternoon when the licensed club was full of people enjoying a drink after work and listening to a band.
Police used heavy sticks to force at least 80 people — including staff, musicians, patrons and passers-by — out of the club and onto a forced one hour march through the busy city streets to the Boroko police station.
According to press reports, police officers then trashed the club and removed all valuable items including computers, cash and large quantities of beer.
The people ejected from the club were reportedly beaten with sticks as they marched to the police station, and were forced to chew and swallow condoms. According to witnesses, police officers reportedly called to the Friday afternoon crowds on Port Moresby's streets to "come and look at the sex workers! These are the people who are spreading AIDS!"
At the Boroko police station all the men were released without charge and all of the 40 women, including several girls under 18, were charged with "living off the earnings of prostitution" and thrown into cells. Allegations have been made that some of the women were raped repeatedly by drunken police in uniform during the more than 48 hours the women were detained.
Some of the arrested women had been working as peer educators with aid agencies such as the Save the Children Fund and World Vision, fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in PNG.
Community workers managed to secure the release of the women in the early hours of March 14 by raising and paying a police "surety" of 2000 kina (A$820).
The HIV/AIDS workers and a number of representatives of local community groups gathered at the Boroko local court the next day to support the women as they entered their not guilty pleas. Their trial has been set for March 31.
The women argue that the police's discovery of condoms at the club and in the possession of the accused women does not prove they were living off the earnings of prostitution. Many of them were distributing condoms at the club in their role as peer educators in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
More than 20 community groups including women's and youth organisations, aid agencies and health, welfare and church groups met at the offices of the Individual and Community Rights Advocacy Forum (ICRAF) in Boroko on March 17 to plan a response to the raid.
They have decided to form a coalition to call for an inquiry into the raid and for the establishment of an independent human rights watchdog in PNG. They are planning a rally and march for March 30 after which they will present a petition to government and police representatives.
ICRAF is one of the few remaining human rights advocacy organisations in PNG. Most other groups were wiped out in the security crackdown that followed the intense public campaign against public sector cutbacks imposed at the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank that mobilised students, trade unionists and even soldiers from 1995 to 2001.
While ICRAF has been subjected to armed police raids for its outspoken defence of civil rights, it somehow manages to survive in its tiny, under-resourced office in downtown Boroko.
There have been calls for an independent human rights watchdog from ICRAF and other human rights activist groups in PNG for more than a decade. Reports of horrific police violence, particularly sexual violence, against women and girls, are commonplace.
PNG police also have a well-deserved reputation for violent suppression of public dissent. In June 2001, three students were shot dead by police at the University of PNG during a demonstration against the World Bank/IMF-imposed privatisation and public sector cutbacks. The police reportedly came from special Australian-trained forces usually deployed to provide security for Australian mining operations in PNG's highlands.
The Australian government has already spent more than $120 million on police in PNG over the last decade. Canberra proposes to spend an additional $800 million, over the next five years, to deploy 230 Australian Federal Police officers in PNG to "help restore law and order", but wants them to have immunity from local prosecution for any violations of PNG law they might commit.
From Green Left Weekly, March 24, 2004.
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