WHERE IS THE OFFICIAL REPORT ON WHAT HAPPENED AT UNITECH DURING JUNE 2016?

Supposedly the Lae police were investigating.   This is a matter of high public interest.  A true PNG patriot has sent us their account of what happened at Unitech.  We are publishing it because all reports we have received is that the police and Unitech officials show no indication of releasing the report, I will lay out what happened as an eye witness to the events.   It would be good if a UPNG student eyewitness who recorded the events might also come forward we are tired of getting indications that UPNG students don’t know how to report on events and submit them to the wider audience.  UPNG communication to the public during their boycott was irregular and not effective in building support. This is your chance to at least explain things to the people of PNG in the same way as the Unitech student below has done.  

At the end of this account there is brief commentary from PNG Blogs.   

EYEWITNESS TO THE EVENTS AT UNITECH

To begin I shall go back to the very beginning on what was transipiring on Unitech Campus before the Boycott started.

Monday 2nd May
UPNG Students begin boycott of class. On Unitech campus it was business as usual. However since UPNG was boycotting on a National Issue, students felt that they should also follow suit to throw more weight behind their UPNG counterparts. Students discussed this in small groups whenever the topic arose and waited for the Unitech SRC to address them. The Unitech SRC however was silent on the UPNG issue. Rumors were already circulating that the SRC President had been bribed to not join UPNG. Students however would not be silenced and discussed the issue in closed groups that if the rumors were indeed true, they would go through the Unitech Constitution to look for a way in which the SRC President could be sidelined and an acting President who followed the student body's interest be temporary put in place.

Wedensday 4th May.
A meeting between the SRC and Student Provincial Leaders and Student Department Association Leaders was called at lunch time at Unitech Union Hall with the agenda being whether Unitech would follow UPNG.

Friday 6th May 11am
Forum called at Unitech. Outcome was that students agreed to support UPNG and also boycott classes.

Monday 9th May
UPNG on 2nd Week of boycott and Unitech began our boycott.

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Monday 6th June
Classes was to resume today as announced by Unitech Admin. Students however continued with the boycott.

Wednesday 8th June
Students at UPNG Waigani campus were shot by Police.

Thursday 9th June
Unitech SRC President condemned UPNG shooting and announces Unitech will continue to boycott classes. Contributions are also asked to help UPNG students.

Friday 10th June
Unitech admin call for resumption of classes and put up notices that classes are to resume on Tuesday 14th June.

Monday 13th June
Unitech Forum. Students have noticed during the boycott that the SRC President has seemed to have a lot of money to spend (whether he was bribed or not is yet to be proven) and question him about it. The SRC President ignores the students calls for transparency and announces classes to resume the next day. The student body does not agree with this sudden U-turn contradicting his statement only 4 days prior, and began to boo at him. The Southern Highlands students reacted by pulling out bushknifes which they had concealed and brought to the forum. A high powerd rifle is also displayed. The SRC Female President appeals for calm and questions why weapons were brought to the Forum. She states that Unitech is a Educational Institution and not a village setting and weapons should not be brought to and such 'ples-type' mentality is not acceptable. This angers the Southern Highlands students who rush to attack her and the student body and staff present at the forum. The Engan students are the closest to her and to react quickly to rush to the SRC Female President’s aid and surround her.  They take her away which resulted in the wounding of an Engan Student. The Southern Highlands students regroup up at the Village Dormitories, build bonfires and sing until daybreak awaiting Engan retaliation.

Tuesday 14th June 6am
Unitech Vice Chancellor Albert Schram walks into the Southern Highlands camp and asks for a reconciliation ceremony to be conducted with the Engans in the presence of Student Leaders from other Provincial Groups. An attempted reconciliation is held however Engans demand that the individual who injured the Engan student must be handed over by the Southern Highlanders to the Police and they shall await the outcome of the injured student before any reconciliation talks can be held. The attempted reconciliation ends in failure and instead of handing over the suspect, the Southern Highlands students leave campus for their home province. Other highlands student groups also leave campus during the course of the week to continue with awareness in their respective provinces.

Friday 17th June
Unitech admin announces resumption of classes on Monday 20th June. A curfew is put into place from the hours of 10pm to 6am and students are urged to carry student id at all time. Police are also called in to support the work of Uniforce, and protect state property amid calls of not wanting a repeat of UPNG in case students interpret the move as a supression of their democratic rights. Unitech Admin requests only 20 Police Personal on campus and for Police not to display firearms.

Monday 20th June
Its has been a week since the attack by Southern Highlands students at the Unitech Forum.   Since the attack the SRC President has also disappeared. Rumors are that he has gone back to his home province or he is in somewhere in Lae hiding. His exact whereabouts are unknown. Unitech Admin appeals to student body to resume classes and save Academic year. Departments are open, lecture halls are open but no students are attending classes. Despite Police presence, Unitech looks quiet, empty and deserted. Students are mostly in their dorms and move around only rarely.

