Writing on Monday this week locally-born academic Dr. Transform Aqorau mentioned the draft security agreement yet to be officially signed between the Solomon Islands Government and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He commented that it had been an interesting couple of weeks with stories of policing, weapons, and a security agreement with China dominating the local and regional media.
The fact is that the regional media reports especially from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have all been critical of the draft security agreement, citing the concern of China’s involvement in the Solomon Islands and allegations of the Chinese building a port facility to accommodate Chinese vessels including navy ships and a military base – all within a relatively short sea distance of Australia’s northwest coast, and within easy distance of New Zealand.
The Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister, in Parliament this week, denounced the regional countries' claims as false and that his government was acting within its rights as an independent sovereign state and would not permit the Chinese to build a port facility for its vessels or allow for the creation of a military base.
Prime Minister Sogavare gave his assurances and thanks for the aid rendered by Australia and New Zealand and also mentioned the existing security agreement with Australia which facilitated the secondment of Australian police and military personnel to Honiara during riots in the capital city last November.
From all accounts, the concerns of SI’s regional partners over the security agreement with China are not going away and there is much debate still in the media, on television, on the radio news, on U-tube and one report has claimed Australia is to build up its defense capabilities in Darwin anxious about the believed Chinese threat that it poses in its back-yard.
It is the same backyard and the same Solomon Islands that were considered as posing threats to Australia’s security concerns way back from 1999 to 2003, but it was not until the year 2003 when Australia woke up to the situation having for 4 years merely observed and monitored the instability in the Solomon Islands and despite having been accurately warned of the danger of doing nothing in July 1999.
More of that miscalculation and failure, however, to follow from my personal account of what happened.
Another of SI’s acclaimed academics, political commentator, and the author of many papers on the Solomon Islands, Dr. Tarcisius Kabuataulaka, director of the Pacific Islands Studies Centre, in Hawaii, said during the course of last week, the reaction from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States on the draft security agreement with China was "understandable", but establishing military bases in other nations isn't how China way operates.
He added by saying the Beijing-Honiara security pact has also made it evident that domestic political differences are the biggest security threat for the Melanesian nation.
Adding to a week of political debate Australia’s former Prime Minister, Mr. Kevin Rudd, was reported by Radio New Zealand has having commented, quote
Australian former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is accusing the current Australian government of creating a political vacuum in the Pacific region by neglecting their needs and concerns.
China has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Solomon Islands on police cooperation.
But there are fears China could also set up a military base as part of a broader deal.
"What is also being leaked apparently just now, however, is a draft broader agreement which takes this level of police cooperation between the Solomon Islands Police Force and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security to a broader military agreement between the Solomons and China," Rudd told Saturday Morning with Kim Hill.
"This) would contain within it the possibility of Chinese naval visits, for the Chinese to engage in wider forms of military cooperating with the government of the Solomon Islands."
"From my own perspective, this would represent a highly retrograde step in terms of peace and security and stability in the Southwest Pacific."
Mr. Rudd said much of the blame lies with the current Australian government led by Scott Morrison.
"The current conservative government of Australia has frankly had its eye off the ball when it comes to the South Pacific and Pacific Island countries more generally both on aid and on climate change policy, over a long period of time, creating therefore in the Pacific Island countries a growing strategic vacuum which made it possible for island states to turn to other countries like China."
Mr. Rudd said Australia also slashed the aid budget for the Pacific for several years after his term in office ended.
'When I left office at the end of 2013, our annual aid flows to the Pacific Island countries was something in the vicinity of about $1b per annum," Mr. Rudd said, noting in subsequent budgets that were cut by "hundreds of millions of dollars".
"We've had more or less seven or eight years of a gaping financial hole in the Pacific Island countries where Australia withdrawing its aid effort has had a huge and negative impact on the budgets of Pacific Island countries. That's just a fact."
Australia has also been ignoring requests from the Pacific for help with climate change since 2013, Mr. Rudd said.
