Secessionist Politics in Papua New Guinea

Bibliographic Data

ID2848763
AuthorsRalph R Premdas (University of Papua New Guinea, corresponding author)
Year1977
Volume50
Issue1
Pages64
Publication date1977-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePacific Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0030-851X • E-ISSN: 1715-3379
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2756119
OpenAlexW2320957559
LanguageEN
Citations received8

N SEPTEMBER i6, 1975 New Guinea (PNG) obtained its independence from Australia. Previously had been Australian territory, acquired in i906, whereas New Guinea had been a U.N. Trust Territory (and formerly a Mandate of the League of Nations) under the control of Australia. During World War II, and New Guinea were jointly administered by Australia and in I949 this arrangement was continued until 1975 when the two legally separate entities were granted simultaneous independence as a single country. What was for Australia and the U.N. Trusteeship Council an act of administrative convenience was regarded by many Papuans as an unfair decision that callously overlooked their desire to determine, through a referendum, whether to be a separate state or to amalgamate with New Guinea. Papuans were in fact promised at various times before 1975 that they would be given this choice. Hence, when it became clear that Australia was preparing and New Guinea for a permanent union after independence, many Papuan leaders felt impelled to protest. By the early I970s, several Papuans organized to form the Papua movement under the leadership of Josephine Abaijah, a popular Papuan member of the national House of Assembly. On March i6, 1975, several months before the integrated New Guinea was scheduled for independence, Besena unilaterally declared Papua's independence from Australia and in the view of its supporters became a separate state. This was not the only secessionist problem confronting PNG. Bougainville, the copper-rich eastern island on which some $500 million had been invested to build one of the most lucrative mines in the world, also wanted its independence, asserting that it had been a pawn in a game of colonial territorial exchanges that resulted in its being severed from the (British-ruled) Solomon Islands. On September i, 1975, less than three weeks before PNG obtained its independence, certain popular Bougainville leaders, mainly Leo Hannett and

Colonialism · Economic history · Ethnology · Geography · Independence (probability theory) · Independent state · Mandate · New guinea · Political science · Politics · Referendum · State (computer science) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Public Administration

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