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Fighting Corporate Copper in Bougainville

Multinational polluter Rio Tinto sued under Alien Tort Claims Act for causing deaths of 10,000 Papua New Guineans

By Kari Lydersen

Bougainville, a small Pacific island belonging to Papua New Guinea in the volcanic “Ring of Fire,” has had a rough go of it. It endured a series of colonialist regimes (including Germany, Japan and Australia), was blitzed by U.S. forces during World War II, and has been assaulted by tsunamis, most recently on April 1. It also suffered one of history’s… return to article

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    The head and subhead make this sound like an outrage has been committed, but what’s with the photo of kids billed as the Bougainville Revolutionary Army?

    I wonder why Bougainville “...was blitzed by U.S. forces during World War II…”!?!

    Is it possible that Kari is just too young to know any better way to put it, or was this intended as a slam, because she dislikes the current administration?

    In any case it makes me wonder about the objectivity of the rest of her reporting. How much is accurate — how much is hyperbole?

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 31, 2007 at 7:25 PM

    I know Bougainville well, having spent time there before and after the fighting (the recent fighting).  There’s some confusion in the article, but I suspect that’s because of her sources. 

    The kids, whose headdresses identify them as from the inland north of the island, are billed as “children of ... guerillas.”  So it’s not a bad caption, except it implies that the ceasefire happened just this week—no!  It was several years ago. 

    I’m not sure I’d have used “blitzed” to describe that the U.S. forces did during WW II, but it’s close.  There are many sources that fairly describe the fighting on Bougainville during WWII.  The idea was to avoid fighting the approx 100,000 Japanese soldiers on Bougainville by making a quick and forceful landing at Torokina, on the W Coast, and securing the area effectively enough to construct an airstrip that could launch fighters that could protect bombers headed for Rabaul.  The US did not want to engage the Japanese beyond what was necessary to get the airstrip running.  This tactic was successful. 

    Berman (I couldn’t find any further identification of him in the article, which is probably an editing error—Berman is a partner in Hagen-Berman, a large and active law firm) , and his co workers and allies are strongly associated with the BRA, which was, and is, only one of the factions on the island.  As an example of this, I’ll use “Sacred Island.”  Only one splinter group of the BRA - the last of Francis Ona’s crowd—refers to Bougainville as “Mekamui,” which in the Nasioi language (only one of the 14 languages spoken on the island) means “Holy/Sacred Island.”  I’d say that probably 90% of the island’s inhabitants do not use this name at all.  Ona and his group did not participate in the post-ceasefire political work on Bougainville.

    There are other errors, but they don’t amount to much, really. 

    However, the past and current political situation on Bougainville is made to seem much simpler than it is, and was.  The situation there is still complex and fluid.  During the fighting there were at least four armed groups—three local, plus the PNG Defence Forces.  The three local groups fought each other as well as the PNGDF.  Most of the reporting and analysis-at-a-distance talk only about the BRA, which over-simplifies the situation.  But it’s hard to see how a journalist at the Washington Post would have enough background knowledge to ask Berman to talk a little more carefully about Bougainville politics.

    There’s no doubt of the destruction the mine caused (I’m an eyewitness here…) but the extent to which it caused enviromental problems all over the island remains unclear.  Certainly in the central portion it was an absolute disaster.  And of course its social effects extended over the whole island.

    The number of dead from the crisis is also hard to calculate, because of the collateral effects.  Far fewer than 10,000 were killed through violence, but many died from lack of food and medicine, etc. 

    There’s a large literature on Bougainville.  Google is your friend here (if you want to check up on the article).  Use “Panguna” (the name of the mine site), Bougainville Copper, Nasioi, Kieta, Arawa, Jaba River, Francis Ona, Joseph Kabui…others will suggest themselves to you if you get interested.  You’ll find the usual wide range of politics and opinion, of course. 

    Finally, if you want to see the island, use Google Earth (or other) to navigate to about 6-19S, 155-30E and you can see what’s left of the mine (it’s that gigantic orange hole).  Note the river system running W from the mine—or I should say what used to be a river system.  Google Earth has “Paguna” shown in two places—the one near Taruba is an error. 

    Bottom line is that although there are errors I’d say that the reporting is acceptable, except for the lack of information about Berman, which should have been easily available.

    United States Posted by mono_kakata on Jun 1, 2007 at 11:11 AM

    mono,

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Most issues are more complex than what we hear due to sound bite reporting and the short attention span of most of us. I’ve always blamed that on our “education” by advertising — Before/After, Bad/Good, Expensive/Cheaper. All Black or White, skipping the wide range of grays.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on Jun 1, 2007 at 3:25 PM

    mono,

    To me “blitz” is what Nazi Germany did to London each night for about two months in 1940 — deliberate targeting of civilian areas. This author may see it in a different way — probably just a youthful oversight.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on Jun 1, 2007 at 8:05 PM

    whattheheck—

    You’re right about the blitz for london.  I was thinking about blitzkreig, lightning-quick strike, overpowering in nature.  So in that sense only I think the US blitzed the Japanese.  I’m travelling right now, visiting my 25 year old son, who tells me that his generation uses “blitz” as in get in, do the job, get out. 

