Bougainville Manifesto 8: The 1990-1991 Crisis

Leonard Fong Roka

To the state of PNG, Rio Tinto and BCL, Bougainvilleans were nobodies of the Solomons that have to be raped off their resources to finance PNG and its citizens who are not at all geographically and ethnically relatives of Bougainvilleans.

But the trio did not know that Bougainvilleans were humans that are adaptive to negative or positive changes; whether the adaptation is planned or not, they need to change to cater for the externally driven changes on their land and society.

The late Francis Ona with every available pressures of change on his shoulder did rush at his numerous goals and history should agree that his ambition for a better Bougainville were not that strategically concrete. Bougainvillean teacher, Lance Itta in his article, A civil war of resources (Post Courier, 23 August 2013 pg 10), implied an organized maneuver by Ona when he tasked a Philip Takaung in recruiting militants; but one as to ask why this turn the crisis of Panguna into a civil war.

The answer is simple; the players were practically incapable of politically leading Bougainville out of the vacuum created by the departure of the PNG state institutions and the demise of the provincial administration.

Let me go to my PNG ATTITUDE article, We don’t want Bougainville as a land of warlords (2012), and start with this scene:

‘All these great military men of Bougainville - although at first fighting to get rid of Bougainville Copper Limited, Papua New Guinea and its Redskins - went off-track in mid-1990.

This divide was created by the late Francis Ona’s inability to administer and control his men and therefore to control Bougainville.

Fighters forgot our cause of freedom and went for war-gains. Think about Ishmael Toroama’s words in the video documentary Coconut Revolution: ‘When I fought everything got into hands…’

Did we fight for personal property or peoples’ freedom? Often, at gun point personal property was removed from owners or guardians; Bougainvillean women were raped, innocent persons were killed….’

According to a BCL webpage post entitled, Chronology of Peace Process (n.d.), on May 1989, the Panguna mine was closed and PNG declared a state of emergency on Bougainville and sent its undisciplined PNGDF to fight Bougainville rebels. But on March 1990, a ceasefire was reached and international representatives were observing the withdrawal of the PNG security forces. 

If Philip Takaung was recruiting the BRA then, what structure was he placing them into? What was his power of influence over these men? Chinese revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong, had Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung (1964) to back his political drive to change China but sadly Bougainville did not have such a determined leadership from the late Francis Ona.

So in March 1990, when the PNG government state of emergency created care center occupants began to head home to their PNGDF burned villagers, the militants headed into the urban areas to experience a lifestyle they had never had before and now they deserve it as heroes or liberators of Bougainville.

One witnessed scene: In one of these days, my parents were in an Arawa clothing shop known as Haus Bilas when a band of BRA men entered. They stood watching as they took new shoes and began helping themselves saying to themselves: ‘Wear shoes boys, we have frozen in the bush fighting for this land’. Rotten opposite!

But in Panguna, Francis Ona, after returning home from his hideout and turning his Guava village into the seat of Bougainville power disregarding Arawa, was creating a power structure and order for his militants amidst tension he was the catalyst to.

Francis Ona, who was now the supreme commander of the BRA, organized the BRA structure with his followers in Panguna. The men were stationed there living and eating like gone BCL employees in the company facilities.

In Panguna, the whole BRA companies were given specific sections of the township to reside on. There was law enforcement on the ground; also, with this each BRA unit leaders were provided with the BCL vehicles to perform their duties. But this was military jobs defined by the leaders and absent was the political structure all these make-ups could function within.

Francis Ona was not prepared to give away his hard-earned glory to the known political personalities like the late Joseph Kabui who was now doing nothing in Arawa, the capital.

His prestige was to be protected outright. He was guarded 24/7 by armed men and women at his village; he also had a unit of witch doctors that also guarded him from sorcerers and kept evaluating his health. With that his home was being maintained. A few BCL plants were ordered to upgrade his hideout and he also took ownership of a number of expensive BCL cars and others.

All these happened as the entire BRA and opportunists watched in disbelief.

So Francis Ona opened trouble. BRA men and opportunist fought each other over the BCL properties in Panguna, especially vehicles at first. After the BCL goodies were done with, the reckless BRA and other rascals ran for private properties as Francis Ona kept silent.

The recklessness also disintegrated the big BRA men into creating own spheres of influence in the fight for personal gains. Vehicle after vehicle and other properties appeared in the backyard of individual BRA commanders and those few dangerous BRA man. But all BRA and opportunist of Kieta had gained something for himself.

