Bina Harbour is one of the only natural deep water ports in Malaita, and Malaita is strategically located in the middle of the island archipelago, making it the natural place to dock the PLA’s Navy vessels.
This idyllic set of islands just east of Papua New Guinee, is the home to 700,000 Solomon Islanders. The Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendana de Neira was the first European to have discovered the islands in 1568; he sighted and landed on Santa Isabel Island. They found signs of alluvial gold on Guadalcanal, and Mendana believed he had found the source of King Solomon’s wealth, and so named his discovery “The Islands of Solomon”. Over the next three hundred years, the islands were rediscovered by various explorers, only to find the natives a tad hostile towards their entries. A very proud people made up of the two original tribal ancestors. The Micronesians and Polynesians.
Colonisation by the Germans and British in various islands ensued, and the first missionaries started their work in and around 1850.
Since then, the Solomon Islands converted from Paganism to adopting Christianity, and today, the islands are devoutly religious, with many faiths being practised. Through the teachings, islanders embraced many ethical and moral values that worked within their island culture. The islands gained independence from Britain in 1978 and officially became known as the Solomon Islands.
Those values are the underpinning of the determination of two brave islanders who have come to the West to warn them of their experience with rich, weak-minded but power-hungry politicians in the Solomon Islands who have worked for decades to install a CCP puppet government and the near-dictatorial regime under Manasseh Sogavare.
Daniel Suidani was the Premier of Malaita Province and became the target for removal by the CCP and Sogavare after his famous Auki Communique, which would limit the investment of Chinese state-owned enterprises in logging and other businesses on Malaita Island. Malaita is the most populous in the country. Before 2019, the Islands government had officially recognized Taiwan, but soon after Sogavare came to power, things turned for the worse. They abandoned Taiwan for the “One China” policy.
Suidani had a life-threatening brain disorder and needed an operation. Sogavare and the Australians denied him support for the $100,000 operation, but thanks to the brave President of Taiwan, he flew to Taipei for the surgery. He became the target of a disinformation operation headed by the advisor and one of the editors of the Solomon Star, Alfred Sasako. He also happens to be the Vice President of the United Front Works chapter of The Solomon Islands Chinese Friendship Association (no coincidence). The story, now part of a defamation suit (Solomon Star filed no statement of defence), goes like this: Suidani plotted with the Taiwanese government and the CIA to mount an armed insurrection in the islands and assassinate PM Sogavare.
Preposterous as that seems, it certainly rings true with much of the anti-West rhetoric emanating out of the Xi Jinping propaganda machine, which aims to sew discontent in democracies around the globe.
On 7 February, Suidani was finally ousted as premier after a third no-confidence vote that saw the government block roads and bring the non-executive from the capital Honiara on a police-escorted boat. One that saw US$10,000 (a mere fortune on the islands) alleged to have passed to several legislators for their support to oust the outspoken Suidani as Premier.
But if they thought it was the end of it, they were wrong, and Daniel Suidani, along with his political advisor and long-time national government policy advisor Celsus Talifilu decided to warn the Western world that something was definitely wrong in how the government was now engaging the PRC. After some visa hurdles and intervention by Congressman Neal Dunn, Congressman Ed Case and Congresswoman Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, they were allowed to travel to New York and later Washington.
They started to tell their story to Chris Chappell and the rest of the “China Uncensored” (YouTube channel) team. They broadcast the first episode that caught the attention of a few in Washington, and they were off to the races. “China Uncensored” helped raise funds to support Suidani and Celsus Talifilu while in the United States. Some of the funds raised were also used for Suidani’s various legal cases.
I met them in Washington at the end of April as I was there to review their legal requirements to recommend to the China Democracy Fund board on how we should proceed. What was laid out to me was the classic money-for-influence operation that the CCP is well known for around the world. Between bribes, harassment and big carrots being dangled in front of Sogavare and his cohorts, it is easy to see how easily the Solomon Islands fell to their entries. Where were the Australians, the New Zealanders or the Americans? Missing in action, which, of course, has led to new tensions in the South Pacific with the Solomon Islands government has signed a security pack MOU with Beijing that no one has yet seen (the final document).
Then while in Canada, Talifilu got a disturbing call regarding a project that he had been working on for over five years. The Bina Harbour Development Project. Originally a dual-purpose project for a tuna fishery and port expansion with New Zealand and the World Bank, it was now all of a sudden in play with China.
The Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Hon Nestor Ghiro with the Chairman of the China National Fisheries Corporation (CNFC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Fisheries Cooperation. Among the attendees was the new Malaita province’s CCP puppet premier Martin Fini. That opened the door for the China Engineering and Construction Company and China Harbour Engineering Company to seek financing to construct this US$180 million project. But there is more, and we should all be concerned with this. Bina Harbour is one of the only natural deep water ports in Malaita, and Malaita is strategically located in the middle of the island archipelago, making it the natural place to dock the PLA’s navy vessels and counter the American security pact with Papua New Guinee.
The real question going forward is if small nations like the Solomon Islands or, earlier this year, Barbados can be so easily bought, then how are our democracies going to compete? China’s BRI and their debt trap diplomacy always bear fruit at the outset, only to see it rot at a later date when payments are due and the CCP takes control over yet another strategic port.
The Americans, Indian and other South Asian countries have a role to play in the South Pacific, including investment in the Solomons and other developing nations, which can apparently be bought for more than thirty pieces of silver.
Dean Baxendale is a writer, publisher, entrepreneur and human rights activist. He leads the Optimum Publishing International and China Democracy Fund.