Solomon Islands: Ethnicity or Economics

TROWEL & SWORD

Resources - Missions (Overseas)

August 2000

Solomon Islands: Ethnicity or Economics

Julian Treadaway

In the middle of the night last June Malakia (the name has been changed) and his family were woken suddenly by a group of men and boys armed with home made guns, resurrected World War 2 weapons, machetes and axes. Malakia was a settler from Malaita, the most populated island of the Solomon Islands, who had bought ‘customary’ land in the larger but less populated island of Guadalcanal. He and his family had built a small village of sago-palm leaf houses next to a placid river and lived peacefully with their Guadalcanal neighbours for over 20 years. The armed men were from the Isatabu Freedom Movement, who had decided there were too many settlers in Guadalcanal and that they should be chased out, whether they were legal settlers who had bought the land like Malakia or illegal squatters like many others.

They told Malakia and his family that they had 24 hours to leave or they would be back to burn the village and kill its inhabitants. The next day Malakia and his family packed as many of their few possessions as they could, and found a truck to take them to Honiara, the capital city, also on Guadalcanal. There they found themselves in a sports hall already crowded with refugees. They soon heard that the ‘militants’, as everyone had started to call them, had come back and carried out their threat of burning down the village, but only after they had safely left.

Over a period of about 6 months about 20,000 people were expelled from Guadalcanal in this way. Some were prosperous farmers who had bought the land legally and invested in modern houses, solar electricity and commercial pig or chicken farms; many were workers on the large palm-oil plantations where most of the workers were from outside Guadalcanal; others were squatters who had settled without permission, often near relatives or just outside the Honiara town boundary.

The press, echoing the ‘ethnic cleansing’ concepts of the Balkans and elsewhere, have called this ‘ethnic tension’, but many aspects of what happened suggest this is misleading.

First, there was very little violence considering the scale of the exodus – less than 20 people were killed. If the situation was caused by ethnic hatreds people would not have been given the time to leave peacefully.

Secondly it is not only Malaitans who have been expelled but also settlers and workers from many other islands – it looked anti-Malaitan because the majority of the settlers were Malaitan, and Malaitans form the biggest single group in the Solomon Islands population.

In fact the problem is one of the distribution of land and resources rather than just an ethnic problem. Malaitans and others have freely ‘bought’ land in North Guadalcanal and many have become prosperous. The large plantations are foreign and government owned and the original landowners get very little share of the profits. Many of the ‘freedom fighters’ are young men from the other side of Guadalcanal, which has fewer resources and has been neglected, like many other rural areas of the Solomons, by successive governments. The young men, often people ‘pushed out’ of school by the lack of places in the school system, see others becoming prosperous: the settlers; the plantation owners and workers; their fellow islanders who have made money from selling their land; the urban elite living on Guadalcanal land; and the politicians they have elected into parliament. They started to ask why they were not getting a share of the wealth. This is a situation repeated in many other parts of the Solomons and perhaps it exploded here first because the ‘wealth gap’ was more extreme and more conspicuous, and because of special factors such as the presence of Bougainville refugees who had already faced a similar situation in Papua New Guinea.

Another aspect is the conflict between traditional concepts of land ownership in which, even if you pay for land, it remains ultimately the property of the ‘original’ landowners, and European concepts of selling land ‘freehold’ and forever. There is also the patrilineal land ownership system in Malaita and the matrilineal system in Guadalcanal, so that a Malaita man marrying a Guadalcanal woman ‘inherits’ land from both sides.

In addition there are many social factors underlying the situation. As in many countries, the education system had been based on an academic pyramid, with large numbers of ‘push-outs’ who have learnt academic skills suitable for urban employment rather than skills useful for rural living, to which most must return. The education system, the media, including 3 commercial FM radio stations, and videos, which now penetrate into almost every village, help to give these young people expectations and glimpses of life styles which they envy but cannot possibly hope to achieve. The videos also show all the techniques of armed, masked men, kidnapping, holding people at gun point, hi-jacking vehicles, tolerance of violence and use of drugs which have now been used by the two militant groups. Even the name of one, the Malaita Eagle Force, reminds one of the videos.

