A West Papuan church leader has warned that ongoing killings of young Papuans allegedly by Indonesian security forces have the hallmark of genocide.

Since the start of the year there has been no stop to violent incidents in the Indonesian-ruled Papua region known internationally as West Papua.

Indonesia’s government blames recent violence on armed, pro-independence West Papuan fighters.

• READ MORE: Papuan women ‘living in fear’ condemn military violence
• Other West Papua reports

However, human rights defenders say the violence is escalating, while the young, indigenous people of West Papua are in the firing line.

High school students shot
Last week a 17-year old Papuan girl was killed as a result of a military operation reportedly targeting civilian mining camps in Tembagapura.

Also last week, several Papuan high school students were shot when tensions flared at a graduation parade through the town of Kobakma in Papua’s central highlands. Police had objected to them wearing the Papuan Morning Star flag — a symbol of the independence movement.

Last month, Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) said it was investigating a shooting incident that left up to 12 Papuan civilians dead as the result of an Indonesian military operation in Kembru district. According to human rights researchers, a 5-year old girl and a 77-year old woman were among the dead.

Komnas HAM’s commissioner for monitoring and investigation Saurlin Siagian said it was difficult to ascertain the exact ages of each victim in the Kembru incident, but he told RNZ Pacific that two pregnant women were among those killed.

Earlier in April, five people, including a 12-year old boy, were shot dead in Dogiyai regency in an alleged retaliatory attack by police after a policeman was killed.

The list goes on, stretching back to January — dozens of people reported dead, dozens more people injured and many more people displaced from their villages.

Disturbing pattern
The head of the human rights and justice department of the GIDI Evangelical Church of Indonesia in Papua, Pastor Jimi Koirewa, said there was a disturbing pattern to these attacks.

“The children are being killed, the women are being killed. That is a part of genocide, because the women will give birth to babies, the kids, the children, the youth, they are the future of Papua, and killing them is part of a genocide.

“They’re wiping us out. There will be no more people there standing in Papua. The old people will die gradually,” Pastor Koirewa told RNZ Pacific.

Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry declined to comment on the pastor’s claim. It said it could not discuss recent incidents while investigations are underway. However, the Human Rights Minister in Jakarta, Natalius Pigai, has admitted the situation is a serious concern.

After a violent year in 2025 — when Komnas HAM recorded 97 violent incidents and armed conflicts in Papua — the situation has deteriorated further this year.

Pigai noted that the country’s independent human rights body has identified 26 cases of violence in Papua from January to April 2026.

“Based on records from both domestic and international sources, there is an escalation. In just under a month, no fewer than 20 people died in 5 incidents in Dogiyai, Yahukimo, Puncak Papua, Timika, and Tembagapura,” Pigai said in a statement on Sunday.

Pigai claimed the government was continuing to seek a peaceful solution that can address the root causes of the conflict.

For the past several years Indonesian security forces in Papua have been engaged in conflict with “armed criminal groups”, their label for Papuan pro-independence fighters within the wider OPM Free West Papua Movement.

Lack of justice: ‘Shooting the people’
Pastor Koirewa said the Indonesian military forces had been amassing in large numbers in recent months.

“There’s so much military deployment coming into Papua and the reason, they said, is they want to get rid of the rebels, OPM, that’s what they call rebels. They said that they want to get rid of the OPM so that development can happen, the government can come and build the land,” Koirewa said.

“But when they come in, they are not shooting the combatant, the OPM, but they are shooting the people. So I see that the it’s escalating.”

Koirewa said police rarely investigated the violent incidents thoroughly, leaving Papuan communities mistrustful of the justice system. The GIDI church has raised its concern with the upsurge in violence.

“Our church, we have no influence in Jakarta at all. We already made some communications through the formal way to Jakarta, yeah, through the our Parliament, let them know what is happening.

“But Jakarta is not responding. They don’t care.

“They just come in with their programme, and they don’t care at all. That’s why the church now is looking for aid outside of our country,” Koirewa said, adding that the aid they sought is for internally displaced people and Papuan schools.

Papuans in poverty
Jakarta has been promoting major agri-business projects in Papua provinces — including oil palm, rice and sugarcane — as well as large scale mining and forestry projects in the interior.

The government argues that increasing development and economic activity raises the standard of living for everyone in Papua.

“Which part of Papua are they developing? Why are the Papuans still the poorest among the whole Indonesian population. They have been for with us about more than 60 years. And why are the Papuans still the Papuans still in poverty?” Koirewa said.

“We see that there has been no output at all. They will only bring more non-Papuans in to take over our land.”

Koirewa said changing demographics due to Indonesian transmigration added to the sense that Papuans were being out numbered in their homeland and facing a bleak future.

“There’s no hope,” he said.

The displacement of Papuan villagers is also a factor, with the latest Internally Displaced Persons update from Human Rights Monitor group saying more than 107,000 West Papuans remain displaced by armed conflict.

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

Last week, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said Aotearoa’s immigration settings were “no way to treat our Pacific cousins”.

“All Pacific people want is a fair go, equivalent to what other nations are getting, and they’re not getting it,” he said outside Parliament.

While Peters’ comments were made in the context of the Pacific Justice petition, the concept of the Pacific as “family” has become a common rhetoric used by politicians and leaders across New Zealand.

• READ MORE: Four key facts about climate change and human migration
• UN warns of millions displaced by climate change as COP30 opens in Brazil
• Other climate migration reports

In 2018, former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern spoke on such issues facing the Pacific.

“We are the Pacific too, and we are doing our best to stand with our family as they face these threats,” she said during a talk at the Paris Institute.

At the Pacific Islands Forum last year, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said: “This is the Pacific family and we prioritise the centrality of the Pacific Islands Forum.”

But is Aotearoa doing enough to live up to this “Pacific family” rhetoric in the face of daunting and life-changing threats, such as climate change, continues to reshape the region?

Discussions and comparisons continue to arise off the back of Australia’s Falepili Union Treaty, which saw the first group of Tuvaluan migrants relocate towards the end of 2025.

Australia’s implementation of the treaty has sparked criticism over whether New Zealand is failing its Pacific neighbours when it comes to climate-related migration.

‘Increasingly perilous situations’
For Pacific Islanders hoping to move to Aotearoa, there is a pathway.

Under the Pacific Access Category (PAC) ballot, 150 people from specifically Kiribati and 250 from Tuvalu — two of the most vulnerable nations at the forefront of climate impacts — can gain residency every year.

Applicants must pay $1385, pass health checks, meet English requirements, be under 45, and secure a job offer.

Dr Olivia Yates has spent years researching climate mobility from Kiribati and Tuvalu.

She said the tension around climate mobility sits not in a lack of awareness, but in the design of the system itself.

“I think the main takeaway is that New Zealand’s current approach to climate mobility, or at least for the last five years — things are starting to change now — but initially — we do a lot of research, get a lot more information, and leave immigration systems as they are,” she said.

She said Pacific neighbours islands are facing “increasingly difficult” circumstances.

“Disasters are becoming more frequent … the access to food and to water is being challenged because of these creeping impacts of climate change. So as the New Zealand government takes one step forward, I feel like climate change is sort of a step ahead of us,” Dr Yates said.

“It sounds very doom and gloom, but the other thing I would say is that our Pacific neighbours, fundamentally and primarily, want to stay in place. Nobody wants to have to leave.”

In the meantime, people are moving, often through pathways never intended to respond to climate pressure.

“People are using these laws to come to the country and their laws that were not really set up to address climate change and the movement of people in response to climate change,” Dr Yates said.

“They’re primarily economically motivated, and so this creates a whole bunch of issues that are the downstream consequence of using a system for something that is not what it was designed for.”

She said that PAC ballot, created in 2001, has effectively become “the de facto pathway for people from Kiribati and Tuvalu to move here for reasons related to climate change”.

While many migrants cite work, family or opportunity as the primary motivations, these distinctions are becoming blurred.

“It’s kind of becoming increasingly difficult to separate climate change drivers from these factors,” Dr Yates explained.

And the consequences can be significant. When visas hinge on employment and strict eligibility criteria, families can find themselves vulnerable if those circumstances shift.

“Our current immigration laws are being used in a way that they weren’t designed for, and this is having really negative consequences on people, specifically from Kiribati and Tuvalu,” she said.

“On the other side of that, those that wish to stay, whether because they choose to or because they can’t afford to leave, that visas aren’t available to them, and they start to face increasingly perilous situations that breach their rights.”

Lacking a plan
Kiribati community leader Kinaua Ewels, who works closely with Pacific migrants settling in Aotearoa, said the system’s rigidity has left many feeling excluded and unsupported.

She does not believe New Zealand is set up to deal with the realities of climate migration

“I’m hoping the New Zealand government could help the people who are able to move on their own, using their own money, but when they get here, they can actually access work opportunities,” she said.

Ewels said the PAC still feels restrictive, and lacks a plan to help new arrivals adapt or secure employment.

“They pressure them to look for their own job. There’s no plan for the government to help them settle very easily, to run away from climate change and their life situations back on the island,” Ewels said.

“More can be done.”

According to Ewels, the families who do arrive with the hopes of safety and stability, end up struggling to navigate basic systems, such as healthcare and employment, and get no formal support.

“It’s very restricted in the way that it’s not supportive to the people from the Pacific Islands,” she said.

NZ govt ‘not ready to bring climate refugees’

Ewels said that while New Zealand spoke of the Pacific as “family,” those words continued ringing hollow for communities who saw little practical support.

“They use the family name, which is a very meaningful and deep word back home, but the process is not done yet,” she said.

“In reality, the government is not actually ready to bring people over here in terms of climate refugees or people needing to move because of climate change.”

Ewels said if New Zealand truly viewed the Pacific as family, that connection would extend itself into some meaningful collaboration with Pacific community leaders here in Aotearoa, who could help them navigate the complexities of this situation.

“If the government talks about family, they should work with us, the community leaders, so we can help them at least make sure people are warmly welcomed and supported when they come here,” Ewels said.

Dr Yates said the government was making efforts, but warned the the pace of policy was struggling to keep up with the pace of change happening in the world today.

“I would say that the New Zealand government is trying. But as the government takes one step forward, climate change is starting to outpace us.”

Pacific sea levels have risen by as much as 15cm over the past three decades.

There are predictions that around 50,000 Pacific people across the region could lose their homes each year as the climate crisis reshapes their environments.

In the past decade, one in 10 people from Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu have already migrated.

Kiribati community leader Charles Kiata told RNZ Pacific in October last year that life on the Micronesian island nation was becoming increasingly difficult, as it was being hit by severe storms, with higher temperatures and drought.

“Every part of life, food, shelter, health, is being affected and what hurts the most is that our people feel trapped. They love their home, but their home is slowly disappearing,” Kiata said at the time.

Crops are dying and fresh drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce for the island nation.

Kiata said Kiribati overstayers in New Zealand were anxious they would be sent back home.

“Deporting them back to flooded lands or places with no clean water like Kiribati is not only cruel but it also goes against our shared Pacific values.”

In 2020, Kiribati man Ioane Teitiota took New Zealand to the United Nations Human Rights Committee after his refugee claim, based on sea-level rise, was rejected.

The committee did find his deportation lawful, although ruled that governments must consider the human rights impacts of climate change when assessing deportations.

The term “climate refugee” remains unrecognised in binding international law. It is a term Dr Yates has previously told RNZ was always flawed.

“Climate change is this unique phenomenon because what is forcing people out of their countries comes from elsewhere,” she said.

“At face value, the idea of being a refugee didn’t fit.”

Many communities suffering at the hands of climate change do not want to leave their home, their culture, their land, their community.

Dr Yates said the term “climate mobility” was a better fit — describing it as a spectrum that recognises the desire for communities to have options.

Australia’s Falepili Treaty v NZ’s climate pathways
In late 2025, the first Tuvaluans began relocating to Australia under the Falepili Union, a bilateral treaty signed with Tuvalu in 2023.

The agreement creates a new permanent visa for up to 280 Tuvaluans each year, allocated by ballot. Applicants do not need a job offer, there is no age cap, nor disability exclusion.

The treaty has led debate on online platforms around why New Zealand does not offer a similar pathway.

International law expert Professor Jane McAdam is cautious against simplistic comparisons between New Zealand and Australia.

“It has been mislabelled in a lot of the international media as a climate refugee visa when it’s nothing of the sort,” Prof McAdam said.

“There’s often nothing in this visa that requires you to show that you’re concerned about the impacts of climate change in the future,” she said.

Professor McAdam pointed out that New Zealand had never been viewed as “totally useless” in climate-related migration of Pacific peoples.

“Historically, New Zealand has been seen as leading the way when it comes to providing pathways for people in the Pacific to move,” she said, noting the PAC visa and labour mobility schemes as examples.

“New Zealand has been leading the way globally in recognising how existing international refugee law and human rights work,” she added.

That includes influential tribunal decisions examining how climate impacts intersect with refugee and human rights law, even where claims ultimately failed.

In 2023, Pacific leaders endorsed the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility, the first regional document to formally acknowledge climate-related migration and commit states to cooperate on safe and dignified pathways.

Dr Yates said New Zealand was “furiously involved” in shaping the framework.

“The framework is the first time, put down on paper, that people are migrating because of climate-related reasons,” she said.

However, the document is non-binding.

“It means our government is ready to take this seriously. But I wouldn’t say they are taking this seriously, yet.”

She added a dedicated, rights-based climate mobility visa is needed that can account for a wide-range of people, including those with disabilities and others disproportionately affected.

RNZ Pacific approached the Immigration Minister Erica Stanford’s office for comment on whether New Zealand immigration law does explicitly recognise climate change or climate-induced displacement as grounds for special protection or a dedicated visa category.

We were advised Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was the appropriate person to comment on the issue.

However, a spokesperson for Peters told RNZ Pacific the specific issue “would be a question for the Minister of Immigration, or the Climate Change Minister”.

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

Speakers contrasted and condemned settler colonialism strategies in Aotearoa New Zealand and Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide in Palestine at a feisty solidarity rally in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today — a day after Waitangi Day, the national holiday marking the 1840 signing of Te Tititi o Waitangi between 46 chiefs and the British crown.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto was one of the speakers after attending an earlier rally at Kerikeri and then driving 240 km with four fellow activists to join the Auckland protest.

“Colonisation in the present resonates with every Māori family. So here we are in that process of decolonisation, a slow process — it’s happening within Māoridom, and it’s happening in the Pākehā world,” Minto told the crowd.

• READ MORE: Why the Treaty Principles Bill had to go down
• Isaac Herzog is accused of inciting genocide in Gaza. He shouldn’t be welcomed to Australia
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“I was so delighted that when the Treaty Principles Bill came in we had that huge hikoī in Wellington,” he said.

“For those of you who know Wellington, we were in Manners Street towards the end of the march.

“And we got word that the rally had started in Parliament. We still had a kilometre to go. The streets were jammed with people, Pākehā, Māori, migrant people — Indigenous people from all over the world, all saying ‘no’.

“New Zealand is not a European country. We have an Indigenous people here and we want to work in partnership through the Treaty of Waitangi.

‘Weak prime minister’
“And what we have now, again, we’ve got a government that is — we have a weak prime minister, and we have got leaders of strong rightwing parties, that’s Winston Peters from New Zealand First, and that other guy from ACT . . .

“You know, whatever his name is . . .” Minto said jokingly. The crowd reeled of David Seymour’s name with a mocking tone and cries of “one term government” with a general election due on November 7.

Among other speakers was Janfrie Wakim, a longtime advocate for Palestine and one of the founders of the Auckland-based Palestine Human Rights Campaign founded in the 1970s, which later evolved into the PSNA in 2013.

She gave a “high fives” message of praise for protesters supporting the cause of Palestine justice and self-determination in this 122th week of demonstrations since October 2023.

Wakim also lauded the “kaimahi” — the workers who turned up each week to set up and pack up.

She said the colonisation of Aotearoa and Palestine had similarities — “but also some differences and decolonising is our task here in Aotearoa and in Palestine.”

Wakim paid tribute to Annette Sykes — “a wahine toa and heroic lawyer” advocate for Māori iwi — who wrote recently “decolonising is not erasing history but rewriting who controls the narrative”.

‘Enriching empires’
“Classic colonialists set out to exploit resources and enrich their empires,” Wakim said.

“European imperial powers dominated the past 500 years and they exited when their empires collapsed,” she said, naming Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Spain.

However, she added, “settler colonialism is different — it remains and is ongoing. All settler-colonial states seek more territory and fewer Indigenous people by ‘ethnic-cleansing’.”

“Settler colonialists sought to recreate Europe in the lands they invaded and they needed to eliminate the local native populations living there — think Australia.

“That is the story of Palestine.

“Settler colonialism is a structure not an event. And Zionists built their structure on that platform.”

Wakim said early Zionists knew well that Palestine was populated. They knew that the land had to be “emptied” to allow European Jews to establish their settler-colonial project.

Nakba refugees
She referred to the 1948 Nakba — “the catastrophe” — when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by Israeli militias. They became refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria but with a UN-backed right to return.

More than 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and their land stolen by the Israelis.

Wakim also told of the Zionists’ racist narrative dehumanising the Palestinians and their relationship to the land”.

“But nothing compares with what Israel is doing today — the brutal, ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing we have been witnessing and continue to witness.”

Wakim said the Zionist structure was built on a weak foundation that was crumbling — “not fast enough but the cracks are widening as is Israel’s reliance on one superpower which itself is in decline”.

She said Palestine and Palestinians remained steadfast and resisting the injustices.

“As here in Aotearoa, they are actively working across the world in solidarity with others to expose the lies and change the narrative and unite people of all nations, ethnicities and religions.

BDS movement growing
“BDS — [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] is growing slowly but surely.”

She said Israel was imploding and she called on New Zealand to renew its “lead on social justice issues”.

“We may be small, but we can be powerful,” she added.

Another speaker, kaiāwhina Kerry Sorensen-Tyrer, spoke of her encounter that day at Te Komititanga Square with three IDF soldiers from Israel “holidaying” in New Zealand. After a brief exchange, she photographed them and reminded the crowd to be vigilant and to report information to the PSNA’s IDF hotline.

“We do not want you in Aotearoa,” she said of the soldiers and their role in a genocidal war on Gaza to loud cheers from the crowd.

A West Papuan advocacy group has condemned Indonesia over taking up the presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, saying it was “totally unfit” and the choice  “makes a mockery” of the office.

Indonesia was the sole candidate for the Asia-Pacific bloc at the council (HRC), which also includes China, Japan and South Korea. It was the group’s turn to propose a leader.

Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro succeeds Switzerland and will now lead proceedings at the UN forum for a year after his nomination last week.

• READ MORE: Human Rights Council elects Indonesian candidate President for 2026
• Other West Papua reports

However, a statement by a senior official of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, has challenged the nomination, asking: “How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when they are hiding from the world their 66-year occupation of West Papua, with 500,000 men, women, and children dead?”

“How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when their President is a war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua?

President Prabowo Subianto “personally tortured East Timorese men, and presided over indiscriminate massacres of Indigenous people from Kraras to Mapenduma”, claimed Wenda whose allegations have been documented in various human rights reports.

‘No apology’
“He has never apologised or been held accountable for his crimes,” said Wenda.

He said Indonesia had not won the presidency due to its human rights record.

“The position rotates around the world, and Indonesia was the only candidate from the Asia Pacific region to put themselves forward,” Wenda said.

“Nonetheless, this appointment makes a mockery of the UN and its claim to uphold international law and human rights.”

Wenda said 105,000 West Papuans were currently displaced due to Indonesian military operations.

“Indonesia holding the presidency of the HRC in 2026 is akin to apartheid South Africa leading it in 1980.”

Instead of leading the HRC, “Indonesia should be a global pariah,” said Wenda.

Refused to admit UN
“For seven years, they have refused to admit the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [to the Papuan provinces], ignoring the repeated demand of over 110 countries, including all members of the EU commission, the United States, the Netherlands, and the UK.

“In that time, with West Papua closed to the world, they have launched countless military operations in Papua, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people.”

Indonesia’s Minister for Human Rights is a West Papuan, Natalius Pigai.

Wenda said Pigai had stated that Indonesia would use the HRC position to “counter breaches of international law in Venezuela and elsewhere”.

“What about your own people, Mr Pigai? What about Indonesia’s own back yard?” asked Wenda.

Until the world intervened to stop such “egregious hypocrisy” and recognised the “ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide”, there would “be no peace or justice in the Pacific.”

Principal defender
The UN Human Rights Council is the world’s principal defender of vulnerable people worldwide. This is the first time that an Indonesian diplomat has been elected president of the forum.

After his confirmation last Thursday, Ambassador Suryodipuro said Indonesia had been a strong supporter of the council since it began its work 20 years ago, and of the Geneva forum’s predecessor, the Human Rights Commission.

“Our decision to step forward is rooted in our 1945 constitution and that aligns with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter which mandates Indonesia to contribute to world peace based on independence, peace and social justice,” he told delegates.

At the same meeting, delegates also agreed to the appointment of Ecuadorian candidate Ambassador Marcelo Vázquez Bermúdez as vice-president of the council for 2026.

