To mark the release of the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) partnered with the agency The Good Company to launch a new awareness campaign that puts an ironic twist on the glossy advertising of the tourism industry.

Three out of six countries featured in the exposé are from the Asia Pacific region — but none from the Pacific Islands.

The campaign shines a stark light on the press freedom violations in countries that seem perfect on postcards but are highly dangerous for journalists, says RSF.

• READ MORE: Fiji media welcomes credible news services, but not ‘pop-up propagandists’, says Simpson
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It is a striking campaign raising awareness about repression.

Fiji (44th out of 180 ranked nations) is lucky perhaps as three years ago when its draconian media law was still in place, it might have bracketed up there with the featured “chilling” tourism countries such as Indonesia (127) — which is rapped over its treatment of West Papua resistance and journalists.

Disguised as attractive travel guides, the campaign’s visuals use a cynical, impactful rhetoric to highlight the harsh realities journalists face in destinations renowned for their tourist appeal.

Along with Indonesia, Greece (89th), Cambodia (115), Egypt (170), Mexico (124) and the Philippines (116) are all visited by millions of tourists, yet they rank poorly in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, reports RSF.

‘Chilling narrative’
“The attention-grabbing visuals juxtapose polished, enticing aesthetics with a chilling narrative of intimidation, censorship, violence, and even death.

“This deliberately unsettling approach by RSF aims to shift the viewer’s perspective, showing what the dreamlike imagery conceals: journalists imprisoned, attacked, or murdered behind idyllic landscapes.”

The RSF Index 2025 teaser.     Video: RSF

Indonesia is in the Pacific spotlight because of its Melanesian Papuan provinces bordering Pacific Islands Forum member country Papua New Guinea.

Despite outgoing President Joko Widodo’s 10 years in office and a reformist programme, his era has been marked by a series of broken promises, reports RSF.

“The media oligarchy linked to political interests has grown stronger, leading to increased control over critical media and manipulation of information through online trolls, paid influencers, and partisan outlets,” says the Index report.

“This climate has intensified self-censorship within media organisations and among journalists.

“Since October 2024, Indonesia has been led by a new president, former general Prabowo Subianto — implicated in several human rights violation allegations — and by Joko Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as vice-president.

“Under this new administration, whose track record on press freedom offers little reassurance, concerns are mounting over the future of independent journalism.”

Fiji leads in Pacific
In the Pacific, Fiji has led the pack among island states by rising four places to 40th overall, making it the leading country in Oceania in 2025 in terms of press freedom.

Both Timor-Leste, which dropped 19 places to 39th after heading the region last year, and Samoa, which plunged 22 places to 44th, lost their impressive track record.

Of the only other two countries in Oceania surveyed by RSF, Tonga rose one place to 46th and Papua New Guinea jumped 13 places to 78th, a surprising result given the controversy over its plans to regulate the media.

RSF reports that the Fiji Media Association (FMA), which was often critical of the harassment of the media by the previous FijiFirst government, has since the repeal of the Media Act in 2023 “worked hard to restore independent journalism and public trust in the media”.

In March 2024, research published in Journalism Practice journal found that sexual harassment of women journalists was widespread and needed to be addressed to protect media freedom and quality journalism.

In Timor-Leste, “politicians regard the media with some mistrust, which has been evidenced in several proposed laws hostile to press freedom, including one in 2020 under which defaming representatives of the state or Catholic Church would have been punishable by up to three years in prison.

“Journalists’ associations and the Press Council often criticise politicisation of the public broadcaster and news agency.”

On the night of September 4, 2024, Timorese police arrested Antonieta Kartono Martins, a reporter for the news site Diligente Online, while covering a police operation to remove street vendors from a market in Dili, the capital. She was detained for several hours before being released.

Samoan harassment
Previously enjoying a good media freedom reputation, journalists and their families in Samoa were the target of online death threats, prompting the Samoan Alliance of Media Professionals for Development (SAMPOD) to condemn the harassment as “attacks on the fourth estate and democracy”.

In Tonga, RSF reports that journalists are not worried about being in any physical danger when on the job, and they are relatively unaffected by the possibility of prosecution.

“Nevertheless, self-censorship continues beneath the surface in a tight national community.”

In Papua New Guinea, RSF reports journalists are faced with intimidation, direct threats, censorship, lawsuits and bribery attempts, “making it a dangerous profession”.

“And direct interference often threatens the editorial freedom at leading media outlets. This was seen yet again at EMTV in February 2022, when the entire newsroom was fired after walking out” in protest over a management staffing decison.

“There has been ongoing controversy since February 2023 concerning a draft law on media development backed by Communications Minister Timothy Masiu. In January 2024, a 14-day state of emergency was declared in the capital, Port Moresby, following unprecedented protests by police forces and prison wardens.”

This impacted on government and media relations.

Australia and New Zealand
In Australia (29), the media market’s heavy concentration limits the diversity of voices represented in the news, while independent outlets struggle to find a sustainable economic model.

While New Zealand (16) leads in the Asia Pacific region, it is also facing a similar situation to Australia with a narrowing of media plurality, closure or merging of many newspaper titles, and a major retrenchment of journalists in the country raising concerns about democracy.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

This week Cambodia marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the murderous Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam celebrates the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975.

They are being commemorated very differently; after all, there’s nothing to celebrate in Cambodia. Its capital Phnom Penh was emptied, and its people had to then endure the “killing fields” and the darkest years of its modern existence under Khmer Rouge rule.

Over the border in Vietnam, however, there will be modest celebrations for their victory against US (and Australian) forces at the end of this month.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua liberation reports

Yet, this week’s news of Indonesia considering a Russian request to base aircraft at the Biak airbase in West Papua throws in stark relief a troubling question I have long asked — did Australia back the wrong war 63 years ago? These different areas — and histories — of Southeast Asia may seem disconnected, but allow me to draw some links.

Through the 1950s until the early 1960s, it was official Australian policy under the Menzies government to support The Netherlands as it prepared West Papua for independence, knowing its people were ethnically and religiously different from the rest of Indonesia.

They are a Christian Melanesian people who look east to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific, not west to Muslim Asia. Australia at the time was administering and beginning to prepare PNG for self-rule.

The Second World War had shown the importance of West Papua (then part of Dutch New Guinea) to Australian security, as it had been a base for Japanese air raids over northern Australia.

Japanese beeline to Sorong
Early in the war, Japanese forces made a beeline to Sorong on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua for its abundance of high-quality oil. Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam served in a RAAF unit briefly stationed in Merauke in West Papua.

By 1962, the US wanted Indonesia to annex West Papua as a way of splitting Chinese and Russian influence in the region, as well as getting at the biggest gold deposit on earth at the Grasberg mine, something which US company Freeport continues to mine, controversially, today.

Following the so-called Bunker Agreement signed in New York in 1962, The Netherlands reluctantly agreed to relinquish West Papua to Indonesia under US pressure. Australia, too, folded in line with US interests.

That would also be the year when Australia sent its first group of 30 military advisers to Vietnam. Instead of backing West Papuan nationhood, Australia joined the US in suppressing Vietnam’s.

As a result of US arm-twisting, Australia ceded its own strategic interests in allowing Indonesia to expand eastwards into Pacific territories by swallowing West Papua. Instead, Australians trooped off to fight the unwinnable wars of Indochina.

To me, it remains one of the great what-ifs of Australian strategic history — if Australia had held the line with the Dutch against US moves, then West Papua today would be free, the East Timor invasion of 1975 was unlikely to have ever happened and Australia might not have been dragged into the Vietnam War.

Instead, as Cambodia and Vietnam mark their anniversaries this month, Australia continues to be reminded of the potential threat Indonesian-controlled West Papua has posed to Australia and the Pacific since it gave way to US interests in 1962.

Russian space agency plans
Nor is this the first time Russia has deployed assets to West Papua. Last year, Russian media reported plans under way for the Russian space agency Roscosmos to help Indonesia build a space base on Biak island.

In 2017, RAAF Tindal was scrambled just before Christmas to monitor Russian Tu95 nuclear “Bear” bombers doing their first-ever sorties in the South Pacific, flying between Australia and Papua New Guinea. I wrote not long afterwards how Australia was becoming “caught in a pincer” between Indonesian and Russian interests on Indonesia’s side and Chinese moves coming through the Pacific on the other.

All because we have abandoned the West Papuans to endure their own “slow-motion genocide” under Indonesian rule. Church groups and NGOs estimate up to 500,000 Papuans have perished under 60 years of Indonesian military rule, while Jakarta refuses to allow international media and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit.

Alex Sobel, an MP in the UK Parliament, last week called on Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner to visit but it is exceedingly rare to hear any Australian MPs ask questions about our neighbour West Papua in the Australian Parliament.

Canberra continues to enhance security relations with Indonesia in a naive belief that the nation is our ally against an assertive China. This ignores Jakarta’s deepening relations with both Russia and China, and avoids any mention of ongoing atrocities in West Papua or the fact that jihadi groups are operating close to Australia’s border.

Indonesia’s militarisation of West Papua, jihadi infiltration and now the potential for Russia to use airbases or space bases on Biak should all be “red lines” for Australia, yet successive governments remain desperate not to criticise Indonesia.

Ignoring actual ‘hot war’
Australia’s national security establishment remains focused on grand global strategy and acquiring over-priced gear, while ignoring the only actual “hot war” in our region.

Our geography has not changed; the most important line of defence for Australia remains the islands of Melanesia to our north and the co-operation and friendship of its peoples.

Strong independence movements in West Papua, Bougainville and New Caledonia all materially affect Australian security but Canberra can always be relied on to defer to Indonesian, American and French interests in these places, rather than what is ultimately in Australian — and Pacific Islander — interests.

Australia needs to develop a defence policy centred on a “Melanesia First” strategy from Timor to Fiji, radiating outwards. Yet Australia keeps deferring to external interests, to our cost, as history continues to remind us.

Ben Bohane is a Vanuatu-based photojournalist and policy analyst who has reported across Asia and the Pacific for the past 36 years. His website is benbohane.com  This article was first published by The Sydney Morning Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned the assassination of Cambodian investigative environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng who has died from his wounds.

