The views of the authors do not necessarily coincide with the opinion of the editorial board. '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. 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. On September 1, 1975, however, just before PNG gained independence, Bougainville and the other islands which were to later form the Autonomous Region of Bougainville declared themselves the Republic of the North Solomons (RNS), independent of both Australia and PNG. Although publicly he persisted with peace talks, at the end of the year, Chan appointed a new commander to the PNGDF, the young colonel who had led Wingti's ill-fated 'High Speed' the year before. 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. RNS was not afraid to set sail on its own. In 1962, a United Nations mission visited Bougainville. Both organisations provided considerable assistance. On September 16, 1975, Papua New Guinea (PNG) gained independence from Australia and became an independent state. Ona stated that his people fight for: 1) land and the culture, 2) land and the environment, and 3) independence (Rotheroe 2001). 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. 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. 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. And although there may not be many “hot” spots in Oceania, there are places where temperatures are far higher than the regional “average”. First there was a series of arson attacks, explosives were stolen from the mine and then, to the dismay of the miners and the surprise of everyone, the massive power pylons supporting the feeder lines along the mine-access road began to fall, their supports expertly blown away by one of the first of Ona's recruits; a bright, young, Australian-trained lieutenant from the Papua New Guinea Defence Force, Sam Kauona had joined the 'holy war'. The mine was officially mothballed on 7 January 1990 but early negotiations led in March 1990 to a ceasefire being declared. Apart from copper, there is also gold, other valuable metals, and a certain amount of oil to be found on Bougainville Island. Only much later and quite reluctantly did these loyalties widen to their broader language groups, let alone to a national identity. BCL, 56 per cent owned by the Australian subsidiary Conzinc Rio Tinto, Australia (CRA) itself a subsidiary of the multinational mining company, RTZ and 20 per cent by the Papua New Guinea Government, reacted with disbelief. 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 Celestial Empire has also set its sights on Bougainville, which China made clear by immediately recognizing the results of the December referendum. Many o… '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. In 1997, negotiations mediated by New Zealand began between the PNG government and secessionist leaders. 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. In their long socks, white shirts and uncomfortably tight shorts , the men of CRA had come, if not by stealth, then without permission. 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. In December 2019, a referendum was held as promised. Bougainville Explained: How the world’s newest country might bloom out of protests against a copper mine The conflict in Bougainville and the desire of Bougainvillean people for independence is rooted in the historic plunder of the resource-rich island that has large deposits of copper and the unequal distribution of wealth that followed. Strapping the helicopters with machine guns, the army had easily converted the gifts into gunships. 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. Inter-tribal warfare meant days marked by constant wariness, distrust and even death. War broke out between Bougainville secessionist forces, primarily the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, and the PNG government. A year later, when land at Arawa was being purchased for the site of the mining town, the women whose land it was lay down in front of bulldozers and grappled with police in riot gear. 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'. An abandoned Rio Tinto mine in the Bougainville region of Papua New Guinea has caused flooding as well as pollution, according to the Human Rights … They are bashing people without questioning them and putting them in jail. Most of the profits drifted abroad, or were funnelled to the PNG state. When the Australian Prime Minister, John Gorton, made a fleeting visit, the Chairman of a recently formed opposition group, Paul Lapun, sought an 'official referendum to determine the future of Bougainville', an option Gorton immediately ruled out. Bougainville Copper Limited, Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. But somewhere in the dappled green jungle above the great gash of the Panguna mine, Francis Ona was at work. 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. The island suffered much unrest triggered initially by the use of non-Indigenous labor in the Island’s largest copper mine. The Bougainville Civil War is considered the largest conflict to have occurred in Oceania since World War Two. The introduction of Australian and New Guinean workers caused resentment and the exploitation of the mine became increasingly intertwined with issues of indigenous identity. But the real trouble came in 1990 when Australia 'gifted' four ancient Iroquois to the PNGDF on condition that they would not be used in the offensive. The copper mining on Bougainville Island was carried out by Bougainville Copper Limited of PNG, a subsidiary of the Australian-British Rio Tinto Group. We have taken the move after painful struggle for the last 20 years of PNG rule. 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. But the BRA were not at all prepared for their new role of maintaining law and order in the new de facto state. As the 1990s progressed, anarchy bred anarchy and conflict spread throughout the island's communities and language groups. The principals of Sandline International, a London-based private military company began their first approaches to the desperate leaders of PNG. In 1988, locals on Bougainville Island began killing the migrant copper workers. 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. ... Rebel guerillas above the Panguna copper and gold mine in Bougainville in 1994. Credit: Ben Bohane. Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (03196482) A desire for self-determination, land disputes and environmental damage related to mining all helped fuel the conflict. Neither could the miners foresee what lay ahead. 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'. The Bougainville Copper Project in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea ran from 1966 to 1973 and cost some US$350 million. A claim was pegged out before the owners of the land could even know what this meant. By 1971 more than 1000 construction workers had come to the island. 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