Behind the postcard beauty of Vanuatu lie tales of police brutality, human rights abuses – and witchcraft. And when a New Zealand judge turned a harsh light on some of the nation's dark secrets, he set in train a series of events that some say could end in another Pacific coup.

THERE'S A cruise ship in town, and in central Port Vila, the Australians are shopping for duty free. Icy air-conditioning chills the sweat on their big sunburnt faces as they throng around rows of Absolut vodka and towers of cigarettes.

At the nearby food market the locals – ni-Vanuatu – are buying and selling too: grotesque deep-fried fish-heads and white starchy slabs of laplap. Or they're queuing to buy calltime for their Digicel mobile phones (pidgin ad slogan: "Yu likem toktok?").

Maximum security prisoners in the hastily built 'container city'.

Just another Wednesday in Vanuatu's dusty capital on the island of Efate – the hub of a tourist-based economy that offers the lava-spitting volcano of Tanna, the wreck dives of Espiritu Santo, stunning beaches on any of the nation's 80-odd smaller islands, and a thrillingly fresh history of cannibalism and black magic.

But in bland concrete buildings scattered around this tiny town – a lawyer's office, a government ministry, the police and army HQs – other dark tales are unfolding. And New Zealand, through its often-thwarted attempts to help out a developing Pacific neighbour with a $20 million aid programme, is in deep. This nation of 250,000 people, which achieved independence from joint French and English colonial masters only in 1980, is wrestling with crises in its jails, its police and its army – crises that the most pessimistic commentators say could lead to a coup.

Others believe it could never go that far – but what is certain is that when the camouflage-clad paramilitaries of the Vanuatu Mobile Force (VMF) recaptured a prison escapee called John Bule on March 29 last year, they started something that will reverberate through Vanuatu for years.

Joshua Bong (left) and Moana Carcasses.

It was no great surprise that Bule – a convicted rapist who had been on the run for a month – ended up with broken limbs, snapped fingers and a shattered kneecap during an "interrogation" at the VMF's Port Vila barracks after his re-arrest. Beatings of escapees were routine, and heartily endorsed by ni-Vanuatu and expatriates fed up with repeat breakouts. (As one Australian-born resident put it, many were happy to see the VMF "kill the f---ing lot of them".)

Even the fact that Bule died needn't have caused a huge fuss: an ineffectual police inquiry took just a week to sweep the entire nasty affair under the carpet, without any of Bule's interrogators even being interviewed.

But then Vanuatu's Chief Justice, Vincent Lunabek, put in place something Vanuatu has almost never seen before: a full coronial inquiry. Crucially, he gave the role of coroner to New Zealander Nevin Dawson – a straight-talking Palmerston North district court judge serving a two-year appointment to Vanuatu's Supreme Court. (New Zealand has also been working to professionalise the prison system, which has long been in a woeful state – see below.)

Dawson's coronial report – an unflinching account of a brutal killing by VMF officers – was released in March, and described breaches of law, of human rights, and of the country's constitution.

As one Port Vila resident told the Sunday Star-Times, this was "the first time that someone's stood up and said, `look, you just can't beat the shit out of people"'.

The report didn't just call for a criminal investigation into Bule's death. It also revealed that senior officials, including Vanuatu's top policeman, Joshua Bong, had tried to derail the coroner's inquest, and it described attempts by VMF members to intimidate those involved in the inquiry, including a death threat against Dawson.

Dawson's report – and this is the bit that is now proving so tricky – also called into question the very existence of the 230-strong VMF. The paramilitary organisation, replete with French-made Famas semi-automatic weapons, has a record of law-breaking and unwarranted violence, and has little or no government oversight.

This, Dawson wrote bluntly, is a "recipe for political instability". He was talking, in other words, about the possibility of a coup.

FOR ANYONE unfamiliar with Vanuatu, Justice Dawson's report into the death of John Bule was startling not just for what it said about brutality and shaky institutions.

Almost as a footnote to a section on VMF lies, bluster and threats, Dawson wrote:

" ...some person or persons attempted to use `black magic' to influence the outcome of the Inquest by laying a `magic stone' outside the Inquest, apparently with the intention of making the Coroner forget the evidence he heard during the Inquest."

Magic, Dawson was learning, is very much alive in Vanuatu.

