The prospect of peace in Bougainville: how it might be achieved through advocacy

Kendyl Bailey, a student journalist from QUT recently wrote this piece on Bougainville, sorcery and peace

Australia. Revered as the land of a ‘fair go’ and mateship; home of the humble barbeque. Though things more sinister transpire in our country’s borders (the latest calamity: should a much-loved Sri Lankan family be removed from detention and granted refugee status), Australia ranks fairly high on indices pertaining to health, opportunity and economic development. Above all, we experience peace. That’s more than can be said for our Melanesian neighbour; Papua New Guinea and specifically, its Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Bougainville and Buka, as well as some outlying islands, comprise the Region; and today, they face a grave threat; one, that is likely foreign to the average Australian.

Sorcery-related violence is just as it sounds: assaults and killings resulting from allegations of sorcery or sanguma. Papua New Guineans are being murdered and brutalised for their supposed dalliances with the supernatural. Claims often manifest in two ways: firstly, as a legitimate response to a death or other disaster, or secondly, as a scapegoating tactic, to be employed as a means of targeting an already-ostracised individual with whom one has a quarrel. For example: a child in the community encounters an untimely end; a local with few friends or family might be accused of killing through witchcraft. And then… the violence ensues. In the past decade, women have been burned alive in houses; a six-year-old girl was beaten and tortured with hot knives; and in Bougainville, a school teacher named Helen Rumbali was beheaded for malevolently bringing about the death of a colleague.

In PNG, this calibre of violence is pervasive and undoubtedly impinges on citizens’ quality of life. The Papua New Guinean legislation that sanctioned sorcery accusations as a defence for murder – the Sorcery Act 1971 – was repealed in 2013; a positive and due step towards severing the link between sorcery and violence. In 2015, the Sorcery National Action Plan (SNAP) was implemented PNG-wide to reflect a ‘less legislative’, ‘more holistic’, on-the-ground response. Nonetheless, sorcery-related crime and killings remain rife. Indeed, an Oxfam report titled, Understanding Gender-Based and Sorcery Related Violence in Papua New Guinea, reflects that between 2013 and 2016, 372 respondents complained of exposure to conflict resulting from sorcery.

In Bougainville, the data is harder to come by, but Australian National University academic, Dr Miranda Forsyth, has been “collecting cases of sorcery accusations and related violence” specific to the Region. In 2016 and 2017, Dr Forsyth’s team, “collected 124 different case studies”. “They involved 180 different accused, and about a third of those involved violence,” she said.

Such data is significant, given the legislation and SNAP should, in theory, have mitigated such violence. Adding an extra layer of complexity to the Bougainville context? An upcoming referendum for independence, slated to be held in November 2019. But how will a society that is required to demonstrate self-governance (to become independent) do so when good governance is inherently lacking?

Agnes Titus is a Bougainvillean resident and human rights defender who works for the Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation, which has been pivotal in campaigning for peace in post-Crisis Bougainville. She fears a vote of independence could serve to exacerbate an entrenched link between sorcery accusations and violence. “Going on our own… I’m just not sure. We need to be in a good place to exercise our independence. I fear that a lot of people will vote for it, because of the Conflict and the issues that have funnelled down… My ideal Bougainville would be independent, but we are not stable enough with what I’m seeing right now,” she said.

The Conflict she references is the Bougainville Civil War, which persisted from 1988 to 1998; arising in response to disputes over the distribution of mining profits and environmental effects of the Panguna copper mine on nearby communities. The War was fought between Papua New Guinean defence forces and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). Both sides wielded sorcery accusations as a device to not only overthrow prevailing leadership structures, but to actually murder combatants from the other side of the divide.

Sadly, many of the human rights violations committed during that time are still yet to be quantified. Titus would have been in her early 30s when the Conflict began. She describes it as a dark decade in Bougainville’s history. “It was a very scary time; a very sad time. Scary because you couldn’t trust anyone. There were different sections in the war, so many times, people’s assumptions… they would use them to get even with people or settle scores. And that’s where the sorcery accusation-related violence comes into play. A lot of people had unsettled business. They used sorcery as an excuse, and I can tell you that many, many, many people lost their lives during the Bougainville Crisis due to sorcery accusations”.

