Press Summary: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will be invited to pay an official visit to eight countries including the Solomon Islands from May 26 to June 4.
So, let's take a look at the past and present lives of the Solomon Islands, a Pacific island nation thousands of miles away. Just know how hard it is to have the courage of today in this beautiful and difficult small country!
background
Solomon Islands, an island nation located in the vast South Pacific Ocean, faces Papua New Guinea in the west across the sea, sails 1600 kilometers to the southwest to see Australia, and to the southeast is another string of island countries, including Vanuatu, the tourist resort of Fiji and Tonga, which was previously famous for volcanic eruptions.
Flag of the Solomon Islands
Location of the Solomon Islands▼
990 scattered islands hanging overseas
Statistically, solomon islands are a veritable island nation. Its land area is only 28,900 square kilometers, and such a small land area is scattered across 990 scattered islands.
Beautiful Solomon
About 30,000 years ago, the Solomon Islands were inhabited by ancient humans.
History of being colonized
In 1568, the Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendana became the first European to discover these islands.
In the late 16th century, Spain attempted to capture Solomon and was defeated by the local natives until 1767, when the English explorer Philip Carteret came to the islands. The Solomon Islands gradually fell into the hands of the colonists.
In 1789, outbreaks of smallpox, measles, typhus, cholera and even the common cold all but wiped out the indigenous people who live in what is now. The contagion spread rapidly, destroying entire indigenous groups that had never existed before the first Europeans showed up and began sneezing. Many of them have never met a European.
Indigenous people captured by the British
Germany declared itself a colonial power in the northern Solomon Islands in 1885, and britain established a "protectorate" on the southern islands in 1893. In 1899, Germany transferred its Solomon Islands to Britain in exchange for Britain abandoning all claims to Samoa.
Massacre of 1888
Solomon, with 30,000 years of human history, became a plaything among the colonialists. Beginning in the late 18th century, the British invaded Australia while implementing a policy of extermination against the indigenous population, including the Solomon Islands, who were also enslaved.
Instructions from Governor Lachlan Macquarie to the commander of the 46th Regiment
Governor Lachland Macquarie's instructions to the commander of the 46th Regiment: I have instructed the probably more natives to be prisoners and to hold them hostage until the truly guilty people surrender themselves or are abandoned by their tribes for execution. – If the aborigines show the least resistance – or refuse to surrender when asked to surrender – the officers commanding the army have been authorized to fire at them to force them to surrender; hang the bodies of the aborigines who may have been killed in such situations in trees to make the survivors more frightened. Governor Lachlan Macquarie, Governor's Diary and Memorandum, beginning on Wednesday, April 10, 1816.
Devastation during World War II
In 1941, great social distancing remained between colonial masters and indigenous peoples in the Pacific Colonies. For example, an Australian government pamphlet, You and the Aborigines, advises Allied servicemen to "maintain your status or sense of superiority." Never "descend to his level" and "become the master".
During World War II, the Solomon Islands, which were isolated overseas, not only did not escape the war. Instead, it became the most tragic battlefield of the Pacific War.
After the outbreak of war, both the Allied forces and the Japanese command regarded pacific islanders as indigenous peoples of their colonies. Their islands, crops, plantations and populations were widely used to support the war, with devastating consequences.
To make way for battlefields, Japanese, and Allied bases, the population of villages, farms, and sometimes even entire islands was resettled.
After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese quickly advanced along the coast and islands of New Guinea toward the southwest Pacific Ocean and entered the Solomon Islands with little resistance.
Panicked, the United States chose Guadalcanal as its first counterattack on land, and the 1st Marine Division landed at Lunga on August 7, 1942.
1st Marine Division
The bloody fighting that followed saw the death toll of the Japanese and Allied forces exceeded 15,000, as did the death toll for the indigenous population.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet in the Land of Projectiles came out and fought for six months
War is deadly
The fierce fighting that lasted from August 1942 to 1943 left an ugly legacy: unexploded ordnance.
Unexploded ordnance
Since police in the Solomon Islands began recording in 2011, more than 45,000 have been cleared from grenades, mortar shells, rifle bullets to aerial bombs.
Unexploded ordnance
It is speculated that as many as 50,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance remain on Guadalcanal. These munitions have been hidden in the soil for more than 75 years, and about 20 locals are killed by these devices each year.
Police in the Solomon Islands are detonating
The solomon islands played a strategic role in the Second World War
Prior to World War II, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) established a coastal observation network in the Solomon Islands as an intelligence-gathering platform that used civilians with radios to report any suspicious developments in their designated areas.
A large number of Indigenous people enlisted as coast watchmen. When the Japanese invaded the Solomon Islands, coastal observers hid in the bushes and began reporting enemy movements to Allied headquarters.
