6 ms·

Violence Against Women in Papua New Guinea

112 points by monort 10y ago

chrischen 10y ago
The problem is Western and other more developed countries still do business with the country, inevitably enabling and persisting their systemic corruption. See ExxonMobil projects in PNG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPIUFZl7f-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPIUFZl7f-U
HillaryBriss 10y ago
article gave me a whole new perspective on Papua New Guinea. what these women face is horrendous.
distances 10y ago
This was a harrowing article. The described cases are surreal in how the brutal violence seems to be an everyday occurrence, something that the men just happen to do when drunk. I knew things are bad in PNG, but I didn't really comprehend how bad it can be.
gheeohm 10y ago
I came across this a few years ago watching an interesting documentary about surfing and Papuan culture called "Splinters". Even taking into context cultural differences, this can be considered nothing but horrific.
walrus01 10y ago
Port Moresby is one of the more dangerous places to travel, no matter what gender you are: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/papua-new-guinea/safety-and-security https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/papua-new-guinea/sa... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/population.davidfickling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/population.dav... http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/201292892518329408.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/20129289... If you're male you're less likely to get raped by the local criminal gangs (who I presume are predominantly not interested in sexual relations with men), but just as likely to get stabbed/beaten/robbed and left in a ditch.
- rustynails 10y ago
  Thank you for saying that violence can happen to anyone. In Australia, we have a very sexist attitude toward violence. The media (and our own minister for sexism) only ever talk about male perpetrators and female victims. This article mentions twice that the majority of victims are women(about 2/3), but it purposely ignores violence against men. My wife said to me the other day, "today's society is more sexist than we've ever seen, isn't it". Unfortunately, I couldn't agree more. Violence against anyone should be condemned, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the gender of the victim. I like HN because it is less sexist than most information sources, however, the price of non-sexism is eternal vigilance. This article raises a tragic issue In an unnecessarily sexist way. My wife is right yet again.
  - socialist_coder 10y ago
    So they say "Female Lives Matter" and you say "All Lives Matter". If I learned anything from "Black Lives Matter", it is that this type of response is not acceptable and does a lot to diminish the original message.
    - mmel 10y ago
      The original message is divisive in nature.
    - iLoch 10y ago
      Without getting too political, I'd like to point out that the purpose of the Black Lives Matters movement is to address differences between the life the average black person is afforded vs. that of a non-minority person (ie. white). There's a strong correlation between black and being poor, and perhaps the solution is not to create a divide by race, but rather by socioeconomic status. A lot of problems we have today, faced both by black people and poor people alike, can be solved by addressing the problems in poor neighbourhoods. Of course that is not to say all black people are poor, that would be ridiculous. But in the mind of someone who thinks in a certain way, because a person is black it means that they are in fact more likely to be from a poorer family, may have received lesser education, etc. So I think socioeconomic status is a much more fair and less divisive way grouping people. "All lives matter" is certainly reactionary, but I think there's truth to the idea the BLM isn't the correct way to solve the problem.
internaut 10y ago
Cruel and unusual violence is also the case for the South African townships. The crime statistics for that country are a fiction. One judge said she never met a girl over the age of twelve who had not been raped.
Mz 10y ago
Every day most of the crimes committed are against women from the Port Moresby slum areas. Ah, systemic poverty rears its ugly head again. This is, no doubt, related in part to the fact that 97% of the land is owned as tribal land, which seriously hampers modern economic development: The PNG legislature has enacted laws in which a type of tenure called "customary land title" is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area);[56] alienated land is either held privately under state lease or is government land. Freehold title (also known as fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinean citizens.[57] Only some 3% of the land of Papua New Guinea is in private hands American indigenous peoples also face this problem: You cannot get a mortgage to build a house if the land it sits on cannot be taken by the bank if you default on your payments. This is part of why indigenous peoples are so very poor. I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps there is some answer that preserves the tribal lands system and also alleviates the stranglehold that has on development. But I have pondered this on and off over the years and come up with no ideas on how to fix it and have not yet seen anything written up that sounds plausible. In the US, tribes that have improved their economic status seem to mostly do so by taking advantage of the legal loophole that they are sovereign states, not subjected to state laws, and they create casinos on their lands. This provides employment as well as becomes a cash cow for paying for schools and the like. Most people do not think casinos represent serious economic development per se. It is a way to filch some wealth from the pockets of the white men that stole their lands, but real wealth is generally rooted in industry and commerce. Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare.
- Mz 10y ago
  Well, I seem to have failed to cite my source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Land_tenure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Land_tenure
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare. This would apply just as much to the music industry as it does to the gambling industry. Casinos do create value; they create entertainment value. It doesn't become less valuable when a company you don't like produces it.

