By DOUGLAS EVAMIER
IN A rare but expected political feat, Australia’s incumbent and courageous new Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (KR) apologized this week to his indigenous population for the plight of the infamous ‘lost generation’.
These were then aboriginal children forcibly, perhaps involuntarily taken away and kept in designated foster homes by so called missionaries without parental or community consent which in retrospect, a part of Australia’s failed integration projects.
Rudd has undoubtedly become the only Prime Minister since Federation to have offered such reconciliatory gesture. The other Australian leader to have ever attempted to come anywhere close was Sir Willian Deane, the country’s former Governor General through an apology.
It is hoped that the apology will act as a catalyst towards manifesting the end of centuries of racial animosity, hatred and defiant reconciliation toward infusing the healing of a racial hemorrhage that has been gleaning Australia’s reputation globally.
A simple sorry is all that the aboriginals have been seeking and Rudd has been nothing but Godsend, standing tall among a league of other Prime Minister’s before him most of whom are now mere epitaphs in Australia’s history.
This is Australia in the 21st century attempting a final and hopefully its best score yet to extinguish racial overtones that has for centuries kept assimilation and integration poles apart. Depending on how keen readers of Australian politics will make of the reverberations that will result with this socio-political project, the fact remains - Australia is genuinely repentant for the forced and involuntary displacement of its own people within its borders.
It is the move that is set to bridge the racial divide and act as a catalyst in spurring a fresh new direction toward the promotion of peaceful co-existence, racial harmony and tolerance. Ultimately, Rudd is adamant the sorry will augment toward a cross-cultural fertilization of progressive development based on peaceful co-existence between its original inhabitants and the different ethnic groups that proudly make up multicultural Australia.
Similarly and perhaps not dynamically quite the same, in the not so far away town of Kokopo, in PNG’s New Britain Island stands Ronnie Kointuo, himself a first generation descendent of a dragooned indentured labourer originally from Ambukanja, East Sepik Province.
Ronnie has dedicated himself the task of seeking some form of liberation for his peers. There is no doubt about his youthful energy, intelligence and enthusiasm in driving his agenda representing some 30 - 40,000 population of the so called ‘Vairas’, the likened local version of displaced people. He has subscribed the attention of East New Britain Governor Leo Dion whom he is working with to assist in endeavors to address this generational issue and attract outside attention and interest to the plight of what he aptly called ‘PNG’s own version of a lost generation’.
Lost they are indeed, says Ron in a recent interview. This number of people currently ‘infest’ the East New Britain Province - children, grand children and great grand children - nothing but human remnants of German colonialist Governor Albert Hahl’s and the infamous Neu Guinea Kompangnie’ (NGK) and Berlin’s Melanesian Possession boss, Adolph von Hansmann’s so called ‘indentured labour’ scheme. These people have hopelessly been left stranded in East New Britain without actually knowing where exactly to go.
Ron argues that a couple of generation of people were born at the plantation to the young men from the Mamose, The Highlands and parts of the Island’s region known throughout the entire New Britain Island as ‘Vairas’.
‘They have lost every human value and dignity,.... heritage such as indigenous customs, customary land ownerships.....they are the lowest class citizen in this country in terms of equal rights and benefits .......this group is lost in every sense’.
They have ‘missed out on basic government services such as education, health and other social and economic services’ because ‘their very low pay of PGK30 per fortnight’ simply cannot sustain them and their families as they succumb daily to the pressure and humiliation of a high degree of local discrimination and indignity’.
He believes that their ‘Vaira’ status systematically prevents Government awareness program on development issues reaching these ethnic category whilst they continue to suffer from abject poverty. Illiteracy is very high amongst this population, coupled with very poor living condition and in many cases these are posing as health hazard and unfit for human habitation and survival.
‘Transpose these denials against the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the Social, Economic and Cultural Rights and PNG’s own constitutional guarantee of equal opportunity and participation makes the Vairas as we know them in this nation a complete laughing stock. By UN standards, he quipped, Vairas are not even qualified to be called human beings’.
Whatever way one views the plight of both Rudd’s aboriginal ‘lost generation’ and Ron’s ‘vairas’, both scenarios however reveal the dynamics relating to the plight of the world’s displaced and stateless peoples phenomenon. The reasons and circumstances triggering displacement and statelessness are many and of varying proportion. The global Refugee situation is the penultimate of such phenomenon. In others, it may be accidents in history or are merely development induced displacement.
