The Illusion of Independence
The Westminster system was never ours.
It was born in London, shaped by centuries of English history, English struggles, and English victories. What worked in London does not always work in Lae, Maprik, Tari, or Daru. Yet in 1975, it was handed to us as if it could replace who we are. For fifty years, we have been conditioned to wear this foreign suit, stitched from cloth that does not belong to our skin. It hangs on us awkwardly, sometimes choking us, sometimes falling away, but never fitting our body, our spirit, our way of life.
Before this, our parliament was our hausman. Our chiefs, our elders, our clans, they were our law. Decisions were made under the tree, around the fire, in unity, in consensus, with respect for land and bloodline. But Westminster replaced that heartbeat with parties, numbers, and opposition. It told us power was about dividing, not uniting. It told us leadership was about politics, not people.
And so we struggle. Governments fall, corruption spreads, and leaders turn against their own. Not because Papua New Guineans cannot lead, but because we were forced to breathe through lungs that are not ours. This is the pain, we lost the voice of our ancestors, and in its place we were given an echo that does not carry our soul.
And then there is the pain of our resources - the lifeblood of our land, taken and exported as if it never belonged to us. The Bougainville Copper Mine is the darkest wound, a story of betrayal and heartbreak that should never be forgotten. These were not abstract disputes over contracts - they were our mothers’ lands, our fathers’ mountains, our ancestors’ graves. Agreements were written to exclude the rightful owners, to prioritise foreign profit. When our people stood and demanded justice, the PNG Government, bound by colonial laws and pressured by international corporations, turned its guns on its own citizens. Families were destroyed. Villages were burned. Rivers poisoned. Communities torn apart. Thousands of our brothers and sisters died. Children were orphaned. Parents lost their homes and their dignity. And all the while, those who designed the system - the foreign executives, the lawyers, the lenders - sat comfortably elsewhere, ensuring the machinery served their profit. Imagine this - your government turning against you, not because of disagreement, but because the law and foreign contracts forced them to. That is the depth of our injustice. That is the price we have paid for systems imposed upon us.
Bougainville is only the beginning. Across the country, in Ok Tedi, Porgera, Lihir, and countless other mining sites, the pattern repeats: exploitation, dispossession, environmental destruction, and profit exported overseas. Communities suffer, lands are destroyed, rivers choked with tailings, and forests levelled. Promised royalties are delayed, mismanaged, or stolen. Jobs are limited to labour while ownership and leadership remain elsewhere. We work the land that is ours, yet the wealth does not nourish our children. The pain of watching outsiders grow rich from your sweat, your soil, your rivers, it cuts deeper than any weapon. Generations have grown up knowing that their inheritance is not theirs to claim. That is the invisible violence that independence never removed.
Loans and foreign aid are another wound pressed into our backs. We are told we need help to build schools, hospitals, and roads. But this help comes with invisible shackles: conditionalities, structural adjustments, policy mandates. They tell us what to build, how to manage, what is acceptable, and what is not. Reject their terms, and the flow of funds stops. Investment disappears. Credit dries up. Sovereign decisions are compromised. We are trapped in a cycle of dependency disguised as benevolence. Aid is not charity; it is control. It is a reminder that fifty years on, we are still taught to ask permission to stand on our own soil, to claim our own future.
Even our laws and courts - the institutions meant to protect us - have often served the powerful, the foreign, and the few. Corruption is not chaos; it is systematised, woven into the framework to ensure compliance and maintain control. Agreements written in foreign legal frameworks compel our leaders to act against the people, against communities that trusted them to defend their rights. Environmental destruction, exploitation, and mismanagement fall hardest on those without power, while the architects of this injustice remain untouched. Justice, in its truest sense, has often been sacrificed on the altar of profit and international obligation.
Education, meant to empower, has often been co-opted to perpetuate dependency. Our children are trained to labour, to implement, to manage, but rarely to lead, rarely to own, rarely to reclaim what is theirs. Advanced industries, mining, forestry, and finance remain in foreign hands. Knowledge is taught, but authority is withheld. Our youth may understand the methods, but the control remains elsewhere. That is why, fifty years on, independence can feel hollow - it's because skill alone does not equal power, and power remains controlled by external interests.
Geopolitical pressures intensify the burden. PNG is at a crossroads, a land of strategic importance. Foreign governments, investors, and institutions see our location as an opportunity, our resources as a leverage. Deals are framed as partnerships, but often serve external strategic agendas. Sovereignty is constantly tested, constantly negotiated under invisible pressure. Every 'decision' of independence is mediated, diluted, and constrained by the needs and threats perceived by those far beyond our shores. True autonomy is a dream constantly deferred.
And culturally, the wounds run deeper than politics and economics. Traditional governance systems, designed to balance authority, communal accountability, and social harmony, are marginalised. Remote villages, once the pulse of leadership and decision-making, are bypassed by central authorities. Promises of development bypass these communities. Roads, hospitals, and schools rarely arrive. The erosion of cultural governance mirrors the erosion of political sovereignty. Communities feel powerless. Citizens feel voiceless. The social fabric frays, as culture, land, and voice are subordinated to foreign-driven structures.
The story of Bougainville illuminates the moral catastrophe of these systems. A government, constrained by foreign-imposed agreements, laws, and international pressures, waged war on its own people to protect corporate interests. Lives were lost. Lands were poisoned. Culture was disrupted. This is not history - it is a lesson, a mirror of the countless invisible injustices endured by communities across PNG. How many times have our people been asked to sacrifice their well-being, their lives, their dignity, to maintain the illusion of a 'modern nation' while foreign profit and influence take precedence?
And yet, even in this darkness, there is hope. Awareness of the truth is the first step. Recognition that the systems, laws, policies, and economic structures imposed upon us were designed to benefit outsiders, not our people, is painful - but liberating. Understanding that the dependence we endure is deliberate allows us to act. We can reclaim our resources, rebuild industries, educate our people to lead and own, rewrite governance structures to serve citizens first, and reconnect with our cultural foundations. Independence is not a gift - it is a struggle, earned through knowledge, courage, and collective action.
Fifty years of independence is both a milestone and a mirror. It reflects our dreams, yes, but also the chains that remain hidden in plain sight. Reclaiming sovereignty demands that we confront the painful truths of the past and the ongoing injustices of the present. It requires courage to face the lies, resilience to rebuild from wounds, and vision to construct a nation rooted in its own values, culture, and authority. Only then can Papua New Guinea step into the next fifty years not as a nation defined by foreign-imposed limits, but as a nation that belongs fully to its people. The suffering, the betrayal, the stolen resources, the communities silenced - these are not abstract stories; they are the lifeblood of our history, the pulse of our struggle, and the call to action that cannot be ignored.
ENDS//
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