Karida massacre: fears of a new era of tribal violence in Papua New Guinea
“I am so worried about my women,” says Janet Koriama, president of the Hela
Council of Women over the phone from the local capital of Tari, having just
spent a night near the scene of the massacre. “Families have lost everything,”
says Koriama – their food gardens, shelter, clothes. Last Wednesday, Koriama
says another woman was killed “and one had her hand cut off while looking for
food to feed their hungry children”.
Koriama is desperately
trying to enlist defence forces to bring around 2,000 women and children
displaced by tribal fighting into shelters she’s coordinating with local
churches. But reports indicate that while soldiers have been deployed as
promised by prime minister James Marape, who is also the local MP for the area,
their mission is focused on capturing the killers, dead or alive. Even if they succeed,
this will be of little comfort to Koriama and other local leaders fearful about
what this massacre signals. While tribal conflict is deep rooted in Hela, they
describe what happened in Karida village as unprecedented in lore or memory.
“This, I have never
seen in my life,” bereft local
chief Hokoko Minape told PNG journalist Scott Waide. Police Minister Bryan
Kramer declared his concern that the killings “changed everything … that it
will become the new trend”. Close observers of
events in Hela are similarly appalled, but rather less surprised. The killings
follow years of escalating violence in a landscape untouched by Europeans only
85 years ago, but which is today the powerhouse of the nation’s resources
economy.
Australian National
University anthropologist Dr Chris Ballard, who has spent many years living
with and researching the area’s dominant Huli population, agrees with local
observations that the massacre falls outside even the eroded rules of tribal
warfare. Before European contact, these constraints “managed fighting quite
effectively,” he says... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/23/the-karida-massacre-the-start-of-a-new-era-of-tribal-violence-in-papua-new-guinea
