CANBERRA: Australian police began taking control of the Solomon Islands capital Honiara on Friday after days of violent protests in the South Pacific island nation, witnesses said.
Tear gas was deployed in Chinatown where looting and the burning of buildings continued on Friday morning and a new curfew was expected to be imposed later in the day, a resident told Reuters.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who requested help from Australia, on Friday blamed foreign countries for stoking the violent protests, but did not name any.
Many of the protesters come from the most populous province Malaita and feel overlooked by the government in Guadalcanal province and oppose its 2019 decision to end diplomatic ties with Taiwan and establish formal links with China.
“I feel sorry for my people in Malaita because they are fed with false and deliberate lies about the switch,” Sogavare told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“These very countries that are now influencing Malaita are the countries that don’t want ties with the People’s Republic of China, and they are discouraging Solomon Islands to enter into diplomatic relations and to comply with international law and the United Nations resolution.”
China and Taiwan have been rivals in the South Pacific for decades with some island nations switching allegiances.
China views Taiwan as a wayward province with no right to state-to-state ties, which the government in Taipei hotly disputes. Only 15 countries maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. The last two to ditch Taipei in favor of Beijing were the Solomon Islands and Kiribati in September 2019.
Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said in a statement: “We have nothing to do with the unrest”.
Solomon Island resident Transform Aqorau said more than a hundred people were on Friday looting shops, before Australian Federal Police officers arrived.
“The scenes here are really chaotic. It is like a war zone,” Aqorau told Reuters by telephone on Friday morning.
“There is no public transport and it is a struggle with the heat and the smoke. Buildings are still burning.”
He said later Australian police were “taking control of Chinatown.”
A statement on the Solomon Islands government website said public servants with the exception of essential workers should stay at home “due to the current unrest in Honiara City.”
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Australia was sending 100 police personnel and was “clearly focused on stability in our region.”
Australian police were previously deployed to the Solomon Islands in 2003 under a peace keeping mission authorized by a Pacific Island Forum declaration and stayed for a decade.
Severe internal unrest and armed conflict from 1998 to 2003 involved militant groups from Guadalcanal and the neighboring island of Malaita, and fighting on the outskirts of Honiara.
Australian police take control of Solomon Islands capital after days of unrest
https://arab.news/m57ut
Australian police take control of Solomon Islands capital after days of unrest
- Tear gas was deployed in Chinatown where looting and the burning of buildings continued on Friday morning
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CARACAS: The Venezuelan army swore in 5,600 soldiers on Saturday, as the United States cranks up military pressure on the oil-producing country.
President Nicolas Maduro has called for stepped-up military recruitment after the United States deployed a fleet of warships and the world’s largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean under the pretext of combating drug trafficking.
American forces have carried out deadly strikes on more than 20 vessels, killing at least 87.
Washington has accused Maduro of leading the alleged “Cartel of the Suns,” which it declared a terrorist organization last month.
Maduro asserts the American deployment aims to overthrow him and seize the country’s oil reserves.
“Under no circumstances will we allow an invasion by an imperialist force,” Col. Gabriel Rendon said Saturday during a ceremony at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, in Caracas.
According to official figures, Venezuela has around 200,000 troops and an additional 200,000 police officers.
A former opposition governor died in prison on Saturday where he had been detained on charges of terrorism and incitement, a rights group said.
Alfredo Diaz was at least the sixth opposition member to die in prison since November 2024.
They had been arrested following protests sparked by last July’s disputed election, when Maduro claimed a third term despite accusations of fraud.
The protests resulted in 28 deaths and around 2,400 arrests, with nearly 2,000 people released since then.
Diaz, governor of Nueva Esparta from 2017 to 2021, “had been imprisoned and held in isolation for a year; only one visit from his daughter was allowed,” said Alfredo Romero, director of the NGO Foro Penal, which defends political prisoners.
The group says there are at least 887 political prisoners in Venezuela.
Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado condemned the deaths of political prisoners in Venezuela during “post-electoral repression.”
“The circumstances of these deaths — which include denial of medical care, inhumane conditions, isolation, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment — reveal a sustained pattern of state repression,” Machado said in a joint statement with Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the opposition candidate she believes won the election.
