He warns that the attacks in Honiara have also raised concern for Chinese communities in other parts of the Pacific. "It’s difficult to predict if riots and looting can be prevented in the future, we just hope it won’t happen again."

But he welcomes the return of some looted goods to the Chinese business community. "With the assistance of the foreign force, it does bring the situation back to normalcy and the Chinese community do feel a lot safer with them around."

“We all are Christian people and if you have such things at home that you take it from the looting it is good for you to return it back."
– looter

Twice in the past week, Kwan has been invited to meet with unnamed members of the Lord Howe shanty community, which is down by the Honiara river mouth. They have returned some looted items, but acknowledged others in the shanty town have held onto goods.

“It’s a positive sign from my community at the Lord Howe settlement that people are planning to return things they took during the looting to the Chinese people,” one of the men said in a statement to ZFM radio station. “We all are Christian people and if you have such things at home that you take it from the looting it is good for you to return it back."

The man acknowledged those in the Chinese community were just trying their best to do business in Honiara, to earn a living for their families and provide employment for Solomon Islands people. Losing their properties and what they owned was a sad thing, he said.

More than a week later, Honiara is still a town unsettled. Unsettled last week by the arrival of foreign police and troops as a regional support force. Unsettled this week by a failed vote of no confidence in Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

"Since the vote of no confidence was defeated, Honiara has been calm ... There's a whole bunch of people at the market. Town's buzzing, people milling around. So it's good to see we've had a positive impact and in the town, things are getting back to normal."
– Lt Colonel Sam Smith

Ahead of the riots, a Malaitan group presented a petition to Parliament that they said was signed by 12,200 Honiara Malaitans.

It called on the Prime Minister to return a World Bank infrastructure project to Malaita, use public funds in a more transparent manner, and ensure Solomon Islands has first priority for jobs in the face of a "high influx of Asians and Chinese cheap labourers".

Children in the line of fire

Lily Chekana is a trained teacher, living in Honiara with her five children. She was preparing her 11-year-old daughter Nomura's school lunch in the morning, when she saw on social media images of the riots, happening just across town.

Nomura had already gone to school early; a terrified Chekana called her sister who lived near the school, and asked her to pick up Nomura from the school.

"This history of riot and looting and burning of town made me feel like I am a stranger in my own country," she says. "I no longer feel safe here.

"And I feel that at the end of the day the Government of my country cannot provide the assurance that we, the citizens of Solomon Islands, will be secure and comfortable."

The arrival of soldiers and police from neighbouring Pacific nations means she feel a little safer now. "Their presence again is not only providing security but also help to empower our local police, the way I look at it," she says. "If the New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea armies and police return, we can still maintain good security here."

Good, but not sufficient to reassure her about the longer-term future.

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"We have long ongoing issues that need to be addressed, and then came the corona thing, and then now this riot," she says.

"I don't know what the future holds for me and my children."

Boots on the ground

Nearly 60 New Zealand defence and police personnel have flown into Honiara in the past week, on Royal NZ Air Force Hercules C-130s and a Boeing 757.

New Zealand's army personnel carry standard issue MARS-L rifles. The 11 police officers, led by Inspector Mike Cook, have pepper spray, body armour and handcuffs, but no firearms. They reported calm in the days after the Parliamentary vote.

Lt Colonel Smith, the senior national officer for the Defence Force, says the New Zealanders are patrolling the hillside suburbs in the south and west of the township. "We're doing community presence, patrolling and reinsuring the population that security is good and the police are out patrolling, after the unrest over the last couple of weeks."

Once their Covid tests come back clear, they will be able to engage more with the local population. Tight border controls have ensured Solomon Islands have had only 20 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and no deaths.

"Since the vote of no confidence was defeated, Honiara has been calm," Smith says. "People have been out, doing some recovery work on their buildings and homes. There's a whole bunch of people at the market. Town's buzzing, people milling around. So it's good to see we've had a positive impact and in the town, things are getting back to normal."

Police Inspector Rose agrees. "We have a community presence and work together with the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force, just around talking with people in the communities, just allaying any fears that they may and ensuring a sense of calm remains," he says.

"Businesses are starting to reopen. People are starting to move around freely. There's a sense of a return to normality."

Chinatown burns, again and again

Some things have changed since New Zealand last sent peacekeepers in 2003 as part of Operation Ramsi – back then they landed only military Hercules on the pockmarked runway; this time they flew in a RNZAF Boeing 757.

But many things remain the same. This was the fifth time locals have rioted in the streets of Chinatown, and looted the businesses there.

It first happened in 2000, escalating into ethnic violence between Guadalcanal locals and Malaitan rebels. Sasako was a Government minister at the time; that was the start of the trouble that forced the country to call in the Operation Ramsi regional peacekeepers, he says, but things have got steadily worse.

