One of the three New Zealanders on the Global Sumud Flotilla who were among the hundreds kidnapped by the Israeli military illegally on international waters this month and abducted to Israel has described his brutal treatment after returning home.

Speaking in a TV3 news report last night, Hāhona Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto), 56, said he was beaten for hours, rammed into a wall until he was unconscious and kicked in the genitals.

He is one of many activists among the 430 Gaza humanitarian flotilla aid crew from more than 40 countries alleging they were abused.

• READ MORE: Gaza flotilla activists allege abuse, sexual assault in Israeli detention
• Flotilla activists recount Israeli violence as they arrive in Turkiye
• Gaza freedom flotilla – reluctance of the West to protest Israel’s thuggery enabled the abuse
• Other Gaza flotilla human rights reports

They were trying to break the 16-year illegal Israeli military blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

Ormsby told reporter Molly Swift “it feels surreal” to be back in Auckland trying to come to terms with “actually being home and being safe” because just last week he was detained
in Israel where he said he was violently beaten at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

It was his first flotilla and as an educator he was hoping to bring school supplies to Palestinian children, the TV3 report said.

“They boarded the boat. We were stripped of all our clothes. We were wearing clothes for the interception to keep warm. We were stripped of shoes,” Ormsby said.

“I left the boat just wearing a pair of shorts and t-shirt. I actually had a gun pointed at me,” he said demonstrating at the back of his head.

“Like I could feel the gun on the back of my head.”

The detainees were taken on a “prison” ship to the Israeli port Ashdod for processing.

“Even there, I was quite overwhelmed at the treatment. Just randomly in the early hours of the morning we had flashbangs thrown into the containers.”

Disturbing account of Gaza flotilla treatment by Israel.      Video: TV3/Stuff

TV3 reports that Israel claims the allegations are “false and entirely without factual basis”. However, documented reports with photographic evidence has been widely published around the world and several governments have announced that that have initiated prosecution investigations against the Israelis.

Cruel treatment against prisoners is explicitly classified as a serious war crime under international humanitarian law.

Eleven Australians were also on the flotilla and have made similar allegations against the israelis. The New York Times this month published a major report of allegations against Israeli prisons while the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem’s report “Living Hell” has documented systematic torture of Palestinians.

Professor Stuart Rees, a professor emeritus of the University of Sydney, has blamed Western governments for the “thuggery” of the Israeli government, saying, “If bullies notice that no one intervenes to stop their behaviour, they may interpret such non-intervention as permission to continue bullying.”

The head of the United Nations body mandated to develop regulations for seabed mining in international waters says Pacific countries are playing a big role in shaping the regulations that will govern the future industry.

International Seabed Authority (ISA) Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho was in Fiji last week conducting training for Pacific Island nations on what it means to be a sponsoring state of a potential seabed mining company.

There is great interest from the likes of China and the US in polymetallic nodules found on the deep seabed in parts of the Pacific Ocean’s international waters.

• READ MORE: Other seabed mining reports

These nodules are rich in minerals such as copper, cobalt and nickel. These metals are highly valued in modern tech — but it remains uncertain how damaging mining would be to the marine environment.

Carvalho told RNZ Pacific Waves the region was very important to the ISA process of developing rules for mining, given the strong country positions both for and against.

“Some of them are really close to the idea of mining in the deep sea outside of national jurisdiction. Others are very much attached to the environmental safeguards and cautious about this activity, therefore this region has a big role in shaping the regime.”

She said she respected the opposing views Pacific countries had on the potential future industry.

PIF representatives
In Fiji, she met with representatives of Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) member countries and civil society organisations.

She said these were sovereign positions and her role was not to judge but rather to facilitate dialogue.

“And that is why I am here for capacity building, training, bringing my team to support these countries to better understand how they can make decisions internally and how they can sit at the table with others to find consensus in the multilateral space.”

She also acknowledged there were some civil society complaints about exclusion from the training but she clarified that the list of participants was constructed based on the relevance of the subject matter.

“So this training was particularly formulated to get government officials more enlightened about the responsibilities and how to make deals with contractors and investors.”

Carvahlo said some representatives of civil society networks were present as observers but it was not possible to invite everyone.

Before she left Fiji, Carvahlo did meet with a group of civil society representatives. She said it was good for her to hear their concerns firsthand.

‘Still big gap’
“They still see a big gap in their participation and their voices to be heard in the decision making,” she said.

“It was very enlightening for me to see that there is still work to be done in this region to make that communities can really engage and shape and influence decision making.”

The ISA boss encouraged all Pacific Island countries, regardless of their stance on deep sea mining, to participate fully in the International Seabed Authority meetings to make use of this historic opportunity to develop the proper regulations for an industry before it actually begins.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

For more than two decades, Iran’s nuclear programme has been subject to intense international scrutiny, sanctions and diplomatic negotiations.

By contrast, while Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, an assertion it has consistently refused to deny or confirm, it faces little to almost no international pressure for transparency.

Over the past 10 months, Israel and the United States have waged two wars on Iran, arguing without evidence that the country was on the verge of having the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

• READ MORE: US drone shot down as tensions surge during peace talks
• Netanyahu: Wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes since 2024
• Other US war/ceasefire on Iran reports

These wars — the 12-day conflict in June last year and the recent month of fighting this year — have killed more than 3375 Iranians and plunged the world into an unprecedented energy crisis.

This imbalance has prompted complaints by Iran of double standards, as well as by proponents of nuclear non-proliferation worldwide.

The difference between the treatment of Iran and Israel is not only evident in international law frameworks such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but also reflected in geopolitics and global power dynamics, observers say.

So, what do we know about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the scrutiny and debate around Iran’s nuclear programme, and why critics argue a double standard is at play when it comes to the threat posed by these two longtime foes?

What do we know about Israel’s nuclear weapons?
It is an “open secret” that Israel is the only country in the Middle East which possesses nuclear weapons, despite it maintaining a decades-long opacity about the issue, observers say.

When pressed on whether his country possessed nuclear capability or nuclear weapons during a 2018 exchange with former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “We have always said that we won’t be the first to introduce it, and we haven’t introduced it … It’s as good an answer as you will get.”

Despite Israel’s lack of transparency about its nuclear programme, experts say the origins of it date back to the 1950s under founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, when Israel began developing nuclear capabilities with foreign assistance, notably from France.

The Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert has long been suspected of producing plutonium for weapons. According to experts, Israel possesses an estimated 80 to 200 nuclear warheads, though exact figures remain unknown.

In 1986, Israel’s policy of secrecy was dealt a serious blow when Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona facility, disclosed information and photographs from the reactor to the United Kingdom’s Sunday Times newspaper.

He was later abducted by Israeli agents, tried in secret and spent 18 years in prison.

Adding to the fog over its nuclear capabilities is Israel’s refusal to sign the NPT, which came into force in 1970, meaning it is not subject to the same international inspections as member states.

The NPT is a global agreement designed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, commit to nuclear disarmament, and encourage the peaceful use of nuclear energy. A total of 191 United Nations member states are signatories to the treaty, including Israel’s longtime adversary, Iran.

Israel’s policy serves multiple purposes, according to analyst Shawn Rostker.

“The logic is fairly straightforward: Ambiguity is meant to preserve deterrence while avoiding some of the diplomatic, legal and political costs that would come with an open declaration, especially given that Israel is not a party to the NPT and continues to sit outside that framework,” Rostker, an Astra fellow with the Constellation Institute, told Al Jazeera.

The analyst said Israel was unlikely to join the NPT in the near future.

“Israel’s position has been tied for decades to its regional security environment, and there is little sign that it sees strategic benefit in giving up ambiguity or joining the NPT,” Rostker said.

“A real shift would probably require a much broader regional security arrangement, potentially tied to a Middle East WMD-free zone or a major change in the threat environment, not outside pressure alone,” he added.

What do we know about Iran’s nuclear programme?
Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1950s under former leader Reza Shah Pahlavi, with US support, but expanded significantly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran, which remains a signatory to the NPT, has consistently maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only, such as energy production and medical use.

In 1974, it signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and in the decades since then, both under the former shah and under the Islamic Republic, it has been regularly monitored by the UN agency.

Iran also joined the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 along with the US and other nations, under which Iran agreed to restrict the enrichment of uranium and to be subject to inspections by the IAEA.

Key provisions of that agreement included:

• Capping uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent for 15 years, levels unsuitable for nuclear weapons
• Reducing centrifuge numbers
• Allowing extensive monitoring by international inspectors, such as the IAEA, including 25 years of monitoring of Iran’s uranium mills and mines

Also under the JCPOA, inspectors from the IAEA — who had already been in Iran monitoring its nuclear programme — began daily inspections of the country’s facilities to ensure that Tehran stuck by its commitments.

It did, they found.

The US, under President Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018, despite the IAEA saying Iran had complied with the agreement up to that point.

Iran nevertheless continued to adhere to its JCPOA commitments for one year after the US exited the deal, according to the IAEA, before restarting heightened levels of enrichment.

Indeed, the US argument for why Iran represents a nuclear weapons threat — that it holds 400kg of 60 percent enriched uranium — is based on an IAEA report from 2025, underscoring how the UN agency has far greater visibility into Iran’s nuclear programme than the world has into Israel’s.

Uranium needs to be enriched to levels higher than 90 percent for it to become weapons-grade. The removal of this 60 percent-enriched uranium has been one of the US’s key demands during talks with Iran.

While the US and Israel have targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities during the 12-day war in 2025 and the most recent strikes this year and claim to have destroyed a large part of them, this map shows what we know of the positions of Iran’s nuclear facilities up to this year:

What proof is there that Iran has the capacity to build nuclear weapons?
While Israel and the US have claimed for some time that Iran is close to building nuclear weapons, they have not offered any meaningful proof.

In fact, in March 2025, Tulsi Gabbard, then US director of national intelligence (she has since resigned), testified to Congress that the US “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003”.

Iran has long maintained that it has no plans to build a nuclear weapon. In 2003, then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli attacks on Tehran on February 28, publicly announced prohibiting the pursuit of such a weapon, saying it was against Islamic law.

After the US and Israel launched their latest war on Iran on February 28, Gabbard, in a new testimony before Congress, said the US intelligence community did not believe that Iran had resumed its nuclear programme after the bombings of June 2025.

Are different standards being applied to Israel and Iran over nuclear weapons?
Palestinian analyst Ahmed Najar is one of many experts who say there is “clearly a double standard” in how Israel’s nuclear programme is treated compared with Iran’s, arguing that politics rather than international norms is what drives this.

In his view, Israel has been granted an exemption from the global non-proliferation regime because of its role as a Western-aligned power in the Middle East, while Iran’s status as a perceived “foe” invites maximum pressure.

“In that sense, international norms are applied selectively — rigorously enforced in some cases, and quietly set aside in others.”

Beyond the political double standard, Najar argues that Israel’s longstanding policy of “nuclear ambiguity” raises deeper concerns about transparency amid the “opacity of Israel’s nuclear doctrine itself”.

“There is ambiguity not only around capability, but around thresholds for use — and that exists without the accountability mechanisms applied elsewhere,” he added.

Najar said he is pessimistic about the prospects of any change to this approach, without a “broader transformation” of international politics and power dynamics.

“As long as strategic interests take precedence over consistent application of international law, Israel’s nuclear posture is likely to remain largely shielded from scrutiny,” he said.

Usaid Siddiqui is a reporter with the Al Jazeera Live News team, writing news and features with a focus on foreign policy issues across several regions including South Asia, the Middle East and the United States. He has a Masters in International Relations from the University of Sussex. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

The empire’s war on activism and journalism continues to escalate as the Trump administration targets leftwing streamer Hasan Piker and antiwar activist Medea Benjamin for the “crime” of bringing humanitarian aid to Cuba.

This is yet another act of aggression in the same onslaught that has seen inconvenient truth-telling and expressions of moral clarity attacked and undermined throughout the Western world at every juncture in recent years.

It is not separate from the persecution of Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes.

• LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

It is not separate from the steadily increasing escalations of internet censorship we’ve seen in the wake of Gaza, Ukraine, covid, January 6, the 2016 US presidential election, and any other excuse the imperial narrative managers could find.

Taking medical supplies to pediatric hospitals in Cuba is now a crime? Saving the lives of babies is a crime? This administration is beyond grotesque. https://t.co/xsvQGEYzb8

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 24, 2026

It is not separate from the Trump administration’s efforts to deport non-citizens for criticising the state of Israel.

It is not separate from the efforts to stomp out pro-Palestine protests and university campus demonstrations.

It is not separate from the arrests of activists in the UK on terrorism charges for saying the words “I support Palestine Action”.

It is not separate from activists facing criminal charges for saying “From the river to the sea” in parts of Australia and Germany.

It is not separate from imperial efforts to crack down on BDS activism and outlaw boycotts of Israeli products.

It is not separate from Israel’s ban on foreign press from entering Gaza, nor is it separate from Israel’s systematic extermination of Palestinian journalists within Gaza.

It is not separate from the artificially manufactured hysteria about “antisemitism” in Western society and the efforts of Western governments to silence criticism of Israel in the name of protecting Jews.

It is not separate from Israel’s massive increase in its hasbara budget this year and the armies of paid trolls we’ve seen swarming online discourse.

It is not separate from the nonstop barrage of imperial propaganda we see every day from the plutocratic press justifying every war and slandering every dissident.

It is not separate from the way imperial oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Larry Ellison buy up news outlets like The Washington Post and CBS and social media platforms like TikTok and Twitter in order to manipulate the way the public thinks, acts, and votes.

It is not separate from the way tech platforms have been manipulating algorithms to hide dissident sources of information from the public and using bogus “fact checking” firms to suppress unauthorised facts.

It is not separate from government secrecy measures which forbid the public from knowing what their rulers are doing, and which aggressively punish anyone who tries to reveal inconvenient facts.

the american govt would rather try to criminalize delivering aid to a country we’ve starved, than punish the epstein class. https://t.co/h19HPsOc9m

— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 24, 2026

The empire is waging a relentless war on intellectual clarity and on moral clarity, because truth and morality are its enemies.

They do not want us to have unobstructed vision, lucid minds, functioning empathy centers and well-formed consciences, because if we did, we would instantly dismantle the empire brick by brick.

This is why they go after anyone who tries to expand the consciousness of Western society using activism and journalism. In an empire built on lies and fuelled by human blood, telling the truth is seen as treason and doing the right thing is seen as insurrection.

The only sane response to such a dystopian situation is to join in the revolution. Help spread unauthorised ideas and information. Take action to spread awareness of the abusive nature of the empire. They’re trying to keep it all in the dark, so we need to bring it all into the light.

They wouldn’t be fighting so hard to suppress truth and compassion if it didn’t present an immediate existential threat to their power structure.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape was on an official visit to France last week, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron and held a number of important meetings to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Topping the list, through a joint communiqué, came the announcement of the setting up of a new PNG embassy in Paris. Currently, the closest PNG embassy is in Brussels, Belgium.

The opening of Papua New Guinea’s embassy in Paris was based on the two nations “sharing a common commitment to democratic values, multilateralism, international law”, as well as in favour of “peace, stability and resilience in the face of climate change … and for the protection of environment and biodiversity”, including forest protection.

• READ MORE: Other France in the Pacific reports

On social networks, Macron described Papua New Guinea’s forests as “the true lungs of the Pacific”.

The diplomatic joint message also stressed the common will to “strengthen friendship and cooperation” relations.

Macron visited Papua New Guinea in July 2023, as part of a regional tour that also included New Caledonia and neighbouring Vanuatu.

On the political front, Marape also led a delegation to the French National Assembly (Lower House), which at the time was engaged in heated debates regarding New Caledonia.

The PNG delegation’s presence in the Parliament’s gallery was hailed and underlined by National Assembly Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, followed by a round of applause from the French MPs.

“Since we arrived, we have felt very much at home and very welcome,” Marape said.

But apart from his encounter with Macron on Wednesday last week, Marape also had significant contacts with major development aid stakeholder AFD (Agence Française de Développement) and the aircraft industry’s ATR, based in Toulouse in southwestern France.

More ATR aircraft on the way
The ATR call was said to respond to PNG plans to expand their current fleet of turbo-prop regional aircraft.

Since 2015, PNG Air currently operates 10 ATR 72-600 aircraft and plans to gradually expand its ATR fleet to 18 aircraft — a mix of ATR 72-600 (72 seats) and ATR 42-600 (42 seats).

ATR is currently finalising the construction of three aircraft to be delivered to PNG Air.

“Papua New Guinea is one of the most geographically challenging countries in the world, and aviation remains a lifeline service for our people, businesses, government services, and the broader economy,” Marape said in France.

Agence Française de Développement
Meeting the AFD top officials, Marape also touched on a crucial strategic development project in Rabaul in the East New Britain province, which is described as a “green port” project supported under the EU’s “Global Gateway” scheme.

The target would be for Rabaul to turn into a regional import-export hub, supporting cocoa, fisheries, sustainable timber, tourism, manufacturing and downstream processing.

At an estimated cost of over 80 million euros (about NZ$159 million), the project includes developments in terms of wharves, storage facilities, export-focused fish processing infrastructure, waste and wastewater systems, emissions reduction and port resilience measures.

From the total cost, AFD is proposing to fund 24 million euros.

The rest would come from the European Investment Bank (24 million euros) and from an EU grant (16.6 million euros).

Other projects supported by AFD include the “SONG” project (“Solwara Na Graun blo pipol”), which supports the conservation and sustainable management of forest and marine ecosystems through the establishment of marine and terrestrial protected areas, a major issue for PNG and the region.

The other project is a Green finance scheme to support the region’s green transition and provide better protection against climate change risks.

EU economic forum
Once the funding is finalised, a loan agreement is to be signed between France and Papua New Guinea during the European Union Economic Forum in Port Moresby on 2-3 June 2026, the AFD said.

During his visit in France, Marape said: “France is an important partner in the Pacific, and Papua New Guinea values this evolving relationship as we work together on shared regional priorities, including security, sustainable development, and economic growth”.

France is also a key player in PNG’s Natural Liquefied Gas (LNG) industry, through its company TotalEnergies.

The TOTAL LNG project is estimated to be worth some US$10-12 billion in development value, with and expected yearly output capacity of 5.6 million tonnes once operational.

In terms of security and defence relations, French and PNG armed forces have signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2022.

Since then, PNG forces are regularly taking part in French-hosted military and disaster-related humanitarian relief exercises and simulations, including in New Caledonia (with the New Caledonian Armed Forces, the FANC, and other neighbouring Pacific islands military personnel), French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna.

Over the past 10 years, France has increased its engagement in the Pacific, where strategic competition grows across the region, including in the form of a struggle for influence between the United States and China.

Through New Caledonia and French Polynesia, France holds one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones and maintains a permanent military presence in the region.

Birds of paradise show
Coincidentally, the Paris Musée du Quai Branly — Jacques Chirac, which is largely dedicated to first peoples and Pacific islands cultures, has inaugurated earlier this month an exhibition named “Plumes of Paradise: Journeys of an Extraordinary Bird from New Guinea”.

The exhibition lasts until 8 November 2026.

It focuses on the multiple representations of PNG’s iconic bird, including the use of its feathers and the influence it had on European cultures.

The exhibition features almost 200 pieces of birds of paradise feather-based art works (jewellery, paintings, stuffed specimens, fashion items and accessories).

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

ANALYSIS: By Professor Stuart Rees

If bullies notice that no one intervenes to stop their behaviour, they may interpret such non-intervention as permission to continue bullying.

For years, the same process has operated in relation to the thuggery of Israel’s Netanyahu government, and in that respect, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s abuse of detainees from the Gaza international aid flotilla was no surprise.

Suddenly, even the Australian government — and New Zealand — condemned the abuse meted out to hundreds of humanitarian activists, but that condemnation was too little too late.

• READ MORE: Uncertainty persists as Trump says Iran deal not ‘fully negotiated’
• Other Gaza flotilla human rights reports

The first measure concerns politicians’ and journalists’ reluctance to question Israeli spokespersons’ claims that they and their army operate according to the highest moral standards.

The second concerns the failure to hold Israel accountable to the rules of international law.

This culture of non-accountability, coupled with acceptance of Israel’s false claims, reappeared when 430 sailors from 40 different countries were taken into Israel’s detention, forced to kneel with their hands zip-tied behind their backs while the Israeli national anthem played and Ben-Gvir taunted them.

On ABC television’s 7:30 Report, the Israeli Ambassador to Australia repeated that Israeli forces had boarded the flotilla with “great sensitivity”. He assured listeners there would be no ill-treatment of the detainees.

Litany of Israeli lies
His claims followed a litany of lies.

In the Gaza slaughter, Israeli military spokespersons insisted they would not harm civilians, Palestinians were allegedly not short of food, and the bombing of hospitals, schools and so-called safe houses was justified by claims that these were all sites of Hamas operations.

The adjective ‘Hamas’ is used to stigmatise anyone who opposes Israeli actions.

Ben-Gvir and others labelled participants in the humanitarian aid flotilla “Hamas terrorist supporters”. This all-purpose label apparently explains terrorism, but even regarding a slaughter of innocents in Gaza, on the West Bank and in Lebanon, few politicians have asked, “whose terrorism are you referring to?”

Government-sanctioned brutality
Israeli officials claimed that no flotilla detainees were harmed, but a video showed detainees being abused in Israeli captivity, and returning Australian detainees reported experiences of violence and sexual abuse.

The Israeli legal rights centre Adalah reported “systemic violations of due process and widespread physical and psychological abuse by Israeli authorities”.

The same organisation said, “at least three people [from the flotilla] required hospitalisation due to injuries such as rib fractures and breathing difficulties”, each incident raising questions about the Israeli Australian Ambassador’s assertion that Israeli forces showed “great sensitivity”.

It is predictable that governments would be reluctant to ask whether Israel’s attacks on the international aid flotilla could be justified in international law.

In relation to other Israeli killing sprees, governments have treated international law as of no consequence.

The 1948 Genocide Convention identified genocide as a crime and obliged signatory governments to prevent such actions and to punish perpetrators. These obligations have been ignored. Neither has action been taken to obey the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 ruling that Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal and should end immediately.

Israel insists that theirs is a lawful blockade of Gaza, but Western governments, having never used their navies to escort small boat flotillas to the shores of Gaza, have colluded with this claim.

Under what circumstances can a country that illegally occupies another’s waters be entitled to enforce a blockade?

The United Nations has described the Israeli blockade of Gaza as a “direct contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law”. Don Rothwell, professor of international law at the Australian National University (ANU), concludes “there has been no legal basis for Israel to enforce a blockade off the coast of Cyprus (within 200 miles of Gaza), yet under international law an exception to a blockade exists for the provision of humanitarian aid to a civilian population”.

Western facilitators
Ben-Gvir’s bullying had been practised for years, but who cared if it was exercised at the expense of Palestinians?

Now, however, international human rights activists have been abused. In response, previously silent commentators have rediscovered their principles and expressed outrage.

The chances of that outrage leading to a revival of respect for international law appear to depend on governments admitting that

the Ben-Gvir abuse was a feature of overall Israeli state violence towards Palestinians,

a policy facilitated by Western democracies.

Ben-Gvir’s treatment of the flotilla detainees was the tip of an iceberg. The UN’s February 2026 Report concluded that the Israeli prison system had degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty.

The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem published its 2026 paper, “Welcome to Hell: the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps.”

Abuse of Palestinians, mostly in secret, had been reported but elicited nothing like the outrage expressed about the treatment of the flotilla crews.

The UN reported that as minister responsible for Israeli prisons, Ben-Gvir had institutionalised torture, collective punishment and dehumanising conditions. Abuse of detainees included rape with bottles, metal rods, and knives, starvation, breaking of bones and teeth, burning, being spat upon, being attacked and urinated upon by dogs.

Courage betrayed
In total contrast to that bestiality, 430 courageous individuals sailed to Gaza, motivated by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and by feeling betrayed by governments that had not intervened in the genocide in Palestine and stayed silent when Israeli forces boarded the flotilla.

Parents of those detainees have condemned governments for a failure to intervene.

But a failure to stop ethnic cleansing, stealing of lands and eventually a genocide had been underway for years, long before October 2023. Throughout those decades, the victims were a stigmatised “other”, so international humanitarian law could be ignored, and Israel and the US were given assurance that murder and mayhem in Palestine and Lebanon should continue.

Ben-Gvir noticed governments’ collusion with slaughter in Gaza and would have taken silence about the boarding of the flotilla as similar to Western collusion with death and destruction in Gaza, and with silence about the extent of cruelty in Israeli prisons.

Abuse of the gutsy flotilla crews has prompted outrage, but that protest has been far too little and far too late.

Moana Pasifika’s head coach Fa’alogo Tana Umaga says they are still hopeful the team continue on in Super Rugby Pacific in 2027.

Speaking at the post-match press conference following Saturday’s clash against the Reds in North Harbour, Fa’alogo said there had been discussions last week between the Moana Pasifika management and team.

“Even this week there was a meeting around what the future looks like. There’s some certainty but not a lot.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific rugby reports

“We always stay hopeful. Who would have thought I would get a job after this but I got one. I had actually given up hope on that.

“So, if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone.”

RNZ Pacific has been told that there are at least two organisations which had shown interest in securing the licence from Pasifika Medical Association (PMA), after it announced last month the club would be disbanded.

One of the bidders is Kanaloa Consortium, which are based in Hawai’i and Auckland.

Pasifika consortium
The consortium is backed by a number of Pasifika heritage former All Black players that includes Joe Rokocoko, Ben Atiga, John Afoa, Anthony Tuitavake and Jerome Kaino.

Kanaloa’s CEO Tracy Atiga confirmed last week they haD sent in their proposal, as per requirements of New Zealand Rugby, and were awaiting an update.

New Zealand Rugby has remained tight-lipped on who the bidders are but said they had opened the process to all bidders.

RNZ Pacific has requested NZ Rugby for an update on what the process now includes and when an announcement would be expected on Moana Pasifika’s future.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

In 2015, the John Key government announced a cooperation agreement that would see NZ Aid pay for Cuban doctors to be taught English in New Zealand before their deployment to the Pacific Islands as part of the communist island’s Medical Brigades.

