Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has requested that the Chinese state security council cease cooperating with the Fiji Police Force, effectively terminating the Memorandum of Understanding inked between the Fiji Police Force and China’s Ministry of Public Security. “There is no need for us to continue because our systems are different. Our democratic and legal systems are different so that we will return to those with comparable systems to us,” Rabuka reported in the Fiji Times.
He was alluding to a memorandum of understanding signed in 2011 between the Fiji Police Force and China’s Ministry of Public Security, which resulted in Fijian police personnel receiving training in China and Chinese officers being deployed to Fiji on three to six-month attachment programmes. Police cooperation efforts between the two countries reached new heights in September 2021, following the appointment of a Chinese Police Liaison officer to be based in Fiji.
According to the Fiji Times, Rabuka said that officers from other nations, such as Australia and New Zealand, may stay because their systems were similar to Fiji’s. In October 2022, Australia and Fiji signed various agreements to strengthen defence cooperation.
Earlier in April 2022, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand became increasingly concerned about China’s influence in the South Pacific following the signing of a framework agreement on security cooperation with China by the Solomon Islands. According to the agreement, China has the authority to send police and even military forces to the Solomon Islands to assist Honiara in “maintaining social order, defending people’s lives and property, and providing humanitarian assistance.”
It further states that these troops can “use its military to safeguard Chinese personnel and projects, and for its ships to stopover in the Solomon Islands and carry out “logistical replenishment.”China is also attempting to bind island states Vanuatu and Kiribati to similar security agreements, raising concerns in Canberra and Washington DC that China is constructing “security perches” in the South Pacific.