He was shot by an illegal logger last week while investigating unlawful deforestation in the country’s northwest.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Cambodian government make sure this crime does not go unpunished, and to take concrete measures to protect journalists.

• READ MORE: Other reports of violence against environmental journalists

On 7 December 2024, journalist Chhoeung Chheng died in a hospital in Siem Reap, a city in northeastern Cambodia, from wounds suffered during an attack two days prior, RSF said in a statement.

The 63-year-old reporter, who worked for the online media Kampuchea Aphivath, had been shot in the abdomen while reporting on illegal logging in the Boeung Per nature reserve.

The Siem Reap regional government announced the arrest of a suspect the day after the attack, reports RSF.

Local media report that the suspect admitted to shooting the journalist after being photographed twice while transporting illegally logged timber.

“This murder is appalling and demands a strong response. We call on Cambodian authorities to ensure that all parties responsible for the attack are severely punished,” Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director in Taipei.

“We also urge the Cambodian government to take concrete actions to end violence against journalists.”

Journalists face violence
Journalists covering illegal deforestation in Cambodia face frequent violence. In 2014, reporter Taing Try was shot dead while investigating links between security forces and the timber trade in the country’s south, reports RSF.

Press freedom in Cambodia has been steadily deteriorating since 2017, when former Prime Minister Hun Sen cracked down on independent media, forcing prominent outlets such as Voice of Democracy to shut down. The government revoked the outlet’s licence in February 2023.

One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be perpetuating the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen, reports RSF.

According to a recent CamboJA report, cases of legal harassment against journalists — particularly those covering environmental issues — are on the rise in Cambodia.

Having fallen nine places in two years, Cambodia is now ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, placing it in the category of nations where threats to press freedom are deemed “very serious”.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Vietnam’s famous Củ Chi tunnel network was on our bucket list for years.

For me, it was for more than half a century, ever since I had been editor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer, which campaigned against Australian (and New Zealand) involvement in the unjust Vietnam War — redubbed the “American War” by the Vietnamese.

For Del, it was a dream to see how the resistance of a small and poor country could defeat the might of colonisers.

• READ MORE: Flashback to the 1968 My Lai massacre: ‘Something dark and bloody’
• Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum

“I wanted to see for myself how the tunnels and the sacrifices of the Vietnamese had contributed to winning the war,” she recalls.

“Love for country, a longing for peace and a resistance to foreign domination were strong factors in victory.”

We finally got our wish last month — a half day trip to the tunnel network, which stretched some 250 kilometres at the peak of their use. The museum park is just 45 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh city, known as Saigon during the war years (many locals still call it that).

Building of the tunnels started after the Second World War after the Japanese had withdrawn from Indochina and liberation struggles had begun against the French. But they reached their most dramatic use in the war against the Americans, especially during the spate of surprise attacks during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The Viet Minh kicked off the network, when it was a sort of southern gateway to the Ho Chi Minh trail in the 1940s as the communist forces edged closer to Saigon.

Eventually the liberation successes of the Viet Minh led to humiliating defeat of the French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Cutting off supply lines
The French had rebuilt an ex-Japanese airbase in a remote valley near the Laotian border in a so-called “hedgehog” operation — in a belief that the Viet Minh forces did not have anti-aircraft artillery. They hoped to cut off the Viet Minh’s guerrilla forces’ supply lines and draw them into a decisive conventional battle where superior French firepower would prevail.

However, they were the ones who were cut off.

The Củ Chi tunnels explored.    Video: History channel

The French military command badly miscalculated as General Nguyen Giap’s forces secretly and patiently hauled artillery through the jungle-clad hills over months and established strategic batteries with tunnels for the guns to be hauled back under cover after firing several salvos.

Giap compared Dien Bien Phu to a “rice bowl” with the Viet Minh on the edges and the French at the bottom.

After a 54-day siege between 13 March and 7 May 1954, as the French forces became increasingly surrounded and with casualties mounting (up to 2300 killed), the fortifications were over-run and the surviving soldiers surrendered.

The defeat led to global shock that an anti-colonial guerrilla army had defeated a major European power.

The French government of Prime Minister Joseph Laniel resigned and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed with France pulling out all its forces in the whole of Indochina, although Vietnam was temporarily divided in half at the 17th Parallel — the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the republican State of Vietnam nominally under Emperor Bao Dai (but in reality led by a series of dictators with US support).

Debacle of Dien Bien Phu
The debacle of Dien Bien Phu is told very well in an exhibition that takes up an entire wing of the Vietnam War Remnants Museum (it was originally named the “Museum of American War Crimes”).

But that isn’t all at the impressive museum, the history of the horrendous US misadventure is told in gruesome detail – with some 58,000 American troops killed and the death of an estimated up to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. (Not to mention the 521 Australian and 37 New Zealand soldiers, and the many other allied casualties.)

The section of the museum devoted to the Agent Orange defoliant war waged on the Vietnamese and the country’s environment is particularly chilling – casualties and people suffering from the aftermath of the poisoning are now into the fourth generation.

The global anti-Vietnam War peace protests are also honoured at the museum and one section of the compound has a recreation of the prisons holding Viet Cong independence fighters, including the torture “tiger cells”.

A guillotine is on display. The execution method was used by both France and the US-backed South Vietnam regimes against pro-independence fighters.

A placard says: “During the US war against Vietnam, the guillotine was transported to all of the provinces in South Vietnam to decapitate the Vietnam patriots. [On 12 March 1960], the last man who was executed by guillotine was Hoang Le Kha.”

A member of the ant-French liberation “scout movement”, Hoang was sentenced to death by a military court set up by the US-backed President Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime.

In 1981, France outlawed capital punishment and abandoned the use of the guillotine, but the last execution was as recent as 1977.

Museum visit essential
Visiting Ho Ch Min City’s War Remnants Museum is essential for background and contextual understanding of the role and importance of the Củ Chi tunnels.

Also for insights about how the last US troops left Vietnam in March 1973, Nixon resigned the following year under pressure from the Watergate revelations, and a series of reverses led to the collapse of the South Vietnam regime and the humiliating scenes of the final Americans withdrawing by helicopter from the US Embassy rooftop in Saigon in April 1975.

Back in my protest days as chief subeditor and then editor of Melbourne’s Sunday Observer, I had published Ronald Haberle’s My Lai massacre photos the same week as Life Magazine in December 1969 (an estimated 500 women, children and elderly men were killed at the hamlet on 16 March 1968 near Quang Nai city and the atrocity was covered up for almost two years).

Ironically, we were prosecuted for “obscenity’ for publishing photographs of a real life US obscenity and war crime in the Australian state of Victoria. (The case was later dropped).

So our trip to the Củ Chi tunnels was laced with expectation. What would we see? What would we feel?

The tunnels played a critical role in the “American” War, eventually leading to the collapse of South Vietnamese resistance in Saigon. And the guides talk about the experience and the sacrifice of Viet Cong fighters in reverential tones.

The tunnel network at Ben Dinh is in a vast park-like setting with restored sections, including underground kitchen (with smoke outlets directed through simulated ant hills), medical centre, and armaments workshop.

ingenious bamboo and metal spike booby traps, snakes and scorpions were among the obstacles to US forces pursuing resistance fighters. Special units — called “tunnel rats” using smaller soldiers were eventually trained to combat the Củ Chi system but were not very effective.

We were treated to cooked cassava, a staple for the fighters underground.

A disabled US tank demonstrates how typical hit-and-run attacks by the Viet Cong fighters would cripple their treads and then they would be attacked through their manholes.

The park also has a shooting range where tourists can fire M-16s and AK-47s — by buying their own bullets.

‘Walk’ through showdown
When it came to the section where we could walk through the tunnels ourselves, our guide said: “It only takes a couple of minutes.”

It was actually closer to 10 minutes, it seemed, and I actually got stuck momentarily when my knees turned to jelly with the crouch posture that I needed to use for my height. I had to crawl on hands and knees the rest of the way.

A warning sign said don’t go if you’re aged over 70 (I am 79), have heart issues (I do, with arteries), or are claustrophobic (I’m not). I went anyway.

People who have done this are mostly very positive about the experience and praise the tourist tunnels set-up. Many travel agencies run guided trips to the tunnels.

“Exploring the Củ Chi tunnels near Saigon was a fascinating and historically significant experience,” wrote one recent visitor on a social media link.

“The intricate network of tunnels, used during the Vietnam War, provided valuable insights into the resilience and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. Crawling through the tunnels, visiting hidden bunkers, and learning about guerrilla warfare tactics were eye-opening . . .

“It’s a place where history comes to life, and it’s a must-visit for anyone interested in Vietnam’s wartime history and the remarkable engineering of the Củ Chi tunnels.”

“The visit gives a very real sense of what the war was like from the Vietnamese side — their tunnels and how they lived and efforts to fight the Americans,” wrote another visitor. “Very realistic experience, especially if you venture into the tunnels.”

Overall, it was a powerful experience and a reminder that no matter how immensely strong a country might be politically and militarily, if grassroots people are determined enough for freedom and justice they will triumph in the end.

There is hope yet for Palestine.

• The Melbourne-based Asia Vacations Group has recently expanded its Vietnam offering in New Zealand.

Sydney-born investigative journalist, author and filmmaker John Pilger died on December 31, 2023.

He should be remembered and honoured not just for his impressive body of work, but for being a brave — and at times near-lone — voice for truth against power.

In early 2002, the “war on terror”, launched by then United States President George W Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attack, was in full swing.

• READ MORE: Daily Mirror legend John Pilger awoke world to great injustices as tributes pour in

After two decades, more than 4 million would be killed in Iraq, Libya, Philippines, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere under this bloody banner, and 10 times more displaced.

The propaganda campaign to justify this ferocious, US-led, global punitive expedition cowed many voices, not least in the settler colonial state of Australia.

But there was one prominent Australian voice that was not silenced — and it was John Pilger’s.

‘Breaking the silence’
On March 10 that year, Sydney Town Hall was packed out with people to hear John speak in a Green Left public meeting titled “Breaking the silence: war, propaganda and the new empire”.

Outside the Town Hall, about 100 more people, who could not squeeze in, stayed to show their solidarity.

