Catholic Social Justice Series No. 26
Bougainville: A Challenge for the Churches
James Griffin
Contents
Foreword
Bougainville: A Challenge for the Churches
Possible Outcomes
Colonialism and Cargo
Enter the Mining Companies: CRA/BCL
Secession and Resolution
Breathing Space: Provincial Government
Prelude to Rebellion
Conflict
Rebellion: Inevitable or Avoidable?
Appendix
Bibliography
Foreword
Historian Jim Griffin’s paper on the vexed question of Bougainville is number 26 in the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council’s Social Justice Series (formerly Occasional Papers). The paper comes out at a critical time in the history of attempts to resolve the conflict when a second meeting, this time to include BRA leaders, is mooted. Such a meeting could represent a big step on the way to peace. Study of this paper by the protagonists at this proposed meeting would, I believe, help to focus discussion.
The paper also challenges churches to learn from the conflict: the churches need to be ready to assist in preventing clashes and, if they occur, to be quick in condemning violence and human-rights abuses. I hope, therefore, that Jim Griffin’s penetrating analysis will be widely read in the churches; I believe it deserves to be.
Most Rev. Kevin Manning
Chairman, ACSJC
Bishop of Armidale
Bougainville: A Challenge for the Churches.
As I write this paper (October 1995) there still appears to be no resolution of the civil war on Bougainville, soon to enter its eighth year. This is in spite of the initiative of Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Sir Julius Chan, immediately on assuming office in late August 1994, in setting up a peace conference, and the war fatigue evident among Bougainvilleans. Unfortunately the conference of October last, staged at Arawa, the principal town in Bougainville, was not attended by leaders of the so-called Bougainville Interim Government (BIG) and Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) - notably, Francis Ona, Joseph Kabui and Sam Kauona - in spite of guarantees of safety being provided by a multinational South Pacific force financed by Australia. The conference derived its credibility from the presence of leaders from all parts of Bougainville except the central mine site area. These included, most notably, Theodore Miriung, a former Acting Judge of the PNG Supreme Court and a legal adviser to the secessionists since 1990, who defected from them and brought with him followers from the North and South Nasioi areas of the central coast and immediate hinterland.
While the peace conference ended with Chan denouncing the secessionist leaders as ‘criminals’ for not attending, and uttering dire threats against them, there were further negotiations in Port Moresby out of which emerged a Bougainville Transitional Government (BTG) with Miriung as premier. Miriung remained at heart a secessionist but, he said, he was now prepared to accept, on pragmatic grounds, Papua New Guinean sovereignty.
Fighting, however, has continued throughout 1995. Even two BRA squad leaders who attended the Arawa conference have reverted to terrorism and the destruction of lives and property, even in putatively safe areas, while the Defence Force (PNGDF) has continued to frustrate any ‘winning-hearts-and minds’ strategy by undisciplined violent forays against BRA locations and even mere suspects. As neither the PNG Defence Force nor the BRA has the resources to eliminate the other, the Bougainville Transitional Government and the secessionists must be reconciled so that a coherent Bougainville position can be established on which to base negotiations with Port Moresby on the province’s future status.
In September this year Australia, with the approval of Port Moresby, sponsored a meeting in Cairns between representatives of the Bougainville Transitional Government and agents of the Bougainville Interim Government resident in Australia and the Solomon Islands. They were exploratory talks, the only conclusion being to hold a farther meeting, but with the participation of the secessionist leaders on Bougainville. A major problem will be convincing them that they cannot win the war as the Bougainville Interim Government external agents maintain the fiction that Port Moresby cannot sustain its military role indefinitely and, even if it could, that the United Nations will eventually be persuaded to step in and prescribe an act of self-determination. This is in spite of a statement in 1994 by the Secretary-General of the UN, Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, that the issue is best settled within Papua New Guinea itself. No State has recognised the secessionists’ interim government which was announced at the unilateral declaration of independence on 17 May 1990. Nor is any likely to, with the possible exception of the Solomon Islands.
Possible Outcomes
What are the possible outcomes of further negotiations?
1. The secessionists will, as their bottom line, continue to insist on the withdrawal of the PNG Defence Force from Bougainville and, in return for the BRA laying down arms, Port Moresby will agree to a multinational supervisory team to keep order, and a UN-supervised referendum.
2. Secessionists will see that it is futile to continue their destructive struggle and, with appropriate amnesties and pardons, will concur with Miriung’s pragmatic policy of negotiating a special status for Bougainville within the State of Papua New Guinea.
3. There will be no agreement and Port Moresby will leave the problem to be solved by fatigue and attrition, knowing that the tragic happenings in Bougainville have only minor effects on politics elsewhere in Papua New Guinea.
4. Port Moresby will conclude that no satisfactory outcome is possible by negotiation and will try to recruit external force to put the rebellion down.
Point 3 requires no elaboration and Point 4 is too improbable for discussion. Papua New Guinea could hardly afford ‘gurkhas’ even if it was thought their presence could be effective. Papua New Guinea would hardly establish a precedent for Indonesia to intervene even if it could, and Australia would not relish any neo-colonial adventurism which would look like defence of its own mining company - again, even if it could.
However, it is most unlikely that Port Moresby will agree to secessionist demands (point 1). Quite possibly the PNG Defence Force may not agree even if it does. Neither will it trust the BRA to hand in more than token arms and will cite its failure to do so during the cease-fire of March 1990 when the PNG Defence Force withdrew from the Bougainville (and Buka Island) altogether. Even if BRA leaders are to prove trustworthy, they cannot control the various dispersed squads and gangs which comprise it. The rebel leaders admit this. Moreover, what is known as the Resistance (to the BRA) will oppose such a move because of justifiable fear of payback unless there is a secure reconciliation. With all its faults the PNG Defence Force is seen by the Resistance as a necessary garrison until such time as an acceptable Bougainvillean police can replace it.
In any case, a referendum before a cooling off period will - or ought to - have little validity, especially when pre-ballot box terrorism will be easy to wage. The size of a multinational supervisory team needed to guarantee anything like a secure ceasefire and referendum will have to be substantial - perhaps 2000 to 3000 men - and the time span for effective preparations will be at least a year. Even if the UN does not have more urgent crises to deal with, it will hardly support such expense. Neither will Australia, assuming it can again assemble a regional force.
This leaves only the second outcome, where secessionists compromise and cooperate in developing provincial autonomy. This will have to go beyond the 1988-9 status quo ante bellum. Currently Bougainville is exempt from the recent Act virtually abolishing provincial autonomy but this exemption expires in 1997. Bougainvilleans are sure to demand an elected second tier government (such as has recently been abolished for the rest of the country) and with it control over a provincial security force, internal immigration (indirect, at least) and resource extraction (at least a power of veto and a conspicuous share of revenue). This is basically what Miriung is working towards. A crucial incentive for the rebels could well be for Port Moresby to agree to a constitutional review within ten years, or in the year 2010, with the option of a referendum on secession. Within this time, one would hope, Bougainville would have returned to some normalcy and even a degree of prosperity.
Under such circumstances a referendum can have some validity. Free from violence, Bougainvilleans can develop some sense of the advantages or otherwise of belonging to a wider polity than Bougainville alone can be, talented ‘exiles’ driven out by the BRA may be reconciled and take their place in the province and, if secession proves inevitable, even the option of amalgamation with the Solomon Islands Republic - still an issue with some on both sides of the border - can be explored.
Port Moresby will naturally perceive in such concessions to Bougainville the risk of the eventual loss of a province rich in minerals, agriculture, forestry and fish. The prospect of a reduction of its exclusive economic zone with possible oil and seabed resources is a further reason to forestall any future disaggregation. Port Moresby also worries about the ‘domino effect’ of a special status for Bougainville which, I believe, is quite exaggerated and, in any event, can affect only the New Guinea Islands. The islands are more integral to Papua New Guinea than Bougainville; secession there will issue more from mistaken policies in Port Moresby than any endemic disposition. Moreover, the withdrawal of security forces from Bougainville will give the State greater capacity to deal with future problems. The failure of Port Moresby to risk radical concessions condemns it to suffering an incurable ulcerative problem and Bougainville to a miserable future.
