In the beginning...

Daniel (not his real name) lived in Arawa for 17 years. He was one of the last to leave.

His life centered around Arawa where he worked as a personnel supervisor for Bougainville Copper Limited. Discussions with him opened another chapter of what cat apulted Bougainvilleans to take up arms against the mining company and ultimately the government of Papua New Guinea. Here is his story.

I may be mistaken but in hindsight I think this is what caused the uprising.

Bougainville Revolutionary Army pres-

idem Francis Ona was a surveyor at the mine. As a Bougainvillean and landowner at the site of the Panguna mine, he was frustrated with the government’s procrastination in reviewing and forcing changes to the original mining agreement between the

national government and the BCL.

“Problems developed between him and his immediate supervisor who then filed a report against Ona to the company. As a result of that report, Ona was demoted and was shifted from the house he had been occupying to one which was of a lower quality. The change in status was quite embarrassing and I, as a

Bougainvillean, would have felt the same if I had been in that position.

This was all happening a few months before the conflict. Sam Kauona was an explosives expert with the Papua New Guinea Defence Force. Just before the conflict, a nurs ing sister at Arawa Flospital was raped by a gang from the settlement of plan tation workers who had been living in

A wounded soldier lies in a makeshift care centre

Another view of Arawa General Hospital

The remain ofArawa Hospital: once the pride of Bougainville

Hope: as he listens to peace talks

squatter settlements close to town.

She was then murdered and muti lated and she was from Kongara vil lage, the village also of Sam Kauona. If that happened to your sister what would you do? I don’t blame Sam for what happened. Local people took revenge and killed some of the planta tion people. These people had come to work in the copra and cocoa plan tations.

Riot police were called in to curb the killing that gained momentum after the first pay-back killing. The riot police started burning local villages in a tactic they were well known for. Any agitation in the country would be treated as such by them.

They took the Bougainvilleans light ly. The tactic was successful else where; here in Bougainville it back fired.

Joseph Kabui won the premiership

election with a landslide in 1988. He was a landowner here in Bougainville and haboured the same feelings as other Bougainvilleans. Three started out as individual outfit leaders fight ing against a common enemy and also among themselves. They realised that they would have to fight side by side to beat the government forces.

And when you have three fighters, who have their own reasons to fight, grouped together in combat, you have a real war on your hands.

Francis One is now BRA president, Joseph Kabui is vice-president and Sam Kauona is BRA supreme com mander.

Together they have sustained a war that has claimed hundreds of lives and together with government they are trying to work their way out of it without losing face on any quarter.

What was once a shopping mall

A soldier’s vantage point: the wrecked shell of a truck

Cut off: communications with the outside world

Yearning for a better future