Mission & Justice

25/9/08

Western Highlands police have blamed politicians and community leaders as the main causes of tribal warfare in the Highlands region. During a peace negotiation ceremony between two warring tribes in Lumusa, Baiyer district, provincial police commander Chief Supt Thomas Eluh said if politicians and leaders were honest, the scale of tribal warfare in the region would be less. “Politicians and leaders provide weapons to youths and encourage them to go out and fight against each other while they themselves with their families live in comfort far away from the war zones. The poor people in the villages are seriously affected. There’s never any benefit from the so called politicians and leaders,” Supt Eluh said. The former chief prosecutor also appealed to the people of the Highlands to change their attitude in supporting each other in making very small issues become full scale tribal warfare which ends with deaths and properties damage.

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24/9/08

Yesterday brought a crop of police stories that show just how tough a battle the police commissioner and his senior officers are fighting to try and return the once admirable reputation of their men and women to its former state. One concerned the alleged kidnapping and rape of two girls aged 15 and 16 from the Tambul district of the Western Highlands province. They were allegedly held and repeatedly raped by their kidnapper from Sept 2 to 13. The report alleged that the two girls were crossing the road at the main bus stop in Mt Hagen in order to enter the city market. They were then held at knife point by their alleged abductor and forced into a PMV. Readers can well imagine the trauma associated with the incident. We would like to think that the girls received a supportive hearing from the police after they eventually managed to escape and report their ordeal. But a senior policeman’s reaction appears to have been one of incredulity.

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Nelson K Philip; 22/9/08

The Minister for Justice, Dr Allan Marat, has expressed disappointment over the Government’s inaction in tabling in Parliament a report and 244 recommendations on gun violence in the country. He said this lack of interest only reflected on the Government’s commitment to eradicating guns and gun-related violence. Dr Marat, who is also the Attorney-General, told members of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) and other stakeholders last week that he was doing all he could to raise the gun issue in Parliament and at other forums. He also suggested protecting and rewarding people who provide reliable information about gun trafficking, locations and the people involved. “We must offer incentives to communities that demonstrate their wish to get rid of guns.-We can do this by tying infrastructure and other development initiatives from Government to communities who want to be peaceful,” Dr Marat said.

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Rhys Blakely; 8/9/08

The mob appeared an hour after sunset, armed with axes, clubs and paraffin. The carnage that followed would have been much worse if the Christians of Gadragaon, a remote village in northeast India, had not been warned by text message: “The Hindus are coming to kill you.” The alert gave most enough time to flee to the jungle, where 114 of them would hide for a week, drinking rainwater and foraging for food. But the warning did not come early enough for those unable to run. “They doused him with petrol and taunted him; we could hear him screaming,” said Ravindra Nath Prahan, 45, of his paralysed brother, Rasananda, 35, who was burned alive by Hindu fanatics. “I could have tried to save him. But we had to save ourselves.” The attack on Gadragaon, by a mob that chanted “Hail Mother India” as they razed the village, was among the first of the grim litany of atrocities committed against minority Christians in the state of Orissa over the past two weeks. The Vatican has called the wave of violence “a sin against God and humanity”.

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Nikki Goldstein; 6/9/08;

Girlforce Friends by Nikki Goldstein is published today; ABC.

There has been a lot bubbling in the media about teen girls during the past year or so. Much is made of the over-sexualisation of teens, the increasing violence among girls and the worries parents have about the internet. All are valid concerns but they are also smokescreens for an equally dark but less-hyped issue: the broad and insidious rise of “mean girl culture”. Not just the name-calling, backstabbing and physical and psychological violence at the pointy end of bullying. It is the fundamental shift we’ve seen over the past decade in the way girls behave towards one another. Bullying today is not the exception - it’s the rule. Bitchiness is so much part of the teen landscape that girls hardly blink when a put-down comes their way. For two years I have run a forum through my website (www.giriforce.com.au) in which I talk to teenage girls across Australia. By far the most pressing topic, every week, has been how to handle the bullying, The bitchiness and isolation girls experience at school.

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Ilya Gridneff; 5/9/08

A former Solomon Islands prime minister has been jailed under reform laws initiated by the Australian-led peacekeeping force he invited into his country. Sir Allan Kemakeza, who had been most recently the forests minister, was sentenced to six months’ jail for organising a violent car theft during a period of political unrest in 2002. Kemakeza ordered militants from the Malaita Eagle Force to smash and steal equipment from the Honiara law firm Sol-Law to scare Australian lawyers out of the country.

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5/9/08

Residents and business houses at the gold mine township of Bulolo, Morobe Province were terrified over the murder of an innocent by-stander in the heart of the town last Thursday. This is because the alleged murder was among overwhelming alcohol related issues raised by residents and locals from the town in recent times. The incident happened a week after a unaninous decision passed by the Bulolo administration, political leaders and the business communities for a liquor ban in the district. Police reported a bystander from the Garaina area in the Waria local level government was murdered by two youths who were allegedly under the influence of alcohol at the main market around 11pm. Police said the alleged suspects confronted the victim and stabbed all parts of his body with knives they had in their possession.

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Nurit Wurgaft; 1/9/08

The murder of a child almost always makes the entire country skip a heartbeat, especially if news of the death is preceded by the child’s disappearance and extensive searches. During the past 30 years dozens of children have disappeared or been murdered in Israel. Many of these cases remain unsolved to this day.

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Rana Husseini; 1/9/08

The Court of Cassation has upheld a May Criminal Court ruling sentencing a 19-year-old girl to 15 years in prison after convicting her of poisoning and killing four of her family members in Irbid in February. “The Cassation Court reviewed the case for almost four months and concluded that the Criminal Court followed the proper legal procedures when issuing the verdict on May 8,” a senior judicial source said. The Criminal Court had originally handed the defendant, H.M. the death penalty for the premeditated murder of her parents and two of her siblings. But the court immediately reduced the sentence to 15 years because her family members and uncles dropped charges against her.

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Susan Connelly RSJ; 9/08; On Channel Seven’s “Today Tonight” programme on September 9 and 10, it was broadcast that a Timorese man accused of killing Timorese people on behalf of the Indonesian military was in Australia on a World Youth Day visa. Joana Ximenes’ brother was beaten to death when he was II years old in 1975 by a man identified as Guy Campos, who was never charged with any offence and who is now staying just a few streets away from Joana’s home. Other Timorese have contacted the programme adding further accusations against Mr Campos. Apart from the disturbing situation of having people accused of murder entering Australia with ease, a matter which has been discussed widely with reference to Nazi war criminals among others (cf Mark Aarons’ book “War Criminals Welcome”), Joana Ximenes’ story brings the lack of justice in East Timor into focus. It highlights the constant human dilemma of trying to balance justice with forgiveness.

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