An Australian author whose award-winning book about Israel’s military and surveillance industry has swept the world is scathing about a controversial Gaza transit company.

Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book about how Israel tests arms and surveillance technologies in the illegal occupation of Palestine, says the shadowy scheme carrying Palestinians to South Africa or other countries was waging “disaster capitalism”.

He said the Al-Majd Europe outfit that reportedly flew 153 people from Gaza to South Aftica could have been operating for weeks or months before being noticed.

• READ MORE: ‘Trip of suffering’: Gaza evacuee details 24-hour journey to South Africa
• Other Gaza reports

Commenting on this mysterious flight carrying people from Gaza that transited through Kenya’s capital Nairobi and ended up in South Africa, Loewenstein told Al Jazeera from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta that there had been rumours about companies making such flights.

He said such flights apparently “requires Israeli permission as well as other countries’ permissions”.

“South Africa was apparently the final destination, considering it is one of the most pro-Palestine countries on the planet,” he said.

Lowenstein said there were “no names or associations” on the “incredibly strange” company website, which “almost looks like it was created by AI”, calling what it does “disaster capitalism” – a theme of one of his earlier books.

‘Making money out of misery’
“This is the concept of people making money out of other people’s misery,” Loewenstein said.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Ministry has warned against groups exploiting Gaza’s humanitarian crisis for human trafficking in the wake of the mysterious arrival of 153 people from Gaza in South Africa this week.

The ministry warned that “companies and entities that mislead our people, incite them to deportation or displacement or engage in human trafficking and exploit their tragic and catastrophic humanitarian conditions will bear the legal consequences of their unlawful actions and will be subject to prosecution and accountability.”

In a statement, the ministry also urged Palestinian families in Gaza “to exercise caution and avoid falling prey to human trafficking networks, blood merchants, and displacement agents”.

The departure of people from Gaza to South Africa was closely coordinated with Israeli authorities.

Everything started with an advertised post from the Al-Majd Europe organisation promising to safely evacuate Palestinian families outside the Gaza Strip, so many Palestinians filled in their applications and were waiting for a call from the organisation.

The situation in Gaza has pushed Palestinians to pay whatever they could to leave the Strip.

‘They lost everything’
“They have lost everything. They lost their houses, and they believe that they do not have any future here,” an Al Jazeera reporter said.

The television channel also said Gazans who used the transit company were forced to pay up to US$5000 to enable them to cross the so-called “yellow line” and be driven from Karem Abu Salem crossing to Ramon airport in southern Israel.

This is a risky move because at least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the October ceasefire for crossing the yellow line. So the operation would have required Israeli military cooperation.

The Gazans were then flown to Nairobi in Kenyan on a Romanian aircraft and transferred to a flight to Johannesburg where border officials held them for 12 hours because they reportedly did not have Israeli exit stamps in their passports.

Amnesty International is asking the New Zealand government to create a new humanitarian visa for Pacific people impacted by climate change.

Kiribati community leader Charles Kiata said life on Kiribati was becoming extremely hard as sea levels rose and the country was hit by more severe storms, higher temperatures and drought.

“Every part of life, food, shelter, health, is being affected and what hurts the most is that our people feel trapped. They love their home, but their home is slowly disappearing,” Kiata said.

• READ MORE: ‘Humanitarian’ visa must be created for Pacific Islanders

Crops are dying and fresh drinking water is becoming increasingly scarce for the island nation.

Kiata said in New Zealand, overstayers were anxious they would be sent back home.

“Deporting them back to flooded lands or places with no clean water like Kiribati is not only cruel but it also goes against our shared Pacific values.”

Amnesty International is also asking the government to stop deporting overstayers from Kiribati and Tuvalu, who would be returning to harsh conditions.

Duty of care
The organisation’s executive director, Jacqui Dillon said she wanted New Zealand to acknowledge its duty of care to Pacific communities.

“We are asking the New Zealand government to create a new humanitarian visa, specifically for those impacted by climate change and disasters. Enabling people to migrate on their terms with dignity.”

She said current Pacific visas New Zealand offered, such as the Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) and the Pacific Access Category (PAC), were insufficient.

“Those pathways are in effect nothing short of a discriminatory lottery, so they don’t offer dignity, nor do they offer self-agency.”

Dillon said current visa schemes were also discriminatory because people could only migrate if they had an acceptable standard of health.

The organisation interviewed Alieta — not her real name — who has a visual impairment. She decided to remove her name from the family’s PAC application to enable her husband and six-year-old daughter to migrate to New Zealand in 2016.

It has meant Alieta has only seen her daughter once in the past 11 years.

“I would urge all of us to think about that and say, if our feet were in those shoes, would we think that that was right? I don’t think we would,” Dillon said.

Tuvalu comparison
Tuvaluan community leader Fala Haulangi, based in Aotearoa, wants the country to adopt something like the Falepili Union Treaty which the leaders of Tuvalu and Australia signed in 2023.

It creates a pathway for up to 280 Tuvalu citizens to go to Australia each year to work, live, and study.

This year over 80 percent of the population applied to move under the treaty.

Haulangi said the PAC had too many restrictions.

“PAC (Pacific Access Category Visa) still comes with conditions that are very, very strict on my people, so if [New Zealand has] the same terms and conditions that Australia has for the Falepili Treaty, to me that is really good.”

In the past, Pacific governments have been worried about the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme causing a brain drain.

Samoa paused scheme
In 2023, Samoa paused the scheme, partially because of the loss of skilled labour, including police officers leaving to go fruit picking.

Haulangi said it’s not up to her to tell people to stay if a new and more open visa is available to Pacific people.

“Who am I to tell my people back home ‘don’t come, stay there’ because we need people back home.”

Dillon said some people will stay.

“All we’re simply saying is give people the opportunity and the dignity to have self-agency and be able to choose.”

Charles Kiata from Kiribati said a visa established now would mean there would be a slow migration of people from the Pacific and not people being forced to leave as climate refugees.

He said people from Kiribati had strengths they could be proud of and could partner with New Zealand.

“It’s a win-win for both of us; our people come to New Zealand to contribute economically and to society.”

RNZ Pacific has approached New Zealand’s Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford for comment.

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

A West Papua independence leader says escalating violence is forcing indigenous Papuans to flee their ancestral lands.

It comes as the Indonesian military claims 18 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) were killed in an hour-long operation in Intan Jaya on May 14.

In a statement, reported by Kompas, Indonesia’s military claimed its presence was “not to intimidate the people” but to protect them from violence.

• READ MORE: Fiji rights coalition slams ‘betrayal’ of West Papua for Indonesian benefits
• Other West Papua reports

“We will not allow the people of Papua to live in fear in their own land,” it said.

Indonesia’s military said it seized firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows. They also took Morning Star flags — used as a symbol for West Papuan independence — and communication equipment.

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom, told RNZ Pacific that seven villages in Ilaga, Puncak Regency in Central Papua were now being attacked.

“The current military escalation in West Papua has now been building for months. Initially targeting Intan Jaya, the Indonesian military have since broadened their attacks into other highlands regencies, including Puncak,” he said.

Women, children forced to leave
Wenda said women and children were being forced to leave their villages because of escalating conflict, often from drone attacks or airstrikes.

Earlier this month, ULMWP claimed one civilian and another was seriously injured after being shot at from a helicopter.

Last week, ULMWP shared a video of a group of indigenous Papuans walking through mountains holding an Indonesian flag, which Wenda said was a symbol of surrender.

“They look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman,” Wenda said.

He said the increased military presence was driven by resources.

President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has a goal to be able to feed Indonesia’s population without imports as early as 2028.

Video rejects Indnesian plan
A video statement from tribes in Mappi regency in South Papua from about a month ago, translated to English, said they rejected Indonesia’s food project and asked companies to leave.

In the video, about a dozen Papuans stood while one said the clans in the region had existed on customary land for generations and that companies had surveyed land without consent.

“We firmly ask the local government, the regent, Mappi Regency to immediately review the permits and revoke the company’s permits,” the speaker said.

Wenda said the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had also grown.

But he said many of the TPNPB were using bow and arrows against modern weapons.

“I call them home guard because there’s nowhere to go.”

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

The author of the book Eyes of Fire, one of the countless publications on the Rainbow Warrior bombing almost 40 years ago but the only one by somebody actually on board the bombed ship, says he was under no illusions that France was behind the attack.

Journalist David Robie was speaking last month at a Greenpeace Aotearoa workship at Mātauri Bay for environmental activists and revealed that he has a forthcoming new book to mark the anniversary of the bombing.

“I don’t think I had any illusions at the time. For me, I knew it was the French immediately the bombing happened,” he said.

• READ MORE: David Robie on Eyes of Fire — Greenpeace video
• Eyes of Fire: Thirty Years On educational microsite
• The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior — Greenpeace
• From Rongelap to Mejatto – how Rainbow Warrior helped move nuclear refugees — David Robie

“You know with the horrible things they were doing at the time with their colonial policies in Kanaky New Caledonia, assassinating independence leaders and so on, and they had a heavy military presence.

“A sort of clamp down in New Caledonia, so it just fitted in with the pattern — an absolute disregard for the Pacific.”

He said it was ironic that four decades on, France had trashed the goodwill that had been evolving with the 1988 Matignon and 1998 Nouméa accords towards independence with harsh new policies that led to the riots in May last year.

Dr Robie’s series of books on the Rainbow Warrior focus on the impact of nuclear testing by both the Americans and the French, in particular, on Pacific peoples and especially the humanitarian voyages to relocate the Rongelap Islanders in the Marshall Islands barely two months before the bombing by French secret agent saboteurs at Marsden wharf in Auckland on 10 July 1985.

Detained by French military
He was detained by the French military while on assignment in New Caledonia a year after Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior was first published in New Zealand.

His reporting won the NZ Media Peace Prize in 1985.

David Robie’s 2025 talk on the Rainbow Warrior.     Video: Greenpeace Aotearoa

Dr Robie confirmed that Little island Press was publishing a new book this year with a focus on the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

“This edition is the most comprehensive work on the sinking of the first Rainbow Warrior, but also speaks to the first humanitarian mission undertaken by Greenpeace,” said publisher Tony Murrow.

“It’s an important work that shows us how we can act in the world and how we must continue to support all life on this unusual planet that is our only home.”

Little Island Press produced an educational microsite as a resource to accompany Eyes of Fire with print, image and video resources.

The book will be launched in association with a nuclear-free Pacific exhibition at Ellen Melville Centre in mid-July.

Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday, aged 88, the Vatican announced. The head of the Catholic Church had recently survived being hospitalised with double pneumonia.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell’s announcement began:

“Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.”

There were many unusual aspects of Pope Francis’ papacy. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas (and the southern hemisphere), the first to choose the name “Francis” and the first to give a TED talk.

• READ MORE: Pope Francis dies one day after first post-hospital public appearance and with final plea for Gaza
• How the next pope will be elected — what goes on at the conclave
• Pope Francis updates: Leader of Roman Catholic Church dies at 88

He was also the first pope in more than 600 years to be elected following the resignation, rather than death, of his predecessor.

From the very start of his papacy, Francis seemed determined to do things differently and present the papacy in a new light. Even in thinking about his burial, he chose the unexpected: to be placed to rest not in the Vatican, but in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome – the first pope to be buried there in hundreds of years.

Vatican News reported the late Pope Francis had requested his funeral rites be simplified.

“The renewed rite,” said Archbishop Diego Ravelli, “seeks to emphasise even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”

Straddling a line between “progressive” and “conservative”, Francis experienced tension with both sides. In doing so, his papacy shone a spotlight on what it means to be Catholic today.

The Pope’s Easter Blessing    Video: AP

The day before his death, Pope Francis made a brief appearance on Easter Sunday to bless the crowds at St Peter’s Square.

Between a rock and a hard place
Francis was deemed not progressive enough by some, yet far too progressive by others.

His apostolic exhortation (an official papal teaching on a particular issue or action) Amoris Laetitia, ignited great controversy for seemingly being (more) open to the question of whether people who have divorced and remarried may receive Eucharist.

He also disappointed progressive Catholics, many of whom hoped he would make stronger changes on issues such as the roles of women, married clergy, and the broader inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.

The reception of his exhortation Querida Amazonia was one such example. In this document, Francis did not endorse marriage for priests, despite bishops’ requests for this. He also did not allow the possibility of women being ordained as deacons to address a shortage of ordained ministers. His discerning spirit saw there was too much division and no clear consensus for change.

Francis was also openly critical of Germany’s controversial “Synodal Way” – a series of conferences with bishops and lay people — that advocated for positions contrary to Church teachings. Francis expressed concern on multiple occasions that this project was a threat to the unity of the Church.

At the same time, Francis was no stranger to controversy from the conservative side of the Church, receiving “dubia” or “theological doubts” over his teaching from some of his Cardinals. In 2023, he took the unusual step of responding to some of these doubts.

Pope Francis is seen as “one of the most vocal leaders on #Gaza. He was always condemning the war on Gaza, and asking for a ceasefire and … end of this conflict.” #AsiaPacificReport #PopeFrancis #GazaGenocide @palestine @OnlinePalEng @PalestineAusNZ https://t.co/vtuTpIVYmv pic.twitter.com/6EF1wdhgYL

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) April 21, 2025

Impact on the Catholic Church
In many ways, the most striking thing about Francis was not his words or theology, but his style. He was a modest man, even foregoing the Apostolic Palace’s grand papal apartments to live in the Vatican’s simpler guest house.

He may well be remembered most for his simplicity of dress and habits, his welcoming and pastoral style and his wise spirit of discernment.

He is recognised as giving a clear witness to the life, love and joy of Jesus in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council – a point of major reform in modern Church history. This witness has translated into two major developments in Church teachings and life.

Love for our common home
The first of these relates to environmental teachings. In 2015, Francis released his ground-breaking encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home. It expanded Catholic social teaching by giving a comprehensive account of how the environment reflects our God-given “common home”.

Consistent with recent popes such as Benedict XVI and John Paul II, Francis acknowledged climate change and its destructive impacts and causes. He summarised key scientific research to forcefully argue for an evidence-based approach to addressing humans’ impact on the environment.

He also made a pivotal and innovative contribution to the climate change debate by identifying the ethical and spiritual causes of environmental destruction.

Francis argued combating climate change relied on the “ecological conversion” of the human heart, so that people may recognise the God-given nature of our planet and the fundamental call to care for it. Without this conversion, pragmatic and political measures wouldn’t be able to counter the forces of consumerism, exploitation and selfishness.

Francis argued a new ethic and spirituality was needed. Specifically, he said Jesus’ way of love – for other people and all creation – is the transformative force that could bring sustainable change for the environment and cultivate fraternity among people (and especially with the poor).

Synodality: moving towards a Church that listens
Francis’s second major contribution, and one of the most significant aspects of his papacy, was his commitment to “synodality”. While there’s still confusion over what synodality actually means, and its potential for political distortion, it is above all a way of listening and discerning through openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It involves hierarchy and lay people transparently and honestly discerning together, in service of the mission of the church. Synodality is as much about the process as the goal. This makes sense as Pope Francis was a Jesuit, an order focused on spreading Catholicism through spiritual formation and discernment.

Drawing on his rich Jesuit spirituality, Francis introduced a way of conversation centred on listening to the Holy Spirit and others, while seeking to cultivate friendship and wisdom.

With the conclusion of the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, it is too soon to assess its results. However, those who have been involved in synodal processes have reported back on their transformative potential.

Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, explained how participating in the 2015 Synod “was an extraordinary experience [and] in some ways an awakening”.

Cardinals use a centuries-old voting process to elect a new pope, complete with smoke signals to indicate the outcome. And the next papal conclave will be the most diverse in Catholic history.

Here’s what you need to know about the process:https://t.co/osfOYKagk9

— The Conversation U.S. (@ConversationUS) April 21, 2025

Catholicism in the modern age
Francis’ papacy inspired both great joy and aspirations, as well as boiling anger and rejection. He laid bare the agonising fault lines within the Catholic community and struck at key issues of Catholic identity, triggering debate over what it means to be Catholic in the world today.

He leaves behind a Church that seems more divided than ever, with arguments, uncertainty and many questions rolling in his wake. But he has also provided a way for the Church to become more converted to Jesus’ way of love, through synodality and dialogue.

Francis showed us that holding labels such as “progressive” or “conservative” won’t enable the Church to live out Jesus’ mission of love – a mission he emphasised from the very beginning of his papacy.

Dr Joel Hodge is senior lecturer, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University and Dr Antonia Pizzey is postdoctoral researcher, Research Centre for Studies of the Second Vatican Council, Australian Catholic University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The late Member of Parliament Jeton Anjain and the people of the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll changed the course of the history of the Marshall Islands by using Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship to evacuate their radioactive home islands 40 years ago.

They did this by taking control of their own destiny after decades of being at the mercy of the United States nuclear testing programme and its aftermath.

In 1954, the US tested the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, spewing high-level radioactive fallout on unsuspecting Rongelap Islanders nearby.

• READ MORE: Rainbow Warrior back in Marshall Islands on nuclear justice mission
• Four decades after Rongelap evacuation, Greenpeace makes new plea for nuclear justice by US
• Eyes of Fire: Rongelap — the Rainbow Warrior evacuation microsite — David Robie
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

For years after the Bravo test, decisions by US government doctors and scientists caused Rongelap Islanders to be continuously exposed to additional radiation.

The 40th anniversary of the dramatic evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior — a few weeks before French secret agents bombed the ship in Auckland harbour — was spotlighted this week in Majuro with the arrival of Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior III to a warm welcome combining top national government leaders, the Rongelap Atoll Local Government and the Rongelap community.

“We were displaced, our lives were disrupted, and our voices ignored,” said MP Hilton Kendall, who represents Rongelap in the Marshall Islands Parliament, at the welcome ceremony in Majuro earlier in the week.

“In our darkest time, Greenpeace stood with us.”

‘Evacuated people to safety’
He said the Rainbow Warrior “evacuated the people to safety” in 1985.

Greenpeace would “forever be remembered by the people of Rongelap,” he added.

In 1984, Jeton Anjain — like most Rongelap people who were living on the nuclear test-affected atoll — knew that Rongelap was unsafe for continued habitation.

There was not a single scientist or medical doctor among their community although Jeton was a trained dentist, and they mainly depended on US Department of Energy-provided doctors and scientists for health care and environmental advice.

They were always told not to worry and that everything was fine.

But it wasn’t, as the countless thyroid tumors, cancers, miscarriages and surgeries confirmed.

As the desire of Rongelap people to evacuate their homeland intensified in 1984, unbeknown to them Greenpeace was hatching a plan to dispatch the Rainbow Warrior on a Pacific voyage the following year to turn a spotlight on the nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands and the ongoing French nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.

A Rainbow Warrior question
As I had friends in the Greenpeace organisation, I was contacted early on in its planning process with the question: How could a visit by the Rainbow Warrior be of use to the Marshall Islands?

Jeton and I were good friends by 1984, and had worked together on advocacy for Rongelap since the late 1970s. I informed him that Greenpeace was planning a visit and without hesitation he asked me if the ship could facilitate the evacuation of Rongelap.

At this time, Jeton had already initiated discussions with Kwajalein traditional leaders to locate an island that they could settle in that atoll.

I conveyed Jeton’s interest in the visit to Greenpeace, and a Greenpeace International board member, the late Steve Sawyer, who coordinated the Pacific voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, arranged a meeting for the three of us in Seattle to discuss ideas.

Jeton and I flew to Seattle and met Steve. After the usual preliminaries, Jeton asked Steve if the Rainbow Warrior could assist Rongelap to evacuate their community to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, a distance of about 250 km.

Steve responded in classic Greenpeace campaign thinking, which is what Greenpeace has proved effective in doing over many decades. He said words to the effect that the Rainbow Warrior could aid a “symbolic evacuation” by taking a small group of islanders from Rongelap to Majuro or Ebeye and holding a media conference publicising their plight with ongoing radiation exposure.

“No,” said Jeton firmly. He wasn’t talking about a “symbolic” evacuation. He told Steve: “We want to evacuate Rongelap, the entire community and the housing, too.”

Steve Sawyer taken aback
Steve was taken aback by what Jeton wanted. Steve simply hadn’t considered the idea of evacuating the entire community.

But we could see him mulling over this new idea and within minutes, as his mind clicked through the significant logistics hurdles for evacuation of the community — including that it would take three-to-four trips by the Rainbow Warrior between Rongelap and Mejatto to accomplish it — Steve said it was possible.

And from that meeting, planning for the 1985 Marshall Islands visit began in earnest.

I offer this background because when the evacuation began in early May 1985, various officials from the United States government sharply criticised Rongelap people for evacuating their atoll, saying there was no radiological hazard to justify the move and that they were being manipulated by Greenpeace for its own anti-nuclear agenda.

This condescending American government response suggested Rongelap people did not have the brain power to make important decisions for themselves.

But it also showed the US government’s lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation in which Rongelap Islanders lived day in and day out in a highly radioactive environment.

