Breaking the silence of a secret
war, the people of Bougainville have chosen words over weapons, discovers Anouk
Ride.
Enemies who became friends – Theresa
Jaintong and Ben Kamada Anouk Ride
Francis and all the other people of
Bougainville know what life is like in a world turned upside down. They have
lived through the South Pacific’s bloodiest conflict since World War Two – it
lasted nine years until a ceasefire was declared in early 1998 between the
Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF)
with its local Resistance Army supporters. In what the outside world frequently
calls a ‘forgotten war’, but which Bougainvilleans simply call ‘the crisis’,
around 20,000 people – an eighth of the population – died due to the fighting
or to the blockade imposed on the island by the Papua New Guinea Government.
A
world turns upside down
Francis is matter-of-fact about how
he personally was catapulted into the conflict: ‘The BRA came and everyone had
to sign up. I was a young boy, wanted to be tough.’ Francis is clearly proud
that his clan name, ‘Omi’, means ‘bad’.
His family, like so many others, was
split by the conflict. His brother fought for the other side – PNG – and was
killed.
His eyes cloud with tears when he
describes the day when he tried to run the blockade to Bougainville from the
Solomons. The PNGDF patrol boat saw them: ‘Three friends of mine were shot.
There was all their blood around me in the sea. And I just grabbed this piece
of wood and was quiet and still so I would not get shot. I drifted, and drifted
all night…’
‘I was psychologically affected by
the War,’ he later admits, ‘even now.’ After drifting away from life as a BRA
boy, he became a youth worker and now does workshops on the dangers of
home-brewed alcohol and violence against women. ‘People are surprised that I
made it to this today but it was hard work and took many years,’ he says before
adding, with grave astonishment: ‘I even saw a psychologist!’
The factors that turned Bougainville
upside down are complicated and rooted in a history of foreign interference
(see the Octopus of War). But clearly the development of the Panguna
copper mine, which began in 1972, congealed Bougainvillean desire for autonomy.
In what was to become the archetypal indigenous anti-mining land-rights struggle
and the loudest wake-up call for the industry in the world, locals protested
for 16 years. But they could not stop a hole six kilometres wide and four
kilometres deep being bored into the central mountains of Bougainville island.
Finally, the conflict became violent on 22 November 1988 when a disgruntled
mineworker raided Bougainville Copper Ltd’s armoury and stole explosives which
he used to destroy company installations. This fiery man, Francis Ona, was soon
proclaimed President of Bougainville by secessionists and he led the newly
formed BRA. Today Ona has rejected the peace process and thus has split with
the majority of the BRA. Ona’s few hundred rebels control the mine and the area
around it. Even flying over this part of the island exposes helicopters to
gunfire.
In addition to the old grenades and
guns left by the Japanese and Americans during the Second World War which were
pieced together and replicated, the BRA was able to steal and capture a lot of
equipment from the Resistance and PNGDF. The PNGDF in turn was supported by
Australia, whose hands are submerged in this murky flow of arms. The Defence
Co-operation Program between PNG and Australia includes supply of light and
heavy weapons, all of which have been used in Bougainville in the blockade and
fighting – it was Australian-supplied Iroquois helicopters that dumped
civilians killed by the PNGDF into the sea following the ‘St Valentine’s Day
Massacre’ in 1990.
The Program also includes military
training and advisers. Ironically, the commander of the BRA, Sam Kaona,
undertook an Australian Officer Training Course in explosives at Portsea near
Melbourne.
Around 20,000 people – an eighth of
the population – died due to the fighting or to the blockade imposed on the
island by the Papua New Guinea Government
Papua New Guinea’s destructive love
affair with overseas military assistance grew to sickening proportions in March
1997 when the Government signed a contract reported to be worth $31 million
with Sandline International to retake central Bougainville by force using hired
mercenaries. Amidst mass protests by PNG civilians and a military rebellion,
the mercenaries were sent home. Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan stood down and
Bill Skate came to power.
Willie Aga, a BRA man, says: ‘I was
not afraid when we heard the mercenaries were coming because I knew they would
die. And we also knew we could get some much better weapons off the mercenaries
than we can off the PNGDF.’
Despite this attachment to weapons
and violence by the BRA and PNG Government, when Skate came to power in
mid-1997 each side seemed more optimistic that a non-violent solution was
possible. A few people in Buka who still wear the prized yellow ‘Election 97’
T-shirts describe their jubilation as they oversaw the island’s participation in
national elections for the first time in a decade.
Skate addressed Bougainvilleans
saying: ‘I feel compelled by the grace of God that the time has come to say
sorry and ask for your forgiveness.’ And on 23 January 1998 all sides signed
the ‘Lincoln Agreement on Peace, Security and Development on Bougainville’ –
renouncing the use of armed force and violence and setting the date of 30 April
as the beginning of a ‘permanent and irrevocable ceasefire’. So far this has
held, despite the PNG Parliament’s refusal to allow a referendum on the
constitutional status of Bougainville.
