Kidnapping linked to police raid in 2015

By MALUM NALU
Hela Governor Philip Undialu, says people of Angore Wellpad A and B at the PNG LNG Project disrupted operations and kidnapped a security manager last Wednesday night because of frustrations over past incidents against them.
He said this at the weekend when commenting on the incident which he strongly condemned.
“The incident at Angore is not a landowner-related issue,” Undialu told The National.
“It’s an isolated issue concerning a police raid back in 2015.
“Police at that time were searching for warlords, and in the process, torched a large number of houses and vehicles, and assaulted and arrested innocent people.”
Undialu said the issue had not been sorted out since and what happened last Wednesday night was mere frustration on the part of the people. He said the people thought that it was a joint police-ExxonMobil operation against them and had acted as such.
“They went and ransacked Wellpad A and B,” Undialu said.
“They cannot do a thing like this to a project that benefits even the landowners themselves. For people to walk into a company camp and disrupt assets and take people hostage, is something unheard of in Papua New Guinea.
“In only happens in the Middle-East or some other countries.
“We have to come down hard on the perpetrators.”
Undialu said it was unfortunate that such an incident happened only a week after another one at Tagali where road connections were cut off. I appealed to police to come down hard on the Tagali incident, and while we hadn’t done much about it, the other incident happened at Angore where people were held hostage,” he said.
“How long are we going to tolerate such behaviour?”