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.

READ MORE: Eyes of Fire – Thirty Years On
LISTEN: David Robie reflects on the Rainbow Warrior on RNZ’s Crimes NZ programme

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”.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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”.

READ MORE: Around the world in 800 days

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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!”

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

• Part 1: Iran a hugely ‘friendly’ country behind the sabre-rattling
• Part 2: 10 reasons why tourists must visit Iran
• Part 3: Iran’s great global adventurers
• The Omidvar Brothers Museum

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.

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

“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.

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.

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?”

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”.

• Part 1: Iran a hugely ‘friendly’ country behind the sabre-rattling
• Part 2: 10 reasons why tourists must visit Iran
• Part 3: Iran’s great global adventurers
• Feel Iran – a project promoting Iran tourism

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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 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.

READ MORE: NZ mosque massacre, New Caledonia referendum and Fiji elections top PJR

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.

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.

READ MORE: Background on the four Fiji coups and the 2009 constitutional ‘half coup’

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.

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.

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.

• Huge increase in Chinese aid pledged to the Pacific
• Other Fiji election stories

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.

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.”

• Pacific Media Centre website
• Pacific Media Centre on YouTube

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.

READ MORE: Broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Alan under fire for Paciofic island ‘leeches’ claim

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

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.

READ MORE: Climate change, at the frontlines

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.

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.

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.

READ MORE: Pacific Islands Forum at Nauru – background

“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 reporting live from Nauru
• Nauru Forum’s refugee focus from media slammed for ‘disrespecting’ Pacific

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No comment was available from the company’s involved.

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

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

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.

READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: Mana counts in the Pacific

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.”

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.

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.

READ MORE: Nauru 2018 and the new Boe on the block

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.

• Pacific leaders endorse new security deal
• NZ must help Solomon Islands tackle unemployment ‘time bomb’, says Clark
• The ‘unscrubbed’ version of the new Boe Agreement on Pacific security

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.

“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.

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.

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

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

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

READ MORE: The Rainbow Warrior itinerary in NZ

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

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

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

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

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

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

The struggle needed to go on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The campaign ship will also visit Lyttelton and Dunedin.

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

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

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

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.

READ MORE: Coups, globalisation and Fiji’s reset structures of ‘democracy’

“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.

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.

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.

• Relief that the Fiji sedition case is over
• David Robie’s verdict on the media in the 2014 election

Sri Krishnamurthi’s interview with former MIDA chief executive Matai Akaoula, now a FijiFirst MP.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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 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

The future of Tonga’s Democracy Coalition remains uncertain as next year’s election looms, a Nuku’alofa-based educator has concluded in a public seminar in Auckland last night.

Dr Michael Horowitz, academic dean of Tonga’s ‘Atenisi Institute, told the audience at his seminar titled Can the Democracy Coalition retain power in Tonga? the fate of the party – and with it the election due late next year — was impossible to predict.

This is largely due to the fact no survey research is conducted, continuing Tonga’s “big surprise” election-day tradition, Dr Horowitz said.

Dr Horowitz, also a visiting research scholar with Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, said the Democracy Coalition may just hold on to power despite a bumpy term littered with controversy.

These controversies included a petition in 2015 for Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva to surrender his education portfolio over the so-called “raw marks” policy controversy and the “cloudy issue” of state-owned Tongan Broadcasting Commission head of news Viola Ulakai’s suspension over alleged false representation, which prompted questions about Tonga’s media freedom status across the Pacific.

‘Dragging feet’
Pōhiva stepped down as Education Minister last week following months of international condemnation by global media freedom groups, although the pressure was primarily over the educational marks controversy.

Pōhiva’s administration is the first democratic government led by a commoner in Tonga’s history and came to power by a narrow margin in the 2014 election.

Dr Horowitz also highlighted the fact that Pōhiva’s government had failed — like those before it — to address Tonga’s poor economic situation, noting it was “dragging one’s feet to change the situation”.

A host of figures cited from the Ministry of Finance attest to the situation highlighted by Dr Horowitz, revealing much of Tonga’s gross domestic product (GDP) is comprised of remittances from family members living overseas (22 percent to be exact), and foreign donations to the tune of US $116 million in the fiscal year 2015 to 2016, meaning Tonga remained “dependent on the people’s generosity”, Dr Horowitz said.

‘Sense of some hope’
Dr Horowitz did, however, note the Democracy Coalition’s term had not entirely been clouded by scandals and economic downturn.

“People have a sense of some hope, some improvement.”

The “change of style” introduced by the Democracy Coalition to Tonga’s politics was something the people could still support despite the “hiccups”, Dr Horowitz noted.

Dr Horowitz also speculated that if the Democracy Coalition should fall, he would not be surprised if another prime minister emerged from the ranks of the nobles, although he did contend highly qualified Finance Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke and Deputy Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni could be in the running.

Lecturer and filmmaker Paul Janman, present in the audience and the man behind the popular 2012 education documentary Tongan Ark, shared Dr Horowitz’s views, noting “2018, no one can tell”.

Janman, who also teaches screen production at AUT, reflected following Dr Horowitz’s talk that it had been “quite a revelation”, with much of the information Dr Horowitz shared having been only anticipated by the filmmaker after Tonga’s transition to democracy.

‘Democracy gaining traction’
“It’s been very enlightening to see the latest.”

Janman also said “the idea of democracy that has been aired and advocated for by schools such as ‘Atenisi is gaining traction”, despite persistence by what he described as “reactionary elements” present “in all kinds of different areas”.

A massive question mark looms over the Democracy Coalition’s future and its outcome in the November 2018 election.

Dr Horowitz said “one doesn’t know” how the votes would go.

• Tonga’s ‘transparency’ prime minister violates media freedom over questions
• Condemning harassment of Tongan journalist Viola Ulakai
• Fifita new education minister in Tongan cabinet shake-up
• Vote of no-confidence a possibility in Tonga

Celebrating 100 years of oil shale mining may represent a proud moment for Estonia, but this doesn’t compare to what the country has lost, many environmentalists say.

The backbone of Estonia’s electricity production may have allowed the Baltic nation to escape from beneath the Soviet yoke and become energy self-sufficient post-independence in 1991, but most observers remember that this has come at a cost: the environment.

“In terms of ecology it’s a total disaster. From the point of view of state economy this is something to be proud of,” says Professor Mait Sepp, research fellow in physical geography at the University of Tartu.

“We have lost our wetlands, we have lost our streams.”

Many of Estonia’s environmental organisations agree, with more than 15 percent (504.6 km²) of the country’s Ida-Virumaa region severely damaged by the oil shale industry.

Mihkel Annus of the Estonian Green Movement says the sector still stamps the largest ecological footprint on the nation, despite European Union (EU) regulations.

’40 years like a volcano’
Perhaps the greatest reminder of this footprint will be the country’s ash mountains, huge piles of solid hazardous waste that mar Estonia’s relatively flat landscape.

“These will probably stay as the remnants of our fossil-fuel dependent past for centuries from now, as well as the land that has been excavated and already been exhausted,” says Annus.

Harmful to the environment due to the poisonous gases and various contaminants they emit into surface and groundwater, these mountains are not only viewed as an ecological disaster.

They have also dealt a blow to the country’s pockets.

It cost the government more than 36 million euros (about NZ$44.4 million) to close the infamous ash mountain in Kohtla-Järve, which stood approximately 170m above sea level before it was closed and made environmentally safe in 2015.

Estonia’s current environmental headache is the Kukruse ash mountain, which one official from the Ida-Viru County government describes as a 40-year-old “volcano”.

Hardi Murula, head of development and planning for the county government, says they have been engaged in ongoing talks for the past three to four years on how best to “neutralise” the mountain, but that no consensus has been reached.

“No one can guarantee during the restoration process that the pollution can be stopped.”

