We were animals to the New Guineans

Leonard Fong Roka

NOTE: Ex-PNGDF soldier and author, Yauka Aluambo Liria, briefly stated that he flew in from Arawa to pick up the body of late Karebu in his book, Bougainville Campaign Diary. Here is an account of a man who was captured by the PNGDF and watched everything that happened before Liria arrived in a chopper.

Mr. Hellman Angkanu of Bakabori outside Arawa

After killing Karebu the Kupe people were ordered by the government to move to Kaino which then began a care centre. I was at Kaino and saw the casket of Karebu brought home; here I watched as a witch doctor forced some magical stuff into the corpse’s mouth to kill the killers and later, the Kupe villagers were ordered by the relatives of the death to carry the casket and he was buried where he was shot.

My brother and I were bringing a plastic of wet bean cocoa from an isolated section of Kupe to Piruana (near Kaino) when we were ordered to return by a fleeing family at midday on 4 July 1989.

On afternoon of 3 July 1989 a troop of Kupe men and a kid were returning home after a day of boozing in the Siae area. At Kaino dusk covered them thus the child could not move on but rest so they moved under a deserted house on the fringes of Kaino and spent the night.

At dawn, the next morning the 4^th of July 1989, one of the Kupe men woke to pee and discovered the arrival of a convoy of yellow Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) vehicles that were used by the military in their operations then. He woke his men and off they disappeared into the cocoa plantation living behind the bales of rice and tinned fish they were suppose to camel home.

As the Kupe men were descending down the Kaino brae for the Bovong River, Karebu, a Bakabori man married in Kupe was making his way to Bakabori village to finalize the harvesting of his cocoa plot that he had started off the previous day.

It is believed that the PNGDF soldiers discovered escapee’s belongings and immediately began tracking them behind after of course, knifing the bales of rice and cartons of tinned fish then scattering everything on the lawn. Since the village of Bakabori is visible from the Kaino side of the Bovong valley, the troops might concluded that the runaways belonged to that village.

 Living Bakabori a little uphill, the runners crossed the cold Bovong below Bakabori and headed up stream towards Kupe following the Kupe-Piruana trail and passed Karebu somewhere without seeing him in person.

The PNGDF stormed the village whilst the people were preparing to go into their cocoa plots and feed also their pigs.

In the cocoa trees surrounded Bakabori village, the villagers were lined up and scolded at: ‘Olgeta yupela pakin kirap na kam arasait’ (Everybody fuckin out of your houses). He paused and continued, ‘Yupla harim tu ah? Pakin kam arasait o bai yupela paia wantem haus ya’ (Are you listening? Fuck, come out or you will be torched with the houses).

The soldiers lined the villagers angrily. Some were ordered to bite each others’ ears; upon which many were left bleeding and in tears. Hellman was ordered to decant a bucket of water with a whole packet of salt they removed from his kitchen hut saturated in it.

Angkanu gathered his kids and wife on the lawn of the village of 7 houses that was now filled with redskin men in military attire. On the lawn the villagers were lined up and seated on the ground; they were frisked as other soldiers infiltrated their houses. In the pretext of searching, some women had their breasts and pubic area verbally or physically molested before their husbands; with another couple who walked late into the assembly area ordered by a soldier to strip and have sex before their eyes but he was scolded at.

The soldiers found nothing lethal but they collected knives, axes and metal fishing spears and began bundling them when commotion flared and a bunch of soldiers were rushing towards the southern edge of the village.

The relative Karebu was calling from the fringes without actually coming out into the open: ‘Oh, where have all the humans of this village gone to?’ As Hellman saw it, he was calling and at the same time having his cocoa hook up in the trees harvesting what he did left from the previous day.

Then guns were clanked off towards the cocoa plot where the calling was coming from. The villagers knew nothing of what actually happened to Karebu as many thought that he might have had a lucky escape.

As the villagers watched one of the soldiers that looked like a leader gave orders to his men and Angkanu and his brother in law and a blood brother of Karebu were tied up behind their backs and forced them into the cocoa plantation in another direction whilst the majority of the soldiers went into the direction of their shooting.

The PNGDF gun butted, punched, kicked and swore at them as the tethered them down a road leading to the Bovong River. Hellman had his nose, mouth, ears bleeding and swollen. He was crying as a child as the uniformed redskins scourged him at will alongside his two partners.

‘With those guns they were men,’ he told me in Arawa, ‘in their eyes I saw cowardice and without a gun I don’t know what a mess the three of us could do on these shameless kind of people. I hate to see redskins today and if one happens to get marry to a relative of mind I will kill him or her straight away’.

Arriving at the banks of the brawling Bovong around 10 o’clock, the PNGDF ordered the trio to sit. There they waited with Hellman having so many things in mind: he was wondering if they were to be executed there by the river and their bodies thrown into the river. This was making him openly crying with his two relatives also following him.

As they sat, another party of soldiers arrived towards midday. Orders were passed and the trio was blindfolded. But the leaf of a young coconut palm wrapped around Hellman got itself torn and still he could see through.

He was shocked in what he saw. Before them a couple of soldiers dragged the familiar muscular body of Karebu holding him on the legs and some supporting from the hands. They laid him so close by that Hellman scanned him thoroughly and whispered to his companions.

His body was so mutilated with fresh bullet wounds. To Hellman, the whole lot of bullets the PNGDF fired at their village maybe ended on this lone innocent cocoa farmer’s body. Flies hovered the body and ants climbed to feed on the solidified blood.

In the afternoon the Australia-donated PNGDF helicopters landed and picked them up. The chopper Hellman and his two friends were in had machine guns mounted on both side of it. When it left the ground, it remain hovering above and then another landed and collected the body of Karebu.

The trio was headed straight to the Arawa police station where Hellman was kicked off from the chopper before the chopper actually touched the ground. He landed on the hard gravel unconscious but regained consciousness in the sharp fist blows from angry redskin policemen. They kicked and pushed the trio into the cell and locked them up.

Back in the village people began searching for Karebu. They tracked the trail the PNGDF followed and seeing heavy stain of blood on the ground, they knew he was killed.

Early the next morning rumors reached Bakabori and Kupe that a new corpse was being brought into the hospital by choppers that entered Arawa from the upstream areas of Bovong River. Thus the widow and some relatives headed for Arawa to recognize the body.

There in the morgue of Arawa General Hospital was the body that was mutilated beyond recognition but the body built and the clothing proved it was him when they shook off the ice crystals gathered on the body.

With no crime to prosecute against, Hellman and his two friends were released from Arawa police cells after having spent a week.