'Cold-blooded murder' by PNG troops

February 10, 1993
Issue 

'Cold-blooded murder' by PNG troops

By Norm Dixon

Papua New Guinea Defence Force troops executed six Bougainvilleans in cold blood after their motorised canoe was intercepted on January 28. The massacre was reported by a sole survivor found washed up on a beach with serious injuries, including a gunshot wound to the head.

Australian newspapers largely ignored this latest atrocity, running brief one-paragraph stories on February 3 reporting a PNG government minister's claim that those killed were "secessionist rebels". The minister, Michael Ogio, claimed nine "rebels" were killed while ferrying guns and ammunition from the Solomon Islands.

According to Morris Tua, the sole survivor, PNG troops intercepted the canoe at the mouth of the Lalwuai River. The canoe was bringing salt, rice, tinned fish and soap from the Solomons. When the canoe tried to escape, PNG troops opened fire and killed one of the passengers. The canoe's outboard motor then stalled.

PNG troops ordered the remaining passengers to jump into the sea. The troops circled the defenceless men in their speedboat, and shot each of them in the head as they desperately tried to swim to safety. One of the victims was Gibson Tampura of Pabaire village near Arawa. He was returning home to join his family after being discharged from the Central Hospital in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.

That same morning, a mortar round fired into Arawa from the PNGDF camp at Tunuru killed Helen Diwai, a 35-year-old woman with four children. The shell landed on a parked truck that was carrying people back from a fishing trip at the nearby beach. Ten other people were injured, two seriously.

The Bougainville Interim Government continues to warn that sources in PNG and Australia have said that a major PNG military offensive to retake central Bougainville will begin within a few weeks. A spokesperson for the interim government said that PNG is believed to have recently taken delivery of five armoured vehicles purchased from, or donated by, Britain. PNGDF personnel are engaged in intensive training in the use of the vehicles, the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile the Australian government has been criticised for its role in helping Papua New Guinea in Bougainville. The criticism was made at a meeting of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation, UNPO, in The Hague in Holland.

A spokesperson for the Bougainville Interim Government, Mike Forster, told the meeting that the Australian government was supplying guns and ammunition to PNG.

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