HONIARA, Solomon Islands (AP) — Rebels who stole about 500 military-style weapons from authorities two years ago returned only about 50 of them during a gun amnesty, international monitors said Saturday.
Peace monitors said the amnesty, which ran several weeks until midnight Friday, was a partial success in that nearly 1,650 homemade and old weapons were turned in.
“The number of weapons collected is a good sign. Former militants are realizing that the people of Solomon Islands want normalcy in their lives, which means no more guns,” said the chairman of the troubled nation’s Peace Monitoring Council, Paul Tovua.
But with some 450 military-style weapons still in rebel hands, lawlessness that has plagued the Solomons in recent months appears unlikely to abate.
The Solomons, a chain of islands in the Pacific northeast of Australia, has been wracked by violence since a coup in June 2000 when rival militants broke into a police armory and stole hundreds of high-powered guns.
The coup was the climax of a bloody 20-month battle between natives from the Solomons’ two main islands, Guadalcanal and Malaita, over jobs and land. The fighting left about 200 people dead.
Tovua admitted that the country of 480,000 still had a long way to go before stability can be fully restored.
“The council is hoping that the peace will hold with most of the weapons handed in already but there are still many more out there,” Tovua said.
A group of 18 international peace monitors are due to leave by the end of the month after about 18 months in the country.