The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. On Wednesday, protesters stormed the national Parliament in Honiara and set a police station and buildings in Chinatown on fire, according to the authorities and local news reports. Residents contended with food shortages on top of the ongoing protests, as the few shops that remained open had imposed strict buying limits. The state of the prime minister’s residence in Lunga, on the outskirts of the capital, was unclear. Sora said, “but it’s the actions of these large nations as they curry sympathy with local actors - favoring some over others to pursue their own strategic objectives without pausing to consider what are already deep social and political undercurrents in the country - that have a destabilizing effect on social cohesion.” What has been the fallout from the protests?īy Friday, many buildings had been burned and shops destroyed. “Geostrategic competition does not by itself trigger rioting,” Mr. With the United States providing Malaita with direct foreign aid while China supports the central government, existing fractures in the nation have deepened, he said. Some experts draw a straight line from the 2019 decision to this week’s unrest.īehind the riots was “quite a lot of unhappiness about that switch,” said Sinclair Dinnen, an associate professor at the Australian National University’s Department of Pacific Affairs. How did the switch in allegiances affect the country? In 2006, riots broke out amid rumors that the election of an unpopular prime minister had been influenced by Chinese or Taiwanese money. This is not the first time China’s presence on the islands has been a source of contention. In 2019, a Chinese company signed an agreement to lease one of the islands, but the agreement was subsequently ruled illegal by the attorney general of the Solomon Islands.
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The United States sees the Solomon Islands, and other Pacific nations, as crucial in preventing China from asserting influence in the region.Ĭhina has been investing heavily in the Pacific, to the alarm of U.S. The island nation found itself in a heightened geopolitical tug of war because of the 2019 decision, which dealt a blow both to Taipei’s global standing and to Washington’s regional diplomacy. Densely forested, mountainous and volcanic, it lies 30 miles northeast of Guadalcanal, the larger island, across Indispensable Strait. Malaita is the most populous of the islands, with residents numbering 160,500 as of last year. Many of the protesters had traveled from the island of Malaita to Guadalcanal Island, which houses the nation’s capital, according to officials and local news reports. Sogavare had requested security assistance, Australia’s prime minister said.
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Papua New Guinea also committed to sending peacekeeping troops to the Solomon Islands, according to local news media, after police officers from Australia arrived in the capital on Thursday night. curfew in Honiara would continue indefinitely. On Friday afternoon, the authorities announced that a 6 a.m.-to-7 p.m. The police said they had arrested two people, and sought to quell speculation that officers had killed the arrestees. The police also fired shots elsewhere in the capital, Honiara, to scatter protesters, according to local reporters, as antigovernment demonstrators called for Mr.
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The police used tear gas to disperse the crowds as riots rocked the nation’s capital for the third straight day. MELBOURNE, Australia - Protesters in the Solomon Islands tried to storm the personal residence of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Friday, setting a building nearby on fire.