Australia is seeking observer status at the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) but has not committed to giving a role to Torres Strait Islanders, its own Melanesian population.

Responding to questions from the Torres News at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM) in Palau last week, Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Pat Conroy confirmed the federal government was applying.

“We’re obviously keen to make that happen, because we see value in having the people of Australia as an observer through the Australian government at the Melanesian Spearhead Group,” Conroy told a press conference in Palau.

• READ MORE: Pacific Islands Forum: Is Australia out of touch with the Pacific and climate?
• West Papua: The Pacific’s new test of Indonesia’s sovereignty narrative
  
• The Pacific’s cocaine highway: will Australia’s $600m deal really help?
• Other Pacific Islands Forum reports

The MSG was founded in 1986 with the primary purpose of supporting decolonisation and self-determination for Melanesian people.

Its current membership includes the governments of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), representing the Kanak independence movement of the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), which is seeking independence from Indonesia, holds observer status but has previously sought full membership.

On the sidelines of the PIF leaders meeting, newly appointed MSG Director-General Dr Anna Naupa told the Torres News the Pacific sub-regional group was preparing for a mid-term review of its 25-year 2038 Prosperity for All strategy.

Engaging with ‘Melanesian brothers and sisters’
“All our Indigenous people, wherever we are within our vast Melanesian communities, should certainly be part of conversations about anything to do with our Melanesia and this is something that we hope to pursue when we come to review the plan,” Dr Naupa said.

Asked if the Torres Strait could apply for observer status, she responded that it could be considered.

“The MSG in its structure is around states and the FLNKS, the movement, and recognition of different types of observers and associate members, but that does not preclude us from engaging with our Melanesian brothers and sisters more broadly,” she said.

Since the 1936 Maritime Strike, Torres Strait Islanders have sought various forms of self-governance and autonomy, including calls in the 1980s to cede from Australia due to “neglect” of their people and region.

Australia has engaged with the MSG in recent years but not with or through its Torres Strait Islander citizens.

“I can’t comment about the past but what I can say is that because of our attention to our Indigenous Melanesian peoples, that is the preference,” she said.

In 2025, Conroy was a guest at the 23rd MSG Leaders’ Summit held in Fiji, the first time an Australian minister has attended their meeting.

Non-commital on ‘greater voice’
He would not say if he supported Torres Strait Islanders having a greater voice in the Pacific or a seat at the MSG table.

“Obviously, there’s a process that is going through where the Melanesian Spearhead Group considers whether Australia would be an observer at the MSG,” he said.

MSG has flagged that it will also review Indonesia’s associate membership in 2027 if it does not enable a visit by the UN Human Rights Commissioner to investigate abuses in its Papuan provinces.

Australia has in recent years faced criticism from UN human rights bodies for some states blocking visits to prisons to investigate conditions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees.

Stefan Armbruster is also the news development lead of Pasifika TV. Jennifer Enosa is a reporter for Radio 4WM and TIMA (Torres Strait Media Association). This article is republished from Torres News with permission.

The 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Koror, Palau, last week has pushed West Papua back to the centre of Pacific diplomacy.

At an Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) caucus held on the margins of the Forum, leaders reaffirmed their longstanding call for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to visit the West Papuan provinces.

They urged Jakarta to facilitate the visit before 31 December 2026, the end of Indonesia’s term as president of the UN Human Rights Council.

• READ MORE: UN human rights commissioner visit to West Papua on track, says Indonesia
• Other West Papua reports

Crucially, the MSG said that if the requested steps were not undertaken, Indonesia’s associate member status would be reviewed at the 2027 MSG Summit.

The question is whether Jakarta is willing to allow independent international observers to see, hear, and assess conditions in West Papua?

Sovereignty cannot be the end of the conversation
For decades, Indonesia has relied heavily on sovereignty and territorial integrity when responding to international criticism of West Papua.

Jakarta maintains that Papua is an integral part of Indonesia and that its political status was settled through the international arrangements culminating in the 1969 Act of Free Choice.

From this perspective, calls for international intervention can be portrayed as challenges to Indonesia’s territorial integrity and interference in its domestic affairs.

But sovereignty and accountability are not mutually exclusive. Recognition of territorial sovereignty does not eliminate a state’s responsibility for human rights. Nor does it prevent international organisations from seeking access to investigate allegations of abuses.

The unresolved legacy of 1969
Indonesia’s sovereignty argument also rests heavily on history. Under the 1962 New York Agreement between Indonesia and the Netherlands, administration of West New Guinea was temporarily transferred to the United Nations before being transferred to Indonesia.

The agreement envisaged an act of self-determination before the end of 1969.

Rather than a territory-wide referendum involving universal and direct participation by the adult population, the process involved representative councils. UN records state that 1026 members of the enlarged representative councils were asked to express the population’s choice, and all chose continued association with Indonesia.

The UN General Assembly subsequently adopted Resolution 2504, taking note of the Secretary-General’s report and the agreement concerning West New Guinea.

The dispute, therefore, is not whether the 1969 process occurred. It clearly did. The deeper question is whether it represented a genuinely free expression of the political will of West Papuans.

This historical disagreement remains politically powerful because the competing narratives have never been reconciled.

For Jakarta, 1969 closed the question of sovereignty. For many West Papuans, it remains evidence that their political aspirations were never freely tested.

But contemporary Pacific diplomacy should not become trapped entirely in this historical dispute. Even if one accepts Indonesia’s present sovereignty over Papua, contemporary human rights questions remain legitimate.

Indonesia’s anti-colonial rhetoric
There is also an uncomfortable contradiction in Indonesia’s international rhetoric.

Indonesia has historically presented itself as an anti-colonial state and a supporter of the principle that peoples should be free from colonial domination.

At the UN Pacific Regional Seminar on Decolonisation in Bali in 2023, then-Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi stated that “independence is the inalienable right of all nations” and argued that colonialism must be abolished.

Indonesia’s response is that West Papua is not a colonial territory and that its political status was settled through an internationally recognised process.

That is a legitimate position for Indonesia to defend. But the political question remains: if self-determination is a universal principle, how should it be applied when Indigenous Papuans continue to challenge the political circumstances under which integration occurred?

Jakarta’s ‘right path’ needs a destination
Indonesia has responded by insisting that the proposed UN visit is progressing and is “on the right path.” Yet the phrase raises more questions than it answers.

What does “the right path” actually mean?

When will the visit occur?

Will UN officials have freedom of movement?

Will they be able to speak privately with Indigenous communities?

Will they meet civil-society organisations, church leaders, victims, local officials and political representatives?

Will they be able to visit areas affected by military operations and displacement?

And will their findings be published without political interference?

These are not unreasonable demands. They are the minimum conditions necessary for an assessment to have credibility.

If Jakarta is confident that conditions in Papua have improved, an independent UN assessment could actually strengthen Indonesia’s position.

Transparency is not necessarily a threat to sovereignty. In fact, it can reinforce legitimacy.

Why the MSG decision matters
The MSG is uniquely placed in this debate because West Papua is not merely a distant foreign policy issue for Melanesian governments.

West Papuans are Indigenous Melanesians, and the MSG was established to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation among Melanesian peoples.

Indonesia’s associate membership has therefore always contained a political tension.

Jakarta seeks recognition and legitimacy within an organisation representing Melanesian interests, while some MSG members continue to raise concerns about the rights and welfare of Indigenous Melanesians inside Indonesia.

The organisation has not abandoned dialogue. Fiji has made clear that engagement with Jakarta remains necessary. But dialogue without measurable outcomes risks becoming a diplomatic holding pattern.

The proposed OHCHR visit provides a practical benchmark. The MSG has effectively placed a deadline on the issue. That changes the diplomatic calculation. Jakarta is no longer responding only to general statements of concern; it is responding to a specific request accompanied by a potential institutional consequence.

The Pacific is testing itself
Pacific governments increasingly speak of a regional order grounded in Indigenous rights, human security, climate justice and self-determination. They insist that Pacific priorities should not simply be dictated by larger external powers.

