PMC Reportage – Asia Pacific Report

French Pacific prepares for snap elections with mixed expectations

APR editor — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 04:29:29 +0000

By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

After the surprise announcement of the French National Assembly’s dissolution last Sunday, French Pacific territories are already busy preparing for the forthcoming snap election with varying expectations.

Following the decision by President Emmanuel Macron, the snap general election will be held on June 30 (first round) and July 7 (second round).

Unsurprisingly, most of the incumbent MPs for the French Pacific have announced they will run again. Here is a summary of prospects:

New Caledonia
In New Caledonia, which has been gripped by ongoing civil unrest since violence broke out on May 13, the incumbents are pro-France Philippe Dunoyer and Nicolas Metzdorf, both affiliated to Macron’s Renaissance party, but also opponents on the local scene, marked by strong divisions within the pro-France camp.

Hours after the surprise dissolution, they both announced they would run, even though the campaign, locally, was going to be “complicated” with a backdrop of insurrectional roadblocks from the pro-independence movement.

Dunoyer said it was the “worst time for an election campaign”.

“It’s almost indecent to call [New] Caledonians to the polls at this time, because this campaign is not the priority at all,” he said.

“Not to mention the curfew still in place which will make political rallies very complicated.

“Political campaigns are always contributing to exacerbating tensions. [President Macron’s call for snap elections] just shows he did not care about New Caledonia when he decided this,” he said.

Dunoyer told NC la 1ère television on Monday he was running again “because for a very long time, I have been advocating for the need of a consensus between pro-independence and anti-independence parties so that we can exit the Nouméa Accord in a climate of peace, respect of each other’s beliefs”.

On the local scene, Dunoyer belongs to the moderate pro-French Calédonie Ensemble, whereas Metzdorf’s political camp (Les Loyalistes) is perceived as more radical.

“The radicalism on both parts has led us to a situation of civil war and it is now urgent to put an end to this . . . by restoring dialogue to reach a consensus and a global agreement,” he said.

Dunoyer believes “a peaceful way is still possible because many [New] Caledonians aspire to living together”.

On the pro-independence side, leaders of the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) platform have also been swift to indicate they intend to field pro-independence candidates so that “we can increase our political representation” at the [French] national level.

The FLNKS is holding its convention this Saturday, when the umbrella group is expected to make further announcements regarding its campaign strategy and its nominees.

French Polynesia
In French Polynesia, since the previous general elections in 2022, the three seats at the National Assembly were taken — for the first time ever — by members of the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira, which is also running the local government since the Tahitian general election of May 2023.

Pro-independence outgoing MP for French Polynesia Steve Chailloux speaking to Polynésie la 1ère TV on Monday. Image: Polynésie la 1ère TV screenshot/RNZ

The incumbents are Steve Chailloux, Tematai Legayic and Mereana Reid-Arbelot.

The Tavini has held several meetings behind closed doors to fine-tune its strategy and designate its three fielded candidates.

But the snap election is also perceived as an opportunity for the local, pro-France (locally known as “autonomists”) opposition, to return and overcome its current divisions.

Since Sunday, several meetings have been held at party levels between the components of the pro-France side.

Former President and Tapura party leader Edouard Fritch told local media that at this stage all parties at least recognised the need to unite, but no agreement had emerged as yet.

He said his party was intending to field “young” candidates and that the most effective line-up would be that all four pro-French parties unite and win all three constituencies seats for French Polynesia.

“A search for unity requires a lot of effort and compromises . . . But a three-party, a two-party platform is no longer a platform; we need all four parties to get together,” Fritch said, adding that his party was ready to “share” and only field its candidate in only one of the three constituencies.

Pro-France A Here ia Porinetia President Nicole Sanquer told local media “we must find a way of preserving each party’s values”, saying she was not sure the desired “autonomist” platform could emerge.

Wallis and Futuna
In Wallis and Futuna, there is only one seat, which was held by Mikaele Seo, affiliated to French President Macron’s Renaissance party.

He has not indicated as yet whether he intends to run again at the forthcoming French snap general election, although there is a strong likelihood he will.

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

Jeremiah Manele is new Solomon Islands PM with ‘100 day plan’

APR editor — Thu, 02 May 2024 05:25:17 +0000

By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor

Jeremiah Manele has been elected Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, polling 31 votes to 18 over rival candidate and former opposition leader Mathew Wale with one abstention.

The final result of the election by secret ballot was announced by the Governor-General, Sir David Vunagi, on the steps of Parliament in Honiara today.

Going into the vote, Manele’s camp had claimed the support of 28 MPs while Wale’s camp said they had 20.

Manele’s victory signals a return of the incumbent government formerly headed by Manasseh Sogavare.

Manele’s administration, which calls itself the Government for National Unity and Transformation (GNUT), is made up of three parties — his own Our Party is the largest followed by Manasseh Maelanga’s People’s First Party and Jamie Vokia’s Kandere Party.

Collectively, the parties came out of the election with 19 MPs but have added nine more to their ranks. We will know which MPs have joined what parties once the registrar of political parties updates its political party membership lists.

In the lead up to the election, Manele and his coalition partners were working on merging their policy priorities into a 100 day plan which they are expected to announce to the public in the coming days.

Once Manele has sorted the compostion of his cabinet, he will notify the Governor-General to set a date for the first sitting of Parliament during which all 50 members of Parliament will be sworn in and Sir David Vunagi will deliver the speech from the throne, the traditional opening address to Parliament.

Solomon Islands 12th Parliament elected Jeremiah Manele, former Foreign Minister as the country’s next Prime Minister. 100 days programme will be released soon. 49 Members of Parliament were present and voted today. 31 infavour of Jeremiah Manele and 18 votes for Matthew Wale pic.twitter.com/izA1wP2x3T

— Collin Beck, (@CollinBeck) May 2, 2024

‘I will discharge my duties diligently and with integrity’ – Manele
In his first national address on the steps of Parliament, Manele congratulated the people of Solomon Islands on a successful election and called for peace.

“Past prime ministers’ elections have been met with the act of violence and destruction,” he said.

“Our economy and livelihoods have suffered because of this violence. However, today we show the world that we are better than that.

“We must uphold and respect the democratic process of electing our prime minister and set an example for our children and their children.”

Manele paid tribute to the traditional landowners of the island of Guadalcanal on which the capital Honiara is situated.

He also outlined next steps starting with the formation of his cabinet which he said he would announce in the coming days and the first sitting of parliament when all MPs will be sworn in.

He said members of his coalition government were finalising their 100 day plan which they hoped to unveil soon.

Manele said there were also a number of laws that were ready to come before Parliament.

“These bills include the value added tax bill, special economics zone bill, the mineral resources bill, the forestry bill and others.

“Cabinet will meet to decide on the priority legislative and policy programmes for 2024. Which includes whether we need to revise the 2024 budget or not,” he said.

Finally, he said he was very humbled by the trust that his fellow MPs had bestowed upon him.

“This is indeed a historic moment for my people of Isabel Province to have one of their sons as the prime minister of Solomon Islands.

“I will discharge my duties diligently and with integrity. I will at all times put the interests of our people and country above all other interests.

“Leading a nation is never an easy task. I ask that you remember me and your government in your daily prayers so we may serve as our lord commands.”

He pledged his loyalty and allegiance to the country’s national anthem, national flag, and the constitution.

“We are one people, we are one nation, we are Solomon Islands. To God be the glory great things He has done. May God bless you all may God bless the 12th parliament and may God bless Solomon Islands from shore to shore.”

Who is Jeremiah Manele?
Jeremiah Manele, who turns 56 this year, is the member of Parliament for Hograno Kia Havulei in Isabel Province.

He is the country’s first ever prime minister from Isabel where his home village is Samasodu.

Manele served as minister of foreign affairs in the last government and ran in this election under the Our Party Banner. However, he has previously been affiliated with the Democratic Alliance Party.

He was first elected to Parliament in 2014 and was the leader of the opposition in the country’s 10th Parliament. He has also previously served as the minister for development planning and aid coordination in the 11th Parliament.

Prior to entering Parliament, Manele was a longserving public servant and diplomat representing the country as Chargé d’Affaires, of the Solomon Islands Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Papua New Guinea and a Certificate in Foreign Service and International Relations from Oxford University.

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

Robert Fisk’s message: Journalists should challenge the narratives of power

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:06:01 +0000

A clip from This Is Not A Movie, a 2020 documentary by about Robert Fisk. Video: Doc Edge Festival

Veteran journalist Robert Fisk, who for decades covered events in the Middle East and elsewhere as a foreign correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, has died after suffering a suspected stroke at his Dublin home.

Fisk became unwell on Friday and was admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital where he died a short time later, reports Al Jazeera English.

Almost six months ago, RNZ Saturday Morning’s Kim Hill did the following interview with Fisk. The Pacific Media Centre republishes this article here as a tribute to the celebrated journalist.

Celebrated veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk believed that journalists aren’t automatons keeping neutral battle scores between oppressed and oppressors and are duty-bound to ensure history isn’t written by politicians.

Fisk, who had spent the past 40 years living in war zones covering conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans and Ireland, died last Friday. He was 74.

He argued that journalists and editors cower from reporting honestly because of corporate and political influence.

LISTEN TO RNZ SATURDAY MORNING: The full Robert Fisk interview – Duration 48m25s

He told Kim Hill in an interview in May that the notion unbiased reporting must not take a moral position was a nonsense and that journalists should, at the very least, challenge narratives of power, which were usually distortions of truth.

The high-profile career of the Englishman who took Irish nationality was the focus of This Is Not A Movie, a documentary by Canadian director Yung Chang about the journalist screened in New Zealand’s 2020 Doc Edge Festival.

Fisk broke several big stories in his time, even landing an interview with Osama bin Laden, notorious Saudi founder of the pan-Islamic terror group al-Qaeda.

A story that didn’t make it on to the front page of The Times – his former employer – was one exposing US responsibility for shooting down a Iranian passenger aircraft in 1988, at the tail end of the Iraq-Iran war.

Robert Fisk … exclusive interview with Osama Bin Laden. Image: RNZ

Verified story spiked
The story, which Fisk verified using local air traffic control sources, was spiked and instead the paper published claims by the US navy that the pilot had tried to carry out a suicide mission on a US warship in the Gulf. His story was eventually published by Ireland’s Sunday Tribune, with Fisk resigning and moving to rival newspaper The Independent.

“I thought, that’s the time I go. If I’m going to risk my life for a newspaper but my editor will not risk his reputation with his owner over a story of mine then it’s time I left,” he said.

Fisk said The Times editor toed owner Rupert Murdoch’s political line, telling him his story was rubbish. An official inquiry by US authorities subsequently backed the content of Fisk’s story.

“It’s a sort of self-censorship… the problem is once you have a ruthless owner and you know your livelihood is in the pocket of that man – and if you’re not fortunate enough to have the reputation that can possibly get you another job – there is a tendency to start not wanting to rock the boat… so it’s in the journalists’ blood, as it is the editors’, not to do something that will cause a ‘crisis’.”

He said this power dynamic affected the way reporters framed stories and reflected the type of politically-contrived language used too. Not least in the Middle East, and especially when dealing with Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“That’s why, for example, journalists refer to the Israeli wall separating the West Bank as a ‘security fence’, because they don’t want to offend the Israelis and Israel’s supporters by calling it a wall, even though it is higher and longer than the Berlin Wall.

“That’s why we call it a ‘Jewish settlement’ in the West Bank, when it’s a Jewish colony… which has a kind of soft impression of settlements in the Wild West perhaps, of course, you think of the Native Americans attacking them.

Distorting the Palestinian struggle
“And also you have this thing where you must never talk about a war between Israel and the Palestinians, it’s always a dispute… it’s more of course, it’s one group of people stealing other people’s land. By de-semiticising this conflict, because we are frightened of what editors or owners will say… we effectively say ‘there must be something wrong when the Palestinians throw stones, they must be generically a violent people’. So, in a sense, we contribute towards warfare, by self-censorship.”

He rejected the concept of giving a false “balance” to stories – that, in some fashion, balance was the ultimate measure of reporting. It was not enough that a journalist merely kept an accurate score of events in a conflict situation, without taking into account history or power differentials.

The argument that a slave owner’s views on the slave trade must be used to strike balance in a story for it to be fair and accurate, he argued, was morally absurd. So too with a Nazi’s views in a story dealing with the extermination of Jews.

Fisk cites a contemporary example – the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982. Scores of Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites were killed by a militia linked to a right-wing Lebanese party, allies of Israel.

The names of at least 1390 were identified, with some death-toll estimates nearly tripling that number. Fisk was on the scene in Lebanon.

Robert Fisk on ’50/50 journalism’. Video: Pacific Media Centre

“I did not spend my time giving equal time to the killers,” he said. “I talked to the relatives of the dead and tried to find out the identities of the dead… My feeling is, you must be neutral and unbiased, but unbiased on the side of those who suffer.

“The idea that we are some kind of robotic creature that reports wars as if it’s a football match, where you give equal time to each side, is a bloody tragedy. It is not a football match.”

Landed in hot water
Fisk’s manner of reporting landed him in hot water at times. In Belfast, he was accused of giving succour to the IRA because he exposed British security force brutality during the Anglo-Irish conflict, which ended in the 1990s.

More recently, he was attacked for undermining those attempting to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, after a story questioned proof Assad’s forces had carried out a deadly chemical attack in April 2018.

The documentary This Is Not A Movie highlights a story Fisk wrote that found no trace of a chemical attack in Douma that had supposedly killed dozens of civilians, a story widely disseminated by western media.

He travelled to the Syrian town and talked exhaustively with local people to find proof of the attack, even inspecting underground tunnels of interest, again finding nothing to back the veracity of the claims.

Fisk talked to a doctor, who said respiratory distress by civilians had been caused by a dust storm created by nearby joint Syrian and Russian bombings.

“The final report of Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons did in fact censor out some of the evidence by its own scientists so that it would say that it’s an open-and-shut case that Assad did use gas. In fact, its own staff could not finally prove gas was used,” he said.

This didn’t stop verbal attacks suggesting he’d done Assad a favour. Fisk brushed this off as merely something to be expected if a journalist was doing their job properly.

“If we don’t do that we’re handing over the writing of history to political parties,” he said.

‘Do our best to get at the truth’
“We simply have to bash on and do our best to get at the truth, even though in Douma I couldn’t establish what it was, at least we raise the doubt.”

Getting to grips with history was essential if serious reporters wanted to do their jobs properly, illuminating meaning behind what would otherwise seem random or vindictive acts of violence, Fisk said.

“I do very much think you cannot report a war or go to a war without at least a very good history book in your back pocket… without knowing what lies underneath the embers you don’t know why the fire is burning.”

An understanding of World War I and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war between Germany and allied forces, could account of much of the antecedents of conflict in the Middle East, he said. The treaty, in part, amounted to a carve-up of imperial rights to occupy nations and created divisive, artificial lines of territory across the region.

“I think there’s an automatic connection between the collapse of industrial civilisation and WWI and then a peace treaty that was effectively going to collapse the ruins of the Ottaman Empire in 1919 and from that came all these borders… particularly the borders of Iraq and Lebanon and Syria and Turkey and all my working life in the Middle East and indeed also in Yugoslavia and Belfast I’ve watched over the past 50 years all the people within those borders burn.

“I said to my friend in Beruit yesterday I think the reason we’re not finding evidence of covid-19 among the Middle Eastern people is that, for them, it was covid 1919 – Versailles was their infection and that continues now to spread its disease across the Middle East, of injustice, lack of independence and lack of freedom.”

Good journalism was needed as much now as at any time in history. He said the hope that the world was getting better with the defeat of Fascism and the establishment of post-war institutions like the United Nations and human rights organisations had proven false. The historical causes of conflict hadn’t be resolved.

Living with tragedy every day
“When you go into the alleyways of the world, the Palestinian camps in Beirut for example, and you actually talk to the people there you realise that they are living in squalor and dirt because Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, signed the Balfour Agreement in 1917, and because the victorious allies, principally the French and the British divided up the Middle East. Britain would have Palestine and France would get Syria and Lebanon in the aftermath of that war and for those people, waking up in their hovels everyday, Balfour signed the declaration last night.

“For them Versailles happened yesterday and history in their experience is something that they are living tragically with every day.

“Whereas we people can luxuriate in a post-war world with values of civilisation, or we think we do, and technology to look after us.”

Journalism should question our cozy, false impression of ourselves as enlightened and civilised Westerners, who conveniently see others embroiled in conflict as lacking these values. He also pointed out a Western hypocrisy of rightly attacking anyone who denied the German holocaust against the Jewish people, yet those in the West allowed Turkey to deny its own Armenian holocaust in 1915, when 1.5 million Christians were killed.

Our complicity in imperialist wars and attitudes should be challenged by reporting facts within an authentic historical context, shorn of political spin.

“One of the things I think journalists have to do, as well as recognise the goodness of ordinary people, is to try and find out why ordinary people do wicked things,” Fisk said.

“We all sort of participate in it in the sense that we wring our hands with anguish when a hospital is destroyed in northern Syria but when a hospital is destroyed in Mosul by an American aircraft we do not wring our hands.

Pandemic pushes Yemen from sight
“We wait to see if the Americans will give us an explanation and then we hope that their claim that they didn’t hit the hospital is true. Same applies to wedding parties and medical centres in Afghanistan and so on.

“When you consider that half a million Iraqis might have died as a result of the Anglo-American illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, when people used to say to me, ‘why don’t you want Tony Blair and George Bush put on trial’, I would always say ‘because they are not going to be put on trial’ there’s no point in wasting your energies’. Now I’m not so sure that would be my reply.”

With the current pandemic the focus of the world’s attention, the situation in places like Yemen had fallen from sight. But, he said, the intractable problems of the region were continuing without any respite.

“One of the great tragedies of the coronavirus pandemic is that the whole Middle East tragedy, of injustice, dispossession and blood, has basically faded away from all of us who are concentrating on our own families, our own countries, and we’ve largely forgotten that long after Covid-19 is in the history books, the same terrible history will continue in these regions.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

How covid priorities have ‘shelved’ PNG climate change action

Sri Krishnamurthi — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 20:00:26 +0000

The project video – read the linked story.

By Sri Krishnamurthi of the Pacific Media Centre

Climate change action has been “shelved” for the moment in Papua New Guinea says a postgraduate media researcher from the tourism and environmental friendly city of Madang.

“Climate change initiatives are on the shelf right now because the focus is on battling covid-19,” says Stephanie Sageo-Tapungu about the crisis facing her country.

Papua New Guinea is one of the worst hit countries by the global pandemic in a region where most Pacific countries have been able to keep the coronavirus at bay.

CLIMATE AND COVID-19 PACIFIC PROJECT VIDEO

She has reveal to me the impact of the coronavirus and how it has derailed climate change action in her homeland.

