Papua New Guinea (
IPA:
[ˈpæpjuə njuː ˈgɪni]), in
Tok Pisin:
Papua Niugini, officially the
Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in
Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of
New Guinea and numerous offshore islands (the western portion of the island is occupied by the
Indonesian provinces of
Papua and
West Papua). It is located in the southwestern
Pacific Ocean, in a region defined since the early 19th century as
Melanesia. Its capital, and one of its few major cities, is
Port Moresby. It is one of the most diverse countries on Earth, with over 850 indigenous languages and at least as many traditional societies, out of a population of just under 6 million. It is also one of the most rural, with only 18 per cent of its people living in
urban centres.
[3] The country is also one of the world's least explored, culturally and geographically, and many undiscovered species of plants and animals are thought to exist in the interior of Papua New Guinea.
The majority of the population live in traditional societies and practise
subsistence-based agriculture. These societies and clans have some explicit acknowledgement within the nation's constitutional framework. The PNG Constitution (Preamble 5(4)) expresses the wish for
traditional villages and communities to remain as viable units of Papua New Guinean society,
[4] and for active steps to be taken in their preservation. The PNG legislature has enacted various laws in which a type of tenure called "
customary land title" is recognised, meaning that the traditional lands of the
indigenous peoples have some legal basis to inalienable tenure. This customary land notionally covers most of the usable land in the country (some 97% of total land area);
[5] alienated land is either held privately under State Lease or is government land. Freehold Title (also known as
fee simple) can only be held by Papua New Guinea citizens.
[6]
The country's geography is similarly diverse and, in places, extremely rugged. A spine of mountains runs the length of the island of New Guinea, forming a populous
highlands region. Dense
rainforests can be found in the lowland and coastal areas. This terrain has made it difficult for the country to develop transportation infrastructure. In some areas, planes are the only mode of transport. After being colonised by three external powers since 1884, Papua New Guinea gained its
independence from
Australia in 1975.
History
Human remains have been found on New Guinea which have been dated to about 50,000 years ago. These ancient inhabitants probably had their origins in
Southeast Asia. Agriculture was independently developed in the New Guinea highlands around 9,000 years ago, making it one of the few areas of original plant domestication in the world. A major migration of
Austronesian speaking peoples came to coastal regions roughly 2,500 years ago, and this is correlated with the introduction of pottery, pigs, and certain fishing techniques. More recently, some 300 years ago, the
sweet potato entered New Guinea having been introduced to the Moluccas from South America by the then-locally dominant colonial power,
Portugal.
[7] The far higher crop yields from sweet potato gardens radically transformed traditional agriculture; sweet potato largely supplanted the previous staple,
taro, and gave rise to a significant increase in population in the highlands.
Little was known in the West about the island until the nineteenth century, although traders from Southeast Asia had been visiting New Guinea as long as 5,000 years ago collecting
bird of paradise plumes,
[8] and
European explorers had encountered it as early as the sixteenth century. The country's dual name results from its complex administrative history prior to Independence. The word
papua is derived from a
Malay word describing the frizzy Melanesian hair, and "New Guinea" (
Nueva Guinea) was the name
coined by the
Spanish explorer
Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, who in 1545 noted the resemblance of the people to those he had earlier seen along the
Guinea coast of
Africa.
The northern half of the country came into German hands in 1884 as
German New Guinea. During
World War I, it was occupied by
Australia, which had begun administering British New Guinea, the southern part, as the re-named Papua in 1904 once Britain was assured by the federation of the Australian colonies that Queensland, with its equivocal history of race relations, would not have a direct hand in the administration of the territory. After World War I, Australia was given a
mandate to administer the former German New Guinea by the
League of Nations. Papua, by contrast, was deemed to be an External Territory of the Australian Commonwealth, though as a matter of law it remained a British possession, an issue which had significance for the country's post-Independence legal system after 1975. This difference in legal status meant that Papua and New Guinea had entirely separate administrations, both controlled by Australia.
