Panguna Metals

Website: http://www.panguna-metals.com

Panguna Metals Limited was set up in conjunction with landowners at Panguna, to remove and dispose of the scrap buildings and equipment left over by the mining operations which were abandoned in 1990 as a result of the conflict.

In 2009, landowners, in collaboration with BCL (Bougainville Copper Limited) and the ABG (Autonomous Bougainville Government) obtained full backing and support to establish Panguna Metals Limited for the purpose of removing the scrap as part of the reconciliation process on the island. The work to remove the scrap will promote positive sentiment among local residents by creating employment and at the same time clearing up the mine area that has a controversial local history.

Activity Photographs

Section of Tertiary Crusher

Electric Shovel 9

A D9 Caterpillar Dozer

One of the Ball Mills at the Concentrator

Transporting this scrap metals to the Loloho wharf involves large trucks, mostly carriers brought into Bougainville from America.

Transporting scrap to Loloho for shipment (Photo: postcourier.com.pg)

Actual shipment from Loloho to Asian markets. Large ships arrive regular on Bougainville's Loloho port to carry away these tonnes of scrap metal.

Off-loading at Loloho

Scrap Carrier loading

Carrier loading

Carrier ready to head off to Asia

LEONARD FONG ROKA comments:

Scrap is leaving Bougainville to Asian destinations. I know money is coming back and Bougainville is getting little from tax Panguna Metals Ltd pays to the Internal Revenue Commission.

But as I see it, the most benefiting persons in the operation are the few big-man of Central Bougainville who provide security to this operations and the company bosses.

As planned before, a framework of equal benefit sharing was proposed and set on paper. Til today, that has not being realised by the people and groups put in place as stakeholders.

The CoEs are yet to feel that impact.

Furthermore, the whole island of Bougainville and its people suffered from the crisis that began in the 1960s but we in Panguna, added the right fuel to in 1989 and turned it into an inferno. So, Bougainville must have the say in what Panguna is doing.

It is easy to plan but hard to reach those plans. So, don't use people to work your individual pockets grow.

All Photo Rights @Panguna-metals.com

33 Years…So Far So Bad

Looking back through misty eyes, it’s kind of a painful nightmare. It all goes back to the family I was born into. But, it’s not worth crying over spilled milk.

Lost opportunities! A wide valley of lost fortunes I staggered through and that’s Bougainville. Yet it’s my home, the land I must be put to rest when my time comes.

Birthday Poster

My father was an auto-mechanic, but he did not teach me the basics of the trade so that I would appreciate him. But he got me entirely into the water of Catholic fanaticism; unbalanced life, and here I am not a holistic kid.

 Anywhere, the Bougainville conflict took papa away and preserved me. I was there doing this and that in my teens in the refugee camps of Kupe mountains in Kieta.

With papa in his resting grave at Piruana some kilometers south of the Kupe Mountains, there was a paradigm shift in my life. I began to mingle more with my peers and learn the arts of manhood. I learn the art of building houses and gardening. These are skills that as a Kieta man I need.

Poor mama, who, without any past investment with papa, fought the war of sustaining us, her 5 Bougainville conflict created orphans. She did it!

I completed Grade 12 and entered the University of Papua New Guinea in 2003 but left in 2004 due to financial constraints.

Out of the education, I got bogged up with numerous part-time jobs and had the taste of what employment and life was in a real world.

Pay packages landing on my palms, more often, two envelopes at the same time had me an icon of sexism and alcoholics in my home valley of Panguna.

I did earned fame for sex, boozing and pornography.

These reckless years, 2004 to 2010, got me learning more things I had missed out on apart from boozing and sex. Example, I got behind the vehicle wheels and bulldozers whilst with our company, Ioro Road works & Construction Company Limited. Building myself houses and planting cocoa farms and happily, I learned to be a man.

Then, I enjoyed it. But today I regret that because it is a kind of a curse that is pestering me and I walk sick with shame back home. Hardly free to social in public spots coz every angle I want to look to, there is an ex-girl eyeing me.

2011, is the year, I decided to re-plot my life. It’s in the making and adapting slowly.

I am in a war to rebuild my reputation amongst my own people. I don’t want them to see me as the promiscuous and boozing Leonard Fong Roka of Kavarongnau.

My hamlet is a home to two Bougainville’s rebel leaders, the late Joseph Kabui and elder brother, Martin Miriori. In our family, I had fame on sex and beer whilst others had popularity in religious and political roles they played.

To me, 33 years had being wasted.

Master Boozer

33 years had being wasted without any tangible gains for a Panguna man.

In 1997, I openly announced as a Grade 7 presentation that I want to be a politician in the future, but I regret that because of doing something good amongst my people I began a social disgust of sex and liquor.

The same year, I began writing poetry with a dream of becoming an author. In fact, reading was my late papa’s art but sadly, he never thought me the art. He thought me to be a priest.

