‘Bel Kol’ concept and the Panguna mine

Leonard Fong Roka

‘The ‘Bel Kol’ is the promise by BCL and Papua New Guinea that they will compensate the people of Bougainville on all cruel and animalistic actions they did on our land and society as they mined our land for the Papua New Guineans’ development,’ paramount chief of Piavora, Charles Karoro said to me at Panguna.

In the Nasioi society of Bougainville, just like any other societies on the Solomon archipelago, conflict was and is the essence of the way of life of the people; it was more intrinsic to the interaction of the human person to another person or the environment.

All these led or lead to disruption of peace within society resulting from war, destruction and death.

Before colonization the Nasioi society was a world governed by clan leadership and power. Laws that existed over the land were supreme and observed by all thus our society was peaceful with minimum reckless violence against each other.

But in the moment of war and death the Nasioi civilization had procedures to heal the wound and divisions in our midst.

‘When my clan’s enemy killed one of us,’ Karoro explains, ‘we did an analysis to see who is on the wrong. If we have enough warriors and our clan is innocent we attack back or carry out a punitive raid and kill.

‘But if our clan is weak we gesture for peace to save ourselves and rebuilt with intention to wage war in the future—ourselves or in an alliance. The enemy knows that its power is not eternal and also have to make peace with us.

‘And the beginning of the peace process and compensation is the domang tamiri or bel kol as you educated youths are calling it. This is the tiny gesture of promise that you, as the culprit, will work towards healing the wounds and division so that we can coexist peacefully back again.’

And for the Nasioi people and the BCL, to Karoro, the concept is the same. BCL came in the 1960s and robbed the people of Bougainville off their wealth to develop PNG and its people who are not at all relatives of the Nasioi people or the Bougainville people.

BCL extracted the resources of the Bougainville people for the good of the PNG people and gave the Bougainvilleans nothing good except the massive destruction of the environment and society.

‘Since BCL and PNG gave us nothing in return for the destruction of our land,’ Karoro said, ‘we went to war with them both. We fought and died and won the war and now we want development on our island to start our journey.

‘With the massive destruction of infrastructure by war and civil conflict our ABG sees the Panguna mine as the way forward. But we all know that Panguna mine is where the war came from and killed the 20 thousand Bougainvilleans from Buin to Buka Island.

‘So BCL and PNG have blood of the 20 thousand people on their hands but since ABG needs BCL then BCL has to right the wrongs starting from domang tamiri. So it is now BCL, PNG and ABG has to give Bougainville the domang tamiri.’

Domang tamiri, or bel kol as the people are now referring to, will be a little promise in the form of cash and kind or feast to the people of Bougainville by BCL, PNG or ABG saying that they will pay the compensation in the later date.

It is the contract that the trio will pay the compensation to heal the wounds of the Bougainville people from Buin to Buka Island and that the future will not be the cruelty Bougainville saw between 1962 and 1997.

To Charles Karoro, ‘Only the domang tamiri will pave the way for BCL and PNG to set their feet on Bougainville. BCL can start physical presence on Bougainville with that simple promise over the shed blood of the 20 thousand Bougainvilleans that were sacrifices due to BCL and PNG’s inhuman treatment of Bougainville.’

But sadly selfish politicians from Bougainville still undermine the Bougainvillean values that kept Bougainville intact since time immemorial.