Bougainville Manifesto 11: Truth & Reconciliation

Leonard Fong Roka

In fact, Bougainvilleans narrow mindedly celebrate June 15 annually, as a day that some form of political establishment empowered by the multilateral peace process since 1997, was achieved. The peace process paved the way for the vital services and goods Bougainville missed under the Australia-backed PNG blockade of the island since 1990.

Bougainville Manifesto 7 (2013) rightfully claimed that the Bougainville crisis was the result of foreigners’ disrespect of the Bougainville nation:

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 [exploitation].

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.

This is the truth behind the Bougainville conflict (1988-1997) that most literature narrowly blames on the unequal distribution of BCL money and BCL’s environmental carnage. To most today, if only the BCL was operating in an independent Bougainville or in the Solomon Islands, Bougainville should not have such a long years of violence of disruption.

And the Bougainville crisis history well proofs it. When Bougainvilleans stood up with lethal weapons for their rights over their land and culture, the tycoons PNG, Australia and BCL were so hostile to the islanders as the SBS correspondent Brian Thomson’s film, Blood and Treasure (2009) shows it that the BCL with interest on Bougainville minerals ‘encouraged the continuation of the blockade for the purposes of starving the bastards out’. Bougainvilleans were bastards to BCL and PNG!

PNG, though re-invited under the Kavieng Agreement 1990 (from Outline History of the Bougainville Conflict) after it fled in mid-1990, was on Bougainville with the will to re-open the Panguna mine since its politicians could not sleep without Panguna rolling to keep their economy steaming.

Having the Bougainville Manifesto 7 noting the problems external forces at on Bougainvillean land and people, there is a greater influence on the 10 year Bougainville crisis from the numerous cultural aspects or systems known in Bougainville.

Bougainville has some 20-40 languages, that when judging from the understandings of Francis M. Deng’s writings, Ethnicity: An African Predicament (1997) where he wrote on Africa: ‘Traditionally, African societies and even states functioned through an elaborate system based on the family, the lineage, the clan, the tribe, and ultimately a confederation of groups with ethnic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics in common. These were the units of social, economic, and political organizations and inter-communal relations’ saw long conflicting results and efforts in the struggle for self determination and nationhood.

Each of these Bougainvillean societies had its own way of acting and thinking; each also had its own pace in transition into the Eurocentric changes that happened on Bougainville since July 1768 (Bougainville Manifesto 2). Each society had its own perception of each other as they watched development taking place in each respective area. Modernization sped in Central Bougainville with the development of the Panguna mine; this was not at the same pace, for example with Buin, that only watched as the Kieta people were advancing; or the Nagovis people who were receiving all the debris from the Panguna mind as they watching the Kieta people raising their standard of living with mine royalties.

This could be the reason why, when Kieta people created the Napidakoe Navitu as a body to create unity across Bougainville in 1969; so many local government councils saw it as a threat to their powers as noted by Mamak & Bedford (1974) as, ‘Moreover, Navitu’s growing strength was perceived by some council leaders outside the association’s immediate area of influence [especially Kieta] as a challenge to their authority.’ Such led to the slow diminish of the group towards to end of the 1970s.

Such differences amongst Bougainvilleans did not only exist across the language groups, was also in the midst of a single language groups also in the late 1980s. In my PNG Attitude article, The Intertwined Roots of the Bougainville Conflict (2011) it was written that ‘Bougainvilleans came to see each other differently; mountain people as ‘backwards’ and coastal people as ‘progressive’ in response to the developing mission, plantation and Panguna mine in Kieta.

This was never reconciled by positive development or progress in terms of equity and equality in the likes of services in education that could have fostered unity for the entire Bougainville population since BCL and PNG were only exploiting and suppressing Bougainville and not developing the owners of the wealth.

So in 1988, Bougainvilleans of the Kongara area attacked the redskin plantations laborers who had raped and killed a local woman in the Aropa Plantation and so the Bougainvilleans of Panguna saw it fit also, to rebel against BCL and the PNG government. So when the redskins fled into Arawa, the young men with their new fighting skills entered the anti-mining movement in Panguna.

