New book on B’ville launched

 LESSONS can be learnt from reading books such as Behind the Blockage so that the errors that caused the civil war on Bougainville would not be repeated, Speaker of the Bougainville House of Representative Simon Pentanu says.

Speaking at the launching of the book written by journalist and editor of Wantok Niuspepa Veronica Hatutasi last week, Pentanu said the book provided a lot of revelations as to why certain things should not be allowed to happen.

Such a book written about incidences recounted helps all of us to know more and understand more about the blockade, he said. 

“It has helped us to help to work hard at things like building peace, some of the processes and some of the things that are going on.

Hatutasi said the book gave an account on the reality of life and the hardships that ordinary Bougainvilleans, especially the women, children and the elderly, went through during the conflict.

The years focused on the book are from 1989 when the war broke out and the period from March 1990 when the PNG Government placed an economic blockade on the whole of the island. 

That went on until about 1994 when the blockade was fully lifted and services gradually trickled into the island.

Hautasi said her task of covering the Bougainville crisis started when she joined in 1993 as a reporter for Wantok, the weekly and only Tok Pisin newspaper.

“I hope this book will be useful for the students of Bougainville and even PNG and their understanding of the conflict, why it happened and how such situations could be avoided or not repeated. With the issue of Bougainville, it is important for the rest of the nation and the world to know, see and hear that PNG can solve its own problems and that we are a unified country.

“I hope that Behind the Blockage will give an inside story of what life was really like behind the blockade,” she said.