Tuesday 21st to Thursday 23rd June.

Unitech Admin continue to appeal to students to attend classes. Students however are beginning to get restless. With the absence of the SCR President the student body is confused on whether to maintain the boycott or resume classes. The SRC is also unsure whether they have the authority to renounce the decision of the President to resume class and continue the boycott. If the SRC President was indeed bribed to dissolve the boycott, his absence was more effective in creating confusion and anxiety amongst students.

Friday 24th June
Students resume classes. Not all students resume classes but only a handful. For the Admin it is however a breakthrough and classes are expected to be in full swing on Monday. Word is spreading around the student body that indeed the boycott has ended and class resumption will being on Monday 27th June and exams to be scheduled to begin 1 week later on Monday July 4th. Exams however are to only cover lessons from Week 1 to Week 11 (Boycott Officially Began in Week 12) and no new assessment items were to be given and all outstanding assessment to be submitted by Friday 1st July.  Later at dinnertime a few Admin Officers appear in the Mess and announce to students unofficially that if students adhere to the Admins call to resume classes on Monday 27th June, the Admin may postpone the exams by a week or two.  Southern Highlands students are also seen to be arriving back on campus.

Saturday 25th June
Due to an electrical fault on campus, the Academic Buildings and Student Dormitories are plagued in darkness. Also because of the heavy rain most students are inside their dormitories. There is random movement but mostly just students going to see their friends and course mates or looking for betelnut, smoke, flex cards,etc. Under the cover of darkness and rain a group of Engans (At this point we can only speculate if they were students or outsiders) are also moving about in what has been said to be a targeted attack (This also we can neither deny nor confirm at this time). Since most of the dormitories face inward towards their own courtyards, it is quite possible to move around unseen. Given the blackout and heavy rain, visibility at the time outside would have been quite poor. I can not state exactly how the Engans found him however according to most sources he was also wondering outside apparently looking for flex or buai/smoke when he ran into the Engans who gave chase to him. He was chased from E-block all the way to C-block where one of his attackers drew close enough to him to slash one of his ankles with a bushknife in which he fell to the ground. As he fell he screamed for help however the group that was upon him also began to also scream and shout and chant their battle cries so that his cries of help could not be heard while they began slashing him repeatedly from his legs to his head until he stopped moving. From about 10m away we stood in horror watching however, what could we do? Those men were armed which bushknifes and any attempt made to help or stop them might also cost us our lives so we stood and watched in silence.

After all movement had stopped they left his body and fled from the scene. Southern Highlands students came and took their fallen wantok and rushed him away for treatment as he was barely alive. We knew that the Southern Highlands students would seek retribution so we fled the scene not wanting to be mistaken in the dark for an Engan. What happened over the course of the next few hours was chaos. It was a warzone and terror unimaginable. The exact time the buildings were set on fire I can’t be sure but during that time the Southern Highlands students mobilized to hunt down Engan students. The Engan students however were nowhere to be found and the Southern Highlands students then directed their anger against us, the entire student body with accusations that we were concealing them. They ran from dorm to dorm hunting us all down and everyone ran in panic. Even hiding in our own rooms was seen as suicidal as Souths students broke open dormitory doors in their search. Due to the rain and blackout it was difficult to know exactly where to run to and who exactly was running and where. It was chaotic and confusion everywhere. Police were on the scene but amidst all the confusion it would have been hard for them to tell who was who and thankfully they showed a high level of discipline and no shots were fired or else a lot of innocent students may have been injured.  When morning came mixed emotions overcame the Unitech student body. Relief that we had survived that chaotic night, fear of further attacks by the Southern Highlands students and confusion of our immediate future because of the destruction of the mass. We did not wait for any official instructions. Students began to pack up whatever they could carry and leave campus as the sun rose. For some who did not want to carry excess cargo, they took their belongings and walked over to the fence and sold their belongings to people in the Uniblock settlement and left with only a bag or two. We left with what we could, most not knowing where to go but to just go anywhere away from our beloved Unitech that we called home.

Statement by current registered Unitech Student 2016.

COMMENTARY BY PNG BLOGS

Again and again we hear certain statements repeating themselves, but particularly that the SRC president seemed unusually unhelpful at making the boycott successful, that at some point during the boycott he seemed to have a lot of money on him without giving an explanation of where it came from, and that the SHP students seemed prepared for battle when coming to a forum and brought concealed weapons from their rooms.   We believe that the father of Graham Romanong, the SHP student murdered, had it correct all along when he said that PNG leaders were to blame for his son’s death.  Whether it was William Powi, Peter O’Neill, another Southern Highlands politician, or a combination of them, the most likely explanation for the behavior and sudden wealth of the SRC President was that he was bought off by these politicians to destroy the effectiveness of the Unitech boycott.