BHP plan controversial West Papua nickel mine

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Broadcast: 29/09/2008

Reporter: Geoff Thompson and Tony Jones

BHP Billiton is on the verge of starting one of the most sensitive mining operations it has ever planned.

Transcript

TONY JONES: In West Papua, and after evading questions about the project for years, BHP Billiton is on the verge of starting one of the most sensitive mining operations it has ever planned. Gag Island in West Papua holds one of the world's richest nickel deposits. But it, and the islands around it, are ringed by what UNESCO and many marine scientists believe is the richest and most diverse coral reef system in the world.

Conservationists say BHP's disastrous environmental record at Papua New Guinea’s Ol Tedi mine should rule out any gamble with Gag Island's riches. And it's not just the potential for environmental damage that makes the gag project controversial. The island lies in West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya. The disputed Indonesian province where previous mining concessions like Freeport have become the focus for pro-independence guerrilla attacks and Indonesian human rights abuses.

Indonesia correspondent Geoff Thompson made the difficult journey to Gag Island to file this exclusive report for Lateline.

GEOFF THOMPSON: Off the remote coast of West Papua in eastern Indonesia sprawls the Raja Ampat archipelago. 610 islands spread across 50,000 square kilometres, covering an area 10 times the size of Bali. But its surface beauty simply cannot compete with the untold treasures below.

CHARLIE VERON, MARINE BIOLOGIST: There was once a time when all scientists in fact it was general knowledge, thought that the Great Barrier Reef was the centre of marine diversity. It was a very special place, but it is not the centre of marine diversity. The Raja Ampat islands of eastern Indonesia are.

JAN STEFFEN, UNESCO, JAKARTA OFFICE: If you look at it from the point of view of marine biodiversity it is what people call the bullseye on the planet. There's no richer person in terms of marine biodiversity.

GEOFF THOMPSON: The Raja Ampat archipelago sits atop the planetary short list of marine sites most deserving of World Heritage listing.

JAN STEFFEN: I think now it is basically a technical matter to get everything sorted out and to fulfil all the requirements but personally, I am quite optimistic that will happen.

GEOFF THOMPSON: But marine life isn't the only resource rich in abundance here. The other is nickel. In fact, one of the world's biggest deposits of that crucial stainless steel ingredient is locked inside Gag Island. A 56-square-kilometre land mass smack in the middle of the Raja Ampat archipelago.

And it's here that BHP Billiton has set up base, and is preparing to mine, after signing a 50-50 joint venture agreement in June with the Indonesian-owned company. For years BHP Billiton has been sitting on the controversial concession. Environmental protests saw the island reclassified as protected forest in 1999. Temporarily shelving BHP's mining plans. A regulatory shift in 2004 again cleared the way for Gag's exploitation. BHP's board has not yet approved the deal, but the company is already the best employer in Gag's only village, Gambia.

WAJU HUSEIN, COMMUNITY LEADER (translated): With the company here, even though they're still exploring, there's a huge difference in income already. When the producing starts, the company promises there'll be some sort of share of the production they get out of Gag Island, like in Freeport and such. There'll be money for the village, as well. They promised us that.

GEOFF THOMPSON: Nearly all of Gambia's point are migrants from nearby ma Luku and welcome the economic benefits they think the mine will bring. But Johanes Goram is an activist and among the Papuans disputing traditional ownership of Gag Island. He used to walk for Freeport's giant gold and copper mine, which for decades has been the flashpoint of conflict between pro-independence guerrillas and Indonesia's military.

Johanes Goram thinks stirring up of jealosies will haunt Gag Island, too.

JOHANES GORAM, NAZARETH FOUNDATION PAPUA: I do believe it is a human rights issue, because when the migrant and the local Papuan will fight or will conflict because of the issue, we are afraid that military intervention can be used to stop, to protect the company, to protect the land, to support the government.

GEOFF THOMPSON: It's extremely unlikely that BHP's nickel mine here will somehow sidestep the minefield of Papuan politics. Loud voices on the Papuan Traditional Council are already saying they are happy for the operation to proceed, but only in a Papua independent of Indonesia. But BHP can count on Indonesian Government support says the head of the country's investment board.

MUHAMMAD LUTFI, INVESTMENT BOARD CHIEF: We want to do it responsibly, but my board at least will make sure that it will happen in the near future.

GEOFF THOMPSON: BHP has refused to discuss which options are being considered to minimise the mine's impact on the surrounding reefs. The company first considered pumping hundred of thousands of tonnes of tailings onto the ocean floor, but BHP now says that option has been ruled out.

RAMSI immunity challenged after death of Solomon Islander in car accident

By Patrick O’Connor

30 June 2008

The Australian media has maintained a unanimous silence on the recent death of a young Solomon Islands’ woman who was hit by a vehicle driven by a police officer deployed under the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). The failure to cover the story is all the more striking given the political furore it has caused in the Solomons’ capital, Honiara, with senior parliamentarians demanding that the Australian-dominated RAMSI forces be stripped of their immunity from the country’s laws.

RAMSI’s immunity is emerging as a focal point for escalating opposition to Canberra’s indefinite occupation of the impoverished Pacific state. Under existing legislative arrangements, the officer involved in the fatal crash—who was allegedly drunk at the time—cannot be prosecuted in the Solomons, even if it is established that a crime was committed.

Hilda Ilabae, a 26-year-old trainee nurse, was struck while walking home from a Honiara church with two flatmates and fellow nurses at around 9 p.m. on June 13. According to an eyewitness, a white utility vehicle veered down the road in a zigzag manner before colliding with Ilabae. “Two of them managed to jump off the road in time but Hilda was late and the vehicle hit her and dragged her to the side of the road into the nearby bushes,” the witness told the Solomon Star.

The nurse died at the scene. A passenger in the vehicle—another RAMSI police officer—was seriously injured in the accident and later flown to Australia for emergency treatment. The officers, both Samoan nationals, were off-duty at the time.

Under the Facilitation of International Assistance Act, the RAMSI officer can be prosecuted under Solomons’ law only if the Samoan government waives the immunity provision. The Facilitation Act was drafted by the former Howard government and ratified by the Solomon Islands’ parliament in July 2003, as more than 2,000 Australian soldiers, police, and officials landed in the country as part of efforts by the Australian ruling elite to protect its economic and strategic interests in the region against encroaching rival powers. Publicly defended as a humanitarian intervention into a “failed” or “failing” state, RAMSI also proceeded under the banner of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)—in order to provide a “multilateral” cover for Canberra’s operation. The Samoan police involved in the June 13 fatality are among a small number of police, soldiers, and legal officials from PIF countries other than Australia and New Zealand.

Five years after the initial RAMSI deployment, Solomon Islands remains among the world’s poorest countries. While hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called Australian aid has been spent on Australian Federal Police salaries, prisons, and the court system, virtually nothing has been committed to health and education services, or to the alleviation of poverty and unemployment. At the same time, the influx of hundreds of highly paid Australian police, bureaucrats, “advisors”, and non-governmental organisation personnel has exacerbated social inequality.

This is especially marked in Honiara, where RAMSI has created a “bubble economy” by pushing up rents and other costs of living. According to a report issued last April by Aid/Watch, a Sydney-based watchdog organisation, a small house in Honiara rented for between SI$600 and $1,000 per month (A$80-$135) before RAMSI arrived, but now goes for between SI$2,000 and $5,000 (A$270-$675). As a result, many public service workers—whose monthly wage often amounts to just SI$1,000 to $2,000 a month—are forced to live in squatter camps on Honiara’s outskirts, without power, running water or basic municipal services. The Aid/Watch report (titled “The Limits of RAMSI”) also noted the situation in Nggosi, an area in west Honiara that is now a RAMSI enclave, with monthly rents averaging between SI$15,000 and $40,000 per month. “You rarely see Solomon Islanders there now, except as a cleaner,” Robert Iroga, a well-known journalist, reported.

For many ordinary people, the manner of Hilda Ilabae’s death symbolised the colonial character of RAMSI’s relations with the population. While the trainee nurse and her friends were walking home, the allegedly drunk RAMSI officer was driving a utility vehicle provided by the authorities. Getting around by car remains a “luxury” for most people, particularly with petrol prices rising. Inflation in fuel and food has hit the Pacific country hard in recent months. Many people are now unable to catch a bus, let alone drive a car, with the standard bus fare in Honiara rising by more than 100 percent in the last month (from SI$2 to $5).

