The Post Courier reports that church leaders acknowledged that after arriving in the region a hundred years ago, different denominations had created division among the people.

This disunity continued on through the crisis years of Bougainville's civil war in the 1990s.Read more

The referendum - tentatively scheduled for next June - will mark the end of a 20-year peace process that followed the end of the Bougainville civil war in the 1990s.

The people of Bougainville will be asked whether they want the national parliament to agree to either greater autonomy or full independence. Continue reading

Source:

Radio NZ

Simon Dumarinu is a first time member of parliament. He narrowly defeated former Mining Minister Sam Akoitai in the Central Bougainville Open seat in the recent Papua New Guinea general election.

A Barapang clansman (Eagle clan) from Orami Village, Ioro, Panguna District, Dumarinu is a member of the Social Democratic Party.

As a member of the Society of Mary, he served as a priest for 28 years and as a religious worker for 34 years.

Fr Ben McKenna, Marist provincial of Oceania confirmed Dumarinu is now suspended from priestly ministry and in the process of being dismissed.

This is not the first time Dumarinu has stood for public office.

In 2015 he took part in the Autonomous Bougainville election for the presidency but lost to former Catholic priest John Momis.

While a deacon and after priestly ordination, Dumarinu worked in Bougainville from 1989 to 1997 at the height of the Bougainville conflict.

A peace agreement to settle the conflict was signed in 2001.

Dumarinu worked for six years in the Solomon Islands before returning to parish work in Bougainville.

In 2010 he joined the Bougainville Peace Building Programme.

He says his focus as Minister of Bougainville Affairs is to ensure the Peace Agreement is properly implemented.

The Bougainville Peace Agreement, which was signed in 2001, is due to reach its conclusion with a referendum on possible independence from Papua New Guinea in June of 2019.

Please Note: This post has been amended.

Sources

• RNZ
• Papua New Guinea Mine Watch
• Asia Pacific Report
• Post Courier
• Image: The National

He said this during his speech at Teituno village in the Wisai area of Buin in south Bougainville while witnessing a reconciliation ceremony in May.

The reconciliation saw the families of late Raphael Duake and Lucy Rukume who are brother and sister coming together once again after a ten year conflict that kept them disunited.

The conflict that affected the livelihood of the two families and the people of Wisai arose from differences and misunderstandings between the two families.

This led to killings that saw both families losing their loved ones.

The reconciliation ceremony began with a para-liturgy led by Unabali followed by a buai chewing and tree planting ceremonies.

In his speech, Bishop Unabali challenged the people of Bougainville to be true witnesses of peace.

Almost every family in the islands of Bougainville, an autonomous region of about 300,000 people in the Pacific Island state of Papua New Guinea, has a story to tell of death and suffering during the decade long civil war (1989-1998), known as ‘the Crisis'.

Yet fifteen years after the 2001 peace agreement, there is no accurate information about the scale of atrocities which occurred to inform ongoing peace and reconciliation efforts being supported by the government and international donors.

Now members of civil society and grassroots communities are concerned that lack of truth-telling and transitional justice is hindering durable reconciliation.

"I believe there should be a truth telling program here and I think the timing is right," Helen Hakena, Director of the Leitana Nehan Women's Development Agency, a local non-government organisation, told Inter Press Service.

"It is nearly twenty years [since the conflict] and some people have moved on with their lives, while there are others who have just cut off all sense of belonging because they are still hurting."

Unabali, concurs. "Truth is absolutely necessary, there is no doubt it is an absolutely necessary thing for peace and justice," he declared.

Source

• wantokniuspepa.com
• ipsnews.net
• Image: screenshot: youtube.com

The Bougainville Motocross Club has proved immensely popular and has helped turn around the lives of people who were affected by the war.

The club's founding president, Emilroy Augustine, said the club had toured across Bougainville.

Augustine, who fought in the war, said he had used his own experiences to help other former combatants.

"We got to remote places and do a bit of a motocross show and all this, some freestyle with our bikes," he told Pacific Beat.

"Then we'll bring our little loud hailers and do our awareness campaigns on weapons disposal and the peace treaty."

Bougainville was administered by Australia after the end of World War II in 1945 until Papua New Guinea gained independence in 1975.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 Bougainvillieans are estimated to have died in the civil war, which saw clashes between secessionists and anti-secessionists from PNG and within Bougainville, between 1989 and 1998.

The conflict has been described as the largest in Oceania since World War II.

Source

• abc.net.au
• Image: abc.net.au

He had just returned, on Saturday evening, from visiting small Christian communities at Tohatsi, Hanahan parish, hearing confessions of school children preparing for first communion.

Michael was the superior the Koromira Marist community on Buka in Bougainville.

He had previously been superior of the Bougainville region of the Oceania province of the Society of Mary.

The Bishop of Port Vila (Vanuatu), Jean Bosco Barames trained for the priesthood with Michael.

Jean Bosco and Tondicop studied together for ten years.

Jean Bosco recalls that they both came from small islands and they met for the first time in 1973 during their first year at St Joseph's High School in Rigu (Kieta), where they studied from 1973 to 1976.

They then went on to St Peter Chanel, in Ulapia, Rabaul, a kind of minor seminary, to complete years 11 and 12.

"I can't say that Michael was a young man with an aptitude for study but he was someone who was strong in his faith and his prayer, and an athlete. He played Rugby League and showed quite remarkable ability," said Jean Bosco.

"At the end of 1978 we completed our schooling and since we were Marist aspirants, Father Ed Duffy, the regional superior at the time, sent us to the south of Bougainville to stay with families for a few months, in the parish of Tabago."

In late 1979, they went to Fiji to prepare for their novitiate, which began in 1980.

