Bougainville Has No Place in New Guinea

Looking back through the history of Bougainville since its discovery by Captain Louis De Bougainville in the 19th century to the eruption of the bloody Bougainville in 1988, Bougainvilleans and their island were the soccer fought for control by two opposing sides without peoples' knowledge.

In fact, Bougainville should have been the first nation to gain independence from the colonisers in the 1970s if the Australians were not worried of their 'protection shield' Papua New Guinea. Australia needed very much to create a country that must stand independent to the east of doubtful Indonesia. That is, if PNG was to remain a state of Australia, there was high probability of friction with Indonesia.

The finance to create that country, PNG, was nowhere, but the island of Bougainville. In the 1960s mining at Panguna in Central Bougainville was already under development so when, later, the Bougainvilleans called for independence, shockwaves swept through the Australian political lines that this was too terrible a disaster for their protection strategy.

With that long relegation of Bougainville people to self-determination, the fruit of PNG-Australian ignorance of human rights was the Bougainville Conflict.

During the peak of the crisis in 1990, a Highlander, J. Guis Kola from Moromaule Aidpost in Simbu, wrote for the Niu Gini Nius, 3 January 1990:

''I am a Highlander who likes reading newspapers, news articles and so on. When every time I come across a newspaper, I usually read Bougainville Crisis on the front cover page or the opposite side.

The government is short sighted sending all the very innocent soldiers and mobile squads to the troubled island to be torn into pieces. Why not let the Bougainvilleans stand on their own two feet and withdrew all the innocent soldiers, mobile squads and others from the island?

I would also like to state that what Bougainville has is only a small percentage of what the PNG mainland has. We have all the precious minerals on the mainland.

Why waste time fighting over Bougainville copper when we should concentrate our energies else where?''

This were great ideas for PNG to have considered earlier than the Bougainville Conflict. But what the author, was not aware of is that, without Bougainvillean money all his talks was not to come to fruition within his lifetime. Bougainville was still financing the development works in infrastructure and so on.

And to the Bougainvillean, this was and is a positive challenge to start thinking in the right direction. Becoming responsible people to our island, the government of the day and to our community members and work towards the betterment of our Solomon island of Bougainville.