Treatment of PNG students called disgraceful

Transcript

The chair of Transparency International in Papua New Guinea says the lack of accountability for police opening fire on protesting students last week is disgraceful.

On Wednesday, police injured as many as 23 students from the University of PNG in Port Moresby after they tried to march to parliament in a show of support for a planned vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.

Mr O'Neill, the police commissioner Gary Baki, and the university's vice chancellor have sought to deflect the blame onto the students, who they say aggravated the incident through their actions.

But Lawrence Stephens told Jamie Tahana that regardless of their actions, there is no excuse for the police behaviour.

LAWRENCE STEPHENS: We find it totally, despicably, unacceptable that police would be armed, confronting students at the university. It almost seemed to be a deliberate provocation of the students and there seemed to have been no excuse for them opening fire and mistreating a number of people, including in one case, a journalist covering the event. Our position remains the same - the police have no right to behave in that manner and people really should be controlling the use of weapons by the disciplined forces. They continue to cause us great shame and great destruction of life and damage to individuals   

JAMIE TAHANA: We have seen Commissioner Gary Baki, who at some point, promised to crack down on control and command in the force. The Prime Minister, the University Chancellor, all in a sense put the blame on the students. Enquiries have been announced into how this violence happened but yet there seems to have been no actual condemnation of the police from authorities.

LS: That appears to be the case. It seems to be much easier for example to blame foreign media for reporting rumours of deaths having been an issue, when the issue is not the rumours of deaths but the fact that police opened fire, and no that is not being focussed on as it should be focussed on. And it is pretty awful when people suggest that students exercising their constitutional rights to stage a protest, to make public their concerns, are confronted with murderous weapons and attacked.

JT: There are countless examples of such brutality. We had Hanuabada last year, we have had the clashes with the army and such - are they acting with a sense of impunity.

LS: I would say that is very, very true. The problem is, people do act as if they have impunity and they do so justifiably because you very rarely find that anybody is seriously held accountable. You don't for example see police commissioners resigning having failed to control their police officers, and being ultimately responsible for the loss of lives. You don't find them taking that responsibility and stepping aside on the basis that they failed. You don't find any of our political office holders prepared to take responsibilities for the decisions that they are ultimately for, but looking for other people to blame.