Gun buyback scheme for the Solomon Islands
Compere: Andrew Lofthouse
ABC radio
20 July 2000
Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer [edited] interview
"I mean, you know, its not an easy situation in the Solomons. It doesn't work quite like organising a meeting here in Brisbane or wherever.. So, it remains to be seen a bit how this will go. Our hope is that the ceasefire talks can take place, at at last start to take place today, and that we can get a ceasefire in the Solomon Islands and then move towards a peace process."
"If the ceasefire talks
are successful, then we'll be sending a team of people from Canberra to the
Solomon Islands to talk through some of the issues which will be central to
peace, and one of those is to get the guns back off the streets and back into
the armory from where they were stolen. And one of the options there is to
put forward a gun buyback scheme.
That might, unfortunately,
be the only way it will be possible to get the guns off the streets, and we
would be prepared to help with that." - Alexander Downer
It is pleasing to see that there is an acknowledgement from Mr Downer that the guns on the streets obviously came from Police and Army armouries. Just like some other pacific-rim countries that Australia has been funding for years, the break down of internal law and order has been hastened by the decay of discipline within the police and military.
We hope that the Australian Federal Government will reflect upon the following words in regards to the success of gun buyback schemes in Africa.
"Gun buyback programmes
were not effective if they saw guns as assets."
Virginia Gamba - Institute for Security Studies 18/1/2000 Business Day, Johannesburg.
On buying back firearms from civilians in Africa
Copy held SSAA National
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