 James Tarnas, thank you very much for joining us today. Can we start by just telling us a bit about your role in Boganville in the last few years? Thank you Jonathan. My role has been just basically two major roles that I played during the Boganville conflict and during the Boganville peace process. During the conflict I was part of the Boganville Revolutionary Army that took up arms against the government of Papua Greeny against the mining company and then during the peace process I was basically a peace builder. Those were the two main things that my role involved. But let me go back a little bit to 1988. I was a young student when the conflict started because I come from the district where the conflict started. I was unable to go to school. I stayed back in the village. So I stayed all my entire life in the district that I come from to part in it and I've never left Boganville since then. Also to say that I never completed my school so I was I'm just basically a village boy from that area who took active participation in the fighting and in the peace building and I continue to be a peace builder today. Right. And back when you were a student prior to the conflict you you never dreamed you would one day be president? I never dreamed that one day I will be the president. In fact I hated politics so much that I decided not to take social sciences in school. I was just majoring in mathematics science and strangely I was studying Japanese language. Right. And in the end I ended up starting to be an accountant thinking that I would take up a profession where I can spend some quiet time behind the doors just playing around with figures and balancing the books. And what was the sequence of events that led you to become president? Because I come from the area and I got myself involved in the early days. I was sort of lucky because in the early days of the militancy and the insurgency there were not many young men that were recruited into the Boganville Revolutionary Army. But because I come from the district, the Banguna district, where the problems started from, I naturally just entered into the Boganville Revolutionary Army and I was one of the few educated ones. Just not high level of education but just enough level of education to at least carry a weapon but at the same time carry a pen and a paper. That was the main distinction from about me and the other combatants that I was fighting alongside with. So what I would say is that because of that background it gave me an extra leverage to associate myself with a fighting man as a young man but also listen to the older people, the older leaders under which we were fighting to listen to them. And because of that education background, I had Francis owner, the Supreme Commander. The Supreme Commander got me to work for him. So basically I was doing a bit of fighting here and there and a bit of attending meetings, listening to the political leaders writing and taking notes for them. So I grew up in that environment as a young man to part in fighting and by the same time I was beginning to take more political responsibilities. In 1990 the government of Papua Negri pulled out and in the first ceasefire in 1990 left a big vacuum and Boganville was thrown into a turmoil. Because of the way the conflict started, the Boganville Revolutionary Army was not a conventional army. It was almost an army of the villages. So we came from all walks of life. Some were politicians, some were businessmen, some were religious people, some were students like me. And of course a good number of them were people from the criminal elements. So when the state functions went through, the criminal elements started coming up and they overpowered the political masters and Boganville was thrown into a period of chaos and violence and anarchy. And that was a time when the second part of the population started thinking, okay this is not safe. Maybe we will be better off with the government of Papua Negri. So they started linking and communicating and contacting the Papua Negri defense force so for the return of the Papua Negri authorities back on the island. And of course because of the difference of opinion on the politics Boganville was divided and then one part of Boganville was steel and the Boganville Revolutionary Army and the other part of the Boganville under a military that was sponsored by the government of Papua Negri and by the Papua Negri government with weapons given by Australia under the defense Australian defense Papua Negri ties. So Boganville was then basically divided in half. We continued fighting amongst ourselves and the conflict was becoming complicated. As I mentioned in the presentation, the Boganville conflict started developing multiple layers. It started from from a frustration against the mining company and when the state missed and all the situation, Boganville is retaliated against the state, meaning Papua Negri and when the state withdrew there was a vacuum and part of Boganville Revolutionary Army so Boganville was also divided. So it went into a multiple layer of conflict and we continued that way. There was a stalemate. We could not move any further Papua Negri government nor the Boganville side would do any progress forward but when that was happening the victims of the civil society people were suffering. So they had to be a way out and the way out was first attempted by the government of Papua Negri when they hired a missionary South African based missionaries that was called executive outcomes, outcomes that was not very well received by the military in Papua Negri for the government of Papua Negri to hire a missionary company outside of Papua Negri was seen as a vault of no confidence against their own state institution so the defense force it revolted against the government of Papua Negri with the problems it must be the prime minister resigned but when that was happening it gave one thing to the Boganville Revolutionary Army it gave an immediate sympathy in Papua Negri, sympathy on Boganville and also sympathy abroad and that brought in a big amount of international attention and that also sent a powerful message to Boganville that time has come for us to reunite and also as I was I mentioned in my presentation earlier was that there was now a thinking in the Boganville Revolutionary Army leadership that Gorilla warfare tactics were now failing we had to move to a higher level right meaning the higher level was now of diplomacy negotiations and peace and dialogue and reconciliation and of course what was clear in our minds was that the weapons we were holding were no longer going to play a major role our major weapon would be international credibility and friendship trust and respect and they will be more of the important tools that we will be needing for peace building but during the process that I just mentioned yes I from a student I became a fighter then from a fighter I was also playing more of a clerical and administrative roles within the Boganville Revolutionary Army and then around 1993 1993 1993 I resigned from the Boganville Revolutionary Army and just decided to stay in the village and then I re-enter the Boganville Revolutionary Army with a very totally different function that I thought I would never do also that was to work with the chiefs in the village and take more active responsibilities in political political awareness and political education what we noticed then was that look to us what is independence we call this world independence and not many people knew what independence was so what we did was we formed a small group group a discussion group where we would just we would sit down criticize ourselves criticize our leaders and just to think if we are on the right track right but out of that discussion group what we came up with is a political education program that gave us started giving out a basic political awareness on what independence is and what state building is what peace is what we can do and what we cannot do and of course an important part of it was to recognize our own limitation our own limitation was the first one we were aware that the international community there was no state nation sponsoring Boganville independence and sponsoring the Boganville Revolutionary Army we were alone on an isolated island right so we had to think and second the international community continued changing and if we continue to drag on we will lose support and of course our people were changing in the end we will we will lose people and also most of our commanders were getting killed and also as I mentioned in my presentation earlier two things that characterise Boganville warfare is the ability to start it and the ability to end it right and traditionally even from our the days of our grandfathers if you start a war you must make sure you end it within your time so that you do not lose the objectives of the conflict anyway so we started we formed that group I designed a small political education program we conducted it in the villages with the fighting men with the chiefs and quickly I mean slowly it got recognition from from the leaders of the struggle so I was asked then to join the political leadership and then I was appointed the minister for peace even I think two years before the start of the formal peace process right so what it gave us was that even in the Boganville Revolutionary Army even during the days of fighting there was already a small core unit in the Boganville Revolutionary Army that was thinking peace and that was that was thinking peace discussing peace so that we already had a grassroot initiative going in fact some of the recommendations that we had actually started before the signing of the formal peace process right with the other Boganville factions and also with the government of Papua New Guinea and of course longer before the long before the arrival of the neutral peace monitoring groups at the United Nations observer mission right so the most important thing maybe that I would leave in this seminar is to say that peace can be advocated peace can be attempted to be enforced but peace really starts with those who all don't peace actually will all don't until those who are in in the center of the fighting decide to accept peace right yes a lot of Boganville and in fact few Boganvillean leaders lost their lives few civilians lost their lives in their attempts as attempts for peace so but the difference with this peace process at the moment the current peace process is that the peace process now is held because it is based on a decision that was made by the Boganville Revolutionary Army right so it's not it's not that because we have a magic magic formula or that it's simply because of the fact that we were the ones that were doing the fighting and we were the ones we had to accept peace and leave peace you mentioned that at the height of the conflict there were sort of multiple layers I guess you reached a point where where some of the objectives start to get a bit lost yeah the objective started getting lost right after 1990 right because the main two objectives for based on the grievance against the mining company and then from that it evolved into a long-standing issue over the question of Boganvillean independence away from public beginning right but then it was getting lost into into just pure hatred and also certain groups for abusing that vacuum the situation to score their own to settle their own scores so there were some personalized conflicts right so we were beginning to lose it and I must say that we we are actually lucky that we had to end the conflict before the two original agendas were or lost and and so just summarizing one of your points there the turning point really came when the focus went from conflict to dialogue about what everyone wanted to achieve yes right yes the turning point came when those of us who were in the center of the fighting realized that fighting was no longer fighting would not achieve anything right we had to move on we had to adapt right so tell me about your involvement in the in the peacekeeping process now now what what drives you to continue after so many years of I guess living with conflict and having been involved in the in the process of resolving it I'll go back to the time that I was I was the minister for peace within the Boganvillean Revolutionary Army I started working as a minister for peace when the peace monitoring group started coming in naturally I was the main person within the Boganvillean Revolutionary Army that started linking and started connecting at a grassroots level to to now change into the new situation yes but before that because you were in a in a block blockade situation we could not get much information from the