Papua New Guinea’s prime minister pledged on Tuesday to crack down on lawlessness in the country’s troubled highlands, saying police would be empowered to fight “fire with fire.”
Rival clans clashed over land near the country’s vast Porgera gold mine this year, killing at least 32 people and sparking a state of emergency.
Prime Minister James Marape said he would use new domestic counter-terror laws, passed last month, to quell frequent bursts of tribal violence.
“We have this anti-terrorism act that will give power to police to flush out those who engage in tribal conflicts,” Marape told AFP in an interview.
“That empowers police to go into these hotspots and deal ‘fire with fire’ so to speak. That’s our immediate response.”
The counter-terror laws, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, hand the government sweeping new powers to deploy armed police and call on the military.
Marape said he was also planning to bolster the South Pacific country’s police force from 6,000 sworn members to more than 10,000 within the next five years.
The government has in the past tried suppression, mediation, gun amnesties, and a range of other strategies to stem the violence, with little success.
The Porgera gold mine once accounted for around 10 percent of Papua New Guinea’s yearly export earnings.
However, flare-ups of tribal violence have frequently slowed production.
Highland clans have fought each other in Papua New Guinea for centuries but an influx of mercenaries and automatic weapons has inflamed the cycle of violence.