The Bravo hydrogen bomb test blasted Rongelap and nearby islands with snow-like radioactive fallout on 1 March 1954. The 82 Rongelap people were first evacuated to the US Navy base at Kwajalein for emergency medical treatment and the start of long-term studies by US government doctors.

No radiological cleanup
A few months later, they were resettled on Ejit Island in Majuro, the capital atoll, until 1957 when, with no radiological cleanup conducted, the US government said it was safe to return to Rongelap and moved the people back.

“Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world,” said a Brookhaven National Laboratory report commenting on the return of Rongelap Islanders to their contaminated islands in 1957.

It then stated plainly why the people were moved back: “The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.”

And for 28 years, Rongelap people lived in one of the world’s most radioactive environments, consuming radioactivity through the food chain and by living an island life.

Proving the US narrative of safety to be false, the 1985 evacuation forced the US Congress to respond by funding new radiological studies of Rongelap.

Thanks to the determination of the soft-spoken but persistent leadership of Jeton, he ensured that a scientist chosen by Rongelap would be included in the study. And the new study did indeed identify health hazards, particularly for children, of living on Rongelap.

The US Congress responded by appropriating US$45 million to a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.

Subsistence atoll life
All of this was important — it both showed that islanders with a PhD in subsistence atoll life understood more about their situation than the US government’s university educated PhDs and medical doctors who showed up from time-to-time to study them, provide medical treatment, and tell them everything was fine on their atoll, and it produced a $45 million fund from the US government.

However, this is only a fraction of the story about why the Rongelap evacuation in 1985 forever changed the US narrative and control of its nuclear test legacy in this country.

Rongelap is the most affected population from the US hydrogen bomb testing programme in the 1950s.

By living on Rongelap, the community confirmed the US government’s narrative that all was good and the nuclear test legacy was largely a relic of the past.

The 1985 evacuation was a demonstration of the Rongelap community exerting control over their life after 31 years of dictates by US government doctors, scientists and officials.

It was difficult building a new community on Mejatto Island, which was uninhabited and barren in 1985. Make no mistake, Rongelap people living on Mejatto suffered hardship and privation, especially in the first years after the 1985 resettlement.

Nuclear legacy history
Their perseverance, however, defined the larger ramification of the move to Mejatto: It changed the course of nuclear legacy history by people taking control of their future that forced a response from the US government to the benefit of the Rongelap community.

Forty years later, the displacement of Rongelap Islanders on Mejatto and in other locations, unable to return to nuclear test contaminated Rongelap Atoll demonstrates clearly that the US nuclear testing legacy remains unresolved — unfinished business that is in need of a long-term, fair and just response from the US government.

The Rainbow Warrior will be in Majuro until next week when it will depart for Mejatto Island to mark the 40th anniversary of the resettlement, and then voyage to other nuclear test-affected atolls around the Marshall Islands.

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

COMMENTARY: By Ahmed Najar

‘To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!’

These were not the words of some far-right provocateur lurking in a dark corner of the internet. They were not shouted by an unhinged warlord seeking vengeance.

No, these were the words of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world. A man who with a signature, a speech or a single phrase can shape the fate of entire nations.

And yet, with all this power, all this influence, his words to the people of Gaza were not of peace, not of diplomacy, not of relief — but of death.

• READ MORE: Houthis threaten Israel over aid blockage as Gaza hospitals run low on fuel
• RSF slams ‘horrific conditions’ for journalists in Gaza in wake of fragile ceasefire
• Other Gaza genocide reports

I read them and I feel sick.

Because I know exactly who he is speaking to. He is speaking to my family. To my parents, who lost relatives and their home.

To my siblings, who no longer have a place to return to. To the starving children in Gaza, who have done nothing but be born to a people the world has deemed unworthy of existence.

To the grieving mothers who have buried their children. To the fathers who can do nothing but watch their babies die in their arms.

To the people who have lost everything and yet are still expected to endure more.

No future left
Trump speaks of a “beautiful future” for the people of Gaza. But there is no future left where homes are gone, where whole families have been erased, where children have been massacred.

I read these words and I ask: What kind of a world do we live in?

A world where the leader of the so-called “free world” can issue a blanket death sentence to an entire population — two million people, most of whom are displaced, starving and barely clinging to life.

A world where a man who commands the most powerful military can sit in his office, insulated from the screams, the blood, the unbearable stench of death, and declare that if the people of Gaza do not comply with his demand — if they do not somehow magically find and free hostages they have no control over — then they are simply “dead”.

A world where genocide survivors are given an ultimatum of mass death by a man who claims to stand for peace.

This is not just absurd. It is evil.

Trump’s words are criminal. They are a direct endorsement of genocide. The people of Gaza are not responsible for what is happening. They are not holding hostages.

Trapped by an Israeli war machine
They are the hostages – trapped by an Israeli war machine that has stolen everything from them. Hostages to a brutal siege that has starved them, bombed them, displaced them, left them with nowhere to go.

And now, they have become hostages to the most powerful man on Earth, who threatens them with more suffering, more death, unless they meet a demand they are incapable of fulfilling.

Most cynically, Trump knows his words will not be met with any meaningful pushback. Who in the American political establishment will hold him accountable for threatening genocide?

The Democratic Party, which enabled Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza? Congress, which overwhelmingly supports sending US military aid to Israel with no conditions? The mainstream media, which have systematically erased Palestinian suffering?

There is no political cost for Trump to make such statements. If anything, they bolster his position.

This is the world we live in. A world where Palestinian lives are so disposable that the President of the United States can threaten mass death without fear of any consequences.

I write this because I refuse to let this be just another outrageous Trump statement that people laugh off, that the media turns into a spectacle, that the world forgets.

“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am… pic.twitter.com/88EjVAyWAe

— President Donald J. Trump (@POTUS) March 5, 2025

My heart. My everything
I write this because Gaza is not a talking point. It is not a headline. It is my home. My family. My history. My heart. My everything.

And I refuse to accept that the President of the United States can issue death threats to my people with impunity.

The people of Gaza do not control their own fate. They have never had that luxury. Their fate has always been dictated by the bombs that fall on them, by the siege that starves them, by the governments that abandon them.

And now, their fate is being dictated by a man in Washington, DC, who sees no issue with threatening the annihilation of an entire population.

So I ask again: What kind of world do we live in?

And how long will we allow it to remain this way?

Ahmed Najar is a Palestinian political analyst and a playwright. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.

In the year marking 40 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents and 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tested by the United States, Greenpeace is calling on Washington to comply with demands by the Marshall Islands for nuclear justice.

“The Marshall Islands bears the deepest scars of a dark legacy — nuclear contamination, forced displacement, and premeditated human experimentation at the hands of the US government,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Shiva Gounden.

To mark the Marshall Islands’ Remembrance Day today, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior is flying the republic’s flag at halfmast in solidarity with those who lost their lives and are suffering ongoing trauma as a result of US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Nuclear justice for the Marshall Islands — a strategy for coordinated action
• UN rights council examines nuclear legacy consequences in the Marshall Islands
• Eyes of Fire – the Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior archive (Little Island Press)

On 1 March 1954, the Castle Bravo nuclear bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll with a blast 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

On Rongelap Atoll, 150 km away, radioactive fallout rained onto the inhabited island, with children mistaking it as snow.

The Rainbow Warrior is sailing to the Marshall Islands where a mission led by Greenpeace will conduct independent scientific research across the country, the results of which will eventually be given to the National Nuclear Commission to support the Marshall Islands government’s ongoing legal proceedings with the US and at the UN.

The voyage also marks 40 years since Greenpeace’s original Rainbow Warrior evacuated the people of Rongelap after toxic nuclear fallout rendered their ancestral land uninhabitable.

Still enduring fallout
Marshall Islands communities still endure the physical, economic, and cultural fallout of the nuclear tests — compensation from the US has fallen far short of expectations of the islanders who are yet to receive an apology.

And the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis threaten further displacement of communities.

Former Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony deBrum’s “nuclear justice” speech as Right Livelihood Award Winner in 2009. Video: Voices Rising

“To this day, Marshall Islanders continue to grapple with this injustice while standing on the frontlines of the climate crisis — facing yet another wave of displacement and devastation for a catastrophe they did not create,” Gounden said.

“But the Marshallese people and their government are not just survivors — they are warriors for justice, among the most powerful voices demanding bold action, accountability, and reparations on the global stage.

“Those who have inflicted unimaginable harm on the Marshallese must be held to account and made to pay for the devastation they caused.

“Greenpeace stands unwaveringly beside Marshallese communities in their fight for justice. Jimwe im Maron.”

Ariana Tibon Kilma, chair of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission, said that the immediate effects of the Bravo bomb on March 1 were “harrowing”.

“Hours after exposure, many people fell ill — skin peeling off, burning sensation in their eyes, their stomachs were churning in pain. Mothers watched as their children’s hair fell to the ground and blisters devoured their bodies overnight,” she said.

“Without their consent, the United States government enrolled them as ‘test subjects’ in a top secret medical study on the effects of radiation on human beings — a study that continued for 40 years.

“Today on Remembrance Day the trauma of Bravo continues for the remaining survivors and their descendents — this is a legacy not only of suffering, loss, and frustration, but also of strength, unity, and unwavering commitment to justice, truth and accountability.”

The new Rainbow Warrior will arrive in the Marshall Islands early this month.

Alongside the government of the Marshall Islands, Greenpeace will lead an independent scientific mission into the ongoing impacts of the US weapons testing programme.

Travelling across the country, Greenpeace will reaffirm its solidarity with the Marshallese people — now facing further harm and displacement from the climate crisis, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining in the Pacific.

Author David Robie’s new Rainbow Warrior book Eyes Of Fire is due to be published in July 2025.

A Palestinian man living in Aotearoa New Zealand who has lost 55 relatives in three Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, says his remaining family will never leave, despite a US proposal to remove them.

US President Donald Trump doubled down on his plan on Friday after it was rejected by Palestinians and leaders around the world.

Yasser Abdulaal, who has lived in Ōtautahi Christchurch for five years, said his two sisters had lost their homes in the 15-month-long war.

• READ MORE:  US committed to ‘buying and owning’ Gaza, Trump says
• Palestinians returning to ‘toxic wasteland’ in northern Gaza
• Peters’ refusal to join ICC backers puts NZ in Trump’s ‘lawless minority’
• World leaders react to Trump sanctions on International Criminal Court
• Other Israel’s war on Palestine reports

Abdulaal said they and their husbands — all teachers — could have left at the start of the bombing but refused to abandon their land — and they would not be leaving now.

“After the ceasefire and with Trump’s statements, they are definitely not going to leave Gaza, regardless of what he says and what [the US] does. It’s their land.”

He said New Zealand should recognise Palestine as a state and sanction Israel in accordance with international law.

It should also call for more funding for international aid to Gaza, he added.

‘Two-state solution’
“New Zealand voted for a two-state solution and we have been asking the government to enforce that. Many countries during the genocide already recognise Palestine as a state but our government sees it as ‘not the right time’.

“I think it is the right time, and New Zealand should recognise Palestine immediately.”

Abdulaal said he reached a moment during the war where he could not bring himself to call his sisters.

“I didn’t know what to say, remotely, from New Zealand.

“It’s a really hard time for everyone, they’ve been in tents for more than eight months, both [my sisters’] houses have gone, they are completely rubble.

“They are still in tents despite the ceasefire because they have no other place to go to.”

But he has talked to the pair since the ceasefire began.

Israeli tanks in area
“One of my sisters can’t even go and see her house as there is still Israeli tanks in that area [the Philadelphia corridor]. But we know from footage — as she says — the height of my house now is half a metre, it was two levels but now it’s half a metre.

“It’s mixed emotions. The killing and bloodshed has stopped, but I have lost 55 [relatives] in the airstrikes, most of them women and children.

“They haven’t even had a proper funeral . . .  it’s really hard, people are just trying to get food for their kids, those basic human rights for people which they don’t have.

“They are happy with the ceasefire, and we hope it will be a permanent ceasefire, but we have also lost lots of people . . .  [the rest] have lost their houses, their jobs, everything.

Families returning to northern #Gaza are shocked by the scale of destruction.

UNICEF’s Tess Ingram shares the reality on the ground and the immense challenges people are facing. pic.twitter.com/IRYrN9AsNM

— UNICEF MENA – يونيسف الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا (@UNICEFmena) February 9, 2025

“When I close my eyes and I think about losing 55 people, and that’s just the ones we know about. It’s horrific, I can’t believe it . . .  they’re all relatives: cousins, uncles, extended family.”

Trump’s proposal was a “dangerous statement and outrageous”, Abdulaal said, likening it to “a reward to Netanyahu and the Israeli government who have been bombing everything in Gaza, killing everyone, committing genocide”.

“[President Trump] says he wants to drive the people out of Gaza, meaning he wants to ethnically cleanse the people from Gaza, which is another war crime,” said Abdulaal.

“This is our land and we are rooted to this land and we’ll never leave it.”

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

COMMENTARY: By Abdelhalim Abdelrahman

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Watching footage of Palestinian parliamentarian and hostage Khalida Jarrar emerge from Israeli captivity was jarring — a far, muffled cry from the sense of happiness and relief most of us felt seeing the young female Israeli soldiers released by Hamas around the same time.

What a study in contrast.

Khalida was clearly emaciated, traumatised and had turned, in the same period of time, from a powerful dynamic woman into a fragile, elderly human being who moved with difficulty.

• READ MORE: ‘Welcome to Hell, the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps’
• The other hostages
• As Israel pounds Gaza, BBC journalists accuse broadcaster of bias
• Pacific Journalism Review special edition on bias: Gaza, genocide and media: Will journalism survive? — David Robie

What a difference it makes who holds you captive. It goes without saying I didn’t see this on any mainstream news outlet.

In a previous period of imprisonment — for being a member of the PFLP, a proscribed organisation — the Israelis wouldn’t even allow Khalida Jarrar to attend the funeral of her own daughter.

Instead she sent a message that was read at Suha’s funeral in 2021:

I am in so much pain, my child, only because I miss you.
I am in so much pain, my child, only because I miss you.

From the depths of my agony, I reached out and
embraced the sky of our homeland through the window
of my prison cell in Damon Prison, Haifa.
Worry not, my child.
I stand tall, and steadfast, despite the shackles and the jailer.
I am a mother in sorrow, from yearning to see you one last time.

Suha, my precious.

They have stripped me from bidding you a final goodbye kiss.
I bid you farewell with a flower.
Your absence is searingly painful, excruciatingly painful.
But I remain steadfast and strong,
Like the mountains of beloved Palestine.

No mainstream coverage
I searched online and found no mainstream outlet had covered Khalida’s release amid the flood of stories about the Israeli hostages. A search to see if Australian or New Zealand MPs had called for the release of their fellow legislator netted zero results.

To them, she is no doubt a non-person. Yet, Khalida Jarrar is a leading political activist and one of dozens of legislators imprisoned by the Israelis. She endured. She remained steadfast.

“The entire system of political imprisonment is based on suppressing Palestinian organising,” said Charlotte Kates, coordinator of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Support Network.

The four female Israeli “Offence” Force (IDF) soldiers, according to all the many images and reports, were fit, happy and well-fed after their 15 months in Hamas captivity.

In contrast Palestinian prisoners typically had lost 16kg by the time they were freed. The Israelis with all the food and resources in the world made a policy — an actual policy — of mistreating prisoners, reducing food to a minimum, often beating them, finding perverse ways to humiliate them and on many occasions sexually assaulting men, women, boys and girls who had been dragged into their custody without charge.

Many, an unknown number, died at their hands.

Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called months ago for legislation to allow the execution of Palestinian prisoners “with a shot in the head” and said he would provide minimal food to them until the law was enacted. I couldn’t find a single Western leader who called for him to be arrested.

Israeli human rights report
These crimes are filling compendia being compiled by the United Nations, the ICC and multiple organisations worldwide. You can read some of it here in an Israeli human rights report, “Welcome to Hell, the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps”.

Our media has a lot to answer for — for what was done to the thousands of Palestinian hostages because of its starring role in silencing Palestinian voices and hiding from view the realities of the Israeli prison system. Thousands were never charged with any crime — other than being Palestinian.

Entire congregations in mosques, groups of people in refugee centres, were indiscriminately swept up and tossed into Israeli concentration camps.

Were future historians to look back on these times and only have the mainstream media to go by, they would have lots of wonderful photos of the Israeli hostages, know them by name, see family hugs, biographical details, and listen to interviews with friends and relatives. In contrast, the Palestinians would turn towards History and we would see blank faces, erased of personality, all the detail of their stories rubbed out.

That’s why it is imperative to find better sources of news and information, like Middle East Eye, Palestine Chronicle, Electronic Intifada and Pearls & Irritations, that can enrich our understanding of our times and the experience of the victims of Western genocidal violence.

In his excellent article “The Other Hostages”, human rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab says: “From the Palestinian perspective: there are about 13,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails who are just as worthy of our concern and also merit our sympathy, and whose families will rejoice at their long-awaited release.”

Turning a blind eye to Israeli mistreatment of prisoners — and the mainstream media bias in favour of all things Israeli — goes back decades. But let’s look at the months since October 7th.

No fact-checking
All the mainstream media and servile politicians raced to report without fact-checking the lies the Israelis and Americans, including President Biden, told about beheaded babies and mass rapes. Few had the decency to walk back the calumnies even after official retractions and international investigations disproved them.

In October 2023 I wrote one of my first stories post-October 7th on this very topic.

Within a month of October 7, eight BBC journalists wrote to Al Jazeera saying “the corporation is failing to humanise Palestinians . . .  investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage.”

CNN staff told British colleagues last year that their network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to “journalistic malpractice”.

Hats off to Novara Media, one of the larger alternative news and analysis platforms for its exposure of bias. What they found was that Palestinians are “killed” whereas Israelis are “massacred” or “slaughtered”.

Checking over 1000 articles by the UK’s supposedly progressive, left-leaning outlets — The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mirror – Novara found that “all three publications favoured Israeli lives, narratives and voices.”

Taking a list of emotive words they cross-checked and found that 77 percent were about violence against Israelis and only 23 percent about Palestinians. Well over 95 percent of victims of violence are Palestinians, 100 percent of land thefts are by Israelis. Facts matter.

Journalism ‘used’ for racist war crimes
This is journalism being used in the service of racist war crimes, used to normalise the mistreatment of prisoners and other Palestinian untermenschen.

In the case of The Independent, it ran 70 stories on Israeli hostages (who at peak numbered about 250) and just one story on a Palestinian hostage (they number over 10,000).

British journalist Owen Jones deserves a medal for reports like: “BBC in Civil War over Gaza.” The report details the efforts of journalists within the organisation to deliver more balanced coverage but the extent to which those efforts are thwarted by powerful pro-Israel operatives within the corporation who ensure “systematic pro-Israel propaganda at the corporation.”

“This unprecedented slaughter could not have happened without powerful cheerleaders,” Jones said in a recent piece about media co-conspirators with Israel in the genocide. “Hold them to account.”

Damn right. I pray to whatever gods may be that justice will one day be served on all those who by their actions or by their “journalism” allowed these crimes to be committed.

I’ll give the last word to Khalida Jarrar as I wish her a full and speedy recovery:

“All I wanted was to bid my daughter a final farewell – with a kiss on her forehead and to tell her I love her as much as I love Palestine.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz He is a lapsed Catholic who has maintained lifelong contact with some of the nuns who played an influential part in his upbringing.

Just one day after President Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration, a minister announced plans to resume the transmigration programme in eastern Indonesia, particularly in Papua, saying it was needed for enhancing unity and providing locals with welfare.

Transmigration is the process of moving people from densely populated regions to less densely populated ones in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous country with 285 million people.

The ministry intends to revitalise 10 zones in Papua, potentially using local relocation rather than bringing in outsiders.

• READ MORE: Prabowo’s presidency sparks fear and faint hope in Indonesia’s restive Papua
• Other West Papua reports

The programme will resume after it was officially paused in Papua 23 years ago.

“We want Papua to be fully united as part of Indonesia in terms of welfare, national unity and beyond,” Muhammad Iftitah Sulaiman Suryanagara, the Minister of Transmigration, said during a handover ceremony on October 21.

Iftitah promised strict evaluations focusing on community welfare rather than on relocation numbers. Despite the minister’s promises, the plan drew an outcry from indigenous Papuans who cited social and economic concerns.

Papua, a remote and resource-rich region, has long been a flashpoint for conflict, with its people enduring decades of military abuse and human rights violations under Indonesian rule.

Human rights abuses
Prabowo, a former army general, was accused of human rights abuses in his military career, including in East Timor (Timor-Leste) during a pro-independence insurgency against Jakarta rule.

Simon Balagaize, a young Papuan leader from Merauke, highlighted the negative impacts of transmigration efforts in Papua under dictator Suharto’s New Order during the 1960s.

“Customary land was taken, forests were cut down, and the indigenous Malind people now speak Javanese better than their native language,” he told BenarNews.

The Papuan Church Council stressed that locals desperately needed services, but could do without more transmigration.

“Papuans need education, health services and welfare – not transmigration that only further marginalises landowners,” Reverend Dorman Wandikbo, a member of the council, told BenarNews.