Cuba, a country of just 11 million people that has been under continuous US economic sanctions since 1962, has sent more than 400,000 healthcare professionals to 155 countries over the last six and a half decades.

Since 1960, when an earthquake devastated Valdivia in Chile, Cuban doctors have been on the frontlines of medical emergencies around the globe.

• READ MORE: Other Cuban reports

They were there for the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami, in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, in Africa during the Ebola outbreak, in South Africa for the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, and Italy during the outbreak of covid.

In any given year the country has had more health professionals working in aid programmes abroad than the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the UK combined.

The National government and Cuba were unlikely bedfellows. The conservative party’s founding constitution in 1936 committed it to combating communism and socialism.

But the communist nation’s medical assistance programme has been a spectacular success when it comes to providing healthcare to those most in need, and the cooperation agreement was a concrete acknowledgement of that.

Soft power, hard currency
Cuba’s overseas doctors programme is both an exercise in what is sometimes called soft power and a source of desperately needed hard currency.

Economists are divided over whether the US dollar’s status as the global reserve currency is an “exorbitant privilege” but there’s no debate over the power it gives the US government to inflict economic devastation on its perceived enemies.

Last year, the medical journal The Lancet published an article that found that economic sanctions — the majority being unilateral imposed by the US — had caused more than 560,000 deaths every year between 2010 – 2021.

In total, the study attributes 38 million deaths – half of them children – to sanctions since 1970.

No country on earth has been under US sanctions for longer than Cuba. A 1958 arms embargo was expanded to include all goods four years later.

The laws and regulations governing the embargo have been described as the “oldest and most comprehensive US economic sanctions against any country in the world.”

Cuba not only survived those sanctions, but its commitment to investing in healthcare at home saw it achieve lower infant mortality rates over a sustained period than the US, while matching it for life expectancy.

Massively impressive
To describe that as impressive is to massively understate the achievement. Life expectancy and low infant mortality normally correlate very closely with a country’s relative wealth.

The US’s GDP per capita has been about eight times that of Cuba for decades.

During the Cold War, trade with the communist bloc helped insulate Cuba from the full impacts of the embargo. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw the island nation facing catastrophic shortages of oil, food and basic goods.

A deal struck between Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, in 2000, to swap Venezuelan oil for Cuban medical professionals was critical to the island nation surviving the crippling US sanctions regime.

That ended with the US’s imposition of a maritime blockade of Venezuela following its “arrest” — kidnapping is a more accurate term — of its president, Nicolas Maduro, in January of this year.

The longest running US sanctions regime in history has become a near total siege resulting in a devastating health crisis.

The UN reports that more than 100,000 patients are awaiting surgeries due to power outages.

“Shortages of electricity, fuel, medicine and medical supplies are severely disrupting emergency care, blood banks, laboratories, immunisation programmes and maternal and child health services.”

Blackouts lasting up to 20 hours have forced hospitals to suspend non-emergency operations. There’s no fuel for ambulances or private cars, so people struggle to get to health services even in an emergency.

Infant mortality has doubled to 9.9 deaths per 1000 live births. At least half of those deaths are directly attributable to US sanctions.

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Cuba a “severe national security threat” due to its military ties to China and Russia. (The US has around 800 military bases in 80 different countries. Neither China nor Russia has a base in Cuba although both are said to have spy facilities — presumably not unlike the ones the US has in New Zealand and Australia.)

And in an effort to illustrate the “heinous nature” of the Cuban government, the US last week issued an arrest warrant for its former Defence Minister, 94-year-old Raul Castro, for the 1996 shooting down of two civilian planes off the coast of Cuba.

The planes were flown by the Brothers of the Rescue, a group that both rescued Cubans attempting to flee the island and dropped anti-government leaflets over Havana.

The then President, Fidel Castro, declared the planes a threat to Cuba’s national security.

Many would take issue with that claim, but it is surely as credible as the US claim that the 57 boats it has sunk in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean since September last year, killing 194 people, were a threat to US national security.

The US accuses Cuba of human rights abuses, including those of medical brigade doctors who it says are victims of human trafficking and forced labour.

This would make Cuban doctors, surely, the only victims of forced labour anywhere to be given a free tertiary education before being trafficked to jobs paying significantly more than if they stayed at home.

(The American Civil Liberties Union has estimated that around 800,000 prisoners in the US produce more than $11 billion in goods while being paid just pennies an hour.)

None of the US’s explanations/accusations can be taken seriously. So, what else could be driving the ramping up of its decades old campaign to topple the Cuban government?

Noam Chomsky called it “the threat of the good example.” A poor country showing it’s possible to redistribute resources and defy Western dominance is simply unacceptable and must be crushed.

One showing that, for a fraction of the cost of what most Western countries spend on “defence,” it can be a superpower in the supply of medical assistance to the Global South is it seems doubly unacceptable.

And then there’s the threat to the bottom-line of US corporations.

ExxonMobil is currently before the courts seeking $1 billion in compensation for the nationalisation of its refineries in 1959.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a US company — Havana Docks Corporation — that claims its waterfront property had been seized by the Cuban government in 1960. It will likely open the floodgates to similar claims.

In 1971, the government commission that first certified that the Havana Dock Corporation’s property had been unlawfully confiscated did the same for 6000 other companies with “legitimate” claims to property worth a combined $1.9 billion ($9.3 billion in today’s term).

Every year for the last three decades, New Zealand and Australia have joined a large majority of UN General Assembly member states in voting for a non-binding resolution demanding an end to the US blockade. (Last year’s vote was opposed by the US, Israel, Argentina, Paraguay, North Macedonia and Ukraine.)

But as that blockade is being tightened to the point of catastrophe, and with the US threating an armed invasion both governments have remained mute.

It’s shameful. Doubly so given that New Zealand’s last National government acknowledged Cuba’s contribution to the alleviation of suffering caused by poverty and scarcity with its cooperation agreement.

The people of Cuba are now suffering unprecedented poverty brought on by scarcity due to an entirely man-made disaster. We know who the culprits are, but not only do our governments remain silent, they continue to be slavishly committed to military cooperation and integration with one of the world’s leading enablers and purveyors of violence.

• Our governments may be silent but civil society isn’t. Here’s a link to an international petition and a NZ one. To keep up with what’s happening in Cuba and solidarity actions in Aotearoa follow the New Zealand Cuba Friendship Society on Facebook.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based freelance journalist. You can follow him on his Substack Towards Democracy.

Securing essential healthcare services for US military veterans from three North Pacific nations remains a persistent challenge.

Despite the US Congress specifically authorising in-country services by the US Veterans Administration for veterans of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), and Palau, the Trump administration over a year ago suspended ongoing talks to implement services.

All three island nations have been lobbying for years to get action for their hundreds of military veterans who, unlike American veterans, do not have easy, or any, access to Veterans Administration services — unless they move to the United States.

• READ MORE: Other US Pacific military veterans’ health care reports

Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Kalani Kaneko, himself a US Army veteran, has been at the forefront of pushing US authorities to begin implementing healthcare for island veterans.

“Most importantly, the Compact legislation approved by the United States Congress specifically mandates the provision of VA services to the Freely Associated States,” he said in an interview this week.

“This was not intended to be a symbolic commitment, but a practical obligation reflecting the unique relationship between our nations,” Kaneko said.

Islanders from the three Freely Associated States (FAS) are allowed by the treaties with the US to enlist in the US Armed Forces and do so at per capita rates generally higher than those of Americans.

‘Served honourably’
“Marshallese citizens have served honourably in the United States Armed Forces for generations, often at one of the highest per-capita rates of military service in the world,” Kaneko said.

“The United States military continues to recruit in the Marshall Islands, and with that recruitment comes a shared responsibility to ensure veterans can access the care and benefits they earned through their service.”

Kaneko said the discussions that the Veterans Administration halted over a year ago have not yet started.

“Formal discussions have not fully resumed, and we have not yet received a definitive timeline from the US government regarding next steps,” he said. But, he added, the government was continuing to advocate for its veterans “to ensure this issue remains a priority.”

In comments issued last month to the US Government Accountability Office, FSM’s ambassador to the US, Jackson Soram, said based on the US Congress-approved Compact legislation, the “Freely Associated States had been in dialogue with the Veterans Administration on increased access to healthcare for FAS veterans”.

“In April 2025, after negotiations were underway, the Department of Veterans Affairs unexpectedly suspended the discussions that had been authorised by the US Congress.”

Soram said all three FAS governments want to resume discussions on this. “This is a fundamentally important goal of the FAS,” Soram added.

Kaneko confirms this sentiment.

‘Serious concerns’
“The RMI continues to engage the United States government regarding the implementation of VA services under the 2023 Amended Compact,” Kaneko said.

“Late March this year, Senator Wilbur Heine and I led an RMI delegation to Washington, DC to meet directly with officials from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and other relevant US agencies to address this issue and several other Compact implementation concerns affecting our people.

“During those discussions, we expressed our serious concerns regarding the continued delay in delivering VA services to veterans residing in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

“The VHA proposed that eligible veterans in the RMI utilize the VA Foreign Medical Program, which allows veterans living abroad to access reimbursement for certain covered medical care received in foreign countries.

“However, we made clear that this approach does not adequately address the realities on the ground in the Marshall Islands.”

Kaneko emphasised the point that the RMI’s healthcare system “lacks many of the specialised services, medical expertise, and support systems required to meet the unique needs of veterans, particularly those with service-related conditions.

“If these services already existed locally, our veterans would not be forced to travel abroad or continue facing significant barriers to care.”

‘Remains firm’
Kaneko said the Marshall Islands “remains firm in its position that veterans residing in the RMI deserve meaningful and accessible VA services consistent with both the letter and spirit of the Compact.

Kaneko was a recruiter for the US Army for much of his time in the military and expresses a feeling of personal responsibility about the provision of healthcare services.

“As a retired US Army soldier who personally recruited many Marshallese men and women into military service, this issue is deeply personal to me,” he said.

“Our government will not sit idle while our veterans continue to face barriers to the benefits they were promised and earned through sacrifice and service.

“This is not simply a policy matter; it is a matter of trust, fairness, and honouring the enduring partnership between the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the United States.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

An emotional and inspiring welcome greeted two of Aotearoa New Zealand’s three Gaza Sumud Flotilla humanitarian activists who arrived home today after their ordeal at the hands of the brutal Israeli military and prison forces last week.

About 60 whānau, supporters and well-wishers greeted Hāhona Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto), 56, and Mousa Taher, 39, with a waiata and haka.

A large banner among the Palestinian flags at Auckland International Airport declared “Nau mai ki te kainga e Hāhona korua ko Mousa — Free Palestine” (“Welcome home, Hāhona, you and Mousa”).

• READ MORE: Andy Worthington: The startling severity of Gaza flotilla activists’ rape allegations
• Wong’s muted response to Ben-Gvir’s video raises serious questions
• Peters condemns Israeli minister over flotilla video as 3 Kiwis detained
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

Another banner said, “We stand together from Aotearoa to Gaza — Global Sumud Flotilla — Free Palestine”.

The returning activists were among about 430 humanitarians from 43 countries trying to break the illegal blockade who were kidnapped, abused and abducted to Israel on “torture ships”.

Most were tortured and beaten, stirring global outrage, and Ormsby was seen to be walking today with a limp at Auckland International Airport.

The third New Zealand activist, Julien Blondel, 47, was not on this flight. His battered face was featured in several reports about an Israeli military raid on the flotilla last month.

Government ministers for several countries have accused Israel of “inhumane treatment” and “unacceptable” brutal behaviour over the abducted activists.

A video posted on social media by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir last week showed him taunting the activists as they were zip-tied and forced to kneel under threat after being detained by the Israeli forces in international waters.

This video was widely condemned, including by New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters who said in a statement:

‘Travel ban on Ben-Gvir’
“Last year, New Zealand placed a travel ban on Minister Ben-Gvir for severely and deliberately undermining peace and security and removing prospects for a two state solution.”

However, a Palestinian researcher has criticised the “weak responses” of Australia and New Zealand over the “detention and humiliation”.

Writing in the Sydney-based Green Left magazine, Shamikh Badra said the abuse and torture by Israel not only revealed Tel Aviv’s approach to the Gaza enclave, it raised questions about Australia’s “response to an ally which is responsible for genocide”.

The Ben-Gvir video footage showed that hundreds of detained activists from various countries — including 11 Australians and three New Zealanders — were forced to kneel with their hands restrained behind their backs while Ben-Gvir walked past mocking them.

Among the peace activists were doctors, students, academics and filmmakers.

“The flotilla had again been attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, and challenge the illegal blockade,” wrote Badra, who is originally from Gaza and is a convener of the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine.

He is also a PhD candidate at the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong.

“They were again intercepted illegally in international waters, but the outcry at their treatment has only come after Ben-Gvir’s public humiliation.

‘Public display of Israeli state power’
“Ben-Gvir’s video was not just about controlling the detainees; it was a public display of the Israeli state’s power,” wrote Badra.

“The forced kneeling, restraints and ridicule were part of a political performance designed to send a wider message: Israel will stop all attempts to challenge the blockade of Gaza.

“Some detainees were restrained with plastic ties; others were forced to kneel while the Israeli national anthem played through loudspeakers. This was a deliberate display of domination.

“They report that they were sexually abused, punched, tasered and kept in inhumane conditions.”

Basic humanitarian law meant that even in situations involving detention or maritime interception, civilians must be protected, wrote Badra.

“This is why European officials, the first to speak out, described the scenes as degrading and unacceptable.”

‘Shocking’ but restrained response
As with New Zealand’s Minister Peters, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong followed suit, saying the footage was “shocking and unacceptable”.

“However there is another broader issue — Wong’s restrained response,” wrote Badra.

“The Benjamin Netanyahu government, of which Ben-Gvir is a senior minister, is one of the [Australian] Labor government’s closest strategic partners.

“Australia’s foreign policy is supposed to be framed around protecting human rights, opposition to arbitrary detention and the defence of its citizens overseas.

“If Israel knows that international reactions are likely to be limited to statements of concern, rather than military sanctions and political isolation, the cost to it of mistreating flotilla activists is marginal.

“But perhaps Ben-Gvir has done us a favour by revealing how Israel treats supporters of Palestine. The flotilla activists’ accounts of their abuse, and the abuse they saw meted out to Palestinian prisoners, don’t leave much to the imagination.”

Shame on the Basque police @ertzaintzaEJGV for brutalising Flotilla members returning home after being abducted, unlawfully detained and ill-treated by Israel. May those responsible be held accountable.

We must resist the Israelisation of our societies. https://t.co/HzaOANaMLf

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 24, 2026

It’s a sign of Israel’s swaggering sense of impunity, and of the grotesque depravity at the heart of their notions of supremacy, that their soldiers and those in charge of them thought that they could get away with inflicting severe physical abuse on the 430 members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, from 45 countries, who were illegally intercepted at sea, in international waters, and then, over two days, were abused on Israeli ships located nearby.

They were then illegally brought to Israel to face further abuse under the watch of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the terrorist thug serving as the Minister of National Security, who caused global outrage when he posted a video of himself and his soldiers bullying and humiliating detained activists in his custody.

As Reuters reported in an article entitled, “Freed Gaza flotilla activists allege Israeli abuse including rape”, the flotilla’s organisers said that activists released from Israeli custody after being detained “were subjected to abuse, with several hospitalised with injuries, and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.”

• READ MORE: ‘More horrific than Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo’: The unsalvageable depravity of Israel’s prisons for Palestinians
• Flotilla activists tasered, sedated, sexually assaulted – Israeli prison service claims brutal abuse ‘justified’
• ‘It’s worse for Palestinians,’ says Australian flotilla activist about Israeli torture
• Shameen Suleman: Outrage over the flotilla activists but where were they for Palestinians?
• Israel’s $700m Hasbara fiasco – how Ben-Gvir’s flotilla abuse video stirred backlash
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

A spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service stated, “The allegations raised are false and entirely without factual basis”, and Reuters noted that it “was not able to verify them independently”, but why would anyone believe the Israelis, when so many of those released were photographed with visible signs of abuse, including severe bruising, and what appear to be burn marks?

Because the Israelis lied about the evident signs of physical abuse, why is it plausible to suggest that claims of sexual assault, and even of rape, are somehow implausible?

Both have been reported widely in Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, and have even been celebrated in the case of five soldiers caught on video raping a Palestinian prisoner in the notorious Sde Teiman prison, who later had to be treated for the most severe internal injuries.

Why, we have to ask, did those directing the soldiers think that they would get away with their actions, when it was obvious that, on their release, the detained activists would be able to publicly show the signs of the abuse to which they were subjected, and, very possibly, would be able to undergo medical examinations to verify the claims by some that they were subjected to sexual assault and rape?

As Reuters described it, “A German Foreign Ministry ⁠spokesperson said consular officials who met German activists on their arrival in Istanbul reported that a number had injuries and were undergoing medical checks”, and stated, “We naturally expect a full explanation, as some of the allegations that have been made are serious.”

Prosecutors investigate kidnapping, torture crimes
In Italy, meanwhile, prosecutors in Rome “are investigating ​the possible crimes of kidnapping, torture and sexual assault and will hear testimony from activists who have returned to Italy over the coming days”, according to an Italian ​legal source.

As Reuters explained, the organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla “had documented at least 15 cases of sexual abuse, with the worst occurring on one Israeli landing ​craft which had been converted into a makeshift prison with barbed wire and shipping containers”.

There, according to the organisers, they “were thrown into the containers and beaten over the head and ribs.” They also reportedly “suffered multiple cases of sexual abuse, including ‘humiliating strip searches, sexual taunting, groping and pulling of genitals’”, and there were “multiple accounts of rape.”

“At least 12 sexual assaults have been documented on that vessel alone, including anal rape and forcible penetration by a handgun”, the group added.

Sabrina Charik, who helped organise the return of 37 French citizens from the flotilla, told Reuters that “five French participants had been hospitalised in Turkey, some with broken ribs or fractured vertebrae”, and that some of them “had made detailed accusations of sexual violence, ⁠including of rape.”

Reuters explained how Mi Hoa Lee, an activist from Spain, “​said she was forced into the darkened container on the ship, according to a video interview included with the flotilla’s statement.” She said, “Four men started beating me in the face against the wall, and I fell down and then stood up again, again ‌to the floor, ⁠stood up again, and they started tasering me for more than one minute.

In the video, she “point[ed] to her ribcage, hips and back where she said they applied the taser.”

“Then”, she added, “they kept beating me until I almost lost consciousness.”

Two ‘prison ships’
Ilaria Mancosu, an Italian activist, told Reuters that “the flotilla members were removed from their boats to two so-called prison ships”, and that “those put on one of the ships suffered more violence than the other.”

As she described it, “They were locked in a container and beaten by five soldiers, suffering fractures to the ribs and arms. Some had serious injuries to their eyes and ears caused by tasers.”

She added that “they spent two days on the prison ships with no ​running water and used cardboard and plastic to keep warm ​at night, since they had no blankets and ⁠were stripped of most of their clothes.

Once on land they were made to kneel for several hours and kicked and shoved if they moved or spoke. They were then taken to a prison where they were moved from room to room periodically to keep them from sleeping.”

According to Reuters, the Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that he had been in touch with all his EU counterparts “so that there may be a quick ​decision to impose sanctions” on Itamar Ben-Gvir

But the problem with this is that, while Ben-Gvir was swaggeringly and demonstrably the face of this abuse, he is not a rogue element or a “bad apple” but an Israeli government minister who is openly showing the world not only how Israel treats Palestinians, but how, given a chance, it treats anyone, anywhere who opposes its genocidal supremacism in any way.

Andy Worthington is an UK investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. He is an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror”. This commentary was first published on his Facebook page.

Pesta Babi (Pig feast), the controversial Papuan documentary film critical of a major development project impacting on the environment in the southeastern Melanesian region, is stirring public debate and a “crackdown” across Indonesia.

The film caused a stir when it had its premiere in New Zealand in March and was described in a review by Asia Pacific Report as “exposing oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under the noses of the military”.

Screenings followed in Australia but there have been reports of a backlash in some parts of Indonesia and some public shows being shut down.

• READ MORE: West Papuan doco Pig Feast exposes oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under noses of military
• Army chief denies direct central command over Pesta Babi film crackdown
• Other Pesta Babi reports

However, the Indonesian military denied they were responsible for the crackdown, blaming some local authorities.

An Al Jazeera television report said Indonesian authorities had shut down several screenings of the documentary about alleged human rights abuses in Papua, including Indigenous land seizures.

It noted that human rights groups and international media still faced restricted access to the Papuan region, which is mainly referred to as “West Papua” in Pacific countries.

Pesta Babi is focused on the largest forest conversion project in modern history in a remote are near Merauke — turning 2.5 million ha of tropical forest into industrial plantations under the guise of “food security” and the “energy transition”.

Footage of village resistance
Dramatic footage of scenes show Indigenous village resisters against the massive destruction of rainforest in one of the three largest “lungs of the world”, shipping of barge-loads of heavy machinery, vast swathes of forest scoured out for rice and palm oil plantations, and of a traditional “pig feast” — the first in a decade.

Papuan environmental film ‘blocked’                       Video: Al Jazeera

In an editorial last week, The Jakarta Post said: “A series of crackdowns on public screenings and discussions of the documentary film Pesta Babi (Pig Feast) serves as a grim reminder that the nation’s democratic progress is not only stalling but effectively backsliding.”

Indnesian Army Chief-of-Staff General Maruli Simanjuntak said there had been “no direct instructions from the central military command to shut down public screenings of the documentary film Pesta Babi: Kolonialisme di Zaman Kita (Pig Party: Colonialism in Our Era).

“The shutdowns came from local administrations to maintain regional safety,” he said at the House of Representatives in Jakarta, according to antaranews.com.

“It is the responsibility of the regional coordinator … who deemed there was a risk of rioting. There was no direct instruction.”

Coordinating Minister for Legal and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra described the title of the film as “provocative” but denied there was a formal ban on screening it.

‘Important educational film’
Jubi News reports from Manokwari, West Papua, that a member of Indonesia’s Regional Representative Council (DPD RI) for West Papua, Filep Wamafma, welcomed the documentary as an “important educational medium” to open public discussion about development issues facing Papuans.

Wamafma said this after attending a public screening of the documentary at the School of Law (STIH) campus in Wosi, Manokwari Regency, last Monday.

The screening was organised by the academic community from Manokwari School of Law in collaboration with academics from Universitas Papua. Participants included students, lecturers, activists, and members of the public.

Wamafma said social conflicts arising from competition over natural resources and economic interests occured not only in Papua but also in many parts of the world.

However, he stressed that Papua’s problems had “unique characteristics” needing serious attention.

“This is a real global phenomenon, but each region has different problems. This film provides a concrete picture of the issues currently faced by Papuan society,” Wamafma said.

He encouraged students, especially law students, to approach the issues raised in the documentary through academic and constitutional perspectives.

Students, he said, should develop systematic analytical thinking by examining facts, legal norms, conducting analysis, and drawing conclusions.

The documentary has been made by award-winning investigative filmmaker Dandhy Dwi Laksono and producer Victor Mambor, founder of Jubi Media, who first visited New Zealand 12 years ago.

• Pesta Babi film review

Activists freed from Israeli detention following the interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla have reported that they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, say flotilla organisers — with at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.

“At least 15 cases of sexual assaults, including rape. Shot with rubber bullets at close range. Tens of people’s bones broken,” organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla posted on Telegram.

“While the world’s eye is trained on the suffering of our participants, we cannot emphasize enough that this is a mere glimpse of the brutality Israel imposes daily on Palestinian hostages,” the statement added.

• READ MORE: ‘It’s worse for Palestinians,’ says Australian flotilla activist about Israeli torture
• Gaza flotilla activists allege abuse, sexual assault in Israeli detention
• Shameen Suleman: Outrage over the flotilla activists but where were they for Palestinians?
• Israel’s $700m Hasbara fiasco – how Ben-Gvir’s flotilla abuse video stirred backlash
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

The reports come after the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) on Wednesday doubled down on its abusive treatment of activists forcibly detained, despite scores of testimonies detailing beatings, interrogation and humiliation as well as rape and sexual abuse.

The IPS responded to a barrage of global criticism after a video showed far-right Israel National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir taunting the flotilla detainees as they were being handcuffed, pushed, dragged and assaulted.

A group of Australian citizens were kidnapped on international waters and beaten senseless on camera by their captors – Israel

The most prominent Israel advocate in Australia – Jillian Segal – has so far said nothing about the welfare of her fellow Australian citizens nor… pic.twitter.com/deibOB3nhC

— RonniSalt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne (@RonniSalt) May 23, 2026

“Upon receiving the detainees, the prison guards were required to act to maintain order and security at the site. All actions were carried out in accordance with procedures and professional considerations,” the IPS claimed.

The IPS also claimed that some of the detainees being shown in widely circulating videos were “not under the responsibility” of the IPS when they were being filmed.

Rights groups say abuse ‘systematic’
However, rights groups have accused Israel of making humiliation, sexual abuse and torture of detainees and prisoners systematic.

Dr Mimi Syed, a US-based physician who volunteered in Gaza amid Israel’s war on the besieged enclave, told The New Arab that Israel’s treatment of those aboard the flotilla is illegal.

“You cannot treat activists and humanitarian workers this way. It’s absolutely outrageous how there’s witnesses saying that people were raped and obvious signs of force being used — I saw some of the photos of the activists which show signs of bruising and fractures, things like that which are absolutely unnecessary,” she said.

“There is video recording of officials deliberately assaulting some of these activists which is just unheard of.

“I’m not surprised as this is something the Israeli government has been doing to civilians in Gaza, so doing to activists in other countries is still right on par with what they have demonstrated to the world in the last two and a half years,” she said.

Several photos and videos shared this week on social media showed flotilla activists being forced to kneel down with their heads on the ground, while Israeli prison officers are surrounding them.

The footage, some of which was shared by minister Ben-Gvir, was condemned by several states, while Poland, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK summoned Israeli ambassadors to “clarify” why their citizens were mistreated.

‘Complete impunity’
The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz asked the country’s foreign ministry if the treatment of the flotilla activists was acceptable, but there was no response.

