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Solomons firearms surrender begins
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Posted on Dec 05 2000
HONIARA, Solomon Islands (AP) — Militias responsible for two years of ethnic fighting in the Pacific nation of Solomon Islands have begun turning over their weapons to international peace monitors.
Forty-three guns were handed in Wednesday by rebels from the ethnic Isatabu group in the first large-scale surrender of weapons since the warring factions signed a peace deal in October. The weapons were handed over at a ceremony on the main island of Guadalcanal.
Paul Tovua, the chairman of a council overseeing the peace agreement, said monitors were still waiting for members of the rival Malaita militia to surrender their weapons.
The process is being overseen by peace monitors from Australia and New Zealand, whose governments sponsored talks that resulted in the peace agreement.
Leaders of the Malaitan and Isatabu fighting groups signed the peace accord to halt fighting between the natives of Guadalcanal and neighboring Malaita island that had left more than 70 people dead and drove thousands of people from their homes.
The dispute arose after Guadalcanal natives, who accused Malaitans of taking their land and jobs in recent years, expelled Malaitan migrants from Guadalcanal. Malaitans formed a militia to fight the expulsions and, with help from renegade police officers, toppled the Solomon Islands’ government in June.
No one knows the exact number of weapons in the hands of the militias, as many guns used in the fighting were either homemade or recovered from caches left over from World War II. Guadalcanal was the scene of a bloody and drawn-out World War II battle between U.S. Marines and Japanese forces.
Under the peace agreement, an amnesty applies to fighters who surrender their weapons by Dec. 15.
