The last Saturday of every month is the TEMIS Ela Beach Craft Market. A different group is hired to preform traditional music, dance, and/or song each month. This month the group was from Bougainville, which was timely for Level 4 (grade 5 and 6) students as we just finished researching the Sandline Affair which resulted in a civil war on this island due to disputes over the Panguna Copper Mine.
The condensed version is as follows:
20% of the PNG National Budget was coming from the leasing of the Panguna Mine to an Australian company. The landowners who originally negotiated the lease asked for new homes and electricity - which at the time, thirty years ago, was a HUGE deal for them. No renegotiations were made and those families that had inherrited the land in which the mine was on were recieving less than 1% of the immense profits. An offshoot of the Landowners Association, the B.R.A. (Bougainville Revolutionary Army) decided to take matters into their own hands - and not peacefully. They began to harrass and assult the miners on their way to and from work - the majority of whom were contractors from Australia. They sabotagued equipment and the mine itself to make a point and try and run the Australian company off. With such a huge portion of the PNG National Budget linked to this one mine, Prime Minister Chan stepped in to quell the violence by sending in extra police forces; when this wasn't successful he sent in the Defense Force (PNG Military) led by General Singorok who is alive and well and living in Port Moresby today. This turned into a bloody, viscious war between the PNG government and the people of Bougainville. The Defense Force was ill prepared to fight in the tropical terrain and against the B.R.A. Singorok agreed to bring in mercenaries to train his forces, but unbeknownst to him, PM Chan has every intention of sending the Sandline International Group (mercenaries from South Africa) in to end the fight by any means necessary - you can just imagine. At this point, Singorok stood up and publically announced he was pulling the Defense Force and asked for Chan's resignation as Prime Minister of PNG. Singorok stated that this was not a fight that should be happening, that brothers shouldn't fight brothers, and that he would no longer participate. At one point Singorok stormed Parliament House an actually attempted to forceably take control of the government due to Chan's indignation and refusal to step down. THis all came to a head in the late 90's and the Sandline Mercenaries were not completely removed from Bougainville until 2003. Peace talks are still occuring with the assistance of independent international groups and New Zealand.
The Inquiry unit was very interesting in that we were able to have guest speakers from both sides - Bougainville and the PNG Government. A teacher at TEMIS was lucky enough to be schooling in Australia at the time, but had most of her family in Bougainville at the time. A parent of a Level 4 student was the Foreign Affairs Minister at the time for the PNG Government and gave a very interesting perspective; he is currently continuing to organize peace and settlement talks between Bougainville and the PNG Government.
Pretty intense for a Saturday Morning Markey story...I know! So, here are some pictures of the Bougainville Pipe Band from the Market (I didn't actually take them, the girl I went with did).
A friend from work, has been working on a movie based on the book Mr. Pip which details a ficticious girl's experience during the civil war in Bougainville, Arawa in particular. He said it has been a very emotional experience for everyone involved as this is still living history. Peace talks are still occuring; no settlements have been made. Those in the village where they are filming, personally experienced the hardships of Panguna being shut down, of the barracade of the island, and of the otrosities that were commited during this civil war. I just finished the book myself; it is definitely worth reading.
As much sadness as Bougainville has seen and felt, it is still such a stunningly beautiful place. He brought back photos, I thought I'd share a few.
No comments:
Post a Comment