A report in the Solomon Star pointed to the tensions revealed by the fatal vehicle accident: “Later Friday night some of Ms Ilabae’s relatives and RAMSI people were involved in a confrontation at the hospital. RAMSI soldiers, along with Participating Police Force [i.e., RAMSI police] officers, were called to provide security as the stand-off was sorted out.”

No doubt concerned to prevent the emergence of any public protests, senior RAMSI officials responded quickly. Special Coordinator Tim George issued a formal apology in letters to both Prime Minister Derek Sikua and the Ilabae family. RAMSI paid for the travel expenses of a reported 200 family members who went to the funeral in the family village of Talakali in Malaita Province. Participating Police Force Commander Denis McDermott, along with other RAMSI and police officials, also attended. Later however, McDermott suggested that the family’s demand for a compensation payment was a matter to be discussed between the Solomon Islands’ and Samoan governments, not RAMSI.

Legal immunity and the Commission of Inquiry’s final report

According to a report published on the People First web site, Manasseh Sogavare, former prime minister and current leader of the parliamentary opposition, said that the death of the young nurse was the eleventh fatality involving RAMSI officers.

“We cannot allow officers of the visiting contingent to continue to be careless about the way they conduct themselves in this country,” he declared. “If they are here to require Solomon Islanders to behave lawfully, then they have a duty to lead by example. The records of some officers so far are appalling... As it stands now, the visiting contingent is a privileged group of people in Solomon Islands who are enjoying immunities that are totally unnecessary and given the change in circumstances it became a license to carelessness. The responsibility now lies squarely on the shoulders of the Solomon Islands government to immediately review the legal framework for deliberation by parliament. Failing this, the government will be seen as condoning these irresponsible behaviours and a party to them.”

Canberra regards legal immunity as an essential component of the intervention, ensuring that Australian personnel retain a free hand to directly interfere in Solomons’ affairs whenever necessary. In Papua New Guinea, the Australian policing component of the so-called Enhanced Cooperation Program (an intervention force modelled on RAMSI) had to be withdrawn in 2005 after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that immunity was unconstitutional. Any forced withdrawal of Australian Federal Police from the Solomons would represent a major setback in Canberra’s efforts to assert its domination of a region that is marked by intensifying great power rivalries, characterised above all by Beijing’s growing economic and diplomatic influence.

The Solomon Islands’ parliament is due to complete the required annual review of the Facilitation Act next month. It remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Sikua will simply ram through a formal approval of the RAMSI legislation without debate (perhaps under the cover of the country’s 30th anniversary celebrations of formal independence from Britain), or whether there will instead be a serious assessment of the legal basis for RAMSI’s ongoing presence.

There is no question that the Rudd government wishes to avoid the latter possibility. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that Canberra’s determination to secure the Solomon Islands’ parliamentary rubber stamp for another 12 months of RAMSI legal immunity lies behind the ongoing suppression of a final report issued by the Commission of Inquiry on the April 2006 riots.

This official investigation was initiated by the former Sogavare government, which was in power from May 2006 to December 2007, when it finally succumbed to a sustained regime change campaign orchestrated in Canberra. The Howard government had targeted then Prime Minister Sogavare, who initiated the inquiry, as well as launching a filthy and slanderous attack on Julian Moti, an international constitutional lawyer and academic who was the central legal figure involved in establishing the investigation. Canberra was at pains to prevent any scrutiny of RAMSI’s role in the 2006 unrest, or any examination of evidence that Australian forces were stood down to allow the violence to proceed.

Moreover, an examination of the Commission of Inquiry’s hearings, interim findings, and final submissions indicates that one of the likely findings of the final report is that RAMSI’s legal immunity be revoked. (See: “Why have the findings of the Solomon Islands Commission of Inquiry into the 2006 riots not been released?”)

The question must be posed: Is this why the final report—which was handed to the Sikua government more than two months ago—has not been publicly released? There has been no explanation for the inordinate delay in its publication. There is no doubt that officials in Canberra have received a copy and have carefully perused its contents. Does the Australian government hope to first secure next month’s parliamentary renewal of the Facilitation Act before permitting the report’s release? And is it aiming to engineer a sanitised version of the final report for public consumption, censoring potentially damaging references to RAMSI’s legal immunity as well as to the intervention’s wider status under international law?

The current Australian Labor prime minister has already made clear his contempt for the Commission of Inquiry. When he visited the Solomon Islands in March, Rudd was asked about the submissions that suggested Canberra bore responsibility for providing compensation for damages caused in the April riots. “Our view as Australia, is that RAMSI has acted entirely professionally and properly in discharging its responsibilities,” Rudd replied. “For RAMSI there is absolutely no case to answer... These matters will now be deliberated on by the appropriate inquiry into what happened in those riots. But from the perspective of the Australian government, there is no case to answer.”

The parliamentary opposition has meanwhile stepped up its demands for the release of the final report. “The government’s suppression of the report is very suspicious,” East Honiara MP Charles Dausabea told the Solomon Star last Thursday. “It makes me very suspicious of what it might contain.”

Dausabea, together with fellow parliamentarian Nelson Ne’e, were arrested by RAMSI police within days of the April 2006 riots and were accused of orchestrating the violence. The two men were imprisoned without trial and denied bail by Australian judges for eight months, only to have the charges thrown out of court once a magistrate had a chance to review the evidence. It turned out that RAMSI’s entire case rested on the bogus testimony of a multiple felon. “I spent some eight months in prison on the matter only to be found innocent by the court,” Dausabea said. “Therefore I demand that the government release the report within seven days [and] if not I will seek my legal counsel for the release of the document.”

Perhaps the sensitivity of the question of legal immunity—along with the related issue of the suppression of the Commission of Inquiry’s final findings—may explain why the Australian media has ignored the killing of Hilda Ilabae.

See Also:
New Solomon Islands prime minister kowtows to Canberra
[2 February 2008]
Australian Labor government steps up vendetta against former Solomon Islands attorney-general
[31 December 2007]
Solomon Islands government rebuts Canberra’s child sex allegations against attorney-general
[14 August 2007]
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots”
[21 February 2007]

West Papua row, MSG support for Australia to host Forum

Supporters of the Free West Papua movement in Vanuatu had petitioned its government to push for the independent group to be granted observer status in the MSG.

islandsbusiness.com/ Pacnews Wed, 28 May 2008 PORT VILA, VANUATU ---- Leaders of the Pacific's larger Melanesian countries are holding their annual summit clouded by a row over the Indonesian province of West Papua, reports islandsbusiness.online. Delegates that are in the Vanuatu capital Port Vila for the two day Melanesian summit that begins on Thursday are playing down the row simmering between host Vanuatu and their largest Melanesian member, Papua New Guinea (PNG). “For PNG, the issue of West Papua is an issue that we don't consider as an issue to be brought into the MSG,” Sam Abal, PNG's foreign minister told islandbusiness.online. “As a sovereign nation, Vanuatu can make them [West Papua] part of their delegation, but as an MSG issue that is something PNG won't allow because it's an internal issue that has a lot of ramifications.” Supporters of the Free West Papua movement in Vanuatu had petitioned its government to push for the independent group to be granted observer status in the MSG. Meanwhile, foreign ministers of the Melanesian Spearhead Group that had been meeting in Vanuatu have added their support for Australia to host next year's leaders' summit of the Pacific Islands Forum. A motion of support was agreed at Tuesday's meeting at the Iririki Island Resort of the foreign ministers. Hosting of the Forum summit is rotated among the 16-member Forum and while Niue is hosting this year's gathering, Vanuatu was supposed to host it in 2009. But in one of his many announcements after winning the prime ministership last December, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had expressed the wish for him to host the annual hob-nob of Pacific island leaders in a Forum that also included Australia and New Zealand as members.

