Unity but for diversity

AS it prepared for Independence, Papua New Guinea’s neighbour Indonesia coined the expression: Unity in diversity.
Indonesia’s national motto Bhinekka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) refers to the variety in the country’s internal composition.
It has some 1,300 ethnic groups stretched throughout the archipelago.
As PNG prepared for its Independence in 1975, it borrowed its neighbour’s national motto as its own for it too was appropriate for a nation proposing to amalgamate some 1,000 fiercely independent and autonomous tribal nations under one flag and one emblem.
“Yumi bung wantaim,” went a Tok Pisin version. We gather together. And in Motu: “Raka hebou.” We walk together.
Such phrases were sufficient in the nostalgic days immediately prior to and a few years after Independence to fire the nationalistic fervour to flame.
That was the dream of uniting independent and competing tribes.
Reality when it intruded soon after Independence was anything but unifying.
It has become so that the more accurate phrase today is “unity but for diversity”.
Everywhere in cities, towns and the rural communities’ ethnic clashes are occurring daily.
Hardly a day passes without some violence flaring up.
Here and there somebody kills somebody else.
Taking a human life is as common as road kills, the bodies of animals squashed up by speeding vehicles on our highways.
Appeals have been made by some many including Prime Ministers for the violence to be arrested to no avail. Something stronger than words must be thrown into the mix for the situation to be brought under any control at all.
Police are not the solution.
Police have now become more peace mediators than law enforcers, appealing everywhere for warring parties to lay down arms and to voluntarily surrender them rather than quell the fights forcibly and arrest perpetrators.
In various instances they have joined the fray, using state issued weapons and ammunition in the cause of violence and mayhem.
The army is worse as a disciplined unit the government could call in at times of civil unrest.
Soldiers get drunk and unruly and if civilians retaliate, they get set upon by soldiers in uniform performing unauthorised “scorched earth” runs.
Warders are hopelessly outnumbered and have their hands full looking after crammed jail houses around the country operating “open door” policies.
What to do?
Take a lesson from history.
Throughout history, rulers sought to put down rebellions via total extinction of a race or via scattering of the troublemaking group to all parts of an empire, both measures extreme and brought much pain but tended to bring about the intended end to the disturbances.
In the Jewish Diaspora, Rome crushed Jewish rebellion by destroying Jerusalem and the temple and scattering Jews to all parts of the then known world.
Families were separated and sent in opposite directions.
Quite an extreme measure and not recommended for our unique situation but something similar, simpler and far more humane can break the backbone of tribalism and regionalism prevalent in PNG.
It happened to an extent in the early life of the nation.
No civil servant in PNG ought to be allowed to work in his home province.
This will have the effect of distributing some 70,000 public servants throughout PNG.
These civil servants and their children would inter-marry in the areas of their employment and spread their unique customs while assimilating those of the area they are in.
Cost to government in airfares and housing for these civil servants would be offset by increased productivity as these civil servants would have fewer distractions from “wantoks”.