I know with all that's been going on with the gang, it's a lot of information. There can be a lot of confusion when it comes to information being dispersed piecemeal over a longer period of time. My co-worker, Chris, wrote up this account of how things with the Hetwara Terrorrist Group have progressed to where they're at right now. If you want to grab a cup of coffee and sit to read this, it may be informative. Or if you want to skim and just look for the points where things are hazy for you, that's cool too. We just wanted to put this out there for our friends and supporters so you have the opportunity to know better what's been going on and how you can keep praying for our friends and brothers and sisters in Mibu.
Background – Birth of Mibu Church
New Tribes Mission has been working among the Mibu people since March 2002. Originally two families comprised the church planting team which was then grown to 3 families in 2004. On average it took about 3.5 years for each of the missionaries to gain fluency in the Ma language that is predominately spoken by the people in Mibu. (Mibu language spans 5 villages some in the lower Nankina valley and others in the Pandepoowai valley, with a total population of around 450 souls.) After much anticipation, the Gospel began to be preached in Mibu in October 2005 in the Ma heart language of the Mibu people. Utilizing drama and countless culturally relevant illustrations the missionaries taught through the Bible Chronologically starting in Genesis and continuing through the rest of the Old Testament repeating major themes (God is creator owner, God is perfect, Man is sinful and in need of a savior, God continually shows He has a plan for mankind, Man cannot save himself, without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness) continually teaching the Bible as one continuous story. In January 2006 Jesus, the promised deliverer as foretold throughout the Old Testament was finally introduced to the Mibu people. By April of 2006 Christ's death of the Cross was explained and the people were shocked at the display of love this Jesus had gone through to save them, and elated when they each realized they had a personal decision to accept this offer of salvation and thus be forgiven, reconciled and adopted into Christ's family. Over 90% of the village of Mibu and many others from villages expressed a clear testimony of their sinfulness and complete dependance on Christ's sacrifice for their sins on the Cross.
Background – Church growth and Opposition
Many outreaches from Mibu church started in cooperation with the missionary team to see this same Gospel messages taught in other villages. The first outreach in 2006 began in Tariknan in the lower Nankina Valley. A few people from Tariknan themselves had been saved in Mibu earlier that year and along with some Mibu believers they, with the missionaries, began retelling the same Gospel story again starting from Genesis resulting in another church being born. Later in 2007 two more outreaches took place in Dagave & Yongem with similar results. From 2008-2015 the church now without the direct aid of Missionaries saw a tremendous opening for the Gospel among the Mina people, a language of about 800 people to the north of Mibu with successful church plants in Langgane, Titirapok, Bamat & Kookwik. In 2010 a Jerung speaking believer Ato from the Nankina valley was moved to go to the village of his birth, Dayik village, and see if there was interest in the Gospel. There was some limited interest but a large number of his relatives became enraged commanding him to stop teaching and the proceeded to run him out of the village. As he was leaving his relatives decided it wasn't enough to send him away, but to send a strong message they decided to kill him. He narrowly escaped with his life with axes and arrows barely missing him. Later in 2015, a small church was established in the village of Titirapok -- now a church was established in each of the 5 Mibu villages. With tremendous change coming into the lives of each village where the Gospel began to take root, this led to a steady increase in requests from other villages in the region asking the Mibu church to bring the Gospel to their village. One of those villages that began asking for the Gospel is Sukgek which is about 30 minutes hike from Dayik. Another believer Roy who was born in Sukgek but raised in Mibu and was bilingual in both Ma and Jerung languages decided to answer the repeated requests and bring the Gospel to the village of his birth. (Roy being compulsive didn't put together a teaching team but decided he could run the show all on his own.) A number of folks who remembered Ato's attempt in Dayik village decided to attend Roy's teaching-- both gospel curious and opposition representatives alike. The teaching went well for the first couple of months but increasingly the opposition began to get louder. Roy too had challenging issues in his marriage which ultimately led him to abandon the teaching before even getting into the New Testament. This led to a split among the folks in Sukgek village resulting in several families eventually moving to Mibu so they could hear the rest of the story and most of these would themselves become believers. By 2017 with Mina churches were now pursuing an exciting open door into the Ngaing language to their north, and the Mibu church felt that they too were ready to follow-up on another invitation to share the Gospel. However, because of the split in Sukgek village they felt it was likely a closed door, and that they could really only reach those who were open and thus were coming to Mibu voluntarily. Instead they decided to pursue another exciting open door, this time directly to the East in Gwarawon village. Gwarawon village, at about 1,200 souls, is the largest village in the entire Nankina valley. The pastor of the Four Square Church in Gwarawon, Moses, has just attended another outreach that was being conducted by the Mibu church in Tok Pisin and had gotten saved through the hearing of the Gospel (yes a pastor getting saved). From that point on, he and his family increasingly begged for the Mibu church to send teachers and begin an outreach. By 2018 around 100 people in Gwarawon became believers and thus the twelfth outreach from the Mibu church was successful. The much more established Lutheran church of Gwarawon however was not as welcoming especially seeing some of their members, even church leaders becoming saved during the outreach in their village. This resulted in physical attacks against Moses including literally an attempted public crucifixion. Nevertheless, invitations asking for the Mibu church to bring the Gospel to yet further and further villages continue to arrive either by letter or by delegation.