Anywhere, I feel I am in love with literature and that would be my lifetime job, I believe; and Bougainville politics coming second place in my dreams.

Will be blogging to the end of life.

But I believe, Leonard Fong Roka will be good name into the future with his people of Tumpusiong Valley.

LOOK BACK: PNG in second attack on Solomons

Wednesday, March 25, 1992

By Norm Dixon

Papua New Guinea Defence Force commandos and their Australian-supplied patrol boats attacked a village in the Solomon Islands for a second time on March 18.

Papua New Guinea Defence Force was always punished by Bougainville Revolutionary Army (Photo: 36th-parallel.com)

The raid destroyed the Kariki petrol depot, which had provided fuel to Bougainvilleans who have crossed the border to try to collect petrol denied to them by PNG's blockade. In the previous attack, the storage tanks were damaged.

The latest attack also burned two houses to the ground and badly damaged another. Solomon Islands police commissioner Fred Soaki described the attack as an act of war. He described to Radio Australia what took place: "In the night, they landed in the same village again ... on the Shortlands Islands and opened fire on the fuel depot and set ablaze all the fuel there. They even went on to fire at the homes where people live."

Solomon Islands police boats chased the patrol boat, flying the PNG flag, back across the border.

The raids follow growing tension between PNG and the Solomons over continued contact between Bougainvilleans and Solomon Islanders. The Solomon Islands government has not prevented Bougainvilleans buying supplies from shops in Solomons, has allowed sick Bougainvilleans to be treated in its hospitals and has allowed representatives of the Bougainville interim government to be present in Honiara.

Retrieved from: Green Left (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/1959)

Bougainvilleans

Environment

Bougainville is a mountainous island with three live volcanoes. Rainfall is heavy and flooding and disrupted communications not unusual.

Profile

Most Bougainvilleans are Melanesians though there are Polynesians on an outlying atoll that is part of the province. All are Christians of various denominations, with the Catholic Church having strong roots in the province. About 20 languages are spoken on Bougainville.

Bougainvillean Children (Photo: thecommonwealth.org)

The principal regional problems in Papua New Guinea have concerned Bougainville, which is geographically, historically and culturally more closely linked to the western Solomon Islands. Only in the twentieth century, under colonialism, did traditional social and economic links become modernized and oriented westwards. Bougainvilleans are black, a characteristic which is shared in the Pacific by only a few peoples in the adjacent Solomon Islands. For most of the colonial era, Bougainville was neglected, and Bougainvilleans have always claimed cultural and ethnic uniqueness.

Historical context

Colonial neglect of Bougainville ended in 1964 when a huge copper deposit was confirmed at Panguna, in the interior mountains. Villagers opposed exploration and land alienation, emphasizing their feelings of separateness. This attitude was promoted by the nationalist Napidakoe Navitu movement which sought a referendum on whether Bougainville should remain within Papua New Guinea. The administration refused to hold such referendum, but in 1973 the island was allowed to have the first provincial government in the country as a concession to emergent nationalism. Pressure for secession continued. Almost all the prominent secessionists were Roman Catholics, and the Catholic Church was closely tied to the search for an independent cultural identity. Secession was sought both in defence of identity and in search of the material rewards of mining.

The province declared its independence on 1 September 1975, just two weeks before Papua New Guinea became independent. After six months the so-called Republic of the North Solomons effectively disintegrated. Although the two key issues that had contributed to secession remained, secessionist aspirations declined in the post-independence years as mining brought considerable wealth and rapid social change. However, despite growing incomes and access to services, concern increased over the environmental damage caused by the mine and there was resentment over the distribution of mining profits, the immigration of workers from elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, and other social problems. Secessionist sentiments were rekindled and resurfaced in dramatic form in 1989 when militant landowners opposed the Panguna copper mine. Since then the struggle for Bougainvillean secession has provided the strongest challenge ever to the basis and stability of the Papua New Guinea nation, and the most serious political and humanitarian issue in Oceania since the war.

Throughout the 1980s, women landowners near the mine site raised concern over a range of social and environmental impacts from the Panguna mine, and a younger generation of landowners challenged their elders, arguing that the compensation and royalty deals could not address the widespread social and cultural impacts of mining. Mounting grievances over mining in 1988 evolved into a more general pressure for secession. The police force was unable to end the militancy, a national government Peace Package was rejected, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) emerged, led by Sam Kauona and Francis Ona, and the mine finally closed in September 1989. In 1990 the national government announced a total blockade of goods and services to the province, a decision quickly followed by the unilateral declaration of independence of the Republic of Bougainville. By this time the BRA was in apparent control of much of the island, though in the northern island of Buka support for the rebellion was hesitant. An interim government was established on Bougainville, with Francis Ona as President. From then onwards an effective communications blackout largely limited information from the island, though there were health problems and the economy and other services were collapsing. Papua New Guinea and Bougainville leaders held talks on board a New Zealand ship, the Endeavour, off Kieta in mid-1990 which resulted in the Endeavour Accord.