In a wide ranging survey of development induced displacement/relocation, World Bank expert Michael Cernea concluded recently that such displacement leads to various forms of impoverishment: landlessness, homelessness, joblessness, economic marginalization, increased morbidity, food insecurity, loss of access to common property and social disintegration. The impact of displacement on indigenous populations can be particularly severe in social and psychological terms, as it entails a severance of sacred ties to their land and culture.
It seems Rudd is on the eve of compensating an act of displacement committed by its past history with the trillion dollar word. Unfortunately for Ron, he has a big task in front of him if indeed he is serious in seeking liberation of his 30-40,000 Vairas out of a colonially induced predicament.
Ron is adamant he ought to flip back into time in settling his mental premonitions. His answers lie in his ability to unravel the rationale for the indentured labour scheme and its associated merit and risk, particularly the firm basis why it was imposed upon an unsuspecting culture of people during critical periods in history. Most obvious is the question of whether the ‘indentured labour scheme’ was indeed a deliberate colonialist design to drive between the formal outlawing of slavery and abolishment of the slave trade to satisfy the economic motive of Berlin to allow its Melanesian possessions continue operating by commercial concessions through NGK to feed its war ravaged economy at that time. Further questions arise whether Berlin bears direct responsibility for the seemingly deliberate act by Hansmann for targeting young Mamose and PNG Highlands men to be dragooned into conscription and sent to the labour lines in the early 1800s under the paternalistic force of the tultuls, luluais and kukurais.
‘The Pacific labour trade had not reached North East mainland New Guinea and villagers knew nothing of indentured labour until the arrival of the Neu Guinea Kompagnie (NGK), Stewart Firth wrote in his book ‘New Guinea under the Germans’.
‘.....(Adolph von) Hansmann’s most serious miscalculations was to expect peoples of coastal Kaiser Whilemsland (now Mamose) to provide labour for his plantations’.
‘Work on contract provided adventure, travel and a useful supply of European goods and was for most New Guineans a matter of choice’.
Ron is convinced the indentured labour scheme which Vairas were subjected to was a subtle and advertent version of the act of ‘slavery’ and ‘serious miscalculations’ or not, Tultuls, Luluais and Kukurais had been deliberate institutions of choice to take charge, maintain control and have young men dragooned under threat of punishment and inducement into contract work. These institutions ensured a haven for labour recruiters.
‘What we have today is a generation of plantation workers who are descendants of the plantation slaves forced to work in the plantations in the 1900s. Most pioneer workers were forced against their free will by the colonial governments of Germany, Australia and the Catholic Church to come to East New Britain and other NGI Provinces.
‘They were given a three year contract to work on newly acquired portions of land to clear forest and plant coconuts. The contract term was abandoned and most plantation workers were left stranded here with no repatriation schemes or resettlement programme for them to go back to their home provinces.
‘Two (2) world wars came, the decolonization took place and independence was granted to the new state of PNG. The ownership of plantations changed hands with the departing foreigners relinquishing their ownership to native landowners. The government passed the Land Acquisition and Redistribution Act in 1975 giving native land rights the legal means to reposes their plantation land. However, there were no legislations on the welfare of the so-called labourers. There were many owners in transit like the well-established Chinese and Australian businessmen who enjoyed the sweat and labour of these slave workers.
Social Facts and Indicators for the Vaira community
95 % of Vairas in the ENBP are second or third generation descendants of slaves
Current conservative estimate 30-40,000 domiciled in some of these abandoned plantations.
A majority make up the population of squatters in settlements within the vicinity of the towns as a result of fleeing from the harsh conditions of labouring in plantations.
Illegal settlers face the unfortunate brunt of the law when their domiciles are subjected to unceremonious and punitive actions of provincial government’s eviction exercises.
Lucky few have purchased agricultural blocks in the Bainings to resettle their expanded families.
2% of the workers have gained some formal education up to college level. Less than 1% has graduated from technical schools. On record, less than 6 graduated from the universities.
Majority remain illiterate, poor, under privileged, discriminated upon and lost.
Land shortages within the Gazelle Peninsula (Raluana Land Studies 2005) means that more plantations will be sub-divided and given back to the native landowners. The workers will be displaced and left stranded or become refugees in squatter settlements.
There is no legislation or re-settlement programmes for the workers and their families. Already they are striving with illiteracy and poverty. Displacement will deny them a home and worse still will increase insecurity based human crises.

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