A Terrorist Movement is Born – HWTG (Head Water Terrorist Group)
The head of the Lutheran Church for the Nankina valley is notably the village of Sevan a couple hours hike East of Gwarawon. Notoriously though the village has also been plagued by crime, particularly murders much over land and sorcery accusations etc. In 2019, seeking to make a name for themselves, a group of brothers from the village of Dayik and some of their friends traveled to Sevan and proceed to murder two of the most notorious bad dudes in the village of Sevan over the usual land & sorcery accusation premises. Starting around that same year this same family then attacked their own village of Dayik practicing what would become a well-used strategy of intimidation, fear, demands for money, pigs and young girls to be forced into marriage with the premise of some kind of injustice needing to be set right and therefore justifying increasingly brutal and vicious acts. By 2020 the entire the village center of Dayik would be completely wiped out including the Lutheran church; the only remaining houses would be in outlying hamlets belonging people who began calling themselves the Hetwara gang. Family and community members who weren't willing to join the group increasingly fled the area, some resettling in Sukgek, Mibu and many other areas hoping to restart their lives. One particular family, Gumuni, was one such family who relocated to Mibu. Gumuni had several children and the HWTG demanded Gumuni give his eldest his daughter to be forced into marriage with a Gang Member or to be sold off into an arranged marriage to another group so the HWTG could "share" in the bride price. Gumuni refused, arguing that his daughter was enrolled in school and that it would be too distracting to her studies to be burdened with a marriage at this point in time. The HWTG one day in 2020 had had enough of Gumuni's excuses and they decided to take the girl by force. The family began to flee into the mountains, as the HWTG gained ground, Gumuni's 5-year-old son decided to put up a fight upon seeing his older sister was about to be captured. He was no match and was summarily hacked up and thrown down into a ravine where he died, his self-sacrifice however did result in the rest of the family escaping. They would eventually find a new home in Mibu and despite all the pain and trauma they readily saw their need for a savior through the Gospel witness of the Mibus and became believers.
HWTG Subjugates Nankina Valley
In late November 2021 HWTG decides to move their operations into overdrive: first with a major attack on the decentralized village of Yopbo in the center of the Nankina valley. The attack is coordinated with young boys, adult men and even wives and young girls all playing a role. First a wave of young boys come into the village and begin harassing villagers, destroying crops, threatening animals and threatening to burn homes unprovoked. When the villagers begin to drive the young boys off in come red-bandana clad men enraged at the "ill treatment of our young boys." Immediately, much of the far-flung village of Yobo begin flight. Elderly and those who don't leave begin to receive demands for money, for animals, their homes and very lives are threatened if payment is refused. As these demands are being given young boys from the gang begin to pursue villagers who have fled, particularly targeting young girls at the direction of the men of the gang. Some gang members stay in the village while others begin to follow the young boys who have picked up on the trail of the fleeing girls with the express intent on raping and forcing them into marriage. This continues for a couple of days. With the premise of land disputes and sorcery accusations given as justifications for their actions, the HWTG begins to exact payment from house after house. Shockingly once payment is made HWTG women are turned loose to loot the houses of those who complied in giving payment and then burn those very same houses. By the time the left Yopbo village, 13 houses (over half the village) would be burned and many young girls of marriageable age would be kidnapped. In the midst of the attack, HWTG recruited dozens of young boys and men from Yopbo village to join the gang with the promise of getting rich quickly. A few survivors of the attack eventually made it to safety out of the area including a few seeking medical attention in Mibu. Threats from HWTG quickly spread to many other villages including Gwarawon, Miok, Mibu, Tariknan, Dagave, Taip, Mambit, Tupibo and many more. Flush with cash, pigs, girls, small solar power lighting systems, clothing, pots and pans and other valuable household items HWTG quickly brought the spoils back to their homes in Dayik and planned for their next attack. About a week later with additionally recruited members HWTG conducted simultaneous attacks in Tariknan and Gwarawon. Tariknan was completely over run. Gwarawon being such a large community required a different strategy. Earlier in the year HWTG had kidnapped a young girl from a family in Gwarawon and forced her into marriage. Sometime shortly afterwards, representatives of the HWTG broughy an insultingly small bride price to pay the father for the girl. The father reacted with hostility saying the price was too small and that he would not tolerate such disrespectful behavior, concluding the encounter by showing part of his machete blade to them. So then before the attack representatives of the HWTG went to village leadership explaining the beef that they wanted to settle with the father and his family. Leadership saw the limited scope of the issue and proceeded to put