outside but and one day while in the bush we got a book the book was written by Nelson Mandela long walk to freedom right and one of the important statements he made was you cannot make peace by talking to your friends but you have to make peace by talking to your enemies right and during the presentation I mentioned that we had a difficult time trying to adjust to the Australian participation because of the colonial history and the mining history we had to ask Australia was the enemy but but we had to find a way out yes we tried our best to find another nation to support the peace process yes but we could not find any nation that could beat the Australian contribution Australia Australia was contributing big money in time big time in terms of finance human resource and also logistics yes so we had to find a way out and the way out for us was to put the united nations observer missing so that those who still continue to have problems with Australian participation at least will link through the united nations yes but there's something else that I will I will mention in this interview that I did not mention at the seminar sure one of the things that we found it a little bit difficult with the with the peace monitoring group was the humanitarian aspect of it right the way the peace monitoring group was deployed on Bowenville did their mandate was not humanitarian assistance their mandate was monitoring the peace and that's it but there were times when we would find out find uh end up in a situation we would have wanted them wanted a bit more from them in terms of assistance yes but we could not ask them any anything more than that right and in a Bowenville society uh what we believe in this is sharing is caring caring is respect and respect strength and peace and I'll give you two examples there was there was an Australian peace monitoring site and this site was right in right I think it was a center that was most closest to Panguna and the standing order at the camp or their policy was if there's food this leftover bury it don't give it to the locals so one day they had a big leftover of meat so under their regulations they couldn't bury it but one of the commanders who was the commander was assigned to that camp decided no they're going to waste this we give it to the locals right so he gave it gave them meat to us we distributed that meat but some of the meat from the peace monitoring group we ended it out to the ones that was still resisting the peace process hold up in the mountains right they received that meat they distributed that meat amongst themselves and a week later a line of commanders came down and asked me if they could talk to the peace monitoring group and that's how they joined the peace process yes so that is one one example of of a situation where I noticed maybe if there was a new humanitarian site attached to this peace operation right it would help because remember I talked about the multiple layers the deployment of the Australian forces on on Bowenville in the peace monitoring group was actually in my view was supposed to have provided two functions yes one is to facilitate a neutral environment for us the Bowenville factions yes and also a relationship building between the Bowenville Bowenvillians and the Australians right but let me say that let me say that even though the humanitarian side of the peace mission was not their mandate they did very well so this peace operation on Bowenville also helped to improve relationships with the Australian Australians on Bowenville in fact it was only about three months ago I did one major peace activity in Bowenville there was this the location around Panguna was a no-go zone to the Australians during during the peace operation right in fact no peace monitor entered Panguna during that time it was only about three months ago when I first for the first time arranged a reconciliation between the Australian High Commissioner to publicly end chemists right and the faction that refused to talk to the Australians and this ceremony involved that involved a very simple thing not big money just one life peak with a backup rise and we perform a cultural ritual to allow the Australian High Commissioner for the first time after 23 years for any Australian officer to enter into Panguna so what I'm trying to get at Jonathan is this peace building on Bowenville is largely based on relationship building yes relationship building because through relationship building you then improve perspectives and then you improve perceptions if there's a negative perception then you improve it through relationship and in a millennial society like Bowenville you the way you the way we build relationship is not informal meetings it might take you just an offer of a cigarette offer your cigarette lighter to offer to a stranger you've made one friend offer food you may you make a friend in fact there were times Jonathan when I wondered what could have happened if the if the policies and the regulations allowed the Australian army commanders and their civilian monitors to chew bitternut right because we use bitternut in peace building yes we use bitternut in gatherings and to make friendship and we use bitternut to court women too right so I'm not sure how well that would work in Australia but I know it's a difficult thing they would not allow them but the point you're making is that understanding local customs local traditions understanding local people and the way they communicate is a really important part of the peace process because you can't build the relationships then you can't have dialogue I'll give you another example the pigeons the regulations did not allow pigeons and demons to bring in cover but few few of them sneak in and the cover plant the young owner plant where cover is made from actually grows wild on Bowenville too much of them it's just that we Bowenville and speed we don't use it right so they did use some sneak in some used that opportunity to build relationships so right because the official mandate of the peace monitoring group did not have a humanitarian assistance where sharing can be part of the program yeah a few people broke rules to build relationships and it worked for the peace process and it sounds like it's a lesson learned for the future in similar situations yes James Talis thank you very much for your time today my pleasure