http://ramumine.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/...-against-mine-landowners/
Autonomous Bougainville Government must denounce threats against mine landowners
Dansi Oearupeu
In 2013, ABG President John Momis assured Rio Tinto communities in the mine area supported the company’s return. Whether he believe this was actually true or not is anyone’s guess, but at least Momis was confident that the ABG, with help from the AusAID sales team, could win the communities over. The subsequent pitches have gone down like lead balloon, and the President is no closer to realising his vision, which may turn out to be a mirage.
Now a customary pincer-move is being used, or as they call it in the Hollywood films, good-cop, bad-cop. The good-cop is Lawrence Daveona and his utterly discredited and deeply unpopular landowners’ association. They are going around telling village people that BCL have agreed to pay bel kol – a traditional form of compensation. But they haven’t, not really. There is no admission of guilt on BCL’s part for the killing of thousands of innocent people. And the offer of K450,000 is an insult.
So the good cop routine is failing. Enter bad cop. ABG representatives are telling citizens that ‘the Panguna mine … [is] now owned by the people of Bougainville and not just the landowners as blood was spilled for this piece of land and these fighters must be compensated for the part they played to protect Panguna’.
In its haste to reopen the mine, the ABG is lighting a fire that may soon burn out of control. Threats are circulating, by a loud minority, that the people of Panguna must reopen the mine and pay compensation to the rest of Bougainville, or they will suffer the consequences.
But the ABG’s view, which this loud minority mimics, makes no sense. The war began, as they acknowledge, over the right of communities to protect their soil, and the birth right of future generations, from being vandalised by foreign corporations out to enrich their shareholders. It was also a war to liberate Bougainville from the casino mentality of Waigani, which sees bloated politicians place the nation’s natural resources on the roulette wheel so they can make a few million, while the foreigners take the rest; with barely a trickle making it through to the silent majority.
The ABG is now suggesting we honour the blood of those who fought for these two causes, by turning Bougainville into a casino, and vandalising the land and environment.
It would be laughable, were the ABG not playing such a dangerous game. If this blood-debt fiction starts to circulate, and communities outside the mine area feel they have been betrayed by the people of Panguna, things could get nasty, very quickly. The President needs to put a stop to this blood-debt talk by opposing it, loudly – otherwise, the loud minority will take his silence as approval.
He must tell his people, that if the landowners do not want the mine, this is a dignity and a right won through the spilling of blood, and it is one that the ABG will uphold as the custodian of the peace agreement and constitution. If it fails in this act, it is a government without legitimacy. ----------- Mein MULTIBAGGER Favorit B?C ;-))))) |