An Exploding Bomb

The wartime battles on Bougainville between the Allies and Japan had brought the island and its potential riches into the consciousness of Australia and its close friends in the mining industry. In 1972, Rio Tinto, which is now the world’s second-biggest mining conglomerate, set up a subsidiary company called Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) to begin mining in the lucrative Bougainville jungle after reaching an agreement with PNG and Australia.

The mine was located in the central Panguna region of the island. It would soon become the focal point of revolutionary activity on the island. Throughout the 1980s, social and political contradictions grew in Bougainville as the mine expanded. The mine completely reoriented traditional life around a company town with foreign officers and businessmen enjoying supreme authority, backed up by the PNG’s armed forces, which had Australian weapons and training.

Capitalist modernity had come crashing onto the shores of the island. The intense, backbreaking labor carried out by the people of Bougainville at the mine was reminiscent of ancient Rome or Spanish-ruled colonial Bolivia. Aerial images of the mine in its heyday show how it destroyed the lush jungle, starting from the center of the island and moving out, like an exploding bomb.

Workers and other locals began to make speeches and hold study groups in secret about the conditions of the mine, partially inspired by dreams of national sovereignty. These groups began to grow in popularity as conditions in the mine drove residents to understand their subjugated position and the need for liberation from the nightmare they found themselves trapped in.

The people of Bougainville and their environment were expendable in the eyes of BCL and their allies. In its seventeen years of operation, the mine had become one of the richest copper sites in the world. It was a flagship of Rio-Tinto’s business and an extremely important source of revenue for the PNG government. Profits from the mine at some points accounted for as much as 45 percent of PNG’s total export revenue.

From Sabotage to Revolution

The dramatic decline in living standards on the island after the introduction of the mine drove people off their subsistence plots and out of their traditional food systems. Mass environmental degradation of water and food supplies threatened their civilization and compelled them to take action.

In 1989, multiple acts of sabotage shook the Panguna mine. Support beams were strategically blown up, entrances to the mine were caved in several times, and tools and weapons were stolen. This came as a shock to the PNG government, its Australian backers, and Rio Tinto, who saw one of the most profitable mines in the world ingeniously shut down. The firm and its national partners suffered massive embarrassment. BCL and the PNG authorities soon implemented a shoot-to-kill policy against any possible bandits.

The leader of this group of saboteurs was a former miner named Francis Ona who went on to be the leader of the guerrilla war against PNG and Australia. Ona quit working at the mine in 1988 to work full-time organizing resistance against it. He travelled around the island gathering support among women who saw their status plummet as traditional social structures like subsistence farming were destroyed, as well as young men who had watched their friends die in the mine.

Ona’s attempts at negotiation for better terms between the workers and Rio Tinto were unsuccessful, and he became radicalized by the process. A BCL manager gave the following justification for their obstinacy:

We didn’t like to be pushed into doing things the Melanesian way because the Melanesian way is a little bit . . . you put pressure on someone, and the pressure results in a reward, and then there is an attitude, I wish I had asked for more, how do I get more. You then reapply the pressure, perhaps a little harder next time, and then you get a bigger reward, and eventually you’re asking “how can I stop this, they are bleeding the company dry.”

The acts of sabotage expanded into a guerrilla war and the mine completely shut down. Ona made the following statement in a radio broadcast:

We are generally peace-loving, law-abiding people. At present we have been blamed for the lawlessness in the province. We have taken the move after painful struggle for the last twenty years of PNG rule. We are fighting to save our land from foreign exploitation.

PNG security forces were sent onto the island to bring down Ona and his Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). They launched raids from coastal beachheads into the interior, trying to find and kill the BRA fighters.

Ona lacked access to modern firearms in the early stages of the war and used knowledge of the jungle to employ poisonous booby traps, rockslides, and ambushes. For several months, this was how the BRA defended the interior of Bougainville.

The Coconut Revolution

In time, Ona procured more weapons and ammunition from the successive waves of defeated PNG forces and used this victorious streak to establish legitimacy among the residents of the island. He established military training infrastructure and set up revolutionary villages where traditional culture and subsistence farming made a return.

The BRA leader took advantage of the island’s staunch Christianity to bring a theory of liberation theology into his propaganda. Ona was not only a guerrilla general but also a preacher, musician, and farmer. One academic article presented him as a Moses leading his people to the promised land, a sovereign independent Bougainville.

This record of success made the PNG government and its allies rethink their strategy. They imposed an embargo on Bougainville in 1990 and went on to launch the bloodiest phase of the war. This proved to be the biggest conflict in Oceania since World War II.

