Ballad of the Melanesian Way

Waves hissed as the moon replenished the gaggle of the night

From the womb came the pinnacle of Melanesia; the

Dancing torch in the murkiness of westernization. As we strip…

He moans: ‘Come back my Melanesia…O,

My Melanesian Way’

 

‘O spirit of the forefathers and the bush and the islands,

Free thy sons and daughters succumb to blasphemy of Melanesia’ He inks in tears…

‘O my naked Melanesian land, sea and brothers,

 See the infiltration from your ancestor’s dream ways

And there shall be light onto the nation’s path’

 

‘Come back…come wear the lei of Melanesia, O sons and daughters

Come write in your heart a Melanesian song so pellucid to you

And walk the foreign lands with dignity of Melanesia.

For in Melanesian dreams you see light to your path

O Melanesian sons…adorn your hearts with Melanesian dreams

O Melanesia…

The Melanesian Way.

 

NOTE

Melanesia today is being swiftly sucked into the ever aggressive torrents of westernization. Society neglects his fountains of existence and run, unstable, to the sweetness of strange foreign magic systemayically driving Melanesia into a deep pit of shit that is hard to understand by the 'giver' himself and the 'recipient' too.

So, our age is an age of pretentions!

 

Eight 2012 Crocodile Prize Pictures

I have a dream and I am running after it at all cost. I am following it closely to improve the craft I am loving so much.

I attended this year (2012) PNG Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers in Port Moresby to meet and listen to PNG and Australian established authors and listen to their inspirational words so that I can improve in my writing.

This great competition is so supported by the Australian High Commission and not PNG government.

Australian High Commissioner to PNG, His Excellency Ian Kemish & Simbu novelist Francis Nii at the Crocodile Prize



Australia so supports this event that is promoting PNG writers and their works thus it is the High Commission that hosts it since 2011.

The PNG Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers new executive that we voted for through electronic whilst those of us who were at Port Moresby cast a ballot.

PNG old man of literature and author, Russell Soaba giving a discourse to young writers from his experience

So attentive young writers listen to another presenter

Australian novelist Drusillla Modjeska who launched her novel 'The Mountain' at the Crocodile Prize; PNG writer Regina Dorum (centre) and PNG Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers president, Amanda Donigi

(From right) Novelist Francis Nii, myself, author Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin (behind me), Bernard Yegiora and David Gonol

One popular figure was the man in blue, Sir Rabbie Namaliu and seated is PNG's wheel-chair bound author Francis Nii with his copy of the Australian novel, The Mountain

A lunch with a writing family that I am missing greatly

 

 

All photo credits to fella writer Jimmy Drekore

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bougainville Revolutionary Army was the Root of Civil Conflict

Leonard Fong Roka

Starting from October 1992 I was a kid roaming around parts of Kieta and Bana District in South Bougainville with a BRA ‘A’ Company body-guard unit attached to my relative, the late ABG President Joseph Kabui then the vice president of the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG). I partook in no armed operation except escorts to my leader and one assault on an innocent Bougainvillean in Bana as I see it today.

 

But, despite the fact my New Guinean father was killed by the BRA in 1993, I still consider myself a Bougainvillean nationalist because of the awareness I have for the ill treatment of my Solomon Island of Bougainville by colonialism and later by Papua New Guinea, especially through the mine on my land.

As Panguna people, we did spark off a conflict that saved Bougainville from brutality of the Bougainville Copper Limited, the Papua New Guineans and the squatter settlements (I carry a scar caused by kids at the Arawa’s Morobe Camp in 1988 on my face). But it was not our fight; it was a struggle for self-determination started off by so-called cargo cult movements like the Hahalis Welfare Society and many others across Bougainville earlier in the 1950s.

These were groups condemned publicly but silently assisted by Catholic missionaries and a few expatriate planters of cocoa and coconut as they demonstrated against ‘rascals’ on our island without violence.

Engaging the barrel of the gun to the long cry, we did the old so proud in 1988 by having the ‘rascals’ packing out of our beloved island in fear and pain. Thus, by then did they realize the fact they were ‘rascals’ in Solomon exploiting and suppressing a people that they are not related to.

