Bougainville out of essential medicines
By Norm Dixon
Sister Rose, matron of Arawa General Hospital in rebel- controlled central Bougainville, has warned that hundreds of women and children face death because essential life-saving drugs have completely run out.
Papua New Guinea has imposed a blockade on Bougainville for more than three years, enforcing it with Australian-supplied patrol boats and Iroquois combat helicopters.
Highlighting the hypocrisy of the Australian government's decision to send 930 army commandoes to Somalia on a "humanitarian mission", Australia continues to endorse and cooperate with PNG's blockade, which is killing women and children daily in Bougainville.
Sister Rose's statement was one of several relayed by Melbourne human rights lawyer Rosemary Gillespie, presently in central Bougainville, to Radio Australia on January 27.
Sister Rose said the hospital had completely run out of many drugs, including quinine tablets and injections, anti-malarial drugs, pain-killers, antibiotics and drugs used to slow the bleeding of women giving birth. She appealed for immediate help from humanitarian organisations to ease the shortage created by the recent intensification of the blockade.
Gillespie said the secretary of the Arawa Red Cross estimates that, in the three years since the blockade began, 2000 children had died because of a lack of medicine.
A statutory declaration read by Gillespie provided evidence of yet another instance of the PNGDF's Australian-supplied helicopters being used as gunships, contrary to supposed guidelines, to shoot at unarmed civilians.
The administrator of the Arawa General Hospital stated that near Arawa on December 4, he and 12 other people were attacked. An Iroquois helicopter swooped down, making four separate passes, and strafed their two cars with machine-gun fire. Two grenades were also dropped. The man and his companions fled into the bush.
Since Rosemary Gillespie slipped into Bougainville from the Solomon Islands in October, the PNG government has been increasingly angry at her ability to send reports on the situation to the outside world.
On several occasions, Gillespie says, PNGDF helicopters have attempted to locate her. There are fears that the PNG government may attempt to harm her. Already, the site from which she has been broadcasting has been targeted by PNGDF mortars.
Recently a bizarre report was broadcast on PNG's national radio. accusing Gillespie of responsibility for the recent upsurge in Bougainville Revolutionary Army activities in south Bougainville.
It claimed Gillespie was the "political commander of the BRA" who issued orders for the BRA to destroy vehicles carrying food supplies to care centres on the island. The reporter said she had been told by BRA sources that Gillespie had arranged for arms and ammunition to be sent to Bougainville through Solomon Islands.