Riots in the Solomon Islands

Riots broke out in the Solomon Islands after Snyder Rini was declared prime minister. However, there are caims that votes were bought by Mr Rini's financial backers. "Not only promises but gifts of money. So how can you fight that?" said Francis Billy Hilly, a spokesperson for the opposition. It has been reported that an angry crowd threw stones at the Parliament building, resulting in tear gas being fired by the police. Cars and buildings were set alight in Honiara and several Australian and New Zealand police officers were injured. [ Photos 1 | 2 ]

In 2003, Australian and New Zealand troops and police were sent to the Solomon Islands "to prevent the Solomons from sliding into anarchy." (Quote from NZ Army). John Pilger writes that "Australian troops were dispatched to the Solomon Islands: to "police the chaos," meaning to secure the country for Australian business. Something similar is under way in Papua New Guinea, where a regime of privatisation, deregulation and "free trade" is being directed by a team from Australia."
Analysis: SEEKING ANSWERS IN THE ASHES OF HONIARA

Iggy Kim from zmag writes on the issue of neo-colonisation in the Pacific:

Barely had the Solomons intervention begun, John Howard was already talking up a plan to strengthen Australian domination over the countries of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

Answering a question at a July 22 press conference, Howard stated that "…many of these countries are too small to be viable… and we really have to develop an approach that I could loosely call… pooled regional govern-ance…. [I]t's just not possible if you've got an island state of fewer than 100,000 people to expect to have all of the sophisticated arms of government".

The next day, in an interview with the ABC, foreign minister Alexander Downer further clarified this proposal with a suggestion of trade liberalisation and a European Union-style common market for the southwest Pacific.

[…]

Sections of the foreign policy elite have been trying to push a more interventionist Pacific policy for some time, especially since the 2000 Solomons coup. At that time, Howard turned down Honiara's request for an Australian military deployment.

Nevertheless, the crisis got Canberra very worried. Weighed down by years of "free market" restructuring (largely pushed by Australia and New Zealand), more and more Pacific states have been hobbling closer to all-round crisis - one that the region's neo-colonial elites can no longer contain, such as in the Solomons.

In an article for Green Left Weekly in 2003 Doug Lorimer gets to the point of Australian and NZ intervention in the Solomon Islands: "[…] the real objective of this “police operation” is not to bring security to the lives of ordinary Solomon Islanders, but to make the Solomons safe for Australian investors to exploit the islanders' labour and their natural resources."