Four-fifths of ni-Vanuatu live in villages outside the nation's two towns, following traditional customs. Any sickness or premature death, a run of good or bad luck, is attributed to witchcraft. Even amid the modernity of Port Vila, it is hard to find a ni-Vanuatu who doesn't believe at least a little bit in witchcraft.

Edgar Hinte, a guide at Port Vila's Cultural Centre, says if you want magic done you go to a spirit doctor (or "kleva man" in Vanuatu's easily translated pidgin Bislama).

"If you want to marry a woman, go to a kleva. He'll give you a herb to rub on your mouth, and that will make the woman faithful to you."

The most powerful witchcraft, though, uses "magic stones" like the one that failed to make Dawson forget evidence. Hinte says they tend to be black and unusual in shape; many of the best stones come from the island of Ambrym, where the active volcano imbues them with greater potency.

You'll know a magic stone when you see one, says Hinte. "They have a strong effect. If you hold one in your hand, your hand will start to go numb."

The stones work at a distance: if you have score to settle, you might pay a kleva with a pig or some kava root, and he'll place some food on a magic stone. Soon enough, your enemy will be poisoned. The cure, naturally, is to go to another kleva. (Or, as a sceptical Port Vila resident who once visited a kleva for the hell of it, puts it: "You go and see a kleva who'll f--- around, charge you a fortune and spit something out on the floor").

A steady stream of cases involving witchcraft comes in front of the courts. Recently, a 14-year-old girl was beaten to death with rocks by family members trying to drive out a malign spirit. Two men from the island of Maewo were accused of witchcraft and reportedly chopped to pieces on the beach with an axe.

There is a political dimension, too. French-born lawyer Marie-Noelle Patterson, a naturalised ni-Vanuatu who was ombudsman in the 1990s and now leads the local chapter of human rights watchdog Transparency International, says widespread fear of witchcraft can "diminish the courage of a nation", chilling public debate about issues such as VMF brutality, or the character of a police commissioner.

"People are raised believing that if I am in my office here and you are [somewhere else], you can do something to harm me, or my children. If I believed that when I was ombudsman, I never would have done anything. I would have been too scared for my kids. That's why sometimes it's good that people like me or Dawson can utter the words that everyone thinks."

DAWSON COULD ignore the stone outside his courtroom; less easily brushed aside were the death threats. According to the coronial report, a senior VMF officer "loudly and aggressively [said] words to the effect that `we will kill the coroner"' before the inquiry began.

Some observers say Dawson was never in any serious danger, and the threat was just the idle outburst of a hothead. But whatever the real danger, the New Zealand and Vanuatu governments responded in earnest, strengthening security at the home of Dawson and his wife Jill. Rumours of a fresh threat in April led the couple to leave the country for several days while the New Zealand government completed a new security analysis.

Both governments say there are no current concerns about the Dawsons' safety, and Justice Dawson is expected to remain in Vanuatu till his contract ends later this year.

Dawson has consistently declined interviews, but he certainly looked relaxed on a recent sunny Monday morning when the Star-Times spotted him in downtown Port Vila, boarding a boat laden with scuba gear and divers. A colleague says Dawson also likes to play golf and tennis.

Recreations aside, Dawson is seen as an extremely efficient judge, managing a demanding caseload and bringing some much-needed rigour to an often slipshod system.

One ni-Vanuatu defendant who appeared before Dawson said the judge gave lawyers for both parties a hard time, pushing them to "pull their socks up... be on time, present arguments properly, talk properly, stand properly – a school-teachery kind of person".

The same scolding tone permeated Dawson's coronial report, but so far the government hasn't really pulled its socks up.

Minister of Internal Affairs Moana Carcasses, a slick-haired and charming populist who is strumming a guitar in his ministry office when the Star-Times pays a visit, is slowly putting together a commission of inquiry into Bule's death and the role of the VMF. Recommendations will be made. Action may eventually be taken.

It sounds awfully like a whitewash and a cop-out, but according to one observer, this is the Melanesian way – moving slowly to find a consensus without rocking the boat too much. More pragmatically, a commission of inquiry will protect the government from criticism that it is simply responding to a white foreigner.

Faced with the spectre of Police Commissioner Joshua Bong, and the well-armed, under-regulated VMF, Carcasses doesn't want to spark a security crisis by moving too fast (see sidebar, left). So softly-softly is how it's going to be, as a young Pacific country tries to find its own way of holding itself together.

"You know, when this nation became independent, there were maybe 15 graduates," says Carcasses. "Now we have much more. We are learning."

