Telling it the PNG way
The coverage of the Bougainvillean war for self-determination on Channel Nine's Sunday program, screened on February 20, was just about crude enough to compare with the black and white Pathe newsreel commentary during World War II.
Journalist Janine Perrett, travelling to Bougainville with a high-ranking government minister and the new commander of the PNG forces on Bougainville, Brigadier General Robert Dademo (there is no other way to get past the PNG blockade), passed on her handfed story undigested. Investigative journalism this was not.
The "balance" was provided by two few-second bites with human rights activist Rosemarie Gillespie, whose comments were just as quickly dismissed. Moses Havini, the Bougainville Interim Government's representative in Australia, was not contacted by Perrett, although he was available.
We were invited to sympathise with occupying PNG Defence Force troops who, we were assured, have only love and affection for the people of Bougainville. Once, they had to go without provisions for two weeks, and their Australian-supplied helicopters have broken down, making patrolling more hazardous. The report, whether by design or otherwise, was an open plea for more military aid.
The Arawa hospital was destroyed by the retreating Bougainville Revolutionary Army, Perrett echoed. There was no mention of the statements recorded by Amnesty International in which witnesses insist that PNGDF troops raided the hospital, killing, among others, the health minister of the interim government.
On reopening the CRA-owned Panguna copper mine, now under BRA control, PNG Prime Minister Paias Wingti was filmed claiming that this was not important; he was concerned only with "winning the hearts and minds" of the Bougainvillean people — a term, Gillespie rightly noted, borrowed from the US government during its war on the people of Vietnam. The PNG finance minister was more honest, making it clear that reopening the mine was a pressing priority.
One positive thing the program did achieve, though not by design, was to expose the lie in Wingti's claims that there was no war on Bougainville, made during his visit to New Zealand in February.
Much was made, for dramatic effect and in an effort to suggest that the PNG regime might find the report controversial, of the visit by the film crew, which became the cause of one more internal squabble among the faction-ridden PNG administration.
Perrett's report does not bode well for the coverage of the Australian parliamentary visit to Bougainville later this year. If that delegation and the press contingent, like Perrett, fail to speak with representatives of the Bougainville interim government, they will succeed only in creating a thicker smokescreen behind which the massacre of Bougainvilleans will continue.