“When a country has complete impunity to do what they want, nothing really is out of bounds for them,” Dr Syed said.

“They will do what they need to achieve their goal which is a land grab, ethnic cleansing, genocide, the displacement of millions of people. It’s not just in Gaza, it’s in the West Bank and Lebanon.”

Activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, who were taken to Istanbul before returning to their countries, also revealed on Friday that the abuse they faced included rubber bullets being fired at close range, tasers to the face, stun grenades thrown into groups of people, stress positions for hours under bright lights, the forced removal of hijabs and sexual taunting.

They said the sexual violence included strip searches, groping, the pulling of genitals, and rape.

According to organisers, based on testimonies from those released from detention, some of the most horrifying accounts come from those aboard a single vessel, dubbed “torture boat”.

“I can say that all were in many ways abused, not one single person walking with nothing,” Veronica Otero, told reporters.

“Among them there were 36 fractures, many broken ribs, torso, shoulders, and back. People were in agony. People were not breathing [due to the broken ribs].”

Testimonies of abuse, rape
More than 50 boats took part in the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), with 430 people on board from more than 40 countries, and since armed Israeli naval commandos began intercepting the fleet in international waters, many have detailed the abuse they faced.

One Australian activist, Zack Schofield, who had since been deported to Istanbul and has now returned to Australia, said all the members of the flotilla were treated brutally.

“Her hands [and] feet were zip-tied together, and then she was dragged around the rest of the processing centre, before she was taken into a prison bus,” he told reporters, referring to an abused Irish woman who was part of the flotilla group.

“There’s no consistency to the violence. It was really at the whim of whichever guard was in front of you,” he continued, adding that he saw many people receive similar or worse treatment.

Juliet Lamont, a filmmaker from Australia, said Israeli soldiers sexually assaulted and beat her, noting she witnessed others — at least 40 — being left with broken bones, while others were sedated and tasered.

The activists said prison guards restricted access to food and water, and were left to sleep on cold, wet floors for days with no mattress or blankets, in cramped conditions.

We do not need any more examples to know that we are dealing with a terrorist state! There is a long, documented history of systemic violence perpetrated by the Israeli regime against the Palestinian people with absolute impunity. pic.twitter.com/JIPvZf2Rqp

— Thiago Ávila (@thiagoavilabr) May 23, 2026

Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila told The New Arab he was beaten unconscious and Israeli forces threatened to kill him.

Meanwhile, Luca Poggi, an Italian economist who was aboard the flotilla, confirmed the reports of sexual abuse: “We were stripped, thrown to the ground, kicked.

“Many of us were tasered, some were sexually assaulted, and some were denied access to a lawyer,” he told reporters after he was deported to Rome.

Nadda Osman is a British-Egyptian journalist and editor based in London. She holds a degree in English and journalism and reports on the Middle East and North Africa. Republished from The New Arab.

• Australian members of the Gaza flotilla arrived back home today and told news media of their abuse. Two of the three New Zealand members of the flotilla are due to arrive back in Auckland early tomorrow afternoon.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Richard Chambers says Pacific Island nations are addressing corruption among their police and customs officials.

Chambers has concluded a trip to Suva, Fiji, for the inaugural Pacific Transnational Crime Summit, which brought together Pacific police chiefs, ministers and prime ministers to discuss what is now a “destination market” for drugs and human trafficking.

He said there was a willingness among police chiefs, most of whom are dealing with corruption in their ranks, to discuss these issues with humility.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji crime reports

“We appreciate that it’s pretty hard sometimes to turn down an offer of a large sum of money when the incomes that many police staff earn aren’t great,” Chambers said.

“New Zealand will support our Pacific neighbours when it comes to particular problems, and that’s not new; we’ve done that for many years.”

New Zealand Police have confirmed their involvement in a six-month investigation into 11 Fiji police officers who were allegedly involved with Auckland-based drug dealers.

The investigation followed a leak of more than 100 text screenshots depicting officers accepting bribes and tipping people off about impending raids.

No specifics
Chambers refused to provide any specifics about that case or any others in which New Zealand may be involved.

However, he said that he had “absolute trust” in the Fiji Police Force and its Commissioner, Rusiate Tudravu.

“He talks quite openly about the challenges that he’s encountered as the commissioner there, and what he’s doing to stamp it out,” Chambers said.

“I’ve been a police officer for 30 years, and over that time I’ve done a lot of work with Fiji … I’ve never experienced any issues myself.”

The Pacific is a strategic transit point for traffickers both in Southeast Asia and Central America. Referred to colloquially by officials and experts as the “narco highway”, product is funnelled through Pacific communities on its way to Australia and New Zealand, where street prices are among the highest in the world.

Chambers’ Australian counterpart Krissy Barrett called this her “nation’s shame”, making for a “moral responsibility” to act. Australia has previously committed AU$400 million to regional policing efforts.

Pacific watch
One action stemming from the summit is a new dob-in line for Pacific communities, calling on the public to “be the community’s eyes and ears.”

The online platform, dubbed Pacific Watch, “will allow the public to” safely and anonymously report suspicious behaviour, drug-related activities and other crimes threatening community safety,” as reported by the Fiji Sun. Its slogan will be: ” Recognise, Remember and Report.”

The website features links to every Pacific country’s police page, as well as a “report now” button that leads to a Microsoft Form. It prompts the user to offer the suspect’s name or nicknames, their appearance and features, occupations, transport and a specific address, on top of describing the activity.

“Phase two” will reportedly include the ability to upload photos and videos as evidence.

It comes after the AFP announced a new office in Bogota, Colombia, alongside Colombian, Mexican, US, Interpol and Pacific forces, with a focus on disrupting supply lines. It would serve as an intelligence source for Pacific officials at one of the key entrances and exits of the narco highway.

New Zealand will send a liaison officer there “before Christmas”, Chambers said.

Military presence
Chambers said military officials from across the world were crawling at the summit.

“[One] thing that has been a particular focus this week is the coordination that needs to occur across all maritime activity,” he said.

“So, besides the Australian Navy, here we have the French Navy, the Mexican Navy, the Colombian Navy.”

However, he said that the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), which has partnered with the Fiji Police for the country’s primary counter-drug taskforce, were absent.

Fiji police are currently investigating the death of known drug pusher Jone Vakarisi, who was beaten to death in a military prison. Military officers have also reportedly patrolled streets in Fijian drug hotspots without police present.

Tudravu has continuously maintained that his officers are in control of all counter-drug operations in the country.

It is unclear whether the Australian and Fiji police, who co-convened the summit, extended an invitation to the military.

RNZ Pacific has asked the Fiji Police and the RFMF for comment.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Britain. France. Canada. Italy. Spain. Belgium. The Netherlands. Poland. Australia. New Zealand . . .  The European Union. The United Nations . . .

Suddenly they have found outrage because international activists aboard the flotilla were humiliated, abused and tortured by Israeli war criminals under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s prison system.

Ambassadors are being summoned. Statements are being released. Diplomats are demanding “clarifications”.

But where have these governments been while Palestinians endured this for years?

Palestinian journalist Sami Al-Sa’i described being raped by Israeli prison guards while blindfolded and handcuffed, left bleeding on the floor as guards laughed and discussed filming the assault.

As a reminder once again, this is the report prepared by Nicolas Kristof from The New York Times, in which I was one of the speakers talking about my own experience, having been raped by members of the Israeli Prison Service during my detention… https://t.co/TQiqu8GQI2

— سامي السّاعي (@SamiAssai) May 22, 2026

Other former detainees described rape with objects, attacks involving dogs, electrocution, starvation and repeated torture inside Israeli detention facilities. Human rights organisations, UN experts and former detainees have all warned that this abuse is systematic, organised and protected from accountability.

Where were these governments when Dr Adnan Al-Bursh was abducted, tortured, sexually abused and ultimately murdered in israeli custody, with his body still withheld from his family? Where are they while Dr Hussam Abu Safiya and Palestinian medical workers remain detained, abused and denied proper medical treatment?

And now the world acts shocked because foreign activists were finally subjected to a fraction of what Palestinians have endured for decades.

In 2010, israeli forces attacked the Mavi Marmara flotilla trying to break the siege on Gaza, killing nine activists before a tenth later died from his injuries.

The world condemned it, statements were made, outrage came and went, yet Palestinians remained trapped under siege while Israeli war criminals continued receiving arms, protection and political cover from Western governments.

To the people aboard the flotilla who were tortured, humiliated and abused while trying to break the siege on Gaza and deliver aid to starving civilians: may you recover safely and may your courage wake people up.

The world saw what happened to you. Palestinians have been screaming about these crimes for years. Credit to @thiagoavila for continuing to expose what so many tried to ignore.

Warning: distressful content!

Those genocidal maniacs RAPED humanitarian activist trying to take food and medicine to children in Gaza! And the worst is that even this they escalate to much worse forms with the 9000 Palestinians in israeli dungeons (almost 400 children)! pic.twitter.com/a0yuMuilvQ

— Thiago Ávila (@thiagoavilabr) May 21, 2026

Summoning ambassadors is not enough. Condemnations are not enough. Expel them. Sanction them. Stop arming them. Stop protecting Israeli war criminals while criminalising activists who try to stop weapons reaching them.

While Western governments choose silence, the British state chooses to criminalise, arrest and persecute activists, journalists, doctors, teachers and humanitarians for standing with Palestine. @Majstar7, @swilkinsonbc, Junaid Mayet, @KarakDesi and thousands more whose only “crime” was refusing to stay silent while Palestinians were slaughtered, starved and abused in plain sight.

My activism is for people. I oppose dehumanisation, torture, rape, abuse and the killing of civilians, no matter who the victim is.

But Palestinians have been subjected to all of this in plain sight while the world chose silence.

Shameen Suleman is a journalist for MENA Uncensored.

A video posted by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in which he is seen taunting abducted flotilla activists who sought to break the siege on Gaza, has triggered a backlash and dealt a huge blow to Israel’s multimillion-dollar public relations campaign, known as “Hasbara”.

The footage, posted on the social media platform X, showed Ben-Gvir gloating as activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla — including three New Zealanders — knelt on the floor, blindfolded, with their hands bound at the Port of Ashdod.

Israeli naval forces had intercepted the flotilla’s vessels in international waters off the coast of Cyprus, illegally abducting 430 participants.

• READ MORE: Israel deports hundreds of Gaza aid flotilla activists amid global outcry
• Spanish MEP accuses EU of failure to act over Israeli ‘kidnapping, hijacking’ of Gaza flotilla activists
• Peters condemns Israeli minister over flotilla video as 3 Kiwis detained
• Peace Action demands NZ summon Israeli ambassador over brutal action against activists
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

Among them, at least 87 launched a hunger strike in solidarity with the more than 9500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The images of activists being dragged across the floor prompted several countries — including Italy, France, the Netherlands, Canada, and Spain — to summon Israeli ambassadors, condemning the “unacceptable” treatment and violation of human dignity.

The collapse of the ‘Hasbara’ illusion
Experts argue that the frantic damage control by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered the rapid deportation of the activists, stems not from moral outrage over the abuses, but from the catastrophic damage done to Israel’s global image.

“Netanyahu was dismayed not by Ben Gvir’s actions, but the fact he filmed and broadcasted them to appeal to his electorate ahead of the upcoming elections.

Netanyahu himself, like Ben Gvir, called the members of the Gaza flotilla terrorist supporters. The term terrorist has now… pic.twitter.com/ITdcIRZD2E

— State of Palestine (@Palestine_UN) May 21, 2026

For decades, Israel has relied on “Hasbara” — a Hebrew term translating to “explanation” — a propaganda campaign to justify its policies and military actions against Palestinians to the international community.

Fathi Nimer, a Palestine policy fellow at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, told Al Jazeera that Hasbara is essentially state propaganda designed to “beautify the image of the occupation” by tailoring specific narratives to different global audiences.

“The fundamental assumption of Hasbara is that Israel is always right, but the world simply doesn’t understand,” Nimer said. He noted that due to Israel’s deepening isolation following its war on Gaza, the state’s Hasbara budget is projected to leap from roughly $15 million in 2023 to an unprecedented $700 million by 2026.

Yet, Ben-Gvir’s brazen video dismantled this heavily funded narrative in an instant.

Global outrage over Israeli minister’s treatment of abuse       Video: Al Jazeera

“The Israeli leadership is treating this as a public relations crisis, not a moral one,” Nimer explained. “For Netanyahu, the sin was not the torture or humiliation of the activists; the sin was broadcasting it to the world.

“Ben-Gvir, however, does not care about Israel’s external image; he performs these abuses for his domestic right-wing base, confident that Israel will face no material consequences.”

Mtanes Shehadeh, an academic and expert on Israeli affairs, echoed this assessment. “The core problem for Israel is that this video transmitted its true reality to the entire world,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It provided the globe with live, irrefutable evidence that structural violence and a disregard for human rights are foundational to the current Israeli establishment.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir is not an anomaly in Israeli society. Hell, he’s not even an anomaly in the Israeli cabinet.

Here’s Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev, also bragging about torturing the activists who tried to bring aid to Gaza.

The entire barrel is rotten to the core. https://t.co/JYahRlhQ0x pic.twitter.com/naNAnvGhzt

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) May 21, 2026

US double standards and ‘pro-terror’ sanctions
The diplomatic fallout also laid bare the glaring contradictions in United States policy.

Following the video’s release, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee criticised Ben-Gvir, stating the minister had “betrayed the dignity of his nation”. However, critics were quick to point out that Huckabee’s condemnation rang hollow, as it focused entirely on the indignity of the broadcast rather than the human rights violations committed.

Furthermore, Huckabee’s remarks came just a day after the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on four organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla, labelling the humanitarian mission a “pro-terror flotilla” in support of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

The US sanctions targeted activists from the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad and the Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network, Samidoun.

Analysts highlight this as a stark double standard. While the US administration quickly moved to sanction humanitarian flotilla organisers, Palestinian civil society groups and International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors, it has consistently shielded far-right Israeli ministers like Ben-Gvir from accountability, even lifting prior sanctions on violent Israeli settlers.

A microcosm of Palestinian suffering
For Palestinians, the humiliation endured by the European and international activists is merely a glimpse into a much darker, systemic reality.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said the bound and blindfolded activists represented a “microcosm” of what Palestinian prisoners endured daily.

“This scene expresses the fascism of the entire Israeli government, not just Ben-Gvir,” Barghouti said. “If the government genuinely opposed these practices, they would have fired him immediately.

“Instead, their audacity has reached the point of pirating ships in international waters.”

Human rights groups estimate that nearly 100 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 2023, amid widespread reports of starvation, severe beatings and medical neglect.

Luisa Morgantini, former vice president of the European Parliament, said the standard diplomatic response of summoning ambassadors is woefully inadequate.

“It is a shame how our governments have behaved. They are complicit,” Morgantini said, calling on European nations to suspend their association agreements with Israel, halt arms sales, and actively back the ICC’s arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.

The ‘hammer’ and the flotillas
Despite the military interceptions and the US sanctions, activists and analysts agree that the flotilla campaigns, which began in 2009 in response to Israeli land, sea and air blockades, have succeeded in exposing the limits of Israeli force.

Nimer cited the American psychologist Abraham Maslow: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

“This is the only way the Israeli military knows how to act — through brute force and piracy,” Nimer said.

“The role of Hasbara was to rationalise this brutality for global consumption. But as the flotillas continue to challenge the blockade, they accumulate small victories and deeply accelerate Israel’s popular global isolation, proving that the multimillion-dollar propaganda machine can no longer hide the reality on the ground.”

Mohammad Mansour is a special correspondent of the Doha-based Al Jazeera global television network.

New Zealand’s government is increasingly eager to promote the buy-in of Pacific nations for closer Defence Force integration in the region, amid concerns about militarisation of the region.

The security environment has been shifting rapidly, and regional defence is becoming more complex, leaving Pacific Islanders wondering if their “Ocean of Peace” is slipping out of their grasp.

In recent months, the defence and police forces of Australia and New Zealand have been increasing cooperation with counterparts in Pacific countries — including Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu — in efforts to combat transnational crime, especially the illicit drug trade.

• READ MORE: Other NZ defence policy reports

But as a number of Pacific Island countries weigh up signing major bilateral treaties or agreements with the likes of Australia, China and the United States, New Zealand has been steadily pushing Pacific regional defence cooperation on a number of fronts.

The communiqué from last October’s South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting (SPDMM) in Chile is instructive.

The SPDMM — which involves New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Fiji, France, Papua New Guinea and Tonga — notes the leadership role New Zealand has taken on better coordinating regional defence architecture.

The member countries agreed to push for a defence advisor from their collective to be embedded in the secretariat of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), whose secretary-general Baron Waqa attended the Chile meeting and appeared to support closer integration.

While the advisor position is yet to be established, the SPDMM is surging ahead with a range of new regional defence initiatives, including developing the Pacific Response Group, under which defence personnel from Australia, Fiji, France, New Zealand and PNG work together to support coordinated humanitarian assistance and disaster relief responses across the Pacific.

Social licence
A briefing from the March joint meeting of the Defence and Foreign ministers of Australia and New Zealand, emphasised how they aim to promote “the sense of integration through Pacific defence forces’ and to “enhance the sense of Pacific forces meeting Pacific security needs”.

It also highlighted a keenness to “get more links between SPDMM and PIF so that these voices are heard directly by the region”.

“The briefings reveal New Zealand’s role in integrating and aligning Pacific defence forces alongside a considerable anxiety about regional social licence,” Pacific historian Marco de Jong said.

He said the language being used “speaks to a programme of influence and public relations, calibrated to downplay criticism that New Zealand is contributing to the militarisation of the Pacific”.

A representative with Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, Maureen Penjueli, who is also a long time advocate for Indigenous rights in the region, said there had been a lack of consultation with the wider Pacific Islands region about the new defence tack.

“We’ve seen so much occupation by those in the defence interests area. For example, the Australian National Security College takes a very primary seat at the Pacific Islands Forum on security. We’ve got competing interests, which is the Fusion Centre that’s in Vanuatu,” Penjueli said.

“When you add more and more players to this regional architecture that already has enough players on defence and security, it complicates the governance structure in a way. Who does it respond to? Who is it answerable to?

“It does not go through the rigour of national consultations, consultations with civil society around some of these bigger significant shifts around defence and security.”

Long-standing partner
New Zealand is a long-standing contributor to Pacific regional initiatives, and its Defence Force is well valued in the region, especially in responding to disasters, humanitarian needs, transnational crime and maritime security threats, and also including in training support.

New Zealand’s Defence Minister Chris Penk, who replaced Judith Collins in the role since March’s 2+2 Ministerial Meeting with Australia, said that New Zealand always sought to adapt its work with Pacific partners to their context, culture and operational needs.

He told RNZ Pacific that in order to support closer cooperation between Pacific militaries, members were also looking at a SPDMM Status of Forces Agreement.

“This would provide a common legal framework for personnel to deploy into each other’s countries more easily, strengthening our collective ability to respond to maritime security challenges as well as humanitarian and disaster relief events.”

Asked if New Zealand is contributing to militarisation of the Pacific Islands, Penk said Pacific partners had warmly welcomed the country’s continued presence and partnership in the region

“The New Zealand Defence Force contributes to regional responses where it is agreed that defence force personnel and assets should be involved, including humanitarian assistance, maritime domain awareness, fisheries patrols, and search and rescue operations.

“As a Pacific military, we are proud to work alongside our Pacific partners to help respond to the challenges facing our region.”

‘Ocean of Peace’
Penjueli warned that militarisation of the region was escalating against the wishes of most Pacific Islands people.

Making things more complicated, she said, was the growing number of security treaties and agreements that Island countries were being drawn to.

She said they were no longer just about defence or security inter-operability, and often included development and economic dimensions, arrangements that “entangled” Pacific countries into wide ranging commitments beyond traditional military and security ties.

Penjueli worried that the interests of the Island countries themselves were more than ever being buried under broader geopolitical jostling.

“We were told that this is to ready the region in an anticipation, to contain China, and we’re told that this is about the drug trade and the drug war that’s taking place.

“Yet for the Pacific, climate change or the climate crisis, remains our significant issue around security. So, I think the agendas are very different.”

At their last leaders summit, PIF countries signed up to the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration, formally committing the region to peace, sovereignty, and climate justice.

However, Penjueli said being a true ocean of peace required demilitarisation and de-escalation — something which she suggested was not the direction that the defence-oriented governments of the region were heading in.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Spanish Member of the European Parliament Irene Montero has accused the European Union (EU) of failing to protect European citizens aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla intercepted by Israel, directing sharp criticism at the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas during a plenary session on the Middle East.

Addressing Kallas in the parliament chamber on Tuesday, the Podemos lawmaker condemned Israel’s actions in the Mediterranean and accused EU leaders of remaining silent, reports Anadolu Ajansi.

“Israel has been in the middle of the Mediterranean for 24 hours, and that is saying something, hijacking ships and kidnapping European citizens,” Montero said.

• READ MORE: Tehran says it is reviewing US response to peace proposal — and global anger over Israeli treatment of Gaza flotilla activists
• Israel begins deporting Gaza aid flotilla activists amid global outcry
• Peters condemns Israeli minister over flotilla video as 3 Kiwis detained
• Peace Action demands NZ summon Israeli ambassador over brutal action against activists
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

“You find that amusing, don’t you? It doesn’t amuse me at all,” she said, asking: “Are you ever going to lift a finger to protect them?”

Montero questioned how the EU would react if another country had carried out similar actions.

“What would you do if it were Iran, if it were Russia standing in the middle of the Mediterranean to kidnap European citizens?” she asked.

“But since it’s Israel, you just smile and look the other way. Shame on you.”

Shared her speech footage
Later on Wednesday, Montero shared footage of her speech in a post on the US social media platform X, accusing the EU of helping “genocidaires.”

“Israel assaults and hijacks ships loaded with aid for Gaza right in the middle of the Mediterranean, and this lady finds it amusing and doesn’t lift a finger to defend the kidnapped people,” she wrote.

“They help the genocidaires without even hiding it.”

❝Ms. Kallas, Israel has spent the last 24 hours, which is no small matter, in the middle of Mediterranean hijacking ships and kidnapping European citizens. You find that amusing, don’t you? It doesn’t amuse me at all❞

Spanish MEP Irene Montero confronted EU foreign policy… pic.twitter.com/YIHm7SZeHI

— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) May 20, 2026

Deportation begins
The Global Sumud humanitarian aid flotilla said Tuesday that all 50 vessels in its aid convoy and about 430 crew and activists had been seized by Israel.

Al Jazeera reports that Israel has begun deporting detained Gaza flotilla activists amid a global outcry over their “appalling” treatment by their Israeli captors. They were being released from the Ktziot detention facility where they were forcibly taken to.

The Adalah legal rights group said it had received confirmation from the Israeli Prison Service and state authorities that all detained members of the Global Sumud Flotilla and Freedom Flotilla Coalition were being transferred for deportation.

According to Adalah, most of the activists are being taken to Ramon Airport to be flown out of the country, while its legal team is monitoring the process to ensure that all activists are safely and fully sent without further delay.

37 MEPs demand ‘accountability’
Meanwhile, Global Sumud Aotearoa reports that while the activists remained detained after their illegal kidnapping, 37 Members of the EU Parliament circulated and co-signed a protest letter.

Although the flotilla are now being released, the demand for accountability in the MEP letter remains the same:

“On 18 May 2026, Israeli naval forces violently abducted the humanitarian workers of the Global Sumud Flotilla in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

“Their abduction constitutes yet another flagrant violation of the rights and principles enshrined in EU law. A previous interception of this same flotilla on 29 April produced documented testimony of systematic torture, severe physical abuse and sexual violence against detained participants.

“The EU–Israel Association Agreement contains binding human rights obligations. Those obligations are being openly and repeatedly violated. Continued inaction by European institutions renders the EU complicit in this pattern of impunity.

“We therefore demand:

• Immediate suspension of the EU–Israel Association Agreement pending compliance with its human rights provisions;
• Immediate and unconditional release of all detained flotilla participants;
• An independent international inquiry into the full scope of EU member state complicity in the abduction, detention, and documented physical and sexual violence inflicted upon flotilla participants by Israeli forces.

“Europe cannot continue to look away. Each failure to act is a signal to Israel that there is no cost to lawlessness. That signal must end now.”

The French National Assembly has voted to allow “native” voters to take part in New Caledonia’s local provincial elections scheduled for next month.

However, the French parliament’s Lower House also refused to include their “spouses”, just like the Senate did two days earlier.

Amid debates in Paris on Wednesday evening (Thursday NZT), the vote to include people who were born in New Caledonia since 1998 came at an absolute majority of 386 in favour and 127 against.

• READ MORE: French Senate endorses change to New Caledonia’s ‘frozen’ electoral roll
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

But the vote on this “organic bill”, only weeks ahead of crucial elections to be held on in the French Pacific territory, is still subject to the verdict of the French Constitutional Council.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, who took part in the heated debates, said the main purposes of the partial “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s electoral restrictions was to rectify “growing distortions” in New Caledonia’s electoral roll.

He said the restrictions were imposed as part of the implementation of the autonomy Nouméa Accord signed in 1998 (since referred to as the “frozen” electoral roll).

But since 1998, due to demographic changes, the proportion of “native” people (from all ethnic groups) has grown from seven percent to 17 percent — an estimated 10,500 people.

‘Small step’ but ‘major’
Lecornu reacted to the vote to include “natives”, saying even though it could be regarded as a “small step”, it was a “major step forward” and a “victory for good sense”.

But the French Lower House’s vote failed to endorse another amendment regarding the “spouses” of qualified voters and whether they could also be included in the “special electoral roll” (specifically designed for provincial elections).

The vote on this specific topic was one vote short (164 against and 163 in favour).

The “spouses” category includes about 1700 people who are married to qualified voters — either by legal marriage or by way of a civil union pact (what the French civil status refers to as PACS) for a minimum period of five years.

Pro-independence FLNKS MP Emmanuel Tjibaou, during debates, repeated that New Caledonia’s electoral roll could not be modified “without the agreement of the colonised people” (the indigenous Kanak population) and that a prior “consensus on a comprehensive agreement” was required.

