About 150 soldiers and police officers from the two imperialist powers began enforcing a state of emergency declared the previous day by the government of Prime Minister Feleti Sevele.

Within a week the foreign troops were patrolling the capital city of Nuku’alofa—the center of the rebellion—alongside Tongan security forces.

Sevele’s government is beholden to the royal family, which rules over Tonga’s population of 114,000. The king appoints the government and 21 of the parliament’s 30 members.

Political tensions mounted over the second week of November as thousands of people gathered outside parliament in Nuku’alofa to demand democratic rights. On November 16 the government recessed parliament without responding to the protesters.

An angry crowd first gathered outside Sevele’s offices. Some protesters then fanned out through downtown Nuku’alofa, setting fire to businesses believed to be linked to King George Tupou V and other members of the royal family.

Nearly 30 Chinese-owned shops were set afire or looted, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported. Most reports say that up to 80 percent of the business district was ruined.

Six people, reportedly protesters, were found dead among the burnt-out ruins. King Tupou dismissed the protest as the work of “a small but dangerous criminal element.” As Tongan government troops and cops began patroling the streets, Sevele asked the governments of New Zealand and Australia to intervene.

Defying a government ban on groups of more than five people gathering in Nuku’alofa, opposition leaders called a November 21 press conference to speak out against the intervention.

“New Zealand and Australia’s role in this exercise is seen as supporting the present regime,” said opposition member of parliament Clive Edwards.

Akilisi Pohiva, a veteran leader of the movement for democratic rights, said the events were “the end product of a long period of frustration, of a long period of struggle against a dictatorial regime that has been ruling this country for years.” Dozens of supporters of the democratic rights movement were imprisoned in the first few days of the state of emergency.

Demands for democratic freedoms have gained momentum in Tonga over the past two years, with large protests against the government and monarchy and a six-week strike last year by the Public Service Association, a new union organizing government employees. The PSA members campaigned for support for their fight among the large Tongan communities in New Zealand and elsewhere.

On Sept. 6, 2005—having wrested wage increases from the government—the PSA workers marked their victory with a 10,000-strong march backing calls for democratic rights. They presented a petition at the time signed by more than 20,000 people calling for reforms to curb the power of the monarchy. The New Zealand and Australian prime ministers, Helen Clark and John Howard, shaped their military intervention during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference held in Vietnam November 18-19. Clark claimed the imperialist intervention “is about supporting a proper process of constitutional reform.”

Justifying the occupation, Howard declared, “Clearly one of the problems in the Pacific is that many of these countries are too small to be sustainable on their own. And that's just a brutal reality.”  
 
 
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