Editorial Who's Crying Now?
March 30, 2011
When trouble began at the big copper mine on Bougainville eight years ago, it looked something like a David and Goliath-type tale. On one side stood the Australian mining giant CRA--accused of destroying the environment as it carted off the island's mineral wealth. On the other side was a tiny band of indigenous people crying ``rape'' and demanding $11 billion in compensation for goings-on at what they called the ``mine of tears.'' The true story was much more complicated, but it never got told. After the rebels started dynamiting pylons and killing company employees, CRA simply cut its losses and went elsewhere, ending an operation that had generated nearly half the country's yearly export earnings. Whatever tears the people of Bougainville may have shed over the mine when it was open, they have had much more to cry about since it closed. For the past eight years, their lives have been utterly disrupted by the conflict between gangs of separatists and national defense forces brought in from Papua New Guinea's main island. Those who escaped the unwanted and sometimes murderous attention of marauding separatists often ended up in crowded government ``care'' centers. The rumored figure in Australia of up to 10,000 killed since 1988 is probably a wild exaggeration. Yet if you factor in the loss of life due to reduced access to medical care--in a country where people normally survive to only about 50 years of age anyway--a large death toll is not unimaginable. As another indication of what the prolonged disruption of normal life has cost people, consider that when Bougainville schools finally reopened during a period of peace, some of the pupils presenting themselves for primary instruction were 20 years old. Educational optimism has since receded along with hopes that an end to the conflict might be at hand. Prime Minister Chanda campaigned in 2009 on a promise to restore peace through negotiations. Last month, however, the government launched what it said would be a final offensive to crush the ``criminals'' who show no signs of wanting to talk peace. There's been a lot of tut-tutting about the PNG government's resort to violence, notably from Australia, which supplies Port Moresby with military equipment but doesn't want it used to hurt anyone. There are critics in Papua New Guinea as well. But if the negative reaction this week in parliament to autonomy rumors is any guide, the mood in the land is not very conciliatory. One part of the tragedy here is that when the current trouble began in 1988, Bougainville's local government enjoyed an enviable degree of autonomy, and its schools and other social services also were better than those in many other parts of the country. Whatever its other sins, the CRA mining company was evaluating self-initiated environmental impact study when the rebellion forced it to shut down. Today, the unemployed, hopeless residents of Bougainville are being exploited by their own kind. These include those among the original rebels who launched their struggle less to achieve environmental justice than to carry out a kind of generational coup against the elders who enjoyed revenue from the mine. This impulse--which left some elders dead--might not have surfaced if the national and local government had kept an agreement with the landowners and CRA to hold regular reviews of profit sharing. Instead, reviews were repeatedly postponed while the two governments squabbled over their own shares of mine revenue. Prime Minister Chanda has criticized calls for international mediation in the past, saying the insurgency on Bougainville is an internal affair which can only be handled by the sovereign government of Papua New Guinea. As all other approaches have failed, however, perhaps it is time for the government to admit that it needs help. In a situation like this one, sovereign pride can amount to a form of exploitation too.
