THE PNG INDONESIA BORDER is a long stretch of land from the tip of Sandaun Province right down through Western Province and almost to Australia. Villages can be spotted in pockets along both sides of the border. The largest and most used entry point from either Papua New Guinea or Indonesia is the border at Wutung.
The PNG side of the border at Wutung is filthy with mountains of empty plastics, cans, and containers that are sprayed with betel nut stains. A lone colourless building houses the PNG customs office. Visitors to the Wutung border find shelters under trees or huts that fry bananas, lamb flaps and sausages. Visitors must answer the call of nature in the forests nearby.
A big tall monument which stands on the Indonesian side dwarfs a short and small one on the PNG side near Bougainville Bay. The Indonesian monument proudly flies the Indonesian flag above a mountain forest which seems to remind PNG not to muddle around with Indonesia.
As you look into PNG from the Indonesian side you see the fearfully scribbled inscription “Jesus Christ is Lord over this land”. The eagle in the Indonesian sculpture, looking like Uncle Sam, stares fiercely down on the inscription.
The Indonesian side of the no man’s land is called Batas and is well polished with pavement, four lanes for cars and properly fenced. All the different Indonesian government departments like Customs and Foreign affairs, Defence, Trade, etc. are housed within well designed Asian-style buildings.
Their soldiers are well polished with smart military attire and guns, unlike the mixture of pot- bellied and betel nut stained soldiers wondering around individually showing no signs of camaraderie and preparedness on the PNG side.
A kilometre into the Indonesian side is the famous Gordon Market-type stalls called Batas. Batas is a ghetto that gives the impression of a new refugee camp. In Batas they sell all sorts of Asian made goods, clothing, electronic equipment, Harley Davidson motorbikes and even sex appetisers like Viagra, Spanish fly, King Cobra, etc.
A digital camera sold in Papua New Guinea for K999 is only K300 in Batas. A Toshiba laptop is only K800 in Batas whilst in Port Moresby it is K4,000 plus.
The official days for Papua New Guineans to go shopping in Batas are Tuesdays and Thursdays but PNG and Indonesian authorities at the border both allow Papua New Guineans to shop at any time of the week as well. People rarely shop in Vanimo.
Most forest owners, some public servants and even visitors travel to Batas or Jayapura to do their shopping for goods as well as for sex. Therefore there much fewer super markets and stores in Vanimo town and these close at around 4 pm.
The PNG government loses millions on import duty and PNG entrepreneurs in Vanimo have lost business opportunities as well with the competition from Batas and Jayapura.
Vanimo market does not have the mountains of garden crops we see in Port Moresby, Goroka or the Mt Hagen markets. The timber royalty money it seems has made people lose their gardening skills.
We went shopping on Friday and Saturday last week. Yes, PNG kina is spent in Batas on the Indonesian side of the border and it is estimated that half a million untaxed kina is going to Indonesia via Batas per week.
We were told that Indonesian soldiers sell guns to Papua New Guineans for up-front cash payment. Asian and West Papuan sex workers prey on innocent PNG men who cross the border to Batas or Jayapura to shop. All the goods and fees for sex are very cheap.
The distance from Batas to Jayapura is just the same as from Batas to Vanimo so Papua New Guineans can travel with locals from the border area to Jayapura without any proper visas.
Caveat! The PNG government has to overhaul the facilities at Wutung and screen people moving in and out of Wutung smuggling and escaping import duties.
Otherwise, PNG will keep losing economically and will also be filled to the brim with imported social ills that include HIV as part of the package.
.. one descriptive bit there was a bit jarring .. i don't know the author .. here is another by him ..
Women advocates confuse gender equality & feminism
KELA KAPKORA SIL BOLKIN | Supported by the Phil Fitzpatrick Writing Fellowship
Sil BolkinWE ARE CONVINCED that the ‘pedestal’ women leaders in Papua New Guinea, who espouse demagogical rhetoric and make discriminatory speeches about the opposite sex at forums and courses for women from the highest echelons of society, are a wedge towards gender equality.
However most of them confuse gender equality with feminism. Their actions and speeches are usually and indelibly feminist and not about gender equality at all.
In any gender equality program men must be part and parcel of the program for some very obvious reasons.
Statistics tell us that men are the worst culprits when it comes to gender-based violence. Not only that, but men are currently in most positions of power at almost every level in PNG.
It seems that the United Nations Women and all the other UN entities use feminism in their approach rather than advocating gender equality.
For a start, if you visit any one of the UN offices in Port Moresby you will surely see more females employed than men. Any men there are usually only employed as drivers for the UN vehicles.
If you go to a workshop on HIV/AIDS in Thailand or Cambodia, for instance, almost all the program officers attending from across the Indian Ocean, Asia and the Pacific area are women.
This situation could lead one to believe that these programs and the gender advocates who go to them are half-baked.
Gender simply means the roles, responsibilities and relationships between men and women. Therefore gender also includes men who have sex with men, trans-genders and lesbians.
In contrast, feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic and social rights for women.
This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist is ‘an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women only’.
It was obvious that the UN Women’s advocacy for the 22 nominated seats in the PNG parliament last year was part of a feminist movement.