Pilger described the war on terror as “a war on world-wide popular resistance to an economic system that determines who will live well and who will be expendable”.

He called for “opposition to a so-called war on terrorism, that is really a war of terrorism”.

The meeting played an important role in helping build resistance in this country to the many US-led imperial wars that followed the US’ bloody retribution exacted on millions of Afghans who had never even heard of the 9/11 attacks, let alone bore any responsibility for them.

That 2002 Sydney Town Hall meeting cemented a strong bond between GL and John.

GL is proud to have been the Australian newspaper and media platform that has published the most articles by John Pilger over the years.

Shared values
For much of the last two decades, the so-called mainstream media were always reluctant to run his pieces because he refused to obediently follow the unspoken war-on-terror line.

He refused to go along with the argument that every military expedition that the US launched (and which Australia and other loyal allies promptly followed) to protect privilege and empire were in defence of “shared democratic values”.

The collaboration between GL and John was based on real shared values, which he summed up succinctly in his introduction to his 1992 book Distant Voices:

“I have tried to rescue from media oblivion uncomfortable facts which may serve as antidotes to the official truth; and in doing so, I hope to have given support to those ‘distant voices’ who understand how vital, yet fragile, is the link between the right of people to know and to be heard, and the exercise of liberty and political democracy …”

GL editors have had many exchanges with John over the years. At times, there were political differences. But each such exchange only built up a mutual respect, based on a shared commitment to truth and justice.

The last two decades of John’s moral leadership against Empire were inadvertently confirmed a few weeks before his passing when US President Joe Biden warned Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat the US’ mistakes after 9/11.

“There’s no reason we did so many of the things we did,” Biden told Netanyahu.

Focus on Palestine struggle
John had long focused on Palestine’s struggle for self-determination from the Israeli colonial settler state. He condemned Israel’s most recent genocidal campaign of Gaza and, on X, praised those marching for “peaceful decency”.

He urged people to (re)watch his 2002 documentary film Palestine is Still The Issue, in which he returned to film in Gaza and the West Bank, after having first done so in 1977.

John was outspoken about Australia’s treatment of its First Peoples; he didn’t agree with Labor’s Voice to Parliament plan, saying it offered “no real democracy, no sovereignty, no treaty between equals”.

He criticised Labor’s embrace of AUKUS, saying it was about a new war with China, a campaign he took up in his documentary The Coming War on China. While recognising China’s abuse of human and democratic rights, he said the US views China’s embrace of capitalist growth as the key threat.

John campaigned hard for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s release; he visited him several times in Belmarsh Prison and condemned a gutless Labor Prime Minister for refusing to meet with Stella Assange when she was in Australia.

He spoke out for other whistleblowers, including David McBride who exposed Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.

Did not mince words
John did not mince words which is why, especially during the war on terror, most mainstream media refused to publish him — unless a counterposed article was run side-by-side. He never agreed to this pretence of “balance”.

John wrote about his own, early, conscientisation.

“I was very young when I arrived in Saigon and I learned a great deal,” he said on the anniversary of the last day of the longest war of the 20th century — Vietnam.

“I learned to recognise the distinctive drone of the engines of giant B-52s, which dropped their carnage from above the clouds and spared nothing and no one; I learned not to turn away when faced with a charred tree festooned with human parts; I learned to value kindness as never before; I learned that Joseph Heller was right in his masterly Catch-22: that war was not suited to sane people; and I learned about ‘our’ propaganda.”

John Pilger will be remembered by all those who know that facts and history matter, and that only through struggle will people’s movements ever have a chance of winning justice.

Republished with permission from Green Left Magazine.

As world leaders meet in Glasgow for the UN Climate Summit (COP26), peaceful environmental activists are being threatened, silenced and criminalised around the world.

The host nation Scotland for this year’s meeting is one of many countries where activists are regularly facing rights violations.

New research from the CIVICUS Monitor looks at the common tactics and restrictions being used by governments and private companies to suppress environmental movements.

• READ MORE: Other COP26 climate reports

The research brief “Defenders of our planet: Resilient in the face of restrictions” focuses on three worrying trends:

• Bans and restrictions on protests;
• Judicial harassment and legal persecution; and
• The use of violence, including targeted killings.

As the climate crisis intensifies, activists and civil society groups continue to mobilise to hold policymakers and corporate leaders to account.

From Brazil to South Africa, activists are putting their lives on the line to protect lands and to halt the activities of high-polluting industries.

Severe rights abuses
The most severe rights abuses are often experienced by civil society groups that are standing up to the logging, mining and energy giants who are exploiting natural resources and fueling global warming.

As people take to the streets, governments have been instituting bans that criminalise environmental protests. Recently governments have used covid-19 as a pretext to disrupt and break up demonstrations.

Data from the CIVICUS Monitor indicates that the detention of protesters and the use of excessive force by authorities are becoming more prevalent.

In Cambodia in May 2021, three environmental defenders were sentenced to 18 to 20 months in prison for planning a protest against the filling of a lake in the capital.

In Finland in June, more than 100 activists were arrested for participating in a protest calling for the government to take urgent action on climate change.

From authoritarian countries to mature democracies, the research also profiles those who have been put behind bars for peacefully protesting.

“Silencing activists and denying them of their fundamental civic rights is another tactic being used by leaders to evade and delay action on climate change,” says Marianna Belalba Barreto, lead researcher for the CIVICUS Monitor.

Troubling indicator
“Criminalising nonviolent protests has become a troubling indicator that governments are not committed to saving the planet.”

The report shows that many of the measures being deployed by governments to restrict rights are not compatible with international law. Examples of courts and legislative bodies reversing attempts to criminalise nonviolent climate protests are few and far between.

Despite the increased risks and restrictions facing environmental campaigners, the report also shows that a wide range of campaigns have scored important victories, including the closure of mines and numerous hazardous construction projects.

Equally significant has been the rise of climate litigation by activist groups.

As authorities take activists to court for exercising their fundamental right to protest, activist groups have successfully filed lawsuits against governments and companies in more than 25 countries for failing to act on climate change.

Papua New Guinea’s biggest bank — Bank South Pacific with major branch networks across the Pacific region — is the subject of regulatory action by the country’s banking regulator BPNG over failure to comply with anti-money laundering regulations, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

The Financial Analysis and Supervision Unit (FASU) of the Central Bank yesterday took regulatory action against the BSP Financial Group Ltd for alleged non-compliance.

The action includes the issuance of a formal warning under section 100 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorist Financing Act 2015, an enforceable undertaking from BSP that it will remove and replace certain executive management staff and for the BSP to engage an external auditor to determine the full extent of the underlying good governance and best business practice issues that were identified during the onsite inspection by FASU.

• READ MORE: NAB and CBA exposed over PNG money laundering

The external auditor’s examination will cover enhanced customer due diligence practices employed by BSP on all high risk and politically exposed people who are customers of BSP.

The director of the Financial Analysis and Supervision Unit of the Central Bank, Benny Popoitai, said in a media release: “The nature of BSP’s non-compliance is serious enough for FASU to have issued an infringement notice, however, FASU has chosen to apply a formal warning instead, making this the first occasion of regulatory action undertaken by FASU against BSP.”

Among the alleged breaches detailed by FASU were BSP’s alleged failure to:

• conduct ongoing due diligence in respect of all of its business relationships in contravention of section 17(1) of the Act;
• ensure that transactions carried out on behalf of its customers are consistent with its knowledge of the customer, the customer’s commercial or personal activities and risk profile contrary to section 17(2)(b) of the Act;
• ensure that ongoing enhanced due diligence is conducted with respect to politically exposed persons in accordance with section 29(b) of the Act;
• conduct enhanced customer due diligence in accordance with the requirements of sections 27 and 28 of the Act where it had taken the view that the customer was a politically exposed person contrary to section 26(1) of the Act;
• obtain information relating to the source of the assets or the wealth of the customer when conducting enhanced due diligence contrary to section 27(b) of the Act;
• take reasonable steps to verify information relating to the source of the assets or the wealth of the customer contrary to section 28(b) of the Act; and
• take all reasonable steps to identify whether a customer or beneficial owner is a politically exposed person contrary to section 29(1) of the Act.

According to Wikipedia, BSP has 35 branches throughout Papua New Guinea and in eight other countries.

Outside PNG, the bank’s operations span Cambodia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Laos, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. It also has correspondent banking relationships with Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and National Australia Bank (NAB) provide correspondent banking services to BSP in Australia, providing a gateway for BSP’s clients from across the Pacific to transfer money in and out of Australia.

BSP employs more than 3000 people and services more than 650,000 business banking customers throughout the Pacific.

On site inspections
The FASU media release said the unit had conducted on site inspections on BSP in 2019 and late last year it had issued the bank with a “show cause notice” requiring it to explain why FASU should not impose enforcement action.

BSP’s response to FASU was a blanket denial without any acknowledgement of the deficiencies highlighted.

This, said Popoitai, had left FASU with no choice but to apply regulatory measures.

He also said: “FASU expects BSP to co-operate with the regulatory measures imposed.”

Penalties for breaching this Act are a fine of up to K500,000 (NZ$205,000) or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or both, or a fine of K1 million (NZ$410,000) for a body corporate, for each offence.

When contacted, BSP’s chief executive officer Robin Fleming told the Post-Courier: “At this stage BSP is unable to comment.”

However, in a later statement to the Australian Securities Exchange today, the BSP group insisted it has complied with the regulations and was considering its “legal options”.

According to the Australian Financial Review, an enforceable undertaking is being sought with the bank to “remove and replace certain executive management staff”. This is understood to include Fleming.

BSP will also be required to hire an external auditor to ensure it complies with anti-money laundering laws in the future.

A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation.

In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle and might with spears and slings to try to catch it.

This didn’t work. So, the women from many villages got together while washing their hair in a river. They wove their locks into a super strong net, caught the fish and saved the island.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – World Bank says economic crunch will hit poorest nations most

• Doctors want refugees out of Nauru hotels due to Covid-19 risk
• NZ confirms 82 new cases for total 950

Now modern day Guåhan, or Guam, is the Covid-19 coronavirus epicentre in the Pacific, if we leave out the US state of Hawai’i. With the latest five more cases, Guam now has 82 infections – more than double the next worst island territory, French Polynesia with 37; there have also been three deaths so far.

