If you're male you're less likely to get raped by the local criminal gangs (who I presume are predominantly not interested in sexual relations with men), but just as likely to get stabbed/beaten/robbed and left in a ditch.
Thank you for saying that violence can happen to anyone. In Australia, we have a very sexist attitude toward violence. The media (and our own minister for sexism) only ever talk about male perpetrators and female victims.
This article mentions twice that the majority of victims are women(about 2/3), but it purposely ignores violence against men.
My wife said to me the other day, "today's society is more sexist than we've ever seen, isn't it". Unfortunately, I couldn't agree more.
Violence against anyone should be condemned, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the gender of the victim.
I like HN because it is less sexist than most information sources, however, the price of non-sexism is eternal vigilance. This article raises a tragic issue In an unnecessarily sexist way. My wife is right yet again.
Yes and no. You could walk around downtown out to Ela beach without too much trouble as long as you don't look well off. Once outside that area, you need a crew.
When my colleagues and I were traveling there, we would play a game: What is the worst story in the paper during your trip?
I think the winner was a riot over cabbages that resulted in multiple fatalities. Also saw stories of people robbed in the lobby of the police station.
What is crazy is that PNG was a member of RAMSI, an organization that was tasked with keeping order in the Solomon Islands.
Every day most of the crimes committed are against women from the Port Moresby slum areas.
Ah, systemic poverty rears its ugly head again. This is, no doubt, related in part to the fact that 97% of the land is owned as tribal land, which seriously hampers modern economic development:
The PNG legislature has enacted laws in which a type of tenure called "customary land title" is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area);[56] alienated land is either held privately under state lease or is government land. Freehold title (also known as fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinean citizens.[57]
Only some 3% of the land of Papua New Guinea is in private hands
American indigenous peoples also face this problem: You cannot get a mortgage to build a house if the land it sits on cannot be taken by the bank if you default on your payments. This is part of why indigenous peoples are so very poor.
I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps there is some answer that preserves the tribal lands system and also alleviates the stranglehold that has on development. But I have pondered this on and off over the years and come up with no ideas on how to fix it and have not yet seen anything written up that sounds plausible.
In the US, tribes that have improved their economic status seem to mostly do so by taking advantage of the legal loophole that they are sovereign states, not subjected to state laws, and they create casinos on their lands. This provides employment as well as becomes a cash cow for paying for schools and the like.
Most people do not think casinos represent serious economic development per se. It is a way to filch some wealth from the pockets of the white men that stole their lands, but real wealth is generally rooted in industry and commerce. Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare.
> Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare.
This would apply just as much to the music industry as it does to the gambling industry. Casinos do create value; they create entertainment value. It doesn't become less valuable when a company you don't like produces it.
Hernando De Soto addresses this issue in specific in his book "Mystery of Capital". Very good book to read about the issue of property rights and economic growth.
This was a harrowing article. The described cases are surreal in how the brutal violence seems to be an everyday occurrence, something that the men just happen to do when drunk.
I knew things are bad in PNG, but I didn't really comprehend how bad it can be.
I came across this a few years ago watching an interesting documentary about surfing and Papuan culture called "Splinters". Even taking into context cultural differences, this can be considered nothing but horrific.
Cruel and unusual violence is also the case for the South African townships. The crime statistics for that country are a fiction. One judge said she never met a girl over the age of twelve who had not been raped.
The problem is Western and other more developed countries still do business with the country, inevitably enabling and persisting their systemic corruption.
[+] [-] walrus01|9 years ago|reply
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/papua-new-guinea/sa...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/22/population.dav...
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/20129289...
If you're male you're less likely to get raped by the local criminal gangs (who I presume are predominantly not interested in sexual relations with men), but just as likely to get stabbed/beaten/robbed and left in a ditch.
[+] [-] rustynails|9 years ago|reply
This article mentions twice that the majority of victims are women(about 2/3), but it purposely ignores violence against men.
My wife said to me the other day, "today's society is more sexist than we've ever seen, isn't it". Unfortunately, I couldn't agree more.
Violence against anyone should be condemned, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and the gender of the victim.
I like HN because it is less sexist than most information sources, however, the price of non-sexism is eternal vigilance. This article raises a tragic issue In an unnecessarily sexist way. My wife is right yet again.
[+] [-] coredog64|9 years ago|reply
When my colleagues and I were traveling there, we would play a game: What is the worst story in the paper during your trip?
I think the winner was a riot over cabbages that resulted in multiple fatalities. Also saw stories of people robbed in the lobby of the police station.
What is crazy is that PNG was a member of RAMSI, an organization that was tasked with keeping order in the Solomon Islands.
[+] [-] Mz|9 years ago|reply
Ah, systemic poverty rears its ugly head again. This is, no doubt, related in part to the fact that 97% of the land is owned as tribal land, which seriously hampers modern economic development:
The PNG legislature has enacted laws in which a type of tenure called "customary land title" is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area);[56] alienated land is either held privately under state lease or is government land. Freehold title (also known as fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinean citizens.[57]
Only some 3% of the land of Papua New Guinea is in private hands
American indigenous peoples also face this problem: You cannot get a mortgage to build a house if the land it sits on cannot be taken by the bank if you default on your payments. This is part of why indigenous peoples are so very poor.
I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps there is some answer that preserves the tribal lands system and also alleviates the stranglehold that has on development. But I have pondered this on and off over the years and come up with no ideas on how to fix it and have not yet seen anything written up that sounds plausible.
In the US, tribes that have improved their economic status seem to mostly do so by taking advantage of the legal loophole that they are sovereign states, not subjected to state laws, and they create casinos on their lands. This provides employment as well as becomes a cash cow for paying for schools and the like.
Most people do not think casinos represent serious economic development per se. It is a way to filch some wealth from the pockets of the white men that stole their lands, but real wealth is generally rooted in industry and commerce. Casinos are largely a means to redistribute money, not create new value. Merely redistributing money is very much decried as a bad thing when we do it in the form of welfare.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|9 years ago|reply
This would apply just as much to the music industry as it does to the gambling industry. Casinos do create value; they create entertainment value. It doesn't become less valuable when a company you don't like produces it.
[+] [-] IndianAstronaut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mz|9 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Land_tenure
[+] [-] distances|9 years ago|reply
I knew things are bad in PNG, but I didn't really comprehend how bad it can be.
[+] [-] gheeohm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] internaut|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrischen|9 years ago|reply
See ExxonMobil projects in PNG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPIUFZl7f-U
[+] [-] HillaryBriss|9 years ago|reply