Kuiai says the the impacts the Bougainville War continues to be felt in present day Bougainville. Photo: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
The autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville, which is seeking independence, continues to face trauma that can be traced back to the eight years of civil war from 1989.
A new blog, called 'Post-Conflict Bougainville' written by academics from the Australian National University, Sinclair Dinnen, Miranda Forsyth, and Dennis Kuiai, has detailed much of this, and what they think should be done.
RNZ Pacific heard from Forsyth in February, and we have spoken with Dennis Kuiai, a Bougainvillean who has previously been part of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA).
(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
Don Wiseman: You have been involved in the work on this post conflict in Bougainville blog. One of the things that you guys have identified is that there's a need for a lot more work in terms of dealing with the underlying problems from that civil war and so on. And this is the sort of work that you have been doing now for more than 30 years. What do you see that that work involves?
Dennis Kuiai: In Bougainville, although we have got the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), although we have voted for independence, although we believe that we have disposed of most of the weapons of war, there still remain important issues that we need to deal with.
Among the many issues that we need to deal with, one of which is the Panguna Mine issue. Although people are talking about reopening, although government has decided that we reopen the Panguna Mine, there are still issues related to the mine, like the issues on cost [and] benefit sharing, issues on social disorientation, on land ownership and also distribution of benefits. More importantly, the Bougainville Copper Agreement has not been repealed by the government of Papua New Guinea and it has not been reviewed. So, that is one issue to deal with.
Locals walk by buildings left abandoned by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto at the Panguna mine site. Photo: OCCRP / Aubrey Belford
The other issue is the consequences, or the impacts the Bougainville War. It brought about sorcery accusation related violence (SARV), it has given rise. Approaches taken now are approaches that have never been taken in the streets of Bougainville, like we have the witch doctors and fortune tellers who can now tell people that that person has made sorcery on you.
Before the conflict, in Bougainville custom there were fortune tellers, there were witch doctors. But there has never been a time when they would pinpoint someone blaming him or her for sorcery.
If there was accusation for sorcery, there were approaches by which they would address sorcery. For example, the first step in addressing sorcery, you have to notify the accused, let them know about your accusation, why you are accusing that person, and the intent of that is to resolve whatever issue that you have with that person. Unlike today, once you accuse, you go in and take their life away. That did not happen in the past. That is something I see as being impact of the armed conflict.
There is also trauma in Bougainville. Ten years of conflict and we went into what I describe as '10 years of developmental gap'. This 10 years to Bougainvilleans of today is the main cause of trauma. Meaning we were all displaced. There are people who are still mourning for the loss of the good things that they had before the conflict. There are people still mourning for the consequences, the impact they had during the conflict. Their loved ones were killed. There are people missing. There were people raped. There are people who are children of gang pack rapes. These are issues that we need to deal with.
There are also issues around marijuana, drug abuse, these things that we call as being substance abuses. But this is also another issue. The other issue is we also need to demilitarise our former combatants. We have not customarily performed the ritual to signify that the war has ended. So, this also something that is contributing to the generational trauma and violence that that we have in Bougainville.
The PNG government agreed to a Bougainville request for a moderator to be brought in to solve an impasse over the tabling of the region's independence referendum. Photo: 123RF / RNZ Pacific
DW: In the blog you guys have talked a lot about the need for a whole lot more peace building at community level. And I know that one of the things that you particularly are involved in is this Bougainville Community Peace and Security Task Unit. Tell me a bit about that.
DK: The idea about the Community Task Unit is based on the ideology of state owned policing. In sovereign nations, policing is a state responsibility, meaning state drives policing for the common good of the citizens of that state.
When we talk about policing, it's all about alleged crime, and that person remains innocent until proven guilty. Once someone is alleged that he has committed crime, one of the things within our Melanesian custom is the fact that once you are accused, you are already guilty. So that maybe the right terminology in our Melanesian culture would be, you are guilty until proven innocent.
That is one of the tasks that that task unit would be doing. Once an allegation, once an accusation is made, it is really an obvious task unit to search, assess, respond, and come up with the right action. Say, for example, if someone is accused of sorcery, don't wait until the violence occurs. But you do the work once you hear about allegation.
The second task is, they should be the ones facilitating peace building in the communities and this is something that New Zealand will maybe recall that in Bougainville, it was New Zealand that supported this idea of Community Auxiliary Police, well before the establishment of the Bougainville police service, or well before the police operations on Bougainville began.
ABG President Ishmael Toroama launching the the Bougainville Digital Democracy Project in Arawa last month. 25 March 2025 Photo: Autonomous Bougainville Government
The idea of the Auxiliary Police was very similar to what we are now describing as being the Task Unit, but unfortunately, the Community Auxiliary Police is now incorporated into the Bougainville Police Service. This means they are now taking orders and commands from the Bougainville police service, whereas, if we are serious about peace and sustaining peace, the same approach that we had initiated Community Auxiliary Police, we need to go back to that.
The third thing is that the community government, the current community government, must take ownership of community peace and security, rather than expecting the police to come down and do what is needed to be done. Sometimes the referral path pathway is too difficult, sometimes it's complicated. Sometimes it's expensive.
Having the Task Unit within the community would make it much more easier to access service delivery of justice within the community. The next thing that we think this Task Uunit would be responsible to make is being there to support the establishment of a sort of a court system, supporting the implementation of the community courts now, which laws were approved in June last year.
These, this people should be there, supporting the community courts in the communities, and making sure that whatever needs to be done is done right, and whatever crime that is to be referred to higher courts, to higher jurisdictions, is to be made because it becomes a responsibility of the Task Unit.
One final one is basically to help the reintegration of the former combatants who are now having special status, and they seem to influence lot of government decisions, lot of implementations at the higher level.
We brought in the ex-combatants to be trained as community auxiliary police. But this time we train them and make sure we reintegrate them back, put them on some form of allowance, together with the community government members, so they come back and take back their place.
Because most of the ex-combatants now, they are born chiefs, but because of this name of ex-combatant, they seem to isolate themselves from the responsibilities they have, and they are not back in their villages. So, that is basically the rational and responsibility of that thinking around the Task Unit.
