Month: September 2024

This is a weekly update about events in Porgera. Before we get started a few caveats: I’m not in Porgera and I’m only relying on my own knowledge of the valley and open sources. I am not a lawyer. I do my best to keep the dates straight but they may get a day off due to my being in a different time zone than Porgera. With that out of the way, let’s talk about what has happened since around roughly the 16th:

On the 14th the Post-Courier published a rather breathless piece entitled “People of Porgera Pleading for Their Lives”. It’s unsigned and claims that on 14 September at 5pm “warlords entered the government town in Porgera where public servants residents [sic] and burnt several houses and opened fire at the public”. Accompanying the article is a short video which they claim is taken “inside Suyan” where the narrator says that people displaced by the fighting have been sleeping outside for a week. Videos and pictures on Facebook (and in the Zarriga article mentioned below) show buildings on fire at the government station, as well as roughly 100 men marching (armed mostly with machetes) through what looks like the government station. The fighting here is described as taking place between “Sakare” (or Sakar, since Engans often don’t pronounce word-final vowels) and Tawa or Pianda Tawa.

Another video shows a man making a speech (telling his enemies to eat their mothers’ vagina, which is the worst thing you can say to someone in Porgera) surrounded by an entourage of fighters. They are equipped with a FAMAS assault rifle, shotguns, an SLR, M16s, and an SP5. I know little about these weapons, but I’m rapidly learning to identify pictures of them. These are serious firearms. I don’t think everyone involved has this much firepower, but it is a telling indication of how serious fighting is. To me (and probably you), the word ‘warlord’ means a leader who controls a territory through purely military rule. In Porgera it seems to mean a skilled, professional fighter — a difference in meaning to be aware of.

The next day the Post published a much stronger piece by Miriam Zarriga claiming that 20 people had been killed, including 2 NPL (New Porgera Limited — “the mine”) employees. According to her 5,000 people had fled the valley. Zarriga also pointed to the broader context of fighting: Maso Karipe, Porgera’s MP, passed away, leaving a gap in leadership in the valley. The 24 May landslide in Mulitaka has basically made it impossible to enter the valley. Porgera has a large population which relies on store-bought food, and the high prices created by the road closure make it difficult to get food (I’ve been told this repeatedly). It’s easy to see how Porgera had become a pressurized container ready to burst. Zarriga claims the bank is closed (I’ve confirmed this) and all government services, including the hospital at Paiam, are also closed. She described the combatants as being “two factions of illegal miners” who “fought among themselves and one face of the group killed two men from the other faction and the fight erupted from then”

On the 16th Porgera made the cover of the Post-Courier, which ran the headline “Porgera in Flames“. I think this is the 3rd time in my career that I can remember seeing this headline on the Post, sadly.

The national reported that Police Commissioner David Manning declared emergency order for Porgera. he is quoted as saying “We have 122 security personnel on the ground, including mobile squads, dog squads and Sector Response Unit as well as personnel from Papua New Guinea Defence Force”. Samson Kua, Manning’s deputy commissioner, would be deployed on the ground alongside Assistant Commissioner Joseph Tondop. I don’t know these people but Tondop had a good reputation among the people I spoke to in POM when I was there over the (boreal) summer. The additional troops to be deployed would be on top of these 122, apparently.

EmTV and others have reported that Peter Ipatas, the governor of Enga, supports an SOE for Porgera.

On the 17th the mine issued a press release confirming that two of its employees had been killed and that it would suspend operations until the 19th.

By the 18th the move to implement a SOE was advanced enough that it made the cover of the Post . The subhead claims “police will use lethal force to disarm anyone with weapons”. EmTV covered Marape’s announcement of a deployment. The National reported a “temporary by-pass for light emergency vehicles” was opened at the Mulitaka landslip. It also announced that the SOE curfew was in effect and additional police would be added to the 100 or so PNGDF “contingent already stationed in Enga”. The mine’s “asset protection unit” (securtity) was “working with state security personnel” they also reported. Overall, the national claimed that there were 2,000 local hires of the mine in the valley.

One of the best and most thoughtful sources of news about Porgera has been Benar News, which ran an intelligent piece of analysis from Michael Kabuni about the fighting in Porgera and PNG more generally. Another piece by Harlyne Joku and Stefan Armbuster provides good background reading on the mine. Joku had another piece on tribal fighting which, like Kabuni’s, focuses on the phenomenon more generally.

Another article on the 19th from Miriam Zarriga provided some details on the movement of PNG forces: Highland Mobile Square 6 was stationed in Porgera, left on the 12th, and was scheduled to return (as of the article’s posting) with Squads 7 and 8 to bring the total number of PNG forces in the valley up to 250. She estimated that the fighting had killed 30 and injured 50. According to her, Mobile Square 7 arrived in Porgera on Tuesday (the 17th, I believe).

On the 21st, Minister for Police Peter Tsiamalili Jr. confirmed that a two month National Emergency had been declared in Enga. The Minister described the fighters as “illegal squatters”. He said the National Emergency would include roadblocks where people would be searched for weapons (I have been through these in a past SOE), “improved capacity at the Mukurumanda Correctional Services facility” (a newer jail near Wabag) and Porgera police station (at Paiam, I believe), and more court services. These are important steps because often even if there are more police in Porgera, the rest of the criminal justice system does not have capacity to deal with people the police arrest.