Transmigration into Papua has sparked protests over concerns about reduced job opportunities for indigenous people, along with broader political and economic impacts.

Apei Tarami, who joined a recent demonstration in South Sorong, Southwest Papua province, warned of consequences, stating that “this policy affects both political and economic aspects of Papua.”

We firmly reject Indonesia’s new transmigration policy to relocate Indonesians to West Papua, along with the world’s biggest deforestation project in Merauke, as it threatens the survival of West Papuans.

ULMWP International Spokesperson, Raki Ap.

Full: https://t.co/rM08vQu32C pic.twitter.com/5EVSgzbnpq

— Free West Papua Campaign (Nederland) (@FreeWestPapuaNL) November 4, 2024

Human rights ignored
Meanwhile, human rights advocate Theo Hasegem criticised the government’s plans, arguing that human rights issues are ignored and non-Papuans could be endangered because pro-independence groups often target newcomers.

“Do the president and vice-president guarantee the safety of those relocated from Java,” Hasegem told BenarNews.

The programme, which dates to 1905, has continued through various administrations under the guise of promoting development and unity.

Indonesia’s policy resumed post-independence on December 12, 1950, under President Sukarno, who sought to foster prosperity and equitable development.

It also aimed to promote social unity by relocating citizens across regions.

Transmigration involving 78,000 families occurred in Papua from 1964 to 1999, according to statistics from the Papua provincial government. That would equal between 312,000 and 390,000 people settling in Papua from other parts of the country, assuming the average Indonesian family has 4 to 5 people.

The programme paused in 2001 after a Special Autonomy Law required regional regulations to be followed.

Legality questioned
Papuan legislator John N.R. Gobay questioned the role of Papua’s six new autonomous regional governments in the transmigration process. He cited Article 61 of the law, which mandates that transmigration proceed only with gubernatorial consent and regulatory backing.

Without these clear regional regulations, he warned, transmigration lacks a strong legal foundation and could conflict with special autonomy rules.

He also pointed to a 2008 Papuan regulation stating that transmigration should proceed only after the Indigenous Papuan population reaches 20 million. In 2023, the population across six provinces of Papua was about 6.25 million, according to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS).

Gobay suggested prioritising local transmigration to better support indigenous development in their own region.

‘Entrenched inequality’
British MP Alex Sobel, chair of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, expressed concern over the programme, noting its role in drastic demographic shifts and structural discrimination in education, land rights and employment.

“Transmigration has entrenched inequality rather than promoting prosperity,” Sobel told BenarNews, adding that it had contributed to Papua remaining Indonesia’s poorest regions.

Pramono Suharjono, a resident of Arso II in Keerom, Papua, welcomed the idea of restarting the programme, viewing it as positive for the region’s growth.

“This supports national development, not colonisation,” he told BenarNews.

A former transmigrant who has served as a local representative, Pramono said transmigration had increased local knowledge in agriculture, craftsmanship and trade.

However, research has shown that longstanding social issues, including tensions from cultural differences, have marginalised indigenous Papuans and fostered resentment toward non-locals, said La Pona, a lecturer at Cenderawasih University.

Papua also faces a humanitarian crisis because of conflicts between Indonesian forces and pro-independence groups. United Nations data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 Papuans were displaced between and 2022.

As of September 2024, human rights advocates estimate 79,000 Papuans remain displaced even as Indonesia denies UN officials access to the region.

Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this report. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

As Israel drives the Palestinians deeper into another Nakba in Gaza with its assault on Rafah, the Palestine Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and solidarity supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand tonight commemorated the original Nakba — “the Catastrophe” — of 1948.

• READ MORE: As Israel bombs Gaza, sirens echo in West Bank marking 76 years since Nakba
• Fiji abstains from new UN vote on Palestinian membership bid
• 1000 protest in Auckland over Israel’s war on Gaza, honour Nakba victims
• Other War on Gaza reports

This was when Israeli militias slaughtered more than 15,000 people, perpetrated more than 70 massacres and occupied more than three quarters of Palestine, with 750,000 of the Palestinian population forced into becoming refugees from their own land.

The Nakba was a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing followed by the destruction of hundreds of villages, to prevent the return of the refugees — similar to what is being wrought now in Gaza.

The Nakba lies at the heart of 76 years of injustice for the Palestinians — and for the latest injustice, the seven-month long war on Gaza.

Participants told through their stories, poetry and songs by candlelight, they would not forget 1948 — “and we will not forget the genocide under way in Gaza.”

Photographs: David Robie

Nakba Day vigil in Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa 2024

1 of 12

A leader of one of New Zealand’s main Palestine solidarity groups today called on the government to expel the Israeli ambassador and call for an immediate ceasefire in the genocidal war on Gaza.

“We know what the crimes are — occupation. Land theft. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Genocide. All crimes against humanity,” Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott told a cheering protest rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga (Britomart) Square.

“My challenge to the politicians of Aotearoa is stand up for international law. Oppose Israeli crimes against humanity. Speak up.”

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Ceasefire talks in Doha struggling amid disputes
• UN Security Council does not pass draft US resolution on Gaza ceasefire
• Other War on Gaza protests

Expressing a frequently cited epithet, “Silence is complicity”, Scott gave a brief rundown on the months of protest since the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, pointing out that the struggle really began after the Second World War with the Naqba (“Catastrophe”) forced expulsions of Palestinians in 1948.

“Another week. Another rally. Another month! Another rally,” Scott began.

“Another year. Another decade. And another decade. Another rally . . .

“This didn’t start on October 7 last year. It started in 1948.”

Heavy Israeli attacks
Scott’s condemnation of the New Zealand government for its “silence” followed news reports today that Israeli forces had launched “violent” ground and air attacks on Khan Younis and bombed homes in Rafah and Deir el-Balah, killing at least 14 Palestinians.

Scott said that “many long term campaigners” would know that “Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa stalwart, Janfrie Wakim, her husband [David] and a whole bunch of Palestine supporters were pivotal in setting up these [Auckland] rallies”.

“Monthly rallies. They were set up in 1981,” he said.

“Forty-three years ago. Forty-three long damn years ago . . .  silence from [New Zealand] governments.

“Throughout those years, we knew that extreme racism and Jewish supremacy was baked into the core of Zionist ideology.”

Turning to the systematic theft of Palestinian land, Scott asked: “Who here knew about the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine — the Israeli theft of Palestinian land.

“The Israeli ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from their homes and lands.”

The Israeli apartheid had treated Palestinians as second class humans, if Zionist Israel had thought of Palestinians as humans at all.

“We took on South African apartheid back in the day,” he said about the 1981 anti-aterheid Springbok rugby tour protests which were inspirational in forcing eventual change to the minority white-ruled regime in Pretoria.

“But [with] the Israeli apartheid of Palestinians. . . Our governments have done nothing.

“All of those breaches of international law! Laws Aotearoa has signed up to. All crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

“You. I. And most people with a simple interest in knowing what was happening in Palestine know the facts. The truth.

“For decades, we have been taking action shouting the issues from the roof tops. Almost begging successive governments to take action.

“Not to spout silly, petty words and then look the other way but take real action.”

Scott said PSNA had written to ministers, taken delegations to Wellington, and visited local MPs in their offices as well as holding rallies.

“Successive governments knew. They all knew about these crimes against humanity.”

But for more than 85 years of Israel committing crimes against humanity, successive New Zealand governments had taken “no real action”.

“They have never sent the Israeli ambassador home to show our displeasure of those crimes against humanity,” Scott said.

He said New Zealand governments had allowed 200 young Israelis to come to Aotearoa to “rest and relax” after enforcing a vicious deadly occupation of Palestine.

“A dehumanising apartheid. And now, to rest and relax after committing genocide.

“What the hell are the politicians thinking? Where are their moral compasses? Israelis committing genocide,” Scott said.

“With a warm smile — welcome to Aotearoa and thanks for bringing your blood stained money with you. Feel free to walk among us, free from consequences.

“We must sanction genocidal Israel. Send the ambassador home. End the Israeli working holiday visa! Ban ZIM shipping agents from our lands.

“Silence is complicity — to the politicians: End your silence.”

Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March praised he crowd for protesting week after week and applying pressure on the government — “it’s thanks to you,” he said to resounding cheers.

He explained the moves the Green Party was taking to persuade the government to grant humanitarian visas for members of Palestinian families in New Zealand impacted on by the brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

A Palestinian campaigner, Billy Hania, was also among many speakers. He broadcast a series of outspoken messages, including a Tiktok rundown on NZ government ministers’ support for Israel and from Michael Fakhri, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

He also praised many of the regular protesters for their perseverance and solidarity, naming several in the crowd.

Meanwhile, Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestine Legislative Council, has told Al Jazeera’s Inside Story that the US should support a “straightforward” resolution in the UN Security Council instead of using “using evasive tactics”.

UN Security Council members are expected to vote on a new resolution put forward by the elected “E10” members calling for an immediate ceasefire on Monday.

Israel is reported to have killed more than 32,070 people in the war on Gaza arrested more than 7350 Palestinians in West Bank so far during the war.

Visiting the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, UN Secretary-General Antònio Guterres said a line of blocked aid trucks stuck on Egypt’s side of the border while Palestinians faced starvation on the other side was a “moral outrage”.

Palestinians fleeing war-ravaged Gaza for safety in Australia were left stranded when the Labor government abruptly cancelled their visas.

The “subclass 600” temporary visas were approved between last November and February for Palestinians with close and immediate family connections.

Families of those fleeing Gaza, and organisations assisting Palestinians to leave Gaza, began to receive news of the visa cancellations on March 13.

• READ MORE: NZ government urged to help evacuate Palestinians from war on Gaza
• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘Everyone is susceptible to death’ — Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen
• ‘This is one way we could help’ — World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong
• Hundreds stage Sydney ‘die-in’ to protest massacres in Gaza
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: More than 100 killed in al-Aqsa Hospital attack

The number of people affected by the sudden visa cancellations was unclear, however there were at least 12 individuals who had had visas cancelled while in transit.

The stories of those affected have been shared over social media. They included the 23-year-old nephew of a Palestinian-Australian, stranded in Istanbul airport for four nights after having his visa cancelled mid-transit, unable to return to Gaza and unable to legally stay in Istanbul.

A mother and her four young children were turned around in Egypt, when their visas were cancelled, meaning they were unable to board an onwards flight to Australia.

A family of six were separated, with three of the children allowed to board flights, while the mother and youngest child were left behind.

2200 temporary visas
The Department of Home Affairs said the government had issued around 2200 temporary subclass 600 visas for Palestinians fleeing Gaza since October 2023.

Subclass 600 visas are temporary and do not permit the person work or education rights, or access to Medicare-funded health services.

Israelis have been granted 2400 visitor visas during the same time period.

The visa cancellations for Palestinians have been condemned by the Palestinian community, Palestinian organisations and rights’ supporters.

The Palestine Australia Relief and Action (PARA) started an email campaign which generated more than 6000 letters to government ministers within 72 hours.

Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), called on Labor to “follow through on its moral obligation to offer safety and certainty” to those fleeing, pointing to Australia’s more humane treatment of Ukrainian refugees.

The Refugee Action Collective Victoria (RAC Vic) called a snap action on March 15, supported by Socialist Alliance and PARA.

‘Shame on Labor’
David Glanz, on behalf of RAC Vic, said the cancellations had effectively marooned Palestinians in transit countries to the “shame of the Labor government which has supported Israel in its genocide”.

Samah Sabawi, co-founder of PARA, is currently in Cairo assisting families trying to leave Gaza.

She told ABC Radio National on March 14 about the obstacles Palestinians face trying to leave via the Rafah crossing, including the lack of travel documents for those living under Israeli occupation, family separations and heavy-handed vetting by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities.

Sabawi said the extreme difficulties faced by Palestinians fleeing Rafah were compounded by Australia’s visa cancellations and its withdrawal of consular support.

She also said Opposition leader Peter Dutton had “demonised” Palestinians and pressured Labor into rescinding the visas on the basis of “security concerns”.

Labor said there were no security concerns with the individuals whose visas had been cancelled. It has since been suggested by those working closely with the affected Palestinians that their visas were cancelled due to the legitimacy of their crossing through Rafah.

PARA said the government had said it had “extremely limited” capacity to assist.

Some visas reinstated
It is believed that some 1.5 million Palestinians are increasingly desperate to escape the genocide and are waiting in Rafah. Many have no choice but to pay brokers to help them leave.

Some of those whose visas had been cancelled received news on March 18 that their visas had been reinstated.

A Palestinian journalist and his family were among those whose visas were reinstated and are currently on route to Australia.

Graham Thom, Amnesty International’s national refugee coordinator, told The Guardian that urgent circumstances needed to be taken into account.

“The issue is getting across the border . . .  The government needs to deal with people using their own initiative to get across any way they can.”

He said other Palestinians with Australian visas leaving Gaza needed more information about the process.

It is not known how many other Palestinians are waiting for their visas to be reinstated.

Republished from Green Left magazine with permission.

The New Zealand government is being urged to create a special humanitarian visa for Palestinians in Gaza with ties to this country.

More than 30 organisations — including World Vision, Save the Children and Greenpeace — have sent an open letter to ministers, calling on them to step up support.

They also want the government to help evacuate Palestinians with ties to New Zealand from Gaza, and provide them with resettlement assistance.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘Everyone is susceptible to death’ — Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen
• ‘This is one way we could help’ — World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: More than 100 killed in al-Aqsa Hospital attack

Their appeal is backed by Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen, whose family is living in fear in Rafah after being forced to move there from northern Gaza.

His ex-wife and two children (who have had visitor visas since December) were now living in a garage with his mother, sisters and nieces who do not have visas.

“There is no food, there is no power . . .  it is a really hard situation to be living in,” he told RNZ Morning Report.

If his family could receive visas to come to New Zealand “it literally can be the difference between life and death”.

‘Everyone susceptible to death’
With Israel making it clear it still intended to send ground forces into Rafah “everyone is susceptible to death and at least we would be saving some lives”.

Dahlen said New Zealand had a tradition of accepting refugees from areas of conflict, including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria.

“So why is this not the same?”

He appealed to Immigration Minister Erica Stanford and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to intervene and approach the Egyptian government.

“We need these people out,” he said.

“Please give them visas; this is a first step. This is something super super difficult and huge and requires ministerial intervention.”

Border permission needed
At the Gaza-Egypt border potential refugees needed to gain the permission of officials from both Israel and Egypt.

Egypt had concerns about taking in too many refugees from Gaza so the New Zealand government would need to provide assurances flights had been organised.

If the government offered a charter flight to bring refugees to this country, “that would be amazing”.

World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong said the government had responded with immigration support in other humanitarian emergencies.

“We provided humanitarian visas for Ukrainians when their lives were torn apart by war, and we assisted Afghans to leave and resettle in this country when the Taliban returned to power. The situation for vulnerable Palestinians is no different.

“Palestinians are living in a perilous environment, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes; children and families starving with literally nothing to eat; and healthcare and medical treatment nearly impossible to access,” Armstrong said.

This is not a detainment camp in World War II, nor a prison in the Holocaust, this is Gaza in 2024. A chilling reminder that history repeats.

A holocaust is happening right before our eyes and the world is silent. pic.twitter.com/Y4SgE1yjji

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) March 10, 2024

Several hundred
The organisations did not know exactly how many people would qualify for such a visa, but estimated it could be several hundred.

“We know there’s around 288 Palestinian New Zealanders in New Zealand, and they have estimated that there would be around 300-400 people that are their family members that they’d like to bring here,” Armstrong said.

“That’s a very small number and as we’ve seen, in the case of Ukraine . . . the actual number of people that have probably come here would be significantly less than that, it’s not like they’re asking for the world. I think it’s quite a conservative number myself.”

She told Morning Report similar visas for Ukrainians and Afghans had been organised within days or weeks.

“It would be New Zealand’s response to this catastrophic situation that is unfolding. We want to be on the right side of history and this is one way we could help.”

She said embassies in the region would need to assist with the logistics of people leaving Gaza.

NZ government ‘monitoring’
Stanford said in a statement the government was monitoring the situation in Gaza.

“The issue in Gaza is primarily a humanitarian and border issue, not a visa issue, as people are unable to leave.

“People who have relatives in Gaza can already apply for temporary or visitors’ visas for them,” Stanford said.

But Armstrong said: “If there is the political will, the government can do this.

“Other countries are doing this . . .  Canada and Australia are getting people out. It’s tricky, but it’s not impossible.”

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

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) has announced in Istanbul a plan to sail again to challenge Israel’s unlawful and deadly siege of Gaza, reports the aid group Kia Ora Gaza.

In the coming weeks, a flotilla will put to sea carrying thousands of tonnes of urgently needed humanitarian aid that will be delivered directly to Palestinians in Gaza, say the organisers.

“After 17 years of a brutal blockade and four months of genocidal assault, including weaponising basic necessities, Palestinians in Gaza are facing an unprecedented and catastrophic humanitarian crisis,” said FFC’s statement.

• READ MORE: Israeli offensive on Rafah will ‘blow up’ captive talks, says Hamas
• Kia Ora Gaza website
• Report on yesterday’s Auckland Palestine rally
• Other War on Gaza reports

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month ordered provisional measures to protect the Palestinians in Gaza from the “plausible risk” of genocide.

Among six strongly worded measures, the ICJ ordered Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

This decision followed UN Security Council resolutions in November and December 2023 which called for urgent steps to immediately allow “safe, unhindered, and expanded” humanitarian access to Gaza.

“Israel’s blatant noncompliance with these orders, and the failure of other governments to pressure the occupying power to comply, motivate us as civil society organisations to take action,” said Ismail Moola of the Palestine Solidarity Alliance, South Africa.

‘We need to act immediately’
“It is incumbent upon us to ensure that Palestinians in Gaza receive humanitarian aid. We expect that the Security Council will enforce the ICJ ruling, but due to the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza we need to act immediately.”

Organisers said plans for the Save Gaza Campaign were ongoing, and the FFC called on the government of Egypt to facilitate the delivery of life-sustaining aid through Rafah into Gaza.

FFC’s mission, For the Children of Gaza, led by the boat Handala, will again set sail from Northern Europe to Gaza in May 2024.

The FFC gathered in Istanbul to plan these campaigns with representatives from the following organisations: Canadian Boat to Gaza (Canada), US Boat to Gaza (USA), Kia Ora Gaza (Aotearoa New Zealand), Free Gaza Australia (Australia), Ship to Gaza (Norway), MyCARE (Malaysia), Ship to Gaza (Sweden), Palestine Solidarity Alliance (South Africa), IHH (Türkiye), Rumbo a Gaza (Spanish State), Mavi Marmara Association (Türkiye) and the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza.

“Where our governments fail, we sail,” said Karen DeVito of Canadian Boat to Gaza.

“We are charting a course to the conscience of humanity, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

She said they called on civil society organisations from around the world who share their values and goals to “support and join us”.

Contact details for Aotearoa New Zealand’s Kia Ora Gaza:
Contact: Roger Fowler
Phone: +64 212 999 491
Email: office@kiaoragaza.net
Website: http://www.kiaoragaza.net/
Facebook: KiaOraGaza

Senator and deputy leader of the Australian Greens party Mehreen Faruqi says the survival of millions of people in Gaza depends on the “live-saving” humanitarian aid provided by UNRWA, and it is “totally irresponsible” to cut funds to the UN agency.

“Western countries, like Australia, who have suspended this aid [to UNRWA] have made a pretty disgraceful and morally indefensible decision,” she said.|

“We know that people are being starved in Gaza at the moment. We know that there is a humanitarian crisis.

• READ MORE: Which countries have cut funding to UNRWA, and why?
• In waging war on the UN refugee agency, the West is openly siding with Israeli genocide
• Other UNRWA reports

“We know that there is a mission of genocide that Israel is committing, and at this time to suspend aid is disgraceful,” Faruqi told Al Jazeera.

Australia joined some 15 US-led countries to cut UNRWA funding by US$667 million — more than half of its total pledges.

The people of Australia had taken to the streets to protest over “weeks and weeks” in support of Gaza. But the government was refusing to listen to their demands, Faruqi said.

“By refusing to listen to the people of Australia, the Australian government is making decisions that are completely opposed to the sentiments, feelings and demands of the Australian people,” she said.

‘People can see . . . 26,000 have been massacred’
“People in Australia can actually see what is going on in Gaza. They can see more than 26,000 people have been massacred.

“They can see that more than 12,000 of those are children. This is completely unacceptable. This [Israeli] mission of genocide.

“And especially the cheerleading by Australia, by the UK, by the US of this invasion of Gaza is reprehensible.”

UNRWA’s funds should be restored immediately and increased, Faruqi added.

Countries such as Ireland, Norway and Spain have continued to fund UNRWA – in some cases increasing their aid — and have condemned the funding cuts as an “attack on humanity”.

New Zealand is currently still funding UNRWA and will review the situation before its next instalment is due mid-year.

‘Happy to keep war going’

Also interviewed by Al Jazeera, independent journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory exposing the Israeli military profit machine, talked about the views of the Israeli population and the Jewish diaspora.