The culture of the gun has captured a proportion of Bougainvillean youth and seven annual cohorts have largely missed out on education. Attempts are currently being made to restore social controls through councils of (allegedly traditional) ‘chiefs’. However, with an involvement spanning almost 100 years, the churches are vital to moral rehabilitation. Obviously the Catholic Church which, at one stage, converted up to 80 per cent of the population, has a salient role here which its Foundation of Law, Order and Justice is already probing. In spite of cultic survivals and some aggressive recidivism among BRA supporters, in most villages Christian rituals and practice have been preserved in the absence of clergy. There is thus a substructure on which to rebuild but, obviously, there must be a consensus about where, in a general sense, the province should be heading.
The rest of this paper selectively reviews events in Bougainville with some focus on the role of the Catholic Church in the hope that there may be some lessons for the future.
Colonialism and Cargo
‘Whom God has joined, let no man put asunder’, thundered pioneer Methodist missionary Rev. George Brown, prophetically, when he heard of the division of the Solomons Archipelago between Great Britain and Germany. His warning still resonates with secessionists who are all the more irked by the ‘horse-trading’ of the final division in 1899 which left the present PNG province of Bougainville (i.e. Bougainville and Buka Islands plus five atolls) with Germany and involved territorial adjustments (e.g. in Samoa) elsewhere. But the imperial powers were hardly sticklers for ‘natural boundaries’. On the African continent straight cartographical lines usually sufficed to delimit colonies even if they cut through tribal lands and populations. It was the same on the island of New Guinea. The Dutch claim in the west extended arbitrarily to the 141 degree parallel and ultimately the westward Fly River bulge, cutting roughly, through the centre of the island. In 1949 the only persuasive claim the new state of Indonesia had on West New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) was that it had been part of the Netherlands East Indies to which Indonesia was the successor state. Basically the United Nations agreed. In this way the boundary of Asia moved into Melanesia. Papua New Guineans resent it but it appears irreversible. Sensitivity over this issue and East Timor causes Indonesia to view any secession movement in PNG with hostility.
The sense of a Solomonese rather than Papua New Guinean identity is ineradicable because of the distinctive jet black skin colour of Bougainvilleans which spills over into the western province of the Solomon Islands Republic. Bougainvilleans (and others) see this pigmentation as the mark of a different race which reciprocal jibes of ‘arse bilong saucepan’ and ‘redskin’ (for brown Papua New Guineans) emphasize. However, Melanesia is a mosaic of pigmentations as a result of isolation and natural selection. Nor can allegedly different customs in themselves justify separatism, Melanesia being characterised by diversity. In this sense, Bougainville with 20 different language groups is a microcosm of Melanesia. However, the self-image of Bougainvilleans as fundamentally distinctive and superior was entrenched in early contact days as, on a divide-and-conquer basis, they were used as bodyguards, bos-bois, police and trusted domestics.
The fact that the Christian missions entered Bougainville from the Solomons, maintained contacts there rather than with PNG, and became until the 1960s almost de facto governments, strengthened the sense of Solomons identity. The Catholic Church converted up to 80 per cent of the people at one stage (with the Methodist - later Uniting - Church 15 per cent and the Seventh Day Adventists five per cent). The mission was in the charge of the Marist order which had direct links with Oceania rather than the rest of Papua New Guinea. It was multi-national, at first Franco-German, with later a strong American component and little identification with the objectives of the Australian Administration which took over from Germany in 1914. Welfare services were largely in mission hands, as was education. No government school existed until 1961 when one was set up mainly for children of administrative personnel while a government high school began only in 1964. While special attention was given to preparing students for seminaries in Rabaul and Madang, which produced many future leaders, there was dissatisfaction in Bougainville itself. ‘Tok bilong God tasol - they talk only of God’, a student unfairly told a future Director of Education in the 1950s. Buka Island, the most advanced area with the earliest ‘contact’, had been seething with cargoism and anti-European resentment in the 1930s. Conversion did not erase ancient beliefs. In 1942 the Japanese at first were welcomed on Buka as liberators and sun-worship temporarily took hold. Post-war, in spite of well-intentioned government cooperatives, development was slow. Local planters regarded Bougainville as the ‘Cinderella district’. Having no regard for priority needs elsewhere (e.g. the opening of the Highlands), Bougainvilleans saw themselves as neglected. Racism was perhaps worse than elsewhere in the Territory. In 1962 in Kieta the United Nations mission was asked by locals to give Australia’s mandate to the USA.