Australia focus on customary land rights in the region

When they are hell bent on destroying Aboriginal Land rights over here who would be foolish enough to believe that they would protect customary land rights in the Pacific, look at the NT invasion and go yarn with Uncle Chappy bout what barrick gold is doing in his country.

the crudd gubbaments Port Morseby declaration was ment to be Australia's new relationship and partnership in the Pacific, kevin (C)rudd was a career diplomat so he knows the art of dressing political shit and making it look sweet, when basically the agenda in the Pacific hasn't changed one bit, just the approach. Same old neo/colonising, land theiving crapitalist neo liberal bastards. Exactly the agenda that was pushed at Apec & the g20, and c(rudds) declaration at Port Moresby certainly makes clear their commitment to neo-liberalism in our region. The grassroots resistance to this has been silenced ruthlessly and by the complicity of puppet governments, academics & ngo's, who sadly were once at the forefront of the resistance to this agenda in the Pacific

At stake for us in the Pacific are our very survival and independence as peoples, the same stakes for the past 200 or so years. Looking at the experience of our Mexican brothers and sisters during the implementation of nafta, we see as in the Chiapa's this neo liberal agenda speaks nothing to us and our humanity in the Pacific, it is at odds with our world-view and desecrates the relationship we have with our land & oceans, left in trust for us from our ancestors for our generations to come. The resistance and the struggle against neo liberalism in South America bears great resonance for us in the Pacific, we have our own history of struggle that has to be reignited across the Pacific if we are to survive with dignity into the next century and beyond.

A Pacific regional infrastructure facility worth $127 million (US$119
million) over four years has been budgeted for work on transport,
water and energy projects.

Wed, 14 May 2008

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA ---- Australia's aid budget aims to deal with
customary land rights and improving government services in the region,
Radio Australia reports.

A Pacific regional infrastructure facility worth $127 million (US$119
million) over four years has been budgeted for work on transport,
water and energy projects.

Over four years, Australia will spend $107 million (US$100.5 million)
on improving the work of government departments and public servants in
the Pacific.

On the sensitive issue of customary land rights, $54 million (US$50.7
million) would be spent over four years on a programme described as
protecting land rights.

The aim would be to promote economic development while reducing the
potential for conflict over land issues. Australia would support work
on planning, surveying and valuing land.

The budget shows the continuing growth of the Australian Federal
Police in the region, with $75 million (US$70.5 million) to be spent
over four years on policing in the South Pacific - particularly on
police help to PNG, Samoa and Nauru.

Port Moresby Declaration

4. The Pacific has significant natural resources - minerals, timber and marine resources. Managing them wisely and sustainably is a challenge for the region.


9. The Pacific Partnerships for Development will be a mechanism to provide better development outcomes for the Pacific Island nations. These Partnerships will embrace:

• improving economic infrastructure and enhancing local employment
possibilities through infrastructure and broad-based growth;
• enhancing private sector development, including better access to
microfinance;
• achieving quality, universal basic education;
• improving health outcomes through better access to basic health services; and
• enhancing governance, including the role of civil society, and the role of non- government organisations in basic service delivery.

13. Australia is also committed to linking the economies of the Pacific island nations to Australia and New Zealand and to the world, including through pursuing a region- wide free trade agreement and enhancing other private sector development opportunities. This will help to secure a sustainable and more prosperous future for the region.

15. Australia will also work to increase its cooperation with other donor countries and organisations, and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, including through more coordinated delivery of development assistance programs across the region and joint programs where feasible.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200805/s2242288.htm

Updated May 12, 2008 15:59:03

A controversial land bill in Samoa has been amended to exclude
customary land.

Samoan Government officials say the Land Titles Registration Bill, due
for its third reading within weeks, has now been amended following
advice from the Attorney-General.

Opponents of the new bill had been angry that the government appeared
to have broken a promise that the new bill - which will change land
registration from a deeds to a title system - would affect customary land.

They say the proposed legislation contained several references to
customary land.

Customary land is sacrosanct in Samoa and there are constitutional
protections for it, which include a requirement that any proposed
change be put to a referendum and gain at least a two-thirds
supporting vote.

A spokeswoman for the opposing group accused the government of seeking
to use the earlier version of the bill to charge rates and taxes on
customary land which traditional owners could not afford.

There was also concern that the government was under pressure to free
up land for development.

The government says the revised legislation is intended to make the
administration of titles more straightforward, and that the changes
will exclude customary land.

World focus with police boost

Mark Dodd | May 13, 2008

AUSTRALIAN Federal Police numbers will be boosted by an extra 500 officers over the next five years, with international operations emerging as a major budget priority for the Rudd Government.

Eight additional AFP officers will soon be sent to Afghanistan to help in a reinvigorated NATO-led coalition effort to contain a booming opium economy. They will be joining four colleagues already deployed under a $47million program over two years to strengthen efforts to bring stability and a measure of law and order to the country.

"The AFP has been providing expertise in counter-narcotics and police capacity development in Afghanistan since October last year," Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said yesterday. "The additional members will provide high-level advice to the National Police of Afghanistan and act in advisory roles with the counter-narcotics police of Afghanistan. More than 90 per cent of the world's opium is cultivated in Afghanistan and, according to the UN, poppy production continues to increase."

The extra 500 AFP officers fulfil a key Labor election promise to increase the agency's capacity to help tackle transnational crime and terrorism -- a package of measures costed at $192million. It follows a $20million package over four years designed to address AFP recruitment and retention announced earlier by the federal Government. It is expected the additional police resources will be phased in over five years, adding a mix of base-level recruits and experienced specialists.

The AFP receives $53.7million over two years to help develop East Timor's national police force, which is riven by ethnic divisions and is struggling with the legacy of a botched UN training regime involving a host of countries with a range of different standards and culture. Eighty AFP specialist trainers will be deployed in East Timor under a program that aims to help train an estimated 2000 local police to be located outside the capital Dili.

"Australia was quick to respond to security issues in East Timor following the attempted assassinations of the President of East Timor, Jose Ramos Horta, and Prime Minister Gusmao, including the deployment of AFP personnel," Mr Debus said. "The AFP continues to play a vital role in the UN mission in East Timor and this will provide a further opportunity for the AFP to contribute to the development of policing in East Timor."

The Australian Government's support for policing in the Pacific region was also boosted by the announcement yesterday of an $80million program. With Australia's main 550-strong combat force pulling out of Iraq, the focus is now on efforts to help strengthen that country's police force. The 2008-09 budget includes a $13.7million plan to help train 30 Iraqi police officers each year in Sydney over the next three years and a further 51 to undertake specialist forensic training.

"The program will give Iraqi police access to the specialist expertise of the AFP's forensic scientists and will focuson building a crime scene analysis system for the Iraqi Police Service," Mr Debus said.

see also:
http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2008/04/afp-clamps-down-on-pacific.html

AFP clamps down on Pacific

This is nothing more than facilities across the islands to spy on and to repress local populations. Transnational crime bullshit, right wing "academics" have written off our young men across the Pacific as transnational youth gangs, just like the bullshit war on terror this is all about control of the Pacific its people and it resources.

See Also:

http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2007/09/presence-of-australian-federal-police.html
http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2008/03/paramilitary-wing-of-afp.html
http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2008/02/keetley-expired.html
http://uriohau.blogspot.com/2008/01/australia-in-pacific-islands.html

Joining Together to Fight Crime in the Pacific

24 Apr 2008, 11:10


Canberra, Australia:

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has stepped up the fight against transnational crime in the Asia Pacific region with today's opening of the Micronesia Regional Transnational Crime Unit (TCU).

The Micronesia Regional TCU is a joint initiative between Australia, the United States and the Federated States of Micronesia, and the opening has been welcomed by Micronesia's Secretary of Justice Maketo Robert.

It is the sixth to open in the Pacific region, and is linked to a network of existing TCUs in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

The AFP first forged a relationship with the United States' Hawaii-based Department of Defence Joint Interagency Task Force West (JIATF West) in 2004 to create a more proactive criminal intelligence and investigative presence in the Pacific.

AFP's Manager International Network Paul Osborne said the TCU network allows law enforcement agencies to share intelligence, and to profile and target transnational crime groups operating across the region.

"The fight against transnational crime can only be successful through strong collaborative partnerships and effective law enforcement intelligence," Commander Osborne said.

The AFP's engagement in the Pacific is focused on long-term capacity building, and addressing issues such as the transportation of narcotics, people smuggling, child sex tourism and transnational sex exploitation.

The AFP has provided the Micronesia TCU with $300,000 of equipment and support, including a new vehicle, intelligence training and an AFP advisor for the first 12 months.

JIATF West has contributed $450,000 to the project for the refurbishment of offices including the provision of cabling, air-conditioning, furniture and computer and communications equipment.

JIATF West's Deputy Director of Intelligence Gary Royster said the facility now had the level of technology required to fight transnational crime in the 21st century. AFP, 23/04/08.

Gubba Trade minister backs Pacific trade talks

"So in many senses, PACER can be a mini-Dohor. It can be a trade and aid development approach".