Sageo-Tapungu is concerned that covid-19 has forced climate change into a secondary role but it still remains a serious concern, especially for her home province of Madang.

She talking with the Pacific Media Centre’s Climate Change and Covid-19 Pacific project as part of a series of interviews which the PMC’s Pacific Media Watch has taken with funding from the Internews Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

Sageo-Tapungu was in the process of returning to her home and family after completing doctoral studies at Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa New Zealand with concerns for both during this recent interview.

In the latest Papua New Guinea covid-19 statistics today, the country had reported 517 cases of covid-19 infection and seven deaths.

This is a video in a series of articles by the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch as part of an environmental project funded by the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Asia-Pacific initiative.

More Pacific Media Centre Climate Change and Covid-19 Pacific project stories

New covid cases in PNG, Bougainville, New Caledonia and Tahiti aired

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 07:48:17 +0000

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Radio 95bFM The Wire’s Zoë Larsen Cumming and Justin Wong talked to Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie today about a resurgence of coronavirus cases in Papua New Guinea and the impact of other Pacific cases on two very important upcoming votes in Bougainville and New Caledonia.

Speaking on the Southern Cross programme, Dr Robie also outlined the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review, which has been causing ripples around the region over its criticisms of government assaults on media freedom in a series of research papers.

A dramatic increase in covid-19 cases in PNG over the past few days took the total to 214 at the weekend with another reported mine case, this time at Lihir in New Ireland province.

Pacific Media Centre · PMC Southern Cross: Resurgent covid-19 in PNG, preparation for NC independence vote, and PJR

A covid status graphic in Papua New Guinea featured on the PMC Southern Cross radio item. Image: The National

Another positive case in New Caledonia has taken the total to 23, but French officials report that the important referendum on independence scheduled for October 4, will go ahead as planned.

The first covid case in Bougainville has been reported but the presidential election will take place on August 12-September 1.

Relaxed borders in French Polynesia has meant two more cases taking the total to 63.

PMC’s weekly Southern Cross radio programme is now taking a break for a while.

Loimata – The Sweetest Tears is a spectacularly exquisite documentary

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 04:00:29 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Host Zoe Larsen Cumming had much to discuss on a new documentary, the exquisitely made Loimata – The Sweetest Tears, which was launched last Saturday to a full house at the ASB Waterfront Theatre as part of the international Whanau Marama film festival.

She asked Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi what made the documentary so special on today’s Pacific Media Centre – Southern Cross segment of Radio 95bFM’s The Wire.

The documentary is about a female master waka builder, navigator and sailor Lilo Ema Siope who was born in Taihape and spent her troubled growing-up years in South Auckland.

LISTEN: Southern Cross on the Pacific Media Centre’s Soundcloud

Abused she was, but she found her true calling on and in the waka.

It remains important to tell these stories of our Kiwi-born Pacific families who find a way to connect with their cultures and to bring richness in diversity to the New Zealand way of life.

What makes this documentary special are the bonds that develop between the Palagi film-making family of Anna and Jim Marbrook, a Pacific media Centre associate, and the Siope aiga who took the Marbrooks into their heart.

Also discussed on the radio programme was climate change and the dangers of relying on sustainable ecotourism, and the dramatic rise in covid-19 cases in Papua New Guinea where cases have jumped by a record 23 to 62.

Loimata – The Sweetest Tears will also play as part of the Whanau Marama hybrid online festival, from August 2-8.

Pacific Media Centre · PMC Southern Cross – Loimata and the revival of the craft of waka building

Southern Cross: Uproar over ABS-CBN denial of TV licence by government

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 07:38:50 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Host Oscar Perress talked to contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch Sri Krishnamurthi today about Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s government rejecting a licence for the country’s biggest radio and TV network ABS-CBN.

Its 25-year-old franchise expired in May but the majority of legislators refused to renew in a threat to the post-Marcos democratic constitution.

This was the lead issue on the Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross segment of Radio 95bFM’s The Wire.

LISTEN: PMC Southern Cross podcasts

“The parliamentarians who rejected this request for a new franchise will go down in history as legislators who preferred to support the ruling caste’s personal interests instead of defending the spirit of the 1987 constitution,” said Daniel Bastard, head of RSF Asia-Pacific news desk.

The vote count was overwhelmingly 70-11 against awarding the new franchise.

Southern Cross then discussed a comment piece from Benny Wenda, chair of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua.

He was adamant in his commentary article that when the 2001 special autonomy statute expires this year that it was time for the people of West Papua to reject Indonesian-controlled “autonomy” and the only solution was an independence referendum.

“There is only one just, democratic and feasible solution for West Papua: our right to self-determination, exercised through a referendum on independence,” Wenda claimed.

And once again the Philippines was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

This time it was the #HoldTheLine support for the brave Maria Ressa who is being backed by 60 freedom groups, including the Pacific Media Centre.

At the weekend the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced the launch of the #HoldTheLine campaign in support of journalist Ressa and independent media under attack in the Philippines.

Acting in coordination with Ressa and her legal team, representatives from the three groups have formed the steering committee and are working alongside dozens of partners on the global campaign and reporting initiatives.

They hope to drup up 30,000 signatures.

Rappler’s chief executive Maria Ressa on June 20 was, alongside her colleague Reynaldo Santos Jr, convicted of “cyber-libel” – a criminal charge for which they could face six years in prison.

Pacific Media Centre · PMC Southern Cross: Shutdown of biggest TV network in Philippines, plea for West Papua

From nuclear refugees to climate justice – the Rainbow Warrior legacy

David Robie — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 12:18:43 +0000

SPECIAL REPORT: By David Robie, who sailed on the original Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap atoll and is author of the book Eyes of Fire.

Thirty five years ago today the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour by French secret agents in a blatant act of state terrorism, killing a photojournalist.

People’s campaigns have moved on since then from nuclear tests and refugees to climate justice – and future Pacific refugees.

The environmental campaign flagship was bombed on 10 July 1985 just weeks after it had been in the Marshall Islands carrying out four humanitarian voyages to rescue more than 320 Rongelap atoll villagers from the ravages of US nuclear tests and take them to a new home, Mejato island on Kwajalein atoll.

They were nuclear refugees seeking justice, relief and a healthy life far from the dangerous legacy left from 105 tests on Bikini and nearby atolls.

Ironically, the bombing in Auckland and mounting Pacific opposition led to a massive wave of New Zealand and Pacific anti-nuclear solidarity and ultimately to the halt of French nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in 1996 after 193 blasts.

The bombed ship’s pioneering environmental work has since been carried on by Rainbow Warrior II and the state-of-the-art eco campaign ship Rainbow Warrior III.

Today the focus is on climate refugees, the lack of adequate health compensation for the Polynesians who suffered radiation and failure to provide proper clean-up of the French nuclear testing zones that are still off-limits after almost a quarter century. Tests were carried out by balloon, derrick, in the lagoon and in a series of underground shafts which have threatened the stability of the 60 km long atoll, leaving it fractured “like Swiss cheese”.

Pacific Media Centre · PMC Southern Cross: Rainbow Warrior reflections, justice for Jenelyn and Papuan free media

Rongelap islanders with their belongings approach the Rainbow Warrior in May 1985. Image: (C) David Robie

Landmark ruling
In January this year, in a landmark United Nations ruling, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, governments have been told not to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by climate change.

Climate action activists have greeted this ruling as a potential game changer for both climate refugees, or migrants, and for advocates for global climate action.

The UN Human Rights Committee ruled in the covenant that “without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to violations of their rights”.

The ruling applied to a humble New Zealand vegetable farm foreman, Ioane Teitiota, from the island nation of Kiribati, who had become a poster boy for climate refugee legal advocates even though he had little understanding of this concept.

Five years earlier, his lawyers had applied for protection for him in New Zealand after presenting a legal argument that he and his family’s lives were at risk from the impact of climate change and rising Pacific Ocean level in Kiribati as one of the “frontline states” facing global warming.

Although Teitiota and his lawyers lost the case because the threat to Kiribati was not deemed to be an imminent risk, the ruling opened the door to recognition of the existence of climate refugees and the possibility of legal refugee protection.

Climate change will force tens of millions of people to leave their homes in the next decade, according to a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). And this would include many on low-lying atolls in the South Pacific.

‘Humanitarian visa’
In October 2017, New Zealand’s Climate Minister James Shaw announced that the incoming government was planning an “experimental humanitarian visa” category for Pacific Islanders forced to leave their homes. Partially inspired by the Teitiota case, it was envisaged that up to 100 people a year might settle in New Zealand under this scheme.

However, this humanitarian plan was quietly shelved because Pacific Islanders generally do not want to leave their homes. They prefer support for adaptation and mitigation for their continuing lives on ancestral land with refugee status as merely a last resort.

The Rainbow Warrior had visited Kiribati and Vanuatu on the voyage to New Zealand after the Marshall Islands mission. Crew members saw at first hand some of the climate pressures already apparent back then.

A panoramic view of Moruroa atoll, French Polynesia. Image: GW

Cancer sufferers seeking nuclear compensation from the French government under the controversial Morin law received a boost last month when a man who had developed bladder cancer as a result of the nuclear tests was awarded almost US$180,000 by the administrative court.

This news was welcomed by both health advocates and activists.

According to the local news service Tahiti-Infos, an earlier application for compensation had been turned down by the authority dealing with the case.

The compensation law has been tightened up again after being earlier relaxed with most claims being rejected between 2010 and 2017.

A French nuclear test balloon at Moruroa atoll. Image: Gerard Will

Uproar in Tahiti
In May, there was an uproar in Tahiti when the French National Assembly attempted to include a clause about compensation over nuclear weapons testing into generic covid-19 legislation while the French Polynesian representatives were absent from the chamber because of the pandemic travel bans.

Tahiti’s Moetai Brotherson, one of the two French Polynesian representatives, described this move as a “scandal” and two nuclear test veteran advocacy groups, Moruroa e Tatou and Association 193, were also angry, reports RNZ Pacific.

During the three decades of French tests, the early atmospheric explosions had dusted atolls and islets with radioactive fallout.

Brotherson expressed disappointment that the French state had demonstrated yet again that it “detested” the Tahitian people. Moruroa e Tatou’s Hiro Tefaarere said he was “outraged” but not surprised because all French presidents from de Gaulle to Macron “couldn’t care less” about Polynesians.

During 2019, the French Polynesian social security agency CPS reported that it had spent US$770 million on health care costs for radiation-induced illnesses. The CPS, responsible for medical expenses and pension payments, has struggled with its budgets and wants France to take responsibility for compensation.

However, French authorities do not accept liability for test-related illnesses, claiming the nuclear blasts were “clean” unlike the earlier US and British tests in the Pacific.

The dumping of military waste at sea off Moruroa during the nuclear testing period. Image: GW

The nuclear tests have rarely been an issue outside French Polynesia and independent Pacific nations. But some consciences are occasionally pricked.

A French Watergate?
Five years ago, the unmasked French bomber who sank the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 made some revealing comments during his interviews with the investigative website Mediapart and TVNZ’s Sunday programme, none more telling than that “the first bomb was too powerful, it should have ended as a Watergate” for French President François Mitterrand.

The last secret of the “Greenpeace affair”. Image: Mediapart

Mitterrand stayed in office for 14 years – a decade after the bombing and before he finally stepped down when his second presidential term ended in May 1995, the year before nuclear tests ended.

The bomber, retired colonel Jean-Luc Kister, added that had Operation Satanique – the sabotage plot – involved the United States, “more heads would have rolled”.

However, while the “innocent death” of Portuguese-born Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira has clearly played on his conscience for all these years, Kister’s sincere apology wasn’t without a hint of trying to rewrite history.

The claim that the secret sabotage operation never meant to kill anybody is unconvincing for anybody on board the Rainbow Warrior on that tragic night when New Zealand lost its political innocence and the crew lost a dear friend.

In 2005, two decades after the bombing and nine years after Mitterrand’s death, Le Monde published a leaked document revealing that the late president had personally approved the sinking of the ship.

The newspaper obtained a handwritten account of the operation, written in 1986 by Pierre Lacoste, who was sacked as head of the secret services.

The Democracy Now! report – Rainbow Warrior and President François Mitterrand. Video: Democracy Now!

‘Neutralise’ the Warrior
He had testified that he had asked President Mitterrand for permission to “neutralise” the Rainbow Warrior at a meeting two months before the attack and would never have gone ahead without the president’s authorisation.

The so-called nuclear “war” in the Pacific dates back to the US bombing of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki in 1945. The bombing was followed by atmospheric nuclear testing by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, arguably the “dirtiest” nuclear testing.

The first so-called nuclear refugees in the Pacific were the Bikini atoll islanders who were relocated into “exile” for the first US weapons tests in 1946.

Then came the British tests at Christmas Island (now Kiribati) and in the Australian outback; the start of the French testing at Moruroa in 1966; more US tests at Johnston Atoll in the early 1960s; flight testing of ICBMs, anti-satellite weapons; and more recently “Star Wars” technology at the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands.

As the late Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace campaign coordinator on board the Rainbow Warrior and whose birthday was being celebrated on board the night of the bombing, noted, “the displacement of local populations and adverse health effects as a result of these programmes has not been without opposition.

“But that opposition has been so scattered and unorganised until recently that it has been little felt in Washington and Paris.”

And the Rainbow Warrior Pacific voyage was planned to make a global difference. It did, but one that shook the world and ended in tragedy.

Moruroa – “Military Grounds – Do Not Enter!” Image: GW

Pacific bombs, nuclear weapons and the Rongelap evacuation

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 03:33:09 +0000

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Thirty five years ago this week in another life Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie was an environmental journalist on board the original Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace flagship that was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.

He was on board for almost 11 weeks and joined the Greenpeace campaigners in the Marshall Islands to rescue the Rongelap islanders from the legacy of US nuclear tests.

He wrote a book about this “last voyage”, Eyes of Fire, which has been published in several countries.

LISTEN: The 95bFM Southern Cross podcast on the Pacific Media Centre’s Soundcloud channel

EYES OF FIRE: THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RAINBOW WARRIOR

He shared some of his reflections on Southern Cross radio at 95bFM today and also discussed latest happenings around the Pacific – including the massive “march in black” peaceful demonstration in Papua New Guinea last Thursday in memory of the young mother Jenelyn Kennedy and against gender-based violence, and the webinar exchange about the West Papuan media freedom #black hole” between Dr Robie and a senior Indonesian Foreign Affairs official.

Speaking on a webinar organised by the Tabloid Jubi newspaper in Jayapura, Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director of the European affairs Sade Bimantara said Papua was “much more open” than credited in social media and that it was “easy” for journalists to go there.

But Dr Robie said that little had changed on the ground in Papua since the new access policy had been announced by President Widodo. No New Zealand journalists had been allowed to go there since 2015.

Southern Cross host Sherry Zhang, who is joining The Spinoff next week, and producer James Tapp were also farewelled from the programme today.

Pacific Media Centre · PMC Southern Cross: Rainbow Warrior reflections, justice for Jenelyn and Papuan free media

Protest marks French Pacific nuclear tests at Moruroa anniversary

USP leadership crisis talking point with Michael Field on Southern Cross

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 06:00:15 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Host Sherry Zhang interviewed veteran Pacific affairs journalist Michael Field who broke last week’s story on the secret BDO New Zealand accountancy report into allegations of funding rorts at the regional University of the South Pacific today on the Southern Cross segment of 95bFM.

Field also spoke about the hounding of suspended vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia, the whistleblower who revealed the mismanagement of funds at the university.

In a Pacific Media Centre commentary today, director Professor David Robie, an alumni of USP, analysed the fight to save academic freedom at the university.

LISTEN: Today’s Southern Cross on 95bFM

Contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi spoke about #PapuanLivesMatter in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

He talked of Filep Karma, a former political prisoner who revealed Joko Widodo’s unkept promise to free all Papua political prisoners made five years ago.

West Papua is of high economic value to Indonesia because of the Freeport gold and copper mine and the palm oil and logging industries.

Also discussed was the Polynesian Panthers who came into being in June 1971 when protested for Pasifika rights, especially during the Dawn Raids in 1973.

One of the original five Polynesian Panthers was Will ‘Ilolahia, who was arrested for helping organise the protests. He spoke at the Auckland Black Lives Matter rally yesterday and it is hoped he will feature in next Monday’s Southern Cross.

Pacific Media Centre · PMC: Southern Cross – Leadership saga at the University of the South Pacific

Thousands throng Auckland for NZ Black Lives Matter protests

Southern Cross: Buyout offer saves AAP and gives Pacific a breather

Sri Krishnamurthi — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:30:44 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

A reprieve for the newsagency Australian Associated Press (AAP) is featured today on Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross segment on Radio 95bFM.

An article written by student journalist Jade Bradford of Curtin University in Perth tells of how AAP is being saved. The implications of the story is discussed given that the agency was supposed to have been ceased operations later this month.

It comes as a major relief to Pacific Island nations that rely on it for balanced coverage of the region.

LISTEN: PMC’s Sri Krishnamurthi and Southern Cross on Soundcloud

On Friday, AAP announced that a consortium of philanthropists and media executives had expressed an interest in buying the AAP Newswire service. Good news for a free media in the Pacific.

“There is now a generation of journalists in Fiji who have never known what it’s like to have a truly free press,” says PMC director Professor David Robie, who is also editor of Asia Pacific Report.

In fact, it was AAP foreign correspondent based in Suva at the time, Jim Shrimpton, who broke the story of Fiji’s first coup in May 1987.

Also discussed on Southern Cross was the Papua New Guinea police investigating death threats texted to Lae city chief Neil Ellery, who has a New Zealand father, and his wife.

There is also a chat with Debate writer and programme producer James Tapp about confronting Pākehā Privilege as a white male student.

Tapp is a Bachelor of Communication Studies and Bachelor of Business conjoint student at Auckland University of Technology, majoring in international business and advertising creativity.

O’Neill arrest featured on PMC’s Southern Cross radio

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 25 May 2020 03:22:34 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

The arrest of former Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill on his arrival home in Port Moresby was featured today on Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross segment on Radio 95bFM.

He was arrested for questioning over allegations of purchasing two generators for 50 million kina (US$14 million) from an Israeli company without approval of the National Parliament.

O’Neill had only just returned to PNG from Australia and was quarantined for 14 days and was granted K5000 bail.

LISTEN: Sri Krishnamurthi on Southern Cross

Also discussed on the programme by Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi, was the pro-independence FLNKS seeking a delay to the referendum for two months because of covid-19 disruptions in New Caledonia.

However, anti-independence politician Sonia Backes said she was firmly opposed to the delay.

The ongoing saga of the past week between print giants NZME and Stuff, which went to the High Court with NZME claiming it had exclusive negotiation period Stuff owners Nine Entertainment Australia, was also highlighted.

However, Justice Sarah Katz said Stuff was getting another offer from a prospective buyer, which was revealed this afternoon to be Stuff’s chief executive Sinead Boucher.

Southern Cross features ‘The Road’ and Papuan repression

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 18 May 2020 02:37:28 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Pacific Media Watch  contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi discusses a new book today on West Papua, The Road: Uprising in West Papua, reviewed by Professor David Robie, in his weekly 95bFM segment Southern Cross.

The book is authored by Australian investigative journalist John Martinkus who has covered wars and conflicts in Asia and the Middle East for many years, including the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Road: Uprising in West Papua

David picks up on the author’s theme of “The Road” – the 4000-plus km Trans-Papua Highway – supposed to be for development in the Melanesian region.

But, as John Martinkus makes very clear in this damning book launched in Sydney this afternoon, it is more about repressing the West Papuans while exploiting the the rich natural resources such as the giant Freeport mine.

There is a section in the book paying tribute to the Pacific Media Watch coverage of West Papua.

Also discussed, is the Philippines with President Rodrigo Duterte’s government shutting down the largest television broadcasters, ABS-CBN with 42 channels across the country.

And, was NZME trying to pull a “fast one” over Stuff in a takeover bid?

Gallery: The virus shackles are off … but where was the social distancing?

Sri Krishnamurthi — Thu, 14 May 2020 06:00:15 +0000

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch hops on a bus from Onehunga to Auckland to check out day one of New Zealand’s new coronavirus status – alert level 2.

Alert level two looked like alert level “zero” today after more than a month of lockdown in Auckland when I caught a local bus into downtown.

There were people in every facet of business smiling and frowning just like Auckland in the old pre-covid days.

ASIA PACIFIC REPORT CORONAVIRUS UPDATES

The barber shops, coffee shops, takeaways were busy as people returned to their normal routines of keeping their businesses open.

What was disappointing, however, was there was no social distancing on the bus – or elsewhere, even though the bus signs said a maximum of 39 people.

Was I taking a risk? I suppose I was but that is the price you pay when you’re a journalist.

Did anyone on the bus feel threatened? No, a few had face masks on … even fewer people were wearing gloves.

Scent of a hairdo
I could smell the scent of the woman in front of me with her hairdo, which was fragrant and pleasant – so much for keeping your distance.

There were others on the bus, like a woman who sat across from me looking really busy as she answered her phone.

The others looked busy too as we picked up passengers on the way to Newmarket where young men and women would alight. And again there was no social distancing.

Whether they were girlfriends and boyfriends, I wouldn’t know but the sheer joy of seeing each other was something to behold after such a long time of being locked away.

Westfields at Newmarket was open, and it seemed that nothing new had happened. Again I was aghast at the no social distancing.

It was appalling to say the least. It was like the shackles had been taken off and people had come out to play on a sunny day.

Onehunga was busy as the mall returned to business, you couldn’t get a place to park your car, which was a far cry from level 4 or even level 3.

Thai pie and coffee
The joy of having a chicken and mushroom pie and a coffee made by the Thai couple down the road before I caught the bus was palpable. Finally, I could return to something normal – even though it was bad for me.

As were the kids at the playground in Onehunga, I saw from the bus. They were going down the slide after lockdown, and their joy was unbridled.

I stopped off at AUT University – where I study. It was closed with a QR barcode on the door which I didn’t bother to try.

Next was a trip to High Street, it seemed nothing had changed, just as busy as ever.

Auckland, had returned to normal it seemed. Covid-19 has been banished …or has it?

Story and pictures by Sri Krishnamurthi

Covid L2 ... or L zero?

1 of 9

Southern Cross covers pandemic lockdown and media ‘fast one’

APR editor — Sun, 10 May 2020 22:00:31 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Well into the alert level 3 phase of New Zealand’s covid-19 coronavirus pandemic lockdown, and today’s weekly Pacific Media Centre Southern Cross radio programme covers what  is happening  in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region.

Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi discusses new developments on the media front in New Zealand.

A surprising bid by NZME to buy Stuff for $1 – were they trying to pull a fast one?

LISTEN: Today’s Southern Cross programme on 95bFM

Whether we should go to alert level 2 – the decision later today was yes on a staggered basis – and the World Press Freedom Day report done by Transparency International on Papua New Guinea.

Also discussed were the controversy over the allegations of homophobic slurs by Fiji Rugby Union chairman Francis Kean who was stood down from standing for World Rugby’s executive council.

Pacific coronavirus: NZ’s big decision, j-schools and media closures

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:56:25 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Into the fourth week of  lockdown in New Zealand, and today’s weekly Pacific Media Centre Southern Cross radio programme covers what journalism schools are doing in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the media in crisis in New Zealand.

New Zealand stands on the precipice of decision day today as the government decides whether to go from alert level 4 to alert level 3 – this afternoon it opted for five more days.

The lockdown will be eased at 11.59pm on Anzac Monday, April 27, followed by two weeks of alert 3 on trial.

LISTEN: Today’s podcast on 95bFM

With ANZAC weekend coming up, the big concern has been will the lockdown rules be broken like at Easter weekend, when many people tended to flout the rules?

For that reason alone, Pacific Media Watch’s Sri Krishnamurthi – like many experts – argues in favour two more weeks of lockdown.

95bfm The Wire presenter Sherry Zhang; producer James Tapp
Radio Southern Cross | PMC Soundcloud channel

Southern Cross covers host of issues in fast-moving Covid-19 time

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 03:31:57 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

From the second week of lockdown in New Zealand, to Covid-19 in the Pacific and an “authoritarianism creep” by governments in the Asia-Pacific region provided a fast-changing landscape on the Pacific Media Centre’s Southern Cross radio programme on 95bFM today.

New Zealand had crossed the 1000-case threshold on Sunday with 89 new cases and one death, reports Sri Krishnamurthi on the programme.

LISTEN: Southern Cross on PMC Soundcloud

However, the pandemic was starting to affect the Pacific with Guam being the worst-hit with 93 cases and four deaths and there was also the curiosity of an American aircraft carrier docked in Guam with 155 cases on board.

Ironically, captain Brett Crozier, 50, who was “relieved” after he sent a letter which ended up in hands of a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, saying that conditions were dire on board was himself reported now to be suffering from Covid-19

Meanwhile, people in Fiji were still not taking the threat seriously with 134 arrested on Saturday for flouting lockdown rules, with Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama threatening unleash the army if lockdown rules were not obeyed.

If that was not enough, some governments were using Covid-19 to clamp down on people and the media as authoritarianism began to raise its ugly head in the Philippines – where on person was shot on Saturday, Cambodia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

There was much angst too, over the way Bauer Media New Zealand toppled costing 237 jobs as the media continues its run of bad news.

And, as fate would have it, category 5 cyclone was bearing down on Vanuatu as well as on-track to hit Fiji, after devastating the Solomon Islands.

Presented by The Wire host Sherry Zhang and producer James Tapp

Coronavirus threat to Pacific, Papuan students in NZ and a starfish scourge

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 19:26:15 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

The Pacific Media Centre’s weekly Southern Cross radio programme on 95bFM has featured the latest Pacific news brought to you by Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi.

He was joined by Auckland University of Technology communications masters student Laurens Ikinia from West Papua to discuss the threat of coronavirus for the Pacific, Papuan students in NZ, right-wing extremism groups and a scourge of crown of thorns starfish eating coral – and how an environmental group found a solution.

“This is a very worrying trend,” says Krishnamurthi in response to the three cases of Covid-19 in a French Polynesia outbreak – first in the Pacific. “And now three cases in Guam, two from the Philippines and one from Japan.

“So they brought it back into Guam. And there is a self-isolating case in American Samoa.

“It has had a very sobering effect in the Pacific – people are being very careful.”

Listen to the PMC’s Southern Cross radio programme.

Ikinia talked about the 160 Papuan students studying in New Zealand as part of a bold education strategy of the local Papuan provincial government of sending students to English-speaking countries.

Krishnamurthi and Ikinia talk about the Pacific issues with 95bFM’s The Wire presenter Sherry Zhang and producer James Tapp.

Vanuatu Daily Post’s Dan McGarry ‘gutted’ by Vanuatu government’s action to reject his work permit

Sri Krishnamurthi — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 20:43:28 +0000

Dan McGarry. Image: David Robie/PMC

By Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch

Media Director of the Vanuatu Daily Post group, Dan McGarry, is devastated by the Vanuatu government’s decision to reject his work permit after 16 years in the country and calls it an attack on media freedom.

“I’m gutted, personally. I’ve devoted 16 years of my life to this country’s development. My family is Ni Vanuatu,” the Canadian told the Pacific Media Centre (PMC).

On Thursday (November 7) he announced the rejection on social media (Facebook, Twitter) expressing his disappointment at being asked to leave as “after over a month of delay and uncertainty, I was informed this afternoon that my work permit has been rejected.”

“In July, the Prime Minister (Chariot Salwai) summoned me and berated me for my ‘negative’ reporting ‘if you don’t like it here,’ he told me, ‘go home’. But Vanuatu is my home”.

“This all began when we broke a story about how six Chinese nationals had been detained without trial or access to legal counsel. Four of them had their Vanuatu citizenship unlawfully revoked without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. All of them were summarily deported to face prosecution in China,” McGarry summarised.

“Within days of these reports surfacing, complaints were lodged with the Media Association of Vanuatu about the Daily Post’s ‘negative’ reporting. No evidence was provided to support these complaints, but the timing leaves little question as to how and why they came about.”

He vowed to continue his fight to stay in Vanuatu and maintain standards of a free and independent media.

“The government can dress it up any way they like, but the evidence is clear: This is an attack on a free and independent media in Vanuatu. But Vanuatu is not Hong Kong, and it’s not China. This fight isn’t over yet…by a long shot,” he said.

“The groundswell of support we’ve seen, both at home and overseas, is
heart-warming and humbling. We will pursue this appeal aggressively, and
fight for justice to the last.”

McGarry explained that he was in the procedure of getting his citizenship when the government rejected his work permit.

“I am in the process of obtaining Vanuatu citizenship. This entire affair began when the Labour department declined to grant a short-term work permit while the application progressed,” McGarry said.

“The government alleges that my employer hasn’t prepared a proper succession plan, and suggests that another individual employed here is qualified for the job.

“Neither of these is true, and for the government to try to tell any private company who it should hire is highly inappropriate. To do so to an independent media company is doubly so.”

The next steps are to appeal the rejection, which followed an administrative process that he expected would take a month or more, and if that failed he would be seeking a judicial review.

The rejection of his work permit has happened on the eve of Melanesian Media Freedom Forum which is on Monday/Tuesday in Brisbane, and which he will attend.

Dr Tess Newton Cain, chair of the organising committee said of McGarry’s predicament “we expect that this issue will be a topic of conversation during the two days as indicative of issues that affect media freedom in our region,” she said.

McGarry’s employers, Trading Post Ltd, were just as surprised with the decision and pledged to support him.

“Based on conversations with the owners, the Daily Post rejects the allegations, and is of the opinion that the decision is illegitimate and flawed on its own merits. They intend to fight it.”

PMC’s Professor David Robie. Image: Isabella Porras/PMC

The Director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Media Watch, Professor David Robie, has also condemned the denial of a work permit by Vanuatu, saying it was “outrageous authoritarianism” and called for the visa to be granted.

“Dan McGarry is one of the leading investigative journalists in Vanuatu and the Pacific and has a commitment to development values,” Professor David Robie said.

“Dan has also been a strong media freedom advocate and has followed the proud traditions set by the Daily Post founder and owner, Marc Neil-Jones, by publishing the truth and holding the powerful to account.

“A loss of Dan McGarry to Vanuatu would be a huge loss to the region as well,” Professor Robie said.

McGarry has received support from the Media Association of Vanuatu and its 89 members which has urged Prime Minister Salwai to relook at all the contributions the Vanuatu Media Industry has made and all that McGarry has done in promoting the development policies and projects over the last four years of the government.

Iran’s great global adventurers – around the lost world in 10 years

David Robie — Sun, 20 Oct 2019 00:24:10 +0000

David Robie, concluding his three-part series about Iran, profiles an extraordinary pair of Tehran brothers who have been pioneering global research adventurers.

They have been dubbed the “Persian Indiana Joneses”. Their adventures are fabled and hair-raising, as shown by a Jivaro shrunken human head and relics from curious rituals on display from almost 70 years ago.

But the Omidvar brothers from Iran were no gung-ho adventurers, merely gate-crashing hidden tribal and indigenous communities around the world. They were also no elitists.

They were courageous research adventurers and their motto was “all different – all relative”.

A 2015 Iranian Press TV channel documentary about the Omidvar brothers.

Today their exploits and treasured artefacts are kept alive in the fascinating Omidvar Brothers Museum, housed in a restored coach gatehouse near the Green Palace in the Pahlavi era Sa’ad Abad forest complex in North Tehran.

I encountered younger brother Issa Omidvar, now 88, at an amusing public talk he gave at the museum last month, and I took the opportunity to interview him. His elder brother, Abdullah, 90, lives with his wife in Chile where they started a business.

Their adventures and survival were of special interest to me, as in 1972-74 I had spent a year travelling across Africa in two stages from Cape Town to Algiers, driving across the Sahara Desert in the process – chicken feed compared with the brother’s two global odysseys totalling a decade, 1954-1964.

The Pacific Media Centre’s Del Abcede and director Professor David Robie with Issa Omidvar (centre) in Tehran last month. Image: Zahra Ebrahimzadeh/PMC

Travelling east from Tehran via the country’s second city of Mashhad, the brothers first passed through Afghanistan, then Pakistan, India, south-east Asia and Australia, where they lived with Aboriginals. Eventually they crossed the Pacific to Rapanui and headed north through Alaska and Canada into the Arctic.

After a huge sweep through North and South America, they rounded off their first seven-year journey in Antarctica.

Following a short break back home in Iran, the brothers set off again on a second exploration trip in a Citroën 2CV across Africa, including the Congo and the pygmy country of the Ituri jungle. They filmed their exploits along the way.

One of the Omidvar motorbikes and the Citroen 2CV used in the brothers’ expeditions. Image: David Robie/PMC

As Guardian travel writer Kevin Rushby wrote in 2013, “they created a visual record that is now a milestone in film history, a documentary record of a vanished world: peoples, cultures and even entire countries that no longer exist.”

According to Issa at his public Tehran talk, “We had the opportunity of visiting, and holding talks with most presidents, prime ministers, kings and cultural personalities of the world.”

The Omidvar brothers’ book cover.

However, many of the communities that they described in their remarkable book, Omidvar Brothers: In Search of the World’s Most Primitive Tribes, and showed in their various documentaries, no longer live as they once did, untouched in remote locations.

The Omidvar mission – they started off on their motor bikes in 1954 with the equivalent of merely $90 each in their pockets – was about scientific research and documentary making.

In the book preface Nikfarjam, then international affairs director of Aryan International Tourism Magazine, wrote that the Omidvar brothers were “the greatest explorers, adventurers and seekers of knowledge in 10 years of scientific expedition … searching [for] the most primitive tribal people in unknown lands of our planet earth who had never had contact with the outsider before …

“The live stories … will take the reader … to the most severe climatic and various geographical conditions living with unknown savage tribes.

“In fact, [this] scientific research has been so adventurous and exciting that hardly anyone can believe all are true and serious.”

But true they are.

A sandstorm on the way to Mecca. Image: Omidvar Brothers Museum/PMC

Issa Omidvar addressing an audience and journalists about his exploits at the Tehran museum last month. Image: David Robie/PMC

The Iranian Organisation of Cultural Patrimony added in their foreword: “The fruits of their exploration are … great photographic and documentary films, hunting equipment and household utensils from diverse primitive tribes.

“With such a treasure, unique of its kind, the Omidvar Brothers Museum illustrates the wealth, complexity and diversity of human culture … and of human organisation that succumbed, victims of the world’s explosive development.”

Kiwi Matariki makes a comment on the brothers’ message board at the Tehran museum. Image: David Robie/PMC

Browsing through the illustrated book in Farsi (an English-language edition also exists), I came across these sample passages:

Kabul
“The first capital we visited was Kabul, a city with few main streets. There were few vehicles, which was a blessing, but there were lots of bicycles on the streets. Even prominent and well-known people used bicycles … One day we were surprised to see the chancellor of Kabul University riding an old bicycle.”

Jalalabad
“We passed through Jalalabad towards the border of Pakistan. To our delight we discovered a wedding party with riflemen and prepared to photograph … Unknown to us … was that this tribe didn’t like to have photos taken, especially of their ceremonies. When they saw us their cheerful shouts immediately changed to a cry of death and they began hurling hundreds of rocks at us.”

Sri Lanka (then Ceylon)
“It is said that Adam and Eve were expelled from Heaven and began their earthly life in Ceylon. We boarded the ship called Safinet al Arab … She was 43 years old and in considerable disrepair with a capacity of 1100 people, mostly pilgrims for Mecca … on the third day one of the Muslim passengers died, creating chaos. The authorities had no choice but to bury the body at sea. From that moment we feared that a similar fate might befall us.”

Hyderabad
“The Kite War is as significant for the people of Hyderabad in India as horse racing is for the British, bullfighting for the Spanish and football for the Brazilians … Common people and nobles alike participate in the kite competitions, betting enormous amounts of money.”

Lucknow
“When we arrived it was a national holiday – the Colour Festival … We were settled at the university dormitory and sleeping when at dawn we awoke with a loud noise. The students pounded on the door and looked as if they had escaped from Hell. Each with a bucketful of water colours and after rubbing some colour on our forehead, they threw each other in a colourful pond.”

Himalayas
“In order the climb the Himalayas, we had to pass through dangerous, swampy forests to reach the slopes pf the mountains. We had not seen such a dreadful forest … Such a threat becomes a hundredfold at night. The roars of wild animals, especially tigers, made us shake with fear … We touched our legs and found a small creature, a leech. We turned on our flashlight and saw a great number of leeches sucking our blood.”

Amazon
“We were nearing the horrifying tribe of Jivaro [in the headwaters of the Marañon River]. We reached a settlement of huts made of wild sugarcane leaves and bamboo around a clearing. All the men and women with painted bodies were standing by their huts waiting for us. Although they had seen other white people, it was interesting for them to see us – maybe at that moment they were measuring our heads to be shrunken!”

A Jivaro shrunken head on display in the Omidvar Brothers Museum. Image: David Robie/PMC

In my interview with Issa Omidvar, he stressed the critical importance of the value of international travel as a contribution to “global understanding and peace”.

Dr David Robie travelled independently and with no political “minders”.

David Robie talks to Issa Omidvar about the brothers’ research travel philosophy. Video: Del Abcede/Café Pacific

A map of the Omidvar exploration journeys. Image: Omidvar Brothers book

Iran a hugely ‘friendly’ country behind the sabre-rattling

David Robie — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 07:52:28 +0000

Iran attracts an onslaught of negative media in New Zealand and Western media. But is it fair or deserved? David Robie has spent several weeks travelling in the country on sabbatical and finds the media negativity far from the reality of the “most friendly” country he has ever visited in the first of a three-part series.

