By Ignatius Kim
When the Solomon Islands Development Trust (SIDT) was founded in 1981 to inform rural Solomon Islanders about issues relating to resource development, it found that lecture-style meetings aroused little enthusiasm in the audience.
So in 1988, this non-government organisation decided to dramatise the issues and set up Sei! Akson Theatre. A public meeting on indigenous peoples' rights was organised by the Environmental Youth Alliance on April 8 in Sydney. At it, Sei! Akson Theatre performed jointly with the Awareness Community Theatre group from Papua New Guinea.
Both groups were in Australia to participate in the inaugural International Popular Theatre Exchange, hosted by Community Aid Abroad. This was held at the University of Western Sydney, Westmead, April 3-18. It involved popular theatre groups and non-government organisations from around the Asia-Pacific region.
The April 8 joint performance was apt. "The people in both the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea bear similar social and environmental costs of multinational corporations plundering our natural resources", said Francis Iro, an actor with Sei! Akson Theatre.
Drama has proved to be an effective tool for the SIDT's educational work. "It's a powerful way to communicate messages", said Iro. "It provides a very clear picture of what 'development' really is and the full nature of the destruction caused by the companies.
"The Solomons are very small, composed of only five big islands and maybe 2000 small ones. So when these huge companies from Australia, Japan and South Korea come in, the scale of their destructiveness is considerably heightened. They pollute everything — the soil, the water. They have large bulldozers and trucks, and when they leave, they leave the whole environment destroyed.
"The multinationals have also brought social problems. They have brought in lots of people from other countries to work for them, many who are responsible for sexual harassment in our villages. They have also disrupted traditional lifestyles, and have a real disrespect for our culture."
Awareness Community Theatre is a program of the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific, Papua New Guinea. Functioning as the outreach arm of the foundation, Awareness Community Theatre has a loose membership of 29 theatre groups in 16 provinces. Yasmin Padamsee, the program coordinator, agrees on the power of theatre to raise social and environmental awareness.
She believes it is particularly effective for dealing with sensitive issues, like AIDS awareness and domestic violence. "In Papua New Guinea, theatre is an ancient cultural tradition and serves as a very acceptable medium for speaking out", Padamsee said.
Awareness Community Theatre has been successful in warning villagers about the reality of "development". With illiteracy rates of 60% among women and 35% among men, the people are vulnerable to deception by multinationals.
"The companies, using local people to negotiate for them, make false promises to the villagers, who then sign something without fully knowing what it is — they just believe what they're told", said Padamsee. "And then soon after, these massive logging companies come in and start clear-felling and not taking into account certain things like sacred trees."
Another product of the multinationals is the intensifying of social inequalities.
"For example, in Enga Province, where Porgera — the second largest gold mine in Papua New Guinea — is located, only a small section of the people have received benefits. The multinationals have been very divisive.
"Also, at Porgera, they have all these ultra-modern facilities — the latest in telecommunications which allow calls to anywhere in the world. Yet, if
you go just outside the mine, you will not see any telephones or even electricity."
The environmental costs are just as great.
"Using ultra-modern technology, the mine takes out the gold as fast as it can from deep underground. In return, the people are just left with the devastated land and the dirtied river where the mine dumps its highly toxic wastes.
"The people there lead traditional lifestyles dependent on the natural environment. So it's very disturbing for them to see these Australians and British flying in and flying out at will doing what they like to their land."
With foreign aid often linked to private investment from developed countries — indeed, aid institutions like the World Bank are run like multinational corporations — Padamsee believes that the PNG government's hands are tied. "Most aid comes with certain strings attached", she said. "It's essentially a problem of the North-South divide."
Iro sees the problem similarly: "The Solomons government is starting to realise the people's problems and is applying regulations to the companies. But many do not comply, and there is only so much the government can do."
Both Iro and Padamsee agree that popular theatre can go beyond raising awareness.
"We're organising the youth in the villages with theatre. We're organising committees at the provincial level to hear complaints against the companies and to pressure the government with the people's demands", stated Iro.
Padamsee concurred, "For example, by doing a lot of landowner awareness, we got together a group of landowners in Ora Province who went to the government to demand their rights. So theatre is also a tool that can get people organised."