West Papua therefore presents a difficult consistency test. At the same time, Pacific diplomacy must avoid reducing every disagreement with Indonesia to a confrontation over sovereignty. Indonesia is too important to the region for that approach to be strategically sustainable.

The better approach is precisely what the MSG appears to be attempting: engagement combined with accountability.

A new phase in the West Papua debate
The significance of Koror is therefore not that the Pacific has suddenly endorsed West Papuan independence. Nor has the MSG decided to remove Indonesia. What has changed is the political language.

The debate is shifting from the binary question of “Indonesia or independence” towards the more immediate question of “sovereignty and accountability”.

That shift creates political space for Pacific governments to demand transparency without having to settle the final status question first. It also places greater responsibility on Jakarta.

Indonesia has spent decades defending its sovereignty over West Papua. It now has an opportunity to demonstrate that sovereignty is compatible with transparency.

The coming months will determine whether the Koror decision becomes another diplomatic statement or a genuine turning point.

For West Papuans, this is not merely a diplomatic dispute. It concerns whether their experiences can be independently heard and investigated.

For the MSG, it is a test of whether Melanesian solidarity has practical meaning.

For the Pacific Islands Forum, it is a test of whether its principles apply consistently.

For Indonesia, it is a test of whether sovereignty can coexist with scrutiny.

And for the United Nations, it is a test of whether international human rights mechanisms can gain meaningful access to one of the Pacific’s most enduring political disputes.

Indonesia’s sovereignty may be internationally recognised, but sovereignty should never become a shield against legitimate human rights scrutiny.

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountains region of Papua New Guinea. He holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

Misinformation on social media is the biggest challenge for journalists, says Belinda Kora, secretary of the Media Council of Papua New Guinea (MCPNG) and founder of Women in Media (WIM).

She gave her address at the closing ceremony of an Election Integrity Workshop for media last week.

The week-long programme was hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with the European Union (EU) and MCPNG on August 31-September 4.

• READ MORE: Other PNG media reports

She cautioned that Facebook posts were often unreliable and urged reporters to verify content before publication.

“Always make sure that whatever you have, go back to your newsroom and share it with your colleagues before publishing,” Kora said.

To illustrate, she pointed to a viral post about a giant cabbage being sold for more that 100 kina (NZ$38) at Eliseo Shopping Centre. Many online users dismissed it as artificial intelligence (AI), but she confirmed its authenticity after checking.

“Get used to verifying and then put it in your [social media] account and say, ‘I verified this’. Doing this will help because there is a lot of misinformation,” she told journalists at the workshop.

Importance of networking
Kora also stressed the importance of networking, highlighting the women-in-media WhatsApp group that has more than 300 members nationwide.

“It’s a good place to share experiences, or if you need contacts for news stories across the country, you can always ask in the group and they will be happy to help,” she advised.

The Media Council of Papua New Guinea, established more than 20 years ago, does not interfere with editorial decisions but provides guidance, training, and support to journalists.

The workshop was designed to strengthen ethical and objective reporting ahead of the 2027 elections.

At its conclusion, 10 media representatives received certificates of participation, equipping them to share the knowledge with colleagues and uphold ethical standards in their reporting during the election period.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

Pro-Palestine activists made strong pleas for stronger boycotts of Israeli products today and again demanded that the New Zealand government sanction Tel Aviv over its Gaza genocide.

In the 153rd week of continuous protests, the activists themed the global BDS – boycott-divestment-sanctions — campaign with local targets such as the Auckland Council and other investment funds.

Speakers included activists Leeann Wahanui-Peters, Neil Scott, Kathy Ross, Achmat Esau and Anna Lee.

• READ MORE: Israel must protect West Bank’s Palestinians amid settler pogroms, says US envoy
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) campaigner Neil Scott gave a blistering indictment of the current coalition government’s weak response to what he called Israeli crimes against humanity.

He also called on the government to end the “visa free” policy for anybody who is in the Israeli military.

“That’s [those] in the current military, or the military reserves — and they are in reserves until the age of 40,” he said. “These people should not be coming to Aotearoa when they are in a genocidal terrorist entity for the Israeli Defence Forces [IDF].

“That should be ended,” Scott added, and he was greeted with loud cheers and applause.

Compared with South Africa
Speakers also compared the BDS campaign with the successful anti-apartheid campaigns against white minority-ruled South Africa in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Now South Africa is spearheading the legal fight against Israel in the world’s top judiciary, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in The Hague. Last week it filed a new legal dossier highlighting the genocidal state’s non-compliance with binding provisional measures.

Another PSNA activist, Anna Lee, also called on protesters to support the BDS movement and do all they could to “damage the Israeli Zionist regime and its ability to continue the genocide”.

“We can financially damage the Israeli economy just as we did when there was an international boycott on apartheid South Africa,” she said.

“We need to target goods, services and any investments that aid the Zionist economy and assist it to do ‘business as usual’ with its apartheid and murderous activities.”

Lee reminded the crowd that boycotts did work.

“They were very successful in hitting the apartheid regime in South Africa and they are already damaging the Israeli economy.

“In fact, they are so successful that Israeli-sponsored Zionist groups in the USA are pressuring Republican state governments to persecute any state employee or contractor who admits to taking part in the boycott of Israel.”

Israeli regime ‘hurting’
The Israeli regime was “hurting” which was why it was working hard on small nations around the world to get more economic collaboration.

“This is why very recently the NZ Israeli Innovation Hub sales promotion was held here in Tāmaki Makaurau [Auckland].

“This shameful event was aimed at increasing NZ economic collaboration with Israeli companies. And it was attended by officials from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).”

Lee said the boycott movement did not just include Israeli-owned companies but included international businesses which had invested in Israel to take advantage of financial incentives and the opportunity to “profit from exploitation of the Palestinian workers in the ‘occupied territories’”.

“It’s not hard to identify these companies today. We can’t rely on the ‘made in’ labels on the packages because these businesses, like the Zionists, are devious.

“But we do have phone apps like ‘No Thanks’ which you can install on your phone.”

Lee said all people needed to do was “scan the barcode” and they would immediately get an answer.

“If the product is on the boycott list you can then make one more ‘click’ and read why. If it is OK the app will say so.”

The app was developed by a Palestinian software engineer from Gaza — “and it is a powerful tool to use to hit the Zionist regime and support Palestinian freedom”.

Activists from the PSNA and other Palestinian solidarity groups around New Zealand held meetings this week to plan actions for the Global March for Palestine on October 10. New Zealand will be the first country in the world to kick off that march.

Support groups include Banners for Palestine, the Palestine Car Convoy, and Stand With Palestine Waiheke Group.

The Auckland event is scheduled to start at 2pm in Te Komititanga Square/Britomart on that day and march up Queen Street to Albert Park.

Also, a solidarity “kite day” event at Coyle Park, Point Chevalier, is planned for next Saturday after the 2pm CBD rally.

Nobody ready to push back
Meanwhile, a prominent Israeli peace activist has warned that no one in Israel’s government was prepared to push back against the extremist policies of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Alon-Lee Green, co-director and founder of the Palestinian-Jewish activist group Standing Together, told Al Jazeera that Israeli politicians were “all fighting against each other over who is more extreme and who is winning more of the right-wing voters”.

Many opposition figures would not represent a departure from current anti-Palestine policies, the activist said, but instead sought to contest “the right wing in power over the question of who’s more right wing”.

Ben-Gvir was “trying to promise us that with more death, and more blood, and more abuse”, Israeli Jews will gain security, Green added.

“He’s lying. We will only get more violence out of it,” he said.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

The British state rigged the trial of Tony Greenstein, a secular Jewish socialist and peace activist, to get him locked up for as much as 14 years — supposedly for “inviting support for Hamas”.

Fearful that the judge would punish his barrister for delivering a closing speech that properly defended him, Greenstein instead spoke directly to the jury.

