Matters weren't helped three years later, in 1965, when the Australian minister for External Territories, Charles Barnes, put in an appearance on the island only to abruptly declare that the Nasioi, as the owners of the proposed mine site, could expect exactly 'nothing' for their land but would have to be content with the standard paltry compensation for lost properties such as houses and coconut palms. Chan's first attempt to negotiate a comprehensive solution with the secessionists at the Arawa Peace Conference in October 1994 was not a resounding success, despite agreeing to their request for the United Nations to be present and cajoling the Australians into funding a small regional peacekeeping force. On Bougainville the opposition to Port Moresby's rule was to grow so hard and fast that when a leading provincial politician, Hon John Bika, prepared a 'compromise' in 1989 that would have granted Bougainville a much greater level of autonomy, the solution devised by a hard core element of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army was to assassinate him in front of his family in the dead of the night. The principals of Sandline International, a London-based private military company began their first approaches to the desperate leaders of PNG. It was not an absolute victory for the BRA nor was it a conclusive defeat for the government but from now on the Government only had two choices as to how it might return – with the permission of the BRA or by invasion. The 'merciless intrusion' of CRA continued unabated. 'The traditional system will never work again. The dispute was essentially a land owners' revolt over getting none of the massive profits generated by the mine. Bougainville’s independence is a good opportunity for Australia and its joint mining corporation with the UK, Anglo-Australian multinational Rio Tinto, to regain access to the island’s resources and develop them again. Ahead of his time, Espie engaged broadly and deeply with anthropologists, the indigenous population and government. We have taken the move after painful struggle for the last 20 years of PNG rule. As part of this strategy, China is doing everything it can to increase the influence it has in the region’s small and underdeveloped states, primarily through economic cooperation. That is why Oceania rarely makes world news, which local populations accustomed to living a quiet life are probably fairly content with. Bougainville Island is one of these places, located about 800 km east of the island of New Guinea. But somewhere in the dappled green jungle above the great gash of the Panguna mine, Francis Ona was at work. Many innocent people, old people, women and children are being slaughtered.'. It did, however, lead the following year to the establishment of a Bougainville Transitional Government under the leadership of Theodore Miriung, a lawyer and former legal adviser to Francis Ona. By far the majority of the mine's workers were 'red-skins' from the island of New Guinea; their presence and their difference – physically from the black Bougainvilleans and culturally – only serving to enhance the sense that the mine and all that came with it had been imposed upon the people of Bougainville. By 1971 more than 1000 construction workers had come to the island. ... Rebel guerillas above the Panguna copper and gold mine in Bougainville in 1994. Credit: Ben Bohane. War broke out between Bougainville secessionist forces, primarily the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, and the PNG government. Bougainville Copper Limited was just the latest in a series of outside elements which for more than two centuries had come to Bougainville's shores to toss and turn the island and its people for their own intent. They accused Bougainville Copper Ltd., of being responsible for poisoning the entire length of the Jaba River, and causing birth defects, as well as the … Louis De Bougainville never actually set foot on the island that would eventually bear his moniker. Inter-tribal warfare meant days marked by constant wariness, distrust and even death. As the months passed, thousands fled into the bush. In 1997, negotiations mediated by New Zealand began between the PNG government and secessionist leaders. It would take a good part of a century for the import of Guppy's discovery to be felt although capitalism had already arrived on Bougainville a decade before him, when in 1871, another doctor of less salubrious repute, James Murray, began kidnapping Buka men for export to the cane fields of Queensland on Australia's north-east coast. Amnesty International. The Bougainville civil war raged for a decade after indigenous landowners, incensed by environmental devastation and inequities associated with the Rio Tinto majority-owned Panguna copper mine, waged an armed campaign to shut the mine down. The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the opinion of the editorial board. Ona stated that his people fight for: 1) land and the culture, 2) land and the environment, and 3) independence (Rotheroe 2001). It was this that PNG's Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, commissioned Spicer to bring back to life with the hiring of mercenaries to deploy against PNG's own, albeit reluctant, citizens. Although the mine brought many benefits unknown in other provinces to Bougainville, they had before them the contrast of the relative affluence of the expatriate mining community who lived within their midst. BCL operated the copper, gold and silver mine at the Panguna mine on Bougainville Island in PNG from 1971 to 1989. With their villages relocated and their lands despoiled by the wastes from the mine, by the time Francis Ona took up their cause, there were many women in Central Bougainville who felt completely disempowered in their role as land-owners. Already the mine had been shut down, 16 people had died – three of them soldiers. In 1988, locals on Bougainville Island began killing the migrant copper workers. What began as a campaign of sabotage escalated into a violent campaign for independence, resulting in the formation of both the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and a government-backed militia. Former employee of the company Bougainville Copper Limited and Bougainville native, Francis Ona, came to lead the resistance against the Panguna mine, and in turn the resistance for independence from Papua New Guinea. Facing a Vietnam-like situation, the PNGDF not only failed in their stated task, but they demonstrated an alarming lack of discipline, training, planning and leadership. They also brought education and new ideas, different from the colonial powers. The Bougainville Civil War is considered the largest conflict to have occurred in Oceania since World War Two. The same year, Teori Tau, a Nasioi from Pakia village, challenged the colonial administration's right to compulsorily acquire their land before Australia's High Court. But all these years later, the vastness of the mine and the violence of its intrusion were still apparent; the majestic green folds of the Crown Prince Ranges suddenly splaying outwards to reveal a vast, dark wound. At its peak in mid-1971, it employed a labour force of some 10,700. The costs of the ensuing conflict, sometimes called the Bougainville Civil War, were immense. The Panguna copper mine was operated by Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL), owned by Conzinc Riotinto of Australia (CRA), an Australian subsidiary of the British mining company Rio Tinto-Zinc. Most of the profits drifted abroad, or were funnelled to the PNG state. Explore ways to support our work and help make peace possible. The conflict spread throughout the island and lasted a decade. For more, go to http://www.riverbendnelligen.com/bougainville1.html By the time Sandline's front man, Tim Spicer, first saw the Panguna mine in early 1997, it was overgrown with almost a decade of disuse. They railed against the national government. Like many Bougainvilleans that day, he sensed a greater import. It was a time of terror, of wild unrestrained violence by a security force that had been sent to do an impossible job. Mary-Louise O’Callaghan describes the events that led to the declaration of Bougainville’s independence and the descent into lawlessness and violence that followed, ending with frustrated peace efforts and the entry of a private military company. For Bougainvilleans, their sense of separateness – physical, cultural and emotional – from Papua New Guinea had been fuelled by their particular experience of this policy; the presence of the giant copper mine and the use of the wealth it generated to pay for the development of the young nation-state. But the BRA were not at all prepared for their new role of maintaining law and order in the new de facto state. Many o… Vying for economic and political influence in the young state and for access to its resources may now become a new area of rivalry between China and the West, which has already colonized the entire region in the past. This occurred as a result of the conflict between the forces led by Francis Ona, Supreme Commander of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force. 'The only one mad enough to take on BCL', Ona, the thirty-something surveyor from the Nasioi language group of Central Bougainville, had quit his job at the mine the previous year, 1988, to launch a campaign against the mine and the company who operated it. On September 16, 1975, Papua New Guinea (PNG) gained independence from Australia and became an independent state. As the end of his term loomed in 1996, with nothing to show on Bougainville but death and defeat, Julius Chan had run out of ideas. 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