word out to the entire community not to get involved in the upcoming conflict since it was just a family-to-family affair. So with nearly the entire village looking on HWTG proceeded to attack every family member related of the girl they had abducted, demanding payment and then looting and burning down houses after concessions were made just to make clear the extent of their cruelty (as a down payment of fear to further coerce compliance later). In all, 16 houses in Gwarawon were burned down, many injuries and again raping and kidnapping. A week later much of the same atrocities were carried out in Mibu. This time however the premise was that Mibu was harboring Gumuni and his family who didn't give HWTG his eldest daughter. With a group now numbering close to 100 people HWTG attacked Mibu at 2:00AM and completely surprised everyone in their houses. Three girls including Gumuni's daughter were raped and kidnapped. House after house HWTG made demands for payment, however miraculously the entire time the HWTG was in control of Mibu it was raining and so they were unable to burn down a single house. After Mibu, HWTG would go on to completely desolate the village of Mambit burning every single house. Systematically HWTG would target every significant village in the Nankina valley and several villages like Tariknan would be targeted repeatedly until every villager had either resettled elsewhere or joined HWTG.
Police Response
Community and missionary agency requests for police aid began in earnest after the attack in Yopbo village but was always answered with, "We are so ready to go in and respond, find us the funding and we'll take care of this problem." After the attack in Mibu however NTM as a mission agreed we needed to help jump-start PNG Government response. Police from Lae and Madang were mobilized into Mibu. A helicopter from Mt. Hagen was contracted to support police operations with the promise of additional government funding to see a full police operation through to completion. Police however never got additional funding so after a touch down in for a couple hours in Tariknan and a return to Mibu, mission sponsored contract funding was completed. A HWTG man of around 20 years old was sent by the group to go and mix with the police to see what their plans were. He was actually identified as one of the rapists while he was chatting with a couple police officers. After a brief interrogation he confessed to the crime and was summarily executed (Papua New Guinea law in 2021 states that aggravated rape carries the death penalty, this law was changed one month later by act of parliament to 30 years in prison instead). Two days later the cache of food and supplies the police had been eaten up and funding was quickly found to pay for one more day of helicopter operation, only this time it was simply to evacuate them out of the area and back to Lae and Madang. Hoping to wrap things up before Papua New Guinea elections in June, at the end of April 2022 police would be sent in again, again to spend a significant time in Mibu waiting for additional operational funding. A month later as their food supplies are about to run out, 10 of the 16 police officers in Mibu decide to proceed with law enforcement actions against the HWTG without helicopter support but instead on foot heading directly for Dayik village. This would end in the unfortunate injury of the lead officer and humiliation of the entire squad. Hiking in the area is treacherous even for local folks let alone urban dwelling police officers. During the hike the lead officer took a fall and ended up with a tree limb puncturing his knee, a severe injury. His team bring him to a house close to Sukgek village and send word that they need an evacuation for the injured officer. It ends up they are in the home of a family in support of HWTG and the next day the heli arrives to evac the injured office and one of his colleagues. The rest of the group is so beat up from the trail that they stay in the house for several days trying to recuperate. One of those nights the HWTG attacks around midnight. The HWTG surrounded the house and began making lots of noise to provoke the police inside. The Mibu guys accompanying the police work frantically to get the police to wake but they are just too tired to recognize the situation and insist on sleeping. Eventually one of the officers awakens and manages to get the others up too, from there they exit the house and begin opening fire. Humiliatingly, the HWTG had anticipated police firearms might be present and had lashed a number of flashlights to sticks pointed at the house. The police target the flashlights while gang members shoot arrows from other directions towards the house. With very little ammo left some shots start heading to actual gang members causing the entire group to retreat with a mixture of fear and exhilaration at "wining the fight against the police!" The police the next morning collect a few items left behind by the HWTG including several red headbands but other than that had nothing to show for the unfortunate adventure. Later Mibu would get word that the house the police stayed in would be burned and the owner attacked for hosting the police. Before leaving Mibu at the end of May the police did deputize villagers from many villages in the Nankina valley as well as Mibu naming them "resistance groups" and encouraging them to go after the HWTG since the police themselves are much more limited in mobility etc. Police even armed a number of the resistance groups with various guns and ammo giving them the commission to kill terrorist members if and whenever they had opportunity.
