Francis Ona, who died July 24 at 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 tons of toxic waste were 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, homemade shotguns and bombs left over from World War II, 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 defense force. The rebellion mushroomed into full-scale civil war, and the rebels consolidated themselves into a secessionist Bougainville Revolutionary Army.

In 1990, Ona declared independence 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 cease-fire 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 United Nations as a move toward 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 World War II 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, practicing 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.