The two territories were combined into the
Territory of Papua and New Guinea after World War II, which later was simply referred to as "Papua New Guinea". The Administration of Papua was now also open to United Nations oversight. However, certain statutes
[9] continued (and continue) to have application only in one of the two territories, a matter considerably complicated today by the adjustment of the former boundary among contiguous provinces with respect to road access and language groups, so that such statutes apply on one side only of a boundary which no longer exists.
Peaceful independence from Australia, the de facto metropolitan power occurred on
September 16,
1975, and close ties remain (Australia remains the largest bilateral aid donor to Papua New Guinea).
A secessionist revolt in 1975-76 on the island of
Bougainville resulted in an eleventh-hour modification of the draft Constitution of Papua New Guinea to allow for Bougainville and the other eighteen districts of pre-Independence Papua New Guinea to have quasi-federal status as provinces. The revolt recurred and claimed 20,000 lives from 1988 until it was resolved in 1997. Autonomous Bougainville recently elected
Joseph Kabui as president.


A girl with a dog at Island of Wagifa
Law
The unicameral Parliament enacts legislation in the same manner as in other jurisdictions having "cabinet," "responsible government," or "parliamentary democracy": it is introduced by the executive government to the legislature, debated and, if passed, becomes law when it receives royal assent by the Governor-General. Most legislation is actually regulation implemented by the bureaucracy under enabling legislation previously passed by Parliament.
All ordinary statutes enacted by Parliament must be consistent with the Constitution and the courts have jurisdiction to rule on the constitutionality of statutes, both in disputes before them and on a reference where there is no dispute but only an abstract question of law. Unusually among developing countries, the judicial branch of government in Papua New Guinea has remained remarkably independent and successive executive governments have continued to respect its authority.
The "underlying law" — that is, the common law of Papua New Guinea — consists of English common law as it stood on
September 16 1975 (the date of Independence), and thereafter the decisions of PNG’s own courts. The courts are directed by the Constitution and, latterly, the
Underlying Law Act, to take note of the "custom" of traditional communities, with a view to determining which customs are common to the whole country and may be declared also to be part of the underlying law. In practice, this has proved extremely difficult and has been largely neglected. Statutes are largely adopted from overseas jurisdictions, primarily Australia and England. Advocacy in the courts follows the adversarial pattern of other common law countries.
Politics
Papua New Guinea is a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations and
Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state, although always referred to as "the head of state" in the Constitution, rather than as "the Queen." It had been expected by the constitutional convention, which prepared the draft constitution, and by Australia, the outgoing metropolitan power, that Papua New Guinea would choose not to retain its link with the British monarchy. The founders, however, considered that imperial honours had a cachet that the newly independent state would not be able to confer with a purely indigenous honours system — the Monarchy was thus maintained.
[10] The Queen is represented in Papua New Guinea by the
Governor-General, currently
Sir Paulias Matane. Papua New Guinea is unique among
commonwealth realms in that the Governor-General is effectively selected by the legislature rather than by the executive.
Actual executive power lies with the
Prime Minister, who heads the
cabinet. The
unicameral National Parliament has 109 seats, of which 20 are occupied by the
governors of the 19
provinces and the
NCD. Candidates for
members of parliament are voted upon when the prime minister calls a national election, a maximum of five years after the previous national election. In the early years of independence, the instability of the party system led to frequent votes of no-confidence in Parliament with resulting falls of the government of the day and the need for national elections, in accordance with the conventions of parliamentary democracy. In recent years, successive governments have passed legislation preventing such votes sooner than 18 months after a national election. This has arguably resulted in greater stability though, perhaps, at a cost of reducing the accountability of the executive branch of government.
Elections in PNG attract large numbers of candidates. After independence in
1975, members were elected by the
first past the post system, with winners frequently gaining less than 15% of the vote. Electoral reforms in 2001 introduced the Limited Preferential Vote system (LPV), a version of the
Alternative Vote. The
2007 general election was the first to be conducted using LPV.
