Nuku’alofa, Tonga – Forces from New Zealand and Australia arrived Saturday in Tonga to help restore order after riots killed at least eight people and ravaged most of the capital’s business district.
Sixty troops and 10 police officers flew in from New Zealand to secure the Pacific island nation’s only international airport after foreign airlines refused to use it because of a lack of security, said a Tongan Defense Services spokesman, Maj. Veehala, who, like many Ton gans, uses a single name.
An additional 50 troops and 35 police from Australia, including forensic experts to identify the bodies of those who died in fires during the riots, arrived later Saturday.
The troops will secure infrastructure including the airport, power stations, broadcasting systems and key government buildings.
Two Chinese shops in Tonga were torched in attacks overnight, two days after rioting destroyed much of the capital, Nuku’alofa, but the city was “reasonably calm” Saturday, Police Cmdr. Sinilau Kolokihakaufisi said.
He said that no one was in the shops during the attacks Friday night and that up to 200 ethnic Chinese – one-fifth the number living in Tonga, halfway between Australia and Tahiti – have sought refuge after about 30 Chinese-owned stores and businesses were torched during Thursday’s riot.
Government spokesman Lopeti Senituli said about 20 young men were arrested overnight, accused of breaking and entering.
Angry youths on Thursday had overturned cars, attacked officials and looted shops and offices before setting them ablaze in the tiny, impoverished kingdom. Officials said about 80 percent of the capital was destroyed.
As in many South Pacific countries, ethnic Chinese traders control a large portion of the economy in Tonga’s capital and are sometimes resented by locals who perceive them as outsiders, although many Chinese families have been there for generations.
China’s ambassador to Tonga, Hu Yeshun, said the embassy had “received over 150 people whose houses or stores were destroyed by the mobs.”
The violence was triggered by anger that Parliament might finish this year’s session without settling plans to give democratically elected lawmakers a parliamentary majority over royally appointed legislators.
The government had agreed Tuesday to a plan ensuring that 21 lawmakers in the 30-seat Parliament will be elected starting in 2008 – but it came too late to prevent the rioting.
