Reprinted below is a speech given by Bernard Tunim, foreign minister of the Bougainville Interim Government, on March 8 to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Tunim, who was smuggled out of Bougainville by canoe in mid-February to attend the commission, was the clerk of the North Solomons provisional parliament until it was suspended by the Papua New Guinea government in 1989.
My name is Bernard Tunim. I have come to you, as a spokesperson for my people, from behind the blockade of the island of Bougainville. I bring with me the hopes of our people that, by voicing to this most important forum our many grievances about the critical situation that has become our everyday lives, this commission will devise a concrete resolution that can be executed into an action plan to assist us, and the Papua New Guinea government, to find long lasting peace for our citizens.
I am here to inform you that the situation for my people is critical. "Wait and see" policies will not do. While many of our people are fighting to defend our right to self-determination, those who support them with their hearts, the civilians, are suffering from the inhumane attitudes of the Papua New Guinea government. When Papua New Guinea says they want to "win the hearts and minds of the Bougainville people", what they are saying is that they want to pierce our hearts and put our heads on sticks.
In the middle of the warfare, many thousands of our people have run to the jungles, because they refuse to be forced into the Papua New Guinea army-controlled care centres, despite the promises of the PNG government that medicines, clothing and food are available there. Many of us have escaped from the care centres, because of being treated like slaves in our own land.
In some care centres the women are forced to live apart from their men, even young girls, to be used for sexual pleasure by the Papua New Guinea army.
Clothes and medical supplies sent by the Red Cross, and other NGOs for the people, are traded by the army to people in the care centres for sex or garden vegetables. Even though the Papua New Guinea government has promised a return of services to these areas where there have been internment camps, for the last two years, there has been nothing.
Papua New Guinea has deprived us of human rights. They offer to return them, if we give ourselves up to the care centres, but we see now that even then, after our people surrender, Papua New Guinea will not give us our most fundamental rights and want only to destroy our most basic right, the right to self-determination.
All Bougainvilleans were pleased to hear of last year's resolution from the commission calling for lifting the blockade, for international fact-finding missions to come to our island, for peace and negotiations. One year has passed since then and there has been no peace, there has been no negotiations, there has been no fact finding, there has been no return of our basic human rights.
We have heard that, during this commission, Papua New Guinea have supposedly changed their minds and invited Australia to send a delegation to our island, but not for human rights purposes. We are ready to show the delegation our suffering people in Bougainville, but we cannot believe that the Papua New Guinea army will allow this mission to proceed, especially to our areas where they have no control. They will not allow human rights fact finding because, on Bougainville, there are no human rights.
After five years of total economic and social blockade, our people are walking naked in the jungle. We live on herbs from the wild bush, which also give us our few primitive medicines to treat the wounded and sick, and we are dying.
Despite these hardships we will not surrender our right to self-determination. Bougainville people are more than convinced and determined to govern our own affairs and to manage our own resources. We are concerned about our land and our environment, which has been turned into a desert by the mining of minerals for the Papua New Guinea government. For us land is sacred, it is our mother. We come from the earth and to the earth we all return.
Over the last five years I believe that we have demonstrated to Papua New Guinea, and the world, that our land and the environment are fundamentally important. We can not survive if our environment is destroyed.
What began for us as a simple demonstration has resulted in five years of needless conflict and the total denial of all our human rights. Since the matter was first raised by the landowners of the mine, all we have ever asked for was negotiation. Papua New Guinea's response has always been the same: the barrel of the gun. We cannot talk to the barrel of the gun, we cannot live as free human beings under the barrel of the gun. We seek peace but not at the price of our freedom.
Our society on Bougainville has been sent back into the dark ages, we have only a thin line of communications to the outside world which serves to remind us that we are, like all of you here, members of the human race. We invite any of you to come to our island and see for yourselves what has been happening to us for these past five years. Not one of you would seek to deny your people what PNG denies the people of Bougainville.
Papua New Guinea seeks a military solution. I promise you that they will never have a military solution. We seek peace and negotiations and, with your help, we believe this will in time provide us with a real and lasting solution and the restoration of our basic human rights. We do not owe Papua New Guinea anything. They have benefited from the destruction of our land, and now they are trying to destroy our people.
I beg of you, do not sacrifice the principles of human rights upon the altar of misplaced sovereignty. The world is changing and this is creating problems. We on Bougainville are the victims of this change, we have a problem that must be addressed, and that problem is the violations of all the basic human rights of my people. We are a small people but our problem is extreme.
All Bougainvilleans believe that there are basic principles of human rights that the new world is built upon. It was the belief in these principles that led to the present situation. We suffer because we bear in mind these principles that begin with "all people have the right to self-determination".
Papua New Guinea has made a mistake in assuming that human rights are a vehicle that can be parked while the bank is robbed. The Bougainville Revolutionary Army has also made some mistakes, but why should the civilian people of Bougainville be the ones that are expected to pay the bill?
All of us cherish and respect the principles of human rights as the only avenue we have for saving our land and our people, and this is why we risk our lives to come to you. We believe the commission is here to save lives, to end suffering and to protect the future of our children. I have five children. Please move to save them.