Regions, provinces and districts
Papua New Guinea is divided into four
regions, which are not the primary administrative divisions, but are quite significant in many aspects of government, commercial, sporting and other activities.
The nation has 20 province-level divisions: eighteen
provinces, the autonomous province of
North Solomons (Bougainville) and the
National Capital District. Each province is divided into one or more
districts, which in turn are divided into one or more
Local Level Government areas.
Provinces are the primary administrative divisions of the country. Provincial governments are branches of the national government — Papua New Guinea is not a
federation of provinces. The province-level divisions are as follows:
Geography

Map of Papua New Guinea
At
462,840 km (178704 sq mi), Papua New Guinea is the world's fifty-fourth largest country (after
Cameroon). It is comparable in size to
Sweden, and somewhat larger than the US state of
California.
Papua New Guinea is mostly
mountainous (highest peak:
Mount Wilhelm at 4,509
m; 14,793
ft) and mostly covered with
rain forest, as well as very large
wetland areas surrounding the
Sepik and
Fly rivers.
The country is situated on the
Pacific Ring of Fire, at the point of collision of several tectonic plates. There are a number of active
volcanoes and eruptions are frequent.
Earthquakes are relatively common, sometimes accompanied by
tsunamis.
The mainland of the country is the eastern half of
New Guinea island, where the largest towns are also located, including the capital
Port Moresby and
Lae; other major islands within Papua New Guinea include
New Ireland,
New Britain,
Manus and
Bougainville.
Papua New Guinea is one of the few regions close to the
equator that experience
snowfall, which occurs in the most elevated parts of the mainland.
Ecology
Papua New Guinea is part of the
Australasia ecozone, which also includes
Australia,
New Zealand, eastern
Indonesia, and several Pacific island groups, including the
Solomon Islands and
Vanuatu.
Geologically, the island of New Guinea is a northern extension of the
Indo-Australian tectonic plate, forming part of a single landmass
Australia-New Guinea (also called
Sahul or
Meganesia). It is connected to the Australian segment by a shallow
continental shelf across the
Torres Strait, which in former ages had lain exposed as a
land bridge — particularly during
ice ages when
sea levels were lower than at present.


The green
jungle of Papua New Guinea bears a stark contrast to the nearby desert of
Australia
Consequently, many species of birds and mammals found on New Guinea have close genetic links with corresponding species found in Australia. One notable feature in common for the two landmasses is the existence of several species of
marsupial mammals, including some
kangaroos and
possums, which are not found elsewhere.
Many of the other islands within PNG territory, including
New Britain,
New Ireland,
Bougainville, the
Admiralty Islands, the
Trobriand Islands, and the
Louisiade Archipelago, were never linked to New Guinea by land bridges, and they lack many of the land mammals and flightless birds that are common to New Guinea and Australia.
Australia and New Guinea are portions of the ancient supercontinent of
Gondwana, which started to break into smaller continents in the
Cretaceous era, 130–65 million years ago. Australia finally broke free from
Antarctica about 45 million years ago. All the Australasian lands are home to the
Antarctic flora, descended from the flora of southern Gondwana, including the
coniferous podocarps and
Araucaria pines, and the broadleafed
southern beech (
Nothofagus). These plant families are still present in Papua New Guinea.
As the Indo-Australian Plate (which includes landmasses of India, Australia, and the
Indian Ocean floor in-between) drifts north, it collides with the
Eurasian Plate, and the collision of the two plates pushed up the
Himalayas, the Indonesian islands, and New Guinea's Central Range. The Central Range is much younger and higher than the mountains of Australia, so high that it is home to rare equatorial
glaciers. New Guinea is part of the humid tropics, and many
Indomalayan rainforest plants spread across the narrow straits from Asia, mixing together with the old Australian and Antarctic floras.


