By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist, and is republished with permission
Australian and New Zealand police will fund a strike force in Colombia to fight the Pacific drug trade.
Aotearoa’s acting deputy commissioner Mike Johnson said an International Joint Investigations Team is being set up with the aim of gathering evidence on illicit shipments before they enter Pacific waters.
New Zealand will base one liaison officer in Bogota, “allowing us to more effectively identify and respond to specific threats that impact New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific,” he said.
“The role would enhance international law enforcement ties and disrupt money laundering and drug trafficking.”
In a statement, Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner Krissy Barrett said they will take “new action” with the help of the New Zealand, United States, Mexican, Colombian, and Pacific authorities, as well as Interpol.
“Coming together with trusted partners is how we will target and frustrate the cartels and other organised criminals,” Barrett said.
Pacific police chiefs, including New Zealand Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, are this week gathered in Fiji’s capital, Suva. Fiji is considered a distribution hub along the Pacific narco highway.
The summit was announced in December of last year, shortly after a massive tranche of Viber message screenshots was uploaded to social media alleged to depict police officers taking money, and orders, from drug dealers.
Both the volume and scale of drug busts regionwide have risen this year, though law enforcement still struggles to keep pace. Separately in January, in the infamous Vatia drug bust, more than US$500 million worth of cocaine was seized, and six people were charged, including four Ecuadorian nationals.
Meanwhile, the US is going all out in the Eastern Pacific, with drone strike footage showing attacks on boats and submarines.
Barrett was full of praise for her Fijian counterpart, Rusiate Tudravu.
“The effect on such small populations is devastating … this is where the leadership of [Tudravu] has come to the fore.”
“He has implored the AFP and other partners to take action to help protect his country and the wider Pacific because Pacific regionalism is about the collective, and nothing underscores this more than the influence of Pacific Island Chiefs of Police.”
The Pacific narco highway
If Australia is the destination on the Pacific narco highway, Colombia is the gateway.
It is widely understood that the islands are a strategic transit corridor, located between two key producers – Southeast Asia and the Americas – and two major consumers – Australia and New Zealand.
Australia is believed to command the highest street-level price in the world, with New Zealand not far behind.
However, Virginia Comolli, an organised crime expert advising leaders at the summit, told RNZ that Pacific Islands have become a drug market in and of themselves.
“Fiji is the most striking case … but this is also happening elsewhere in Tonga, Solomon Islands, PNG, et cetera,” she said.
“But oftentimes the people who end up in court are locals. Normally they are not the masterminds … so it’s so important to look upstream and [go to] where the drugs originate.”
Over time, drugs in transit have fallen into the hands of Pacific Islanders, partially due to cases of corruption among police and customs officials, and the region is now emerging as a market in and of itself.
Comolli said for the police chiefs at the summit, this is a fact that cannot be ignored.
“Of course, these are not comfortable things to bring up, but we just need to read the news from across the Pacific.”
All the same, she felt as though police ministers were fronting up to the responsibility.
“It’s not an elephant in the room that people are not mentioning: quite the opposite, it’s front and centre of the discussion.”