For long time observers, the plight of Guam is not exactly a surprise.

“Epidemics or outbreaks of disease have been a persistent part of Guam’s history since first contact with Europeans,” writes local author, artist and activist Michael Lujan Bevacqua in the Pacific Daily News. “From the start of Spanish colonisation in 1668, you can provide a historical outline of Guam’s history over the next two centuries simply in terms of disease outbreaks.

“As the Spanish brought new diseases into the Marianas, their mere presence was deadly to CHamorus. As the first priests under San Vitores began to spread out across the Marianas, their arrival was often announced through microbes, with someone dying a strange and unsettling death, even prior to a priest actually visiting a village.”

Death by colonial ship
Death by epidemic always entered the territory the same way – by ship.

Although the last major outbreak happened back in 1918, writes Bevacqua, when the world was engulfed by the Spanish flu with 868 people dying locally (6 percent of the island population), some people still recall the horror.

And now Guam is host again to the worst Covid-19 outbreak in the Pacific. To make matters worse, another ship is involved with the colonial masters seeking sanctuary. The landing of almost 3000 crew members from the USS Theodore Roosevelt yesterday by Governor Lou Leon Guerrero to be quarantined in hotels ashore has been branded as a “dangerous” gamble by community leaders.

Seventy seven confirmed cases were on board with three deaths and the captain feared a disaster with the cramped quarters on board.

While the Pacific infection rates are still relatively low, many governments have been responding with panic, paranoia and creeping authoritarianism, especially in relation to freedom of information, media independence and constructive and accurate communication, so vital in these critical times.

Perhaps they are borrowing some ideas from not-so-distant neighbours in Southeast Asia. For example, the Philippines where President Rodrigo Duterte gave a controversial order to troops to “shoot dead” violators of the capital Manila’s three-week coronavirus lockdown, including those protesting for food.

Duterte’s ‘shoot them dead’ virus order to troops slammed as dangerous

Duterte’s government, intolerant of the news media at the best of times, has also cracked down on journalists. The Paris-based media freedom advocate Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on Philippine prosecutors to abandon all proceedings against media under a new law that is claimed to combat “false information” about the coronavirus pandemic “but in fact [it] constitutes a grave violation of press freedom”.

Two journalists face prison
Two journalists based in the southern province of Cavite – Latigo News TV website editor Mario Batuigas and video blogger and online reporter Amor Virata – are facing the possibility of two months in prison and fine of 1 million pesos (NZ$68,000) along with a local mayor as a result of charges under the new law brought by the police last weekend.

According to RSF, they are accused of spreading “false information on the Covid-19 crisis” under section 6(6) of the “Bayanihan [community] to Heal As One Act,” which President Duterte signed into law on March 25 granting himself special powers.

In Cambodia, people who violate the extensive new state of emergency powers fast-tracked into law yesterday face up to 10 years in prison, according to a draft of the pending legislation.

“The law includes 11 articles divided into five chapters and gives the government near limitless powers to repress public gatherings and free speech during times of threats to national security and public order — or in times of health crises — and gives authorities wide powers to arrest people as they deem necessary,” reports Cambojanews.

In Indonesia, President Joko Widodo’s government has pressed ahead with fast a track  debate to adopt three controversial laws, including the revised Criminal Code and a weakening of the anti-corruption law, widely interpreted to collectively cement legal intolerance to dissent just at a time when the Covid-19 crisis public restrictions prevent any demonstrations.

Critics are stunned that the Parliament is determined to press ahead with this debate at the time of the health emergency that some critics have described as a “slowly-ticking coronavirus bomb nearing the point of detonation”.

Lacking public oversight
According to The Jakarta Post in an editorial: “It seems fairness is not something many of our politicians, either in the legislative and executive branches of power, believe in strongly. The deliberation of the three bills, which have met widespread opposition given to their contentious articles, will lack public oversight, which is essential.”

But as Gadjah Mada University communication lecturer Wisnu Prasetya Utomo notes in his Indonesia at Melbourne blog: “A key element of responding to the coronavirus outbreak must also involve efforts to eliminate or challenge misinformation. Minimising fear and panic as a result of hoaxes and misinformation is half the job in responding to this evolving crisis, which as yet has no end in sight.”

The Indonesian “bomb” across the border in Papua stirred an angry response in neigbouring Papua New Guinea from East Sepik Governor Allan Bird, who controversially called for a “shoot to kill” order to frontier troops against border-crossers. He later explained his views in a blog.

“This is a fight for survival. If we spend all our bullets (resources) and deploy our troops in the wrong corridor, we will lose the war,” he wrote.

“So what’s the strategy? Where should we deploy our assets to fight the virus? Where are we most vulnerable? And where can we mount our best defence? To me it’s at the entry point. Our borders… That’s the front line.

“Who do we need on the frontline? Soldiers and policemen. Well resourced. That should be 60 percent of our effort.”

Draconian rule, censorship
In Vanuatu, the caretaker government, taking cover from last month’s post-election confusion, has introduced draconian, authoritarian rule and censorship this week with the public barely noticing, as my colleague Sri Krishnamurthi revealed yesterday in Asia Pacific Report.

Vanuatu using Covid-19 to impose censorship on media, citizens

A regional media freedom advocacy group, Pacific Freedom Forum, has voiced concerns over governments taking advantage of emergency powers to impose restrictions on Pacific media. The detention and charging of two high profile Fiji citizens with breaching the Public Order Act over social media comments about Covid-19 brought the issue to a head.

The forum also noted that the Cook Islands had just passed information restrictions in its new Covid-19 legislation, levelling heavy fines and jail terms for those spreading “harmful information” over the pandemic.

“The state of emergency is not an excuse to treat newsrooms as a one-way channel to the public, or to gag dissent, social media commentary, and hard questions with restrictions and legislation,” warned Melanesia co-chair Ofani Eremae, a Solomon Islander.

As Governor Bird says, a comprehensive strategy is needed – not only for his country, but also for the Pacific region: “Burning roadside markets and beating up our women who sell food is not a smart strategy. Why is this our focus?”

Those legendary Guåhan women had the right idea: strategy, strength in unity and collaboration.

• More Asia Pacific Report stories on the coronavirus pandemic

By David Robie in Paris

When Reporters Without Borders chief Christophe Deloire introduced the Paris-based global media watchdog’s Asia-Pacific press freedom defenders to his overview last week, it was grim listening.

First up in RSF’s catalogue of crimes and threats against the global media was Czech President Miloš Zeman’s macabre press conference stunt late last year.

However, Zeman’s sick joke angered the media when he brandished a dummy Kalashnikov AK47 with the words “for journalists” carved into the wood stock at the October press   conference in Prague and with a bottle of alcohol attached instead of an ammunition clip.

Zeman has never been cosy with journalists but this gun stunt and a recent threat about “liquidating” journalists (another joke?) rank him alongside US President Donald Trump and the Philippines leader, Rodrigo Duterte, for their alleged hate speech against the media.

Deloire cited the Zeman incident to highlight global and Asia-Pacific political threats against the media. He pointed out that the threat came just a week after leading Maltese investigative journalist – widely dubbed as the “one-woman Wikileaks” – was killed in a car bomb blast.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated outside her home in Bidnija on 16 October 2017 after exposing Maltese links in the Panama Papers and her relentless corruption inquiries implicated her country’s prime minister and other key politicians.

Although arrests have been made and three men face trial for her killing, RSF recently published a statement calling for “full justice’” – including prosecution of those behind the murder.

Harshly critical
While noting the positive response by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to the journalists’ safety initiative by RSF and other media freedom bodies, Deloire was harshly critical of many political leaders, including Philippines President Duterte, over their attitude towards crimes with impunity against journalists.

In the Philippines, for example, there is still no justice for the 32 journalists brutally slain – along with 26 other victims – on 23 November 2009 by a local warlord’s militia in to so-called Ampatuan massacre, an unsuccessful bid to retain political power for their boss in national elections due the following year.

Rappler published a report last year updating the painfully slow progress in the investigations and concluded that “eight years and three presidential administrations later, no convictions have been made”.

Ironically, Rappler itself – hated by President Dutertre – has also been the subject of an RSF campaign in an effort to block the administration’s cynical and ruthless attempt to close down the most dynamic and successful online publication in the Philippines (133rd in the RSF World Media Freedom Index – a drop of six places).

Founded by ex-CNN investigative journalist Maria Ressa, Rappler has continued to challenge the government, described by RSF last year as the “most dangerous” country for journalists in Asia.

Duterte’s continuous attacks against the media were primarily responsible for the downward trend for the Philippines in the latest RSF Index, with RSF saying: “The dynamism of the media has also been checked by athe emergence of a leader who wants to show he is all powerful.”

The media watchdog also stressed that the Duterte administration had “developed several methods for pressuring and silencing journalists who criticise his notorious war on drugs”.

Test case
The revocation of Rappler’s licence by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is regarded as a test case for media freedom in the Philippines.

National Union of Journalists of the Philippines advocate Jhoanna Ballaran says the situation is very worrying.

The RSF consultation with some of its Asia-Pacific researchers and advocates in the field has followed a similar successful one in South America. It is believed that this is the first time the watchdog has hosted such an Asia Pacific-wide event.

Twenty three correspondents from 17 countries or territories — Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Hongkong, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Tibet — took part in the consultation plus a team of Paris-based RSF advocates.

Asia Pacific head Daniel Bastard says the consultation is part of a new strategy making better use of the correspondents’ network to make the impact of advocacy work faster and even more effectively than in the past.

The Pacific delegation – Associate Professor Joseph Fernandez, a journalist and media law academic who is head of journalism at Curtin University of Australia (19th on the RSF Index), AUT Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie of New Zealand (8th) and former PNG Post-Courier chief executive and media consultant Bob Howarth of Papua New Guinea (53rd) – made lively interventions even though most media freedom issues “pale into insignificance” compared with many countries in the region where journalists are regularly killed or persecuted.

