Rosemarie Gillespie urges help for Bougainville
By Tony Hastings
Rosemarie Gillespie believes in direct action. When she heard that people were dying from lack of medicine in Bougainville because of the Papua New Guinea government's blockade of the island, she got in a boat with the medicine and risked her life to take it there.
When she heard about the massacres, the concentration camps and the other atrocities committed by PNG soldiers — with Australian-supplied equipment — she collected statutory declarations from surviving witnesses and took them to the South Pacific Forum meeting in July 1992.
She first got involved in action for Bougainville while practising as a barrister in Melbourne, when she needed information to defend a client from Bougainville who was appealing for refugee status.
In Sydney, she got in touch with Sam Boron, founder of Radio Free Bougainville, who showed her a report which had arrived two days previously from the then minister of health of the Bougainville Interim Government, Bishop John Salay. The report was a plea for help, describing how four children had died that week from lack of medicine, and many more were under threat.
"I decided I had to bring the medicines in because I know what it is like to have sick children and wonder if they are going to survive."
She was on her way a week later. "So many people worked so hard to get the medicine together, just within the space of a week, it was a fantastic response."
That was in February last year. The situation is still critical, the blockade still in place. The main effects are to prevent medicine and supplies from going in and information from coming out. The Australian government last year gave $31 million in defence aid to PNG, and these weapons are being used
against innocent civilians on Bougainville.
I asked Gillespie what others could do to help.
"We need people to do everything in their power to make sure the word gets out on what's really happening in Bougainville. We need to stop the shipment of arms and munitions into Bougainville — which are consequently used to kill innocent civilians — and to break the blockade.
"At the moment the Papua New Guinea government is trying to pretend the blockade's not there, which is a lie. Just in May the PNG government stopped the Red Cross from bringing medicines into Bougainville.
"The only way we'll be able to do anything to stop the blockade is to publicly challenge it in full sight of the PNG army and the media. That's going to take a while to organise."
She also suggested writing to foreign minister Evans. "The more letters he gets the better, but I personally believe direct action is the thing that's going to change things."