By Gary Juffa* - via PNG News Facebook Page

An ominous moon has risen over the island of Papua New Guinea tonight, it casts its thick dark shadows across all of the nation, over its villages, its districts and settlements, its suburbs and streets, its ghettoes and by-ways, its highways, valleys and plains.

On this dark night, in its capital, in its dilapidated and run down general hospital’s intensive care unit, a young man lies in a comma in a hospital, his life hanging on a thread, a clot of blood pressing his brain, a father, a son, a brother and a husband, his heart beats strong, his blood flows warm in his deep slumber and his family await, anxiously, in the company of tears and fears, the young man a victim of political turmoil.

A nation sleeps restless, uncertain of tomorrow. Its leaders seemingly oblivious to the impending mayhem and chaos, destruction and bloodshed that looms evermore closer with each passing heartbeat. Ignoring the masses and ignoring discussion, dismissing possibilities of negotiation and moving forward, the island paradises leaders bring it closer to certain anarchy and conjure nightmares of an uncertain future, of foreign intervention that maybe be pre planned and awaited, of foreign forces and imposed interim arrangements, of re-colonization or chaos and abandonment.

Having never really achieved true independence, always suckling on the teat of foreign aid and constantly and continuously manipulated by clever strategic maneuvers of powerful economies that clutched the puppet strings to the nation’s political limbs with ironclad intensity, Papua New Guinea braces itself for yet another torrid journey in its young life as an independent nation. 

The next day, dawn breaks early on the island of Sankamap, also known as Bougainville, also known as Brokenville, and a small child wrapped in a dirty second hand jacket and jeans sits on the edge of a small copper- turquoise pool of water sifting his gold pan deftly in the cold and crisp chilly air the hope of yielding gold, oblivious to the poisonous chemicals that saturate the water. He sniffs and sings a lonely melody deep in the pit of what had been the world’s 3rd largest copper mine, exhausted from his effort the previous day, his older brother snatches a nap under a burnt out frame of a giant caterpillar 170 load truck, truck number 36, once driven by rebel leader Francis ONA who dared raise his voice against profit and greed one fateful day in 1988 and the Papua New Guinea government then, made a terrible mistake, a mistake paid with the blood of its own people, 20,000 of them 10 years later ending only with a ceasefire but a whole host of problems that remain unresolved to this day. The young man breaths restlessly and his family weeps anxiously, a child pans for gold and sings a dirge, a nation awakes into a nightmare, a government is making the same mistake again – ignoring its people.

*The Author is a former PNG Customs Chief and Founder of the new political party, People's Movement for Change