Nauru’s controversial ban on the ABC from covering the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) this September was soundly condemned and the draconian 2010 Media Industry Development Decree in Fiji (57th) and efforts by Pacific governments to introduce the repressive “China model” to curb the independence of Facebook and other social media were also strongly criticised. (Nauru is unranked and China is 176th, four places above the worst country – North Korea at 180th).

Media highlights
Highlights of the three-day consultation included a visit to the multimedia Agence France-Presse, one of the world’s “big two” news agencies, and workshops on online security and sources protection and gender issues.

No sooner had the consultation ended when RSF was on the ball with another protest over two detained local journalists in Myanmar working for Reuters news agency.

An RSF statement condemned Monday’s decision by a Yangon judge to go ahead with the trial of the journalists on a trumped up charge of possessing secrets and again demanded their immediate release.

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, have already been detained for more than 200 days with months of preliminary hearings.

They now face a possible 14-year prison sentence for investigating an army massacre of Rohingya civilians in Inn Din, a village near the Bangladeshi border in Rakhine state, in September 2017.

RSF secretary-general Deloire says: “The refusal to dismiss the case against the journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo is indicative of a judicial system that follows orders and a failed transition to democracy in Myanmar.”

The chances of seeing an independent press emerge in Myanmar have now “declined significantly”.

The Pacific Media Centre’s David Robie was in Paris for the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific consultation. Dr Robie is also convenor of PMC’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

• RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2018
• Who murdered Malta’s most famous journalist?
• ABC ban: News Corp rejects media boycott of Nauru forum

Czech President Miloš Zeman’s “joke” threat against journalists. Video: The Young Turks

Cambodia’s last independent newspaper has had its editorial team gutted after its managing editor, web editor and two senior journalists resigned following a demand from the Phnom Penh Post’s new owner to take down an article reporting on the sale of the paper over the weekend.

The Post’s editor-in-chief Kay Kimsong was then sacked for his role in the article’s publication.

“I got fired by the new owner…because I’m the editor-in-chief and I allowed the printing of the independent story based on journalistic integrity,” Kimsong told Southeast Asia Globe shortly after he was dismissed.

“I trust my reporters and my editors and I think that being journalists, we made the right decision. But it’s their business and they said, ‘Kimsong, you’re the editor-in-chief – and you made a big mistake.’”

The article, which was published on Sunday evening, confirmed that Sivakumar S. Ganapathy, chief executive and managing director of Malaysia-based public relations firm Asia PR, was the new owner of the newspaper, which has been the nation’s paper of record since 1992.

Outgoing publisher Bill Clough announced the sale in a press release on Saturday, welcoming Sivakumar – also known as Siva – to the role and praising his credentials.

“Siva is a well respected newspaper man, with a [sic] experienced journalist background, and represents a strong investment group from Malaysia,” said Clough, an Australian mining magnate who has be in charge of the paper since 2008.

Doubts over future independence
But journalists and media watchdogs across the region have raised doubts about the paper’s future independence due to a number of concerning links between the Post’s new owner and the Cambodian and Malaysian governments.

Asia PR’s website lists “Cambodia and [Prime Minister] Hun Sen’s entry into the government seat” as one of its previous clients. More worryingly, Sivakumar’s personal description maintains that he currently “leads the Asia PR team in managing ‘covert operations’ for our clients.”

Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, described the deal as “a staggering blow to press freedom in Cambodia”.

The Phnom Penh Post had been the subject of a US$3.9 million tax bill, which drew widespread parallels with the circumstances surrounding the shuttering of former English-language publication the Cambodia Daily.

The newspaper, which frequently published stories criticising the government, was shut down last September after being hit with a $6.3 million tax bill widely believed to be politically motivated.

The Post has also been dogged by an ongoing legal action launched by former chief executive Chris Dawe for wrongful dismissal during his tenure at the paper. Clough stated that the Post’s tax bill had been settled as part of the sale.

Post office plunged into chaos
Emotions ran high in the hallways and offices of the Post on Monday afternoon after the new ownership tussled with editors over the story.

Managing editor Stuart White, who has worked for the Post for six years, was the first staff member to refuse to remove the article.

“I was asked to take down the story about the sale by a colleague, who characterised it as a direct order from the new management,” White said. “I didn’t feel like I could do that in good conscience, so I resigned immediately.”

The order was passed through the ranks, with each editor refusing to take down the story.

Web editor Jenni Reid then refused and resigned, followed by the co-authors of the piece, business editor Brendan O’Byrne and senior journalist Ananth Baliga. Chief ececutive Marcus Holmes was the last to tender his resignation.

A senior Cambodian staffer who requested anonymity said that local reporters had pleaded with the new management not to put the paper’s long-running record of independent journalism at risk.

“The rest of the Khmer staff just stayed in the meeting to say, ‘Can you run a second story?’ ‘Do not pull [the original] down…run a second article, correction, make a clarification,’” the staffer said. Management refused, and Kimsong was fired shortly after.

Editors targeted by Sivakumar
Kimsong, O’Byrne and Baliga were all targeted by Sivakumar in an internal memo savaging the Post’s coverage of the newspaper’s sale, with the new owner calling on all three staff members to be “terminated”.

Although a press release from the paper’s new owners announcing the sale maintained that Sivakumar was “fully committed to upholding the paper’s 26-year-old legacy and editorial principles/independence without infringing any relevant laws and regulations of the Kingdom of Cambodia,” the memo – which was published earlier today by local news site AEC News – served up a stinging rebuke to the article, claiming that the piece did not meet the “high caliber” [sic] that the new owners expected from the paper.

Sivakumar called the piece “a disgrace and an insult to the independence claim of the newspaper” and said it “borders on internal sabotage”.

Today it is clear that the editorial independence of Cambodia’s last true independent media is at threat

Among Sivakumar’s complaints against the article were that the reporters forgot to publish his middle initial and that they identified him as “an executive”and “executive director” of Asia PRrather than CEO and managing director.

In the past year, Cambodia’s shrinking independent press has come under fire as the country gears up for a national election in July, with former Khmer Rouge commander Hun Sen the clear favourite to continue his 33-year reign.

The last gasp of the free press
Daniel Bastard, head of the Asia-Pacific desk of Reporters Without Borders, expressed his solidarity with the Post’s journalists.

“Rumours about pressures from Hun Sen’s government to try and muzzle the Phnom Penh Post have spread for a few months,” he said. “Today it is clear that the editorial independence of Cambodia’s last true independent media is at threat.

“The removal of the Post’s editor and the censorship on articles detailing the journal’s sale are dreadful signs that journalists will no longer be able to do their work freely.”

More than 30 radio stations known to be critical of Hun Sen’s rule were silenced by the government last year, including Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

Cambodia plunged ten places in the 2018 Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index to number 142 out of 180 countries.

Since launching in January 2007, the Cambodia-based Southeast Asia Globe has sought to “engage our readers through reports that dig deeper and stories that inspire”.

• More Cambodian stories

One of Cambodia’s last remaining independent newspapers has announced it is closing today after 24 years, the latest in a series of blows to critics of Prime Minster Hun Sen.

The Cambodia Daily said today’s edition would be its last after it was slapped with a US$6.3 million tax bill, which its publishers said was politically motivated, Al Jazeera reports.

“The power to tax is the power to destroy. And after 24 years, one month and 15 days, the Cambodian government has destroyed The Cambodia Daily, a special and singular part of Cambodia’s free press,” the newspaper said in a statement.

The paper blamed “extra-legal threats by the government to close the daily, freeze its accounts and prosecute the new owner” for the closure.

The announcement came hours after Opposition Leader Kem Sokha was arrested and accused of treason.

READ MORE: Kem Sokha detained during Cambodia police raid

The Cambodia Daily was set up in 1993 by veteran American journalist Bernard Krisher in the aftermath of Cambodia’s genocide from 1975-78 and subsequent civil war.

It publishes in English, but also carries some articles in Khmer.

Krisher sold the paper to his daughter Deborah Krisher-Steele in April.

‘Arbitrary’ back taxes
Last month, the Cambodian tax department said the paper owed $6.3m in back taxes, with Hun Sen branding the owners “thieves” in one of his recent speeches.

The paper said the figure was “arbitrary” and not based on an audit of its books.

“It’s a dark day for press freedom in Cambodia,” editor Jodie DeJonge told AFP news agency on Sunday.

“We just can’t believe that on Monday morning we are going to wake up and not come and put out another newspaper. It’s a tremendous loss.”

The paper is not the only independent media organisation to come under pressure. Tax probes have also been announced by the government against the US-funded Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, who say they have complied with local laws.

A group of local radio stations which carried Khmer-language VOA and RFA content have also been shuttered or banned from broadcasting their content.

Last week, the US expressed “deep concern” over the state of Cambodia’s democracy after the government there ordered out an American NGO.

An Indonesian tribal rights activist, a Sri Lankan woman who has helped civil war victims, and a Japanese man working for the preservation of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat are among this year’s winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, considered Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

The formal presentations will be made next month.

Indonesian Abdon Nababan has been recognised for “his brave, self-sacrificing advocacy to give voice and face to his country’s indigenous people communities, his principled, relentless, yet pragmatic leadership of the world’s largest tribal rights movement, and the far-reaching impact of his work on the lives of millions of Indonesians.”

Gethsie Shanmugam of Sri Lanka has been recognised for her “compassion and courage in working under extreme conditions to rebuild war-scarred lives” and for her “tireless efforts” in building Sri Lanka’s capacity for “psychosocial support, and her deep, inspiring humanity” in caring for women and child victims of war.

Yoshiaki Ishizawa from Japan will receive the award for “his selfless, steadfast service to the Cambodian people, his inspiring leadership in empowering Cambodians to be proud stewards of their heritage, and his wisdom in reminding us all that cultural monuments like the Angkor Wat are shared treasures whose preservation is thus, also our shared global responsibility”.

From the Philippines, former PEZA director-general Lilia de Lima was recognised for “her unstinting, sustained leadership in building a credible and efficient [economic zone], proving that the honest, competent and dedicated work of public servants can, indeed, redound to real economic benefits to millions of Filipinos.”

Also given recognition was Tony Tay of Singapore for his “quiet, abiding dedication to a simple act of kindness – sharing food with others – and his inspiring influence in enlarging this simple kindness into a collective, inclusive, vibrant volunteer movement that is nurturing the lives of many in Singapore”.

