Both governments are claiming responsibility for rescue of nine Papua New Guinean nationals last month
Tensions between China and Taiwan have found an unlikely battleground – a fight over who rescued nine Papua New Guinean sailors who were lost at sea for nearly a month.
The dispute came after the rescue of the Papua New Guinean nationals in Solomon Island waters after 29 days lost at sea, late in February.
Continue reading...The Pacific country was coronavirus-free until last month but an outbreak of thousands of cases is overwhelming the health system
Frontline health workers in Solomon Islands have warned that its health system is on the brink of collapse as the country struggles to deal with a devastating outbreak of Covid-19.
A senior doctor and two nurses at the National Referral Hospital (NRH) in the capital of Honiara have told of how there are no beds for Covid patients – leading to people dying on the floor of the wards – as well as a lack of facilities and staff shortages that have led to Covid-positive nurses being recalled to work and probationary nurses tending to critically ill patients solo, when they should be supervised by a more senior nurse.
Continue reading...Manasseh Sogavare defends switching diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China
The prime minister of Solomon Islands has defended his government’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with China, accusing “agents of Taiwan” of attempting to destabilise the government.
Manasseh Sogavare made the comments during a heated day in parliament as the opposition leader, Mathew Wale, attempted to remove the prime minister through a no-confidence motion that was defeated by a significant majority.
Wale blamed Sogavare for the deadly anti-government protests and riots that have shaken the country in recent weeks. Protesters marched on the parliamentary precinct in the east of Honiara on 24 November, where they allegedly set fire to a leaf hut next to Parliament House where MPs and staffers go to smoke and eat lunch. Riots followed lasting hours with buildings being torched in Chinatown, as well as at a police station and a school.
Rioting continued for days. The bodies of three people were found in a burnt-out building in a store in the Chinatown district of Honiara.
Many of the protesters come from Malaita province, the most populous province in the country, where the provincial government has had tense relations with the central government for years. Tensions increased in 2019 when Sogavare announced that Solomon Islands would switch its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China, a decision that the Malaita premier, Daniel Suidani, has strongly criticised.
Troops will join Australian-led force that also includes Papua New Guinea
Fiji will contribute 50 troops to an Australian-led peacekeeping force in Solomon Islands after anti-government rioting that razed parts of the capital of Honiara, the Fijian prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, has said.
The Fijian contingent will lift the number of peacekeepers to about 200 troops and police officers, mostly Australian with a contribution of at least 34 personnel from Papua New Guinea.
Continue reading...The badly burnt victims were discovered in a building in Chinatown in Honiara after days of rioting
The bodies of three people have been discovered in a burnt-out building in the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara, the first reported deaths after days of rioting.
The charred bodies were discovered in a store in the Chinatown district of Honiara, police said on Saturday.
Continue reading...Honiara has awoken to a calmer scene but tension lingers as quelling the violent protests has not resolved their underlying causes
Unresolved tensions and geopolitical pressures are a volatile mix in Solomon Islands.
What began as a peaceful protest calling for the resignation of prime minister Manasseh Sogavare on Wednesday quickly descended into unrest as the crowd of about 1,000 people, many of whom travelled from the neighbouring Malaita province, grew agitated and set fire to a leaf hut in the capital Honiara’s parliamentary complex.
Continue reading...Comments come as Australian police and defence force personnel arrive in Honiara to help restore order
Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has blamed foreign interference over his government’s decision to switch alliances from Taiwan to Beijing for anti-government protests, arson and looting that have ravaged the capital Honiara in recent days.
However, critics have also blamed the unrest on complaints of a lack of government services and accountability, corruption and foreign workers taking local jobs. In 2019, Sogavare also angered many, particularly leaders of Solomon Islands’ most populous province, Malaita, when he cut the country’s diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Continue reading...Survey of more than 6,000 people by Transparency International is the most comprehensive look at corruption in the region to date
One in three people across the Pacific Islands region have paid a bribe when using a public service in the last year, while a quarter of people have been offered a bribe for their vote in the last five years, according to a report by Transparency International.
The findings for the watchdog group are based on a survey of more than 6,000 people in 10 countries and territories, and is the most comprehensive look at corruption ever carried out in the region.
Continue reading...Surviving on oranges they’d packed, coconuts from the sea and rainwater they collected, they floated about 400km in the Solomon Sea before being rescued
Two men from Solomon Islands who spent 29 days lost at sea after their GPS tracker stopped working have been rescued off the coast of Papua New Guinea – 400 kilometres away from where their journey began.
Livae Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni set out from Mono Island, in Western province, Solomon Islands, on the morning of the 3 September in a small, single 60 horsepower motorboat.
