JUSTICE FOR SHEENA!!
I AM PROUD TO BE SHEENA COOK’S DAD!
My daughter, Sergeant Sheena Cook, has been held in prison in Buka Police Station for the last six months, without, as I understand it at the moment, being allowed to contact her family or me, her dad.
Various questions arise about violation of her Human Rights.
I am only now just on to it; I desperately need your attention and support.
When Sheena failed to contact us about her brother’s wedding last month, I became seriously worried. I contacted our PNG network of extended family and friends to make enquiries.
We discovered she was being held in remote Buka Prison, North Solomons, on what, to me, would appear to be trumped up charges. She has now been incarcerated for 6 months in a mosquito infested prison, without any mosquito nets or repellent and forced to sleep under constant lighting and fed a very poor diet and without contact with her two sons.
One of the photographs I post here shows Sheena and me, in Buka, just after her discharge from Buka hospital in 2011, for a serious operation in relation to her seriously painful endometriosis that had her in agonising pain. Thanks to a very talented local female surgeon, her life was saved. However the condition rumbles on and I am seriously concerned about any possible lack of attention to this by the authorities.
Apparently, from what I have been told, the main charge is escaping from custody for an earlier offence, namely borrowing a firearm from the Buka armoury to shoot a cow, for a friend, for a feast. That part, borrowing the gun, is true but escaping from custody is demonstrably false to the extent of being contrived/fanciful.
Events transpired, as I understand it, which prevented Sheena from returning the gun to the armoury that afternoon so she stored it under her bed that night, intending to return it in the morning.
She was raided that night. I have to ask whether this was a set-up?
To use the gun was of course a bad decision, but based on the abundance of illegal firearms remaining in North Solomons following the relatively recent civil war, a war that claimed thousands of lives, that decision needs to be taken in context.
It did however give her enemies an avenue to remove her as head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Buka Police.
So Sheena’s room was raided that night by other police. The results can be found on line. Sheena was too ashamed to inform me. She had been assured by the person who was holding the feast that he would pay the fine. She waited in prison for six weeks for him to do so.
I eventually was informed and paid the fine, see the receipt attached.
In February, this year, 2023, Sheena was then re-arrested for, as I understand it, “escaping from lawful custody” when being held for the above crime, when in fact, she had been lawfully released on the basis of my paying the fine.
A second charge for which she is to be tried this coming week (I just learned this tonight) I am told is “destroying Police property in Arawa Police Station”. For reasons I cannot reveal here, I am convinced she is innocent.
I am travelling to Buka as soon as I can mobilise, to demand to see my daughter, hopefully in time for the court case.
As I have only just heard this evening that the court case is this coming week, I present the evidence here and now for the world to see. Yes, I paid the fine that allowed her to be released from custody lawfully.
I have not had time to seek legal advice on this.
As a child, Sheena spent a couple of years at Hong Kong International High School and a year at Aberfeldy High School, Scotland, where she was chosen as International Student of the Year for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and got to shake hands with Prince Philip in Edinburgh, in 1992.
We’ve been back to Scotland with Sheena a number of times. With that wonderful smile and open, honest, warm personality, she made friends easily and is greatly loved by both our families in PNG and Scotland.
Sheena is quite like her dad, calls things as she sees them and strives for a better world. That seems to have landed her in a heap of trouble. Lot’s more could be said but I don’t intend to jeopardise our case right now.
There is no time for me to “tread warily” but we do just need the attention and support of our wonderful friends, right now.
Please watch this space. I’m travelling as soon as possible and will keep you posted.
This post was originally published on Sept 9th 2023 on Dave’s facebook page.
Justice for Sheena is Justice for Bougainville 