Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said the Chinese police will increase the assistance provided by Australia and New Zealand.
The Solomon Islands has rejected suggestions by Australia and other partners that it has partnered with Beijing as a “threat to peace in the Pacific” and says China will increase the skills of its 1,500 police officers in cyber security and community policing.
Opposition parties in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the Solomon Islands have called on Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to take action. “immediately” publish information about police cooperation signed in Beijing on Monday, is concerned that it will call for more races.
In a statement on Friday, Sogavare’s office said the Pacific Islands nation was expanding its security cooperation, and that Chinese police had increased the support of Australian and New Zealand police.
“No one knows himself,” it said.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she “presented Australia’s clear views on security in the Pacific” during a meeting with Chinese Ambassador Wang Yi in Jakarta on Thursday night.
“The government of the Solomon Islands fails to see how the changes to the (Royal Solomon Islands Police Force) traffic control in Honiara, the provision of police equipment or the completion of the Forensic Autopsy Lab threaten peace and security in the Pacific region,” said a statement from Sogavare’s office.
Riots in the capital of Honiara in 2021 revealed the openings of the island’s police force, it said.
Australian and New Zealand Police to be sent in the Solomon Islands in response to the unrest at Sogavare’s request, and previously led a decade-long international peacekeeping mission to restore peace after an internal conflict.
Last week before his visit to China, Sogavare announced that Australia’s defense partnership would be reviewed.
Opposition leader Matthew Wale said in his speech that “the police are different in democracies than in communist countries and democracies must uphold human rights and due process”.
The issue was not the availability of security equipment in China, but the relationship between Chinese and Pacific police, said Meg Keen, director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Islands program.
“It’s difficult how the weapons are used, especially the guns and water cannons,” he said.
On his trip to Beijing this week, the first since the agreement on a defense treaty with China Last year, Sogavare pledged to support China’s Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative, which link China’s development and security investments.
The Solomon Islands has a population of 700,000 people spread over the islands with the best location in the Pacific, and it was important for the US to go west to liberate the Philippines during the Second World War.
Tensions between Taiwan have raised concerns in Washington and Canberra over China’s military intentions in the region.
“Our fear is that in the near future, China’s interest will clash with US influence and interests in the region and we are in the middle of it all,” opposition leader Wale added.