In 2006 there were more riots, after MPs anointed the unpopular Snyder Rini as prime minister. New Zealand and Australia, whose peacekeepers were already on the ground with Operation Ramsi, were forced to flood the streets of Honiara with 200 reinforcements. 

Back then, Chinese businesses were targeted partly because of allegations they and Taiwan had helped fund Rini to bribe legislators for support in the vote for prime minister. The riots had their desired outcome; within 14 days of taking office, Rini was ousted by Sogavare, who bizarrely accused Australia of provoking the riots – and threw out Australian High Commissioner Patrick Cole.

There were more riots in 2011, after Prime Minister Danny Philip resigned over allegations he misused Taiwanese funds, and the pro-Chinese Gordon Lilo took office.

In 2006, the riots had helped elevate Sogavare to his second term in office. But in 2019 the tables were turned, and the protests were against Sogavare (by this point serving his fourth term as prime minister) deciding to switch diplomatic recognition to China.

Whether the protests are again China or against Taiwan, it is the unfortunate local Chinese community – some of whose families have been in Solomon Islands since before Taiwan and the People's Republic even existed as separate entities – who have born the brunt of the riots.

In 2021, the riots were again led by Sogavare's opponents. That's why he has requested assistance from New Zealand, Australia, PNG and Fiji – to calm the riots and secure his position in office. 

There is a certain irony in Sogavare calling in the assistance of Australia and New Zealand, after previously blaming Australia for the 2006 riots and ejecting its envoy.

This week, with overseas troops securing the perimeter, he told the nation's riven Parliament that “agents of Taiwan” were undermining his Government after it switched diplomatic recognition to mainland China. 

"Solomon Islands as a sovereign democratic state reaffirms its decision and stands by its traditional bilateral partners, USA, UK, Australia, Japan and NZ and the rest of the world … in recognising the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of China,” he told MPs.

China had agreed to upgrade Honiara's hospital and universities, MPs were told. This will only fuel concern from those who believe China is buying the loyalties of the Pacific. It's not the only small island nation to accept the Belt & Road infrastructure loans of the People's Republic: Kiribati has also switched loyalties to China, Fiji has borrowed heavily, and even New Zealand-associated Cook Islands and Niue have signed up to Belt & Road.

The US alleges China is enticing these nations into debt traps, and cites the contentious example of China financing Sri Lanka's Hambantota port. That is disingenuous: while Sri Lanka did default on that loan, China never demanded the port as collateral. But certainly, China's active interest in the Pacific has prompted the US administrations of Obama, Trump and now Biden to re-engage, south of the equator. 

But the political unrest is more complicated than just China versus Taiwan.

It involves dissent between different ethnic groups, including the Malaitan majority who elected opposition leader Matthew Wale. (Malaita has banned Chinese companies from working in the province and has accepted US aid).

It was the aftermath of a coup by Malaita Eagle Force, who had seized weapons from police armouries, that forced the 2003 intervention of 2,225 Pacific region military and police personnel, including from New Zealand.

Ever since the US and Japan faced off in World War II, Solomon Islands has served as a staging post to bigger geopolitical confrontations. With major powers happy to exploit political differences within the Solomons, and throughout the Pacific, it has sometimes been difficult for islands to forge their own political unity.

Both Sogavare and Wale claim the other is in the service of a foreign power. It is unlikely that either claim is well-founded, but such accusations do make it difficult to rebuild the democratic legitimacy of the Solomons Parliament.

Follow the money

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced an additional $1m to support Pacific countries’ anti-corruption efforts, speaking this week to the virtual Summit for Democracy hosted by US President Joe Biden.

It may not seem much (certainly not compared to the hundreds of millions otherwise invested in corruption by other big national players in the region!) but its timing is significant.

When the Solomons agreed to switch recognition from Taiwan to mainland China, the renegade province of Malaita was flooded with Taiwanese aid money and received a visit from US lobbyists as it called an independence referendum. "Taiwan actually provided $5 million to Malaita province to buy rice," Alfred Sasako says. "Unfortunately, much of that money has disappeared in Honiara. I think only $600,000 of that money was used; they don't know where the rest of the money's gone."

Beijing, in turn, handed over about $770m (NZ$140m) to the Honiara-based Government.

Mihai Sora is a former Australian diplomat in the Solomons who is now a research fellow at the Lowy Institute. Sora says Beijing took over funding the Prime Minister's National Development Fund – from which Sogavare divvies out millions to MPs as he sees fit.

This week, facing the vote of no confidence, Sogavare offered to pay MPs $46,000 directly into their bank accounts from the "slush fund", The Australian newspaper reports.

