Kama squats in the shade of her bush shelter and shakes her head slowly.
"I have nothing and nothing left to lose," she says quietly as children prepare sweet potatoes.
From Ogio village, Kama is one of 142 refugees who trekked for a week from their villages along the rugged Weathercoast of Guadalcanal to seek safety in the capital Honiara.
In recent weeks a string of villages along the southwest coast of the island have been terrorized and their houses burnt by renegade Harold Keke and his band of thugs.
One baby died along the way and had to be buried in a makeshift grave in the bush.
Kama's grief is even more profound -- Keke's men executed her two sons John and Weatley because they were police "special constables" working for the government. Now she feels alone and vulnerable.
"Keke and his boys came into our village at three in the morning and executed the constables, beat their heads in with sticks," said another refugee still too afraid to give his name.
"They demanded everything from us -- chicken, pigs, money. If we didn't give them such things they threatened to kill us. Then they burnt our whole village anyway."
Guadalcanal, scene of one the biggest battles in World War II, is divided by a rugged mountain range, leaving its south or Weathercoast inaccessible from the north where the capital, Honiara, is located.
Four years ago Keke, a former policeman, founded the Guadalcanal Liberation Front (GLF) to drive off the island the people from Malaita, across Iron Bottom Sound from Honiara.
The civil war that destroyed the Solomons economy, killed more than 100 people in a nation of an estimated 400,000, and resulted in more than 20,000 people losing their homes.
Last month Australia announced it would send in an intervention force to restore law and order to the Solomons.
Since May, at least 1,000 refugees have moved into Honiara, says Josiah Karich who fled with them and is now working with the National Disaster Management committee on contingency plans for a further influx.
"People here are still afraid. Their home villages have been destroyed and now they are in Honiara they are afraid of militants, especially if there is a backlash when the intervention force arrives. I have requested a police post to be established here to help protect us."
Some of the refugees fled Honiara back to their villages during the conflict to escape harassment from another rebel group, the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF), only to find themselves at the mercy of a rebel from their own island.
Most Guadalcanal militants, known as the Isatabu Freedom Movement joined attempts to bring peace but Keke and his followers, thought to number 30 to 40, refused to join the peace process and have been on the run ever since.
It remains unclear what Keke and his group actually stand for, since he appears not to have any political agenda.
"In the beginning he wanted to get rid of squatters on our traditional land and he talked about independence for Guadalcanal, but that was just talk," says Guadalcanal Premier Ezekiel Alebua.
"We people on Guadalcanal have been demanding a state government within a federal system for a long time, but independence has never been an issue."
He said Keke may be holding out for his own survival, fearful people want to kill him.
"He's just a gangster who watched too many Rambo films," he said.
Alebua said the proposed intervention force has popular support on Guadalcanal and throughout the country.
"We just hope the force is even-handed and balanced so that they deal with both Keke in the bush and the MEF militants who have caused so much trouble here in Honiara," he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese