NZ’s role in a tricky Pacific peace

Nearly five years after the Autonomous Region of Bougainville voted for independence from Papua New Guinea, the two parties are at a stalemate, and have tapped our former Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae to mediate.
For those who’ve followed the evolution of the conflict, there’s little surprise to see a New Zealander in the role: our country has a long and proud involvement in helping bring peace to the region.
“I’m not going to try to pre-judge it, but if anyone can develop a solution from these people, Sir Jerry’s got a good chance of doing so,” says former foreign minister Sir Don McKinnon, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering a peace deal that brought the decade-long civil war in PNG to an end.
In today’s episode of The Detail, Sir Don explains the history of Bougainville’s battle for independence and New Zealand’s pivotal role in its past, and likely role in its future.
Papua New Guinea sits just north of Australia, on the eastern half of an island shared with West Papua, Indonesia. The Melanesian country has been occupied by Germany, Britain and Japan, and most recently by Australia, before gaining independence in 1975. Bougainville is a separate island, to the southeast of the mainland. It would like to be a separate country, too.
“They don’t believe they belong to Papua New Guinea,” says Sir Don. “The colonial powers drew a line, and Bougainville should have gone with the Solomons and Vanuatu.”
Between 1988 and 1998, Bougainville fought a brutal civil war for its independence. Sir Don first visited Bougainville in 1994 and was stunned by the situation.
“What I saw at first-hand was just shocking. Going into Arawa, which was a care centre where Bougainvillians were supposed to be safe and getting fed, I don’t think they were getting fed,” he says.
“I could see people who were clearly starving and absolutely fearful for their lives.”
He believed that real progress could only happen by getting leaders off the island, so he organised a meeting in Christchurch, based on a strategy that had been used in the resolution of the Bosnian war.
“I took a cue from Warren Christopher, one-time Secretary of State in the US.
“He said ‘well I decided one way to get through this [is] I’m going to put all these people on an Air Force base in Ohio, I’m going to lock the gates, I’m going to give them all the booze they want, and they’ve got to stay there until they reach a solution.’
“And I thought ‘now that’s a pretty good idea. I’m going to put all these Bougainvillians on a military base’.”
First though, New Zealand defence force shuttled around the island by air, picking up the delegates. What was supposed to be a few dozen people quickly ballooned.
“Those 30 or 40 people ended up being 70 or 80 people. There were more people to be picked up, including one we picked up by accident who wasn’t even supposed to come to New Zealand. He was supposed to go to a hospital in Buka. But he was lucky, he ended up in Christchurch Hospital.”
The meeting was high-risk – and the gates were locked.
“We were dealing with people who had killed other people, so there was every reason to have a pretty safe environment for the people of Christchurch. On the other hand it meant the media couldn’t come in and keep talking to the Bougainvillians and sort of getting ahead of the game.
“So it was absolutely perfect.”
And it worked.
“They started to develop their own theory on how they should negotiate with the Papua New Guinean government.”
That meeting was followed by another with both Bougainvillians and Papua New Guineans, and then later with a larger group of regional government leaders.
The war ended in 1998, and that set the stage for the 2019 referendum where Bougainville voted overwhelmingly for independence.
But Papua New Guinea says the referendum is non-binding, and Bougainville wants it to be tabled in PNG’s parliament. Both parties reportedly support Sir Jerry Mateparae to help mediate.
In this episode of The Detail, Sir Don McKinnon and RNZ Pacific journalist Don Wiseman explain the history of the conflict, and what role Sir Jerry Mateparae will play.
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