Talks in view of such a comprehensive agreement were mooted by Lecornu, after the crucial elections to be held on 28 June 2026.

The French PM also promised that a comprehensive agreement on New Caledonia’s political future would be finalised “by the end of this year”.

Tjibaou assurance
Tjibaou, during debates, assured that his pro-independence camp remained engaged in view of the announced post-elections discussions, sometime in July.

However, for the pro-France side (parties that wish New Caledonia to remain a part of France), the inclusion of natives but not of the “spouses” was mainly regarded as “disappointing” and “insufficient”.

An emotional pro-France MP for New Caledonia, Nicolas Metzdorf (Les Loyalistes), during debates on Wednesday, said even though he was “very happy for the natives of New Caledonia” — “for us, this is far from being enough”.

“You are the shame of the Republic, you are the shame of New Caledonia”, he lashed out at French MPs.

He warned that since the “spouses” were still denied the right to vote at those local elections, his party would not take part in the announced talks with the French government after the poll and that they would now wait until the next French Presidential elections in 2027.

“We have nothing left to expect from this government”, he told the House.

Local reactions
New Caledonia’s Senator Georges Naturel (Les Républicains, rightwing), who was the mover of the motion in the French Parliament, hailed the lawmakers’ vote (both in the Senate and the National Assembly), saying the inclusion of “natives” was “a gesture of justice and democratic consistency”.

However, he remained cautious on the upcoming verdict from France’s Constitutional Council, saying the legal framework was “narrow”.

One of the leaders of moderate pro-independence group “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance, which split from FLNKS in 2024), Victor Tutugoro, said this was a “wise decision” on the part of French MPs, because it was in keeping with the spirit of the 1998 Nouméa Accord.

Speaking on behalf of the moderate Wallisian-based Éveil Océanien party, Milakulo Tukumuli said he was rather satisfied with the outcome of the vote, because “it is totally in keeping with our position”.

The very issue of modifications to New Caledonia’s conditions of eligibility for voters was perceived as one of the main triggering factors that led to riots in May 2024, causing 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) in material damages, a drop of 13.5 percent in the local GDP, as well as thousands of unemployed due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.

Due to the riots, New Caledonia’s provincial elections have been postponed three times since 2024.

Those elections are crucial in the sense that they will choose new members for New Caledonia’s three provincial assembles (North, South and the Loyalty outer islands) and then, proportionally, will determine the makeup of the territorial Congress and its “collegial” government, as well as its president.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Nauru’s government has issued a directive to all public servants and employees of state-owned enterprises in-country and abroad to adhere to the “One China” policy.

The Cabinet directive comes as the Micronesian island nation marks its 58th constitution Day this week.

In January 2024, Nauru became the first nation to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China just two days after Lai Ching-te was elected president.

• READ MORE: Other ‘One China’ reports

Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry at the time accused China of “offering economic assistance as incentive to persuade” Nauru terminate diplomatic relations with Taipei.

However, since then Nauruan officials have described the relationship with Beijing as reaching “new heights” and “manifesting into concrete tangible actions” for the two countries.

“Following Cabinet decision on 15 May 2026, all personnel representing the Government and State-owned Enterprises of the Republic of Nauru in-country and abroad are further directed by Cabinet to observe the One-China Principle,” the government said in a statement on Wednesday.

It added officials must “ensure consistency in the use of terminology and references in official conduct, communications, engagements, and administrative practices across all government departments, instrumentalities, statutory authorities, state-owned enterprise, government-controlled enterprise, agencies, and affiliated bodies”.

It further advised officials to “avoid using terminology, symbols, flags, emblems, or representations which are inconsistent with the One China Principle”.

“All official communication relating to the Taiwan Province of China must comply with the diplomatic position of the Government of Nauru.

“Officials must not enter into official relations and arrangements with the Taiwan Province authorities or participate in programs funded by the Taiwan Province.”

Taiwan no longer has a diplomatic presence in Nauru after the island nation switched its allegiance to Beijing.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand has joined international condemnation of Israel’s far-right national security minister, even summoning the Israeli ambassador to convey that message.

A video posted by Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, showing him taunting detained flotilla activists, drew international condemnation on Thursday.

The video showed kneeling activists, with their hands zip-tied, while Ben-Gvir shouted “they came as big heroes, see how they look now… not heroes, nothing, terror supporters”.

The video released by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir

• READ MORE: Peace Action demands NZ summon Israeli ambassador over brutal action against activists
• Several nations summon Israeli envoys as Ben-Gvir taunts flotilla activists
• 87+ Gaza aid flotilla activists abducted by Israel now on hunger strike
• Family pleas for kidnapped 3 Kiwis as Gaza flotilla demands global activists’ freedom from Israel
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

Ben-Gvir also said he had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “give them to me for more much time, give them to us for the terrorist prisons, this is how it should look”.

He posted the video with the caption “welcome to Israel”.

In a statement on X, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand condemned Ben-Gvir’s behaviour.

“Last year, New Zealand placed a travel ban on Minister Ben-Gvir for severely and deliberately undermining peace and security and removing prospects for a two state solution.

Further vindication
His latest conduct with respect to the Gaza flotilla, which has been seriously criticised by his own Prime Minister, is further vindication of that position.

Peters said ministry officials had been instructed to call in the Israeli Ambassador on Thursday to directly pass the government’s grave concerns.

New Zealand condemns the behaviour of Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Last year, New Zealand placed a travel ban on Minister Ben-Gvir for severely and deliberately undermining peace and security and removing prospects for a two state solution.

His latest conduct with…

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) May 20, 2026

“We expect Israel to adhere to its international legal obligations, including in its treatment of New Zealanders participating in the flotilla.”

The US, the UK, France, Italy and Canada were among the countries which expressed alarm at the video, which Ben-Gvir shared on social media.

A global pro-Palestinian humanitarian aid movement said three New Zealanders were detained by Israel after their boats were intercepted while taking part in a flotilla to Gaza.

The Global Sumud Flotilla had repeatedly tried to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Palestinian territory.

In a statement, the group said New Zealanders Mousa Taher, Hāhona Ormsby and Julien Blondel were now in Israeli custody.

It said Mousa and Julien had returned to the flotilla after an earlier interception.

MFAT comment
RNZ approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) for comment.

In a previous statement provided to RNZ earlier this month, MFAT said it understood up to six New Zealanders had been caught up in the interception and it was aware of allegations made about the treatment of New Zealanders in custody.

Consular officials in New Zealand and Europe had been working to get information and support the New Zealanders involved, it said.

“The New Zealand government made it clear to Israel that the safety of New Zealanders involved was paramount and that international law must be upheld,” the previous statement said.

New Zealand had a long-standing “do not travel” advisory in place for Gaza, explicitly warning against any attempt to enter by sea, MFAT said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

• Pacific Media Watch reports that 428 Gaza flotilla humanitarian activists from 40 countries were abducted from more than 50 boats in the Israeli operation this week, according to organisers. The boats were carrying humanitarian aid in a bid to break the illegal blockade of Gaza.

New Zealand needs to summon Israeli ambassador to protest over the illegal and brutal treatment of Global Sumud Flotilla humanitarian aid activists — including three New Zealanders — kidnapped in international waters this week.

Peace activists are demanding this in the response to Israel ambassadors being summoned by several host governments over the “degrading” treatment.

Media footage broadcast by Al Jazeera and other media show Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir taunting activists in Israeli custody, including the three New Zealanders — Mousa Taher, Julien Blondel and Hāhona Jason Ormsby.

• READ MORE: Several nations summon Israeli envoys as Ben-Gvir taunts flotilla activists
• 87+ Gaza aid flotilla activists abducted by Israel now on hunger strike
• Family pleas for kidnapped 3 Kiwis as Gaza flotilla demands global activists’ freedom from Israel
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

Update: New Zealand has now also condemned the behaviour of Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir with Foreign Minister Winston Peters issuing a statement saying, “we have instructed MFAT to call in the Israeli Ambassador today to directly pass on our grave concerns”.

The latest protest came from the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, who condemned a video showing Ben-Gvir abusing activists as they were forced to kneel on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs.

Kallas described the treatment of the abducted activists as “degrading and wrong” and said rightwing minister Ben-Gvir’s conduct was “unbecoming of anyone holding office in a democracy”.

Peters noted that New Zealand had last year placed a travel ban on Ben-Gvir for “severely and deliberately undermining peace and security and removing prospects for a two state solution”.

Several countries — including Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Canada — have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their capitals to express “indignation” over Israel’s treatment of the Gaza flotilla activists.

Other countries condemning the incident include South Korea, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Germany, Poland, Qatar, Slovenia, Turkiye, Austria, Belgium, Colombia and the United Kingdom.

Ben-Gvir’s actions ‘unacceptable’
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot denounced Ben-Gvir’s actions as “unacceptable”, calling for the release of French citizens “as soon as possible”.

Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand called the incident “deeply troubling”, adding that Ottawa would summon the Israeli ambassador over the incident.

“The world is finally moving after seeing the cowardice and the violence of the Zionist regime against our non-violent solidarity humanitarian mission,” a flotilla organiser, Brazilian Thiago Ávila, posted on X.

“But the key problem is that this level of unacceptable violence is still nothing compared to what they do to Palestinians every day.”

All 428 activists from 40 countries were part of the peaceful flotilla of more than 50 boats taking humanitarian aid to Gaza in a bid to break Israel’s illegal blockade.

“We call on the Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, to summon the Israeli Ambassador,” said Valerie Morse, member of Peace Action Wellington, in a statement.

“He needs to stand up for these New Zealanders who are being detained illegally and tortured by the Israeli military.

“The video footage shows the activists held in stress positions while Ben-Gvir parades around shouting at them.

New Zealand condemns the behaviour of Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Last year, New Zealand placed a travel ban on Minister Ben-Gvir for severely and deliberately undermining peace and security and removing prospects for a two state solution.

His latest conduct with…

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) May 20, 2026

‘Peters ignored responsibilities’
“Thus far, he has completely ignored his responsibilities as Foreign Minister. We have not heard a word of condemnation for Israel’s blatant kidnapping of ordinary people peacefully sailing in the Mediterranean Sea,” Morse said.

“Peters is greenlighting more Israeli impunity by failing to take action for New Zealanders in extremely vulnerable positions.

“He must demand the immediate release of these New Zealanders without delay and without harm.”

The world is finally moving after seeing the cowardice & the violence of the Zionist regime against our non-violent solidarity humanitarian mission. But the key problem is that this level of unacceptable violence is still nothing compared to what they do to Palestinians every day pic.twitter.com/8Z7mgJa5uc

— Thiago Ávila (@thiagoavilabr) May 20, 2026

At least 87 people kidnapped by Israeli forces from a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza have begun a hunger strike, say organisers, after Israeli forces intercepted the last remaining vessel in international waters.

The group is striking “in protest of their illegal abduction and in solidarity with the over 9500 Palestinian hostages held in Israeli dungeons”, the Global Sumud Flotilla wrote on X, reports Al Jazeera.

Late on Tuesday evening, Israeli forces “kidnapped” six people on board the Lina al-Nabulsi boat, organisers said.

• READ MORE: Family pleas for kidnapped 3 Kiwis as Gaza flotilla demands global activists’ freedom from Israel
• Foreign ministers of 10 countries say Israel’s storming of the aid flotilla is blatant violation of international law
• Greenpeace calls on global govts to ensure safety of Gaza flotilla stormed by Israeli military
• ‘They threatened to kill us at gunpoint,’ says NZ Gaza flotilla activist
• After Israel’s brutal attack on Kiwis the NZ government does nothing
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

The boat was the last in a group of more than 50 vessels that left Turkiye’s port city of Marmaris last week to sail towards Gaza, with the goal of breaking Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed late on Tuesday that its forces were taking hundreds of flotilla participants to Israel.

“Another PR flotilla has come to an end. All 430 activists have been transferred to Israeli vessels and are making their way to Israel, where they will be able to meet with their consular representatives,” a ministry spokesman said, calling the effort “nothing more than a PR stunt.”

Israeli forces began overtaking the vessels in international waters off the coast of Cyprus on Monday, organisers said, where they raided boats, allegedly fired rubber bullets and abducted participants.

Nine Indonesians, 3 New Zealanders
The detainees included nine Indonesian citizens, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s foreign ministry said Wednesday.

Indonesia called for the immediate release of all vessels and said that “every diplomatic channel and consular measure will continue to be fully utilised”.

Some 15 Irish citizens, including Dr Margaret Connolly, the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly, were among those being held.

Countries including Turkiye, Spain, Jordan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, Libya, and the Maldives denounced the Israeli interceptions as “blatant violations of international law and international humanitarian law”.

Three New Zealanders were also abducted on the flotllla but their government has not spoken out. They are Mousa Taher, turning 39 next week; Hāhona Ormsby, 56; and Julien Blondel, 47.

The United States, however, imposed sanctions on four activists for their involvement in flotillas that have tried to reach Gaza, claiming without evidence that the organisers were acting “in support of Hamas”.

Some previous flotilla participants have refused food upon being detained by Israel.

Pro-Palestine activists jailed in the UK also participated in a high-profile, months-long hunger strike that began last year and led to severe health effects.

• More information at the Global Sumud Flotilla New Zealand delegation Instagram page

NZ EMBASSY (responsible for the illegally occupied Palestinian terroritories) in Ankara, Turkey
+90(312)4463333
Email: NZEmbassyAnkara@mfat.govt.nz

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has called on the New Zealand government to resolve a tenancy controversy over the Israeli embassy — by expelling the ambassador and staff.

Noting the world pariah status of the country after the International Criminal Court (ICC)  has reportedly sought arrest warrants for war crimes against up to five more Israeli officials, the PSNA said today the shift of the Israeli embassy into the Fisher Funds building in Wellington had concerned other tenants in the office high rise.

Citing The Post front-page article on Monday, it said only some occupants of the 13-storey site had been told that Israel was moving in.

• READ MORE: Israeli far-right minister Smotrich says ICC seeks his arrest
• Israeli Embassy on the move ‒ but not all new neighbours happy, despite heightened security promise
• Family pleas for kidnapped 3 Kiwis as Gaza flotilla demands global activists’ freedom from Israel
• Other Gaza genocide reports

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement “the building’s owner was obviously trying to keep the arrival of the embassy a secret” to avoid objections.

“It’s pretty obvious why. The Fisher Funds building is owned by Prime Property Group, which is controlled by rich-lister and former Israeli Defence Force major, Eyal Aharoni,” she said.

“He’s looking after his own.”

According to Al Jazeera and news agencies, Israeli far-right Finance Minister ⁠Bezalel Smotrich said he had been informed that the ICC ⁠in ⁠The Hague ⁠had ⁠requested a warrant for his arrest.

Smotrich did not specify who had informed him about the warrant and said it was a “declaration of war”. The process of seeking warrants ⁠is confidential.

Displacement orders
The ICC accusations reportedly centre on Smotrich’s forced displacement orders for Palestinians, his support for moving Israeli settlers into occupied territory, and his claim it may be “justified and moral” to starve Palestinians in Gaza.

Another report, by the independent Haaretz newspaper, named five officials — including Smotrich — as the subject of arrest warrants, but the ICC described this as “inaccurate”.

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Tamimi said the solution to the embassy location concern was the New Zealand government could expel the ambassador and his staff.

“We broke off diplomatic relations when it was discovered Israel’s Mossad spy agency had been getting fake New Zealand passports. So, there is a precedent,” she said.

“It all comes down to the fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It’s the world’s worst atrocity of this century and shamefully its ongoing perpetrators are flying their flag over our capital city.

‘Kidnapping citizens’
“At this very moment, Israel is firing on the Sumud Flotilla trying to bring aid to Gaza and kidnapping and assaulting New Zealand citizens on that convoy.

“Our ministers are shaking hands with the people who represent this illegal violence in international waters.”

Tamimi said that although Fisher Funds did not own the building it operated out of, “it must have powers as the holder of naming rights”.

Three New Zealanders are being illegally held hostage by the Israeli military after security forces boarded more than 50 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid bound for the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

They have been named by the flotilla Aotearoa delegation as Mousa Taher, turning 39 next week; Hāhona Ormsby, 56; and Julien Blondel, 47.

All three were among the 428 humanitarian aid activists from 40 countries detained by the Israeli forces when they illegally intercepted the flotilla in international waters near Cyprus over the past two days.

• READ MORE: Foreign ministers of 10 countries say Israel’s storming of the aid flotilla is blatant violation of international law
• Greenpeace calls on global govts to ensure safety of Gaza flotilla stormed by Israeli military
• ‘They threatened to kill us at gunpoint,’ says NZ Gaza flotilla activist
• After Israel’s brutal attack on Kiwis the NZ government does nothing
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

Mousa Taher was aboard the Kasri Sadabat, one of the final 10 boats to be intercepted. A father of seven, Mousa left his children a message before being illegally abducted, writing on a sign for the livestream camera, “I love you”, and “Salaam Baby!”

His 11-year-old son has written a plea to the New Zealand government to intervene:

“To Mr Government: I want to ask you to please help my Dad, Mousa Taher, so his boat doesn’t get intercepted by Israelis. I miss him very much and I hope to see him untouched, not hurt, and in good conditions.

The people in Gaza deserve support, especially all the kids like me. Help my Baba to help Palestinians please.”

— From: Shay Yusuf. Age 11

Taher, who was previously illegally intercepted by the IOF on April 29 alongside Julien Blondel, returned to the flotilla for a second time.

Taher, who was previously illegally intercepted by the IOF on April 29 alongside Julien Blondel, returned to the flotilla for a second time.

Message to ‘fellow Kiwis’
Yesterday, before his illegal interception, Taher sent the Aotearoa delegation a message announcing, “I have a message to my fellow Kiwis and the New Zealand government.

“I’m on my boat which has humanitarian aid, on the way to Gaza to break the illegal siege of the israeli occupation forces.

“What I would like to say is that, for three years, I watched the uncontested demolition and obliteration of a people. It was on the TV for all of us to watch.

“Our government chose time and time again to do nothing. To be complicit, and to allow this to happen.

“There has been war crime after war crime, and yet the New Zealand government has been investing and shaking hands with these war criminals who are committing war crimes.”

“Our government has a choice. Are you going to uphold international law? Are you going to uphold humanitarian values? Are you going to be the New Zealand that we know and love?

“Or are you going to allow these oppressors to continue?… Please just be humans. And stop the killing of babies… this is my request and my plea. Kia Kaha, and we will see you in Gaza hopefully.”

Blondel abducted second time
Also abducted is New Zealander Julien Blondel, a dual citizen to Switzerland, who was beaten in the face in Israeli military custody after the first interception on April 29.

Despite the beatings, sexual harassment, and abuse that flotilla participants experienced during this abduction, both Blondel and Taher have returned to the flotilla to try and break the siege once more, the Aotearoa delegation said in a statement.

“They returned because they remain steadfast in their solidarity with the Palestinian people and their belief in a liberated world,” the statement said.

Hāhona Chris Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto), father of five children, is the third New Zealander to be illegally abducted.

Before the illegal interception, he said, “we are now only days away from Gaza… we need your eyes on us. Your eyes then become the government’s eyes on us.

“It keeps us safe. It keeps us out of harm’s way by the IOF… My freedom is not real if yours is denied. Free Gaza.”

The Aotearoa delegation said: “To echo Hahona’s words, we implore New Zealand to keep its eyes on the abducted flotilla participants to keep our whānau safe. We demand that the New Zealand government does everything in its power to protect them.”

Flotilla organisers demand release
The abducted participants are being taken to a port in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

The Global Sumud Flotilla organisers have demanded the immediate, unconditional release of all the  participants, alongside the more than 9000 “unjustly detained Palestinian political prisoners facing a codified regime of state-sanctioned terror”.

GSF has also called on world leaders to demand the release of the flotilla participants, the release of the Palestinian political prisoners and hostages and an end to the genocide and blockade on Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Global Humanitarian Convoy has been blocked on the outskirts of Sirte in Libya while attempting to reach Gaza. This is despite the unambiguity of the Fourth Geneva Convention: all parties are obligated to allow the free passage of humanitarian aid and personnel.

“The international community must act now and protect the lives of the vulnerable,” said the GSF. “Blocking humanitarian aid is a violation of international law both at sea and on land.

“Our governments must speak up.”

10 countries condemn Israel
Al Jazeera reports that several countries have condemned the Israeli attacks on the aid flotilla.

The foreign ministers of Turkïye, Spain, Jordan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, Libya, and the Maldives released a joint statement, describing Israeli forces’ actions as “blatant violations of international law and international humanitarian law”.

A new law in Papua New Guinea, requiring a political parties to meet a quota for fielding women candidates, is being described as a step in the right direction, but maybe not far enough.

The new elections rule that women must make up 10 percent of parties’ endorsed candidates was recently announced by Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates Commission (IPPCC).

The law is an affirmative action aimed at trying to address the chronic lack of women as elected representatives in the country.

• READ MORE: Other women in PNG politics reports

There are currently three women MPs in PNG’s 111-seat Parliament. Since the country gained independence 50 years ago, only 10 women have been elected MPs.

Persistent cultural norms continue to disadvantage women, but attitudes are slowly changing.

Yet to be tested
A PNG academic specialising in gender equity in governance, Dr Orovu Sepoe, who is also a former chair of the commission, said Parliament passed the law but it has yet to be tested.

“We’ll wait and see how it turns out in the 2027 election. As an affirmative direction, it’s good, but could have been thought out carefully,” she said.

“There are other issues. How many political parties will actually actively seek out women candidates? They’re not very good at doing that for women candidates in the PNG context.”

Dr Sepoe said that the law’s compliance measures could mean it has limited impact.

The penalties for parties who fail the quota in consecutive elections are de-registration and a fine of 5000 kina (about NZ$1900), which she admitted was “peanuts” for the main political parties.

“There is a catch here that I thought might present challenges because the penalties will only apply after two consecutive elections, rather than just one, rather than straight away,” she said, noting that a general election takes place only every five years.

Party leaders
People’s Reform Party leader and East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said the rule was a good idea, indicating the main parties should have no trouble complying.

“I think everyone complies, all the political parties comply. In the case of my party, we’re running about 30 candidates, and so three of those will definitely be women, in order to comply,” Bird said.

Social Democratic Party leader Powes Parkop also said his party would meet, if not exceed, the threshold.

Parkop, who is also chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, described the rule as a positive discrimination measure, saying it was a welcome step, even if temporary.

“We need to take all steps necessary towards achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, and more importantly, creating a environment by which we can overcome all the barriers that impede women from having a equal playing field to be able to contest with everybody else, men especially, to have a chance to be elected to National Parliament,” he said.

Parkop said whether other parties follow the rule would depend on their selection processes, acknowledging that women are disadvantaged at every level of the political process.

“The reality in PNG is that everything is tough against women in PNG, especially having access to resources, financial resources, is hard for them, and culturally they are not seen as leaders, or traditionally not playing that leadership role.”

Unfinished business
PNG’s Parliament has grappled with affirmative action on gender equality in politics before.

Back in 2011, a proposal to create 22 reserved seats for women in the Haus Tambaran gained limited support among PNG’s “big men” of politics, and subsequent other attempts got nowhere.

“It is still an unfinished agenda, as far as I’m concerned, at the moment,” Dr Sepoe said.

“In the recent past, we’ve not had the political will to make it come into effect, so that’s where we are now.

“There have been talks, there have been conversations, discussions about doing a lot more, but we’re only a year away from the election, and how much time do we have to bring any substantive changes for special seats in parliament?”

In the past two general elections in PNG, women made up only around five percent of overall candidates. The fact that it resulted in less than three percent of MPs elected being women is telling.

This new quota rule may be a small step, but in PNG any step towards addressing the gender imbalance in Parliament is better than nothing.

Parkop said the move may not change the entire dynamics, but it is a step in the right direction.

“And that’s what PNG needs. We need to create a step by which we can enable women to have an opportunity to be elected.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the US Capitol.

Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)

Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.

• READ MORE: Trump says Iran attack held off upon Gulf states’ request
• Republican Thomas Massie who stood up to Trump defeated in Kentucky primary
• Other Donald Trump reports

Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose US military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticise Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.

Trump is marshaling the full force of his MAGA machine — spending more than $30 million on a House Republican primary — to purge another of his political enemies from the Republican House. Even Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth is flying to Kentucky to campaign for Massie’s challenger.

It’s all seen as an investment in intimidating and disciplining Republican office-holders who might otherwise think of straying.

Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.

The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.

In his concession speech Friday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:

“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution.

“And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”

Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.

As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday on Meet the Press, “There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”

Former generations of Republican politicians had principles, beliefs, ideals. They thought the federal government too large. Or believed it spent too much money. Or was too lenient on criminals. Or was too eager to support the civil rights of Black people. Or any number of issues with which Democrats disagreed.

Today’s Republican Party no longer has any purpose other than achieving whatever Trump wants, which is mainly to make Trump richer and more powerful. The GOP is now Trump’s; it is no longer America’s.

Today’s Republican voters, by contrast, are showing increasing frustration with Trump. Those who think of themselves as traditional Republicans don’t like Trump’s expansive use of federal power. Those who are fiscally conservative, like Thomas Massie, are upset by Trump’s wanton spending, tax cuts, and soaring debt.

“America-first” Republican voters are concerned about Trump’s intrusions into Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere. And they want the rest of the Epstein files released.

Yet for elected Republicans, survival now depends on personal loyalty to Trump.

All of which raises a fundamental question: Has the official Republican Party — now nearly purged of anyone willing to reflect the concerns of Republican voters rather than Trump’s will — become complicit in Trump’s criminality? Is it aiding and abetting Trump’s lawlessness?

A case can be made that the official Republican Party is indeed complicit.

For Trump, the first and most basic sign of loyalty to him — and therefore survival as a politician in Trump’s Republican Party — is a willingness to publicly proclaim as truth what we know to be two big lies: that Trump won the 2020 election, and that he did not seek to overturn its results by illegal means. As a result, almost all congressional Republicans are now election deniers.

Trump has also made it clear that loyalty to him bars any criticism of his unlawful immigration dragnet, which has so far resulted in the murders of three US citizens by ICE agents and the detention and deportation, without a hearing, of people suspected of being in the US illegally.

