Bougainville women tell of Pacific's forgotten war

By Diana Taylor

BRISBANE (Reuters): It is the forgotten war, but the women on Bougainville island, site of the longest running armed conflict in the South Pacific, want to tell the world of the terror and suffering they have endured during the past 12 years.

As a deal to end the secessionist rebellion on the Papua New Guinea island nears, its women are demanding that those responsible for destroying their lives and leaving a generation of children psychologically scarred be brought to justice.

"There was indiscriminate killing -- people who were educated, people who worked for the government, the businessmen, everyone was targeted," said Bougainvillean Helen Hakea, who runs a peace group on the island which supports thousands of women widowed or abandoned during the fighting.

"The women were targeted because if they came to your home to look for your son or your husband, the women would be harassed, sexually, physically, with guns," she said.

"It was very difficult because even your family member could have been targeted, there was no trust at all," Hakea told Reuters on a visit to Australia.

An Amnesty International report in 1993 said both the PNG army on Bougainville and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) were carrying out summary executions, torture and rape.

Hakea cannot forget the terror she felt the day she gave birth to her son, Max, surrounded by 20 armed men demanding to know where her husband was hiding.

"I was so scared, I gave birth prematurely in an abandoned bank where the counter was used as the table," Hakea said.

"There was no incubator so every morning we put him out in the sun to warm him ... he wasn't completely formed, he was so tiny," she said.

"Another woman wasn't so lucky. She gave birth prematurely just after me in the bank and she died, but the baby survived. Every time I see that baby now, I think about the time I could have died as well," she said.

Ten days later, pro-government forces returned and burnt down Hakea's house, forcing her family to flee.

"I will never forget that day because of the terror, our entire village was burnt," she said. "The lady who died in labor after me was supposed to be buried, but her coffin was left on the side of the grave -- everybody ran."

To escape, Hakea and her crying children climbed down the side of a cliff and crawled into a cave.

"We stayed in the cave for five days and then we ran again to my mother's place ... Then my mother's village was attacked and the men lined up and beaten."

Landowner grievances against an Australian-operated copper mine in central Bougainville sparked the secessionist rebellion in 1988. The jungle-clad mountains gave the rebels, armed with home-made and World War II weapons, the advantage.

The establishment of a government-backed counter-insurgency force resulted in a fratricidal civil war which dragged on until 1997, but the rebels remained unbowed.

How many died on the cigar-shaped Bougainville island during its long and bloody conflict remains unclear.

Rebels say thousands died in fighting or from preventable illnesses caused by a lack of medicines during a four-year military blockade of the island.

But the government says the figure is in the hundreds.

Bougainville's women say they have kept a "bush census" of the deaths and are now digging up unmarked graves.

"Most of the dead were thrown into rivers and into the sea. In some villages there are no men left at all," Hakea said.

"We kept our own records, widows sent in information of their husbands killed and who was responsible. We think there are about 15,000 people who have died," she said.

Protracted peace talks since 1997 reached a breakthrough in March 2000 when the government agreed to a referendum on Bougainville within 15 years and an option for independence.

A disarmament agreement earlier this month has given Bougainvilleans hope that a comprehensive political agreement will be in place shortly.

Hakea said a final political solution for the island may be just around the corner, but the stories about what happened on Bougainville must not be forgotten.

"Children have witnessed the killing and disappearance of their family members -- we have a whole generation of people who need counseling," Hakea said.

"The horrible stories about what happened, these things are not documented ... it has to be known and people have to be prosecuted, to put the mothers at peace."