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144 pages

English

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This book offers a pioneering window into the elusive workings of state-corporate crime within the mining industry. It follows a campaign of resistance organised by indigenous activists on the island of Bougainville, who struggled to close a Rio Tinto owned copper mine, and investigates the subsequent state-corporate response, which led to the shocking loss of some 10,000 lives.

Drawing on internal records and interviews with senior officials, Kristian Lasslett examines how an articulation of capitalist growth mediated through patrimonial politics, imperial state-power, large-scale mining, and clan-based, rural society, prompted an ostensibly 'responsible' corporate citizen, and liberal state actors, to organise a counterinsurgency campaign punctuated with gross human rights abuses.

State Crime on the Margins of Empire represents a unique intervention rooted in a classical Marxist tradition that challenges positivist streams of criminological scholarship, in order to illuminate with greater detail the historical forces faced by communities in the global south caught in the increasingly violent dynamics of the extractive industries.
Series Introduction

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

1. State Crime and the Empire of Capital

2. The Specificities of Papua New Guinea’s Development

3. From Landowner Crisis to Industrial Sabotage

4. Eight Days That Shook BCL, the First Mine Shutdown and Its Aftermath

5. A Tale of Two Solutions: Counterinsurgency Warfare and the Bougainville Package

6. The Making of Civil War on Bougainville

7. State Crime and Really Existing Capitalism: The Lessons of Bougainville

Afterword: Impunity, Civil Society and the Struggle Ahead in Melanesia

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

Social Science

Droit et juridique

América del Sur

South America

Latin America

Central America

Criminology

SS Central America

Australia

Informations

Publié par	Pluto Press
Date de parution	20 août 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783712304
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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State Crime on the Margins of Empire
State Crime on the Margins of Empire
Rio Tinto, the War on Bougainville and Resistance to Mining
Kristian Lasslett

