Theodore Miriung was having dinner with his wife and children when he was shot dead. Twenty-three years on, his family is still searching for answers.
At midday on a Saturday, 16-year-old Lorraine Miriung was outside her Bougainville home collecting galip nuts when she saw something that alarmed her — a man creeping through the undergrowth with a rifle.Theodore Muriung was elected premier of the Bougainville transitional government in 1995It was 1996 and Bougainville was still in the grip of a civil war that plagued the region for almost a decade, but Lorraine had extra reason to be worried.
"So he shouted at me and said it was a public road and people would walk down it, and 'what are you talking about? Stop it'." That night, Lorraine sat down for dinner with her father, mother and her younger brother Mel under their house, which was elevated on poles.Mel Miriung was only 10 years old, but he remembers it clearly."We were caught by surprise when the gunshot sounded. We were still eating and my father died with food still in his mouth."
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