Bougainville Revolutionary Army was the Root of Civil Conflict

Leonard Fong Roka

Starting from October 1992 I was a kid roaming around parts of Kieta and Bana District in South Bougainville with a BRA ‘A’ Company body-guard unit attached to my relative, the late ABG President Joseph Kabui then the vice president of the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG). I partook in no armed operation except escorts to my leader and one assault on an innocent Bougainvillean in Bana as I see it today.

 

But, despite the fact my New Guinean father was killed by the BRA in 1993, I still consider myself a Bougainvillean nationalist because of the awareness I have for the ill treatment of my Solomon Island of Bougainville by colonialism and later by Papua New Guinea, especially through the mine on my land.

As Panguna people, we did spark off a conflict that saved Bougainville from brutality of the Bougainville Copper Limited, the Papua New Guineans and the squatter settlements (I carry a scar caused by kids at the Arawa’s Morobe Camp in 1988 on my face). But it was not our fight; it was a struggle for self-determination started off by so-called cargo cult movements like the Hahalis Welfare Society and many others across Bougainville earlier in the 1950s.

These were groups condemned publicly but silently assisted by Catholic missionaries and a few expatriate planters of cocoa and coconut as they demonstrated against ‘rascals’ on our island without violence.

Engaging the barrel of the gun to the long cry, we did the old so proud in 1988 by having the ‘rascals’ packing out of our beloved island in fear and pain. Thus, by then did they realize the fact they were ‘rascals’ in Solomon exploiting and suppressing a people that they are not related to.

In that fight we created the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. I know this name quaked the Pacific and even our rulers the Papua New Guineans or Ivitu, as we know them in Buin.

But the question is: Why did we turn on each other? This is the question that must be answered today so that we take Bougainville in the right track.

In 1990, I was a Grade 4 student at Kaperia Community School in Arawa, when the first ceasefire was signed by Sam Kauona (BRA) and Leo Nuia (PNG) known as the ‘Butcher of Bougainville’. All the BRA men were stationed at Panguna. Law and order was observed for a month within Panguna with the late Francis Ona as the supreme head.

But as these men got out of this cage, they did harm to businesses in Arawa by looting them calling themselves as redeemers of Bougainville. I once after school, encountered two BRA men reluctantly wearing shoes without paying for it saying to the cashiers, ‘we have suffered in the bush fighting for you’ in a store known then as the Haus Bilas.

To the late Francis Ona and his followers, closing down the Panguna mine was the bliss that blinded them. Keeping order and governing Bougainville was neglected. Thus, the BRA recklessness grew and spread.

The BRA men, majority of who were illiterate, went astray grabbing private and ex-BCL property; looted shops and exploited women often with the gun. These unorganized BRA bands falsely accused innocent people of being PNG spies and tortured them. Others, were accused of sorcery and killed.

The politically incompetent late Francis Ona was nowhere to be seen or heard in this anarchy created under his name. BRA’s ill treatment of innocent Bougainvilleans was executed under the ‘standing orders’ of Francis Ona as I was hearing. But this was a lie since I heard later that Francis Ona was not aware of any so call ‘standing orders’ and he was not responsible for the suffering endured by Bougainvilleans.

But it was said that ‘who ever that cause harm to a fellow Bougainvillean was responsible to it’ for our fight, was solely aimed at our foe, the Papua New Guineans.

But, that’s it. The BRA was a name posed externally as a body with a central command fighting for Bougainville freedom when in fact, it was tag that hosted dozens of independent individuals or bands of men who operated at own will across Bougainville.

To many of these BRA men, then, Buka was a strange place with beautiful women and unarmed men. So, with their new-found privileges they frequented Buka in new ex-BCL or robbed vehicles exploiting women and terrorizing the peace in this part of Bougainville and this lead to the Buka leaders like Sam Tulo, to re-invite the PNG government into Buka in 1990 and the creation of the Buka Liberation Force (BLF) that fought on behave of the PNGDF that had mostly coward soldiers trained by Australia (BLF men claims) after an agreement signed in the New Ireland province of PNG.

The BRA response to this was: ‘The Bukas have sold off our island to foreigners’ instead of admitting that it was they who were dividing the people of Bougainville with their irresponsibility and recklessness based on their lack of political know-how (Joseph Kabui was politically capable then, but the ruler then was the barrel of the gun and Francis Ona) .

In South Bougainville, Siwai District, responded to this BRA-BIG insanity through its creative leader, the late Anthony Anugu and few others. They created the South Bougainville Interim Authority (SBIA) to the shock of the sick BRA and BIG to try and provide services to the people who now had no leader to guide them.

But, the kind and valuable leaders were betrayed by Siwai BRA lunatics and killed in early 1992 in Panguna.

Thus, today it is the BRA that ought to re-evaluate its irresponsibility of the past and lead Bougainville in the right direction instead of sitting down and waiting for miracles and creating fear in the hearts and minds of my people on Bougainville.