The Endeavour Accord, which stated that services to Bougainville would be restored and that the long-term political status of Bougainville would be reconsidered, did not hold. Papua New Guinea troops landed on Buka in September 1990 and restored some semblance of government control, but not without force. Civil war was waged there for several months, and human rights abuses in various parts of the province were documented on both the Papua New Guinea and BRA sides. PNGDF (Papua New Guinea Defence Force) troops were supported by pro-PNG ‘Resistance’ militias, which led to fratricidal conflicts with BRA forces.

By the end of 1992 most of the north and centre of Buka and parts of south-western Bougainville were under government control. The area around the Panguna mine remained under BRA control and there was sporadic violence in the marginal areas. The Bougainville crisis contributed to increased conflict in the neighbouring Solomon Islands, as the Solomons’ police increased their military capacity to cope with cross-border raids by PNGDF troops in hot pursuit of BRA militants and civilian refugees.

Government forces entered the town of Arawa in February 1993 and in 1994 the government temporarily gained control of Panguna. Further attempts were made to secure a political resolution of the crisis and services were restored to more areas of Bougainville. A change of government in August 1994 led to Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan giving primacy to a peace initiative for Bougainville. A ceasefire was declared, a South Pacific Peacekeeping Force was introduced and a peace conference organized at Arawa. A Bougainville Transitional Government was established in March 1995, operating through eight local interim authorities but the Premier, Theodore Miriung, was murdered in October 1996.

It was not until 1997 that effective peace was restored to the island, following the Sandline crisis and the fall of the government of Sir Julius Chan.

By 1997, the conflict in Bougainville between the PNGDF and the BRA had come to a military stalemate, with the PNG government unable to defeat the independence movement. The government of then Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, fearing the war was creating divisions and mutiny in the PNGDF, and concerned about international criticism of human rights abuses by government forces, turned to a foreign corporation for assistance in recruiting mercenaries, purchasing military equipment and aiming to recapture the giant Panguna copper and gold mine (which had been closed by BRA activity).

The London-based corporation Sandline International recruited personnel from Executive Outcomes, one of a range of private corporations established by former military personnel to wage warfare on behalf of corporate backers or to protect key resource projects like diamond mines, oil fields or mining projects. Operating widely in Africa, Executive Outcomes sent African mercenaries, helicopters and weaponry to Port Moresby, in preparation for an armed assault on BRA areas and Bougainville villages.

The Sandline saga ended in failure, when the plot was revealed in the media and elements of the PNGDF led by Brigadier General Jerry Singirok rose up in protest and refused to allow the mercenaries to commence their operations in Bougainville. In March 1997, the mercenaries were captured at gunpoint by PNGDF soldiers and expelled from the country. The 1997 Sandline crisis was a significant turning point in Papua New Guinea politics, contributing to Prime Minister Chan’s loss of office in July 1997 elections and leading to peace negotiations to settle the Bougainville war.

The 1998 peace settlement opened the way for amendments to the PNG Constitution and from 2001 Bougainville was no longer a province of Papua New Guinea but an ‘autonomous political entity’. The adoption in December 2004 of a new constitution led to it becoming an ‘autonomous region’ with ‘higher autonomy’ within PNG. Although the majority of financial support for the new region continues to come from PNG, the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) has wide-ranging powers over all but foreign affairs, defence and finance; it is moving towards financial autonomy and has a distinct status in terms of foreign aid.

In May 2005, Bougainvillean voters elected an autonomous government led by President Joseph Kabui, a former BRA leader who later engaged in peace negotiations with Papua New Guinea. The death of BRA founder Francis Ona in July 2005, apparently from malaria, will hamper the project of the Republic of Mekamui, the self-proclaimed government in central Bougainville, which refused to join the peace process in the late 1990s. Followers of Francis Ona, mainly in the mountains around the now defunct Panguna copper mine, have not been absorbed into the ABG, and remain a force of dissent. Bougainville will vote on its final political status after 2015.

Though the crisis did not fragment Papua New Guinea, it resulted in massive devastation in Bougainville. The economy disintegrated, hundreds of lives were lost, children missed years of education, communities and families were torn apart, new divisions and hatreds emerged and old divisions were rekindled and, almost a decade after the restoration of peace and regional civil authority in most areas other than around Panguna, problems of reconciliation remained. The extensive blockade of Bougainville, the refusal to allow the International Red Cross or medical supplies to enter for long periods of time, or to give journalists access to the island, and the difficulties placed in the way of Amnesty International led to considerable external criticism of the manner in which Papua New Guinea was seeking to resolve the crisis. The crisis disturbed relations between Papua New Guinea and both Australia and the Solomon Islands.

Current issues

Despite cultural divisions, almost all Bougainvilleans are Melanesians and there are no significant regional antipathies. A Polynesian minority exists on outlying atolls north of Bougainville but does not experience discrimination. The principal challenge remains to establish a viable economy for Bougainville, and what role a mine might take in that.

