History of Bougainville
Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), has been inhabited by humans for at least 29,000 years, according to artefacts found in Kilu Cave on Buka Island.
The incorporation of Bougainville into German New Guinea initially had little economic impact, although the associated Catholic missions succeeded in converting a majority of the islanders to Christianity.
[8] Douglas Oliver in his 1991 book discussed one of the unique aspects of the people of Bougainville: [A] trait shared by the present-day descendants of both northerners and southerners is their skin-colour, which is very black.
[9]Dutch explorers Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire were the first Europeans to sight present-day Bougainville, skirting Takuu Atoll and Nissan Island in 1616.
[5] On 10 April 1886, two years after the establishment of German New Guinea, the United Kingdom and Germany agreed to divide the Solomon Islands archipelago into spheres of influence.
The acting administrator Reinhold Kraetke arrived accompanied by an imperial judge, a company manager, a visiting German journalist, a missionary, and a local merchant Richard Parkinson who had been recruiting labourers from the area for several years.
[23] The administration established larger "line villages" in place of the smaller hamlets, in order to simplify collection and "condition the able-bodied men to the barracks discipline on the plantations".
[25] The late 1920s and 1930s also produced an influx of anthropologists and ethnographers to Bougainville, among them Australians Ernest and Sarah Chinnery, Catholic priest Patrick O'Reilly, Briton Beatrice Blackwood, and American Douglas L.
A concerted Allied land offensive between November 1943 and April 1944 was needed to occupy and hold the part of the island along the western shore in an area called "Torokina".
The Hahalis Welfare Society, established in 1959 and led by John Teosin and Francis Hagai, mounted a campaign against Australian authorities' attempts to impose a head tax.
They claimed that the Jaba River had been poisoned, causing birth defects among local people, as well as the extinction of the flying fox on the island and adverse effects on fish and other species.
A report on the SBS Dateline program, broadcast on 26 June 2011, states that Sir Michael Somare, at the time Papua New Guinea's Opposition Leader, had signed an affidavit in 2001 specifying that the PNG government was acting under instruction from mining giant Rio Tinto.
[36] In November 1988 Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) returned to attack the mine, holding up its magazine, stealing explosives, and committing numerous acts of arson and sabotage.
The company suggested that the flying foxes had suffered high fatalities due to a virus brought in from East New Britain, and said that mine operations had not affected the health of the river.
The PNG government and Bougainville Copper initially made attempts to resolve some of the outstanding issues, and offered an expensive compromise deal, which was rejected outright by Ona and Kauona.
As a response to the continuing violence, the national government called a state of emergency; it placed the island under the administration of the Police Commissioner, who was based in Port Moresby.
In 1990, Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu of Papua New Guinea agreed to pull Papuan troops out, and for international observers to witness the disarmament of the BRA.
A number of raskol (criminal) gangs that were affiliated with the BRA, equipped largely with weapons salvaged from the fighting in World War II, terrorised villages, engaging in murder, rape and pillage.
On the island of Buka north of Bougainville, a local militia formed and drove out the BRA with the help of Papuan troops, during a bloody offensive in September 1990.
Papuan Foreign Minister Sir Julius Chan attempted to recruit a peacekeeping force from the nations of the Pacific, but Wingti quashed the idea.
He met with Kauona in the Solomon Islands and arranged for a peace conference to be held in Arawa that October, with security provided by an Australia-led South Pacific Peacekeeping Force.
In their absence, Chan's government entered into negotiations with a group of chiefs from the Nasioi clan, headed by Theodore Miriung, a former lawyer for the Panguna Landowners Association.
Chan decided to abandon attempts at peace, and on 21 March 1996, he gave the go-ahead for an invasion of Bougainville, under new commander of the PNG defence forces, Jerry Singirok.
In September, BRA militants attacked a PNG army camp at Kangu Beach with the help of members of a local militia group, killing twelve PNGDF soldiers and taking five hostage.
Although Chan's government attempted to blame the BRA, a subsequent independent investigation implicated members of the PNG defence force and the resistance militias.
Discipline and morale was rapidly deteriorating within the ranks of the PNG military, which had been unable to make any substantial progress in penetrating the mountainous interior of the island and reopening the Panguna mine.
Breaking with Ona, Kauona and Kabui entered into peace talks with the government of Bill Skate in Christchurch, New Zealand, which culminated in the signing of the Lincoln Agreement in January 1998.
In March 2005, Dr Shaista Shameem of the United Nations working group on mercenaries asked Fiji and Papua New Guinea for permission to send a team to investigate the presence of former Fijian soldiers in Bougainville.
Support was provided to the group via use of the Loloho wharf on the eastern side of the island by naval vessels from Australia and New Zealand as well as the Kieta airfield by weekly C130 Hercules flights from Townsville.
Four UH-1 'Huey' helicopters were supplied by Australian 171st Aviation Squadron, which were painted bright red for visibility and utilised to ferry personnel to inland villages inaccessible by foot or vehicle.
