Papua New GuineaPolice in Papua New Guinea are looking for The Most Rev George Ambo, former primate of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, for questioning in connection with the theft of emergency supplies destined for people in an area struck by a cyclone and flooding.

The supplies were apparently stolen by members of Puwo Gawe, a cargo cult said to be led by Sister Cora, an excommunicated Anglican nun, and Archbishop Ambo.

Security forces have been directed to detain cult leaders of the Puwo Gawe cult movement over their alleged involvement in hampering the effective distribution of relief supplies.

The cult is reported to have a following in almost all areas of the province.

Yesterday, a team of police and soldiers were deployed to Begabari village along the North Coast with orders to round up cult leaders who allegedly meddled in the efficient distribution of relief supplies transported there last Saturday.

Puwo Gawe members grabbed the supplies, claiming that the goods were cargo given to them by their ancestors.  Police are determined to arrest those responsible for disrupting distribution of desperately needed disaster relief provisions.

George Conger provides some background information on cargo cults in the South Pacific.

Cargo cult devotees believe in the imminence of a new age of blessing and prosperity, whose sign will be the arrival of cargo from heaven.

While the cults first arose in the mid-Nineteenth century when Melanesians first came in contact with the West, they spread quickly during World War II when the American and Australian armies established large supply depots in the region to support the allied campaigns in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.

Cult devotees saw the influx of supplies as a sign of the millennium, and many stopped farming and hunting, turning to spam and other army foodstuffs for subsistence. God’s failure to return discouraged many, but the cults survive, led by charismatic leaders who predict the imminent arrival of cargo from heaven.

It is not yet clear whether Abp Ambo, who served as primate from 1983 to 1990, is actually associated with the cult or aided the thefts.  Allegations and unconfirmed reports are all police have to go on thus far.