    Harry Gailey, historian, wrote an interesting book “Bougainville, The Forgotten War,” about the US forces on Bougainville 1943—the Torokina landing.  Among the interesting points is that the US army tossed one of its african-american battalions (regiment?  I don’t have the book with me) into battle with no tropical warfare training because, Gailey shows, they figured that the soldiers would be naturally suited to jungle warfare.  Really.  Well, obviously they were not.  The Bougainville people I worked with were quite struck by seeing black people in uniform and with weapons. 

    One more item—Executive Solutions / Sandline, the mercenary group, was hired by the PNG government to attempt to retake the mine, kill Ona, and so on.  This is only interesting because the leader of this mercenary bunch is now working organizing security for the US in Iraq.  Again, I’m not home and can’t give more references but if it interests you I’m sure you can chase it down via google.  The attack on Bougainville never happened.

    United States Posted by mono_kakata on Jun 2, 2007 at 1:18 AM

    mono,

    Communication is a delicate and tricky art — something we need to keep in mind with so much information “blitzing” us 24/7. 

    Having just finished reading the “Black Swan”, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb I was at least inclined to give a young (everyone is now) author a bit of slack.
    (Note: “The Black Swan” is sub-titled, “The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” I would have called it, “Thinking for Dummies.”)

    WW2 has long been an interest of mine and I have read a number of books on that theater of operations — I’m sure someone really thought the assumption logical to put Americans of African ancestry in there. Well, black or white, all of our guys were fighting in a preview of hell down there. Everything was against their making it work. This is also something we need to remember when looking at today’s Gordian knot in Iraq.

    If location is primary in relation to real estate, in war it’s Perspective, Perspective, Perspective.

    Thanks for the references.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on Jun 2, 2007 at 1:38 PM

    Hi Mono,

    Just a quick note about the mercenary group you mentioned- the role of private militaries in resource related conflicts is an extremely interesting literature.  I did some work on that in the late 1990s, although my info now is not current.

    I believe you’re referring to Executive Outcomes, not Executive Solutions.  EO was a mercenary group made up of (decommissioned? retired?) South African soldiers looking to deploy their expertise in a post-apartheid world. They disbanded a while ago, due to the bad publicity they were receiving, but I’ve heard that they’ve reformed under other companies.  Sandlines is a British company, made up of retired soldiers who used to be in some kind of Special Forces (not sure what the technical name is).  They have a much cleaner profile, as they’ve tended to focus on training militaries of recognized governments rather than actually conducting military ops.

    Intriguingly, EO was hired by the elected government of Sierra Leone to help them fight off an absolutely vicious insurrection (the RUF) that was fuelling its struggle by trading access to diamonds for Western companies in exchange for arms and money.  This was the subject matter of that recent movie, Blood DIamonds, although I’m not sure if EO is referenced there.  In this case, EO was extremely effective at helping the elected government secure control over their borders and defeat a long-standing guerilla army that had no moral legitimacy… not quite the same in the case of Bougainville, which makes me wonder what the criteria was for EO to accept contracts.

    Canadian companies have also been complicit in these resource related conflicts - we just held 5 national roundtables on the relationship of the extractive sector to development, and Cabinet should be announcing some response to those roundtables soon. Something to look out for if you’re passionate about resource justice.

    http://geo.international.gc.ca/cip-pic/current_discussions/csr-roundtables-en n.asp

    cheers,

    V.

    United States Posted by vijayanagar on Jun 10, 2007 at 6:04 PM

    Yes, Executive Outcomes.  Sorry about that. 

    I feel certain that both EO and Sandllne were involved, but I don’t have time right now to chase down the references.  The whole mess caused the government of Julius Chan to fall—they tried to hide the payment, as I recall, in the highway budget.  Eventually the PNG government reneged on the contract, and EO et al took them to court for non-payment of a valid contract, and won. 

    Here’s what I chased down using Google (“Julius Chan” + “Sandline”):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline_affair

    Wikipedia is what it is—this article isn’t signed and there are no references, but in this case what’s written fits my recollection well.  One small slip is that the B.R.A. = Bougainville Revolutional Army, not “Bougainville Resistance Army.”  The “Resistance” was another armed group, strongest in the North but present in most regions, opposed to the B.R.A.  The two groups did fight each other.

    I’ll look at the Canadian material. 

    By the way, I signed myself “mono_kakata” because that’s the name the people I lived with often used for me.  It means, literally “body white,” and they used in generically for “white person.”  Mono muni = black person, and so on.

    United States Posted by mono_kakata on Jun 10, 2007 at 6:36 PM
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