OCEANIA/PAPUA NEW GUINEA - Tribal war does not stop: massacres of women and children in the Kanduanum parish area

Port Moresby (Agenzia Fides) – Children tortured, women raped. Then murdered and their bodies thrown into the river. This is the most recent and frightening balance of the tribal war that has been ravaging the villages of Papua New Guinea for months, a nation that in just over a month will host Pope Francis in what will be the longest apostolic trip of his pontificate.

Twenty six deaths have been confirmed. Women and children were killed in a series of attacks in three villages in the eastern Sepik province in the north of the country. Just a few months ago, another wave of attacks between tribes devastated the province of Enga, in the heart of the nation, where clashes have become increasingly deadly due to a significant increase in the use of firearms (see Fides, 26/2/2024).

Already in the past, the national government had increased operations, military and otherwise, to curb this violence, without much success. In recent years, tribal clashes have increased in intensity: they have gone from simple bladed weapons to automatic and firearms. At the same time, the country's population has more than doubled since 1980, leading to increased tensions over access to resources and land, reigniting tribal rivalries.

Now, as the nation prepares to welcome the Holy Father, the land is once again bathed in blood. According to local police reports, the massacres occurred at different times. They began on July 17 and continued for several days. It is feared that the death toll of 26 could be higher. The number, in fact, has only been calculated based on the bodies found along the river. But, according to authorities, it could even double. The three villages were destroyed and the survivors, about two hundred people, fled into the forest, and are completely abandoned to their fate.

As Fides has learned, the national director of Caritas, Mavis Tito, is in constant dialogue with the diocese of Wewak to closely monitor the situation. In fact, attacks on villages have occurred in the area of the Kanduanum parish: "This is not an isolated case. What is happening is a conflict between four different groups that is becoming more and more accentuated."

The police, points out the director of Cáritas, "are present in the area. But the land is not easily accessible and they arrived when the violence had already ended. Unfortunately, although there is a deployment of police forces, the number of agents is insufficient to manage this increasingly unstable situation. To date, almost ten days after the attacks, no aid has arrived at the site, increasing the risk of a humanitarian catastrophe: "The people who fled to the forest have nothing. There is no kind of help. “Even the temporary care center has run out of supplies.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has also weighed in on the matter, declaring himself "horrified by the shocking outbreak of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, apparently due to a dispute over property and rights of use of land and lakes".

The UN once again calls on local and national authorities in Papua New Guinea “to carry out prompt, impartial and transparent investigations. I also call on the authorities to work with villages to understand the causes of conflicts and thus prevent the recurrence of new violence."

Violence that arises for various reasons, as Father Giorgio Licini, Italian PIME missionary and secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, had already explained to Fides: "The clashes between the indigenous people, some of the whom had their first contacts with the outside world only 70 years ago, may be due to various reasons, but above all they depend on the control of the territory, which is deeply felt in their traditional culture. These tensions are maintained by members of the different groups who have migrated to the cities where they have established businesses and, therefore, can send weapons or pay mercenaries.

The clashes, Father Licini emphasizes, "take place in remote inland, rural or forest areas, with a high incidence of illiteracy, characterized by cultural and social backwardness where, for example, witchcraft practices and even hunting of women believed to be witches are in force. In the past, the situation of these groups was more stable. Today, with mobility and globalization, everything is more chaotic. "We are in a transition phase between the old culture and a new identity that, however, is not yet solid or well defined." The reasons for violence, therefore, must be sought in this process of cultural, social and economic transformation that is affecting the entire nation. (F.B.) (Agenzia Fides, 25/7/2024)

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tribalism

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violence

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