7 November 2022
Without prejudice.
On Sunday well known and widely acknowledged, respected, long serving local journalist, Dorothy Wickham, wrote an article in which she referred to the 60 MK 18 semi-automatic firearms supplied to the Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) by Australia.
She commenced her article by saying, ‘A country with a population of less than a million people, we have been down this road before.”
“In 2000, a coup was instigated by militants and rogue elements of the police force and turned into three years of bloodshed and chaos.
Australia spent close to a billion dollars over a 15-year period to restore the normalcy we are all now enjoying.”
She then went on to add, quote
“It’s as if all that hard work to collect guns was a waste of time and money. Solomon Islands banned firearms, but police were allowed to carry weapons again in 2017.
We still have some villages around the county that have their signboards up, proudly proclaiming it as a gun-free village.
What exactly is our government trying to achieve here? Our leaders must be clear about what they want for the future and what kind of society we are building.
The leaders of my country must remember that we are so behind in our health and education development it has become embarrassing.
Many of our schools are lacking proper facilities; our health infrastructure is even worse. And we still focus on the police. There are only about 2,000 police officers in the whole country – many very young and fresh out of training.
“Solomon Islands is becoming its own worst enemy.”
Dorothy’s view has been shared by a chorus of defence analysts and academics sounding out their own concerns on Linkedin and in newspapers about the arms supply and the likely implications for the Solomon Islands.
Here are just two viewpoints posted on Linkedin over the weekend, both relating to the arms supply Dorothy’s article highlighted.
No 1, “This is the danger. Whether it is now or later, everyone who protests, legitimately or otherwise, will assume that heavily-armed police may turn up at some point. So some will come prepared to respond in kind. And everyone else, protesters and society alike, will be anxious about what might happen in the protest. This may stifle legitimate protest by some. But worse, each protest will now have that tension, the anxiety of possible lethal violence, automatically loaded into it. The risk of escalation is now there.”
No 2 “Australia delivers police vehicles and rifles to Solomon Islands in ‘game-changer’ donation
The announcement comes after a turbulent year in the relationship between Australia and Solomon Islands, particularly on the question of security, after the Pacific country signed a controversial and secretive security agreement with China.”
Dr Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University, said the move represented a significant shift in the relationship.
“Australia, under its policing partnership program with Solomon Islands, has supported the RSIPF’s staged limited rearmament and training. This has included previous donations of vehicles, riot gear and pistols,” Ms.Powles said.
She also added, “The move could raise alarm and mistrust among Solomon Islanders.”
“There is already low public trust in the police and this will certainly raise questions amongst those in Solomon Islands concerned about the rearming of the RSIPF,” she said.
“The donation of 60 MK18 semi-automatic rifles is a game changer because it’s a significant increase in capability.”
“Policing assistance has increasingly become contested in Solomon Islands with its two main security providers competing for influence,” Ms. Powles concluded.
James Batley, a former Australian High commissioner to Solomon Islands, said on Wednesday: “I’d rather they (the guns) came from us than from anyone else, to be perfectly frank. Countries like Australia don’t just hand over guns, we hand over systems to manage guns … and not everyone would do that.”James Batley, a former Australian high commissioner to Solomon Islands, said on Wednesday: “I’d rather they (the guns) came from us than from anyone else, to be perfectly frank. Countries like Australia don’t just hand over guns, we hand over systems to manage guns … and not everyone would do that.”
Mr.Batley also commented about the arms supply saying, “While Australia had been involved in supplying training and equipment to the Solomon Islands police for many years, China’s increased interest in the country could not be ignored as a potential factor in the supply of the guns.”
“It’s not being done in a vacuum … obviously you can’t take it out of the context of what’s going on geopolitically,” he said. “But it also must tell us something about what the government itself wants because it’s not like we thrust things on them against their wishes.”
Mr. Batley I knew as the Australian High Commissioner in Honiara during my time in office (1997-1999) and he was always insistent that Australia only acted in the Solomon Islands support and interests when requested to do so by the SIG.
This happened to be his viewpoint in 1998 when the Australian government acted on my request to conduct a full security review of the Solomon Islands and its needs for an effective and fully resourced police service.
