By Rahul Bhattarai in Auckland

Banabans of Rabi – A story of Survival, a short documentary film by the two Auckland University of Technology media students, has been premiered in the fourth Nuku’alofa International Film Festival that took place in Tonga this week.

This short documentary is a story about the people who have been first affected by the phosphate mining on their original home island of Banaba and now by climate change on their adopted island of Rabi.

The British Phosphate Commission forceful displaced them from Banaba during World War Two.

READ MORE: Life on Fiji’s Rabi Island – simple, peaceful and full of smiles

Since 1945 after they first settled into their new home – Rabi, a remote northern island in Fiji – they are faced with a second and the most threatening man-made global problem, climate change.

Tom Corrie, one of the residents who had left Rabi as a young man and later returned, says Rabi has changed.

“The part of my history has been taken away from me, part of my livelihood, my enjoyment my pleasures have gone,” he says in the documentary, pointing at his former playground that now has now been engulfed by the rising tides.

“We are the most effected by climate change,” he says.

In solidarity
“People in Rabi and their struggle with climate change, they’re not the cause of this but unfortunately they [have] had to face the consequences,” says co-director Blessen Tom.

“I wanted the world to know about their struggle and wanted to let them know that they’re not alone in this,” says Tom.

The film was a part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate change project, which was initiated by director Professor David Robie in 2016.

It has been made possible by collective support from the partners, University of South Pacific Journalism, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) and AUT’s Te Ara Motuhenga documentary collective with senior and documentary maker Jim Marbrook.

Film makers Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom travelled to Tonga with the assistance of a funding grant from AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

• ‘Bearing Witness’ – a Pacific climate change journalism research and publication initiative

The Pacific community has contributed immensely to New Zealand’s economy – but that isn’t the only contribution, says a leading development studies academic.

Dr Crosby Walsh, founding professor of development studies at Massey University and at the University of the South Pacific – and a blogger on Pacific issues, was commenting about some perceived shortcomings of a new report on the Pacific’s contribution to the New Zealand economy.

The Pacific community has contributed $48.4 billion, reports the New Zealand Pacific Economy document published by the treasury last week.

READ MORE: Community input key to the new report

“Our censuses allow people to declare more than one ethnicity, thus, the footballer Reiko Ioane played for the Māori All Blacks,” said Dr Walsh.

This report was prepared to identify and define the economic footprint of the Pacific community within New Zealand’s economy.

Although the statistics show the contribution of the entire Pacific community to the New Zealand economy, it is unwise to “lump all [Pacific communities] together with a single identity,” said Dr Walsh.

“Their contributions vary. For example, Cook Islanders in the orchards of Hawkes Bay; Tokelauans in forestry in Tokorua and car assembly in Lower Hutt,” said Dr Walsh, who publishes Croz Walsh’s blog on the Pacific.

Challenging formulas
This research, funded by the Treasury and the Pacific Business Trust, was welcomed by Tagaloatele Professor Peggy Fairborn-Dunlop, professor emeritus at Auckland University of Technology.

“This publication is groundbreaking in its revisioning and challenging of commonly used formulas of economic and economic contribution,” said Tagaloatele.

“In doing so, the data has set a comprehensive and really realistic picture of Pacific people’s significant actual contribution to the New Zealand economy but also – and very importantly – what Pacific peoples believe to be important in life, such as social capital,” she said.

“We have a strength -based platform to go forward. I strongly congratulate the Treasury on their boldness in setting these new baselines and directions,” said Tagaloatele.

Low income
About 310,000 Pacific New Zealanders living in the country residing primarily in Auckland, says the new report.

More than 163,000 Pacific employers and employees contribute $6.6 billion into the New Zealand economy, or six percent of the total economy, but with an unequal spread in individual pay.

An average individual income of $40,300 contrasted with an average income of $53,500 of non-Pacific New Zealanders, said the report.

There was a huge inequality in the highest paying job sector but the wages were consistently in the low paid or unskilled jobs.

The highest paying job was in the mining sector for all New Zealanders, the report said, yet, the non pacific people earned an average of $104,900 in contrast to $69,000 of Pacific Islanders.

In the lowest paying industry (accommodation and food services industries), the pay scale for all New Zealanders was the same, averaging about $25,000.

Tertiary education
“Often this work is low or unskilled,” said the report. But in order to combat the low wages, it is important that increasing tertiary education qualifications of young Pacific will enable growing income levels and wealth creation.

As cited in Beehive, “Improving Pacific people’s education success will lead to increased employment, higher incomes, home ownership and overall health and wellbeing for all our people,” said ‘Aupito William Sio, Labour MP and Minister for Pacific Peoples.

The income from the 101,000 Pacific households contributes $12 billion into the economy with an average of $119,000 in comparison to 114,000 to non-Pacific.

The Pacific community also pumped $8 billion dollars into the gross domestic product (GDP) as an income from various fields either by working as employees or employers across a range of sectors in both Pacific and non-Pacific enterprises.

Their contribution to production GDP is $3.1 billion whereas the contribution to expenditure GDP is $10.4 billion.

The total contribution is $48.4 billion.

And the Pacific community spent 27,000 hours a week involved in an unpaid voluntary labour.

The report said that the “Pacific religious organisations (churches) hold over $500 million in assets” and these operations relied on 27,000 Pacific volunteers a week.

• NZ Law Society elects first Pasifika woman as president in ‘sea change’
• New report reveals contribution Pacific New Zealanders make to economy

Students and staff gathered in Auckland last night to launch a cookbook with a difference celebrating culinary delights from refugee or immigrant families – and to taste some of the special 15 recipes.

The recipes in Tastes of Home, published by Auckland University of Technology to support an educational scholarship for refugees, were an instant success.

Chapters and the recipes have been provided by volunteer student contributors drawing on their family culinary secrets.

READ MORE: Diversity at Auckland University of Technology

“These recipes have been tested and standardised by the culinary art students for the cook book,” says Lian-Hong Brebner, a diversity manager at AUT and one of the co-editors with Professor Alison McIntosh.

“This is more then a cookbook, it’s about celebration of AUT’s diversity that refugee and migrant background students bring to us, and their their tradition of hospitality,” says Brebner.

Encouraging diversity
AUT as a university encourages diversity and was also the first university in New Zealand to appoint a professor of diversity – Professor Edwina Pio.

“We are also proud to be the first and only New Zealand university to appoint a professor of diversity,” says Dr Andrew Codling, who is the head of the vice-chancellors office.

“We are proud that our students and staff are from over 100 nationalities on our campuses, and in fact over 52 percent of our staff were born overseas – and I am one of them,” says Dr Codling.

Seven percent of the staff are from the Pacific, 6 percent are Māori and 64 percent of the professional staff are female.

AUT scholarship programme
Proceeds from the book sales will go towards a scholarship programme for future refugee students.

About 50 volunteers from diverse backgrounds worked around the clock to make the book possible.

“I volunteered to be part of the project because I loved that the proceeds would be going towards a scholarship for refugees,” says Leilani Sitagata, who is a final year AUT student journalist.

“As I’m a journalism major, I knew how to write, and I love my food – so I thought why not combine the two and help write a cookbook.”