Same neo liberal shit as howard, let us plunder your resources or no "aid". Strategic & economic "interests" in the Pacific have not changed a bit since invasion. PACER, PICTA, APEC, G20, NAFTA, we know what this free trade really means to us in the Pacific, destroying and defiling our lands, our oceans our culture in an insatiable greed for resources. Neo colonisation and control of Pacific through aid and the training of government officials, the military and the police.

Even worse is the actu condoning migrant worker schemes for the pacific islands. When unionists start sounding like pr consultants for neo liberals, you have to worry.

"Like every other part of the globe, the tiny island states of the South Pacific have become arenas for intensifying rivalry between the major powers. As well as being rich in resources, including oil and gas, the region has immense strategic significance."


Australia's Trade Minister Simon Crean is in Papua New Guinea today to participate in trade negotiations. It's a small part of the overall meeting but important for the Pacific.

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/programguide/stories/200804/s2225084.htm

Presenter: Karon Snowdon
Speaker: Australia's trade minister, Simon Crean

CREAN: PACER is the Pacific area, CER, the free trade agreement if you like for the Pacific. I am very keen to advance it, because I think that in the Pacific, we need to build an economic self-sufficiency for the Pacific Islands and we can do that by opening up trade, but also engaging the Pacific Islands in technical transfers, obviously ensuring that our aid programs are supportive of assisting them build their infrastructure, build their capacities. So in many senses, PACER can be a mini-Dohor. It can be a trade and aid development approach.

SNOWDON: There's less enthusiasm on the other side of the table though for obvious reasons in that they've got favourable trade conditions now without PACER, that they might lose if those talks are confirmed?

CREAN: Well again, I think this is the concern that people have in trade by looking at it from a defensive perspective. There's clearly many more benefits from opening up trade. The reality is that world trade is growing three times faster than world output. If countries want to secure their economic future, whether they're developed countries or developing countries, the message is simple. You've got to engage in trade because that's where there are more opportunities. How do we create those opportunities and keep building the opportunities, we keep liberalising the barriers that restrict trade.

Now out of all of that, countries find their specialities, their niches, the comparative advantages and there are many within the Pacific area.

Our task is to ensure that they have got the capacity to take advantage of it. So the opening of trade advantage is only one dimension. Building their capacity is another and Australia and New Zealand are in very strong positions to assist them in that regard.

SNOWDON: The trial seasonal worker program looks more promising now. Will PNG and East Timor be included in that, workers from those countries included in that?

CREAN: Well, we're watching with interest the trial that New Zealand has conducted and we're making our own assessment of its impact in the Australian context, that's something that we're interested to follow. But in the context of PACER, I've got no doubt that this will be an issue that is raised by the Pacific nations. It's something we have to respond to in a sensible way. But we're not going to do that in advance of seeing how the trial works and we're not going to do it in advance of a more comprehensive approach to the whole aid and trade perspective in the Pacific.

SNOWDON: And, the big trade union here, the Australian Workers Union has thrown its weight behind a seasonal workers scheme here in Australia. Is that encouraging?

CREAN: Well, it is encouraging, but I think again it's terribly important that when we develop these approaches, we explain what the basis for them is, what the rational behind them is so that people don't see them from threatening perspective's, but see them as part of a much broader agenda to open up and make more self-sufficient the Pacific. Because it's in all of our interests that we develop their economic sustainability, because that's the lasting basis upon which we can build security in the region to.

Australia in the Pacific Islands

by Nicholas Maclellan — last modified 2007-12-21 14:18

Regional programs for "Australian Forces Abroad"

"Australia in the Pacific Islands" is one of a series of briefings published by the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, for the "Australian Forces Abroad" series of briefing books.

As well as major overseas deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, Australia has deployed military, police and intelligence personnel closer to home - to Timor Leste and the small island states of the Pacific.

Since the late 1990s, Australia has deployed police, troops or naval vessels to Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Nauru, and extended joint operations with New Zealand and other member states of the Pacific Islands Forum. The largest deployments include Australian involvement in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), the Enhanced Co-operation Program (ECP) to Papua New Guinea, and extensive operations by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

The Nautilus Institute is developing a series of country specific sites (listed below) on Australian operations in the Pacific. However a number of police and military programs operate at regional rather than national level - thus "Australia in the Pacific Islands" includes briefings on a number of multi-country programs that operate in the region, such as the Law Enforcement Co-operation Program (LECP), the AFP's Pacific Transnational Crime Network, or the Pacific Patrol Boat Program.

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About Australian Forces Abroad and Australia in the Pacific islands

Australian Defence Force regional programs

• Defence Co-operation Program
• Pacific Patrol Boat Program

Australian Federal Police

• Law Enforcement Co-operations Program (LECP)
• International Deployment Group (IDG)
• Operational Response Group (ORG)
• Pacific Transnational Crime Co-ordination Centre (PTCCC)
• Pacific Regional Policing Initiative (PRPI)
• Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police (PICP)

Attorney General's Department

• Anti-Money Laundering Assistance Team (AMLAT)

Country briefing books for the Pacific region

Australia in Solomon Islands

Australia in Tonga

Australia in Timor Leste (forthcoming)

"Australian Forces Abroad" - Australia in the Pacific Islands

Project coordinator: Richard Tanter

Project researcher: Nic Maclellan

URL: http://gc.nautilus.org/Nautilus/australia/australia-in-pacific/australia-in-pacific

Solomon Islands government ousted through parliamentary vote

By Patrick O’Connor

14 December 2007

Email the author

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/soga-d14.shtml

The Solomon Islands government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was ousted yesterday after a no-confidence motion won the backing of 25 parliamentarians, against 22 on the government side. Sogavare remains caretaker prime minister pending a parliamentary vote, which is expected next week, to elect his successor. Opposition leader Fred Fono is one of several candidates vying for the job. Two former government ministers who were among those who defected to the opposition last month, Derek Sikua and Gordon Darcy Lilo, are also expected to nominate.

Sogavare’s removal from power marks the culmination of a protracted destabilisation campaign, orchestrated in Canberra, aimed at installing a more pliant administration. Soon after he came to power in May last year, Sogavare was identified by the previous Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard as a threat to the ongoing occupation by the Australian-dominated Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). Sogavare’s 20-month term in office was dominated by a succession of provocations mounted by RAMSI and the Australian government.

The RAMSI operation in July 2003 involved the dispatch of more than 2,000 soldiers, police and officials to take control over the Solomons’ state apparatus, including police, prisons, judiciary, public service, treasury and central bank. While launched under the pretext of a humanitarian intervention, the neo-colonial operation was driven by a concern to protect Australian corporate and strategic interests. Developments in the South Pacific, which Howard characterised as Australia’s “special patch”, have become increasingly bound up with escalating great power rivalries. RAMSI marked a shift within the Canberra foreign policy establishment toward the more open use of military force to maintain Australian regional hegemony. The operation was hailed as a forerunner for potential interventions in other Pacific states, most notably the resource-rich former Australian colony, Papua New Guinea.

The ferocity with which Canberra responded to Sogavare’s limited moves to reduce RAMSI’s control over public finance and economic policy can only be understood within this context. The Howard government’s campaign was one of two regional “regime change” operations initiated in 2006. More than a thousand Australian troops were deployed to East Timor in May last year as part of a concerted campaign to oust the elected Fretilin administration of Mari Alkatiri. Fretilin fell foul of the Howard government after resisting its demands for most of the multi-billion oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea, as well as for cultivating relations with Australia’s rivals, particularly Portugal and China.

There a number of significant differences between East Timor and Solomon Islands; the Solomons, for example, formally recognises Taiwan and has no diplomatic ties with Beijing. Canberra’s drive against both the Sogavare government and the Fretilin administration, however, were driven by the same imperative—namely the exclusion of rival powers from its declared sphere of influence.

Sogavare’s ousting demonstrates that this central strategy remains unchanged under the new Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Labor Party fully endorsed the RAMSI intervention when it was first announced in 2003. Rudd and his colleagues similarly backed the Howard government throughout its campaign against Sogavare. Following Labor’s election win, however, Rudd and his parliamentary secretary for the Pacific, Duncan Kerr, made noises about establishing better relations with Pacific governments by dealing with them in a less abrasive fashion.