For half an hour, he picked apart sham charges relating to three social media posts and a blog article he wrote against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza genocide reports

In doing so, he exposed the proceedings as a political show trial — one of a growing number, designed to silence opposition both to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and to the British state’s complicity in it.

In summing up, Judge Sarah Plaschkes said she had considered referring Greenstein for contempt of court. But instead she dismissed his eloquent, damning address to the jury as a “rambling speech delivered by an old man”.

At that point, presumably, she had no idea what impact Greenstein’s words would have on the jury.

In a stinging rebuke to the judge, the jury members unanimously acquitted him after just two hours of deliberation. As it turned out, it was not Greenstein on trial; it was British justice.

Hearing all the facts
Once given a chance to hear all the facts, not just the ones curated by the Crown, the jury accepted Greenstein’s arguments, including his accusation that the judiciary were readily conniving in the growing authoritarianism unleashed by the UK state’s complicity in genocide.

Which may explain why Greenstein’s landmark victory in a case with huge implications for free speech — and the right to speak out on the British state’s partnership in Israel’s genocide — was almost entirely ignored by the establishment media.

Had the jury found against him, you can be sure that same media would have covered the matter extensively, playing its part in sending a message to audiences that they should keep their heads down and avoid showing any solidarity with the Palestinian people or risk sharing Greenstein’s fate.

His acquittal, and the British state’s humiliation, was not a message the state — or the billionaire-owned media — wanted publicised.

What Greenstein’s closing speech managed to do was introduce something the British state and its judiciary have been carefully trying to strip out of the current wave of show trials of anti-genocide activists: important context.

Greenstein had to dismiss his barrister for the closing speech because, had the barrister spoken to the jury as Greenstein himself did, he would have most likely shared the fate of another distinguished lawyer, Rajiv Menon KC.

Menon is facing contempt of court proceedings over his masterful closing speech in the trial of six Palestine Action defendants, who were charged with multiple and serious crimes over their efforts to destroy killer-drones produced at a factory in Bristol operated by Israel’s biggest arms maker, Elbit Systems.

Refusal to convict
As a result of Menon’s speech — you can read the most important passages here — the jury refused to convict any of the defendants of any of the offences for which the state had put them on trial.

The judge in that case, Jeremy Johnson, was so eager to make an example of Menon — and intimidate other lawyers so they would be dissuaded from giving other Palestine solidarity activists a proper defence — that he managed to abuse the established legal procedure specifically designed for contempt of court referrals.

The Court of Appeal had to overturn his decision, though it allowed him to reapply for contempt proceedings against Menon, this time using the proper channels. Johnson did so.

The point is that judges like Johnson and Plaschkes — faithful servants not of justice but of the British state — know that no jury will convict activists trying to to stop a genocide if it is framed in those terms. So these judges must rig these trials to keep the jury as ignorant as possible of the relevant context: that the British state is persecuting peace activists for embarrassing it over its collusion in genocide.

That fact was, once again, only too evident during Greenstein’s trial.

Plaschkes was angry throughout the proceedings at Greenstein’s efforts to introduce context to the case. For the prosecution to succeed, she needed the jury to ignore many relevant things about Greenstein’s supposedly “Hamas-supporting” comment about a “ghetto uprising” in Gaza:

• the context that the one-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023 was a direct response to Israel’s preceding 16-year blockade of Gaza, denying its 2.3 million-strong population the essentials of life and turning the enclave effectively into a concentration camp;
• the context that, following the October 2023 breakout, Israel immediately launched a genocidal campaign of destruction against the enclave’s infrastructure and its civilian population;
• the context that, as a secular socialist, Greenstein has been a long-time critic of Hamas, as proven by a stream of articles he has written over more than a decade and that he cited to the jury;
• the context that, as the son of Holocaust survivors, he is deeply opposed to one people systematically oppressing another – all the more so given that Jewish Zionists have exploited their people’s historic victimhood to justify Israel committing contemporary crimes against Palestinians;
• the context of international law, which states that a people under occupation, the Palestinians, have a right to resist their oppression by Israel, including through the use of violence;
• the context that Greenstein had not even mentioned Hamas in posts that were the focus of the trial, or indicated any support for it – only his support for the right in law for Palestinians to resist Israeli crimes;
• the context that the British government proscribed the political wing of Hamas under the UK’s terrorism laws only in 2021, not based any new “terror” behaviour – in fact, four years earlier Hamas had rewritten its charter, showing a strong willingness to make concessions to Israel. No, the purpose of proscription was specifically to advance Israel’s goal of intimidating popular, international solidarity with the people of Gaza;
• the context that, in prosecuting Greenstein, the British government is destroying the very basis of the right to free speech, all to advance the interests of the demonstrably genocidal state of Israel;
• the context that the British state is not some dispassionate arbiter of justice in these prosecutions: it is aggressively colluding in Israel’s crimes. Its huge conflict of interest in silencing critics is the elephant in the room.

Greenstein told the jury:

Your [verdict] will not stay in this room. If these three posts are terrorism, then the word has a new meaning for everyone in this country. Every student who shares an article. Every pensioner who retweets the wrong opinion. Every writer, every blogger, every one of your neighbours with a social media account and a view about a war.

Can it really be the law of England that any of them – that any of you – will be condemned to 14 years of prison for a tweet? You have the power, today, to answer that question. Whatever your answer is, it will be remembered long after this trial is forgotten.

Masterclass speech
The whole speech is a masterclass in how to speak over the head of a complicit judiciary and prick the conscience of people who still have a moral backbone. I recommend you read it in full here.

The British government desperately wanted the scalp of a Jewish activist to show that no one is safe from the state’s long arm of persecution. It failed, which should be cause for relief and celebration among every person who opposes authoritarianism.

The defeats being handed to the British state by juries who hear the actual evidence are adding to the pressures on officials to find new ways to bypass the ancient right of trial by jury.

The government of Keir Starmer was determined to establish the precedent of scrapping jury trials. Faced with the unpopularity of such a move, his successor Andy Burnham has sounded hesitant about advancing the measure. But pledges he made while seeking the Labour leadership — and prime ministership — are proving to be worth little now that he is in office.

Meanwhile, courtier-judges like Johnson are finding ways to get around the reluctance of juries to convict anti-genocide activists of serious crimes.

Juries that convict activists of a relatively minor charge of criminal damage for smashing up killer-drones, assuming the defendants will get a few months in prison, are learning that they are thereby handing judges in these trials unlimited powers, in violation of the most basic principles of justice.

After the verdict, judges like Johnson are choosing to rewrite the charge sheet, adding retrospectively what they are bogusly calling a “terrorism connection”. That means they can sentence the defendants as “terrorists”, leading to far longer jail sentences and destroying the defendants’ lives in perpetuity.

Mark of a justice system
This is the mark of a justice system that no longer cares about evidence, fairness or jury verdicts. It cares only about visible punishment, about spreading terror through the courtroom.

We can fight back. Juries appear to be growing increasingly wary of these highly politicised trials the British state is staging to exonerate itself of its criminal activities and lock up its critics. As judges increasingly abuse the justice system to get the jail sentences demanded by the state, juries are likely to become much less willing to serve as an alibi for state repression.

This is no longer a struggle simply for the Palestinian people’s survival. It is a struggle for ourselves, for our right to have a voice, to have some say in how our societies are run and for whose benefit. It is a struggle to keep the forces of darkness at bay a little while longer.

And it is a battle none of us can afford to lose.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article is republished from the author’s Substack with permission.

New Zealand signed an international letter criticising Israel which foreshadows sanctions but a pro-Palestine advocacy group has rapped the government over its “haphazard” and “mixed messages” West Asia policy.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) cited a “hint of future economic sanctions” against Israel in a statement of concern issued jointly by New Zealand, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Canada just over a week ago.

However, New Zealand did not put its name to another second and stronger statement of condemnation against Israel constructing the highly strategic E1 illegal settlement on the Occupied West Bank.

