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News > May 31, 2007

Fighting Corporate Copper in Bougainville

Multinational polluter Rio Tinto sued under Alien Tort Claims Act for causing deaths of 10,000 Papua New Guineans

By Kari Lydersen

Children of Resistance and Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) guerillas arrive at the signing of the Bougainville Cease-fire Agreement in Arawa on Bougainville on April 30.

Bougainville, a small Pacific island belonging to Papua New Guinea in the volcanic “Ring of Fire,” has had a rough go of it. It endured a series of colonialist regimes (including Germany, Japan and Australia), was blitzed by U.S. forces during World War II, and has been assaulted by tsunamis, most recently on April 1. It also suffered one of history’s most brutal rapes of natural resources—the massive Panguna copper mine run by a subsidiary of the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto from 1972 until 1988.

Now, it appears Bougainville residents may finally get a measure of justice against the forces that caused extensive deforestation, pollution and military repression that allegedly led to the deaths of more than 10,000 islanders.

A lawsuit filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which allows foreign nationals to sue corporations in U.S. courts, demands Rio Tinto remedy environmental devastation from the mine and pay restitution to tens of thousands of residents who were displaced, sickened or lost family members from either the mine’s operations or the decade of war that raged after an uprising forced its closure.

The lawsuit was filed in 2000 in San Francisco, since Rio Tinto has a subsidiary called Rio Tinto Borax located in the Mojave Desert in California. In 2002, the suit was dismissed at the behest of the State Department, which argued it would interfere with the country’s peace process that in 2005 resulted in the election of Bougainville’s first autonomous government.

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals, against the wishes of the Bush administration, affirmed its 2006 decision that the lawsuit could proceed.

“If the case does go forward, the company intends to establish that the plaintiffs’ allegations against Rio Tinto are false and that Rio Tinto is not liable for the injuries that the plaintiffs claim,” says company spokesperson Christina Mills, who declined to comment further.

Berman says Rio Tinto will likely try to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. “This certainly is a lead case now in the issue of deference to the State Department,” says Berman. “Usually if the government says we don’t want this case to go forward, it won’t go forward. But this court said it won’t defer to the Executive Branch.” Since 1993, approximately 36 human rights abuse suits have been filed against corporations under the Act. More than half have been dismissed, but others have resulted in large financial settlements.

Bougainville is located at the far western tip of the Solomon Islands archipelago about 500 miles from mainland Papua New Guinea, and its residents are ethnically and culturally distinct from those of the mainland.

The copper lode has been central to Bougainville’s struggle for independence from Papua New Guinea, which itself won independence from Australia in 1975 but refused to grant Bougainville independence for fear of losing the mineral resources.

In November 1988, militants forced the mine to close through blowing up power pylons and other acts of sabotage. For a decade following the mine’s closure, a war raged between the Bougainville Revolutionary Army and Papua New Guinean and Australian military forces trying to quell the independence movement and reopen the mine. By the time a ceasefire was signed in 1998, more than 10,000 Bougainville residents—about one-tenth of the island’s population—had been killed.

The lawsuit alleges that, in addition to the 10,000 dead, the mine also caused the destruction of a way of life—the matrilineal tribal and subsistence fishing and farming culture that earned it the name “Sacred Island.” “A deep sense of social malaise set in, which expressed itself in clan tensions, depression, alcohol abuse, rage, traffic accidents and incidents of violence—all distress signals of a people severed from their roots,” the suit claims.

The suit quotes tribal leader Perpetua Serero, who says, “We don’t grow healthy crops anymore, our traditional customs and values have been disrupted and we have become mere spectators as our earth is being dug up, taken away and sold for millions.”

Kari Lydersen, an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based journalist writing for publications including The Washington Post, the Chicago Reader and The Progressive.

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  • Reader Comments

    The head and subhead make this sound like an outrage has been committed, but what’s with the photo of kids billed as the Bougainville Revolutionary Army?

    I wonder why Bougainville “...was blitzed by U.S. forces during World War II...”!?!

    Is it possible that Kari is just too young to know any better way to put it, or was this intended as a slam, because she dislikes the current administration?

    In any case it makes me wonder about the objectivity of the rest of her reporting. How much is accurate — how much is hyperbole?

    Posted by whattheheck on May 31, 2007 at 1:25 PM

    I know Bougainville well, having spent time there before and after the fighting (the recent fighting).  There’s some confusion in the article, but I suspect that’s because of her sources. 

    The kids, whose headdresses identify them as from the inland north of the island, are billed as “children of ... guerillas.” So it’s not a bad caption, except it implies that the ceasefire happened just this week—no!  It was several years ago. 

