Panguna is burning again, and the plan it is meant to fund is showing its cracks

by M. J. PASSINGAN

In the early hours of 13 September, more than 30 men armed with high-powered rifles drove into Panguna and attacked staff of Lloyds Metals and Energy Limited. Machinery was torched and a man was killed. President Ishmael Toroama responded with defiance, saying the attack would only strengthen his government's resolve to enforce its mandate to reopen the mine. His Veterans Minister, Lynus Dake Junior, went further, insisting it was not a protest or land grievance but a crime driven by greed and criminal elements.

That framing is convenient, and it is incomplete. Samson Kaissy, who chairs the Panguna Landowners Interim Council and supports Toroama, said the attackers were unauthorised gold panners angry at being displaced by the mine's reopening. People losing their livelihood to a mine project is a land grievance. It is the same kind of grievance that closed Panguna in the first place, shut in 1989 amid protests over environmental damage and how the revenue was shared.

The stakes have never been higher. The ABG's final position is that Bougainville should move into self-government in 2027 and then independence in 2030. Panguna is the economic engine of that plan. Toroama has repeatedly described reopening the mine as essential to Bougainville's economic independence, and the remaining reserves are valued at about A$160 billion at current prices. One contractor has become the load-bearing wall of a nation-building project.

So the process that chose that contractor deserves scrutiny. Lloyds' own chairman describes the company as an iron-ore producer, and it was authorised on 7 August only for preparatory works and feasibility activities. Reporting says Toroama bypassed a government tender and told Bougainville Copper Limited to stop talking to China Molybdenum. In June, the ABG rescinded BCL's exploration permit. An OCCRP investigation also reported that the President accepted a Lloyds offer to pay for his wife's life-saving kidney surgery before signing the deal. None of this establishes wrongdoing. All of it is the kind of process question that, left unanswered in Buka, eventually gets answered with violence in the hills.

Then there is security. Police say Lloyds has started building dongas to house police posts at Loloho, Morgan junction and the Panguna township. When a foreign mining company builds the police's accommodation, it is fair to ask whose interests those police will be seen to protect. Bougainvilleans do not need reminding where that question led last time.

Port Moresby has not covered itself in glory either. Trade Minister Richard Maru rushed to say he had warned Lloyds off Panguna, adding that he "feared the very outcome that has now transpired". A national minister publicly calling a region uninvestable is not neutral commentary while ratification is stalled and the ABG accuses the national government of what appears to be a strategy to make ratification fail. Both governments are using Panguna as leverage, and neither is owning the risk.

Nine suspects are in custody and police are searching for 19 more. Arrests will deal with the arsonists. They will not deal with the underlying problem. A mine meant to finance a new nation has to earn the consent of the people living beside it, including the panners the plan never accounted for. Publishing the Lloyds agreement, releasing the selection record, and answering the OCCRP findings would do more for 2030 than any show of resolve.