• READ MORE: ‘Not sorry’ – will international pressure mean justice for Zomi Frankcom?
• PSNA slams NZ’s ‘uncaring’ lack of signature on global Israeli settlements censure
• Why Israeli tenders for illegal E1 West Bank settlement prompted outrage
• Other Gaza, Palestine reports

The second statement was issued at the same time, and had been signed by 22 Western countries.

All the countries who signed the second letter, except New Zealand and Germany, also signed the first one.

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement that ether New Zealand was deliberately identifying and aligning with Germany — which is Israel’s third largest arms supplier — or “outsourcing” its foreign policy,

“More likely, it’s National outsourcing its foreign policy to New Zealand First, whose leader is blatantly pro-Israel. That haphazard arrangement results in mixed and ambiguous messages for the world and for New Zealanders,” Tamimi said.

Warning over tenders
She said there was a suggestion of economic sanctions in the second statement which did have New Zealand’s signature.

The statement stated “businesses should not consider bidding for construction tenders.

“They should be aware of legal and reputational consequences, including the risk of involving themselves in various breaches of international law.”

Tamimi said this warning was presumably to local companies in each country. It was a notice that the governments of the signatory countries could bring legal proceedings or amend legislation to thwart these companies.

“If governments follow this through, this is hugely important for investment funds in New Zealand which operate under Acts of Parliament, such as the Super Fund, ACC and KiwiSavers,” she said.

“The Super Fund lost a court case earlier this year, due to its attempts to keep investing in companies profiting from Israeli West Bank settlements. The writing is on the wall for other investors in Israel.

“Investment in genocide and apartheid Israel is neither a prudent nor moral choice for anyone.”

Pacific Islands Forum leaders are being urged to strengthen regional unity and ensure the Forum remains firmly Pacific-led as member countries work to deliver the goals of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

Outgoing Forum Chair Solomon Islands and incoming Chair Palau, at the opening ceremony of the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, both emphasised that collective action — particularly on climate change, ocean protection and economic resilience — will be critical to turning regional commitments into tangible results for Pacific communities.

Speaking on behalf of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale, Foreign Minister Rick Hou described the Forum chairmanship as a responsibility shared among members rather than belonging to a single country.

• READ MORE: US pushes critical minerals agenda in Cook Islands with Penrhyn ‘lifeline’
• Peters blasts Solomon Islands cabinet ministers for move against PM Wale
• Solomon Islands ‘dangles over the edge of political instability’ as three ministers quit
• Missing leaders won’t derail Pacific Islands Forum outcomes, says secretariat
• Vanuatu Special Envoy calls for PIF to ‘reopen’ issue of Pacific access to West Papua
• Solomon Islands PM Wale rushes home from Palau after confidence challenge launched
• Other PIF reports
• Other West Papua reports

“In our Pacific way, the chair is rather like a paddle passed from hand to hand — no one owns it,” Hou said, describing how each country took its turn before passing responsibility to the next.

He said the achievements during Solomon Islands’ chairmanship were the result of collective regional effort, including the establishment of the Pacific Resilience Facility, endorsement of the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration and progress on regional labor mobility.

“These were not achievements of one chair or one country. They were the work of the Forum family,” Hou said.

Hou said Solomon Islands had sought to maintain that collective approach during its tenure, including through the Forum Troika’s work on regional architecture, the Suva Agreement, capitalisation of the Pacific Resilience Facility and preparations for the next UN climate conference.

He also stressed the importance of protecting the Forum as the region’s political home amid growing strategic competition.

Political home for ‘honesty’
“At such moments, the Forum must remain the political home where Pacific leaders speak honestly, listen carefully, and decide our own course,” Hou said.

Accepting the chairmanship for Palau, President Surangel Whipps Jr also called for members to work as a single Pacific family while recognising their different national circumstances.

“Not separate delegations working in parallel, but one Pacific family moving together,” Whipps said.

He said the collective aspirations of the region and the vision set out in the 2050 Strategy depended on solidarity among Forum members.

“The achievement of our collective aspirations and our leaders’ vision for 2050 rests on our unity and solidarity as a Forum family,” Whipps said.

Whipps said unity did not mean that countries must have identical interests or positions. Instead, it required members to listen to one another, maintain trust and find common ground through constructive dialogue.

The Palau president placed climate change at the centre of the Forum’s collective agenda, calling it the greatest threat to Pacific peoples’ security and well-being.

Unified target push
He urged the region to maintain a unified push to keep the 1.5-degree Celsius temperature target within reach, improve access to climate finance and recognize the ocean as part of the climate solution.

Whipps also linked climate action with economic security, pointing to the vulnerability created by high fuel, freight and food costs and dependence on imported diesel. A regional shift toward renewable energy, he said, could strengthen both climate resilience and Pacific economic sovereignty.

Whipps also emphasised the need for sustainable ocean management, resilient food systems and financing that matches the scale of the challenges facing Pacific island countries.

The transition from Solomon Islands to Palau places the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and its members at the centre of continuing that collective work.

Both leaders stressed that outside partners remain welcome but should support, rather than determine, Pacific priorities.

For the Forum, the challenge now is to translate the 2050 Strategy from a shared vision into coordinated action — ensuring that climate commitments, ocean stewardship and economic resilience deliver measurable benefits for Pacific people.

Republished from the Island Times.

An exiled West Papuan leader living in Australia is calling on Oceania leaders at the Pacific Island Forum meeting in Palau this week to condemn growing military violence in the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region.

Paula Makabory, an executive member of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), has also appealed to Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders to do the same and to call for an immediate end to the violence in civilian areas and to address the environment crisis in West Papua.

Her call is being supported by several Pacific-based organisations.

• READ MORE: Vanuatu special envoy calls for PIF to ‘reopen’ issue of Pacific access to West Papua
• Missing leaders won’t derail Pacific Islands Forum outcomes, says secretariat
• Other PIF reports
• Other West Papua reports

“The letter sent today to Pacific leaders calls for immediate action because the humanitarian situation has reached a critical juncture, underscored by devastating casualties reported in recent weeks,” Makabory said in a statement.

She cited the following recent incidents as examples of many since mid-2025 until now which showed an escalation of extrajudicial killings and the use of drones and land mines by the Indonesian military in civilian areas:

• Thursday, 18 June 2026: A drone strike in Intan Jaya. At about 1pm local time, an elderly Papuan woman was killed, and two other women were severely injured in an attack involving explosive materials deployed by Indonesian military drones. Local sources indicate an alarming escalation in military tactics, including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and landmines placed along civilian footpaths.
• Wednesday, 17 June 2026: A fatal shooting in Dekai, Yahukimo. At 4.05 pm local time, a young Papuan man was shot and killed in Yahukimo Regency, Papua Pegunungan. Eyewitness accounts from the victim’s family directly implicated members of the Indonesian Marine Task Force.
• Thursday, 2 July 2026: American pilot Nicholas F. Gosselin of Associated Mission Aviation (AMA) was killed after landing in Yahukimo. The West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB) claimed responsibility, alleging the aircraft was supporting Indonesian military operations, while Indonesian authorities claimed it was conducting a civilian humanitarian mission.

‘Urgent need for international monitoring’
“Regardless of the competing accounts, this tragic [pilot] incident demonstrates the urgent need for independent international monitoring, transparent investigations, and renewed efforts to de-escalate the conflict and promote human rights,” Makabory said,

“Under the internationally recognised doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the global community — and neighbouring sovereign states in particular — has a duty to step in when a state fails to protect its population from systematic human rights violations.”

She said the continuous deployment of heavy tactical forces had turned residential areas into active conflict zones, where indigenous Papuans were treated with inherent suspicion and lethal force.

There had been 24 extrajudicial killings so far during 2026.

“Severe human rights violations are rarely met with independent investigations or genuine justice, leaving civilian populations entirely defenceless and more than 125,00 people displaced and homeless in the Highlands,” she said.

Makabory said the Indigenous people of West Papua were an integral part of the Melanesian family.

“Their ongoing suffering directly weakens the security and solidarity of the entire Pacific region,” she said.

