Subject: 'austraLasia' # 389

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS ROUTED BY REBEL ACTIVITY

Julian Fox

SUVA: 26th July -- Both in Suva, Fiji and Honiara, Solomon Islands, increased rebel activity in the metropolitan area has meant the closure of two Catholic schools. Even as I write, rebel supporters are pouring into the school of St. John Bosco in Nepani, just a few kilometres down from the Salesian residence in Naulu. St. John Bosco's is a struggling little prep-Year 8 school in the poorer mangrove settlements of Suva, which had only just resumed school on Monday after 8 weeks of closure and two false starts. The Salesian community has adopted the school for obvious reasons and helps out in a variety of ways.

Once the rebel supproters of George Speight vacated parliament and were given total amnesty, something the mind and heart finds it very hard to come to terms with (mine, anyway), they moved to Kalubu a small settlement out along King's Road some 15 kms from the city centre, and took over the Fijian school there. But their supporters have grown to around 800 in number. They needed more room! Schools offer the space to expand and nobody appears to be able to bring the rule of law to this situation. In Honiara, St. Joseph's College Tenaru, between the Salesian parish of Tetere and the city, has closed for the rest of the year. Tenaru has been the meeting point or rather the dividing point between IFM and MEF militants and at one time was even shelled from a gunboat off Tetere Beach (shades of WW II years there!). St. Joseph's is conducted by the Marist Brothers of the Oceania Province.

While in both countries some sort of 'peace' has been established from several weeks ago, and while admittedly the reasons for the insurgency in both places are quite different, the two situations have been rightly linked under the title 'copycat coup'. What is apparent is that neither situation is presently solved, and that increasingly, the disturbance is coming closer to 'home' to the Catholic communities of both nations.