500 taken from siege town on Bougainville Is.

Press, Issue 33842, 14 May 1975, Page 17

500 taken from siege town on Bougainville Is.

BOUGAINVILLE ISLAND. May 13. Buses carrying men, women and children pulled out of the strife-torn mining town of Panguna today as police broke through strikers’ barricades under cover of tear-gas.

So far today more than 500 Europeans have been evacuated from the fortress-like town which had been held by rioting Bougainville copper workers since last night. Officials of Bougainville Copper Pty Ltd ferried the

evacuees 17 miles down from the mountain mine site to the. coast town of Arawa where they were billeted in private homes, community centres and local schools. The pull-out started this morning when the 200-strong Bougainville police force, backed by reinforcements of : 120 baton-wielding riot police

iflown in from Port Moresby! |and Rabaui, peppered barbed, i wire and boulder strewn I barricades with tear-gas | grenades. The attack against the strikers, huddled behind the barricade on the company’s sl3m road from Arawa to Panguna, went on for several hours and there was a counter-attack of stone throwing before the defenders withdrew. Women and children and non-essential staff had spent several hours waiting in the burning hot sun at a prearranged pick-up point fori the Bougainville copper buses to break through.

Communications with the mine have been restricted to one emergency telephone but .'the first people into the town |after today’s skirmishes confirmed estimates by mining engineers of more than slm damage.

Trucks and cars had been tipped into rivers, a bulldozer had wrecked the main sports complex and few windows and fibro walls had been left intact, said the witnesses.

A police helicopter made regular patrols overhead to pinpoint the main trouble spots and Government officials, in an attempt to prevent the trouble spreading, (have imposed a liquor ban on the island.

It appeared tonight that the 1000 rioters, who battled police yesterday after striking in protest against pay and conditions and the dismissal of a high union official, had temporarily retired.

But according to company officials, now counting lost production at the rate of half a million dollars a day, there was little guarantee of the situation remaining quiet. Production which started at the mine three years ago,

at a cost of $4OO million, is not expected to re-start for another three days.