Bougainville Manifesto 7: Sources of Conflict

Leonard Fong Roka

In terms of strategic political leadership, the late Francis Ona should be considered lacking vision and planning capacity. For him, shutting the Panguna mine was the determining factor of his status and power over Bougainville; he was the liberator and thus the ruler of Bougainville.

In 1990, all the praises he received from Bougainville when the Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) and Papua New Guinea government left the island blinded his conscience to fill in the power vacuum on Bougainville. He, with his power, isolated himself from the public and tried to play the role of a supreme being ruling Bougainville through orders from his Guava village.

As he hid himself, the late Joseph Kabui, struggled to play the leadership role leading the politically scattered Bougainvilleans under the abusive and disorderly Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) that were now preying on the very people whom they claimed to defend against external exploitation and indoctrination.

Thus it is obvious Francis Ona was lost in the tangle of politics he had just created. Taking off to shut the Panguna mine on a rung of family feud, he was now trying to stand on the independence rung; the internal BRA sparked chaos rung that ignited the civil war; the re-infiltration by PNG army rung and so on. He did not strategize his war based on historical facts and experiences.

All these, got him off-track from the Bougainville problem that began with the arrival of colonialism in the Solomons. The question: “What is wrong with Bougainville?” was not answered by Francis Ona when he decided to wage war against PNG and BCL.

But the Bougainville problem was not a 1988 issue as many blindly promote.

Bougainville Manifesto 1 tells us: ‘Our islands’ world was made up three parts that are the flesh that is me the human being; the nature that surrounds me, such as the trees, caves and so on and the marriage between the flesh and the nature; this is the spiritual world that governed and is governing my people since time immemorial.

The human being depended on the nature and the nature depended on the spiritual world that united the man and the nature. The bond between the three was respect and respect! The upset of one is the disadvantage of the world’.

Broadly speaking, Bougainville crisis began with the dawn of colonialism. Bougainvilleans were subjected to exploitation, indoctrination and genocide by firstly, the colonial powers, and later with much more intensity by the PNG government and people.

Under the stinging colonial administration of British, Germans, Australians and the Japanese Bougainville faced the worst ruthless exploitation. Oral history and written records highlights a wide range of subjections. Bougainvilleans were cheap laborers, sexual subjects, human commodities in black birding and isolated bystanders of their wealth.

They stood by as their plantations were servicing colonial masters and PNG laborers shipped in boatfuls; they were forced to despise their traditions and swallow western religions and other secular ideologies without a chance to voice their epistemological views about their land. Bougainvilleans were used to destroy their own land and life.

Worst case is the Australian and PNG exploitation of Bougainville minerals in Panguna to fund the development of PNG and not Bougainville.

Parallel to exploitation, indoctrination is denying Bougainvilleans their right to progress for the better. In my PNG ATTITUDE article, A mission to articulate what makes us Bougainvillean (September 2013), outlined my islanders fate as: ‘But PNG’s seven million people do not acknowledge the distinctive qualities of Bougainville’s 200,000 people but rather indoctrinates them to pave the way for exploitation and eventual genocide.

The fate for Bougainvilleans starts from the PNG Constitution. The very first line in the Preamble, “We, the People of Papua New Guinea— united in one nation…” is the foundation of indoctrination of Bougainville people.

Under the real definition of the term ‘nation’ PNG is not a nation but a country of 800-plus nations. Building a country on lies brings disaster and PNG experiences that in the form of corruption, crime and so on.

PNG further enforces this lies on Bougainvilleans through the education system. PNG has an education system that does not respect Bougainvilleans but rather, it is a curriculum that turns Bougainvilleans away from their origins or roots’.

This erupted with the colonial administration and grew worst since 1975 and Bougainvilleans were swimming in it in tears and still in the post conflict Bougainville, we are still submerged in it.

Though the killing of Bougainville began with exploitation, indoctrination took over with the dying years of colonial rule. Thus, today, indoctrination is backing exploitation and side by side, the pair would lead to eventual genocide of Bougainville.

Genocide on Bougainville was and is so protected by religion-backed humanistic thinking. Yet, history knows that Christianity centered legal norms were the ones justifying the European to call the indigenous peoples of the colonized world savages and kill them to take over their land to finance the industrial revolution in Europe.

 Humanistic Thinking, example, human rights, thus is the Third World’s guillotine if one is not allowed to interpret it from own realistic perspective that would be for the betterment rather than disaster of one’s own people and land.

For Bougainville, the mighty PNG was and is gobbling its race, culture, values, dignity and so on and in the near future Bougainville will be no-more but a mere historical agenda. This is purposefully done under the blessings from the norms of human rights and the PNG constitution.

Since the dawn of colonialism the world forgot that Bougainville and its people were human beings; they were human beings with senses that generated changes within their psyche. They felt pain and joy; they saw disaster and success on their land. Thus all these brought about good and bad development or change to the individual Bougainvillean and his world. As human beings Bougainvilleans had to maintain the status quo to perish or instigate change to survive the carnage on their land and life.

To all that, the colonial administration and later PNG, just laugh in ignorance and arrogance till hell opened wide in late 1988 for the world to see that somewhere in the heart of the Pacific a people were being denied their rights for survival.