112 points by monort 10y ago

The problem is Western and other more developed countries still do business with the country, inevitably enabling and persisting their systemic corruption. See ExxonMobil projects in PNG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPIUFZl7f-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPIUFZl7f-U

HillaryBriss 10y ago

article gave me a whole new perspective on Papua New Guinea. what these women face is horrendous.

distances 10y ago

This was a harrowing article. The described cases are surreal in how the brutal violence seems to be an everyday occurrence, something that the men just happen to do when drunk. I knew things are bad in PNG, but I didn't really comprehend how bad it can be.

gheeohm 10y ago

I came across this a few years ago watching an interesting documentary about surfing and Papuan culture called "Splinters". Even taking into context cultural differences, this can be considered nothing but horrific.

walrus01 10y ago

Port Moresby is one of the more dangerous places to travel, no matter what gender you are: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/papua-new-guinea/safety-and-security https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/papua-new-guinea/sa... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/population.davidfickling https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/population.dav... http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/201292892518329408.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/20129289... If you're male you're less likely to get raped by the local criminal gangs (who I presume are predominantly not interested in sexual relations with men), but just as likely to get stabbed/beaten/robbed and left in a ditch.

rustynails 10y ago
Thank you for saying that violence can happen to anyone. In Australia, we have a very sexist attitude toward violence. The media (and our own minister for sexism) only ever talk about male perpetrators and female victims. This article mentions twice that the majority of victims are women(about 2/3), but it purposely ignores violence against men. My wife said to me the other day, "today's society is more sexist than we've ever seen, isn't it". Unfortunately, I couldn't agree more. Violence against anyone should be condemned, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the gender of the victim. I like HN because it is less sexist than most information sources, however, the price of non-sexism is eternal vigilance. This article raises a tragic issue In an unnecessarily sexist way. My wife is right yet again.
- socialist_coder 10y ago
  So they say "Female Lives Matter" and you say "All Lives Matter". If I learned anything from "Black Lives Matter", it is that this type of response is not acceptable and does a lot to diminish the original message.
  - mmel 10y ago
    The original message is divisive in nature.
  - iLoch 10y ago
    Without getting too political, I'd like to point out that the purpose of the Black Lives Matters movement is to address differences between the life the average black person is afforded vs. that of a non-minority person (ie. white). There's a strong correlation between black and being poor, and perhaps the solution is not to create a divide by race, but rather by socioeconomic status. A lot of problems we have today, faced both by black people and poor people alike, can be solved by addressing the problems in poor neighbourhoods. Of course that is not to say all black people are poor, that would be ridiculous. But in the mind of someone who thinks in a certain way, because a person is black it means that they are in fact more likely to be from a poorer family, may have received lesser education, etc. So I think socioeconomic status is a much more fair and less divisive way grouping people. "All lives matter" is certainly reactionary, but I think there's truth to the idea the BLM isn't the correct way to solve the problem.

internaut 10y ago

Cruel and unusual violence is also the case for the South African townships. The crime statistics for that country are a fiction. One judge said she never met a girl over the age of twelve who had not been raped.

Mz 10y ago

Every day most of the crimes committed are against women from the Port Moresby slum areas. Ah, systemic poverty rears its ugly head again. This is, no doubt, related in part to the fact that 97% of the land is owned as tribal land, which seriously hampers modern economic development: The PNG legislature has enacted laws in which a type of tenure called "customary land title" is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area);[56] alienated land is either held privately under state lease or is government land. Freehold title (also known as fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinean citizens.[57] Only some 3% of the land of Papua New Guinea is in private hands American indigenous peoples also face this problem: You cannot get a mortgage to build a house if the land it sits on cannot be taken by the bank if you default on your payments. This is part of why indigenous peoples are so very poor. I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps there is some answer that preserves the tribal lands system and also alleviates the stranglehold that has on development. But I have pondered this on and off over the years and come up with no ideas on how to fix it and have not yet seen anything written up that sounds plausible. In the US, tribes that have improved their economic status seem to mostly do so by taking advantage of the legal loophole that they are sovereign states, not subjected to state laws, and they create casinos on their lands. This provides employment as well as becomes a cash cow for paying for schools and the like. Most people do not think casinos represent serious economic development per se. It is a way to filch some wealth from the pockets of the white men that stole their lands, but real wealth is generally rooted in industry and commerce. Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare.

Mz 10y ago
Well, I seem to have failed to cite my source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Land_tenure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Land_tenure
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare. This would apply just as much to the music industry as it does to the gambling industry. Casinos do create value; they create entertainment value. It doesn't become less valuable when a company you don't like produces it.