The Role of the Royal Solomon Islands Police in Ethnic Violence

Afu Billy

Afu Billy is a Community Resource Trainer at the Pacific Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT), a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project based in Fiji. This article is the personal view of the author and may not necessarily represent the views of RRRT or UNDP.

Civil conflict erupted in the Solomon Islands in May 1999 when a group of Guadalcanal youth began violently evicting Malaitan settlers from their properties in Guadalcanal Province. This incident sparked a four-year-long crisis. In June 2000 Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa’alu was forced to resign at gunpoint. Within a month of the first incident, armed hostilities between the Isatabu Freedom Movement (IFM) of Guadalcanal and the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) broke out in Guadalcanal. More than 100 lives were lost and an estimated 32,000 people displaced. As a result, the Solomon Islands Government was unable to fulfill its basic functions.

The role of the Royal Solomon Islands Police (RSIP) should have been to enforce law and maintain internal security, especially in protecting citizens. Instead, the RSIP played a major role in committing human rights violations in the country’s ethnic and social crisis that occurred between 1998 and July 2003; ending with the intervention of the Australian led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI).

Prior to the conflict, the RSIP was already rife with ethnic factionalism. Viewed as “pro-Malaitan”, non-Malaitans already did not trust the police. As of June 2000 approximately 75 per cent of the country’s 897 police officers were Malaitan. This point is significant, due to the view in Solomon Islands that the state itself is seen as a foreign concept; an attempt by colonial powers to merge the different island groups into a single country. People align themselves with their village or language groups far more than with the state, viewing themselves as “Malaitan” or “Are Are” first, and Solomon Islander second. Most of the population lacks a sense of nationality and due to years of poor governance and corruption, there is no sense of “trust” in the state or state run functions. These factors have contributed to a situation where the public does not trust the state run police force and provides an extreme example of where state powers and institutions did not function to effectively control law and order and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.

The situation also explains the reaction of the RSIP at the outset of the conflict. When Guadalcanal youths started forcing Malaitans out of Guadalcanal, the police were seen to use their position to retaliate against the Guadalcanalese, resulting in police committing human rights violations. An example of this took place in September 1999, when several paramilitary police officers in a speedboat shot a man near shore, dragged him into the water and reportedly beat him to death.

Fuelling the conflict was the availability of guns held in police armouries around the country. The armouries provided the supply of weapons and arms used by militant groups, often assisted by police. For example, in December 1998 the Tulagi Police Armoury in the Central Province was broken into by men who were identified as police officers from the RSIP in Honiara. In January 2000, the police armoury in Auki, Malaita was raided and arms stolen; these arms were later used in the formation of the Malaita Eagle Force. A day after the MEF and the police staged the attempted coup and held Prime Minister Ulufa’alu hostage, they raided the armoury in Honiara and stole arms.

After the violence began, the police rapidly lost control over the deteriorating law and order situation. The Special Response Unit and the Paramilitary Police Field Force (PFF) became like legitimized arms of the MEF within the RSIP. After the signing of the Townsville Peace Agreement in October 2000, government attempts to control the situation through the recruitment of 1200 untrained former militants (most of whom were MEF members) into the police force as Special Constables (SC) worsened the situation as the RSIP was already seen as “pro Malaitan”. The recruitment, which was supposed to be a government effort to “reintegrate these ex-combatants into useful and lawful activities”, backfired as these ex-combatants used their new role as SCs to wield influence within the force which in turn led to the deterioration of the police response to the conflict. Members of the PFF and the SC engaged in criminal activities, including extortion, robbery, vehicle theft, intimidation and fraud, with police leadership condoning these abuses.

Public confidence in the RSIP and the government plummeted, as the government was seen to be helpless in controlling its own police force. Extreme cases include where the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office were targeted for extortion by criminal elements in the RSIP and militant gangs. Government revenue collected went to meeting fabricated and outrageous compensation demands as the Special Constables looked on, profiting from the lawlessness.

The SCs became a major impediment to legitimate police efforts to respond to citizen complaints and the maintenance of law and order, as they had become instrumental in dealings between militant factions.3 Police investigations against SCs and armed ex-combatants were stalled for fear of reprisals. In addition to the factionalism within the police force, police work was also hampered by the lack of resources, specifically vehicles and fuel. Between the period of the signing of the Townsville Peace Agreement in October 2000 to the arrival of RAMSI in July 2003, the situation fully deteriorated within the police force, rendering it corrupt, violent, undisciplined, biased and dysfunctional.

The police as the traditional defender of the people had failed to effectively protect the nation. Without police backing, the government was ineffective to maintain law and order and many officers exploited the situation and their government positions for personal gain.

A closer analysis points to a number of long-standing issues that had contributed to the deterioration of the RSIP. These include:

This scenario reflects successive Solomon Islands governments’ lack of adherence to the principles of democracy, good governance, human rights and respect for the rule of law. Governments were corrupt; the law enforcement arm had failed in its obligations to protect the rights of citizens, instead contributing to the violation of citizen’s rights. Although Solomon Islands is a nation that professes to be democratic, a democracy needs to be one which practices good governance and upholds the rule of law to ensure that the human rights and freedoms of its citizens are protected and enjoyed without violations. Democracy, good governance, human rights and the rule of law cannot be separated.

Where these principles are not adhered to, as was the case of Solomon Islands, poor governance and corruption become major features of government functions, including the police. In the Solomons situation, this disabled the police force in its role as a provider of security for its citizenry. The values underlying corruption and poor governance had spread to individual officers who used their positions for personal gain, rather than for the good of the public.

The role of the police everywhere is to uphold the rule of law and human rights, and ensure that people are protected. This was not the case in Solomon Islands during the crisis. Currently, the RSIP is being retrained; overseen by RAMSI, a collaborative force supported by the Government of Australia. It is my personal opinion that to instill the values of good governance, democracy and respect for human rights in the RSIP, training in human rights needs to become part of the training programme for the Solomons police. As a Solomon Islander, I believe this should be a priority.