The BRA was a revolutionary force that had to withstand assaults from Australian-trained PNG special forces as well as the direct involvement of Australian forces, dropping grenades onto villages from helicopters. These tactics spurred condemnation of Canberra’s role from international and domestic antiwar activists.

In the face of this onslaught, the BRA and the people of Bougainville took heavy losses, which were compounded by the lack of medical supplies due to the embargo. As many as twenty thousand people died in Bougainville’s ten-year conflict: between one thousand and two thousand of those were deaths in combat, with civilians accounting for the rest. The island had a population of around only 200,000 at this time.

A documentary called The Coconut Revolution explores the day-to-day experience of embargo, war, and revolution on the island. The camera follows Ona as he trains young men, leads religious services, and grows crops. Footage of young children slapping PVC piping to make music for worship is juxtaposed with footage of Australian pilots dropping bombs on villages. The film also explores the homemade technology built to outwit the embargo, as well as the new food systems pioneered by the women of the island.

Digging Deeper

Morale among PNG forces worsened as the reality of fighting against a deeply entrenched guerrilla force began to set in. This prompted government officials to use even more violent tactics in the hope of securing a rapid victory. The PNG authorities implemented a strategy of village razing, torture, and indiscriminate killings of young men suspected of belonging to the BRA. However, the rebel force continued to hold fast.

It is important not to completely romanticize the BRA, whose use of child soldiers garnered international condemnation. However, they were the only effective opposition to a world of exploitation rooted in the hell of suffocating mineshafts. Many of the soldiers had only known the violence of the mine and saw counterviolence as the only legitimate way of bringing it to an end.

With pressure mounting, the government of PNG leader Julius Chan had dug itself into a deep hole. This was the largest military operation in the young country’s history. Not only was their country’s GDP on the line — they also had Australia and Rio Tinto breathing down their necks.

After several failed peace negotiations between the BRA and PNG, Chan grew impatient. His government decided to hire the mercenary networking firm Sandline International in 1997, with backing from Australia. Sandline in turn contracted the South African mercenary group Executive Outcomes to fight the BRA.

Executive Outcomes was one of the world’s largest mercenary forces. It was staffed with highly experienced special-forces veterans from the white-settler regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia. The company’s business model was based around the defense of resource interests across the Global South.

Just a year earlier, the Indonesian government had hired it to fight guerilla forces in West Papua, which had occupied some of Rio Tinto’s gold and copper mines. Executive Outcomes succeeded in its mission, using horrific methods of repression. Human rights groups are still coming to terms with the violence in West Papua.

When the Executive Outcomes story broke, it might have seemed that hope was fading for the people of Bougainville. However, they received help from an unlikely ally. In 1997, a PNG journalist published an exposé with details of the secret agreement Chan had struck with Executive Outcomes for the use of forty-four mercenaries for $36 million. The company was even considering buying a stake in BCL.

The PNG army was deeply insulted by the news, especially the lead commander of the Bougainville operation, Jerry Singirok, who had to believe that the war was unwinnable. Singirok and his allies in the high ranks of the army went on an unauthorized nighttime operation to arrest every Executive Outcomes mercenary.

Chan had no idea what was happening until he woke up the next morning to massive protests outside his home after Singirok informed the public over the radio. The mercenaries were released and sent home to cheers of approval from a massive crowd of PNG citizens.

Toward Independence

These were some of the biggest public protests in PNG history, and they had support from a determined portion of the military command. Chan was forced to resign, and new elections were held in 1997. The new government ended the war in Bougainville through a peace settlement. There was a cease-fire, after which negotiations for the legal status of Bougainville commenced.

People in Bougainville celebrated the peace but also reflected upon the pain and suffering they had witnessed. The Me’ekamui Revolution still had a lot of lessons to learn on the pathway to independence. Fiscal problems and financial illiteracy made it possible for several resource companies to scam the young autonomous nation. The current government is trying to bring back mining in a safer form, but mining-related operations still give rise to violent incidents. Rio Tinto has stated their desire to restore ties with Bougainville on multiple occasions.

In 2019, the people of Bougainville officially voted for independence in a referendum, with almost 98 percent voting in favor. The legal process for independence is still ongoing. A former BRA commander, Ishmael Toroama, was recently elected president of Bougainville.

Whatever the future holds for Bougainville, the Me’ekamui Revolution was a spectacular achievement. At a time when revolutionary dreams were fading elsewhere, the people of Bougainville held firm against the combined power of Rio Tinto, Australia, and PNG, and are on a path toward securing their own country.