Slush funds in paradise

What Fairfax correspondent Craig Skehan doesn't know about the South Pacific isn't worth writing on a postcard home while sipping a mango daquiri overlooking Bora Bora lagoon. His reporting on the Solomons crisis has been first rate.

Today’s story – written with Russell Skelton – on the Taiwan-funded political slush fund that’s been fuelling corruption, and ultimately conflict, in the islands.

If you haven’t already, read it here and here. Or get out of the house and buy the paper!

Burying the news

Paranoia Corner: The circumstances of the death and whereabouts of Australia's first military victim of the Iraq War just get more bizarre. Apparently, Private Jake Kovko's body is in transit home once more, while the body of the fellow mistakenly flown to Australia in his place is going back to Bosnia.

And apparently, he didn't kill himself accidentally while cleaning his weapon, the clear impression befuddled Defence Minister Brendan Nelson gave in his Saturday press conference.

All this begs the highly – H-I-G-H-L-Y – cynical question from one Press Gallery operative: What if a certain body was lost on purpose to push out any headlines lingering from yesterday on Medibank/health reform/national ID card?

Now that would REALLY be burying the news.

The Solomons - gunpowder, treason & the plot

As our Honiara insider, Lukim Iu, predicted here on Friday, Snyder Rini is gone. The Solomon Islands PM stepped down yesterday rather than face defeat on the floor of Parliament. So what next for the Solomons?

Our man in the Solomons, Lukim Iu, continues the story:

Yesterday's events seem to have removed RAMSI from a rather sharp hook - Snyder Rini's resignation and some spectacular allegations in court put its activities into some perspective.

RAMSI had been attracting some flak over the past week for apparently supporting an unpopular government, that of Rini. Its argument is that it was simply supporting the democratic process, not Rini specifically.

The situation has now changed dramatically. Solomon Islanders had been hoping for a real change in government, after suffering from years of official corruption and incompetence. But they took the view that the old guard had, effectively, stolen the election by electing Rini as PM. He is a close associate of the previous PM Kemakeza.

People felt cheated, and that's what the riots were all about.

The torching of Chinatown was something different. It was well planned and carried out very efficiently.

In yesterday's court proceedings it was alleged by the prosecution that another MP, Nelson Ne'e, not only urged rioters to blow up the SI parliament - "dynamite hem parliament" - but threatened to "chop the throats" of five Malaitan politicians if they didn't vote the right way.

Meanwhile another MP, Charles Dausebea, who is also seeking bail, is said to have driven slowly through Chinatown in his green Mitsubishi calling out "go ahead, go ahead, go ahead," to the looters. Both are to find out today if their applications for bail will succeed.

The looting was a disgraceful free-for-all. We had a box seat view of the torching of Chinatown last Tuesday night and saw some of the subsequent looting, which is commonly known here as "shopping." One man I saw had a flat-bed trolley loaded high with his selections.

However, only a relatively small number of people were involved. The full story on these plotters and criminals has still to come out.

The truth, as Ernest said,is never plain and rarely simple. There are deep undercurrents in all of this, and they are just starting to emerge.

Hugo says: Another incisive analysis from our man in Honiara. Two handy resources for keeping up to date with the unfolding SI news are Radio Australia and the local newspaper, The Solomon Star, a publication which seems to have come of age during the crisis, providing timely and relevant coverage.

Inside Indonesia's secret terror campaign

Death in the shadow of Indonesia: A skull lies in the East Timor jungle at Passabe in this photo by Sasha Uzunov - to its left is a black military-styled belt worn by militia equipped by Indonesia's TNI.






Melbourne journalist Sasha Uzunov is a rare beast; a foreign correspondent with real life military experience - a military and strategic analyst worth listening to. Today, he gives The Hugog an insight on the power play between Australia and Indonesia over West Papua:


The Australian government made the right call in granting political asylum this month to the 42 Papua refugees who fled their Indonesian occupied homeland. Passions are running high in Jakarta; but we should not give in to pressure. We stood firm over East Timor in 1999 and we should do this again.

