My island’s and people’s survival was this gun

Leonard Fong Roka

‘When we were kids our parents used to tell us ‘don’t wander new the road for the erereng (Nasioi term for redskin) are bad people and they will kill you and throw you in the bush’ and then took off to town (Arawa). We took that by heart and so never wandered towards the main road but keep in the safety of our villages and watched the erereng expended their slums further inland. This is why I went to fight the thieves that were destroying my island, Bougainville,’ Saul Korai told me in Arawa.

Mr. Saul Korai

Saul Korai hails from Kapanau area near the Aropa airport in Central Bougainville. He joined the guerilla group, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) movement against the Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), the PNG government and the New Guinean squatter settlements as a teenager in early 1989.

He says in had no hope in late 1988 as his people began attacking the New Guinean squatter settlers at Aropa after they raped and murdered a local woman who was returning home from the garden, but I had to join in the fight.

He was in action against the PNG government invaders till 1996. ‘Despite the fact that we, the fighters, have directed Bougainville into a civil war that had cause a alarming loss of thousands of innocent lives, the greatest achievement is that we the Bougainvilleans has now the right to decide our future. It is a milestone that came about through suffering and destruction.’

Korai likes the peace process. ‘Despite the fact that, we the Bougainvilleans, were learning the art of war and winning the Australia-backed PNGeans in many engagements; also the pro-PNG resistance forces beginning to steal PNG weapons or killing them, the peace process was a smart decision by leaders like the late Joseph Kabui. If we did force the invaders out, I know that the 1990 BRA smartness would come alive and we would have then killed many of our own people. But the peace process made that impossible.’

But in the peace process one thing Korai hates to hear and talk about is one of the three pillars of the referendum that should come somewhere between 2015 and 2020 is the ‘disposal of all weapons’ or ‘weapons disposal’. ‘This was the worst thing ever done to us Bougainvilleans. It is a slap in the face for us Bougainvilleans by the New Guineans. Our own leaders sold us out to the cruel and unpredictable sting of the New Guineans.

‘These guns were our freedom. Without a gun the BCL, the PNG government and people would have turned us into no-bodies on our own island. Those beautiful mountains of Panguna would have now being a desert or my Aropa area would have being a New Guinean district; these were the guns, which did make us seen as human beings by the New Guineans and the world. So why take them away from me and destroy my valued asset without giving me what I fought for?

‘We fought and died for independence with guns that we were not given by the people promoting the weapons disposal thing. That pillar must be changed. I will support only a strategy for a weapon-free Bougainville when leaders create a kind of museum or memorial where weapons and life stories of combatants and all other cases and issues relating to our struggle can be kept safe for our children.’

Saul Korai today is a successful cocoa farmer in the Aropa area and bought himself a Honda Dyna truck that now transports people from the Aropa area daily with their produce to the market in Arawa.

He keeps his beloved rifle at home. ‘Seeing this weapon makes me think about the suffering our island and people went through for years. If ABG wants it back, it must make sure to keep it safe so that I can visit it and let my kids see it and know who their father was and why he become that sort of a man. This is the only valuable approach to free Bougainville from weapons.’

To Korai, such a memorial to store all weapons for visitors and so on would also generate income for veterans in the future.