People live in fear of police

POLICE brutality  become all too real in Papua New Guinea.
Grievous assaults, killings and wanton destruction of properties everywhere in the country are reported to be the culture of our police force.
Our people fear the police more than the com-mon criminals and view them as gun-toting gang-sters, terrorists and rebels.
In civilised countries, police do not control civilian protests with guns and assault weapons but with batons, shields, water cannons, tear gas or non-lethal electroshock weapons such as lasers.
The police are supposed to be the protectors of the people.
The police are supposed to be highly disciplined to only use reasonable force in very necessary violent situations like armed rob-beries, wars and terrorist attacks.
In PNG, we are seeing policemen walking around with high-powered assault rifles.
PNG is a very peaceful country but the police is making it look like a very violent and unsafe country like Afghanistan of the Middle East.
The barbaric and inhu-mane behaviour of the present generation of police is making the people lose confidence and security as the police force as the primary law enforce-ment agency in the country.
This is a bad signal to the foreigners who want to come into our country and invest.
I call on the O’Neill Government to introduce amendments to the Police Act to ban the police from using any guns or assault weapons in public places against civilians and where situations to do not warrant the use of guns.

Manasseh Makiba
Waigani