Noah Musingku

Noah Musingku was born in 1964, in Tonu, a small village in Siwai, South Bougainville. In the late 1970s, Musingku went to Buin High School. His schoolmates included James Tanis, who later became president of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, A Unilateral Declaration of Independence was made on 17 May 1990, but Australian and New Zealand-brokered peace talks tended to ignore this fact. Francis Ona controlled over half of the island, and proclaimed himself king of Me’ekamui ("holy land") in May 2004. ==U-Vistract==

In 1997, seven years after the unilateral declaration of independence, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army was in control of the island, but its leadership split into factions. Ona was in control of the army, and sought full independence. Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) found U-Vistract to be an unlicensed securities and investment program. :Within a few years, some 70,000 Papua New Guineans had deposited K350 million into U-Vistract alone. U-Vistract also attracted followers in Australia, Solomon Islands and Fiji. In Australia, a small number of Queensland investors contributed some AUD500,000 between July and October 1999. From Australia, he went to Port Moresby,. While in Port Moresby, he tried to set up a bank in the old Hawaiian Bank building, but he was shut down by the PNG government and forced to leave to the Solomon Islands. He began again to set up his system, but the Australian police in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) forced him out. In 2003 he travelled to Ona's headquarters in Guava, Panguna, Bougainville, and established a bank there. Two years later he was able to travel to his ancestral village of Tonu, where he established his bank headquarters in an old cattle farm owned by the paramount chief. ==Kingship==

Musingku stayed in the small Me'ekamui-controlled "no go zone" before returning to Tonu, his home village, in 2004. Declaring Tonu the Kingdom of Papaala, he rechristened himself King David Peii II, and established a 500-man militia named the "Me'ekamui Defense Force". Musingku continued his scams, which took the form of banks. He allied with Me'ekamui, which he had convinced Ona to restructure as a kingdom. After Ona died in 2005, Musingku proclaimed himself the king of Papaala and Me'ekamui. His unrecognized micronation, a small compound, remains. Other Me'ekamui factions do not recognize his authority. Musingku's ideology is radically nationalistic and heavily influenced by the prosperity gospel and Pentecostal Christianity; with Guardian reporter Sean Williams commenting that his style of speech bore many similarities to that of televangelists. The only two significant such holdouts were Musingku and Damien Koike of Konnou. Koike subsequently agreed to co-operate with the ABG, leaving Musingku as the last remaining Me'ekamui holdout. As the independence process stalled in the following years, many ABG leaders became concerned that Musingku would take advantage of delays to foment an insurrection; James Tanis expressing to The Guardian that Musingku's anti-western ideology could see him try and forge connections with Iran. ==References==