Stifled
voices are let free
As Bougainville was previously under
a state of siege, the story of the crisis has only just been heard. When asked
why peace has happened now, Willie Aga cites the most common reply: ‘We were
tired of war, tired of killing.’ War-weariness seems to have beaten down most
former fighters. Willie adds: ‘The PNGDF couldn’t win because those men in
Resistance, they are our brothers. We cannot keep killing our brothers and they
do not want to kill us.’
Foe & Infiltrator of the Solomon Island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
The legacy of this disturbing
experience is obvious in the volatile young men who have lived the War as
fighters. They become frustrated or are too humiliated to go to school to learn
how to read and write alongside people half their age. And, says youth worker
Francis, ‘they don’t know how to just talk. It’s difficult just to get them to
talk. They consider themselves better because they’ve fought and they won’t
negotiate.’ With boredom and homebrew, or jungle juice, in plentiful supply
these youths are responsible for most of the ‘law and order problems’ which
concern Bougainvilleans. Although they have just come out of a war, the
islanders are horrified at the gangster crime they have seen or heard of in
Port Moresby, PNG’s capital and one of the most violent cities in the world.
Despite the ‘bad’ name Francis and
other former fighters have, they are able to reject violence and be
reintegrated into society. To do this they need employment or education but
Willie says that aid donors are reluctant to fund projects which employ former
killers. Still, he is far from despondent about the chances that people who
lived through the War can hold the peace: ‘When we were fighting I saw miracles
– survival.’
People were forced out of the towns
and villages into a life on the run in the jungle. Around 35,000-40,000 were
coerced or fled into crowded government ‘care centres’ which many saw as
prisons where people routinely suffered human-rights abuses. Other communities
came under the control of the BRA and were forced to move with the fighters in
their pursuit and retreat from the PNGDF.
Patricia from Arawa says: ‘It was
very hard up there in the bush. The BRA made us move each day with all our
things. We had to make shelter under the trees so we could not be seen by the
security forces flying overhead. After the crisis was over I went up there in a
chopper. What a joke! You can see everything from up there! The BRA made fools
of us.’ And some women spent the crisis with their children hiding from both
the BRA and the PNGDF, often becoming ill and perishing in harsh conditions,
without access to medicines.
But the remarkable resilience that
many people showed through the crisis has now been used to transform the
island. In just a year Buka has been rebuilt from scratch, Arawa’s local
produce market thrives and flights from PNG are full of people coming and going
for business or to see family now the blockade is over. The passion to rebuild
Bougainville is palpable – such as the man who insisted on digging in the hot
sun to lay telephone cables despite malaria, a rapidly melting block of ice
bandaged around his head and all attempts at dissuasion by his fellow workers.
At the same time, Bougainvilleans
value independence and many worry about whether the large inflow of aid – $64
million over five years from the Australian Government alone – implemented
without grassroots control, will lead to a ‘handout mentality’. Many highlight
the lack of local employment in aid projects. Mining remains one of the most
sensitive topics and it is not even mentioned in any of the peace talks. Most
Bougainvilleans use this as the yardstick for what they do not want – foreign
economic control in any form, including top-down aid.
But international support is
encouraged – a prominent example being the success of the Peace Monitoring
Group. This group of organized and unarmed citizens of Australia, Aotearoa/New
Zealand, Fiji and Vanuatu patrols Bougainville in a bid to discourage violence
or breaks of the ceasefire but also to spread the word about peace and its
benefits. The Peace Monitoring Group, like the Peace Brigades (an international
organization of human-rights monitors who are dispatched to trouble-spots),
show that unarmed foreigners can be more effective peace police than armed
‘peacekeepers’ whose motives are inevitably seen as suspicious by locals.
Octopus
of War
Eight
tentacles reaching towards Bougainville's crisis
- Louis de Bougainville ‘discovered’ the islands in 1768.
When he landed on the northern island the people ran up to him saying
‘Buka? buka?’ meaning ‘What? What?’ and so this island became called Buka
and the southern larger island became known as Bougainville.
- Queen Victoria and Chancellor Bismarck drew a line on
the map in 1884 which was to determine that Bougainville was administered
by the Germans, separately from Bougainville’s ethnically and culturally
similar Solomon Islands.
- In 1918 Bougainville, with Papua New Guinea, came under
Australian jurisdiction due to a League of Nations mandate; then in 1947
PNG became a United Nations Trust Territory for which Australia was
responsible.
