Bougainville - Fame

Gillespie rejects Bougainville entry claims

CANBERRA, Australia (March 9, 1998, PACNEWS)-Australian civil rights lawyer Rosemarie Gillespie has angrily rejected claims that she helped four foreign nationals who tried to enter Bougainville illegally through the Solomon Islands.

Gillespie says it was she who alerted the Sydney-based National Coordinator of the Bougainville Freedom Movement, Vikki John, about the entry attempt and this led to Solomon Islands police preventing the four men from crossing the border into Bougainville.

Gillespie, a vocal supporter of Bougainville independence, was appointed Research Officer for the breakaway Bougainville Interim Government in 1995.

She entered Bougainville four times during the war, carrying medicine and other humanitarian supplies, and did much to publicize the plight of the Bougainville people to the outside world.

In a statement issued Sunday, Gillespie says she was approached in January by an American writer, Robert Pelton, who wanted to interview rebel leader Francis Ona for a new edition of his book, The World's Most Dangerous Places. She said she repeatedly told Pelton and his three colleagues that the time was "not right" to visit Ona and that they should not do so unless they were invited.

She said she was concerned when she learned that one of the men, Rob Krott, was a former member of the U.S. Special Forces and had served as a mercenary in several countries.

"I raised the alarm when they would not take notice of me," she said. Gillespie said allegations made against her by the Secretary of the Bougainville Interim Government, Martin Miriori, and others were nonsensical and defamatory and she is threatening legal action.

http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1997/ASA/33400197.htm

Jap Crap

If you do make the trip to Bougainville you might want to visit a piece of history. Near the village of Aku (24 kilometers before Buin) about an hour walk from the road, lies the wreckage of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's Betty Bomber. He was shot down on April 18, 1943, by U.S. P-38s. All around the island are other relics of World War II. Buin is full of Japanese equipment and fortifications. A downed and very dead American pilot was found in his Corsair in 1968 just half a kilometer from Buin-Kangu Hill road. The mangrove swamps on Sohano Island near the Buka passage to the north are also full of old equipment, including a Japanese fighter. Green Island was a dumping ground for U.S. equipment after the war.