Good afternoon everyone here in the room or elsewhere watching in Washington DC and good morning to what I hope are many people watching along as well in Papua New Guinea, Australia and elsewhere for those here in the room. That's why we're doing this as late in the afternoon as possible. So hopefully we have some friends online in the region. My name is Brian Harding and I'm the senior expert for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands here at the US Institute of Peace. USIP is a national nonpartisan public institution that was created by the US Congress, headquartered here on the National Mall in Washington DC and we have a very clear mandate and it's to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict abroad. USIP is present in addition to this beautiful building here in about 26 countries around the world and one of them is Papua New Guinea where we have one of our newest country programs. The context for it and the development of our program in Papua New Guinea is really a major expansion of the Institute's work in the Indo-Pacific region including the Pacific Islands and of course this is in line with growing attention in Washington and by the US government. Last week at USIP we had an event with some of the most senior officials for the Indo-Pacific in the US government celebrating the second anniversary of the Indo-Pacific strategy that the White House released and really one of the big takeaways was the relative increase in attention to the Pacific Islands region and it's really been remarkable. For USIP Papua New Guinea has really become a center of gravity for us in the Pacific Islands as we've developed this broader program. Certainly the geopolitical importance of Papua New Guinea in the region is a part of that driver but also we have to be honest it's a country that's racked with conflict so a natural place for USIP to be engaged. In terms of what we are actually doing I'll take the moment to do the advertisement. The first thing I'd say is all of our work in Papua New Guinea is new. We've only been there for about a year but I also think it's a reflection of the wide range of the type of work we do at USIP. At headquarters we're engaged in research on conflict dynamics in the country and also supporting efforts to build a closer US-Papua New Guinea relationship. In Port Morrisby we're fostering dialogue between diverse national actors on peace and conflict largely through a partnership with the National Research Institute and at the community level primarily in Morobe province but also elsewhere we're piloting some very practical strategies to try to prevent violence. Today we're here to talk about a recent wave of violence in Papua New Guinea that's really hit the international headlines in which I think is a real stark reminder of the challenges the country faces but also the challenges and opportunities in some ways for the United States as it engages Papua New Guinea more and more. And I'm pleased that we're able to have and at least for the moment a stable internet connection to have two of our most important colleagues from USIP who are based in Papua New Guinea on the screen here. And the two of them who I'll introduce in a moment have really been my tutor over the last year or so as I've personally learned more about the country and also Gordon Peake here sitting next to me. First just to introduce them Ruth Kissam who is at least on my left on the screen up there is USIP senior staff member in Port Morrisby the capital. Ruth is however from Enga province in the Highlands where she travels frequently so unfortunately it also means she's personally connected to the horrendous violence we've seen most recently. And if you spend any time with Ruth in Port Morrisby you'll see very quickly how a dynamic individual as she is who seamlessly moves between the different worlds that exist in Port Morrisby and the country. We're really pleased that she's with USIP and able to join us this morning. The second speaker is to the right who is static for a moment but oh no she's moving she's there. Zouabe Tinning. Zouabe is our other senior staff member for USIP in Papua New Guinea and she lives in Lay City in Morobe province. And Zouabe does some really extraordinary work at a community level that we're going to hear more about later on. And finally sitting next to me here at headquarters is Gordon Peake who's our senior advisor for the Pacific Islands. Gordon has long experienced decades of experience in Papua New Guinea including over three years living in Boganville a topic on which he's written a book. And among other things he really oversees our research agenda on the Pacific Islands and Papua New Guinea. So for our event today we have a pretty generous amount of time another 80 minutes or so. So what I'm going to do is give the floor in succession to Ruth Zouabe and Gordon for some initial comments hopefully about six or eight minutes. And then I'll ask a few questions and then we'll open it up for a discussion questions and comments in the room. And those watching online you can submit them online and for those in the room if you just take a look around these are the people who follow Papua New Guinea in a serious way in Washington. So comments are just as welcome as questions. But let me without further ado turn to Ruth and Ruth. Let's start with the basics. Tell us what happened about a month or so ago in Port Moresby and how it relates to the more recent events up in the Highlands. Over to Ruth you look stable and hopefully the connection is good. Yes. Good morning Brian. Good morning everyone. I'm in Port Moresby. I had to move to early in the morning to a hotel so that I can at least get a better network. And that's a funny thing about the island. Sometimes we have funny networks. Sometimes we are able to actually speak like the way that pick up the network pick up the way it is picking up now. About a month ago. It wasn't something that wasn't expected. We've had different scenarios where something the government does all the people it would it would spiral into a bit of looting a bit of rioting. But on 10th of January it was actually the police that gave the orders for people because they were not happy with the government on the take up the tax cuts that they they were they felt they it was imposed on them. The government later retracted and said that it was actually a glitch with the Internal Revenue Commission. And it wasn't really a tax cuts but we know that it was a tax cut and they had to say that to cover up for their lack of foresight into seeing what this was going to turn out to be. I work with a lot of community leaders across the city. We run safe houses. We work with women and vulnerable and marginalized young people. But what we saw was not only the ones that were marginalized that went out and did the looting. It was a public servants. It was also the working class. It was people that you would think would not even drive the vehicle up into shops and actually help themselves to the looting. That really showed something that in a lot of cases we refused to see which was there was no state. There was no state in place that people would respect and say that we have a rule of law or even for people themselves to say that it's morally wrong. What we saw was it was people were just driven by a mindset of poverty that they wanted to at least get anything they want. One of the funny things that we also realized was there were certain shops that were not even touched. I'll link this to what happened in the highlands. There were certain shops that were not touched. Most of the shops that were looted were those that have been in the country for a very long time but they belong to a specific ethnicity. One was the Stop and Shop which is an Indian Fijian that has been in Papua for a very long time, 30 years. The other one was an Australian who came back in the 60s, Brian Bell, and he's been and both of them are foundations that have been working in communities. One would think these were two shops that no one would even bother touching because these are the ones that work with community. These are the ones that work with civil society with the government and have been around for a very long time, faithfully paying their taxes. But no, they were the first ones to be looted. But what we saw was some particular shops, Chinese shops, shops on the periphery where you would think would be the first to be touched. They were not touched. Now they had people protecting those places, gunmen protecting those places. The premises where people couldn't get in and even loot them because they knew that those places were guarded. They knew that these places had guns that were protecting them. So no one bothered to touch those Chinatowns. No one bothered to touch those shops, but they went after the shops that belonged to just about everyone in the community. Now, after the aftermath, the aftermath saw a lot of Papua Nicanians struggling, especially within the city. I'm sure Zouabe will talk about what happened in Lehi, but with us we saw in our safe houses women that were raped inside the shops that were looted, that were killed inside the shops that were looted. We've asked people to come forward, but we don't know the exact number as of now, even though the government has set up a commission which doesn't include women on the board. It's all men to find out about what happened on that day. And that is something that we feel women's voices have also not been taken into consideration, given the fact that a lot of the shopkeepers that were inside those shops that got burned down and those that lost their lives were women. And yet we don't have the numbers that have come out. Some are saying it's in the hundreds, but to what extent and the exact number we still don't know. Even to this day, the reports have not been filed and tabled for the public to access. And so we're now at a juncture where we don't know what happened, exactly what happened, what triggered January 10th, as far as the government is concerned. But on the streets, we know that the government does know what happened. They're fully aware of it, and they don't want to even take that into consideration, given the fact that we have a voice of no confidence coming up. So I don't know, Brian, if I could link that to Enga or we can do that later. Go on, let's do that. Okay. So what we saw in Enga was again a gun violence on the level that was never seen before. And this is a month later from what happened in Moresby. And Ruth, I think the audience here is pretty familiar with Port Moresby. Can you just take a step back and just tell us where Enga is, what it is, who lives there, and just some of those broader dynamics? Absolutely. So Enga is one of the highlands, seven highlands provinces smack right in the middle of the, and I think it's the highest elevation. And it's right in the middle of the old island of Papua New Guinea. It hosts the Pogoromain. It's one of the few provinces that I think made contact with the outside world very late, probably in the 50s, for 50s here. So it's tribal in every way very and the people who live there are quite aggressive. They saw their, to them peace building is actually taking it out on the battlefield with their tribal enemies. Lately we've had lots and lots of guns smuggled into the province. And a lot of these guns are smuggled in for elections. Every five years we have elections and every year it has changed its course. It used to be when we stand in line and then we vote. But lately for the last three or four elections, it's been what they call a block vote because of the tribal way in people think the tribe agrees to give to one. So it is their form of democracy is when a tribe actually gives to one person. And if two people from one tribe are actually running for the same seat, that's where you find conflict. So there's been the buildup of arms by aspiring politicians, by businessmen to protect their business. It's just people have been doing that. What we saw on Sunday last week was something at a scale that we've never seen. We've always had rules of engagement when it came to tribal warfare. You don't kill two men from the same family in one warfare. I will say I'm an onion. I'm about three hours drive from my village is three hours drive from where the killings happened.  