They were professed together in January 1981 and went back to Papua New Guinea where from 1981 to 1983 they studied for the priesthood at Holy Spirit Seminary in Bomana.

They eventually parted company at the end of 1983, meeting up again in 1987, one or two weeks before their ordination to the priesthood, which took place on 4 December 1987.

After ordination Michael was appointed to work in Bougainville and John went to New Caledonia.

They worked together again in Bougainville from 2000 to 2002.

Getsi says her success is an important symbol for all Bougainvillean women.

She was competing against 11 men and did particularly well through the second preference votes re-allocated from unsuccessful candidates.

A total of 342 candidates contested the election, which included 33 constituency seats, three reserved seats for women in parliament, three reserved for former combatants and the seat of president.

Getsi was among 11 women who challenged male candidates for an open seat in their respective regions.

Helen Hakena, from the Leitana Nehan Women's Development Agency, was with Getsi when the results were declared last Tuesday night.

Hakena said the newly-elected MP was left dumbfounded by the result.

"When she heard that they declared her the winner, she sat down in her chair without speaking, she had tears in her eyes,"

Source

• fbc.com.fj.
• radionz.co.nz
• radioaustralia.net.au
• radioaustralia.net.au
• Image: abc.net.au

The Red Cross helped formulate the policy and says it's ready to help locate, identify and return human remains.

Listen to Interview

The new approach could see the possible exhumation of remains and their return to their families for traditional burial as a way of bringing closure to the conflict.

A Bougainville-based delegate of the ICRC, Tobias Koehler, says the process is a big step forward.

"Because it acknowledges suffering by the families of missing persons related to the crisis and we are very much in favour of this policy because it clearly acknowledges a humanitarian approach. Accountability and justice should not stand in the way of families finding answers about what happened to their loved ones."

The Bougainville Civil War has been described as the largest conflict in Oceania since the end of the Second World War, with about 15,000 to 20,000 people killed.

Source

• Radio Australia International
• Radio New Zealand International
• Image: i.ytimg.com

Most of the 2700 people on the Carteret Atoll are relocating to Bougainville after their home islands have become increasingly uninhabitable.

The atoll, made up of six islets, has suffered saltwater intrusion, contaminating freshwater wells and making it impossible for the islanders to farm taro.

The Catholic Church has provided the islanders with four parcels of land on Bougainville.

The first group of families - 86 people in total - have moved into their new homes and started farming again.

The resettlement of some 2000 people is being led by Ursula Rakova from the Cartaret Atoll, who used to work for Oxfam New Zealand.

Ms Ravola spoke about the experience of resettlement to a "Summit on Women and Climate" in Bali, Indonesia, last week.

Several hundred elderly people are staying on the atoll as they cannot bear to leave their home, which is three hours by boat from the Bouganville main island.

Many things have had to be considered in the resettlement, Ms Rakova told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

These include education of young people, health facilities, economic opportunities for the islanders, and trauma counselling for the families and the host community, she said.

All of this requires money, which was not forthcoming, from the Papua New Guinea government or anywhere else.

It was especially difficult to get funding for building proper housing.

Small amounts of seed money from the New Zealand High Commission in Papua New Guinea and the Global Greengrants Fund helped with a resettlement process which included community profiling and assessment.

This resulted in the islanders owning land, a home and a sustainable way of living in their new location.

An organic cocoa company has been set up to help them earn income.

Sources

• Thomson Reuters Foundation
• Image: New York Times

He says that since the Report has not yet been formally presented to the Government, he is not "prepared to go into a point by point rebuttal of the findings".

"But on the basis of what has surfaced, the UN sponsoring body should immediately withdraw the report and apologise to the people of Bougainville and by extension to the people of Papua New Guinea."

"The report cannot in any way be an accurate empirical study of certain social conditions in Bougainville and has served to engender stereotypical reporting that does not enhance the social indices of Bougainville," he said.

Source

• PNG Attitude
• Image: Radio Australia

The UN Gender Violence Survey was released last week and included assertions that some of the highest rates of sexual violence in the Asia/Pacific region occur in the province. Continue reading

He says he considers the link to be so unfaltering that when he baptizes a new member of the church or confirms someone or even when he ordains a priest, he asks individuals to plant 10 trees as a way to give rise to new life.

Such an act of faith is one way he prayerfully encourages people to help stem the rapid pace of climate change.

"(I) use this situation, which is going to be affecting us more drastically than probably in the past, to help people recapture our relationship to the environment," he said.

"We must entrench something in our lives to continue this environmental concern, respect and care."

Bishop Unabali was in Washington to open a three-day symposium highlighting the urgent calls from Pope Benedict XVI on the importance of Catholics acting on behalf of an increasingly fragile environment in the face of climate change.

The event was hosted by The Catholic University of America

Source

• CNS
• Image: CNS

Sister Garasu told Radio Australia that the government is making a great effort to address the situation, but more needs to be done.

"In my work I don't talk about lost generation, I know that's the term used for young people in Bougainville who are struggling to get out of their experience from the crisis. What I talk about is young people, and I believe that if you keep labelling people then psychologically it does not help.

"So I talk about young people and the young people that I work with they come from all over Bougainville, and I believe that these young people they have potential it's just that they have never been given the opportunity. And for me there's really no lost generation. I think what we need to understand here is that the young people are there, what they have lost is time, time and opportunity."

Source

• Radio Australia
• Image: New Dawn on Bougainville

Fifteen cases required admission and have already been treated and discharged. The death toll still stands at two but the disease has spread across Gogohe and Hutjena.

The Cholera Task Force is now looking at strict measures to contain the epidemic from causing more deaths and to further prevent it from spreading all over Bougainville. The age group most affected are between the ages of 10-15 year olds and most cases reported revealed that more girls are affected.

Source
PINA