Pluto Press www.plutobooks.com
In loving memory of Susan Lasslett
First published 2014 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Kristian Lasslett 2014
The right of Kristian Lasslett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN    978 0 7453 3503 2   Hardback
ISBN    978 0 7453 3504 9   Paperback
ISBN    978 1 7837 1229 8   PDF eBook
ISBN    978 1 7837 1231 1   Kindle eBook
ISBN    978 1 7837 1230 4   EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
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Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Text design by Melanie Patrick
Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
Contents
Series Introduction
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1.
State Crime and the Empire of Capital
2.
The Specificities of Papua New Guinea’s Development
3.
From Landowner Crisis to Industrial Sabotage
4.
Eight Days that Shook BCL, the First Mine Shutdown and its Aftermath
5.
A Tale of Two Solutions – Counterinsurgency Warfare and the Bougainville Package
6.
The Making of Civil War on Bougainville
7.
State Crime and Really Existing Capitalism: The Lessons of Bougainville
Afterword: Impunity, Civil Society and the Struggle Ahead in Melanesia
Notes
Bibliography
Index
State Crime Series Introduction
With this book we launch an exciting new series dedicated to understanding state crime, a series which showcases the best of new state crime scholarship. This is work which challenges official and legal definitions of crime, but on any reasonable definition (whether based on national and international law or a concept such as social harm) crimes condoned, committed or instigated by states dwarf most other forms of crime. Genocide, war crimes, torture, and the enormous scale of corruption that afflicts nations such as Papua New Guinea make everyday crimes against the persons and property of European citizens appear almost trivial. This series grows out of the International State Crime Initiative’s work on advancing our understanding of state violence and corruption and of resistance to them. The series is driven by a new and sophisticated wave of state crime scholarship; one in which theoretical development drawing on a variety of social scientific traditions is informed by courageous and rigorous empirical research.
A major area of state crime scholarship, to which this book contributes, is that concerned with the interaction and collusion between states and corporations. In State Crime on the Margins of Empire , Kristian Lasslett provides a compelling narrative of capital, empire and resistance on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which endured a brutal civil war from the late 1980s into the 1990s.
On this one small island was visited almost every form of state and state corporate crime including forced displacement, mass-destruction of property, internment, torture, extrajudicial killings and a lethal sanctions regime. Lasslett demonstrates the necessity of understanding the complex layering of formal and informal power structures through a detailed study of clan relationships, patronage networks, patrimonial political relations and the asymmetrical interaction between mining capital and the states of Papua New Guinea and Australia.
The theoretical perspective from which Lasslett views these developments is an interpretation of ‘classical Marxism’, which draws on the works of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky as well as less celebrated figures such as the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov. When Lasslett’s theoretical map places Papua New Guinea ‘on the margins of Empire’, the Empire in question is that of global capital. It is an Empire without a sovereign; if it has an Emperor, it is the impersonal logic of capital, which the governments of nation-states serve as more or less obedient viceroys. Although global in reach, its effects can only be understood in relation to the dynamics of local political and economic conjunctures.
Within this framework, the study of state crime starts from a recognition that states cannot rule for long by naked coercion alone. State crime occurs when economic and political pressures lead states to violate the norms on which their legitimacy depends, arousing processes of resistance, exposure and censure which may, in different circumstances, curb criminal activities or provoke an intensification of violent repression. The regional articulations of capitalism embody certain criminogenic potentials, but they become actualised only under specific historical conditions which Lasslett chronicles in meticulous detail. There is nothing crudely reductionist about Lasslett’s version of Marxism.
While not every state crime scholar is a Marxist, classical or otherwise, Lasslett’s Marxism is deployed partly in order to critique some other well-established approaches to state and corporate crime. We are delighted to launch the series with such a powerful and innovative contribution to state crime scholarship and hope this book will provoke a healthy debate within the field, to which other books in the series will also contribute.
Penny Green and Tony Ward
Series Editors
Abbreviations
ABC
Australian Broadcasting Commission
ABG
Autonomous Bougainville Government
ADF
Australian Defence Force
ADoD
Australian Department of Defence
AGA
Applied Geology Associates
AusAID
Australian Agency for International Development
BCF
Bougainville Copper Foundation
BCL
Bougainville Copper Limited
BIG
Bougainville Interim Government
BLF
Buka Liberation Front
BMWU
Bougainville Mining Workers Union
BRA
Bougainville Revolutionary Army
CIS
Corrective Institutions Service
CRA
Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Limited
DFA
Papua New Guinea Department of Foreign Affairs
DFAT
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
DIB
Defence Intelligence Branch, Papua New Guinea
DPMC
Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
HBSS
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro
HC
Australian High Commission, Port Moresby
NEC
National Executive Council
NPLA
New Panguna Landowners Association
NSA
Bougainville Copper Limited National Staff Association
OPLA
Old Panguna Landowners Association
PLA
Panguna Landowners Association
PMD
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister’s Department
PNG
Papua New Guinea
PNGDF
Papua New Guinea Defence Force
RPNGC
Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary
RMTLTF
Road Mining Tailings Leases Trust Fund
RTZ
Rio Tinto
SOE
State of Emergency
Acknowledgements
A large project such as this is always indebted to a wide network of people.
When I began the research back in 2004, evidencing the state-corporate decisions and motivations that underpinned the crimes on Bougainville seemed an impossible task. I was fortunate, in this respect, to have received much encouragement and guidance from activists and advocates involved in the Bougainville anti-war and independence movement, including Max Watts, Rosemarie Gillespie, Vikki John, Marilyn Havini and Moses Havini, to name just a few. Their steers led me first to Seattle where the law firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, afforded me generous access to their case file. Then, when I arrived in Papua New Guinea during 2006, and faced the challenge of locating senior state officials, I was grateful to have the assistance of Effrey Dademo, Almah Tararia and Graeme Kunjil.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my colleagues at the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) including Penny Green, Tony Ward, Alicia de la Cour Venning, Tom MacManus, and Fatima Kanji. I have also benefited enormously from the support of ISCI’s Honorary Fellows John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, and Richard Falk, all of whom have proven so generous with their time and guidance over the years (in addition to being unyielding beacons for truth and rigour). As a result of these collective efforts, ISCI has become a vibrant hub for state crime research, and without its support this book, and book series, would not exist. Equally, I have benefited greatly from the supportive and collegial environment at the University of Ulster’s School of Criminology, Politics and Social Policy & Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, and before that at the University of Westminster’s School of Law.
Also, it would be remiss not to note, with thanks, the many inspiring scholars currently working in the area of state crime studies. A special nod, in this respect, goes to Scott Poynting, Dave Whyte, and Steve Tombs, all of whom have lent a hand along the way. Furthermore, given the strong Marxist currents that underpin this volume, I must gratefully acknowledge members of the Historical Materialism World Development Research Seminar Group. Over the years our meetings and discussions laid the tracks for many profound adventures into Marxism.
Thanks also goes to Anne Beech and the entire Pluto Press team. One cannot emphasise enough what an important role they have played in supporting critical research, including this volume, over the decades. The scholarly terrain is so much the richer because of Pluto’s efforts.
To finish I would like to acknowledge a few special individuals who have been an intrinsic part of this project since its inception – my colleague, Pe