We don't burn people within the house. You only engage with your enemies at the tribal field. Those are the rules of engagement. But what happened on Sunday was something at a scale culturally did not have any roots. 50 plus men were killed and they were ambushed. Now, another thing that came up that we're starting to realize is usually because of bullets and bullets not being readily available. People don't use machine guns like or guns like AK-47 or this SLR. But that was what was used and people sprayed into the crowd of men that came, which meant there was so many bullets available. Now, the question that many are asking is where did those bullets come from? Where did those guns come from? The guns have been there. They've been trading those guns, but it's the bullets that usually runs out. And we've seen how the networking has happened within, whether it's from different people finding those. Remember my insinuation earlier about certain business houses not being touched in Mosby. Now, we're looking back and we're seeing that there is some form of connection between how those bullets are actually being moved between places at the entry ports and up into the silence. Now, if you see Enga province is smacked right in the middle of Papua New Guinea. So the only way in and the only way out is the main highway or the airports that are closer to the province. So the bullets that are coming into the province, it's leading to a question that it's beyond Papua New Guinea itself and the capacity for them to be able, especially the Defense Force or the Army, which are the two, the Armouries that we have bullets available. So again, we're looking at the borders we're looking at. And this is the work that I do with the different organizations that we work with where looks at human trafficking, gun smuggling, even human rights abuses that are happening. What happened in Wabig or Enga on that day as a direct link to how those guns and the bullets are coming into the island. And of course we've got at the moment, a big issue around drugs as well, where PNG is now being used as a port to be able to smuggle drugs. So those guns and the bullets, it's not manufactured in Papua New Guinea. So they ask it to be a way that it's coming in and falling into the hands of the warlord or abusing it and using it for tribal reason in their tribal fights. And it's wiping people are causing massacre that has never been seen before on that kind of scale. Great. Thanks Ruth. And there's so much to come back to and you can't see from where you're sitting but many of the people who are thinking most deeply about Papua New Guinea in Washington are writing down many notes about what you're saying. So much to get back to. I'm hoping you can take us back to the riots and take us to lay. Certainly there was violence and seven people were killed at the same time as these riots were ongoing in Port Moresby. But at least reading the headlines and sort of trying to watch the news seemed like it was the less generalized looting in Mayhem. And Zuhaba you work directly with exactly the type of people who might be involved in such violence. So we're hoping you can just share what those days look like and lay who was involved who wasn't in any lessons that you might have taken from it. Thank you Brian and hello everybody. Yes. Usually when riots or rampage anything like that happens in Port Moresby the replaying effect usually comes out to the other smaller centers in the country. And lay is one of the city that experienced a little bit of the riot. There wasn't a lot of looting because all the disciplined forces meaning the police the defense and the correctional service officers they were out on the street manning the street and preventing people from looting shops and causing damage to properties around the city. So that was about lay city even though we had 50 policemen that were flown down from lay to Port Moresby to contain the situation in Port Moresby. We had the other two disciplined forces that joined the police and they were on the streets maintaining order. What happened a little bit at the end of breaking shops and all this it happened outside of the main city up at Unitec and around the former area. But the shops went looted because they were police presence there too. And just like Ruth said those Asian shop had to maybe pay for police to be around and keep their shops safe from looting. But what I was interested in during that time because most of the time when such thing happened in Port Moresby the youths in lay usually get out on the street and they do a lot of damage to the properties and cause a lot of trouble on the streets. But during that time we didn't have that.  So I, there weren't a lot of people in jail. They said they were about two to seven who were killed during that half day riot. But the numbers are not really confirmed yet. The youths were interviewed later this week on what they were doing during that week of unrest. And the youths that I was working with, they are usually from the outskirts of Lake City in the settlements where most of the illegal activities are evident. Most of them they go into violence and they usually be the first people to participate in rioting and looting of shops. They didn't come out that time. So I asked them why what they were doing during that time and they said it's nothing to do with us. It's the public servants issues. It's about them paying tax to the government. We are from the community and we live on the market, table market. And we need the shops and the market in the communities to be open so we can continue to do our business and survive from what we are doing here. So the youths didn't come out. They saw the situation as something that belongs to the public servants who usually pay tax to the government. For them they only do informal marketing. They don't pay tax and they say it doesn't affect us. So we don't need to get out there and do something nasty and get ourselves into trouble. So those were the responses that I received from the youth leaders that I was engaging my program here in Morobeh province. Great. Thank you, Zuhabe. And just brought our context. I mean, some people in this room know you and they know about your work. Zuhabe, she can explain it better than I, but works with young male perpetrators of violence who are sort of check themselves into faith-based self-help organizations. And Zuhabe works with them in really sophisticated ways to think about masculinity and try to get out the root causes of violence. So I think there's a lot to follow up there. She truly is in the community about where she works, where she chooses to live. So I think there's a lot to be gained from there. And we'll get back to Zuhabe in a moment, but I want to turn it to Gordon. You've written, and I think pretty boldly, that the violence and maybe that's what you can do as somebody from Ireland who's in the mix of thinking about issues in Papua New Guinea and U.S. Papua New Guinea relations, Australia Papua New Guinea relations. But you've written about what you say are the failings, the governance failings of the Papua New Guinea state. And I'm hoping you can talk us a little bit through about what you've written. And a bit on what the world's focus on Papua New Guinea might mean for thinking about the responsiveness of the state. And I know some other writings related to policing, but let's get to this first bit first. Great. Yeah, I think maybe it is partly from coming from Ireland, but also I was taught as a writer to write what's in front of you, to write what you're actually seeing. And I think really Ruth captured it well when she said that the events of 10th of January showed that the state was not there. And sometimes that we can kind of, we see a state in Papua New Guinea that actually when you look behind it is about as substantive as a kind of movie set in a way. One of the most iconic sets of footage of the riots was a sort of footage that was taken from the office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Papua New Guinea where there were people kind of shaking at the gate trying to get in. And the gate managed to hold only because there was one little lock that managed to keep it from people storming it as well. I can vividly, I spent a lot of time in that office. And one of the most, I traveled with some USIP colleagues there, including Zwaabe last February. And I remember the most, my most abiding memory of being in those offices is how few people there are in the office. They look rather grand from the outside, but when you look inside, there's very few people there at their desk sort of working. And I think this is the sort of dilemma of governance in Papua New Guinea that you have a state that is being a lot as expected of it, but actually when you look behind it, it's not doing particularly very much. And geopolitics that you mentioned, Brian, earlier on, I think sort of amplifies that situation and also exposes I think the dilemma that there is in anyone who is sort of wanting to engage with and wanting to work with, wanting to kind of support Papua New Guinea and the people of Papua New Guinea to address some of the violence that my colleagues have so eloquently described and work on every day. And the dilemma is this, which is that states work on having productive relationships with other states. That's the nature of the state system. States are meant to forge, that's what the Vienna Convention, like that's the way by which states work. They're meant to forge productive relationships with other states. And that means forging productive relationships with the elites of other states. And as Sir Ruth has kind of alluded to, there's lots of questions about the elites in, at some elite, certainly in Papua New Guinea and their desire to actually kind of address this. And I think this is going to get into an issue that the U.S. has confronted, and all states have confronted throughout their history of how do you work with other states, particularly when it comes to issues of fragility and stability and sort of aid and development. Because there you're getting into tricky political issues and tricky issues that kind of put you in, put the potential of uncomfortable conversations with your kind of counterparts in the political elite as well. And I think that's one of the sort of dilemmas of this present moment for Papua New Guinea. And the piece that Papua New Guinea leaders are tremendous as anyone who's visited Papua New Guinea knows Papua New Guineans are in general at rolling out the red carpet, rolling out the welcome mat for people, but probably less good at the kind of work a day instances of governance that are kind of required to make the state run. There was a report that was done by the Australian National University about a decade ago, and it looked at the Papua New Guinea state's performance in health and education. And the title of the report was really vivid. It was a lost decade. And the statistics for sort of health indicators, education indicators have sort of flatlined in the decade, in the decade since. And I'll give one other example about the sort of dilemmas that, and I wrote a piece on this that's on the USIP website. One of the dilemmas of sort of getting the Papua New