Collective diplomatic action
Makabory urged Pacific Island Forum leaders to “break the silence” and take collective diplomatic action by issuing a formal condemnation of recent killings in Intan Jaya and Yahukimo, issue a collective call an immediate cessation of military operations in civilian areas, and demand unimpeded United Nations access to investigate human rights abuses.

She also called for condemnation of drone strikes, the establishment of a humanitarian corridor for aid for displaced people in the Highlands, a moratorium on mega projects in West Papua and an independent evaluation of Special Autonomy in terms of pathways to indigenous West Papuan self-determination.

“The report also calls on the PIF leadership to challenge the crushing of peaceful dissent and the widespread destruction of Indigenous land with resulting acceleration of deforestation and regional climate change risks.”

Catherine Delahunty, spokesperson for West Papua Action Aotearoa (WPAA), said the New Zealand and Australian governments were “failing in their critical leadership roles” by their silence on all of these issues.

“The Pacific Islands Forum has called or years for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to be granted immediate, unrestricted access to West Papua to conduct an independent investigation, but this has been ignored and the PIF needs to ensure Indonesia can’t expect status at Pacific meetings while ignoring the PIF requests,” she said.

Makabory said the PIF Special Envoys, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape, needed to negotiate a firm timeline for a UN fact-finding mission with Indonesia.

“The PIF and MSG must bring the West Papuan human rights crisis and land crisis to the forefront of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and relevant international human rights forums to ensure global oversight,” she said.

“The survival of our Melanesian brothers and sisters depends on leaders who are willing to champion human rights and regional stability over political convenience.”

Four opposition party spokespeople today condemned the New Zealand coalition government’s Palestine policies and called on voters to oust it and elect parties pledging “humanitarian” policies.

The spokespeople accused the Christopher Luxon-led government of turning a “blind eye to a full-blown genocide” and being complicit in crimes against humanity.

Speaking at the 152nd consecutive week of pro-Palestine protests in Te Komititanga Square in downtown Auckland, speakers for the fledgling Free Palestine Party, Green Party, Labour Party, Te Pāti Māori and an independent candidate for Mangere, Dr Timoti Te Moke, delivered stinging criticisms of the government to loud cheers and cries of “shame”.

• READ MORE: Iran says it will stand firm over ‘unjust’ US sanctions, settlers besiege West Bank’s Qusr
• Palestine Action activists face ‘terror’ charges over Trump golf resort spray-painting
• Other Palestine reports

Organisers invited nine political parties and independent candidates to take part in today’s rally and forum. Only five agreed. But FPP and TPM were unable to attend and sent statements.

“As a party we have marched beside and for our Palestinian whānau, we have pleaded with our government to do more, do better — speeches, written questions, letters,” Te Pāti Māori coleader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said in a statement presented by Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa’s Leeann Wahanui-Peters.

“We called for ceasefires, to sanction Israel, expel the Israeli ambassador, recognise the State of Palestine, pushed for humanitarian pathways, called to end to NZ participation in military occupation.

“But this is no big feat. This should’ve been the norm in the face of such atrocity.”
Ngarewa-Packer’s statement said: “We have watched as the people of Palestine have lost their homes, their land, their whānau — grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, children — whole generations.

‘Experiencing loss after loss’
“Injuries unseen, unprecedented. No food, food blocked. They pick up, rebuild, and are moved again. Experiencing loss after loss.

“We have heard the misleading narratives, we have heard the ceasefires where the fires have not ceased, the ‘war’ references as a blind eye gets turned to a full-blown genocide and not only have we had to witness this overseas, but our own government . . . has refused to take any meaningful action and will always sit complicit in this genocide.

“We as Māori understand too well the effects of colonisation, the shared experience of indigenous across the world and stand in solidarity with our Palestinian whanau.

“We understand the historical context that creates environments where greed becomes more important than lives.”

The statement said the party’s 2026 foreign affairs policy committed Aotearoa to an “independent, militarily neutral foreign policy grounded in peace, mana motuhake, indigenous solidarity and international human rights”.

It also “explicitly commits us to sanctioning states involved in illegal wars and cutting diplomatic relations with governments actively committing war crimes”.

Wahanui-Peters read out a list of 10 commitments, including recognising Palestine and expelling the Israeli ambassador.

‘Free Palestine’ an election issue
PSNA’s Anna Lee read a statement on behalf of the FFP, pointing out that the party “isn’t for voting” but to raise “genocide as an election issue”.

It will provide information over what is going on in Palestine.

The party is committed to contesting parliamentary elections as an independent party and building a mass democratic movement for justice in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally.

“We aim to change public opinion and put sustained parliamentary pressure on the New Zealand government to uphold its obligations under international law with respect to Palestine.”

“When [voters] go to the ballot box look for the parties that have made an ethical stand and support for the Palestinians and against the genocide that is happening,” Lee said. “So remember, this is a party, that we do not vote for.”

The Green Party’s Ricardo Menéndez March reminded the Palestine supporters of his party’s long solidarity with the free Palestinian movement.

“From years ago when [co-leader] Marama Davidson joined the Freedom Flotilla towards Gaza, we have taken action in Parliament against the genocide.

Time to sanction Israel
“This is why as we are heading to the election it is very clear. It is time to sanction Israel and it is time to expel the Israeli ambassador.” Loud cheers greeted this statement.

“Anyone who comes from a Muslim majority country will know that when you are applying for a visa, you are more likely to face delays, discrimination and scrutiny on national security grounds.

“Yet people who come from Israel and from the IDF are more likely to have been involved in war crimes, and this has not been rightfully applied

“I myself have called within the Green Party throughout this term to make sure that we have humanitarian visas for Palestinians to be reunited with their families. And this needs to be part of a broader package of humanitarian response to genocide of free passage.”

Phil Twyford, Labour Party MP for Te Atātu, also gave a strong statement on his party’s stance supporting Palestine, saying that foreign affairs spokesperson Vanushi Walters would present “official” policy at Parliament this week.

He said the activist movement supporting Palestine liberation had done an “amazing job” over the last few years, “keeping the issue alive – not just here, but all over New Zealand.

Twyford also acknowledged Menéndez March and the Green Party for “leading on this issue” in Parliament.

‘We acted with courage’
“Our country has done best over the years when we have acted with courage and on principle – and we have done it on multiple occasions. The New Zealand government responded to activists on the anti-apartheid struggle.

“It was a Labour government that responded to the peace movement, which demanded that we go nuclear free. And we did. We led the world.

“It was Helen Clark government that refused to go along with the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. It was the right thing to do.”

Dr Timoci Te Moke, an independent candidate for Māngere, said: “The reason why I have such passion for the people of Palestine is because what’s happening to them happened to my people.

“The destruction of their people happened to my people. The colonisation of the Palestinians happened to my people.”

About the future with the “needed” change of government, Dr Te Moke said: “We need to recognise Palestine and we need to have a Palestinian embassy here. And internationally, we need to kick out [Foreign Minister] Winston Peters and put someone in who will recognise Palestine.”

Twice arrested
During question time with “open mic”, a man spoke who said he had just come from the United Kingdom and he had been twice arrested for his support for the Palestine Action group that had been unjustly proscribed by the British government, and has also just been banned by the US government as well.

The man, Jeremy Watson, said his case was due to come up in court in October “along with 500 other people — they can’t just put us all in jail”.

He urged the New Zealand activists today to carry on their protests. He warned against state efforts, such as in the UK and United States, to “silence speaking out for Palestine” and protect Israel’s genocide.

He said it was pensioners, retired people, invalids and other vulnerable people who were being unjustly arrested for supporting Palestine Action.

Several speakers said how vital it was to hold an incoming new government to their Palestine promises.

The New Zealand general election is on November 7.

What Te Pati Maori Party pledges:

1. Recognise Palestine: Aotearoa should formally recognise the State of Palestine and support Palestinian self-determination and full international recognition.

2. Sanction Israel: Impose meaningful sanctions against the Israeli state and those responsible for war crimes, occupation, illegal settlements and the destruction of Gaza.