Other useful programs, like primary education for all girls, personal female viability and life skills and men and boys training on the right way to treat women are much more vital programs for the betterment of women than the 22 nominated seats, which will only really serve a few lucky women.
Don’t tell me that it worked in Rwanda. Rwanda has just come out of a terrible genocide. Women were totally marginalised, raped and massacred during the genocide. Now there is currently a higher population of women than men. Their constitution allows for 24 reserved seats for women because of the ugly inhuman behaviour from their menfolk.
Malawi, Uganda, South Africa and Namibia all fund a plethora of large organisations that take the advocacy programs far and wide throughout the country, consistently changing people’s behaviour.
PNG women have never experienced such ugly inhuman behaviour from their menfolk on the mass scale that occurred in Rwanda. Individuals are often subject to deplorable behaviour from their menfolk but never in a large, organised way.
According to a report on a blog at WordPress.com, women occupy only 89 out of 535 seats in the US Congress (16.6%). This is below the world average, below the average of North America (18.7%), and below the average for high-income OECD countries (23.4%).
Even countries in the west where many of these barriers have been alleviated, representation is still much lower. If that is the case how does UN Women and its proponents expect PNG to cope with such a concept overnight?
By the way, let’s address the false perception that women are better leaders than men. It is a populist fallacy. Not all women are good leaders, just like all men are not good leaders.
For instance, in Australia in 1996, Pauline Hanson cast aspersions on Aboriginal people, blaming them for higher-than-average crime levels, and suggesting that they had privileged access to entitlements.
She rejected outright the proposition that Aborigines were the most disadvantaged group in Australian society. Hanson delivered a broadside against special programs of all kinds for Indigenous Australians.
Her most incendiary allegation was, ‘I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians.’ She said that Asian migrants did not assimilate, formed their own ghettos and had their own religion and culture. Hanson also called for abolition of multiculturalism.
In the 2008 US presidential election, every time Hillary Clinton won primary or caucus votes Barack Obama got up there and congratulated her, but the opposite never happened. Clinton never congratulated Obama for winning the primaries or caucuses in any of the states.
Josephine Abaijah was the first woman to be elected to the PNG House of Assembly in 1972. She was re-elected in 1977 with Wariyato Clowes and Nahau Rooney and stood unsuccessfully for a third term in 1982.
Abaijah founded and led the Papua Besena Movement, which agitated unsuccessfully for Papua to become an independent country in its own right instead of being linked to New Guinea. If she had had her way Papua would have been an economic and social basket case in no time. She also absurdly expressed support for Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka’s military coup in Fiji in 1987.
Nahau Rooney was elected to Parliament in the post-independence general election of 1977. She was re-elected in 1982, becoming the only female Member of Parliament at that time, but was never subsequently returned to Parliament.
In 1977 Rooney served as Minister of Justice in Prime Minister Michael Somare’s cabinet. In 1979, during her term as minister, she wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kevin Egan, “urging intervention” in the case of politician and businessman John Kaputin being charged with failing to file company returns.
As a result, Egan had her sentenced to a nine month jail term for contempt of court. She was immediately released on license by Somare. She later served as Civil Aviation Minister.
Loujaya Toni has just dethroned a veteran politician and, according to media reports, before the excitement had settled, her pious SDA husband had knelt before senior male politicians and begged for wine and grog when the bars were closed, starting from Milne Bay to Port Moresby and up north to the Melanesian Hotel in Wopa Country.
Toni refused to talk to the journalists when she was probed about her husband’s behaviour. Why didn’t she stand her ground and tell the journalists that her husband needed counselling instead of hiding behind silence?
From this analysis, it is evident that being a male or female doesn’t make you a better leader. Individuals like Nelson Mandela, Aung San Kyi, Queen Elizabeth II, Enny Moaitz and Barack Obama are great leaders because of the principles they stand for, the decisions that they make and the actions that they take and not because of their sex.
International donors and development partners should advocate for basic primary and secondary education for all females, and males too.
In PNG large NGOs do not want to go to the Southern Highlands, Hela, Simbu, Enga, Western, Gulf and Sandaun Provinces. They prefer to sit comfortably in Port Moresby, Madang, and Lae and, if they like extend their branches to Milne Bay and East New Britain.
These are the signs and symptoms of organisations that are only half-hearted about helping our mothers, sisters and even our men in PNG and therefore they should be penalised.
In the programs get the culprits (men) to realise the benefits of having women educated and placed in strategic management positions. Ease out the blind funding organizations that step on each other’s toes in Port Moresby, Lae and Madang.
If this is done all else will unfold and soon educated and affluent women will find themselves elected to the PNG parliament on merit in droves and supported by their men folk.
PNG Attitude was established to address a major issue: the silence that, for too long after PNG Independence in 1975, existed between Papua New Guineans and Australians.
The politicians still talked, the business people still traded, the missionaries still preached, but ordinary people - people like us - mostly stopped communicating.
And this was after we’d spent 40 or 50 years thrown together by the winds of colonialism – a period in which many of us got to know each other very well indeed.
That post-Independence silence denied a great friendship and a close relationship.
The purpose of PNG Attitude is to play a small part in ensuring that the silence is replaced by a mutual conversation between the people of our two countries. PHILOSOPHY
PNG Attitude is committed to strengthening the people-to-people relationship between Papua New Guineans and Australians.
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