Solomon Islands

While the Howard government portrayed last year’s intervention as a humanitarian effort—dubbed Operation Helpim Fren (Helping Friend)—it formed part of an aggressive shift in foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq war. It signalled the use of military and economic muscle to trample over national sovereignty in order to reinforce Australian strategic and commercial dominance over the southwest Pacific.

RAMSI’s neo-colonial character was underscored by the response of New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff to the prison riot. The New Zealand Labour government has acted as Canberra’s deputy in the intervention, contributing troops and police personnel to secure its own interests in the region. Goff said the disturbance showed how important it was to continue the presence of a RAMSI military component—some 500 troops still remain—and for security to be strengthened to deal with ongoing problems inside the prison. He insisted that the prisoners’ demands for pardons, reconciliation and the withdrawal of immunity for RAMSI officers would not be met.

The tensions inside the prison reflect wider social discontent, and mounting dissatisfaction with the economic agenda being pursued by the RAMSI powers and its trampling on democratic rights. One year after the intervention force arrived, virtually nothing has been done to alleviate the poverty or improve the health, education and social services of the Solomons’ half a million people, who remain among the poorest in the world.

Instead, the central purpose of RAMSI has been to establish “law and order” as a precondition for corporate investment to exploit the islands’ natural resources, plantations, potential tourism development and other market opportunities. In a speech on RAMSI’s first anniversary, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer emphasised the necessity to remove all obstacles to the creation of a “robust private sector” in the Solomons.

Downer asserted that the small country’s economy had failed because of “government domination” of potentially profitable activities. Breaking this grip, privatising services and “providing a stable environment for private business” were “fundamental,” he insisted.

His declaration simply ignored the legacy of decades of British control over the islands before they were formally declared independent in 1978. Moreover, Canberra has directly contributed to the economic and social crisis in the Solomon Islands by repeatedly insisting that the country slash public sector jobs and services or face a cutoff of Australian and overseas aid.

Downer demanded that this free market program be intensified. He specifically stipulated the opening up to private business of basic services such as telecommunications, electricity and water, the abolition of communal land tenure, and the removal of “cumbersome investment regulations”, accompanied by labour market deregulation to lower workers’ wages and conditions. He launched a report by his department, Solomon Islands: Rebuilding an Island Economy, which lays down a virtual blueprint for a dramatic economic restructuring along these lines.

This plan will have devastating consequences for the way of life of most Solomons people, which is based on village and communal relations, kinship support and subsistence farming. It will fully subject them to the dictates of global markets, as well as line the pockets of Australian and New Zealand business consultants and entrepreneurs. Such conditions will inevitably deepen the social misery of the population and generate growing resentment against the Australian-led neo-colonial intervention.


Someone knows what is going on there nowadays?