Mr. Rudd said that it was no surprise China was making moves.
"Our friends in the Pacific Island countries have concluded that Australia under this government does not really care for their interests either on the question of their development assistance needs or on the question of climate.
"It's a matter of logic that creates an opening for other countries beyond the region, including China, to begin to advance their interests in our part of the world."
End of quote
I have to say Mr. Rudd’s criticism over Australia having not having its eyes on the ball in respect of the Solomon Islands for several years is not entirely accurate or correct knowledge of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands from 2003 till 2013, a decade which cost the Australian taxpayers many millions of dollars, the loss of two Australian’s killed while serving as part of the RAMSI mission and of the part played in restoring law and order during the civil uprising now referred to as the period of “ethnic tension.” or simply as the “tensions.”
Even before 2003 and still continuing Australia has played its part in contributing to the Solomon Islands through DFAT support by aid in kind and with substantial financial payments to the SIG to advance its policies and programs across the board and particularly in the health and policing sectors.
Australia did, however, take its eyes off the ball in early 1999 at the onset of civil unrest being waged initially by a core of militants who went by the name of the GRA and later the ISATMBU freedom movement hell-bent on the forced removal of Malaitan people who had intermarried and settled peacefully in Guadalcanal or merely worked there.
As the militancy turned into violent criminal acts involving arson attacks on properties, including private homes and commercial premises, assaults, rape, forced removals, and even murder, the government in Australia disregarded the security warning advice I had tendered in person and in many intelligence briefs.
The request for help from Australia was even denied to the incumbent SI’s Prime Minister who ended up being held captive by militants at gunpoint and forced to submit his resignation
Australia’s failure to help the Solomon Islands and to render any assistance to me at the time of my appointment as local police commissioner – in fact shown the door by the AFP when I visited Canberra at my own initiative and cost, I believe is still a cause of ongoing instability that Dr. Tarcisius Kabuataulaka cites as being the political instability leading to domestic political differences. Instantly that featured in the years from late 1998 with the rise of GRA militancy.
History as the habit of losing factual information or relevant facts on which to base real evidence, but I took immediate action in writing all the incidents and happenings involving militancy and my calls on Australia for short term police and military intervention in the years from 1997 to mid-1999 and all are documented in my published book. ‘Policing a Clash of Cultures’ ( Amazon Kindle bookshelf).
In respect of the claimed security threats said to be faced by the Solomon Islands and queried by Dr. Aqorau, and the domestic political differences cited by Dr. Tarcisius Kabuataulaka I would urge whoever ultimately takes the responsibility for the training and further advancement of the local police force, the RSIPF, to spend much time in studying an integrated approach to crowd psychology in respect of furthering better public order policing – using high powered automatic firearms, in my opinion, is not the way to go.
Let me end this piece by adding these few paragraphs on police tactics in dealing with crowds during public order incidents.
Where police use more interventionist tactics against the crowd as a whole – for instance, through the various forms of forced dispersal – the whole process can go one step further. Crowd members, whatever their initial intentions; find themselves the target of police action. Hence they will look to the most effective ways of avoiding arrest or injury. Sometimes this will involve the active use of violence to keep the police at a distance. Sometimes it will mean grouping together with other crowd members in order to gain collective strength. What is more, in this context, it makes sense to group together with the strongest, the meanest, and the most experienced people. Those who one would ordinarily do most to avoid become the most valuable allies once crowd members perceive their situation as one of ‘self-defense’
It is a well-known finding that common fate is a key determinant of common group membership: where the police treat all crowd members the same, they are likely to see themselves as to all the same; where the police treat all crowd members as oppositional they are likely to see themselves as a united opposition. What makes this all the more serious is that the effects are not limited to the crowded event itself. We find that people who expect the police to uphold their democratic rights (to protest, to watch sport in safety) but feel that the police have denied these rights are often those who are most outraged, most angry, and who enter subsequent crowd events with the greatest willingness to confront the police.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