The autonomous government has faced ongoing problems with some supporters of the late Francis Ona in the no-go zone near the Panguna mine, who have refused to accept the peace process. This has been compounded by the activities of criminal elements, such as the alleged conman Noah Musingkuh, who has reportedly used Fijian mercenaries to train dissident militias in areas of the ‘Republic of Mekamui’.

Retrieved from: World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples ( http://www.minorityrights.org/4767/papua-new-guinea/bougainvilleans.html)

Guns in Bougainville: remove them by Bougainville likes

By Leonard Fong Roka

When Bougainvilleans protested against the mining in Panguna and the reckless political marriage into Papua New Guinea, the pre-independent administration of PNG, had armed police on them to throw them into the prison cells of Kieta, then the government station.

Bougainvillean and his gun (Photo: Justin Teneke)

In late 1988, when the New Guinean plantation laborers of Aropa raped and murdered a local woman, Bougainvilleans stood up to strike back on the aliens that had long tortured them the government of PNG deployed armed police on them. PNG only wanted rascals—Bougainvilleans—behind bars at Kuviria detention centre.

What erupted at Aropa, moved to Toniva town, Kieta town and into Arawa town. Bougainvilleans began attacking New Guinean squatter settlers.

When the PNG police arrived with the brutality on the island, Bougainvilleans also began looking for arms. The crisis spread towards South Bougainville and North Bougainville.

The PNG government was not interested in addressing the root causes of Bougainvillean upraising but it was there with its undisciplined security forces in hot pursue of money and pride that its little army gained in Vanuatu.

New Guineans did not see Bougainvilleans as humans that needed respect as a minority group of the Solomon Islands that it was ruling. They were interested in the wealth that was developing them and prestige this island was giving them in the international arena.

Guns gave Bougainvilleans the dignity as humans in the realm of cruel PNG politics.

However, when the Bougainville Peace Process came into existence, PNG ran ahead to propose to Bougainvilleans that they must ‘do away with the guns’ for it was an impediment to true peace and development.

PNG kicked so hard and so ‘Weapons Disposal’ began one of the three pillars of the ‘Terms of Referendum’ signed in 2001 at Kokopo in East New Britain.

Across Bougainville, few weapons were contained but not all. Why?

Bougainvilleans are not stupid! They know the history of their island from the colonial era into the pigsty of New Guineans since 1975 that oral history has saved for them.

When leaders of Bougainville and the liars of Papua New Guinea, brokered the peace effort, they looked at the wishes of the United Nations, the PNG leaders, Australia & New Zealand and the loud voices of Bougainvilleans. The dislikes and likes of the gunman were ignored once again.

What Bougainvilleans must know is that, our gunmen are the men who took up weapons in 1988 or had took up arms in the midst of the crisis.

They saw how Bougainville was mistreated. So why force them to throw away their guns? Did we address the reason why they took up the gun?

Many Bougainvilleans say: ‘Once we are independent then we will destroy our guns’.

In this line of words, a leader must identify the rightful strategies to removing guns in Bougainville. Careful analysis of the current PNG-Bougainville political arrangements has a stench of ‘repetition of pre-1988 history’ to the many gunmen in Bougainville.

 Ain’t we witnessing it? Though we have political power, realizing that is problematic because we are trying to take off from the scrap and our government opens the door too wide for the people and organizations we rejected to come back.

Thus, with the gun, men feel they still have the power to tune the politicians if things go wrong. It is confidence in self and the road to our goal of nationhood.

Every problem involving guns that is happening in Bougainville after the Bougainville Peace Agreement has an instigating issue behind it. Someone is getting someone into suppression or exploitation that is why, one is resorting to guns.

Thus, guns are not a problem in Bougainville as it is in Papua New Guinea where they hunt each other as animals.

There are amicable strategies to get rid of guns but we ignore them.

Technology Bougainvilleans Outweighing Real Bougainvilleans

By Leonard Fong Roka

Ever since walking through the gates of Divine Word University, I had being exporting my thinking heaps through the social media for the world to see. Face book and blogs I had recently employed to spew my dreams.

Technology Bougainvillean

Alongside me, there are also many Bougainvilleans that one cannot hear or see them in any one place on Bougainville belching out verbal fire in a meeting place of the VAs, CoEs, the District Administration or any open forum held in the villages and so on across Bougainville.

Thus, for many of us, our medium of expressing our thoughts is the many social networking sites provided for us by the IT (Information Technology) revolution recently.

Sadly, as I export my dreams I often feel uneasy to myself about the question: Are my people across Bougainville receiving my thoughts? It is a question that pesters me!

Across Bougainville not all can access the internet. However, with the entry of Digicel, there is accessibility to internet through mobile phones and modems.

