200 in mass fight in Solomons capital

Transcript

The Solomon Islands police say they have arrested five people after four houses were torched during a fight involving more than 200 people in Honiara last night.

The police say the fight was at Karaina settlement in West Honiara, between people of Reef Islands and Duff, Santa Cruz and Pileni islands of Temotu Province.

A police spokesperson, Seink Mahuta, told Mary Baines that the fighting erupted after a community leader handed out financial assistance to the settlement, but it was not distributed evenly.

SEINK MAHUTA: According to our police report, the incident sparked from a community assistance that was given out by one of our honourable here at West Honiara to those people, in a settlement called Karaina, and only a few people benefitted out from it, most of them were left out. That's what sparked the incident which left four houses burned down. They are all from Temotu Province, but they come from different islands. One island called Reef, they are one side. And the other, it's Duff, Santa Cruz and Peleni. They are together - three islands together against one. All these people are living together, they were giving kind of a package of money for all of them, but it was received by someone from Reef Island and he did not share it equally among all the other islands as well, except for his own place, for the Reef people. At the moment, following the incident last night, police have calmed the situation. Five of them have been arrested, most of them are male, they are in custody at the moment, they have been charged with arson.

MARY BAINES: How many people have been wounded?

SM: Not many people, one was an elderly fellow, he was attacked, that's how he got his injuries. It was lucky that most of them got away from the scene, especially women and children, and only those elderly and young people were attacking each other with stones and all this stuff. There were minor injuries too, with other people, but not so serious.

MB: So there were 400 people involved in the fight?

SM: No it's less than that number. The settlement actually is a mixture, we have women, children and elderly and youth on the place. It's just more than 200 people living on that site. The number increases because they were calling each other for support, but then the situation returned back to normal early this morning.

MB: So are the police still there now keeping this calm?

SM: Exactly, the police have been there since last night since the stoning and throwing of all the sticks and so forth.

MB: Is there a concern that more fighting will erupt again tonight?

SM: That's what the police are working on. At the moment, they have taken in elderly, women leaders within the area, and their leaders as well. Police are mediating between them. They come from the same province, but different islands. We hope that nothing further will go on from here, since they have been sitting down together on the one table and sorting things out. Police are trying to find a solution by means of getting their shares especially those who were not happy about their shares of money that weren't given to them by the leader of Reef Island.