Guinea state kind of working, getting it activated, and that's something that was announced by the previous administration in APEC in 2018. Australia, the US, Japan, New Zealand have embarked upon a really important, a really, really vital, practical and geostrategically important project to try to electrify the country, where there's only 15% of the country is electrified. The reason why Ruth had to leave her home in the capital and go to a hotel is because she couldn't guarantee that there was electricity at home to be able to have this call. And yet when you look at some of the reports of that project, it sort of makes, you know, it talks about chronic crisis, it talks about general dysfunction. These are sort of quotes that we build out as well. And I think that sort of shows the dilemma that there is for any state wanting to work with Papua New Guinea, which is sort of that tension between Papua New Guinea's elites knowing that they're being courted geopolitically and the need to actually make the state of which they are part, the state of which they are head off, the state to kind of work for the people of Papua New Guinea. And you saw on January 10th just how it didn't work. This really extensively, extensively trained police weathered away in large part. So I think it shows the sort of the difficult sort of point you are when we talk about fragility. So let's dig into that a little bit. This question of policing, it's something you've worked quite a bit on, got your start in the Pacific Islands region on. And as you said, you know, the police sort of faded away. And that's what Ruth said, and also just this broader question of security forces, you know, had some positive impacts in private security as Ruth was discussing. So clearly the PNG police have been expensively and extensively trained, and there's going to be an instinct to do more. So is a new approach required, or what do we do here? How's Washington been thinking about this? So I think that there's a standard menu that is done for police reform, that it's been done ever since the kind of early days of the Cold War, is the idea that you train police, because you say that the major challenge for the police is the lack of technical skills, and so they need training and they need equipment. And I think that is an important part of the equation. I don't think we should sort of throw that out, but it obscures that there's other factors that are going on as well, which means that if you're only going to address the technical matter with policing, you're going to miss the bigger picture with that particular police organization or with other police organizations all through the world. So let's sort of run through some of the issues that there are with the Papua New Guinea police, which is you've got a very small number of officers. You've got about 6,000 officers for a country of at least 10 million in population, which is well, well below the kind of UN-recommended number of one for every 300 police. You've got a constability that has a kind of mixed record as well. The police commissioner of Papua New Guinea, David Manning, described the police as some of them were criminals in uniform. That's his words, not my. He was being sort of bolder than me in saying that. And there's a political economy at play as well where Papua New Guinea's elite don't seem to put sort of budgetary allocations into areas which seem to be of obvious need. So to address the sort of corruption issues in the country where 7% of the GDP of the country is meant to exit the country as well. So I don't think training alone is going to really make an impact on those kind of systemic and structural issues. And in the piece that we wrote, we kind of made sort of three points. The first one was to continue what we're doing. Police are constantly being trained. It's in the kind of nature of police to do that. But second to look at what the fact that the majority of policing as in the maintenance of order is actually not being done by people in uniform, but by sort of the two of the colleagues that we have in front of us here, people who use their networks and connections to help police and maintain order within their communities. There's been a long list of survey findings which find consistently time and again that when Papua New Guineans have the choice of going to someone for safety, security and access to justice, they actually don't go to the uniform police. They go to clan leaders. They go to religious leaders. They go to members of esteemed in the community like Ruth and Zwaabe. So I think it's sort of for us, it's about kind of recognizing that. There's a bunch of really interesting literature written about something called policing coalitions. How do you try to network together people so they can all work together on that? And the final point I think about thinking about the police is sort of digging a little bit deeper into kind of the questions around elite capture, questions around the political economy that the police are working within. Before my time I was in this room when it was launched, this terrific report that looked at the kind of behind the uniform features of what happens in policing in Ukraine, our security sector more broadly, in Ukraine, in Mexico, they did one in Egypt. And I think that will provide a kind of set of insights that will show that sort of training alone is a part of the equation but it can't just be the only part of the equation as well. Great. I'm going to turn to Ruth for one question and then we'll turn it to those in the room. And I think if you're online you can put those there and then they'll be read out to us, to me and the panel. But Ruth, I think it probably jumped out to many people sitting in the room here that there are no women on this commission investigating what happened. What if you just take us a bit broader and talk about the women, peace and security dynamic in Papua New Guinea. I know you're part of some interesting important conversations about a national action plan. Just sort of situate us in that conversation. Absolutely. So the UN Charter 1525 for women, peace and security. We don't have a national action plan in the country. I think there's about 130 countries in the world that do have a national action plan but Papua New Guinea doesn't. And that is one of the things that we've pushed for at the civil society. I've been pushing for to have the country needs one. We have what we call the gender secretariat but that is more to deal with issues within the country. That is now clearly showing up in every sector we're seeing. Even in the political arena, we only have three women in parliament. Well, you have 50% of the population, not 50% but more than 50% of the population being women. We've tried to have reserve seats but that too has been kicked out of parliament which is basically predominantly men. But then we have some champions, some males that have championed the costs for women. But at the same time, because of, I can't really put it pocket down to deeply patriarchal values, but the Highland is deeply patriarchal. Traditionally, the traditional norms are so defined. And you see that across so many cross cutting issues where women are concerned. One prime example is the committee that was set up to investigate January 10th. Not one even thought of including a woman. And you would think that women were very, very affected and they were. Lots of women shoppers were harassed, were abused, they ended up at the emergency. We had to be at the emergency department of the hospital to see women come in with knife wounds. And these are hospital, sorry, these are shopkeepers at the shops that were looted. Women that were raped, they were sexually assaulted during the looting. And one would think that women would form part of the committee but not even one woman is sitting at the committee. So who gets to now be their voice, who gets to understand what it's like to be a woman when the whole country, where the whole city went into a mayhem looting and rioting. So it's clearly the undertone is there of not taking a woman's voice seriously into account. Yesterday we just had a press conference where all the women leaders from provinces came together to appeal to the prime minister, to appeal to the members of the parliament, to appeal to the leaders that we don't care which side of the political spectrum you sit from, whether it is from the opposition or the government. As mothers, as women, we've had enough of violence, we have enough of mayhem. So it's a cry not for any political sort of grandstanding, but for genuine help for women who are suffering because of all the gaps in our state. Gordon alluded to this, there is no state. And for that, where the gaps where the state is weak, you're seeing a sort of a character of what you would think would look like. And that is supporting only a minority few. And people are abusing that they're coming up with ways in which to enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the state. And where there is it's so weak, it's being abused outright. We don't have strong laws that, or even legislation that would give an opportunity for women to have a seat in parliament, for example, which is something that they've been pushing for that has been pushed back. But then at the same time, it's not making it easy for women to participate politically, because, again, you have to stand in line. Now, which women would want to go on MS guns and money to push their way into parliament to pay their way to get ballot boxes so that they can under no one wants to do that. And that is what we're seeing is becoming more and more prevalent that it's a man's world. Thank you, Ruth. I'm going to open it up and hopefully people can just wave at me if they would like to speak and truly comments are welcome or questions directed to any of our panelists. I would just ask that you turn on your microphone so people online can hear you and introduce yourself briefly before speaking. And we'll start right over here. Hi, I'm Tim Robinson. I've worked in P&G for about eight years as an advisor to the last three treasurers, including now Minister Lin Stuckey and Secretary Oake. Just one quick comment and a question. Ruth's absolutely right. In the days following, it was really unclear what had happened. What it looks like now in hindsight is that a temporary threshold increase for the tax free threshold that was increased in 2023 to 20,000 Kena wasn't implemented in the system, even though it was passed in the budget to them be made permanent and continue on an ongoing basis into future years. That threshold wasn't implemented in the Olesko tax system, and so the threshold defaulted back down to either 17,500 or 12,500. It's still a little unclear which, which then led to a big increase in people's tax payment. I really like all the comments about policing, which I think is where a big part of this comes in.  