Politicking is fun, but the actual execution of our thoughts through pragmatic decision making is another issue that one as to fight for. This is because it is easy for us to dream; but, for us to realize that dream, it is so brutally difficult.

I can bombard the Face book or my blog Leonard Fong Roka with every reasonable thoughts I make, but am I sure my physical characteristic display that to my people when I am amongst my people in Bougainville? Do my actions speak what I write about Bougainville politics?

Many Bougainvilleans by observation speak politics away from home. This is sad. At home, we drink and con people; get into many social ills with our people thus our words don’t really reflect our IT politics. Thus, this is fruitless politics whereby people are just laughing at us.

After our holidaying, we fly back into our safe haven in any corner of Papua New Guinea and get back into the air.

Who is our subject here, these New Guineans? These people have their own problems like the tribal fights and the booming natural resource extraction industries that are robbing them to worry about.

Our Solomon island of Bougainville has its own unique chaos. We are adopting corruption, crime, suppression of our own people and so on fast enough that soon we will be conflicting amongst ourselves.

Thus, as we politics in the IT world, we must also politic on the ground as Bougainvilleans. Your gods will never walk amongst us to help us free ourselves; it is you and I who can write the very positive lines to put those lines of words back into action where our people can appreciate us and our dreams.

Politicking without action on Bougainville will result in further divisions when we create, by the power of our visionary words, men so laden with the many theories of politics we post in the social media.

So, apply our thoughts in Bougainville and not in the IT world of so much fantasy.

LOOK BACK: SOUTH PACIFIC PEACEKEEPING FORCE (SPPKF)

Operation LAGOON

Australia – October 1994.

Units: Army: SASR; 3^rd Brigade, including 103 Signal Squadron, 5^th Aviation Regiment (4 X Blackhawks), 4 Field Regiment (RAA), 3^rd Combat Engineer Regiment, 3^rd Brigade Administrative Support Battalion (Medics); RAN assests: HMA Ships SUCCESS, TOBRUK & 2 X Sea King Helicopters; RAAF Assets: Medics, Air Transportable Telecommunications Unit (ATTU), 2 X CC-08 Caribou (Short Range Transport aircraft), 4 x C-130 Hercules (Long Range Transport aircraft) with ground crews.

Strength: Approx 800.

AO: Papua & New Guinea - BOUGAINVILLE

Since 1988, the Eastern Island of Bougainville, which nestles in between the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, has seen a protracted guerrila war against the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF). The guerillas – The Bouganville Revolutionary Army (BRA), were fighting for independence from PNG, allowing themselves to establish an autonomous Country, rich in mineral resources.

In an attempt to bring peace and stability to the region, Australia led a peacekeeping force to broker a peace agreement between the PNG Government and the BRA, with a view to hold free and fair elections in the long term. This force was known as the South Pacific Peacekeeping Force (SPPKF), which deployed between 4-21 October 1994.

Tasked with providing security for the Peace conference held in Arawa, the SPPKF was deployed to cover four neutral zones, Team Sites were established to each of the four neutral zones, with a HQ established in ARAWA. Support was provided by Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu in the provision of Infantry troops, with New Zealand providing additional C-130 aircraft.

The Bougainville Revolutionary Army, (BRA), not trusting the allegance of the SPPKF with the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF), did not attend the Peace conference. As a result the conference collapsed. OPERATION LAGOON lasted less than 3 weeks with only limited success in that an agreement was signed committing the island to long term peace.

The Truce Monitoring Group (TMG) and the Peace Monitoring Group (PMG), with troops and personnel provided from Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Vanuatu and Fiji was to be established late in 1997.

VEA: Schedule 3 from 21 September 1994.

Awards: No awards were presented.

Retrieved from link:  http://www.peacekeepers.asn.au/operations/SPPKF.htm

LOOK BACK: Conduct and Aftermath of Operation 'Lagoon'

Table of Contents

Force Employment

End of the Conference

Observations

On Saturday 1 October 1994, after renewed pressure from inside the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and from Australia for him to postpone the start date of the conference, PNG’s Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, appealed directly to Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating to insist that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) deploy the South Pacific Peace Keeping Force (SPPKF) prior to the start date of 10 October. Chan pointed out that the deployment time could be reduced if troops were moved by air rather than by sea. He called for a substantial advance party to be deployed to Arawa by 8 October to establish a presence. Keating contacted the Australian Defence Minister, Senator Robert Ray, soon after a conversation with Chan and told him to instruct the ADF to have the SPPKF on Bougainville before the peace conference started on 10 October.^[1]

Confirmation that the peace conference would start on 10 October had a significant impact. Pre-deployment training stopped.^[2] HMAS Tobruk had to be loaded with personnel and stores in less than 24 hours. At around this time, HMAS Tobruk’s ship’s army detachment staff assessed that there was too much stock on the wharf. The ship would be overloaded and possibly ‘bulk out’.^[3] Captain Jim O’Hara’s only option was to load HMAS Success with the stores that would not fit aboard Tobruk. Unfortunately, both ships bulked out before all stores could be loaded. HMAS Tobruk was also 200 tonnes over its authorised weight limit. Commander John Wells advised O’Hara of the final weight only five hours before the vessel was due to sail. He and Wells spent the next hours calculating the risk in allowing her to sail on schedule.^[4] Any delay would result in the SPPKF not getting on the ground in Bougainville in time to set up the peace conference venue and protect delegates. O’Hara analysed the weather forecasts for the voyage to Bougainville. Fortunately the weather was on the side of Operation Lagoon—calm conditions. O’Hara and Wells accepted the increased risk and HMAS Tobruk sailed on schedule.