The Labor government nevertheless gave the green light for the Solomons’ opposition and RAMSI authorities to continue their campaign against Sogavare. A clear signal was its refusal to respond to the Solomons’ prime minister’s public invitation for Rudd and Kerr to visit Honiara. It was not an accidental omission. Earlier this week, Rudd’s office refused to return calls from the World Socialist Web Site enquiring about his attitude, while a spokesman for Kerr said he had not received a formal notification from the Solomons’ government and insisted that it would be “inappropriate” to respond to Sogavare’s public invitation.

RAMSI intervenes against Sogavare government

While the full extent of the Australian authorities’ behind-the-scenes involvement in the manoeuvres against Sogavare in the lead-up to the no-confidence motion is not known, there is no doubt that RAMSI played a central role.

Three former RAMSI leaders—Ben McDevitt, Nick Warner, and James Batley—were instrumental in ensuring that former prime minister Allen Kemakeza avoided being stripped of his parliamentary seat and sent to jail, despite being convicted on December 6 of serious charges, including intimidation and larceny. After receiving character statements from the three, the Australian magistrate adjudicating the case sentenced Kemakeza to just two months jail and granted bail pending an appeal. Kemakeza had refused to commit to either the government or opposition side. After declaring himself to be happy with the court’s “fair judgment”, the former prime minister cast his vote against Sogavare in yesterday’s no-confidence vote.

The court’s decision proved crucial, as Kemakeza ended up holding the balance of power. Had he supported the government, Sogavare may have been able to claim 24 parliamentary votes against 24 for the opposition, thereby blocking the no-confidence motion. (The final vote of 25 to 22 reflected the absence of one government member who failed to attend parliament due to health reasons and has since died.)

After securing Kemakeza’s support, RAMSI officials launched an extraordinary police and military operation in Honiara. Scores of heavily-armed Australian and New Zealand soldiers, along with Australian Federal Police officers, were deployed around Honiara on Tuesday. Australian troops in full camouflage gear remained on guard outside the Honiara Hotel, where opposition parliamentarians had gathered. While supposedly a security operation aimed at preventing violence, the show of force was clearly aimed at bolstering the opposition and stifling any protest. Government MPs, who received no similar protection, accused Australian forces of helping to isolate opposition parliamentarians so they would not have a chance to cross over to the government’s side.

“Such a display of arms rather openly to members of the public is uncalled for and questions the very issue of RAMSI’s independence and impartiality in dealing with law and order in this country,” a government statement issued just before the no-confidence vote declared. “Now it is becoming very clear that RAMSI is working in tandem with Asian loggers who are alleged to have been providing financial support to the opposition in a conspiracy to oust the [Sogavare] government.”

Rudd responded to the no-confidence vote by stressing his determination to see the Solomon Islands’ attorney-general Julian Moti extradited to Australia. “This individual is the subject of criminal charges,” he declared. “We have activated our extradition arrangements with the government of the Solomon Islands. Nothing has changed on that score.”

Moti, a respected legal academic and practitioner specialising in constitutional and international law, became the subject of a vicious witchhunt orchestrated by the former Howard government. Moti was instrumental in establishing the Commission of Inquiry into the April 2006 riots in Honiara, which threatened to expose RAMSI’s complicity in the violence. He further assisted a parliamentary review that threatened to strip RAMSI personnel of their blanket legal immunity from Solomons’ law. Moti also threatened to challenge the legality of the entire RAMSI intervention before the International Court of Justice. In response to this threat, the Howard government mounted a bogus campaign for his extradition, based on trumped-up statutory rape allegations that had been thrown out of a Vanuatu court in 1998. The central aim was to undermine Moti through constant vilification in the Australian and Pacific press as a “child sex” perpetrator.

For Rudd to again solidarise himself with this vile campaign—even after Sogavare has lost power—speaks volumes about Labor’s fundamental agreement with the former Howard government’s agenda in the Solomons. What happens next with Moti remains unclear, although Fred Fono has declared that the “first act” of the next government will be to have him arrested and extradited to Australia.

Corrupt old guard returns

Yesterday’s no-confidence vote effectively subverts the outcome of the April 2006 national elections. The elections were a massive repudiation of the Kemakeza government, which had been in power since 2001 and presided over the entry of RAMSI forces in 2003. Popular hostility toward the entrenched corruption of the prime minister and his colleagues combined with growing dissatisfaction and outright opposition toward RAMSI. Half of all parliamentarians lost their seats, including 9 of Kemakeza’s 20 ministers.

Despite the result, horse-trading between the different factions and politicians saw all 11 surviving government ministers stay in power as part of a coalition government headed by Snyder Rini, Kemakeza’s former deputy. The announcement of Rini’s government sparked widespread outrage, which culminated in a two-day riot that was sparked by a clash outside the parliament between RAMSI police and demonstrators. Sogavare came to power soon after Rini was forced to resign.

The old guard of the former Kemakeza government is now back in the saddle. Kemakeza and Rini are likely to take up prominent positions in the new government, as is Laurie Chan. Chan’s father, Tommy Chan, is a Honiara businessman who was alleged to have been involved in vote-buying deals that are widely believed to have been behind Rini’s installation as prime minister in April 2006.

The defeat of the Sogavare government has not seen any protests or violence, though authorities remain on alert and RAMSI soldiers and police continue to patrol Honiara. Whatever the immediate outcome of the political crisis, the return of the old Kemakeza government forces will exacerbate tensions throughout the Solomon Islands.

The new government inherits a social crisis, marked by escalating poverty and social inequality throughout the country, for which it has no solution. The RAMSI intervention has involved the investment of considerable sums into the Pacific country’s state apparatus, especially the prison system, police and judiciary, while a negligible amount has spent on health, education and other basic social services. The influx of hundreds of highly-paid foreign personnel working with RAMSI has led to a boom in the provision of luxury and high-cost products and services but has delivered nothing for ordinary Honiara residents except sharply rising prices, particularly for food and housing. Thousands of people, particularly frustrated young men, remain without work or decent housing in squalid squatter camps in the capital.

The situation will only worsen if the new government in Honiara delivers on its pledges to advance the “free market” economic reform agenda promoted by Canberra.

See Also:
Solomon Islands government in crisis after parliamentarians join opposition
[12 December 2007]
Labor, Liberal and the revival of colonialism in the South Pacific
[21 November 2007]
Solomon Islands’ foreign minister condemns Australian occupation at UN General Assembly
[11 October 2007]
Solomon Islands government rebuts Canberra’s child sex allegations against attorney-general
[14 August 2007]

Top of page The WSWS invites your comments.

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World Socialist Web Site

THE PRESENCE OF THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE IN THE PACIFIC REGION.

The AFP has had a presence in one form or another, in the Pacific for close to two decades. The initial entry into the Pacific Region was by way of the Defence Cooperation Program funding which enabled the AFP to place an officer in Vanuatu in an Advisory/Training capacity. That role today is a liaison role in keeping with other AFP officers posted overseas.

From an Operational perspective, the AFP has serviced the Pacific Island region from Canberra since the early eighties, by way of a South Pacific Island Liaison Officer, who travelled on a regular basis throughout the region. That role is now that of a Regional Coordinator Pacific Islands based in AFP HQ Canberra.

In 1994, the AFP, as a result of increasing transnational crime indicators such as drugs and guns, opened a liaison office in Port Moresby, PNG.

In August 2001, a successful cabinet submission to address the increasingly apparent transnational crime issues in the region saw the placement over a 6 month period, of two additional officers in Honiara in the Solomon Islands, an additional officer in Port Moresby, PNG and Port Vila, Vanuatu and the opening of a new post with two officers in Suva, Fiji Islands.

An additional AFP officer was also posted to the office of the Regional Coordinator Pacific Islands (formerly the South Pacific Liaison Officer) in Canberra. All AFP Pacific Island posts have various responsibilities when it comes to other countries in the region. For example, Fiji is responsible for all PIC’s east of Fiji and the AFP Regional Coordinator Pacific Islands retains responsibility for Micronesia and the French Territories, whilst PNG, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu have enough responsibilities with their countries alone.

The boost in AFP personnel in the Pacific Region was also supported by approximately 2.4 million dollars in Law Enforcement Cooperation Program (LECP) funding support over 2.5 years. Many LECP interventions are under way or have been completed in the field of Intelligence, Investigations, Forensic, Border Control, officer exchange and attendance at various conferences, seminars and workshops
.
The AFP enjoys a high profile in the Pacific region and is intent on raising that profile
in the future. Considerable work is being generated through the placement of additional officers in the region, and this together with the LECP initiatives has enabled considerable inroads to be made into Pacific policing and other law enforcement agencies.

