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The 'Bougainville Province', also known as 'North Solomons Province', is an autonomous province in Papua New Guinea and is the largest of the Solomon Islands group. The largest island is 'Bougainville Island', and the capital is Arawa. The province also includes the adjacent island of Buka and assorted outlying islands including the Carterets. The population of the province is 175,160 (2000 census).
Bougainville Island is ecologically and geographically, although not politically, part of the Solomon Islands. Buka, Bougainville, and most of the Solomons are part of the Solomon Islands rain forests ecoregion.

Contents

History

See also

Further reading

External links

History

:''Main article: History of Bougainville''

The island was named after the French navigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville (whose name has also been lent to the creeping tropical flowering vines of the genus Bougainvillea ). In 1885 it came under German administration as part of German New Guinea. Australia occupied it in 1914 and, as a League of Nations mandatory power, administered it from 1918 until the Japanese invaded in 1942 and then again from 1945 until PNG independence in 1975, as a United Nations mandatory power.
The island was occupied by Australian, American and Japanese forces in World War II. It was an important base for the USAAF, RAAF and RNZAF. On March 8, 1944 during World War II, American forces were attacked by Japanese troops on Hill 700 on this island. The battle lasted five days, ending with a Japanese retreat.
The island is rich in copper and gold. A large mine was established at Panguna in the early 1970s by Bougainville Copper Limited, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto.

Disputes over the environmental impact, financial benefits, and social change brought by the mine renewed a secessionist movement that had been dormant since the 1970s. It developed into a civil conflict that lasted nearly a decade and claimed up to 20,000 lives. The Papua New Guinean government requested the help of Sandline International, a private military company previously involved in supplying mercenaries in the civil war in Sierra Leone, to put down the rebellion. This resulted in the Sandline scandal.
The conflict ended in 1997, after negotiations brokered by New Zealand. A peace agreement finalised in 2000 provided for the establishment of an Autonomous Bougainville Government, and for a referendum in the future on whether the island should become politically independent.
Elections for the first Autonomous Government were held in May and June of 2005. On June 15 2005, Joseph Kabui was elected President.
On July 25, 2005 rebel leader Francis Ona died after a short illness. A former surveyor with Bougainville Copper Limited, Ona was a key figure in the secessionist conflict and had refused to formally join the island's peace process.

See also

★ Noah Musingku - businessman, warlord and Bougainville separatist leader.

★ Bougainville campaign (1943–45)

★ Empress Augusta Bay

★ Battle of Empress Augusta Bay

★ North Solomon Islands

★ Francis Ona

Further reading

★ Douglas Oliver, ''Bougainville: A Personal History'' (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1973)

★ Douglas Oliver, ''Black Islanders: A Personal Perspective of Bougainville, 1937–1991'' (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1991) [Repeats text from 1973 and updates with summaries of Papua New Guinea press reports on the Bougainville Crisis]

★ Paul Quodling, ''Bougainville: The Mine And The People''

★ Regan, Anthony and Griffin, Helga (eds.) 2005. ''Bougainville Before the Crisis''. Canberra: Pandanus Books.

★ Robert Young Pelton, Hunter Hammer and Heaven, Journeys to Three World's Gone Mad. ISBN 1-58574-416-6

External links

★ UN Map #4089 — United Nations map of the vicinity of Bougainville Island, PDF format

★ Conciliation Resources - Bougainville Project

★ The Bougainville Conflict

★ The Coconut Revolution, a documentary film about the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.