Densely forested mountains in the Ekuti range of Central Papua
PNG includes a number of
terrestrial ecoregions:
Economy


Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea is richly endowed with natural resources, but exploitation has been hampered by rugged terrain, the high cost of developing infrastructure, serious law and order problems and the system of land title, which makes identifying the owners of land for the purpose of negotiating appropriate agreements problematic. Agriculture provides a subsistence livelihood for 85% of the population.
Mineral deposits, including
oil,
copper, and
gold, account for 72% of export earnings. Former Prime Minister
Sir Mekere Morauta tried to restore integrity to state institutions, stabilize the
kina, restore stability to the national budget, privatize public enterprises where appropriate, and ensure ongoing peace on
Bougainville following the 1997 agreement which ended Bougainville's secessionist unrest. The Morauta government had considerable success in attracting international support, specifically gaining the backing of the
IMF and the
World Bank in securing development assistance loans. Significant challenges face the current Prime Minister
Sir Michael Somare, including gaining further investor confidence, continuing efforts to privatize government assets, and maintaining the support of members of Parliament. The third quarter (September, 2004) Reserve Bank Report by the Governor of Bank of PNG showed positive economic stance by the Government, with inflation at zero. However, in March 2006 the United Nations Committee for Development Policy called for Papua New Guinea's designation of developing country to be downgraded to least-developed country because of protracted economic and social stagnation.
Land tenure
Only some three per cent of the land of Papua New Guinea is alienated; it is privately held under 99 year State Lease, or it is held by the State. There is virtually no freehold title; the few existing freeholds are automatically converted to State Lease when they are transferred between vendor and purchaser. Unalienated land is owned under customary title by traditional landowners. The precise nature of the
seisin varies from one culture to another, but generally title is communal and in the hands of traditional clans. This is a matter of vital importance because a problem of economic development is identifying who the membership of customary landowning groups is, and thus who the owners are. Disputes between mining and forestry companies and landowner groups often devolve on the issue of whether the companies entered into contractual relations for the use of land with the true owners. Customary property — usually land — cannot be devised by will; it can only be inherited according to the custom of the deceased's people.
Demographics
Papua New Guinea is one of, if not the most
heterogeneous nations in the world. There are hundreds of ethnic groups indigenous to Papua New Guinea, the majority being from the group known as
Papuans, whose ancestors arrived in the New Guinea region tens of thousands of years ago. The others are
Austronesians, their ancestors having arrived in the region less than four thousand years ago. Considerable intermixing has taken place over the millennia. There are also numerous people from other parts of the world now resident, including
Chinese, Europeans, Australians, Filipinos, Polynesians and Micronesians.
Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country, with over 820 indigenous languages, representing twelve percent of the world's total. Indigenous languages are classified into two large groups:
Austronesian languages and non-Austronesian (or
Papuan languages). There are three official languages for Papua New Guinea.
English is an official language, and is the language of government and the education system, but it is not widely spoken. The primary
lingua franca of the country is
Tok Pisin, in which much of the debate in Parliament is conducted, many information campaigns and advertisements are presented, and until recently a national newspaper,
Wantok, was published. The only area where Tok Pisin is not prevalent is the southern region of
Papua, where people often use the third official language,
Hiri Motu. Although it lies in the Papua region, Port Moresby has a highly diverse population which primarily uses Tok Pisin, and to a lesser extent English, with Motu spoken as the indigenous language in outlying villages. With an average of only 7000 speakers per language, Papua New Guinea has a greater density of languages than any other nation on earth except
Vanuatu.
PNG has the highest incidence of HIV and AIDS in the Pacific region and is the fourth country in the Asia Pacific region to fit the criteria for a generalised HIV/AIDS epidemic.
[11] Lack of HIV/AIDS awareness is a major problem, especially in rural areas.
Culture


Resident of Bago-bago, an island in the southeast of Papua New Guinea
The culture of Papua New Guinea is multi-faceted and complex. It is estimated that more than a thousand different cultural groups exist in PNG. Because of this diversity, many different styles of cultural expression have emerged; each group has created its own expressive forms in
art,
dance,
weaponry,
costumes,
singing,
music,
architecture and much more.
