Ripon Rahman spent almost two decades building his life in Papua New Guinea. After arriving in the country in 2003 from Bangladesh, he married his wife, Priscilla, in 2008. In 2019, soon after moving to Port Moresby, he defied the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic to open three shops with his brother. A year later, his son was born.
It took just one day for it all to be torn down.
On 10 January, Rahman lost everything when riots ripped through Port Moresby. Shops were set on fire and citizens robbed and assaulted after police and public sector workers protested over a pay cut that officials blamed on an administrative glitch.
Events spiralled out of control after police began to strike on Wednesday morning after discovering a reduction in their pay packets. The government quickly circulated messages on social media denying that a new tax had been imposed on police and blamed the discrepancy on a computer error.
Without police however, the city “lost control” according to governor of the National Capital District, Powes Parkop.
Shops were looted and their owners attacked. The guard house at the prime minister’s office was set on fire and firefighters were reportedly threatened as they tried to do their jobs.
“We have seen unprecedented level of strife in our city, something that has never happened before in the history of our city and our country,” Parkop said in a broadcast to the city.
Across Rahman’s three shops, everything was taken. “They even got the CCTVs and the fridges and the cashier machines in the shops,” he says.
By the time order was restored, it was reported that 16 people had lost their lives across the country and a state of emergency was declared by the prime minister, James Marape, with soldiers and police patrolling the streets of the capital from Thursday.
As calls for Marape to resign grew, he issued an apology to local business owners and said that the government would look at offering tax relief measures for them “to recover some losses”.
For Rahman though, government assistance is likely to be only a drop in the ocean of the immense financial loss he has incurred.
“We didn’t insure our two shops,” he says, adding that the losses would add up to tens of thousands of dollars. “They even wanted to loot my house at the back of the shop, and I told them to just get whatever they wanted and to spare my wife and son.”
His brother, Arif, says that everything from their shops – including items in storage – were looted. A truck the brothers use to transport goods was stolen, another was simply burnt.
Arif says the looters entered his home and took clothes, utensils and even his two-year-old German shepherd dog and his cat.
In Port Moresby, police and soldiers continue to patrol the streets as the state of emergency continues. Marape has said that restrictions will be placed on movement, while alcohol is to be banned after 10pm.
An investigation will be carried out into the acts of arson and looting, but for Rahman, it will be little comfort.
“I made PNG my home … my son was born here, he is a Papua New Guinean, and I believed in this country.
“We had faith in Papua New Guinea, in its economy and its people,” he says. “But all that’s shattered, everything’s gone.”
