Fellowship and Citizenship As Models of National Community: United Church Women's Fellowship in Ranongga, Solomon Islands‪.‬

INTRODUCTION In recent years, violence has become a primary means to ensure privileges within Solomon Islands. Beginning in late 1998, militants from the island of Guadalcanal began attacking groups of people from the island of Malaita who, since World War II and especially since independence in 1978, had settled in Guadalcanal around the capital city Honiara. The attacks eventually resulted in the evacuation to their home islands of approximately twenty thousand settlers. Although quickly dubbed 'ethnic tension', the conflict emerged less from primordial animosity between Malaitans and Guadalcanal people, who had peacefully coexisted for generations, and more from the interplay of government corruption and criminal activities with the resentment felt by many Guadalcanal people at land alienation and their unequal opportunities within a post-colonial economy (Kabutaulaka 2000). On 5 June 2000, a Malaitan militia united with a faction of the Solomon Islands police force to take over the national armoury, depose the constitutionally elected government, and take the Prime Minister hostage.