RECONCILIATION is the most important aspect and tool for everlasting peace and normalcy on Bougainville and must still be conducted all over the region.
This is from a peace advocator and elder from the Bougainville west coast district of Kunua, Herman Siriva.
Speaking to PNG Loop, Siriva said reconciliation is the only way forward and it’s only through this that Bougainville will go to referendum.
Just two weeks ago a major reconciliation ceremony was held in his home village of Doaso in Hahon Kunua District, where a senior veteran Barnabas Tobby reconciled with families of 22 people that where killed by the BRA. The victims included a PNGDF soldier, late Corporal Gareitz.
“There are still some very sensitive issues here which needs to be addressed through reconciliation, here in the West Coast some people still bear scars today,” Siriva said.
“One of our break through was the extraction of three Defence Force soldier’s bones.”
“They were killed here during the war,” he said.
“I simply have put up my hands to volunteer to help with the reconciliation by becoming the master of ceremony and to organise victim’s families, to come together and meet the former perpetrators during the Bougainville crisis,” he said.
“I appeal to the government and other relevant authorities and agencies to continue with reconciliations no matter what it takes, as long as they have the funding and more importantly the data that is where people like me come in,” Siriva said.
“Data is the most important thing we need before actually conducting a reconciliation ceremony, how many people died, and how many perpetrators there were,” he said.
(Picture: Extraction of the three KIA on Bougainville an important ceremony by the West Coast people. They have been encouraged to do more.)