In that fight we created the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. I know this name quaked the Pacific and even our rulers the Papua New Guineans or Ivitu, as we know them in Buin.

But the question is: Why did we turn on each other? This is the question that must be answered today so that we take Bougainville in the right track.

In 1990, I was a Grade 4 student at Kaperia Community School in Arawa, when the first ceasefire was signed by Sam Kauona (BRA) and Leo Nuia (PNG) known as the ‘Butcher of Bougainville’. All the BRA men were stationed at Panguna. Law and order was observed for a month within Panguna with the late Francis Ona as the supreme head.

But as these men got out of this cage, they did harm to businesses in Arawa by looting them calling themselves as redeemers of Bougainville. I once after school, encountered two BRA men reluctantly wearing shoes without paying for it saying to the cashiers, ‘we have suffered in the bush fighting for you’ in a store known then as the Haus Bilas.

To the late Francis Ona and his followers, closing down the Panguna mine was the bliss that blinded them. Keeping order and governing Bougainville was neglected. Thus, the BRA recklessness grew and spread.

The BRA men, majority of who were illiterate, went astray grabbing private and ex-BCL property; looted shops and exploited women often with the gun. These unorganized BRA bands falsely accused innocent people of being PNG spies and tortured them. Others, were accused of sorcery and killed.

The politically incompetent late Francis Ona was nowhere to be seen or heard in this anarchy created under his name. BRA’s ill treatment of innocent Bougainvilleans was executed under the ‘standing orders’ of Francis Ona as I was hearing. But this was a lie since I heard later that Francis Ona was not aware of any so call ‘standing orders’ and he was not responsible for the suffering endured by Bougainvilleans.

But it was said that ‘who ever that cause harm to a fellow Bougainvillean was responsible to it’ for our fight, was solely aimed at our foe, the Papua New Guineans.

But, that’s it. The BRA was a name posed externally as a body with a central command fighting for Bougainville freedom when in fact, it was tag that hosted dozens of independent individuals or bands of men who operated at own will across Bougainville.

To many of these BRA men, then, Buka was a strange place with beautiful women and unarmed men. So, with their new-found privileges they frequented Buka in new ex-BCL or robbed vehicles exploiting women and terrorizing the peace in this part of Bougainville and this lead to the Buka leaders like Sam Tulo, to re-invite the PNG government into Buka in 1990 and the creation of the Buka Liberation Force (BLF) that fought on behave of the PNGDF that had mostly coward soldiers trained by Australia (BLF men claims) after an agreement signed in the New Ireland province of PNG.

The BRA response to this was: ‘The Bukas have sold off our island to foreigners’ instead of admitting that it was they who were dividing the people of Bougainville with their irresponsibility and recklessness based on their lack of political know-how (Joseph Kabui was politically capable then, but the ruler then was the barrel of the gun and Francis Ona) .

In South Bougainville, Siwai District, responded to this BRA-BIG insanity through its creative leader, the late Anthony Anugu and few others. They created the South Bougainville Interim Authority (SBIA) to the shock of the sick BRA and BIG to try and provide services to the people who now had no leader to guide them.

But, the kind and valuable leaders were betrayed by Siwai BRA lunatics and killed in early 1992 in Panguna.

Thus, today it is the BRA that ought to re-evaluate its irresponsibility of the past and lead Bougainville in the right direction instead of sitting down and waiting for miracles and creating fear in the hearts and minds of my people on Bougainville.

LOOK BACK: Bougainville rebels prepare for mercenaries

Wednesday, March 12, 1997 - 11:00

By Norm Dixon

Fighters of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) are on "red alert" in preparation for attacks by South African mercenaries hired by the Papua New Guinea government. The pro-independence Bougainville Interim Government has reported that the mercenaries have already been involved in skirmishes at several locations.

PNG Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, 'Bougainvilleans had no right to their island'

 

Mercenaries were spotted on February 28 and March 1, conducting reconnaissance flights over Bougainville in two Iroquois combat helicopters donated to the PNG Defence Force by the Hawke Labor government.

BIG Australian spokesperson Moses Havini reported that on March 1, grenade launchers were fired at villages below. Radio Australia reported on March 3 that the missions involved at least four operatives of Sandline International, the British company linked to the South African-based Executive Outcomes mercenary outfit.

