Dozens of people were killed in the so-called “tribal fights” in a number of places in the Tari-Pori District of Hela Province over the last 18 months.

Others were injured with life changing injuries and many more were displaced including students deprived of their education. Small village-based entrepreneurs have lost their businesses and formally employed people cannot return to their villages.

After some initial shock and awe reporting on Facebook and the mainstream media, the killings and related problems have been out of the public spotlight. Life goes on, so it seems. Is that so for the people affected by the ongoing spate of tribal fights in Tari-Pori and other places in Hela Province?

Reports coming from the Tari-Pori District suggested that the people were not killed and injured using traditional methods of tribal fighting. Traditional tribal fighting weapons such as bows and arrows, spears and stone axes were not used. On the other hand, the methods employed were mainly surprise guerrilla-like ambush and murder or wanton attacks using modern firearms and bush-knives.

The traditional tribal fights in the highlands provinces and other parts of Papua New Guinea in the pre-contact times were generally organized events where the warring factions would choose a time and place to do battle. It was mainly predictable; that men would assemble, go through their rituals, gather their bows and arrows, spears, stone axes and wooden shields and then move to the battle field and engage the enemy.

Surprise attacks were not permitted and women and children were not involved or attacked by the warring clans or tribes.

Much of these traditional ground rules of tribal warfare were retained in the fights that sporadically erupted in the post-contact years from the 1950s right up to the late 1990s in areas where the age-old tradition continued. Tari-Pori was one of them.

However, the time-worn methods and weapons deployed in the tribal fights have changed markedly over the last 15-20 years.

In provinces like Hela, many of the tribes and clans have ‘modernised’ their fighting weapons and methods of engaging their enemies. The methods include springing surprise attacks on members of their enemy tribe, clan or even family and ambushes at the least expected times. In more recent years, the guerrilla-like ambushes have been very deadly in Tari-Pori and the other two districts of Hela. The tribesmen have also resorted to attacking and killing women and children – a no go zone in the pre-contact times.

The guerrilla-like surprise attacks and attack on women and children have changed the complexion of tribal fighting in Tari-Pori and other areas of Hela. Will it change? What will be a future ‘tribal fight’ be like from here on? These are questions we must ask and our leaders must ask to and find asnwers.

Tribal fighting is unlawful and it is up to authorities to deal with the problem. The police, peace and good order committees, churches and government authorities in the districts have done their bit to address these problems. They enabled people to make peace and live in harmony once more. But the fights keep re-occurring. If it is not in one part of the district, the fights erupt in another area. It must now concern any learned and law-abiding Tari-Pori native or a Papua New Guinean in general that villagers have deviated from the traditional weapons and methods of fighting to the more deadly options with mass casualties as happened so far in that district in recent months.

It must be of serious concern that what was a ‘traditional’ form of retribution used as a last resort in highly controlled ways has been hijacked for other motives by modern men in Tari-Pori and some of the districts in the region.

We should also know now that men of Tari-Pori and other parts of the Highlands are no longer fighting over “land, women and pigs” only as in the pre-contact times but for other reasons.

In Hela, the glaring economic disparities, disputes over entitlements from the petroleum projects and the pitted competition for political office during the national elections have provided a deadly bedrock for the sporadic but frequent fights even at the slightest provocation.

In some cases, age-old animosities have been dug up as a front to attack each other for disputes over project entitlements and or success or failure at the national elections.

So, are the so-called ‘tribal warriors’ or ‘tribal fighters’ in Tari-Pori that ambushed and killed women and children plus men the same as the tribal warriors as in the traditional times. My answer is no. They are gutless cold blooded murderers.

Should these heartless murderers be brought to justice? Yes. But how, in remotely districts like Tari-Pori? How do you enforce the rule of law in a mostly rural and remote district like Tari-Pori with limited road access to the outlying areas?

But still the long arm of the law should reach out to the murderers and haul them in to face the law for their crimes. These murderers should be brought to justice in whatever shape or form. One way is for Papua New Guinea to set up a Human Rights Commission to look into these sorts of killings in places like Tari-Pori as an abuse of the human rights of the people killed and all the victims of wanton destructions that are still alive.

It is high time authorities address these deaths under the guise of tribal fighting as manslaughter or murder and more so an attack on the human rights of people.

I call on the United Nations representatives in PNG to look into this matter as an agenda for the UN Commission for Human Rights to take up and assist our country to address it.

We cannot continue to allow some fully armed men roam the rural country-side to destroy the lives of people under the guise of the so-called “tradition” of tribal fight because it is no longer “traditional”.