The AFP today, involves itself in close consultations with DFAT, Defence and AusAID on issues relating to policing in the Pacific Region. The AFP now provide advice to the Australian Government, the Australian Intelligence community and Australian overseas missions on a regular basis on policing and politics in PIC’s and more recently on AusAID Police Institutional Strengthening Projects in PNG, Solomon Islands and future projects in Vanuatu and Fiji.

The AFP has hosted a number of workshops in an effort to improve the outlook of Pacific policing and also works in close consultation with the Pacific Island Forum (Law Enforcement Liaison Officer - LELO) on matters of mutual interest. The most recent initiative to be placed before AFP management is the placement of a Training Enforcement Liaison Officer in Suva, Fiji Islands to coordinate all Pacific Law Enforcement Training, a well overdue and much anticipated initiative for the region.

The AFP is a regular attendee and contributor at the following:

The South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference (SPCPC)
The Australasian and South West Pacific Commissioners Conference (ASWPCC)
The (Pacific) Forum Regional Security Committee (FRSC)
The Oceania Customs Organisation (OCO)
The Pacific Immigration Directors Conference (PIDC)
The New Zealand Combined Law Agency Group Conference (CLAG)
The following are examples of the conferences attended.
South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference (SPCPC)

SPCPC is the South Pacific Chiefs of Police Conference and consists of Police Commissioners from all Pacific Island countries from Saipan and Guam to French Polynesia and Australia and New Zealand. The SPCPC meets once a year in various member countries around the Pacific and is supported by a mid term SPCPC working group which addresses all resolutions arising from the conference.

This conference is the voice of policing in the Pacific. The AFP is very active within the SPCPC, both financially (providing travel funds) and representative wise, and together with two invited state police force representatives, attend each year. Representatives of the SPCPC attend other Pacific Island forums such as the Forum Regional Security Committee (FRSC) and the Oceania Customs Organisation (OCO).

Australasian and South West Pacific Region Police Commissioners Conference
(ASWPRCC)

The ASWPRCC is the Australasian and South West Pacific Region Commissioners Conference. This is a more Australian dominated conference with the AFP and all States and Territories represented. PNG and Fiji are the only other semi regular representatives at this Conference. The conference addresses issues of both a domestic and international nature.

THE AFP OVERSEAS NETWORK

The principal role and functions of the Australian Federal Police Overseas Network is
to:

• Establish a relationship of confidence with the police and law enforcement
agencies in the host country and other countries within the region of
responsibility, facilitating a flow of information to Australian police forces

• Initiate inquiries with relevant local law enforcement agencies on behalf of the
AFP, State Police, ABCI, etc, and pass on requests from local agencies to the
AFP for inquiries within Australia

• Coordinate and provide advice to host countries on joint investigations

• Assist the host country in the development and execution of controlled
operations

• Assist with the extradition of persons wanted in Australia or the host country

• Identify new developments in police training, equipment and practices,
especially in relation to drugs and organised crime

• Provide training and technical advice where appropriate to local law
enforcement agencies

• Cooperate, with the knowledge and agreement of the host country, with Third
Country law enforcement authorities

• Represent the AFP at international law enforcement conferences, including
those held under the auspices of the United Nations Drug Control Program
(UNDCP) and Interpol

• Facilitate visits by law enforcement officials to and from the host country

• Liaise with Department of Foreign Affairs-designated special purpose liaison
officers at Australian Missions where the AFP is not represented

• Strengthen the capability of foreign law enforcement agencies through the
provision of training programs through the Law Enforcement Cooperation
Program (LECP)

http://www.paclii.org/journals/fJSPL/vol08no2/9.shtml

National liberation comes to the South Pacific

Although the small Pacific Island nations now exercise a nominal independence very few have sufficient resources and practically no industrial development which would enable them to stand up to the pressures that are being imposed on them by Australia, New Zealand and other nations with more highly industrialised economies.

It has been easy for countries such as Australia to use so-called "aid" programs and loans (and then threatening to withhold them) to demand that the weaker nations adopt policies acceptable to the developed countries.

Australia, in cooperation with the United States, declared the South Pacific Island states to be its area of influence. In this frame of mind the Howard Government declared that it was the policeman of the region and sat in judgement over its neighbours as "rogue" states, "failed" states, not capable of "good governance". The Australian Government used such charges to claim it had the right to carry out pre-emptive strikes, and with assistance from others even went to the length of deliberately engineering crisis situations for that purpose.

Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands is a classic example. On two occasions the Australian Government and its lapdog ally, New Zealand, sent troops and police to the Solomon Islands as a consequence of some local disturbances. Who stirred up these disturbances has, of course, never been explained.

The troops and police were not alone in moving into the Solomon Islands. Civilian personnel were included, some taking over key positions in government economic and legal advisers, judges, bankers and election monitors. That these personnel would include members of ASIO and other "intelligence" agents has to be taken for granted.

In the Solomon Islands an Australian policeman took over the position of Police Commissioner and was responsible for last week's raid on the office of the Prime Minister of the Solomons. The raid was carried out while the PM was out of the country attending a meeting of the Pacific Forum and violence was used to break into his office.

All this was accompanied by vicious verbal attacks on the Solomon Island's Prime Minister by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer whose arrogant and outrageous behaviour had already been displayed in connection with East Timor and Papua New Guinea. Downer is a typical colonial governor using the stronger economic and military power of Australia and the availability of personnel to effect a virtual colonial take over.

The PNG Government was faced with a similar attempt to take it over but Australia was eventually forced to back off after insisting that Australian personnel in PNG should be above PNG laws. Australian high-handedness was again on display recently in connection with PNG when the Australian Government refused to extend visas to the PNG Prime Minister and other government officials to visit Australia when they were allegedly involved in the Julian Moti affair.

Flagrant interference

The Australian Government's flagrant interference and stand-over stand-over tactics also being played out in East Timor as it attempts to turn East Timor into an Australian colony. Once again troops and police were rushed in using the pretence of disturbances in Dili. No United Nations authority was sought despite the presence of a UN mission in Dili that dates back to the struggle of the East Timor people against Indonesian occupation.

In the recent discussions in the UN Security Council, Australia argued that it should continue to control the military forces at present in East Timor rather than passing command over to the UN mission.

The UN investigation into the events earlier this year in Dili has concluded that Alfredo Reinado could be prosecuted for his role in the disturbances in which a number of East Timorese were killed. Reinado is said to be in "hiding", yet it is clear that his whereabouts are known to the Australian military and media. His criminal role is also being covered up by the Australian Government with no steps to arrest him despite his escape from jail several months ago.

Reinado, who lived in Australian for about nine years and trained at the military college in Canberra, is clearly working closely with Australian forces and was a useful and willing tool in the vicious Australian-orchestrated campaign to overthrow the elected government of Mari Alkatiri.

Another long-standing Australian resident who is also playing the Australian Government's game is the present Prime Minister of East Timor, Ramos Horta.

Growing resistance

Despite these campaigns, occupations, economic and political pressure and blackmail, there is an obviously growing resistance in the island states to the attempts of the Howard Government (and the Keating and Hawke Labor Governments before that) to re-impose a form of colonialism on the island states, to destroy their independence and sovereignty and to install governments that will do the bidding of their Australian masters.

A Communist Party booklet Recolonising the Solomon Islands published in 2003 says that the rejection of colonialism and the demand for independence and sovereignty remain strong in the world and the neo-colonialist plan outlined by the Australian Government may yet come crashing down as it deserves.

In the 1970s and `80s the Pacific Island states were given their statehood in the wake of the world-wide anti-colonial movement of the time. Now, the people and governments of these states are beginning to fight for their independence!

From The Guardian

“Policing the neighbourhood”—Australia’s new para-military police

Part 1

By Mike Head
27 September 2007

This is the first in a two-part series on the Australian Federal Police.

At the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Sydney this month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, initialled a highly significant agreement. Made under the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation signed by the two governments in Japan earlier this year, the agreement established that the Australian Federal Police would train Japanese police to serve in “international hot spots”.

The AFP’s training program highlights the growing interest in foreign capitals in a new model of para-military intervention, developed by the Howard government, around the AFP’s International Deployment Group (IDG).

The Japanese government’s interest in using heavily-armed police agencies in overseas operations is particularly noteworthy. Japan’s post-World War II constitution formally forbids the establishment of military forces, and there has been deep opposition within the population to the involvement of the country’s so-called “self-defence” military units in the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

But interest in the IDG is not confined to Tokyo. According to a recent series in New Matilda, an on-line liberal magazine: “The expansion of the International Deployment Group will see the AFP operating significantly outside its original mandate—in areas that would seem to be a more natural fit for the military, NGOs or aid agencies—and is attracting considerable global attention as the first of its kind.”

The Howard government established the IDG in February 2004, seven months after sending more than 2,000 troops and police to the Solomon Islands in 2003. The specific role of the hundreds of AFP officers was to form the backbone of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which took control of key aspects of the small country’s administration, including the police, legal system, prisons and finance ministry.

The deployment marked an unprecedented new phase in the life of the AFP, which has traditionally been a small domestic force, primarily responsible for enforcing federal criminal law, policing the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and guarding diplomatic and other official buildings. Under the Australian Constitution, the far-larger state police forces carry out most internal policing.

The AFP was only established in 1979, through a merger of the ACT Police and the old Commonwealth Police. The amalgamation resulted from the still-unexplained 1978 bomb explosion outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel, the venue for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting. The blast became the pretext for the conservative Fraser government to declare that the “age of terrorism” had arrived in Australia, requiring a dramatic boost to the size and powers of the federal police, intelligence and security services.

Today, the “war on terror” declared by the Bush administration after the September 11 terror attacks in the US, is being exploited by the Howard government to enlarge and transform the role of the AFP. By the end of 2008, the IDG will have grown to 1,200 members, equipped with advanced military-style weaponry, including armoured personnel carriers, and consuming one-third of the AFP’s annual budget. In 1979, the AFP’s personnel numbered some 2,952. By next year, the force will have more than doubled.

The IDG already has teams in 10 countries—Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Cyprus, Cambodia, East Timor, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru and Tonga. The AFP also has trainers or exchange personnel in other locations, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Micronesia.

To date, the IDG’s main operations are concentrated in the Solomons, where about 230 officers dominate RAMSI and the local police force. The next largest contingent of 60 is in East Timor, where some 200 police accompanied the hundreds of Australian troops deployed last year by the Howard government as part of its efforts to secure the removal of the Fretilin administration of Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.

The IDG is designed to provide a “rapid response” capacity to aid the military in the event of popular unrest. Its role as a regional policing agency was underscored last November, when 64 IDG members were sent to Tonga after riots in the capital Nuku’olofa. Three AFP “advisers” are still there.

Neo-colonial agenda

The AFP’s submission to a current Senate committee inquiry into “Australia’s involvement in peacekeeping operations” pointed to the neo-colonial character of these operations. It also outlined the rationale for police, rather than troops, to occupy the front line against the local population—at least after the initial show of military force, as happened in East Timor and the Solomons.

“Sovereignty, respect and understanding of host nation culture and laws will assist in the acceptance of police contributions. Sovereignty will however be used in a variety of circumstances to obstruct change which may reduce the benefits of police interventions or capacity building missions as they threaten the status quo enjoyed by local elites,” the submission stated.

In other words, paying lip service to “host nation culture and laws” helps legitimise the operation in the eyes of the local population, but “sovereignty”—i.e., national independence—remains a barrier to enforcing Australian interests. While the “police interventions” are presented as humanitarian or “capacity building” missions to assist impoverished populations, their real purpose is to assert Australian strategic, diplomatic and economic domination over the entire South Pacific region.

The submission said the AFP was “revolutionising its approach to offshore operations” for two reasons. One was a turn away from the “bygone era” of “traditional peacekeeping”, based on UN or multilateral operations—with the consent of warring parties—to unilateral interventions, often in so-called “failed” or “fragile” states.

This shift is bound up with growing conflicts between the major powers, particularly the US, Europe, China and Russia. In the Asia-Pacific region, backed by the US, Canberra is intent on establishing unchallenged hegemony, which means not only ousting regimes regarded as obstacles to its interests, but also combating the influence of rival powers, especially China.

The other reason given by the AFP was the need for a long-term presence, lasting well beyond the normal span of a military engagement. Although the submission’s language was cautious, it pointed to the need to establish new regimes—basically puppet administrations—which would require armed police backing. “In the power vacuum that frequently exists, the international community may be required to establish transitional administration authorities that provide traditional government functions including executive policing.”

Such “executive policing” would require a greater use of weaponry and lethal force than normally involved in Australian domestic policing. “These environments are volatile and have resulted in a shift, in the case of police, in the authority to bear arms and use deadly force,” the submission stated.

Drawing on the experiences of Timor and the Solomons, the AFP said the command of the intervention could fluctuate. During the initial stages, “an effective military response” would be primary; followed by a policing focus, with the possibility of transferring back to military command “in certain forms of crises”.

As a result, the line between the military and the police is becoming blurred. A feature of the IDG is closer “interoperability” with the military, including the “embedding” of AFP officers in “Joint Operations Command and the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre”. The submission predicted: “Joint operations with the Australian Defence Force as part of national offshore crisis response will become more frequent and increased interoperability will be necessary”.

Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra last October, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty spoke of “policing in a new paradigm” in which the police became “the new deployable arm of Australian government policy”. “If a government wishes to intervene in the issues of another state, it has traditionally been achieved through the deployment of military force to deliver on the government’s objective,” he noted. But because of the political sensitivities involved, the AFP was being transformed into a “pseudo-gendarmerie”.

Keelty drew a parallel with the formation of “Special Weapons and Operation style teams in Australia”. Over the past 20 years, para-military police units have been established in every Australian state, operating with sub-machine guns, armoured vehicles and riot gear.

Among the witnesses testifying at the Senate inquiry was Flinders University law professor Andrew Goldsmith, the lead researcher in “Policing the neighbourhood”—a three-year Australian Research Council-funded study, in partnership with the AFP, of the AFP’s experiences in East Timor, the Solomons and Papua New Guinea. He emphasised the need for the “management of perceptions” in IDG operations to overcome local hostility.

“Australia faces an almost inevitable perception in the region of being a kind of symbolic big brother, and that poses a number of legitimacy problems,” he advised the senators. Later, he added: “Australia’s involvement in oil and gas with Timor has coloured our ability to operate as effectively as we would like in Timor-Leste.”

Goldsmith’s testimony illustrates one of the central preoccupations behind the Senate inquiry’s ongoing deliberations and the work of the IDG: how best to camouflage the underlying economic and strategic interests of the Australian political and corporate establishment, including control over the lucrative oil and gas reserves under the Timor Sea, throughout the region.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/afpo-s27.shtml

To be continued

See Also:
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 1
[21 February 2007]
The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots
Part 2
[22 February 2007]

Down with the apec fence

Rudd-Other Cheek of the Same Arse

WHAT difference will the election of Labor leader Kevin Rudd as Australia’s next prime minister make for his Pacific neighbours? Will there be significant changes, or just more of the same?

Unlike the sometimes tumultuous democratic change elsewhere, Australian elections are a staid affair. But consistent polls tell us that a limited version of “regime change” is about to take place in Canberra.

The Rudd team has successfully marketed itself, and the investment groups, mining companies and corporate media which dominate Australian policy – despite their prior uncritical support for prime minister John Howard – broadly accept the proposed change.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch even gave his personal blessing, after Rudd visited him in New York.

No small part of the Rudd team’s success has been the ugliness of the incumbents.
Domestic legitimacy was difficult to maintain in face of the unpopular privatisations, bloody war, racist policy towards immigrants and refugees, and attacks on domestic civil and industrial rights.

The Pacific legacy, similarly, is not pretty.While preaching “good governance” and security in the region, intervention and corruption were hallmarks of the Howard administration.

Regional intervention was linked to commercial and strategic interest, but argued in the name of “stability” and “assistance”. The Ramsi intervention in the Solomon Islands, although initially invited, led to a near collapse in relations between the Australian and Solomons governments.

The 2006 intervention in Timor Leste, following a long conflict over oil and gas revenue, affronted the major political party. Fretilin now in opposition, blames Australia for backing a coup. And the planned Enhanced Cooperation Programme for PNG collapsed after unconstitutional immunities sought for Australian officials were overturned in PNG’s Supreme Court.

Under Alexander Downer’s stewardship of foreign affairs and trade, the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) personnel paid nearly A$300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein’s regime, to secure pre-invasion wheat contracts. As an official inquiry showed, Downer then argued the case for Australian participation in the illegal invasion of Iraq, on the basis that support for the US-led war would benefit “Australia’s commercial position in Iraq”.

