Francis Ona, who died on Sunday aged 52, launched and led a
secessionist struggle in the Papua New Guinea island province of Bougainville
and later proclaimed himself king of the island, setting up an autonomous
administration in a mountainous retreat in the jungle.

The background to the war was the granting by the governments of
Australia and (following independence in 1975) Papua New Guinea, to Conzinc
Riotinto of Australia (CRA), a subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc, of rights to
excavate the world's largest open-cast copper mine at Panguna, in the middle of
the island.

From 1972, when work began, islanders watched their land dying
under their feet as more than a billion tonnes of toxic waste was dumped in the
river system. CRA failed to negotiate with local people or allow them a share in
the massive profits from the mine. Compensation and jobs did little to assuage
local anger.

In 1988, after 16 years of futile protest, Bougainville's
traditional farmers, led by Ona, who was also a surveyor at the mine, decided to
take matters into their own hands.

Inspired by the example of Christ, and by the Sylvester Stallone
film Rambo: First Blood Part II, in which the hero takes on his enemies with a
bow and arrow, Ona and his tribal warriors launched a campaign of violence and
sabotage. Armed with bows and arrows, home-made shotguns and bombs left over
from the Second World War, they succeeded in closing the mine and inflicting
huge damage on the Papua New Guinea economy.

As the violence escalated, the Port Moresby government, panicked
about the loss of revenue, sent in the national defence force. The rebellion
mushroomed into full-scale civil war and the rebels consolidated themselves into
a secessionist Bougainville Revolutionary Army.

In 1990, Ona declared UDI and appointed himself interim president
of the new Republic of Bougainville, provoking an economic blockade of the
island by the Port Moresby authorities.

The conflict, which lasted 10 years and cost an estimated 15,000
lives, mostly from disease and starvation, ended in a ceasefire in 1998. In 2001
Bougainville was promised a referendum on independence in 10 to 15 years. The
prime mover behind the rapprochement on the rebel side was Joseph Kabui, Ona's
vice-president, who became the island's president in June this year following
elections brokered by the UN as a move towards autonomy.

Ona remained aloof from these developments. Refusing to sign any
agreements, he and a devoted band of followers, some of them "cargo cultists"
who still worship the Second World War aircraft that suddenly appeared to
parachute supplies into Bougainville during the Japanese occupation, remained
holed up in a mountainous retreat in Bougainville's central jungle. There they
established a "no-go zone" encompassing the disputed Panguna mine workings.

In his self-imposed seclusion, Ona, who claimed to have been
crowned King of Me'ekamui (a Bouganvillean word meaning "Sacred Island") last
year, spent much of his time tending his vegetables, practising his healing
skills on local villagers and singing songs of his own composition about the
conflict. Last year he was joined by a strange pair of "advisers", "Prince"
Jeffrey Richards of Kempsey, in Queensland, and "Lord" James Nessbit of London,
whose motivations may or may not have been related to speculation that the mine
might soon be sold or reopened.

In the run-up to the presidential election, efforts were made to
persuade Ona to join the peace process. In March he emerged from his mountain
fastness to proclaim Bougainville already independent from Papua New Guinea, but
he stopped short of urging his supporters to disrupt the election.

Francis Ona was born in 1953. Nothing is known of his early life
until he emerged at the head of the Bougainville rebellion.

For many islanders, he remained a respected symbol of the
secessionist struggle. He will be given a state funeral in the provincial
capital of Buka.