WOMEN OF SOLOMON ISLANDS APPEAL TO GUNMEN FOR PEACE

June 16, 2000 – (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Radio interview) While the Solomon Island's economy gradually grinds to a halt, nobody at the political level seems to have any answers to the country's debilitating ethnic war…

Reporter: Sean Dorney

COMPERE: While the Solomon Island's economy gradually grinds to a halt, nobody at the political level seems to have any answers to the country's debilitating ethnic war.

The women of the Solomon Islands are taking their pleas for peace directly to the boys carrying the guns on both sides.

Our correspondent, Sean Dorney, went with a group of women to Alligator Creek, East of the capital Honiara. It was the scene of the fiercest fighting last week between the Malaitan Eagle Force and the Isatabu Freedom Movement.

SEAN DORNEY: Many of the women were naturally afraid of what was ahead of them, and so before they left Honiara fortified themselves by singing hymns in the YWCA Hall.

Alligator Creek is off the Eastern end of the international airstrip, Henderson's Airfield, and it's the front line. At a Malaitan Eagle Force bunker, where a dozen heavily armed young Malaitans man a machine gun and other weaponry, the women made an appeal.

One mother told the militants their families wanted them to live.

UNIDENTIFIED: They need you people. They want you people to be home. And the only thing [inaudible] we come now with love and peace in our hearts. We want peace to be restored in this country, the Solomon Islands. We want a democracy to prevail.

SEAN DORNEY: Some of the young men took little notice. One opened a box of cartridges halfway through the religious service that the women performed. Others were touched. One older militant dissolved into tears in his sister's arms.

A Catholic nun, Sister Donna Scianna [phonetic], said she had not borne children but she regarded the men before her, and the ones they were fighting the other side of Alligator Creek, as her children.

DONNA SCIANNA: People cry for them. We pray for you every day. Please, please put down your guns. Please. We cannot go on like this. We need peace. We need unity.

SEAN DORNEY: The Malaitan Eagle Force Commander in the bunker, Moses Guaguafili, said little but thanked the women who'd brought them food and beetle nut.

MOSES GUAGUAFILI: We say thank you from us.

SEAN DORNEY: Just beyond the MEF bunker, mid-way between the front lines, some exceptionally brave Anglican religious, the Melanesian
brotherhood, have set up a tent. I asked Brother Walter who was there what their mission was.

BROTHER WALTER: Our sole mission, our intention, is to stop people from shooting and also to try our best to bring peace to this nation of Solomon Islands.

SEAN DORNEY: What have you been doing here? Do you talk to the MEF boys that are about a hundred metres that way, and the Isatabu people who are just the other side of the bridge, there?

BROTHER WALTER: Oh, yes. Every evening and every morning we used to go and take service with them and stories to try to talk in a way that they will have peace or mercy in their heart.

SEAN DORNEY: Has there been any trouble since last week here, at Alligator Bridge?

BROTHER WALTER: Er, since the last week there was a heavy shootout in this area, Alligator, but we try our best and there was no shooting until now.

SEAN DORNEY: Well naturally now, following the women, we are walking across the Alligator Creek Bridge where a lot of the fighting took place last Tuesday, and the nuns and the others from the women's group are now approaching the Isatabu Freedom Movement checkpoint, just on the far Eastern side of the Bridge.

But on the other side the Guadalcanal militants would not let me record anything. There were more than 100 of them. Their weapons were home made, or World War II vintage. They told the few women who had ventured across the Bridge that their Commanders would have to authorise any meeting between them and the women's group. However, they said they'd pass word back and invited the women to return on Sunday.

The women accepted that and they'll be back.

COMPERE: The reporter there was our correspondent, Sean Dorney in Honiara in the Solomon Islands.

From: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s141298.htm