Answering a question about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declared goal of “total victory” as the war drags on, Loewenstein acknowledged how global diasporas were split in their opinions with younger Jewish groups in the US increasingly seeking a ceasefire, but his view of Israel was grim.

“One of the things that is really clear. . . is that most Israelis want their hostages back, which makes sense. But at the same time they are also very happy to keep the war going.

“In fact, most polls do not suggest that the majority of Israeli Jews want the war to end.,” he said.

“They do want Hamas to be removed in some way. What that looks like, of course is up to debate.”

Author Antony Loewenstein discusses Jewish diaspora splits over the Gaza war. Video: Al Jazeera

New Zealand would likely continue funding the United Nations agency delivering aid in Palestine if concerns about its staff were dealt with, the Foreign Affairs Minister says.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Tuesday confirmed New Zealand was reviewing future payments to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

It follows accusations by Israel that 12 agency staff were involved in the Hamas’ attacks on October 7, which left about 1140 dead and about 250 taken as hostages.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘What is the critical issue here, it is the humanitarian crisis that we face and war in Gaza’ – Foreign Affairs Minister Peters
• Defunding UNRWA will cause Gazans ‘more misery and suffering’, warns former PM Clark
• Which countries have cut funding to UNRWA, and why?
• Other UNRWA reports

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report the allegations warranted a proper investigation.

But he said the critical issue was the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

According to the Palestine Health Ministry more than 26,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a war on the besieged enclave in response to October 7.

Awaiting UN investigation
Peters said it was possible there were a few “rotten apples” within UNRWA.

“If the matter has been dealt with, and with assurances that it does not happen in the future, then the crisis is of a level, we must, I believe, and I think the New Zealand people would want us to respond to the crisis rather than to react in that way and punish a whole lot of innocent people because of the actions of a few.” he said.

Peters said it would be premature to make a decision before the UN finished its investigation.

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

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, who led the UN Development Programme which oversees UNRWA, told RNZ Morning Report today it was the biggest platform for getting humanitarian aid into Gaza for a population that is 85 percent displaced.

People are on the verge on starvation and going without medical supplies, she says.

“If you’re going to defund and destroy this platform, then the misery and suffering of the people under bombardment can only increase and you can only have more deaths.”

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Helen Clark’s full interview on UNRWA
• Palestinians condemn suspension of UNRWA funding by Western nations
• Delegitimise, defund, destroy: Israel’s long-waged war against UNRWA
• Amnesty chief calls UNRWA funding cuts ‘heartless’, ‘sickening’ – Breakdown of funding
• UNRWA funding cuts condemned as ‘collective punishment’
• Other UNRWA reports from Al Jazeera

Clark said it was “most regrettable that countries have acted in this precipitous way to defund the organisation on the basis of allegations”.

Al Jazeera reports that top Palestinian officials and Hamas have criticised the decision by nearly a dozen Western countries led by the US to suspend funding (totalling more than US$667 million) for UNRWA — the UN relief agency for Palestinians — and called for an immediate reversal of the move, which entails “great” risk.

Ireland, Norway, Spain, the European Union and others (with funding totalling more than $497 million) have confirmed continued support for UNRWA, saying the agency does crucial work to help Palestinians displaced and in desperate need of assistance in Gaza.

The Norwegian aid agency said the people of Gaza would “starve in the streets” without UNRWA humanitarian assistance.

Hamas’ media office said in a post on Telegram: “We ask the UN and the international organisations to not cave into the threats and blackmail” from Israel.

Defunding ‘not right decision’
Former PM Clark did not deny the allegations made were serious, but said defunding the agency without knowing the outcome of the investigation was not the right decision, RNZ reports.

“I led an organisation that had tens of thousands of people on contracts at any one time. Could I say, hand on heart, people never did anything wrong? No I couldn’t. But what I could say was that any allegations would be fully investigated and results made publicly known,” she said.

UNRWA funding cuts — why Israel is trying to destroy the UN Palestinian aid agency.  Video: Al Jazeera

“That’s exactly what the head of UNRWA has said, it’s what the Secretary-General’s saying, that process is underway, but this is not a time to be just cutting off the funding because a small minority of UNRWA staff face allegations.”

Luxon suggested Clark’s plea would not affect New Zealand’s response.

The European Union will NOT suspend funding to UNRWA. It will await the results of the investigation that UNRWA announced, not collectively punish Palestinian civilians while the investigation is underway the way the US government and others are doing. https://t.co/NUxEC0MrwJ

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) January 29, 2024

“I appreciate that, but we’re the government, and they’re serious allegations, they need to be understood and investigated and when the foreign minister [Winston Peters] says that he’s done that and he’s happy for us to contribute and continue to contribute, we’ll do that.”

He compared the funding of about $1 million each year (in June) with the $10 million in humanitarian assistance provided by the government for the relief effort — “and we’ve split that money between the International Red Cross and also the World Food Programme”.

Clark said people could starve to death or die because they did not receive the medication they needed in the meantime.

Halting aid to Gaza via UNRWA is “deeply twisted and harmful”.
…And Australia has joined in the halt. https://t.co/17gV0AyPaj pic.twitter.com/5b7DU6dOaB

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) January 30, 2024

If major donor countries like the United States and Germany continued to withhold funding, UNRWA would go down and there was no alternative, she said.

Clark did not believe there was any coincidence in the allegations being made known at the same time as the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the situation in Gaza.

According to the BBC, the court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to refrain from killing and injuring Palestinians and do more to “prevent and punish” public incitement to genocide. Tel Aviv must report back to the court on its actions within a month.

Clark said the timing of the UNRWA allegations was an attempt to deflect the significant rulings made of the court and dismiss them.

“I think it’s fairly obvious what was happening.”

States must reverse cruel decision to withdraw UNRWA funding
https://t.co/JRMfHH9P04

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) January 29, 2024

Israel had provided the agency with information alleging a dozen staff were involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas fighters in southern Israel, which left about 1139 dead and about 250 taken as hostages.

More than 26,000 people — mostly women and children — have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a major military operation in response, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

Israel military have killed 152 UNRWA aid workers since the onslaught on Gaza began.

UNRWA was founded in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 to provide hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who were forcibly displaced with education, healthcare, social services and jobs. It started operations in 1950.

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

In 2023, the world witnessed a sustained attack on the very foundations of the international legal order.

Russia, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, continued its illegal invasion in Ukraine. Israel’s response to the deadly October attack by Hamas exceeded its legitimate right to self-defence. And Venezuela threatened force against Guyana over an oil-rich area of disputed territory.

But is it all bad news for the international legal order?

• READ MORE: South Africa has made its genocide case against Israel in court. Here’s what both sides said and what happens next
• Myanmar charged with genocide of Rohingya Muslims: 5 essential reads

There are six ongoing international court cases initiated by states or organisations seeking to clarify the law and hold other states to account on behalf of the international community.

These cases offer smaller countries, such as New Zealand, an opportunity to have a significant role in strengthening the international legal order and ensuring a pathway towards peace.

A departure from the legal norm?
Normally, cases are brought to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) when a state’s direct interests are impacted by the actions of another state.

However, six recent court cases reflect a significant departure from this tradition and mark an important development for international justice.

These cases argue the international community has a collective interest in certain issues. The focus of the cases range from Israel’s actions in Gaza (brought by South Africa) through to the responsibility of states to ensure the protection of the climate system (brought by the United Nations General Assembly).

South Africa’s justice minister Ronald Lamola outlined the country’s genocide case against Israel, as a landmark hearing opened at the International Court of Justice pic.twitter.com/AvlM8BwhQI

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Holding states accountable for genocide
Three of the six cases seek to hold states accountable for genocide using Article IX of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Put simply, Article IX says disputes between countries can be referred to the ICJ.

In late December, South Africa asked the court to introduce provisional measures — a form of international injunction — against Israel for genocidal acts in Gaza.

These proceedings build on the precedent set by a 2019 case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya people.

In 2022, the ICJ concluded it had jurisdiction to hear The Gambia’s case on the basis that all parties to the Genocide Convention have an interest in ensuring the prevention, suppression and punishment of genocide.

According to the ICJ, The Gambia did not need to demonstrate any special interest or injury to bring the proceedings and, in effect, was entitled to hold Myanmar to account for its treatment of the Rohingya people on behalf of the international community as a whole.

South Africa has made the same argument against Israel.

In the third case, Ukraine was successful in obtaining provisional measures calling on Russia to suspend military operations in Ukraine (a call which has been reiterated in several United Nations General Assembly resolutions).

While Ukraine is directly impacted by Russia’s actions, 32 states, including New Zealand, have also intervened. These countries have argued there is an international interest in the resolution of the conflict.

In November 2023, following the example of intervention in Ukraine v Russia, seven countries — Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (jointly) and the Maldives — filed declarations of intervention in The Gambia v Myanmar, in support of The Gambia and the international community.

States can apply for permission to intervene in proceedings where they have an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by the decision in the case (in the case of the ICJ, under Article 62 of the ICJ Statute). That said, intervening in judicial proceedings in support of the legal order or international community more generally was relatively rare until 2023.

South Africa is taking Israel to the ICJ, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s @nabilabana explains what’s behind the case pic.twitter.com/Hv9R4orEa8

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 11, 2024

Climate change obligations under international law
But it is not just acts of genocide that have attracted wider international legal involvement.

In 2023, three proceedings seeking advisory opinions on the legal obligations of states in respect of climate change under international law have been introduced before the ICJ, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

These cases can be similarly characterised as having been brought on behalf of the international community for the international community. New Zealand has intervened in the Law of the Sea case.

Collectively, these six cases comprise actions taken on behalf of the international community with the overarching purpose of strengthening the international legal order.

They demonstrate faith in and support for that legal order in the face of internal and external challenges, and constitute an important counter-narrative to the prevailing view that the international legal order is no longer robust.

Instituting proceedings does not guarantee a positive outcome. But it is worth noting that less than three years after the ICJ issued an advisory opinion condemning the United Kingdom’s continued occupation of the Chagos Archipelago, the UK is quietly negotiating with Mauritius for the return of the islands.

New Zealand’s support for the global legal order in 2024
The international legal order underpins New Zealand’s security and prosperity. New Zealand has a strong and internationally recognised track record of positive intervention in judicial proceedings in support of that order.

In 2012 New Zealand intervened in the case brought by Australia against Japan for whaling in the Antarctic. Following our contributions to cases before the ICJ and ITLOS in 2023, we are well placed to continue that intervention in future judicial proceedings.

Calls have already been made for New Zealand to intervene in South Africa v Israel. Contributing to this case and to The Gambia v Myanmar proceeding provides an important opportunity for New Zealand to make a proactive and substantive contribution to strengthening the international legal order.

Dr Karen Scott is professor in Law, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

South Africa has accused Israel of “genocidal intent” over its war on the besieged enclave Gaza Strip, and pleaded with judges at the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an interim order demanding Israel halt its military offensive in the embattled territory, reports Middle East Eye.

South African lawyer Adila Hassim told judges at The Hague that “genocides are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies as a plausible claim of genocidal acts”.

“Israel deployed 6000 bombs per week . . . No one is spared. Not even newborns.

• READ MORE: ICJ hears South Africa’s genocide case against Israel over Gaza war
• Genocide in Gaza: A call to urgent global action – Backgrounder

UN chiefs have described it as a graveyard for children,” she said told the court on the opening session of the two-day preliminary hearing.

“Nothing will stop the suffering except an order from this court.”

Israel’s ongoing three-month war in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, lawyers told the court.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and an Israeli blockade severely limiting food, fuel and medicine has caused a humanitarian “catastrophe”, according to the UN.

‘Genocidal in character’
South Africa submitted its case against Israel at the ICJ last month and has said Israel’s actions in Gaza are “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group”.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another South African lawyer and legal scholar at the hearing, said Pretoria was not alone in drawing attention to Israel’s genocidal rhetoric.

He said that at least 15 UN special rapporteurs and 21 members of the UN working groups had warned that what was happening in Gaza reflected a genocide in the making.

Video: Middle East Eye

Ngcukaitobi added that genocidal intent was evident in the way Israel’s military was conducting attacks, including the targeting of family homes and civilian infrastructure.

“Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”

Ngcukaitobi said the “genocidal rhetoric” had become common within the Israeli Knesset, with several MPs calling for Gaza to be “wiped out, flattened, erased and crushed”.

Israeli defence
On Wednesday, Nissim Vaturi, a member of Israel’s ruling Likud party, said it was a “privilege” for his country to appear at The Hague as he doubled down on earlier remarks where he said there were “no innocent people” in Gaza.

This is the first time Israel is being tried under the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, which was drawn up after the Second World War in light of the atrocities committed against Jews and other persecuted minorities during the Holocaust.

During yesterday’s proceedings, Professor Max du Plessis, another lawyer representing South Africa, said Israel had subjected the Palestinian people to an oppressive and prolonged violation of their rights to self-determination for more than half a century.

Dr Du Plessis added that based on materials shown before the court, the acts of Israel were plausibly characterised as genocidal.

“South Africa’s obligation is motivated by the need to protect Palestinians in Gaza and their absolute rights not to be subjected to genocidal acts.”

Genocide cases, which are notoriously hard to prove, can take years to resolve, but South Africa is asking the court to speedily implement “provisional measures” and “order Israel to cease killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinian people in Gaza”.

Thank you Madiba. Thank you South Africa. #ICJ #ICJGenocideConvention pic.twitter.com/9xjdSR40MI

— Dr. Omar Suleiman (@omarsuleiman504) January 11, 2024

Three hour hearing
Yesterday’s hearing consisted of three hours of detailed descriptions detailing what South Africa says is a clear example of genocide. Israel will today have three hours to respond on Friday.

The spokesperson of the Israeli Foreign Affairs, Lior Haiat, hit out at the comments made in the hearing, calling it “one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy,” and demonstrated “false and baseless claims.”

He also accused South Africa of “functioning as the legal arm of the Hamas terrorist organisation”.

As South Africa did in its 84-page legal filing ahead of the case, the country’s Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola repeated that he “unequivocally condemns Hamas” for the October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Republished from Middle East Eye.

The full first day hearing – South Africa’s submissions. Video: Middle East Eye

The Algerian democracy advocate Ahmed Zaoui, a New Zealand citizen, has been arrested by Algerian security forces after commenting on human rights violations at a political meeting at his home.

His New Zealand lawyer Deborah Manning said Zaoui had been detained at a police station in the city of Medea since he was taken from his home at about 5.30pm on Tuesday (Algerian time).

“He was arrested at gunpoint . . . by eight men in balaclavas from the special forces and the neighbourhood was surrounded, so it was a significant operation, and he’s been taken for interrogation,” she said.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: NZ citizen Ahmed Zaoui detained in Algeria
• Behind The Shroud – juxtapositioning truth, intelligence and tradecraft – Documentary by Selwyn Manning
• Other Ahmed Zaoui reports

“It’s a precarious situation for anyone taken under these circumstances.”

He had not yet been charged with anything, she said.

Zaoui, who was recognised as a refugee in New Zealand 20 years ago after a protracted legal battle, entered Algeria on a New Zealand passport.

“Mr Zaoui has two homes now — he has family in Algeria and New Zealand and he was wanting to find a way to live in both worlds.

‘Constant communication’
“He returned to Algeria to be with family in recent years as the political situation appeared to be settling. He was planning to return to New Zealand later this year.”

Manning remained in “constant communication” with Zaoui’s family in Algeria.

The family was “very concerned” and was working with New Zealand consular affairs.

There was no New Zealand consulate in Algeria but Manning said she was in touch with “the relevant authorities”.

Selwyn Manning’s documentary on the Ahmed Zaoui case.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told RNZ it was aware of reports of a New Zealander detained in Algeria but could not provide further information due to “privacy reasons”.

According to Amnesty International, about 300 people have been arrested in Algeria on charges related to freedom of speech since a law change in April cracking down on media freedom.

Zaoui, a former theology professor, stood as a candidate for the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria’s first general election in 1991.

However, the government cancelled the election and banned his party when it appeared it was on track to win the election, forcing Zaoui and others to flee the country.

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

Opposition National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis was among three political leaders who made a surprising commitment at a debate last night to build 1000 state houses in Auckland each year.

Labour Party leader and caretaker prime minister Chris Hipkins and Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson also agreed to do so, with resounding “yes” responses to the direct question from co-convenors Sister Margaret Martin of the Sisters of Mercy Wiri and Nik Naidu of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub.

All three political leaders also pledged to have quarterly consultations with a new community alliance formed to address Auckland’s housing and homeless crisis and other social issues.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Interview with Te Ohu co-chair Nina Santos
• Labour, National and Greens commit to 1000 more state houses a year in Auckland
• National makes commitment to build 1,000 state houses
• Other NZ election 2023 reports

The “non-political partisan” public rally at the Lesieli Tonga Auditorium in Favona — which included about 1000 attendees representing 45 community and social issues groups — was hosted by the new alliance Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga.

Filipina lawyer and co-chair of the meeting Nina Santos, of the YWCA, declared: “If we don’t have a seat at the table, it’s because we’re on the menu.”

Later, in an interview with RNZ Morning Report today, Santos said: “It was so great to see [the launch of Te Ohu] after four years in the making”.

‘People power’
“It was so good to see our allies, our villages and our communities — our 45 organisations — show up last night to demonstrate people power

“Te Ohu Whakawhanaunga is a broad-based alliance, the first of its kind in Tāmaki Makauarau. The members include Māori groups, women’s groups, unions and faith-based organisations.

“They have all came together to address issues that the city is facing — housing is a basic human right.”

She chaired the evening with Father Henry Rogo from Fiji, of the Diocese of Polynesia in NZ.

Speakers telling heart-rending stories included Dinah Timu, of E Tū union, about “decent work”, and Tayyaba Khan, Darwit Arshak and Eugene Velasco, who relating their experiences as migrants, former refugees and asylum seekers.

The crowd was also treated to performances by Burundian drummers, Colombian dancers and Te Whānau O Pātiki Kapahaka at Te Kura O Pātiki Rosebank School, all members of the new Te Ohu collective.

Writing in The New Zealand Herald today, journalist Simon Wilson reported:

“Hipkins told the crowd of about 500 . . . that he grew up in a state house built by the Labour government in the 1950s. ‘And I’m very proud that we are building more state houses today than at any time since the 1950s,’ he said.

“’Labour has exceeded the 1000 commitment. We’ve built 12,000 social house units since 2017, and 7000 of them have been in Tāmaki Makaurau. But there is more work to be done.’

“He reminded the audience that the last National government had sold state houses, not built them.

“Davidson said that housing was ‘a human right and a core public good’. The Greens’ commitment was greater than that of the other parties: it wanted to build 35,000 more public houses in the next five years, and resource the construction sector and the government’s state housing provider Kāinga Ora to get it done.

“’We will also put a cap on rent increases and introduce a minimum income guarantee, to lift people out of poverty.’

“Willis told the audience there were 2468 people on the state house waiting list in Auckland when Labour took office in 2017, and now there are 8175.

“’Here’s the thing. If you don’t like the result you’re getting, you don’t keep doing the same thing. We don’t think social housing should just be provided by Kāinga Ora. We want the Salvation Army, and Habitat for Humanity and other community housing providers to be much more involved.’

“Members of that sector were at the meeting and one confirmed the community housing sector is already building a substantial proportion of new social housing.”

As recovery and humanitarian efforts ramp up in Hawai’i’s Maui to help evacuees from the town of Lāhainā, there is frustration among many about the response and the failure of emergency sirens to sound off during the disaster.

The most recent update for Hawai’i’s Governor’s Office has the death toll at 110.

“The sirens never went off which is why a lot of people died because if people had heard the sirens, they would of course have run,” said Allin Dudoit, an assistant for the New Life Church in Kahului, which has been assisting survivors with basic supplies, accommodation and counselling.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES:  Maui in state of recovery and mourning
• Other Maui wildfire reports

“When they saw the smoke outside, they didn’t think they were in danger because they didn’t hear the sirens,” he added.

“I had a nephew who made it out alive with his sisters, they got burnt a little but they made it out.”

Dudoit told RNZ Pacific that many survivors were still in their homes when the fires struck and that fallen telephone poles prevented cars from getting out.

“People have been telling me they only had seconds to get away, that they didn’t even have time to run down the hallway to grab a family member — that’s how bad it was.

Telephone pole gridlock
“So many telephone posts were down that it caused a gridlock . . . they thought they were getting away, but the fires just came in and swept through the traffic.

“My wife’s uncle didn’t make it, he was in a truck.”

More than 1000 responders — mostly from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — are in Maui assisting survivors and recovering bodies from Lāhainā.

In the wake of the disaster, Hawai’i’s Governor Josh Green had announced aid, including employment insurance, financial support and housing.

“We have over 500 hotel rooms already up and going,” said Green.

“If you’re displaced from your job, you need to talk to the Department of Labour . . . please do that so you can get benefits and resources right away.

“We have an AirB&B programme that will have a thousand available rooms for people to go to.

Stable housing
“We want everyone to be able to leave the shelters and go into stable housing which is going to take a long time.”

A housing crisis already exists in Hawai’i. Just last month, Green issued an emergency proclamation to expedite the construction of 50,000 new housing units by 2025.