The truth of the matter, however, was it was Mr. Batley’s then Deputy High Commissioner who first raised the idea that Australia wished to conduct such a security review and left it to me to sell the idea to the then SIAC government.
I did so willingly hoping to gain the same kind of help that only occurred with the arrival of RAMSI in 2003.
What the SIG got by way of a security review in early 1999 was a whitewash of the needs for security and policing requirements, even a failure in that review to acknowledge or recognize the then prevailing worsening local security situation tantamount to civil unrest situation with the ongoing “militant” activities rampant across Guadalcanal. (Those that might have read my book ‘Policing a Clash of Cultures’) will have known of how the so called security review failed the Solomon Islands at a highly critical time and it was a further 4 years before the help that was desperately needed in 1999 came about.
Then only (in 2003) because the “penny had finally dropped” in Canberra and the Howard government feared the SI becoming an haven for offshore terrorist activity, similar to what had occurred on the island of Bali when 80 or more Australians tragically lost their lives in two bombing incidents in nightspots frequented by tourists.
The theft of sophisticated weapons supplied to the para-military arm of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (NRSF) some years before I became the police commisioner were stolen from the Central Police Armoury after my departure from thc country and used largely by the Malaita Eagle Force in combating the GRA and Isatambu fighters.
Overtures had been made to me in early 1999 to hand over some of the NRSF weapons to people in the community seeking to defend themselves, or so they said, I flatly refused any such approaches.
I was told by one senior member of the police service one day while in the police radio control room. “You know, Sir, out of respect for you and your control of the situation preventing the situation getting really out of hand, when you do leave us, we will take action to take control.”
This conversation I reported to the then SI PM and to Australian Intelligence in Canberra in person in July 1999.
The PM said in his reply after I had told him of the conversation in the police radio control room. "You know, Frank, if you do go my government will collapse."
The resultant armed conflict brought about the intervention of RAMSI in 2003 at the supposedly invitation of the Solomon Islands Prime Minister at the time. My information from well known and reliable sources disputes that the RAMSI intervention came at the request of the SI PM, but at the intervention of the Australian Government which, faced with a then “Ark of instability” in the region (in East Timor, PNG and in the Solomons), decided it had to act in defence of its national security and in support of the greater strategic security interests of the United States.
I question to what extent the Australians have given the RSIPF all necessary SOPE (Standard Operation Procedure Instructions and Training) to be able to properly handle the MK18 firearms, and knowing as I do, and many others know the same, the members of the local police force, handled the public order demonstrations in Honiara last year very badly.
There was reportedly little, or any negotiation, conducted with the protestors that had gathered at Parliament last November, as was within their constitutional rights to gather and protest peacefully
Whether or not there was a command from a senior police officer on duty at the scene to order the firing of tear gas on the protestors, or whether a “trigger happy” member of the public order police team first opened up with discharging tear gas, we still do not know, but the consequences we know all too clearly
In any future confrontation involving the police and protestors could it possibly be imaged a panicking policeman with a MK 18 rifle might fire on those assembled?
What would the consequences be? I know my own answers but a scenario Solomon Islanders should seriously ponder, including the issues concerning payback against individuals, their wantoks and their communities. A situation I witnessed all too clearly in early 1999.
Facing off against raging protestors can be a frightening experience and especially to a young, inexperienced policeman and no written orders can easily prevent an inappropriate action when faced with such a situation,
Yes, I speak from experience during the very early years of my police career in what is now the country of Zambia when ‘uprising’ by tribes opposed to the then colonial government and between the tribes themselves brought about daily rioting, with looting, property damage, arson, intimidation and deaths.
Managing conflict on such a scale was very much part of my extensive training both academically and practically and modelled by British law enforcement methods in which was enshrined the use of minimum force at all times. Orders very much strengthened today and laid down as Standing Order Codes for all police forces in the United Kingdom by the UK College of Policing and guided by the United Nations (UN) basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials.
Mr. Batley has told us the MK 18 rifles now in the hands of the RSIPF came with “with systems to manage the guns.”
That may have been the case, but given the scenario I have outlined to be a possibility for their use in the Solomon Islands during any future incidence of public disorder, can we be sure there will not be a serious calamity caused by the police misuse of the guns now in their hands. A calamity that will be very difficult to explain or to justify and overcome as a nation.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
