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Global AIDS - Papua New GuineaA Day of Shame For All of Us - ' Viewpoint', Courier-Post. Pt. Moresby 28 October, 2004 ONE of the key distinguishing marks of a human being is its care for the young and its concern to give a decent burial for its dead. In Papua New Guinea's Melanesian society with strong ethnic and tribal ties, a dead body is not just the property and responsibility of the immediate parents but of the extended family. Yesterday should have been declared a day of mourning of PNG's loss. The loss of life and vitality of bright-eyed babies who would have brought joy to many childless couples. The loss of potentially productive Papua New Guineans. This loss is more pronounced because many of the innocent babies were left abandoned by their mother who gave birth to them, by their father in most cases who abandoned the mother with his seed, by the relatives who obviously knew this baby was in her mother's womb. It took a complete stranger - Tessie Soi and the Friends Foundation - to do the decent thing and bury these little babies. In all PNG cultures that's an offence that can only be washed away by killing of pigs - and a huge feast with payouts of shell money. Failing that, land would have to be given to Ms Soi and the Foundation of Friends - for handling bodies that are not theirs. Yesterday's burial was the second mass burial of abandoned babies at the Port Moresby morgue. Earlier 24 of these abandoned dead babies were buried. Yesterday, 17 others were laid to rest at the Bomana Cemetery. Those two together with the brutal killing of another baby in Hagen and the dire statistics that 15,000 PNG children die before reaching their fifth birthday is the worst and most shameful indictment against us. This indictment is not something we can blame away on history, influx in capitalistic lifestyle or family rejection. It is a total denial of our Melanesian-ness, of our human-ness, of all that society stands for. Shame on us! Shame on Papua New Guinea! |