In Panguna, the Guava villagers used guns to control Panguna for themselves or scare away people whom—gaining nothing against the armed men—begin dismantling BCL houses and so on, to replace their homes back in the villages that the PNG government had burn.

Seeing this chaos, the former PNGDF soldier and BRA leader, Sam Kauona who had also left Panguna for his home in Tororei, then decided to involve the Panguna brothers Joseph Kabui and Martin Miriori who were doing nothing in Arawa as the result of the August 1990 suspension of the North Solomons (Bougainville) Provincial Government by PNG.

Kauona also got the brothers connected with Francis Ona and in 17 May 1990, the second UDI in Bougainville history happened in Arawa with the creation of the Bougainville Interim Government (BIG). But the BRA engineered chaos was already out beyond the perimeters of Kieta and out of reach from the BIG.

Whilst UDI celebrations was on in Kieta, Kieta BRA and opportunists and their followers in other parts of Bougainville were out disturbing peace and justice on Buka Island and much of north and a few areas in South Bougainville and central Bougainville.

To all these the Buka Islanders, according to a online Australian government house committee appendix document entitled, Outline History of the Bougainville Conflict (n.d.), re-invited the PNG army on 13 September 1990 under the blessing of the NEC and eventually leading to the signing of the Kavieng Agreement on the 5 August 1990 calling on the PNG government to establish rule only on Buka and let go Bougainville.

Francis Ona now had some myopic reasons to talk and accuse fellow Bougainvilleans whom, he himself cannot provide the leadership to, many now saw as being betraying Bougainville or much popular phrase then, ‘Salim Bogenvil go bek lo PNG na BCL’ that was known well on the Radio Free Bougainville campaigns and news reels.

The BRA then went reckless as a ‘secret police’ tracking down moles inside Bougainville with orders from Francis Ona. Many innocent Bougainvilleans met their fate; lost their property that were confiscated as punishment by BRA elements thus, leading to spontaneous birth of anti-BRA groups the very first of which was the Buka Liberation Force (BLF) that was created on Buka Island.  

Under the very nose of Francis Ona and his BRA, Bougainvilleans turned against each other; the BIG was late with its leader, the late Joseph Kabui, to exercise power over Bougainville for the now considered military hand of BIG, the BRA had already scared away the Bougainville people.

Bougainvilleans were hunting and killing each other throughout the island as were Francis Ona and Joseph Kabui were playing their own politics in Kieta without control over the whole island of Bougainville. 

A Panguna kid falling in love with business

Leonard Fong Roka

For Paul Monoung (pictured with his canteen below) he was not there before 1990 to witness his Panguna District so cursed with squatter settlements by non-Bougainvilleans of PNG that sailed to his island to exploit its wealth of opportunities and suppress the indigenous people of Panguna.

Born in 1998 with the peace process after the PNG army had satisfied themselves from shelling his island with Australia supplied mortar bombs and gunships from coast to coast, he did not see the pre-crisis reality that caused the rebellion that eventually killed some 20 000 of his people; one of whom is his blood uncle, killed by the PNG government in Torokina’s Papona village.

Drive in a vehicle from the village of Maingku where the Panguna District starts from on the port-mine-access road into Panguna mine site and down Tumpusiong Valley to Jaba where Panguna District meets Nagovis of South Bougainville and one could work out why young Paul Monoung is significant to Panguna.

Along this section of the Arawa to South Bougainville highway you won’t go hungry or thirsty for retail outlets are lined from the Maingku area (Pakia) into Panguna mine site and down into the Tumpusiong Valley by the road side.

The road side business activities within the Panguna District is raising; there are retail stores, tyre services, fuel stations, vehicle workshops, liquor outlets, traditional food and goods stores, cooked food bars when you eat and markets for fresh garden produce that south Bougainvillean travellers help themselves with.

And this change in the Panguna people is being driven by the money culture backed by the alluvial gold mining in the district.

Our Monoung did complete elementary school in 2010 and should be in Grade 5 now but he is forever on and off from school. He spends most of his time panning gold in his Tumpusiong Valley. He is one of the many kids known in the Tumpusiong Valley as the ‘koro batauinanunaving’ which means ‘gold chaser’.

These kids inherited this tag because of their attitude whereby whenever a gold miner taps more gold in a particular spot along the BCL polluted Kavarong river banks; they are seen to migrate there with their home-made equipment. They will stick around the spot till the gold infested block runs dry and they move on.

