Tribal wars 2 nukes2/21/2023 ![]() ![]() Towns nestle in valleys hemmed tightly by steep mountain ranges. Boylanįlying into one of Papua New Guinea’s Highlands airstrips can be hair-raising. The dramatic landscape is home to almost 40% of Papua New Guinea’s population, with communities living in villages that are often remote, poorly serviced, and difficult to access. In the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, towns nestle in valleys hemmed tightly by steep mountain ranges. The result: evidence that traditional rules limiting tribal warfare are breaking down, and dark warnings that money from a boom in resource extraction is being spent on high-powered guns. But it echoed escalating violence and an erosion of the traditional limits to tribal conflict across Papua New Guinea.Ī team from the International Committee of the Red Cross spent two weeks traveling through Hela and Southern Highlands, neighboring provinces in the island nation’s Highlands region, to document the humanitarian consequences of tribal fights. The level of carnage in this Kagua District village in Southern Highlands Province was far greater than anything seen before in tribal conflict. What happened that night in November 2013 shocked Papua New Guinea and made headlines across the Pacific. By dawn, some three dozen Wombe, mostly women and children, were dead. The Wombe who managed to escape the burning structure were set upon by men with machetes. When they don’t, I sleep without eating.” “I wait for other people’s plates of food. With her village destroyed, she remains displaced, and relies entirely on the goodwill of her host community to survive. “I cannot work, walk around or eat properly.” CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / J. Helen, an elderly member of the conflict-affected Wombe clan in Southern Highlands Province, suffered severe burns after the house in which she was sheltering was bombed by an enemy tribe during a fight in 2013. As I was standing, the blanket over my head started to burn. “I threw a blanket over my head and covered myself and just stood there in the middle of the fire. Either way, the wood and bush materials quickly erupted in flame with dozens of Wombe inside. There are disputed accusations that the attackers used a grenade. We did not know we were already surrounded by our enemies.” “I woke up and felt a strange heavy feeling in the house. Sitting on the same windswept hilltop more than three years later, surrounded by incinerated homes, charred wooden pillars, and her now-homeless clansmen, she recounted the deadly attack: Helen, about 60, was one of the Wombe women hiding in the haus man that night. What happened next reflects a worrying trend in Papua New Guinea: increasingly violent tribal attacks - including the use of rape and mutilation - against targets that include women and children. After all, their presence in this male space broke tribal custom.īut then again the attackers may not have cared. Did the attackers know that Wombe women and children were inside? Perhaps not. With machetes drawn, they approached the haus man, a community building meant only for men. Three of their clansmen lay dead at Wombe hands, and they could not let the outrage go unanswered. Armed fighters slipped into Ragu, home of the Wombe, at 2 a.m. ![]() In this case, six people, who were accused of causing the death of a local politician, were captured and tortured for several weeks in an effort to force confessions. The remains of a house set alight during an attack targeting a family accused of sorcery. ![]()
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