Homemade cuisines from around the world featured in the book include Afgan, Iranian, Iraqi, Kurdish and Māori and many other dishes.

On launch day, 38 copies were sold with a further 100 copies already being pre-ordered online.

• Tastes of Home at AUT Shop

By Rahul Bhattarai

Nine years on the popular Flavourz Film Festival has grown and grown … with more than 170 people watching the screening of 15 student documentary and feature productions at Auckland University of Technology at the weekend.

The short films – ranging between 2min30sec and 12min – featured topics as wide ranging as birdlife, culture, ethnicity, matchmaking, migration, plastic pollution, racism, the Banabans of Rabi and the closure of Hato Petera College. Some were quirky and funny.

“Flavourz has evolved over the years. In the beginning it had a small screening and a small lecture hall, now we have got about a 170 people here today,” said senior lecturer and film maker Jim Marbrook.

READ MORE: Banabans of Rabi short climate change documentary chosen for Nuku’alofa

“it’s a showcase of some of our really interesting work with the focus on diversity and culture.”

Marbrook was one of the founders of the festival along with Tui O’Sullivan, Isabella Rasch and Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.

“We got the idea to put on a film festival to celebrate diversity,” said Marbrook

AUT has one of the New Zealand’s leading school of communications with the latest facilities and highly experienced staff for the students to learn from.

A Migrant’s Story, by Irra Lee, one of the films screened at the festival. Trailer

‘Lucky students’
“In a Bachelors of Communications Studies programme students are very lucky because we have a very strong journalism school and we have screen production courses,” said James Nicholson, curriculum leader and a senior lecturer for television and screen production.

An 11 minute postgraduate documentary, Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival, by Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, made as part of the three-year-old Bearing Witness climate change project, was one of the films screened.

It has been accepted as an entry in the Nuku’alofa Film Festival in Tonga later this month.

Banabans of Rabi shows the impact of climate change and on the remote northern island of Rabi in particular.

Hele Ikimotu was inspired to make this film in order to explore his own unknown Kiribati culture and the struggles of the people on the island where the Banaban people had been relocated by the British colonial government.

Such voices are seldom heard in the mainstream media.

“When it comes to climate change it is only about the bigger cities and the islands,” Ikimotu said.

‘Telling the stories’
“In Fiji, it’s always about Nadi and Suva but not so much about the outer islands. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity to tell the stories of those who don’t get the opportunity to talk about what they are going through.

“I had never really experienced that side of my culture, never knew too much about it,” he said.

“So when the opportunity to go to Fiji came with the Pacific Media Centre, I used it to go to Rabi. I knew it was a difficult trip but if I put in some effort it could happen.”

The trip from Suva to Rabi was 15 hours long.

“it was a very gruesome trip, with up to seven hours in a motor vehicle at a stretch, and a boat ride,” said Blessen Tom.

Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival will be screened at the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival in Tonga on November 22/23.

• Banabans of Rabi on facebook
• Rabi landslide? Not a big problem, horseback and walking the answer

The inaugural Flavourz film festival in 2009.

A housing trust chief executive has condemned the government for taking “short cuts” to tackle New Zealand’s housing crisis.

“We need to stop pulling rabbits out of hats and looking for quick fixes,” said Bernie Smith, CEO of Monte Cecilia Housing Trust.

Speaking at the annual Bruce Jesson Foundation lecture in Auckland on the topic “housing crisis – a smoking gun with no silver bullet”, he soundly criticised the government for not doing enough to provide affordable housing.

“A bit dramatic but I am known to be dramatic from time to time.”

READ MORE: Tūhoe leader’s address to deliver ‘hard truths’ about New Zealand

He said that there were no short-cuts to building affordable housing.

Smith has 40 years of experience in various forms of leadership in state and local government and not-for-profit sector.

The lecture has been delivered in previous years by prominent figures such as investigative journalist Nicky Hager and a former prime minister, David Lange, in honour of the late journalist and political thinker Bruce Jesson.

Work together
To resolve the housing crisis, Smith said the government and bureaucrats needed to work together and have a generational housing strategy that “builds strong housing communities for the present and the future generations”.

The coalition has been in government for 11 months and it has been “claiming all the issues that we are confronted with today are solely due to previous government”, he said.

“We need to stop the blame game, we need to stop thinking central or local government will resolve this issue, that housing first or some other programme is a quick fix,” he said.

Barry Wilson, president of Auckland Council for Civil Liberties, said that the political parties should be working together to “house the homeless in a comfortable secure condition”.

“There should be some unified political approach, it’s not productive every time they change the government,” Wilson said.

Long term strategy
New Zealand needs a 25 to 30-year-long housing strategy “that every political party agrees and signs to”, Smith said

“Labour has a plan that National is trying to drag down. What they should do is be working together on a long-term plan, not one that depends on the three-year election cycle,” Wilson said.

New Zealand housing strategy should be created not by the politicians or bureaucrats, rather by the people from the community, who have lived with experience, like the homeless, the renters, community housing providers, and people form wide ethnic communities including Māori or Pasifika, Smith said.

“A strategy that looks at the whole of the continuum and recognises into generational living affordable rentals, affordable home ownership, does not forget a strategy that includes building strong healthy and safe communities with clear mile stones and targets,” he said.

Smith said the country needed to have a strategy that is housing community “value” focused rather than the housing “volume” focused.

Community value was focused when each and every individual is seen as equal no matter their housing option, either state housing, private renter, or an owner-occupier.

Overcrowded households
In Auckland there are 92,000 households living in unaffordable rental situations spending more than the 30 percent of their net income on rent.

“Thirty six thousand households living in overcrowded conditions.”

In Auckland alone, there is 20,300 homeless people, where the Māori population is five times and Pasifika 10 times more disproportionately affected.

Kiwi Build was not an affordable housing solution to many New Zealanders as it was only affordable to middle class people with higher household incomes, Smith said.

Smith said it was noted at a recent Kiwi Build Affordability meeting with Auckland city mayor Phil Goff:

“Auckland Council’s chief economist stated in July that to buy a 3-bedroom Kiwi Build house at $650,000 they will need either an income of $106,000 with a $130k (20 percent) deposit or an income of $120,000 and a $65,000 (10 percent deposit) for the household to affordably purchase a Kiwi Build home (and that is with debt servicing ratio of 35 percent.

“This means that Kiwi Build houses are only affordable for the top 40 percent of Auckland’s households.”

• Housing issue not just ethnic – Pākehā leaders have ‘failed’, says author
• Pasifika voters want ‘hand-ups, not hand-outs’ in NZ housing crisis

Leading academics warn that the “problem” with China is not the Chinese Communist Party but that Western self-censorship is “killing” its liberal democracy.

“China is not the real threat there, we are, we are the biggest threat to liberal democracy in New Zealand,” says Dr Stephen Noakes, senior lecturer in politics and international relations and Asian studies at the University of Auckland.

“Every time we self-censor, when we choose not to speak out, when we chose to keep quiet for fear of not getting a visa, or not getting a trade deal … But since we, through our obsequiousness towards China are a potential threat, we can also be the cure,” he told a  public seminar last week.

READ MORE: Why China fears the Falun Gong

Lawyers and political scientists gathered at University of Auckland (UOA) last week to discuss the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies about fundamental human rights and freedoms, civil liberties and the rule of law.

Organ harvesting
China has been under fire globally for its alleged unauthorised organ transplants from members of the Falun Gong community.

Though the initial position of the Chinese government was that all the organs were donated, “this was at a time when they [China] didn’t even have donation systems… and they did not have an organs distribution system,” said Professor David Matas, lawyer, author and professor of immigration and refugee law at the University of Manitoba.

While all organs were being found locally and the transplant volume was small, after the prosecution of Falun Gong began, the transplant volume “shot way up,” he said.

China became the leading producer of transplantation in the world, second only to the United States.

Research conducted in 2006 by Professor Matas and his colleagues concluded that “the organs were coming from the practitioners of Falun Gong”, he said.

As a result of his report, the Chinese government quickly shifted its stance and said that “everything that was coming from prisoners sentenced to death and then executed, before their execution they decided to donate their organ as an atonement for their crimes,” said Professor Matas.

Foreign lobbying
In New Zealand strong lobbying from the Chinese Embassy prevented an exhibition of the Chinese spiritual organisation  Falun Gong to be set up in Auckland City.

Lawyer Barry Wilson, president of Auckland Council for Civil Liberties, said he had spent an enormous amount of time at the Auckland City Council trying to persuade them to allow the Falun Gong stand and the demonstrations for the protection of Falun Gong to remain.

“We were up against very strong lobbying from a Chinese Consulate and the Chinese Embassy which did not want that exhibition there,” he said.

The Chinese constitution of 1982 contained the civil liberties that are observed in democratic countries – “freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and association, and freedom from arbitrary arrest,” he said.

When Xi Jinping became president, he also brought his “clearly expressed opposition for liberal values”.

“In his speeches he has spoken of the dangers of the liberal ideas like civil liberties, constitution rights, the dangers they pose for Communist Party rule,” he said.

In China, there is no separation of powers between the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature – “courts and judges are subject to political direction,” he said.

Ruling by law
“What China needs is lawyers as cogs in its economic development machine, but it needs lawyers to rule by law, not keep the rulers in check through the rule of law,” he said.

Wilson said: “They [Falun Gong] are always interesting… its organisation and its events well deserve support.”

China has also been using various means to infiltrate foreign countries to exercise its soft power on them – the Confucius Institute (CI) is one such organisation, says director Doris Lui in her documentary movie, In The Name of Confucius. 

The documentary claimed CI was an “infiltration organisation”.

The Chinese government founded the institute in 2004 to teach foreigners the language and culture of China.

The documentary has been a strong critic of the CCP over its alleged violations of human rights, particularly against the Falun Gong community.

In August, the free screening of the movie was set to air in University of Auckland, but the airing was withdrawn at the last minute.

The University of Auckland, University of Canterbury and University of Wellington in New Zealand have ties with CI.

The CI, which is controlled by the Office of Chinese Language Council Internationl (Hanban) prevents its teachers from teaching Cantonese or Hokkien.

• Other APJS stories

A leading academic on peace research issues has called for increased policy making efforts to face up to the challenges of Pacific “relocation” at a weekend conference of global climate and conflict researchers.

“A major conflict-creating component of climate change in the Pacific is the forced reallocation of people,” said Professor Kevin Clements, founding director of Otago University’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) and also secretary-general of the Tokyo-based Toda Peace Institute.

“Pacific nations only have three choices – adaptation, mitigation and relocation,” he said.

READ MORE: Climate change and security big focus for Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru

Climate change scholars from around the world gathered at the University of Otago’s Auckland Centre over the weekend to discuss interrelationships between climate change and conflict.

Pacific Island nations are in the front line of global climate change crises, raising sea level and “drowning” lands are forcing thousands of islanders to relocate far away from their homelands and atolls.

This forced reallocation created a fertile ground for conflict in the other Pacific nations, Professor Clements said.

Existential challenge
Failure to make the needed changes in time would impose an “inevitable existential challenge to us all”.

Failure to adapt or mitigate the negative effects of climate change would ultimately result in forced relocations, “forcing people from your own land unto other people’s land and so that’s really beginning to be a major conflict creator in Fiji.”

“Climate change is a major existential challenge for everybody,” Professor Clements said.

Policy makers still had no solid plan to deal with conflict created by climate change.

Dealing with the issues of climate change and conflict was one of the questions which were difficult to answer.

“How do states and peoples create spaces of inevitable migration of people of these countries,” asked Professor Clements.

“Every Pacific nation has been challenged by a combination of elevated sea level and king tides.”

Significant challenge
Having these two combinations posed a significant challenge to the local environment.

“Arable land diminishes, and water quality diminishes as it becomes more saline, and with global warming is also challenging and declining fish resources,” he said.

“Pacific Island countries need to ask themselves, what do they need to adapt these new challenges How can they mitigate their effects and, if they can’t do that, where will they go?” Professor Clements said.

Dr Bob Lloyd, a climate change consultant for Pacific countries, said it was “extremely difficult” to make the public aware of the gravity of climate change.

This was because “people don’t listen” and people complained that there was a disconnect between the scientists and prejudiced knowledge that local communities had.

“When you talk to communities about the problem and give them the solutions and they don’t want to listen because solutions involve considerable social and economic deprivation,” he said.

One way climate change could be minimised was through reduced use of short and long-distance transportation as the Pacific used an enormous amount of air transport for commuting, he said.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed during her United Nations diplomacy mission last week that the government was looking into tweaking the recently announced increase of refugees quota from 1500 from 1000 by 2020 to focus on climate refugees, reports Newshub.

Rahul Bhattarai is a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student journalist who is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

An allegedly “enslaved” Indonesian fisherman on board Yu Shun 88, a Taiwanese flagged tuna longliner, has now been repatriated from Fiji to his homeland, says an Auckland lawyer.

Barrister and solicitor Karen Harding alleged in a social media video message addressed to the skipper that the fishing boat was holding her client against his will in “abject” working conditions.

But with the help of an Indonesian government representative and a charity group known as Pacific Dialogue, the fisherman was repatriated to Indonesia last weekend.

READ MORE: From traffic law to human rights – how an Auckland woman is fighting for justice for 30 fishermen

Harding, a lawyer with a high profile in acting on drink and driving cases who has branched into human rights lawsuits, said the unnamed fisherman’s bed was infested with fleas, food was spoiled, and there was no fresh soap or water for showers.

The fishermen on the boat, which carries up to 17 people, were also forced to work for 18-20 hours a day, she claimed.

Harding said the captain had taken the passport, the seaman’s book and withheld pay as a security bond.

The fisherman wanted to go home due to “horrible working conditions” and many injuries.

Wages withheld
One fisherman was so injured, he was “not even able to hold a chop stick,” Harding said.

“You are holding him against his will and your company is not paying him his wages and holding the wages back as security,” she alleged in the video message.

Her client got a job to work on a Taiwanese fishing vessel in Suva and “was promised, he was going to get US$450 (NZ$672) in wages and commission of US$400 (NZ$589) per month per docking,” Harding said.

Not paying them and holding wages as security was “creating forced labour”, Harding said.

“I liaised with the Indonesian government on Sunday … and liaised with the charity group known as Pacific Dialogue,” and the latter reported the matter to the embassy, Harding said.

The Indonesian government had been helpful in a timely dealing with this matter.

The Indonesian government had arranged for the representative of the Indonesian government to go to the agent’s office on the Suva wharf,” Harding said.

Seeking wages
Now that the fisherman was home, the problem was getting his wages for the time he had worked on the ship.

Out of NZ$1261 allegedly owed to him, he had only received $141 for four months of work. His contract had said that “if he didn’t complete the contract they weren’t going to pay his wages,” said Harding.

There are other fishermen on board the same ship, but because Harding was only dealing with one fisherman, the status of the others is unknown.

The same fisherman had also allegedly been subject to similar harsh conditions in New Zealand waters on board a Korean vessel.

The fisherman still had not been paid by the Oyang 77, for the period of 2009 January 22 to 2010 December 6.

“He effectively only got paid only one hour a day at the NZ minimum pay rate,” Harding said.

“And he worked 18 hours a day on average.”

No comment was available from the company’s involved.

The Yu Shun 88 is now headed towards Solomon Islands and is expected to spend another 12 months at sea with other fishermen on board.

• Indonesia cracks down on brutal conditions on foreign ‘slavery’ fishing boats
• Former Oyang crew in legal battle

Greenpeace executive director Russel Norman praised the “people power” that gained an important victory in the “oil war” when the Rainbow Warrior docked in Auckland yesterday for a week-long visit.

The Greenpeace environmental flagship was welcomed by about 200 people – including some original crew members – on the first leg of its seven-week “Making Oil History” tour of New Zealand after arriving at Matauri Bay on Sunday.

“It brings a tingle down the spine to see the Rainbow Warrior return to the port of Auckland” where the original Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on July 10, 1985, killing photographer Fernando Pereira,” Dr Norman said.

READ MORE: The Rainbow Warrior itinerary in NZ

“It’s about celebrating the people power movement in Aotearoa which was able successfully to put pressure and build a movement to support a government that wanted to end issuing new exploration permits for oil and gas,” Dr Norman told the crowd.

“And that’s a very, very important victory, and it’s a victory that was only possible because of people power.”

New Zealanders from north to south had come out to rally and protest against offshore exploration for oil and gas.

“Iwi and hapu came out to the beaches and in front of seismic testing vessels to stop and confront the oil industry,” he said.

‘Epic struggle’
“That was an epic struggle, mostly successful in ending new offshore exploration permits for oil and gas”.

But it was not yet entirely finished business, said Dr Norman.

The struggle needed to go on.

Musician Don McGlashan sang his Rainbow Warrior dedicated tribute “Anchor Me” at the welcome.

The crowd included two original Rainbow Warrior crew members, Hilari Anderson and Susi Newborn, relief cook Margaret Mills on the ship at the time of the bombing and author and journalist David Robie, who travelled on board for the Rongelap Atoll voyage and wrote Eyes Of Fire.

The tour was “not only remembering about the past and the great victory in terms of nuclear testing in the Pacific and nuclear-free New Zealand”, it was about the continuing people power struggle, said Dr Norman.

Public viewing
The Rainbow Warrior will be open for public viewing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Amanda Larsson said events would be hosted on board the ship to inform the public about what New Zealand’s energy transition might look like.

After Auckland, the Rainbow Warrior will sail to Whangaparaoa Bay in the eastern Bay of Plenty and to the East Coast to pay respects for the work the community has done.

Larsson said the ship would then go to Wellington for another event with politicians exploring the future of energy in New Zealand.

After Wellington, the ship will sail to Kaikoura where it will document wildlife.

The campaign ship will also visit Lyttelton and Dunedin.

The last leg will be to Stewart Island before heading for Australia to protest against oil companies’ offshore exploration plans in the Great Australian Bight.

• Rainbow Warrior returns to NZ for ‘oil free’ future and activist doco
• Gallery: From fighting nukes to stopping oil – Rainbow Warrior

Don McGlashan singing “Anchor Me” at the welcome for the Rainbow Warrior yesterday. Video clip: Del Abcede/PMC

A local Indonesian community leader has praised the co-publication of a climate change and disasters edition of Pacific Journalism Review launched at Auckland University of Technology on the eve of the Indonesian Festival on campus last weekend.

The journal featured research papers on Indonesia, New Zealand and the Pacific, including a comparative study between tidal flooding in the Central Java city of Semarang with an impact on more than 75,000 people and the devastation of Cyclone Winston in Fiji.

The journal also included a study on disaster survival narratives in the Indonesian media.

READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review climate and disasters edition

Maman Baboe of the Auckland Indonesian Community launched the publication, saying he looked forward to further partnerships.

This edition was a collaboration between the Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta and the Pacific Media Centre in AUT’s School of Communication Studies

The University of the South Pacific in Fiji also contributed.

Lester Finch, director of AUT’s Indonesian Centre, said he strongly supported the PMC for doing such important work with the journal.

Opened by ambassador
He also highlighted how AUT was the home for the only Indonesian centre at a New Zealand university, and it was also hosting the annual Auckland Indonesian Festival, opened by Ambassador Tantowi Yahya on Saturday.

PMC director Professor David Robie, who is also editor of PJR, said this was the first joint edition of a media journal between Indonesia and New Zealand.

He thanked his team at AUT and in Indonesia and Fiji for putting in “enormous time and effort” for making the edition possible.

• Gallery: Climate change, disasters spark Indonesian-NZ research publication

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reaffirmed her country’s offer to take 150 refugees from Nauru and Manus Island shortly before she attends the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit next week.

New Zealand’s offer to take in “150 refugees from across Nauru and Manus still stands”, she said at the official opening of a new science and technology building Ngā Wai Hono at Auckland University of Technology yesterday.

Nauru is hosting the 49th Forum but has a very tight media policy for the event including a ban on Australia’s public broadcaster ABC and a threat to revoke the visas of journalists who capture images of the refugees or detention centre facilities.

READ MORE: Aid groups call on Pacific leaders to end Nauru refugee ‘stain in region’

The country has also been trying to “clean up” the facilities before politicians and the media arrive for the week-long Forum and associated meetings from September 3-9 after years of alleged human rights violations.

Amnesty International alleged this week there was an “escalating health crisis” for refugee children on Nauru, saying the Australian government’s “shameful refugee policy” must top of the agenda of the Forum meeting.

In an open letter co-signed by a coalition of 84 influential civil society organisations, Amnesty International called for an end to the “cruel and abusive refugee policy” which had led to more than 2000 women, men and children being “warehoused” on Nauru and Manus island in “cruel and degrading conditions” over the past five years.

Insight to refugees
Due to her short three-day visit to Nauru, Prime Minister Ardern did not have the time to meet individual refugees, but confirmed New Zealand’s stance.

“Having an insight as to the experience on Nauru, of course, that’s something I want to seek,” she said.

“But if I meet with the individual refugees, how do we decide who they would be?”

Ardern will speak to various different leaders from Pacific Island nations during her Nauru visit.

She said would use her time as productively as she could consider a range of issues from Pacific neighbours’ perspective.

Nauru has been an ongoing problem with its crackdown on the media.

The government’s ban on the ABC had drawn global condemnation from media freedom groups, including the Pacific Media Centre.

The Prime Minister was at AUT to open the new $120 million Engineering, Technology and Design building.

This is a digital era home with state of the art facilities for engineering, computer and mathematical sciences students at AUT’s city campus.

Rahul Bhattarai is a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student journalist who has been on an intensive assignment for Te Waha Nui this week. He is also on the Pacific Media Centre‘s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

• • Nauru media ban on ABC targets Australian detention centre gag
  • NZ Pacific journalists ‘appalled’ by Nauru ban on ABC at Forum
  • Plea for PM to be ‘game changer’
  • Prime Minister officially opens Ngā Wai Hono

Almost 17,000 Nepalese people are now living in New Zealand following a sharp increase of migration from the Himalayas country, according to Statistics New Zealand’s latest figures.

In 2013, there were approximately 1600 Nepalese people in the country, but five years later that figure has increased by almost 1000 percent.

Of those living in the Auckland region, the majority have typically settled in the Puketapapa local board area in Mount Roskill (16.4 percent), Henderson-Massey local board area (14.1 percent), and Waitemata local board area (11.3 percent).

The president of New Zealand Nepal Society (NZNS), Dinesh Khadka, said 60 percent were international students and 40 percent were long-term residents who were on visas or work permits.

“Approximately 9000 [Nepalese] people live in Auckland and the rest are dispersed across various parts of New Zealand,” said Dinesh Khadka.

Two communities
NZNS is one of two Nepalese community organisations in Auckland, with a registered membership of 280 families.

The other is the New Zealand Nepal Association with 100 registered members.

A national festival will be held in Auckland on October 13 when Nepalese will celebrate Dashain, a national festival, which symbolises the victory of good over evil.

Dashain takes place over 10 days, when family members and friends come together and enjoy traditional cuisine, play cards, fly paper kites and play on a traditional bamboo swing.

Rahul Bhattarai is a student journalist on AUT’s Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies and also a part-time reporter for the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project. This article was first published by Te Waha Nui.

Military forces on peacekeeping duties often face dilemmas that are difficult to resolve, says a retired colonel who is now an education consultant.

Colonel Richard Hall, who retired from the British Army after 25 years’ service, peacekeeping roles in several countries, and led a New Zealand mission to Afghanistan in 2008/9, told an audience at Auckland University of Technology he had faced a challenge when a local tribal chief asked for security for young schoolchildren.

The chief was running a small school where he was teaching young children, but he was getting death threats from the Taliban who wanted him to stop teaching.

READ MORE: 10 years, eight lives, and $300 in Bamiyan – was New Zealand’s time in Afghanistan worth it?

Colonel Hall had to decline the request.

“Sadly, I couldn’t,” he said.

This kind of dilemma was rather common for military officers, especially when they were engaged in an operation with limited military resources or mandate that did not allow such activity, said Hall.

He was speaking at a public event organised by the Auckland branch of the United Nations Association of New Zealand on the theme “peacekeeping and the use of force”.

‘Victors’ peace’
Hall said World War 2 was a “victors’ peace” and the United Nations Charter was heavily influenced by the Allies who had won the war – China, France, United Kingdom, United States and the Soviet Union.

They “preserved” their power through enabling a veto in the Security Council. That gave them the ability to influence their “common interest”.

“It wasn’t long before the political divide between the East and West came out,” he said.

This was when the permanent members were often in complete disagreement with each other.

The common interest became difficult, and often it led to the creation of “mandates” by the UN.

“Those [mandates] were a compromise, they were weakly worded to avoid a veto,” Hall said.

This was a major concern as it caused lots of difficulties for the people on the ground, including confusion over the role of UN peacekeeping force.

The public generally confused the UN’s role with providing security to the host country, but that was incorrect.

Impartial role
The key aspect of peacekeeping operation was the UN being totally impartial.

It was not about taking sides – except for two exceptions; the Korean War in 1950 and the invasion of Iraq in 1990. However, these were examples of peace enforcement operations (under chapter 7 of the Charter) as distinct from peacekeeping operations.

The UN tried to bring various sides of a conflict together through a political process to reach a peace agreement – while the military worked in the background facilitating the process.

UN Charter’s chapter six is devoted to the peaceful settlements of disputes.

“Political negotiation between warring parties were the preeminent way of resolving conflicts”, Hall said.

Some roles for the military in peacekeeping tended to be completely unarmed or lightly armed troops doing a “couple of things”.

Hall said the UN military might be observers ensuring there was going to be a ceasefire agreement, or they might be creating a buffer zone between warring factions to prevent the conflict reigniting due to breach of a ceasefire.

Health impact
UN peacekeeping soldiers also suffered seriously from post-traumatic stress disorder as they were not allowed to intervene.

According to the United Nations (UN) Principles of Peacekeeping, there are three basic principles that set UN peacekeeping operations apart as a tool for maintaining international peace and security – consent of the parties, impartiality and non-use of force except in self-defence, and defence of the mandate.

UN peacekeeping forces were not allowed to engage in any kind of offensive, unless it is for self-defence which created a huge problem for their mental well-being, Hall said.

Soldiers witness “killing and raping” and they could not do anything about it and that caused more psychological distress.

Hall said that if the public did not support the mission, that was demoralising for soldiers.

“They feel they have been committed to an operation and there is no political, moral support from the government of the day and also the general population,” he said.

Responding to a question from the audience, Hall said: “Although not a peacekeeping operation, an example of a lack of support was the Vietnam War: the New Zealand soldiers experienced the trauma of war and on their return were badly let down by the government and public.

“It wasn’t their fault that they were there, they were fulfilling a commitment made the New Zealand government of the day.”

Hall has been decorated with the New Zealand Order of Merit and has had a distinguished military career with service in Bosnia, Cyprus, Kosovo, Middle East and Northern Ireland as well as Afghanistan.

He was seconded to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to establish regional peacekeeping centres in Africa, working extensively with local military, politicians and NGOs.

Hall’s book A Long Road to Progress: Dispatches from a Kiwi Commander in Afghanistan is an autobiographical account.

Currently he is a senior educational consultant in the deputy vice-chancellor’s office at Auckland University of Technology.

• United Nations Association of New Zealand

Radio 95bfm Jemima Huston is joined by AUT Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie and reporter Rahul Bhattarai about the centre’s Asia Pacific Report news stories and issues being covered.

Topics include: the detention of a Bangladeshi photojournalist, in an ongoing protest in Bangladesh; the screening of the controversial movie In the Name of Confucius; ABC’s Asia Pacific shortwave radio cutbacks; and Vanuatu appointing a special envoy for West Papua.

LISTEN: Full PMC Southern Cross radio programme

• Media freedom groups protest over detained photojournalist
• 95bfm link

A Chinese government-sponsored cultural and education programme offers Mandarin lessons around the world. But a new film raises questions about a darker side of the Confucius Institutes, reports Rahul Bhattarai of Asia Pacific Journalism.

Chinese-born Canadian film director Doris Liu has had her visa to China denied but has never faced a direct threat or interference from the Beijing government over her controversial documentary In The Name Of Confucius screened in Auckland last month.

Her visa to China has been rejected because of her investigative work, she told Asia Pacific Report.

Her documentary criticises Chinese policy and political influence through the multibillion dollar Chinese government-supported Confucius Institute programmes attached to 1600 universities and schools across the globe.

READ MORE: In The Name of Confucius

Three universities in New Zealand have ties with CI – University of Auckland (UOA), Canterbury University and Victoria University of Wellington.

Auckland University of Technology (which has no ties with the institute) and Victoria University welcomed the screening of the documentary.

But the University of Auckland cancelled its public screening on the day of the event – just hours before the documentary was due to be screened.

“I had already been rejected for a Chinese visa to enter China because of my journalism before making this film,” filmmaker Liu said.

Recorded, threatened
However, she added that during her interviews in one of the Canadian institutes, the Confucius Institute director had video recorded her and threatened that she would report her back to Beijing.

“The director used her smartphone to film me conducting an interview with the school board representatives,” Liu said.

“She told me that she would report back to Hanban in Beijing about my media presence.” (Hanban is an abbreviation for the Office of Chinese Language Council International, the Confucius Institute headquarters.)

Liu added that “the interview didn’t end happily as the school representatives stopped the interview and they all walked away.

“After that I couldn’t get access to any Canadian Confucius Institutes, except for a couple of telephone interviews.

“I could imagine that Hanban informed all its Chinese directors working at the Canadian Confucius Institute not to accept my interview requests.”

Suppressing teachings
While talking to Mack Smith of 95bFM, Dr Catherine Churchman of Victoria University said that under the institute policy, “you have to teach Mandarin, you are not allowed teach Cantonese or Hokkien” – or any of the other Chinese languages – and “you have to teach in the simplified Chinese characters set”.

Dr Churchman said the main reason the institutes did not allow the teaching of traditional Chinese was to “suppress people” from being able to read documents from Taiwan or Hong Kong, or many other overseas countries.

Until the 1980s, the Chinese diaspora, including in New Zealand, used traditional Chinese characters to publish their literature.

Dr Churchman said that many of the texts published in China, including the literature from the Chinese Communist Party and its foreign affairs, were only in traditional Chinese.

Suppressing the traditional Chinese was a form of “censorship that the Chinese Communist Party has over things written inside China”, she said.

“They [CI] have a lot of influence over the institute itself, they pay for half of it usually, and they pay quiet a lot of money,” she said.

Dr Churchman said Victoria University received about “half a million” dollars in 2016.

Institute ‘controlled’
The Confucius Institute was run by Hanban, which was controlled by the Chinese Ministry of Education, she said.

While the ministry might not necessarily have had direct influence over the institute, it did provide rules about what was allowed to be taught in the institute.

After Auckland University cancelled the public film screening of In The Name of Confucius, Associate Professor Phillipa Malpas said: “The event was prematurely advertised as being open to the public before it had been approved and confirmed by my faculty.

“It was subsequently approved for screening to University of Auckland staff and students.”

AUT screened the documentary at a public event on July 26 with a packed auditorium, including the presence of an Asia Pacific Report journalist.

However, Alison Sykora, head of communications in AUT, said the Chinese Vice-Consul-General spoke to the university before the screening of the movie. The Vice-Consul had been given an invitation but AUT had not yet received a reply.

Chinese soft power
The documentary shows how China has been using CI in order to influence foreign countries through soft-power initiatives.

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former chief of the Asia Pacific Canadian Security Intelligence Service, says in the film: “CI were used to manipulate not only the academic world, where they were implanted, but to also emanate more influence outside of the campus as well.”

The documentary says that the CI is an “infiltration organisation” that was founded in 2004 by the Chinese government under the guise of teaching foreign students Chinese culture and language.

Institute teachers were also forced to sign a contract that they were not members of the banned and persecuted spiritual group Falun Gong.

Last November, the Chinese government pressured the Japanese government in an attempt to cancel an international conference due to the planned showing of the documentary, but in spite of the pressure the screening went ahead.

The film was shown in an international human rights conference in Tokyo, receiving a good response from the global audience.

In The Name Of Confucius has been shown 57 times in 12 countries.

Filmmaker Doris Liu said that the movie had been well received, with review ratings of 8.7 out of 10 on Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and 4.8 out of 5 on Facebook.

Rahul Bhattarai is a student journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies (Journalism) reporting on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.

• How China is invading Western universities with communist propaganda – Huffington Post

Unite Union national director Mike Treen arrived in Auckland today and told of his brutal experience at the hands of the Israeli military while trying to break Israel’s 11-year-long illegal Gaza blockade.

But he vowed he would do the whole voyage again “if it was useful” to the humanitarian cause – even after being badly mistreated by the the Israeli security forces.

The Israeli Navy “hijacked” Treen’s boat Al Awda (The Return) and seized all 22 people on board, just 40 miles nautical miles from Gaza.

READ MORE: Deported Freedom Flotilla activist on his way

“Israeli navy hijacked the ship by force, and multiple uses of tasers on me and other crew, for trying to peacefully resist,” he said.

His boat was hijacked by armed and masked Israeli soldiers in international waters.

“We weren’t forcefully trying to resist them,” Treen said. “We wanted to make clear that they had no right to take our boat. This was an unlawful act – we were in an international waters, we had the right to free passage.”

Threatened the captain
But the Israelis not only forced their way onto the boat, tasering and beating people, they also threatened to kill the captain, “simply threatened to execute him if he did not pilot the ship towards Israel,” Treen said.

Treen himself was tasered four times on his face and head area, was stomped on his foot, and left with bruises all over his body.

After the brutal treatment, he was taken to an Israeli prison and detained for five days.

During his detention, Treen was interrogated by Israeli officers and also by a New Zealand honorary consular official based in Israel, Gad Propper.

“The New Zealand consulate based in Israel in every minute acted as an agent of the Israeli state not of the New Zealand government,” Treen said.

He was not interviewed alone. The consul “interviewed me with police and security officials in the room and when he asked me about the taser mark on my face, he [Gad Propper] then immediately implied that it was somehow my fault”.

When Treen told the interviewers that his belongings, including his wallet had been stolen, Gad Propper had said “it was an exaggeration and they [Israeli soldiers] surely wouldn’t do that”.

Treen was deported back to Auckland emptyhanded with an empty wallet and with most of his money having been stolen.

• More Gaza Freedom Flotilla stories

Author and researcher David Hall has criticised anti-immigration rhetoric in New Zealand’s housing crisis, saying a more serious problem is “Pākehā leaders … failing to take action”.

Speaking at a panel discussion at Auckland University of Technology last night, Dr Hall, editor of the book Fair Borders: Migration Policy in the 21st Century, said harm and hurt from such rhetoric created side effects impacting on migrants.

Negativity directed towards home buyers with Chinese sounding surnames diverted attention from “long lines of people with British sounding surnames” that held and continued to hold powerful and influential positions over the housing issue.

READ MORE: Borders, divisions and the space between

Although there is an ethnic dimension to housing crises, he said that the most significant issue was that “Pākehā leaders supported by electorates with Pākehā majorities [were] failing to take action.”

Dr Hall, senior researcher of AUT’s Policy Observatory, was joined by three of the book’s contributors, Andrew Chen, Dr Arama Rata and Dr Evelyn Masters, to discuss how New Zealand’s borders impacted on its citizens, recent immigrants, and on people barred from the country.

Dr Hall said that over emphasis and over simplification of the role of immigration was not just a way of avoiding taking action, it was a way of avoiding responsibility for taking action and that helped nobody – “not even Pākehā and I say that as a Pākehā myself”.

He pointed out that one continuous theme was the failure of successful decision makers to make the tough decision that might have made a difference, such as the mayors of Auckland going back to the 1990s or the housing ministers.

“There is bit of pattern here,” he said.

‘Tricky’ issues
Dr Hall said that house prices had been rising since 1990s and only eight years ago there were more people leaving the country than were arriving, yet the house prices rose during the negative migration period.

The issue was “very tricky” with some of the genuine social strains such as housing affordability and policy and its relationship to migration.

The debate treated “immigration as an economic medicine that might taste a little bad and people just need to put up with which also doesn’t do anything to address peoples’ genuine worries”.

This was not his story to tell as no one ever challenged him based on the colour of his skin.
“As a Pākehā this isn’t really my story to tell because no one ever challenges me on whether I belong here, no one ever suggests to me that I shouldn’t be speaking English in public and no one tells me to leave by virtue of my appearance but this happens all the time to people,” he said.

Dr Arama Rata, a research officer at the University of Waikato, said that in New Zealand there was a border in place which was established by the invaders.

Māori border ignored
But the “Māori border has been ignored, a new imposition of state authority is being imposed, borders have been closed around the nation state to allow certain desirable white migrants in and to exclude others, and now we have a very secure racist structure in place”.

She said borders needed to be in place but, they “should be controlled more by our values rather than just purely economic incentives and the way I think we need to stop framing immigration as a problem”.

Dr Evelyn Masters, with Pākehā lineage and Cook Islands heritage that she is really proud of, said she struggled in explaining her New Zealand identity because people judged her based on her appearance.

Dr Masters, research manager of NZ Institute for Pacific Research, said people struggled to understand that she had multiple lineage in her blood line and wanted to be known as a New Zealander.

She did not have to be just one race because she looked brown, she said.

“I just want to say that I am a New Zealander, because my experience is I am multiple – I have brown people and white people in my family, why do I have to be just one as you see me.”

The panel was part of the BWB Winter Series, supported by Creative New Zealand.

• Migrant nurses in NZ face racism daily

It was a case of Pacific meets Pacific in AUT’s School of Communication Studies this week as one of the inaugural winners of the Pacific Cooperation Foundation internships welcomed this year’s new batch of four student journalists from Fiji, Samoa and Solomon Islands.

Pauline Mago-King of Papua New Guinea was a final year communication studies student in Madang when the internships began and she visited New Zealand in 2015 thanks to PCF.

Now she is a master’s degree student at Auckland University of Technology doing research into domestic violence and non-government organisation responses in her home country.

She says she knew the flexibility of the AUT programme was just right for her – “especially when you come from a country where there aren’t enough opportunities for a student to gain experience.”

AUT’s Pacific Media Centre hosted the PCF internship students and director Professor David Robie welcomed them, saying “we‘re just a small programme but with quite a reach, we have an audience of up to 20,000 on our Asia Pacific Report website”.

The PMC, with a small part-time team, covers the region with independent news as well as conducting out a discrete media research programme.

Three of the students on the two-week internship in New Zealand come from the University of the South Pacific and the student newspaper Wansolwara – Elizabeth Osifelo (Solomon Islands), Salote Qalubau and Adi Anaesini Civavonovono (both from Fiji). The fourth, Yumi Talaave, is from the National University of Samoa.

The interns toured AUT’s communications facilities, including the state-of-the-art television studies and control room.

They then visited AUT’s journalism newsroom and media centre.

The students also watched the final editing stages of a short current affairs documentary by two AUT students involved in the PMC’s Bearing Witness climate change project.

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom travelled to Rabi Island in the north of Fiji in April and filmed the documentary Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival in the hope of spreading awareness about the impact of climate change in the Pacific.

Their lecturers, Jim Marbrook and David Robie, hope to enter the documentary into film festivals and an earlier video by the students as part of the project gives a glimpse of life on the island.

Suzanne Suisuiki, communications manager of PCF, says these kinds of internships provide the opportunity for Pacific students to gain wider exposure and better understanding of media.

“We wanted interns who had a sense of appreciation of the media industry,” she said.

She plans to next year expand to the wider Pacific region, including Tonga and Papua New Guinea.

Two students were also selected from New Zealand to go to Fiji and Samoa.

• The PCF media programme

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson last night condemned the “obscenity” of jailing West Papuans by Indonesian authorities for raising their Morning Star flag of independence.

Speaking at the launch of the West Papua solidarity “desk” at the First Union community office in Onehunga, Davidson said she was upholding the party’s long standing solidarity for the indigenous Melanesians in their search for self-determination and independence.

About 25 people supporting the cause of West Papua gathered at the event in a bid to raise awareness in New Zealand over the ongoing issue of human rights violations in West Papua by the Indonesian government.

“It’s a privilege to launch the desk because we need to continue to do the work to raise awareness and to stand in solidarity with the people of West Papua,” Davidson said.

Davidson, along with the cultural group Oceania Interrupted, are creating an activist action of performance to “disturb” public places to help raise awareness as Maori and Pacific women of the Pacific.

“We are standing in solidarity with women leaders of indigenous movements around the world and around the Pacific,” she said.

Davidson has also asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to call on Indonesian President Joko Widodo to account and to raise the human rights issues.

Indonesia has just been elected to the UN Security Council for a two-year term.

Facing imperialism
Green MP Golriz Ghahraman said that this was a “solidarity movement for both the people of Pacific and across the world – it’s part of the imperialism that people are experiencing”.

She added that the people of West Papua were facing militarised oppression by the Indonesian government in order to seize their resources.

“West Papuan culture and heritage is violently suppressed for access to their natural minerals,” she said.

Human rights and peace activist Marie Leadbeater, author of the forthcoming book See No Evil, said that West Papua was a close Melanesian neighbour which had been under Indonesian control since 1963 against the will of Papuan people.

She said: “They were promised self-determination and an opportunity to become an independent nation, the same as other independent nations in the Pacific.”

That promise had not yet been fulfilled and as a result the West Papuan people had been resisting or campaigning, which came at a huge price, including the loss of thousands of lives due to the conflict with the Indonesian government.

• • More West Papua stories
  • Indonesia elected to UN Security Council

Palestinian author and a journalist Dr Ramzy Baroud vowed today that Palestinians would never be defeated by the Israelis and they would never cease to fight for their freedom.

“Sisters, brothers, comrades and friends, Gaza is under siege, their people are dying in droves, their children are denied the most basic human rights,” he told a rally of about 400 people protesting in Auckland’s Aotea Square in support of Palestinian human and land rights.

In the last 10 years of blockade, thousands of Palestinians had been killed by a “deliberate Israeli campaign of starvation, dehumanisation and disempowerment”, the author said.

LISTEN: Dr Ramzy Baroud’s interview with RNZ’s Kim Hill

Dr Baroud, a Palestinian American in New Zealand on a tour to promote his new book, The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, also spoke about the Palestine holocaust caused by the Israelis, which was seldom fairly reported by mainstream media.

The UN Human Rights Council yesterday voted to assign international war crimes investigators to probe last Monday’s killings of scores of Palestinians on the bloodiest day of protests in Gaza.

The resolution was supported by 29 countries, with only the US and Australia voting against. Fourteen countries abstained, including Britain and Germany.

Boycott sought
Middle Eastern Eye reported that 110 Palestinians had been killed in recent weeks in a report about the UN investigation and the Great March of Return.

Holding the protest in Auckland was an attempt to gain support from the NZ government, “to impose a boycott in their [Israeli] regime, on its economy, and on its political representation,” said Mike Treen, a spokesperson for Global Peace and Justice Auckland (GPJA).

The protesters then marched down Queen Street towards the US Consulate near Britomart chanting slogans such as, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, “Freedom for Palestine”, and “Long live Palestine”.

About 60 Palestinian men, women, and children were killed by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) troops during protests over the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Guatemala followed suit the next day.

May 14 marked the 70th year since the state of Israel was established.

That was a day of celebration for Israelis and Zionists but mourned by indigenous Palestinians as Al Nakba – “the catastrophe”, the day they lost their liberty.

US embassy ‘wrongdoing’
In his speech, Dr Baroud spoke about the wrongdoings of the rightwing Israeli government and the Trump administration for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is heavily disputed and highly controversial as it is regarded as sacred land by both the Jews and the Muslims.

Dr Baroud said the reason for global trip was to reclaim the Palestinian narrative, “an attempt at retelling Palestinian history from the viewpoint of Palestinian refugees”.

Since most mainstream media focused on the Israeli narrative rather than the “Palestinian facts”, he wanted to tell the story exactly as it was happening on the Gaza Strip.

Dr Baroud said many historians focused on Palestinian’s history through the “eyes of Israel, the Zionists and through the Western media”.

‘Central narrative’
This was the “central narrative” of this conflict between Zionists and Palestinians which needed to be re-taught, he said.

Dr Baroud also said that the long-term solution to resolve the conflict was to end Israeli colonisation of Palestine that had continued for decades.

“This system of apartheid, system of military occupation, has to end.”

According to UN resolutions, there were four key points that the Israeli government needed to follow – “the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, Palestinian freedom to travel, and an end to the apartheid system, and demolition of the apartheid wall.

“And the racist laws that have targeted Palestinians for over 50 years need to end.”

Dr Baroud said the occupation needed to come to an end in order for there to be a prospect of peaceful co-existence in the future.

The apartheid of colonisation had to be dismantled.

About 50 people gathered in Auckland’s Silo Park today to protest over the 70th year of Nakba – also known as the Palestinian “catastrophe”.

The protesters included a Palestinian whose father had been evicted by Israeli forces to make way for Jewish settlers and a prominent Pacific social justice advocate who had protested during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand.

Both protesters likened the policies of the Israeli state to the anti-apartheid policies of the former white minority South African regime.

READ MORE: Gaza rallies: How women shape Great March of Return movement

But Israelis celebrate tomorrow – 14 May 1948 – as Independence Day for their state.

One Palestinian was killed in Gaza on Friday as the six-week “Great March of Return” headed into its last days ahead of Nakba Day on May 15, reports the Middle East Eye.

According to the latest Gaza Ministry of Health tally on Wednesday, Israeli forces stationed behind the fence had killed 47 Palestinians and wounded 8536 during demonstrations.

The Palestinian supporters in Auckland marched peacefully from ANZ Event Centre by the waterfront to Silo Park beating steel washtubs and chanting slogans such as, “free free Palestine!” and “Israel is a racist nation!”

Placards declared “Israel is a racist state”, “Boycott Israel” and “Israel was built on a lie – the holohoax”.

Israeli supporters had organised their own events, which were attended by some National MPs and Rob Berg, head of the Zionist movement in New Zealand.

Police set up a “safe zone” to prevent protesters and Israel Day festival supporters clashing.

The Nakba protest at Silo Park today. Video: Rahul Bhattarai/PMC

Peaceful protesters
The line of police mostly held back the peaceful protesters while there were few police to monitor the pro-Zionist hecklers.

Billy Hania, a Palestinian living in New Zealand, told Asia Pacific Report he was at the protest to oppose the celebration of the state of Israel.

“Israel is an apartheid establishment and was founded by evicting people from their home,” he said.

The victims included his own father who was evicted at the age of 12 at gunpoint in order to make room for Jewish settlers, he said.

Hania was at the protest to commemorate the Nakba which was a “catastrophe”. This was in 1948 when the people of Palestine had lost their homes and continued to be under Israeli occupation which is illegal under international law.

Will ‘Ilolahia, a founding member of Polynesian Panther Party, was also present in “support of the anti-Zionist policy in regard to Israel, and also the pro-Palestinian struggle”.

‘Ilolahia was in the Patu Squad during the anti-apartheid protests against the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand and he was “self-exiled” to Tonga.

‘Follow Lorde’ plea
He said New Zealand should follow in the footsteps of Kiwi musician Lorde and “put it out there that Israel is actually like apartheid”.

He said: “Zionist Israel is set up as just like apartheid.”

‘Ilolahia added that the “struggles of the Palestinians are the same as the struggles we’ve had here in Aotearoa and the Pacific – us indigenous people have to stick together”.

Valerie Morse, organiser of the Auckland Peace Action, said the protesters were there “as a protest against the 70th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel”.

She added: “We are here in support of the Palestinian people and their struggle for freedom and justice.”

Morse also said there had been seven decades of “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian people – ever since the state of Israel had been founded.

Almost five million indigenous Palestinians live in refugee camps – waiting to return home – outside of their Palestine homeland.

Morse and other protesters were protesting over the displaced Palestinians as a part of an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

The BDS campaign has three main demands: to “ tear down the apartheid wall”, enable the right of return for Palestinians living outside of their former homeland, and equal rights for Palestinians within Israel.

• Gallery of protest images

About 50 people staged a “wall of noise” protest in Auckland’s port today in a bid to shut down the Israeli “festival of oppression” marking 70 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

Protesting at the Silo Park over what Palestinians regard as the Nakba – “the catastophe” – when the state of Israel was established in 1948 through “ethnic cleansing” of an estimated 750,000 to one million indigenous Palestinians.

The Palestinians were forced to become refugees in a Jewish-majority state in Palestine and the day – 14 May 1948 – is regarded as Israel’s independence day.

“The Nakba isn’t just a crime of the past,” said Auckland Peace Action group spokesperson Valerie Morse, one of the organisers. “The repression is ongoing.”

The Pacific Media Centre’s Rahul Bhattarai and Del Abcede were at Silo Park to capture the protest in pictures.

• Gaza rallies – how women shape the Great March of Return movement

Free Palestine!

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