Most of these different cultural groups have their own language. People typically live in
villages that rely on
subsistence farming. In some areas people hunt and collect wild plants (such as
yam roots) to supplement their diets. Those who become skilled at hunting, farming and fishing earn a great deal of respect.
On the
Sepik river, there is a famous tradition of
wood carving, often in the form of plants or animals, representing
ancestor spirits.
Sea shells are no longer the
currency of Papua New Guinea, as they were in some regions — sea shells were abolished as currency in 1933. However, this
heritage is still present in local
customs; in some cultures, to get a bride, a groom must bring a certain number of golden-edged clam shells
[12] as a
bride price. In other regions, bride price is paid in lengths of
shell money,
pigs,
cassowaries or
cash; elsewhere, bride price is unknown and it is brides who must pay
dowry.
People of the highlands engage in colourful local rituals that are called "sing sings". They paint themselves, and dress up with
feathers,
pearls and animal skins to represent birds, trees or mountain spirits. Sometimes an important event, such as a legendary
battle, is enacted at such a musical festival. (See also
Music of Papua New Guinea.)
Sport
Sport is an important part of PNG culture. The national sport, although not official, is considered to be
rugby league. In a nation where communities are far apart and many people live at a minimal subsistence level, rugby league has been described as a replacement for tribal warfare as a way of explaining the local enthusiasm for the game (a matter of life and death). Many Papua New Guineans have become instant celebrities by representing their country or playing in an overseas professional league. Even Australian rugby league players who have played in the annual (Australian)
State of Origin clash, which is celebrated feverishly every year in PNG, are among the most well known identities throughout the nation. The
Papua New Guinea national rugby league team usually play against the
Australian national rugby league team each year in
Port Moresby. It is such a popular fixture that thousands of people can't get into the ground once it's full, causing people to climb onto the stadium roof or up trees outside the ground in order to see the match. The limited capacity of the stadium for this fixture often sparks riots. Spectators clashed with riot police during this fixture in 2006.
Australian Rules football has experienced considerable growth over the past decade, now being Papua New Guinea's second most popular sport. They also boast the second highest number of players in the world. The
Papua New Guinea national Australian rules football team competed at both the 2002 and 2005 International Cups and were runners-up both times (to Ireland and New Zealand respectively). AFL-PNG is the governing body of the sport in Papua New Guinea.
Mal Michael is a famous Papua New Guinean footballer in the AFL, and his popularity has helped increase awareness of the game in his homeland.
Other major sports which have a part in the PNG sporting landscape are
soccer,
rugby union and, in eastern Papua,
cricket. The
national rugby union team have in the past attempted to qualify for the
Rugby World Cup, but have yet to debut.
Religion
The courts and government practice uphold the constitutional right to freedom of speech, thought, and belief, and no legislation to curb those rights has been adopted, though Sir Arnold Amet, the immediately previous Chief Justice of Papua New Guinea and an outspoken proponent of Pentecostal Christianity, frequently urged legislative and other curbs on the activities of
Muslims in the country.
The 2000 census showed 96 percent of citizens were members of a Christian church; however, many citizens combine their Christian faith with some pre-Christian traditional indigenous practices. The census percentages were as follows:
Minority religions include the
Jehovah's Witness (20,000) and the
Bahá'í Faith (15,000 or 0.3%), while
Islam in Papua New Guinea accounts for approximately 1,000 to 2,000 or about 0.04%, (largely foreign residents of African and Southeast Asian origin, but with some Papua New Guinean converts in the towns). Non-traditional Christian churches and non-Christian religious groups are active throughout the country. The
Papua New Guinea Council of Churches has stated that both
Muslim and Confucian missionaries are active, and foreign missionary activity in general is high.
Traditional religions were often
animist and some also tended to have elements of
ancestor worship though generalisation is suspect given the extreme heterogeneity of Melanesian societies. For a discussion of one (West Papuan) society's traditional religion by way of example, see the article on the Korowai of
West Papua.
