Safety was once a pride of Honiara. Once!
Citizens in the 80s and 90s can attest to this.
Children reading story books then would have had to shake their imaginations to picturise what pick-pocketing looked like, or they’d chance upon it in a video.
Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that of Honiara.
An Op-ed by one Sharon Banuk [read viewpoint below] details the ‘Trepidations of a female student in Port Moresby’ as its title goes.
Ms Banuk’s experiences in the article are synonymous to a female student travelling through Honiara’s streets.
There is no luxury of ‘not being apprehensive about your safety’ when walking in the streets of Honiara. Daytime or, worse, night.
In Banuk’s article, one experience stands out which can be said is similar here – “It prompted us to walk with our guard up at all times, to have our bags and bilums draped in front of us, to pack our phones and purses in the deepest parts of our bags or bilums, and to always be looking over our shoulder when someone got too close in the crowd”.
Pickpocketing is rife in Honiara, and has been given a name in the local pidgin – Beliga.
Social media is riddled with posts concerning Beliga activity in Honiara. This does not affect female students alone – from children to elderly, male and female.
Beliga activities in the city is most profound at the Central market and surrounding areas. Over the years it has spread to the city’s CBD, Pt Cruz.
It is also common along the Kukum highway near shops and offices eastwards of town, and further parts of Tandai highway, west of Honiara.
Odd enough, as with Banuk’s article, Beliga activities are somehow also linked with bus-stops here.
Over the years, Beliga activity has morphed to actual burglary. In some cases it has become armed burglary, such as the incident on January 19 this year, in a bus along the main road above Koa Hill in which a teenage boy was stabbed by a Beliga demanding his mobile phone.
A PLAN International report in September 2020 had said only seven percent of 236 girls surveyed said they ‘always feel safe in public’. The report said ‘adolescent girls, boys and their communities all agreed that girls weren’t able to fully participate in Honiara’s public spaces because of the high number of harassment and violent incidents, especially at night’.
And, the reasons they don’t feel safe include high levels of sexist behaviours and sexual harassment. Risks to girls in public include drunk and intoxicated people, theft, verbal harassment, touching and rape.
The PLAN report also mentions a high rate of Bystander Culture (more than 80 percent) in which members of public are indifferent to harassment or a girl being victimised in public.
For pickpocketing, it is believed that this may be lower. But the practice being rife contends it does not offer much of a deterrence.
An array of factors contributes to the high rate of Beliga activity in the streets of Honiara.
High urban drift and unemployment undoubtedly top the list. Inundated capacities of responsible authorities to deal with it, and lack of effective policies and ordinances to tackle this problem. Deteriorating family values and morals must not be overlooked.
Collective and concerted efforts are needed! (Sad that this line has become somewhat a cliché for Solomon Islands’ problems)
Proactive police action needs to step up. Such as what transpired over the Easter weekend, in which police carried out public awareness sessions in various spots in town.
The Honiara City Council has a law enforcement arm which is expected to consistently monitor hotspots within the city, such as the central market, busy walkways along the city’s CBD, etc.
Since this issue is indiscriminate for any Honiara commuter, it should be the business of the public not to become blasé bystanders.
There is a thing called the citizen’s arrest [Criminal law 9.0.2], rather than entertain the notion that it should be left for the authorities and law enforcers to deal with it alone.
While some of Ms Banuk’s experiences are relatable in the Honiara context, some are not. Yet! If we are not careful! Such as the use of guns, extreme boldness in committing such crimes in the open, and the very high prevalence of such open street crimes as in the context of Banuk’s experiences.
