By GABRIEL KATUHO
UPNG Journalism Student
THE internal affairs team from the police department are investigating sex cartel and syndicate in the country.
Minister for Internal Security Peter Tsiamalili announced this in parliament on Wednesday.
He made this known in response to question raised by Member for Raicoast, Kessy Sawang on issues concerning sex syndicate involving young Papua New Guinea girls and foreign men.
“In December 2022, Post-Courier reported three Papua New Guinean victims of an alleged Asian sex cartel who turned to media after their formal complaint appears to be stalled.
According to the report, the three women were held hostage for three days in an apartment in Downtown, Port Moresby, where they were drugged and raped by various groups of local and foreign men.
The women alleged that the foreign organizers behind the sex ring have a strong network in law enforcement and have become untouchable,” the MP for Raicoast said.
“Despite new drug laws being passed, there have been increasing movement of illicit drugs within country as well as alleged report of this sex trafficking. These are issues that have been continuously reported by our media.”
“Can the minister inform this house what has happened to this case and whether there is a section in the police force that is specifically dealing with this issue of human trafficking,” Sawang asked.
In response, Minister Tsiamalili said “this is a syndicate that continues to abuse the caps within the system. And we know that for far too long, even our police have been compromised somewhat”.
“And there is a big effort by this government to start closing in those caps. One of the strategies that we have discussed within the force is the importance of NID program.
NID is very important part of our development and our security. Once we zero down and ensure that we have visibility of our citizens, we would be able to differentiate even the aliens that are taking advantage of our system.
We are taking every measure possible to clean up our system with the support of our bilateral partners and government support,” said Minister Tsiamalili
He said, it has been made aware that some of the senior team members have been involved, however, because of the sensitivity, their information will be provided when the investigation is completed.