Vanuatu has made plenty of mistakes, says Carcasses, who is remarkably candid about that fact that police violence has long been condoned by government, and that intimidation of court witnesses is still commonplace.

But a young country, and its people, will make mistakes, and you need to give people second chances, says Carcasses, who then chooses a turn of phrase that under the circumstances seems in pretty poor taste.

Human rights activists might argue that every official who does something wrong should end up in jail, says Carcasses, "but there is not enough room in jail".

Who is Joshua Bong – and could he lead a coup?

If Vanuatu has a man who might conceivably take the role filled in Fiji by Frank Bainimarama, it would have to be Joshua Bong.

Bong is currently police commissioner, and has strong links to the paramilitary Vanuatu Mobile Force (VMF) that he once led. He was accused of perjury in Kiwi judge Nevin Dawson's report into the fatal beating of prisoner John Bule, but no action has yet been taken against him. Many believe this is because the government fears Bong's reaction if threatened.

For all their guns, it is unlikely the 230-strong VMF would have the popular support to mount a simple military coup, but one observer says if the force felt itself under serious threat, it could well attempt to take a dozen key people, lock them up somewhere and put in place others more likely to serve their interests.

Ralph Regenvanu, an independent MP within the governing coalition, says Bong is "a thug. And we don't need the commissioner of police to be a thug who disregards the law".

In early 2009, Bong was acting director of Vanuatu's Correctional Services when prisoners burnt down a jail in protest over their mistreatment. He was suspended from that job as a result.

Bong has shrugged off calls for him to resign, blaming Bule's death on the governments of Vanuatu and New Zealand for taking too long to build a new prison in Port Vila.

According to a Radio New Zealand report, Bong said the governments were meant to have put proper prison facilities in place, and if this had been done there would have been no escapes, no death and no inquiry.

As one outraged insider said, it was a case of "avoid the issues and blame an aid donor. NZ Aid have had to crawl over broken glass to have the privilege of building a new prison for them, and now it is their fault for not doing it sooner".

Minister of Internal Affairs Moana Carcasses admits his government is responding to the coronial report extremely cautiously, because "stability is a concern", and a security crisis would have a damaging effect on Vanuatu's tourism-dependent economy.

How NZ got caught up in Vanuatu's prison-escape drama



- 2004 Historic concerns over ill- treatment of prisoners and escapes from Port Vila's colonial prisons ("ex- British" and the "ex-French") lead NZ to focus aid assistance on developing new civilian Correctional Service to replace police. NZ also pledges to build a new prison.



- 2005-2008 Wrangles over land ownership stall prison construction, but Correctional Services formed regardless. Escapes continue apace.



- Early 2008 Two high-profile murders of expatriates stoke public perception that Port Vila is awash with dangerous criminals (even though neither killer was an escapee). Vanuatu government asks VMF to work alongside Corrections: result is an even more chaotic system that leaves NZ advisers despairing, and a return to brutal treatment of prisoners.



- December 2008 Prisoners at ex-French prison vow to burn it down unless conditions improve. Acting Corrections head Joshua Bong blocks attempts by two MPs (Ralph Regenvanu and Moana Carcasses) to broker negotiations.



- December 19, 2008 Ex-French prison burnt to the ground. All inmates escape. The two MPs persuade escapees to turn themselves in, but are arrested and charged, ludicrously, with aiding their escape. (Charges are later thrown out by Justice Dawson.) Bong suspended from Corrections role (but soon reappointed as police commissioner).



- January 2009 All prisoners are crammed into the remaining ex- British prison.



- February-March 2009 Twenty prisoners, including rapist John Bule, escape. VMF launches "Operation Klinap" to recapture them. All but one prisoner is recaptured, but many are brutally assaulted and left with broken bones.



- March 29, 2009 Bule is recaptured and beaten, then delivered to Port Vila hospital, where he dies.



- May 2009 NZ helps Correctional Services build temporary high- security unit out of converted shipping containers ("container city") near ex-British prison, and rebuild ex-French prison.



- June 2009-present Just one prison breakout since repair of the ex-French prison and completion of "container city". Plans for building the new prison continue.

The Sunday Star-Times acknowledges the support of the Pacific Co-operation Foundation in the research of this article. PCF is a not-for-profit organisation focused on improving the economic and social development of the Pacific. For more information please visit www.pcf.org.nz