And I think if we looked at it objectively, if the police said they weren't going to enforce laws in Washington DC tomorrow, people here would loot. I would go to Target and loot. It's, you know, it's, it would happen in any country in the world. But something weird did happen on January 10th that hadn't happened before. I think even, even in the time I've worked in P&G, payrolls have been missed back in 2017, 2018. They all slipped by a few days, and it didn't lead to this level of chaos or this level of outbreak. In 2018, during APEC, the police weren't paid allowances and they broke into parliament, but they didn't go on strike. And I guess this is kind of a question to all three panellists, but what do you think, what do you think made the situation so much worse this time? And what do you think led the police to kind of scale up their reaction to actually essentially going on strike and they wouldn't enforce laws when they hadn't even done that during the allowance issue during APEC? Thank you very much. And Guplalo looking you too, Pla. Let's start with either Ruth or Zuabe. Why this time, not last time? Team Guplalo looking me too. Morning, Loyu. I think what happened that I would pinpoint down to is the buildup of the political instability and the resentment with people. Things went in 2018, there was so much hope, 2017, 2018, people were looking at their life as in it could get better. It could get, you know, there could be something that would make our lives better. But the downward trend of basic services to the inflation that was happening to the point that the money that people were receiving was not enough to sustain them. This is something that you could see happening that led to this. There was so much dissatisfaction. There was so much even no trust in the leadership that we have in the country. We've had fuel shortages that have led to airstrikes, led to a lot of things that it was a buildup. The frustration that we felt in the past wasn't as bad as what is now the feeling, the general feeling around. It could most be for the rest of the country. It's like people don't feel their government where it really should be felt. So the buildup to the point that the frustration wasn't able to, or people just went on, that's my take on it.  Gordon, why don't you jump in and then I'll ask it a slightly different way for Zuhabe. Great. I mean, I endorse everything that Ruth said and the sort of buildup, the sort of sense of a kind of a watched pot sort of boiling over. As well, I've got lots of friends and family in Papua New Guinea and I look at the challenges that everyone has in living kind of normal, normal lives where even sort of people in the middle class are really struggling to get by in this sort of sense of sort of endless frustration as well. I think riots are also interesting. What's interesting about this, the real reason why we wanted to have this event was we wanted to actually remember back on it because as a tendency, we all as human beings have a tendency to think ahead. It's really striking how little coverage there has been about this incident in the months since when James Marape, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, went to Canberra. It was not mentioned at all. I mean, partially that's for reasons, a kind of diplomatise, but also it's interesting that it's not mentioned as well. Papua New Guinea, as Ruth and Swabia said, this has happened before. It's also happened in Solomon Islands in 2022. It happened in Tonga in 2006. And I think these riots, which are kind of just outbursts of frustration with the way by which the state, whether that be the state in Papua New Guinea, the state in Solomon Islands and the state of Tonga, is run as something that's really worthy of sort of unpacking and thinking more about in terms of fragility. There's a colleague of ours who's been doing a terrific set of research projects on Solomon Islands called a nuke ride. And she's written and thought more deeply than I have about what do riots signify as well. And it's really striking, I think that we should, you know, I think it's an opportunity, I think this is one opportunity to kind of reflect on that because it's a whole complex of different issues. And unless we kind of unpack those issues and we've sort of done it like lousy policing is one, but kind of cost of living, lack of hope is really worth doing. Brian was sort of right when it was quite a sort of full-throated piece I wrote, but I wrote it because I was really upset. And I wrote it the morning that the author riots a friend of mine's niece had committed suicide. And she committed suicide because of her kind of complete lack of faith in sort of the fact that tomorrow would be any better than it was today. And there's just a general sort of malaise and hopelessness, I think, in large parts of Papua New Guinea that this, and I channeled my sort of annoyance about that into the piece, but I think that there's a general malaise, and I think it's worth sort of anyone who wants to sort of help or, you know, and to assist to kind of reflect on what that is. I mean, why is it, why is Port Mores be a city where most people in this room can't walk the streets? What does that say about the sort of everyday state that there is? Zuhabe, you brought us the relatively good news story that things weren't as bad as they could have been. And I sort of spoke for you a little bit, but I'm hoping you just take this opportunity to share a little bit more about the communities you work in, and maybe some of the more specific stories of who didn't get involved, who might have otherwise. Thank you. Let me go back to what Rudi responded with. Generally, the political leadership in the country is quite bad compared to the previous days, like 15, 20 years ago. What I've noticed was like poor attention to the workforce, the government workforce. And there's also, there's no attention to the people in the community. And through our work with the male behavior change training program that we're having with the young youths in the settlement in the community, people from the community express that there's hardly services from the government getting right into the community. The health centers do not have drugs to treat patients. The schools are totally in disorder. Teachers are accepting bribes or admitting students. And generally the programs that the government supposed to be implementing to deliver service to the communities, but the services are not getting there. They are not provided as before with enough equipment and workforce to bring the services into the community. So with that, I was expecting people to react with the situation that happened recently. The youths could get on the road and make their way up to the town and destroy all the shops out there. But I believe with the program that we are running now for a year now, we started with the youths from the settlement. Those who usually lead in instigating violence and also lead in riots and protests and all these before. We've worked closely with them and their leaders. We've organized them into the youth groups and we are working through the community-based organization and the youth associations to reach out to the members of the youth in the community with information, appropriate information around human rights and the laws and how they can improve themselves and increase productivity in the community because the government is not available now to assist them wherever they are. So I believe they have gotten enough information from USIP, so we're here in Morobe province. We've reached out to almost like three quarters of the settlement, which is outside of the city. That's where bulk of the population are living. And that's where most of the violence and conflict that happens in Morobe province. So we've covered those areas, so kind of kept those youths in the right sense not to do what might get them into trouble, unnecessary trouble like before. So most of them said, why would we put our life online for nothing? It doesn't concern us. So that was like a response that I didn't expect to get from them because they were always looking out for opportunities to get what they need to satisfy their basic needs in life, but they didn't do that in the last month, the incident of KED. So I feel that something going on with our program here in Morobe province and it's having some positive impact, especially on the targeted groups that we really want to work with and change the attitude around violence. So this might be, I'm just believing that this might be one of the outcome of our program here in Morobe. Thanks, and I would encourage anybody interested in learning more to go to usip.org. We have a produced a 10 or 12 minute video of Zouabe working in the community with these leaders sort of brings it all to life a bit. Who's next? Matt, want you to introduce yourself? Hi, Matt Hudson with the Department of State, CSO Pacific team. So one thing I've noted in the time I've covered Papua New Guinea is a lot of things come to quick ends when, and that's kind of part of my question. So, Ruth, you'd mentioned the lack of a state during the riots and Zouabe, you mentioned the next day things were kind of back to normal. So my question is if it's not the police or effective policing bringing these riots to an end, how or why do they end? Whoever wants to jump in first. Hi, Matt. Thank you for your question. And I think that's a very good question. I would also like to know why because I feel it might have some tribal cultural depending on where these communities are. Let me give you a contrast of what happened now in the cities were the ones that the riots happened in the other 22 centers around the country, no one touched anything. Apart from only one province up in the highlands, one of the newer province, which capital has a conflict around where it's supposed to be by the tribal leaders around the town. It's a town, it's not a city. But in other towns around the country, other centers around the country, it was the people, the tribal, the tribal or indigenous people that owned the land on which the town or the city set were the ones that actually protected the city. The ones that walked the streets, the ones that stood with the police to say that no one touches any buildings, no one touches a school, no one's going to do that. In towns like Mount Hagen, which is the third largest city, it was the tribes that surround the city were the ones that actually came into the city and basically took over saying that no one and they were picking up rubbish. They were cleaning up their city and it happened also in many in southern islands and in other parts in anger. Exactly the same thing, business is normal. It was the two main cities, which were has had all the government departments that had all the business houses. Lay is the economic capital of PNG and the port city of PNG. And of course, what most based our, where the parliament house is, those were the two centers or the cities that had the rioting everyone else. It was business is normal for them. So good question. It stopped because there was, I think there was no support from the others. Majority of the people that live in lay and what most be you have the huge or biggest population of settlers, people that come into cities and towns and squat on government land in looking for a better life for themselves better access to health education for the children, but a lot of them squat on land that does not belong to them so they build little shanty towns. And those were, and not only them, I mean, when people looted everyone looted, but you have a large number of settlers in those two, two centers, now people are not pushing to have the vacancy act passed. So that people that do not have any work and are not engaged in any formal employment should be sent back to their own provinces. But then in the provinces where majority of these towns are nothing happened. People went to school went to work. It was business is normal. It was only one or two incidents were opportunist started blocking the highway and all that but like I said, those were the only two centers that had disturbance for others people tried, but it didn't get anything beyond amassing. They got quick quickly dispersed by security or the police and. Yeah, like I said was business is normal. I don't know if I'm answering your question. Do you want to jump in or Gordon. Let me respond from us in Morobe. We play city we have a very good supportive MP. And he's the deputy prime minister at the moment. He's got a very good relationship with the, the, like the public servants, not just not the public servants only but especially the police. And he had a program he has a program that engages the youth to kind of clean around the bus stops and around the city areas, the drains and all these and keep the city clean and also help to control petty crimes at the bus stop where women get harassed and the bags get snatched. So there is a program that's running that he's running at the moment that's engaging youth as well as the youth supporting the police in managing the towns and cities especially the bus stop where a lot of violence against women happen. So, when that situation arose, the youths that were around that, that those areas, they, they kind of supported the police in, you know, controlling the situation in the town. So they were speaking to the peers not to do what, what is not right. Yeah, so I believe for Morobe, it was, I think we had some very good programs on the ground that already, like the MP is supporting and, and it's already like happening for almost like more than five years now. So that might be the outcome of what we didn't see going from bed to us. Let's, let's go to an online question. Yes, so we have a comment online saying there is a domino effect across the country and social media played an important role in this domino effect. The riots and looting emanated as a result this disruptive effects of integrating into a digital economy and PNG. So there's no question here, but maybe curious to hear thoughts on how cybersecurity needs to be upgraded to curb new threats and any thoughts on kind of the role of social media. Who wants to jump in? Yeah, I mean, I can, I can jump in. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a comment as a question. I mean, like all of us, a lot of us are popular getting to spend a lot of time on social media and are getting information from, you know, WhatsApp, from Facebook, from, from, you know, YouTube. And I think it's an underexplored territory as to what the role of social media is in terms of either giving negative messages or giving kind of positive messages. There's a concept in political science, which is called the jumping scale. And it means that with things that used to be able to happen isolated out in the, in place X would never really filter into the capital city. But actually because of social media and because of how interconnected we all are, things that could happen previously in isolation have these kind of ramifying ripple effects. And I think it is something that's sort of worthy, worthy of examination. I wake up most days to a, and I'm sure as well, Ben, Ruth wake up to many more of them to like, hands of videos of some of which is pretty horrendous of the, of the violence that actually is going on in Papua New Guinea, that is less headline grabbing than this, but is the kind of everyday violence that punctuates and permeates so many lives. So I think it's something that is worthy of further examination. I'll just give a plug to Brian mentioned the NRI researchers. We're doing a very small research project at USIP that is actually looking exactly at this issue and trying to get at what can we discern and what can we learn from social media usage. Can it be used to dampen things or can it be used to inflame things? And we're really, I think, into uncharted territory with it. And I think it's something worth thinking about and reflecting on. And I thank the commenter for further question. I've got a drew pad. I saw his hand up, then Andrew and then over there. Hi, my name is Drew Podnag. I'm with the Department of State desk officer for Papua New Guinea. So I think the timing of this is very interesting because it came ahead of the grace period on the vote of no confidence. I think some people, I mean, I think explicitly folks in the government have said, you know, that was a bit of suspicious timing. But, you know, in the weeks after the rioting, Prime Minister Marape was not particularly concerned at how these riots might affect his ability to stay in power. And in fact, he lots of country to go to Canberra and address the Parliament where he was, you know, the first Pacific leader to ever address the Australian Parliament. And so in talking and thinking about the sort of divorce between what's happening kind of at the local level with the desperation people are feeling and sort of at the elite level. I think Prime Minister Marape has over the last couple of years really raised his regional profile. So I guess my question here is, you know, if there is no outlet for people within the political system, and it seems like, you know, from what we're seeing on open source, you know, Prime Minister Marape still has a pretty solid political coalition doesn't necessarily look like it's likely that he'd be removed. You know, where do we go from here?  Or is there some other sort of way where there can be some accountability for the government? Yeah, thank you. Ruth, do you want to take this? How it intersects with politics? Drew, thank you for your question. It's interesting. It's interesting how there is a disconnect from the elite and the people that are feeling the real pinch of trying to make a living and not to take away anything from what there may be some politicians are trying to do to alleviate the economic burden that the people are feeling. It's been building up for some time. We've been on a decline in the last two decades, three decades or so. Education system has failed. Health systems have failed. The lawlessness that is recent. I work in the space of social reaccusation related violence, which is a direct result of the health system. People need to blame someone for the death of unexpected deaths, deaths relating to lifestyle of people. But then at the same time, it's because hospitals do not have enough medication. We don't have doctors that are able to use medical equipment, probably lack of it. And so you have a huge catchment area of people with one hospital serving them 25,000, 20,000 without one hospital. But then people die from curable diseases. So of course, people are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the way they see their government now. Your view might not necessarily be my view. Whereas when you want to call an ambulance, it's just 911, the police or the ambulance or whatever you need. It's just a phone call away. Some of our people have to walk days to get to the nearest road to make it to the nearest hospital. So the dissatisfaction has been there for a very long time. And now to see that becoming wider and wider, to be able to really decide where would be the tipping point, whether or not we reach the needle where it tips over, or whether or not we've come to a point where people will say that, you know what, this is my lot in life. So I'll just go on. The rich can keep getting richer. I will go back to my land till my land. And basically, you know, this is what I do. But you can also see that the buildup of arms and the way that the elites are starting to secure themselves through all kinds of means is also portraying a state that is becoming criminal. Because we have a lot of gaps there, it's just showing up in every turn that we don't have what you would call, normally call, a state, a police system that barely function, an L system that doesn't even function at all, likewise with education, other infrastructure. So when we talk about state, and if we have one, it barely functions. So, of course, when you are looking at a prime minister that doesn't care, because he knows, you can use a state if the state is there, but if the state is not there, then of course, you know exactly how to meander through that, and be confident in the fact that you can still be in power and not care what the people on the ground are feeling. So whether or not we reach the tipping point and the needle has been pushed, that I can really say if we're certain, if we're going to have more riots, or people will say that, you know what, I'll just deal with it as it is. Great. Thanks. Hi, everyone. My name is Andrew Harding. I'm with the Heritage Foundation's Asian Study Center, leading our Pacific Island works. Two questions. They're adjacent to one another. First, over to Ruth, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that some restaurants or businesses weren't looted and specifically said that it was the Chinese shops that weren't looted because they were protected by gunmen. I have a hunch that it wasn't by chance, but I'm curious if you could just elaborate a little more about these Chinese shops and as to how these gunmen came to protect them versus others. So just appreciate some elaboration on that remark, and then more broadly to the panel, if we could dive in a little more to Chinese activities throughout Papua New Guinea that may be standing out, and where that seems like there's some security conversations that are developing with PNG in China. So if those two questions adjacent to one another would be great to get answers on that. Thanks. Yeah, great. Ruth, why don't we start with this more specific issue of the Chinese shops, and who are these, quote unquote Chinese, and what are the dynamics there? And then maybe Gordon, some thoughts on this security arrangement and other issues. So Ruth. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Andrew, for your question. So we've seen a lot of new Chinese versus old Chinese. We've always said Chinese in the Chinese towns in Papua New Guinea. We've got members of parliament that makes Chinese. We've had Chinese businesses in the country that have put in a lot of development into what we now have a country. But then we've had a late influx of Asian business people that have come into the country. Some of those business houses were not even touched and they are on the periphery of the city where they're very, very near settlements. A lot of them have what you call shops that they call them lots. So it's either lot 22 or lot 60 where you have 10 or 20 shops facing each other. Now, most of these shops have what everyday people need because a lot of them are very cheap. They go at a cheap price. And again, it's on the periphery of the city. So people would easily have access to it. Not even one of them was touched. Not even one of them was burned to the ground like the other shops within the city center. And that brought a lot of questions of how could these shops be not. I asked around for a few people, why couldn't these shops were touched? Why didn't you to the young men that were robbing shops to the women and they were they were like do you want us to be short dead because they had people standing on the rooftops with guns. And some of them were foreigners. I mean, not some most of them were foreigners and they were standing at the rooftops of their building with guns. Now, whether or not some of these guns were registered, we don't know whether or not they were guns that were issued by security firms. We don't know. All we know was that these are the shops that were not touched and these are the shops that could have easily been accessed and easily been touched. So, of course, there is that undertone around the city that there are certain shops in Mosby we know that you cannot be able to touch them and and a lot of them are really are linked to this new influx of Chinese that have been coming into the regions as well that have been coming into the city and building up putting up their shops. Now we've got the old Chinese that have been always been around in the country. Some of them got looted, but not the new ones. So Robin, anything you can share in lay sort of on these general dynamics and where is China. I mean, this is, you know, one of it's no secret one of the one of the reasons why Washington is more and more focused on Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands region generally is because of competition with China. Right. So