August 28 2002

by Michael Field

One time alter boy Harold Keke has yet to boast how exactly it happened but we know, because he told the world, that he pointed a rifle at Father Gus and with a single shot blew him away.

The first indigenous Catholic priest of the Solomon Islands, Father Augustine Geve, was dead at his feet and Keke personally contacted national radio to claim credit.

That was on August 20 on Guadalcanal, an island that exactly 60 years ago was synonymous with blood and horror and today has plunged back into a new nightmare. Back in 1942 Guadalcanal was a pivotal battle between the Japanese and the Allies and because of what happened to Father Gus last week, some in the Solomons want the Australians, New Zealanders and Fijians back -- this time to hunt down Keke.

"We need your help," Police Minister Augustine Taneko told Radio New Zealand. "If there's any time we need your help, it is now."

There is a price on Keke's head: around his village are the unmarked graves of 10 men who last month tried to collect. Keke is said to have killed them all.

The Solomons, already one of the Pacific's poorest states, has endured an intractable civil war which Keke, who lives in the tradition of the Melanesian "Big Man", launched in 1998-1999.

After World War II the Guadalcanal's indigenous "Guele" found neighbouring Malaita islanders had moved in, and after independence in 1978, the new wartime depot of Honiara became capital.

Solomons academic Tarcisius Tara of the Australian National University has written his Guele people grew up "detesting the fact others who have settled on our island are often disrespectful of our customs and of us.... Such disrespect manifests itself in actions such as murder, the settlement of our land and the plunder of our resources."

In 1998 several Guele had been murdered by Malaitans and there had been several rapes.

In December that year a group of men led by Keke raided a police armoury on nearby Russell Island. Police arrested Keke and charged him with attempted murder and robbery, but he escaped, prompting the first of several rewards for his arrest. None have ever been paid out. He returned to his home Talise at Sughu Anchorage on the Weathercoast and soon after the Guadalcanal Revolutionary Army began terrorising Malaitans. In the guerrilla war around 100 people have been killed in a country of just 300,000 while 20,000 people lost their homes. The rival Malaita Eagle Force staged a coup in 2000, taking control of Honiara.

Tara said Keke is a school drop out who joined the Police Field Force, a para-military force, but left to become unemployed, like his younger brother and fellow militant Joe Sangu.

"They have political views, they are well aware of issues of land, feel dominated, have relatives who have been murdered," Tara says. "They are complex individuals."

Keke's story has Heart of Darkness/Apocalypses Now written across it, but John Roughan, a friend of Father Gus, also knows the great disparity of wealth between the Weathercoast and Honiara.

"A half-hour plane trip from Avu Avu on southern coast of Guadalcanal to Honiara was like flying from one century and landing in another," he wrote on Solomons People First website (peoplefirst.net.sb).

"When villagers climbed over the mountains, and that's the only way many of them ever made it to Honiara, they experienced two so different worlds. Villagers gasped and could only marvel at the profound differences between what they saw in Honiara and what they experienced over on the Weather Coast. Is it any wonder that deep seated resentment started to build among these people over the past few years."

On Tuesday Solomons police confirmed that Father Gus, who was also the Minister of Youth, Women and Sports, had been murdered.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Operations, Wilfred Akao says after gathering information from witnesses at the scene of the killing, police were able to confirm Father Gus was assassinated on August 20. His body is still missing.

Roughan says the priest went over the mountains knowing things would not be easy.

"As (a cabinet minister) he felt he had a duty to bring some of the warring factions of his constituency back together again. Who better than himself?

"A son of the area, an ordained priest who had over a 20 year period laboured in the villages along the Weathercoast and now a minister of the crown."

Money and good gestures from afar would not turn the people back to peace and order: "He had to see them face to face, talk to them in language and listen to their stories....

"The Weathercoast people had seen too many bad things, had experienced too much death, pain and destruction to be easily convinced that returning to a life of the past was their best road to the future."

Roughan says the Weathercoast people were Father Gus' kith and kin.

"When Fr. Gus appeared at his Eternal Judge's presence last Tuesday afternoon, I feel he had a great defence on his side. 'Why did I go there? I wanted my people to begin the peace process. Perhaps my own blood will now water this tender plant and in a short time, it might begin to grow'. I really hope so!"

On Friday Father Gus will be remembered in a national day of mourning.

Copyright: Michael Field