[asia-apec 1779] NZ Herald Online Story - Curfew to dampen protest fever in Papua New Guinea

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	NZ Herald, Auckland										28/06/01 - Curfew to dampen protest fever in Papua New Guinea <br>

PORT MORESBY - A nightly curfew has been imposed in the Papua New Guinea capital Port Moresby after at least three people were killed in a day of anti-reform protests.

The dusk-to-dawn curfew ordered yesterday by Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta will remain in place until July 10 to help police restore order after protests against IMF-backed economic reforms degenerated into violence on Tuesday.

Six days of peaceful student protests against IMF and World Bank-backed reforms, including the sell-off of state enterprises, erupted when police tried to disperse the crowd of hundreds of students.

A show of force yesterday by police thwarted mob plans to steal and display the bodies of the three university students.

A mob of at least 1000 gathered outside Port Moresby General Hospital amid calls to break into the morgue to recover the bodies of the two male and one female students from the University of PNG.

The mob's apparent plan was to carry the bodies to PNG's Parliament House as part of the continuing protest.

However, regular and riot police sealed key sections of the road leading from the hospital and past the Army's Murray Barracks to Parliament.

The protesters were eventually contained in front of the hospital and scattered by a police charge.

Members of the Defence Force were confined to barracks but were on alert for a possible callout.

Elsewhere, the capital was quiet as schools remained closed and people and transport stayed off the streets of looted and burned shops and stoned vehicles.

Police said they were "hoping and praying" that peace could be restored.

"The situation has calmed down in a long way, but we will have to see how the day unfolds," police commander Tom Kulunga said.

Reports from Australia yesterday that a fourth person had been shot dead could not be confirmed.

Morauta has introduced major reforms to try to rebuild the economy of the resource-rich but impoverished nation, plagued by economic and political chaos since independence from Australia in 1975.

But opposition to the reforms, based on nationalist fears of foreign investment and local job losses, has mounted since soldiers staged a 12-day mutiny in May over reports that the armed forces would be slashed.

Opposition leader Bill Skate, who is in Australia for medical treatment, called on Morauta to set up an inquiry.

"For the first time in the history of PNG's democracy, during a peaceful protest, we've lost lives and this is an extreme situation ... the Prime Minister needs to clear his name and his credibility," Skate told Australian radio.

- REUTERS
											
 

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