While HMAS Tobruk and HMAS Success were at sea, the main body of the combined force flew out on 6 October in Australian and New Zealand C-130 Hercules transport aircraft. To satisfy Chan’s request, a 100-strong advance party flew directly to Buka Island airfield from Townsville to meet up with four Black Hawk helicopters and two Caribou transport aircraft that had been pre-positioned there to fly them to Arawa by 8 October. HMAS Tobruk arrived in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, on 7 October 1994. Brigadier Peter Abigail, his staff, the main force of the SPPKF and the ADF logistic support force were aboard by 2.00 a.m and HMAS Tobruk sailed from Honiara at 5.00 a.m. on 8 October. The previous 24 hours had been a tiring period for all personnel. The cramped conditions and the general excitement at finally being inbound to Bougainville were not conducive to catching up on lost sleep.^[5]

HMAS Tobruk anchored in Arawa Bay at 5.30 a.m. on 9 October. This arrival, less than 24 hours before the start of the conference, meant that neutral zones had not been secured, the conference site was not set up and administrative support for the conference was not in place. Planners had assessed that it would take seven days to achieve these objectives. The 100-strong advance party had been working without rest since arriving the day before to secure the conference site and set up facilities, but there was still much to do.^[6] Troops on HMAS Tobruk now had 12 hours to do what they could during the daylight hours of 9 October.

Just to add to the challenges facing Abigail and his headquarters,

when [HMAS] Tobruk berthed alongside Loloho Jetty, a combination of high hills surrounding the berth, the metal cranes, warehouses and ship ore loading facilities on and adjacent to the jetty resulted in the loss of both HF [High Frequency] and VHF [Very High Frequency] communications. Without SATCOM [satellite communications], HQ Combined Force would have had no strategic or tactical communications, other than UHF [Ultra High Frequency], for approximately 16 hours.^[7]

The origins of these problems lay in disjointed planning. Like logistics, communications planning for Operation Lagoon had followed a divided approach; vertically between each level of command and horizontally between each Service. At the strategic level, the mechanism for joint planning, the Joint Communications Planning Group sponsored by the Director General of Joint Communications and Electronics, had not met. If it had, subsequent problems would have been reduced.^[8] There would have been one point of contact for allocating and clearing frequencies with PNG authorities. As it was, the combined force depended on Inmarsat terminals to provide telephone, facsimile and data services back to Australia that were ‘subject to congestion due to the uncontrolled access to the overall system’.^[9]

At the operational level, ‘there was poor information flow from all parties’, according to one navy report.^[10] A Land Headquarters report noted some army and navy coordination problems that resulted in late arrangements for the distribution of cryptographic equipment and an unnecessarily large number of communications and cryptographic plans.^[11] At the tactical level, Abigail’s senior communications officer, Major Bill Teece, was not appointed at the outset as the Chief Communications Officer to develop a joint communications plan and bid for additional equipment. This left each Service to make separate communications arrangements for Operation Lagoon.^[12] Also at the tactical level, HMAS Tobruk had not received a substantial update ‘to its communications fit’ for two years and its HF receivers and transmitters continually broke down and took some time to repair.^[13] Army signallers rigged army RAVEN tactical radios on HMAS Tobruk’s flag deck that enabled Abigail and his staff to communicate with Australian radio operators who were with SPPKF platoons, giving Abigail a good understanding of the progress of South Pacific contingents. There were persistent problems communicating between army RAVEN equipment and non-RAVEN equipment being operated by the navy and the air force.^[14]

Force Employment

The consequences of putting the tactical level of command under pressure were now beginning to show on the ground and offshore in Bougainville. Communications capabilities were limited from the beginning. There had been no time to test the satellite communications (SATCOM) equipment that had been fitted to HMAS Tobruk. Communications managers had not anticipated the impact of the infrastructure around Loloho on communications. The crash in communications was a great source of frustration for General Peter Arnison who was trying to command Operation Lagoon from Victoria Barracks in Sydney.^[15] It was during this time that three Bougainvillean gunmen opened fire on a PNG Water Board party. The gunmen fled after firing a volley of shots, leaving the workers unharmed. This was a hasty ‘hit and run’ attack—an unsettling start for the SPPKF’s first day in Arawa. The sound of shots, and then a noisy clearance operation by the PNG Defence Force (PNGDF), involving use of hand grenades and automatic fire, frightened several hundred Bougainvilleans in the vicinity, who had gathered for the conference, as well as the inhabitants of a nearby displaced persons camp. However, there appeared to be an immediate loss of confidence in the SPPKF. Word of the incident and PNGDF retaliation soon got around those who had already gathered for the conference, and over 600 Bougainvilleans in the camp who were normally protected by the PNGDF.^[16]