On March 3, PNGDF soldiers led by mercenaries fired three mortar rounds near the Bougainville capital, Arawa. Villagers report that PNGDF soldiers, led by mercenaries, have taken up positions 25 km from the abandoned RTZ-CRA copper mine at Panguna.

In response, BIG President Francis Ona warned that mercenaries would be shot on sight. According to Bishop John Zale, a BIG representative in the Solomon Islands, BRA fighters are not intimidated by the threat of mercenary intervention.

The firepower at the mercenaries' disposal does not worry the BIG, Zale told the Melbourne Age on March 2: "Back in the days when all this started, the BRA had only bows and arrows. Then they managed to capture some weapons and learned how to use them. But while the PNG forces were always better equipped and trained, our boys have always beaten them."

Opposition is mounting in PNG to Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan's escalation of the war. The Individual and Community Rights Advocacy Forum (ICRAF), one PNG's main NGO bodies, is to sponsor a constitutional challenge to the hiring of mercenaries.

ICRAF director Powes Parkop told Chan in a letter, "Any decision to hunt down and kill hardcore BRA leaders or members or, for that matter, anyone on Papua New Guinea, would be in breach of the Constitution ..."

A similar challenge is being prepared by opposition politician Rimbink Pato. The government of the Solomon Islands has threatened to take a case to the International Court of Justice.

John Momis, the member of parliament who nominally represents Bougainville, said he was "flabbergasted" by Chan's hiring of mercenaries. It could only result in all Bougainvilleans uniting against the PNG government, he warned. The Port Moresby-appointed Bougainville Transitional Government also expressed reservations.

A group of nine MPs, led by former PM Sir Michael Somare, has demanded Chan's resignation over the mercenary contract.

Chan's government is deeply divided on the Bougainville conflict. The dominant position of Chan, his deputy Chris Haiveta and defence minister Mathias Ijape favours an all-out military solution. PNGDF commander Brigadier-General Jerry Singirok has been in Singapore and Hong Kong "shopping" for Black Hawk helicopter gunships fitted with remote-control M-16 machine guns, fixed-wing aircraft from Spain, training for pilots and ground crew, weapons, ammunition and other military gadgets such as sophisticated radar and night-vision equipment — all on the advice of the "consultants" from Sandline/Executive Outcomes.

The softer line, being pushed by PNG provincial and local government affairs minister Peter Barter, is that there cannot be a military solution and that negotiations with the BIG are necessary. Barter is favourable to a lifting of the blockade and a restoration of services to rebel-held areas. The blockade has cost the lives of at least 10,000 Bougainvilleans.

Meanwhile, Canberra continues to refuse to cut the Australian military and "budgetary" aid to Port Moresby. The lobby group Aid/Watch on March 5 backed calls by the Bougainville Freedom Movement for all Australian aid to PNG to be suspended until the Bougainville war ends. Australian "aid" only allowed Port Moresby to prolong the war and to commit human rights violations, the group said.

Pressed on whether Australia would cut its $320 million annual aid to PNG, foreign minister Alexander Downer could manage only to say that "at this delicate time it is important that we keep our options open and continue to work behind the scenes". Opponents of the war are becoming increasingly frustrated at Canberra's mock outrage.

BRA Commander Sam Kauona says that Australia was "seriously implicated" in creating the nine-year conflict. BIG President Francis Ona pointed to Australia's continued funding of the PNGDF, supplying Iroquois combat helicopters and allowing Australians to pilot them.

"I don't trust Australia", Ona told the Age on February 28. "They are the ones supplying assistance and information to the PNGDF. The only way for there to be peace is for Australia to recognise independence for the people of Bougainville."

Kauona added that Australia should provide urgent assistance directly to the people of Bougainville, impose sanctions on PNG and support an international peacekeeping force to replace PNG troops on Bougainville.

The prime minister of the neighbouring Solomon Islands, Solomon Mamaloni, slammed the Australian government on March 4 over its "double-faced" attitude. He said Canberra's criticism of PNG's resort to mercenaries was not genuine. He said he suspected that Australia's lack of action was based on its desire to see the Australian-owned Panguna copper mine reopened.