In the 2012 Monoung made some K5000 and decided to compete with three other kids of his age who also had canteens nearby who were also members of his gold chasing gang.

He ordered his elder sister’s husband to hand-lumber his timber; purchased a few old roofing iron sheets at K600 from his father’s kitchen hut, and with his brother-in-law they began building his semi-permanent house for his canteen.

He is now shelling all goods except refrigerated goods since he has no private mini-hydro of his own but he plans to buy a generator in Arawa which will be dismantled and place in the water system to be built soon to operate a freeze he plans to buy soon.

‘Nephew, that store you photographed me when you helped me to weave the bamboo wall is doing fine,’ he told me over the phone. ‘Stationeries are doing well because of the students at Kavarongnau School. I just purchased a big stereo system to lure customers here and it is happening. My money is growing and I will build myself a permanent house soon after constructing the hydro electricity.’

He said he loves his business but his mother and sisters angers him a lot by doing a lot of credits in his canteen.

Avakori Culture in Bougainville

Leonard Fong Roka

In the Nasioi society of Bougainville there is a saying for males that goes: ‘when you fuck a woman, you must know that you are fucking a garden, a house and everything that will sustain you both’. This is associated with marriage.

This wisdom really is a norm in Central Bougainville to South Bougainville; unlike the north, it is not that evident. And in the proverb above, it is the situation where it tells a man that ‘he is fucking a house the moment he is naked on his woman’ that is the catch phrase here.

In most Bougainville communities in Nasioi, Koromira, Eivo, Nagovis, Banoni and Siwai (areas I am familiar with) the village concept is dying out rapidly. In the post crisis Bougainville, hardly there is a village community in existence in these communities.

The 10-year Bougainville civil conflict did contributed to the rapid dying of the village systems. The crisis scattered people into refugee camps away from the coasts or into the PNG held care centers thus disturbing the harmonious progress of village living.

But in Buin I discovered such massive villages especially Oria, Laguai and Malabita but the proverb still is prevalent in these villages.

In today’s Bougainville homes are being erected within the extended or nuclear family circles. Males in the family turn to make these isolated and family based homesteads into something of a village scale to the distant eyes.

In the Nasioi society it is evident that little boys as young as six years turn to force their parents or brothers to built them one-room houses. This is a culture referred to as avakori in Nasioi which means baby-works (both boys’ tiny houses or girls’ little gardens are referred to as avakori).

Avakori, especially for younger girls’ gardens, when their brothers or parents support it, contribute to the sustenance of the family.

There is this spirit of independence or self reliance for the youngsters with the old tradition of avakori. Males are equipped to built own homes and females are real independent to make gardens that sustains their families when marriage is reached.

For myself, I did begin to do avakori in the peak of the Bougainville crisis in 1992 in the Kupe village.  Influenced by my peer grouping, I began making my own garden backed by my mother and late in 1993, I began a house of my own supported by a relative.

In my Tumpusiong Valley with modern materials and money from gold is at hand, male kids are well engaged with avakori of little houses (as photographed (above) is my cousin, Tabekau, in his own house that also has electricity supplied ) and females also running parallel with their interests.

This has led to change in the said areas where the young are becoming the breadwinners since in their families or they are more financially independent and not being fed by their parents.

The Road of Change for Avaipa: Tumpusiong-Paruparu Road

Leonard Fong Roka

The Avaipa area is landlocked by ranges that sprout west from Bougainville’s main backbone, the Crown Prince Range in the Panguna area. It consists of six major villages namely Kosia (near and borders Avaipa to Panguna), Sipuru, Mainoki, Sirovai, Siuema and Kaspeke before the Bougainville crisis but today it is dotted by hamlets.

Geographically the area is all plain that is sourced from the Banoni coast of South Bougainville but protected by the Crown Prince Range to the north, the Kosia ridge to the east and the Piruo Mountains further west towards the Karato area. It was not linked by a road even though it was just near the multi-million kina Panguna mine that promised Bougainville so much and gave nothing.

The center of activity for the entire area is the Paruparu Catholic station (sub-parish of Deumori), primary school and health center. Popular during the peak of the Bougainville crisis as an educational facility for training health workers and so on, the peace on Bougainville demised it as it pulled people towards the cash economy.

The Australian Panguna mine for funding PNG gave nothing to Bougainville’s Avaipa area as usual. To access government services the Avaipa people walk kilometers across rivers and mountains for hours to Tumpusiong in the south-east or Borumai in the north-east.

