Students Frustration on Bougainville Government

Leonard Fong Roka

As shock and fear of the slaying of the Divine Word University’s Sepik student Nigel Laki and injury sustained by Ishmael Palipal and others holds every nerve on campus, Bougainville students cry that their government in Kubu has failed them by failing for so long from building them their own university on Bougainville where they have freedom and peace in their home island.

The number of Bougainvillean students entering Divine Word University is steadily increasing annually. For many of the 2014’s first year students they have made it here since DWU is making itself known as a hub of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in PNG that continuing students turn to promote when touring their secondary schools every November with the Bougainville Youth Foundation (BYF) awareness programs.   

For many first timers out of Bougainville, they know the ‘Beautiful Madang’ tag is a reality but just as their flight touches on the Madang airport, its unkempt vicinity and the standard of peoples’ dressing and housing in town and rugged commuters intimidating stares tells them that they had believed a lie.

Since arriving at DWU, over 11 students across the Madang Town’s tertiary institutions had been robbed by thugs in town. Two first year male students from DWU were repeatedly harassed and threatened with small kitchen knives in a bus ride from town to DWU main campus for their shopping cargo till one of them punched the thief in the neck choking him and darted into the DWU main gate. Another student from Madang Teachers College was withdrawing cash from an ATM in town when a rascal held him up inside the outlet and walked away with his K2000 school fee cash.

In another incident, encountered by Bougainville students away from the safety and peace of their island, a trio of Madang Technical College students were pick pocketed in town but they attacked the child rascals. However a bigger criminal mob was getting on them and they have to run for safety and rush back to school.

“This is really a strange place,” one of the pair harassed in the bus ride to DWU, said. “And thank God the crisis chased these rascals out of our island. I have gleaned even without any cash on hand they are there wandering around their town looking for opportunities to rob us.”

In a informal gathering outside the AJ Hall (pictured) as they waited for the funeral service to start Bougainvillean students were sharing all the things they are seeing and experiencing that are of real contradiction to their island home, Bougainville.

To them, the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) must use all that funding that the PNG government is giving to build a university in Bougainville so they can transfer and complete their education back home.

A female student was saying, “I am fed up with our members in Port Moresby and Buka for not building us a university back home and ignorantly letting us attend this crime infested place. I had bad night with all those police gunfire last night and this morning. Hate to be here.”

Another shared, “The ivitu (redskins in Buin) love to kill each other and so all of us boys must try to avoid all these life-threatening developments. We have suffered enough and we are here to get an education and return home to remove all those old leaders who are not functioning well.”

Students also ran through a list of their fellow students slain or disadvantaged through past and recent history everywhere in PNG as they told their final year students that they have to go home and get into positions that have say in policy making and prepare their way after completing their studies in DWU.

To all Bougainvillean students the ABG must now speed up the development of standard technical and teachers colleges and universities back in Bougainville since they are fed up coming into PNG to be harmed.

They have waited and got frustrated for a university said by the Catholic Church at Mabiri in Central Bougainville. But they are happy that colleges as in Tinputz, Koromira, Mabiri and so on that give a little trade skill to Bougainvillean youths.

They are also excited of the development of a technical school and a teachers college in Buin, South Bougainville. But all have a collective concerned that non-Bougainvilleans must not be allowed into Bougainville to create the slums and deprive them from their own land as it was before 1989.

All laughed when one student rose and said: “Boys if you want a wife now that you are a university student, find your wife in this family and girls, do the same too; a thing from Bougainville must return back to Bougainville.”