The closure of ash mountains throughout Ida-Virumaa is largely seen as positive despite the challenges, with one of the mountains in the former oil shale town of Kiviõli converted into an adventure centre in a joint industry-government project.

Piret Väinsalu of the Estonian Fund for Nature says the restoration of land is rather impossible, however.

“You can try to restore it into something, but it will always be there as a ‘heritage of oil shale age’.”

Legacy pollution
But government, industry and environmentalists do not see eye-to-eye on the source of this environmental damage.

Minister of Environment Marko Pomerants says much of the environmental impact is related to “legacy pollution” of the Soviet-era.

“Fortunately, most of the major negative effects are a thing of the past and the current oil shale sector has remarkably reduced its harmful practices for the environment.”

He says environmental concerns today largely involve emissions, although these have decreased since 2002.

Timo Tatar, head of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication’s energy department, agrees.

“Talking about environmental damage, one can say, that oil shale environmental impact has significantly decreased due to heavy investments into new combustion technologies as well as emission control.”

Official 2014 data by the European Commission shows Estonia currently stands as the second highest emitter, per capita, of greenhouse gases in Europe, however, and its far from carbon-free history occupies a blight on their climate change record.

Although the EU’s Emissions Trading System allows the country to sell-off its emissions because they are lower than the country’s massive levels at 1990, things are far from rosy, especially in the wake of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement.

In light of this, environmentalists Annus, Väinsalu, and their colleague Aleksei Lotman, a marine conservation expert with the Estonian Fund for Nature, do not share officials’ view.

Although they agree the oil shale industry is “very much less polluting” than it was 30 years ago, they say making oil shale “environmentally friendly” is not enough.

To call current improvements by the oil shale industry so is “over-optimistic to say the least”, Lotman says.

A question of commitment
They are therefore critical of industry and government and feel both have failed to act effectively.

Väinsalu, who serves as the Estonian coordinator for the international non-profit network EKOenergia in her role with the Estonian Fund for Nature, says the government does “just enough” to be on a good list for Estonia’s European partners, while it simultaneously supports oil shale interests by lobbying for greater industry exemptions.

“Instead of understanding the need to find an alternative route and exit the oil shale era our government just supports the industry in every way possible.”

Eesti Energia, Estonia’s state-owned energy enterprise, refutes such claims and says it has taken several steps to reduce the environmental impacts of its operations.

“Today we can produce more energy from oil shale than in the past with less environmental impact,” says Eesti Energia.

Eesti Energia says introductions in new technology have been responsible, although physical changes have also occurred.

Among these was the 2008 closure of the ash field at their Balti power plant near Narva, in Estonia’s east.

The project took three years to complete and resulted in 570ha being made safe for the environment.

In 2013, Eesti Energia’s sister company, Enefit, opened a 17-turbine wind park on the former ash field.

“Our main focus lies in replacing fossil fuels with cleaner fuels,” Eesti Energia says.

The company adds it already does so through its use of water, wind, and biomass.

Annus, however, as a member of one of Estonia’s most influential environmental organisations, feels industry may not have been as cooperative as it makes out.

“Whether they would make their processes more environment-friendly voluntarily, is questionable.”

He says this is because the oil shale industry has been put under increasing pressure by tightening EU regulations.

“They have been forced to take action to meet the set concentration values of emissions, changing the technology of landfilling of solid and hazardous waste, limiting water pollution, and so on.”

Annus adds much of Estonia’s oil shale industry happens behind closed doors, which further calls into question their transparency.

“A lot of the region has also been blocked off from the public eye.”

Kaja Peterson, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre’s (SEI Tallinn) climate and energy programme, says Eesti Energia has, in fact, been rather open.

“I think Eesti Energia has been very flexible because they reformed and created a new sister company, Enefit Renewable Energy.”

She points out, however, that Eesti Energia is gradually transitioning to renewables and oil shale, unfortunately, still forms the majority of their operations.

Fossil free future?
This seeming unwillingness on the part of officials to divest from oil shale has led to serious doubts about Estonia’s renewable future.

While the government and oil shale industry remain positive, environmentalists and researchers are sceptical.

They claim there is no direct investment or clear political will in renewables by the government, only some will to diversify.

“There have been measures to promote sustainable energy, but the indirect subsidies for fossil fuels have still been greater,” Annus emphasises.

Annus feels Estonia is lagging behind a large portion of their EU counterparts and trendsetters, while Tatar and Pomerants celebrate Estonia reaching its Renewable Energy Directive target – 25 percent of renewables in final energy consumption – well before the 2020 deadline.

“Since the political target has been achieved there is no political motivation to increase that,” Peterson says.

Peterson’s colleague, Lauri Tammiste, SEI Tallinn’s director, says the shift to a low-carbon economy remains on the official agenda.

He highlights plans by the government to reach 50 percent of renewables and lower CO₂ emissions by 2030, although there will be a challenge.

“The main issue is, how to actually deliver these goals and ensure successful transformation with biggest possible environmental, economic and social benefits.”

When asked whether Estonia would have a fossil free future, Sepp was adamant he would not see change in his lifetime.

“No. Not in the near future.

It’s very convenient to use this old system. You have one system which works and to build a new one …. takes a lot of money and a lot of effort. Some very critical changes must happen to change this system.”

It seems clear, for the time being at least, that Estonia’s energy future remains far more carbon intensive than environmentalists would like.

Feature article by Kendall Hutt; photos by Essi Lehto and Lukas Rusk. The assignment was part of the Inclusive Journalism Project collaboration between journalism schools in New Zealand and Scandinavia.

More than a million people have poured into the United States capital to march in opposition to President Donald Trump, a day after the Republican took office, as sister demonstrations took place in cities across Africa, Asia-Pacific and Europe.

Women and men of all ages took to the streets of Washington, DC, rallying around issues like women’s rights, reproductive rights and immigration to mark International Women’s Day, reports Al Jazeera.

The march was supposed to be along the National Mall, the stretch of parkland that runs from Congress to the White House.

But it spilled onto Pennsylvania Avenue, the street where the new president and property tycoon now lives, and where his Washington-based hotel is.

The global protests began in Auckland as more than 2000 people turned out to march for global women’s rights in New Zealand’s largest city just hours after incoming President Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington.

Many carried banners and placards as they marched from the US Consulate, near Britomart central railway station, up Queen Street to Myers Park in the heart of the city.

Some placards read “Women of the world unite”, “Our Planet Our Future”, “Girl Power”, “Human Rights are Women’s Rights”, “My Body, My Rights”, “Men of Quality Respect Women’s Equality” and “No Hate Mongering”.

Many marches took place in other cities across New Zealand.

In Auckland and many of the global marches, women protesters wore knitted pink cat-eared “pussy” hats, a reference to Trump’s admission to having committed sexual assault in a video that was made public weeks before the election, sparking outrage.

Video: Del Abcede

REVIEW: By David Robie

Media coverage of the decapitation and other atrocities against journalists has heightened global awareness of just how dangerous the profession of journalists is when covering war zones, corruption and human rights violations under dictatorships.

“Although violence against journalists is not a new phenomenon, the trend has worsened,” writes New Zealand-based media academic, political scientist and analyst Maria Armoudian in her new book Reporting from the Danger Zone: Frontline journalists, their jobs, and an increasingly perilous future.

Researcher Dr Armoudian, lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Auckland and author of the 2011 book Kill the Messenger, provides sobering statistics in her “danger zone for journalists” analysis.

Since Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by Pakistani extremists in 2002, at least five journalists have been decapitated on the job.

Four years ago, in 2012, Paris-based media freedom advocacy agency Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) reported a 33 percent rise in journalist killings. This followed the world’s worst single massacre of journalists at Ampatuan on the southern island of Mindanao in the Philippines in November 2009 when at least 34 were killed.