The young fighters had not met a central authority educating them for the cause they were to fight for and controlling them before. Apart from the central figure of militancy, Francis Ona, who was gaining his power and prestige from the massive media coverage and respect the authorities of the day—North Solomons Provincial Government and the PNG national government—were giving him, individual BRA member was gaining prestige and power from the way he behaved in combat against the government security forces.

Thus when the 1990 ceasefire was reached, there was already two forces that could naturally repel each other. This led to chaos since both parties had conflicting interest in the fight they had saw as being won as my PNG Attitude article, BRA was the root of the bloody civil conflict on Bougainville (2012) that said:

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, most of them illiterate, went astray grabbing private and ex-BCL property, looting shops and exploiting 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 Francis Ona was nowhere to be seen or heard in this anarchy created under his name.

I was hearing that the BRA’s ill treatment of innocent Bougainvilleans was executed under the ‘standing orders’ of Ona. But this was a lie as I heard later that Ona was not aware of any ‘standing orders’ and he was not responsible for the suffering endured by Bougainvilleans.

The BRA posed as a body with a central command fighting for Bougainville freedom when in fact it hosted dozens of independent individuals or bands [that] operated at will across Bougainville.

 Since all Bougainvillean societies had own characteristics and view to modernization and other changes of the 21^st century, the BRA impact was perceived in their own ways of thinking resulting in reviving old problems leading into the 10 year civil conflict that resulted in the loss of 20 thousand lives from Buka to Buin.

With the highlight profiled so far starting off from Bougainville Manifesto 1 (2013), there is some degree of light to pinpoint who was at fault and why. And for Bougainville it was a multi-headed sword thus, for Bougainville to attain lasting peace for their island home, they have to concentrate on the domestic peace effort and not run to reconcile wounds with any non-Bougainvillean entities.

Unity and peace should the established on home soil first then Bougainville looks elsewhere for peace making opportunities.

The Bougainville peace process that began since 1997 was all commercialized by the top-leaders of the peace efforts. Only big issues concerning big people were looked into and the little people were ignored. The resulting outcomes are the continuous negative problems faced by Bougainville.  

Thus Bougainville needs a peace process that is from the heart from a Bougainvillean to a fellow Bougainville he had harmed.

The peace effort on Bougainville should begin from nowhere but the Panguna area for the crimes against Bougainvilleans and each other since 1988 to 1990. Leaders associated with the creation of the Bougainvillean Revolutionary Army (BRA) and their soldiers should admit to the people of Kieta and later Bougainville as a whole their failure in strategic leadership, their crimes committed with self interest and pride, and so on.

More people and the former BRA men turn to narrowly and in denial of all the rot they had done to us and divided us by also putting some blame on the pro-PNG resistance, Bougainville Resistant Force (BRF), but with time, the BRF were new comers in response to the cruelty and injustice the BRA did to us. The BRA created its own enemy the BRF during the crisis.

Panguna leaders and Kieta BRA have to expose to the people why they created the BRA and where did they went wrong; why did they steal from people; why did they rape Bougainville mothers; why did they disobeyed the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG); why did they did extrajudicial killings and torture; why did they use propaganda on people and so on.

This should be the Panguna rebel politicians and the Kieta BRA apologizing to the Kieta people from village to village and family to family; from Kieta they should be going from district to district, again down from village to village till the whole Bougainville is covered. This process is not that simple since the Panguna leaders and their Kieta BRA had inflicted paid on individuals, families, villages, clans and districts that even the peace process that started off since 1997 had ignored it under the influence of corruption.

Once the Panguna leaders and the Kieta BRA admits all its wrongs then all others, the BRAs and leaders from other districts of Bougainville and the BRF to follow the same process of reconciliation with the Panguna leaders and Kieta BRA as the mediators.

This peace exercise needs a powerful leader and a Bougainville government that educates and holds all Bougainvilleans under its wings for a free independent Bougainville.