There’s no serial killer in the Purari Delta
30 January 2011
BY BILL McGRATH
THIRTEEN BODIES found in the Purari Delta are not Purari Pawaias but people of the Eastern Highlands originating from an area below Okapa.
Perhaps they are Kukukukus from the extreme western boundary of the region occupied by the various Kukukukuk groups.
These 13 bodies, and possibly others, were apparently killed and thrown in the Lamari River or a tributary, which flows into the Subu River and then joins the Purari River just below InterOil's staging base camp on the Middle Purari River.
The bodies were discovered by the coastal Gulf people at the mouth of the Purari River, who were said to have buried them before the Police at Kerema were informed.
When the Provincial Police Commander from Kerema visited the base camp later, I happened to overhear his comments on this matter. I have no knowledge whether the District Manager at Okapa undertook a foot patrol into the killing fields to conduct a detailed and thorough investigation as would have happened in colonial times.
The entire investigation into the matter - and other discoveries of floating bodies - seems to have been shelved.
On Friday the PNG Institute of National Affaitrs was to present a public seminar by Dr Joshua Bell of the Smithsonian Institute entitled 'Serial Killer in the Purari Delta: Violence, Resource Extraction and their Networks'.
InterOil Limited is developing the Elkand Antelope gas project at Wabo, in the hinterland of Gulf.
Dear Bill - Thank you for the clarification. My use of the Police Commander's comments was meant more as a provocation to get the audience to think about the various ways these resource extraction projects, and the global demand for timber and gas/oil, are 'killing' communities and the environment in the Purari Delta, both literally and figuratively.
From what I know from working in the Delta for the last 11 years, such occurrences are far from rare on the coast. Which is just to say that the dead in the highland areas are thrown into the tributaries of the Purari and find there way down to the coast.
Posted by: Joshua | 04 February 2011 at 07:13 PM