To Trump, loyalty requires full support of his foreign policy — including the abduction of a foreign leader, an undeclared war with Iran, and the killing on the high seas of people only suspected of smuggling drugs, in violation of international law.

Loyalty also demands unquestioned support for other of his lawless acts — using the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, building a mammoth White House ballroom, issuing no-bid contracts to his friends, promoting his family’s businesses and implementing policies favorable to them, accepting gifts from foreign powers, and defying court orders.

Is it fair to conclude from all of this that today’s official Republican Party — the people who are in office because Trump has put them there, or who maintain their office because they back whatever Trump wants — has in effect become a criminal organisation, analogous to the mafia or a drug cartel, whose members are blindly loyal to their criminal bosses?

Robert Reich is a US professor, former Secretary of Labor, co-founder of Inequality Media and writes at robertreich.substack.com

The French Senate has endorsed proposed changes to New Caledonia’s restricted electoral roll to allow “native” people to vote in next month’s local elections.

The proposed changes relax current vote restrictions enforced under the Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998, a situation often referred to as the “frozen” electoral roll.

The relaxing measure concerns an estimated 10,000+ voters, who were born in New Caledonia since 1998 and have since reached the voting age of 18.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The measures, initially perceived as a way to protect against any dilution of the indigenous Kanak voters, only concerned about 8 percent of the population.

But as time went by, it was now barring 17 percent, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told French Senators on Monday evening Paris time.

He said this growing proportion infringed on France’s principles of universal and equal suffrage.

After hours of debates in Paris, the vote on Monday was 304 in favour and 20 against.

Obtained a pledge
Over the past few weeks, Lecornu held more talks with New Caledonian politicians from all sides of the spectrum, and said he had obtained a pledge that after the 28 June 2026 provincial elections, everyone would come back to the table and resume comprehensive political talks concerning New Caledonia’s future status.

He said the talks would start as soon as July 2026 and would have to bring an outcome “before the end of the year”.

Yes to ‘natives’, no to ‘spouses’
But the Senate did not approve of another amendment which aimed at extending the “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s electoral roll to “spouses” of qualified voters.

The inclusion of those who are regarded as spouses was aimed at those who had been married (or entered into a French Civil Union pact) there for at least five years and latest estimates showed this concerned between 1500 to 1800 people.

New Caledonia’s Senator (Les Républicains, right-wing) Georges Naturel, who was the mover of the motion, admitted himself that this additional clause for “spouses” would potentially expose the text to a censure from the French Constitutional Council.

New Caledonia’s other Senator Robert Xowie (pro-independence FLNKS) warned of yet another attempt of “passage en force” which would probably make the provincial elections campaign “even more radical”.

The proposed changes to New Caledonia’s electoral makeup come less than six weeks ahead of crucial elections in the French Pacific territory.

The provincial elections are scheduled to be held on 28 June and, based on proportional representation, they will determine not only New Caledonia’s three provincial assemblies (North, South and the Loyalty Islands), but also the territorial Congress, its local government and its president.

Lecornu: Status quo would sow seeds of fresh violence
Taking the floor on Monday before the Senate, Lecornu stressed that not changing New Caledonia’s electoral rule “cannot be a solid base for the future”.

Lecornu said not doing anything would potentially sow the seeds of fresh violence in New Caledonia.

Earlier attempts to change New Caledonia’s status under the French Constitution, in May 2024, have led to insurrectional riots, which caused 14 deaths and over 2 billion euros (abot NZ$3.9 billion) in damages, as well as thousands of jobs lost due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.

Lecornu said his government’s Bill was meant to offer New Caledonia’s political stakeholders — both pro-France and pro-independence — a “balanced” compromise.

But this reform for “natives” still has many hurdles to pass.

On Wednesday (local time), the French Lower House, the National Assembly, which is divided and less likely to approve the French Organic Bill, is also to vote on the same text.

On April 2, the National Assembly rejected an earlier attempt to change France’s Constitution to implement the outcome of talks held in July 2025 (Bougival talks) and in January 2026 (Matignon-Oudinot talks). The process was proposing to create a “State” of New Caledonia and a correlated “Nationality”, all under the French framework.

Mixed feelings from New Caledonia’s polarised Congress
A few hours earlier on Monday in Nouméa, New Caledonia’s Congress was also convened at the request of the French government.

The meeting was also dedicated to the Organic Bill later debated in the Senate.

The request was to provide French lawmakers with a snapshot of the parties’ views regarding the text.

The sitting lasted hours in Nouméa and, once again, it was the reiteration of each party’s stance on the proposed changes to the electoral roll conditions of eligibility. The final vote reflected a polarised landscape, with each party camping on their respective positions.

On the pro-France side, most were in favour of opening the vote to the “natives”, but many regretted that the same could not be done for their spouses.

“Which country in the world is barring its own children to choose their local representatives? None,” an indignant pro-France Rassemblement group leader Virginie Ruffenach said.

“Not now,” replied UC-FLNKS group leader Pierre-Chanel Tutugoro, who said the electoral roll was “a fundamental pillar of (New Caledonia’s decolonisation process, as enshrined in the (1998) Nouméa Accord”.

Tutugoro said this could not be modified outside of a wider political agreement.

The final vote in the Congress on the inclusion of “natives” reflected those divisions: 25 in favour (including pro-France Rassemblement and pro-independence UNI [Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance]), 14 against (pro-independence Union Calédonienne-FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front]) and 13 abstentions (pro-France Les Loyalistes).

More pre-election local moves on the local front
Meanwhile, over the weekend, the four main components of the pro-France block announced a pact to contest the upcoming provincial elections as a united front.

These are Sonia Backès (Républicains Calédoniens), Nicolas Metzdorf (Génération NC), Alcide Ponga (Rassemblement — Les Républicains) and Gil Brial (Mouvement Populaire Calédonien).

In a joint statement, they have announced they have chosen the “general interest”, based on common candidates.

“Together, we share the essential: our indefectible attachment to France, civil peace, democracy and institutional stability,” they wrote.

“On 28 June, the choice will be simple: between division that paralyses and union that builds”.

At a media conference held on Friday, May 15, FLNKS leader Christian Téin said they remained open to talks with other parties.

He said there was a “will to build our country with all voluntary groups”, including in New Caledonia’s Southern province (where the capital Nouméa is located and traditionally perceived as pro-France).

Security reinforcements to arrive soon: French High Commissioner
Speaking to local Radio Rythme Bleu on Monday, France’s High Commissioner in New Caledonia Jacques Billant said preparations were currently being made in preparation of the French Pacific territory’s provincial elections.

“My priority as High Commissioner is that the elections take place in a serene atmosphere so that every political force can campaign in the best possible conditions and that each and every voter can exercise their civic right”.

He said the French Ministry of Interior (Home Affairs) “will allow reinforcements for New Caledonia. They will arrive gradually starting mid-June”.

“We’re talking about over 300 gendarmes who will arrive to reinforce the 2000 police force and gendarmes already deployed.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Greenpeace International has condemned Israeli armed forces for illegally attacking a peaceful Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters for the second time.

The flobal environmental movement said in a statement it echoed the Global Sumud Flotilla’s urgent demand for safe passage for their peaceful humanitarian mission.

“Governments must act now to stop these illegal acts of aggression,” the Greenpeace statement said.

• READ MORE: Irish president’s sister, 2 Kiwis among Gaza flotilla activists detained by Israel
• The Flotilla Tracker map showing the location of the vessels
• Live streams from the flotilla
• Other Gaza humanitarian flotilla reports

Greenpeace spokesperson Pujarini Sen said: “In Palestine, in Lebanon and now in international waters, Israel’s disregard for human rights and international law cannot be tolerated.

“How long will the world stand by and watch Israel act with such impunity?

‘Protect the flotilla’
“Greenpeace calls on all governments to act with urgency to uphold international law and ensure the immediate release and protection of the Global Sumud Flotilla with concrete steps to ensure its safe passage to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.”

The Global Sumud Flotilla is a peaceful international movement sailing to oppose Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza, to confront the complicity that enables occupation, and to stand with the Palestinian people.

The Israeli government continues to enforce a blockade by land and sea of aid and food from international organisations. Blocking aid and targeting those who attempt to deliver it are violations of international humanitarian law.⁣

CPJ protest over journalists
In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called on international governments to demand the immediate release and protection of all civilians detained after Israeli forces attacked and intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, including at least seven journalists on board.

“Detaining journalists for documenting a humanitarian mission is a grave violation of press freedom and international law,” said CPJ’s MENA regional director Sara Qudah in a statement.

“Israeli authorities must restore communications, ensure the safety of all passengers, and allow independent media to report without intimidation, violence, or arbitrary detention.

“Governments worldwide must act now to prevent further Israeli attacks on journalists and humanitarian civilians.”

At least 40 countries are represented by some 500 protesters and humanitarian activists on board the flotilla.

Israel is reported to have boarded and seized more than 60 boats in the flotilla.

At least two New Zealanders are reported to have been kidnapped by the Israeli military.

CPJ calls on international governments to demand the immediate release and protection of all civilians detained after #Israeli forces attacked and intercepted #the_Global_Sumud_Flotilla in international waters, including at least 7 #journalists on board. Detaining journalists for… pic.twitter.com/OpcQ33Jgrj

— CPJ MENA (@CPJMENA) May 18, 2026

A multinational police investigation implicating 11 Fiji police officers in collusion with drug traffickers has been handed over to prosecutors.

The Fiji police announced that the investigation, lasting nearly six months, now awaits advice from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) on how to proceed.

On December 1 last year, a social media activist posted more than 100 screenshots of Viber messages between the officers and a member of an Auckland-based organised crime group.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji crime reports

Police personnel depicted in the screenshots ranged from beat cops to Criminal Intelligence Division (CID) officers to the head of the Narcotics Bureau.

The texts purportedly showed the Narcotics Bureau chief and others demanding a hit be put out on an individual, providing tip-offs about possible locations and movements. They also depicted officers demanding payments, with details of drop zones and pickup arrangements.

Police said that each officer’s financial histories was investigated.

Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu told local media on 19 December 2025 that the Narcotics Bureau chief had been placed on leave.

NZ ‘assisted’ investigation
A statement confirmed that Australian and New Zealand authorities “assisted” in the investigation. Tudravu confirmed in a press conference that United States authorities were also involved.

New Zealand police said they were “in touch” from December onwards.

“Fiji Police is leading the investigation, and New Zealand Police has offered any support that Fiji Police may require,” they said.

On December 2, Tudravu announced the investigation, with the officers’ phones confiscated shortly after. Police confirmed the investigation concluded last week.

The US Embassy in Wellington, where an FBI office is set up, declined to comment.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Irish President Catherine Connolly’s sister is among the Gaza-bound Global Sumud flotilla activists detained by Israeli forces, reports Middle East Monitor.

Dr Margaret Connolly was among at least six Irish citizens aboard the aid flotilla detained by Israel, the Irish Independent reported, citing activists.

At least two New Zealanders — Hāhona Ormsby and Julien Blondel — have also been detained, according to the Global Sumud Aotearoa — support delegation.

• READ MORE: Spain summons Israeli envoy over Gaza flotilla interception, calls it ‘new violation of international law’
• Türkiye condemns new Israeli ‘piracy’ against Gaza aid flotilla in international waters
• The Global Sumud Flotilla Tracker
• Other Gaza flotilla reports
• WATCH: An Al Jazeera Instagram report showing the Israeli military storming the flotilla

A third New Zealander, Mousa Taher, was still sailing toward Gaza aboard the Kasri Sadabat.

According to the Global Sumud Flotilla, 10 boats from a 60-vessel convoy were intercepted in international waters and boarded by Israeli forces earlier on Monday.

Organisers said the interception took place around 70 nautical miles off the island of Cyprus, with at least six of the 15 Irish participants detained.

The flotilla released videos from Connolly and five other activists that appeared to have been recorded before the interception.

‘If you are watching . . . ‘
“If you are watching this video, it means I have been kidnapped from my boat in the flotilla by the Israeli occupying forces, and I’m now being held illegally in an Israeli prison,” Connolly said in the video.

“I am so proud to be taking part in this flotilla — it is the largest to date,” she added.

The Israeli army attacked and intercepted the Gaza-bound Global Sumud humanitarian flotilla in international waters and detained around 100 activists as the mission sought to break Israel’s blockade on the Palestinian enclave.

The flotilla, consisting of more than 50 boats, set sail on Thursday from the Turkish Mediterranean district of Marmaris in a renewed attempt to break the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007.

Organisers said the mission included 426 participants, among them 96 Turkish activists and participants from 39 other countries, including Germany, the US, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Algeria, Indonesia, Morocco, France, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Egypt, Pakistan, Tunisia, Oman and New Zealand.

On April 29, Israeli forces also attacked the Global Sumud aid flotilla off the coast of the Greek island of Crete.

Pacific Media Watch reports: A Global Sumud Aotearoa statement said today: “Overnight, the Israeli military has illegally boarded and intercepted over 35 vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla, including the two vessels carrying New Zealanders Hāhona Ormsby and Julien Blondel.

“Hāhona and Julien are now in israeli custody.

“New Zealander Mousa Taher is aboard one of 18 vessels still sailing through the night to Gaza.

“The safe and unimpeded passage of the remaining vessels is protected under international law, including the UNCLOS Treaty.

“We sail with the legacy of a people who have resisted for eight decades, rooted in steadfastness, in Sumud. We will not stop until the siege is broken and until Palestine is free.”

• Global Sumud Flotilla Live Feed

Türkiye has condemned Israel’s intervention against the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, describing it as “a new act of piracy”, reports TRT World News.

In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Israeli forces had yesterday intervened against the flotilla, which was carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Three New Zealanders were reported to be facing illegal interception — including Hāhona Ormsby, Mousa Taher, and Julien Blondel — according to Sumud Flotilla statement.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces storm Gaza-bound aid flotilla off Cyprus
• Global Sumud Flotilla Live tracker
• Other Gaza flotilla reports

The Turkish ministry said: “We condemn the intervention carried out by Israeli forces in international waters against the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was formed to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and which constitutes a new act of piracy.”

The ministry noted that citizens from nearly 40 countries were on board the flotilla of more than 50 vessels and said Israel’s “attacks and intimidation policies” would not prevent international solidarity with the Palestinian people.

It called on Israel to immediately halt the intervention and unconditionally release the detained participants.

The ministry also said Turkish authorities were taking necessary steps to ensure the safe return of Turkish citizens aboard the flotilla and were closely monitoring developments in coordination with other countries.

Israeli military attack
The Israeli army attacked the Gaza-bound Global Sumud humanitarian flotilla in international waters on Monday. Live broadcasts from the flotilla showed Israeli naval forces intercepting the vessels one by one.

Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported that activists detained aboard the flotilla were being transferred to a navy ship described as a “floating prison” before being taken to the port of Ashdod.

The Global Sumud aid flotilla demanded “safe passage” for its humanitarian mission to Gaza, accusing Israel of carrying out “illegal acts of piracy.”

In a statement, the flotilla said Israeli forces attacked the first of its boats “in broad daylight” in international waters while military vessels intercepted the fleet.

“We demand safe passage for our legal, non-violent humanitarian mission,” the statement said.

• WATCH: An Al Jazeera Instagram report showing the Israeli military storming the flotilla

A Sumud Flotilla Aotearoa statement in Auckland last night said three of the boats being illegally intercepted carried New Zealanders on board. They were reported to be:

Hāhona Ormsby aboard the Diabolo
Mousa Taher aboard the Kasri Sadabat
Julien Blondel aboard the Abodes

“This is an illegal interception of a peaceful humanitarian flotilla sailing under international law.” said Phoebe McLean of the Aotearoa Delegation.

“We must speak out. We must protect our people. We must protect Palestine.”

‘Propaganda campaign’
In a background statement, the Aotearoa Delegation statement said this latest military interception followed a “coordinated week-long propaganda campaign” broadcast by state-controlled Israeli regime media outlets, and amplified by their own “self-proclaimed propaganda yacht filled with influencers spreading the israeli regime’s lies”.

“This established playbook seeks to manufacture consent to carry out war crimes and crimes against humanity against an unarmed, non-violent civil society mission composed of doctors, journalists, and humanitarians.”

The Global Sumud Flotilla legal team has formally stated that the participants are entirely unarmed, and any violence executed on these vessels remains the sole legal responsibility of the israeli regime.

Active criminal investigations are moving forward across 20 countries, and individual liability will also be pursued in international courts for all forces “enforcing this genocidal siege”, the statement said.

Also, the naval interception of the flotilla “occurs in tandem with an aggressive containment strategy on land”.

The Global Sumud Land Convoy — comprising more than 30 vehicles, including 7 specialised ambulances and 20 mobile homes — has been halted near Sirte, Libya.

Eastern Libyan authorities, reportedly acting under direct political pressure from Egypt, have positioned military forces to block the overland humanitarian route toward Rafah.

ANALYSIS: By Trita Parsi

The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran.

Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner.

Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours.

• READ MORE: Iran says talks ongoing through Pakistan with a focus on ending war
• Israeli forces storm Gaza-bound aid flotilla off Cyprus
• Other Gaza and Iran “ceasefire” reports

We should first recognise that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit– the blockade of the blockade — has failed. That, in turn, was itself an admission that the war had failed. Which was an admission that the threats of war in January had failed.

As I have argued before on my Substack, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump; it has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.

Although negotiators have made meaningful progress on several fronts, talks have thus far failed to produce an agreement, largely because of irreconcilable differences over Tehran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile. And as Washington has come to realise that the blockade is backfiring, a new and dangerous dynamic has emerged: both sides now believe another round of fighting will strengthen their hand in the negotiations that follow.

As I argued in numerous interviews in January, Trump dramatically underestimated Iran’s strength, while hardliners in Tehran believed war would strengthen Iran’s leverage by exposing the illusion of Iranian weakness.

Vindicated assessment
In their view, the outcome of the conflict vindicated that assessment, leaving them increasingly confident — even emboldened — about what a second round of war could yield. I am told the new Supreme Leader belongs to this camp.

Moreover, just as Tehran believes Trump intends to prosecute the next war with far greater ferocity, Iranian planners are preparing a far more expansive and punishing retaliatory campaign, complete with new strategic objectives and targets.

First, Iranian officials increasingly describe the next war as an opportunity to inflict maximum strategic damage on the United Arab Emirates, citing Abu Dhabi’s active role in the previous conflict, its deepening and increasingly overt partnership with Israel, and its role in urging Trump to resume hostilities.

Tehran is likely to target American data centers in the UAE, a move that serves multiple purposes. Iranian officials argue that these American technology firms have already become participants in the conflict through their support for the Pentagon.

At the same time, Tehran sees an opportunity to cripple the UAE’s ambitions to become a global artificial intelligence hub — and, in doing so, potentially undermine Washington’s AI competition with China.

This points to a second defining feature of Iran’s strategy in a future war. Tehran believes Trump and his family hold financial stakes in many of these same technology ventures.

Targeting Trump’s personal business interests is a lever Iran conspicuously avoided pulling during the first conflict but now appears increasingly willing to use.

Logic straightforward
The logic is straightforward: Trump may tolerate damage to American strategic interests, but he is acutely sensitive to threats against his own financial empire. Raise the personal cost to Trump himself, the reasoning goes, and he may prove more willing to adopt a realistic negotiating position.

Third, Tehran is likely to show far less restraint if evidence emerges that other Gulf Cooperation Council states permit the United States or Israel to use their territory or airspace in a renewed conflict. The result would be broader and far more perilous horizontal escalation, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the global economy should critical energy infrastructure come under attack.

Fourth, the Red Sea is now in play. That would dramatically widen the geographic scope of the conflict while placing even greater upward pressure on already volatile oil prices.

Finally, Tehran is increasingly examining the possibility of severing the major submarine fiber-optic cable networks running beneath the Persian Gulf — arteries through which most GCC internet traffic flows, including billions of dollars in financial transactions. Iranian officials increasingly view this as a potential second Strait of Hormuz: a powerful new point of leverage capable of disrupting the global economy at enormous scale.

Renewed war is not inevitable. But when both sides convince themselves that another round of fighting will strengthen their negotiating position, the gravitational pull toward conflict becomes dangerously strong — however irrational the logic may ultimately be.

Trita Parsi is an Iranian-Swedish political analyst and foreign policy scholar specialising in Middle East geopolitics and US-Iran relations. He is the co-founder and executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Republished with permission.

Israel is now perceived more negatively than any other country in the world, according to new global polling published by Nira Data as part of its 2026 democracy and country perception research.

The five most positively perceived countries were Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Sweden and Italy.

The findings place Israel at the bottom of the Global Country Perceptions 2026 ranking, a survey of 46,667 respondents assessing how 129 countries and three international organisations are viewed around the world.

• READ MORE: As Israel becomes a global pariah, leaked Meta data reveals soaring costs for its brands
• Israel to spend $730m on propaganda as global image collapses over Gaza genocide
• Improvements in Pacific media freedom, but a shameful silence on Gaza ‘death trap’
• Other Gaza and war on Iran reports

The ranking was published alongside Nira Data’s 2026 Democracy Perception Index, which surveyed 94,146 respondents across 98 countries on how citizens experience democracy in their own countries.

The result marks another sign of Israel’s deepening international isolation amid its genocide in Gaza, mass displacement of Palestinians, starvation policies and escalating violence in the occupied West Bank, and attacks on Lebanon in breach of a so-called “ceasefire”.

Israel’s global image has collapsed as human rights organisations, UN experts and international courts have warned of grave violations of international law by the occupation state.

The United States has also suffered a dramatic collapse in global standing. The US is now ranked among the five most negatively perceived countries in the world, below both Russia and China in international favourability. Its net perception score fell from +22 per cent in 2024 to -16 per cent in 2026, a 38-point drop in just two years.

Growing anger over Trump
US decline came amid growing anger over President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, including strained relations with NATO allies, aggressive tariffs, threats relating to Greenland, cuts to Ukraine aid and Washington’s role in the US-Israeli conflict with Iran. The survey found that the US is now viewed as a major global threat, behind Russia and Israel.

The wider 2026 Democracy Perception Index describes itself as the world’s largest annual democracy survey.

Unlike expert-based democracy rankings, it asks citizens directly how they experience democracy through questions on elections, freedom of speech, political pluralism, civic education, separation of powers, rule of law, government transparency and peaceful transitions.

The collapse in Israel’s standing comes as global public opinion has shifted sharply against the occupation state over its assault on Gaza.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, displaced nearly the entire population and imposed conditions that UN experts and genocide scholars have described as genocidal.

For the US, the findings point to the steep cost of Washington’s continued military, diplomatic and political support for Israel.

While successive US administrations have shielded Israel from accountability at the UN and continued arms transfers despite mounting evidence of war crimes, the survey suggests that global publics increasingly associate American power with impunity, double standards and destabilising wars.

Republished from Middle East Monitor.

The eighth floor of the Tempo building in Jakarta became the setting for a gathering rich with meaning.

What brought together community leaders, politicians, academics, religious figures, journalists, and the family of the late Thom Beanal was not merely a book launch. It was an earnest attempt to revisit the essence of struggle, leadership, and hope for the land of Papua.

The event, which took the form of a discussion and review of a three-volume book series on Thom Beanal, opened with greetings in multiple traditions — from an Amungme war cry to salutations representing all major tribes in Papua.

• READ MORE:  Tom Beanal, the true indigenous of Papua
• ‘They’re wiping us out’ – church leader warns about young West Papuans killed in escalating conflict
• Papuan women ‘living in fear’ condemn military violence
• Other West Papua reports

That gesture alone reflected the very spirit of the man being honoured: a leader who embraced diversity and respected every single man and woman.

The gathering coincided with three historic moments, making it even more significant.

First, it marked exactly 27 years since Thom Beanal, standing before President B. J. Habibie, boldly expressed the heartfelt desire of his people. With courage and clarity, he called for recognition as a nation that wanted to cooperate honestly, peacefully, and democratically.

Second, the event served as a memorial, three years after Beanal’s passing — a man who left a deep imprint on the struggle of Indigenous Papuans.

Third, it celebrated the culmination of two years of work by a writing team, resulting in a trilogy that chronicles the journey of a lay pastor, a tribal chief, and what many now call a “father” to the indigenous Papuan.

From lay pastor to Indigenous defender
Thom Beanal was no ordinary leader. Born on 11 July 1947 into the Amungme tribe in Timika, he completed his education from primary school to a Catholic theological academy, then served as a catechist teacher in Wamena and Paniai and as a lay pastor in several parishes.

Yet behind his calming smile and disciplined demeanour lay a profoundly thoughtful mind.

Witnessing firsthand the human rights abuses and ecological destruction caused by PT Freeport Indonesia, Beanal resigned from his pastoral duties. He felt a more urgent calling: to defend indigenous communities whose lands and lives were being uprooted.

In 1994, he founded LEMASA, the Amungme Traditional Deliberative Council, as a vehicle for indigenous advocacy. Two years later, he took an audacious step — suing Freeport in a New Orleans court. That legal action set a precedent: for the first time, a Papuan had dared to take on a multinational giant on foreign soil.

His fight did not stop there. Beanal went on to push for a one percent allocation of mining revenue for affected communities. Although limited in scope, that achievement brought a measure of justice to people who, for decades, had borne the negative impacts of mining without enjoying the wealth of their own land.

Reform era and a unique role
Entering the reform era, Beanal’s role expanded. Together with other Papuan figures and students, he helped establish FORERI, a forum that channelled Papuan aspirations during the early wave of reform.

When the Papuan Council (Dewan Papua) was formed in 2000, he served as its vice chairman. He later became chairman of the Papuan Traditional Council from 2002 to 2007. Remarkably, President Abdurrahman Wahid — known as Gus Dur, a leader with genuine concern for justice in Papua — appointed Beanal as a commissioner of PT Freeport Indonesia.

Serving until 2018, Beanal found himself in a unique position: an indigenous rights fighter sitting on the board of the very company he had long opposed.

Yet despite those strategic roles, speakers at the book launch event described Thom Beanal as a humble man, disciplined and rich in metaphor. He never offered instant answers.

Instead, he opened spaces for collective reason to search for truth. In every balance of history, he arrived precisely when the Papuan people were not in a good state. And sadly, three years after his passing, the reality facing Papua remains far from encouraging.

