Australia Blamed For Increase In PNG Police Brutality Cases
“While some level of violation is unremarkable for any security force – mistakes happen – it is the scale of these violations and the extent of the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators that is of deep concern. Violations in PNG have reached such widespread and systematic levels they are actually feeding crime, insecurity and a breakdown in the rule of law,” said the New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR).
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Airing its views in a review of next month’s visit to PNG by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the group said Australia and its aid agency AusAID should take responsibility for the failure by PNG authorities to address police brutality.
The AusAID-funded 2004 Ministerial Police Review, which was undertaken during the tenure of ex-police minister Bire Kimisopa, identified lack of accountability as a key obstacle to changing the culture and reforming the PNG police force.
However, the ACHR said AusAID as the police review’s sole funding agency failed to use its muscle to push for the report’s implementation.
Australia’s failure to condemn human rights abuses by PNG police officers also came under scrutiny.
“Despite the severity of human rights abuses in PNG, under the Howard government, Australian diplomatic representatives did not publicly raise human rights concerns with PNG,” said ACHR.
But a spokesman for AusAID’s PNG office said law and order problems were already being addressed through their PNG law and justice sector programs.
“A strong component of this strategy is to support and strengthen the rule of law in PNG and increase access to justice for all Papua New Guineans. The Australian Government through AusAID will spend around $A30 million (K88.4 million) in 2007-2008 in the PNG law and justice sector across a range of programs,” he added.
The New Delhi-based organisation also expressed concern AusAID was using the size of its aid to dominate PNG’s development agenda.
“It will spend an estimated $A355 million (K1.05 billion) in PNG in 2008 alone. The size of its assistance allows AusAID to dominate development discourse in PNG. In this review, ACHR argues that AusAID’s policy position condemns Australian development assistance to failure. Billions of dollars of Australian development assistance will be wasted and will at best fail to halt PNG’s descent into a vicious cycle of violence and human rights violations that undermine all other aspects of development and development assistance,” said ACHR.
However, the AusAID spokesman said their development assistance program had been done in close consultation with the PNG government and was in line with the medium term development strategy (MTDS).
He added the AusAID program was also subject to regular review, which is one of the New Delhi group’s recommendations to the Kevin Rudd government, though ACHR suggest that it be done independently by a panel of eminent experts.