He also condemned the Howard government's refusal to aid Bougainvillean refugees in the Solomons and its policy of channelling aid through Port Moresby.

The BIG has rejected the announced plan by the PNG government to buy RTZ-CRA's 54% stake in the Panguna mine. Francis Ona said the plan was a "shady and crooked deal" designed to hand over Bougainville's mineral wealth to companies linked to the mercenary forces, just as has happened in Angola and Sierra Leone, where Executive Outcomes operated in the past.

Retrieved from: Green Left (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/15303)

Panguna People and the Re-opening of the Mine

Leonard Fong Roka

Panguna people saw the environmental carnage and the influx of aliens from New Guinea and beyond. Today, they know that the extraction of the mineral ore on their land was for the good of Papua New Guinea and not Bougainville. They know at least, a Panguna kina, was milked on the Highlands Highway construction; a Panguna kina is there in the founding of the Air Niugini; a Panguna kina is there in the building of the Waigani parliament house and the list goes on. To them, Papua New Guinea was made by the Panguna mine and the many Bougainville cocoa and copra plantations.

 

To the Panguna man, the making of Papua New Guinea, from the basic economics to politics was all are Bougainvillean designing and financing!

This is the insight the uneducated or illiterate majority of the landowners that comprises a population of youths and children are told day-in-day-out. Since the days of the crisis to the dawn of the peace process, this is the information they are being nurtured in. One hears these stories in the family homes; after church services and worst of all, in the boozing midst (stand a New Guinean (ere’rengkong) here and you hear all the Panguna-connected curses).

For the majority of the static and illiterate Bougainvilleans, the Bougainville crisis did opened their realization of the fact that they are Solomon Islanders. At the peak of the Australia-backed Papua New Guinea blockade of their island, they had a brother who gave them little ammunition and medicine. His islands were well connected in closeness from the coasts of Buin and Kieta as he saw it from the high mountains; a fact, that is not a reality towards New Guinea.

The political discourse of the conflict-days was anti-PNG. Church men preached gospels loaded with sentiments of anti-PNGism. Few music artists of Bougainville sing all the negativity created on Bougainville by the New Guineans (the illiterate so love these artists and their songs) and the BCL. In every traditional feasting night or days there is anti-PNG or BCL folksongs sang or poetic lamentation songs at funerals in any post-conflict Bougainville death for all, every bad things happening is all created by the past deeds.

For all the majority of Bougainvilleans and the Panguna people, this is the culture the people are engaged to, or are subjected to.

Thus, when one looks at the re-opening of the Panguna mine, one has to look at the people profile (including their likes and dislikes) of the Panguna district and the existing landowners’ body to get a clear picture of what our hope is in re-opening the mine.

But, the noted trend in approaching the subject today is the non-landowner dictates like the wishes of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, the ABG and so on that is not considerate of a retributive justice for all bad things that happened on Bougainville because of the mining.

To the people, the 10 billion forwarded by late Francis Ona is not in the coffin resting with Francis Ona. On this issue, there are many injustices on Bougainville that ought to be addressed before talking about mining.

Firstly, the majority of the Panguna population consists of the illiterate or half-literate (high school failures or ex-BCL laborers and other ordinaries) men and women. But in this group of people Bougainville politics is a culture alongside the wealth of guns and trade of guns.

In this group also, is where one finds the culture of entrepreneurship is growing. This unit of people hosts gold panners, gold buyers, scrap metal dealers, victims to scrap metal dealing conman, retail outlet operators and those investing further into cocoa planting by buying land in the coastal areas such as Wakunai and Tinputz Districts.

And before the Bougainville conflict, this people were no-bodies in their own land and so in 1988-1989, the late Francis Ona ran to this people for support and got what he wanted readily even without setting for himself any political manifesto to execute the secessionist struggle; thus the crisis was born against BCL and its few ‘local friends’ and Papua New Guinea.

When the Bougainville peace process came into existence, it was those surviving old BCL’s ‘local friends’ and the crisis created opportunists went ahead with Panguna mine re-opening talks whilst the majority slowly adapting to changes by engaging into business and investment with their own sweat without talking about the mine’s re-opening.

