By Rosa Koian

From Syria to Mali to Indonesia civilians are screaming for peace and justice in the face of mechanised artillery and guns, and Papua New Guinea would not turn its face away from this.

Instead last week, the Papua New Guinea government deploys soldiers made up of Papua New Guineans to make sure an international corporation, ExxonMobil, have its way in this rural community of Southern Highlands Province.

At the same time it boosted police numbers in Porgera, Enga province to keep “illegal miners” away from the gold. Barrick Gold another world class miner would not tolerate these villagers any where near its operations.

In Pomio, East New Britain Malaysia’s logging giant Rimbunan Hijau sends armed police to intimidate locals and dismantle roadblocks set up by villagers to discourage the company from harvesting more trees on their land.

This band wagon of extractive industrialisation guarded by arms has left much of the world blood stricken and it is not ashamed to press its way to the Pacific and onto Papua New Guinea. Is this the model of development Papua New Guinea wants to run with?

How can Papua New Guinea be a force for peace when there is so much bloodshed already in resource rich nations forced upon them by corporations. Surely there must be a better way of dealing with issues of importance.

From this remote community of Southern Highlands a group of people demand to be included in this world class project, the Liquified Natural Gas LNG), but off course “there are too many of them” as echoed by a BHP lawyer in the Ok Tedi versus the people case in 1994. Extractive industrialisation often cares little about the environment and demand that populations be moved often forcefully so that they can just take whatever they came to get.

In the Southern Highlands is the source of gas which will be sent down pipes across the Gulf Province to the nation’s capital in Port Moresby. That is a lot of land and sea area covered, and certainly a lot of questions needing honest responses.

Consultations with local landowners are becoming a dreaded thing by the government but could help isolate many issues and create understanding. Yet it has been handled very poorly by successive governments.

In February a village was buried in a landslide and ExxonMobil would not take responsibility for that claiming it was the work of nature. This landslide generated anger and frustrations as the cause is still to be determined. Calls for an independent study by local groups still stand while landowners have received "shut up" money of more than K2m.

Papua New Guinea has witnessed a bloody 10-year civil war in Bouganville which ended in 1999. Since 2009 miners are back and pressing the PNG government to re-open the mine. For many Bouganvilleans the scars are still fresh and Rio Tinto seems not to respect that.

From across the boarder only a few minutes flight from Ok Tedi’s open pit mine is the Freeport mine. Huge amounts of raw video footages have gone out informing the world of the injustices there but the Papua New Guinea government seems to be blind or deaf to these issues.

The deploying of soldiers into the Southern Highlands is only adding to the already high statistics of civil injustices directly related to extractive industrialisation. The band wagon is passing through and Papua New Guinea needs to pause for a moment and as it prepares to celebrate Easter maybe it is time to rethink our development path. Is a path free from violence possible? It is time to think. It is time to grab hold of a new future.