In Madang a case which aims to stop mine
tailings from being dumping into the Astrolabe bay stands on a precipitous
peak.
Three landowners have withdrawn from the trial,
while another seeks to be joined. Punctuating this court room drama are threats
and under the table deals, as the mine operator attempts to lambast its project
through to production.
It would seem that in the rush to begin
production, Metallurgical Corp of China Ltd
(MCC) and their friends within government are wholly focused on seeing the mine
come to fruition, regardless of future consequences.
One thing they appear to forget, however, is
that giants fall very easily in Papua
New Guinea.
This is particularly so when they fail to take
note of the growing mood of discontent swelling at the grass-roots level.
If the case is indeed dismissed, then no doubt
MCC and their supporters will be all smiles and hand-shakes.
However, what they ignore is that the law
provides an important cathartic release for grievances, one that can be
employed to discharge pressures that may have otherwise lead to more substantive
social actions.
A province
of Papua New Guinea that bears the
scars of such actions is Bougainville. Like
MCC, Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) applied pressure to the Australian
administration to see the mine progress through to production at a rapid pace.
As a result, riot squads were dispatched to the
island to intimidate women landowners who had opposed the mine's construction.
Despite local concerns, the mine began
production in 1972.
Over the two decades of its operation the
Panguna copper and gold mine was an extremely profitable venture.
It
delivered around K1 billion worth of revenue to Papua New Guinea.
Nevertheless, the operation's positive and
negative impacts were channelled through a network of power at both a local,
provincial and national level, which created new and divisive inequalities.
The sum result was that poorer communities
living in the mountainous areas around the mining operation faced land
shortages, lack of income generating opportunities and an environmental
catastrophe.
In
August 1987 when Francis Ona and Perpetua Serero won election to the executive
of the Panguna Landowners Association (PLA) these frustrations were given a new
and articulate voice.
They were adamant, that the mine had caused
social divisions and environmental destruction, thus the only logical solution
was to close it down and compensate the communities who had suffered loss.
At a meeting in April 1988, the PLA's
secretary, Francis Ona, announced: "All we want is to close
the mine".
When the company responded with
the offer of a public works program, me Francis Ona stated "we the
landowners will close the mine … we are not worried about money. Money is
something nothing".
Perpetua Serero, the PLA's
chairperson, explained further, "one of our major concerns is pollution –
money is of secondary consideration, compensation for these are
insufficient".
Despite these protests of the landowners'
representative body, their ambition to see the mine peacefully closed failed.
While BCL's management were sympathetic to
villager concerns, they believed that the PLA's actions were simply part of an
initiative to get more compensation, despite Ona and Serero's statements to the
contrary.
As a result, the landowners' demands were
treated as a tactic for extorting further benefits from the company, and not
the genuine desires of a people pushed to the brink by 30 years of stunted
development.
Matters came to a head in November 1988 when an
independent company contracted to review the mine's social and environmental
effects, claimed that BCL had generally done a good job.
This flew in the face of the experience of
local villagers.
A week later Francis Ona and other
disenfranchised landowners began a campaign of industrial sabotage.
Following Conzinc Riotinto's (BCL's parent
company) threat to withdraw their considerable investments from Papua New Guinea, the Papua
New Guinea state initiated a bloody counter-insurgency
campaign to neutralise the wayward landowners who had now joined with a number
of ex-Papua New Guinea
Defence Force soldiers to form the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.
Under orders to demonstrate the Papua New Guinea
government's brute power, the Papua New Guinea Defence Force assaulted villages
using mortars, attack helicopters and automatic rifles.
Dozens died as a result of these attacks.
Moreover, a blockade was placed around the
island, which took the lives of 3,000 civilians in 1990-91 alone.
Alienated by the force which the government had
used against its own people, villagers in central Bougainville
rallied behind the BRA and as a result they successfully expropriated BCL.
Nevertheless, this came at the cost of
heightened animosity on the island, which fuelled a decade-long conflict whose
death toll is estimated to be between 10 to 20,000 people.
There is a well-known axiom, those who fail to
heed history, are destined to repeat its mistakes.
Railroading the legitimate aspirations of
landowners, dividing communities and corrupting government officials lead Bougainville down a dark, decade-long path.
The bell now tolls loudly for MCC.
Let us hope that the embers of discontent in
Madang, if repressed, do not awaken a genie that cannot be returned to its
bottle.
* Dr Kristian Lasslett is a fellow at the International State
Crime Initiative (www.statecrime.org) and a Lecturer in
Criminology at the University
of Ulster. The views
expressed in this paper are his own.