But the government is wrong in not supporting the right for West Papua's bid for full independence. It would actually be in Australia's long-term strategic interest for smaller friendly states to act as a buffer against the Indonesian military - which has been waging a vendetta against Australia since 1999 because of Timor.

Only now the TNI's tactics have changed. The Indonesian military is giving support to the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.

Just how many Indonesians agree with their government, or for that matter accept their military's brutal behaviour? If we want a real relationship with Indonesia it should not be based on fear but mutual understanding.

But first, some necessary background: an Indonesian Military Policeman warned me seven years ago that some of his military colleagues would seek revenge against Australia for our involvement in liberating East Timor.

Australia led the INTERFET mission in East Timor when that territory voted in a referendum in August 1999 to break away from Indonesia. There was widespread violence as pro-Indonesian militia when on the rampage. Britain and the US also contributed troops to the INTERFET mission.

I met Sergeant Herman, as he wanted to be called, on the East Timor-Indonesian West Timor border, at a place called Motaain on 22 November 1999. I was there with the Australian Defence Force's Media Support Unit (MSU), which was covering a conference between Interfet Commander, Australian General Peter Cosgrove, and his Indonesian counterpart, General Adam Damiri.

While the brass exchanged pleasantries, the rest of us were fraternising with the "Enemy". Sergeant Herman told me he was a Christian from one of the smaller islands of Indonesia and was upset with the Javanese, the Muslim majority who run the country.




Captured Militia weapon: a Soviet designed, Chinese made SKS rifle supplied by the Indonesian forces to the militia. We nicknamed this weapon "lucky" - it has a bullet hole embedded in it.






"When war over in Timor Timur (East Timor), Jakarta will fight secret war using dirty tricks," he said. "There will be bombs, killings, explosion. Tourists will be killed. Buildings, hotels, embassies and churches blown up. No one safe!"

Standing five metres away was SBS TV's correspondent, Heather Paterson. I wanted to tell her about the sensational conversation I had but because I was a serving member in unform I was forbidden to reveal anything to the media. How I regret it. InsteaD, we discussed sleazy Indonesian Generals making sexual advances to female western reporters.

I reported my conversation with Indonesian Army Sergeant to my superior - but we both ended up laughing as we thought the Indonesian MP was trying to soften me up and gain some information out of me.




Comrades in arms: then Australian soldier Sasha Uzunov (left) with Indonesian Sergeant "Herman"...








In hindsight, Sergeant Herman's words are chilling: the bombings in Bali, the Marriott Hotel, and the Australian embassy in 2004 and Bali a second time.

In early October 1999, Townsville-based infantry battalion, 2RAR, was involved in the biggest shootout since Vietnam when they reached the border village of Motaain, near Batugade. Three members of the Indonesian security forces were killed in the contact. It was later revealed the Indonesians had opened fire first.

I arrived in Dili, the capital of East Timor, in late October 1999. I ended up with the MSU by pure luck. I was a journalist in civilian life and when i joined the Australian Army I was allocated to the infantry corps. Somehow I managed to be sent to the Defence Public Affairs Organisation for a few months in Canberra before East Timor erupted.

The main group of MSU was based at the Hotel Tourismo. I was with a sub-section known as CPIC (Combined Public Information Centre) as a clerk, PR assistant, driver, and provided the occasional escort to a senior British Army Officer who travelled the length and breadth of East Timor collecting humanitarian data. He would take me along as his protection because he didn't want to carry a weapon. He needed it. Once, we almost were fired upon by friendly Fretilin independence fighters at a roadblock.

One of my main tasks was to record General Cosgrove's media conferences, transcribe them and them email them back to HQ in Canberra. I aslo had to organise flights in and out of the conflict zone for brave journalists caught in the line of fire - like when Channel Nine reporter Simon Bouda came down with malaria and had to be treated at the military hospital in Dili.

In Dili, CPIC shared its compound with US Special forces troops, known as Green Berets. Every time the media arrived on our doorstep, the Green Berets would rip off their Velcro unit shoulder badges, and pose as army engineers. Only female Australian journalist Sian Powell was suspicious and savvy enough to think something was going on.

I formed a friendship with one of the Green Berets, Sergeant First Class Glen Cohen. He told me that he and his colleagues were not allowed by Washington to leave the confines of Dili because if they were caught in a battle with Indonesian Special Forces (Kopassus) it would create an international incident.

"This is supposed to be a gunfight between you Aussies and the militia, we're only here officially to help distribute humanitarian aid," he often joked.

Just after Christmas 1999, I escorted Australian freelance photographer Mathew Sleeth to the Oecussi enclave, that little part of East Timor inside West Timor. Sleeth wanted to take some photos of a mass gravesite. We jumped on a patrol with soldiers from 3RAR, the Army's Sydney-based Parachute battalion.

At the village of Passabe, which was only a few metres away from the Indonesian border, we visited the mass grave of 52 Timorese who had been slaughtered by the militia and then buried in shallow graves. When the rains had come, they had exposed bones and bits of clothing.

I remember muttering to myself that I saw a black military-styled belt next to a skull. A 3RAR officer who was close by heard me and came over and told me that it meant nothing; that I should forget what I saw. He seemed nervous at my comments

At the time I found his comment extraordinary. Why would an officer care what I saw? Later, I heard 3RAR's Intelligence Officer, Captain Andrew Plunkett, claim he had been pressured to
underestimate the number of Timorese massacred and downplay the Indonesian Army's involvement.

My first tour finished in January 2000 and I returned to my original unit, 4RAR, which was preparing for its first and my second tour in April 2001, this time as an infantry rifleman.

During pre-deployment training we were openly told that the militia had become active again in the lead up to East Timor's elections in August 2001. We were told that Kopassus troops had masqueraded as militia and had links to the terror group, Jemiaah Islamiah.

I left the Australian Army in April 2002 and returned to journalism. I came forward in August of that same year with my story but no one in the Australian media was interested.


Hugo says: Sasha Uzunov is a freelance journalist who has reported from the Balkans and Iraq for newspapers in the UK and North America and, as you've just read, is a former Australian soldier who served in East Timor. His is the kind of credible, first hand view Australia's policymakers should be heeding. Instead, sadly - and to our detriment - we listen to the myths peddled by civilian desk-soldiers like Paul "Among the Barbarians" Sheehan.

Check out Sasha's website here.

Trouble in Paradise - the Solomons stitch-up

Now that Australia's RAMSI forces - under the direction of our Foreign Minister Alexander Downer - have begun arresting Opposition politicians in the Solomon Islands to buffer the nascent regime of colorful new Prime Minister Snyder Rini, it's worth asking: what's this all about, and why can't we do this in Australia?

Our man in Honiara, Lukim Iu, explains:

The troubles here are a direct, though indecental, response to steps some senior members of the Chinese business community took to influence the outcome of last week's election. The most public of these were the "vote boats" - chartering boats, for "free trips" back to the provinces, on the understanding that you will vote the "right way" when you get there.

There is no absentee voting here. You either go home to vote, or get yourself enrolled where you are actually living.

Taiwanese money was also involved. Taiwan's biggest critic, Joses Tuhanuku, was defeated by a former SI ambassador to Taiwan. A "free boat ride" back to his electorate, in the outlying islands of Rennell Bellona, helped achieve that result, too. Joses, incidentally is the husband of Walkley award-winning journalist, Mary Louise O'Callaghan.

Incidentally, one of the "vote boats" travelling to the Western Province, apparently sank. (No casualties outside the truth).

There was a weekend rumour that Rini would resign then be spirited out of the Solomons by the Australian military for his own safety. Idi Amin's departure from Uganda was handled in that way.

That didn't happen. Rini was sworn in, secretly, as PM instead.

But he won't last. Former PM Billy Hilly has already lodged a no-confidence motion, which is likely to be dealt with next month. RIni would not survive that. Even the present lot of none-too-bright MPs now realize that Rini is on the nose with the public.

Rini, incidentally, once said that RAMSI was welcome to stay in SI, but not to look at the SI Government's account books. He has changed his tune now, of course. But wonder why he said that?

Hugo says: So ther you have it. Australia has aligned itself with yet another corrupt regime in a "Busted Arse Country". What's extraordinary is that we are participating in a military operation to stifle the parliament, under rather thin pretence. Did anyone mention Kristalnacht?

Downer's dopey defence

So Alexander Downer's too busy to do his job! It's a bolder take than Mark Vaille's pathetic cry that he was snowed under in his job as Deputy PM and Trade Minister and didn't have time to check on AWB bribes - but as an excuse before the Cole Commission into the wheat for weapons scandal, it's a ripper.

The Herald-Sun's Gerard McManus captures the extraordinary Downer evidence today. Sloppy and negligent is probably the best that can be said for Downer, and Peter Hartcher says so in today's SMH.

So what do we make of a Foreign Minister who only reads diplomatic cables when he is "stuck on a plane" and has nothing better to read? Sadly, Downer's evidence is characteristic of the man. In fact, it's fair to say the lazy minister will do just about anything to avoid the responsibilities that come with his high office.

We are reliably informed that when travelling, Downer prefers playing with his Gameboy to taking advice from his diplomats. DFAT officials tell of times the minister has waved them away in airplanes with the imperious order: "Not now, I'm nearing top score on Super Mario Brothers!"

Downer is a smart bloke who jumped into the commission's witness box yesterday with a twinkle in his eye. But if he thought he could joke his way through the questioning he was wrong.

Just how does his admission yesterday that he didn't read any of the 21 cables containing warnings about AWB square with this Downer declaration to Parliament in February?

Asked in Parliament on February 28 about his knowledge of the cables, Downer said: "Of course, I would have read them. I was perfectly satisfied with the response of the department to these inquiries." Downer is really his own worst enemy - but Michelle Grattan definitively states in today's Age that "the scandal will not bring down a minister..."

It's a judgement based on Howard's determination not to lose a minister to scandal under almost any cicumstance - and Michelle jumps the gun a little too early, without even awaiting Commissioner Cole's report.

Sunday Showdown in the Square

The feisty crew who set up an Aboriginal tent embassy in the King's Domain have been getting up all the right noses; the likes of 3AW shock jock Neil Mitchell and his mate at Kirribilli have been outraged at the latest upstart Koori activism.

And Friday's visit by Lord Mayor John So and state Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gavin Jennings seems to have further fired up the activists. So and Jennings gave them a 4pm deadline today to leave their camp, established during the Commonwealth Games to highlight the ongoing sore of Aboriginal disposession.

So how did the group of "law-breaking Aborigines" respond to this arbitrary ultimatum? Undeterred, they decided to expand their protest.

They gatecrashed a Thai new year festival held at Federation Square, a few hundred metres up the road. Three activists, one performing the traditional smoke ceremony, tried to get on stage but were asked by Thai organisers to leave.

After a Fed Square guard was called the Aboriginal group agreed to depart.

The action was captured in these photos by freelance photojournalist Sasha Uzunov

We'll be watching this afternoon to see if the jumpy civic authorities' 4pm ultimatum leads to the kind of conflict that would signal a victory for intolerant types like Mitchell.

Corruption in paradise

This weekend's elections in the Solomon Islands has eroded the powerbase of Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza. With counting continuing, it's unclear whether his People's Alliance Party will cling to power - but our correspondent, Lukim Iu, reports from Honiara that a change of government is just the first step to stopping the rot that's eroding the islands.

Check out his entertaining, and ominous, report on corruption in paradise:


Several times, in the early days of the civil strife, Solomon Islands police raided Charles Dausabea's property near Henderson airfield, outside Honiara, looking for stolen weapons.

Dausabea, who was opposition whip then, was to become a prominent member of the Malaitan Eagle Force, one of the main militias in the five year civil war, which ended in 2003.

That war is now commonly called the ethnic tensions.

At its height, in 2000, the year of the coup, which displaced the government of Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa'alu, there was a gun battle outside Dausabea's property, between the MEF and the Guadalcanal Revolutionary Army.

That battle, like the police raids before it, was inspired by reports of large caches of stolen weapons, Dausabea was said to keep there.

Six years later, in the first elections since the Australian led intervention, which restored peace in the Solomons, Dausabea won back the seat in parliament, that he lost in 2001.

Another MEF dignitary, for want of a better word, the prominent Honiara lawyer, scoundrel and thug, Andrew Nori, also stood for parliament in the April 2006 elections.

At the time of writing, the result in the seat he contested, had not been declared.

But the Prime Minister, Sir Allan Kemakeza, was re-elected, even though police admitted, on the eve of the elections, that they are investigating reports that aid money, worth $US5 million, has not been seen since it entered Sir Allan's office.

Voters in Sir Allan's well-watered electorate, which takes in the Savo and Russell Islands, also disregarded another disturbing report.

That said Sir Allan still runs a secret political slush fund, bankrolled by Taiwan, which, is more commonly known as the Republic of China in Solomon Islands.

What's in a name, after all - if accepting it gets you a hospital, two fire trucks, police motorcycles and all the know-how your country will ever need, to grow its own rice.

A new report, published by the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia, found that the millions of dollars neighbouring Vanuatu has received in aid, over the past two decades, hasn't raised the living standards of that island nation's poor, at all.

Instead, it says, the money has largely been appropriated by Vanuatu's ruling elite, including that island nation's bloated, and sadly misnamed, public service.

By now, I guess, you are starting to see how these things can happen.

Vanuatu's elite is certainly not alone.

One Solomon Islands politician, though, has been vigorously fighting the political corruption he says comes with Taiwan's aid.

This, of course, is Joses Tuhanuku, the sole Labor party MP in the 50 member SI parliament.

Until, that is, the April 2006 election.

Joses campaigned hard against the secret slush fund he says Kemakeza administers, with Taiwan standing in the background, writing cheques.

He was beaten by a man named Seth Gukuna, a former Solomon Islands ambassador to, guess where?

That's right.

Taiwan.

Your knowledge of Pacific Island politics is truly remarkable.

Tuhanuku, incidentally, is the husband of two time Walkley Award winning journalist, Mary-Louise O'Callaghan.

As you know, the party system in Solomon Islands is very weak.

Although the counting is still far from complete, the balance of power in the new parliament, will almost certainly be held by independents.

Before the end of the month, a special sitting of the new parliament will be held, to choose a new Prime Minister for the next four years.

Over the past few months, an enthusiastic band of idealistic young Solomon Islanders has been campaigning hard for a clean election, under the banner of the The Winds of Change organisation.

They took out advertisements in the Solomon Star, inviting their fellow citizens to sign pledges, declaring, effectively, that they would not sell their votes to the highest bidder. Thousands did.

But new plastic water tanks started mysteriously appearing throughout the electorate of one senior minister, who is notorious for marrying a series of his house-girls.

Most analysts are cautious about predicting who will be Solomon Islands Prime Minister, at the end of this month.

I'm not.

I'd be prepared to bet, even at this stage, that it will be the incumbent, Sir Allan Kemakeza.

You will, by now, have guessed why.

He has the biggest slush fund at his command.

No-one else comes close.

He also has a very good reason to fight hard for his job.

As Prime Minister, he may well be untouchable.

Effectively, above the law.

Even if he stole millions, effectively depriving thousands of Solomon Islands children of both decent educations and effective health care.

If Kemakeza loses the top job, though, he might well find himself in Rove prison, with Harold Keke, Ronnie Cawa and Francis Lela for neighbours.

And those old Weathercoast warlords still have a few scores to settle with Sir Allan.

42 protection visas – or 42,000?

As Australian-Indonesian relations tremble under the weight of those 42 refugees from West Papua, it's worth putting this latest brouhaha with our tetchy neighbors to the north in some perspective. And the latest edition of The Monthly landed in my box today with a nice dose of balance.

Human rights lawyer Mark Aarons' article, Truth, Death & Diplomacy in East Timor, reminds us just how entrenched are the forces of disinformation.

He reminds us that in March, Australia's Ambassador to the US, former ASIO boss Dennis Richardson, gave a speech attacking those calling for a proper act of self-determination for West Papua. "Papua is part of the sovereign territory of Indonesia, and always has been. As far as Australia is concerned, Papua is an integral part of Indonesia," he declared.

So Indonesia has always had sovereignty over West Papua, right?

Wrong. West Papua had not been part of Indonesia at all for the 20 years after it came into existence in 1949. It was only integrated into Indonesia as part of a sham vote in 1969. Writes Aarons: "The US believed that 90% of West Papuans were against integration, yet the international community, including Australia, not only accepted this sham act of self-determination, but has ever since turned a blind eye to the history of Indonesian mass killings, torture and arbitrary detentions in the territory."

His conclusion: "We should not fear separatist tendencies in the archipelago any more than Europe needed to fear the break-up of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union". Just as the Russian-dominated Soviet Union collapsed into constituent states when the authoritarian stranglehold was released, so will the Javanese-dominated Indonesia.

The inevitable shifting sands of the Indonesia archipelago is a dissolution that will cause significant indegestion in our region – but isn't it time we stopped massaging the truth to justify holding together an artificial conglomerate?

Sure, there will be fallout that will make the 42 West Papuans in their boat look like a picnic party. Although not nearly the 42,000 predicted on Lateline last night by Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a former advisor to Indonesia preisdent BJ Habibie. That has got politicians on both sides of the ocean very scared. And, as usual, Kevin Rudd is more scared than most, claiming excitedly: "There's a grave danger that we begin to see the Australian-Indonesian relationship spiral out of control."

But building a strong relationship with our neighbors depends on honesty on both sides, not just jumping to attention at the hint of a new crisis. While Indonesian politicians are whipping up a local frenzy comparing West Papua to East Timor, don't forget it was Indonesia that invited Australian troops in to Dili back in 1999.

West Papua and Aceh are two examples of a people who yearn for the kind of freedom that took East Timor 30 years and hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve. Re-writing history and trying to bury the problem did nothing for the Indonesian-Australia relationship back then.

We should encourage an increasingly open and democratic Indonesia. But a repeat of that kind of political appeasement can do nothing but delay the inevitability of history. And history will judge us just as harshly as it judged successive Australian governments who collaborated with Soeharto.

The prophecy of Mark Steyn

If there's one consolation to fighting off a Melbourne autumn storm to visit the doctor, it's the magazines in the waiting room. And tonight, Dr Ellen has some beauties. Try the Spectator 27 December 2003: Christmas has come twice for Mark Steyn whose cover story is about the latest triumph on the War on Terror – the capture of Saddam from his foxhole.

Here is hastily-scribbled five minute compendium of the Steyn stream-of-conscious:

The Insurgency
"...another six weeks of insurgency sounds about right, after which it will peter out, despite the urgings of Tariq Ali, George Galloway and other armchair insurgents."

Trickle-down destabilization
"It may be that the Iraq war has done more to free Zimbabwe of its thug ruler than all the Commonwealth resolutions put together. Imagine that! Look for a lot more trickle-down from Iraq the year ahead, in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and beyond."

Yep, the brilliant success of the Iraq invasion secured the overthrow of Robert Mugabe in 2004, democratic reforms in Syria and Saudi Arabia, plus a less belligerent attitude from Iran. Must have slept through those developments.

He did get some things right:
Osama bin Laden
"He will continue to be dead throughout 2004."

The Democratic party
"The only real question next November is how badly the Dems will do."

OK. So Nostradamus he aint. And Steyn should be read chiefly for his comic value, we knew that. It's just as well to remember that his best jokes are the unintended ones.