3. End military complicity: No New Zealand participation in, procurement from, intelligence support for, or military cooperation that contributes to Israel’s war against Palestinians. We oppose purchasing Israeli weapons and military technology while Palestinians are being killed with the same military-industrial system.

4. Use diplomatic consequences: Where a government is actively committing war crimes, our policy allows for diplomatic relations to be severed. We have called for the Israeli Ambassador to be expelled or recalled and for New Zealand to withdraw diplomatic legitimacy from Israel’s conduct.

5. Demand an end to the siege of Gaza: Open the crossings. Allow unrestricted humanitarian assistance, food, water, medicine, fuel and reconstruction materials into Gaza. Starvation cannot be used as a weapon of war.

6. Demand a real and permanent ceasefire: Not temporary pauses while bombardment, blockade, displacement and occupation continue. There must be an enduring cessation of violence accompanied by accountability and Palestinian freedom.

7. Uphold international law and accountability: Support international investigations and accountability through institutions, including the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. War crimes must have consequences regardless of which country commits them.

8. End economic support for occupation and apartheid: Support divestment and economic measures against institutions, companies and products directly sustaining illegal settlements, occupation or military violence against Palestinians.

9. Protect humanitarian workers and peaceful solidarity: Aotearoa must defend humanitarian workers, including New Zealanders attempting to deliver aid to Gaza, and unequivocally protect peaceful Palestinian solidarity and protest.

10. Confront antisemitism and Islamophobia without silencing Palestine: We condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia and racism. Opposition to the actions of the Israeli Government, Zionism, occupation or genocide must not be falsely characterised as hatred of Jewish people.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Justice Desmond Fagan’s Supreme Court decision in the State of New South Wales v Farhat wrecks the architecture designed by Antisemitism Special Envoy Jillian Segal, adopted by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and enforced across Australia.

Australians have been instructed that hostility towards Israel is hostility towards Jews. The lobby never won that argument. It changed the dictionary instead.

Albanese supplied the imprimatur. NSW Premier Chris Minns supplied the muscle. David Crisafulli criminalised protest slogans. Peter Malinauskas carried the doctrine into the South Australian Parliament.

• READ MORE: NSW ‘seeking urgent advice’ on controversial court ruling that found anti-Israel vandalism was not antisemitic
• A judgment that challenges the IHRA definition of antisemitism
• Other Australia antisemitism reports

Different parties. Different states. The same obedient genuflection.

The vandal who wasn’t an antisemite
Mohommed Farhat was a vandal for hire. He caused more than $110,000 in damage, torched a vehicle and painted “Fuk Israel” across Woollahra.

Justice Fagan found Farhat was recruited and did not know what some slogans meant. Yet the State wanted him branded an antisemite and shackled with 55 terrorism supervision restrictions.

Fagan refused. His judgment is an autopsy of how propaganda becomes administrative fact. Police, prosecutors, the Crown Solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions repeated an unexamined claim until repetition replaced proof.

The label was false and “injustice to the defendant” followed.

Then he turned to the definition. The IHRA formulation promoted by Segal and embraced by Canberra was, he found, “verbose and imprecise” and “detached from the reality of common usage”.

Promoting it sought to change the settled meaning of “a word that has been in use in the English language for 150 years” and to “graft” onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism ”a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel”.

Fagan cited Pew polling showing 74 percent of Australians unfavourable towards Israel, rising to 79 percent this year, and inferred a “humanitarian reaction to Israel’s genocide of the Gazans”.

A definition that tars four in five Australians is not detecting hatred.

It is outlawing majority opinion.

Antisemitism, Fagan said, is simply “hostility to Jews for their Jewishness”. It is real, repugnant and must be confronted. Israel is a foreign state. Zionism is a political ideology. Neither is entitled to immunity from condemnation.

Protecting Jewish Australians is essential. Protecting a foreign government from criticism is not.

The lobbyist who wrote the law
Segal became Special Envoy after leading the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, whose published mission includes defending Israel, encouraging Zionism and lobbying governments for positions favourable to Israel.

The referee was recruited from one team’s front office.

She may hold those views. She may not launder them through the Commonwealth and receive them back as law.

Albanese outsourced the dictionary to a protagonist, then adopted her every recommendation despite warnings from Jewish and civil liberties groups that it would punish lawful advocacy for Palestine.

Not consultation. Capitulation, formalised in a press release.

The government’s response commits the Commonwealth, states and territories to implementing Segal’s programme. National machinery of compliance, and the premiers queued up to install it.

Minns, Crisafulli, Malinauskas
Minns expanded police powers and created new speech offences. Crisafulli criminalised two protest slogans, with two years in prison where words might reasonably cause somebody to feel menaced, harassed or offended.

Offended. The decay of liberal democracy, compressed into one word.

Malinauskas backed IHRA through the South Australian Parliament, then pressed Adelaide Writers’ Week to dump Palestinian Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah. David Gonski, whose name once meant needs based schooling, now fronts an Antisemitism Education Taskforce with Segal at his side.

The Australian Public Service Commission says IHRA applies in federal workplaces. AHPRA adopted it across 16 professions and more than 960,000 practitioners. A reference tool held over a doctor’s registration is not a dictionary but a threat to a livelihood.

Fear is the cheapest police force ever deployed.

Executive policy cannot rewrite ordinary language. A circular cannot create law. Parliament never enacted IHRA, so the court gave it no force. Not a High Court ruling, but a preview.

Eighteen police, one shirt
I have been the test case.

On 3 November 2024, NSW Police arrested me at Bondi for wearing “Fuck Israel, Fuck Zionism”. I threatened nobody and damaged nothing. I was handcuffed, held six hours, fingerprinted and DNA tested by force over my objection.

Three charges followed, with bail conditions that ran more than a year. At one point I was banned from the eastern suburbs. My home in Surry Hills sat 400 metres from the boundary. One wrong walk meant arrest and up to 12 months in a cell awaiting a hearing.

For a shirt.

All three charges collapsed in December 2025 once my lawyers raised the implied freedom of political communication.

On April 6 this year, as many as 18 officers surrounded me at Bondi over the same shirt, among them Odin squad taskforce officers and two senior officers from area command. Overhead, a drone and a helicopter. On standby, an ambulance and two caged wagons.

Odin is a tactical unit for crowd management, high visibility policing and high risk operations. The high risk operation that morning was a shirt. I took it off. They arrested the shirt. A penalty notice arrived a week later.

Fagan has not decided my remaining matter, but he has demolished its pretence. He found the sprayed “Fuk Israel” was “crude political expression of contempt” for a foreign state, not hatred of Jews. If those words stayed political when painted during a crime spree, they cannot become Jew hatred worn peacefully on cotton.

The obscenity was never the shirt. It was the state power assembled around it.

Segal supplied the language. Albanese supplied the authority. Gonski took the classroom, AHPRA the professions, Minns the handcuffs, Crisafulli the statute book, Malinauskas the Parliament and the festival stage.

Justice Fagan supplied something none of them could survive: the law.

• Editor’s Note: the NSW Government is considering appealing Justice Fagan’s decision.

Still drawing international censure for his genocidal call to kill dozens of Gazans daily, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has faced fresh condemnation after visiting the construction site of a gallows where Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis are set to be hanged to death, with select Israelis gathering as spectators.

Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, posted a video to social media in which he gloats about the construction of gallows, which is being built in an undisclosed location in central Israel.

“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons — we kept it,” Ben-Gvir says in the video. “I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists law — we did.

• READ MORE: Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder
• Other Israeli execution reports

“And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.

Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation.

Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.

WATCH: National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announce expansion of newly approved death row facilities, including observation booths.

‘Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging’ pic.twitter.com/MRKJoSVD9q

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) August 18, 2026

Viewing booths
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing booths where victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.

“Terrorists deserve only one thing — death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 was convicted by an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organisation, whose leader he has openly honoured.

Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu news agency that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.

Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions.

