Voters of the Pacific Island Bougainville has favoured independence from Papua New Guinea.
They have won a landslide referendum victory, according to results released on December 11, 2019.
It is a major step toward the troubled isles becoming the world’s newest nation.
- According to the Bougainville Referendum Commission, 1,76,928 people — around 98% of voters — had backed independence with just 3,043 supporting the option of remaining part of Papua New Guinea with more autonomy.
- The historic vote caps a decades-long peace process and a long recovery from a brutal civil war between Bougainville rebels, Papua New Guinea security forces and foreign mercenaries that ended in 1998 and left up to 20,000 people dead — 10% of the population.
Background
- Bougainville have struggled against Papua New Guinea’s rule since the 1970s. At the time, Bougainville’s Panguna mine provided nearly half the entire country’s export income through gold and copper mining. But little tax revenue seemed to make it back to Bougainville.
- Its economic grievances led the region to declare independence, or try to, in 1975. But Papua New Guinea ignored that push, and over the ensuing decades, tensions simmered and then exploded. Violence shut down the mine in 1989 and a nine-year war claimed the lives of 20,000 people.