Thus on the issue of Panguna re-opening talk, one as to deal accordingly between the crisis-created opportunists (some are armed), the few old BCL’s ‘local friends’ (majority in the current Panguna Landowner Association) and the change adaptive majority (crisis-created opportunists run here for support) in their folly.

So far, the discourse on the issue of Panguna re-opening comes from the crisis-created opportunists and the few old BCL’s ‘local friends’ who feign as genuine representatives of the population. The dangerous majority, that is adaptive to changes in Panguna and so engaged to personal small-scale business activities and so on, has no voice yet. Thus, every now and then, the Panguna re-opening gossip that is often exciting the world is not representative of the Panguna’s majority.

And this is obvious. Every foreigner that enters Panguna with mine re-opening interests chats with crisis-created elite or the members of the Panguna Landowners Association (many of whom are BCL’s old ‘local friends’) and then return to spill their bias in-house chit-chat to the media as a break-through towards the re-opening of the Panguna mine.

Majority of the Panguna people (illiterate and literate) are standing on the foundation of the recent Bougainville history. To them, BCL was for Papua New Guinea’s development and not Bougainville; and re-opening of the mine goes well for the locals in an independent Bougainville that is free from Papua New Guinea (failure of the Bougainville weapons disposal program comes into play here because many people see that Papua New Guineans will be returning if Bougainville is free from weapons) where benefits will be for Bougainvilleans.

Furthermore, majority of the Panguna people and Bougainville should be assured that their crisis-created spirit of entrepreneurship will be sustained by the ABG. But so far, the signs are not good for Bougainvilleans as the ABG is trying to suppress the bases of self-reliance for Bougainville by inviting Chinese foreign direct investment to get Bougainville in a trickle of seconds away from the stone-age into the computer-age (a process that took the industrial countries centuries to develop through agriculture or a step-by-step transition from subsistence to market economies) and likely to create loopholes for the Bougainville economy in the long run (when extraction of raw materials are depleted and the investors proudly return, where will the Bougainvillean turn to where all farming land is gravel?).

Many can critic this discourse, but one has to note that the Bougainville crisis was a ‘natural university’ to many Bougainvilleans for it opened the mind’s eye to the islanders.

So, re-opening of the Panguna mine must follow the dictates of the Bougainville people with a leadership that is trusted by the people and not the kind of leaders that are dirt to the people’s eyes and yet are currently playing the game for Bougainville's Panguna re-opening.

 

So nice are these writing People

Leonard Fong Roka

Worst to me is my tight-lip culture. I never freely utter a word in the midst of people I am not familiar with unless told to do so by someone in authority or chair of the meeting.

Myself and novelist Francis Nii

I silently hate myself for this. And this is exactly what I did at Port Moresby’s Australian High Commission for the Papua New Guinea Society of Writers, Editors and Publishers’ 2012 Annual General Meeting and Writers’ Forum.

I uttered not a word! Not at all, a social being, I guess.

But from my perfect world I met great writing men and women from all over Papua New Guinea. Men and women who know me and I know them only by name and not physically. I was proud to be in the company of figures like authors Russell Soaba and Francis Nii; bloggers Nou Vada, Martyn Namorong and Emmanuel Narakobi and Australian writer and big time Crocodile Prize editor, Phil Fitzpatrick whilst our Keith Jackson was not present.

Whilst in the midst of Australians and other Papua New Guineans with a common interest that is literature, spills did reached my wriggling ears that the ‘high walking Papua New Guinean’ employees of the Australian High Commission exist with plastered lips; utter a word of no Australian national interest and you are fired! A fellow Highlander, whispered to me as a local girl poked the concrete with high-heels passed us.

But, there we were, Australians and Papua New Guineans who are brothers in the name of the ‘ink’ or in this day and age, the ‘keyboard’. Politics does not come into play in our side of the world; or otherwise, it is suppressed there somewhere.

So cool was I in a perfect world of writers. More than anything else, I did sell off who I was in character or attitude to my fellow men and women. Many just threw light to that. They said, Mr. LFR, reading you and your world we think you were somewhat physically an imposing being. But, you really a small man with a big mouth…haha!