    I’m not sure I’d have used “blitzed” to describe that the U.S. forces did during WW II, but it’s close.  There are many sources that fairly describe the fighting on Bougainville during WWII.  The idea was to avoid fighting the approx 100,000 Japanese soldiers on Bougainville by making a quick and forceful landing at Torokina, on the W Coast, and securing the area effectively enough to construct an airstrip that could launch fighters that could protect bombers headed for Rabaul.  The US did not want to engage the Japanese beyond what was necessary to get the airstrip running.  This tactic was successful. 

    Berman (I couldn’t find any further identification of him in the article, which is probably an editing error—Berman is a partner in Hagen-Berman, a large and active law firm) , and his co workers and allies are strongly associated with the BRA, which was, and is, only one of the factions on the island.  As an example of this, I’ll use “Sacred Island.” Only one splinter group of the BRA - the last of Francis Ona’s crowd—refers to Bougainville as “Mekamui,” which in the Nasioi language (only one of the 14 languages spoken on the island) means “Holy/Sacred Island.” I’d say that probably 90% of the island’s inhabitants do not use this name at all.  Ona and his group did not participate in the post-ceasefire political work on Bougainville.

    There are other errors, but they don’t amount to much, really. 

    However, the past and current political situation on Bougainville is made to seem much simpler than it is, and was.  The situation there is still complex and fluid.  During the fighting there were at least four armed groups—three local, plus the PNG Defence Forces.  The three local groups fought each other as well as the PNGDF.  Most of the reporting and analysis-at-a-distance talk only about the BRA, which over-simplifies the situation.  But it’s hard to see how a journalist at the Washington Post would have enough background knowledge to ask Berman to talk a little more carefully about Bougainville politics.

    There’s no doubt of the destruction the mine caused (I’m an eyewitness here...) but the extent to which it caused enviromental problems all over the island remains unclear.  Certainly in the central portion it was an absolute disaster.  And of course its social effects extended over the whole island.

    The number of dead from the crisis is also hard to calculate, because of the collateral effects.  Far fewer than 10,000 were killed through violence, but many died from lack of food and medicine, etc. 

    There’s a large literature on Bougainville.  Google is your friend here (if you want to check up on the article).  Use “Panguna” (the name of the mine site), Bougainville Copper, Nasioi, Kieta, Arawa, Jaba River, Francis Ona, Joseph Kabui...others will suggest themselves to you if you get interested.  You’ll find the usual wide range of politics and opinion, of course. 

    Finally, if you want to see the island, use Google Earth (or other) to navigate to about 6-19S, 155-30E and you can see what’s left of the mine (it’s that gigantic orange hole).  Note the river system running W from the mine—or I should say what used to be a river system.  Google Earth has “Paguna” shown in two places—the one near Taruba is an error. 

    Bottom line is that although there are errors I’d say that the reporting is acceptable, except for the lack of information about Berman, which should have been easily available.

    Posted by mono_kakata on Jun 1, 2007 at 5:11 AM

    mono,

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Most issues are more complex than what we hear due to sound bite reporting and the short attention span of most of us. I’ve always blamed that on our “education” by advertising — Before/After, Bad/Good, Expensive/Cheaper. All Black or White, skipping the wide range of grays.

    Posted by whattheheck on Jun 1, 2007 at 9:25 AM

    mono,

    To me “blitz” is what Nazi Germany did to London each night for about two months in 1940 — deliberate targeting of civilian areas. This author may see it in a different way — probably just a youthful oversight.

    Posted by whattheheck on Jun 1, 2007 at 2:05 PM

    whattheheck --

    You’re right about the blitz for london.  I was thinking about blitzkreig, lightning-quick strike, overpowering in nature.  So in that sense only I think the US blitzed the Japanese.  I’m travelling right now, visiting my 25 year old son, who tells me that his generation uses “blitz” as in get in, do the job, get out. 

    Harry Gailey, historian, wrote an interesting book “Bougainville, The Forgotten War,” about the US forces on Bougainville 1943—the Torokina landing.  Among the interesting points is that the US army tossed one of its african-american battalions (regiment?  I don’t have the book with me) into battle with no tropical warfare training because, Gailey shows, they figured that the soldiers would be naturally suited to jungle warfare.  Really.  Well, obviously they were not.  The Bougainville people I worked with were quite struck by seeing black people in uniform and with weapons. 

    One more item—Executive Solutions / Sandline, the mercenary group, was hired by the PNG government to attempt to retake the mine, kill Ona, and so on.  This is only interesting because the leader of this mercenary bunch is now working organizing security for the US in Iraq.  Again, I’m not home and can’t give more references but if it interests you I’m sure you can chase it down via google.  The attack on Bougainville never happened.

    Posted by mono_kakata on Jun 1, 2007 at 7:18 PM

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