We allow crime into our midst

A BRAVE young teacher at an international school in Port Moresby was brutally assaulted and raped many years back now.
She had been wed for just a month.
Returning from her native Australia where she had received medical treatment, the brave woman fought for justice alone and identified all her attackers, packing them all to jail.
Then she went to a journalist and recounted her ordeal, ending the interview with these comments: “99 per cent of Papua New Guineans are very good people.
Only 1 per cent of them are evil.
The tragedy is that the 99 per cent allow themselves to be terrorised by the one per cent.”
And there you have it, the biggest truth behind PNG’s high crime.
There is another more recent story of another brave woman.
She had been undergoing sexual harassment for some time in her work place.
The perpetrator was her superior.
She was not alone in this.
This was a serial harasser and most women were subjected to the treatment in this particular work place.
Eventually our brave soul took the matter to court but many of those other women did not join a fight and others actually joined the side of the harasser.
The case was won and a few of those who went against the action benefited from the victory by promotions in their various positions.
There is that lesson again: Do not be a bystander or avert your eyes to crime, whatever its form.
How many times do Papua New Guineans stand by while a crime is committed right before their eyes?
A Goroka young man heard the plaintive cry of a young woman outside his home one night and rushed to rescue her from her attackers who were in the process of sexually assaulting her.
He completed the rescue at much cost to himself and he landed in hospital.
Hearing about this, Sir Julius Chan had the young man flown to Port Moresby and he was rewarded and recognised for this bravery.
A young Bougainvillean saw two drunks harassing a fellow Buka woman across the Waigani bus stop in Port Moresby, well within eye and earshot of officers at the police station there.
The bus stop was crowded with onlookers who chose to be on-lookers that day as usual.
The young Bougainvillean lad took it upon himself to advise the drunks to kindly leave the young woman alone, that she could be their sister, that she was not minding their business.
The first drunk turned on him and asked him what business he had with the girl and said something else too vulgar to repeat.
The Bougainvillean lad advanced two steps and BANG! That drunk was out for the count for the day.
He turned on the second but he fled across the bus stop, narrowly escaping being crushed to death by oncoming traffic.
The girl turned to thank her rescuer but he was long gone in the throng, his peace of mind established and his duty already performed.
Members of the crowd too had clearly had their show and went about their ways, never comprehending the powerful lesson displayed there.
The four true stories above give their own lessons more powerfully than any words we could supply.
Suffice it to say that crime exists in Papua New Guinea because the majority of us allow it.
Crime exists because we benefit from it.
Crime exists because we invite it.
Crime can be brought down by one brave soul standing against it. Think about what two or fifty or a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand could achieve if they stood together against crime.
Why, there would be no crime to speak of?