Australian Humanitarian Aid for Bougainville Eds note: This is not a historical article. It is about a current and planned action. For three years a military blockade has been imposed on the island of Bougainville, effectively stopping all but a trickle of humanitarian supplies from reaching the island. Imposed by the Papua New Guinea military with the backing of the Australian Government, this virtually total blockade has meant that almost no consumable goods, clothing, or, most seriously, medical supplies, have reached the island's population. Malaria, respiratory illnesses, childbirth complications and asthma are amongst the biggest killers which have claimed the lives of an estimated two to three thousand people since the blockade started. It is clear that this blockade by the Papua New Guinea and Australian military represents an appalling abuse of basic human rights and contravenes several international laws including the Genocide Convention, 1948, the International Convention on the Rights of Children, and the International Labour Organization Treaty on the Rights of Indigenous People. In response to the escalating human tragedy currently occurring on Bougainville, a number of grassroots peace, human rights and environmental activists have formed a Victorian based network to generate positive solutions to the Bougainville crisis. This network is called Australian Humanitarian Aid for Bougainville. We are a totally independent, non-government, community coalition that has formed in an attempt to generate an effective campaign of publicity, support and direct medical and humanitarian aid for the people of Bougainville. The group is currently implementing a number of strategies. These include * a community education campaign aimed at raising awareness amongst ordinary Victorians about the Bougainville crisis. This education campaign involves members of our group addressing community groups, schools, trade unions, organizations and others about the current crisis on Bougainville. * a medicine collection campaign involving a growing numbers of hospitals and doctors who are donating and collecting medicines to be sent to Bougainville. In the past three months we have sent approximately one and a half tonnes of critically needed medical supplies to the area. * a publicity campaign through the mainstream and alternative media aimed at maximizing availability of information on current developments on Bougainville. Members of the group are regularly writing for sections of the print media and participating in radio programmes to give ordinary Australians accurate alternative information on Bougainville to the official sanitized and questionable information filtering down from the Australian and Papua New Guinean Governments. We are attempting to bring the voice of the Bougainvillean community to the Victorian community. This is critically important due to the fact that the military blockade has also imposed a media blackout on the island. Peace and Medical Ship for Bougainville Apart from these strategies we are primarily focusing energy on a central project of sending one or more ships loaded with Australian activists and medical supplies directly through the military blockade to the island of Bougainville. We have already located a boat that is suitable for this project. The ship is called the "Flinders", a majestic fifty foot turn of the century wooden sailing vessel. We currently have this vessel berthed at St. Kilda pier, where we are preparing it for the trip. We intend to leave in approximately mid to late August, sail to Sydney and Brisbane, building the profile of the campaign as we go, across to Honiara in the Solomons and then to the island of Bougainville. We intend to ask politely for passage across the blockade from the Papua New Guinean military, and will hopefully be granted that passage. We are in the process of attempting to establish an ongoing dialogue with all concerned parties including the Papua New Guinea and Australian governments and military. We are already communicating with Bougainvillean representatives in Sydney, Solomon Islands and Bougainville, and have their full support in this venture. There are several aims in sending a ship to Bougainville in this way. These include: * to reassert and strengthen the positive relationship between Bougainville and the Australian community. It will be our attempt to show Bougainvilleans that ordinary Australians do care and that while our government has chosen to be at war with them, we, the Aus tralian community, are not. * to improve the communication between the Bougainvillean and Victorian community. The trip will provide us with an opportunity to hear from the Bougainvillean people, and spread their message directly to the Australian community. It will facilitate people to people and community to community communication. * to take in and distribute medical and humanitarian supplies and to establish an ongoing network to send these supplies from Victoria and other states to Bougainville. * to evacuate and provide safe passage across the blockade for Bougainvilleans who urgently require medical treatment on the Solomon Islands. Currently many people with serious conditions are suffering on Bougainville as they are afraid of crossing the blockade. * to provide a focus for building an ongoing and effective campaign in Australia on the Bougainville issue. * to generate public awareness about the issue and about Australian Government involvement in oppression of Bougainvilleans through direct military aid to Papua New Guinea. * if necessary to nonviolently challenge the blockade in place. The major obstacle to the trip at present are a shortage of funds and activists. We estimate that to make this trip possible we will have to fundraise between ten and fifteen thousand dollars. We envisage that other boat owners may wish to join us in this venture, and therefore a pool of funds will be necessary to support the trip. Several of the key activists intending to travel on the boat have also recently been afflicted with health problems. We wish to increase the pool of activists available to travel on the trip, and encourage anyone with an understanding of nonviolence who is interested in travelling to Bougainville to please contact me on the address or phone number supplied. Any donations would also be greatly appreciated. The project and activities of the group have a strong commitment to nonviolent action as a means of social change, and to a nonviolent resolution to the crisis on Bougainville. In practical terms this means that we are an open non-secretive group, we respect and communicate with all parties in the conflict, and are not interested in taking sides in a negative blaming manner but wish to focus on positive means of resolving the Bougainville crisis. We recognize that Australian and Papua New Guinea leaders have proven themselves incapable or unwilling to address the causes of this conflict, and that we must rely on grassroots community initiative and pressure to improve the situation on Bougainville. At the completion of this voyage, it is hoped that Australian Humanitarian Aid for Bougainville will continue to build the relationship between the Bougainvillean and Victorian communities. We intend to do this by continuing to implement the first three strategies of collecting and distributing medical supplies, educating Australians, and publicizing the plight of the people of Bougainville. Depending on the success of this first trip it is highly possible that we will launch similar trips to Bougainville in the future. Brendan Condon 50 Moor Street Fitzroy Vic 3065 phone / fax (03) 417 7448