While Porgera continues to struggle with violence, the issue of tribal fighting is working its way in to wider debates in the country about mining. The post and the National both reported on critical remarks made by Dr. Lino Tom, MP for Wabag, who argued that “rushing to open the mine before addressing Landowner Benefit Framework [sic] will inevitably lead to more problems”. When the mine reopened this year, not all of the agreements had been signed which were necessary for it to begin operation.

Specifically, the Community Development Agreement had not been finalized. This is the agreement signed by landowners which specifies what benefits they will receive from the mine (other than the equity they hold). Instead, they signed a “consent compensation agreement” to allow the mine to open while negotiations continued. Most landowner representatives are in POM at the moment negotiating this agreement. ‘Relocation’ is one of the key ‘legacy issues’ of Porgera, and a key part of this agreement might be that Porgeran landowners would be relocated outside of Porgera. Tom is suggesting that until this agreement is signed there will be an “escalation of lawlessness in this valley and more lives lost”.

On the 19th Jerry Garry pushed back on these claims. He is the managing director of the MRA (tldr: the government authority that deals with mining). Accoridng to Garry, “the fighting started between two illegal miners from Kandep and Laiagam districts respectively, over gold that they had mined illegally in the pit” and had little to do with the issue of benefits for Porgera landowners. The operation of the mine and negotiations were “processes that can run in parallel”.

On the 20th TVWan reported that in CDA negotiations, 700 million had been committed by the government to resettle Porgera landowners. It is always hard to understand what is going on in negotiations, but it may be that the exchange between Tom and Garry happened in public in order to have something happen in private in negotiations. The negotiations are still ongoing.

That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week.

For years I’ve been keeping bookmarks and links to news about Porgera for my own scholarly record. Because there is another surge in fighting again I thought it would be useful to write a short post summarizing what appears to be happening in the valley. I am in the US, and get most of my news from social media and chatting with friends online, so I am not a good source of accurate information. But hopefully I can collate some things to put together a fuller picture.

I first noticed this latest round of violence in Porgera on 10 September (all dates in US time) when social media posts started showing pictures of smoke rising above Suyan. Suyan is an area east of the government station which is home to a large fenced off campus with accommodations for mine workers called Suyan “Camp”. It was not clear if Suyan Camp or the Suyan area was on fire — if it was the camp then that would be very unusual. To the best of my knowledge (and to my surprise) most mining facilities appear to have been untouched during the years the mine was closed. I assume this was because people wanted the mine (and the revenue it brings) to return. They also didn’t want to risk angering the police and the mine as well. So if mine facilities are destroyed in this conflict, that would be a real mark of escalation.

On 11 Sep the UN Disaster Management team posted a report on fighting in Porgera (I read it on the 13th when it was posted to ASAONet). It was not much more detailed than social media postings and claimed there was fighting at Panandaka or ‘Panataka’ as they spelled it. The UN has a lot of room to improve their reports — I hope they will rise to the occasion. They claim “at least six” people died, and that “most sources report a total of ten fatalities”. It was good to have those figures.

On 13 September the Post-Courier, one of PNG’s two two newspapers, ran an article about fighting in Porgera “Porgera in state of Chaos”. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by their coverage as well, which was not spell-checked and did not attribute any of their sources. They claimed 20 people were dead in Porgera (a number circulating on FaceBook) but did not attribute it this number to any news source. According to them seven bodies have “been identified and confirmed dead”. There is a lot of room for the Post to improve its reporting as well. Even just verifying posts on socials would be great.

On September 14th social media posts showed Upper Maipangi, above Porgera Station, on fire. There are also pictures circulating of dead bodies. I have no way to verify these, especially the dead bodies. These posts are very hard to look at. But the pictures of upper Porgera station burning do appear to be upper Porgera station.

In my discussions with people, one person described the situation as “civil war”. It appears that people from clans based in Laiagam (and perhaps Kandep) are fighting local Porgerans. There has long been tension between people born and raised in Porgera and migrants from Laiagam and Kandep (areas just east of Porgera). There is a complicated story to tell here about affinal politics and in-migration, but the tldr is that long-standing tensions appears to have broken out into fighting. Sakare is the clan whose name I’ve seen listed most often as the ‘outside’ clan fighting in Porgera. But I have no way to confirm that and I don’t know much about this group.

I’ve also seen images circulating on Social Media of a letter which appears to be from James McTiernan, the general manager of NPL written on 15 Sep. It states that the mine would suspend operations for the 16th, 17th, and 18th of September. It gives workers three days of leave without pay to sort themselves out. If workers stay on site they will be paid during this period. The document looks pretty legit to me.

There is also a document circulating dated 16 Sep entitled “EMERGENCY ORDERS FOR PORGERA” and signed by Samson Kua announcing a curfew in Porgera that will run from 5pm to 7am every day. It says that vehicles will be searched and weapons will be confiscated. It looks like a real document to me as well.

There is a very good article on this new SoE by Harry Pearl and Harlyne Joku at Benar News entitled “PNG authorizes lethal force to quell deadly violence near Porgera mine: Police declared a state of emergency after fighting between illegal miners and local landowners”. Joku’s reporting is consistently good.

NPL hasn’t posted any press releases about this on their website yet. A lot of media sites (like the Post and EmTV) have been focused on independence day celebrations. We’ll see if they turn to Porgera now that independence weekend is over. It is a depressing way to spend independence weekend. This violence in Porgera is terrible.