The Solomons experience is not unusual. There is a long history of global and regional powers – New Zealand included – buying influence in the Pacific, often to secure votes in international fora. So when Ardern drew the world’s attention to NZ’s first-equal ranking in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index as the democracy summit, it could only be with the sure knowledge it would highlight the poorer performance of Pacific neighbours.

"This new support complements the considerable support we provide already for regional anti-corruption efforts, strengthening national audit, and support for the public service and justice sectors in the Pacific," she told leaders.

In Sydney, Sora says: "The contest for influence in the Pacific is is more visible today than it's ever been in the past. There is a Chinese Embassy in Solomon Islands where there hadn't been one before; the US is opening an Embassy in Honiara.

"The landscape becomes less benign. The politics are not less local, but there are certainly geopolitical factors now that are overlaid on to local politics, and co-opted by local political actors. And that's been directly as a consequence of this competition between between the US and China.

"Against that backdrop, countries like Australia and New Zealand, they have long standing development and political links with these countries trying to retain stability and support economic development and improved governance. That would have been the case with or without this competition between the US and China. And look back long enough, and you'll see that Australia and New Zealand had a presence in the Solomon Islands for a long, long time. And, and we're security partners."

"There is no political dialogue that's possible while people are burning down shops, and looting and rioting in the streets."
– Mihai Sora, Lowy Institute

Back in 2006, a Lowy Institute policy paper warned: “The havoc in Honiara is a physical expression of the destructive impact that Taiwan and China can have on small Island states.” 

And 15 years later, the institute remains cautious of that impact. Sora says it's critical that New Zealand and Australia remain neutral, as far as possible, in the local politics and in being seen to favour China, Taiwan or the US. "I do know that injecting support for some actors at the expense of others directly contributes to the intensity of that local political conflict," he says.

Australia and New Zealand would be very conscious of the history between the prime minister, Sogavare, and the international presence in the Solomon Islands. "And I'm sure the irony is not lost on anyone that we have a prime minister that has kicked out an Australian High Commissioner and threatened to kick out Australia from Operation Ramsi; the very same person now calls for their support to reestablish stability and security in the capital.

"Neither Australia nor New Zealand looks to cash in on that, to score points, to draw attention to it.

"Inevitably, when you stabilise the security situation in Honiara, in the context where some people are calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister, there is certainly that secondary political benefit to the Prime Minister that he gets to stay in power.

"But Australia's position is that there is no political dialogue that's possible while people are burning down shops, and looting and rioting in the streets. No matter who's in power, they would have gone in to support whichever prime minister of the day was was being torn down by a rioting mob, because that's not how to have a political transition, how to have lasting peace."

Tainted love

In the Solomons, Transparency International says, little progress has been made since the passing of the 2018 anti-corruption law. And last year, key government actors were accused of diverting funds intended to help people struggling during the pandemic.

Civil society groups across Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have called for greater transparency and accountability in the Covid response. Covid-19 and Cyclone Harold "exposed several cracks in already weak governance systems", Transparency International says.

The Solomon Islands announced it would ban Facebook, under the guise of preventing the spread of misinformation. In Vanuatu, the government announced restrictions to press freedom, enabled by its state of emergency. In Samoa, Tuila'epa Sa'ilele Malielegaoi refused to relinquish the prime ministerial office after losing the election.

Most Pacific nations aren't on the corruption rankings but of those that are, Vanuatu is at 75, Solomon Islands at 78, Timor-Leste at 86, and Papua New Guinea at 142, out of 180 nations included in the index. “The Asia Pacific region struggles to combat corruption and tackle the profound health and economic impact of Covid-19,” Transparency International says.

The NGO does note that after decades of tireless efforts, Papua New Guinea celebrated a huge victory last year with the passing of legislation to establish an anti-corruption commission. Similarly, the Solomon Islands appointed its first ever director general of its new national anti-corruption commission, which can now focus on recruiting and training staff to get up and running.

The NZ and Australia governments are funding work this year on a Pacific Corruption Barometer, asking people in 17 island nations about their direct personal experience of corruption in their daily lives, to show how far countries have to go to fight corruption.

Ardern thanked President Biden for bringing together democratic leaders to defend against authoritarianism, and fight corruption. But it is overseas powers bankrolling some of the slush money that is tainting Pacific nations – as the Corruption Barometer may find, and as her diplomats and defence personnel on the ground in Solomons will surely report.

Lt Colonel Smith hopes the unrest won't just resume when the New Zealanders and other regional peacekeepers leave in a month or so: "I think that's for Solomon Islanders to work through in good faith. I think there's a lot of enco