Some helped, others move
“Some people are getting lots of help while others are going to have to move away from Maui from lack of help.” 

Among the most active groups helping Lāhainā evacuees have been Maui’s many churches whose congregations have been raising donations and taking in evacuees.

Baptist Church Pastor Matt Brunt said many people were still reported missing and there was a sense of despair among those who had not heard from missing relatives.

“They’re pretty certain that people they haven’t been able to find yet are most likely going to be a part of the count of people who have died,” said Brunt.

“It seems like people have the immediate supplies they need, but housing is definitely is the biggest need now — to get people out of these shelters and find them a place to live.

“There’s a mixed response of how people feel about the response time of the government, but we also see just how many individuals are stepping out and meeting the needs of these people.”

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

Asia Pacific Report

A new documentary and human rights report have documented savage attacks in 2021 by Indonesian security forces on a remote West Papuan village close to the Papua New Guinea border as part of an ongoing crackdown against growing calls for independence.

The documentary, Paradise Bombed, and the research report made public yesterday allege that six Papuan villagers were killed in the initial attacks, a further seven were killed later when fleeing to safety, and 284 people were recorded by witnesses to have died from starvation in the months since then.

The researchers also allege that the security forces used bombs and rockets fired by helicopters and drones in the Indonesian attacks.

• READ MORE: West Papuans flee from conflict into remote PNG area
• PNG Trust report on the attacks on the Ngalum Kupel villagers
• Other West Papuan human rights reports

An estimated 2000 people were forced to flee into the forest and have remained in bush camps ever since, fearful of returning to their homes.

“From 10 October 2021, there have been ongoing attacks on the Ngalum Kupel
community by the Indonesian National Armed Forces,” said the researchers, documentary filmmaker Kristo Langker, and Matthew Jamieson of the PNG Trust.

“The continued aggravated attacks by Indonesian military forces and apparent complicity of Indonesian authorities have profoundly impacted on the community [until] July 2023.

“The Ngalum Kupel people have evidence that the Indonesian National Armed
Forces are targeting the whole of the Ngalum Kupel community with modified Krusik
mortars and Thales FZ 68 rockets.”

Targeted villages
The military aerial attacks were reported to have targeted a series of villages which
are adjacent north and northwest of Kiwirok, the regional and administrative centre.
This includes the Kiwi Mission station.

Four community members of the Nek-speaking Ngalum Kupel ethnic tribe were eyewitnesses to the airborne rocket and bombing attacks on their villages around Kiwirok.

“They described a drone dropping bombs together with four or five helicopters firing rockets at houses, food gardens, pigs and chickens,” the report said.

The witnesses named the dead victims and the displaced survivors.

“The witnesses collected shrapnel and bombs from the initial series of attacks,
bringing this evidence to Tumolbil in PNG,” the report said.

“The shrapnel and bombs collected indicate that Thales FZ 68 rockets and modified Krusik mortars were used as the munitions in the military aerial attacks. The witness accounts detail the Indonesian military forces using a drone/UAV armed with modified Krusik mortars, Thales rocket FZ 68 weapon systems and military attack helicopters against an Indigenous community.”

The report authors concluded that the Indonesia National Armed Forces — which were
understood to be equipped with Airbus Fennec attack helicopters and Thales
rockets systems — were “likely responsible for the helicopter components of the attacks.”

Wenda praises researchers
United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda has praised the researcher and documentary maker in a statement yesterday:

“These courageous filmmakers, Kristo Langker and friendlyjordies, have shown how bombs made in Serbia, France, and China were used to massacre my people. What happened in Kiwirok is happening across West Papua.

“We are murdered, tortured, and raped, and then our land is stolen for resource extraction and corporate profit when we flee.

“My heart was crying as I watched this documentary, as I was reminded of the Indonesian attack on my village in 1977. My early life was like the Kiwirok children shown in the film: my village was bombed, my family killed and brutalised, and we were forced to live in the bush for five years.

“The difference is that in 1977 no one was there with a camera to interview me — no one knows what happened to my mum, my aunt, my grandfather. But now we have video proof, and no one can deny the evidence of their own eyes.

“Aside from the number of Kiwirok people killed by Indonesian troops — ranging between 21 and 72 — witnesses from the village say that hundreds have died of starvation while living in the bush, where they lack food, water, and adequate medical supplies.

“Villagers attempting to return to Kiwirok have been attacked by Indonesian soldiers – shot at close range, with sniper rifles, and tortured. The names of Kiwirok residents are now added to the 60,000 — 100,000 who have been forcibly displaced by Indonesian militarisation since 2018.

“The international community knows this is a grave humanitarian crisis, and yet still refuses to act. Why?

“I want to alert all our diplomatic groups, the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP), the International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP), and all West Papuan solidarity activists around the world. You must ask your governments to address this, to stop selling arms to Indonesia.

“I also want to thank Kristo Langker and friendlyjordies for making this important documentary, and to Matthew Jamieson for producing the report on the attack. You have borne witness to the hidden genocide of my people.

When we are finally independent, your names will be written in our history.”

There has been no immediate response by Indonesian authorities.

No government likes to be called out for human rights abuses and it’s uncomfortable to do so, particularly when the abuser is either a friend or a country with which we have strong economic links.

In our relations with China, this is a difficult issue for us.

However, we should always expect our government to speak out for human rights and the case can be made that Chris Hipkins was too soft on his visit to China last week. The impression was of a laid-back Prime Minister failing to convey any of the serious concerns expressed by credible and principled human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

• READ MORE: ‘A real massacre’: Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Jenin
• Israelis kill nine in attack on Jenin refugee camp
• Other Palestine reports

It seems New Zealand is leaving the heavy lifting on human rights to Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta who, in her own words, had a robust discussion with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on these issues earlier this year.

An Australian report said she was “harangued” from the Chinese side, although this was denied by Mahuta.

Hipkins, as Prime Minister, has our loudest voice and he should have publicly backed up our Foreign Minister.

If we want to be regarded as a good global citizen, we have to speak out clearly and act consistently, irrespective of where human rights abuses take place. This is where New Zealand has fallen down repeatedly.

Looking the other way
We have been happy to strongly condemn Russia and announced economic and diplomatic sanctions within a few hours of its invasion of Ukraine but we look the other way when a country guilty of abuses is close to the US.

In regard to the longest military occupation in modern history, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, we have been weak and inconsistent over many decades in calling for Palestinian human rights.

It hasn’t always been like that.

In late 2016, the National government, under John Key as prime minister, co-sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSC2334 – NZ was a security council member at the time) which was passed in a 14–0 vote. The US abstained.

The resolution states that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”. It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.

Video shows the moment journalists said they were directly fired at by Israeli soldiers whilst they were covering the raid in Jenin refugee camp pic.twitter.com/OBQ5aS5c0A

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 3, 2023

So why does this matter now?

Because Israel has elected a new extremist government that has declared its intention to make illegal settlement building on Palestinian land its “top priority”. Early this week it announced plans for 5000 more homes for these illegal settlements, which a Palestinian official described as “part of an open war against the Palestinian people”.

Israel shows world middle finger
Israel is showing Palestinians, and the world, its middle finger.

At least nine people have been killed and scores wounded in the latest Israeli military attack on Palestinians in what is being described as a “real massacre” in Jenin refugee camp.

UNSC 2334 didn’t just criticise Israel. It called for action. It also asked member countries of the United Nations “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967″.

In practical terms, this means requiring our government and local authorities to refuse to purchase any goods or services from companies (both Israeli and foreign-owned) that operate in illegal Israeli settlements.

This ban should also be extended to the 112 companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as complicit in the building and maintenance of these illegal Israeli settlements.

The government should be actively discouraging our Superannuation Fund and KiwiSaver providers from investing in these complicit companies but an analysis earlier this year showed the Super Fund investments in these companies have close to doubled in the past two years.

Some countries have begun following through on UNSC 2334 but New Zealand has been inert. We have not been prepared to back up our words at the United Nations with action here.

West Papua deserves our voice
Following through would mean we were standing up for human rights for everyone living in Palestine. We could expect our government to face false smears of anti-semitism from Israel’s leaders and their friends here but we would receive heartfelt thanks from a people who have suffered immeasurably for 75 years.

Palestinians are the largest group of refugees internationally — 5.9 million — after being driven off their land by Israeli militias in 1947-1949. Every day, more of their land is stolen for illegal settlements while we avert our gaze.

The Indonesian military occupation of West Papua and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara also deserve our voice on the side of the victims.

Standing up for human rights is not comfortable when it means challenging supposed friends or allies. But we owe it to ourselves, and to those being brutally oppressed, to do more than mouth platitudes.

These peoples deserve our support and solidarity. Let’s not look the other way. Let’s act.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published in The New Zealand Herald but is republished with the permission of the author.

Following widespread media coverage of the collapse of what was a more than US$70 million trust fund for Bikini islanders displaced by American nuclear weapons testing, the United States Congress has demanded answers from the Interior Department about the status of the trust fund.

Four leading members of the US Congress put the Interior Department on notice last Friday that Congress is focused on accountability of Interior’s decision to discontinue oversight of the Bikini Resettlement Trust Fund.

In their three-page letter, the chairmen and the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House Committee on Natural Resources — which both have oversight on US funding to the Marshall Islands — wrote to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland with questions about what has happened to the Bikinians’ trust fund.

• READ MORE: Other Bikini Islander reports

It was initially capitalised by the US Congress in 1982 and again in 1988 for a total investment of just under US$110m.

Protests in Majuro
The Congressional letter is the first official US action on the Bikini Resettlement Trust Fund and follows several demonstrations in Majuro over the past six weeks by members of the Bikini community angered by the current lack of money to support their community.

The letter notes that on November 16, 2017, Interior accepted Kili/Bikini/Ejit Mayor Anderson Jibas and the local council’s request for a “rescript” or change in the system of oversight of the Resettlement Trust Fund.

As of September 30, 2016, the fund had $71 million in it, the last audit available of the fund.

“Since then (2017), local officials have purportedly depleted the fund,” the four Senate and House leaders wrote to Haaland.

“Indeed, media reports suggest that the fund may have been squandered in ways that not only lack transparency and accountability, but also lack fidelity to the fund’s original intent.

“If true, that is a major breach of public trust not only for the people of Bikini Atoll, for whom the fund was established, but also for the American taxpayers whose dollars established and endowed the fund.”

They refer to multiple media reports about the demise of the Resettlement Trust Fund, including in the Marshall Islands Journal, The New York Times, Marianas Variety and Honolulu Civil Beat.

No audits since 2016
The Resettlement Trust Fund was audited annually since inception in the 1980s. But there have been no audits released since 2016 during the tenure of current Mayor Jibas.

The lack of funds in the Resettlement Trust Fund only became evident in January when the local government was unable to pay workers and provide other benefits routinely provided for the displaced islanders.

Since January, no salaries or quarterly nuclear compensation payments have been made, leaving Bikinians largely destitute and now facing dozens of collection lawsuits from local banks due to delinquent loan payments.

‘Fund is in jeopardy’
The letter from Energy Chairman Senator Joe Manchin and ranking member Senator John Barrasso, and Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman and ranking member Raul Grijalva says American lawmakers “have a duty to oversee the management of taxpayer dollars appropriated for the resettlement and rehabilitation of Bikini Atoll”.

The letter also repeatedly makes the point that the money in the trust fund was only to rehabilitate and resettle Bikini Atoll, with projects on Kili or Ejit islands limited to only $2 million per year, subject to the Interior Secretary’s prior approval.

“Regrettably, the continued viability of the fund to serve its express purpose now appears to be in jeopardy,” the US elected leaders said.

The US leaders are demanding that Haaland explain why the Interior Department walked away from its long-standing oversight role with the trust fund in late 2017.

Specifically they want to know if the Office of the Solicitor approved the decision by then-Assistant Secretary Doug Domenech to accept the KBE Local Government’s rescript “as a valid amendment to the 1988 amended resettlement trust fund agreement.’

They also suggest Interior’s 2017 decision has ramifications for US legal liability.

Key questions
“Does the department believe that the 2017 rescript supersedes the 1988 amended resettlement trust fund agreement in its entirety?” they ask.

“If so, does the department disclaim that Congress’s 1988 appropriation to the fund fully satisfied the obligation of the United States to provide funds to assist in the resettlement and rehabilitation of Bikini Atoll by the people of Bikini Atoll?

“And does that waive any rights or reopen any potential legal liabilities for nuclear claims that were previously settled?”

They also want to know if KBE Local Government provided a copy of its annual budget, as promised, since 2017.

The letter winds up wanting to know what Interior is “doing to ensure that trust funds related to the Marshall Islands are managed transparently and accountably moving forward?”

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

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has called on the international community to “pay serious attention” to the escalated violence happening in West Papua.

Head of ULMWP’s legal and human rights bureau, Daniel Randongkir, said that since the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) — a separate movement — took New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens hostage last month, tensions in the Papuan central mountainous region had escalated.

The New Zealand government is pressing for the negotiated peaceful release of Mehrtens but the Indonesian security forces (TNI) are preparing a military operation to free the Susi Air pilot.

• READ MORE:  AI says West Papua conflict ‘alarming’
• Other reports on the NZ hostage pilot

Randongkir said the TPNPB kidnapping was an effort to draw world attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Papua, and to ask the international community to recognise the political independence of West Papua, which has been occupied by Indonesia since May 1, 1963.

Negotiations for the release of Mehrtens, who was captured on February 7, are ongoing but TPNPB does not want the Indonesian government to intervene in the negotiations.

Randongkir said that in the past week, there had been armed conflict between TPNPB and TNI in Puncak Papua, Intan Jaya, Jayawijaya, and Yahukimo regencies. This showed the escalation of armed conflict in Papua.

According to Randongkir, since 2018 more than 67,000 civilians had been displaced from conflict areas such as Intan Jaya, Nduga, Puncak, Puncak Jaya, Yahukimo, Bintang Mountains, and Maybrat regencies.

Fled their hometowns
They fled their hometowns to seek refuge in other areas.

On March 16, 2023 the local government and the military began evacuating non-Papuans in Dekai, the capital of Yahukimo Regency, using military cargo planes.

“Meanwhile, the Indigenous people of Yahukimo were not evacuated from the city of Dekai,” Randongkir said in media release.

ULMWP said that the evacuation of non-Papuans was part of the TNI’s preparation to carry out full military operations. This had the potential to cause human rights violations.

Past experience showed that TNI, when conducting military operations in Papua, did not pay attention to international humanitarian law.

“They will destroy civilian facilities such as churches, schools, and health clinics, burn people’s houses, damage gardens, and kill livestock belonging to the community,” he said.

“They will arrest civilians, even kill civilians suspected of being TPNPB members.”

Plea for Human Rights Commissioner
Markus Haluk, executive director of ULMWP in West Papua, said that regional organisations such as the Pacific Islands Forum and the African Caribbean Pacific bloc, have called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to immediately send the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua.

ULMWP hoped that the international community could urge the Indonesian government to immediately stop all forms of crimes against humanity committed in West Papua, and bring about a resolution of the West Papua conflict through international mechanisms that respect humanitarian principles, Haluk said.

Haluk added that ULMWP also called on the Melanesian, Pacific, African, Caribbean and international communities to take concrete action through prayer and solidarity actions in resolving the conflict that had been going on for the past six decades.

This was to enable justice, peace, independence and political sovereignty of the West Papuan nation.

Mourning for Gerardus Thommey
RNZ Pacific reports that Papuans are mourning the death of Gerardus Thommey, a leader of the liberation movement.

Independence movement leader Benny Wenda said Thommey was a regional commander of the West Papuan liberation movement in Merauke, and since his early 20s had been a guerilla fighter.

He said Thommey was captured near the PNG border with four other liberation leaders and deported to Ghana, and lived the rest of his life in exile.

Wenda said that even though he had been exiled from his land, Thommey’s commitment to a liberated West Papua never wavered.

Republished with permission.

https://t.co/32Q0qeXCS2

— Benny Wenda (@BennyWenda) March 20, 2023

The appointment of Baron Waqa, former President of Nauru, to head the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) next year was a jaw-droppingly poor decision and an insult to everything the regional body is meant to represent.

What were the Forum leaders thinking?

Here’s the thing, they were probably told he was the former President of Nauru, he’ll do, and we have to keep Micronesia happy. Tick.

• READ MORE: Pacific leaders commit to Forum reforms and ‘family unity’
• Other Barbara Dreaver reports at Asia Pacific Report

There is no doubt Micronesia has held the power at this forum after Kiribati dramatically ditched the group last year. It is crucial all Pacific countries, which include NZ and Australia, be united as the world goes through some crazy times.

Micronesia was offered a number of incentives to keep them at the table, including a new sub-regional office in Kiribati, a Pacific Oceans Commissioner based in Palau and Nauru’s Baron Waqa as Secretary-General.

Ongoing investigation
So what sort of man has been chosen to lead the Forum next year?

1. There has been an ongoing Australian Federal Police investigation into Gold Coast phosphate company Getax for the alleged payment of bribes to Nauruan politicians. That includes Baron Waqa, who allegedly received $60,000.
2. In 2014, President Baron Waqa and his government sacked the independent judiciary. He defended doing so, saying, “we have a right to dismiss any person not fulfilling their duties in the best interests of Nauru”. This prompted an international outcry, and the New Zealand government withdrew aid for the judicial system there in protest.
3. In 2015, his government blocked access to Facebook, which many, including a former Chief Justice, believed was an attempt to stifle dissent.
4. Media freedom is an issue — it costs $8750 to apply for media to apply for a visa, and if it is not approved (most of the time), you lose that amount.
   A disclosure: I was taken into custody in 2018 during the Pacific Islands Forum while interviewing a refugee in a public area. The government, led by Nauru President Baron Waqa, later said I wasn’t detained but accompanied them “voluntarily”. An outright lie — two police cars showed up, my equipment and phone were confiscated, and I was ordered into one of the cars. I was then placed in a dark room with a male police officer — a failed attempt at intimidation — for at least an hour before NZ MFAT officials arrived.
5. In 2015, an Australian PR firm, Mercer PR, which was working for the Nauru government, released details of a police report on an assault of a female Somali refugee.

Woman’s name, details released
The local police had found insufficient evidence, and in an extraordinary move, the government released the name of the complainant and graphic details about the allegations, including comments about her vagina and whether there was any evidence of semen and sexual activity.

The founder of the PR company, Lyall Mercer, defended the document release, saying it had done so on behalf of the Nauru government. A government led by Baron Waqa . . . and there was never any back down or apology over this.

How galling to see the sycophantic tweet from Lyall Mercer this week congratulating Waqa for his new PIF role, saying, “he is a person of great integrity & character, has travelled the world extensively & has a love & passion for the region & the Pacific way”.

So how do the women of the region feel about being represented by a man who had no problems with this extraordinary breach of privacy, the absolute contempt for the woman involved, which was clearly intended as a warning for any other female refugee coming forward?

Last year, as part of the PIF communique, the leaders commended the first PIF women leaders’ meeting a “milestone for the region and is demonstrative of its collective commitment to ensure that regional priorities are considerate of gender-balanced views and perspectives”. What a joke.

Pacific politics male-dominated
Politics in the Pacific is male-dominated, that’s a fact, and the Pacific Islands Forum could do a lot more to change that — this appointment is several steps back.

There were some highlights of the PIF special meeting. It was a relief to see Kiribati return to the Pacific Islands Forum. Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has done more to bring the Pacific countries together than any other individual — as Forum chair, he showed immense integrity during the forum — and finally, from New Zealand’s perspective, I’m told Carmel Sepuloni did an exceptional job at the leader’s table.

But the selection of Baron Waqa shows how desperate Pacific Forum leaders, without doing due diligence, were to keep Micronesia happy.

This a shoddy outcome for what needs to be a strong regional group with good governance, reflective of the people who live in the region, not the people at the top.

Barbara Dreaver is Television New Zealand’s 1News Pacific correspondent. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

How Rabuka is reshaping Fiji’s politics. Video: TVNZ Q&A

One year to the day since Russian tanks ran over the Ukraine border — and over the UN Charter and international law in the process — the world is less certain and more dangerous than ever.

For New Zealand, the war has also presented a unique foreign policy challenge.

The current generation of political leaders initially responded to the invasion in much the same way previous generations responded to the First and Second World Wars: if a sustainable peace was to be achieved, international treaties and law were the mechanism of choice.

• READ MORE: A year on, Russia’s war on Ukraine threatens to redraw the map of world politics – and 2023 will be crucial
• Ukraine war 12 months on: the role of the Russian media in reporting – and justifying – the conflict
• Ukraine: 12 months at war – Biden visit to Kyiv sets the seal on a year of growing Western unity and Russian isolation

But when it was apparent these higher levels of maintaining international order had gridlocked because of the Russian veto at the UN Security Council, New Zealand moved back towards its traditional security relationships.

Like other Western alliance countries, New Zealand didn’t put boots on the ground, which would have meant becoming active participants in the conflict. But nor did New Zealand plead neutrality.

It has not remained indifferent to the aggression and atrocities, or their implications for a rule-based world.

