VIOLENCE against women has been at the forefront of media reporting for the past month.
And the public is aware of the overwhelming lack of reaction on the part of the Members of Parliament.
A hastily organised petition presented to the House by the one woman Member was given short shrift.
It was handled in the dismissive manner of ministers responding during question time, who, when faced with an indefensible situation, advise questioning Members to “put it on the notice paper”.
In other words, like the findings of the members of the Gun Committee, whose recommendations also echoed the voice of the people, nothing was done and nothing is likely to be done in the foreseeable future.
Both the report of the Gun Committee and the violence against women petition are viewed with contempt by too many males cemented into positions of authority.
The past month has also seen many other violent incidents.
One example was our report yesterday of the death of a senior magistrate, allegedly at the hands of attackers.
Many of these other reports have involved men, both as aggressors and as victims.
Perhaps it’s time we looked at the whole of our society, for we appear to have become a nation mired in violence.
This is evident not only in the widely reported assaults, rapes and murders that appear in the media, but in an attitude of arrogance and belligerence that is fast becoming the norm for social intercourse.
Verbal exchanges between strangers today are initially guarded, and are likely to veer into confrontation at the slightest pretence.
That pretence is often the tribal ethnicity of the other person.
Sadly, PNG faces the real possibility of breaking down into a series of warring tribes.
The origin of another person is the over-riding determinant of any contact between two people, and suspicion is the initial emotion experienced
by those belonging to two groups that come from different areas.
This then is the issue of national violence in an increasingly aggressive society.
The National believes that one answer to this impasse may be for the nation to address the whole issue of violence – violence, aggression and confrontation, verbal and physical and mental violence, violence against the youngest children and the oldest people in our society, violence against men and women.
It may be that broadening the scope of the campaign against violence could bind most of the community into a force capable of sharply reducing violent incidents and behaviour.
Many women acknowledge that they as a gender are
unlikely to succeed in stamping out domestic violence in the face of a male dominated society steeped in the convenient idea that men are born rulers.
But if the men were to be involved with the women in an anti-violence campaign, it may be that real progress could be made.
There is still a macho approach to violence in PNG that sees some kind of virtue in losing an arm or a leg or an ear in the name of an all-male tribal or personal confrontation.
Far from being a badge of courage, these injuries are a condemnation of those upon whom they have been inflicted. They are the product of a violent society.
Do we want our teenagers to grow up in a country that offers them a substantial chance of being crippled or losing a limb or becoming mentally disturbed or the victim of murder, all in the name of “manliness?”
It seems to us that the government that accepts the responsibility for stamping out any and every kind of violence is the one that will bring real peace and prosperity to our country.
Bring our men and women and youths, our churches and all those committed to national justice together in a campaign to address this issue.
Other nations in adjoining regions have done so.
Walk the streets of their cities and you will not be attacked.
Their citizens close their front doors and know that they will not be invaded.
They encourage their children to walk to school secure in the knowledge that they will not be molested along the way.
Violence in all its forms has no place in PNG.