Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said that his country does not deserve to be labelled as such after US President Joe Biden suggested that his uncle may have been eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea during World War II.
“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labelled as such. I urge President Biden to get the White House to look into cleaning up these remains of WWII so the truth about missing servicemen like Ambrose Finnegan can be put to rest,” Marape said in the statement.
Biden had “appeared to imply his uncle was eaten by cannibals after his plane was shot down over PNG during WWII”, Marape’s office said in a statement late on Sunday.
Biden spoke about his late uncle while campaigning in Pittsburgh last week. He said that his “Uncle Bosie” had flown single engine planes as reconnaissance flights during the second world war and was heavily engaged in the Pacific theatre.
The Pacific Theatre, also known as the Pacific War, refers to the theatre of operations during World War II that primarily took place in the Pacific Ocean and its surrounding regions.
Biden then went on to say that his uncle’s body was not found after his plane crashed because there were cannibals at the time in New Guinea. “He got shot down in New Guinea. They never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
The Guardian in its report cited residents of Papua New Guinea who said these statements can be deemed offensive.
The UK-based newspaper spoke to Michael Kabuni, a lecturer in political science at the University of Papua New Guinea who said that the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, the Melanesian peoples, are very proud of their heritage.
“And they would find this kind of categorisation very offensive. Not because someone says ‘oh there used to be cannibalism in PNG’ – yes, we know that, that’s a fact. But taking it out of context, and implying that your [uncle] jumps out of the plane and somehow we think it’s a good meal is unacceptable,” Kabuni was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands remain littered with wartime human remains, plane wrecks, ship wrecks and tunnels, as well as leftover bombs which were still killing people, Marape said. “Sometimes you have loose moments,” James Marape later told news agency AFP, adding that the relationship was stronger than “one blurry moment”.
Historically, cannibalism has been documented among a small number of tribes in remote parts of Papua New Guinea.
But the nation has for decades tried to shed outdated tropes that paint it as a wild nation full of savagery.
“There are much, much… deeper values in our relationship than one statement, one word, one punchline,” Marape said.
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