The issue one year on is whether this original position is still viable. And if not, what are the military, humanitarian, diplomatic and legal challenges now?

President Biden makes a surprise visit to Kyiv in dramatic show of U.S. support for Ukraine days before anniversary of invasion https://t.co/iqUrTrRqvq

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 20, 2023

Military spending
While New Zealand has no troops or personnel in Ukraine, it has given direct support.

Defence force personnel assist with training, intelligence, logistics, liaison, and command and administration support. There has also been funding and supplied equipment worth more than NZ$22 million.

This has been welcomed, although it is considerably less on a proportional basis than the assistance offered by other like-minded countries. However, the deeper questions involve how the war has affected defence policies and spending overall internationally.

While New Zealand’s current Defence Policy Review is important at the policy level, the implications affect all citizens and political parties. Specifically, most countries — allies or not — are increasing military spending and collaborating to develop new generations of weapons.

For New Zealand, this calls into question the longer-term feasibility of its relatively low spending of 1.5 percent of GDP on defence. And Wellington is increasingly being left out of collaborative arrangements (AUKUS being just one example), which in turn reinforce alliances and provide pathways to technology.

This is tied to the largest question of all: whether New Zealand wishes to relegate itself to becoming a regional “police officer” or wants to carry its fair share of being part of an interlinked modern military deterrent.

Amid U.S. claims that Beijing may be poised to send weapons to help Russia’s war in Ukraine, China accused the Biden administration of spreading lies and defended Beijing’s close partnership with Russia. https://t.co/52tRnRRAFh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 20, 2023

Diplomacy and domestic law
New Zealand also needs to reconsider its commitment to humanitarian assistance. So far, almost $13 million has been spent and a special visa created allowing New Zealand-Ukrainians to bring family members in for two years. With the war showing no sign of ending, this will likely need to extend.

But New Zealand’s non-neutral status also means it has other responsibilities, and should consider greater assistance with the Ukrainian refugee emergency. This would require going beyond the current visa scheme, and opening and expanding the refugee quota programme’s current cap of 1500.

Diplomatically, New Zealand also has to start considering what peace would look like. This raises hard questions about territorial integrity, accountability for war crimes, reparations and what might happen to populations that do not want to be part of Ukraine.

New Zealand has enacted a stand-alone law to apply sanctions on Russia. But because this now sits outside the broken multilateral UN system, a degree of caution is called for, given the door is now open to sanction other countries, UN mandate or not.

Preparing for the worst
Finally, New Zealand needs to prepare for the worst. The war is showing no sign of calming down. Weapons and combatant numbers are escalating unsustainably.

Nuclear arms control is in freefall, with Russian President Vladimir Putin suspending participation in the New START Treaty, the last remaining agreement between Russia and the United States.

At the same time, the US has ramped up the rhetoric, suggesting China might supply arms to Russia, and declaring unequivocally that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

Were China to go against Western demands and provide weapons, countries like New Zealand will be in a very difficult position: its leading security ally, the US, may expect penalties to be imposed against its leading trade partner, China.

While Putin may be able to live with the rising death toll of his own soldiers (already over 100,000), at some point the Russian population won’t be. As the US discovered in Vietnam, it was not the external enemy that ultimately prevailed, it was domestic unrest, as more people turned against an unpopular war.

How Putin will respond to a war he cannot win conventionally, while risking losing popularity and position at home, is impossible to predict.

Everyone might hope his nuclear threats are a bluff, but New Zealand’s leaders would be wise to plan for the worst.

Whether a small, distant, non-neutral South Pacific nation might be a direct target or not is conjecture. What is not speculation, however, is that if the Ukraine war spins out of control, New Zealand would be in an emergency unlike anything it’s witnessed before.

Dr Alexander Gillespie, professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A second group of refugees detained in offshore Australian detention camps have arrived in New Zealand.

Four people touched down on a flight yesterday.

“I’m happy for them that they can get their freedom,” a friend of the recent arrivals who is still detained on Nauru, Hamid, said.

• READ MORE: Other Nauru refugee reports

Their arrival is part of an offer made by the New Zealand government to resettle up to 150 people who are or have been detained on Nauru each year for three years starting from 2022.

The Australian federal government accepted the offer in March last year and the first six refugees arrived in November.

The total arrivals of 10 is out of 100 refugees who have had their cases for resettlement submitted to Immigration New Zealand (INZ).

‘Kia ora’ Aotearoa, I’m Hamid’
Hamid is from Iran and has been detained for almost a decade.

“The situation here on this island is really hard — not just for me, but for everyone.

“I cannot stand any more time on this island.

“Please help! please help! please help! I need my freedom, I need my life, I need my family!” Hamid said.

He arrived on Christmas Island in 26 July 2013 with his eldest daughter and son. He left his wife and youngest daughter, who was only nine at the time, in Iran.

“In Iran, a lot of people already die, she [my wife] is tired. My daughter, I always worried about her. I give them hope,” he said.

Hamid dreams of being reunited with his family in New Zealand. He dreams of living in Queenstown and having a big Iranian barbecue.

A second group of refugees detained in offshore Australian detention camps have arrived in New Zealand.

Four people touched down on a flight yesterday.https://t.co/arpinIyy3U

— RNZ Pacific (@RNZPacific) January 20, 2023

Scattered family
He said his case had just been sent to INZ by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

While he waits for New Zealand to decide on his future, his wife and youngest child remain in Iran, his son is in Australia and his eldest daughter is in the US.

A family that has gone through so much is now scattered around the world.

“My family, I love them and the time and the day they join me, I cannot wait to be with them, to hug them and give them my love.

“I love them, they are my only love, my one and only, my wife, she is my one and only,” he said.

It takes around six to nine months to assess and process each case, a wait he said is going to be gruelling.

“All cases under the Australia arrangement are subject to having refugee status recognised by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and being submitted to New Zealand for resettlement. The UNHCR refer these cases to INZ who conduct an interview process with the individuals,” an INZ spokesperson said.

While Hamid was not on yesterday’s flight, INZ said it, “will be in contact with [him] about his situation once his arrangements are finalised”.

Until then, Hamid said he was scrubbing up on his te reo Māori while dreaming of his new life in New Zealand.

He cannot wait to greet people with “Kia ora”.

“I know New Zealand, I love the people,” Hamid said.

‘Bereft of hope’
While Hamid did have hope, Amnesty International said others did not.

It is calling on the New Zealand government to speed up the resettlement process.

“The Australian government’s offshore detention regime in Nauru and PNG has destroyed so many lives,” Australia refugee rights campaigner Zaki Haidari said.

“Many people are now so broken they can’t make a decision for themselves and are bereft of hope.”

An Immigration New Zealand spokesperson said it currently had 90 applications to process.

Interviews are underway for the remaining cases.

But the process was simply too slow, Haidari said.

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

The US tested 67 nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands, tricking the people who lived on Bikini Atoll to leave their homeland “for the good of all mankind.”

But the Bikini Islanders didn’t know the US would contaminate their island and make it uninhabitable.

Now nearly 70 years later, many Marshall Islanders have moved to Springdale, Arkansas, nearly 600 miles (965 km) from the nearest ocean.

But as many Marshall Islanders build new lives there, they know Arkansas is not their permanent home, and their nuclear legacy is something both Americans and the next generation of Marshall Islanders need to remember.

The US forced the 167 islanders living on Bikini Atoll to leave in 1946 to enable American testing of nuclear weapons.

Over the next decade, the US tested 67 nuclear devices — 23 of them on Bikini.

Tabish Talib traveled to the Ozarks to learn how the Marshall Islanders are staying connected to their roots so far from their home.

“I feel like a nomad,” says a sixth generation representative of the Bikini Islanders in Arkansas, Sosylina Jibas-Maddison. “And it’s heartbreaking knowing there that we don’t have a home to go to.”

This is known to Marshall islanders as Bikini Day on July 5, the day that is also marked for the inaugural design of the swimsuit named by its French designer after the nuclear “bombshell”.

• AJ+ Reports: Why a royal princess from the Pacific is in Arkansas (13m30s)

The AJ+ Reports documentary on the Marshall Islands in the US.

A New Zealand aid worker in Kyiv says the ReliefAid group he leads was one of the first to provide food in the suburb of Bucha — northwest of Kyiv — where Russian troops are alleged to have executed 150 civilians.

New Zealand donations in the Ukraine War have so far helped the aid group deliver more than six tonnes of food to survivors, and take medical supplies to hospitals around Kyiv.

ReliefAid executive director Mike Seawright arrived in Kyiv this weekend after driving in from the western side of Ukraine — “down some roads that have seen a lot of intense fighting, burnt out buildings, warehouses completely flattened, family homes destroyed and lots of military hardware burnt out.

• LISTEN TO RNZ SUNDAY MORNING: ‘You can’t do this from a desk in New Zealand’ – ReliefAid executive director Mike Seawright
• Ukraine: Zelenskyy still seeks peace despite expected Russian attacks

“It was an interesting if not somewhat chilling drive.”

He has been in the country for a month after crossing the border on foot.

In Kyiv, “the fighting may have stopped … but the destruction of family homes is still there. People are living in the rubble of what was their normal lives with nothing to their name, faced with cold, harsh conditions, with little or no food. So humanitarian support such as we are providing … is essential.”

But while fighting there may have stopped, missiles were still “raining down” on the city, making it unsafe.

Management on the fly
Seawright said that with many trucks bringing aid into the country — and at least one plane of medical supplies — a lot of organisation was involved.

“It also takes a lot of management on the fly. So we’ve predefined plans … but of course what happens on the day is entirely dependent on checkpoints we can’t control, road conditions on roads that have been severely damaged … and a security situation that is extremely volatile. So this is our number eight wire – managing all of this.”

His team also wants to deliver aid to people in the besieged city of Mariupol.

“We are standing by to get in there as soon as conditions allow. We pride ourselves on being at the forefront of humanitarian action. ReliefAid is a warzone specialist humanitarian aid organisation but I have to say, even we can’t get access to Mariupol at the moment.”

As soon as an access corridor was established, they would be in, Seawright said.

Being on the ground was key to working effectively, he said.

A lot of hard work
“It takes a lot of hard working, a lot of networking, a lot of managing logistics, but I’m proud to say we’ve got an incredible team here in Ukraine allowing us to do that.

“The most important thing you need to do when engaging with a new environment is see what is happening on the ground. We’ve got to know who we are supporting. We have got to make sure we know what their needs are and therefore we need to make sure the support that we receive by generous kiwis in New Zealand and across the world is going to the right place.

“You can’t do this from a desk in New Zealand, you can’t do this by reading a report. You have to get on the ground and see it yourself.”

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

COMMENTARY: By John Minto

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed so much hypocrisy in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the Western world that’s it’s hard to keep track.

Israel has racism down to a fine art.

While the world was putting their hand up for Ukrainian refugees — Israel put its hand up only for Jewish Ukrainian refugees (at least one grandparent must be Jewish).

• READ MORE: What the war in Ukraine taught us, Palestinians
• A threshold crossed: Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution

As early as January 2022, Israel began planning to transfer Ukrainian Jews to become colonists in the land of the Palestinians. Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption proclaimed: “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.”

The refugees/colonists began to arrive in early March, receiving preferential treatment, while Ukrainians who could not prove their Jewishness according to Israel’s racist criteria for refugees face myriad difficulties.

Meanwhile, the World Zionist Organisation’s Settlement Division has begun preparing 1000 housing units for Ukrainian Jews on stolen and occupied Palestinian and Syrian land in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan Heights.

When there was an outcry from Israeli liberals saying, quite rightly, that this was not a reflection of Jewish values, the government said they would take non-Jewish refugees as well.

Predictable reaction
The predictable reaction from racist Israelis was “We are a Jewish state — why are we taking in these gentiles?”

The government, however, says the non-Jewish refugees won’t be able to claim Israeli citizenship — they will have to leave when the fighting stops.

Important to point out here that Israel is NOT a Jewish state. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinians. Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural state dominated by a racist regime which has made indigenous Palestinians second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth class inhabitants in the land of their birth and the land of their ancestors, Palestine.

This is well described in Amnesty International’s short video on Israeli apartheid.

The Amnesty International video.

Jewish Ukrainian refugees are being welcomed because it helps Israel maintain a majority Jewish population. It’s a country obsessed with demographics and determined to maintain what Israel’s largest and most respected Human Right Group, B’Tselem, calls “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.

It is proposed that most of the Jewish Ukrainian refuges will be settled in illegal Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land while Israel’s apartheid government continues its refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their homes and land after around 800,000 were ethnically cleansed from vast swathes of Historic Palestine by Israeli militias in 1948 — a process which continues to this day.

And Jewish Ukrainian refugees will qualify for automatic Israeli citizenship — something denied the big majority of Palestinians in their homeland Palestine – all of which has been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali — “I’ve killed a lot of Arabs in my time and there’s nothing wrong with that” — Bennett has been promoting himself as an international mediator.

International condemnation
Israel didn’t join the international condemnation of Russia and has repeatedly refused Ukrainian appeals for military assistance, but Bennet flew to Moscow for a three-hour meeting with Putin and was then on the phone to Zelensky suggesting to him he should think about the cost in death and destruction in Ukraine and agree to Russian terms.

Bennett followed up by trying to get the parties together for a mediation meeting in Jerusalem.

This is the same Israeli leader who refuses to meet with Palestinian leaders, refuses to negotiate any peace deal with Palestinians and says he will never agree to a Palestinian state being established on his watch. Not the credentials for an international mediator.

And in case readers missed the recent news a further two high-profile groups have joined the international human rights condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state.

A short summary of the highest profile groups that have described Israel in this way over the past 18 months is here:

• Numerous Palestinian civil society organisations
• The late South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace prize winner Desmond Tutu — “Name Israel an apartheid state and boycott”.
• B’Tselem — Israel’s largest and most respected human right organisation, in their January 2021 report “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”
• Human Rights Watch, the US largest human rights organisation, in their April 2021 report “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”
• Amnesty International, in their February 2022 report “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians”
• Addameer prisoner support group and Harvard Law School label Israel an apartheid state
• UN Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Right Council, Michael Lynk, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world

Racism on steroids
It’s racism on steroids in Israel just as it was in apartheid South Africa. And increasingly Jews around the world are seeing it as such. From an opinion poll last year 25 percent of American Jews already regard Israel as an apartheid state and 38 percent of young American Jews say the same thing.

We need regime change in Israel and everyone living in historic Palestine enjoying equal rights.

John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

The Green Party says New Zealand has put its relationship with the NATO security alliance ahead of saving lives in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced $5 million would go to a NATO fund for the purchase of “non-lethal military assistance” such as fuel, rations and first aid equipment.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO, is a security alliance including the United States, Canada and 28 European nations.

• READ MORE: Other Ukraine war reports

Green Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman told RNZ the funding appeared to be a “diplomatic nod” and could have been put to better use.

“It looks like we’re trying to be part of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ — so to speak — when that’s not actually our best contribution,” Ghahraman said.

“That $5m could have gone to aid where it would immediately be saving lives … versus us ticking-the-box of being in the NATO circle while giving very little by way of actually helping people in this conflict.”

Ghahraman said Ukrainian refugees were desperately in need of food, blankets, medicine and shelter.

‘Contending with covid’
“They are contending with covid at the same time they’re living through a European winter — millions upon millions, displaced in refugee camps or in need of resettlement.”

To date, New Zealand has contributed $6m in humanitarian aid, mostly through the Red Cross. The government has also created a special visa to assist Ukrainians to join their relatives in New Zealand.

Speaking at a media conference on Monday, Ardern said the “extraordinary measures” to help Ukrainian forces were in direct response to requests from Ukraine.

Asked to explain the pivot from humanitarian aid to military assistance, Ardern described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “a massive disruption to the international rules-based order”.

The Defence Force will also donate surplus stock of 1066 body armour plates, 571 camouflage vests and 473 helmets to Ukrainian forces.

ACT leader David Seymour said New Zealand’s contribution was “pathetic” and should include direct weapon support.

“How long do we want to be the weakest link in the West? We have to answer the call and provide what we have to help these people defend their homes.”

Send missile launchers
Seymour said New Zealand should immediately send Ukraine its supply of Javelin medium-range missile launchers.

“They’re not doing much here — I haven’t seen any Russian tanks in New Zealand lately — but they could do a lot over there,” Seymour said.

Ardern said directly providing weapons would be a “fundamental change” in the country’s approach to the conflict, but the option remained on the table.

She noted New Zealand did not have a large supply of such equipment.

National Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Gerry Brownlee told RNZ the government’s response, so far, was appropriate.

“The circumstances here are very different than anything we’ve had to deal with before,” Brownlee said. “We should be doing our bit.”

Providing firepower
Brownlee said the option of providing firepower could potentially be considered “further down the track”.

“Our contribution would be so small compared to that from the United States or Great Britain,” Brownlee said.

“Whatever we do, clearly we’re going to have to operate through NATO and their connections into Ukraine to make sure that whatever assistance is given does get to the right place.”

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

International media has been facing scrutiny from indigenous groups in the Pacific for the way it has been covering the Russia-Ukraine war.

Some have highlighted “double standards” among journalists who have brought attention to the plight of Ukrainians, while long-standing conflicts like those in Indonesia’s provinces of West Papua and Papua are often ignored.

Vanuatu’s opposition leader and former Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu said a media clampdown in West Papua had made it difficult for media to report on the situation there.

• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: Ukraine’s war with Russia has been making world headlines — so why isn’t the conflict in West Papua?
• UN report calls for independent probe into ‘shocking’ rights abuses in Papua
• Other West Papua reports at Asia Pacific Report

“The media blackout is a big contributing factor,” he said.

“In Ukraine, at least, we have journalists from around the world, whereas in West Papua, they’re banned completely.”

This week, the United Nations issued a statement sounding the alarm on human rights abuses in Papua, and called for urgent aid.

It also urged the Indonesian government to conduct full and independent investigations into allegations of torture, extrajudicial killings and the displacement of thousands of West Papuans.

Independent observers refused
But Regenvanu said Indonesia had refused to allow independent observers into the territories.

“Indonesia has just refused point blank to do it, and has actually stepped up escalated the occupation in the military, suppression of the people there,” he said.

A senior US policy advisor to Congress, Paul Massaro, drew heat from indigenous activists online after he tweeted: “I’m racking my brain for a historical parallel to the courage and fighting spirit of the Ukrainians and coming up empty. How many peoples have ever stood their ground against an aggressor like this? It’s legendary.”

I’m racking my brain for a historical parallel to the courage and fighting spirit of the Ukrainians and coming up empty. How many peoples have ever stood their ground against an aggressor like this? It’s legendary

— Paul Massaro (@apmassaro3) February 26, 2022

Veronica Koman from Amnesty International said such commentaries about the situation in Ukraine ignored the many instances of indigenous resistance against colonisation.

“West Papuans have been fighting since the 1950s. First Nations in Australia have been fighting since more than 240 years ago,” Koman said.

“That’s how resilient the fights are … it’s just pointing out the the double standard.”

Koman said the West Papua and Papua provinces of Indonesia are currently experiencing some of the worst humanitarian crises.

The war in Ukraine will be televised, unlike West Papua. https://t.co/gZRXnK39rC

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) February 24, 2022

“Sixty thousand to 100,000 people are being displaced right now in West Papua due to armed conflict, and these displaced people are mostly ignored,” she said.

“They are not getting assisted and all because mostly they are in forests. And they are afraid to return to their homes so are just running away from Indonesian forces.

“The situation is really bad and deserves our attention. And Ukraine war shows us that another world is possible, if only there’s no double standards and racism.”

Republished with author’s and ABC Pacific Beat’s permission.

A West Papuan advocacy group in Australia has appealed to Foreign Minister Marise Payne to take the cue from a new United Nations Rapporteurs statement this week condemning the “ongoing human rights abuses” in the Indonesian-ruled West Papuan region.

Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) said there was an urgent need for Australia to speak out against the Indonesian military abuses in the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.

“We are urging the Australian government to join with the UN Rapporteurs in raising concerns about the situation in West Papua, publicly with Jakarta, condemning the ongoing human rights abuses in the territory,” Collins said in a statement.

• READ MORE: ‘Double standards’ claims as world reacts to Ukraine crisis, ignores Papua
• UN report calls for independent probe into ‘shocking’ rights abuses in Papua
• Other West Papua reports at Asia Pacific Report
• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: Ukraine’s war with Russia has been making world headlines — so why isn’t the conflict in West Papua?

“We know the government has said it raises concerns about the human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian government, but have not seen any public statements of concern on the issue unlike the governments concerns about abuses in China and the situation in the Ukraine.

“The issue of West Papua is not going away.”

In a letter to minister Payne, Collins raised the UN rapporteurs’ concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua, “citing shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people.”

The association said it would not go into “all the grave concerns” about human rights abuses in West Papua “as we have written many times on the issue”.

But Collins quoted the rapporteurs’ statement: “Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5,000 indigenous Papuans by security forces.”

It is estimated that the overall number of displaced people in West Papua since the escalation of violence in December 2018 is more than 60,000.

Collins said that “Urgent action is needed to end ongoing human rights violations against indigenous Papuans.”