The work of the Coast Watchers was so influential in winning the Battle of Solomon that the Commander of the South Pacific Region, William W. Bush, was so influential in winning the Battle of Solomon. Admiral Halsey of the Bull", declared, "Coast watchers saved Guadalcanal, and Guadalcanal saved the Pacific Ocean." ”
Coastal observers and officers
But after the war, they were quickly forgotten.
Towards "independence"?
World War II destroyed much of the Solomon Islands, and nationalist movements emerged near the end of the war. By 1960, the British were forced to make concessions, allowing some local autonomy.
The islands gained autonomy in 1976 and became independent two years later under the leadership of prime minister Sir Peter Kenilorea. But in fact, after the collapse of colonial rule in London, the function of "caring" for developing countries in the South Pacific was transferred to Canberra. Australian politicians' deep-seated neo-colonialist notions of defiance of the small states of Oceania have long dominated the political and economic lifeblood of the Solomon Islands.
The Solomon people lived in poverty without allowing other countries to approach The Pacific Island nations such as Solomon, which is 1,500 kilometers away from it, but never really promoting the development and progress of the region.
Under the control of the United States and Australia, Solomon "established diplomatic relations" with the mainland Taiwan region in 1983.
The so-called "independence" is not worthy of the name.
Manipulated by the "United States and Australia", riots continued
The United States and Australia have long practiced a policy of divide and rule in Solomon, division and disintegration, and manipulation of ethnic antagonism, resulting in constant riots and people's livelihood.
In 2000, newly elected Prime Minister Manasi Sogavare focused on reaching a peace deal between groups, dividing resources equally, but was forced to step down in 2001.
To strengthen its control over Solomon Islands, in 2003 Australia dispatched the so-called Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands in the name of "Re-establishing Law and Order".
But in 2006, riots broke out in The Solomon capital, Honiara, and the city's Chinatown burned down.
The struggle for true independence and development is arduous
The relentless politician Sogavare, who was re-elected as prime minister for the fourth time after the 2019 general election, flatly announced the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the Solomon Islands and China in the same year.
Prime Minister Sogavare
After the "severance of diplomatic relations between The Institute and Taiwan," Taiwan did not completely withdraw from Solomon, and the Tsai Ing-wen administration joined forces with the United States to secretly support solomon's internal opponents.
In 2020, the United States provided up to $25 million in aid to the province of Mareta, which is 50 times the amount of aid received from the world in a year.
Driven by money, in November 2021, the Solomon Islands erupted again in violent riots, mainly among residents of The Province of Maleta, with buildings around the Parliament building burned down, schools and businesses forced to close, and Honiara Chinatown looted.
The unrest left three people dead, 63 buildings destroyed and $67 million lost, leaving Chinatown in ruins.
Sogavare survived the near-coup riots, angrily accusing the opposition of conspiring with Taiwan to incite the riots in Congress, pointing out that "Taiwan proxies" were behind the scenes.
A stone stirs up a thousand layers of waves
On April 19 this year, Solomon Islands, as an independent sovereign state, signed a "Framework Agreement on Bilateral Security Cooperation" with China, which will cooperate in maintaining law and order, disaster response and humanitarian affairs in accordance with the needs of the host country.
The bilateral security cooperation framework agreement between the two countries is not aimed at any third party, and the agreement is open, transparent, open and inclusive, and it is not inconsistent with the bilateral and multilateral security cooperation mechanisms that exist in the host country and other countries, but is complementary to each other.
However, Australian Prime Minister Morrison speculated that China's establishment of a military base in the Solomon Islands would touch the "red line" of the Australian government, and an Australian analyst also issued a "threat" that if China established a military base, the Australian government may launch a military invasion of the Solomon Islands.
At the same time, the United States not only mobilized Japan, New Zealand, and other military allies in the Pacific region to diplomatically "encircle and suppress" countries that were only the size of a projectile, but also launched its media propaganda tools to distort the facts, spread rumors that the cooperation agreement signed between The country and China is a "military agreement" and that China will "station troops" in the country, and threatens that cooperation between the country and China will "shake regional and world stability."
The so-called "Czar of the Asia-Pacific Region", Kurt Campbell, coordinator of the US National Security Council for Indo-Pacific affairs, came directly to the country and "asked questions" about the country's Prime Minister Sogavare.
"Tsar of the Asia-Pacific" Kurt Campbell
But even he himself had to admit that "they (Solomon) have not met or contacted the (American) ambassador for decades." The U.S. delegation said it would speed up the reopening of the embassy in Solomon. (The U.S. Embassy in the Solomon Islands has been closed since 1993.) ）
The Solomon Star, a major English-language daily newspaper in the Solomon Islands, wrote, "Washington has virtually forgotten the Solomon Islands completely since World War II, and now it has finally 'woken up' and forced Prime Minister Sogavare to abandon its agreement with China." ”
But the whole world can clearly see that the West simply does not have the sentiment and ability to build a "community with a shared future for mankind", and everything they say is futile!
Prime Minister Sogavare was even more blunt: by signing a security agreement with China, he had put the Solomon Islands on the "right side of history"!
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