Shaping theatre arts
Also a recipient of this year’s award is the Philippine Educational Theatre Association of the Philippines for its “bold, collective contributions in shaping the theatre arts as a force for social change, its impassioned, unwavering work in empowering communities … and the shining example it has set as one of the leading organizations of its kind in Asia”.

Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is Asia’s highest honour aimed at celebrating the memory and leadership example of the third Philippine president after whom the award is named.

It is given every year to individuals or organisations in Asia who manifest “selfless service and transformative influence”.

Carmencita Abella, president of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, said this year’s awardees “are all transforming their societies through their manifest commitment to the larger good. Each one has addressed real and complex issues, taking bold and innovative action that has engaged others to do likewise”.

“The results of their leadership are palpable, generating both individual efficacy and collective hope,” Abella said in a statement.

“All are unafraid to take on large causes. All have refused to give up, despite meager resources, daunting adversity and strong opposition,” she added.

The six awardees will join a community of 318 other laureates who have received Asia’s highest honour to date.

This year’s winners will each receive a certificate, a medallion bearing the likeness of the late president Magsaysay, and a cash prize.

They will be formally conferred the award during formal presentation ceremonies in Manila on August 31.

• The Ramon Magsaysay awards

By Jewel Topsfield of The Sydney Morning Herald in Jakarta

It’s hard to comprehend it happened in this century: human slaves trapped on fishing boats being whipped with poisonous stingray tails, having ice blocks thrown at them and being shot.

“If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us,” says Hlaing Min, 30, a runaway slave from Benjina, a remote fisheries weight station in eastern Indonesia’s Aru Islands.

“There must be a mountain of bones under the sea…. The bones of the people could be an island, it’s that many.”

In 2015 more than 1300 foreign fisherman from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos were rescued from Benjina and Ambon, after an Associated Press investigation revealed the brutal conditions aboard many foreign vessels reflagged to operate in Indonesian waters.

Extraordinary images of men being kept in a cage exposed the chilling reality of 21st century slavery.

“They were trafficked from their home country, mostly by means of deception, forced to work over 20 hours per day on a boat in the middle of the sea, with little to no chance of escape,” says a report on human trafficking in the Indonesian fishing industry released this week.

Some were kept at sea for years at a time.

After the rescue, the International Organisation for Migration interviewed the fishers.

They were told of excessive work hours — 78 percent of 285 victims interviewed in depth claimed they worked between 16 and 24 hours a day, cramped conditions, meals of watery fish gruel, physical and psychological abuse and even murder.

‘Several crews died’
“While on board, I often heard the news from the boat radio that several boat crews had died, either falling to the ocean, fighting or killed by the other crews,” a Cambodian fisher says in the report.

“While I was working on the boat, I saw with my own eyes more than seven dead bodies floating in the sea.”

Witnesses testified that requesting to leave the boat could be a death sentence for some victims. Those who did might find themselves chained on the deck in the middle of the day or locked in the freezer.

“The heartrending stories of these fishers could not be left untold,” says IOM Indonesia’s chief of mission Mark Getchell.

The report says the Benjina and Ambon cases highlight the lack of adequate policing of the fishing industry and a lack of scrutiny of working conditions on ships and in fish processing plants.

Seafood caught by modern day slaves entered the global supply chain, with legitimate suppliers of fish “unaware of its provenance and the human toll behind the catch.”

“The situation in Benjina and Ambon is symptomatic of a much broader and insidious trade in people, not only in the Indonesian and Thai fishing industries, but indeed globally,” the report says.

Repatriation of enslaved fisherfmen
In 2015 the Australian government provided $2.17 million to IOM to support the daily care, repatriation and reintegration of formerly trafficked and enslaved fishermen from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, who had been stranded on islands in Indonesia’s Maluku province.

“This funding support has since been extended to enable IOM to provide assistance to foreign fishermen stranded in any area of Indonesia,” an Immigration Department spokesman said.

“This assistance plays a crucial role to support and protect victims of trafficking and slavery in the fishing industry by reuniting victims with their families and providing them with limited financial assistance which can help them establish an alternative livelihood.”

IOM spokesman Paul Dillon said Australia provided the lion share of the funding for its emergency response to the human trafficking crisis, which included returning more than 1000 victims to their home countries.

“This would not have been possible without the Australian government,” he said.

At the launch of the report in Jakarta this week, Indonesian Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti unveiled a new government decree requiring all fisheries companies to submit a detailed human rights audit.

This was one of the report’s key recommendations to protect fishermen and port workers from abuse.

“That being said, Indonesia still has homework towards the approximately 250,000 Indonesian crews on foreign vessels operating across continents that remain unprotected,” Pudjiastuti says in a foreword to the report.

The report also called for greater diligence in recording the movement of vessels in Indonesian waters, more training on human trafficking, independent inspections of ports and vessels at sea and centres in ports where fishers could seek protection.

Jewel Topsfield is the Jakarta-based Indonesia correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.This article was first published by the SMH and has been republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

As global response to an online petition continues to grow, can the death of one elephant change attitudes on Southeast Asia’s animal tourism industry? Dominic Pink investigates for Asia Pacific Report.

More than 150,000 people have signed a petition to end elephant riding at Angkor in Cambodia, a UNESCO World Heritage site where tourists converge to marvel at the immense Khmer Empire ruins.

“There is no such thing as cruelty-free elephant rides,” says the Change.org petition, which asks that APSARA (Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap) ban elephant riding at the archaeological park.

The catalyst was the death last month of Sambo, a female elephant aged between 40 and 45, who collapsed and died of a presumed heart attack after carrying tourists between temples in oppressively hot temperatures — nearby Siem Reap recorded a high of 40 degrees C on April 22.

Cambodia has just 70 captive and 500 wild elephants remaining, according to Jack Highwood, founder of the Mondulkiri-based NGO Elephant Valley Project, “so to lose another is a sad loss for Cambodia’s increasingly rare elephant population.”

The World Wildlife Fund lists Asian elephants as an endangered species, with the total population estimated somewhere between 30,000 to 50,000 and on the decline.

“Cambodia owes much of its rich history to the strength of the elephant,” says Highwood.

“Now that Cambodia is prospering, it should take advantage of its new-found wealth to protect this important species.”

International support
International animal welfare organisations such as the Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival Foundation (EARS) and World Animal Protection (WAP) have voiced their support for the petition, and are challenging travel companies to get on board.

“It has been really heartwarming to see the global response to Sambo’s death,” says Carmel de Bedin, EARS Asia’s Hong Kong director.

“There has been incredible support for the petition, both locally and internationally, and we feel that this is really indicative of the changing attitudes around the world to elephant tourism.”

Nicola Beynon, head of campaigns for WAP Australia and New Zealand, says their research has found that when people are made aware of the cruelty involved in wildlife attractions such as elephant rides, “they consider it unacceptable.”

“The problem is that a lot of the cruelty is hidden and goes on behind the scenes,” she says.

“For instance, most people wouldn’t know that elephants go through a process called ‘the crush’ … When they are young, they get taken from their mothers, kept in isolation, chained up, deprived of food, and beaten.

“It’s a horrific process, designed to break the elephant’s spirit so that it submits to human will and is safe to interact with tourists. And that’s just the start of their life in captivity.”

Decreasing demand
WAP are focussed on decreasing tourist demand for exploitative wildlife attractions, and more than 100 travel companies have committed to their pledge to no longer sell elephant rides in packages, including Contiki, Intrepid Travel and World Expedition.

The organisation is now taking aim at TripAdvisor with a petition that accuses the popular online travel company of profiting from animal cruelty, and demands that they stop promoting and selling tickets — through their subsidiary Viator — to “cruel wildlife tourist attractions”.

This strategy proved successful earlier this year when travel company Thomas Cook removed sales of elephant rides and shows following a WAP petition signed by almost 175,000 people.

According to the WAP petition, the University of Oxford reviewed 188 wildlife venues featured on TripAdvisor last year and found that 75 percent of the attractions involved wildlife cruelty.

“We’re targeting TripAdvisor because they are the biggest online travel company and they are hugely influential in terms of how tourists spend their dollars,” says Beynon.

“If TripAdvisor came on board with this campaign they could be a tremendous force for good.”

WAP is asking TripAdvisor to put in place a “positive programme” called “Wildlife Leaders”, inspired by their existing eco-friendly programme “Green Leaders”, where venues that treat animals responsibly would be rewarded.

TripAdvisor Inc. representatives declined to be interviewed for this article, responding to Asia Pacific Report’s request with a statement saying:

“We believe these petitions are well-intentioned and we appreciate their ability to shine a bright light on animal cruelty.

“We believe, however, that these efforts would be better served directed at national governments and local regulatory bodies to ensure that businesses are operating within the legal requirements of that country or region, or better yet, to improve local standards and regulation regarding animal welfare.”

The statement also highlighed that establishments listed on TripAdvisor did not represent their endorsement, and all tickets sold through Viator were subject to a Code of Conduct ensuring that no animal-related experiences that were known to be prohibited by respective governments were offered.

But Beynon believes that this response is “passing the buck”.

“Just because it’s legal, that doesn’t mean it’s not cruel, and big global companies have a responsibility to set their own standards and their own ethics about what they consider acceptable.”

De Bedin concurs, saying TripAdvisor has a “moral duty” when it comes to the sites they choose to promote.

“Suggesting that organisations work directly with the governments is side-stepping the issue and is derogatory to the work of organisations such as EARS Asia, who already do challenge the bodies ‘in charge’ as it were.”

When it comes to advice for prospective Southeast Asia tourists, de Bedin says: “Don’t leave your morals at home.”

Suffering cruelty
“Our rule of thumb,” says Beynon, “If you can hug it, if you can ride it, if you can take a selfie with it, or if it’s performing for you, then there is a very good chance that that animal has suffered cruelty and you should avoid it.”

De Bedin points out that while elephant riding is a growing industry in Southeast Asia, so is ethical elephant tourism.

Last week saw the announcement of a new Elephant Nature Park in Phuket, the second elephant rescue and rehabilitation centre under this banner — considered to be one of the most reputable sanctuaries in Thailand — and the first in collaboration with EARS Asia.

