Leonard Fong Roka
NOTE: From Franics Batana's story
Watching the spreader security attack gang creeping down the
‘V’ shaped water way towards the main road heading into the Tumpusiong Valley
and beyond into South Bougainville for the spreader, the team assigned to
attack or torch a Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) contracted chopper, a MiG
18 type transport that was regularly also serving the PNG security forces, the
team headed into the Dapera resettlement and climbed into the garden brae
towards the concentrator area where the chopper was based.
 |
| Ambrose Kuirua |
The helicopter attack team comprised of Kongara men and the
Tumpusiong Valley men. In their midst was a 14 year old boy, Ambrose Kuirua
from the Tumpusiong Valley.
Kuirua never went to school but grew up loitering his home
valley in with most jobless young men scavenging for interesting parts of the
BCL plants like bulldozer batteries and bulbs that they brought home for
lighting their homes and powering their stereo sets.
With the BCL operations profiteering and giving back nothing
to Bougainvilleans, young Kuirua grew up loving the job of making a living by
dismantling parts of the BCL’s civil works’ equipment that were, all year,
stationed in the Tumpusiong Valley manning the built up of siltation, flooding
and so on.
Most of these men earned their living selling batteries, car
stereos, bulbs and switches that they removed from the BCL properties to people
from areas away from the mining areas for a cheap price. Whenever, they needed
hard cash, they flocked into the many BCL camp canteens and robbed them.
Beside, the illicit activities of the BCL hated Tumpusiong
Valley men; the positive gain to them is that, without formal training in the
Panguna mine school, they had taught themselves how to operate the heavy BCL
plants and vehicles. In the cover of the night, they were always teaching each
other how to operate the mechanical beasts.
By the time the crisis erupted, Kuirua was an expert in most
of the plants. In early 1989, before the late Francis Ona took off to the bush,
Tumpusiong people protested and decided to block the Panguna-Nagovis road that
runs through the Tumpusiong valley.
As plans were made, the men ordered they will use BCL
equipment to block the road near the entrance of the Pit Drainage Tunnel in the
Tumpusiong valley. So, with doubts who was to operate the plants, one of
Bougainville’s notable leaders, Martin Miriori drove the gang of young men to a
BCL plant yard near the BCL piggery-poultry project of Mananau in Nagovis,
South Bougainville.
Every man rushed onto his own choice of equipment, ignited
it directly from the battery and set off for home. People were surprised to see
the juvenile Kuirua arriving at the proposed roadblock spot in a huge
front-hand caterpillar loader.
The protest was over siltation in some parts of the
Tumpusiong Valley that was going out of control. For two days the road was cut,
all vehicles from South Bougainville returned back and vehicles entering from
Panguna were turned back.
The protest was called off after a police officer known as
Luke Pango pleaded with the people. Despite unsatisfactory outcomes, the people
went home.
But for the young Kuirua, he was now in the bush with the
militants.
So, the moment the attackers reached a industrial complex
known as the Dynatex, a operation of the BCL that was specialized in rubber and
so on that were employed for example in the sealing of the high pressure pipes
to minimize friction, that team broke into two.
One half of the group remained near the road that leads into
the concentrator buildings and further extends up to the helipad. Their task
was to shoot any BCL vehicle that entered the road if the presence of the team
heading for the chopper was intercepted.
The young Kuirua was with the helicopter attack team. Once
they left the main road below, in minutes they were on the helipad in the
chilling Panguna midnight cold. With a 5 liter of petrol they remained stealth
trying to figure out the security men because there was a Bougainvillean that
was working here and they did not wanted to hurt him.
Seeing that there was not a Bougainvillean in the midst of
the men on duty, the attackers headed to get the security men with knives
without the guns that would attract attention. Seeing the armed militants, the
security person fled for their lives.
The militants now surrounded the huge white chopper. Many of
them had never seen such a beast and some of them only saw it while flying
high.
Kuirua kept his distance from the braver men ready to run if
anything went wrong.
Seeing that there was no spot on the chopper that can absorb
the petrol they broke a window. Then, there was no one amongst the mature men
that can get his body inside and decant petrol so Kuirua was called.
With joy to take the opportunity of being responsible to
strike the match, he climbed in and onto comfortable seats. But first of all he
went for the cockpit in search for some souvenir to bring home and got what he
wanted—the pilot’s flying helmet.
As told he decanted petrol form the cockpit and out onto the
passenger section. Then he climbed and clanged on the window; stroked the match
and dropped it onto a seat and jumped onto the gravel as the inferno got
furious inside.
They fled into the mountains of old Moroni and watched with
their other team members as the PNGDF fired shots into the wrong directions.
Holding his war gain, the helmet, Kuirua was feeling so
excited as the men praised him for a good job done for the night and the people
whom their land was been destroyed.
After that night, Kuirua carried his helmet in his bag in
all operations in attended all around Central Bougainville. He valued it so
much and took good care of it through 1990 to 1992 and lost it to some thugs in
1994 as people began to flee from the arrival of the PNGDF in Nagovis when he
left it and went to fight in South Bougainville.
Ambrose Kuirua is now a married man and an alluvial gold
miner.
No comments:
Post a Comment