Gwarawon falls
As August 2022 is coming to a close, representatives from HWTG arrived in Gwarawon indicating that because the fighting was causing mounting casualties on both sides it was time for the HWTG themselves to surrender and begin negotiating a peace to end the conflict. Gwarawon, given its large population actually was home to two resistance groups which makes this next part of the story difficult to bear. With many months of conflict, a desire for peace on the part of the Gwarawon villagers was sincere and gave way to widespread optimism over the upcoming surrender and peace negotiations. What would occur however was the very opposite of surrender and peace. Instead, as Gwarawon villagers were preparing peace decorations the HWTG attacked with a group some say over 200 people including 60 adult men and many others being women and children making up the looting force (many of these women themselves being kidnapped and now under threat are forced to loot the homes of new victims). Some would put up a fight, some are killed. But ultimately it's clear the village is lost and all who can flee for their lives. Soon what starts as a trickle ends up being a flood of refugees running from Gwarawon and surrounding communities, many end up spending weeks, some months, hiding and starving in the jungle trying to evade capture and death. Sadly, multiple reports of elderly starving to death quickly make their way to Mibu as well. In all-- just over 4,000 souls have been identified as being displaced by the HWTG. Eventually over 1,000 of these souls would hike over twelve hours to seek refuge in Mibu village.
God Sends an Earthquake
With starvation starting to have a tangible impact on the entire area, discussions begin among NTM, SIL & MAF as to how to assist with the growing humanitarian crisis if possible in any way. Due to security concerns, flying into Mibu with fixed-wing aircraft had been considered a high-risk no-go with preference to utilizing helicopter instead. Mission Helicopter availability is however undergoing unprecedented scarcity due to a number of factors. For example, NTMA could over the next 3 months only spare 2 flights and given the size of aircraft only provide fairly small material help anyway. MAF then reviewed the situation and decided that with a number of increased security precautions (no women pilots, walkie-talkie teams standing by on all the approaches to the airstrip etc) fixed wing flights could be resumed by the end of September. Shortly after this however, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake with the epicenter not too far from Mibu rocks Papua New Guinea. Counter-intuitively this devastating event that caused several injuries in Mibu and deaths in many other places throughout the country had the effect of immediately opening the airstrip in Mibu to send a flood of supplies in. With malaria for the first time ever being transmitted locally the entire population was dealing with significant health crisis compounded by many other diseases now being spread communicably as people are packed into fewer and fewer homes. (The earthquake exacerbated this by causing a number of homes to no longer be habitable). With so many refugees now living in Mibu, roughly 220 kgs of rice can easily be consumed a day along with continued need for batteries for flashlights for security teams and medicine as well, the needs are overwhelming for us missionaries to fathom-- to say nothing of the difficulties the Mibu people themselves are facing hosting these many guests. Nevertheless, with the vigilant and armed security teams keeping watch over the community 24 hours a day aided with walkie-talkies and coffee as well, the refugees have felt a degree of safety and the vast majority of them have expressed excitement over being in Mibu and having opportunity to hear God's Word taught to them every day in Tok Pisin. Again, this is being taught chronologically starting in Genesis which started October 31st and continues 5 days a week for 3 solid hours.
A Setback That Sounded Like a Gunshot
Tuesday November 15, another big day of flying in medical, food and security supplies to Mibu. Leading up to this day Jack Linguan, the owner of a trade store on the coast North of Mibu in Saidor had been on many occasions of material help with food and clothing to the Mibu people and other refugees. As a thank you to him for his selflessness (all the more remarkable because he's not a believer) he was invited to fly into Mibu for just a short turnaround trip giving the Mibus an opportunity to say thanks and present him with some gifts (lael of flowers, a bow with a set of arrows) while at the same time also flying in additional rice from his store up to Mibu from Saidor etc. Upon second landing however a groove in the airstrip became too deep and caused a bolt on the landing gear to snap thus closing the airstrip for fixed-wing aircraft. Already in the two weeks since this incident the humanitarian food supplies have been used up, malaria is again on the rise without any medication to tamp it back down, battery supplies for security teams are running low and despite all of these discouraging metrics one thing is on the rise: the refugees. And the Mibus have not wavered in their desire to see God's word continue to be taught. The Mibus do not have food and medicine for themselves or the refugees, all they have is God's Word and He is sustaining them! Daily now many have been out on the airstrip working to repair it with the hope that this too will be a way to bring in relief supplies yet again. These are serious times, overwhelming to say the least. How will God make His name famous yet again we do not know, but we know expectantly who He is and that He is able!
Thank you all for your continued prayers and support!