PNG writers having lunch at Australian High Commission

Simbu writers, Kela Kapkora Sil Bolkin, Francis Nii and Jimmy Drekore were my good pokers. They were are perfect band and often getting me into thinking why Simbu is doing cool in the art of writing. Collective effort there is, I see in these well written men.

Despite the fact publishing a book in Papua New Guinea is in deep shit (costly and profitless), we still love our art of writing.

Thus, ‘Writing’ binds us in communion so perfect that even the eye cannot force a line in between us weather Phil Fitzpatrick is Australian; Francis Nii is Simbu and I am a Bougainville.

September Moments in Bougainville History

compiled by Leonard Fong Roka

 

1 September 1975

Declaration of the ‘Republic of North Solomons’

September 1990

 PNGDF lands at Buka Island .

 

September 1992

PNG said it would apologize to the Solomon Islands for a raid on a village in which two people died. PM Paias Wingti stated that his government would also pay compensation to the victims’ families. Relations between the countries broke down after the attack. The Solomon Islands are calling for a third party mediation

September 1994

Sir Julius Chan meets Sam Kauona, leader of the BRA, in Honiara . Agreement on the deployment of a South Pacific Peace Keeping Force to Bougainville made up of troops from Australia , New Zealand , Tonga , Fiji and Vanuatu to provide security for peace talks in Arawa.

September and December 1995

Talks in Cairns attended by BRA, BIG and BTG representatives. December talks jointly chaired by representatives of the Secretary-General of the UN and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

September 1995

The text of a proposed framework treaty on future relations between Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands has been finalized. The treaty did not however address the potential repatriation of some 2000 people who fled to the Solomon Islands to escape Bougainville's secessionist war

14 September 1995

Peace talks between the BRA, the central government, and the Bougainville transitional government (which is supported by the federal government) concluded in Cairns, Australia, on a positive note. The leader of the transitional government in Bougainville, Theodore Miriung says that they could be the start of a genuine reconciliation

27 Septerber 1995

PNG's Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan says that Bougainville will always remain an integral part of the country

September 1996

Prime Minister Skate announces extended terms of reference for a new Sandline Enquiry.

September 1996

NCDC Governor Bill Skate calls for national referendum on Independence for Bougainville.

September 1998

Final Sandline Report tabled in Parliament and released

 

September 1998

The Government fails to pass legislation enabling Bougainville to set up a ‘Bougainville Reconciliation' government (BRG) to replace the current provincial government, theoretically organic law takes over and Bougainville comes under the same provincial government legislation as the other 18 provinces in the country. This being the case, John Momis would become ‘governor'. However, at the recommendation of the Minister responsible for Bougainville Affairs Sam Akoitai, the NEC using its powers suspended the ‘provincial government', allowing the BRG to be formed with Joseph Kabui and former premier Gerard Sinato as co-chairman of the Constituent Assembly. John Momis and the Opposition are challenging its legality in Court.

September 1996

Death of ten PNG security force personnel at Kangu Beach, South Bougainville.

September 1999

Prime Minister Sir Mekere Morauta recommends that the suspension be extended for six months and that it be conditional on the parties to the peace process putting in place a permanent structure during that period.

The Regional Member John Momis challenges the suspension in the National Court .

26-27 September 2001

Weapons disposal fact-finding mission visits Bougainville

 

10 September 2002


Inaugural session of the Bougainville Constitutional Commission in Buka

 

30 September 2002

Self-imposed deadline for Stage II passed un-met – 1611 weapons had been contained. Ex-combatants propose 24 December as new deadline.

 

Further Reading links:

·         Bougainville Copper Limited (http://bcl.nlawebdesigns.com/bougainville/history.html)

·         Bougainville Copper Limited (http://bcl.nlawebdesigns.com/bougainville/chronology-of-peace-process.html)

·         Refworld (http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/topic,463af2212,469f2ebe2,469f38ca17,0,,,.html)

 

 

Self-centred Exploitation Leading to Earth's Peril

Leonard Fong Roka

 

The environment—landforms, climates, plant cover and wildlife— sustain itself. In due course, it shapes the behavior pattern of the man and his life. Thus, men adapt into the environmental dictates of their respective environs.

But this natural process of ‘preservation and benefit’ is taking a shift to the selfish will of modernization. The contemporary man is gobbling the Earth’s resources to make his individualistic consumerist life grow in power and prestige. In the process, he suppresses and exploits the environment and his fellow humans are left stranded to suffer the consequences.

