By Pip Hinman
SYDNEY — Activists from the Bougainville Freedom Movement picketed the regional headquarters of the Australian Defence Force on September 9. They demanded an end to Australia's involvement in Papua New Guinea's attempts to quash Bougainville's national liberation struggle and called on the Australian government to condemn human rights violations by the PNG defence forces.
Vikki Jones of the BFM told Green Left that while the Australian government claims the Bougainville war is an internal matter for PNG, it has continued to interfere in its "internal matters" by providing military assistance.
"The reason for this", Jones said, "is the government's eagerness to get the Panguna copper mine restarted, given that CRA has a 54% share in it. All they care about is the copper, certainly not the people of Bougainville who are in desperate need of medical and other supplies."
On September 6, defence minister Robert Ray confirmed Australian troops' involvement in the four-year-long Bougainville conflict. A report in the Australian quoted him as saying Australia had a "long-standing arrangement" with the PNG government on "the use of Australian loan personnel in any politically sensitive situation".
"I have on occasion approved specific requests from the PNG government for ADF personnel serving with the PNG security force to visit Bougainville." Ray said the troops had been used "to assist with the restoration of communication and to assess requirements for infrastructure repair".
However, Moses Havini, international spokesperson for the Bougainville Interim Government, disputes this. "If the government is interested in a political solution, as Senator Ray said in his statement, then it should condemn the inhumane blockade of the island of Bougainville, and push for international fact-finding teams to be allowed to enter Bougainville immediately."
Both the Hawke and Keating Labor governments have stated that Australian aid is not used in PNG's internal security matters. But the supply of Australian police advisers and Iroquois helicopters, and Australia's assistance in helping PNG establish a military base in the PNG highlands, gives lie to this myth.
Approximately $340 million a year — a quarter of the Australian aid budget — goes to PNG.
The government's "aid" to PNG came under the spotlight last year when two Australian journalists spent three weeks investigating the activities of the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau's advisers. Their expose on the ABC's Background Briefing implicated AIDAB in the training of PNG paramilitary police squads for jungle warfare in the highlands and on Bougainville.
These squads were found to use excessive force and to burn villages. The Australian advisers not only condoned the human rights abuses, but participated in and, in some instances, took command of operations.
The journalists, Matthew Brown and Steve McDonell, found that the Royal PNG Constabulary Development Project was one of AIDAB's biggest aid beneficiaries, receiving $30 million over 1987-1992. Senator Ray announced recently that $28 million has been earmarked for 1993-94 together with 38 Australian soldiers who will serve with the PNG Defence Force.
A report in the September 9 Age said that the PNG police minister, Avusi Tanao, was preparing a cabinet submission on the use of foreign and private training for an elite police tactical force to enforce PNG's draconian Internal Security Act.
Tanao told Port Moresby's Post Courier that he was looking at three possible sources for training PNG police, including Indonesia and Malaysia, which have "proven capacities in counter-insurgency and against civil disturbances". A third option was the British mercenary group, Defence Systems Ltd, which recently opened an office in Port Moresby.
Havini said that the stalemate in the Bougainville war would not be resolved by increasing the use of force. He called on the Australian government to end its military aid to the PNGDF.
If the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee can amend their foreign aid bill linking arms sales to Indonesia with an improvement in the human rights record in East Timor, why, he asked, can't the Australian government apply the same principle to PNG?
"We call on the Australian government to condemn human rights violations by the PNGDF on Bougainville, as they have done over human rights abuses in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia.
"We want the Australian government to begin to play a positive role in a conflict resolution on Bougainville rather than fight its proxy war on the people of Bougainville, who are merely fighting for their economic and political rights."