• Foreign Officer sent back
• SPC, MP, Business owner might allegedly collude
By ANDREW FANASIA
A FOREIGN business owner of Breakwater Cafe was reported for allegedly making very highly discriminative and racist comments against some local women who went there.
Speaking to the Solomon Star on condition of anonymity a concerned citizen said this racist and discriminative action done to our locals is against the Constitution of this country and must not be tolerated.
It is specific under Chapter 2 of the National Constitution protection of fundamental rights and freedom of the individual.
In Chapter 2 Section 15 (3) it clearly states that subject to the provision of subsection (9) of this section, no person shall be treated in a discriminatory manner in respect of access to shops, hotels, lodging-houses, public restaurants, eating-houses or places of public entertainment or in respect of access to places of public resort maintained wholly or partly out of public funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.
The Solomon Star followed up the incident after it was first posted in the social media by a New Zealander who was working with the Secretariat Pacific Commission (SPC) Officer in Honiara.
This paper later found that the New Zealander flew out of the country a few days after he posted the incident on social media.
According to a reliable source the New Zealander has to leave the country because SPC received some complaints from one of the Members of Parliament who might have a close link with the owner of the Breakwater Cafe.
It was also reported that the Facebook post was taken down after complaints were raised against SPC.
The Solomon Star further made inquiries by calling the SPC office in Honiara to verify some of the information at hand.
But when this paper called and started questioning, the person on the receiver slammed the phone and hang up.
The action done by the SPC office in Honiara now raised a lot of questions as to why an organisation dealing with human rights issues did not want to further comment on this matter.
The concerned citizen who spoke to this paper in anonymity asked that why did SPC want to hide?
“They should come out and speak against the racist and discriminative comments done to the women of this country.
“One of our very important woman leaders who is a president of a political party was one of the women standing there when the Breakwater Cafe owner called them as ‘Dirty’ or ‘Those kinds of people’ or it simply implies they don’t want locals there,” the concerned citizen said.
It was understood that SPC was known for its many programs in the pacific and one of their core programs is addressing human rights issues in the pacific.
“If this matter is related to human rights then we expect SPC to speak up and tell the public if the Breakwater Cafe owner and the alleged MP collude to remove the New Zealander or even speak up against the racist and discriminative action,” the concerned citizen added.
Meanwhile, this paper understands that this is not the first time local citizens were treated this way by Breakwater Cafe.
One of the victims of such racist action told this paper that they also experienced such treatment in the past.
This paper also contacted the SPC staff who posted the incident but there was no response from him who is currently in Fiji.
Attempts were made to call Breakwater Cafe for further comments but it was later found that they were not listed in the contacts according to Telekom Directory Enquiry.
The Breakwater Cafe owner is being sought for comments.
