Papua New Guinea finds Biden’s cannibal remarks hard to swallow
- Biden last week raised the possibility that his uncle, whose plane was shot down over New Guinea in May 1944, might have been eaten by cannibals
- ‘My country does not deserve to be labelled as such’, PNG’s PM said of the US president’s insinuation, after meeting China’s foreign minister
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.
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“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labelled as such,” Marape said in the statement.
“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.”
Biden last week raised the possibility his uncle might have fallen victim to cannibals, after visiting a missing-in-action war memorial in Pennsylvania.
“Sometimes you have loose moments,” Marape said in an interview after Biden’s contentious remarks, adding that the US-PNG relationship was stronger than “one blurry moment”.
“I’ve met him on four occasions, until today, and on every occasion he’s always had warm regards for Papua New Guinea,” Marape said. “Never in those moments [has] he spoke of PNG as cannibals.”
I’ve met him on four occasions … Never in those moments [has] he spoke of PNG as cannibals
Historically, cannibalism has been documented among a small number of tribes in remote parts of PNG. But the nation has for decades tried to shed outdated tropes that paint it as a wild nation full of savagery.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.
The impact of the war remains sensitive among Pacific islanders, however.
Marape said his nation was “needlessly dragged into a conflict that was not their doing”.
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Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands remain littered with wartime human remains, plane wrecks, shipwrecks and tunnels, as well as leftover bombs which were still killing people, he said.
In a single bomb disposal expedition on the island of Bougainville in 2014, troops from Australia and the United States destroyed 16 tonnes of wartime munitions.
The US government’s own travel advisory for PNG cites unexploded ordnance as one of the main dangers in remote areas.
US defence records showed Finnegan’s courier flight was actually “forced to ditch in the ocean” off the island’s coast “for unknown reasons”.
Finnegan’s aircraft hit the water hard and three crew members failed to emerge, while one survived and was rescued by a passing barge, the official Defence POW/MIA Accounting agency said on its website.
A search the next day found “no trace” of the missing crew, the agency said, and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Finnegan died when he “crashed in the Pacific”, not over land.
Biden’s cannibalism quip comes on the back of a string of recent gaffes.
Earlier this year, Biden regaled an audience with an anecdote about meeting former German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 2021 – who at that point had been dead for four years.
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Biden has repeatedly asserted there are no problems with his memory or cognition.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
