A plea for peace on Bougainville

PNG-Bougainville

By Wally Hiambohn

“THE time for weapons and firepower in Bougainville is now long past. It is a time for discussions between the parties to the conflict, leading ultimately to a nego tiated political settlement,” wrote Aus tralian politician Senator Stephen Loosley in April following a visit to Papua New Guinea's strife-torn Bou gainville Island. He had led a delegation of five parliamentarians to government controlled parts of Bougainville and came away moved by destructions and suffering he saw.

He wrote that peace could not be delayed any longer because of the intensity of the sufferings of the people

and the number of killings that took

place. Senator Loosley’s delegation was

allowed in after the PNG government took a significant step in its approach to Bougainville by allowing foreign ob servers to the island. Man) - others from the Pacific region have also been invited to go in and see for themselves. Said Senator Loosley “While the govern ment appears to have steadily broadened its support, the Bougainville Revolution ary Army still controls significant areas.

particularly in the central and southern Earts of the island. About 45,000 ougainvilleans, of a total population of around 150,000, still live in those areas.”

Senator Looslcy said neither side could win the war, although both sides retain an easy capacity to inflict casualties on the other. “Unfortunately, ordinary civ ilians suffer the consequences, becoming refugees on their own island. The view of the Australian delegation is that Austra lia may have contributed, at different times and in the colonial past particu larly, to the current problems. This may have been the result of inadvertence or neglect but the perception is widespread on Bougainville that Australia has an obligation to the people there as friend and neighbour.” He said Australia could assist by offering to host peace talks and/ or make it clear that Australia was not only committed to the peace process but stood ready to accelerate "our humani tarian assistance and our infrastructure programmes in the wake of a peace settlement”.

“Our delegation saw far too much destruction on Bougainville but not once did we confront any sense of hopelessness among the Bougainvilleans, who are a deeply religious and spiritual people.

Only the war is hopeless. The people have been damaged in their communities but their lives seem far from broken. We urged the leadership of PNG to open Bougainville to more visitors and more organisations. This can only serve to reinforce international interest in a positive way, while providing broader, additional humanitarian assistance and skills training for rebuilding across the island.” Australian Associated Press PNG correspondent Lucy Palmer who accompanied the Australian delegation filed this report after the visit: Peter is 16, and he’s in hospital with a nervous breakdown. Around him are some of the casualties of Bougainville’s bloody and divisive six-year war. Young men in plaster rest wearily on stretcher beds in gloomy makeshift tents, confused and shaken by their horrifying gunshot wounds. At the other end of the island, more than 60 former members of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) from the Motuna region are clasping hands and exchanging heads in a reconciliation ceremony with the villagers of Kaparo. Even the brightly-dressed widow of Tony Anugu, a former Mf killed by the BRA last year, stands tearfully in line, still grieving but willing to forgive the young men, and accept them hack into the community. .Nothing is more striking than the human face of the Bougainville crisis.

The Australian delegation, which only went into government-controlled areas, were greeted with the same refrain everywhere they went ---■ Bougainvilleans want peace. They want to move out of the crowded government '’care centres" and go back to their villages.

They want to tend their gardens without fear of being attacked. In fact, they want what most Australians want — to raise and educate their children in peace. “The people here, we have all suffered and many people are bitter. But the people also know that if they do not forgive everything that has happened the war will go on for generations even if the fighting stops, one elderly chief said.

Theresa Jaintong, once the mayor of the

provincial capital Arawa, is an impressive

woman. She has only just emerged from four years of hiding in the dense and mountainous jungle which surrounds her home town. When the government security forces pulled out of

Bougainville in March 1990, Jaintong fled

into the mountains with her four young children.

“At one stage my little girl’s name was on a list to be raped but we found out and we called a meeting. We said we would march to (BRA leader) Francis Ona and tell him to control his guys,” she said.

“When the BRA heard this, they said if we don’t stop the meetings we’ll rape the mothers too. It will he a long time before we forget experiences like that.” The Bougainville crisis began in late 1988 when landowners, angry at the lack of benefits from the giant CRA-

operated Panguna copper mine, began sabotag-

ing the plant. After the PNG government sent in the troops, the dispute escalated into a fullscale campaign for secession by the BRA, and despite several attempts to make peace, the war

has since continued unabated. Peter’s family is hiding somewhere in the bush in central Bougainville. He hasn't seen them for over a year, but he can't go and look for them because he’s frightened the BRA will kill him. He now lives in Buka, a government-controlled island just north of the Bougainville mainland.

“Sometimes I get very upset very quickly especially when I think about it all,” he said,

quietly understating the tremendous psychologi

cal impact of the war. A few hundred kilometres away, Amos, also 16, expressed similar feelings. Sitting on the floor in the cardboard partitioned care centre at Loloho, he said he felt very angry a lot of the time.

“When I can, I want to fight. I want to join the resistance. I am angry with the BRA, they are spoiling my country,” he said. The Australian delegation, which heard many of these stories, was advised not to go to BRA controlled areas, mainly in the centre of the island, because of concerns for their safety. The BRA did invite them, and has, through its interim government, expressed a desire for peace and a willingness to negotiate with the PNG government. Last month, after calling on the BRA to negotiate, Prime Minister Paias Wingti announced a nine-fold increase in the budget for the security forces operating on the island. The message this sent, as far as the Bougainville Interim Government was con cerned, was that the PNG government was

preparing for further assaults on BRA

strongholds. “The extra funding can only cause more bloodshed and suffering. Wingti's declar ation will send them (the BRA) back into the field to fight,” an interim government spokes man said.

As if to balance what the delegation did not see, the Catholics Bishops Conference of Pj\G and the. Solomon Islands held their annual general meeting in Port Moresby on the week after the visit and made sonic alarming claims of the situation on the island. People were being “killed like pigs and buried like dogs” by

resistance fighters working alongside the Papua

New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) the bishops said. In a nine-page statement, the Catholic Bishops Conference said untrained resistance fighters, armed by the PNGDP in the six-year war against the BRA, were carrying out brutal murders as “ payback”

against BRA killings.

From eyewitness accounts in southwest Bougainville, an area that the Australian parliamentary delegation visited the bishops said one resistance fighter, the younger brother of a BRA commander, was dragged into a Catholic mission post by the army and other resistance fighters, after he disappeared into the bush for several hours without explanation.

“There, without any trial, he was brutally beaten, cut with knives, hit with fence posts and finally shot in the chest. Still bleeding, but not yet dead, he was dumped in a hole and covered with soil. All this took place in the presence of relatives, school children and others,” the statement said. The bishops said many resistance fighters were using their powers to settle old scores, “with the blessing of and armed by the army”. □