Panguna in Bougainville. A development that suppressed and exploited the Solomon Island people of Bougainville to the benefit of the Papua New Guineans who control the island without any respect of the cultural genocide they execute on the marginalized people. Hope came about in 1988 when locals began a armed resistance that uprooted the Papua New Guineans out of the island. Struggle is still on (Photo: darcey.com).

 

In his rush for resources, he causes an imbalance in the ecological nature’s cycle of sustaining itself by ever soaring consumption rates. He crosses borders with his technologies for more resources thus having the future in peril.

People with insights to modern ways, reap the benefits readily whilst the disadvantage people are lost into poverty and death.

This is because a few can adapt or have the guts to adopt the new ideologies or technologies at the speed of light and not through a step by step approach. That is, leaping from the stone-age to the computer-age as Papua New Guinea is doing living most citizens lost without a plot or concrete foundation to absorb shocks later if resource exploitation is complete and the investor works away proudly.

His advancement brings positive and negative change in humanity but not the environment. One result is, man live longer and produces more. In the process, the more people require more resources to survive. So he reaches out.

He reaches out to the unknown lands and people. He divides the land and people of a common ethnicity or nation up without their consent or awareness and suppresses and exploits them for the good of his country origin.

Within the basket of colonization, the new westernized man, slowly realizes the wrong people he is being called a ‘nation’ with, within a post-colonial climate. So this resentment turns into a conflict of nationalism or genocide of the marginalized by those ethnic groups in power.

War breaks out; people suffer and countries economic or political status drops.

 

 

 

Christianity is a Problem to Bougainville: Drives People off the Plot

Leonard Fong Roka

Christianity is an impediment to any form of human development, apart from spiritual, in society in this day and age. From the simple exaggerated Bible based teachings, it creates senseless fear of the spiritual world in the mindset of our economically struggling population and island that results in the problem of free riders.

 

I was born and brought up in a hardcore Catholic family. All my life was nothing secular but religion and its ways. Reflecting back, it is obvious I’d lost so many opportunities that would have made me someone with positive contributions in society much earlier. This was if my parents saw the need in bringing me up in a balanced life culture—secular and religious.

All my life was a struggle for the unknown good things in Heaven. My father was an auto-mechanic with the gone Bougainville Copper Limited but sadly, in the manner I see the world today, he never bothered to teach me how to dismantle and re-set the injector pump of 3-L diesel Toyota Hilux. That’s how cruel Christianity was to ill equip me to face the real world.

Translating this into nation building, Christianity is a problem so serious into leading the Bougainville people in the wrong direction. I say this because, if you read the Christianity’s principle book, the Bible, it is a great book of contradictions that needs an educated Bougainvillean to read between the lines; not the poor illiterate of society, in order to gain good things.

Getting the whole population of Bougainville educated is our goal to actually realized our ambition for nationhood.

I accept the fact that development comes into society through a man’s understanding and learning of the basics of economics and politics. These are not spiritual aspects of life and the fundamental bases to drive Bougainville forward.

Christianity, thus have to come into play when all loopholes are sealed and the island’s governing machinery is steaming forward. An educated population is the only group who can navigate their way in a beneficial mannerism between secularism and Christianity.

Christianity’s ritual of conversion when introduced to the illiterate people of society has created fanatics across Bougainville. These converts have, with unprecedented power of spirituality, condemned education, money and everything secular has worthy not for the good of the man and the Earth.

And such a contemporary cultural development trend is a sting to positive progress for it is freely, under the eye of the national laws, getting people off-track from national goals of the Bougainville Government.

In late 1999, a bunch of my school mates at Arawa High School quit school because of the Christianity promoted 2000-pull stop of the world! Every afternoon, after school, I saw them preaching the Bible in the public places in town when Bougainville needed them in the classrooms.

Christianity is having people with its slogan, the ‘END TIMES’, in chaos of irresponsibility towards pursuing a path of personal, family, community and national development through education for Bougainville.

 

Don’t just sit there – do something, and do it now!