- Two weeks before PNG was to receive independence in
1975, Bougainvilleans tried to pre-empt rule from Port Moresby by
declaring independence. The Australians sent in riot police, a few
Bougainvillean leaders were arrested and the islands were left to become
part of the North Solomons Province of an independent PNG.
- In 1972 the development of what was to become the
world’s largest copper mine, Panguna, started. Women pulled out surveying
pegs and lay down in front of trucks in an attempt to stop mining but were
forcibly removed.
- The mine provided a great source of income to the
cash-strapped PNG Government, accounting for 40 per cent of their national
export earnings. The landowners received less than one per cent of the
profits while their rivers became horrendously polluted and surrounding
trees and plants died.
- Tensions between traditional landowners on the one
hand, and the PNG Government and the mining company on the other hand,
heightened as a group of landowners got together and campaigned for more
compensation and better environmental control. They resorted to violence,
naming themselves the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.
- The PNGDF arrived in 1989, burned villages and also
tortured, killed and raped civilians and rebels. The BRA expanded
operations through the whole island and declared independence on 17 May
1990. The PNGDF announced a blockade of the island the next day.
Despite the common points of
agreement that have helped keep the peace in Bougainville, there are several
topics the various parties to the process do not agree on and they are enjoying
having the right to meet, debate and discuss. One conversation – between two
supporters of different visions for Bougainville’s future – seemed to sum up
how people felt about peace and its implications. Theresa Jaintong, a forceful
organizer and rapid speaker from the District Women’s Council, does not support
independence and describes herself as a moderate: ‘I don’t want to take sides.
People from all sides come and we will embrace them if they want peace. During
the crisis the women would tell both sides to stop fighting. And in the care
centres we would tell the PNGDF where not to go. If the BRA or the Security
Forces were doing something – an ambush or something – we would say to them “I
cry for you now if you do not go out and fight. If you go out and get killed, I
will not cry for you.” They listened to that.’
In ways like this the women are
influential, she says: ‘They work for peace and were very important in creating
this peace. The top – the official Bougainville Transitional Government – doesn’t
matter. The women have a different approach. They are among the people. And
they can create peace.’
At this stage we are interrupted by
Ben Kamada, Chief Planner of the BRA, who is known for a quick temper as much
as a quick mind. He had told me before that although he may fire mortars over a
roundtable rather than a mountain these days, independence for Bougainville is
his target.
‘The women got us killed,’ he says
dismissively.
Theresa rolls her eyes and I get the
feeling they have discussed this topic before. She attempts to ignore this
comment: ‘He talks like this but he is a peacemaker. He allowed women from
government-controlled areas and BRA areas to come together. He took care of me
although he knew I was moderate.’
Ben will not be shrugged off: ‘I
hate the women. I hate PNGDF. They’re all the same. I do not trust them. When
we came down because our mothers told us, our chiefs told us, we got killed by
the soldiers. The women talk like this because they did not fight; they did not
suffer.’
Theresa’s mouth opens in shocked
disgust. The argument is on. ‘Oh!’ she exclaims. ‘We had suffering, the women
experienced great sadness. But we got together. In the care centres we formed a
Council of Chiefs and organized ourselves. We made peace in ourselves and then
we went out to make peace…’
Ben is adamant: ‘I am scared. I
don’t trust these people and I don’t trust the women.’
‘You live with a woman!’ says
Theresa in exasperation as she turns half her back to him and leans closer to
me: ‘Don’t listen to all of this. He has been a bridge between warring
parties.’
Ben is shaking his head: ‘I might be
a bridge, but soon I will break. Too many people on me and I break.’
‘There is not peace,’ he continues,
‘We signed the declarations but there is not trust. I do not trust the PNGDF. I
have peace with Resistance because they are Bougainvilleans, black skins like
me. Not these redskins (Papuans). I want them to go back.’
‘You can’t ask them to go back. They
don’t want to be here,’ insists Theresa. ‘It’s the Government that wants them
to be here. That is who you must talk to.’
Ben is not pacified: ‘I do not trust
the Government,’ he says and then adds thoughtfully: ‘There have been four
ceasefires, maybe there will be a fifth one.’
‘No!’ says Theresa her yellow eyes
flashing anger.
Ben crosses his arms: ‘I am not
ashamed of it. I have rascals watching and ready to fight. I want to tell the
world!’
Theresa covers her ears and, head
down, shouts: ‘Stop talking like this. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to
know!’
Ben continues: ‘We have our weapons
and they have theirs. We are ready to fight.’ Theresa turns and looks him
straight in the eyes as she emphasizes each word: ‘You own the peace. You
signed the agreement. You can not fight. You own the peace.’
Ben is silent for a moment. The
words hang somewhere in the space between the two political adversaries. And
the realization comes – they agree on something after all. Ben’s shoulders push
back and he grins proudly: ‘I own the peace.’
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