The withdrawal of PNGDF troops from the outskirts of Arawa had also caused problems on the roads leading to the conference site at the Arawa High School. Locals began approaching members of the SPPKF with reports that groups of armed young men were intimidating and robbing people coming to the conference. Colonel Feto Tupou convened an emergency meeting of the Ceasefire Committee at the Arawa High School at 5.15 p.m. on 9 October to discuss these reports and the shooting incident. Mr Nick Peniai, a representative from the North Solomons Interim Authority, informed the meeting that the optimism present when delegates began arriving in Arawa had been replaced by fear. The robberies, intimidation, shooting incident and the ill-disciplined PNGDF response had lowered the morale of those gathered for the conference and the inhabitants of the Arawa displaced persons camp.^[17]

These incidents put Tupou, Colonel Sevenaca Draunidalo and the SPPKF in an awkward situation. Criminal gangs had become emboldened by the PNGDF withdrawal. The displaced persons and the hundreds of delegates gathering in the Arawa area were at risk, especially at night. Peniai called for a curfew and regular patrols to ensure security. The Rules of Engagement (ROE) for Operation Lagoon permitted the questioning (but not detention) of persons behaving suspiciously. The ROE were silent about the confiscation of weapons in the neutral zones. There was also no provision for curfews or interventions to protect the lives and property of Bougainvilleans if they were assaulted or robbed. The expectation of ordinary Bougainvilleans was that the SPPKF was there to protect them during the conference. In reality, the SPPKF was not authorised to enforce full control over neutral zones or anywhere else in Bougainville. Peacekeepers were there to maintain a deterrent presence during the conference. The ROE of ‘presence’ would be insufficient to deter criminals from going about their business. The SPPKF may have had the right mission, but it did not have robust ROE to achieve it. The difficulty in controlling armed groups on the ground was emphasised on the day the conference opened when one of the Australian Sea King helicopters returned from a routine reconnaissance mission with two bullet holes in its tail section. O’Hara reported stirringly that, ‘this was the first occasion [that] the RAN [Royal Australian Navy] had incurred battle damage since the Vietnam War’.^[18]

Later that day, one of Abigail’s attached intelligence officers informed him that the PNGDF had set an ambush, supported by Australian-supplied Claymore anti-personnel mines, on the main route into Arawa. Local PNGDF forces appeared to be using the conference as an opportunity for payback. Abigail told the local commander to abandon the ambush site and move his troops out of the area.^[19] As dangers increased, ADF communications capabilities decreased. Communications between Arnison and Abigail and their staffs were breaking down or overloaded. Lieutenant Colonel Steve Ayling, a communications staff officer with Headquarters Australian Defence Force (HQ ADF), reported that the Inmarsat satellite, through which most communications were being sent, was overloaded and there was also congestion elsewhere in the Defence network.^[20]

Retrieved from link: http://epress.anu.edu.au/sdsc/sfsr/mobile_devices/ch07.html

The road to Hell is paved with religion and westernization

Martyn Namorong

When the greedy White ruling class decided to loot the rest of the world's nations of their wealth they carried with them, their Laws, their customs, their Government, their Technology, their diseases and their Religion. The greatest lessons about how the west and by extension the western model of development work can be found in the way they shamelessly conducted themselves in other peoples land.

Their religion Christianity was about a Middle-Eastern zombie. (FYI a zombie is something that rises from the dead). They told everyone that their religion was the ONLY WAY TO SPIRITUAL HEAVEN.

The historical context of colonization is that it was coming out of a people who had for millennia since the Greek empire of Alexander, being a subversive race. First the Greeks, followed by the Romans, then the Roman Catholic Church and the European nations. They had thousands of years of experience in subverting people.

At the time Europeans decided to subvert nations elsewhere, their Religion was is turmoil thanks to a German Priest (my namesake a German Priest called Martin) who noted that the religous center of the Western model of Development, was rotten to the core.

The Catholic priests had, after centuries of wanking in monasteries, figured how to subvert people in order to exploit them off their wealth.

I'm deliberately using the word SUBVERSION or SUBVERT because to subvert a population is to make the population think that it is acting in its best Interest while at the same time undermining its interest. In simple English: they make you think you're helping yourself when in fact you're harming yourself.

In order to build St Peters Basilica in Rome they made the Europeans think that it was in their interest to give money to the Catholic Church for the remission of sins - some con job the poppies called indulgence. The premise of this was that Jesus is the only way to Spiritual heaven and the Western Church is the only way to a Middle-Eastern zombie.

