4-25-06, 8:48 am

Solomon Islands: Wrong way, go back! Get out!

Law and order has been restored! “Democracy” has been imposed by Howard’s guns – Australia’s (and NZ’s) armed military and police forces! A corrupt government has been sworn in as a successor to the equally corrupt former government. “Unruly masses”, “rabble” and “mob”, are the favoured terms used by the Australian media to describe the impoverished and resentful Solomon Islanders who have taken to the streets in protest. They are the ones that genuinely want work (rather than unemployment) and want a clean government elected by clean elections. But they have now been put in their place.

The real failure is that of the Australian and New Zealand Governments and the rapacious moneyed men from Taiwan and elsewhere (including Australia) who are ripping off the resources of the Solomon Islands.

“Our police will have to remain there for a long time to come”, declares Downer. “You can never sometimes put an end date on them”, says Howard commenting on the deployment of troops and police. But by what right does the Australian Government assume and then impose an occupation on a neighbour and then declare that they will occupy it for a “long time to come?” Did the Solomon Islanders make this decision “democratically”?

The indigenous people of the Solomon Islands have occupied their islands for centuries. Any conflict they may have had would surely be nothing comparable with the turmoil, economic deprivation and destruction that outsiders have imposed on them.

The armed forces and the police and those who claimed that they came to tell the Solomon Islanders how to establish “good governance” and how to run their economy failed to understand or even attempt to take into account the traditions, culture and ways of life (such as community land ownership) that had maintained a stable society in former times.

In classical imperialist terms, Howard declares that “It is in our interests, as well as in the interests of the region, that we prevent states from failing”. He claims that Australia’s interests and those of the region are the same but there is every indication that this is not so.

Is it in the interests of the Solomon Islanders that their timber, fish stock, minerals and other resources be plundered by outside capital that will pull out as soon as their never satisfied profit motives have been exhausted – when the resources run out?

Is it in the interests of the Solomon Islanders that they have imposed on them an allegedly “democratic” government which is, in fact, run by corrupt politicians that the Australian military and police forces are seen to be protecting? The police arrested and imprisoned no less than 4,000 Solomon Islanders following the first occupation in 2003. “Instead of arresting the prize culprits, the Australian Federal Police give them close personal protection guards”, commented one long-term Australian resident of Honiara.

During the course of the recent rioting it became obvious that the Australian forces found themselves on the receiving end of angry stone-throwers, and this sentiment is certain to increase as the same failed policies are re-imposed. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that the Howard Government has learnt or is capable of learning that its policies are a main contributing factor in the recent unrest.

The same demand for independence that is now facing the Indonesian Government in West Papua is also arising in the Pacific Island states and the younger generations in particular will not tolerate forever the imposition of a colonial occupation and the exploitation that inevitably goes with it.

“We have a long-term commitment to the security of the Solomon Islands and we are absolutely determined that [they] will be a stable democratic country and that can only happen if we go the distance”, claimed Big Brother Howard.

“I don’t have great optimism of us being able to get out of the Solomon Islands”, said Downer, but in time it is certain that a demand to end Australian occupation and the ripping out of the resources of the island by Taiwan and elsewhere will bring an end to the suffering that is now being imposed.

From The Guardian