“This criminal thug — a sympathiser of murderers of Palestinians, a supporter of terror, and a pathological racist — is also hopelessly infantile,” Cassif told The New Arab. “Soon we will oust him from the government, and next, throw him behind bars.”

European Parliament Vice-President Pina Picierno accused Ben-Gvir of staging “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show”.

The liberal US pro-Israel group J Street asked on X, “Are we supposed to believe, as some in the Jewish establishment would like us to, that Ben-Gvir’s words somehow tell us nothing about the country he helps govern?”

Jewish extremists excluded
“He is Israel’s National Security Minister, and he is now celebrating a facility built to execute Palestinians while Jewish extremists are excluded from the law,” the group added.

“As the old saying goes: When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When a government gives someone this much power, we have to reckon honestly with the agenda they are pushing.”

Ben-Gvir — who is under sanctions and banned from countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank — was still being denounced on Wednesday for advocating the daily mass killing of Palestinians, including civilians, in Gaza amid a nearly three-year war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said on Wednesday — which was World Humanitarian Day — that Ben-Gvir’s “remarks are appalling, they’re outrageous, they’re dehumanising, they’re dangerous, and we condemn them unequivocally.”

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday in Berlin that Merz “strongly condemns Minister Ben-Gvir’s inhumane statements, which violate international law — they are unacceptable.”

“As the occupying power, Israel must treat Palestinians with dignity, protect their property, and ensure public administration and humanitarian aid,” the spokesperson added.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “unbearable and inhumane,” adding that “further sanctions could be imposed, and all options are on the table.”

In the United States, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo said Thursday on Bluesky that “Ben-Gvir is a bloodthirsty psychopath, war criminal, and one of Israel’s beloved genocidal leaders.”

“America and the world should be sanctioning, divesting, and boycotting Israel in every way until this apartheid regime falls,” he added.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams. This article was first published by Common Dreams and is republished under Creative Commons.

The IDF’s decision not to open a criminal investigation into the deaths of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, including an Australian citizen, drew strong condemnation.

But for Palestinians, this has simply become the norm.

Four years ago, when I arrived from Palestine to study for my Master’s degree in Melbourne, Australia, I had a hard time finalising some paperwork related to government services, simply because I could not create an account. The problem was that my country, at the time, wasn’t listed within the governmental system.

• READ MORE: Palestinian theologian warns against trusting Israel over Hind, medics killings probe
• What did Al Jazeera’s investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza reveal?
• Who was Hind Rajab and why is Israel investigating her killing?
• Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of 5-year-old and paramedics
• Other Gaza genocide reports

There was no “Palestine” or “West Bank” and not even a slot for “Occupied Palestinian Territories”. At another interaction with local bureaucracy, the worker who received my passport commented that it was the first time he had seen a Palestinian one.

“I am sorry,” he said politely, “but I can’t even see it on the map.”

By the time we left Melbourne in 2024 and returned to our home in Ramallah, a lot had changed. For many months, hundreds of thousands of people gathered every Sunday in the city centre, raising Palestinian flags and calling to end Israel’s war in Gaza.

Watching these protests develop and gather steam, I came to realise that they were taking place not because Australia had become as “pro-Palestinian” as some of the media coverage had suggested, but rather because Israel’s image had badly deteriorated.

Australian opinion shifted
In September of 2025, the shifts in Australian public opinion regarding Israel and the occupation found their way into the country’s official policies, when the government in Canberra recognised Palestine. Australia was one of several influential countries to do so in recent years.

One of the most influential turning points in Australian public views of Israel came in April 2024 when an Israeli airstrike on Deir al-Balah killed seven aid workers from the humanitarian organisation World Central Kitchen, among them Zomi Frankcom, a 43-year-old woman from Melbourne.

For many Australians watching the horrors in Gaza from afar, that was the moment the war became personal.

This week, an internal inquiry by the Israeli military determined there was no criminal wrongdoing by any of the officers or soldiers involved in the fatal incident. Two years after the aid workers had been killed, Israel made clear it had no intention to punish anyone for their deaths, or even allow a proper independent investigation.

In Australia, this decision has been received with a mixture of anger and disappointment. The Australian Foreign Minister summoned the Israeli ambassador in protest.

I was following the headlines in Australia’s leading news websites from my home in Ramallah and realised how different my expectations as a Palestinian are from Israel, compared to those of many Australians. For me, there was nothing surprising about the Israeli military shielding soldiers from accountability.

Adla Alnazer is a public policy consultant and former adviser to the Palestinian government. This article was first published by Haaretz.

For more than a week, Israeli settlers have besieged three Palestinian families in their homes in Qusra, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, cutting them off from basic supplies and emergency services.

Settlers used the same tactic just last month to force the al-Tubassi family from their home in Jalud. This time, however, with one of the besieged Qusra homes belonging to a Palestinian-American, the siege has become front-page news.

The United Nations, France, Spain and the United Kingdom have issued condemnations, and the White House was reported to be pressing Netanyahu to publicly denounce settler violence.

• READ MORE: Qusra mayor: Besieged families face imminent food, medicine shortages
• Why can’t Israel be held accountable for its genocide in Gaza? It’s the media
• Other Gaza, West Bank reports

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a staunch settlement supporter, broke publicly with the Israeli government to call the besieging settlers “Israeli terrorists”.

On August 13, Israeli forces ordered the families to evacuate, saying the homes would be seized “to protect” them, and converted 16 homes in the town into military barracks.

Soldiers entered Qusra that day. Israeli forces briefly detained one Israeli suspect during a later overnight operation dismantling nearby outpost structures, but no other arrests of settlers have been reported.

Amnesty International’s Erika Guevara Rosas said the siege reflected “an accelerating and well-documented pattern of coordinated and strategic settler terror, enabled, backed and funded by the State of Israel”.

15 Palestinians trapped
For a second week, 15 Palestinians, including two children, remain trapped in their homes.

Soldiers spent two days dismantling the settlers’ tent, only to put up their own in the same spot, effectively continuing the closure.

Municipal crews eventually restored electricity and water, but the families say they have been told they cannot leave their homes.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reports that the settlers have been continuing their intimidation of Palestinians by threatening them.

“Even though they are not here at the moment, they are showing that they can come at any time and make their lives a living hell. That’s the term that one of the family members uses to describe their lives lately,” she said.

“These settlers arrived here seven months ago. Yes, the siege started last week, and we’re entering the second week now, but the harassment by settlers has been ongoing for the past months since these settlers decided to erect a new illegal outpost close to these houses.

‘Silk glove versus iron fist’
“One of the family members has two daughters — one is two and a half, the other is four. They are always scared, clinging to their parents because of the nature of the trauma that they are living under, the continued threats.

The Israeli soldiers that had been occupying these three homes continued to be there.

“According to what we understand happened, they might have told settlers to leave, but it’s seen here that the Israeli forces are treating settlers with a silk glove versus the iron fist with which they treat Palestinians.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera the same day, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese called Qusra the “climax” of Israel’s “decades-long rule of impunity”, saying Israeli officials “appear to be collaborating with settlers rather than restraining them”.

Nonetheless, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli military to prepare a plan for transferring responsibility for civilian law enforcement to the Israeli police — a move critics questioned as impractical and warned could further advance Israel’s de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Illegal settlers uncowed
Rather than being encumbered by the global outcry, settlers have carried out similar sieges — with soldiers again standing by or actively assisting.

On August 16, in Beit Imrin, north of Nablus — a village nominally under full Palestinian civil and security control — settlers besieged a home for more than three hours, blocking residents and ambulances from reaching those inside.

Israeli forces then raided the house themselves, arrested all nine people inside, and withdrew. Soldiers separately blocked Palestine Red Crescent crews from the area and confiscated their ambulance keys.

For years, the legal architecture of West Bank dispossession — including firing-zone designations, “state land” declarations and a permit regime that effectively criminalises Palestinian construction — has operated overwhelmingly in Area C, the area of the West Bank under full Israeli control.

It has fallen hardest on Bedouin and herding communities who have experienced massive forcible displacement as a result.

