'State Terror and The Bougainville Conflict'
Summary
Perched on the north-west tip of the Solomon Islands archipelago, Bougainville forms part of Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) easternmost border region. Despite its remote location the development of a major copper deposit in Bougainville’s Crown Prince Ranges made the island one of PNG’s most strategically significant areas. Consequently, when customary landowners used industrial sabotage to close the mine in 1988, this regional dispute soon transformed into a major national crisis.
As the crisis unfolded the national government chose to deploy the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) in an effort to reopen the mine and suppress the landowner movement. Extra-judicial killings, forced displacement, the internment of civilians, and the denial of humanitarian aid, were just some of the egregious tactics employed by the military. No one was exempted from the violence.
Read the rest at: http://www.statecrime.org/testimonyproject/bougainville