So the Church thrived at the expense of the poor Europeans and the Europeans genuinely thought they were serving their best interest, until my namesake (Martin) figured the con job. Having being challenged by Martin Luther, the Church launched the Counter-Reformation. The word propaganda was first used when Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85) set up the Societas de Propaganda Fide (Society for the Propagation of Faith).

This narrative continues today not just in the one way to spiritual heaven version, but also the one way to physical heaven version. The contest for the monopoly of religious and secular ways to heaven have continued down the centuries including during the Cold War. Indeed the Cold War is a classic contest of ideas, both religious and secular.

We also see today the contest of ideas between the Islamic world and the West. For the West, there can be no other form of government than democracy. Even though, the people of Islamic Iran have higher levels of literacy and education compared to 'democratic' PNG and communist Cuba has better Healthcare than democratic America. Now, I'm not implying that PNG becomes an Islamic Republic or a Commie state, instead I'm highlighting the fact that different cultures, societies, geographical locations and historical contexts need their own unique sets of ideas to progress.

Today, many people religiously preach that the only way to physical heaven is the western colonial model of development. When my namesake questioned the One Church to Heaven narrative, he was excommunicated, riddiculed and threatened. It wasn't because he was theologically wrong, it was because some of the Elite in Europe did not wish to give up their control of religion, political power, land and resources.

The western elite set out to conquer the world with their one model of development that would replicate the St Peters Basillica social experiment throughout the world. Papua New Guineans are being hoodwinked today into paying a lot of indulgences (resources exploited by foreigners) in order to get to heaven (see development).

My namesake saw the deceit of the Western Model of Spirituality and argued that it wasn't the pope (head of the Church and the European elite) who would take people to spiritual heaven, it was the faith of the individual. You didn't have to give your resources to the Pope in order to get to heaven.

It is not necessary that we handover our resources to foreigners in order to see progress. If it was, the Founders of these nation would not have called for National Sovereignty and Self Reliance or for the wise use of natural resources or even for Our own model of development as articulated by Goal number 5 of the Papua New Guinea Constitution.

Subversion is seen as the ultimate weapon of War. It is also referred to as Political Warfare or diplomacy. It was first described by an ancient Chinese General, Sun Tzu in The Art of War. Sun Tzu writes:

"The Supreme Art of War is to subdue the enemy [a nation] without fighting."

In case you still haven't noticed yet, Papua New Guinea has already been conquered. Different parties have used arguments from the Western Model of Development, to invade the country.

We have a Malaysian who have conquered Logging and Oil Palm

We have a Chinese who have conquered the Retail sector

We have the Americans who have conquered Natural Gas

We have the Commonwealth (Australian/Canadian) miners who have conquered Mining.

We have the Filipinos who have conquered Tuna Fisheries to supply Europeans

I know there are many Papua New Guineans out there dreaming of being rich. But ask yourself, how will you gain wealth if foreigners are in charge of the sources of wealth? How will you develop your country if you don't have control of the resources necessary for creating developmental activities.

The consequence of foreigners being in control of national wealth is that we fight like dogsover elections and positions in politics and the public services, so that we might be able to collect the scraps they throw to the government coffers.

Em bai yu toktok long maus tasol long bringim divelopment, na nogat senis bai kamap. Yu ken tok yu papa na mama graun o yu risos owna tasol samtin tru em yu papa/mama long nem tasol na ol ausait lain benefit.

The West's model of development is a form of violence: Economic Violence. Look no further than Panguna, the Fly River, the Watut River, RH logging Camps, Ramu Mine, SABLs, etc... The reason you don't perceive it as violence is because you've been trained to think that it's ok - just collateral damage [remember subversion].

But just in case you don't believe me look at what's happened to Europes PIGS [PIGS stands for Portugal Ireland Greece & Spain]. Having fattened the PIGS with cheap credit, the Bankers have now taken them to the Economic slaughterhouse to trim the fat.

Germany (Formerly the Holy Roman Empire, and Colonizers of New Guinea) is punishing its neighbors. Previously they fought with armies, now they use Economic Violence. Now they're telling the PIGS that it's perfectly normal and in their interest to suffer economic violence.

Gandhi described poverty as the worst form of violence. But poverty is just a symptom of economic disparity also referred to as economic violence. And economic violence is a product of the greed of a few elite.

And the elite have used the Western Model of Development to enrich themselves the same way that the Catholic Church enriched its coffers with indulgences. They both promise heaven but fail to deliver.

Now you have been trained not to question these two realities: religion and development. No one wants to be anti-god or anti-westernization. If you do stray away from these two sets of belief systems either god will punish you or Americans will bomb your country.

Sun Tzu warns in the Art of War: "Know your enemy and know yourself..."

 Retrieved from NAMORONG REPORT (http://namorong.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-religion.html)