PNG national museum to ensure carvings ruling enforced

Transcript

A Papua New Guinea national court ruling against the speaker of parliament's removal of cultural carvings and a totem pole from the national parliament has been described as a victory for common sense.

The speaker, Theo Zurenuoc, had claimed that the cultural adornments were unholy and that their removal was a purification and part of the "reformation" of parliament undertaken under his guidance.

The court concluded the removed objects were protected under the National Cultural Property Act.

The director of PNG's national museum Andrew Moutu described the case as being a good test of legislation that hadn't been exercised in fifty years.

A plaintiff in the case, Dr Moutu told Johnny Blades the removal of the items was a deplorable attack on PNG culture.

ANDREW MOUTU: I’m glad that the case has come out this way. It’s a victory for common sense, and it’s a victory for all of Papua New Guinea. And we are glad that this has set an important precedent for cases to be considered in future.

JOHNNY BLADES: Can I just recap again; the Speaker, he was saying that these faces, these (carved) heads on the parliament, that they were evil. What does he base that on?

AM: It’s based on not anything factual, but completely self-imposed views about what made them evil, or unholy or all those kinds of things. We don’t know where it came from. The heads were stylized, anthropomorphic representations of faces. There were several parts of the parliament that were designated to come under the knife. One of them was the lintel (which the carved heads were displayed on) that was the first one to go. Another one was the totem pole in the grand hall – that came down by about five metres. They chopped it down by five metres by the time the prime minister intervened and brought an end to this… mutilation that was going on.

JB: That’s how a lot of people saw it, that it was mutilating Papua New Guinea culture and heritage.

AM: It is, it is. There were a lot of factual errors. They were not particularly informed. They do not know the history of the parliament, and of how all these cultural decorations came about. What the spirit or intentions are behind these decorations that sort of adorn and embrace the process of the parliament. And they took it for granted and they basically formed an opinion that they were instances of evil representations that needed to be removed and so on. Ill-informed and ill-conceived.

JB: With the lintel, will that be returned to the parliament, will that be put back up on the front?

AM: That’s according to the court orders. According to the court orders, the speaker has six months to replace and restore those parts of the building that have been destroyed or removed.

JB: Do you think the speaker will be able to get his beliefs in order to be able to do that?

AM: The museum will enforce this court order and see that it is brought to a full conclusion, it’s fully concluded.

JB: You mean, if you don’t see any action, you’ll go back to court?

AM: Yeah, basically that’s what we will do.