Papua New Guinea pleads for Australian Police aid to stem unprecedented clan violence

On Wednesday, the governor of Papua New Guinea’s Enga province, where the fighting occurred, asked lawmakers to call on Canberra to send in Australian Federal Police forces to help stem extreme tribal violence in the restive Highlands region.

The plea follows a massacre on Sunday in which dozens of clan members were slaughtered with machetes or gunned down by semi-automatic weapons in Enga province after an apparent attempt to ambush rivals backfired.

Enga is home to the controversial Porgera Gold Mine, operated as a joint-venture between Canadian company Barrick and China’s Zijin Mining Group.

It employs over 3,000 people and accounts for around 10 per cent of the island’s total export value. But it has also been dogged by allegations of rights abuses, environmental ruin and unfair profit distribution.

Reports indicate that more than 60 people may have been killed in the province, which remains deeply impoverished despite its rich mineral resources. The area is flooded with high-powered weapons and plagued by tribal vendettas, rampant sexual violence, and accusations of witchcraft that often escalate into lynchings.

“We are so close to Australia, our security is important to Australia … they can give us the manpower we want, to finally get the culture of policing right,” the governor of Enga province, Peter Ipatas, told the Papua New Guinea parliament on Wednesday in an admission that the state alone cannot provide security after Sunday’s massacre.

The violence comes as the fragile government of Prime Minister James Marape clings to power in the capital of Port Moresby after riots aimed at his administration erupted on January 10, driven in part by police officers and defence forces who walked off the job over a salary