A grim reality for Papua today
The presentations at the Tempo building painted a grim picture. Terms like genocide, ecocide, and ethnocide were mentioned as ongoing threats to Indigenous life. Papua’s gold and other natural resources, it was argued, remain mortgaged until 2061 under a contract deemed uncivilised because it ignores the basic rights of the customary landowners.

Suffering, the speakers said, is still the daily bread of Papuans. It is against this backdrop that the three books on Thom Beanal were written — not to lament the past, but to read the present clearly and to weave solutions for the future.

The 47 contributors to the third volume, divided into six sections, provided reflections and testimonies that enrich the books. They came from diverse backgrounds: family members, prominent figures of the Amungme tribe, academics, activists, and religious leaders.

The head of the writing team, Markus Haluk, expressed his highest appreciation to everyone who supported the two year process. Moral support and advice from religious, traditional, and political leaders were cited as a key source of strength.

Special thanks were directed to the book’s reviewers, including Dr Budi Hernawan, Dr Suraya Afiff, Yorrys Raweyai, Inayah Wahid, and Emanuel Gobay, for their critical engagement with the content.

Six strategic demands for the future
More than a launch, the event became a platform for six strategic recommendations and hopes. First, the books should serve as historical source material and references for young Papuans and the wider public. The concern that the struggles of national figures might vanish with time underscores why documentation and dissemination are so urgent.

Without conscious efforts to write and spread the stories of past heroes, dark chapters could repeat, and the sacrifices of predecessors might become meaningless.

Second, the book launch was not meant to be a time for complaining or blaming one another. Instead, it is time to speak honestly about Papua’s current realities and then collectively formulate comprehensive, strategic solutions.

This constructive mindset is a legacy of Beanal’s way of thinking — seeing problems as challenges to be solved, not excuses for despair.

Third, participants were called to continue the prophetic voice exemplified by several great figures. Mentioned were bishops such as Monsignor Staverman, Monsignor Monninghoff, Monsignor Laba Ladjar, Monsignor John Philip Saklil, Father Neles Tebay, Monsignor Yanuarius You, and Monsignor Bernardus Baru OSA.

Among executive leaders, two presidents known for their deep concern for Papua — B. J. Habibie and Gus Dur — were hailed as models of dignified, peaceful struggle. The goal is noble: to save the people, culture, and natural world of Papua, which remains the last remaining lung of the Asia Pacific region. Achieving this requires genuine solidarity across sectors and religions.

Fourth, a firm call was directed at the Indonesian government, especially President Prabowo Subianto and relevant ministers: stop the mortgaging of Papua’s natural wealth, stop the gold theft, and stop the destruction of the universe that is the Papuan people’s home.

The contract binding Papua until 2061 is seen as a form of structural injustice that must be corrected. Rejection of all forms of natural resource pledging for the benefit of a few — especially to foreign parties — was voiced loudly before dozens of attendees.

Fifth, recognition of and respect for the rights of the Papuan people over politics, land, natural resources, and human dignity are non negotiable demands. The threats of genocide, ethnocide, and structural violence must be halted immediately. The absence of genuine recognition of these basic rights has been the root of decades of conflict and suffering in the land of Papua.

Sixth, and perhaps most fundamental, is the call to build honest, peaceful, and democratic negotiations between the Papuan people and the Indonesian government. This is not a new idea. It is precisely what Thom Beanal himself voiced when he stood at the State Palace on 26 February 1999.

He laid before the president the sincere desire of his people, offering equal dialogue based on honesty and peace. Twenty seven years later, the same call must be repeated — proof that a massive homework assignment still lies before the Indonesian government.

Continuing the struggle, not grieving
The subsequent discussion session opened the floor for strategic ideas from participants. The emphasis was that this gathering was not for grieving or lamenting fate, but for continuing the struggle. Attendees were encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and contribute according to their capacities.

An academic might contribute through critical research, a journalist through balanced and in-depth reporting, a politician through pro-people policy advocacy, a religious leader through moral and spiritual reinforcement, and an artist through works that raise awareness.

The event closed with a beautiful, touching metaphor drawn from Thom Beanal himself. He once reflected on the rain that welcomed his funeral in Timika. In his poetic logic, he hoped that the words spoken by those who continue his struggle would water the still thirsty soil of the fight.

The land of Papua, with all its natural wealth and cultural diversity, has long been like an arid field waiting for the rain of justice, recognition, and respect from the wider Indonesians.

A test of national commitment
The gathering at the Tempo building ultimately served as a test of Indonesia’s national commitment. Do we truly want to learn from a figure like Thom Beanal? Can we draw wisdom from the journey of a lay pastor who left his religious duties to pursue social justice? Do we have the courage to admit that for decades, systematic structural injustice has occurred in Papua?

And most importantly, do we possess the political will to stop all forms of exploitation and violence, and to build equal, dignified dialogue?

The trilogy on Thom Beanal, launched that day, is not merely a collection of stories from the past. It is a mirror for understanding today’s reality, and a compass for stepping into the future. It is a document of courage from a child of the nation who chose not to remain silent, despite great risks.

It is a legacy for young Papuans so they do not lose their historical roots, and for young Indonesians outside Papua, so they do not lose empathy and a sense of justice.

In the end, the gathering affirmed that Thom Beanal’s struggle is unfinished. His legacy still needs many hands to carry it forward. Amid threats of genocide, ecocide, and various forms of structural violence, prophetic voices like those modelled by the bishops, priests, and presidents who dared to side with justice are still desperately needed.

Will the Indonesian government listen? Will today’s leaders — including President Prabowo Subianto and his ministers — respond to the call to stop mortgaging natural wealth and to start honest, democratic negotiations? These questions still hang in Jakarta’s hot air, while in Timika, the rain may continue to fall, waiting for the words that can water the still thirsty land.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta. He is also an honorary member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Aotearoa New Zealand, and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is “open to all except its adversaries”, and any passage through the trajectory of this significant chokepoint should be coordinated with the Iranian military, reports AL Jazeera.

Sources say the number of ships transiting through the strait has slightly increased, but is still very low compared with pre-war times, reports Tohid Asadi from Bandar Abbas, a city on the strait.

Asadi has filed several exclusive reports from the strait area in the past few days.

• READ MORE: Drone hits UAE power plant; Israeli attacks on Lebanon continue
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He reports that Iran also said it was critically important for the US to lift the blockade on Iranian ships as a condition that could be taken into consideration when it comes to taking the strait into a normal situation.

Iran says it will soon reveal its plan to manage traffic ⁠through the strait, including the charging of tolls, while Trump has warned Tehran will have a “very bad time” if a peace deal is not reached soon.

On Saturday, Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, said his country would no longer allow “enemy” military equipment to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Tohid Asadi reporting from the Strait of Hormuz.              Video: Al Jazeera

insurance-based framework
The Lebanese-based satellite news service Al-Mayadeen reports that Iran is advancing an insurance-based framework to manage the strait, of H aiming to expand maritime oversight and generate post-war revenue while remaining within international law.

Iran’s Ministry of Economy is reportedly advancing a proposal to manage the Strait of Hormuz through an insurance-based framework aimed at enabling post-war oversight of the strategic waterway in accordance with international law, while also creating a new source of revenue for the country.

According to a document obtained by Fars News Agency, the initiative seeks to establish a mechanism through which “management of the Strait of Hormuz becomes possible via insurance,” in a way that would remain acceptable to foreign states under non-war conditions while still allowing Iran to exercise effective control over maritime activity in the strait.

Under the proposed framework, Iran would gain broader oversight capabilities, including expanded access to maritime data and the ability to distinguish between vessels from different countries transiting the waterway.

Since the onset of the US-Israeli war, Iranian officials have maintained that “security of the Strait of Hormuz lies with the armed forces of the Islamic Republic”.

Against that backdrop, the proposal argues that management of the strait should remain under Iranian authority due to the damage Tehran has sustained from the passage of hostile vessels through the corridor.

A West Papuan church leader has warned that ongoing killings of young Papuans allegedly by Indonesian security forces have the hallmark of genocide.

Since the start of the year there has been no stop to violent incidents in the Indonesian-ruled Papua region known internationally as West Papua.

Indonesia’s government blames recent violence on armed, pro-independence West Papuan fighters.

• READ MORE: Papuan women ‘living in fear’ condemn military violence
• Other West Papua reports

However, human rights defenders say the violence is escalating, while the young, indigenous people of West Papua are in the firing line.

High school students shot
Last week a 17-year old Papuan girl was killed as a result of a military operation reportedly targeting civilian mining camps in Tembagapura.

Also last week, several Papuan high school students were shot when tensions flared at a graduation parade through the town of Kobakma in Papua’s central highlands. Police had objected to them wearing the Papuan Morning Star flag — a symbol of the independence movement.

Last month, Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) said it was investigating a shooting incident that left up to 12 Papuan civilians dead as the result of an Indonesian military operation in Kembru district. According to human rights researchers, a 5-year old girl and a 77-year old woman were among the dead.

Komnas HAM’s commissioner for monitoring and investigation Saurlin Siagian said it was difficult to ascertain the exact ages of each victim in the Kembru incident, but he told RNZ Pacific that two pregnant women were among those killed.

Earlier in April, five people, including a 12-year old boy, were shot dead in Dogiyai regency in an alleged retaliatory attack by police after a policeman was killed.

The list goes on, stretching back to January — dozens of people reported dead, dozens more people injured and many more people displaced from their villages.

Disturbing pattern
The head of the human rights and justice department of the GIDI Evangelical Church of Indonesia in Papua, Pastor Jimi Koirewa, said there was a disturbing pattern to these attacks.

“The children are being killed, the women are being killed. That is a part of genocide, because the women will give birth to babies, the kids, the children, the youth, they are the future of Papua, and killing them is part of a genocide.

“They’re wiping us out. There will be no more people there standing in Papua. The old people will die gradually,” Pastor Koirewa told RNZ Pacific.

Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry declined to comment on the pastor’s claim. It said it could not discuss recent incidents while investigations are underway. However, the Human Rights Minister in Jakarta, Natalius Pigai, has admitted the situation is a serious concern.

After a violent year in 2025 — when Komnas HAM recorded 97 violent incidents and armed conflicts in Papua — the situation has deteriorated further this year.

Pigai noted that the country’s independent human rights body has identified 26 cases of violence in Papua from January to April 2026.

“Based on records from both domestic and international sources, there is an escalation. In just under a month, no fewer than 20 people died in 5 incidents in Dogiyai, Yahukimo, Puncak Papua, Timika, and Tembagapura,” Pigai said in a statement on Sunday.

Pigai claimed the government was continuing to seek a peaceful solution that can address the root causes of the conflict.

For the past several years Indonesian security forces in Papua have been engaged in conflict with “armed criminal groups”, their label for Papuan pro-independence fighters within the wider OPM Free West Papua Movement.

Lack of justice: ‘Shooting the people’
Pastor Koirewa said the Indonesian military forces had been amassing in large numbers in recent months.

“There’s so much military deployment coming into Papua and the reason, they said, is they want to get rid of the rebels, OPM, that’s what they call rebels. They said that they want to get rid of the OPM so that development can happen, the government can come and build the land,” Koirewa said.

“But when they come in, they are not shooting the combatant, the OPM, but they are shooting the people. So I see that the it’s escalating.”

Koirewa said police rarely investigated the violent incidents thoroughly, leaving Papuan communities mistrustful of the justice system. The GIDI church has raised its concern with the upsurge in violence.

“Our church, we have no influence in Jakarta at all. We already made some communications through the formal way to Jakarta, yeah, through the our Parliament, let them know what is happening.

“But Jakarta is not responding. They don’t care.

“They just come in with their programme, and they don’t care at all. That’s why the church now is looking for aid outside of our country,” Koirewa said, adding that the aid they sought is for internally displaced people and Papuan schools.

Papuans in poverty
Jakarta has been promoting major agri-business projects in Papua provinces — including oil palm, rice and sugarcane — as well as large scale mining and forestry projects in the interior.

The government argues that increasing development and economic activity raises the standard of living for everyone in Papua.

“Which part of Papua are they developing? Why are the Papuans still the poorest among the whole Indonesian population. They have been for with us about more than 60 years. And why are the Papuans still the Papuans still in poverty?” Koirewa said.

“We see that there has been no output at all. They will only bring more non-Papuans in to take over our land.”

Koirewa said changing demographics due to Indonesian transmigration added to the sense that Papuans were being out numbered in their homeland and facing a bleak future.

“There’s no hope,” he said.

The displacement of Papuan villagers is also a factor, with the latest Internally Displaced Persons update from Human Rights Monitor group saying more than 107,000 West Papuans remain displaced by armed conflict.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Niue’s assembly has re-elected Dalton Tagelagi as its prime minister, continuing his leadership for the next three years.

Tagelagi, 57, has led Niue since 2020 and was nominated alongside Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui during the leadership vote.

The 19th Niue Assembly was officially sworn in on Wednesday local time.

• READ MORE: Other Niue reports

Billy Talagi was sworn in as the new Speaker of Parliament.

Pacific Media News reported Tagelagi won a narrow 11-9 leadership vote, and the result confirms continuity in leadership but exposes a deeply divided Parliament with MPs split almost evenly between the two leadership nominees.

Niue’s 20-member Assembly is elected every three years, made up of 14 village representatives and six common roll MPs elected across the country.

Addressing parliament after his re-election, Tagelagi called for unity in the new term.

‘Challenging times’
“These are challenging times when we go into elections because we have different perspectives and understanding that sometimes this might divide our families and affect our relationships with one another,” he said.

“I ask you to come together in this Assembly, that we make decisions for the good of the people. I humbly ask you all to work together as we move forward with the 19th Legislative Assembly and government.”

PMN’s Inangaro Vaka’afi told RNZ Pacific Waves Tagelagi had been adamant he wanted another term.

“And also try and complete some of the work that they have already started,” she said.

She said there is a mixture of reaction to how Tagelagi had led the country so far.

“I think it’s not necessarily individual MPs, but you remember that they are representing their village constituency or a common role seat.

“So perhaps there has been some sentiment on the ground in terms of situation on the island, or where the economy is at the moment, also just knowing what’s happening, because some of the work that’s been done doesn’t necessarily get filtered down to grassroots.

‘Finest of margins’
“But I know that there are people on island who are quite satisfied and happy with the direction that they’ve been going, and then there are others who are not, especially when you think about — he represents a village constituency for Alofi South, which is the largest voting population on the island, and he managed to secure his seat by the finest of margins, by one vote.

“And if one were to sit back and just analyse that there’s obviously, I guess, requests or some want from within his constituency to pay a bit more attention to the village. And understandably, because you are the leader of the country, you do have to put the interest of a whole nation in front of mind.

“But don’t forget that you also were placed in that position by your village constituency.”

The new 19th Legislative Assembly also saw a record seven women elected, making up 35 percent of the House — the highest in the nation’s history.

The six common roll seats went to Robert BJ Rex, Moira Enetama, Richmond Lisimoni-Togahai, Emani Fakaotimanava-Lui, Sonya Talagi and Kahealani Hekau, alongside village representatives, several of whom were elected unopposed.

Robert BJ Rex, who topped the common roll vote with 560 ballots, told BCN he was honoured by the outcome.

“My life is based in community. Not only my community, but just my presence around any group or any community, I have tried to be there and get involved and support in any way I can.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Solomon Islands has entered a new political era. In a historic morning at Parliament House yesterday, Matthew Cooper Wale was elected as the nation’s new Prime Minister.

His victory marks the culmination of a dramatic week in Honiara and signals a potential shift in both the country’s internal management and its place on the global stage.

Wale, the longtime Leader of the Opposition, defeated former Foreign Minister Peter Shanel Agovaka in a secret ballot, winning 26 votes to 22.

• READ MORE: China’s growing grip on the fragile Solomon Islands media sector
• Solomon Islands PM Jeremiah Manele ousted after just over two years in power
• Other Solomon islands reports

The result was greeted with cheers from supporters gathered outside Parliament, Honiara and around the country, as the 57-year-old leader prepared to take the oath of office before Governor-General Sir David Tiva Kapu.

The road to victory
The path to the premiership was anything but simple. Just eight days ago, the previous government led by Jeremiah Manele collapsed after losing a motion of no-confidence.

For years, Matthew Wale has been the most prominent voice of dissent in the Solomon Islands, often coming close to the top job but never quite reaching it. After falling short in the 2019 and 2024 leadership votes, many viewed Wale as the perpetual runner-up.

However, today’s result proves that his persistence and his message of “breaking the shackles” finally resonated with a majority of his fellow Members of Parliament.

In his first address following the announcement, Prime Minister-elect Wale was humble but realistic.

“We take the government at a difficult time,” Wale told the press. “Change is coming. These changes are necessary, and they may be painful. I ask that you join your government in putting your hand to the plough.”

Profile of a leader
Who is Matthew Wale? Born on 13 June 1968, in Ambu Village, Malaita Province, Matthew Cooper Wale is a seasoned veteran of the Pacific political landscape. Before entering the world of policy and Parliament, he was an accountant — a background that many believe informs his disciplined approach to the national budget.

Wale first entered Parliament in 2008 during a byelection for the Aoke/Langalanga constituency. He quickly made a name for himself as a fiery and articulate speaker. Unlike many politicians who stay in the background, Wale has never been afraid of a verbal scrap on the floor of Parliament.

Over the past 18 years, he has served in various roles, but he is best known for leading the Solomon Islands Democratic Party (SIDP) and acting as the primary check on the power of former Prime Ministers Manasseh Sogavare and Jeremiah Manele.

In late 2024, he was even awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for his long service to the public and political life of the country, a testament to his standing both at home and within the Commonwealth.

A vision of ‘economic liberation’
What does a Matthew Wale government look like? Throughout his career, Wale has championed a few core beliefs that he calls his “pillars of change”, “anti-corruption and “elite capture”.

Wale’s most frequent target is what he calls “elite capture” — the idea that a small group of powerful people in Honiara control most of the country’s wealth. He has promised to dismantle these systems to ensure resources reach the rural provinces.

Education and health: A vocal advocate for the “ordinary family”, Wale has consistently pushed for increased funding for hospitals and free, high-quality education. He believes that a nation cannot flourish if its citizens are not healthy and skilled.

Political stability: To end the cycle of “grasshopping” (where MPs switch parties for personal gain), Wale has signaled he will seek to strengthen laws that keep political parties disciplined and accountable.

The ‘China question’ and global relations: Perhaps the most watched aspect of Wale’s new leadership will be his foreign policy. For years, Wale was a staunch critic of the 2022 security pact signed with China, warning that it could “jeopardise” relationships with traditional partners like Australia and the United States.

Tone has evolved
However, as a pragmatist, Wale’s tone has evolved. While he is expected to rebalance the nation’s relationships — likely warming ties with Canberra and Washington — he has acknowledged that Chinese infrastructure is now a reality in the Solomon Islands.

He is unlikely to tear up existing agreements overnight, but observers expect a more “balanced” approach that prioritises Solomon Islands’ sovereignty above all else.

As the sun sets on the nation today, the atmosphere is one of cautious optimism. The challenges facing Prime Minister Wale are immense: a struggling economy, high cost of living, and a deeply divided Parliament.

But for today, the man who spent nearly two decades in the wings finally has the chance to lead. Matthew Wale’s message to the people is clear: the road ahead will be hard, but the destination — a fairer, more transparent Solomon Islands — is worth the effort.

The “Hapi Isles” are watching, and the world is, too.

Campion Ohasio is a Solomon Islands-based self-taught visual artist, graphic designer, and prominent political cartoonist known for capturing South Pacific social issues. He gained early recognition in the 1990s for his work on Uni Tavur at the University of Papua New Guinea and later as a editor for the Solomons Voice. This commentary is republished with the author’s permission.

Most of the Western media refuse to join the dots and explain Israel’s decades-long obsession with defanging Tehran.

The war in Iran is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has planned for four decades. He has always wanted Israel to extend from Egypt to the Euphrates and in the process have the United States overthrow seven neighbouring countries, the last and latest being Iran.

That was also America’s plot, hatched by the neo-conservative authors at the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000. The list of targeted countries, confirmed by US General Wesley Clark in 2007, was based on a proposal published in Israel in 1982.

• READ MORE: Lifting secrecy plans to censor jornalists
• Other war on Palestine, war on Iran reports

Ambitious as they were, these long-held intentions have now culminated in the US-Israel war on Iran, which seems sudden but was carefully planned, a former British Ambassador claims.

US President Donald Trump was not “bounced into it” by Israel: it had been in gestation for months, says Craig Murray, Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004.

Well in advance, Trump had weapons ordered for fast delivery from Lockheed Martin, naval ships and troops were moved to the Gulf, and CIA and Mossad agitators reportedly stirred up Iranians in several cities, already exasperated by their theocratic rulers and by US sanctions.

If Murray is right, Trump and Netanyahu must have been planning this in their frequent meetings before and since the “12-day war” against Iran last year. Or for longer: Trump has reminded the world that as far back as 1987 he wanted the US to take over some of Iran’s oil, and to go to war for it.

Everything is a ‘deal’
But Trump’s shambolic war shows that he regards everything as a “deal’” and while aggrandising himself, he fails to understand that Iranians don’t accept transactionalism about their country, whoever its leader is.

He appears not to remember that under the Shah, Iran was on good terms with Israel and the US, until the uprising against the Pahlavis in 1979. He doesn’t mention the CIA’s overthrow in 1953 of Prime Minister Mossadegh, who merely wanted to nationalise Iran’s oil.

Instead of understanding Iran and its people, Trump claims to trust his “gut instinct” about the war, and he regularly gets it wrong.

The state of the president’s mental, cognitive and physical health has been raised again lately by his niece Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist. She observes symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in Trump, and recalls that his father and her grandfather, Fred Trump sr., died with dementia.

Other specialists detect signs of “malignant narcissism”, and note that the President’s repeated threats, exaggerations, and reversals are more likely to be the results of incapacity than of intent.

Still, Trump’s erratic statements keep attention focussed on him, keeping the world guessing and confused, and his narcissistic self on centre stage. For Trump, as for Netanyahu, the personal is paramount. Both of them face coming elections (Trump has to face the mid-terms in November while Netanyahu has a general election before the end of the year); both want to stay alive and out of jail; and the continuing war further enriches them, their families and friends.

Plans for war
Netanyahu’s project derives from the 1982 Yinon Plan, named after its author, an Israeli diplomat, journalist, and former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Published in the Hebrew journal Kivunim (“Directions”) as “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, it reappeared in a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, prepared for Netanyahu by American neoconservative strategists. They also produced their “Project for the New American Century”, advocating a “catastrophic and catalysing event” that would convince Americans of the need for war.

The “Clean Break” document argued that Israel should abandon land-for-peace diplomacy and instead pursue a strategy that would weaken or remove hostile regimes in the region, particularly Iraq and Syria. The goal was not mere military victory but a geopolitical restructuring of the Middle East in Israel’s favour.

In 1997, some of the same people involved with that report established the Project for the New American Century think tank, which produced several major reports, especially “Rebuilding America’s Defences” in the year 2000. It argued for preserving US military preeminence in the Middle East and two other theatres with a “revolution in military affairs” that might be accelerated by a “catastrophic and catalysing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”.

Just a year later on 9/11, such an event occurred, leading Congress quickly to pass the Authorisation for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, and the anti-terrorism PATRIOT Act.

Track the planning process forward to 2001, and a former CIA operator confirms what many conspiracy analysts have suspected for years: that Israel, together with Saudi Arabia, was potentially informed about conspirators in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11 before they occurred. John Kiriakou, a former CIA bureau chief for Pakistan, points to the involvement of the Saudi royal family in Al-Qaeda’s plan.

As well, Kiriakou says that Mossad was thick on the ground on the US east coast in 2001 and Israel knew what was to happen, but did nothing to stop it.

Furious response over Saudis
Kiriakou points to the furious response to Riyadh by US agencies on learning of the Saudis’ dominant involvement in 9/11. It produced three sudden deaths in a week in July 2022: Princes Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz (in hospital after an operation), Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki (in a car accident), and Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir (of thirst in the desert).

The latter two were both in their mid-twenties, while Ahmed was 43. Seven months later Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistan’s Air Marshal, died in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly Northwest Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants.

9/11 researchers have found out a lot more about what two US “allies”, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, knew in advance of 9/11 and did in support of al-Qaeda. US lawyer Gerald Posner’s account is based on al-Qaeda operative Ali Zubaydah’s claims about his capture and interrogation, and his admissions about his work with Saudi and Pakistani officials.

From Guantánamo Bay, where he has been held without charge for more than two decades, he told Posner that both Prince Ahmed and Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistan’s Air Marshal, “knew that an attack was scheduled for American soil on that day”. Like Israelis, they did nothing to stop it.

The Report of the 9/11 Commission, which some said was “set up to fail”, read more as a call to arms against al-Qaeda than a forensic criminal report. The GW Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations prevented the US Congress accessing 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after 9/11.

Eventually released by Biden in June 2016, the pages identified Saudi Arabian diplomats, officials, and members of the ruling family as contributors to preparations for the attacks, but not Israelis.

Yet when US President Bush declared a “war on terror” in response to 9/11, he realised Netanyahu’s aim for the US to attack Israel’s neighbours. And war, says Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, “is always the first option, not the last one in Israel“.

Heavy insider trading was recorded in New York in advance of September 11, including put options on United Airlines, American Airlines, and other related stocks. A majority of those polled by The New York Times in the five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers and Washington thought the government was lying or was hiding something.  Even some staff, investigators, and members of the 9/11 Commission knew that senior military officials and CIA director George Tenet had lied to them, while others’ evidence was suppressed. But their knowledge was excluded from the final report.

Terrorists, neo-colonialists, tyrants and war criminals
This history reveals the need to be sceptical of Washington’s claims about terrorism from 9/11 to today’s war against Iran. “Terror” is repeatedly used as propaganda to manufacture consent for war and to demonise enemies of the West, while what the US and Israel do is “not terrorism”.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a war crime, said NATO and its friends: yet the US coalition’s long wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria were not. Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its former territory, was an outrageous land grab: Israel’s annexations of Syria’s Golan and the Palestinians’ West Bank territory were not. Hamas’ breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023 was terrorism; Israel’s recurrent attacks on Palestinians since 1948 and its ethnic cleansing of Gaza since 2023 were not.

