The interim government, announced by Ona, included the former Premier Joseph Kabui as Minister of Justice and Sam Kauona as Minister for Defence. 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. Bougainville Copper’s main objective is to work cooperatively towards realising the vision of resuming active exploration and sustainable copper, gold and silver mining at Panguna, in central Bougainville, after mining ceased in 1989. A desire for self-determination, land disputes and environmental damage related to mining all helped fuel the conflict. English. Inter-tribal warfare meant days marked by constant wariness, distrust and even death. 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. In 1988, locals on Bougainville Island began killing the migrant copper workers. In their long socks, white shirts and uncomfortably tight shorts , the men of CRA had come, if not by stealth, then without permission. A schoolboy at Rigo High School, Francis Ona, watched as the first shipment of copper was loaded at the wharf. The post mortem examination found his spinal column had been completely severed. 'From today Bougainville shall be forever a sovereign, democratic and independent nation.' But the BRA were not at all prepared for their new role of maintaining law and order in the new de facto state. Strapping the helicopters with machine guns, the army had easily converted the gifts into gunships. 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. People are really scared of them. In December 2019, a referendum was held as promised. A claim was pegged out before the owners of the land could even know what this meant. The principals of Sandline International, a London-based private military company began their first approaches to the desperate leaders of PNG. The Celestial Empire has also set its sights on Bougainville, which China made clear by immediately recognizing the results of the December referendum. Panguna had only generated A$6.2 billion in sales in the past 16 years – but in doing so it had become the largest single source of revenue available to the PNG Government after Australian aid. In the end, there was no final burst of gunfire, no mad rush of expatriates to the airport but through a mixture of deception and disobedience, Bougainville, in the first half of 1990, slipped from Port Moresby's control. At the time the Catholic Archbishop of Bougainville, Gregory Singkai spoke out against the atrocities and the behaviour of the PNGDF: 'They are really unruly and undisciplined. The more the Australian administration insisted upon the construction of the copper mine – for the sake of the future state of Papua New Guinea they said – the more the issue of the mine and Bougainville's future political status became inextricably mixed. A new report by the Human Rights Law Centre in Australia details the continuing devastation wrought by a copper and gold mine that closed more than 30 years ago in the Papua New Guinean territory of Bougainville. Speculation about the future of the Panguna copper mine in Papua New Guinea’s autonomous region of Bougainville, which ignited a decade long civil war in the 1990s, peaked late last year when an application for exploration by former Rio Tinto subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL), was put to a local vote. By the 1960s, Bougainvilleans had withdrawn their labour from all foreign-owned plantations. Given the current confrontation with China, these countries are therefore likely to do everything they can to ensure that Bougainville gains its independence following the referendum and prevent a hot spot from erupting within their buffer zone. The Bougainville Civil War is considered the largest conflict to have occurred in Oceania since World War Two. 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. Australia will most likely have to make Bougainville a seriously attractive offer, given the current situation in the region. For more, go to http://www.riverbendnelligen.com/bougainville1.html '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. In June 1989 a 28-day State of Emergency was declared and the first of a decade of futile and often ill-conceived military actions – Operation Blueprint – was launched. From 1988 to 1998 the most violent conflict in the Pacific region since the Second World War erupted on the islands of Bougainville, now an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea. Eight years to the day after the first of CRA's geologist had walked in, production at the Panguna mine commenced. The United States was also quick to recognize the results. Burghley Yard, 106 Burghley Road, London NW5 1AL, Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (03196482), Charity registered in England and Wales (1055436), Safeguarding, transparency and other policies, Constitutional accommodation and conflict prevention, A Bougainville Interim Government perspective on early peace efforts, From Burnham to Buin: Sowing the seeds of peace in the land of the snow-capped mountains, The role of women in promoting peace and reconciliation, Resolving two dimensions of conflict: The dynamics of consent, consensus and compromise, ‘Joint Creation’: The Bougainville Peace Agreement - and beyond, Key points of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, Aid as an instrument for peace: A civil society perspective, The role of the United Nations Observer Mission, Reflections on the Truce Monitoring Group, Making, building and sustaining peace by peaceful means, Key texts and agreements: Accord Papua New Guinea. In 1989 in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, a copper mine co-owned by an Australian mining company and the PNG government became the focus of conflict. 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. 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. Amnesty International. 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. Significantly Ona was also angry with the older generation of landowners – including his own uncle, Matthew Kove, who had disappeared in suspicious circumstances months earlier – for what Ona claimed was the misuse and unfair distribution of the landowners' share of royalties from the mine. We have taken the move after painful struggle for the last 20 years of PNG rule. The terror started in 1989 with helicopters loaned by the Bougainville Copper Limited to the riot police. 