Continue reading...A proposal to mine 60% of a tiny island of Wagina in the Pacific was met with outrage by locals and became a landmark case in Solomon Islands.
A proposal to mine 60% of Wagina for bauxite was met with outrage by locals and became a landmark case in Solomon Islands
When a mining company arrived on Wagina nearly a decade ago with a proposal to mine 60% of the island for bauxite, resistance was swift and resolute.
“I was in the group that went and physically stopped the machines that landed on the site behind this island,” says Teuaia Sito, the former president of the Lauru Wagina Council of Women.
Continue reading...China is the major buyer of wood from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging
An illegally logged tree, felled in the diminishing forests of Papua New Guinea, may well end up becoming floorboards in a Sydney living room, or a bookcase in a home in Seattle.
Illegal logging contributes between 15% and 30% of the global wood trade, according to Interpol. China is a major buyer of the world’s illegal timber, according to environmental groups, especially from Pacific nations like PNG and Solomon Islands, which are implicated in illegal or unsustainable logging.
Continue reading...Pacific diplomacy hinges on in-person discussion but web-only meetings have fed a growing dispute over the forum’s leadership and purpose
In the Pacific, it is all about the talanoa: the conversation and the consensus.
For the 50 years of the Pacific Islands Forum (beginning life as the South Pacific Forum), meetings have always happened in person, and it is the power of the leaders being together that has given the forum its rare ability to find common ground.
Continue reading...A handful of countries – most of them islands, most of them remote – remain coronavirus-free, but life has not remained wholly unchanged
For all of its virulence, for all the breathtaking speed with which it spread seemingly everywhere around the globe, there are places still where Covid-19 has not reached, and might never.
Places without face masks or elbow-bumps, without QR codes or capacity limits, without lockdowns or social distancing. There are a handful of countries across the globe – many of them islands, most of them remote – that have managed to escape the pandemic. But while the virus hasn’t hit, the global shockwaves it has sent rippling around the world certainly have.
Continue reading...NGO workers mapping second world war bomb sites died when ordnance detonated in their home
An Australian man and his British colleague working to map unexploded bombs across Solomon Islands have been killed in an explosion at their home in the capital Honiara.
Australian Trent Lee and Briton Stephen “Luke” Atkinson died when an unexploded ordnance is believed to have detonated shortly after 7.30pm on Sunday.
Continue reading...Covid-19-related developments throughout the Pacific Islands
The total number of Covid-19 cases across the Pacific stands at 314, with new cases reported this week in New Caledonia, Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.
New Zealand is under increasing pressure, both internally and from across the region, to consider Pacific countries as part of its proposed travel ‘bubble’, alongside, or even in place of, Australia. The foreign minister, Winston Peters, initially rejected including Pacific island nations, but later backtracked.
Continue reading...Group left Papua New Guinea in canoe before Christmas and survivors were rescued almost 2,000km away a month later
Four people have been rescued after spending 32 days adrift in the South Pacific, after a tragic voyage that resulted in the deaths of eight of their fellow travellers, including a baby.
The group left Bougainville island, east of the mainland of Papua New Guinea, on 22 December to travel the Carteret Islands 100km away for Christmas celebrations.
Continue reading...Pacific nations, still reeling from a devastating measles outbreak, have watched news out of Wuhan in panic
As Pacific Islanders watched updates about the coronavirus outbreak over the past few weeks, unease soon gave way to panic.
Still reeling in shock from a measles outbreak in Samoa, Pacific Islanders’ fears were stoked as it became apparent that even large, well-developed countries were struggling to contain the outbreak. Low-resourced settings always suffer the greatest losses in global medical crises and people living in these island nations are not blind to that detail.
Continue reading...After my nation switched allegiance to China, it took journalists on a ‘look and learn’ tour
The invitation from the prime minister’s office came in mid-November, almost exactly two months after the event referred to as “the switch” – the day the government of Solomon Islands, after more than 30 years of diplomatic allegiance to Taiwan, unceremoniously switched recognition to China.
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] want to take SI [Solomon Islands] media on an ‘Look and Learn’ tour of China,” the email said, “you’re on the list.”
Continue reading...If anything demonstrates the interconnectedness of the 21st-century world, it is how a decision made in the Solomon Islands, population 650,000, in the remote South Pacific, can affect the behaviour of powerful countries on the other side of the globe. That, in a way, is exactly what happened last week when Nato leaders met in London. Top of their agenda was Donald Trump’s demand that Europe pay more for its defence. But why is the US so exercised about so-called “burden-sharing”? In part because, these days, it is looking west, not east.
The US has identified China, not Russia, as the biggest strategic, economic and potential military rival to its global leadership. Barack Obama, who was dubbed the “Pacific president”, formalised this shift with his 2011 “pivot to Asia”, which prioritised the region.
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