Source: PNG Mine Watch

Only a truly great thinker can capture historical motion with such accuracy, that their words can serve as a compass for the years ahead. Francis Ona’s historic address, written in 1989, could have been read out yesterday on the steps of Bougainville’s parliament.

We were forced to become passive observes of our own exploitation, first by the racist colonial administration and after independence by the black political leaders in whitemen’s coats.

We are the ‘sacrificial lamb’ for the few capitalists whose hunger for wealth is quenchless and unceasing. The leaders of this country have easily befriended foreign capitalists and multinational companies and they will continue to maintain these relations with their foreign allies

As far as we are concerned the political leaders of this country do not represent the interest of their people but instead their own material interests. They are more and more interested in building their own individual empires at the expense of the silent majority. That is why their major preoccupations are foreign investments and creation of business partnerships with foreign capitalists”