He also reminded the minister about AWPA’s letter on 12 August 2021 raising concerns about West Papuan activist Victor Yeimo, the international spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee (KNPB).

“He is being charged with treason. We look forward to your reply on this matter.”

Shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans have been taking place in Indonesia, say United Nations-appointed human rights experts who cite child killings, disappearances, torture and enforced mass displacement.

“Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5000 indigenous Papuans by security forces,” the three independent experts said in a statement.

Special Rapporteurs Francisco Cali Tzay,  who protects rights of indigenous peoples,  Morris Tidball-Binz, who monitors extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary,  covering human rights of Internally Displaced Persons, called for urgent humanitarian access to the region and urged the Indonesian government to conduct full and independent investigations into the abuses.

• READ MORE: Other West Papuan reports

They said that since the escalation of violence in December 2018, the overall number of displaced has grown by 60,000 to 100,000 people.

“The majority of IDPs [internally displaced persons] in West Papua have not returned to their homes due to the heavy security force presence and ongoing armed clashes in the conflict areas,” the UN experts explained.

Meanwhile, some IDPs have been living in temporary shelters or stay with relatives.

“Thousands of displaced villagers have fled to the forests where they are exposed to the harsh climate in the highlands without access to food, healthcare, and education facilities,” the Special Rapporteurs said.

Relief agencies have limited access
Apart from ad hoc aid deliveries, humanitarian relief agencies have had limited or no access to the IDPs, they said.

“We are particularly disturbed by reports that humanitarian aid to displaced Papuans is being obstructed by the authorities”.

Moreover, severe malnutrition has been reported in some areas with lack of access to adequate and timely food and health services.

“In several incidents, church workers have been prevented by security forces from visiting villages where IDPs are seeking shelter,” the UN experts said.

They stressed that “unrestricted humanitarian access should be provided immediately to all areas where indigenous Papuans are currently located after being internally displaced.

“Durable solutions must be sought.”

#Indonesia: UN experts concerned by deteriorating human rights situation & abuses against #indigenous Papuans, incl. child killings, disappearances, torture & mass displacement, in Papua & West Papua. They call for humanitarian access & investigations: https://t.co/idEsWJDBvM pic.twitter.com/mwFQyxgkCc

— UN Special Procedures (@UN_SPExperts) March 1, 2022

‘Tip of the iceberg’
On a dozen occasions, the experts have written to the Indonesian government about numerous alleged incidents since late 2018.

“These cases may represent the tip of the iceberg given that access to the region is severely restricted making it difficult to monitor events on the ground,” they warned.

Meanwhile, the security situation in Highlands Papua had dramatically deteriorated since the 26 April 2021 killing of a high-ranking military officer by the West Papua National Liberation Army in West Papua.

The experts pointed to the shooting of two children, aged two and six, on October 26, shot to death by stray bullets in their own homes, during a firefight. The two-year-old later died.

End violations
“Urgent action is needed to end ongoing human rights violations against indigenous Papuans,” the experts said, advocating for independent monitors and journalists to be allowed access to the region.

They outlined steps that include ensuring all alleged violations receive thorough, “prompt and impartial investigations”.

“Investigations must be aimed at ensuring those responsible, including superior officers where relevant, are brought to justice. Crucially lessons must be learned to prevent future violations,” the Rapporteurs concluded.

Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation.

The positions are honorary and the experts are not paid for their work.

The Refugee Action Coalition has called Australia’s apparent attempt to walk away from its responsibilities for the refugees it dumped in Papua New Guinea an outrage.

Australia announced last week that by the end of this year it will end its offshore detention arrangement with PNG.

The scheme was declared illegal by the PNG courts five years ago but 124 people, most of whom have been judged to be refugees, remain there.

• READ MORE: Australia, Nauru renew commitment to detention centre
• Other Pacific refugee articles

The coalition’s Ian Rintoul said PNG had no capacity, or desire, to look after these people, or search for third countries to take them off their hands.

“I think it is just a continuation of the Australian government trying to distance itself from the atrocities they are responsible for in Manus Island in Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“They have been trying for many years to try and distance themselves from the responsibility for people that they took there illegally, according to PNG law, but who they take no responsibility for.”

Last month Australia signed a new long term commitment with Nauru to continue to run its detention facility — the only place where Australia will send people trying to arrive on the mainland illegally by boat.

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

Since the attacks on the United States by 15 Saudi Arabian Islamic fanatics on 11 September  2001 — now known as 9/11 —  the world has been divided by a “war on terror” with any protest group defined as “terrorists”.

New anti-terror laws have been introduced both in the West and elsewhere in the past 20 years and used extensively to suppress such movements in the name of “national security”.

It is interesting to note that the 9/11 attacks came at a time when a huge “global justice” movement was building up across the world against the injustices of globalisation.

• READ MORE: ‘Fortress USA’: How 9/11 produced a military industrial juggernaut
• 9/11 should have led to a criminal investigation, not a war
• Other 9/11 reports

Using the internet as the medium of mobilisation, they gathered in Seattle in 1999 and were successful in closing down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting.

They opposed what they saw as large multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets, facilitated by governments.

Their main targets were the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, World Bank, and international trade agreements.

The movement brought “civil society” people from the North and the South together under common goals.

Poorest country debts
In parallel, the “Jubilee 2000” international movement led by liberal Christian and Catholic churches called for the cancellation of US$90 billion of debts owed by the world’s poorest nations to banks and governments in the West.

Along with the churches, youth groups, music, and entertainment industry groups were involved. The 9/11 attacks killed these movements as “national security” took precedence over “freedom to dissent”.

Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, a former vice-president of the UN Human Rights Council and a Sri Lankan political scientist, notes that when “capitalism turned neoliberal and went on the rampage” after the demise of the Soviet Union, resistance started to develop with the rise of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Mexico) against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and culminating in the 1999 Seattle protests using a term coined by Cuban leader Fidel Castro “another world is possible”.

“All that came crashing down with the Twin Towers,” he notes. “With 9/11 the Islamic Jihadist opposition to the USA (and the war on terror) cut across and buried the progressive resistance we saw emerging in Chiapas and Seattle.”

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a British human rights campaigner and TV personality, warns: “9/11 panicked us into the ‘war on terror’ using lethal weapons of questionable legality which inspired more terrorists.

“Twenty years on, those same adversaries are back and we now have a fear of US perfidy—over Taiwan or ANZUS or whatever. There will be many consequences.”

But, he sees some silver lining that has come out of this “war on terror”.

Targeted sanctions
“One reasonably successful tactic developed in the war on terror was to use targeted sanctions on its sponsors. This has been developed by so-called ‘Magnitsky acts’, enabling the targeting of human rights abusers—31 democracies now have them and Australia will shortly be the 32nd.

“I foresee their coordination as part of the fightback—a war not on terror but state cruelty,” he told In-Depth News.

When asked about the US’s humiliation in Afghanistan, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder of the International Movement for a Just World told IDN that the West needed to understand that they too needed to stop funding terror to achieve their own agendas.

“The ‘war on terror’ was doomed to failure from the outset because those who initiated the war were not prepared to admit that it was their occupation and oppression that compelled others to retaliate through acts of terror.” he argues.

“Popular antagonism towards the occupiers was one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeat of the US and NATO in Afghanistan,” he added.

Looking at Western attempts to introduce democracy under the pretext of “war on terror” and the chaos created by the “Arab Spring”, a youth movement driven by Western-funded NGOs, Iranian-born Australian Farzin Yekta, who worked in Lebanon for 15 years as a community multimedia worker, argues that the Arab region needs a different democracy.

“In the Middle East, the nations should aspire to a system based on social justice rather than the Western democratic model. Corrupt political and economic apparatus, external interference and dysfunctional infrastructure are the main obstacles for moving towards establishing a system based on social justice,” he says, adding that there are signs of growing social movements being revived in the region while “resisting all kinds of attacks”.

Palestinian refugee lessons
Yekta told IDN that while working with Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon he had seen how peoples’ movements could be undermined by so-called “civil society” NGOs.

“Alternative social movements are infested by ‘civil society’ institutions comprising primarily NGO institutions.

“‘Civil society’ is effective leverage for the establishment and foreign (Western) interference to pacify radical social movements. Social movements find themselves in a web of funded entities which push for ‘agendas’ drawn by funding buddies,” noted Yekta.

Looking at the failure of Western forces in Afghanistan, he argues that what they did by building up “civil society” was encouraging corruption and cronyism that is entangled in ethnic and tribal structures of society.

“The Western nation-building plan was limited to setting up a glasshouse pseudo-democratic space in the green zone part of Kabul.

“One just needed to go to the countryside to confront the utter poverty and lack of infrastructure,” Yekta notes.

”We need to understand that people’s struggle is occurring at places with poor or no infrastructure.”

Social movements reviving
Dr Jayatilleka also sees positive signs of social movements beginning to raise their heads after two decades of repression.

“Black Lives Matter drew in perhaps more young whites than blacks and constituted the largest ever protest movement in history. The globalised solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, including large demonstrations in US cities, is further evidence.

“In Latin America, the left-populist Pink Tide 2.0 began with the victory of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and has produced the victory of Pedro Castillo in Peru.

“The slogan of justice, both individual and social, is more globalised, more universalised today, than ever before in my lifetime,” he told IDN.

There may be ample issues for peoples’ movements to take up with TPP (Transpacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreements coming into force in Asia where companies would be able to sue governments if their social policies infringe on company profits.

But Dr Jayatilleka is less optimistic of social movements rising in Asia.

Asian social inequities
“Sadly, the social justice movement is considerably more complicated in Asia than elsewhere, though one would have assumed that given the social inequities in Asian societies, the struggle for social justice would be a torrent. It is not,” he argues.

“The brightest recent spark in Asia, according to Dr Jayatilleka, was the rise of the Nepali Communist Party to power through the ballot box after a protracted peoples’ war, but ‘sectarianism’ has led to the subsiding of what was the brightest hope for the social justice movement in Asia.”

Robertson feels that the time is ripe for the social movements suppressed by post 9/11 anti-terror laws to be reincarnated in a different life.

“The broader demand for social justice will revive, initially behind the imperative of dealing with climate change but then with tax havens, the power of multinationals, and the obscene inequalities in the world’s wealth.

“So, I do not despair of social justice momentum in the future,” he says.

Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.

The Migrant Action Trust has condemned a proposal by a diversity academic calling for a New Zealand nation-building course before people are granted permanent residence or citizenship as “dangerous” and “discriminating”.

“This proposal is dangerous. It is dangerous because it comes at a time when the world — including Aotearoa — has demonised a religion and those associated with that religion,” the trust said.

“We have inculcated in the minds of others that ‘these people’, and by association, all people of colour are a danger.

• READ MORE: Auckland professor says ‘specific nation-building’ course to get citizenship could counter terrorism
• Losing NZ citizenship: What you need to know
• Other reports on the Lynnmall attack

“That is a dangerous, discriminating, and damaging legacy. Just ask Māori.”

The call for a “specific nation-building” course for potential citizens of Aotearoa has been made by Professor Edwina Pio, chair of diversity at Auckland University of Technology.

She made the plea in a paper titled “Diffusing Destructive Devotions: Deploying Counter Terrorism” days after last Friday’s knife attack at Auckland’s Countdown supermarket in LynnMall.

But the Migrant Action Trust chair, Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, described the proposal as “cynical”, saying it raised many questions.

‘Values of our colonisers?’
“Firstly, whose values will inform this nation-building paper? Will they be the values of the colonisers or of our tangata whenua? Will it be the values of those whose labour built this land or those whose dubious transactions stole this land?,” Dr Nakhid asked in a statement.

“Will it be the refugee with the ideologies of terrorist groups or the resident Pākehā with the ideologies of terrorist Pākehā  groups which hold the ideologies of the dominant Pākehā group which hold the ideologies of white supremacists?

“Who will be made to take this nation-building paper? Will it only be potential citizens such as migrants, asylum seekers and those from refugee backgrounds but not those wanting to remain permanent residents?

“What about citizens themselves who mistrust the government, challenge their laws and protest their policies?

“Will they need to go back to school to take this nation-building paper?”

Dr Pio’s research had found lone terrorists to be “dangerous and hard to combat” when compared to group terrorists.

She said “higher impact” policies were needed to combat terrorism and she called for legislation to require people to pass nation-building courses before being granted citizenship or permanent residence.

A Sri Lankan-born refugee, Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, 32, stabbed seven people in the Countdown supermarket before he was shot dead by police.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the Islamic State supporter as a “lone wolf terrorist”.

A pro-independence movement in West Papua has appealed to several Western countries — including New Zealand — to provide urgent humanitarian help by supplying covid vaccines directly to the Papuans to cope with the “double crisis” in the Indonesian-ruled region.

Benny Wenda, interim president of the Provisional Government of West Papua, said today he had made the appeal by writing to the foreign ministers of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the US.

“I have also written to the President of the European Commission, the WHO [World Health Organisation] and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the escalating covid-19 situation in our land,” he said in a statement.

• READ MORE: MRP, MRPB to challenge Jokowi in Constitutional Court regarding Otsus Law revision
• The Jakarta Post: New deal, old approach over West Papua
• ‘We’ll be extinct,’ warns West Papuan churches, call for halt to ‘racist’ Otsus
• Papuan People’s Assembly deems Otsus Law evaluation ‘unlawful’
• Indonesian lawmakers adopt unpopular bill to reshape Papua
• Other West Papua special autonomy law articles

“This new crisis is a further existential threat to my people.”

Indonesia had caused a double crisis for the people of West Papua by launching military operations in the middle of the pandemic, Wenda said, as he had warned.

“Just yesterday, villagers from the West Moskona district were attacked by troops after attending a peaceful worship session against ‘Special Autonomy’, fleeing to the forests and the city of Bintuni,” he said.

“Woman and children are afraid to return to their villages in case the military and police arrest or attack them.”

50,000 plus displaced
“More than 50,000 people have been displaced in Nduga, Puncak and Intan Jaya over the past two and a half years. Their homes have been destroyed, their churches burned and their schools occupied by soldiers.

“They are left in internal displacement camps, where the virus will spread rapidly. Already in the cities, patients are being turned away or treated in cars outside the hospital.”

Western countries and the WHO had an urgent moral obligation to give vaccine doses direct the local Papuan government for distribution, Wenda said.

“As the 2018 Asmat health crisis showed, Jakarta cannot be trusted with the health of the West Papuan people,” he said.

“Over nearly 60 years of colonisation we have seen a chronic failure to develop health facilities in West Papua, leaving us dying on top of the natural riches Indonesia is extracting. If Jakarta is allowed to hold the reigns of vaccine development, my people will suffer further.”

Wenda said the developments were part of a “continued genocide against my people”.

“Our forests have been torn down, our mountains decapitated, our way of life destroyed. Indonesia restricts healthcare and enforces a colonial education whilst killing anyone who speaks out for self-determination,” Wenda said.

“Launching military operations in the middle of a pandemic is a policy designed to further wipe out our population. We need urgent international assistance, direct to the local Papuan government, not through the colonial occupier.”

• Full statement by the ULMWP

Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Climate Change is calling on the international community to take responsibility for a food security crisis in the Carteret Islands, and some of the other remote atolls of Bougainville.

Minister Wera Mori recently returned from a fact finding mission to the region and he was “horrified” by what he saw.

He said the PNG government was taking steps to ensure that food could be grown elsewhere, and supplies to those who need them were maintained.

• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: PNG Climate Change Minister horrified by plight of Carteret Islanders

But he said that in the long term, industrialised nations, which he accused of causing the climate change related crisis in the first place, needed to step in and assist with measures to prevent the islands from slipping any further under the waves.

“One of the big islands, part of it has been covered by the sea, so basically now instead of one island, you have two,” Mori told ABC’s Pacific Beat.

“Parts of Bougainville, south-east of Solomon Islands … we have coastlines that have been washed away.”

Republished from ABC Pacific Beat.

The Governor-General, Dame Patsy Reddy, this week invested social justice advocate and former Green Party MP Keith Locke as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit “for services to human rights advocacy”.

Locke described the the award in the New Year Honours list as recognition of the great work of human rights advocates in the many organisations he had worked in, such as those mentioned in the tribute read out at the ceremony.

“Mr Keith Locke has been a long-term human rights activist at both national and international levels,” said the citation.

• READ MORE: 2021 New Year Honours List

“Mr Locke became the National Co-ordinator of the Philippines Solidarity Network from 1986 to 1991 and created exchange programmes between social justice groups in New Zealand and their counterparts in the Philippines.

“Around this time he opened the progressive One World Books store, which provided a hub for activists in Auckland.

“He was Secretary of the Wellington Latin America Committee from 1980 to 1985.

In the 1990s he was a Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the NewLabour, Alliance and Green parties and was a Green Member of Parliament between 1999 and 2011.

“During this time, he advocated on politically unpopular international human rights issues and drew attention to human rights abuses in Tibet, China, East Timor, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East.

“He was recognised by Amnesty International with the Human Rights Defender Award in 2012 and the Harmony Award from the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand in 2013.

“Since retiring from Parliament, Mr Locke has served on the Boards of the Auckland Refugee Council from 2012 to 2017 and the New Zealand Peace and Conflict Studies Centre Trust until 2019.”

Asia Pacific Report, the Auckland-based independent news and analysis website, has been increasingly targeted by Indonesian trolls over the past three months, involving a spate of “letters to the editor” and social media attacks.

One of the most frequent letter writers, an “Abel Lekahena”, who claims to be a “student” or “writing on behalf of the people of Papua”, has accused APR of “only taking the separatists’ narrative as they played the victim”.

Sometimes he is purportedly a student living in “Yogyakarta”, West Java; at other times he is a migrant from East Nusa Tenggara “currently living in Manokwari, West Papua”. He has written to Asia Pacific Report 10 times in the past eight weeks – twice in one day on December 29, 2020.

• READ MORE: Facebook censorship on West Papua – then deafening silence
• Vanuatu Daily Post: Indonesia online propaganda undermining West Papua
• Indonesian double standards over press freedom endanger safety of Papuan journalists

“Lekahena”, if that is even his real name, claims in his latest “template” letter on Monday that since January, “the armed separatists prowled in Intan Jaya” and burned a missionary plane on January 6 and he has cited several clashes between pro-independence militants seeking independence for West Papua and the colonial Indonesian security forces.

He also blames the increase of internal Papuan refugees on the rebels.

“Instead of feeling guilty, armed separatists continue to make victims, spread propaganda, and take refuge behind refugees’ issues to seek sympathy from the domestic and international public,” claimed Lekahena in his letter to APR’s news editor.

“I would like to point out that Asia Pacific Report as a credible media should have also publish/talk/discuss [sic] regarding the endless list of the Free Papua armed separatists’ crimes in January-February 2021.”

Lekahena follows with a long list of web links to alleged Papuan rebel “crimes” while utterly ignoring the widely documented human rights violations and atrocities attributed by international watchdogs to the Indonesian security forces – both recently and over the last half century since Indonesian paratroopers invaded in 1961 and Jakarta gained control of the Papuan half of New Guinea island in a sham “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.

‘Separatist’ smear label
Our reply to Abel Lekahena is first that editorially we do not accept the term “separatist” which is a smear label that should not be used when describing indigenous people struggling to regain their homeland. This offensive word should also be discarded by the world’s media and news agencies as well.

We are reporting the struggle of pro-independence militants and human rights activists against a grave injustice. Papuans are Melanesian, just like their brothers and sisters across the border in Papua New Guinea.

They are Pacific Islanders.

Nevertheless, Asia Pacific Report seeks to independently report Papuan development, education, health, human rights, social justice and many other issues with courage, balance, fairness and vigour.

Second, a random look at newspaper headlines in Papua today – such as the West Papua Daily English language edition of Tabloid Jubi – reveals the plight of many Papuans and it is time Western countries, especially Australia and New Zealand, woke up to the reality and really put pressure on Jakarta to urgently allow a fact-finding team with the UN Rapporteurs on Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples to visit Papua:

March 10: Indonesia ‘must take responsibility’ for Nduga and Intan Jaya displaced people

March 10: Indonesian police, military investigate ‘stray bullet’ case that injures a youth in Mimik

March 8: Police arrest nine, disperse International Women’s Day rallies in West Papua

March 8: ‘Indonesia has gone too far’: A disabled man and a teenager in West Papua’s Intan Jaya shot dead

March 4: ‘The case is manipulated’: Two Papuan students detained by Jakarta police

Reveal yourself
Finally, Abel Lekahena, we invite you reveal who you are really are, and stop wasting our time with pointless propaganda for the Indonesian security forces. Many reports have surfaced about the trolling of media in Pacific countries perceived to be sympathetic voices to West Papuan self-determination.

Facebook and other social media have scrapped or suspended many fake web pages created by the Indonesian military and other authorities.

Let us get on with our job of informing our readers with the facts, stripped of the TNI (Indonesian security forces) fake news and spin or repression, and continue our commitment to speaking truth to power.

Dr David Robie is recently retired director of the Pacific Media Centre. Asia Pacific Report provides extensive coverage of West Papuan issues through a network of independent journalists, NGO advocates and researchers, and Pacific media students.