Journalist accused of link to beating incident
Title -- 4836 PNG: Journalist accused of link to beating incident
Date -- 8 November 2005
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- PNG Post-Courier 8/11/5
Copyright - PC
Status -- Unabridged
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EXPATS WARNED OFF
www.postcourier.com.pg/20051108/news01.htm
PORT MORESBY (Post-Courier Online/Pacific Media Watch): Expatriates allegedly behind an environmental campaign against Papua New Guinea's Ramu nickel/cobalt mine have been warned off by a key landowner leader, a front page Post-Courier story reported today.
“If I see them, they’ll really get something,’’ David Tigavu, chairman of the landowner’s association for the planned mine site said in an exclusive phone interview on Friday.
He was one of a handful of landowner leaders who interrupted a media interview in Madang Town earlier in the week and verbally attacked a Madang villager who had headed the anti-mine publicity.
The villager, Simon Warr, later claimed he was also physically assaulted and harangued by some landowner leaders in a car and later at the entrance to a mining company office.
He has laid a complaint with police.
Warr claimed he was hijacked from an interview with Madang-based journalist and journalism lecturer Kevin Pamba.
[Pamba writes a current affairs column for the rival National newspaper, owned by the Malaysian logging company Rimbunan Hijau, and teaches journalism at the private Catholic education institution, Divine Word University.]
Warr said he was forced into a car, beaten by landowners during a road trip and later at the entrance to a mining company joint venture office and then pressured in an interview in the office.
He said the journalist was present at all stages. It was alleged also that a policeman and a state lawyer were present during the mining office interview, where he was criticised by landowner lawyers for his anti-mine activities.
His supporters supplied photos of Warr, who claimed his nose was broken or severely injured and that his nose was still bleeding a day after the attack.
Tigavu said he was one of the landowners who confronted Warr and accused him of trying to delay or interfere with the planned mine.
But Tigavu denied taking part in manhandling or assaulting of Warr.
He described Warr, from the Rai Coast area of Madang Province, as “uneducated, a man who can’t even write his own name let along writing something fancy like in those advertisements’’.
Tigavu conceded in a phone interview on Friday that Warr might have been “slapped around’’, although not by himself.
He said it was however nothing compared to what could happen if “outsiders using an uneducated puppet’’ continued to work against the project.
“All the inland and coastal landowners are frustrated,’’ Tigavu said.
“If the project gets stopped, it will become worse and the expatriates will be on the receiving end of it.”
Warr was the chief signatory of a petition published in full-page advertisements recently.
The advertisement — with scores of names of villagers listed as signatories — claimed the landowners had not been given enough information about possible effects on the people and environment from the massive mining project.
A Chinese government owned company recently took up majority ownership in the project, with a minority of shares still being held by the Highlands Pacific company, Mineral Resources Development Company Ltd and landowner groups.
Tigavu said on Friday the Chinese had been upset about the anti-mine publicity and feared it might undo his own efforts over the past 26 years in trying to bring development to his people.
“This guy could have lost his life. It is as serious as that,’’ he said.
“Highlands Pacific has spent K16 million to study the environment and the tailings disposal issue. I have led landowners to the Misima mine to see what happened there and we are satisfied with the precautions being taken.
“These NGOs have nothing to offer my people.’’
PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government organisation comprising journalists, lawyers, editors and other media workers, dedicated to examining issues of ethics, accountability, censorship, media freedom and media ownership in the Pacific region. Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at the University of the South Pacific, Bushfire Media based in Sydney, Journalism Studies at the University of PNG (UPNG), the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and Community Communications Online (c2o).
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