Asia Pacific Report asked the APSARA Authority, the Cambodian Ministry of Tourism, and the Royal Embassy of Cambodia in Canberra for comment, all of whom were unresponsive.

All these more ethical developments have come too late for Angkor’s Samba.

Dominic Pink is an Auckland-based student journalist reporting on AUT’s Asia-Pacific Journalism course.

Tensions have mounted in both Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and Nauru as the controversial Australian offshore processing detention centres have once again come under fire.

In Nauru, allegations have surfaced from a group of detainees that they were assaulted by guards following a protest.

The Department of Immigration confirmed that a “disturbance” had occurred at the site, with chairs, tables, and other objects being thrown at service provider staff.

But detainees are accusing the guards of violent behaviour, claiming that they had punched children and thrown rocks and chairs. Two detainees are currently receiving medical treatment.

Addressing these claims, the department denies that any children or women were assaulted during the incident, stating that the event had quickly “de-escalated”.

As tensions in Nauru simmer, asylum seekers in Australia’s other immigration centre on Manus Island were told they would either be resettled or deported.

After more than three years since the camp was re-opened, Papua New Guinea officials announced that 400 out of the 850 men on the island had been found to be legitimate refugees.

60 men refused claims
At least 60 men were reported to have refused to submit their claims, instead asking PNG authorities to transfer them to the United Nations.

Those who failed to file their claims or received “negative” assessments will face deportation.

Those with “positive” assessments will be resettled in Papa New Guinea as part of Australia’s Regional Resettlement Arrangement, otherwise known as the “PNG solution”.

Shrouded with reports of rape and abuse, conditions on both Nauru and Manus Island have long been heavily criticised.

Columnist and founder of refugee awareness initiative Wage Peace NZ Tracey Barnett insists that Australia is failing its human rights obligations.

“I would argue these centres are illegal and I would also argue they are terribly inhumane. Unfortuantely, Australia has seen fit to essentially sell their human rights obligations to poorer countries who need the cash.”

“I would argue that they are in essence trading human lives in the people trading business themselves. Although Australia has tried to stop the boats in Operation Sovereign Borders, the irony is that they’ve become people traffickers themselves.”

‘Justifiable’ Australian view
But University of Auckland’s foreign policy analyst Professor Steven Hoadley says that from Australia’s point-of-view, it’s off-shore detention centres are justifiable.

“The Australian government doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong. They assert that the asylum seekers are being treated in a humane fashion and they can go back to where they came from at any time.

“The Australian government will actually pay their airfare and put $5000 in their pocket and send them off with a friendly smile. So they’re not actually incarcerated.”

Late last year, the government of Nauru banned all media from reporting from the island state, prompting plenty of concern from rights groups.

Barnett called the ban “a terrible shame” while also criticising Australia’s Border Force Act which severely restricts the freedom of those working in detention centres.

Passed by the Australian Federal Parliament in 2015 with bipartisan support, the Act means that government-contracted staff can face up to two years in prison for speaking to media about conditions in facilities.

In February, the Australian High Court upheld the country’s right to detain asylum seekers off-shore. But for Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) spokesperson Ian Rintoul, detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island breach international law.

“According to Australian law, the off-shore processing arrangements are legal. But it’s very clear that it violates both the spirit and the letter of the refugee convention.”

“We think the situation should go back prior to 1992 when mandatory detention was introduced. We want to see an end to off-shore processing regimes.”

Cambodian programme ‘failure’
Controversy has also surrounded Australia’s resettlement policies for legitimate refugees.

In 2013, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that no asylum seekers arriving by boat would be resettled as refugees within Australia. Instead, they would be resettled in Cambodia or PNG.

However, it was recently revealed that of the five refugees that had been voluntarily resettled in Cambodia in 2015, only two now remained in the country with the Cambodian government deeming the programme “a failure”.

With millions of dollars spent on the programme, Barnett is among the many critics of the so-called “Cambodia solution”.

“They offered I believe $55 million to resettle any of the refugees whose cases had been decided in Nauru, and what Cambodia did was it put one proviso on that deal, and the proviso was that the refugee had to want to come to Cambodia.”

“So far, only four or five have taken up that offer. So if you divide that by $55 million, that’s a very expensive price tag indeed for what is essentially a failed policy.”

However, a spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Joe Lowry, whose organisation has been involved in the resettlement programme, says that regardless of the number of those who resettle, some costs are fixed while others are not.

“There are certain costs that have to be paid out whether or not one person comes from Nauru or a thousand come. Things like accommodation, language lessons, teachers, and utilities.”

Vulnerable migrants
He says that despite criticism, the IOM’s decision to involve themselves in the programme was not taken lightly.

“We took the decision that it was best for vulnerable migrants to get off Nauru if they wanted to leave and be in Cambodia. It took us as an organisation about six months to come to that decision. It wasn’t something we did lightly. “

With the general election likely to be held in Australia by mid-year, focus has shifted to the two major political parties.

Professor Hoadley believes little will change following the upcoming election, and says there is broad agreement among politicians about the country’s approach to dealing with asylum seekers.

“There’s definitely a consensus in Canberra among the political elite. When Labour was in office, they reinstituted the Pacific solution, while the current Coalition government is perhaps slightly more robust.

“They created a special Navy task force with a general in charge of it, which is a little bit higher profile, but it’s something that the Navy had been doing for over a decade under both political parties as they alternated in power.”

Rintoul takes a different view, and says that visible differences have started to emerge.

“I think there’s growing disquiet between the Labour party and the Coalition. Labour has been willing to make more critical comments about the slowness of processing.

“Those kinds of issues have similarly become issues inside the Coalition which is an increasing indication that there are serious differences of opinion inside the Coalition as to what policies can be implemented.”

Jihee Junn is a postgraduate journalism student at Auckland University of Technology and is on the Pacific Media Centre’s 2016 Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course.

• Human rights and media forum in Fiji

The scene happens every day in capitals across south-east Asia: a strategy session in an ambassador’s ornate sitting room over coffee with like-minded senior diplomats from the US, Canada, and EU member states trying to figure out how to persuade a national government to reverse course on human rights.

On this particular day in Bangkok the ask was a tough one, demanding the government stop arresting and roughing up critics, chastising and censoring the media, and cracking down on public protests.

Human Rights Watch got a rare invite, and during the inevitable brainstorming, I asked “Where is Australia, why aren’t they here?”

Eyes lowered and heads shook ever so slightly around the room. Talking like a friend has fallen off the wagon, one diplomat said “We’re not sure of them anymore. They’re going a different way.”

Left unsaid in this polite circle is that the human rights principles once a core part of Australia’s foreign policy have been undermined by its single-minded determination to stop boats of asylum seekers and migrants “by hook or by crook.”

Last year was a hard one for human rights in many parts of Asia, with governments arresting and jailing critics in opposition parties and civil society, trying to put the internet genie back in the bottle through censorship and cyber-crime laws, and cracking down on NGOs and community groups with new draconian regulations.

Repression in Thailand is in full swing under the military government. Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia has arrested dozens of people for publicly criticising his government. Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam routinely arrest and jail dissidents using ruling-party controlled courts.

Myanmar has a new government but no solution to end the repression of ethnic Rohingyas. Religious minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia face blasphemy charges, death threats, and massacres.

Rights-respecting solutions rare
Australia is rarely pushing for rights-respecting solutions these days – and more than that, is too often part of the problem. Politicians trapped in the refugee policy dialogue in Canberra frequently fail to recognise that Australia’s boat push-back policies, and offshoring asylum seekers into abusive conditions of detention in Nauru and on Manus Island, are seen as a green-light by Asian governments to do the same: send asylum seekers and refugees back into harm’s way or lock them up in indefinite detention.

For example, during the south-east Asia boat people crisis in May 2015, the Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian navies played a cruel game of “human ping-pong” by pushing away boats of starving and sick Rohingya.

At a time when the governments were prepared to let these people float around waiting to die, then prime minister Tony Abbott did the unconscionable by justifying those tactics, saying “if other countries choose to do that, frankly that is almost certainly absolutely necessary if the scourge of people smuggling is to be beaten.”

It suddenly became much harder for non-governmental organisations, governments, and UN agencies to persuade those three countries to bring the Rohingya to shore.

By soliciting governments to help stop boats, Australia also ends up looking the other way on other rights abuses. By cooperating with Australia to take back boats of their nationals, both Sri Lanka and Vietnam know they could count on Australia not to publicly raise concerns about the rights abuses that drove those people into the boats in the first place.

Push backs by other countries are also met with silent acquiescence from Canberra. Australia said nothing when Thailand sent back 109 ethnic Uighurs in July to China to face torture in custody and long prison terms, and has kept silent as Beijing pursues its dissidents in Bangkok.

China arrests and sends fleeing North Koreans back to the brutal regime of dictator Kim Jong-Un, and is met by deafening silence from down under.

Praised Cambodia
Australia has praised Cambodia for signing the September 2014 Cambodia-Australia deal to resettle refugees from Nauru to Phnom Penh. Prime minister Hun Sen told Australia that Cambodia was safe for refugees to resettle – but don’t tell that to ethnic Montagnards fleeing political and religious persecution in Vietnam who Cambodia hunted down in the border forests of Ratanakiri province and forced back into Hanoi’s hands, all after the Australia deal was signed.

Meanwhile, Cambodia is laughing all the way to the bank with at least $55 million of Australia’s taxpayer dollars for taking just five refugees so far from Nauru. All this for a deal that the UN high commissioner for refugees termed “a worrying departure from international norms” of refugee protection.

With the recent high court ruling, Australia now faces the return of 267 asylum seekers to Nauru and Manus Island, where they face possible renewed physical and sexual assault, and life in limbo.

Australia’s international reputation has suffered enough – it’s time to do the right thing by accepting its responsibilities, not only as a party to the UN Refugee Convention but also as a responsible neighbour and member of the international community, and provide this group with fair and timely refugee status determination in Australia.

And for those found to be refugees, let them stay.

Phil Robertson is the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. This article was first published in The Guardian.

By Dyna Rochmyaningsih in Jakarta

Scientists in South-East Asia and the United Kingdom’s Met Office have teamed up to develop a model that predicts how the climate in the region will be like in the next 100 years.

