Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Australian government demands hand-over of Solomon Islands’ attorney general

Rick Kelly via sam | 09.10.2006 21:51 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Repression | World

This unanimous support indicates what is at stake in the Solomons for the Australian ruling elite. Howard recently announced a major expansion of the military and specifically listed the PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji as potential targets for Australian intervention. In this context, a successful challenge to Australia’s grip over the Solomons would prove disastrous.

A major expansion of the military
A major expansion of the military


The Howard government is engaged in an increasingly aggressive attempt to unseat the Solomon Islands’ government and Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, amid an ongoing standoff over the fate of Julian Moti, the Solomons’ attorney-general arrested in Papua New Guinea on September 29. The governments of both the Solomons and PNG are defying Australia’s demand that Moti be extradited on bogus charges relating to a 1997 child sex allegation.

Tensions remain high in the Solomon Islands, following opposition leader Fred Fono’s announcement last Friday that a motion of no-confidence aimed at bringing down the government would be postponed for a week. Fono, who claimed to have sufficient support in parliament for the motion, withdrew the nomination because of alleged “rumours, speculation, and intimidation, indicating that if this government was to fall there would be another riot”. Sogavare has dismissed the opposition’s claims, and insists that his government is secure.

The immediate spark for the political crisis was Sogavare’s expulsion of Australian High Commissioner Patrick Cole last month for meddling in the Solomons’ internal affairs. The expulsion led to a war of words between Canberra and Honiara, with Sogavare condemning the Australian government for bullying and political interference.

Moti has been targeted both as a means of undermining the Sogavare government, and to avoid any scrutiny of the Australian-dominated Regional Assistance to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI). Australian forces were dispatched to the Solomons in 2003 after the Howard government declared the Solomons a “failed state” and a potential haven for terrorists. RAMSI took over the country’s key economic, judicial, and security institutions.

RAMSI was never a “humanitarian intervention” and was instead aimed at securing Australia’s domination of the South Pacific. Opposition to RAMSI among ordinary Solomon Islanders mounted as it became evident that Australia is doing nothing to alleviate the country’s endemic poverty and unemployment.

Following elections in April, riots erupted in the capital, Honiara, leading to the widespread destruction of hotels and businesses, particularly in Chinatown. The disturbances followed a RAMSI military and police operation aimed at propping up Sogavare’s predecessor, Snyder Rini. Amid corruption allegations, the parliament had chosen Rini as prime minister despite the electoral routing of the previous pro-RAMSI government, in which he had been deputy prime minister.

Concerned to suppress any examination of RAMSI’s responsibility for the riots, Canberra was alarmed when Sogavare announced an official Commission of Inquiry in July. The inquiry was to investigate the cause of the riots and examine the case of the two parliamentarians, Nelson Ne’e and Charles Dausabea, whom Canberra made scapegoats for the disturbances. The men, who are reportedly opponents of RAMSI, have been held without trial since their arrest in late April. Australian judges have repeatedly denied bail.

Canberra has made every effort to derail the official inquiry. Former Australian Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld became the subject of a media witch-hunt ostensibly over an unpaid speeding fine after he was appointed head of the Commission of Inquiry. The sensationalised reports, which emerged just days after Einfeld accepted the position in mid-July, disappeared just as suddenly following his resignation on September 17.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday that Australian forces considered arresting Sogavare last month, after the publication of a leaked cabinet submission in which the prime minister questioned Ne’e and Dausabea’s detention and raised the possibility of collusion between Australian-appointed prosecutors and judges.

“So seriously did the Australians regard the submission that, according to well-placed sources, Australian personnel—working with Solomons police as advisers—considered scope for a raid to obtain further documents,” the newspaper reported. “There was even an examination of whether Sogavare had breached any criminal laws for which he could be arrested. But, regardless of the legal assessment, it was considered that arresting the Prime Minister posed too much risk of renewed rioting or possible assassinations.”

The scapegoating of Moti

Moti was similarly targeted by Canberra for political reasons. He was closely involved in Sogavare’s decision to establish the Commission of Inquiry, and recommended that Einfeld head the investigation. According to one report, Moti’s private law firm in Honiara also represents Ne’e and Dausabea.

The Howard government’s insistence that its pursuit of Moti is strictly a police matter and has nothing to do with its dispute with the Solomons is absurd. Moti was prosecuted in Vanuatu for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl, but the case was thrown out by two different courts. One magistrate ordered Moti’s legal costs be paid and described the prosecution as “unjustified and oppressive”. Moti’s allegation that the girl’s father had originally demanded a payment of $35,000 to drop the charges led to blackmail charges that were eventually dropped, and a civil case later brought by the girl’s guardian was settled out of court.

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday described the contents of six statements made by the alleged victim to Vanuatu authorities in 1997: “All are in English, though it appears she only spoke French. None was in her own writing. None was sworn. The underlying story does not change from statement to statement, but details are contradictory. Others appear fanciful. She said he had three testicles, but a Port Vila GP, Dr Frank Spooner, would later examine Moti and concluded he had two.”

Vanuatu authorities considered the case closed and reacted with surprise to Canberra’s extradition attempt. “We felt the case against him was cleared, finished,” Pau Navoko Lui, the country’s police commissioner, told the Sydney Morning Herald. Australian authorities never notified Lui’s office that they were reinvestigating Moti.

The extradition demand, which relies upon Moti’s Australian citizenship, involves a misuse of Australia’s sex tourism laws. Under this legislation, individuals can be prosecuted for sex offences committed overseas. The laws were designed to facilitate the prosecution of offenders who evaded arrest overseas, not to create a kind of international double jeopardy.

Justice Minister Chris Ellison has insisted that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) investigated the case at the beginning of 2005, but has not explained why Canberra regards Moti’s prosecution in Vanuatu as deficient. Ellison has also not said why the AFP did not interview the alleged rape victim until June this year. Such an interview would be the starting point of any serious re-examination of the case.

International law expert Don Rothwell, of the Australian National University, has questioned the timing of the investigation. “I don’t think there has been a satisfactory explanation by the Australian government,” he told SBS television. He asked why a warrant hadn’t previously been issued “given that these charges against Mr Moti are fairly long standing ... and given the fact that Mr Moti apparently travels in and out of Australia fairly regularly”.

The timing of the case is only explicable in its political context. The alleged sex crime was nothing more than a convenient pretext for Canberra’s vendetta.

Despite the utterly cynical character of the Howard government’s manoeuvres against Moti and the Solomons government, no one in the entire political and media establishment has issued a note of criticism. Opposition leader Kim Beazley declared that there was no political motivation behind the government’s pursuit of Moti, while today’s editorial in the nominally liberal Sydney Morning Herald demanded he face trial in Australia.

This unanimous support indicates what is at stake in the Solomons for the Australian ruling elite. Howard recently announced a major expansion of the military and specifically listed the PNG, Vanuatu and Fiji as potential targets for Australian intervention. In this context, a successful challenge to Australia’s grip over the Solomons would prove disastrous.

See Also:
Canberra’s dirty tricks ahead of Solomon Islands no-confidence vote
[2 October 2006]
Solomon Islands PM publicly denounces Australian government
[21 September 2006]
Australian government targets Solomon Islands for “regime change”
[16 September 2006]

 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/moti-o09.shtml

Rick Kelly via sam

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech