{"id":50020,"date":"2022-11-06T04:00:06","date_gmt":"2022-11-05T19:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/nov\/06\/china-and-australia-must-not-turn-solomon-islands-into-a-gun-state-again"},"modified":"2022-11-06T04:00:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-05T19:00:06","slug":"china-and-australia-must-not-turn-solomon-islands-into-a-gun-state-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=50020","title":{"rendered":"China and Australia must not turn Solomon Islands into a gun state again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are many things we need more than high-powered weapons \u2013 and we remember what happened last time police lost control of their guns<\/p>\n<p>My country once lived in fear of the gun. Thousands of weapons, many stolen from police armouries, fuelled the years of violence known as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ramsi.org\/the-tensions\/\">the tensions<\/a>\u201d, and disarming the police and population took years. Now, it seems China and Australia want to turn Solomon Islands into a gun state again.<\/p>\n<p>This week Australia announced it would give the Royal Solomon Islands police force 13 vehicles and 60 MK-18 semi-automatic rifles \u2013 a move described as a \u201cgamechanger\u201d that brings a significant increase in capability. Last month, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2022\/oct\/12\/first-solomon-islands-police-head-to-china-for-training-amid-deepening-security-ties\">34 officers flew to China for training<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/nov\/06\/china-and-australia-must-not-turn-solomon-islands-into-a-gun-state-again\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are many things we need more than high-powered weapons \u2013 and we remember what happened last time police lost control of their gunsMy country once lived in fear of the gun. Thousands of weapons, many stolen from police armouries, fuelled the years&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,874,63,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-pacific-islands","category-solomon-islands","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50021,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50020\/revisions\/50021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}