30/8/06; www.theage.com.au
A three-week amnesty for the surrender of illegal firearms in PNG’s gun-ridden Southern Highlands province starts on Wednesday under a state of emergency in place there. PNG’s Police Minister Alphonse Willie announced the amnesty in newspaper notices, calling for all illegal firearms to be surrendered within the set time and promising immunity from criminal prosecution if people did so.
Prime Minister Michael Somare announced the emergency provisions for the graft-ridden region on August 1 following the virtual collapse of the provincial administration under the now-sidelined Governor Hami Yawari.
Hundreds of extra police and a platoon of soldiers have been sent in to ensure central government-appointed controllers can take over the run-down administration and start getting essential services back to the people.
Following the firearms amnesty, the security forces plan to go in search of the estimated 2,500 plus illegal weapons in the province and to prosecute those who fail to surrender them.
The state of emergency to date has generally been peaceful with police confiscating provincial government vehicles taken over by unauthorised persons and issuing notices to those illegally occupying government houses to vacate or face eviction and prosecution.
The Southern Highlands is notorious for illegal firearms which are used in tribal fights, highway robberies and at election-time to intimidate rival candidate supporters and election officials.
But getting the guns in through an amnesty or search and seize missions may prove difficult when villages rely on their arsenals to protect themselves from raids by neighbours.
Locals say a home-grown arms surrender policy is needed involving all communities because villagers will not surrender their weapons as long as they know potential raiders from other villages have not surrendered theirs.
High school students in the provincial capital Mendi have called on the province’s political leaders to take the lead and surrender their own weapons first.
Under Yawari’s governorship, roads, schools and health posts fell into disrepair as he handed out bundles of cash to curry favour as a network of corruption operated at provincial government level.
Yawari, angered by the central government’s declaration of the state of emergency and suspension of the provincial government, has since backed off threats to block the region’s oil and gas projects including the proposed PNG-Queensland gas pipeline.
But he has gone to court to try to get the emergency provisions declared illegal.
PNG Police Commissioner Sam Inguba said he had written to Yawari asking him to present himself to fraud detectives for questioning over allegations of gross mismanagement of community funds but he had not showed up.
If Yawari continued to elude police, fraud investigators would have no choice but to obtain a warrant for the governor’s arrest, he said.