According to the model, the region will be generally 2-4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2060 and continue to heat up around 3-5 degrees Celsius until 2100.

The strongest warming will occur in mainland South-East Asia. Extreme rainfall events will occur in the northern part of the region, which covers northern Vietnam, Laos, parts of Thailand and northern Philippines.

From June to August, the region will face significant reduction in rainfall. From September to November, rainfall rates will increase. In the archipelago, the difference between wet and dry seasons will be more pronounced.

The project, called Southeast Asia Climate Analysis and Modelling (SEACAM), was initiated by the Centre for Climate Research Singapore (CCRS) in collaboration with the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre. Scientists from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam were involved.

SEACAM and the Met Office have put up a climate change tool website for South-East Asia based on a climate modelling system dubbed PRECIS, which stands for Providing Regional Climate for Impacts Studies.

“One of the main aims of the SEACAM project is to enhance collaboration and capacity-building among South-East Asian countries in climate research,” says Raizan Rahmat, CCRS project coordinator and senior research scientist.

Climate scenarios
He adds that prior to SEACAM, there had been limited collaborative research in South-East Asia to create climate scenarios in the region.

“Given the geography of South-East Asia, with its complex terrain and maritime characteristics, it was necessary to generate more detailed climate simulation at a higher resolution than that provided by global climate models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports,” he says.

Unlike global climate models, PRECIS has a higher resolution that can more accurately predict the future climate of the region. Several climate parameters such as temperature and rainfall have been analysed.

Developed by the Met Office, PRECIS is beneficial for smaller islands in South-East Asia because the climate model shows these islands as land masses rather than ocean points. Lands respond to climate change differently from the ocean.

David Hein, a software engineer from the Met Office, says the model is user-friendly. Scientists can simulate regional climate parameters with a mouse click.

“PRECIS allows anyone with a desktop or a PC to be able to run a climate model. It is simply a matter of clicking ‘Run PRECIS’ and PRECIS will produce data which can be used to study possible climate change in the region,” he says.

This article was produced by SciDev.Net’s South-East Asia and Pacific desk.

By Jonathan Pearlman in Perth

Australia has adopted some of the world’s toughest policies against refugees in recent years and will not relent despite criticisms over measures such as towing boats back to Indonesia and transferring all arrivals by sea to remote Pacific Island detention centres

The controversial approach has been aimed at preventing the flow of asylum seekers who attempt the risky voyage to Australia from transit camps in Indonesia.

In a heavy-handed approach that has damaged relations between Canberra and Jakarta, the federal government has warned that “any people smuggling boat … will be detected, intercepted and safely removed”.

“(Australia) will continue to stop anyone who attempts to come illegally by boat – regardless of where they are from,” Australia’s Department of Immigration said in a recent publication on its website.

Australia’s Navy and Customs vessels seek to intercept boats carrying asylum seekers before they reach Australian waters and force them to turn back, sometimes providing fresh lifeboats.

Australian officials have allegedly paid some people smuggling crews to head back to Indonesia – a move that experts say is illegal under international law. Canberra has refused to comment on the allegations.

Those migrants who make it to Australia by boat are transferred to remote island detention centres in the Pacific island nation of Nauru, or on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. As of the end of last October, there were 621 detainees in Nauru, including 95 children, and 929 on Manus Island.

Failed deals
Australia has attempted to strike various deals with nations across the region to accept these detainees but the efforts have largely failed.

Cambodia agreed to take refugees from Nauru in return for about A$40 million from Canberra in increased aid. But just five migrants took up the offer to move to Cambodia and one of them – a Myanmar Muslim – reportedly ended up moving back to Myanmar.

Numerous other countries across the region have been proposed as possible venues for resettlement, including Malaysia and East Timor. The latest discussions have apparently focused on the Philippines.

Australia’s controversial approach has been heavily criticised as unlawful and cruel by the United Nations and human rights groups but has proven brutally effective.

Following the adoption of the harsh tow-back policies by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott after he was elected in September 2013, the flow of asylum seekers all but stopped. There were 17,204 arrivals by boat in 2012, 20,587 in 2013 but none in 2014.

Current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has insisted he will follow Mr Abbott’s tough approach but acknowledged that the consequences of the policy were “harsh”.

‘Harsh policy’
“We do have a tough border protection policy, you could say it’s a harsh policy, but it has worked,” he said after becoming leader in September.

“It is tough, but the fact is we cannot take a backward step on this issue.”

Canberra has insisted its tough approach was aimed at ending deaths at sea following numerous tragedies in which rickety boats sank while attempting the passage from Indonesia to Australia.

Responding to criticisms last year, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the government could not “stand idly by in the face of these repeated tragedies”.

“Our policies are lawful. They are safe. And they work,” he said in a statement in September.

“They save lives. They reduce the risks run by our border protection personnel. And they have stopped the evil people smuggling trade to Australia.”

During a session of the UN Human Rights Council in November, Australia’s approach came under heavy criticism from numerous countries.

Security ally
Australia’s closest security ally, the United States, urged Canberra to promote “humane treatment and respect for the human rights of asylum seekers”, including those processed offshore in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

Despite its hardline approach to boat people, Australia accepts large numbers of refugees under its humanitarian programme.

The government has agreed to take 12,000 refugees fleeing Syria and Iraq this year, in addition to its current annual intake of 13,750 people.

As 190 nations grapple with the world’s future at the global climate summit in Paris, forest fires in Indonesia have been continuing to rage since July 2015.

Emissions from this year’s fires have reached 1.62 billion metric tons of CO2, bumping Indonesia up from sixth largest to fourth largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in the world, surpassing Russia in a matter of six weeks and the entire US economy in just 38 days. [1]

Global Forest Watch Fires detected at least 127,000 fires across Indonesia this year, the worst since 1997. These fires were mostly caused by the clearing of forested peat lands to plant palms for oil.

The fires have produced toxic smog smothering Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and as far away as Thailand and the Philippines. The haze closed schools, disabled airports and caused more than 500,000 cases of respiratory illnesses in South-East Asia. More than 40 million Indonesians have been affected.

In preparation for the Paris climate summit, 190 countries that are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change were asked to submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to control carbon emissions. [2]

The UN has received 120 INDCs, which will be used to draft a new international climate agreement towards a “low-carbon and climate-resilient future”.

Eight of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have submitted their INDCs before the 1 October deadline. Only Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia have yet to make submissions.

Conditional target
Cambodia committed to reduce GHG emissions by 27 per cent by 2030, which will be taken from the energy, manufacturing and transport sectors, aside from other industries. But this target is “conditional” on international support. Cambodia also plans to increase its forest cover to 60 per cent of its land area by 2030.

Laos plans to increase its forest cover to 70 per cent of its total land area by the year 2020, with trees and forests serving as GHG sinks. The government also commits to increase the share of renewable energy to 30 per cent of its energy consumption by 2025.

Myanmar has the largest tropical forest area in mainland South-East Asia, so it is already a net GHG sink, its INDC said. But it will need international assistance in its socio-economic development.

The Philippines promised to reduce its carbon emissions by 70 per cent by the year 2030, which will be taken from the energy, transport, waste, forestry and industry sectors. But like Cambodia, the target is “conditional” on assistance from the international community.

Singapore, the first ASEAN country to submit its INDC, said it will unconditionally reduce emissions intensity by 36 per cent by 2030 in energy, industry, agriculture, land use, land-use change, forestry and waste.

Thailand, which is one of 16 countries considered most vulnerable to future climate change impacts in the next 30 years, placed adaptation as top priority and pledged to reduce its GHG emissions by 20 per cent by 2030.

Vietnam promises to unconditionally reduce its GHG emissions by 8 per cent by the year 2030, but the rate could reach 25 per cent with international support. Vietnam has intensified its efforts in forest protection, afforestation and reforestation.

For Indonesia, its INDC pledged to reduce deforestation and cut annual emissions by 29 percent by 2030 is unlikely to be met, however, if it does not put out the forest fires permanently.

Core issues
Observers note that the UN-sponsored climate talks start with countries submitting their INDCs to the planned climate change agreement. That these INDCs, focusing mainly on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, are “nationally determined” suggests that the agreement will have a strong bottom-up approach.

The summit will try to merge the INDCs with “top-down” elements to forge a compromise that assures broad participation and stronger direction. The task, however, will not be easy. Four core issues remain intractable. [3]

Differentiation – Developed countries do not want to have binding emissions targets for developed nations only, which they contend should be for all. Developing nations want the onus to be on the big emitters.

Finance – Developing countries want developed countries to make good on their commitment to mobilise US$100 billion a year in public and private finance by 2020 to establish a Green Climate Fund to finance mitigation and adaptation projects. Developed nations want to have more donor countries so the burden is not entirely on them.

Legal character ­– While the agreement will have “legal force”, there is no consensus on precisely what form it will take. While the United States, for example, is ready for binding procedural commitments, it opposes binding emission targets.

Transparency – Existing requirements for the reporting of country efforts are two-tiered, with a more rigorous system for developed countries than for developing ones. Developed countries are pushing for a common framework for all parties.

But there is hope that intractable positions in the past might change this time around, in view of undeniable evidence that global warming and climate change are here.

The United States and China have announced that both want a deal. The European Union also has set its target, which accounts for more than half of the world’s emissions. India has begun devoting more attention to climate change.

If only Indonesia can put out its fires and two big Asian economies, Japan and Korea, join the bandwagon, and political will strengthens among the big economies, Paris 2015 could be a landmark for the struggle to mitigate global warming and climate change.

Crispin Maslog is a former journalist and now science journalism professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and director of the Silliman School of Journalism, Philippines. He is a consultant of the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication and board chairperson of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, both based in Manila. This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s South-East Asia & Pacific desk.

References
[1] Nancy Harris et al. With latest fires crisis, Indonesia surpasses Russia as world’s fourth-largest emitter (World Resources Institute, 29 October 2015)
[2] Center for Climate and Energy Solutions Submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) (Accessed 14 November 2015)
[3] Elliot Diringer The core issues in the Paris climate talks (Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 2 November 2015)

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9508