Papua New Guinea K-9 Unit member guards at the Porgera mining site as protesters from warring tribes gather. September 2024 Photo: Screengrab / supplied
Warring clan leaders in Papua New Guinea's Enga province have agreed to peace talks after chronic tribal revenge killings among local terrorists with military-style weapons.
Police say 32 people died during the brutal five-day conflict, 60 received life-threatening injuries and 59 houses were
burnt to the ground.
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In a statement on Thursday, the police said the two rival clans have agreed to lay down their arms and take part in
dialogue.
Acting police commissioner Jospeh Tondop said this is good news for innocent citizens, non-citizens and business operators, who felt threatened as hundreds of gunmen fought in dense bush.
Tondop said he has assured both leaders that independent investigators outside of Porgera will conduct a full investigation and take appropriate action again the offenders based on what they find.
State of emergency orders released on Monday include a curfew, liquor ban and prohibiting the possession of weapons in public.
Tondop said mediation would not stop police investigations into crimes committed.
'Failure of systematic and systemic leadership'
A leading politician in PNG said the issues that have sparked the violence in Porgera are due to systemic failure by governments over many years.
Don Polye has been in the PNG parliament since 2002 and said there are significant deficiencies in leadership and governance that now must be addressed properly.
Polye said the local level government system in Porgera has collapsed and leadership has failed.
"It is also the failure of systematic and systemic leadership," he said.
"For instance, when the sense and policy of government are implemented, it must be delivered from the national government, public service system to the provincial administration, provincial government system, and then that must be aligned down to the local level government system, which is the third tier.
"And that has not been existing. In my opinion, the public service system has collapsed."
The two rival clans have agreed to lay down their arms and take part in dialogue, police say. Photo: Supplied
He said this has led "systematic failure" of capacity, upskilling, management, and then abilities that are needed on the ground to manage issues.
"There's been systematic failure and systemic inadequacy in terms of capacity, skilling management, and the abilities that you must have on the ground to manage issues…so that any perceived circumstance can be addressed before it happens."
Polye said once these issues were corrected, the next thing would be the policing of the Special Mining Lease (SML) areas.
He said governments must relocate people away from the SMLs to ensure there is no illegal mining because this is a major source of the tribal rivalry.
"And [Porgera] is an SML area that is a big issue that was left unaddressed by various governments and the mining companies and partners in the whole of the mine.
"Therefore, the people who live around there, they go to the neighbouring mine pit, and they do illegal mining in numbers, thus compromising the safety and the security of the mine operations against the national mine standards."
Another issue Polye raised was the need for a change of attitude among the people - a redeveloping of a sense of tolerance of each other.
"There is the need for an holistic overhaul of the governance system in Papua New Guinea because the law and order issues that you find in Porgera now, the style of it and the cost of it is different, but the commonality is the people's attitude; quick to get angry, the sense of negativity, the hatred, the dislike, people complaining against one another, people fighting over things.
"The tolerance to goodness is very limited," he added.