Hamas and Hezbollah’s retaliation and the Houthis’ attacks are terrorism: Israel’s bombing and occupation of Gaza and southern Lebanon are not. Iran’s leaders are murderous tyrants: Israel’s indicted war criminals Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (both wanted by the International Criminal Court on arrest warrants for crimes against humanity).are not. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC are designated terrorist organisations: the IDF, CIA, and Mossad are not. The US assaults on Venezuela and Iran, to be followed by Cuba, are claimed to be against terrorism or drugs: in fact they are about who controls oil and makes and unmakes governments.

It does not occur to most Americans and Israelis that their own activities are state terror. Instead, they claim a right to defend US hegemony and all Jews’ right to Eretz Israel and greatness as “God’s chosen people”. Palestinians who resist have no such rights and are called subhuman terrorists, and under a new law, Arab Israelis will be executed for terrorism, while Jewish Israelis are not.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis made similar claims about the superiority of their civilisation to justify the Holocaust. No wonder some now detect a resurgence of fascism in the US, Israel, and elsewhere. Others observe the sudden rise of anti-Semitism since October 2003.

A growing number expect the US war to fail, leaving Israel to do its worst in Iran and Lebanon.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been added to Al-Qaeda on the list of designated terrorists. The wars that followed culminate in Iran, labelled by Trump a “terrorist regime”.

Candidate Trump took Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to “move fast and break things”. He has done it as president. What ends up broken is now the whole world’s concern.

Dr Alison Broinowski AM is an Australian former diplomat, academic and author. Her books and articles concern Australia’s interactions with the world. She is president of Australians for War Powers Reform. Republished with permission from Declassified Australia.

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand has criticised plans for the country taking part in next month’s military exercises with Israel and the United States, saying Wellington must not be seen aligning militarily with a state “facing serious allegations of war crimes and genocide before international legal institutions”.

In a statement today, the Palestine Forum expressed “deep concern” over the reports that the NZ Defence Force (NZDF) would participate in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercises with Israel and the US in Hawai’i between July 21 and 31.

“New Zealand has long claimed to uphold international law, human rights, and an independent foreign policy,” the statement said.

• READ MORE: NZDF plans upcoming RIMPAC training with Israel and the US
• Other RIMPAC reports

“Participating in joint military exercises alongside Israel fundamentally contradicts those values and risks damaging New Zealand’s international reputation.”

Such exercises should not happen at a time when the world was witnessing the ongoing devastation in Gaza and growing international condemnation of Israel’s actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Palestine Forum said.

“There should be no military cooperation with states engaged in ongoing conflicts and facing credible allegations of violations of international humanitarian law.”

The Palestine Forum called on Christopher Luxon’s coalition government to “immediately review” New Zealand participation in these exercises and “ensure the country does not become complicit directly or indirectly in legitimising violence, occupation, or collective punishment”.

Stand on side of justice, peace
New Zealanders expected their country to stand on the side of justice, peace, and international accountability, not military cooperation with governments accused of grave human rights abuses.

Valerie Morse, a member of Peace Action Wellington, yesterday released a statement about RIMPAC 2026 from the NZDF obtained in response to an Official Information Act (OIA) request last month.

“The NZDF is sending the largest contingent of troops and materiel in a decade to the this year’s RIMPAC including three ships and 328 service personnel,” Morse said.

“This is while Israel continues its genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the US and Israel wage an illegal war on Iran.”

While appreciating certain points in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s speech “Securing NZ’s Future in a more Volatile World” on current challenges to international law, enshrined “rules” and “order”, we must take a hard look at the solutions he offers to enhance security.

Security now clearly is shaped in a global context. The world’s geopolitical issues affect us all, not just those near sites of military engagement, as wars on Ukraine and Iran show.

So it’s misleading to consider security as simply a national or even regional issue, though people within range of military missiles and drones suffer the most horrendously.

• READ MORE: New Zealand in ‘big trouble’ amid growing global uncertainty, US-China relations, expert says
• Securing NZ’s Future in a more Volatile World — Luxon speech

We would agree, as Luxon claims in closing remarks, that we have values worth defending.

What kind of a world and what network of values do we most want to defend? And how can we do this without compromising those same values?

Does anyone really believe that cultural and political values such as democracy are best defended by doubling military spending as he proposes? Or that 20th century national security perspectives and “bomb them to hell” strategies are fit for purpose today, while nuclear arsenals grow month by month, no longer restrained by arms control agreements?

We don’t exist in a defence structure siloed off from a former ally who flouts any semblance of a “rules-based order”. Australia, now our only officially acknowledged defence partner, is closely linked militarily with the US.

Exercises against ‘enemy’
Last year. NZ’s navy joined US and Israel in regular RIMPAC military exercises, to prepare for war against those labelled “enemy”. Judith Collins justified this on the basis that the US sent the invitations; NZ didn’t create the guest list. (Jack Tame interview, The Nation).

Clearly it’s time to weigh up our bedfellows more judiciously, and what values their actions, rather than their words, show they are defending.

It’s hard to see how one defends values like democracy by preparing for war alongside nations whose “Ministries of War” commit and enable genocide in Gaza, threaten to add Canada and Greenland to the US real estate portfolio, and bomb weaker nations back to the Stone Age, while kidnapping presidents of other nations if US corporate interests could benefit.

Luxon is right in stating that this is a historical inflection point, and the way in which we react, along with other nations, will determine “what kind of world comes next”.

How are our values best defended? With weapons and threats? Or by joining like-minded nations to call out all who undermine the values, rules and institutions that endeavoured since the end of World War Two and the United Nations Charter to enhance genuine human security worldwide?

Only ethically grounded values, policy and strategies, supported by inspired multilateral diplomacy and conflict resolution skills, can promote such values and the multilateral order which supported them.

War is a barbaric, blunt tool from a past age which cannot deal with worsening 21st century existential threats which need global collaboration to solve, if most of humanity is to survive the future.

We owe it to our descendants to defend ethical values appropriately to build the foundations of a world that is fit for them.

Frances Palmer is a peace and conflict studies advocate and commentator. She was a SCF nurse in Vietnam and Khmer refugee camps 1975, 1980. Palmer wrote history resources for schools on “Cambodia, Faces of Violence, Hegemony & Holocaust” and “Aotearoa NZ 1980s-1990s, Participation & Resistance to International War”. This article was first published at Scoop.

Amnesty International says it is “deeply alarmed” over the obstruction of justice and chaotic scenes — including gunfire — witnessed at the Philippines Senate this week over a fugitive from the International Criminal Court.

Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who faces an arrest warrant issued by the ICC, escaped from the Senate premises in the early hours of yesterday, May 14, after the gunfire incident on Wednesday night.

Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano confirmed his exit yesterday afternoon.

• READ MORE: Bato dela Rosa, wanted by ICC, evades arrest, escapes Senate premises
• Authorities must arrest former police chief

The independent news website Rappler reported Dela Rosa’s escape yesterday morning, citing information relayed by the Senate secretariat to a credible source.

In response to reports that Dela Rosa had fled the Philippines Senate building allowing him to evade the arrest warrant, Ritz Lee Santos III, executive director of Amnesty International Philippines, said:

“We are deeply alarmed at the obstruction of justice and chaotic scenes witnessed at the Philippines Senate,” he said.

“Ronald dela Rosa’s position as Senator offers him no special protection from an ICC arrest warrant, neither under domestic nor international law. It is hugely concerning that fellow Senators and others appear to have assisted him in evading arrest and in delaying the execution of the arrest warrant — effectively facilitating his escape for now.

“Despite seeking to distance themselves from these events, President Marcos and relevant agencies remain ultimately responsible for ensuring Dela Rosa’s arrest.

Philippine senator wanted by ICC escapes            Video: Al Jazeera

Key role in ‘war on dugs’
Santos said Dela Rosa held a key role in the “war on drugs” under former President Ridrigo Duterte, who is in The Hague awaiting trial on ICC charges of crimes against humanity.

The former police chief was a “clear flight risk” and appeared intent on avoiding accountability, said Santos.

“He should be promptly located, arrested and surrendered to the ICC to answer allegations of crimes against humanity.

“The place for Dela Rosa to challenge his case and the crimes against humanity he is alleged to have committed is in The Hague, in impartial and independent trial proceedings.

“Political authority must not place anyone above the law. In the interest of justice for victims, survivors and their families, those alleged to have committed grave crimes must be held to account, no matter how long it takes.”

Three-day stand-off
After a three-day standoff between law enforcement and dela Rosa at the Philippines Senate, he was reported to have left the Senate building at 2.30am local time yesterday. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

The night before, gunshots were fired inside Senate premises while some Senators and media were still inside. There remain conflicting reports on what led to the shooting.

Various senior administration representatives, including President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, denied that there were attempts to execute an arrest warrant.

On May 11, the ICC confirmed it had issued an arrest warrant for the sitting senator.

The warrant states that the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber found there were “reasonable grounds to believe” Dela Rosa had committed the crime against humanity of murder, citing incidents in which 32 people were killed between 2016 to 2018.

Throughout 2025, I served on Australia’s first parliamentary inquiry into society-wide antisemitism. When the Bondi terrorist atrocity occurred, we had yet to finalise a report, and I supported the decision to simply send our evidence to the Royal Commission.

A notable feature of our inquiry was the care taken to test evidence and contentions through robust questioning.

This included testing key witnesses vigorously as to the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel, and on other key contentions and demands of Jewish representative groups of a Zionist perspective.

• READ MORE: Other Bondi Royal Commission reports

This didn’t please all the witnesses, for example, it led Lynda Ben-Menashe, president of the National Council of Jewish Women, to later publicly label me as “NSW’s Gaslighter-in-Chief”. This was for daring to even suggest that a wrongful conflation of Israel and the Australian Jewish community could be driving antisemitism.

In my limited observations so far of the Royal Commission, this degree of scrutiny seems not to be present, particularly when

witnesses have sought to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

The evidence in our inquiry made clear the absolute centrality in Zionist advocacy in Australia of this conflation, which is no new phenomenon, as former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban famously said of his work, “the chief task of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all”.

This conflation, however, seems to be worsening antisemitism.

Critising Israel not antisemitic
The Jewish Council of Australia spoke in their evidence of “a politicised and divisive discourse which seeks to label any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, thereby increasing antisemitism by linking Jewish identities to the state of Israel and its human rights abuses”.

A central insight I took from the inquiry is that political leaders need to exercise restraint and responsibility in not treating the Jewish community as a monolith (itself an antisemitic trope), but also in how we respond to political demands from pro-Israel Jewish representative groups.

We should undoubtedly treat these groups as important voices and witnesses on antisemitism and recognise their right to lobby, but if we subcontract the development of policy to them,

counterproductive policies focused on criticism of Israel will inevitably be the result.

This has certainly been the case with the appointment of Jillian Segal, someone, as I put to her in our inquiry, with no obvious expertise on the core question of how to reduce racism across a community.

Long before Bondi, Segal played a central role in demanding the banning of pro-Palestine protests from the CBDs of major cities, and she undoubtedly contributed to the divisive and unconstitutional post-Bondi ban on protests.

I challenged Segal in the inquiry on whether this demand was actually pernicious, because such bans would be unconstitutional and calling for them created fear and suggested the Jewish community was deliberately not being protected. She unsurprisingly disagreed.

Shared understanding missing
Another topic at the inquiry was the importance of dialogue at a community level, building shared understanding between communities sitting on each side of the conflict.

I put to a number of witnesses that perhaps this should be a two-way street.

On the one hand, non-Jewish communities are gaining an understanding of Jewish history, why Israel is so important to so many Jewish people and why the tropes of antisemitism are false.

On the other, Jewish people gaining an understanding of Palestinian history, which perhaps might reduce perceptions of antisemitism arising from Palestinian activism.

Segal was asked in this regard whether, “there might be a role for education within the Jewish community about the history of the Palestinian people” and tartly responded, “education is always valuable, but the focus of the plan is protecting Australians from hate, not asking vulnerable communities to adjust their sensitivity to it”.

Similar evidence emerged from Joshua Kirsch, a Jewish community advocate, of whom I asked:

“Do you think there are ways to deepen community understanding on both ‘sides’, if I can use that term, such that there can be a greater alignment of understandings, or greater understanding of the perspective of the other? We’ve heard evidence about perceptions of antisemitism having a pernicious influence themselves, and people interpreting things in a genuine way as antisemitism that is not intended as antisemitism is intended, for example, things that Palestinians might say about their situation.”

He answered, “I think my priority as a Jewish person, and I think as a person who is involved with Jewish organisations, is not to educate Jewish people about why their feelings are not valid.”

Indeed, what became clear in the evidence was that many of the political demands of pro-Israel groups actively

prevent the development of some semblance of a shared understanding of history.

This came up directly in the inquiry when I questioned Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh, whose council has adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which suggests that it is antisemitic to label Israel a “racist endeavour”.

“If you had a Palestinian resident who came to you and said, ‘I was expelled in 1967 from what is now Israel. I’ve been denied a right of return. I think Israel is a racist endeavour,’ is that resident an antisemite?”

Namesh replied, “There are strong views in terms of Israel and Palestine. What is crucial is understanding there are two peoples and both claim connection to the land. I think both are very valid”. 

It seemed to me that the IHRA definition could, in that public exchange, hardly be defended, because to do so would have been to directly and blatantly deny Palestinian history and identity to an absurd degree.

Yet inevitably, it will continue to be advocated for by many Jewish representative groups.

Zionist denials
In that vein, prominent Australian Zionist Alex Ryvchin attended the inquiry and directly denied that any ethnic cleansing had occurred during the formation of Israel.

A level of denialism, contradicted by the historical record, that is difficult to square with a dedicated commitment to inter-community dialogue. The evidence in our inquiry convinced me that ensuring our Jewish community is not conflated with Israel is central to dealing with growing antisemitism.

Callow future Australian political leaders might return from Israel impressed after free study tours, but the difficult, albeit obvious, truth is that Israel is an Apartheid state, founded on ethnic cleansing, a premeditated determination to create a Jewish super majority and then a denial of the right of return.

The world’s expert human rights organisations do not have this wrong.

These facts, the criminality of the destruction of Gaza and Israel’s increasingly expansionist tendencies, mean Israel will continue to attract a growing storm of criticism.

But Australia is a free society, and our Jewish community is allowed to be as supportive of Israel and Zionism as they wish. No other community in Australia is expected to distance itself from a country with which they identify, no matter how illiberal and criminal its government is, and it should never be demanded of any part of our Jewish community.

Ultimately, the only people responsible for the actions of the state of Israel are the officials of that state.

While most people will agree on this statement, the difficulty is found in how broader narratives and policies, including the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, impact across the community.

It is in this fiendishly difficult context that we look to Royal Commissioner Bell to chart a way out of the downward and divisive spiral we seem to be in.

She truly will need the wisdom of Solomon to unpick this knot of growing antisemitism in Australia.

As New Caledonia marks the second anniversary of a spate of unrest and riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, the situation on the ground remains tense, on the political, economic and security levels.

Politically, over the past two years, there have been sequences of discussion between local stakeholders and the French State.

Under the now former Minister for Overseas Territories, Manuel Valls, a series of talks in the suburbs of Paris (Bougival) in July 2025, led to a document that seems to provide a roadmap for more powers for the French Pacific territory, including the prospect of a “State” of New Caledonia, with its associated “nationality”.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

This Bougival process was, however, denounced by the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) which said, after its delegates had initially signed the agreement, that their signatures were withdrawn.

Other parties, including the “moderate” pro-independence PALIKA and UPM, committed to the agreement.

But the legislative byproducts of the Bougival document, including a constitutional amendment and an organic law, could not be enacted, especially as a result of a rebuke from the French National Assembly on April 2 this year.

Through a game of alliances between local and mainland French parties, the rejection of the Bougival-inspired bills came from both left (Socialists) and far-left (La France Insoumise) parties and even from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN).

As French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced earlier this month, after holding a fresh series of talks with local politicians, he had decided that crucial local elections should be held on June 28, most of the local parties have now entered into campaign mode.

The poll, which had been postponed three times since May 2024 (the date originally set) is now once again at the centre of debates, especially on the sensitive question of who will be qualified to cast their votes.

Since the Nouméa Accord was signed in 1998, and as part of its implementation, the electoral roll is currently “frozen”. It means it excludes people who were born or have resided in New Caledonia for an uninterrupted 10 years after November 1998.

There have been talks on an “adjustment” of the sensitive electoral roll to at least include people who were born in New Caledonia and have reached voting age since 1998.

Relaxing this criterion — which was originally designed as a temporary measure to guard against a potential risk of “diluting” the indigenous Kanak population vote — would concern about 10,000 new voters, usually referred to as “the natives”.

But this issue is crystallising again tensions and passions in New Caledonia, just like it did in reaction to an earlier attempted constitutional amendment which, in May 2024, was also perceived as the main trigger for the demonstrations, followed by unrest, staged by pro-independence parties.

But two years on, French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou and French PM Lecornu, have launched another attempt to “adjust” the provincial roll, focusing on the inclusion of the “natives”.

The provincial elections in New Caledonia elects new members for the three provincial assemblies. Based on the results, they will also determine proportionally, the makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress, the makeup of New Caledonia’s collegial government and its president.

The organic law to integrate the natives is scheduled to be tabled before the Senate on  May 18, and later before the Lower House, the National Assembly.

On the same day in Nouméa, the local Congress will be asked to vote and therefore express its position on the same matter, even though the vote would be non-binding for the French lawmakers.

Under a particularly tight schedule, the proposed organic law is also supposed to be endorsed by France’s Constitutional Council before the end of May 2026.

If it fails, New Caledonia’s provincial elections will still take place, but without any change to the “frozen” electoral roll.

In a special, 30-minute long address dedicated to New Caledonia, on social networks on May 8, Lecornu said the “status quo is not a destiny”.

After the provincial polls, Lecornu intends to bring politicians together again sometime in July to resume wider talks on New Caledonia’s political future.

In preparation for the poll, most of New Caledonia’s political parties and groups, whether pro-independence or pro-France (those who wish New Caledonia to remain a part of France), have already positioned themselves, especially on the electoral roll issue.

In the pro-France camp, there are ructions within leading parties, such as Rassemblement-LR and other components, such as Les Loyalistes or Nicolas Metzdorf’s Génération NC.

Rassemblement president and head of the local government Alcide Ponga’s suggestion that his party should run the provincial elections behind Metzdorf — who is also one of New Caledonia’s two representatives at the French National Assembly — has drawn criticism and several resignations from Rassemblement.

Since August 2024, the FLNKS has lost two of its pillars: the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and the UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia) have formed their own “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance) group, mostly based on their disapproval of the hardline approach promoted by the main component of FLNKS, Union Calédonienne and its allied “pressure groups”.

One of those groups, the CCAT (Field Action Coordination Committee), was perceived as the main force behind the protests that later degenerated into riots, in May 2024.

In August 2024, CCAT leader Christian Téin was elected as FLNKS president, even though he was at the time serving a pre-trial jail term in Mulhouse (north-east of mainland France).

Pending the ruling on his case for alleged crime-related charges, which has not happened yet, Téin was allowed to return to New Caledonia.

The purpose of the march was to reaffirm that “the fight is not over” and to pay homage to the Kanak “martyrs” of May 2024.

“We are here because what happened in 2024 is about to happen again,” FLNKS politburo member Henri Juni told the crowd, denouncing what he terms another “passage en force” from the French State.

Juni said the FLNKS now aimed at restoring “maximal unity” within the pro-independence camp to obtain maximal results at the coming provincial elections.

FLNKS’s official stance on the matter is that the electoral roll can be modified, but that this can only take place as part of a comprehensive agreement on the future of New Caledonia.

PALIKA, on its part, held an extraordinary congress over the weekend that mostly concluded that its commitment to the Bougival process, further reinforced by more talks in January 2026, had now de facto come to an end, since it regarded this process as also de facto ended due to the April 2026 French parliament’s rejection.

In view of the June 2026 provincial polls, PALIKA is now calling for “mobilisation” from voters “in order to create the conditions of a ‘rapport de force’ to support our project of full sovereignty in partnership”.

On the sensitive issues of relaxing the restrictions of the electoral roll, PALIKA says in a release published on Tuesday that they are in favour of a readjustment for the “natives”.

One heart, one voice
On the pro-France side, parties are in support of the relaxation of the electoral roll, not only for the “natives”, but also for qualified “spouses”.

A local association named “Un, Coeur, une voix” (One heart, one voice, or OHOV) is campaigning against the minimal inclusion of “natives”, but calls for a wider opening for the roll.

“This is a minimal adjustment that institutionalises a durable exclusion”, OHOV wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron early in May 2026.

OHOV is also preparing to bring the matter to a court, in opposition to the partial “readjustment” of the proposed organic law to eventually contest the future outcome of the provincial polls.

“You have thousands of (New) Caledonians who were born there, or their spouses, … And they cannot vote… This is a matter of justice, of balance also and this is not a great demographic upset, it’s a point of equilibrium”, Minister Moutchou pleaded earlier this week during an interview with French national media France Info.

Security issues
On the security front, French High commissioner Jacques Billant has already enforced a ban on the sale of alcohol between 11 and 17 May 2026. The only exception being the sale of alcohol at New Caledonia’s international airport, Nouméa-La Tontouta.

Billant said this was “to prevent any public order unrest”, or “events and demonstrations” taking place around the symbolic date of 13 May 2024.

Earlier in April, 3-star Lieutenant-General Pierre Poty, who commands all gendarmerie forces in France’s Overseas Territories, told New Caledonian media French forces were “ready to confront fresh unrest, thanks to its prepositioned forces and their armoured components”.

But he said he did not see “any precursor sign of a resumption of violence”.

Meanwhile, in Nouméa, a neighbourhood watch group of so-called “Citizen Resistance Collective” (CRC), said earlier this week they have remained vigilant and would not allow “another May 13 to happen, because the response would be immediate and determined”.

The CRC was formed during the 2024 unrest, mainly to protect their property against burning and looting from protesters.

Early in May 2026, the French High Commission in Nouméa revealed latest statistics showing that in 2025, the number of burglaries on residential properties has risen by 46.7 percent, mostly in the capital Nouméa and its urban surroundings.

Economy
New Caledonia’s economic situation remains a matter for concern.

Most private sector stakeholders have sounded the alarm bell over the past months, despite French assistance being deployed over the past two years, mostly to refinance the construction of destroyed public buildings and infrastructure.

Businesses, employers and employees are up in arms against the current situation which deprives business leaders and investors of the required “visibility” to regain confidence.

Most of them are demanding that a political agreement be reached, which would provide them a minimum of predictability in the long term.

“We don’t believe things are getting better”, New Caledonia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) vice president Stéphane Yoteau told an economic forum earlier this month.

Yoteau said businesses in New Caledonia have now reached “a degree of absolute urgency”.

“The situation is catastrophic, we’re now caught in a vicious circle that is feeding itself: less business (-20 percent), less employment (-12,000), less spending revenues (household budgets have lost 10 percent on average), so there is less consumption, therefore less public tax income, etc. And so on”, the CCI leader explained.

The forum gathered representatives from employers federations MEDEF-NC, CPME-NC (small and medium industries confederation) and FEINC (federation of industries of New Caledonia).

‘A degree of absolute urgency’
They are asking for five emergency measures, including a postponement or a tax holiday for some social contributions.

They said these measure could be drawn from French government assistance and re-directed to help small and medium businesses keep their heads above water.

They say New Caledonia’s economy is “on the verge of collapse” and “economic breakdown”.

“The question today is not even to access financing faculties. There is no more business in New Caledonia. Everything stops,” FEINC President Xavier Benoist told local media.

He said 40 percent of businesses only have a few weeks of visibility and 45 percent have only three months left in terms of cash flow.

Despite the recent announcement from the French PM of a “re-foundation” plan for more than 2 billion euros over the next five years, business leaders are asking for an immediate emergency package to “save New Caledonia’s economy”.

“What we are asking is not a favour, it’s not assistance. It’s something to keep our economic fabric alive. Otherwise, it will continue to go down”, said Sonia Critg, vice-president of the small industries branch of the CPME.

“Not doing anything today amounts to deliberately choosing a much deeper and much more expensive social crisis tomorrow”, she stressed.

On May 11, more than 100 business leaders, employees, unemployed, retired workers, staged a protest march in front of New Caledonia’s government building in downtown Nouméa.

Once again, at the heart of their plea, was a cry for assistance to ease their situation which, they said, was “no longer bearable”.

Minister for Economy Christopher Gygès received a delegation and promised some exemption measures were in the pipeline, especially targeting small and very small businesses.

Recently appointed head of the French inter-ministerial mission for reconstruction, Amaury Decludt recently completed his first mission in the French Pacific territory.

He assured that out of the more than 2 billion euros earmarked by France, about 10 percent was ready to be mobilised, mainly for large infrastructure projects such as one road across New Caledonia’s main island or a project to build bus exchange stations in rural areas.

He said talks were ongoing regarding New Caledonia’s crucial nickel mining sector and has been facing major difficulties over the past few years..

Out of the three companies currently in existence, two (one in the North of the main island, the other in the South) were currently up for sale.

Decludt also said the French government was also in contact with the European Union to persuade Brussels of the appeal of New Caledonia’s nickel.

New Caledonia’s nickel industry has been facing major structural challenges over the past few years, mainly due to the rise of world-class competitors in Indonesia, as well as high costs of production mainly related to high cost of the energy.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Papuan women attending a free speech forum organised by the Dogiyai Student Association in Jayapura have condemned what they describe as ongoing violence against women and children in Papua.

The gathering took place in the Lingkaran Abepura area, Abepura District, Jayapura, on Monday.

Activist Vero Hubi said Papuan women continued to bear the impact of prolonged conflict, including violence, displacement, and the loss of family members.

• READ MORE: West Papuan graduation parade turns violent after police object to Morning Star flag
• ‘Genocide continues’ as Indonesia massacres 10 West Papuans, says ULMWP
• Other West Papua reports

“I speak on behalf of Papuan women who have become victims of violence, forced displacement, and the loss of loved ones due to the prolonged conflict in Papua,” she said.