Added to this are historical factors such as the British encouragement for Malaitans to migrate rather than develop their own island, so that young Malaitans became migrants from the days of when they were taken to Queensland by the ‘blackbirders’. This led to the Malaitans being the entrepreneurs in many areas and, as so often happens, their initiative came to be resented by others.

The situation, therefore, is far more complex than the simple’ ethnic tension’ of media headlines.

For a while the situation got much worse, with the Malaita Eagle Force arming themselves with stolen police guns and returning to Guadalcanal to demand ‘compensation’ for their loss of land. Recently this group joined forces with discontented paramilitary elements of the police and an ambitious lawyer/politician to take over Honiara, surround the Prime Minister with a ‘protective force’ of armed men and demand his resignation. Partly under international pressure the Prime Minister was freed so that his final resignation had a semblance of constitutionality, rather than brute force.

There was a period of skirmishing, rather than open warfare, outside Honiara, but reports of this were very exaggerated, especially overseas – perhaps one reason why the Australians decided to evacuate all their nationals and others who wanted to leave. Even before they all left, however, the two militant groups had agreed to a truce, a strong women’s group has pleaded with them as mothers to stop fighting, and at the end of June some of the Malaita Eagle Force crossed the bridge between their bunker and the Isatabu Freedom Fighters and shared food with them. Another group of women are now regularly going to the ‘border’ and meeting women from the other side and exchanging food with them – a very Melanesian gesture.

It looks as if the two sides do not want to fight as long as they get their compensation, an amnesty and other demands. This is not easy, but again indicates that it is not essentially an ethnic conflict. Meanwhile we await the election of a new Prime Minister by Parliament, now scheduled for 28 June. Unless the new Prime Minister tackles the underlying problems, however, the situation may simmer and break out again, even if he gets the two warring sides to make the truce permanent.

The fundamental question is whether the Solomon Islands allows modern trends to continue, including migration between islands, modern land purchase, inter-marriage, multicultural schools and a mixed public service which can be posted to any island. These are the trends which are slowly making a nation of Solomon Islands. The pressures against these trends are now great. There are already demands from most provinces for the introduction of ‘pass laws’ to restrict the movement of people. The danger of this in a country of 400, 000 people with over 70 language/cultural groups is that it would result in a return to the nineteenth century situation of division into tiny, hostile ethnic groups, and perhaps the revival of ‘tribal’ fighting with modern weapons, as has already happened in parts of Papua New Guinea.

Here, as elsewhere in Melanesia, the only viable alternative, given the economic and social changes which have already taken place, is to move forward towards nation building, perhaps within a federal structure, rather than return to the ethnic isolation of the past. Most of the more educated people realise this, but the ‘militants do not, and this is exploited by ambitious politicians. Many of the young militants are also there because they enjoy the violence and because their guns have for the first time given them a status in their society and power over their elders, which they will not easily give up. Whatever the future holds the road is going to be a long and hard one for a country known as the “Happy Isles”.

In our view Julian gives a good background and assessment of the current problems in Solomon Islands. Obviously, not all aspects of the problem have been included, as the situation is very complex indeed. On Friday 30 June, the government elected a new Prime Minister, Mr Mannasah Sogovare, the former leader of the opposition. His first undertaking was to outline a 100-day plan during which time the following results were targeted:

The return of law and order to the police.
The militants on both sides to return all weapons and cease hostility.
The resumption of schools and other government services
The resumption of international services to Honiara.

Sogovare was elected by the members of parliament, but does not hold a majority and therefore his political position is shaky. The whole country will need to get behind him in order to achieve these goals. Needed is much wisdom, humility and a willingness to move forward and forgive the past on all sides. We request much prayer for Solomon Islands, and particularly for the Christian Churches and Missions who may have leading roles to play.

Kevin & Machi Rietveld.

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