Leonard Fong Roka
Papua New Guinea was built at the cost of the alienation of
the Solomon island people of Bougainville. Bougainville people were belittled
by the influx of non-Bougainville and non-Solomon people and cultures.
Bougainville suffered environmental destruction that will take hundreds of
years for ecology to put some order cause by the extraction of ore to finance
PNG.
For this injustice a people went to an armed struggle
against the state of PNG, its peoples, and the miner Bougainville Copper
Limited (BCL) (I include ‘its peoples’ because the Panguna mine property
vandalism and attack on employees came later then the attacks on New Guinean
squatter settlements around all Bougainvillean urban areas).
This armed crisis backed by an unprepared political
leadership ended in a decade long struggle of a civil conflict and a negotiated
multilateral peace process that was more-PNG friendly and not Bougainville oriented.
In PNG, as most literature pinpoints, the Bougainville
economy collapsed with the crisis while all provinces were advancing. But with
the Bougainville peace process, it is obvious that PNG came stronger to choke
Bougainville on its still chaotic recovery process.
In a 2001 article, Agreed
Principles on Referendum (online) it is read:
4 a) The constitutional amendments
will guarantee that the referendum will be held:
·
No earlier than 10 years and, in any case, no
later than 15 years after the election of the first autonomous Bougainville
Government,
·
When conditions listed below have been met,
·
Unless the autonomous Bougainville Government
decides, after consultation with the National Government and in accordance with
the Bougainville Constitution, that the referendum should be held;
b) The
conditions to be taken into account include:
o
Weapons disposal, and
o
Good governance;
After the signing of these terms of referendum, a 2001
article by Norm Dixon, Bougainville: Referendum Terms Questioned (online)
appeared. In it, the PNG and the Australian governments hailed the referendum
terms as a ‘break through’ and ‘a milestone’ but the Bougainvilleans had
questioned it.
Former Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) leader Sam
Kauona accused the late Joseph Kabui and Joel Banam who led the Bougainville
delegation to sign terms of the referendum in Kokopo in 26 January 2001 as
‘given too much away to a dishonest government’ and added that ‘The survival of
the PNG/Bougainville peace process depends very much on honesty, fairness and
transparency…If we have not learned from our past mistakes then this struggle
could go on for another 40 years.’
Honesty, fairness and transparency are foreign attributes in
the current nature of PNG’s dealing with the Bougainville people and
government. In the whole PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill January 2014 tour of
Bougainville he hardly talked about Bougainville rights to referendum or self
determination.
In a February 5, 2014 David Lornie Post Courier article, Maurua: PM to clarify views on referendum,
a Siwai pastor said ‘I’m feeling that I don’t understand Papua New Guinea’s
position on independence. They are not serious about what we think because 2014
is the last year before we enter the window of referendum.’ This is one of the
many doubts on Bougainville and those with guns seem to be happy that they did
not throw away their guns so that PNG will play on with Bougainville.
Again the PNG thinking was captured by Light Intervention: Lessons from
Bougainville, by Regan (2010: 127) that:
The logic is that in the 10 to 15 years
from the establishment of the ABG in 2005, the PNG government has the
opportunity to work closely with the ABG to promote all forms of development in
Bougainville in a way that could be expected to encourage Bougainvilleans to
consider the possible merits of remaining a part of PNG when it comes time to
vote in the referendum.
PNG is at work. It
succeeded to influence the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA) to created
friction to the Bougainville progress and now it is all about winning
Bougainvillean hearts to see Bougainville has problems through the PNG lens and
not the Bougainville lens.
And the Peter O’Neill 2014 tour shows all the proof of PNG
activities to undermine the Bougainville government, the ABG.
During the three-day tour the PNG delegation announced
multi-million dollar development projects like the re-opening of the Aropa International
Airport by the PNG government for Bougainville thus exciting the people and a
handful of leaders. In all these projects’ launchings afterwards, a PNG
minister flies into Bougainville from Port Moresby to officiate and not an ABG
minister.
Bougainville’s ABG had endured continuous loud attacks for
not bringing development from Bougainville’s own representatives in the PNG
parliament mainly Hon. Jimmy Miringtoro from Central Bougainville and Hon.
Steven Pirika from South Bougainville and little from Hon. Lauta Atoi from the
North excluding the regional MP, Hon. Joe Lera who had been productively
working with the ABG.
And all these condemnation of the government that came out
as the result of the peace process with the responsibility to carry Bougainville
forward is the national MPs has the financial power then the struggling and
PNG-depended ABG.
The three MPs had been so destructive on ABG and not
supportive. An ABG parliamentarian sent me a text message few days ago claiming:
We believe PNG has agents in the
Autonomous Region of Bougainville to disrupt our preparations for referendum.
Our national MPs, except the regional MP, are all agents of PNG. They feel
comfortable with what they are receiving [from the PNG government] while
majority of Bougainvilleans continue to struggle. They use the DSIP funds to
promote “PNG’s might” and attempt to convince and mislead Bougainvilleans thus
undermining the ABG. Tasol ol bai tait (But they won’t succeed).
But PNG intentions are all clear they are pursuing their
baseless, disrespectful and irrelevant desire of Bougainville’s integration
into PNG so it can remain enslaved under its old claws of the pre-1990 days.
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