By Leonard Fong Roka
In June I published an article ‘West Papua Conflict is Asian Infiltration and Rape of Melanesia’ in blog Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE (link http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2012/05/west-papua-conflict-is-infiltration-rape-of-melanesia.html (also available in http://lfongroka.blogspot.com/2012/05/west-papua-conflict-is-asian.html ) outlining my views of the problems faced by West Papuans under Indonesia as we in Bougainville, had gone through under Papua New Guinea.
These were my thoughts from a Bougainvillean background, but surprises I had from a myopic Papua New Guinean and he was just a symbol of million people blinded by institutionalised indoctrination. The few educated will go against my thought thinking that the intellectual see-saw is massed to their side. Sorry!
This is what one Papua New Guinean said after quoting me:
'After the dawn of decolonisation, West Papua found itself in Indonesia; Bougainville in Papua New Guinea; and New Caledonia struggling for self-determination from French rule'.
What a lot of rubbish Leonard!
Either by default or design, Bougainville has and still is an integral part of PNG. This is in contrast to your continued assertion that PNG, somehow, had colonised Bougainville.
Every ethnic group in PNG are distinctively different in complexion and culture, and Bougainville is no exception.
I served time working in Panguna during the pre-crisis years and found from the majority of the Bukas then that even they see themselves different to the rest of the mainland Bougainvilleans, with the exception of the Teop-Tinputz people.
Gabuar - The lines you quote are rubbish because you and your place (wherever it is) has not seen relatives dying before your eyes struggling to defend their subjugated life as I did. That is that civil conflict in Bougainville.
My thinking was moulded in a trouble-torn Bougainville and its anti-PNG discourse. And you will never change me.
In ethnicity, yes there is difference. But, you your mention of Buka is myopic.
Stand a Buka islander and New Guinean together and compare them, there is a extreme contrast (race). Check the Buka and a Wakunai, they are one for they are Solomonese.
Bougainvilleans are different from New Guineans!
I start by requoting my words again: 'After the dawn of decolonisation, West Papua found itself in Indonesia; Bougainville in Papua New Guinea; and New Caledonia struggling for self-determination from French rule'.
‘Bougainville in Papua New Guinea’ (quoted), what do I mean? Before 16 September 1975, Bougainvilleans knew who they were and set out resistance not to be part of PNG; and even, in the very first week of September declared the ‘Republic of North Solomons’.
But still, despite the tears they shed in the many rallies and protests they held, my people were never respected in accordance to the many conventions and so on created by the United Nations to protect human rights, we were often called ‘cargo cultists’. And my island ended up in the deep shit of PNG.
We were nobodies, so the coloniser forced its way into our heart to develop the Panguna mine to fund and modernize its buffer state PNG whilst keeping us ‘media’ rich and marginalized just like the West Papuans under Indonesia.
This is colonization in disguise! Why? Because, immediately after independence, PNG granted us a ‘useless’ provincial government system to shut our mouths thinking we were retards.
PNG did not bother to review the parasitic Bougainville Copper Agreement on the people of Bougainville. It did not protect our rights on our apical home island, which our elders were protesting as early as the 1950s, by measures such as a Vagrancy Act and so on. But, let aliens to take over our land with their squatter settlements and suppressed us shamelessly on our Solomon island of Bougainville.
Now let me comment on the concept of ‘Bougainville is an integral part of Papua New Guinea’.
Many say, a constitution is a supreme document governing an independent state like PNG. It is all powerful and above the parliament. Yes, I should agree but not in a PNG context, but in a European environment, I will accept this idea.
Where is this Bougainvillean rebel coming from? Well, democracy is said to be a ‘government of the people, by the people and for people’ (Abraham Lincoln). Thus, there is a reciprocal bonding between the state and the people. However, if we explore the PNG experience, the supremacy of the constitution is in a see-saw because the people—the very sources of power—have not yet tasted what nationhood is all about!
In the 1970s or 1980s, the late Saddam Hussein used the phrase ‘Full bellies make no noise’ as a tool to nationalize foreign oil companies in Iraq. Here, we see the idea why I say that the people must be satisfied in order for a government to remain stable. This then determines the supremacy of a constitution.
The years 2011-2012, we have witnessed the parliament and the judiciary playing around with the ‘supreme’ constitution of PNG for personal gains. We see corruption in public office, in the streets; crime on the rise, people insecure so they are importing guns for the welfare of the tribe or the family. Where is the constitution?
If the term ‘integral’ is to be valued in PNG, there must be harmony and satisfaction as to how PNG is functioning.
We consider ourselves as one because of indoctrination by the few elites holding onto neo-colonialist stigma over our conscience and benefit at the top as the rest goes astray without hope.
Thus, whether you like it or not, every province or tribes are still far from being an integral part of Papua New Guinea. They are still on the road to that goal!
