Solomon Islanders plead for help

By MARY-LOUISE O'CALLAGHAN

HONIARA - Refugees fleeing brutal persecution on the Solomon Islands' Weathercoast yesterday made an emotional plea for a regional intervention in their country.

"A neutral force, a foreign force, is the only solution," said Obed Mark, who in the past six months has lost two uncles and two first cousins at the hands of the Solomons' most infamous rebel leader, Harold Keke.

Mark is just one of nearly 600 people who have fled the Weathercoast and made the trek across Guadalcanal since their home villages were raided and razed by Keke's men throughout May and June.

A former church pastor from Urahai village, Mark gave a calm and precise account of the horrific deaths of his relatives to the Herald yesterday from the Weathercoast refugee camp at Tininge in the hills behind Honiara.

"My cousin was asleep when they came," he said. "Keke's men came, they took him and they held him and cut off his head, cut off his arms, they cut off his legs."

Mark's cousin, John Tova, was 31.

A younger cousin, John Waitly in his mid-twenties, met a similar fate after being taken away to one of Keke's temporary camps in the mountainous bush that rises above the area's golden snaking coast.

Two uncles, Alas Tibmate, in his 40s, and his younger brother, Relon Raslie, were taken in the most recent raid on Urahai, which completely destroyed the village in the early hours of May 27.

"Their mother was taken too and that's how we know they are dead," said Mark.

"She saw them in the camp, they were tied tight with their elbows behind their backs, their faces were swollen from beatings from heavy sticks and there were deep cuts across their backs, necks and arms.

"She saw that they were lost. They did not look alive before they let her go."

But in this complicated conflict no one is an independent observer, as Mark - sworn in as a special constable after the 2000 coup - concedes when explaining that he, too, had taken up arms against Keke when asked for assistance by Solomon Islands police.

"We don't have any rights, we can't follow our customs, we can't follow our chiefs. If Keke says, 'Do this', we do it; 'Do that', we do that."

But he had lost all confidence in the Solomon Islands police to deal with Keke and his followers, who are thought to number more than 100.

"He has high-powered weapons and his men have plenty of ammunition so it looks like there might be politicians, maybe even senior police, who could be helping them."

Unlike the Solomon Islands' new Police Commissioner, William Morrell, Mark did not believe it would be possible to negotiate a peaceful end to the Weathercoast crisis while Keke was calling the shots.

"Keke doesn't respect the Government. He killed his member of parliament, he killed the provincial member.

"He doesn't respect churchmen, doesn't respect the chiefs.

"The only thing that can save our people is a foreign intervention."