To this day there has been no justice for the families of the victims.

The mounting death toll has been accompanied by a 37 percent rise in abductions (to 119) between 2013 and 2014, writes Armoudian, citing RSF statistics.

The author also summarises other media freedom organisation tallies, noting “hundreds more have been imprisoned of exiled”.

Local journalists bear the brunt
Armoudian goes to great pains to stress that it is the local journalists who bear the brunt of the violence and slayings, “accounting for more than 75 percent of journalists killed or imprisoned, and 90 percent of the abductions.

“The attacks signal a dark era for journalism and a stark departure from previous decades when combatants, at minimum, tolerated journalists, treating them as civilians, and often sought their sympathies.” (p. 1)

What has changed? The social media revolution and the realisation by extremist groups that they no longer need journalists to tell their story.

In fact, making martyrs of journalists make good video footage. They are the “collateral damage” of insurgencies.

This research project was funded by the University of Auckland, which covered a grant from the Faculty Research Fund.

The research for Danger Zone drew largely on interviews with 32 journalists worldwide, including New Zealand’s Jon Stephenson, the country’s only “war correspondent” but nobody from the Asia-Pacific. Twenty four of the journalists agreed to be named in the book while the rest chose to remain anonymous due to the continuing occupational dangers they face.

An Auckland University of Technology journalism graduate, Corazon Miller, now a reporter with The New Zealand Herald (who recently gained a scoop interview with controversial Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte), and a Pacific Media Centre (PMC) associate, also assisted with research and transcripts.

‘Why ethical journalism matters’
Danger Zone has seven chapters with the introduction entitled “Why ethical journalism matters”. The other chapters explore the “origin of stories” (sourcing), the foreign correspondents’ “afflictions”, “staying alive”, “living in a danger zone”, the “first casualty” and a conclusion.

Many of the journalists with long experience recount how difficult and risky the job has become.

Carol Williams, a veteran correspondent who has reported on the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Ukraine conflict, for example, recalls that human rights stories “just happened to occur on my turf”.

She had started off as a foreign correspondent covering nuclear disarmament and the superpower relationship during the Cold War. But she became motivated by witnessing

“some of the most horrible things that were done to children. In Sarajevo, the Serbs would shoot into schools and hospitals. Little six-year-old kids [were] seeing their teachers blown up in front of them …” (p. 21)

Freelance American journalist Dahr Jamail, with little previous journalism experience, was motivated by his “personal outrage”.

“I saw the selling of the [Iraq] War and was completely outraged and decided, ‘Well, I will go in.’ And one thing I can do as a US citizen is go in a report on how this is impacting [on] the Iraqi people because that’s the phase of the story that was totally omitted from the mainstream [media].” (p. 19)

Antidote for hopelessness
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Roy Gutman, author of How We Missed the Story, argued that journalism in conflict zones provides change-makers and hope as an antidote for hopelessness.

“Journalism is one of the few means [that] we, maybe the only means, that I certainly had, or that we have as the general public, to expose horrible practices in the hope that somebody will do something about it. And that’s what journalism is all about.” (p. 21)

He exposed Serbian concentration camps and ethnic cleansing “killing fields” in Bosnia … and “that story did have impact, and have a wallop”.

It is pleasing to see Jon Stephenson, the only journalist to take on the NZ Defence Force establishment on a matter of truth and integrity – and win, featuring in this book several times.

In one chapter, Stephenson explains how difficult it is, especially as a freelancer with limited resources available, to get to a remote and dangerous conflict zone. His form of independent “embedding”, if it can be called that, is by becoming immersed with ordinary people, not the elites.

On his first trip to Afghanistan, Stephenson flew to India, took a train to the Pakistani border, and then made a long walk across the harsh countryside into Pakistan via Wagah.

“I just walked across the border … from the moment I arrived in Pakistan, I started collecting info on what the locals felt … on buses, and even in a hotel, I’d talk to the hotel clerk and … I met an MP from the Pakistani parliament. He invited me to his home in Islamabad. I interviewed the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan who I met on the roof of the Marriott being interviewed by CNN. And I just started there really and worked my way up.” (p. 110)

Stephenson met the family of Abdul Haq, one of the major resistance leaders during the so-called jihad against the Soviets, and ended up in a family compound in Peshawar with some other journalists.

Notable omissions
As well as the analysis, Danger Zone provides some “helpful resources” for journalists. However, while useful, including some key links such as the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, there are notable omissions, such as Reporters Sans Frontières/Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which runs an extensive safety programme for freelance journalists in particular. This is a curious oversight because RSF is mentioned in many citations.

Pacific Media Centre, which has been the most active unit on this issue in New Zealand with a Pacific Media Watch freedom project dating back to 1996, and is associated with RSF is also not listed. This is strange given the fact that Danger Zone originated in Auckland and that the PMC, based at the neighbouring university, has produced several publications on conflict and peace journalism.

There is also no mention of the world’s worst atrocity against journalists, the Ampatuan massacre in the Philippines.

However, these are relatively minor criticisms. Essentially this book is inspirational for a new generation of journalists in a troubled era for journalism and a helpful resource for media school libraries.

It is also encouraging that all the interviewees for this project “expressed compassion and empathy for victims of violence, abuse, and failed institutions, and most were vicariously traumatised as a result”. Ethical journalism is alive and defiant in the face of mounting pressures.

But, warns Dr Armoudian, far more work is needed from scholars, international media law experts, “and journalists themselves”, in developing safer ways to secure vital information for democracies.

Reporting from the Danger Zone: Frontline journalists, their jobs, and an increasingly perilous future, by Maria Armoudian. New York and London: Routledge, 2017. 155pp. ISBN 978-1-138-84005-8

References:
Armoudian, Maria (2011). Kill The Messenger: The media’s role in the fate of the world. New York: Prometheus Books.

Gutman, Roy. (2008). How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and the hijacking of Afghanistan. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Professor David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology.

ANALYSIS: By David Robie

Just having missed the shootings by a US veteran at Florida’s Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport last Friday by less than a couple of hours after returning from a Caribbean vacation, I have been following the aftermath with intense interest.

From the safety of Little Havana in Miami, I have monitored the Spanish and English-language press (almost 60 percent of the population are Hispanic speakers) and live local television reports on the Fort Lauderdale massacre.

What has struck me most is that several key issues have barely been covered in the media soul-searching, topmost being the bizarre gun culture itself.

A professor commenting on CNN about another issue – the fate of the so-called Obamacare “universal” health law after Donald Trump is inaugurated next week – compared the US culture unflatteringly with the European citizens’ sense of “commonwealth” described his countryfolk as “still cowboys”.

This sentiment was reflected in at least one letter in the press. Writing in a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times, Barbara Rosen noted with irony:

Once again, there’s carnage.

I travel the world to countries where people have no guns but have universal health coverage. How do I explain to them that in my country we let people have semiautomatic weapons but we take away their health coverage?

So proud.

Key issues
Key issues barely covered in US media reportage include:

·       What is it about the militarist culture that leads young soldiers to fundamentally question the morality of their actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere and drive them to carry our vengeful acts against their fellow citizens?

·       Why was there hardly any public social mourning for the airport victims (5 killed, several of them bound for holiday cruises at Port Everglades; 8 wounded)? Are Americans so used to these senseless killings that it has become something of a “norm”?

·       Is there a serious flaw in basic security design at US airports?

I’ll start with the last question first. Having just personally experienced massive airport security getting into the United States for a start (beginning with first seeking a visa waiver first a couple of months earlier, a tedious process that still lead to family fellow travellers missing the first connecting flight from Los Angeles because “Homeland Security” couldn’t find passport numbers in their system) just before Christmas, this is worth a closer look.

