Augustine Karuvi: An Epic Journey of a Bougainville Rebel

Leonard Fong Roka

We started the civil war that killed thousands and it is us that must now lead the younger generation to attain a better life in a Bougainville that is free from all forms of suppression and exploitation-LFR

In 1988, the young men who initiated the anti-Bougainville Copper Limited and Papua New Guinea militancy in part of Central Bougainville, were mostly the men who had hardly reached the high school level in education. A good number of these men were often involved in criminal activities thus when an activity so resembling their life erupted in Panguna, they were all there.

And one such youngster was Augustine Karuvi of Koiano in the Kokoda (Koiano, Koromira and Dangtanai) constituency of Kieta. But, Karuvi’s tale is different because he was a student who decided to walk out of the classrooms to join the fight.

Br. Augustine Karuvi OP

 

The young Augustine Karuvi left school in 1989 to fight in a conflict that the end was so blurred at the age of 17. Then, his area which was referred to as Koromira, was a safe haven of some of the pre-crisis know rascals thus with them he was into the fight.

But his fighting career was halted by the 1990 cease fire between the PNG security forces and the militants.  He returned to attend school in 1991, then, operated by the weakening North Solomons provincial administration that lasted for only 1991 and ceased in early 1992 (not all schools did this but only a handful that had concerned teachers).

Within 1991 the reckless Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) arrogance of those days caught up with his extended family. In his family he had a cousin serving in the Papua New Guinea Defence Force and was not at home so to the BRA they claimed the family was still communicating with him.

Augustine was tortured alongside some of his male family members.

In that same period, his next cousin, a defected police Officer, Joseph Miarama Kasika was killed by locals in a BRA operation at Rotokas in Wakunai when he arrived in a scene where a band of BRA men before his party stirred trouble with the locals.

Augustine was a lost youngster for there was no hope; he was trapped. Then in 1992, the Papua New Guinea Defense Force landed at his home, the Toimanapu plantation. To Augustine, the PNGDF captured this location as strategic position to try and quell the BRA boats that darted into the Solomon’s Choiseul province for humanitarian help in the midst of the Australia-backed total blockade of Bougainville.

With this event and out of loyalty to the Bougainville cause, he joined the BRA group of his home, Koiano.

His first action in the BRA was at the Toimanapu PNGDF camp. This camp hosted some local families who surrendered in pursued of medical assistance. This operation saw an early dawn raid on the PNGDF and it resulted on the death of one popular BRA fighter from the Kongara area, Eperi.

After many other operations, his next major engagement was in the Papua New Guinea’s operation to clear Bougainville from all rebel areas and code named as High Speed Operation especially popular around 1996.

Augustine was at the former Aropa International airport defending his land from invaders in an engagement that took nearly a week till the PNGDF were driven back to Arawa where they came from and caused the death of two Bougainvilleans—a BRA man and an innocent fishing Kongara child.

To Augustine witnessing the lost of child that had a long future was damning. He says: ‘Truly I was fighting a genuine cause for my island and people. We were victims of ill treatment of our home by foreigners that did not respect us’.

The kid came to fish in the Aropa before the fighting began. As the exchange of gunfire began, terser bullets (bullets that explode several times after living the gun barrel) fired by the PNGDF confused him by exploding upstream so he darted downstream and was captured by the enemy.

His body was retrieved by Augustine and four other BRA men a day later buried with his hands tied behind his back. He was tortured to death and sustained broken bones and knife wounds but no familiar bullet wounds.

After this incident, Augustine calmed himself and remained fighting the PNGDF till they withdrew unable to face the determined BRA fighting power. For example, one of their hope of success, a Australia donated armored vehicle also was nearly put out of action thus they were demoralized. 

As the BRA was gearing for a massive final assault, scouts reported that the invaders were not being detected. Augustine was relieved to go home without seeing more blood.

But in the BRA rush to scavenge where the PNGDF was positioned, a booby trap exploded and killed another of his comrade, Nathan Matebai who was also another BRA legend of the late 1990s.

Exhausted by the Aropa operation he went straight for another attack on Toimanapu without visiting his family in the hideouts in the jungles of Koiano.

He was engaged to the PNGDF for a week, once more.

This fight, once again at his home area, was ignited on a Friday. ‘We engaged the PNGDF with care to let them waste their Australian ammunition and when it felt like they were done we could move in and slaughter them,’ he recalls. ‘But things really went not the way we wanted’.

As planned, their random gunfire at the Toimanapu encampment flowed smoothly into a Saturday.

On the next morning, a Sunday, it was Augustine’s group’s turn to disturb the enemy. They engaged the PNGDF and exchange fire. With a partner, some fifty meters away from the PNGDF line, Augustine and his friend were struggling to figure out a machine gunner when the reckless firing of the PNGDF man caught his friend. He died instantly and Augustine called a BRA soldier from the Buka Island and they moved the death to safety.

Early the next morning, the PNGDF wounded BRA general commander, Ishmael Toroama and the operation to flush out the invaders from his home was called off.

Augustine Karuvi feels great that he had contributed to resist his island’s subjugation and exploitation by foreigners despite the many negative aspects of the Bougainville crisis we have created and more must be done for Bougainvilleans to be free.

With this in his heart, in 1997 when his enemies, the PNGDF were withdrawing from parts of central Bougainville, he went on to attend Arawa High School and continued on to Bishop Wade Secondary school. From here he enrolled at the East New Britain Business Studies in Rabaul and in 2005 was employed by a local company in Arawa.

From 2006 he joined the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church to become a priest.  In 2007 he was posted in the Gizo Diocese Western Province of Solomon Islands and his posting was completed in 2009.

One significance of his Gizo posting was his going home to Koiano direct by neglecting PNG and international rules of sovereignty.  

‘For all those times,’ he laughs, ‘I took a boat from Gizo and went straight home instead of wasting time going to Port Moresby and to Buka. This is my home islands and it is one of the many reasons many Bougainvilleans died as we tried to regain our rights as Solomon Islanders’.

Augustine and his family were originally from the northern Choiseul Island of the Solomon Islands and were new comers into Central Bougainville just before colonialism.

Many a times the PNG High Commission at Honiara warned him but he ignored that.

From 2010 2011 he was at Bomana Catholic Theological Institute and now he is a ordained Dominican brother in the Order of Preachers (OP) and had just completed the course, English Language Arts at the Divine Word University to venture more into his learning of becoming a good Bougainvillean.

To him, Bougainville’s future depends on the new comers and their sacrifice to be educated despite the fact that they are over the required age of sitting in the classrooms and often they are laughed at by those that did not see the impact of the Bougainville civil war. But we have to cuddle our traditional values and the cruelty of history and make a new free Bougainville for our future generations.