With Bougainville we talk about exploitation, indoctrination and genocide

Leonard Fong Roka

After invited by the Lowy Institute for its PNG New Voices Conference at the PNG’s National Research Institute (NRI) conference center in Port Moresby on the 29 of May, I had not much time to find resources to help my speech thus I frisk into my writing project, Bougainville Manifesto (in PNG Attitude) to get my talk.

 

The writing project I worked on since 2013 explores and comments on the Bougainville Island past, present and the future and I hope to publish as a way of preserving the  writing and bringing them to Bougainvilleans as a book.

At the conference there were people with more professional know-how into the issues ragging in PNG politics, culture and so on. And having the late afternoon session named as New Political Engagement in which my topic, The Prospects for Bougainville, was in made all a challenge, where people were exhausted by now and also PNG politics is ambiguous.  

My panel consisted of Douveri Henau, Executive Director of the Business Council Papua New Guinea and research staff at PNG Institute of National Affairs, as chairman; Arianne Kassman, who is a Youth Against Corruption Association Coordinator for Transparency International PNG, who spoke on the theme, Youth Participation in the Decision Making Process; Martyn Namorong, well known PNG commentator and blogger, who spoke on the topic, Using Social Media and Technology: Opportunities and Risks; myself and, Serah Sipani, a law degree holder from UPNG and Masters in Public and International Law from University of Melbourne, who spoke on the theme, National Identity.

For a bushman like me, such a unit of professionals is a scary lot thus I have to go straight to Bougainville reality with examples in PNG to feel immune from their professional scrutiny; and be at a safe coign to respond at question time but it did not happen.

Aided by a PowerPoint I began by saying that whenever we want to talk about Bougainville we must talk about three problems that faces the people of Bougainville. And these are exploitation, indoctrination and genocide.

Since the earliest colonial days, especially after the Germans took over the reign from the British during the 1886-1899 window, traders and planters flooded Bougainville and took over land for their cocoa and copra plantations for own benefit and not the owners of the land. They exploited Bougainville outright and in the 1960s the creation of the BCL’s Panguna mine and the birth of PNG in 1975 advanced exploitation to the skies for us Bougainvilleans.

To assist exploitation we have indoctrination supported by the rule of law, religion, and education and so on that degrades the Melanesian Way as evil or barbaric or insane. But these bad cultures of course sustained Melanesia for ages before colonization so PNG or Bougainville must not let go its fountain of dignity.

The two, exploitation and indoctrination, led to genocide; Bougainvilleans are losing their cultures, race, identity, dignity, resources and so on.

And I went on to get Ghana writer, Francis M. Deng’s words, from his article Ethnicity: An African Predicament, which states that Ethnicity is more than skin color or physical characteristics, more than language, song, and dance. It is the embodiment of values, institutions, and patterns of behavior, a composite whole representing a people's historical experience, aspirations, and world view. Deprive a people of their ethnicity, their culture, and you deprive them of their sense of direction or purpose.

In Melanesia we cannot advance without holding onto our epistemology and by empowering every little ethnic groups of Melanesia. Here it is clear that PNG is not a ‘nation’ as we love to say it; but it is a country of some 800 ‘nations’ but we deny ourselves or by killing ourselves. PNG will never get anywhere by celebrating the ‘umbrella’ PNG with all the 800 ‘nations’ packed into a bucket where the strongest keep aloof and the weak struggling for breath and causing political, economic and social chaos.

So here is the logic why we Bougainvilleans, being Solomon Islanders, had recognized our fate under PNG and had struggled for self determination since the 1960s. Under PNG our identity and dignity is fast eroding but our Bougainville Constitution is the finest set of laws that upholds our identity and dignity. But watching the political trends in line with educational, economic, political investment and so on we have a challenge of effectively and efficiently implementing that fine set of laws of Bougainville to free our island and people.

As I see it exploitation and indoctrination are so high in the post-crisis Bougainville. PNG ignores the way it keeps negating Bougainville people of Solomon Islands in the name of strengthening unity of PNG. For example, as it was with the pre-crisis Panguna mine, post crisis Bougainville despite producing on average 10 000 tons of cocoa between 2002 and 2006 (Cocoa Board of PNG) that could earn Bougainville about K300-500 million annually gave nothing to farmers. Simple answer is cocoa leaves Buka as Bougainville Cocoa but goes overseas as East New Britain Cocoa.

But I know that Bougainvilleans are learners and we are learning from all the wrongs others are making on us and those wrongs we ourselves are committing upon ourselves. And as our President Dr. John Momis loves to say: There is no way for Bougainville to go down; right from the concrete that was laid down, we will build a nation.