But it is the post crisis Bougainville, a Bougainville without a multi-million dollar Panguna mine, that finally blew a wind of change to the people; their hours of shouldering wet-bean or fermented cocoa bags, will be history; stretchers for their sick and death back home will no more because of the newly constructed road from the Tumpusiong Valley into Paruparu.

The road was first dreamt of by the 2005-10 Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) house. This government funded a survey from Borumai and over the rugged Crown Prince Range into Paruparu that cost some K100 thousand in 2009. The surveyors, however, upon completion discovered that Paruparu was so close to Tumpusiong and a road from Tumpusiong would be less costly than what they have done from Borumai.

Thus, the surveyor with local community leaders then did another surveying from the Tumpusiong’s Pingnari section where one of the local leaders, Wendelinus Bitanuma, had his home at a rough cost of another K100 000 of public money.

The surveying team made up of members from the Arawa area of Kieta and Siwai in South Bougainville were rich with two rounds of surveying within 2009 and early 2010. But land related conflicts on the areas the road would run through created by community leaders between the innocent and development needy landowning villagers scared the ABG away and the project was called off; and the village leaders also were not to be seen.

However, in mid 2012, the national MP for central Bougainville, Hon. Jimmy Miringtoro came to the rescue. He allocated some millions for the death project and it was revived to the joy of the people.

The surveyors came back to life with another round of surveying. Groups of people from Avaipa cleared the jungle trail they had used for ages now for the bulldozers to employ to dig up the top soil for the trucks to dump gravel from the Tumpusiong’s Panguna created tailings.

The contract was awarded to Kompaini Transport, a local company from the Koromira area of central Bougainville. They did not waste time when the funding was delayed, but use own money to start the work to liberate the Avaipa people from being slaves of own survival and the state later reimbursed them.

By the Christmas of 2012, transport vehicles were already visiting the Pangtaresi ridge (photo a vehicle on Pangtaresi) that is a center point on the Tumpusiong to Avaipa trail. Situated high on the ridge, walkers rest here having a cool view of both the Avaipa area to the north-west and Tumpusiong Valley to the south-west before continuing their journey neither way.

Rumors also are wide spread that a few Avaipa people and groups were gearing to purchase vehicles that once they had no choice for there was no safe place to keep since their homes were kilometers away in the bush.

Thus the road could be said of as a road of change to the Avaipa people and those peoples surrounding them.

Alluvial Gold Mining in the Panguna’s Tumpusiong Valley

Leonard Fong Roka

After 1997 when the Bougainville Peace Process slowly gained momentum the people on the coastal plains of Nasioi, especially around Arawa, slowly began to rehabilitate their old cocoa and coconut plantations. On the higher altitudes like Panguna where cocoa does not yield, people sought means to earn the cash the coastal people were enjoying; most young men began to labour for the coastal people.

For those in the village it was a search for a resource that would counter the cash economy the coastal people were enjoying. Panguna people attempted butterfly, coffee, vanilla and the spice farming but it all did not work well to their liking.

So by chance in 1998 the Moroni and Dapera villagers began the sharing tales of the world oldest precious mineral, gold. They knew for oral history had it that it was first mined in the mountains of Kupe in the 1929 to 1930 era; and the Barapinang (what is now Panguna area) much later.

They knew also the tales of the heydays of the Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) that gold was processed in the Panguna mine’s concentrator within their reach thus they began to sample the area; using old methods of panning, they discovered the valuable mineral of the world since the Biblical times was there waiting for them.

A gold rush dawned. People as far as Siwai in South Bougainville and Arawa in Kieta’s east coast flocked into Panguna to tap in. The BCL tailings affected Tumpusiong Valley people also joined the rush for gold money.

By the mid-year of 1999, the entire Concentrator Zone of the Panguna site began controlled by the landowners and a few BRA leaders. Tumpusiong miners were slowly pushed to the periphery thus their numbers slowly declined from the scene.

Doing nothing back in their homes they slowly developed a thought that the vast sedimentation the BCL and Rio Tinto dumped into their valley came from Panguna so there must be traces of the old valuable mineral in store for them.

So without the entire valley knowing a person by the name of Boniface Arunara in late 2000 began sampling for the mineral his people were kicked aside for at Panguna mine site. He did love to pan at Panguna before but sadly he was wounded by the Papua New Guinea military in left leg and thus he does not walk long trails.