“Many Papuan women today live in fear and under constant pressure,” Hubi said.

She stressed that Papuan women would no longer remain silent in the face of continued suffering.

Hubi also drew attention to the condition of internally displaced communities in several conflict-affected regions, saying many women and children had been forced to flee after homes were allegedly occupied by security forces.

Wounded in bomb blasts
She further alleged that some women were wounded in bomb explosions while attempting to protect their children.

According to Hubi, women across Papua will continue speaking out against all forms of violence targeting women and children.

She also urged institutions responsible for women’s and children’s protection to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Papua and publicly release the findings.

“We demand transparency in the investigation process and justice for the victims,” she said.

Another participant, Yustina Butu, spoke about the psychological burden experienced by Papuans, particularly students from Dogiyai living in Jayapura.

Butu called on Dogiyai police to thoroughly investigate and take responsibility for a number of incidents, especially those involving teenage victims in Dogiyai Regency.

She also said alleged acts of violence committed by security personnel against civilians in Yahukimo and Mimika regencies, including against women and children, must be held accountable.

Duty to protect civilians
According to Butu, the duty of the military and police is to protect civilians, yet many civilians have instead become victims of violence.

“We are calling on Dogiyai police to conduct a comprehensive evaluation regarding the shootings of civilians,” she said.

She further urged the Dogiyai Regency administration in Central Papua to work together with police authorities in addressing the cases.

Butu emphasised the role of women as mothers who nurture and raise children, saying both the government and security forces must properly fulfill their responsibilities to safeguard the public.

“We want our children to grow up safely and peacefully — not in fear or exposed to violence and inhumane treatment. We hope the state and the government will hear and consider our demands,” she said.

Republished from Jubi News with permission.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

For decades, two irreconciliable narratives about Israel and its motivations have existed in parallel.

On the one side, an official Western narrative portrays a plucky, besieged “Jewish” state of Israel, desperate to make peace with its hostile Arab neighbours. Even to this day, that story dominates the political, media and academic landscape.

Time and again, or so we are told, Israel has held out an olive branch to “the Arabs”, seeking acceptance, but is always rebuffed.

• READ MORE: Shoot Palestinians, not settlers: Israeli general exposes double standard
• Jonathan Cook’s website
• Other reports on the war on Gaza, Lebanon Iran

A largely unspoken subtext suggests that supposedly irrational, bloodthirsty, Jew-hating regimes across the region would have completed the Nazis’ exterminationist agenda but for the West’s humane protection of a vulnerable minority.

A Palestinian counter-narrative, accepted across much of the rest of the world, is choked into silence in the West as an antisemitic “blood libel”.

It presents Israel as an ethnic supremacist, highly militaristic state — armed by the United States and Europe – bent on expansion, mass expulsions and land theft.

On this view, the West implanted Israel as a colonial military outpost, there to subdue the native Palestinian population, and terrorise neighbouring states into submission through relentless and overwhelming displays of force.

No middle ground possible
Palestinians cannot make peace, or reach any kind of accommodation, because Israel pursues only conquest, domination and erasure. No middle ground is possible.

The proof, note Palestinians, is Israel’s long-standing refusal to define its borders. As its military power has grown decade after decade, ever more extreme political agendas have surfaced, demanding not just Israel’s takeover of the last remnants of the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies but expansion into neighbouring states like Lebanon and Syria.

Here are two conflicting narratives in which each side presents itself as the victim of the other.

Two and a half years into a series of Israeli wars against the peoples of Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, how are these two perspectives holding up?

Does Israel look like the frustrated peacemaker facing off with barbaric opponents, or a rogue state whose decades-long aggression has provoked the very retaliatory violence exploited to excuse its constant war-making?

Is Israel a small, reluctant fortress state defending itself, or a Western military client so drunk on its own power that it can no more limit its territorial ambitions than a great white shark can stop swimming?

The truth is that the past 30 months have graphically exposed not only what Israel always was but, by extension, what our own Western states aspired to achieve through their most favoured Middle East client.

Ambassador let slip
In a moment of imprudence last month, Christian Turner, Peter Mandelson’s replacement as British ambassador to the US, let slip the reality. Washington, the West’s imperial hub, he said, had no deep loyalty to its allies — apart from one.

Unaware his words were being recorded, he told a group of visiting students: “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States, and that is probably Israel.”

That special relationship requires that the political and media class in Washington’s other client states, such as Britain, shield the West’s Sparta in the Middle East from critical scrutiny.

So glaring have Israel’s atrocities become that the British government announced last month that it was shuttering its Foreign Office unit tracking war crimes — citing the need for cuts — rather than face further exposure of its collusion in those crimes.

If the British government refuses to monitor Israel’s war crimes, don’t expect more from the establishment media.

For months, Israel has been blowing up village after village in south Lebanon, driving millions of inhabitants from lands lived on for millennia by their ancestors, and it barely registers with our politicians and media.

Israel is destroying Gaza’s water supplies, as it earlier did the tiny enclave’s hospitals and health system, ensuring the further spread of disease, and our politicians and media have barely a word to say about it.

Israel kills, jourmalists, first responders
Israel kills journalists and emergency crews in Gaza and Lebanon week after week, month after month, and it raises barely an eyebrow from the political and media class.

Israel declares “yellow lines“ in Gaza and Lebanon, demarcating expanded borders that formalise its theft of other peoples’ lands, and this instantly becomes the new normal.

Israel continuously violates ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, spreading misery and inflaming yet more anger and bitterness, and once again, our politicians and media turn a blind eye.

Which Western media outlets are pointing out a starkly revealing fact: that Israel now occupies more of Lebanon than Russia does of Ukraine?

An analysis by the Newscord media monitoring group last month confirmed earlier research: that the British media studiously avoid naming ethnic cleansing and genocide when it is Israel — rather than Russia — carrying them out.

Comparing the coverage of the most “serious” establishment British news outlets — the BBC, The Guardian and Sky — with that of Al Jazeera, the study found that UK media consistently choose to obscure Israel’s responsibility for its crimes.

Israel was identified as conducting attacks in Gaza in only around half of British news reports, in contrast to nearly 90 per cent of Al Jazeera’s. As Newscord noted: “Half the time, BBC readers aren’t told who killed the person in the story.”

Hind Rajab headline
That was graphically illustrated in a notorious BBC headline: “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help.”

In fact, an Israeli tank had sprayed a stationary car with gunfire even though the Israeli military had known for hours that it contained a Palestinian girl — the sole survivor of an earlier attack — who emergency crews were desperately trying to reach. Israel killed the rescue team, too.

In another revealing finding, Newscord notes that four out of every five BBC reports on casualties caused by Israel’s attacks used the convoluted passive — rather than active — voice, clearly with the intent to downplay Israel’s culpability and savagery.

The British media also actively undermined the enormity of the Palestinian death toll in Gaza by regularly attributing the figures to a “Hamas-affiliated” Health Ministry — even though the numbers, currently at well over 70,000 Palestinians, are almost certainly a massive undercount, given Israel’s early destruction of the enclave’s government and its capacity to count the dead.

The fact that the United Nations has found the Gaza figures to be credible was mentioned in only 0.6 percent of reports.

Similarly, the BBC and The Guardian made the decision to humanise Israeli captives of Hamas twice as often as they did Palestinian captives of the Israeli state.

The inappropriateness of that double standard is underscored by continuing insinuations from politicians and the media that Hamas “beheaded babies” and carried out systematic rapes on 7 October 2023 — more than two years after those claims were utterly discredited.

Sickening practice
Contrast that with the media’s effective burial of Euro Med Monitor’s report last month on the sickening practice by the Israeli military of raping Palestinian prisoners with dogs trained for that very purpose.

There has been a flood of accounts from Palestinians held captive by Israel of their systematic rape and sexual abuse, confirmed by human rights groups and by the testimonies of whistleblowing Israeli soldiers and medics. Little of this is making headway in the Western media.

Newscord points to a further, veiled problem that skews Western coverage: the omission of established but inconvenient facts that would present Israel in a depraved — that is, an accurate — light.

For example, observes Newscord, the BBC has entirely failed to report all but one of the hundreds of clearly genocidal statements made by Israeli officials, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down.

It is easy to understand why. Legal authorities usually struggle to make a conclusive determination of genocide because, crucially, it depends on divining intent, which is typically hidden by those committing atrocities.

Starkly, in Israel’s case, not only do its actions in Gaza look like genocide, but its leaders have been crystal clear that those actions are intended to be genocidal. That is behaviour only seen in those intoxicated by a sense of their own impunity.

Once again, the British media have obligingly taken it upon themselves to shield Israel from any legal jeopardy — all in the interests of objective reporting, you understand.

Same story since 1948
This is nothing new. It has been the same story since before Israel’s violent creation on the Palestinians’ homeland in 1948, when 80 percent of the native population were ethnically cleansed by Israel from the new, self-declared “Jewish” state. Or when, in the continuing language of deceit employed by Western political, media and academic elites, some 750,000 Palestinians “fled”.

The aim has been to manufacture and maintain a bubble of illusion for Western publics, one where our own crimes — and those of our allies — remain invisible to us.

Note in this regard the UK government’s determined exclusion of Israel from a recent “independent” inquiry, under former Whitehall bureaucrat Philip Rycroft, into malign foreign financial influence on British politics. It was, of course, Russia that was put chiefly under the spotlight.

Predictably, Keir Starmer’s government rejected in April a petition signed by more than 114,000 people calling for a similar public inquiry into the influence of the powerful Israel lobby.

That came as no surprise, given that any such investigation would have risked foregrounding the many hundreds of thousands of pounds known to have been received by Starmer and his ministers from pro-Israel lobbyists.

The same British political and media class so averse to investigating the malign influence of the pro-Israel lobby is also ignoring Israel’s current, systematic destruction of villages and infrastructure across south Lebanon — in flagrant violation of a supposed ceasefire.

Israeli soldiers have told local media that their job is to target all structures indiscriminately, whether civilian or “terrorist”, with the goal of preventing the Lebanese inhabitants from returning to their villages.

Colonising occupied lands
That fits with Israel’s announcement that it does not intend to withdraw after the fighting ends, and widespread plans to colonise the occupied lands in Lebanon with Jewish settlers.

Were it not for videos of Israel blowing up Lebanese communities breaking through on social media, despite algorithmic suppression, we might not know about Israel’s wholesale efforts to ethnically cleanse south Lebanon.

Responding to these videos with a rare “mainstream” report on the campaign of destruction, The Guardian sugar-coated the horror faced by Lebanese families discovering their homes gone, along with priceless memories and heirlooms. This experience was described — absurdly — by the paper as “bittersweet”.

Critics note a consistent pattern. Israel is not only levelling south Lebanon; over the past 30 months, it has levelled almost every building in Gaza, too.

But the template for both is of much earlier origin, as every Palestinian learns from a tender age.

Having expelled most Palestinians from their homes in 1948, Israel spent years blowing up some 500 villages one after another — even as Israeli leaders publicly claimed to be begging the refugees to return and Western leaders were extolling Israel as the “only democracy” in the Middle East.

Expulsions that the West still pretends did not take place eight decades ago are now being live-streamed. This time, they are impossible to deny, as well as the colonial, supremacist agenda behind them.

Villify the messenger
If the message inhering in Israel’s atrocities can no longer be disappeared, laundered or normalised — as it was in an age before 24-hour rolling news and social media — then a different strategy is required: villify the messenger.

This is the political task of our times.

The anti-racist left are demonised as Jew-hating bigots for trying to burst the West’s long-established bubble of illusion by noisily flagging both the atrocities committed by Israel, supposedly in the name of Jews, and the complicity of their own governments in those atrocities.

Last month, Starmer’s government forced through the Commons a law allowing the police to outlaw protests causing “cumulative disruption” — that is, repeat protests like those against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The media barely blinked.

Last week’s attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green, allegedly by a mentally ill man with a long history of violence, is being quickly exploited by the main parties to prepare for even tighter restrictions on the right to protest.

Britons who try to stop Israeli war crimes, whether by targeting Israel’s factories of death located in the UK or by holding placards in support of this kind of direct action, continue to be treated as “terrorists”, even after a court ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action is unlawful.

With juries often proving reluctant to convict, the British state has set about openly rigging the trials. Juries are blocked from learning about the reasons for the targeting of Israeli weapons factories — the accused’s main defence. Judges instruct juries to convict.

Long-established right
Members of the public who silently hold signs outside court are arrested for reminding juries of a long-established right in law to defy such instructions, follow their consciences and acquit — a police abuse contravening hundreds of years of legal precedent, and one the courts appear increasingly ready to condone.

There are gags, being dutifully obeyed by the media, on other secret malpractices designed to help the British government secure the verdicts it needs to stop activism against the genocide. We only know because Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has used parliamentary privilege to draw attention to them.

It was telling last week that, in the current repeat trial of six Palestine Action defendants, five of them dispensed with their barristers for the closing speeches. They noted, darkly, that their legal representatives could not properly represent them due to “decisions made by the court”.

Meanwhile, the Starmer government is pressing ahead with plans to finally rid itself of troublesome juries and let more reliable judges decide these political show trials alone.

Welcome to the rapid unravelling of Britain’s most cherished constitutional rights — needed chiefly, it seems, to protect a far-off country that, according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), commits the crime of apartheid against Palestinians and may plausibly be committing genocide in Gaza.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published on the author’s website and republished with permission.

“Whoever uses a citizen ill, indirectly offends the state, which is bound to protect this citizen; and the sovereign should avenge his wrongs, punish the aggressor, and, if possible, oblige him to make full reparation; since otherwise the citizen would not obtain the great end of the civil association, which is, safety.”

Swiss jurist Emmerich Vattel expounded this principle in his landmark The Law of Nations, 1758. It is universally accepted today that every State has an obligation to protect its nationals when they are overseas.

As Vattel explained back in the day: this is a duty arising from the bond of nationality. A leader who betrays this principle of citizenship is unworthy of high office. Such a man is New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Late in the night of April 29, a large Israeli force made up of several warships, a prison ship, aircraft, and drones attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of over 60 humanitarian vessels drawn from dozens of nations across the globe.

• READ MORE: Why the Global Sumud Flotilla hasn’t given up in spite of the Israeli attacks
• Gaza Freedom Flotilla Tracker
• Eyes Of Fire Rainbow Warrior educational resource

The Sumud flotilla, in international waters near the Greek island of Crete, was Gaza-bound. The plan was to open a humanitarian aid corridor to the enclave that is suffering genocide at the hands of Israel and its Western allies.

Over 20 vessels were boarded, many dozens of activists beaten, some later requiring hospitalisation. Once the crews were transferred to the prison ship, the vessels were sabotaged and abandoned in international waters.

For the next three days the Israelis beat dozens of the Sumud crew, tortured some, terrorised others with threats of murder, guns in their faces, and performed other unlawful acts including denying essential medication, forcing hostages into stress positions, forcing others to hug the Israeli flag, flooding decks to make sleep impossible, and many other sadistic acts. Several Kiwis were among those who were savagely kicked and punched in the head, back and ribs.

Like many Western governments, New Zealand leaders did absolutely nothing to condemn the attack, nor initiate action against Israel. They did not even offer material support to their citizen-victims once they had been dumped onto Crete without money, adequate clothing or phones.

Rainbow Warrior attack
Let’s be clear: according to international law, sovereignty does not end at the borders of a country. New Zealand suffered the most serious state terrorist attack on its own citizens since the French government bombed and sank Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985. This time the state was Israel. Both events bear uncanny resemblances and disturbing differences that are immensely consequential.

The similarity: a state terrorist attack on vessels on peaceful humanitarian missions.

The difference: the response to the two events by both the New Zealand governments and media of the day.

In 1985, when news that terrorists had infiltrated New Zealand and attached limpet mines to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior, blasting a hole below the waterline, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, the government, the media and the population of New Zealand went into a frenzy.

I will never forget those momentous times. Within days the culprits had been identified: they were agents of the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the French equivalent of the CIA. Two of the large squad of French agents, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were caught. It eventually emerged that this terror plot — which the French impudently codenamed “Opération Satanique” — reached all the way to President François Mitterrand.

The story riveted and animated New Zealand for months. The government relentlessly pursued the villains, eventually forcing the resignation of high officials including defence minister Charles Hernu and the head of the DGSE, Pierre Lacoste. As part of the settlement the French had to pay for a replacement vessel for Greenpeace and the two spies were sentenced to 10 years prison, part of which were spent in New Zealand jails before they were transferred to internment on Hao Atoll. Within two years the French welched on the terms and let their agents return to France for awards and promotions.

Eugene Doyle comments on the flotilla outrage on Neutrality Studies.

The consequences for New Zealand were enormous. New Zealanders were shocked when they learnt Australia helped some of the attackers to escape, and the country’s other closest allies, the UK and USA, uttered not a single word of condemnation to the French. This betrayal and the terror attack itself fundamentally altered New Zealand’s relationship with its Western allies and set it on a path towards an independent foreign policy, the high-points of which was the Nuclear Free Zone Act 1987 and New Zealand’s expulsion from the ANZUS security pact with the US and Australia, both within two years of the attack. It was a time when many felt proud to be New Zealanders.

Shame of reporters
Fast forward 41 years and we have the most serious state terror attack on New Zealand since the Rainbow Warrior bombing. The media, to the shame of reporters I have spoken to off the record, treated it as a minor story and quickly moved on. The government told the victims of this terrorist attack they had to fend for themselves and offered not a breath of condemnation.

No mainstream reporter grilled the government over this inaction.

Prime Minister Luxon’s conduct is reprehensible on so many fronts. Prioritising “strategic alignment” with Israel and the US over the physical safety of New Zealanders is a betrayal of his most fundamental duty.

Even a neo-con like US President Ronald Reagan got the memo: “A government’s first duty is to protect the people,” he said in 1981. Luxon’s failure to defend his citizens — however contemptible it may be — probably does not reach the threshold of “treason” under the Crimes Act 1961 definition (lawyers may disagree) but it does confirm that the man has no place as the leader of a sovereign and democratic nation.

The Prime Minister constantly refers to himself as a “chief executive” or CEO, so I appreciate politics isn’t his strong card. Political philosophy is clearly a weakness too. So permit me, Christopher, a few observations.

Among my first lessons as a tender-faced youth attending political science classes at Victoria University was Thomes Hobbes’s principle that the only reason individuals surrender their liberty to a sovereign is for protection. If certain categories of citizens come to realise the state is willing to see them beaten and abused to please a foreign state, it breaks all sorts of bonds that should not be broken.

In other words, the litmus test for a sovereign democracy is not how the state treats docile citizens and its buddies but how it protects even vociferous dissenters when they are in the hands of a foreign power. The Sumud flotilla crew are anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-genocide; in other words, the opposite side to the Prime Minister and the New Zealand government. They deserve protection and medals not boots in the head and abandonment.

Breaches torture convention
The mistreatment of the Sumud prisoners also breaches the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and meets the threshold for cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The Kiwis are free now and I know from speaking to some of them that they are shell-shocked and traumatised but also mindful that their ordeal was short and less than the medieval mistreatment of thousands of Palestinian hostages in Israeli concentration camps today.

As a minimum the New Zealand government should confront the Israelis and demand two things: Non-repetition and Reparations.

Non-repetition is a commitment that such wrongful acts won’t happen again. The government should issue a “Note Verbale” — a formal warning to Israel of real consequences if citizens are in any way abused. They — and all governments — should have done so before the Sumud flotilla sailed.

Secondly, the government should demand Full Reparations — payment for medical bills, evacuation costs, trauma, and damage to property, including the millions of dollars in damage to all the vessels sabotaged, and return of stolen property (including Sean Janssen’s pounamu pendant, a Māori taonga (treasure) that was ripped from his neck by an Israeli stormtrooper).

I was proud to be a New Zealander when our government stood with Greenpeace following the French state terrorist attack in 1985.

Today, I am proud of the men and women of the Global Sumud Aotearoa Delegation, including Hāhona Ormsby, Julien Blondel, Jay O’Connor, Samuel Leason, Mousa Taher, Sean Janssen and Rana Hamida. They keep alive the flame of hope that one day New Zealand will again stand for humanity, international law, peace and an independent foreign policy.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

The political activist suing major New Zealand emitters over climate change damage says a law change blocking his case and others like it is “an affront to democracy”.

The government announced yesterday it would amend climate laws to prevent companies from being sued over damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The change will prevent findings of liability in torts — a type of civil case where one person or entity claims another has caused them harm.

• READ MORE: Other climate change law reports

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said it would apply to current and future cases — stopping a landmark case against Fonterra and five other major emitters in its tracks.

In 2024, iwi leader and activist Mike Smith was granted permission by the Supreme Court to sue Fonterra and other major dairy and fossil fuel companies.

He argued the companies, which collectively contributed about a third of New Zealand’s emissions, had a legal duty to him and others in communities that are being damaged by the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

The hearing, which was sent back to the High Court, was due to start in April next year.

‘Creating uncertainty’
Dr Goldsmith said Smith’s case was “creating uncertainty in business confidence and investments that the government must address”.

The law change would “remove the possible development of a new regime that contradicts the framework Parliament has already enacted to respond to climate change”.

New Zealand already had a legal framework to manage emissions, through the Climate Change Response Act and the Emissions Trading Scheme, he said.

“Our response to climate change is best managed by the government at a national level and not through piecemeal litigation in the courts.”

Smith told RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme the government’s decision was unprecedented and outrageous.

“It’s an affront to democracy,” he said.

“If Parliament can cancel a live court case, then no legal claim is secure at all, once it becomes politically inconvenient.”

‘Public interest case’
The legal case was asking the court to decide whether the companies involved could be held responsible for their emissions, he said.

He said they were not seeking costs or damages and it was instead a “public interest case” to establish that the companies were liable. They hoped to prompt the companies to take action to reduce greenhouse emissions.

“These companies are not fools. They’ve got some of the best science available to them … All we’re asking is that they act responsibly, and if they can’t decide that themselves then they need to be nudged along.”

He countered Dr Goldsmith’s claims that the case was undermining business confidence.

“Real business confidence comes from predictable law — not from government intervention in active court cases.”

What the big emitters should really worry about were the effects of climate change itself, Smith said.

“If the farmers are feeling nervous about [the case] and lobbying the government to have these cases struck out, if I were them I’d be more nervous about the the droughts that are pending… That’s the real threat to their model.”

‘Shocking abuse of power’
Greenpeace labelled the change a “shocking abuse of power” that would protect climate polluters from paying for the damage they had caused.

Greenpeace executive director Russel Norman, told RNZ Midday Report, it was “outrageous” and he believed it was being done to protect large corporations.

“People will have their right to go to court removed.

“They intervened mid-case. It is an outrageous overreach.”

Lawyers for Climate Action president Jenny Cooper KC said the decision was shortsighted.

“What it looks like is a kneejerk reaction to legislate over the top of the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Smith and Fonterra before that’s gone to trial.”

That would leave New Zealanders with no avenue to claim damages or compensation against emitters in future, she said.

“It’s really hard to understand why we would want to legislate now to say we could never bring claims against emitters for the harms and losses we’ve suffered.

“If they are not responsible for paying then who does? Well, everybody, basically.”

Climate ‘wrecking ball’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the goverment was using its “dying breaths” to remove New Zealanders’ right to hold emitters accountable.

“They’ve spent two and a half years taking a wrecking ball to climate laws and, at the 11th hour, they’re now ripping away New Zealanders’ and the courts’ ability to do what this government lacks the spine to do.”

The minister’s claims that common law could cut across the government’s climate change framework made no sense, she said.

“The Climate Change Response Act and the ETS do not deal with this issue at all — there is no framework or mechanism for any type of compensation for climate related harm.”

Instead, the change “appears to be cutting off the only potential mechanism we have at the moment before we are anywhere near having legislation that would address these issues.”

The law change would not alter the government’s responsibilities under the Act, and businesses that had obligations under the ETS would still be required to meet them, Dr Goldsmith said.

Another landmark climate case, taken against Climate Change Minister Simon Watts over the government’s plan to tackle climate change, is also unaffected.

That case was heard in March and a reserved decision is expected later this year.

The case against Watts was taken jointly by the Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) and Lawyers for Climate Action.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Fiji’s military chief has made a public admission at a church service that the institution was “at fault” for the death of Jone Vakarisi while he was in military custody.

Local media reported that Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) commander Ro Jone Kalaouniwai, while addressing officers at a military family service, admitted “we are at fault” for Vakarisi’s death.

“We must be held accountable,” he was quoted as saying by local media outlets.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji military reports

State broadcaster FBC reported that Kalouniwai described Vakarisi’s death as an “unintentional” and “regrettable” incident, while the two national dailies reported him saying no one imagined or knew it would end up the way it did.

Vakarisi, 37, was notorious for being at odds with law enforcement and had been linked to criminal networks. He died on April 16 after being detained by soldiers and taken to RFMF’s Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Suva to be questioned regarding “national security investigations”, which included allegations of trying to break in and access military assets.

Commander Kalouniwai initially attributed Vakarisi’s death to “pre-existing conditions”.

However, he was forced to issue a “correction” after the police announced they had classified Vakarisi’s death as murder.

Murder investigation
A murder investigation is currently ongoing, with no one charged, almost a month since Vakarisi’s death.

The Fiji police and military have launched joint security operations to take down criminal networks in the country. The operations have resulted in a heightened military visibility around the country.

Kalouniwai said the security forces had made progress but “an unforeseen incident occurred at the camp”, the FBC report said. He urged military officers to adhere to the law.

RNZ Pacific contacted Fiji police last week seeking an update on the murder investigation.

In an email reply, Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu said he would not let media dictate police actions and advised RNZ Pacific to continue liaising with the police’s media liaison officer.

Over the weekend, graphic and distressing photos of Vakarisi’s body began circulating and being shared widely on social media.

Fiji’s Online Safety Commission said it was “deeply concerned” about the images being circulated.

“The images being shared are highly distressing, show the deceased in a vulnerable and exposed state, and have caused further pain and trauma to the grieving family members,” it said.

“We strongly urge members of the public to refrain from sharing, reposting, forwarding, or publishing such material across any social media platform, messaging publication, or online platform.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.