As it happened, exposure of the AWB scandal allowed the US to completely squeeze Australian wheat suppliers out of the Iraqi market.

Neighbouring leaders were treated with contempt. When PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare was forced to remove his shoes in Brisbane airport, Downer claimed this was a “standard operation” that applies to “everybody”.Yet when US vice-president Dick Cheney arrived in Australia, state laws were changed overnight, at Howard and Downer’s request, to allow Cheney’s bodyguards to carry their weapons through the airport and onto the streets of Sydney.

Then as Solomons prime minister Manasseh Sogavare sought to appoint Australian lawyer Julian Moti as his attorney-general, Canberra and the Australian federal police decided they would sideline Moti with charges that he had engaged in child sex in Vanuatu.

In fact, Moti had been cleared of all charges and was not wanted in Vanuatu. His real offence, it seems, was that he had advised an inquiry into the role of Australian police in the April 2006 disturbances in Honiara.

When Moti passed through Port Moresby, the PNG Government did not comply with an Australian extradition request, and instead deported him to the Solomons, Howard and Downer then turned on the PNG Government.

With such a history, most Australians and their Pacific neighbours are keen to see the back of Howard.Indeed, regime change in Canberra at the least brings the prospect of some new faces, and perhaps a change of tone in the conversation.

Rudd and his shadow foreign minister Robert McClelland may well take a step back from the overt racism that characterised the Howard-Downer regime, where neighbouring governments were bluntly told what was good for them.

This change in tone may be reflected in some actual policy changes, for example a resurgence in the teaching of Asian languages in Australian schools, and an increase in AusAID scholarships.

Rudd has spoken of a “Pacific Colombo Plan”, suggesting significant numbers of scholarships. He has also indicated a planned increase in the AusAID budget, from 0.3% to 0.5% of GDP, by 2015-16.

Most of this, as we know, will return as “boomerang aid” to the handful of Australian companies who are AusAID’s “preferred contractors”. Nevertheless, aid money is clearly a central means by which Rudd hopes to rescue Australian influence. He recognises the damage Howard has done, speaking of a “long-term drift in Australia’s strategic standing right across this region” and expressing a desire to control “anti-Australianism” and avoid “costly military interventions”.

What might this mean in practice?It may include increased intervention.
Rudd’s party now speaks of a “staged withdrawal” of troops from Iraq, but a build-up in Afghanistan and the Pacific, possibly including Timor Leste.

The budget of the Australian Federal Police in the Pacific already nearly exceeds its domestic budget, but Rudd has promised them even greater resources.

Education aid will be targeted. Rudd will likely follow Howard in plans to increase scholarships to Timor Leste, now that Australian troops have helped sideline Fretilin.

Due to Howard’s chilly relations with the Alkatiri government, scholarships to Australian universities for Timorese students had fallen from 20% a year to just 8% per year. That may now increase.

McClelland, who is likely to be the new foreign minister under a Rudd government, has spoken of Labor’s desire to train “a new generation of young leaders” from Timor Leste, PNG, the Solomons and Fiji, with greater Australian loyalties.

This brings us back to the continuities between Howard and Rudd. We can expect Rudd as prime minister to continue to back Australian mining companies and to work against potential competitors, in the Timor Sea and in PNG.

He will be hostile to plans to develop gas processing capacity in Timor Leste and PNG, if Australian companies are not involved. Rudd will probably continue Howard and Downer’s opposition to Cuban health and health training programmes in the region, but the opposition will remain private, because Australia cannot compete.

Timor Leste already has one of the fastest-growing health systems in the world, largely thanks to Cuban generosity. Relations with China are in a class apart, due to its economic power. Rudd, who speaks Chinese, has said he will seek greater engagement with China while maintaining a strong alliance with the US.
A further continuity will be Rudd’s backing of the “open market” or export-oriented approach to agriculture.

This is dictated by the global ambitions of Australian agribusiness.
On this basis, Australia refused to help rebuild Timor Leste’s rice production after 1999, even though it sells no rice to that country. Australia does have substantial rice exports to PNG, and typically does not support staple grain programmes.
A Labor government led by Rudd would not be quick to move on the “migrant worker” issue, because of trade union fears.

A possible breakthrough might come for skilled workers in the mining sector.
The simplest solution, of course, would be to extend to young Pacific people the backpacker visas now offered to young “working tourists” from wealthier countries such as Britain, Germany and South Korea.

However, residual racism in the Australian immigration system may make this difficult. As Rudd says, he “will listen” to the region. His background as a diplomat and a linguist give him some advantages, in this regard. However as a technocrat – who quibbles more with Howard’s means than his ends – he can be expected to maintain support for all the important commercial and strategic interests backed by Howard.
The pressure and influence is likely to be less crass and less public, but somewhat more “backroom” and cheque-book driven.

Dr Tim Anderson

Note: The author is a senior lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney

POLICE ROPE IN RAMSI OFFICERS TO OPPRESS SOGAVARE

Date: 10 August 2007

Auckland 6am; Police in the Solomon Islands are warning locals in Honiara they'll face the full brunt of the law if they cause trouble today.

It's D-Day for prime minister Manasseh Sogavare as a vote of no confidence is tabled against him in Parliament.

Police Commissioner Jahir Khan says he has 400 men on duty ready to quell any uprising. (listen)

http://www.niufm.com/site_resources/library/News/Lito/A0000010_aug1007/jahir..................12pm..................1087.mp3

Mutujulu statement on the military occupation of their community

Leaders of the Mutitjulu community today questioned the need for a
military occupation of their small community

We welcome any real support for indigenous health and welfare and even
two police will assist, but the Howard Government declared an emergency
at our community over two years ago - when they appointed an
administrator to our health clinic - and since then we have been without
a doctor, we have less health workers, our council has been sacked all
our youth and health programmes have been cut.

We have no CEO and limited social and health services. The government
has known about our overcrowding problem for at least 10 years and
they’ve done nothing about it.

How do they propose keeping alcohol out of our community when we are 20
minutes away from 5 star hotel? Will they ban blacks from Yulara? We
have been begging for an alcohol counsellor and a rehabilitation worker
so that we can help alcoholics and substance abusers but those pleas
have been ignored. What will happen to alcoholics when this ban is
introduced? How will the government keep the grog runners out of our
community without a permit system?

We have tried to put forward projects to make our community economically
sustainable - like a simple coffee cart at the sunrise locations - but
the government refuses to even consider them.

There is money set aside from the Jimmy Little foundation for a kidney
dialysis machine at Mutitjulu, but National Parks won’t let us have it.
That would create jobs and improve indigenous health but they just keep
stonewalling us. If there is an emergency, why won’t Mal Brough fast
track our kidney dialysis machine?

Some commentators have made much of the cluster of sexually transmitted
diseases identified at our health clinic. People need to understand that
Mutitjulu Health Clinic (now effectively closed) is a regional clinic
and patients come from as far away as WA and SA; so to identify a
cluster here is meaningless without seeing the confidential patient data.

The fact that we hold this community together with no money, no help, no
doctor and no government support is a miracle. Any community, black or
white would struggle if they were denied the most basic resources.
Police and the Military are fine for logistics and coordination but
healthcare, youth services, education and basic housing are more
essential. Any programme must involve the people on the ground or it
won’t work. For example who will interpret for the military?

Our women and children are scared about being forcibly examined; surely
there is a need to build trust. Even the doctors say they are reluctant
to examine a young child without a parent’s permission. Of course any
child that is vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected but
a wholesale intrusion into our women and children’s privacy is a
violation of our human and sacred rights.

Where is the money for all the essential services? We need long term
financial and political commitment to provide the infrastructure and
planning for our community. There is an urgent need for 10’s of millions
of dollars to do what needs to be done. Will Mr Brough give us a
commitment beyond the police and military?

The commonwealth needs to work with us to put health and social
services, housing and education in place rather than treating Mutitjulu
as a political football.

But we need to set the record straight:

* There is no evidence of any fraud or mismanagement at Mutitjulu – we
have had an administration for 12 months that found nothing

* Mal Brough and his predecessor have been in control of our community
for at least 12 months and we have gone backwards in services

* We have successfully eradicated petrol sniffing from our community in
conjunction with government authorities and oil companies

* We have thrown suspected paedophiles out of our community using the
permit system which our government now seeks take away from us.

* We will work constructively with any government, State, Territory or
Federal that wants to help aboriginal people.