Leonard Fong Roka
On loose sand Bougainville was founded by colonization when
Papua New Guinea had it attached to its tether for a hike as its source of
finance to fund its independence.
Most written
literature, known so far, of the pre-independent Papua New Guinea era, points out
that the Solomon Island of Bougainville was the backwater in terms of
development and progress. Apart from Bougainville, Papua New Guinea was
progressing with cocoa-copra plantation, timber, rubber, coffee, cattle and so
on as Bougainvilleans remained locked outside the doors or was an exploitation
garden for planters and missionaries.
But the desire for independence for the Papuans and New
Guineans brought Bougainville to the world. Bougainvillean wealth was
attractive to build the Papuans’ and New Guineans’ dream country. The new
country that the United Nations was pushing the Australians to create so needed
money for its strength to survive globalism that was undergoing globalization.
Thus, as Ian Downs’ 1980 book, The Australian Trusteeship: Papua New Guinea 1945-75 (page 340) puts
it: ‘The discovery of copper in Bougainville in 1964 was the greatest single
event in the economic history of Papua and New Guinea. It was a giant step
towards independence’. Papuans and New Guineans were celebrating that are
massive resource for them were not on their land but in the distant Solomon
Islands.
The poor Bougainvilleans that were so occupied with the
economic activities of plantations and missionary activities were in the dark
with the drastic development plans happening on their island for the benefit of
the New Guineans and Papuans in the colonial administration buildings of Port
Moresby, Kieta and Sohano Island.
So the point was, as Martin Miriori’s 1996 article, Bougainville: A Sad and Silent Tragedy in
the South Pacific, puts it ‘Panguna became one of the largest opencast
mines in the world, and the only source of finance for Papua New Guinea's
independence. In essence, Australia gave Bougainville and her people as an
independence gift to Papua New Guinea’.
And with a Bougainvillean populace made scare coats
consciously, the Panguna mine was a revolution that showcased the lethality of
changes in the eyes of the indigenous people and sprouted the energy on them to
strive for their self determination in order to save their land and culture.
The Panguna mine project, according to Divine Word
University Faculty of Arts’ Bougainvillean Associate Professor Jerome K. Semos,
PhD, was a four-phase affair of colonial coercive slapping on the people of
Bougainville since the 1960s.
In an emotional early-May 2013 presentation that saw a few
young Bougainvilleans in tears entitled, Empirical
and Historical Analysis: The Bougainville Conflict and the Sovereignty
Implications for Bougainville, PNG and the Pacific Region, he highlighted
that the political history of the evolution of the Bougainville conflict was a
four phase stagger for the Solomon people. Bougainvilleans suffered and
struggled for 27 years under colonialism, self-governing and independent Papua
New Guinea and Conzinc Rio Tinto (CRA) and BCL since 1963 to 1990.
The first phase of the
four, according to this Bougainvillean academic, reigned from 1963 to 1970.
In this phase, ‘a policy of colonial lack of interest (by state and CRA/BCL) to
local consultation and participation led to early struggle or conflict by
resource owners over state rights and ownership of resources, and over unfair
mining and compensation agreements.
‘Resource owners were convinced they had ownership rights to
both surface and subsurface resources; the colonial state policy said
otherwise. The mine was considered the economic life blood for PNG’s drive
towards independence, hence the strong arm approach to getting it into
production quickly. The BCL mine was built on one policy alone [upheld in the
House of Assembly in those days]: ‘Masta I tok, Tok I dai’’.
Foreigners walked over Bougainvilleans with their greed. But
Bougainvilleans were not that stupid for they stood up for their rights. As
noted by Donald Denoon in his 2000 book, Getting
Under the Skin: The Bougainville Copper Agreement and the Creation of the
Panguna Mine (page 64) that ‘by the end of 1965 landowner resistance had
brought prospecting to a standstill, and in February 1966 the administrator
transferred Bill Brown to Kieta…to get the prospecting going again’. The
administration was desperate for the mine thus employed every man and
strategies to suppress the Bougainvilleans and exploit their land for the good
of foreigners.
The second phase took
off from 1970 to 1975. In this period, ‘The resource conflict, including
compensation and beneficiary concerns over the BCL mine developed into a
popular secessionist (self determination) struggle. Came September 1, 1975—15
days before PNG’s independence—Bougainville unilaterally declared its
independence from PNG and Australia.
‘But that proclamation of statehood was rejected outright.
PNG needed the mine and there must be a way of keeping a vital mine as well as
having some control over the mine’s financial benefits. So to this, PM Somare
extended a viable political deal to Bougainville leaders and people’.
Bougainvillean stocks of oral history claim this period as
the most brutal and unbearable pain for the people. Strangers and strange
cultures were brought in by the BCL and PNG and that was destroying their life
adding more pain of watching their land turning swiftly to bare rock and dust.
Thus the only survival way available the missionaries thought them was
independence.
Independence was the only measure to save Bougainville
resources for its own people; save the environment for own use and management
and for advancement for Bougainvilleans which then Australia was pushing for
Papuans and New Guineans at the cost of Bougainvilleans.
The third phase took
off from 1977 to 1985. In this phase it is known that ‘Secessionist
conflict and struggles evolved into limited autonomy for Bougainville,
established through the introduction of a provincial government. However, the
North Solomons Provincial Government (NSPG) was unable to establish a direct
negotiation with PNG Government and BCL with respect to the 1974 Bougainville
Copper Agreement (BCA) negotiations. Therefore, the BCA lapsed without being
re-negotiated in 1981.
‘Again resource owners and the NSPG were left out and
frustrated. Again the BCL mine was blocked off temporarily to force PNG
government to agree to resource owners and their NSPG be included in the BCA
negotiations’.
Sadly for the Solomon people of Bougainville, PNG was clever
enough to fool them in order to rob them off their wealth. In their cry to be
involved in the negotiations of the BCA that outlined the breakup of how the
benefits of the mine should be distributed, PNG denied them by giving them one
of the worst system of powerless provincial government system not worthy for a
struggling people for their rights; or by creating bodies to fetch locals some
wealth but these were bodies governed by corrupt officials.
And PNG was not interested with Bougainvillean concerns for
their survival and development for its interest was money from Bougainville’s
Panguna mine and plantations.
The last phase ran
from 1986 to 1989. In this phase, we glean that for ‘Twelve years of
inaction by the NSPG, 25 years of state apathy and BCL’s passing the buck,
which led to continual struggle and conflict, plus the irrefutable loss of a
subsistence lifestyle forced resource owners to revolt against the state and
BCL.
‘Faced with security problem the BCL mine closed down; many
workers and population left Bougainville and thereafter a local rebellion advanced
into a Bougainville-wide secessionist rebellion and civil war.
‘Independence for Bougainville’ has made its second coming,
but this time, it came at enormous costs to Bougainville and PNG.
‘PNG faced with serious financial crisis partly attributed
to the demise of the profitable BCL mine. Bougainville was completely blocked
off from the rest of PNG and the region [by Australia and PNG]’.
Letting the Solomon Island people of Bougainville sleeping
and waking up every day in pain thus shaped a populace that cannot stand any
longer to the lies of PNG and BCL.
Thus when Bougainvilleans took violence to shut the mine and
fight for independence, PNG and BCL ran out of their creativity of fooling
them.
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