Titus makes reference to society’s almost idolatry of the ‘almighty gun’ – a totem of power to which we are wired to bow. One day, during the Conflict, the BRA’s leader, Francis Ona – armed with his own weapon – issued an order: that all sorcerers were to be killed. Perhaps this – a decree by a man, to be carried out by men – is what connects the intricate fabric of the past with that of the present. After all, today, men are disproportionately accused of sorcery in Bougainville, yet in other PNG provinces, claims are largely levelled against women. Verena Thomas is a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Senior Research Fellow and cofounder of the Yumi Sanap Strong initiative, which uses arts-based approaches to support human rights defenders and address sorcery-related violence. She indicates that while it is actually quite difficult to assess the role Ona’s edict has played in today’s setting, there remains a definitive need to eschew the confines of a bloodied history, in a mission to pave a new way forward. “Rather than allowing it to still be used as an excuse: ‘oh this is what we did in the Crisis’ – which is not necessarily what we’re finding, but I think subconsciously, it is a validation in people’s minds of the order given – we need to move on through advocacy,” she said.

Advocacy is not for the faint of heart in Bougainville. Human rights defenders, such as Agnes Titus, are the centre of a narrative demonstrating the important change-making roles women have occupied; roles, that have yielded improvements in providing counselling services, campaigning, and delivering education opportunities surrounding fundamental human rights.

Christine Ramsay, a Volunteer Service Abroad (VSA) worker stationed in Bougainville, agrees that education is key. “It is something that I am aware of and do keep in mind as I live in this community. I am careful not to do anything that could cause an accusation. We are well-briefed on this type of issue. One issue arose last year that did indirectly affect me. A young man from Busbin Village, where I live, drowned while spear fishing. His family, who are from another area, accused his companions of sorcery. Helen Hakena of LNWDA [Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency], who also lives in Busbin, managed to sort this out. It was quite a traumatic time… Care must be taken. But with thoughtfulness, it can be worked around. Organisations like Leitana and the Nazareth Centre are endeavouring to educate against sorcery accusations,” she said.

Ultimately, beliefs in sorcery are ingrained. According to Dr Forsyth, traditions are innately regional; meaning, the way in which they manifest in Bougainville contrasts starkly with other areas of PNG. In Enga Province, sorcery is preserved by a belief that women wield an ability to remove people’s hearts for consumption. Conversely, in the Highlands, kumo sorcery dictates that there is a particular animal spirit – a rat or dog, for example – residing in a human body that comes out to feed when the person (or ‘vessel’) is sleeping. Titus’ own experience saw her grow up believing her future father-in-law – a local of her town – was a ‘poisen man’ who carried dangerous items in his basket. Although, deep down, Agnes didn’t really believe the allegations – instead adhering to a hybrid scientific-religious belief system, into which the ‘poisen man’ theory did not fit – she remained wary of her soon-to-be relative until adulthood. At that point, she knew she could no longer perpetuate a false and damaging narrative.

Still, there are barriers to advocacy efforts that extend far beyond what is generally perceived as the principal issue: being, a ubiquitous belief in sorcery or the supernatural. Firstly, resources are scare; particularly, for people living in the villages. In the case of Helen Rumbali – the Bougainvillean woman murdered by beheading in 2013 – police were outnumbered and forced to turn away by a weapon-clad, angry mob. Likewise, tangible resources – such as accommodation, as is provided by the Nazareth Centre – are being overwhelmed by the number of people fleeing their accusers. “There has been a flow of people coming to the safe house in Chabai. Right now, there is a family who are at the Centre because they have been accused of sorcery. The mother and father. Their property was destroyed so they went to the Centre… Really, the safe houses are for women and children; they’re not meant for men,” Titus said.

Despite the leaps and bounds women and other stakeholders – such as the creators of Yumi Sanap Strong – have made in advocating for the right to life, there is still work to be done. “We need to go at the community level where different groups are involved. In our arts-based approaches, we look at empathy and the way people are affected by violence, and how that creates advocacy among audiences. So, then we have discussions of who might have been affected by violence, and we talk about the impact of that within their communities and families and to individuals, which allows for discussions where others (who are perpetrators or who might believe in certain ways of doing things) can rethink about the impact of what they’re doing,” Verena Thomas says.

Meanwhile, Agnes Titus’ assessment is simpler. “We need to keep going. We need to try harder”.