Yikwanak News Online

The NationalEditorial

VIOLENCE is happening all across the country, either it be sorcery or crime related clash.

This is concerning as the numbers are increasing at alarming rate, especially number of people who are dying as a result of this violence that is taking place against women, children or against each other.
It is a daily occurrence in some societies somewhere across the country.
Every day someone is dying as a result of violence.

And yet the number of investigation or arrests that have been made to arrest those who are the culprits to those violence is almost nonexistence.

This is only about reported cases on what we read on social media and mainstream media but just imagine the number of people who are dying and they have not been reported in the across country where society just finds a way to try and resolve these issues within our Melanesian way of handling this kind situation in our communities.
Numbers are certainly much higher.
When we look at it and let’s say one person die every day in any part of the country, that’s 365 people dying every year.

That’s the minimum we are talking about but the numbers are far too high.
This senseless violence needs to stop.
It has to start with us leaders.
Once we start accepting this kind of behaviour and we say, em orait man ya dai (that’s okay, this person died) so tomorrow bai yumi go mekim compensation (tomorrow we go pay compensation), we are just making excuses and we will have a mindset in the future that this is a normal behaviour. Anywhere in the world, one person dies, the entire police force will be there to investigate and arrest the culprit.

Even it may take months and months, they will continue to investigate and conclude it.
What is wrong with our police force?
What is wrong with our investigators?
What is wrong with our community leaders and leadership that we are able to tolerate this?
It is not right.

It is unfair to families who lose loved ones and this kind of senseless violence destroys not only the families but the entire society.
The violence happening cities and towns are mostly tribal or community issues taken into public and affecting a range of very innocent people who are not party to those problems.
Also the displacement of our settlers in the cities.

Prime Minister James Marape recently said that the unemployed should not be in the cities.
But you just simply cannot pick them up and take home or deport them somewhere else.
They have every right to freedom of movement, freedom of choice.

They have the right aspire to try, and improve their living standards, educate their children, acquire business jobs and doing SMEs.
All we need to do is find a way to settle these people.

For the National Capital District, Governor Powes Parkop had a brilliant idea about converting settlements to suburb.
Government needs to support that initiative.
Maybe, the Morata eviction recently would not have come this far had the settlement to suburb programme had been in place or a similar one in the 1970s or 80s.
That area was a hunting ground for the Motu-Koitabuans and there were really no settlers there in the 1800s.
People started settling there when Port Moresby was developed.

Overtime, Government acquired the land from the traditional land owners.
Social issues relating to accommodation, peaceful living and trying to earn a living to feed one’s family must be addressed with some urgency