Talk:Bougainville

From Academic Kids

"Bougainville has gone through a long revolution to end imperialism." - all the sites that reference this are completely biased, accusing Australia of either generic or economic imperialism, perhaps no surprise to the occupants of the Australian Empire. In any case, we need a neutral description of who the revolutionaries are plus their aims. Stan 16:15 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Huh? Wrong target! Bougainville has never been an Australian football. It was part of New Guinea - i.e., it belonged to the German Empire - until one of the World Wars - the first, I think, at which point the League of Nations assigned it for "protection" to Australia. If colonial exploitation on the European model was the aim, Australia failed rather miserably. Independance for PNG (including Bougainville) was granted readily, and possibly rather unwisely - far too little was done in the 50s and 60s to prepare PNG for democracy, and then everything happened all at once. Many observers blame this mismanagement (at least I think it was mismanagement) for the much of the trouble that greater PNG has experienced in the years since then. Of course, this is a familiar story. Much the same could be said of many (most?) of the former colonies around the world.

On the other hand, far and away the biggest problem greater PNG has today is overpopulation. To make matters worse, PNG has very little income and depends on the large amount of foreign aid it gets (most of it from Australia). Aid aside, the one decent source of hard-cash income PNG had was the enormous copper mine on Bougainville, owned by a multi-national mining giant of Australian origin, and operated (from all that I hear) with little or no sense of environmental or community responsibility. Typical old-style mining company, in other words.

PNG desperately wanted to hang on to the mining revenue, the Bougainvillians desperately wanted to get rid of the (from their point of view) foreign oppressors. Eventually, the islanders decided that, if it meant getting rid of rule by Port Morseby's goon squads, then they could live without the mine. If they made the mine unworkable with civil unrest, then PNG would have no reason to insist on ruling Bougainville any more. And that's what they did.

The PNG troops and the hired mercenaries (Sandline Affair and all that stuff) got rougher and rougher, eventually converting Australian-supplied general-purpose helicopters into helicopter gunships. That, for Australia and New Zealand, was pretty much the last straw. Nothing much was said in public (at least not that I remember) but you didn't have to be Einstein to work out that the Oz government said to the PNG government "either you get your act together in Bougainville or we stop being the one and only thing that stands between you and total economic collapse".

Under heavy international pressure, PNG consented to negotiate with the rebels, and the rebels wound back their fight. Talks went on for a long time, with New Zealand playing a leading role. Last I heard, the island was (at least in relative terms) peaceful.

All of the above from memory, so I won't stick it in the article, but if anyone cares to cheack my facts, then edit as required and go right ahead. Tannin 16:49 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Heh, pretty good memory! I'd heard the occasional oblique ref to Bougainville troubles, but wasn't clear who was on whose side. Next I suppose we'll hear about the penguins at Mawson being oppressed by the evil scientists (violation of privacy, etc) :-) Stan 17:11 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There were two secessions. The first one was not long after PNG independence, and the rebels called their country North Solomons. Then the later one was fought by a group whose name incorporate their political and military wings: the Bougainville Interim Government / Bougainville Revolutionary Army. That's BIG/BRA. I am not making this up, you know. Gritchka 17:32 28 Jun 2003 (UTC)