Miscellaneous
Papua New Guinea has 582 airstrips.
[13]
The
Philippines is an active economic partner of Papua New Guinea. In 2003,
jeepneys, a form of transportation common in the Philippines, were exported to Papua New Guinea to provide an alternative, reliable, economical and creative means of transportation. The Philippines realized their need for an alternative transportation; Papua New Guinea's terrain is similar to the Philippines'.
Papua New Guinea was one of the main focal points of Jared Diamond's book and later PBS documentary
Guns, Germs, and Steel
See also
Notes
References
- Swaddling, Pamela (1996). Plumes from Paradise. Papua New Guinea National Museum. ISBN 9980-85-103-1.
External links
Coat of arms elements A
motto (from Italian) is a phrase or a short list of words meant formally to describe the general motivation or intention of an entity, social group, or organization.
..... Click the link for more information. Unity in diversity is a a socio-ecological philosophy that describes a sense of oneness despite physical or psychological barriers.
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- For the Radiohead song, see "The National Anthem".
A
national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a country's government as the official
..... Click the link for more information. "O Arise, All You Sons" is the national anthem of Papua New Guinea. The song was promoted to national anthem when Papua New Guinea became independent on 16 September 1975. The anthem was composed by a former Royal Marine and Australian soldier, Tom Shacklady.
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capital (also called capital city or political capital — although the latter phrase has a second meaning based on an alternative sense of "capital") is the center of government.
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Port Moresby (IPA: [ˌpɔːrt ˈmɔːrzbi]), or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255,000 (2000), is the capital of Papua New Guinea.
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Population: 5,670,544 (July 2006 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 37.8% (male 1,090,879; female 1,054,743)
15-64 years: 58.3% (male 1,703,204; female 1,601,224)
65 years and over: 3.9% (male 103,054; female 117,440) (2006 est.
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Port Moresby (IPA: [ˌpɔːrt ˈmɔːrzbi]), or Pot Mosbi in Tok Pisin, population 255,000 (2000), is the capital of Papua New Guinea.
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An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. It is typically the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, though the law in many nations requires that government documents be produced in other
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English}}}
Writing system: Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng
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Tok Pisin (tok means "word" or "speech" as in "talk", pisin means "pidgin") is the creole spoken in northern mainland Papua New Guinea, the National Capital District, and the New Guinea Islands.
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Hiri Motu}}}
Official status
Official language of: Papua New Guinea
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: ho
ISO 639-2: hmo
ISO 639-3: hmo Hiri Motu, Police Motu or
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Papua New GuineaThis article is part of the series:
Politics of Papua New Guinea
- Queen
- Elizabeth II
- Governor-General
- Paulias Matane
..... Click the link for more information. Sir Paulias Nguna Matane GCL, GCMG, OBE, KStJ (born 1931), formerly a career civil servant, became Governor-General of Papua New Guinea from June 29 2004.
He was elected by Parliament on May 27, 2004, receiving 50 votes, while his opponent, Sir Pato Kakeraya received 46
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Papua New GuineaThis article is part of the series:
Politics of Papua New Guinea
- Queen
- Elizabeth II
- Governor-General
- Paulias Matane
..... Click the link for more information. Sir Michael Thomas Somare, GCL, GCMG, CH, CF, MP (born 9 April 1936) was Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea from independence in 1975 until 1980, from 1982 until 1985, and again since the 2002 election. He was re-elected as Prime Minister at the 2007 election.
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Independence is the self-government of a nation, country, or state by its residents and population, or some portion thereof, generally exercising sovereignty.
The term independence is used in contrast to subjugation,
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AnthemAdvance Australia Fair [1]Capital Canberra
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Events
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1970 1971 1972 -
1973 - 1974 1975 1976
For the song by James Blunt, see .
..... Click the link for more information. Independence is the self-government of a nation, country, or state by its residents and population, or some portion thereof, generally exercising sovereignty.
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