Panguna Internal Geopolitics and the Panguna Re-opening possible Problems

Leonard Fong Roka

In the ABG website, New Bougainville Bulletin, Panguna was recently noted as the only Bougainville’s readily available wealth as ABG’s President John Momis stated: ‘This is because my government believes that as the Panguna Mine helped bankroll Papua New Guinea’s independence in the 1970s, it too can again bankroll Bougainville’s autonomy and independence’ (Aneisia, 2013).

With the story of wealth creation soaring high, all decision makers are being consciously narrowed down to dealing with the known political factions and the landowners, but in the Panguna district there are people that do not worship this political factions nor are they landowners in the mine lease areas but rather, they are a populous lot that exist in the inaccessible inland areas. Sadly, re-opening strategists are hopping over an issue that needs catering for alongside the re-opening agenda.

A Kori family's canteen in the gold panning valley of Tumpusiong at Pingnari Kori settlement

 

In geographical terms, the Panguna District, as it was known since 2010, is made up of 6 areas. They are: the Pine valley on the port-mine access road, the Panguna mine site itself, the Tumpusiong Valley, the Toio Valley, the Orami area and the Biampanari valley.

In demographic terms the Pine, the Panguna mine site and the Tumpusiong Valley are readily accessible to most infrastructure development laid by the gone Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL). These three areas access services readily and socio-economic indicators, like the level of education, are in the positive rungs. Furthermore, all these three locations host the main landowners in Panguna.

But the inland areas of Biampanari and the Toio are way backwards because of distances and rugged terrain the people here daily have to conquer to reach the Morgan to Bolave (Bana District) section of the Panguna to South Bougainville highway. On the other hand, Orami is different. The topography in the Orami area is rugged and the two feeder roads, Sikoreva-Kori and Bolave-Orami, were built in a fashion not suitable for the environs. Thus from dereliction the roads are not accessible by vehicles so people have to leave their homes in the night to reach the closest spot on the highway with their saleable garden produce, their sick patience and even to go to school or shopping in Arawa or Panguna mine site area.

With Orami there is its sister village of Daru that borders Panguna with Kongara 1. These two villages have their own primary schools and Orami’s produces cocoa and Daru is denied by climatic conditions not suitable for cocoa and the distance to the road.

Up the Biampanari we have the villages of Iarako, Rumba, Sirobana, Kori, Irang and Pangka. These villages produce the highest cocoa volume in Panguna. Up the Toio we have the villages of Damara, Tumpuruno, Diri, Widoi, Karanau, Poaru, Mosinau and Utongpunta. Oral history differentiate only the village of Poaru, where majority of them settled here after journeying from the Tumpusiong Valley area through the Panguna mine site thus they are custodians of land areas under the mining lease lands.

During the start of the conflict in 1988, young men from these isolated villages stood behind the disgruntling landowners to force BCL to shut down; the late Francis Ona ran off to Mosinau village to hide and the first Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) soldier was killed at Orami. Also in comparison to other areas of Panguna, more young men of these villages were killed in direct action by pro-PNG resistance and PNG soldiers. These are contribution these people have done for the betterment of the landowners who were long being treated as animals by corrupted leaders, the PNG government and the BCL.

As the New Zealand brokered peace process gained momentum in Panguna and business opportunities raised, these people migrated and settled in the Panguna mine site and some in the alluvial mining valley of Tumpusiong. Many have become successful in business like owning retail outlets and gold trading. Most businesses operated in the Panguna mine site today are owned by these immigrants and event are larger number of them have purchased land blocks in the east coastal areas in Wakunai and Tinputz and grow cocoa there.

These successes on land they do not own, since 1998, were a source of resentment with the locals. On this conflict also, was born the Panguna District and its establishment in the midst of immigrants at Karona in Panguna. Thus its operations were continuously disturbed by the conflicts of interest that often had the immigrants on one side and locals, like people from Dapera and Moroni villages on the other.

Due to these issues, the Panguna district administration operates from Arawa despite the fact that they have the most classic building then the rest of the 12 other districts of Bougainville.

And with the dawn of the Panguna mine re-opening talk in the air, we have a problem that needs the same treatment as the issue of concern; we the landowners are indebted to these people, and BCL and the PNG government the pair that exploited Panguna, when looking at the Panguna District, have not to look at the landowners since they are already in the BCL-landowner affair, but they need to look for ways to accommodate these Panguna mine site immigrants.

To the people of Panguna, BCL and the PNG government meant to bring them into extinction. As it was practiced later under the Australia-backed PNG blockade of the Solomon island. BCL did not bother to bring roads in the inland areas of Panguna, for its interest was the Papuans and New Guineans development; not Bougainvilleans.

As regular travellers into inland villages, we are told, ‘You Tumpusiong people will be soon benefiting from the Panguna mine that is soon to be operating whilst we your relatives perish in this forgotten world’. But such words is a tip of the ice berg of issues that has high probability to affect re-opening of Panguna that leaders are not interested to visit.

There are more questions regarding Panguna’s inland people now controlling the Panguna mine site. As landowners talk about mining and walk in and out of offices, these people are left feeling out of place. They run nearly all businesses in Panguna and are we planning anything or any means, to accommodate them? They will benefit, but will that gain ever change their homes in the inaccessible mountains?

One leader, in 2012 told a village meeting in Damara to settle a dispute over the Jaba bridge maintenance that: ‘We the inland people will not benefit from this fuckin mining talk; landowners must only remember, we lost our young men in their problem with BCL. Only let the chief negotiators of Panguna re-opening and the BCL just to built us the best roads systems and bridges such as what the Japanese are doing on the Arawa-Kokopau highway right to our villages and talk about mining.

‘Through such a development, then we can collect the spill-over benefits from the mine and improve our standards of living. But remember we, the uneducated do not need non-Bougainvilleans once more in Panguna’.

From these words, decision makers in the re-opening of Panguna talk, must work out plans to repatriate these settlers home. But how could such a step be pragmatic? The only solution to that came from the chief in Damara: BCL and ABG must built roads and bridges connecting all the inland villages so that they can partake easily to every change that takes place in their district. Before the conflict, BCL did not directly involve with the Panguna communities, it ignored them outright. And now, is it coming with a change of heart?

If so, many are asking, ‘why are a few Panguna students attending tertiary institutions in PNG not benefiting from the Bougainville Copper Foundation (BCF) school fee assistance scheme? BCF serves only one student when there are more than two coming from the same household. But these few a Panguna people whom their land BCL and PNG exploited to marginalize them.

BCL is returning with its old culture of belittling us the indigenous people of Bougainville. Is the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) prepared to re-mould this tycoon to a body that will start thinking like a Bougainvillean? Most meetings and talks are seemingly being done to please BCL!