Arunara identified the mineral at a spot known as Sinari-tave in the Tumpusiong Valley. He secretly mined it for a few weeks but he was discovered and excitement diffused so the entire valley was searched and gold uncovered and mined as off.

Gold panning turned the Tumpusiong living standard positively high according to Bougainville measures and scales. Small businesses mushroomed and everybody has money earned with hard clean labour.

Pakia Gap

By Leonard Fong Roka

 There is no other road on Bougainville central mountain backbone, Crown Prince Range, except the Panguna mine’s Port-Mine-Access road. The highest point of this road is called the Pakia Gap (picture); it is cold and foggy and refreshing to us travellers. It is also history and politics for us Bougainvilleans and also the post-conflict political problem.

I celebrate Pakia Gap’s significance in my own way for it is my pride when people talk about the blessing they feel passing Pakia Gap.

 To the Torauan paddler and his sea, it is too high

To the South Bougainvillean coastal man, it is too freezing

But to the Panguna man, it is sweet home, motherland;

The table for the two ridge divided Ioros kisses: the Pinenari and the Kavarongnari.

 

Bone freezing winds chills

Ear sweetening songs of the bush soothes

Eye narrowing fog blankets

Virgin bush caresses your spine

And the weary traveler is in Heaven.

 

From the east and the west coasts, cars climb

Snail pace and in agony your brae of bitumen road;

From the west they tally their gain from Camp 10 and Shoofly Corner and I get you,

Pakia Gap. From the east they rung you from Pakia to Policeman Corner and Finger Point and I get you,

Pakia Gap.

 

She dawns on the weary traveler:

Bone freezing winds chills

Ear sweetening songs of the bush soothes

Eye narrowing fog blankets

Virgin bush caresses your spine

And the weary traveler is in Heaven

And fall his own way home laughing.

For Pakia Gap is sweetness to the Bougainvillean.

 

Pakia Gap is where the Bougainville east coast and west coast rub noses

Pakia Gap is where Ioroan lovers kiss

Pakia Gap is where history Bougainville modern history opens

Pakia Gap is where politics is trapped

Pakia Gap is where peace must born

Pakia Gap is where Bougainville belongs; and

Pakia Gap is freedom!

Call on ABG to create opportunities for Students

Leonard Fong Roka

The Divine Word University’s Department of PNG Studies & International Relations requires its Third Year students to at least undergo part-time job exposure over the break and at the beginning of their Forth Year; they have to provide the Department with a certification of their experience to the Department for assessment and valuation of the student.

To this a Bougainvillean student from Lonahan village on Buka in PNG Studies & International Relations department, Ancitha Semoso (pictured), is sending email after email with her letter of interest and references attached to offices in Buka with hope to secure a position.

‘I did send emails to government departments of the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) and NGOs on Buka,’ she told me, ‘but nobody is responding that positively to me. I hate that attitude of ignorance by a Bougainville on a Bougainville.’

She did write to other organizations in Port Moresby for the part-time jobs opportunity that is an academic requirement for her. A few did accept her interest but suggested that they won’t provide her with accommodation. Thus she is sad and looks nowhere but want positive answers from Bougainville.

‘I am a Bougainvillean; I am the future of my island,’ the 23 year old said frustratingly. ‘And those old folks in the Bougainville government need to give me a space to gain practical experience instead of being overloaded with theories that otherwise will not help me out in the future.’

She emphasizes that one Bougainville problem is that the ABG is not investing more on its future human resource.

‘Bougainville is on a political journey,’ she told me, ‘and that needs us the young generation to be nurtured now and be prepared to take on the challenges of leading our Bougainville after the scheduled referendum on independence that is some three years away.

‘We will vote for independence but is our ABG grooming us to take on the responsibilities of leading our own country?’

Miss Semoso had written to the ABG parliamentary services; she had written to the Bougainville administration and the World Vision, but till now she is waiting to be positively responded upon by the various government bodies and NGOs.

‘When I do not secure a part-time job outside of Bougainville,’ she said, ‘I won’t be hurt. But when the organizations I wrote to on Bougainville, where I call home, I am really sad. I am asking, ‘Are our leaders on Bougainville really dedicated to freeing Bougainville based on the facts or reasons that our people had fought and died for since 1988?’’

Ancitha Semoso wants Bougainville to have programs those students in tertiary institutions outside Bougainville must be subjected to every year when they return home.