'The traditional system will never work again. Following discovery of the Bougainville copper deposit in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1964, Espie was appointed to manage the design, construction, financing and operation of the world’s largest copper mine. Islanders were driven off the land to make room for mining operations. Resistance forces armed by the PNGDF began to spring up as the more vigorous communities attempted to protect themselves from BRA attack. 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. They railed against the national government. They also claimed that Bougainville Copper had set up a system of apartheid on the island, with one set of facilities for white workers, and one set for the locals. The conflict which sparked this ongoing injustice began in November 1988. The Panguna mine on Bougainville Island, one of the world’s largest copper deposits, began production in 1972, shortly before the RNS declared independence, and the new state knew how to provide for itself. The introduction of Australian and New Guinean workers caused resentment and the exploitation of the mine became increasingly intertwined with issues of indigenous identity. All air and sea transport was halted. Deep in the Crown Prince Ranges of central Bougainville, the roar and hum of the world's largest open-cut copper mine had not yet fallen silent. The Panguna mine on Bougainville Island, one of the world’s largest copper deposits, began production in 1972, shortly before the RNS declared independence, and the new state knew how to provide for itself. The extraction itself seriously damaged the island’s ecology, and the revenue generated by the mine went to Papua New Guinea, with the PNG national government receiving a 20% share of the profit from the mine. They are destroying people's property, shooting cars, destroying their food gardens. The giant copper mine struck at the heart of this matriarchal structure. Killed in August 1989, in front of his parents, at least there was witness to his death. In a way Peter Tarupiu was one of the lucky ones. 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. 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. As the violence spread, in Port Moresby and Canberra the race was on to vilify Ona, first as a disgruntled former employee, then as a 'hysterical extremist' and finally as 'mad' or even dead. 'I can't pass the land on now because most of it has been covered up by the mine,' Patricia Dave said in 1988 as she stood among her grandchildren. The conflict showed no signs of ending, and in January 1990, Bougainville Copper announced the mothballing of the Panguna mine. The Bougainville Copper Project in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea ran from 1966 to 1973 and cost some US$350 million. In a decision of the full court it was ruled that section 122 of the Australian constitution empowered the Commonwealth Government to make such laws without having to provide 'just terms of acquisition'. Bougainville Copper Limited, Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. PNG independence followed. 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. The island suffered much unrest triggered initially by the use of non-Indigenous labor in the Island’s largest copper mine. Mining operations were officially halted on 15 May 1989, due to militant activity and the mine has remained closed since. Louis De Bougainville never actually set foot on the island that would eventually bear his moniker. However, the young state of Papua New Guinea also had plans for Bougainville’s resources, and has sent a group of police over to the island. The Autonomous Region of Bougainville is comprised of Bougainville Island and several other nearby islands in the Solomon Islands archipelago. Fortunately, no major clashes have broken out, and the decision taken following negotiations was that the North Solomon Islands were to remain part of PNG, although it gained greater self-governance rights and a province called the Northern Solomon Islands was created. There was never good synergy between Australia and its colonial charges on Bougainville, but the American priests were living proof of an alternative authority to the rough-shod Australian administration. 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. 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. Operating completely outside of the PNG constitution but with local knowledge and kinship, they were to become one of the state's most effective 'weapons'. Instead, Spicer's attempts to wrest control of Bougainville from its own people and its destiny was to spell the political ruin of Julius Chan and with that, the end of efforts to resolve the crisis militarily; the beginnings of real negotiations for peace, nine years after Francis Ona first threw down the gauntlet. So a campaign of sabotage against BCL and ultimately the national government was launched. The mine started production in 1972 under management of Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) with the Papua New Guinea government as a 20% shareholder. It is unlikely that PNG will happily part with the mineral-rich island, but another war would probably break out on Bougainville Island if it were to refuse to do so, and various sanctions would also probably be imposed on PNG by Australia and New Zealand, which were involved in the many agreements signed which together formed the Bougainville Peace Agreement, and these countries are therefore also guarantors of compliance with the agreements. In July the next year, under increasing pressure from Chan, he was put to the test launching 'Operation High Speed II' before flying off to Australia leaving his men to flounder and be slaughtered as they were comprehensively defeated on Aropa beach. It was no longer simply the copper mine that was in the hands of the BRA but the island's airstrips, roads and even doorway security at the largest supermarket. The introduction of Australian and New Guinean workers caused resentment and the exploitation of the mine became increasingly intertwined with issues of indigenous identity. Everyone can be a peace champion! Their belief in the intrinsic good of every man and their American concept of land ownership – so much closer to that of the Bougainvilleans – empowered people to question, and ultimately resist much of the administration's clumsy attempts to 'civilise' them. Up to 20,000 people, or 10% of the population at the time, lost their lives. 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