sketch out where China is or isn't in Maro Bay province. Thank you. From what I'm observing here in Moro Bay. The Chinese have, they're already in the communities. They're with the people right at the peripheral of the city and right at the peripheral of the community. Most of the shops that Papua New Guinea's own are rented out by Asians, not just Chinese but Indians as well. And they, they have very good relationship with the community members. They employ them and some of them are engaged in their kind of informal sales of the products like carrying t-shirts on the street or earpiece, mobile phone earpiece and speakers on the, like they take them out on the street and do street sales. So that's how some of the ways that the Asians are doing in, in doing business here in Moro Bay province. So they, they're kind of, they've mixed well with the community and they're doing their business using the community. So I think because of that relationship, maybe one of the reason might be because of the relationship, the good relationship that they have with the community had kind of protected them and their businesses. Second, they also kind of provide support to the police forces. And in, in such situation like what had occurred, they, they provide food and funds to the police. So they, they are around them or near them to provide that security that they need. So that's, that's with Moro Bay province. The Asians are already in the communities and they're living with the people. There are some intermarriages already happening there. And the business are kind of, they've got them involved in their business. So that kind of secure them to be there in the community and doing business. Gordon, could you sort of unpack some of these observations and then sort of lay on the geopolitics and policing and PRC elements to it? Sure. I think the, the, I'll begin by just sort of reinforcing the reflections of my colleagues from Papua New Guinea. I think they're really important reflections and the, the point that Zwa Bay made about kind of first mover advantage that comes with, with being in, you know, being, and how well integrated Chinese communities are in Papua New Guinea. I lived in Bougainville, as Brian said, for, for three years. And I remember I had a really enlightening conversation with the owner of one of the kind of fried chicken restaurants in, in Boca. And he made the point. It features prominently in Gordon's book. It features prominently in my, in my book. It's well worth visiting once. But he said, he sort of said, he said sort of words to the factory. He said, you'll be here for a few years. But we're going to, we, you know, we're traders. And we know when we come to Bougainville, we'll, we'll be here for a kind of long time. I think that's sort of worth reflecting on and just in terms of the kind of relationality of this, this, this place with people that aren't perceived as states like China or the United States are perceived as people. And I think, you know, the, the tenure of communities, people in these communities is really important as, as, and what Zwa Bay was talking about in, in Merobe is definitely true in Bougainville in terms of sort of, you know, marriages into communities and what, and what happens when you marry into a community, you get access to land as well. The wider kind of geopolitical point that you alluded to about a month ago, the foreign minister of Papua New Guinea, Justin Chachenko was in Beijing and he sort of made a sort of an announcement. There was a sort of trial balloon or a, or a way to get attention or a serious thing. It was hard to, to know that, that, that Papua New, that China had offered Papua New Guinea assistance after, after the riots. And that got everyone froth, you know, about what it could, what it could mean. And it's very similar to, to what happened in Solomon Islands after the riots, very similar sort of style of, of doing it. And we focus on the kind of, you know, Chinese playbook in a way. But there's also a, an elite playbook here as well within the Papua New Guinea elite, which is if you mentioned, if you mentioned the C word, you know that you're going to get more attention from Australia or from the United States. So it's a kind of sort of a known button that you can, that you can press. And I think that's sort of worth sort of reflecting on that. I also, we wrote a piece on this and we said it's important not to downplay this sort of the Chinese sort of role. I mean, they were in Solomon Islands. There's an extraterritorial policing component in, which in Solomon Islands as well. But it's also important not to downplay the, by extraterritorial policing. And Chinese state officials rounding people up and putting them on planes bound, bound back for, for Beijing has happened in Vanuatu. But there's also a kind of Pacific part of the equation too that we need to kind of think about as, as well. And one of the sort of Pacific parts of the equation, and I think it, it kind of gets to the point that I made earlier, Andrew, that's hard to kind of use words like the state or, you know, the Chinese, and you're actually sort of talking about people, is a story that was told in the, relayed in the organized crime and organized crime corruption reporting project that did this sort of fascinating story that I think showed the multi kind of threaded connections that relate to poor governance, relate to kind of elite linkages, and relate to business interests, whether they be from, you know, China or from Australia or from, you know, or you're sort of one of the sort of Chinese that's been here for a long time that Ruth and Zwa Be went to. And these stories all kind of have a similar sort of thread to them. And they relate to a kind of large scale infrastructure project, sort of money going missing, you know, something happening, you know, at a rest.  And I think it's sort of all these instances point, I think, to the kind of weak underbelly of sort of policing and authority in Papua New Guinea, and point to things I think that, you know, we in the United States could think about, you know, we, anyone who's kind of interested in thinking about these issues could think about. And one obvious one would be to look at the financial system that, and where money flows in and out of Papua New Guinea. I mean, there's people much more qualified than I to talk about that. But that should give you a pretty good indication about where money is flowing in and flowing out. Final point I'll make, and I think it's sort of something worth noting for everyone in the audience and for everyone watching online, is that there's something called a mutual evaluation that is taking place at the minute, which is an assessment of Papua New Guinea's anti-money laundering abilities and the extent to which they're kind of doing what they're expected to do on that. I think that those reports are often quite revealing of levels of interest and also offer quite good roadmaps for what you can actually do about it. Do about it as well. And I think it's one of the kind of tools in the financial system that the United States plays a large role in that we could, you know, actively think more about it. It's a tool that's at disposal as well. Okay. Our time is marching down very, very quickly. So I'm going to have Megan read out one online question and one question over here and one last question over there. And then our panel will get a last word. Yeah, so we have a question on policing assistance. The governor of Anga province has repeatedly called for Australian federal police to be deployed on the ground there. What does that say about how the AFP is perceived and policing more broadly? Then there's a similar question that's asking about the announcement two days ago that 20 police from Commonwealth countries would be deployed to PNG, giving past policing assistance how effective do you think that strategy is? Okay, and let's just grab all the questions at once. So my name is Rowan Travis. I'm also from states yet. So my question is related to you've kind of shown this progression from dissatisfaction to violence and then the violence causing more dissatisfaction and just seeing what other inflection points, especially in the areas you were talking about education, medicine, fuel shortages that we might see in the next six, eight, nine months, causing more of these newsworthy levels of violence in the future. Finally. Lauren Sauer International Foundation for Electoral Systems. So I have two questions. One is what do you see as the priority investments for stability? Given the discussions of whether it's policing, whether it's more peace, peace kind of interventions and what kind of incentives will do elites need in order to finally deliver services for citizens. Okay, all great questions. Let's go to each of our panelists and hopefully in some combination everybody will have addressed all of them. So we'll go Ruth, Zuhabe and Gordon. Ruth, certainly the question of Anga, you know, for you. So the governor has been for quite some time asking for the intervention of the Australian federal police now in the wake of the violence last week. His call has been going on for some time since last year before that, but not after the violence on Sunday. He's calling for AFP was basically around the governance of police to work with police on good police morale boosting with not at police training after they go to the academy, the police academy. A lot of the policemen that we have in the country right now have not gone for further training after their first and some of them have been in the force for 30 years. Some of them been in the force for 20 years, 10 years. Now this is a country with high threshold for violence. So you're, you're, you have policemen that are exposed to violence over and over. So they are disciplined now becomes a problem again.  Now, it's not that it's just that their behavior is now this is a police force that has the worst ratio in the, in the world. You said 10 million Papua Nicanians. Well, UN said we've got 17 million Papua Nicanians. So let's do the math. We've got 6,000 policemen that is policing 17 million people, but of the 6000 policemen, one third, two thirds of those policemen are desk police officers past retirement age. So you've got one third of those 6000 actually active duty policemen. So you can just imagine how hard it is for 2000 policemen to police 17 million Papua Nicanians. I think the AFP over is not going to do anything. If anything, it's actually going to make it worse, because you have tribal people that will see foreigners and crouching on their land. So sending AFP up to anger is not going to solve the problem. If this problem actually has to be dealt by Papua Nicanians in Papua Nicania, fix the state, the law and order issue that we already have here. I think there was another question around the violence that how can we be able to curb this. And one of the things I think it came from someone from the electoral. So one of the things that we can fix this is getting people elected into parliament through democratic means, not having people that have usurp the power of the people using violence and guns because then people are not going to respect whoever the member of parliament is. So fix the electoral system. We don't have an electoral system in place that people can go and vote. We don't have even the census. Our census updated. So right now the members of parliament have the power to actually boost the numbers in their own electorate. So if they want to boost the numbers in a certain place that they know that they have supported, they can do that. So you would have 10,000 people in the support base of those members of parliament. So if we have a good census where every Papua Nicanian is actually in the census, they could easily