The headlines were chilling as we flew into Turkey and then Iran. “All out war”, trumpeted The New Zealand Herald, as being an imminent response to last month’s surprise drone attack knocking out almost 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production, blaming the attack on the Islamic Republic without convincing evidence.

President Donald Trump warned that the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran was found to be behind the attacks, and then later apparently backed off and relied on even heavier sanctions.

The next day the Herald belatedly ran the other side of the story, quoting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s response denying the allegations and warning that Iran would defend itself in the case of a US-Saudi attack while offering the “hand of friendship and brotherhood” for overseeing security in the Persian Gulf.

WATCH: Iran’s Rouhani – US sanctions have failed

President Hassan Rouhani says US sanctions have failed to bring Iran’s economy to its knees. Al Jazeera video

Houthi forces in neighbouring Yemen, invaded by a Saudi-led coalition in 2015 that led to widely condemned four-year civil war, claimed to have carried out the drone and rocket attack on the two oil installations at Abaiq and Khurais.

Given the rising geopolitical tensions, as I was about to visit the country for several weeks as a visitor on sabbatical, I was keen to see the realities on the ground in Iran behind the sabre-rattling.

Haven’t we seen this sort of situation before, attempts at regime change by Washington on the flimsiest of evidence? The unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, based on the fictitious claims of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. And look at the chaos and destruction of a nation that resulted from that overwhelming military attack.

“Iran wants peace, prosperity for neighbours” – the Tehran Times earlier this month. Image: David Robie/PMC

Vietnam pretext
And then there was the 1964 manufactured Bay of Tonkin incident that was used as a pretext for US escalation of the war on North Vietnam. What a disaster with the eventual humiliating airlift withdrawal of US combat troops in 1975.

Just a few weeks before the Saudi oil installations attack, Al Jazeera UpFront interviewer and columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote in The Intercept in response to a Washington assessment blaming Iran for an earlier attack on two Saudi oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz:

“Why would you trust the word of a single official on such a sensitive and contentious issue? And why, oh why, would you rely on the testimony of a member of the Trump administration, known globally, of course, for its stringent and unbending adherence to the truth?”

Hasan added this qualification:

“If you’re going to trust the word of a single anonymous official, in this administration of fanatical hawks and shameless dissemblers, why not trust this particular official who was quoted in The New York Times?

One American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential internal planning, said the new intelligence of an increased Iranian threat was “small stuff” and did not merit the military planning being driven by Mr Bolton [then still National Security Adviser before being sacked by Trump]. The official also said the ultimate goal of the year-long economic sanctions campaign by the Trump administration was to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States.

Hasan added a rather stinging rebuke about the performance of Western journalists generally.

Lessons for journalists

Iranian national newspapers … only a handful of English publications among the Farsi-language press. Mostly a different story to tell from Western media. Image: David Robie/PMC

“Plenty of journalists say they want to learn the lessons of Iraq. But the sad reality is that many of my colleagues in the media are, wittingly or unwittingly, becoming complicit in this administration’s cynical and dangerous attempt ‘to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States’.”

Confronted with the tensions and about to arrive in Iran for my first visit – and hopefully not last to this fascinating, friendly and vibrant country with a proud history of ancient civilisations – I consulted our MFAT’s “Travel Safe” website.

Sadly, our government’s advice to travellers is just as flawed as media reports.

Under a large red exclamation icon, the site warns “do not travel within 100km of the border with Afghanistan, within 10km of the Iraqi border or east of the line running from Bam to Jask close to the Pakistan border due to the threat of terrorism and violent crime”.

I won’t quibble about the Iraqi or Pakistan borders – as I did not personally visit those areas, but I suspect the warning is exaggerated, especially when you consider that a record 3.5 million Iranian pilgrims have just been crossing the border into Iraq peacefully, as usual, for the annual Arba’een pilgrimage to Karbala.

Iranian pilgrims heading across the border into Iraq to Karbala. Image: PMC screen shot from Iran’s Press TV channel

However, the Afghan border warning is way off the mark. I have just come back from a week-long visit to Mashhad, Iran’s second city – a beautiful and peaceful metropolis that hosts the world’s third-largest mosque, the Haram-e Razavi shrine. This is only a three-hour drive from the border.

Haram-e Razavi shrine in Mashhad … attracts more than 28 million pilgrims a year. Image: David Robie/PMC

Pilgrims from Pakistan travelling across Iran. Note the hand wave from the bus rooftop luggage rack. Image: David Robie/PMC

For the next section, “Exercise increased caution”, the NZ government advisory warns: “Elsewhere in Iran exercise increased caution due to the potential for civil unrest and the regional threat of terrorism”.

Laughable advisory
Frankly, this is laughable when you consider what New Zealand suffered on March 15 with a terrorist gunman killing a total of 51 peaceful worshippers at two Christchurch mosques being a far worse attack that either of the Iranian incidents mentioned on Travel Safe – in Ahvaz on 22 September 2018 and the capital Tehran on 7 June 2017.

This does not mean no caution is needed given that the repressive rule under the Shah deposed in 1979 has been continued by the revolutionary regime. But for travellers like us, Iran is an astoundingly friendly country that welcomes tourists with genuine enthusiasm and with few overt signs of the restrictions that rile many (such as the hijab rules that have led to widespread White Wednesday protests and agitation over the tragic death of the so-called “Blue Girl” football stadium protester that gained an interim victory last week).

On September 2, 29-year-old Sahar Khodayari, set herself on fire in front of the Tehran revolutionary courthouse after learning she could face a prison sentence for up to two years following her protest attempt to enter the capital’s Azadi Stadium dressed as a boy.

She was dubbed the Blue Girl because this was the colour of her favourite team, Esteghial FC.

Although attendance by women at football matches has been banned since 1981, sometimes exceptions have been made for matches played by the national Iranian team and some women have posed as men to attend.

After Khodayari’s tragic self-immolation, a ban on women at Azadi Stadium was lifted, but it is unclear whether this is permanent or applies elsewhere in the country.

The White Wednesdays campaign was launched by US-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad to oppose compulsory hijab wearing.

No hijab photos
The campaign persuades women to post photos or videos of themselves without headscarves and the journalist publishes them on her social media sites. News reports have cited authorities as saying protesters face up to 10 years, but scores of women have protested anyway and been arrested.

Alinejad is followed on Instagram by almost three million people, an important influence given that other major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Telegram are banned in Iran.

In recent weeks, the detention of two Australian social media “influencers” for allegedly taking photographs with a drone without a permit – and now set free – and the arrest of a British-Iranian social anthropologist without charge have also contributed to negative headlines. (Another dual citizen academic has been detained since 2016).

No Family Visits or Lawyer Allowed for Detained Anthropologist Kameel Ahmady Two Weeks Into Detention

Media freedom organisations such as Paris-based Reporters Without Borders have monitored human rights violations against journalists for years. Iran is cited as the biggest jailer of women journalists.

“We reject these authoritarian rules and I would say 90 percent of Iranians don’t accept them. But we Iranians have become very good at pretending, we are very adaptable people,” says an Esfahan manufacturer, who spent time in New Zealand as a student.

Another Iranian, from Mashhad, who also studied in New Zealand, says, “Our future has been destroyed. For young people like us, we have limited choices.”

However, the country has far more nuanced realities than Western media generally give credit. Back to columnist Mehdi Hasan – what is his advice for journalists in order to provide a more balanced account of the country?

He has four suggestions: “stop the stenography”; get the facts straight; context, context, context; and get better sources.

Under his stenography heading, he condemns “passing along the claims of US officials to readers of viewers, without checking whether they are true or not”.

Getting facts right
Getting facts right – “Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme. Iran has complied with the terms of the nuclear deal.”

It is the US that scuttled the nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – last year while Europe and the UN were satisfied it was working. Trump imposed the punitive sanctions that have rightly been branded by both Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif as “economic terrorism”, especially Washington’s efforts to cut off Iranian revenue from the sale of its oil (a policy currently being defiantly thwarted by China).

Clearly this blunt “maximum pressure” attempt at “regime change” has failed and now the US policy has been exposed as “maximum deceit”, according to the Iranian leadership.

Hasan says journalists ought to provide context by reporting more historical background to the issues. For example, how often do stories report that the US “Eisenhower administration toppled the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Dr Mohammad Mossadegh in a CIA coup in 1953?” He had nationalised the British-owned Anglo-Iranian oil company (later rebranded as British Petroleum).

“Or that the Carter administration offered safe haven to the repressive dictator, the Shah of Iran, after he fled from the Iranian Revolution in 1979?”

Iranian conscript soldiers – young and old – during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Martyrs in that war are honoured in public places today right across the country. Image: David Robie/PMC – pictured from exhibition in Tehran of unidentified photographers

A poster celebrating the sacrifice of martyrs in the eight-year Iran-Iraq War. Posters such as this – and many with individual home town heroes – are displayed everywhere in Iran. Image: David Robie/PMC

And the Reagan administration encouraged Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to launch a surprise invasion of Iran in 1981, a bitter protracted war that lasted eight years with unprepared Iranian conscripts – young and old – suffering most of the estimated one million casualties.

Hasan also urges the use of better sources. Do not simply rely on administration officials, whether in Washington or Wellington. Look to a wider range of sceptical voices and analysts. And Al Jazeera, Turkey’s TRT News and Iran’s Press TV channels are good for more balanced and background perspectives.

Among academics I have talked to, media management social scientist Professor Reza Ebrahimzadeh of the Islamic Azad University at Esfahan, argues that foreign news organisations need to do a far better job in providing “context and history” about Iran to promote global understanding.

More journalists from New Zealand need to go to Iran to see for themselves.

Dr David Robie travelled independently and with no political “minders”.

Media management social scientist Professor Reza Ebrahimzadeh … foreign news organisations need to do a better job of reporting Iran. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

One of the many friendly groups and families encountered across Iran keen for a chat, “selfies” and swapping Instagram accounts. Image: David Robie/PMC

Special Report – The unmasking of Hong Kong

Hugh Bohane — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 09:03:15 +0000

A special multimedia report by Hugh Bohane in Hong Kong

As China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the birth of its Communist Party on October 1 with an extravagant military parade, down south in Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters continued their struggle to have all of their five demands heard. This was met with brute force by Hong Kong’s “raptor” riot police, resulting in serious injuries to journalists and protesters.

A billboard defaced in Hong Kong. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

Veby Indah, a 39-year-old Indonesian journalist, permanently lost the sight in one of her eyes last Sunday while filming. Police shot a rubber bullet into a group she was standing beside while live streaming.

Other local and foreign journalists have made complaints of being physically harassed by the police, something which the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) has strongly condemned.

A poster depicting police brutality. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

For the first time since the protests began four months ago, two protesters have been shot with live ammunition in recent days and more than 1400 people have been arrested since June. The first protester to be struck was an 18-year-old male protester who was shot in the chest by a riot police officer at close range, narrowly missing his heart on October 1. He is in a stable condition but has been charged with one count of rioting and two counts of assaulting a police officer.

The second protester was a teenage boy aged just 14, who was shot by a plainclothes police officer on the evening of October 4. In a night of continued mayhem, Chinese banks and MTR stations were firebombed, which prompted metro lines to be shut down and plunged the city into further chaos.

Recently, I spoke to a well-spoken young 20-something protester named *Dickson attending an anti-police brutality protest at Prince Edward station in Mong Kok.

“A lot of the protests are banned, which is a big problem because protesting is a basic right that Hong Kongers have or used to have. The way that the Hong Kong government and Beijing is handling this isn’t any different to how they have handled things for the last 70 years. In previous times, most protests fail and after awhile the movement dies off and then things get worse. It’s one country going against a special administrative region, we don’t have much we can do as citizens. At the same time, its seems that the protest movement has this time caught a lot more attention internationally,” said Dickson.

Sheer desperation
At the same protest a middle-aged lady named *Mary approached me with a voice of sheer desperation, “We are very afraid of the Hong Kong police and the CCP are hiring secret police from mainland China and they want to arrest our Hong Kong people. We want to see the CCTV footage from this [Prince Edward] metro station to find out what really happened on August 31,” referring to a prior incident, when police were accused of seriously assaulting protesters and allegedly covering up the evidence.

Protesters reach out to Trump for support. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

Earlier that day, I had bumped into a nurse named *Ally who was attending a weekend protest at The British Consulate-General building. After exchanging contact details, she later emailed me thanking us for covering the story, something that multiple Hong Kong citizens have done during our time in Hong Kong.

“I’m a registered nurse working in the department of surgery in one of the hospitals in Hong Kong. Amnesty International reported that the Hong Kong police assaulted a protestor after they were arrested. This is true. One protester was admitted to my ward after he was arrested, his CT report showed a splenic laceration and a fractured nasal bone. We found multiple abrasions over his face and body, there was a lot of bruising which is consistent with being beaten by baton.

“These were noted to be seen all over his body, the laceration on his leg needed to have sutures. I couldn’t believe that the patient got such an injury before he was arrested? As healthcare professionals, all of us felt very shocked and angry after we approached the patient. According to the patient, he said the police took him to the toilet and used their fist to attack his abdomen. They also used some hard object to beat his back and beamed a laser directly into his eyes. I can’t believe they are the police and not triads,” she wrote, along with a screenshot from a text message conversation with one of the doctors on duty at the time.

This escalation of events comes as Chief Executive Carrie Lam adopted the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to introduce a ban on protesters wearing masks, which came into effect on October 5, further pouring more fuel onto the protester’s fire. The repressive law was enacted in the 1920s by the then British colonial power and it was last used in 1967 to quell a communist riot that spilled into Hong Kong from the mainland during the Cultural Revolution.

Communists organised demonstrations targeting police and planted bombs in the streets and causing a period of turmoil. The Emergency Regulations Ordinance can give the government tremendous power to seize assets and search and arrest anyone they chose. It was not difficult for Lam to put this in place due to the fact she has a majority of seats in the Legislative Council.

Growing fears
On top of that, there are still growing fears among some citizens that the PLA could be readying themselves to take matters into their own hands. Earlier in the week, Reuters released an investigative report estimating that (according to diplomats), there might be as many as 12,000 troops already on the ground in Hong Kong.

Masked protesters hold a sign. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

A statue built by protesters. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

Shortly after the mask-ban was announced we spoke with Emily Lau, a former member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council.

“We are at a very dangerous stage now. The pro-Beijing political parties and business people supporting Carrie Lam are very ignorant and unwise to push Hong Kong to the brink. This law about banning face masks is so provocative and I think it is going to be very useless. The whole procedure is wrong. They did not do any consultation. They used the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to give them the power to enact legislation without going through the Legislative Council properly,” Lau told me.

I asked Lau what we can expect to see from the protesters in response to this new law.

“Many protesters have taken part in illegal assemblies anyway and they were not afraid, so they are not going to be afraid of this law. They will have to build another ten prisons, it’s laughable.

I think many groups will be up in arms, even doctors because they wear the masks to protect themselves. The people are not going to take it lying down and many young people think they don’t have any future anyway and they will go and die, which is very sad. They are very emotional and so the thing to do is to help them to calm down not aggravate the situation. This can not go on and nor should it be allowed to go on. Otherwise you will see Hong Kong as once a safe, vibrant and free city suddenly decline, and also if that’s the case, we will no longer be a very good international business and financial center.”

A sea of humanity. Hugh Bohane/PMC

Election climate
Next Month is the district council election and the DAB (pro-Beijing party) has already suggested it should be postponed (perhaps indefinitely) until the climate calms down.

“They can have an election in Afghanistan, so why can’t they have one here? But of course they are very afraid they will lose and lose very badly. That means not only will they lose their seats in the the district council, which have no power, but our system is such that the district councilors elect 117 members of the chief executive election committee and the way this election is carried out is that the overall winner takes all. So whoever gets a majority in the district council will get all the 117 seats in the chief executive election committee. So if they do very poorly they are going to hand over 117 seats to the pro-democracy camp. But first let’s see what happens in the coming days with this mask ban…”

A protester holds a sign outside the British Consulate-General. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

Protesters laying flowers at Prince Edward station. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

Riot police hold up up a sign to deter protesters. Image: Hugh Bohane/PMC

Gallery: Guardianship photo shoot with the Ihumātao ‘protectors’

Del Abcede — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 08:31:43 +0000

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

The Pacific Media Centre’s Del Abcede joined the Ihumātao “protectors” protest at the weekend to soak up the atmosphere of guardianship over the future of the sacred indigenous Māori site.

Fletcher Building plans to build 480 homes on the site but work has been suspended by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern while talks continue between various stakeholders.

The SOUL (Save Our Unique Landscape) protectors group says the land has historical, cultural and archaeological significance and should be left an open space or returned to mana whenua.

The block of land was confiscated in 1863 by British colonial authorities, acquired by the Crown and sold to the Wallace family. In 2016, the 32ha block was bought by the Fletcher group for housing development.

Here is a portfolio of Del’s images.

Ihumātao - protecting the future

1 of 14

PMC projects creative ‘grab bag’ unveiled at midwinter showcase

Michael Andrew — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 07:22:17 +0000

By Michael Andrew

A creative “grab bag” of projects has been unveiled by the Pacific Media Centre in a showcase of collaboration across academic and communication communities.

Held at Auckland University of Technology on Friday and hosted by PMC advisory board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, the PMC “Midwinter Showcase” celebrated the launch of a double edition of Pacific Journalism Review, the 2018 Bearing Witness documentary Banabans of Rabi, the Pacific Media Watch Project – The Genesis video and the new PMC Online website.

Doctoral candidate and journalist Atakohu Middleton opened the night with a karakia before pro-vice chancellor and faculty dean Professor Guy Littlefair officially launched PJR – which focuses heavily on the New Zealand mosque massacre and media dilemmas of democracy – with a powerful and poignant speech.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor Dr David Robie … an occasion to celebrate a range of projects coming to fruition in one moment. Image: Michael Andrew/PMC

Describing universities as the “critic and conscience of society”, Professor Littlefair lauded the value of the new PJR research in light of the media response to the March 15 atrocity.

He said how the privileged Pākehā narrative of New Zealand history made the violence of the attack all the more affronting for a media community consisting of mostly young, white journalists.

“This double issue of PJR that I have the privilege to launch tonight picks up on the narrative at precisely this point,” he said.

“’Dilemmas for journalists and democracy [PJR title]’ – these five words encapsulate for me the critic and conscience role of universities.

“This journal provides once again a magnificent example of the best, most relevant, most meaningful research that I as a dean could hope to see come from this wonderful faculty of ours.

“David and the team, I could not be more proud.”

The trailer for Banabans of Rabi.

Banabans of Rabi
Banabans of Rabi was then screened after an introduction by AUT screen production senior lecturer Jim Marbrook.

Marbrook, who helped produce the film, described it as a successful product of collaboration between journalism and screen production students.

He explained that film creators Blessen Tom and Hele Ikimotu had to overcome particular challenges to get to the remote Fijian island of Rabi and make the documentary.

“The philosophy of the Bearing Witness project is to go to areas that are under reported, that are quite difficult to get to; with that comes risks and complications.

“It’s kind of a pressure cooker situation to drop two students into.

“There is not a lot of power on the island, it’s isolated. Complicating that is the mix of languages; Fijian, Gilbertese and Banaban as well.

Blessen Tom then described filming on Rabi where scarcity of electricity meant that he had to be very selective with his choice of shots to conserve battery power.

Sri Krishnamuthi and Blessen Tom’s documentary about Pacific Media Watch.

PMW Project – The Genesis
Postgraduate communications student and former NZ Press Association journalist Sri Krishnamurthi introduced the Pacific Media Watch Project – The Genesis documentary which pays homage to the origins of the PMW media freedom project.

Through making the film with Blessen Tom, Krishnamurthi described learning about the project, from its creation in response to the wrongful arrest of three Tongans in the famous “contempt of Parliament” case in 1996, to its two decades since as a “watchdog of Pacific journalism.”

He stressed the value of the project and its role in the development of student journalists.

“The beauty of it is the use of student contributing editors – all of them will echo my sentiments; that this little gem which is invaluable as a guardian of Pacific journalism must be kept going for years to come.”

PMC Online
Finally, Tony Murrow of Little Island Press unveiled the new mobile friendly and robust PMC Online website, the product of almost two years of his team’s work in collaboration with the PMC.

He said the bold and colourful design reflected the vibrancy and diversity of the Pacific Media Centre.

The website is due to go live on www.pmc.aut.ac.nz in the coming days.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie acknowledged all those who had contributed and collaborated on the assortment of projects – including Pacific Journalism Review co-editors and collaborators Khairiah Rahman, Dr Philip Cass, Del Abcede, Nicole Gooch and Professor Wendy Bacon, whom he described as one of the best investigative journalists in Australia.

Professor Guy Littlefair with Pacific Journalism Review team members designer Del Abcede (from left), founding editor Professor David Robie, associate editor Dr Philip Cass, assistant editor Khairiah Rahman and Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, an editorial board member and chair of the PMC Advisory Board. Image: Michael Andrew/PMC

30 arrested in Honiara post-election riots as calm returns to capital

Pacific Media Centre — Thu, 25 Apr 2019 03:00:00 +0000

Police say some people decided to take the law into their own hands and marched through some streets of the capital, fighting, causing public disturbances and property damage, reports the Solomon Star.

RNZ Pacific reports that an uneasy calm has returned to the capital while Sogavare rejected accusations his past governments have “failed” Malaita over project implementation.

More reports, pictures on ABC Pacific Beat

A police officer speaks to a youth during yesterday’s disturbances in Honiara. Image: Solomon Star

Significant damage was caused at the Pacific Casino Hotel and many vehicles were also damaged.

These crowd marches were illegal and investigating police are expected to arrest more suspects.

Five Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) and four Correctional Services officers were injured and needed medical attention, the Star reports.

Commissioner Matthew Varley called on residents to stay home unless it was “extremely necessary” to avoid further trouble.

Police operation
“I have ordered a large police operation to conduct more high visibility patrols across Honiara tonight and police will stop anyone that is causing trouble around the city,” he said.

Manasseh Sogavare speaking to media yesterday after being elected prime minister again. Image: Solomon Star

“People engaged in disorderly conduct will be searched and dealt with.

“I have also ordered a number of road blocks and checkpoints to be put in place to reduce traffic in the city.”

Commissioner Varley said: “This is necessary to ensure we maintain security across Honiara tonight. The RSIPF will not take any chances when it comes to public safety.

“If you are a law abiding citizen, then you have nothing to fear.

“Police are in control and we are continuing to respond to any incidents of disturbance around the city.

“But anyone who is planning to carry out any illegal activity can expect police to deal with you sternly.”

Swift action
The Police Response Team (PRT) officers and riot squad officers have been ordered to take swift action against anyone using violence.

“I urge all law abiding citizens to stay at home tonight and stay off the streets,” Commissioner Varley said.

“We need peace in our families, our communities and in our nation.”

Reports from RNZ Pacific and the Solomon Star.

Solomon Islands police in riot gear during yesterday’s post-election disturbances in Honiara. Image: Melanesian News Network

Telling the real stories behind ‘plastic’ Pacific islanders and stereotypes

Leilani Sitagata — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 06:45:17 +0000

A look at the lives of Pacific Islanders who choose to ignore or struggle to embrace their heritage. Video: Plastic Polynesia trailer

By Leilani Sitagata

Two final-year communication studies students at Auckland University of Technology decided for their end-of-year project to film a mini documentary about what it means to be a “plastic” islander.

The television majors Elijah Fa’afiu and Jamey Bailey brought it all to life to create Plastic Polynesia.

The nickname “plastic” refers to a person who is out of touch with their culture and perhaps cannot understand or speak their language.

The film looks at the lives of Pacific Islanders who choose to ignore or struggle to embrace their heritage and follows a student learning Samoan for the first time.

Fa’afiu says he was passionate to pursue this concept because he can relate to being “plastic”.

AUT filmmakers Jamey Bailey (producer) and Elijah Fa’afiu (director). Image: Leilani Sitagata/PMC

Plastic identity
“I identify with the term ‘plastic’ and it turns out that I’m not the only one who does,” he says.

“I wanted to explain this word and how it differentiates Pacific Islanders from each other.”

He says that over the years he has not been in touch with his Samoan and Māori heritage, and this is the case for a lot of Kiwis.

‘Disconnected from roots’
“I feel I’ve been disconnected from my roots, that wasn’t intentional – it was just how things ended up.”

Alongside Fa’afiu was producer Bailey, who was in a similar boat to him when it comes to being connected to his culture.

“I label myself as ‘plastic’ because it’s an easy scapegoat.

“I don’t speak the language, I don’t do church, I don’t do all the things I’m supposed to do.”

He says that this film was an opportunity to challenge and explore what exactly “we are meant to do”.

Part of the documentary follows university student Rashad Stanley as he undertakes the journey to learning the Samoan language.

Not knowing
This was important to Fa’afiu as he says he can relate to the experience of not knowing such a big part of his culture.

“Being born in New Zealand, my parents did take me to church and speak Samoan to me, but I never really absorbed the language.”

Plastic Polynesia also touches on the idea of how Pacific Islanders are stereotyped.

Bailey says he strongly believes this generation is the one that’s working hard to break the misconceptions surrounding all types of people.

“Growing up, the common stereotypes are that we’re only at school for the sports and music, and mainstream media has been a big part of the way Pacific Islanders are perceived.

“With Plastic Polynesia, we’re trying to break those stereotypes and show that there are Polynesians out there who are different.”

The film also includes an interview with Hibiscus and Ruthless’ Nafanuatele Lafitaga Mafaufau Peter as well as many students.

Bailey says the message is key and he hopes the audience will catch on to the importance behind the story they share.

“In terms of face value, a lot of people just see brown skin and we want to tell that stories don’t get heard.

“Our goal by the end of this is to bring awareness that we can’t keep grouping people, we’re all individual.”

Leilani Sitagata is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Plastic Polynesia will be screened during the AUT Shorts film festival being held at The Vic in Devonport on November 22

‘I was coerced into the 1987 coup,’ admits Sitiveni Rabuka

Sri Krishnamurthi — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 10:33:35 +0000

By Sri Krishnamurthi of Asia-Pacific Report

A repentant Sitiveni Rabuka, the Fiji military strongman who sparked off the country’s “coup culture” in 1987, admits he was “coerced” by the defeated Alliance party into carrying out the first coup.

Three decades after I watched Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka walking Parliamentarians out of the back door of Parliament at the point of a gun on 14 May 1987, dressed in a light-blue suit, he has told me who the architects of the coup were – and his regrets about it all.

It has taken 31 years, and Rabuka, the face of the 1987 Fiji coups, is becoming more open and vocal about who were really behind the South Pacific’s first military takeover.

The 14 May 1987 Fiji military coup by Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka … sparked off the legacy of the so-called “coup culture”. Image: FB file

Hardly a day goes by when Sitiveni Rabuka, now leader of the Social, Liberal, Democratic Party (SODELPA), isn’t asked to recall that fateful day that changed the course of history in Fiji.

FIJI ELECTIONS SPECIAL REPORT 14 NOVEMBER 2018

The people of Fiji who have joined the diaspora in other parts of the Pacific, Commonwealth and beyond still view him with suspicion, if not the hatred of old – believing the old adage that a “leopard can’t change his spots”.

It is for that reason I was a little apprehensive to meet the man who loomed larger in the imagination than Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Unlike the slasher, Rabuka was real. So was the impact of his coups.

SODELPA leader Sitiveni Rabuka … today he is very much the casual, relaxed diplomat. Image: Sri Krishnamurthi/PMC

But, to be greeted by “bula” followed by his disarming and wide Fijian smile makes one realises that Rabuka, who has been on the international stage since he became Prime Minister in 1992, is now very much a diplomat.

Gone was the soldier
Gone was the soldier and in his place sat a casual, relaxed, worldly politician ready to speak his truth with remarkable honesty.

Taking him back to 1987, the burning questions were: whether he thought that the coup’s objectives were met? And who were the unseen faces behind the takeover?

Rabuka reiterated that the coup was instigated by the Alliance Party and its leader, the late then Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (who later became president). Each time he talks on the subject, Rabuka seems to provide a little more detail than before.

“1987 was really political in the sense that the Alliance leaders at the time wanted something done, wanted something changed, and yes (I took the action),” Rabuka says, referring to the meetings he had with Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara that led to his actions – the leader of the now-defunct Alliance party.

“The only way to change the situation now is to throw this constitution out of the window.”

These were the words of Sir Ratu Mara,” he told Dr Sue Onslow in an interview in Suva on Thursday, 10 April 2014.

Time and time again he apologised for the coups in 1987.

‘I have apologised’
“I have said that before, I have apologised for the hurt to the people for the coups,” he says without hesitation.

“I knew they [the coups] were wrong and because I apologised I was forgiven. I apologised to the Indians at the time on the very next “Girmit” [agreement] day on May 14 the following year [1988]– one year after the first coup.

“I attended the “Girmit” festival and apologised.”

Multiculturalism is very much a part of his lexicon now, although he does not subscribe to the theory of assimilation and homogeneity in all cultures and races.

“The biggest challenge to multiracialism all over the world is understanding — crosscultural understanding,” he says.

“As long as we understand each other we can co-operate, not integrate and not assimilate but we can harmoniously co-exist.”

If SODELPA wins next month’s election what does he intend to be his first action on the steps of Parliament?

‘I’m anticipating victory’
“In Parliament I will be thanking the people for giving us a majority. I’m anticipating that we’ll be victorious, and I will thank the people of Fiji for giving us their confidence, particularly in me.

“The many that I have hurt, they may not vote for me this time, but more and more are coming around and embracing me.”

He admits to trying to form a coalition against FijiFirst, but not all – like Roko Tupou Draunidalo and the Hope party – were buying into it. That she has no time for Rabuka is evident in her frequent, public outbursts.

“I don’t know, maybe because her step-father was Dr [Timoci] Bavadra [elected Prime Minister in 1987 when he carried out the coup] and maybe she has not forgiven me since 87,” says Rabuka.

“We’ve spoken to everyone except for Tupou. Her party was not formed when we were doing the coalition talks and she just went straight ahead and said, ‘no, we’ll never coalesce with SODELPA as long as Rabuka is involved’”.

Besides domestic politics, Rabuka is keeping an eye on the geopolitical situation. The indications are that he is uncomfortable with the growing presence of China in Fiji.

“China is an international player but not a traditional partner and we should consolidate our co-operation with our traditional partners – people we know and whose systems are similar to ours.”

Chinese base plan ‘blocked’
China announced it was giving Fiji 30 million RMB yuan (FJ$9.5 million) in aid last month.

Just a day later, Australian media reported that it had been revealed that Canberra had successfully blocked China from funding a major regional military base in Fiji.

In August, Australia and Fiji jointly announced the Black Rock military base in Nadi was to be redeveloped as a regional hub for police and peacekeeping training, according to a report by Radio New Zealand.

“If it is aid it is aid, but it is not really aid because it has to be a reciprocal arrangement and I don’t know what that reciprocal arrangement is.”

There were rumours of China setting up a naval base near Suva like those reportedly planned for Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

However, Rabuka does not think it is plausible and would require much more than simply making a military decision.

“Bases are government decisions, not military decisions, I don’t think they can just come in and set up a base without the government [approving it].

Government should allocate
“The government should accept the aid as aid to the government and allocate it, instead of the aid going straight to the military,” says the man who should know.

After selling land he owned in Savusavu, Vanua Levu, to a Chinese from Brisbane in July, Rabuka was labelled a hypocrite.

However, he defended his actions by saying in the Fiji Sun: “I had an arms-length dealing with him. The name was in Chinese, but the address was from Brisbane.”

Rabuka’s road to Damascus didn’t just seemingly happen overnight but through all his trials and tribulations, and he isn’t finished yet.

He still has battles to fight, this time as a politician for SODELPA, not as a soldier.

Sri Krishnamurthi is a journalist and Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student at Auckland University of Technology. He is attached to the University of the South Pacific’s Journalism Programme, filing for USP’s Wansolwara News and the AUT Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report.

Pacific storytelling with a focus on the ignored and ‘untold’ issues

Pacific Media Watch — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 05:09:45 +0000

A video made by an AUT screen production graduate, Sasya Wreksono, marking the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre. Video: PMC

PROFILE: By Craig Major of AUT News

Based at Auckland University of Technology, the Pacific Media Centre is a small team dedicated to telling stories from across the Pacific that you won’t read anywhere else.

Established in 2007 by Professor David Robie in AUT’s School of Communication Studies, the centre focuses on postgraduate research projects and publications that impact on indigenous communities across the Pacific.

“We’re a small team, but the scope of what we cover is phenomenal,” Dr Robie explains. “As researchers and reporters, we look at the repercussions that big issues like climate change, human rights violations and press freedom have on these small communities in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The team are active publishers, managing several platforms including the Pacific Media Watch and Asia Pacific Report news websites, the half-yearly academic research journal Pacific Journalism Review and its companion Pacific Journalism Monographs, the blog Niusblog and Toktok, a quarterly newsletter.

The centre has also secured a media partnership with Radio New Zealand – the first content-sharing arrangement between a New Zealand university and a news organisation – and hosts the weekly Southern Cross radio programme on 95bFM.

Some of the Pacific Media Centre team: Sri Krishnamurthi (from left), Blessen Tom, Leilani Sitagata, Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, Professor David Robie and Del Abcede. Image: Craig Major/AUT

Dr Robie, along with Advisory Board chair Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, sees the centre as having a strong advocacy role across the Pacific and further afield.

“I think it is a real strength of the PMC that the team can find issues in the Pacific that just aren’t covered in the mainstream New Zealand media, then explore them and report on them with authority and conviction,” Dr Robie says.

Beyond a travel brochure
“The team is skilled in identifying issues that are beyond the scope of what the public sees in a travel brochure.”

Dr Nakhid echoes this sentiment. “New Zealand’s media can be very insular when reporting on what is happening in the Pacific – even though there is so much happening right outside our doorstep.”

Internally the team takes a cross-discipline approach, working closely with students and staff in the School of Communication Studies (particularly Te Ara Motuhenga, the documentary collective) and the School of Social Sciences.

The centre also has international partnerships, such as with the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, and maintains close ties to Pacific communities based in New Zealand – and are sure to collaborate with community groups for events and seminars.

“Pacific Media Centre organised a seminar about the refugee situation in Myanmar recently,” recalls publications designer Del Abcede. “Through talking to the Burmese citizens that we had invited, we discovered a range of issues that only came to light in the mainstream after the Myanmar election.”

PMC reporting staff – mostly postgraduate students – are encouraged to uncover and explore the issues that interest them.

“Working with the PMC has been very illuminating,” says Sri Krishnamurthi, a postgraduate student who has covered Fiji-based news for PMC, and has interviewed two of the three party heads hoping to win Fiji’s general election next month.

“I have a background in communications and journalism, but doing this kind of reporting has been a real eye-opener,” says Krishnamurthi, a Fiji-born journalist who worked with the NZ Press Association for 17 years.

Film festival screening
And just this week two students from the centre, Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom, have had their Bearing Witness climate change documentary, Banabans of Rabi, accepted for screening at the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival.

The trailer of Banabans of Rabi, a short documentary on climate change accepted by the 2018 Nuku’alofa Film Festival. Video: BOR

The freedom to pursue stories in the region is an opportunity for Dr Robie and the team.

“Students that work with us learn so much – and there really is no underestimation of their abilities,” Dr Robie said.

“Not only that, it promotes media and journalism as a viable career path for Pacific students, and leads to opportunities for international journalism projects.”

Dear Heather, we’re really talented, empowered – and we’re not leeches!

Leilani Sitagata — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 18:30:34 +0000

The Plantation Conversations video.

By Leilani Sitagata

Since media personality Heather Du Plessis-Allan’s “leech” comments late last month, some of New Zealand’s Pasifika community have responded with messages of empowerment.

Online platform Plantation Conversations has created a video compiled of people who were affected by what the broadcaster said.

PC co-founders Tara Leota and Torisse Laulu told Asia Pacific Report that after seeing a story about the “leech” comments they knew they had to do something.

Leota says it was hard to swallow and she was “appalled” that Du Plessis-Allan would say that.

“We wanted to make a video that would empower our people who may have been hurt or disappointed by the words used by a woman in her position.”

The video includes short testimonials of Pasifika people celebrating their success. However, Leota says it wasn’t an easy task gathering people.

“We worked with those who were confident enough to be on camera, and coincidentally they were students.”

100,000 views plus
The video currently has more than 100,000 views on Facebook and numbers are still growing.

However, people have “misinterpreted our intentions” since only students were used.

“Degrees and academic achievement aren’t the only form of success.

“But they are symbolic to our parents and grandparents’ hard work, sacrifice and endurance.

“Without them we wouldn’t have achieved these degrees and attained good careers – so in a way we’re also celebrating our aiga.”

AUT’s Foundation Professor of Pacific Studies Tagaloatele Dr Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, who recently retired and took up a role with the National Commission of UNESCO, says Du Plessis-Allan’s remarks were “extremely naïve, ill-informed and actually quite inflammatory”.

Tagaloatele emphasises that New Zealand is a country closely related with the Pacific Islands.

“New Zealand considers itself a region of the Pacific. She has totally underestimated and can’t understand the trust, respect, and historic ties.”

New Zealand Pacific pride
Despite Du Plessis-Allan saying Pacific Islands are “leeching” off of New Zealand, Tagaloatele still believes the country is proud of being linked to the islands.

“I think New Zealand actually takes great pride in saying that it is a Pacific nation.”

Although it has been a few weeks since the comments were made, the Pasifika community is still supporting the idea of empowerment.

Laulu says they have had an overwhelming amount of love and support both here and overseas for their video.

“Some misinformed opinions are disappointing especially when they come from your own people, but we are happy that we are seeing a healthy discussion between those who are for and against our video.”

PC have not heard about whether Du Plessis-Allan has seen their video or not, but either way they say they are not concerned.

“We aren’t bothered if she does or doesn’t watch our video, we don’t want any more attention focused on her.

“We are just happy to see our people remain resilient and uplifted. If that’s the case, then we’ve done our job.”

Leilani Sitagata is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

#IAmNotALeech
#WeAreNotLeeches

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

Sri Krishnamurthi — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 06:30:09 +0000

Climate change is a major worry to the Pacific Islands and it was the major talking point at the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) earlier this month. Barbara Dreaver of Television New Zealand, who was detained and questioned in Nauru, talks to Sri Krishnamurthi of Asia-Pacific Report.

Two significant events happened at the 49th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) earlier this month – climate change and ratification of the Boe agreement (a regional security pact that succeeded the 2000 Biketawa agreement), says Barbara Dreaver, a veteran journalist with 20 years’ experience covering the Pacific.

Dreaver made headlines herself by being detained and questioned for four hours after interviewing an asylum seeker from a detention centre on Nauru.

The centres were declared a forbidden area when Nauru approved journalists’ accreditation for the forum on September 3-6.

APJS NEWSFILE

Initially, Nauru revoked Dreaver’s accreditation but reinstated it, so she could cover the forum proper, and she did not allow it to detract from doing her job.

Climate change is a growing burden for the Pacific and was the key discussion point at the forum.

Central to this is the demand by the Pacific Island countries that the United States return to the Paris climate agreement of 2015.

In short, the Paris Agreement is an ambition to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C – and to limit the increase to 1.5 °C – as called for by the smaller island states at the forum.

Plea to the US
“Pacific leaders have also called on the US to return to the Paris agreement,” says Barbara Dreaver.

The call comes on the back of US President Donald Trump announcing his intention in June 2017 to withdraw. Under the agreement, the earliest possible withdrawal date for the US is November 2020, although moves have been afoot for the US administration to withdraw from the agreement.

Climate change has become such an important problem for Pacific Island nations that it had to take centre stage at the forum.

“Yes, this was the main thrust of the forum. The leaders have formally requested the United Nations appoint a special adviser on climate change and security and they have also called on the UN Security Council to appoint a special rapporteur to produce a regular review of global, regional and national security threats caused by climate change,” Dreaver told Asia Pacific Report.

Most of the controversy at the forum centred around Nauru, which was once a phosphate-mining mecca now virtually stripped dry and reduced to playing an off-shore role as a detention centre for asylum seekers to Australia.

Nauru is set to receive nearly A$26 million from Australia in Official Development Assistance in 2018-19, which is almost a quarter of its gross domestic product.

“The money Nauru receives from Australia is valuable to this cash-strapped nation. It’s not only in cash terms – buildings have been improved etc. For Nauru, while it’s a headache, it’s also a godsend,” says Dreaver.

Sensitive refugee discussions
Sensitive discussions around the detainees did take place under muted conditions and away from the media, she noted.

“The discussion around the detainees on Nauru took place in the bilaterals and only at a general level.

“There was some sensitivity given it’s a domestic issue for the most part and Nauru had made it clear it did not consider it part of the forum – even if others did.

“It should be noted that the bigger non-government organisations like World Vision or Amnesty, which would have brought up the issue at side events [civil society discussions)] were refused visas to Nauru.”

Incarcerated children on the island, kept in conditions widely considered inhumane, hardly rated a mention at the forum.

“The children on Nauru are staying put – I understand there are now approximately 109 of them,” says Dreaver.

An Australian decision
New Zealand did discuss the potential resettlement of some of the asylum seekers but were told it was an Australian decision.

“Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister) discussed it with Nauru at the bilateral discussions but at the end of the day, if Australia doesn’t agree with the transferral of refugees to NZ it won’t happen. The decision is not the Nauru governments’ to make,” says Dreaver.

That was not to say New Zealand did not have a contribution to make at the PIF, even though one commentator in New Zealand likened Pacific countries to “leeches”.

“Most of New Zealand’s contribution was behind the scenes. For example, like some of the other member countries it had input on the Biketawa Plus or Boe Declaration,” she said.

“New Zealand’s presence must not be underestimated… the only times a New Zealand Prime Minister has not attended a forum has been when it has been close to an election.

“While fellow leaders have always publicly expressed their understanding, they have also made it clear New Zealand is missed and it doesn’t go down well.

“New Zealand is strong on fisheries in the region and its input in this area is strong,” she says on a food source that is dear to the heart of all Pacific Islanders.

Climate change priority
Again, there was no getting away from climate change and the security of the region, as Dreaver points out.

“Yes, the Boe declaration was ratified (named Boe as this is name of the President of Nauru’s [Baron Waqa] village where it was signed).

“The leaders had to go back to the table in the evening as Australia had some concerns over the language about climate change which other leaders describe as the single greatest threat to the region.

“There is a strong agreement for resources for cash-strapped nations, particularly in the area of cybercrime – it’s expected New Zealand and Australia will provide specialist and technical knowledge to help small island nations combat this,’’ Dreaver says.

Progress was made at the 49th sitting of the Pacific Islands Forum despite it being held in the controversial venue of Nauru.

Young PMN journalist ‘flips the switch’ on Pasifika news stories

Leilani Sitagata — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 03:17:56 +0000

By Leilani Sitagata

Becoming a journalist wasn’t always on the radar for a young Pasifika reporter from Auckland who covered the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit in Nauru earlier this month.

Auckland University of Technology alumni Mabel Muller is now a journalist for the Pacific Media Network (PMN).

She graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor of Communication Studies, majoring in journalism. But that wasn’t her goal at first.

“It was my dream to pursue performing arts,” she says.

“But career pathways like that aren’t always supported by Pasifika people and after I talked about it with my parents my Dad wasn’t keen on me doing that.”

Muller was born in Tonga and grew up in Mangere while attending Marcellin College.

She says she was left trying to decide what to do instead of studying the arts after it not being the preferred choice of her parents.

Passion for talking
“That discouraged me going down that pathway, but I still had a passion for talking.

“I couldn’t pursue acting, so I thought communications might be the answer to my problem.”

Initially the goal was to major in television, but Muller didn’t make the top 20 cut off.

“Journalism was my second option and I got put there by default, but I grew to love it in my last year.”

Muller says in an interview with Asia Pacific Report that while studying she became quite aware of the way Pasifika people are represented by the media and she was “fired up”.

“Once I learnt how often [Pasifika people’s] stories were perceived in mainstream media, I was so determined that I wanted to be part of the group that changes that.

“I wanted to be part of the movement that flips the switch of Pacific perception in society through media.”

Hesitant to step out
However, straight after graduation Muller was hesitant to step out and apply for jobs in the media.

She says that during her final year there were only a few students in her major who were of Pasifika descent.

“I guess being a minority in our major made me feel inadequate as a journalist compared to others.

“Obviously English is their first language and so of course they’d be better at writing than me.”

Almost a year on from graduating, Muller says she couldn’t stay away from journalism any longer.

“I applied everywhere, and I kept getting declined even though they were only junior reporting roles.”

Through connections she found out about an opening as the receptionist for PMN, applied and got the job.

Neutral position
“It was awesome because being a newbie in the industry as it was good for me to be in a neutral position where I could get a feel for what things were like – especially in the Pacific context.”

Seven months after working for PMN, Muller was shifted from reception to the newsroom.

“They were like we can’t have a journalist sitting at the front desk doing nothing and not putting her skills to good use.”

During university, Muller didn’t realise her broadcasting papers might come in handy someday in her work.

“When I came [to PMN] I thought, oh gosh, all that I learnt in radio journalism, I actually need to apply here.”

Muller says she wants to produce stories that are positive, although she won’t shy away if some hard-hitting truth needs to be told.

“I always want my stories to improve the lives of Pacific people, to inspire, build, uplift and empower.

Accountability ‘biggest value’
“Sometimes there are stories we have to report on which don’t do those things and that can be uncomfortable.

“But at the end of the day that won’t stop me because accountability is one of the biggest values of journalism.”

At the start of September, Muller was flown to Nauru where she reported on the Pacific Islands Forum for PMN.

“I saw the aftermath of years of colonisation through phosphate mining and the damages on the island through that.”

She says the experience was “overwhelming” and overall not what she expected.

“I’m used to going back to the islands and it being rich in land and being plentiful of food.

So, going to Nauru and seeing they didn’t have that was so shocking.”

Nauruan viewpoint
Muller believes something that needs to be voiced more is the Nauruan people’s viewpoint, rather than just the government and the refugees.

“Journalism is about balance and giving everyone a voice.

“The Nauruan people play a big part in their story because that’s their island.”

Aged just 23, Muller has only scratched the surface but aims to shut down as many stereotypes as possible along the way.

“I hope one day to look back and see that I’ve been part of that change in perspective that we’re not just sports players.

“We are more than just crime, obesity and non-communicable disease statistics.”

Leilani Sitagata is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Mabel Muller and Tongan journalist ‘Anau Taufa at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru earlier this month. Image: Pacific Media Network

Fisherman kept in ‘abject’ conditions at sea repatriated from Fiji, says lawyer

Rahul Bhattarai — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 08:07:06 +0000

By Rahul Bhattarai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A “flea-infested bed” on board the Yu Shun 88. Image: Lawyers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No comment was available from the company’s involved.

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

The infected hand of one of the fishermen on board Yu Shun 88. Image: Lawyers

Refugees, journalist detention in Nauru ‘overshadow Pacific issues’

Pacific Media Centre — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 01:05:04 +0000

Support was widespread for journalist Barbara Dreaver’s detention at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru earlier this month. But, reports Maxine Jacobs for Asia Pacific Journalism, some commentators argue journalists should abide by their host nation’s reporting regulations and the Nauru refugee crisis is not as important to Pacific nations as it is to New Zealand and Australia.

While controversy dogged Nauru’s detention of TVNZ Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver during the Pacific Islands Forum earlier this month, some critics question how the reporting “overshadowed” climate change and other critical Pacific issues.

New Zealand journalists have expressed their outrage against the holding of Dreaver during the summit, but Massey University’s Pasifika director Associate Professor Malakai Koloamatangi says reporting of important issues discussed at the forum was sidelined by attention focused on media freedom.

“Because of what happened to Barbara Dreaver, and the lack of access to refugees, it was kind of a distraction and it detracted from maybe covering the main business at the forum,” he says.

APJS NEWSFILE

Dr Koloamatangi says issues such as climate change, regional security, immigration and trade are significant concerns for the Pacific and the forum.

However, these issues had been overshadowed by Dreaver and Nauru’s refugee camps.

“The refugee issue is probably not as important in the Pacific as it is in New Zealand and Australia, that’s really the reality of the situation.

People here and Australia have a lot of time to be concerned about the refugees in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, but unfortunately for Pacific Islanders themselves there are other pressing issues like poverty and domestic violence, third world diseases and so on that they are probably more concerned about.”

Detained, released and then reinstated TVNZ Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver … Nauru government “displeased” with NZ reporting on the refugee issue. Image: Barbara Dreaver/Twitter

Highly sensitive
Dr Koloamatangi says the refugee issue is a highly sensitive one for Nauru.

He says he does not condone limiting press freedom, but it is a sensitive and complicated issue which needs to be looked at from many points of view.

“All journalists need to be respectful of the laws and regulations of the countries where they work…but on the other hand you have people who have decided that this is the way they’re going to work, regardless of the fact that they will be punished by the law.

“Some of them have been to prison, so it’s a choice.

“Obviously when Barbara decided not to follow the directions given by the Nauruan government she was obviously taking a risk, and with risk come possibilities of penalties and punishment…but it’s what makes her the quality journalist that she is.”

Nauru issued a statement explaining Dreaver’s detention by police, saying her accreditation and access for the Pacific Islands Forum had been revoked due to a breach in visa terms, but was reinstated the next day.

Dreaver said the interview she held with a refugee was outside a restaurant, not inside a camp.

Detained three hours
However during the interview she said she was questioned by police and held at a police station for three hours for breaching her visa.

“I was under the impression, and I know, we were allowed to talk to refugees. I think it probably shows that things are a wee but sensitive here. In fact, a lot sensitive.”

Nauru’s statement said the government expected media to portray the detention of Dreaver as preventing press freedom.

“We have only asked for co-operation from the media in order to preserve public safety, and this is not unreasonable.”

Nauru President Baron Waqa said media attending the forum were not interested issues in the Pacific – only issues for their own nations and they should have had a stronger focus on the forum.

“How many leaders here? But we’re having to deal with these other issues which do not even touch on the concerns of the Pacific and the rest of the leaders. It disappoints us,” he said.

“Don’t tell me about refugees being an issue. How can it be an issue for Tonga, for Kiribati? No, it’s an issue for Australia and for all those refugee advocates out there.”

‘Selling news’
President Waqa said journalists were invited and came to Nauru to report on the forum but chose to report on other issues on the island.

He said the “media are impressing your will on us” and “sell our news”.

However, Radio New Zealand journalist Gia Garrick, who reported on the forum, rejected the President’s statement.

“Sell the stories? For money? Well, being part of [public broadcaster] RNZ I would completely refute that.

“It’s kind of a double standard from the President because on the first day he invited journalists to go and talk to refugees in the community, saying things along the lines of the refugees here live harmoniously, they live in the community, we’re not going to stop access to them, we invite you to talk to them and you’re more than welcome.”

A journalist who attended the forum provided Pacific Media Centre with the guidelines issued to journalists covering the event which states:

“You are only authorised to report on, or take photos or videos of, the PIF (Pacific Islands Forum). Any other subjects must be approved by the RON (Republic of Nauru).”

Mixed messages
Garrick said journalists were sent mixed messages from the get go because guidelines were vague and as the refugee situation was raised at the forum it was not clear what the restrictions were.

“There was no way a set of very vague visa guidelines and a direction from the media person was going to stop us from reporting the story.

“We still covered the forum as we would previous years, but there was also the matter of the refugees, the 900 refugees that they were keeping in detention centres on the island.”

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) supported Dreaver after her detention by Nauru police, stating in a release that her detention was unacceptable.

MFAT spokesperson Todd McClay said: “Freedom of the press is a fundamental part of any democracy and journalists must be free to tell important stories.”

Union E Tū, stood by the TVNZ Pacific correspondent, welcoming the support shown by MFAT, while challenging Australia for its alleged role in her detention.

“This is a story of huge public interest to audiences across the world and Barbara did not shy away from tackling it, even though it has always been clear authorities in both Nauru and Australia are not keen on a light being shone on the issue, E Tū said.

“While Barbara was detained by Nauru police, Australia too must take some responsibility for this attack on press freedom.”

Maxine Jacobs is a postgraduate student journalist on the Asia Pacific Journalism Studies course at AUT University.

Boe climate and security pact big step forward, but lacks a gender drive

Jessica Marshall — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 05:32:23 +0000

The major item on the agenda at last week’s Pacific Islands Forum was climate change. However, a gender gap appears to be at play within climate change itself. Jessica Marshall reports for Asia Pacific Journalism.

The content of the Boe Declaration, signed at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru earlier this month, is not widely known. However, a statement from NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern suggests that it declares climate change as a security issue.

“The Boe Declaration acknowledges additional collective actions are required to address new and non-traditional challenges. Modern-day regional security challenges include climate change,” she said in a statement.

Both the leaders communique and the declaration itself affirm the fact that climate change is a real issue. However, it is discussion of gender in light of that is lacking.

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According to a report by Oxfam, men survived women 3 to 1 in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests that this was because women were trapped in their homes at the time of the disaster “while men were out in the open”.

The agency also suggest that a cultural or religious custom can restrict a woman’s ability to survive a natural disaster.

“. . . the clothes they wear and/or their responsibilities in caring for children could hamper their mobility in times of emergency,” a UNDP report says.

Caregivers and providers
Figures from the United Nations show that 80 percent of those displaced by climate change were women. This, they argue, is caused primarily by their roles as caregivers and providers of food.

London School of Economics research indicates that women and girls are definitively more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than their male counterparts.

In societies where women are considered to be lower on the metaphorical food chain, “natural disasters will kill . . . more women than men,” the report says.

The two researchers could find no biological reason why women would be at more risk than men.

Based on this research, and other research like it, many public figures have called for attention to be paid to the issue.

“More extreme weather events. . . will all result in less food. Less food will mean that women and children get less,” dystopian author Margaret Atwood told a London conference in June.

The author of books like The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake said that climate change “. . . will also mean social unrest, which can lead to wars and civil wars . . . Women do badly in wars”.

Primarily burdened
When asked about the issue at an event at Georgetown University in February, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “. . . women. . . will be . . . primarily burdened with the problems of climate change”.

Earlier this month, former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark told a crowd of about 200 people at the National Council of Women (NCW) conference that the world was close to missing the opportunity to tend to the issue of climate change and women were most likely to be affected by it.

“Everything we know tells us that women are the most vulnerable in this,” she said. “If you look at the natural disasters caused by weather. . . more women die”.

According to Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, President of the Marshall Islands, women are more affected by climate change than their male counterparts but are also “less likely to be empowered to cope”.

“Women aren’t making enough of the decisions, and the decisions aren’t yet doing enough for women,” she wrote in The Guardian.

The UNDP argues it is because of a woman’s place in the household that she is in prime position to affect change when it comes to this issue.

“. . . knowledge and capabilities [regarding reproduction, household and community roles] can and should be deployed for/in climate change mitigation, disaster relief and adaptation strategies,” the report says..

Feminist solution
“A feminist solution” is what former Irish President and UN Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson argued for in June.

She explained that “feminism doesn’t mean excluding men, it’s about being more inclusive of women and – in this case – acknowledging the role they can play in tackling climate change”.

She’s not the only, nor the first, to make such a suggestion.

A whole feminist environmental movement, known as ecofeminism, has sprung up over the decades since the 1970s.

At its most basic level, ecofeminism is exactly what it sounds like: It argues that there is a relationship between environmental damage – such as that done by climate change – and the oppression of women and their rights.

For example, in her 2014 book This Changes Everything, journalist Naomi Klein argues that it is hypocritical that the self-same lawmakers who claim to be “pro-life” are also the ones who push for whole industries surrounding drilling, fracking and mining to not only survive but thrive.

Business confidence
“If the Earth is indeed our mother, then far from the bountiful goddess of mythology, she is a mother facing many great fertility challenges,” she writes.

In New Zealand, leader of the opposition National Party Simon Bridges, who is opposed to the idea of removing abortion from the Crimes Act, is also vehemently opposed to the idea of stopping oil and gas exploration in the Taranaki region.

His concern is that “It will have an effect on business confidence,” he said back in April.

The truth of climate change, as with most global issues, is that there can be no one-size fits all solution.

For some, like Helen Clark, it requires long-term mass movements. For others, it requires being invited to the conversation.

Time will tell as to which one wins out.

SODELPA’s Rabuka confident of winning power in Fiji election

Sri Krishnamurthi — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 22:21:37 +0000

By Sri Krishnamurthi of the Pacific Media Centre

Fiji’s Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) leader Sitiveni Rabuka is confident of winning government benches in the 2018 general election.

SODELPA, the largest opposition party from the 2014 election in Fiji, currently has 15 seats while FijiFirst has 32 and the National Federation Party has three in a 50-seat Parliament.

SODELPA was established in 2013 after the dissolution of its predecessor, the then ruling Soqosoqo ni Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) party.

SPECIAL FIJI PRE-ELECTION SERIES

“I’m looking at, at least 28 seats, which gives us a majority. I have calculated on the basis of the 18 seats that we held. We won 18 seats but then lost three – two to debt and one to imprisonment,” said the enigmatic leader of SODELPA.

“They were replaced by the next three on the list, but those three only missed out by a few votes because of our total party vote.”

Rabuka, notorious for executing the Pacific’s first coup in 1987, says his party is all geared up for the election and ready to start campaigning.

“We are giving out the party message about consolidating the (indigenous) Fijian institutions – the iTaukei institutions and remembering the Bible,” says the former prime minister.

“It is a long struggle.”

Coalition deal sought
As for strategy, he has tried to do his utmost to get the other parties around the table in a coalition deal to take on the ruling FjiFirst party.

“I tried to form a coalition before the elections but based on the views of their supporters, they preferred not to be seen holding hands with me, so they decided no, we’ll go it alone.”

Rabuka seemed to undergo a change in attitude in the years after his coup. He formed a partnership with the then National Federation Party leader, Jai Ram Reddy, to usher in the more equitable 1997 Constitution.

But ironically, their coalition suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1999 election to the Fiji Labour Party led group.

Rabuka made it clear that a grand coalition with FijiFirst, post-election, is not on the cards and will never be, as long as he remains leader of SODELPA.

“With FijiFirst, we have not considered that, and I will not consider it,” he says as a bottom line.

“We are diametrically opposed in our views,” he says with a stern gaze.

Record of service
And, why should people vote for SODELPA, which is looked suspiciously in some quarters as a nationalist party, unlike FijiFirst, which claims multiracialism as its manifesto?

“We believe we have the record of service, a leadership that listens to the people,” said Rabuka, who was prime minister of Fiji from 1992-1999.

“We have compassionate leadership, and we have the will to do what is right, with malice towards none.”

He has several planks on which to campaign this election, and he outlines them:

“We are going to campaign on social justice, looking after the marginalised, the weak in society; we will continue with the social programmes in the past and spread the national wealth as widely as possible,” he says, reciting his well-practised mantra.

He denies notions that SODELPA is perceived as an iTaukei (indigenous) party.

“Some view us as that, but it is not factual, as we have shown,” he says.

“We are just carrying on what started in the Deed of Cession (1874), where we promote civilisation and Christianity.

Good governance
“We increase industry and trade, and good governance in the interest of the natives, as well as the white population – those are words of the Deed of Cession.

“We continue in the same trend as continued in the colonial days; the Alliance days, the SVT days and the SDL days.”

He vehemently disagrees with the abolition of the Great Council of Chiefs (Bose Levu Vakaturaga), disbanded in March 2012 by current Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

“It was the wrong thing to do because the universal cry now is for indigenous institutions since the declaration on the rights of the indigenous peoples on December 13, 2007.

“The Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) should be re-established. They have no executive role, but they have a very important mediatory and advisory role.”

As for the claims that the GCC had always tried to be involved in the politics of Fiji, Rabuka admits there is some truth to that accusation.

“They have always tried that. I found that during my time, I had to stand my ground as prime minister and chief executive officer of the government of Fiji.

“I used to say, ‘you are advising me on indigenous matters, on matters of iTaukei, I listen, but I rule in the interest of the nation as a whole’.”

Rabuka has become a consummate politician, a long way from the days when he was third-in-command in the military in 1987, carrying out the orders of the then beaten Alliance government and staging a coup.

Oil victory thanks to NZ ‘people power’, says Greenpeace chief

Rahul Bhattarai — Thu, 13 Sep 2018 11:53:01 +0000

By Rahul Bhattarai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The struggle needed to go on.

Hilari Anderson (from left), David Robie, Trevor Darvill, Margaret Mills and Susi Newborn at the welcome for the Rainbow Warrior on Princes Wharf yesterday. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The campaign ship will also visit Lyttelton and Dunedin.

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

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

Sedition, coup-era media law and nerves keep lid on Fiji press

Sri Krishnamurthi — Sun, 02 Sep 2018 13:03:02 +0000

Sri Krishnamurthi

With the date for this year’s second Fiji general election since the 2006 coup yet to be announced, one of the questions is will there be a free media for the campaign? Sri Krishnamurthi in Suva talks to some media commentators who are not optimistic.

The frenzy of the forthcoming elections is just starting to hit Fiji, even though the date has yet to be announced, but the elephant in the room is whether the media is going to be free of government interference.

“No, definitely not. The combination of threats [such as those faced by Hank Art – who as publisher of The Fiji Times recently beat sedition charges] and self-censorship have become
severe,” says New Zealand journalist Michael Field, a veteran of 30 years reporting on the Pacific.

“I believe the Fiji media is fearful of the [Voreqe] Bainimarama government and its ability to hit at media in ways that are expensive and worrying. This ranges from the simple banning of government ads in The Fiji Times to the various sedition issues.

FIJI ELECTIONS 2018

“Being free and independent is too expensive for what are small companies compared with the size of the state.”

Dr Shailendra Singh, coordinator of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, questions whether Fiji is ready for a free media.

“Whether Western notions of free, unrestrained media are suitable for a developing, fragile, ethnically-tense country is a moot point,” he says.

“Media have been known to inflame situations, just as governments have been known to use stability and security as pretexts to curtail media scrutiny and criticism. Finding the right balance can be elusive,“ Dr Singh says.

‘Power of the pen’
When Sitiveni Rabuka staged the first two coups in 1987, he admittedly was unaware of the “power of the pen”.

“Personally, I had nothing to hide from the media” he said on reflection in 2005 about his coups.

The 1987 Fiji military coups leader Sitiveni Rabuka as he was back then. Image: Matthew McKee/Pacific Journalism Review

However, subsequent governments did not see the media as a poodle to be toyed with; instead the perception of the industry was that of a rottweiler itching to bite.

“I think it is more likely that the media regulations arose from those who saw the influence of the media, particularly in the [Mahendra] Chaudhry government [overthrown in the third coup in 2000] – and earlier in the lively free-ranging days when the media really was free and independent,” says Field, who was banned from Fiji in 2007.

“The Bainimarama government is clever enough to realise that they might not last with a free media.”

Fiji has flirted with having both a regulated media and self-censorship since the first of its four coups in 1987.

“True. But the government baulked, fearful of the public reaction and international fallout,” says Dr Singh.

‘Media always fragile’
“What that tells us is that media freedom in Fiji has always been fragile. It was only a matter of time.

“Media in Fiji are free to report as they see fit but serious mistakes are punishable by various existing laws such as defamation and contempt which are sufficient, so journalists are quite cautious.

“No one wants to be dragged through the courts like in the recent Fiji Times sedition case. The three-year lawsuit would have been financially, physically, psychologically draining. The Fiji Times escaped by the skin of its teeth.

“Free media is in the beholder’s eyes in some respects. Government feels media is free enough. Media, on the other hand, feel caged. Finding the right balance can be elusive.”

Ricardo Morris, a former journalist and current affairs magazine editor in Fiji, explains the impact of the Media Industry Development Decree (MIDD) which was imposed in 2010 and five years later became law.

“The decree became an act in 2015. The Media Authority (MIDA) doesn’t have to do much anymore because [chairman – Ashwin] Raj simply has to make comment or criticise a media company for some perceived slight and everyone retreats,” says Morris.

Watching Our Words: Perceptions of Self-Censorship and Media Freedom in Fiji

Morris researched and authored a 2017 report on self-censorship in Fiji on a Reuters Foundation scholarship.

“There is talk regionally and internationally about how the media Act is hanging over the media’s head. However, Raj usually says, ‘we have never brought prosecution against a media company under the media decree’ and he is right.

‘Always that danger’
“But there is always that danger.

“They’ll usually issue statements, and in the past there has been public shaming, so now you don’t really need to bring cases against the media because they are too afraid to do something that might jeopardise their position or if they do get charged they will get charged under some other criminal law as in the case of The Fiji Times now – they are charged under the Crimes Act, a case that has now gone to appeal. That’s a distinction.”

Dr Singh says it is for that reason he does not see a relaxation of the media laws.

“The media situation is not going to change – that I can say with some confidence. The laws are going to remain the same for some time yet.

“Government, which has the power to change the legislation, has not said anything. One assumes the government is happy with the way things are, so why change? If this government is returned with a strong mandate, it may feel confident enough to change the laws.

“Or it may see a stronger mandate as a vindication of its media law. The opposition National Federation Party (NFP) has said it will abolish the decree if it forms government. “

Which provisions of MIDD do those involved find most objectionable and would like to see removed?

‘Protect their own backs’
“Fines and jail terms against reporters/journalists were removed but this is meaningless unless the same is done for publishers/editors, obviously because the latter have control over journalists and will censor them to protect their own backs.

“Clear definition of what constitutes inciting communal antagonism,” says Dr Singh.

As Field says, it is simple case of economies of scale when it come to the media.

“This ranges from the simple banning of government ads in The Fiji Times, to the various sedition issues. Being free and independent is too expensive for what are small companies compared with the size of the state,” he says.

Hence the media has become a cowered and beaten animal in Fiji.

“It has become tame and fearful, it is under the control of the government and its handlers. Many journalists in Fiji, with an eye to junkets and scholarships, prefer to follow the Information Ministry line and just write up press statements,” says Field.

“I don’t think there has been a true debate in Fiji over what a free media should be … the debate has always been defined by the men with the guns.”

Sedition charges
Sedition charges were filed against The Fiji Times, three of its executives, and one opinion columnist. The columnist (Josaia Waqabaca) accused Muslims of historic crimes including invading foreign lands, rape, and murder.

“Sedition is not a crime in most countries, it’s called free speech. The content of the letter with its anti-Muslim sentiment is widely held by many. By suppressing it you do not make it go away,” says Field.

“I believe the final verdict was reached because the open absurdity of the charge, and its contents, could not be sustained, and even the imported judge did not want to be seen signing on to it.”

As Morris puts it: “We haven’t really heard the debate about the sedition law, a lot of the countries with similar histories have abandoned the sedition law because there is a fine line between freedom of expression and sedition.

“But now because of The Fiji Times, my perception is the general public err on the side of caution and will not say anything that will be deemed seditious.”

MIDD sits above the media like an axe waiting to fall, and the threat of it falling is why the media cannot expect freedom in the 2018 general elections or anytime soon.

Fiji is ranked 57th on the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index with an RSF verdict: “Little desire to restore media freedom”.

Sri Krishnamurthi is a journalist and Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology student contributing to the Pacific Media Centre‘s Asia Pacific Report.

Sri Krishnamurthi’s interview with former MIDA chief executive Matai Akaoula, now a FijiFirst MP.

Where in the world is the Pacific? NZ researchers talk strategy reset

NZ Institute for Pacific Research — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 06:07:12 +0000

A diverse group of scholars discuss “resetting” New Zealand’s Pacific-oriented foreign policy agenda. Video: Blessen Tom/NZ Institute of Pacific Research

By Sri Krishnamurthi

Debate has been lively and vigorous in response to the New Zealand government signalling a shift in foreign policy towards the Pacific Islands region.

To have a look closer at that debate the New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research (NZIPR) has brought together a diverse group of scholars from the University of Auckland who have research experience in the Pacific to discuss New Zealand’s Pacific-oriented foreign policy agenda, but more broadly to consider “where in the world is the Pacific?”

Associate Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem (director of NZIPR and Development Studies, University of Auckland) chaired the discussion aptly titled “NZIPR Critical Conversation seminar”.

READ MORE: Browse RNZPR’s Lali blog

It was introduced by Professor Jenny Dixon (Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Strategic Engagement, University of Auckland) and featured Georgina Roberts (Ngāti Porou, Director of Pacific Connections at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade – MFAT), Associate Professor Damon Salesa (Pacific Studies at the Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Auckland), Dr Mark Busse (senior lecturer in Anthropology, University of Auckland), Dr Lisa Uperesa (senior lecturer in Pacific studies at the Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Auckland) and Associate Professor Chris Noonan (associate dean postgraduate international in the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland).

“The New Zealand government has invited everybody to think differently about how they do development in the Pacific and it came under this Pacific reset strategy. Winston Peters (Foreign Minister) took himself off to Australia to announce that this is what New Zealand is going to do,” Associate Professor Underhill-Sem said in her opening remarks.

“Since then there has been a lot of fabulous articles, discussion, blogs written about what does this all mean? What do we mean by a reset? And what are we resetting from – but more importantly what do we imagine the Pacific to be, how do we understand the Pacific?

“The question I’m asking [of the researchers] is what are the most meaningful boundaries that they undertake their research in, and hopefully we get an idea of how we can deal with some of the substantive development issues that really haven’t changed regardless of what the New Zealand government has done.

“We still have enduring development issues that need to be addressed.”

‘Shifting the dialogue’
Georgina Roberts of MFAT defined the Pacific reset as “shifting the dialogue” as the perspective of the Pacific changed.

“Statements were made at the beginning of March by the minister around needing to change the approach New Zealand takes with our region and moving from more of a donor-recipient relationship to one of partnership.

“It was about doing things differently, and that was to be underpinned by five key principles that was the basis of the reset, understanding, friendship, mutual benefit, collective ambition and sustainability.”

She said that meant the government had to interact, engage and collaborate with all the parties and stakeholders who had an interest in doing things better with their Pacific partners.

In the budget, the government had decided to allocate $714 million over the next four years in additional overseas assistance to mostly support the “Pacific reset”.

“Where will that money be spent? Climate change is a significant one, human development and this is an area of health and education for example, inclusive development and that means doing more to support youth and women in political representation and value issues, things like human rights, governance and democracy promotion – these are areas that haven’t gained as much attention in the previous years,” she said.

“There are a lot of challenges in our region.”

Working collectively
There were 30 government agencies that were involved in the Pacific and it was the government’s ambition to have them working collectively.

That led the discussion to the historical perspectives of the Pacific and what were the meaningful boundaries both geographically and temporally in the region, presented by Associate Professor Damon Salesa.

“New Zealanders don’t understand what New Zealand is. There are two New Zealands constitutionally – there is the New Zealand proper which is the New Zealand that most New Zealanders think of, that is North Island, South Island, Stewart Island and the Chatham Islands.

“But there is another constitutional entity called the realm of New Zealand which goes as far south as the Ross Territory and Antarctica and as far north as Tokelau, and includes the Cook Islands and Niue.

“So, part of that points out this other history of the New Zealand dollar, New Zealand language and New Zealand passport – those complexities remind us that even New Zealand is a contested, misunderstood concept for New Zealanders,” he said.

That meant there was a lot at stake with how New Zealanders defined the Pacific, and it was particularly important in terms of foreign policy.

It took in the definition of New Zealand’s Pacific, it was very specific in what the Pacific was.

“What New Zealand isn’t is, as seen by the Pacific people who live here.”

‘Two New Zealands’
“If we think about New Zealand as a nation the two most distinctive things about it, are Tangata Whenua (Māori ) and Tangata Pasifika (Pacific peoples). They are what make New Zealand not Australia or Canada. That is something very powerful about that way of being New Zealanders.

“For me the last frontier is finding a place for the Treaty (Treaty of Waitangi) in our foreign policy,” Associate Professor Salesa said.

Dr Mark Busse spoke about anthropological ways of defining the Pacific. He said there were two things that were important to consider – that even small communities, such as the one he lived in, in Papua New Guinea, were affected by international politics and international capitalism.

He said they had a profound impact on the lives of people living in those communities.

“I would suggest that the Pacific is less a geographical space or area, than a set of deep social and historical relationships, its people face large challenges, but I expect they will face those challenges by using values and knowledge that has been passed down over generations,” Dr Busse summed up.

What countries and territories, and their moving demographics and diaspora were considered around the Pacific to be in the Pacific, was Dr Lisa Uperesa’s discourse.

She said from the vantage point of the United States, ongoing migration of Pacific peoples, Micronesians, was shifting with people moving to Guam and Hawai’i.

Largest Pacific city
In the eyes of Americans, they would be surprised to hear that Auckland was the largest Pacific city in the world, the anthropologist and Pacific Studies senior lecturer said.

Her studies concentrated on Samoa and the fact that approximately 400,000 Samoans live abroad, primarily in the US, Australia and New Zealand, compared to 250,000 in American Samoa and independent Samoa.

“I focus on Samoan migration and mobility looking specifically at sport, and this has provided new boundaries of the definition of Pacific peoples and the way they move,” she said.

This project, she said, used sport to think about the history of migration and the place of sport in education and it also helped to reinforce the importance of place and importance of community history and agenda.

“The new Polynesian triangle includes cities like Auckland, Sydney, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City and in this vision the Pacific encompasses geographies and cartographies of presence, it is where Pacific people are,” she said.

Associate Professor Chris Noonan said that from a legal and trade perspective, the Pacific region didn’t exist.

“In the Pacific, the Pacific negotiations were supported by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and funding from Europe through the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and negotiations took place because of institutional structures that were in place and not necessarily because the Pacific had a huge commonality,” said Associate Professor Noonan.

He outlined how and why the Pacific region negotiated both as a bloc and as individual countries.

Associate Professor Underhill-Sem said it was important that research in the Pacific was allowed to flourish and be given exposure through discussions like this “critical conversation”, which will be an on-going event on the NZIPR calendar.

Postgraduate AUT Pacific Media Centre students Sri Krishnamurthi and Blessen Tom (video) reported on the seminar in partnership with the NZ Institute for Pacific Research.

Reviving the ‘lost skills’ of traditional waka Pacific voyaging

Hele Ikimotu — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 05:46:27 +0000

Waka (or va’a) voyager and environmental advocate Schannel van Dijken talks about the Pacific and Samoan ocean sailing traditions and the challenges of climate change. Video: Pacific Media Centre

By Hele Ikimotu

The president of the Samoa Voyaging Society (SVS), Schannel van Dijken, says humans cannot thrive without looking after our landscapes and seascapes.

As part of his work with the SVS, van Dijken and his team of volunteers sail across the Pacific on their waka, the Gaualofa – promoting the old tradition of navigating.

“Our mission is to revive the lost art of traditional navigation and voyaging but also to take this knowledge and stewardship responsibilities that we used to have – take these to the communities,” he says.

He also speaks of the challenges around climate change and the need to raise awareness about the issue.

This 4 minute video was produced by Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness climate assignment under the postgraduate International Journalism Project with Te Ara Motuhenga at Auckland University of Technology.

USP celebrates 50 years and leads research action on climate change

Hele Ikimotu — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 07:28:37 +0000

Bearing Witness crew Blessen Tom and Hele Ikimotu’s video story of USP’s ongoing 50th anniversary celebrations and climate change. Video: AUT Pacific Media Centre

By Hele Ikimotu with visuals by Blessen Tom in Suva

This year, the University of the South Pacific is celebrating 50 years since its opening in Fiji in 1968.

The university’s first campus was established in Suva, with a student count of 200 – it now accommodates over 30,000 students across the different campuses within the Pacific region.

USP has campuses in 12 different Pacific nations – Fiji, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Chandra said USP has made a positive contribution to the Pacific region, including contributions in human resources, policy change and research.

He described the university as being “owned by the Pacific and serves the Pacific”. Professor Chandra emphasised the need for these Pacific countries to work together in advocating for Pacific issues.

“As small countries, we need to work together. One is simply too small to be playing in the big world out there. We need to put all of our voices together. We need to co-operate, work together and integrate,” he said.

Professor Chandra also spoke highly of USP’s efforts in tackling the issue of climate change.

Leading stand
Over the years, the university has become one of the leading tertiary institutions to make a stand against the issue.

Vice-Chancellor Rajesh Chandra speaks to USP journalism students in a training media conference about the 50th anniversary of the regional Pacific university. Image: Blessen Tom/Bearing Witness

“The university has played this role of researching, advocating, supporting policies and disseminating knowledge around climate change,” said Professor Chandra.

The USP journalism school for example is consistently producing stories on climate change issues in their student newspaper Wansolwara. They have also partnered with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre to host two students every year for the Bearing Witness climate change journalism project.

This has seen significant stories about the effect climate change has had on communities in Fiji such as the award-winning multimedia story produced by Kendall Hutt and Julie Cleaver last year about Tukuraki village.

“I am also proud of the USP students. They have gone to the various COPs and have supported their own countries and have become senior advisers to their governments.

“I am quite proud and happy because the climate is central to the survival and prosperity of our country.”

The university’s 1999 strategic plan also saw the establishment of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD).

Raising awareness
The centre was opened to implement more research of the region’s environment and has continued to raise awareness about climate change and sustainable development in the Pacific.

PaCE-SD offers a postgraduate programme in climate change, with currently 200 students across the Pacific enrolled in the programme.

The centre also implements community projects around climate resilience in the Pacific and has been involved in major projects such as the Community Coastal Adaptation Project (C-CAP) and the Future Climate Leaders Programme (FCLP1).

Since the centre has been established, it has been recognised as a strong part of the university’s fight against climate change and environment research in the Pacific.

PaCE-SD director Professor Elisabeth Holland said it was important to be on the ground making a difference in the Pacific region and local communities.

Bearing Witness reporter Hele Ikimotu, speaks with Elisabeth Holland about the climate change work of PaCE-SD. Image: Blessen Tom/Bearing Witness

Deputy director of the centre Dr Morgan Wairiu echoed Professor Holland and said the focus of PaCE-SD was helping communities adapt to the changes in the environment because of climate change.

He said it was also important to provide students with the right skills to help them in their areas of research so they could come up with effective solutions to help communities affected by climate change.

PaCE-SD deputy director Dr Morgan Wairiu … providing the right mix of skills for students. Image: Blessen Tom/Bearing Witness

Community projects
Professor Holland said: “We run community development projects. We have a locally managed climate change adaptation network that extends to more than 100 communities in 15 countries across the Pacific.”

She said that by listening to how communities were affected by climate change, it had taught their team to listen better and develop a more participatory approach in decision making.

“We have the opportunity to learn from one another and if we’re learning from one another, we’re in a partnership to serve whatever problem is in front of us.”

Professor Holland encourages anyone who is interested in learning about climate change to keep an open mind and said: “Don’t assume you know what the answer is.

“The strongest solutions are those developed together. The fundamental values of participatory listening and respect help solve most of the challenges that come up.”

Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom are in Fiji as part of the Pacific Media Centre’s Bearing Witness 2018 climate change project. They are collaborating with the University of the South Pacific.

Images: PMC journalists, academics, students and mentors celebrate 10 years

APR editor — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 03:35:27 +0000

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Participants at the Pacific Media Centre’s 10th anniversary celebration last Thursday held a silent vigil calling for justice for the victims of the 2009 Ampatuan massacre and in protest against the spate of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

Calling for “Justice Now!”, “Never again to martial law” and “Stop the killings”, the participants made the emphatic statement at the end of a compelling address by Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), during the “Journalism Under Duress” seminar.

Associate Professor (Pasifika) Laumanuvao Winnie Laban of Victoria University, who launched the centre as a cabinet minister a decade ago, praised the progress, and AUT’s School of Communication Studies head Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya launched a new photojournalism book.

Images by Del Abcede and Kendall Hutt of the Pacific Media Centre | Video slides

PMC turns 10 in images

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Southern Cross: 30 years of N-free Aotearoa – Pacific leaders seek healthier oceans

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 06:56:54 +0000

Pacific Media Watch News Desk

AUT Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project editor Kendall Hutt speaks with 95bFM’s The Wire host Amanda Jane Robinson on the weekly radio programme Southern Cross about celebrating 30 years of a nuclear-free Aotearoa.

She was at Devonport’s Depot Artspace at the weekend to hear some inspiring speakers who led the Peace Squadron and the peace movement campaigning for a nuclear-free New Zealand.

Auckland mayor Phil Goff and activist photographers John Miller and Gil Hanly were there too.

Hutt also talks about Pacific leaders calling for healthier oceans at UN conference in Washington.

David Robie traces the early history of peace movement in a 1986 article for the New Internationalist
RNZ National on Rev George Armstrong and the Peace Squadron
David Robie’s comments at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Aotearoa “30 Years On” event at the Deport Artspace in Devonport at the weekend.
Greenpeace on New Zealand’s nuclear-free landmark.

PMW editor talks of concerns over martial law in southern Philippines

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 29 May 2017 08:19:47 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Pacific Media Watch’s Kendall Hutt spoke with 95bFM’s The Wire host Tess Barnett today about martial law in the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines.

She says this is worrying for the Asia-Pacific region.

Papua New Guinea and the Micronesian states have significant diasporic Filipino communities.

Hutt talked about what the declaration of martial law in response to urban attacks in Marawi City, means; comparisons with the Marcos dictatorship; and the threat it poses if it continues past the “normal” 60-day period.

Kendall Hutt and colleagues present the weekly radio programme Southern Cross about Pacific issues on 95bFM on Mondays.

In Manila, Opposition lawmakers condemned President Rodrigo Duterte over his apparent rejection of constitutional provisions allowing Congress and the Supreme Court (SC) to assess the martial law declaration in Mindanao, reports Rappler.

“Is the President saying that he’s willing to violate the Constitution? He is on his way to becoming a dictator,” said Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat Jr.

Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao following clashes between government forces and Maute Group terrorists in Marawi City.

Listen to Kendall here:

Southern Cross: Media climate study, free speech in Indonesia and Timor-Leste PM’s gag

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 22 May 2017 20:59:54 +0000

Pacific Media Watch News Desk

Pacific Media Centre’s Kendall Hutt speaks with host of Radio 95bFM’s The Wire Amanda Jane Robinson about a study on how journalists cover climate change, free speech in the case of Indonesia’s blasphemy law, and Timor-Leste journalists facing jail for defamation over criticising the Prime Minister.

Pacific Media Watch

Southern Cross: PNG election security, Fiji coups, Manus Island shooting, and Benny Wenda visits NZ

Pacific Media Watch — Sun, 14 May 2017 22:28:41 +0000

Pacific Media Watch News Desk

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie speaks to Radio 95bFM’s The Wire host Amanda Jane Robinson about security operations for the Papua New Guinea general election, the 30th anniversary of the original Fiji coup, credibility in narratives surrounding the Manus Island shooting, and exiled West Papuan MP Benny Wenda’s visit to New Zealand.

Images: Benny Wenda — advocating for a Free West Papua

Pacific Media Centre — Wed, 10 May 2017 11:06:55 +0000

Photographs by Del Abcede

West Papuan parliamentarian in exile and human rights advocate Benny Wenda spoke to about 80 students, staff and activists at Auckland University of Technology last night.

He spoke under the Papuan Morning Star flag, banned in Indonesia where protesters showing this can face up to 15 years in jail.

The colourful event was organised by the Global Peace and Justice Auckland (GPJA), West Papua Action Auckland (WPAA), Asia Pacific Human Rights Coalition (APHRC) and Oceania Interrupted theatre and cultural group in partnership with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

Meeting and greeting Benny Wenda

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Images: Papuan street art, freedom seminar pose challenge at Jakarta’s WPFD2017

David Robie — Mon, 08 May 2017 06:10:55 +0000

Photographs by David Robie and Bernard Agapa in Jakarta

The World Press Freedom Day organisers, UNESCO and the Indonesian Press Council, marginalised the highly sensitive issue of West Papuan media and human rights violations in Jakarta last week.

But they failed to silence West Papuan media freedom advocates.

This seminar, at one of the other WPFD cluster of hotels, was a resounding success at raising the issues.

Southern Cross report on WPFD2017

Free Press in West Papua

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Pacific student journalists passionate about reporting climate change

PMC Reporter — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 21:42:45 +0000

University of the South Pacific student journalists talk about climate change and their daily lives — and the future. Video: Julie Cleaver/Kendall Hutt/PMC

By Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt in Suva

Pacific journalism students in Fiji say reporting climate change is crucial for the survival of the region.

The University of the South Pacific students say educating people about the issue throughout the region and the world is a key factor when it comes to “saving” the Pacific.

“Covering climate change is important for me because my country’s life and my country’s peoples’ lives are at stake, so I need to let institutions outside my country know that we are facing the effects of climate change, and its severe effects that we’re facing,” says Shivika Mala, a third-year Fiji journalism student who is also majoring in politics.

Shivika Mala (Fiji) … “my country’s life and my peoples’ lives are at stake.” Video still: Julie Cleaver/PMC

Mala also says it is time for the global media to pay more attention to the Pacific’s current situation and not just focus on natural disasters.

“Climate change is happening. This is the reality and it’s about time journalists and other people who don’t necessarily believe in climate change to start doing their research and start understanding the challenges, the implications, and the impact it has on not only the Pacific countries, but other countries as well,” says Mala.

She says this is because the homes and lives of herself and her peers have already been affected.

Climate change ‘something personal’
“Climate change for me is something personal. It’s something that effects my country and the Pacific and the world as well. Climate change for me means loss of life, and loss of loved ones.”

For Vilimaina Naqelevuki, a 20-year-old journalism and politics student, her village, Narikoso, on Ono Island in the Kadavu group, has already suffered great loss.

Nariko has been suffering from the impacts of climate change and therefore believes the island’s younger generation will lose their sense of culture, Naqelevuki says.

Vilimaina Naqalevuki (Fiji) … “within the years to come I won’t have an island left to go back to.” Video still: Julie Cleaver/PMC

“I was fortunate enough to have met my great-grandmother, she passed away six years ago. She tried to talk and teach us as much as she possibly could about what was left of the island.

“It’s a little bit emotional and every time I talk about it I get really sad, because I know for a fact that within the years to come I won’t have an island left to go back to, and that just saddens me a lot.”

For Semi Malaki, who is studying a double-major in journalism and politics, climate change has also already become a reality in his home country, Tuvalu.

“For us in Tuvalu it’s more to do with the security and survival of our people, because we all know climate change causes the sea level to rise.”

Semi Malaki … “for us in Tuvalu it’s more to do with the security and survival of our people.” Video still: Julie Cleaver/PMC

Changed food lifestyle
He also says climate change has changed the lifestyle of people in Tuvalu, particularly regarding food. This is because the rising sea level makes it difficult to grow food as salt water contaminates crops.

“People now are now less dependent on root crops and more dependent on imported foods from overseas, and that’s had a lot of impact on our diets.

“This has health impacts on non-communicable diseases, like lots of Tuvaluans have suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure due to the change in their diets.”

He also says people are migrating away from Tuvalu because of the fear that the country might sink one day.

Due to forced migration, culture and traditional ways of life is also at stake for Pacific people.

Loss of culture
“What climate change does is remove these people from their traditional and everyday lives and completely sends them somewhere else. They have to restart their lives again,” says Mala.

Telstar Jimmy … “changing weather patterns affects that cultural knowledge we used to have.” Video still: Julie Cleaver/PMC

For Vanuatu, where the population largely relies on subsistence farming, losing culture is already a fact of life, says Telstar Jimmy, a mother of three who is completing a double major in journalism and language and literature.

“Sixty-five percent of our population relies on subsistence farming. That’s naturally their way of life. All they know is how to grow crops and also how to fish.

“That’s been a major part of their lives and changing weather patterns is affecting that because our ancestors used to know when to go fishing or which places to do their fishing. But now, because of changing weather patterns it affects that cultural knowledge we used to have.”

Additionally, Jimmy says one of Vanuatu’s 100 plus languages has already been lost as a result of climate change migration.

“In some places where we had different dialects, when we had to relocate them to another place and in order to adapt to the particular environment, they have to use the bigger languages to communicate with the people there.

“As they use more of the bigger languages, they lose the smaller languages that were originally there and that is why some of our languages have already begun to be lost.”

For Jimmy, Mala, Malaki, and Naqelevuki, their message for the world is clear: climate change is real.

“Climate change is happening to us. We’re going to lose our land, we’re going to lose our culture and our identity if we don’t do anything about it.”

Julie Cleaver and Kendall Hutt are in Fiji for the Bearing Witness project. A collaborative venture between the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme, the Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre and documentary collective Te Ara Motuhenga, Bearing Witness seeks to provide an alternative framing of climate change, focusing on resilience and human rights.

Chasing media freedom story ‘opened passion’ for new PMW editor

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 06:48:04 +0000

Award-winning Auckland University of Technology graduate journalist Kendall Hutt has been appointed contributing editor for the Pacific Media Watch freedom project for 2017.

Hutt says she is extremely thankful for the opportunity to continue growing her passion for and knowledge of the Pacific, but more importantly telling the region’s stories.

“Every Pacific nation has its own story. It’s not all about palm trees and white sandy beaches,” she says.

“Islands are being inundated by rising sea levels as a result of climate change, and human rights violations are being committed.”

Hutt says she is determined to make the wider public in New Zealand and regionally more aware of these issues, as the Pacific Media Centre had done for her during her studies.

“PMC opened my eyes to a region I hadn’t previously considered for my journalism career,” she says.

‘Gung-ho reporting’
“I had dreams of being a gung-ho war reporter or holding politicians to account in the halls of Parliament.”

Writing a story exploring media freedom in the Pacific in early 2015 really changed that direction for the better — it awoke a passion in me.”

She succeeds former PMW editor TJ Aumua, who is currently adventuring overseas with 2015 editor Star Kata; Norwegian journalist Daniel Drageset with the National Police Directorate; Alex Perrottet, now a journalist with Radio New Zealand International; and Anna Majavu.

Hutt has been a contributing writer for PMC since 2015 and has recently returned from a journalism exchange in Finland as part of her Honours year last year.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie congratulated her on her appointment after a series of interviews.

“We are pleased to have Kendall on board. She has shown with past contributing assignments that she is a dedicated and talented young journalist and committed to the Pacific.”

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with several global media freedom organisations, including Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

The position of part-time PMW editor is appointed annually and is open to current AUT journalism students and recent graduates. It involves research, writing, editing and publishing on Asia-Pacific media freedom, human rights and socio-political issues.

Kendall Hutt can be contacted via Asia Pacific report.

Pacific ‘cyberbullying’, PNG student protests, ‘free’ media featured in PJR

Pacific Journalism Review — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 20:46:59 +0000

A mini-documentary about 20 years of publication of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review, produced by AUT University screen production and television student Sasya Wreksono to mark the publishing milestone. Video: PMC on YouTube

Student protests at the University of Papua New Guinea that led to police opening fire on a peaceful crowd last year, Australian journalism training in the Solomon Islands, “cyberbullying” in Fiji, independent campus media, and Radio New Zealand International’s reporting of the Pacific are among topics featured in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

The latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review 22(2).

The journal was published online today on the new Tuwhera research platform at Auckland University of Technology with a special edition on journalism education in the Pacific.

Peer-reviewed papers have been drawn from the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) and the Pacific Media Centre Preconference and the World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC16) conference at AUT last July.

Thirteen Asia-Pacific educators and journalists were funded to attend the conferences by the recently created NZ Institute for Pacific Research, Asia New Zealand Foundation, Transparency International New Zealand and UNESCO.

The University of Auckland’s Associate Professor Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa, who opened the JERAA-PMC preconference, says in the editorial journalism is central to the public interest in the Pacific.

Dr Salesa, director of the new institute, says journalism protects culture and especially language. However, a fast-changing world is “making it difficult for journalists to keep up with the scale of some of the issues affecting the Pacific” – such as climate change.

The editorial also features his comments about the challenges to journalism educators.

Edition acting editor Dr Philip Cass writes about Wansolwara, the longest-running journalism school newspaper in the Asia-Pacific region – last year it celebrated 20 years of publishing in Fiji.

Dr Shailendra Singh and Eliki Drugunalevu assess three case studies of cyberbullying against truth-seeking student journalists in Fiji.

Managing editor Professor David Robie, on sabbatical last year, offers an analysis of the transformation of Pacific Scoop into Asia Pacific Report, the campus-based digital publication with the widest reach in the region.

Dr Alexandra Wake reports on her research into Australian post-conflict journalism training initiatives in Solomon Islands while Emily Matasororo reflects on the national university upheaval in Papua New Guinea last year climaxing in police shootings that left at least 23 people wounded.

Dr Matt Mollgaard examines the role of Radio New Zealand International as a source of information and a tool for “soft power” in the region.

Tongan publisher, broadcaster and media freedom campaigner Kalafi Moala’s closing address at WJEC rounds off the Pacific section.

PJR also features a major research report on the state of New Zealand journalism, conducted as part of the Worlds of Journalism Study; a Frontline “journalism as research” report on indigenous collaboration in Western Australia; capstone units; a NZ mayoral celebrity scandal; and covering police corruption in Indonesia.

Other WJEC Asia-Pacific papers will be published in two future editions of PJR later this year.

PJR table of contents