http://pngexposed.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/...open-bougainville-mine/
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Leaked Document Reveals Secret ABG Plan to Reopen Bougainville Mine
by pngexposed
A document leaked to Rio Tinto shareholders lobby group, ESBC, by disgraced landowner leader, Lawrence Daveona, allegedly for cash payments, reveal the façade of democracy surrounding the Bougainville mine’s reopening.
Over the last three years ABG officials have told the public that the mine will only be opened if there is a democratic consensus supporting it. Corporate lickspittle, Jemima Garrett, summarises the official ABG tagline, “discussion and consensus-building are central to Bougainvilleans’ traditional way of doing things”.
Documents recently leaked to PNG Exposed reveal the ABG government’s commitment to the Melanesian way is a sham; for several years the ABG has had secret plans in place to reopen the mine, regardless of public opinion or consensus.
According to MEETING MINUTES taken in November 2011, the Panguna Management Consultative Committee (PMCC) was told by ABG officials that the mine was going to be opened regardless of popular sentiment. The Mining Minister, Michael Oni, informed the meeting “that there was no two ways about [it, the] Panguna mine [is] being opened in the not too distant future”. President Momis in agreement added, the mine “must be opened and there is an important need for a Unified Stand by ABG and Panguna Landowners”.
According to the minutes: “Discussions transpired and the general position on the re-opening was obvious and both ABG and the Executive Committee Members of PMCC fully supported and endorsed that Panguna mine must be re-opened”.
So much for public consultation – it appears the decision to reopen the mine was made years ago in closed door meetings by political elites. Recent consultation forums are nothing more than a fig-leaf, or more accurately a cynical sales pitch – complete with threats of PNGDF reoccupation and forced marriage to mainlanders – designed to manufacture consent for a decision already made by those who stand to directly profit.
Indeed, as the meeting minutes reveal women’s groups are the deeply opposed to the mine reopening – and why not it was women who nursed dying children during the conflict, endured rape as a weapon of war, and picked up the pieces after the many village burnings. No wonder then the landowner ‘leaders’ groups supporting Rio Tinto are dominated by men, and no wonder then that ABG leaders such as Minister for Veteran Affairs would tell women opponents of Rio Tinto that PNG has “hidden plan[s] … that all Bougainville single women will be married by outsiders to own the land”, unless they agree to the mine reopening in time to 'finance independence'.
And like between 1962-1989 the silent majority – especially the women – whose opinion is irrelevant to political power brokers, will bare all the costs of the mine reopening and the subsequent conflict it generates as the conniving behaviour of the political elite, and its corporate allies, is gradually exposed to a new generation of Bougainvilleans.
Sadly it would seem history is repeating itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. -----------
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