Aussies agree to strengthen Solomon Islands’s police force

AUSTRALIA GOVERNMENT — Prime minister Anthony Albanese said the deal ensures Australia remains the security partner of choice. (EPA Images pic)

SYDNEY: Australia said today it had agreed to boost Solomon Islands’s police force with a multi-year funding, training and infrastructure package for the Pacific nation, which has fostered close ties with China.

But in a sign of the competition it faces from Beijing, the Solomons’s police announced the same day it had received a modest donation from China for its police support fund.

The Australian deal – valued at A$190 million over four years – will include the construction of a new police training centre in the Solomons’ capital Honiara, Canberra said.

It represents a “new foundation for Australia’s security partnership with the Solomon Islands”, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a news conference.

“What we have done is ensure that Australia remains the security partner of choice,” he said.

Albanese said he sealed the agreement after discussions with Solomon Islands prime minister Jeremiah Manele.

Manele’s predecessor switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2019.

Three years later, the archipelago signed a secretive security deal with Beijing that raised alarm in western capitals over China’s expanding influence in the Pacific.

‘Genuine relationship’ with China

Beijing’s move sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity by the US, Australia and other allies to cement closer relations with strategically placed South Pacific nations.

Albanese said his country was proud to make a “significant investment” in the Solomons’s police so they could take primary responsibility for their own security.

“This partnership will strengthen the Solomon Islands domestic security, but it will also enhance its ability to contribute to regional stability,” Albanese said.

Despite Australia’s overtures, Solomon Islands ties with China remain tight.

Asked today about the deal with Canberra, Beijing’s foreign ministry said: “No country should regard island countries as their backyard”.

“Instead, they should complement each other’s strengths, coordinate and cooperate, and carry out trilateral or multilateral cooperation,” spokesman Lin Jian said.

“We hope that relevant parties can truly respect the independence and complete sovereignty of island countries and not interfere in their internal affairs,” he added.

The Solomons’s police issued a statement within hours of Australia’s announcement, saying the Chinese embassy had given its police support fund a donation equal to about US$18,000 to help officers in tough times.

It was testimony to China’s “genuine relationship with Solomon Islands”, said Ian Vaevaso, police deputy commissioner for national security.

The Australian deal will deliver “much-needed support” for Solomons’s police but falls short of securing a more exclusive relationship, said Mihai Sora, Pacific analyst at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute think tank.

It would not commit the Solomons to “diminish or scale back” ties with China – as had been the case in recent deals Australia signed with Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu, he said.

“It is weaker than the other commitments,” Sora said.

Local police overwhelmed

China has been offering its own training and hardware to the Solomons’s police.

It maintains a small but conspicuous police presence in the country, sending a revolving cadre of officers to train locals in shooting and riot tactics.

Local police, numbering 1,500 for a population of about 720,000, appeared overwhelmed when anti-government protests turned violent in Honiara in November 2021.

The riots left at least three people dead and much of the capital’s Chinatown district in ruins.

On a visit to Australia in June, Manele raised the country’s policing needs with Albanese.

In a joint statement at the time, the leaders said the Solomons had asked Australia to help it double the size of its police force to 3,000 over a decade, with a longer-term goal of reaching 5,000.

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