be able to vote people in. Maybe there might be one of the things that could end the violence and overalling the system. Lastly, overalling the old system. This is, like I said, a state that has problems and there is as loopholes everywhere. So overall of the police system could be a fair start into how we can be able to address this. But otherwise it's the old state. The old statehood. There is no state. Zouabe, a minute of last thoughts. I'll just respond to the AFP police here in Papua Nicanian. From what I'm seeing and previously working with them, they are mostly focused on administrative methods and capacity building of police. So they have that like kind of targeted provinces that they work in. So I believe they have a program and the JSS 40 for anger. And I don't know if that contract have ended or not. But in Morobe, they provide that support to the police and it's mostly capacity building and administrative support. So what what I think about the police is if we can increase the number of kind of trained police and get them recruited in the system. That is one thing that's very challenging, especially with recruitment with all nearly all public servants in the country. We have a lot of need here about the government's capacity in bringing in public servants into various sectors to implement. It's kind of quite challenging for our government at the moment. Yeah, so I think that's what the police are experiencing. And another thing is the training that the police receive only for six months. And I feel that is not enough. I did have some opportunity to speak with the AFP, the team leaders here in Morobe. And I said, why don't we give them some chances to, you know, maybe take them overseas and they see for some few three, four weeks or one month. And let them see how policies, policies are kind of doing their work so they can come back with that experience and see if they can improve their performance here in Papua New Guinea. So give them some outside exposure on how, you know, countries that have good practices in policy. So they can come back with those experience and try improve here. So that's, that's my perception around how we could improve policing here in Papua New Guinea. Gordon. Sorry, go ahead, Zora. Sorry. With the electoral system, I feel it will be more just if we could have this electronic system for voting so people can vote through that so they are not manipulated in their decisions in voting. But for me, I see it's kind of a mile away for us to achieve. Our senses are not updated like in the last 10 years, maybe. And the systems like the electronic system cannot, I mean, it's a challenge for the electoral commission to have it. We might have finally have a frozen connection. I think we did really well. Gordon. The sort of crystal balls with saying question. I mean, it's a really important question. You know, it's hard to predict. So if we've got people to give them a fair go in, we still have a long way to improve on that problem that we are seeing now, especially with election really in choosing the leaders. I mean, what was announced yesterday in Papua New Guinea was that Puma, which is the major fuel provider in Papua New Guinea, isn't going to wind up its operations. In, it's like three or four months ago, this happened. There was a sort of a consternation and like what we would all have, we couldn't put fuel in our vehicles and some of those knock on effects that Ruth was talking about. I mean, it didn't raise the temperature right over to boiling point, but that seems an obvious thing to address. The incentives thing, I think the electoral system is something, I think the electoral system and the census are, what are donors good at? They're good at doing technical things that are divorced sort of from maybe from the politics of it and the census seems an obvious thing to focus on. And the fact that we all know that there's going to be an election in 2027, that's not in dispute. That's something that sort of really gets on. And in terms of your question of incentives, I think that gets into the question of elites. There's a book that I read recently called Gambling for Development. It basically looked at like why do certain countries constitute quote unquote development successes and others do not. And the answer that the author came up with was that the elites had an interest in doing that. And that's not something that we outsiders can address. But I think technical things like the census that Ruth was talking about, the electoral system, the fact that nearly 50% of Papua Indians were disenfranchised in the last election. And there is a terrific piece written by Terrence Wood, who's a sephologist. Is that what an electoral specialist wrote on the USIP website? That I really encourage everyone to go and take a look at. Great. Thank you, Ruth, Zuabe, Gordon. Clearly Washington is more focused on Papua New Guinea than any time in recent memory. We're trying to do our small part with work in the country, but also using our incredible staff there to connect and bring a little more knowledge to Washington. So really happy that we did this. This was a little bit of an experiment. If we could just have our own staff, us calling the meeting, and hopefully a few people would show up and enough people did. So we'll be sure to do it again. So thank you so much for joining us.


Federal Government resumed trial of Boko Haram suspects and withdrawal limits will cripple campaign funding party members cry out. This is PlusPolitics and my name is Nyam Ghul Aghaji. Thanks for joining us. The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Abu Bakar Malami on Monday said the Federal Government will resume the mass prosecution of Boko Haram suspects being held in selected military formations in Nigeria. It was reported that a similar exercise has been conducted some years ago when such trials was conducted in military facilities in Niger or Nigeria rather, in the Bernou states. According to him, President Mohamed Buhari has approved funds for the exercise. And we're joined to discuss this by Deji Awobi, a legal practitioner. Welcome Deji to the program. Thank you Father Lee. Okay, we've heard this story about the Boko Haram suspects that are going to be prosecuted again by the Federal Government and we've been told that the Federal Government has released money. The President actually has released money for the prosecution of the Boko Haram suspects, many of them that are in the custody somewhere in military formations. How much faith do you have in this statement by the Attorney General that they are going to actually pull it off finally? Well, it's interesting that the Attorney General has chosen this time, a few months to the departure from the arms of power to begin the trial of this suspect. However, the President is very clear that when you have anybody who is alleged to have committed a crime, you should prosecute them timeously. So for me, coming from the arms of power, it was important for the government to prosecute those detained Boko Haram suspects as soon as the proof of evidence was available. Instead of keeping them and determining at what pace they intend to go and when and choose at what point they would prosecute them. So now that they've decided to prosecute, I believe that I will come out openly to make that statement, then I believe that they should see it through and give the suspect a fair trial. Whether or not a military permission or military camps will be the right place to have the trial is another question that we can come to later. But for now, I think we will welcome the development that finally those persons who have been accused of being Boko Haram members or being Boko Haram sponsors will get their day before the tribune or before the court for the trial. But the word soon by the federal government seems to have a different definition all the time because we have been told a long time ago that the federal government will soon name sponsors of Boko Haram. They will soon name people who are chief teams in those groups, those bandits and all that and the soon has never come to pass till this moment. How sure are you that this soon is going to be really as everyone else in the world defines the word? Honestly, when it comes to the Nigerian government and their use of word and language, particularly the word soon, I think I speak for almost all of the Nigerians that we really cannot please this government in terms of where and... So we really can't please this government in terms of what they want to do and whether they will do what they say they will do. But it will take what they have said with a pinch of salt in terms of yes, they said they will soon start it, but I will not close my eyes and believe wholeheartedly that this government will follow through what they have said. However, the AGF with the snap of Nigeria knows very well that when you have suspects who have been detained, you need to give them a trial. But there's so much secrecy concerning this book Haram is you. Secrecy as you've mentioned in terms of sponsorship, secrecy in terms of who and who have been arrested and apprehended. We don't really know the names of these suspects. We don't know whether these suspects were given a fair trial or that they've been allowed access to their counsel. Whether or not the allegations that they've been confronted with are available to them is that the proof of evidence are available to them to know exactly what the offenses are. You know, sometimes with our government, security agencies, there are times where innocent people are also taken along with those who are suspected of committing these crimes. So we really cannot say that everybody who has been apprehended or rounded up as suspects is indeed a suspect in terms of the commission of the offense. But we can only keep faith with the government, hoping that they've told the new leaf and hoping that I haven't said what they've said that they would see it through. But like I said, I wouldn't hold my breath believing everything that this government has said because in the past seven years they've shown that whatever policy that they wanted to follow through on, they've always had one snag or the other. So let's just keep up a life that these suspects will get their trial. Okay, but even if the government decides to do this, they have the will power to prosecute this, do you think the justice system, the Nigerian justice system can handle this? Well, in terms of personnel, I believe we have the brightest legal mind in Africa, even in the world, that a lot of our judges are well-traveled, well-schooled, well-educated. So in terms of the quality of personnel, we have one of the best array of judges you can find anywhere in the world. However, when it comes to infrastructure, it comes off. Okay, we seem to be losing your audio, Deji. We hope that whatever adjustments needs to be done should be done now. Oh, okay, I can hear you, but I can hear you not that clear. Okay, all right, go ahead. I can hear you now. As our saying, it's about the personal minds who can do this trial and give us the very best of legal... But in terms of the structural facilities available to them, I think that the government needs to do more. And then the case dockets of the judges is quite enormous. So adding maybe trial of 1,000 suspects or more would burden the judicial system, particularly that we have elections coming and we have pre-election matters ongoing in our courts. So as it's where we would need to have more judges employed by the judiciary, the NGOs need to look into this, have more judges employed by the judiciary so that we can have maybe nice courts to attend into these trials, as opposed to having the same judges who attend to civil matters, attend to criminal matters, and they're about burdening the justice system. That for me, I think is the... Okay, okay. Well, we've been talking with Deji Awobi Day and we'll just take a short break and we'll return to Deji to continue this discussion. Stay with us. You're welcome back. It's still Plus Politics on Plus TV Africa. We're talking with Deji Awobi Day and we're looking at what the Attorney General of the Federation has said that soon Boko Haram suspects that are in custody already will be prosecuted by the federal government and money has been released to that effect by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. And we're just asking, what is your fate in the justice system like? And Deji was trying to give answers to that before we went on that short break. So Deji, you might want to continue with your train of thought. How do you believe in the justice system to be able to pull that off and prosecute whoever they will need to prosecute and do what they need to do? Yes, thank you for the question. I believe that in terms of personnel, we have the very best of legal minds on the bench and in the bar to attend to this trial. Where I think that we might have a little challenge is in the area of facilities that will be available for this trial. You know, in terms of the structures available, the assistance that are required to enable the spreading of justice in this matters is where I have cause for concern. But in terms of the personnel, I believe that we have the best of legal minds to effectively ensure that the fair trial is given to these suspects. Now that the government has given its full backing in terms of saying money has been released, I believe that saying money has been released means that there is no financial muzzle to back this trial from beginning to conclusion. And I believe that if the government's plan to have a day in court, and of course I believe that where they don't have the counsel of their choice, it's the counsel to defend the suspect. So any person who has been detained who doesn't have access to counsel would have a public counsel available by either the legal counsel of Nigeria or by the Ministry of Justice to defend these suspects to ensure that it is balanced on both sides under the fair trial at the end of the day. You did allude to the fact that the time frame is very short and I am also concerned about that that if this were to be done by the federal government, is the time frame good enough? We know that the Chief Justice has said that more judges need to be appointed just like you pointed out to yourself, that more judges need to be appointed and maybe some other people within these numbers that have been arrested and put in detention, they may not have the legal counsel to back them up and they might need the services of councils that will do pro bono or councils of government that will stand for them and this manpower is not there. So this time frame, do you think it's enough or in your suggestion they might need to just extend it? I believe the time frame between now and when this government departs is short but the good thing is that the government is a continuum. So it means that even if this government departs... Okay, we'll encourage you, if you're watching this program right now to also join the conversation on our social media platforms all our social media platforms at Plus TV Africa maybe you have a question or a comment to make and you might just want to do that, Plus TV Africa whether on Twitter or on Instagram, just look for us and send that question for us you might just want to add the hashtag plus politics. Deji, are you back there? Yes, I'm back. I don't know what happened. Just round off what you were saying about the time frame. Yes, so I was saying that as it relates to the time frame government is a continuum. So what it means is that if the new government comes in, come May 29 that government will continue with the trial of the suspects. For me, what's important is that the trial of the suspects is set to begin and these suspects will have their day in court and that for me is good for our legal system that persons are not just detained at the instance of government for periods of ending rather you give them opportunity to defend themselves and of course if those of you who are found guilty will be sentenced to whatever time of imprisonment or whatever penalties that the court would impose those who are found innocent will be acquitted of the charges and be able to vision the normal life's back. So for me it's important that we begin this trial of the suspects so that everybody involved can see that justice is not only being done but it seems to be done. Okay, but a lot of people have used this to measure the level of commitment to insecurity to fight against insecurity by this present administration that have been very secretive about the prosecution of this Boko Haram suspect and the sponsors and all those things surrounding this Boko Haram if these people are tried the way they say they will be tried and the guilty ones, some people have said that they should pay even with a capital price for their action while some others are advocating amnesty. What part of the divide would you stand? Well, I'm not a fan of amnesty deals for convicted criminals so if even a trial and a person is found guilty of the offence I do not see the reason why you'll be granted them amnesty you should allow them to serve their time and then if on good behaviour you find that they are remorseful but they've turned a new leaf you can then go ahead and grant a pardon the question provides for how to grant a pardon to convicted criminals. Now, for those who are on the other side of the divide who believe in this amnesty deal for these people but largely because of the crime that has been committed I mean people have been killed, children, women, adults including men and women have been killed and most of their families have been have had to deal with the trauma of losing loved ones or a government will now say it wants to pardon persons who have committed these grievous crimes honestly it doesn't sound good to the heirs that such persons are pardoned what it does is it encourages other criminals to go along this route knowing that at some point in time they will be pardoned and you will believe that's why there was the outcry when the president pardoned the convicted ex-governors who have found guilty of corruption so if you have that kind of outcry for convicted politicians who have found guilty of corruption how much more for persons who took life of others who caused so much pain to others, other families other people of particular territories so amnesty for me is of the table and should be of the table what we should be talking about is ensuring that people get justice justice to the victims as well the victims of the crime persons who have suffered on account of this of the conduct of these criminals should also be seen to have some form of closure some form of solace in the justice system that such persons who have committed those crimes against their families have also been dealt with so for me I believe this trial should begin the secrecy of course is not unconnected with the fact that if the names of these persons get out or the names of these particular members get out it may affect the work of the security service in tracking maybe financiers or sponsors or other persons involved so maybe that's why we can create an argument for them that they are making them very secret but now we are starting the secrecy involved as long as justice is done if your hearing is given to the suspects themselves they have counsel of their choice who is defending them and everything is done by the book by due process there would not be any reason for us to worry but where there is some secrecy and they don't have access to counsel that's where I believe that we should all be concerned so that we don't have a Kangaroa trial where we just convict people for offenses which have not been substituted for no reason so it's important that on all sides on the part of the government the suspects themselves everybody is giving it seems to be engaging in a fair trial for all consent Okay, just the final one in so many cases we've seen governments come no matter how lofty a program is they abandon it and move on to something else and this may also be another case where a new government comes in and this prosecution, this fight that this present government might start now will be abandoned and we will not hear anything about it is there any legal way that this thing we can guard against it that okay, let's make sure that the next government that comes continues with what we have begun here is there any way of legally making sure that the next government continues with this prosecution and everything that needs to be done to these cases Well, the Attorney General of the Federation has the powers to enter a nullly prosecute and that was to choose not to pursue the prosecution of these persons any further that power is constitutional, is provided in the constitution therefore is a power for him to exercise Well, whether or not the next government will want to continue with it is left to be seen I'm not sure that there's anything that we can do about insisting on them on the next government continuing with it because once the EGF enters the nullly prosecute which is discretion to enter and then there's no confederate discretion However, there can be some public pressure that can be applied if there's public outcry if there's some public pressure applied towards the exit of that power then we might see some hesitancy on the part of the new government in just discontinuing the prosecution of these suspects However, we want to believe that we ever imagine we would not have that as the first duty to go ahead and discontinue the prosecution of these suspects because it sends a very bad message across to everybody involved even to Nigerians that the government is not ready to be tough on criminals and on crime in general I want to believe that whoever comes in whoever emerges as president eventually would at least for the purpose of a cosmetic application pursue these trials up to a point maybe after a few convictions after a few years I've gone by maybe they may decide to discontinue the prosecution of all of this or most of them but I will not stick up my neck to say that the next government would not do so because the power of the attorney general the petition as well as the attorney general of the state is well provided for to enter a nonly prosecute so if they decide you do decide not to go further with the prosecution of these suspects we can't do anything about it the best you can do is to amount to public pressure and then see whether the public outcry can weigh on the mind of the government Okay, what a good way to wrap up this segment of the program public outcry that means the people will have to sit up if they find anything the next government is not doing right and they have to cry out through the legal means that are available to the people to do that and possibly like you said we hope that the next government will listen Well, thank you very much Mr. Deji I will be a day for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts with us Thank you Barbara Well, that was Mr. Deji I will be a day, a legal practitioner and he was talking about what the attorney general of the federation said that the prosecution of the Boko Haram suspects now in custody will soon begin and money has been released for that Before we go to the next topic let's just take a very short break and when we return we'll be discussing the cash withdrawal policy by the central bank and the claims that it will cripple campaign funding ahead of the elections Stay with us


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