PHIL FITZPATRICK

THREE YEARS AGO I wrote an article for the Post Courier’s Independence Day supplement bemoaning the decline of literature in Papua New Guinea.

Phil Fitzpatrick

 

Since then we’ve had two years of the Crocodile Prize literary competition, which conclusively proved I was awry in my assessment.

There is nothing wrong with literature in Papua New Guinea. It is very far from being in decline. On the contrary, it is absolutely booming!

There are hundreds, that’s right, hundreds of talented writers out there scribbling and typing away every hour and every day of the week.

You name it and they are writing about it – love and romance, politics and war, social issues, history, the future, pigs, dogs and everything.

How can that be true, you ask? And, if it is true, how come we can’t go into a shop and buy their books? After all, this is what we want to read, it is much more interesting than those second hand and distant books from overseas.

And, of course, that is the nub of the problem - you’ve got it in one. There are plenty of shops that would sell Papua New Guinean books if they could get them, especially if they came at a reasonable cost. The trouble is, there are no books being published for the shops to sell.

Why not? The answer is that there is no money to be made from publishing Papua New Guinean writers and their books. Production costs are too high, distribution is difficult, the market is too small and people need to buy food and other necessities before they spend money on luxuries like books.

Try this for an example. It has cost us close to K50,000 to print 3,000 copies of the 2012 Crocodile Prize Anthology. That’s K17 per copy without the cost of editing, design and distribution. If we wanted to get our money back we’d have to wholesale it for at least K35. With the retailer’s profit margin that would take it up to around K50 a copy. And that would be a really cheap Papua New Guinean book. You can buy a lot of rice and tinfish for K50.

But books aren’t luxuries, you say. The heart and soul of a nation are defined by its literature; no luxury, surely? And besides, with declining literacy rates, our kids need good Papua New Guinean books to read. How else can they learn about their country, its past, its prospects? Someone needs to do something about it! What is the government doing, for goodness sake?

And here you would be hitting the nub of the problem on the head. What is the government doing?

The answer is a very sad ‘absolutely nothing’. Isn’t that appalling? Isn’t that shameful? And to make matters worse, it isn’t just the current government or the one before that or even the one before that; it’s all of them, ever since independence and, to Australia’s shame, even before that.

Why on earth did they launch a new nation without ensuring it had the beginnings of a literary tradition (although there was a spike, never seen since, around independence)? Not one single collective government or prime minister has given the remotest thought to literature in Papua New Guinea. Truly amazing!

But that’s how governments are, you say. They’ve got more important things to worry about, literature will have to wait. If we want to do something about literature in this country someone else will have to do it. Even though it should be the government, it just doesn’t care enough.

So who is this someone else? There is always someone else in Papua New Guinea when it comes to owning problems. Who is it this time? The answer is, ‘there is no one else’, simple as that! Why? Because there’s no profit in it!

Think about it and you will realise that the government is the only one who can fix the problem.

It has to set up its own independent publishing arm. It has to publish at least 10 new books a year without fear or favour and without undue censorship. It has to make sure the books get distributed all over Papua New Guinea. It has to make sure that every kid in Papua New Guinea has access to Papua New Guinean literature.

The government has to take the initiative; no one else can do it. It has to spend kina capital to earn social capital. It has to forget about making profits or lining the pockets of some public servant.

In return, it will reap huge rewards. The intelligentsia, the elites and the common people will laud a government that does it and come in behind it. It will create national solidarity.

People will learn to be Papua New Guineans first and Engas, Hulis and Motuans second. Every child who reads a book about PNG, be it fact or fiction, will see the government publisher’s imprint and be proud of their far-thinking politicians who made it possible.

Someone has to tell them to get started as soon as possible. Who should that ‘someone’ be? The answer is ‘you’.

That’s right; if you’re reading this now when you are finished you must write a letter to your local member. If you live close enough go and knock on their door and tell them to their face. Write a letter to the prime minister; let him know what you think.

It’s up to you. That’s right, you! The person sitting reading this. Go do it now, before it’s too late!

 

Retrieved from: Keith Jackson & Friends: PNG ATTITUDE (http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2012/09/dont-just-sit-there-do-something-and-do-it-now-pngs-literary-future-is-in-its-own-hands-and-ready-to.html)