By Steve Painter
The two-year blockade by the government of Papua New Guinea has strengthened support for independence on Bougainville, says Rosemarie Gillespie, an Australian lawyer just returned from a visit to the island. Bougainvilleans are coping well by returning to their traditional lifestyles, adds Gillespie, who spent several weeks in areas controlled by the Bougainville Interim Government.
All imported goods, particularly batteries and fuel, are in very short supply, replenished only by small boats running the blockade from the nearby Solomon Islands. Gillespie herself was in a boat that was fired on from the air while running the blockade, she told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly. Trade and social intercourse are traditional between the Solomons and Bougainville, as the breakaway island is geographically and culturally part of the Solomons group. It was separated from the rest of the group in an 1885 colonial deal between Britain and Germany.
While people with illnesses or injuries are suffering because of the shortage of medicines caused by the blockade, the general level of health appears to have risen because of the enforced return to traditional foods in place of canned and preserved junk food, says Gillespie. Root vegetables and beans are plentiful, though supplies of fish can be interrupted by Australian-supplied PNG patrol boats and aircraft harassing and sometimes killing people fishing in their traditional waters. The blockade has led to an increase of deaths in childbirth and from tropical diseases.
Morale in the rebel areas is good, and the discipline of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) fighters has increased steadily in the last two years. "We are all BRA now", is a common saying, as traditional and religious leaders, and people from all social backgrounds, fall in with the independence movement. Gillespie reports that the rebel areas are safe, and women walk freely at night around communities darkened by a lack of electricity and even kerosene for lanterns.
PNG troops control, at most, 20% of the population in several small areas, including the island of Buka to the north of Bougainville. But even in these areas most Bougainvilleans support independence — including most of those who might doubt the wisdom of BRA and Interim Government tactics, says Gillespie.
The PNG troops implicitly recognise this by herding much of the population into concentration camps and burning their original villages, along the lines of the United States strategic hamlet strategy during the Vietnam War. The camps are euphemistically titled "care centres".
People from these centres, including four traditional chiefs from Buka, have been taken out and murdered in retaliation for operations have also been reports of beatings, torture and sexual harassment. Some inmates, including women with young children, have been forced to stand for hours in the sun, or in torrential rain, also in apparent reprisal for BRA activities. Resident in the camps also complain that they are poorly fed. The women are allowed to visit their gardens for only a few hours, two or three days a week, and are prevented from planting new crops.
The PNG forces are acting increasingly as an army of occupation, abandoning any pretence that they have been invited in. They occupied Buin in mid-June despite a local chiefs' resolution the previous month declaring support for independence and opposition to PNG troops coming into the area. Poorly armed BRA forces have so far turned back about five attempts to land PNG forces in the independence stronghold of central Bougainville, where there can be no pretence that they have been invited.
The BRA fighters are holding out, even though the mostly Australian-supplied PNG forces are much better armed. Many of the BRA weapons are scavenged from arms dumps and wreckage left in the area from World War II. The PNG forces have not abandoned plans to occupy the central area, and there are rumours that special forces may be trained at an army base in Queensland for this purpose.
Rosemarie Gillespie says many Bougainvilleans are particularly angry over the use of four Australian-supplied Iroquois helicopters as gunships. One of these aircraft is apparently no longer usable, but there have been numerous reports of the others firing on islanders despite the fact that the craft were supplied on the condition that they be used only for transportation.
Statutory declarations collected by Gillespie include several accounts of islanders being dropped to their death from these helicopters. The Iroquois are piloted by Australians apparently employed by a private company in a transparent ploy to circumvent Australian laws forbidding involvement in mercenary activities.
Meanwhile, the most effective aspect of the PNG blockade appears to be its information blackout. Most media reports are based on "information" issued by the PNG government in Port Moresby. Amnesty International representatives have been denied access to the island, and there are no international journalists present. Journalists must get government permission to go to PNG-controlled areas, or risk their lives as Rosemarie Gillespie did by running the blockade to the BRA areas.
Gillespie says the PNG government would not be able to keep up its war against Bougainville without the roughly $50 million military aid it receives from Australia. Even without the cost of the war, the PNG government is in deep financial trouble, and its health and education systems are crumbling.
The Australian government gives every sign of knowing exactly what is happening on Bougainville, with foreign minister Gareth Evans ortant questions, including claims of human rights violations and use of the helicopters for military purposes. Significantly, Evans has not denied any of these claims, instead trying to discredit them as biased and unreliable.
It seems the Australian government is hoping for a quick PNG military victory — an approach which is showing no sign of success and is guaranteed to lead to a great deal more hardship and bloodshed for the peoples of both Bougainville and PNG.