Bougainville

may be next!

From a Port Moresby correspondent Is Bougainville lost to Papua New Guinea? There must have been oc casions during his hectic visit to the copper island in January when Papua New Guinea’s chief minister Michael Somare thought so.

It was a barnstorming meet-the people tour. In seven days there were 11 public meetings; four demonstrations; one hastily-organised helicopter trip out of Panguna and scores of calls for secession.

Somare’s Fokker Friendship touched down on Buka airstrip just a fort night after the brutal murder of two senior Bougainvillean public servants at Goroka in the Eastern Highlands District of the main island of New Guinea (see p 4).

The deaths of the two men, who had been in a car which fatally injured a young Goroka girl on Christmas Eve, galvanised public opinion all over Bougainville. The old split between the southern secessionists and the northern anti-secessionists dis appeared overnight. Even people who had strongly opposed the secessionists for many years hinted that an independent Bougainville mightn’t be so bad after all.

In the week preceding Somare’s arrival, there was feverish activity in the Kieta area as the Napidakoe Navitu secessionists tried to muster enough support to have the chief minister’s visit cancelled.

However, Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Mines and Napidakoe Navitu chairman, Paul Lapun, weighed in strongly against his col ftagues, and Navitu opposition to

the tour crumbled. Partly as a result of this, Lapun was to be referred to by Bougainvillean students in the following week as a “traitor” to the Bougainville people and a “puppet” of Somare.

Other people publicly told the four Bougainville members of the House of Assembly to resign from the Somare government and sit in the House as independents. This won’t happen, of course, and even if it did, it would not bring the Somare govern ment to its knees as some proponents of the idea hope.

At his first public meeting at Lonahan village on Buka Island, Somare heard demands that were to be repeated time and again during his entire trip.

In the words of some of the dozens of placards and banners that were waved at him: “Somare—let Bougain ville secede”, “Somare—teach the Highlanders to obey the law”, “Bring Bougainville public servants back” and “Somare—hang all murderers”.

It was at Buka that the chief minister was involved in an embarras sing incident in which a village relations officer of Bougainville Cop per Pty Ltd abused Somare for reject ing the company’s invitation to open the copper mine last year. It is believed that the village relations officer, a European, has since been dismissed from the company.

A similar happening occurred in a Kieta motel on the last night of

Somare's visit to Bougainville. As Somare entered the dining room wear ing his now-familiar “national dress’’, a European sitting nearby said in a stage whisper; “Look at that kanaka wearing a laplap!” The chief minister was upset by the comment but wisely refrained from taking the matter any further himself.

Midway through his tour, the chief minister was supposed to hold a public meeting at Panguna. Shortly before the meeting was to commence, 80 Guava village men were spotted in the copper town carrying spears, axes and bows and arrows.

Bougainville parliamentarians Paul Lapun and John Momis tried to convince the men that they should not take their weapons to the meeting, but the men refused. They said the weapons were symbolic and there was no intention that they should be used.

When Lapun and Momis insisted that the weapons not be allowed in the meeting hall, the villagers replied that they would not attend the meet ing. Insulted and angry, they stalked off. The meeting was abandoned.

At this point, Lapun and Momis, holding fears for the chief minister’s safety, advised Somare that he would be wise to abandon the road trip from Panguna to Boku on the west coast of Bougainville. Within minutes, a helicopter was flying Somare out of the copper town.

It was a bad error of judgment.

There had been a demonstration at

Kieta where people had carried weapons. And later there was to be a demonstration at Buin during which an old man threw a spear into the ground at the feet of the chief minister before ceremonially break ing it in half as a sign of friend ship. But at Panguna the decision was to “get out of town, fast” leaving behind the disgruntled Guava people.

The emotional backlash of the Goroka murders detracted from the usefulness of Somare’s tour. The cry for secession is still based more on gut feelings than on logic. Somare himself said that he believed the people were not clear about the reasons for secession.

But Somare created a favourable impression with most of the 5.000 people he met during his visit. At public meetings he patiently sat listening to the people's complaints for as long as four hours. He allowed people to talk themselves out before making his routine comments that the Constitutional Planning Com mittee would be determining the political future of Papua New Guinea in consultation with the people (see p 22) and that the government had already initiated action to investigate lawlessness in the Highlands. Somare was in Bougainville to listen and to learn.

“If it was in the best interests of Papua New Guinea, I believe Bougainville could secede now. But a responsible government represents a whole country, not any one part of that country,” Somare said later.

“However, there is no doubt that the people of Bougainville are discontent ed. I am sure that the status quo can not be continued successfully.”