As another traveller noted in the LA Times: “What is striking, and unreported, is that this relatively small and contained crime scene (the shooter did not even try to move around or escape), located in the open public [baggage] area outside of the security area for the terminal at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, morphed into an airport-wide shutdown because of a serious flaw in basic security checkpoint design.

Traveller Mike Post added that the exit lanes from the terminal gates that led to the baggage claim areas had no physical barriers and only limited unarmed security:

Terrified passengers fleeing the baggage area can simply turn around and run back through the exit corridor, ignoring all those ominous warnings, and in seconds destroy hours’ worth of security screening as they surge back into the gate area, rendering the entire terminal and airfield unsecure and at risk.

This type of event was foreseeable. Such a lack of foresight and imagination by our airport security professionals is inexcusable.

When we left Florida, after travelling four hours by bus to Orlando International Airport to start our homeward journey (we had connecting flights to Fort Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles to Auckland with American Airlines — Qantas flag booking), two of our five suitcases for four people had their padlocks cut open by Homeland Security. A notice from Transport Security Administration was deposited inside the bags by the time we left LA for Auckland. It said:

To protect you and your fellow passengers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is required by law to inspect all checked baggage. As part of this process, some bags are opened and physically inspected. Your bag was among those selected for physical inspection.

During the inspection, your bag and its contents may have been searched for prohibited items. At the completion of the inspection, the contents were returned to your bag.

If the TSA security officer was unable to open your bag for inspection because it was locked, the officer may have been forced to break the logs on your bag.

TSA ‘apology’
The TSA notice apologised for the action but said the agency was “not liable” for damage.

The lack of public mourning over the Fort Lauderdale deaths was quite extraordinary for us, having recently visited Nice’s Promenade des Anglais Rotunda where on public display is “the outpouring of community love” for the victims of Tunisian truck driver who went on a shooting rampage on Bastille Day last year.

USA Today reported that four days after the 26-year-old accused Alaska-based gunman Esteban Santiago – decorated for his combat service in Iraq — opened fire inside Fort Lauderdale Airport, no vigils or public memorials had been held for victims.

Previous mass shootings have stirred emotions from people in the communities in which the tragedies took place…

While people hurt in the shooting are being supported by their families and friends, there has been a lack of visible response from the general Broward County community.

In addition to a lack of memorials, no official GoFundMe accounts have been created. A single bouquet of pink flowers was left on a bench outside the baggage claim area of Terminal 2. Less than an hour later, it was gone.

‘Routine part of life’
The newspaper also quoted the head of the department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Dr Charles B. Nemeroff, saying US citizens had become “inert” to this sort of tragedy, “as if it is almost a routine part of life” in America.

Rarely did I see reports raising the basic issue about the US gun culture and how urgent it is to change the Second Amendment about the American citizens’ constitutional right to “bear arms”.

According to The Guardian, no other developed country in the world has “anywhere near the same rate of gun violence as the USA. The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times that of Sweden, and nearly 16 times German’s rate, according to United Nations data compiled by The Guardian.

The gun deaths are also a major reason why the United States has a far higher suicide rate (including non-gun deaths) than other developed nations.

There are more than 310 million civilian guns in the United States, almost equivalent to one for every man, woman and child in the country with a population of 324 million.

• Accused airport shooter Esteban Santiago is told his maximum sentence is death

Professor David Robie is editor of Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published on his Café Pacific blog.

Homeland Security official website

Hosted annually by the Pacific Cooperation Foundation, this year’s Pacific Wave event was held at Aotea Square, Auckland, where guests spoke about the importance of Pacific youth playing an innovative role in technology.

A significant keynote speaker was Dr Michelle Dickinson, director of the science and technology organisation Nanogirl and a senior University of Auckland lecturer.

Dr Dickinson, who describes herself as a “passionate engineer who wants to make a difference in the world”, stressed the importance of having diversity in science and engineering industries.

A call for diversity
“We need to talk more openly about having more female and especially Pacific and Māori students in this industry,” Dr Dickinson said.

“I get students to draw what they think a scientist looks like and it’s always a guy,” she said during her presentation.

“I’ve probably had over a thousand kids draw a picture of a scientist and I’ve never had one of them draw a women and I’ve never had one of them draw a picture of someone from a minority group… we need to change that.”

Speaking to Asia Pacific Report, Dickinson explained: “Diversity in science and engineering is really important because what we do is solve problems. The best way to solve problems is to have teams and if you have a team of people that are just like you and think like you, you probably are not going to problem solve as well as if you had a diverse team.”

Diverse teams ensure people are coming with different experiences and backgrounds, which help create the best science solution or engineering product, she said.

Also a co-founder of OMG Tech! A programme that is focused on state of the art technology, allows children in primary and intermediate schools across the nation to take part in workshops, learning aspects of 3D printing, coding and building robots.

Passionate about her cause, Dr Dickinson said she did not run a workshop unless the class was 50 percent female and 50 percent low decile Māori and Pasifika students.

“Because I want to create a technical space of education where the minority become the majority,” she said.

Pacific innovation
Pacific high school students who attended the conference were encouraged to be creative and to think of innovative ways of using technology to add value to society.

Mike Usmar, the chief executive for High Tech Youth, an organisation which allows young people to use technology to change economic environments, said technology creates room for groundbreaking ideas.

“There is amazing innovation in the Pacific community and they’re utilising technologies in ways probably the designers didn’t think. That is just a hallmark of where our future is with our young people.”

New Zealander and global entrepreneur Jamie Beaton also spoke at the event.

The Kings College graduate is the chief executive of Crimson Consulting, a company that has made almost $90 million within three years.

The institution helps young professionals gain the mentoring and assistance they need to study at world-class universities.

“Basically after high school I had applied to all these universities around the world. After I gained admission to them I realised there was this massive need in New Zealand to help students with the resources necessary to break these geographical boundaries – that was the starting block,” he told Asia Pacific Report.

More Pacific needed
The 21-year-old reinforced the theme of empowering youth with technology.

Beaton explained he is particularly focused on helping universities which are actively trying to recruit students from the Pacific.

“But there isn’t enough representation right now from Pasifika, so we need more applicants.”

“I want to help inspire more of these students by providing the tools necessary to get into these places.”

He said it was important for young people to remember that their potential is not bound by their community, but instead bound by the world.

Pacific Wave speakers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do changes to climate change reporting need to happen? Does the media itself need structural change to face the new challenge? Kendall Hutt seeks some answers to the debate for Asia Pacific Report.

A worldwide call has gone out by academics and journalists for news media to change its approach on reporting climate change.

Current coverage of climate change leaves the public ill-informed on the issue and largely cynical, say some academics.

Also of concern is a tendency for media to frame climate change as an international rather than local issue, which leads it to be defined as a problem for others and not one of national sovereignty.

The need for improvement was highlighted at a public talk delivered at Auckland University of Technology last month, in which Professor Robert Hackett of Simon Fraser University discussed whether certain “touchstones” of journalism, such as objectivity and the public sphere, apply in covering what he dubbed a “climate crisis”.

The topic of a forthcoming book with several colleagues titled Journalisms for Climate Crisis, Hackett proposes several alternative reporting models that could potentially allow greater, more in-depth coverage of the climate change issue.

However, Dr Hackett concluded his talk by stating structured media reform was needed for climate crisis journalism to flourish. He stressed that the industry needs space to discuss such reform in order to foster change in defiance of a lack of political will.

Speaking with Asia Pacific Report, Dr Hackett has expanded on this conclusion, saying such structural media reform would “encourage and expand better journalism practices and coverage to the scale that is needed in a situation of global crisis”.

He added media reform would also reduce commercial pressures on journalists to generate clickbait and reduce concentrated corporate ownership.

But this is not a view shared by others.

Oxfam New Zealand’s senior campaigns and communications specialist Jason Garman rejects the idea of media reform.

“I think passing the buck that media should be solving this problem by doing better is not the way to go,” he says.

I think everyone needs to come to the reality that climate change is affecting all of us and we all should be playing a constructive part in making sure we have a world that’s liveable for everyone.”

Garman believes improvements to the way climate change is reported needs to come from – and return to – journalism’s fundamental role in educating and informing the public.

This is a view shared by science communication specialist and former journalist, Dr Jan Sinclair.

Dr Sinclair says it is mainly the media’s responsibility to inform the public of the extent and reality of the risks of climate change.

“It’s the journalist’s responsibility to tell people whether their lives or property are at risk.”

Like Garman, Dr Sinclair rejects Dr Hackett’s idea of media reform being the way for media to improve its climate change coverage moving forward.

Dr Sinclair is wary of reform due to the vested interests of fossil fuel industries and “sceptical lobby” which have plagued, and continue to plague, coverage of climate change.

She says such well-funded and powerful lobbying has promoted a culture of climate change being framed as “uncertain”, both within the media and social world.

Evidence of such lobbying can be seen by looking at ExxonMobil, one of the leading opponents of climate change science, which also once happened to be one of its leading proponents.

A video by AJ+ recently revealed that ExxonMobil spent US$61 million between 1998 and 2005 challenging scientific consensus surrounding climate change.

ExxonMobil has also been largely responsible for creating the uncertainty Dr Sinclair describes, with the oil company spending US$30 million on a network of think tanks and researchers who have challenged climate change science.

Dr Sinclair says any improvements to current reportage are a question of ethics and should be seen as a matter of integrity for journalists.

Question of ethics
“If journalists could perhaps have a discussion on which ethics are important, and then link speaking truth to power to the problem of interpreting scientific results… I think that might be beneficial.”

The journalistic adage of “speak truth to power” does not do climate change reporting any favours, she adds, as this “political” focus is detrimental.

This is something Dr Sinclair has also noted in her research into comparisons of what information the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported and what The New York Times reported across a 17-year period from 1990 to 2007.

Dr Sinclair noted: “Journalists are encouraged to privilege political discourses over scientific advice”, in direct correlation with the adage.

In contrast, Taberannang Korauaba, a doctoral candidate with the Pacific Media Centre and editor of the Kiribati Independent, believes stories on climate change need to focus more on the positive and calls attention to the Pacific.

Positivity needed
“The same message is repeated, sea is rising, people will be displaced, sea encroaching land, temperature is getting hotter these days on the islands.”

Yes, Pacific people are victims of climate change, he says, but stories should focus on adaptation and media attention shift to investigate the distribution of adaptation funding.

“What is happening now on the ground, I think the focus should be there. How much money given to these islands to help build their resilience, how it is spent, who is getting what?”

Korauaba says the media needs to adopt strategies to better report climate change and one of those is deliberative journalism, journalism that is acknowledged as empowering local people and leading to greater, popular decision-making.

In his research, he regards deliberative journalism – what he terms in the i-Kiribati-language as Te Karoronga – as allowing the community to be part of climate change adaptation and raising understanding and awareness of actions, so the people themselves can take action to help save their islands.

Despite such varied calls for the media to reframe its coverage of climate change, such as by Pacific Journalism Review in a special edition in 2014 on “failed states” and the environment, not all coverage is, or has been, inherently bad, Garman and Hackett stress.

Not inherently bad
Professor Hackett says some media organisations have been doing “remarkably good work” and “exercising a sense of agency”.

One such organisation is the Desert Sun, he adds, Palm Spring’s daily in southern California due to the host of feature articles it has produced.

Garman, however, highlights the media’s growth and acknowledgement in framing climate change as a human rights issue.

“If you’d asked me that question [growth] ten years ago I would have said, ‘No, absolutely, people see climate change as an environmental issue only, something that’s happening to polar bears and may affect humans at a long-off point in the future’.

“Whereas now I do think people understand that climate change is happening now, it’s affecting people now, it’s a human rights issue.”

Although no consensus exists as to what form reframing should take, Korauaba has noted it will take time for any changes to come into effect.

“The world can’t change overnight, at least we do something, and keep doing it regularly in our coverage.”

Kendall Hutt is a graduate journalist from AUT University, currently completing her Honours year in Communication Studies. She is on the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Journalism course.

The summit was organised to create a platform for better understanding and engagement, and celebrate the role of many cultural groups in New Zealand society; build a sense of unity among other ethnic people; and to explore how they can contribute and add value to the community and the nation.

Asia Pacific Report was at the summit and this photogallery by the Pacific Media Centre’s Del Abcede features the diverse nature of the summit.

• Mainstream NZ media takes a pasting at multicultural summit

Do you know who I am?

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A 50-minute drive out of Suva city is Daku village, a community of 332 people nestled close to the sea and surrounded by mangroves.

As peaceful as it seems here, the village is one of many in Fiji where the people are working hard to adapt their daily lives to the burdens of climate change.

Village headman Biu Naitasi says he has noticed the sea-level rising around the village within the last 40 years.

But it wasn’t until five years ago, with the assistance of the Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) at the University of the South Pacific, first through an AUSAID project and then through the United States Agency for International Development’s Coastal Community Adaptation Project (USAID/C-CAP), that they understood the terminology and its link with climate change.

‘New term’

“[The term] climate change is something new for us. We haven’t heard about it before,” says Naitasi.

Arriving at the village, Asia Pacific Report bore witness to flood waters lapping on the door steps of village homes.

Remnants of the tropical cyclone Winston that savaged Fiji two months ago, and other tropical depressions which have left parts of the nation drenched in heavy rainfall, have left their mark.

Waterlogged land leaves the village vulnerable to water-borne infections, like dengue, filariasis, and diarrhoea, and in the worst case scenario, cholera and typhoid.

Floodgate system
In 2015, USAIDs’ C-CAP initiative implemented a floodgate system, built into the river wall which allows water to flow out of the village while blocking out sea water in high tides or floods.

But relief is still needed when king tides surge onto the land.

“Sometimes it’s up to our ankles,” Naitasi says. “We need another floodgate near our plantations as salt water has damaged our crops, but we’re waiting for funds.

“The plantation area of the village gets flooded every rainy season and during high tides.”

Sea water is also rusting and eroding the wooden and metal homes in the village.

The extreme weather in Fiji in the past month has seen the community having to rebuild and repair their homes.

“Some houses were blown off partly, and some completely, by the cyclone.”

Took shelter
Headman Biu Naitasi says villagers were unable to use electricity and because of flooding many were forced to take shelter in the community hall.

Asia Pacific Report was told the strong winds completely destroyed a family home, forcing all eight members living inside to relocate.

Like Daku, many villages and communities in Fiji are facing similar problems. They are doing the best they can; using traditional methods and human power to heighten coastal walls and eliminate flood water from their homes.

But climate change is escalating, leaving coastal villagers living with the burden of its effects daily.

“Tell them to believe it, climate change is happening,” says Naitasi, sending a message to the world.

“We can’t stop climate change, but we can reduce its effect.”

• More “Bearing Witness” project photos of Daku
• VIDEO: Climate change adaptation in a Fiji village

Fiji is gearing up to launch a monitor-and-clean-up project over the predator crown of thorns starfish.

The crown of thorns starfish (COTS), or Acanthaster, is responsible for disturbing coral reef ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific coastal area.

The creature is  also having a bad impact on local communities which rely on the coral reefs for their livelihood.

In 2013, rural communities of southeast Santo in Vanuatu reported severe outbreaks of the COTS in the water.

After a few years of research and requests from local people, the Vanuatu Fisheries Department launched an initiative called the Oceania Regional Acanthaster Network (OREANET) to control the outbreak of COTS in Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

Dr Pascal Dumas, a research scientist with the Vanuatu Fisheries Department, said: “With the help of more than 10 years of reports, we have found that many Pacific islands are affected by the crown of thorns starfish.

“But as we don’t have exact quantitative data, it is a high time to start a small scale monitoring initiative.”

Lethal injection
The project focuses on different methods to eradicate COTS, including lethal injection, electric/physical barrier and asphyxiation.

“We have reports of the COTS outbreak in Fiji from our colleagues in the University of the South Pacific. They were observing outbreaks in some areas of Fiji,” said Dr Dumas.

He said there was some evidence linking the COTS outbreak to climate change.

“Increasing temperature of sea water and enrichment of coastal water are two major effects of climate change that leads to the outbreak of COTS in the water,” he said.

The project is based on the support of local communities.

Dr Dumas is looking for people in Fiji who are willing to go into the water and send reports about COTS “hotspots” in different areas which immediately need to be cleaned up.

“We need students from USP as well to work on this project. The students will be responsible to communicate with local NGOs, communities, dive operators and resort owners.”

Early warning
This project includes a website as an early warning system.

Sylvie Fiat, a data manager and IT engineer from IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement), has developed a website and a mobile app (for Android and Windows phone) to reach out to the local people.

“Local people have to fill up a simple observation report form about their name, place and the amount of COTS they have observed in the specific region. With this request, a trained team will start the clean-up process of COTS,” said Fiat.

They have launched a website for the Fiji project as well. The website will help them monitor the COTS in different regions and also to develop an effective risk management strategy to save coral reefs.

However, people without internet access may take some help from the key people of the local community or region.

“We had some issues with the internet in New Caledonia. As a solution we appointed a few key persons in the community who can have access to the internet and with their help, people could easily submit the request form on our website or mobile application.”

The team is planning to launch awareness campaigns in Fiji in the upcoming weeks. They will give some information and training about COTS to the local communities.

“COTS have strong and poisonous thorns. So people are not supposed to touch them directly. Last year two men in Vanuatu died because of the poison,” said Dr Dumas.

He is interested in expanding this project to other Pacific Islands as well.

“We have some requests from Kiribati and Tuvalu. So hopefully we will launch this project in these countries soon.”

• The University of South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment & Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) is hosting a weekly seminar for students during their semester. This week, they invited Dr Pascal Dumas and Sylvie Fiat from Vanuatu to inform the students about their project.

Ami Dhabuwala and Pacific Media Watch contributing editor TJ Aumua are in Fiji on a two-week “Bearing Witness” climate change journalism project with the University of the South Pacific.

• Crown of thorns website in Vanuatu
• ‘Bearing Witness’ project

Six of the Auckland participants who attended the UN Commission of the Status of Women held in New York in March have had an opportunity to report back on the discussions that were held on the international stage.

An echoed concern among the participants was the lack of Pacific and indigenous representation at the commission.

Some even feel disappointed with a particular presentation and report by New Zealand’s Ministry for Women at the commission that “named and shamed” Māori and Pacific women.

At the “report back” session held by the Pacific Women’s Watch NZ (PWW), Denise Ewe, area representative for Tāmaki Makaurau and national executive at the Māori Women’s Welfare League (MWWL), said she felt honoured to participate in the commission but was “ashamed” over the ministry’s presentation.

Ewe said singling out these specific ethnicities and attaching them to domestic violence data on a world stage was “sloppy” when there were groups in New Zealand that have concerns around the same issue.

“There was over 4000 women from every country and no other country specifically and deliberately named [the ethnicity].

“That for me was one of the lows I have to say,” said Ewe.

Formal letter
Another participant who is also national president of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Prue Kapua, said the league was in the process of writing a formal letter about the issue to the ministry and will be meeting with them for a debrief within the next month.

“The issue about that particular report, and how it was used has already been raised, we have discussed that with the minister last year but it seems to find its way back into that forum.”

Kapua said the commission was a huge learning experience where she gained perspectives on the process of negotiating on human right laws.

But she was disappointed with the “invisibility” of indigenous women in the world arena.

PWW board member and former Shakti Community Council employee Sara Daneshvar was also present at the commission and told Pacific Media Watch that in future she would like to see increased Pacific “grassroots” representation.

She said the Pacific was unfamiliar territory on the world stage and urged the New Zealand government to provide assistance for island nations to attend UN conferences and commissions like this one.

“For example, Papua New Guinea was not represented but we know there are plenty of organisations doing work on the ground there, but they barely have the funds to run their services. How are they going to have the funds to go to these conferences?”

Real issues
Daneshvar emphasised the real issues affecting indigenous and Pacific women were not going to be heard unless their voices and perspectives were presented directly by them.

Her message to women in New Zealand is the need to be aware of the resources they can access if their rights are abused.

“A lot of women do not know the threats committed against them are actually [human rights] abuses. All of them need to be aware that they should be treated as equals to men, that is their right as women, and if that is abused they need to know what can they do about it.”

Beverley Turner, international secretary for PWW, said New Zealand had got a reputation of being “this first country for women to vote, but [other world countries] don’t realise all the other issues beneath the surface.

“We would very much like an action plan for women,” Turner said. “This government refuses to have a plan of action for women; categorically refused that recommendation from the Human Rights Council.”

Turner’s message: “You are women, you have the same rights as women anywhere—go for it.”

TJ Aumua is contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Abunimah, editor of The Electronic Intifada, made an inspiring call for action to build the international movement for Palestine – focusing on effective boycott and divestment campaigns.

“The tide has turned,” Ali said, reported Kia Ora Gaza as support for the Palestinian human rights struggle, and condemnation of apartheid Israel grew around the world.

He spoke in Wellington last night and his Christchurch and Dunedin programme is here. Photo gallery by PMC’s Del Abcede who was at the Palestine conference.

• Electronic Intifada videos

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Auckland’s Fiji community have mobilised together to action disaster relief efforts for their families back home in the Fiji Islands.

Community members assembled in Mangere last night fuelled with emotion and desperate to send help back home.

Those affected in Fiji have requested donations of  non-perishable foods, water, blankets, fishing rods and tools that can be used to help the rebuilding process.

The Fijian Community Association of Auckland and the Auckland Mayoral Committee confirmed two shipping containers would be made available soon so those wanting to contribute to relief efforts can donate.

Two main container loading points:
1. South Auckland
City Impact Church
385 Mt Wellington Highway
(Entrance via Apex Centre)
Mt Wellington
Fiji Community contact: Ratu Isoa Soqosoqo 021 269 5925

2. West Auckland
Church Unlimited
3 Te Atatu Road
Glendene
Fiji Community contact: Greg Traill 021 928 551

Relief items needed:
Non-perishable food items
Bottled water
Linen – blankets, sheets, pillows, towels
Clothes
Kitchen utensils
Pots/pans
Mosquito repellents

Money donations:

FIJI RED CROSS
Bank: ANZ Banking Group Ltd.
Account number: Account Number: 1313354 BSB: 010890 (applicable for international deposits)
Account Name : Fiji Red Cross Society Account
Swift code: ANZBFJFX (applicable for international deposits)
Please State in Narrative: TC Winston Fiji Red Cross Appeal and your name, If you need a receipt please contact Fiji Red Cross at: communications@redcross.com.fj

UNICEF
Fiji’s Children Emergency Appeal: Donate through www.unicef.org.au/appeals/fiji-children-s-emergency-appeal

NEW ZEALAND RED CROSS
All their Pacific Disaster Funds will be directed to the Fiji crisis. Make your donation through their website: https://www.redcross.org.nz/donate/where-the-need-is-greatest/

AUCKLAND COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION
Auckland Communities Foundation (ACF) is a charitable foundation and a trusted vehicle that manages Auckland Council Mayoral Fund for the Pacific. Any donations should be made through ACF as follows:
a. Via the “donate now” function on the ACF website: www.aucklandcf.org.nz.
b. Via direct payment to the ACF bank account (with reference “MFP” to ASB Bank account 12-3028-0714703-00)
c. Via cheque made payable to “Auckland Communities Foundation Mayoral Fund for the Pacific” and sent to PO Box 26087, Epsom 1334.

FIJI GOVERNMENT
Donations can be made through the bank accounts below and donors will not be charged any fees, including overseas transactions. International donations can be made through the following account:
Bank: Australia New Zealand Banking Corporation
Account Number: 12628523
Account Name: Prime Minister’s National Disaster Relief and Rehabilitation: Cyclone Winston
Swift Code: ANZ BFJFX
BSB: 010 890
HUMM FM Cyclone Winston Relief Fund Appeal – All funds collected will be given to the Fiji Red Cross. Make a donation to:
ANZ Bank Account: 06-0082-0015961200 Cyclone Winston Relief Fund; or
contact Roshilla on +675 849 7000.

An enterprising new media collaboration between a journalism school and an independent news organisation will take off on Thursday evening in a bid to bolster Asia Pacific news and analysis in New Zealand.

Asia Pacific Report will feature news reports and features from student journalists on a postgraduate Asia Pacific studies course at Auckland University of Technology and a network of contributing academics and journalists around the region.

The new website, to be launched by Pacific Cooperation Foundation CEO Laulu Mac Leauanae, is a result of a collaboration between Evening Report owner and editor Selwyn Manning and AUT’s Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.

“This will be a fresh ‘Pacific voice’ in the media. A series of excellent, in-depth stories are being filed by our students and collaborating journalists and they deserve a digital showcase for their award-winning work,” says Dr Robie.

“AsiaPacificReport.nz will be a stimulating and challenging new source of news and current affairs available to the public. And with our Creative Commons licence policy it will be available for the regional Pacific media to tap into.”

Over the past three years Manning’s company, Multimedia Investments Ltd, has successfully launched Evening Report, The Daily Blog, 36th-Parallel.com, Newskitchen.eu, de.Newskitchen.eu, ForeignAffairs.co.nz and LiveNews.co.nz as independent media outlets, and has provided the springboard, inspiration and technical support for the AsiaPacificReport.nz venture.

He says AsiaPacificReport.nz seamlessly displays all forms of digital reportage and analysis in an easy to navigate design. It was built from the ground up with convergence in mind and its content logic accentuates the strengths of Pacific Media Centre’s editorial policy and course outputs.

Significant reach
“Multimedia Investments will provide significant reach for the PMC’s reportage and analysis.

“It will enable the publishing of AsiaPacificReport.nz’s content into global media outlets, including Dow Jones Factiva, Lexis Nexis, Moreover, and Acquire Media.

“We look forward to launching Asia Pacific Report and are confident it will be a significant outlet and a reliable source for public discourse and debate within the Asia Pacific region,” Manning says.

Among objectives of the website, Dr Robie says, are:

•    An independent Asia-Pacific voice telling the “untold” stories

•    An educational media resource boosting the quality of regional reporting

•    Addressing issues of equity and justice

•    Providing Asia-Pacific journalism internships as a professional development opportunity

Manning, a former chair of the PMC Advisory Board, and Dr Robie previously collaborated with the Pacific Scoop venture, founded in 2009.

The AsiaPacificReport.nz website launch

Report by Ryan Dagur in Jakarta

While countries consider their climate change options for the future at COP21 in Paris, forest fires and the ensuing pollution have been growing problems in Indonesia.

For the most part, the scorched forest issue was isolated to the western Indonesian islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra. However, this year, the issue has plagued both Papua and West Papua, which raises concern among activists about the future of forests in these easternmost provinces.

“If it is not seen as a serious threat. It is a scourge for the future,” said Franciscan seminarian Yulianus Freddy Pawika of the Francisan commission for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation in Papua.

According to the National Agency for Disaster Management, from July to October this year, fires struck 2.6 million hectares of forest.

Papua, which had 353,191 hectares of land burned, stands behind Sumatra (832,999) and Kalimantan (806,817).

The number of fire hotspots in Papua, according to Purbo Sutopo Nugroho, the agency spokesman, reached 584, with the majority in Merauke district, which had 346, while Mappi district had 117.

Fire triggers
Nugroho said forest fires are a new problem for Papua.

The government, meanwhile, placed the blame for the fires on indigenous people.

“If the forests are burned and rain falls after that, grass will grow back and become green and animals will come. It will become a hunting ground for nomadic groups. These aspects are being investigated by us,” Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar told The Jakarta Post.

However, activists like Pawika believe the fires are triggered by the activities of multinational corporations, which have increased their presence in Papua over the past decade.

In Merauke, a fire hotspot, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate megaproject converted about 1.6 million hectares of land used by indigenous Malind people into a food, timber and biofuel production plantation.

The project was initially announced in 2009 by former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, with the goal of helping the country raise production of crops like rice, corn and soybean.

In May, President Joko Widodo announced plans to relaunch the project and said that the allocated area would be expanded to 4.6 million hectares.

According to Pusaka, a nongovernmental organisation focusing on indigenous rights, the government so far has granted permits to 41 plantation companies to operate on 1.5 million hectares of land.

Pusaka spokesman Yosafat Leonard Franky said three companies were responsible for the fires.

“We do not believe the Papuans are the perpetrators of forest fires,” he said.

“We are more inclined to think that there are other parties who deliberately set fire to the forest, because perhaps in the future they need land for oil palm plantations and other agriculture.”

According to Franky, culturally, Papuans never burn their forests, preferring instead to preserve the land.

“In general, if Papuans want to open new fields, they use machetes and axes to chop wood. If it is said that people burn forests to clear land and then hunt animals, that is not at all in accordance with their traditions,” he said.

Pawika said that in the Papuan mindset, the forest is their friend.

“So it is impossible that the perpetrators of forest fires are indigenous Papuans.”

Nugroho, the disaster agency spokesman, said he would not rule out corporations’ culpability. However, he said the effects of the El Nino phenomenon, which have wreaked havoc on developing countries dependent on agriculture, is the principal cause of the prolonged drought that has left the region vulnerable to forest fires.

Local concerns
Attention to this issue is already emerging, especially from local governments.

Lamadi de Lamato, spokesman for Papua Governor Lukas Enembe, said that in addition to taking steps to extinguish the fires, the government has urged all parties, including companies, to not set forests on fire.

The plantation corporations maintain that they are not responsible for the forest fires; placing the blame on the prolonged drought leading to arid conditions. Indeed even de Lamato said the corporations’ involvement in the fires would be difficult to prove, given the worsening drought.

Meanwhile, Franky said he hopes the local government will remain consistent in its attempts to preserve the forests, noting that many government officials are more concerned with short-term profits rather than preserving forests for long-term benefit.

Zenzi Suhadi, forest protection campaigner for the Indonesian forum for the environment, said the government must control the activities of corporations working in the region. He accused government officials of passing out concessions too easily to various companies.

From 2007-2011 for example, he said 14.7 million hectares of land were awarded to plantation companies.

“The granting of licenses should be tightened and law enforcement must be carried out on those negligent of their duties,” he said.

Weak church
Pawika lamented the weak role of the church in speaking out forcefully on the destruction of Papua’s forests, in comparison to the corporations who are backed by security forces that suppress resistance from local people.

“Concern over this issue is still limited in certain circles. It has not been a concern for the five dioceses in Papua,” Pawika said.

“We have not heard of one bishop in Papua speak firmly about this issue,” said Pawika, a Papua native.

He said the church must unite against forest destruction, given that this is a major threat to the indigenous Papuans’ survival.

“The indigenous people depend on the forest. If this problem is not solved soon, then this also means Papuans will be increasingly marginalised,” he said.

Report by the UCA Catholic News Service.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9499

Report by Pacific Media Watch

Item: 9498

David Robie
France detonated 193 nuclear tests in the South Pacific, at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, before halting the tests in 1996 in the face of Pacific-wide protests. On 10 July 1985, French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, in a futile bid to stop a protest flotilla going to Moruroa. Journalist David Robie, who was on board the Rainbow Warrior for more than 10 weeks of her last voyage, coming ashore in Auckland just two days before the bombing, told his story in the book Eyes of Fire. Here he reflects on the 20-year legal struggle to prevent the French spies from gagging reportage of their guilty plea from public television and the lingering secrecy about the health legacy of nuclear tests in the Pacific.

SYDNEY: (Pen Sydney/Pacific Media Watch): EXCERPT: This seems to be a remarkable year of memories and reflection for freedom of speech and bearing witness struggles  in  the  Pacific  region.  The  townsfolk  and  children  of  the  remote  Timor-Leste border town of Balibó have recently marked the 40th anniversary of the murder of five young Australian-based television newsmen dubbed forever as the Balibó Five.

On  16  October  1975,  the  five  journalists  –  Greg  Shackleton,  Gary  Cunningham  (New  Zealand),  Tony  Stewart, Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters (both British) from  channels  Seven  and  Nine  –  were  reporting  on Indonesian  special  forces  incursions  into  independent Timorese territory.

They were brutally killed with impunity. Weeks later, a sixth journalist from Australia, Roger East,  who  ventured  to  Timor-Leste  to  investigate  the murders and set up an independent Timorese news agency, was himself executed by the invading Indonesian forces on  8  December  1975.  Their  fate  has  been  told  in  the compelling 2009 Robert Connolly film Balibó.

But the impunity lingers on, not only for the journalist atrocities but for more than 150,000 Timorese victims of the 24 years
of Indonesian occupation.

In July, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia appeared to have turned a new leaf on media relations over the two Melanesian provinces that collectively make up the West Papua  region  by  declaring  an  “open  door”  visa  policy for foreign journalists. This is far from the reality. Māori Television recently sent a television crew there – the first New Zealand TV journalists to visit West Papua in more than 50 years – to bear witness.

But their stories, such as a report on a New Zealand aid-assisted thriving kumara (sweet potato) industry in the Baliem Valley, were hardly a testimony to media freedom.

Bearing witness
For me, as a journalist and media educator who has worked in the Pacific region for almost four decades, the issue of media freedom and bearing witness that has outweighed all  others is  the  bombing  of  the  global  environmental Greenpeace  flagship Rainbow Warrior by  French  secret agents on 10 July 1985 and the death on board of Portuguese-born Dutch photojournalist Fernando Pereira.

The 30th anniversary of the sabotage, which was New Zealand’s first and only example of state terrorism, came and went in a rather muted fashion (compared with events marking 20 years, for example).

Read the full article

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9498

Three Pacific island countries of Fiji, Kiribati and Palau have added their support to a European initiative that promotes the impact of climate change on oceans.

Prince Albert II of Monaco is spearheading the initiative, which has the support of 11 countries that included the three Pacific nations, as well as Aruba, Canada, Chile, France, Mexico, Monaco, New Zealand and Sweden.

Under this initiative, the group has signed into the “Because the Ocean” declaration, which among other things calls on the United Nations’ panel of climate scientists known as the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change to produce a specific report about the impact of climate change on the ocean.

They also want to promote an ocean action plan as well as reaffirm their commitment to reinforce ocean resilience by working to meet the UN SDG (sustainable development goal) 14, which is to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

In line with this, Sweden has agreed to help Fiji host a high-level UN conference on oceans and seas to be held in June, 2017, all aimed at promoting the implementation and maintaining political momentum in the achievement of SDG goal 14.

The grouping feels the ocean needs to take central stage in negotiations to finalise a new global agreement on climate change that started in Paris this week, given the key role oceans play in our climate.

Sustaining life
The ocean sustains life on earth and our collective well-being, the gouping’s ‘Because the ocean’ declaration stated.

“It produces half the oxygen every human being breathes. It also absorbs 25 percent of all the CO2 emitted by human activities, it captures approximately 90 percent of the anthropogenic heat added to the global system, and it receives nearly all the water from melting ice,” said the Declaration released to journalists covering the COP21 negotiations.

The Declaration added focusing on ocean resilience is vital because it is:

·         central to economic wealth, with an estimated contribution of between US$3-6 trillion per year to the global economy. 90% of globally traded goods are transported by sea; fisheries provide 4.3 billion people with more than 15% of the animal protein consumed, and coastal areas provide crucial services for local communities

·         already experiencing significant stress, now aggravated by increased CO2 concentrations liable to seriously affect marine life. Carbon dissolved in the Ocean alters its chemistry, already driving acidity up by 30% since the beginning of the industrial revolution

·         warming, causing irreversible damage to coral reefs and other ecosystems and species, stronger storms, changes in sea currents, including accelerating the spread of invasive species

·         rising of sea level, and we must anticipate that millions of people are at risk of being displaced especially in low lying areas and Small Island States

Signing of behalf of their countries, the “Because the ocean” declaration has been initialed by Prince Albert II of Monaco; President of Kiribati Anote Tong; President of Palau Tommy Remengesau; Minister in charge of Ecology and Sustainable Development of France Ségolène Royal; Minister of Environment of Canada, Catherine McKenna; Minister of Cooperation and Development of Sweden, Isabella Lövin; Minister of Rural Development and Agriculture of Fiji, Inia Seruiratu; Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chili, Heraldo Muñoz; Minister of Regional Planning, Infrastructure and Integration of Aruba, Oslin B. Sevinger; Director General of National Environment and Climate Change Institute of Mexico, Dra. Amparo Martínez Arroyo; and on behalf of New Zealand, the deputy permanent representative to OECD, Rebekah Riley.

Samisoni Pareti is editor-in-chief of Islands Business magazine, Fiji.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9497 | SPREP COP21 coverage

#4PacIslands

By TJ Aumua

OPINION: I felt the heat of Fiji’s tropical climate as soon as I jumped off the plane. The warmth was a pleasant relief from New Zealand’s frosty winter and a gratifying reminder of what a holiday feels like.

But I wasn’t here for a holiday. So ignoring the billboards touting Fiji as a honeymoon getaway, I was to work in the nation’s newsrooms for two weeks to gain a different perspective on our Pacific neighbour.

The exchange was a part of Pacific Cooperation Foundation’s Media Programme which partnered with Fiji National University and Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre as host organisations.

On my first day in Suva I met with student journalists from Fiji’s National University. They told me Fiji should be known for its people; that despite the nation experiencing four coups in the past two decades, the people have persevered and continue to make achievements.

I was lucky enough to meet some of these people. For two weeks it was an inspiration to work alongside some of Fiji’s 20-plus-year-old journalists who were informing the nation.

I got to accompany them on their weekly assignments helping with interviews, writing and voicing news stories, and watching behind the scenes of how a 6pm news bulletin is put together and broadcast live to the nation.

A highlight was being a part of a newsroom’s daily process of being placed on an assignment early in the morning, putting the story together and then watching it on TV that night or reading it in the newspapers the next day.

Restrictions
Fiji’s media climate often hits international headlines for being restricted and censored by the Fiji Media Industry Development Decree.

At times, this was frustrating to work under; having to withhold certain questions I wanted answered, as well as locals being extremely hesitant to speak to the media in fear of repercussions.

But I admired those journalists whom, under challenging circumstances, strived to keep the people of Fiji at the heart of their stories.

When I asked some of Fiji’s student journalists why they chose this career path, they said although they had felt the effects of their country’s media environment, it was important for them to be a voice for Fiji’s rural communities who are often under represented.

The motivated people I met in Fiji went beyond these young journalists. It extended further into youth who worked within the countries NGOs, engineering firms, the music scene and those who are entrepreneurs.

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