Occupation toolkit becomes clear
Beit Imrin has none of that legal exposure. But as the Qusra siege leads settlers to widen such tactics, the week’s developments suggest that where the traditional legal toolkit of the occupation does not reach — like the areas of the West Bank under nominal Palestinian control — the pattern is becoming clear:

• settlers establish a tent adjacent to homes and are not removed;
• Palestinians’ homes are besieged, with water, power, supplies and medical services cut off; and
• soldiers arrive not to remove the settlers, but increasingly to remove the family — through arrest or ostensibly for their “protection”.

On August 16, settlers also pitched tents for a new outpost near Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, which, the Wafa news agency reported, brings the number of outposts surrounding Umm Safa and neighbouring Burqa to six; settlers have already seized most of Umm Safa’s and Burqa’s surrounding lands.

As new outposts were built without authorisation, Israeli forces demolished homes in Qalandiya, north of Jerusalem; Masara, south of Bethlehem; and Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem, according to pictures and videos shared among local activists.

Israeli authorities also forced Sami Abu Rahma to demolish his own farm in al-Mughayyir, days after his son was shot by settlers working the same land.

The Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission told Wafa that Israeli authorities carried out 80 demolitions in July alone, hitting 165 structures, with 34 further notices issued.

Gaza’s trajectory hangs in the balance
A Board of Peace official told Al Jazeera on Monday that the body had agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel did not need to withdraw its forces from Gaza until Hamas disarmed — including both light and heavy weapons, and the dismantling of its tunnel network.

That comes after Netanyahu had publicly rejected the disarmament agreement announced by US President Donald Trump last month. The deal had initially envisaged a phased withdrawal occurring alongside a phased disarmament.

The US administration’s latest diplomatic push on Gaza, led by Jared Kushner’s meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, appears to have yielded no major breakthrough.

Al Jazeera senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Netanyahu would “give the appearance of getting along” with Kushner but “won’t really go along with the plan” for Gaza.

“I mean, he’s not going to be able to actually say a flat no to Trump. What he’s going to do, and what he’s done, in fact, is he announced the making of these two committees in order to show that there is some form of progress without really committing to any real movement on the 15-point plan,” Bishara said.

Bishara said Netanyahu’s announcement of two committees to discuss the plan was a tactic to “bury the issue”, noting that “when you want to bury an issue, make a committee for it”.

Kill ’30 or 40′ people a night
In a podcast with former Israeli captive Rom Braslavski, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israeli forces should kill “30 or 40” people in Gaza every night, going beyond those who pose an immediate threat.

The far-right minister said he opposed Netanyahu’s decision to scale back strikes under the current truce, called for encouraging Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently alongside new Israeli settlement of the Strip, and offered to help arrange for Braslavski to personally execute prisoners under Israel’s newly enacted death-penalty law for Palestinians.

Ben-Gvir holds no formal authority to order military strikes but sits on Israel’s security cabinet.

It is against that tension — between US pressure to advance the ceasefire and demands from Israel’s far right for intensified attacks — that Israeli strikes this week resumed, though still at a pace markedly lower than two weeks earlier.

On August 12, a strike on a motorised rickshaw in Beit Lahiya killed municipal worker Mohanad Saada, returning from repairing a war-damaged well — Israel’s first air strike in Gaza in more than a week.

On August 13, a drone fired three missiles at a four-wheel drive vehicle in Gaza City, killing Colonel Jamal Abu Kamil, the city’s civil police chief; the Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas commander, a claim Gaza’s police and Interior Ministry rejected.

More attacks were reported in the following days.

Israel forces destroying evidence
Beneath the week’s violence, a report from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel is crushing and trucking rubble out of the Strip — more than 10 million tonnes have already been removed.

The group says the process erases property boundaries and risks destroying evidence relevant to the International Court of Justice’s genocide case against Israel.

Meanwhile, vital supplies continue to be severely restricted from entering Gaza; on August 15, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said only 12 of the Strip’s 34 oxygen-generating stations remained functional, with no spare parts entering the territory, according to Wafa.

Doctors said that cancer patients are dying at two to three times the pre-war rate after Israel destroyed the Strip’s only specialised cancer hospital.

Alongside 21 additional bodies recovered in Khan Younis underneath the rubble, the Palestine Red Crescent also recovered the body of 14-year-old Suhail Masoud Shalouf on August 16, after he was shot the previous evening near the so-called “Yellow Line” in an area rescuers had been unable to reach.

By August 17, Gaza’s Ministry of Health had counted 1,265 Palestinians killed since the October “ceasefire” — and 73,399 killed since October 7, 2023.

This report has been compiled from Al Jazeera updates for the past week under the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Cook Islands Party (CIP) could secure a supermajority for its fifth consecutive term in government after three independent female candidates who won seats in Mangaia agreed to join the party.

CIP leads following the preliminary count of the 2026 general election with 12 seats, leaving them just one seat short of forming a government.

The party had hoped to secure that decisive seat in Pukapuka-Nassau, where incumbent CIP MP Tingika Elikana trails independent candidate Dr Kirianu Nio by three votes (134-131), with six declaration votes remaining to be counted.

• READ MORE: Cook Islands election: preliminary results starting to come in
• Other Cook Islands elections reports

Altogether, independent candidates hold eight seats — including two from Atiu (Independent-Enuamanu) and one from Mauke (Independent Party) — while the Cook Islands United Party holds four seats.

CIP has an existing partnership agreement with Atiu and Mauke MPs, who were part of the government during the last term and have reportedly pledged their continued support.

With the addition of Mangaia’s three incoming MPs — Agnes Armstrong, Tetangi Matapo and Rimmel Poila-Mokoroa — the CIP could reach 18 seats, commanding a two-thirds parliamentary majority.

Armstrong retained her Ivirua seat unopposed, newcomer Poila-Mokoroa won in Oneroa and Matapo held her Tamarua seat in the August 12 general election. The three reached an agreement to join the CIP following a virtual meeting with party leaders this week.

‘All agreed to join’
Senior CIP member and caretaker minister Vaine “Mac” Mokoroa, who retained his Nikao-Panama seat for a third consecutive term, told Cook Islands News that the independent Mangaia members held a zoom meeting with CIP president Henry Puna and caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown on Thursday.

“They have all agreed to join the government of the day,” confirmed Mokoroa, husband of Poila-Mokoroa. “This process and negotiation was facilitated through the endorsement and grace of Numangatini Ariki.”

“All independents are in need of change and progress on their island hence the reason they decided to stand as independent and move into government.”

Following a meeting with Prime Minister Brown on Friday local time, Mokoroa said the PM agreed to let him help facilitate and provide an office for the independent MPs from Mangaia.

“I know that I can assist and guide them where their priorities are lined up.”

Armstrong, who spoke for all three, told this newspaper last night that they had agreed to join the CIP together.

“That’s our consensus with our committees and the people behind us — that we all work together as one for the betterment of the island and our individual constituencies,” she said.

Decision confirmed
Numangatini Tangitamaiti Tereapii Ariki also confirmed the decision.

Numangatini Ariki said that he advised the three incoming MPs to join the party positioned to form the government.

“They’ve agreed to work together. The three of them,” he said. “Because Mangaia has been out of government for some time … I asked them to make up their mind.”

“The main reason is to have Mangaia sitting at that table where the decisions are made. We can’t sit outside. It’s been too long that we’ve been sitting outside”.

Numangatini Ariki also extended his congratulations to all candidates who stood in the election, particularly those who secured the most votes in their constituencies to become MPs.

The final results are expected to be released later next week. Chief Electoral Officer Taggy Tangimetua earlier said that there were logistical challenges in getting all the ballot papers to Rarotonga before official counting could start.

Overseas postal votes
These include ballots from the Pa Enua, as well as overseas postal votes from Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, and Suva, Fiji.

Tangimetua said the ballots from all the outer islands are expected to arrive by this weekend. However, the postal votes from the overseas centres are expected to take some time.

She explained that once the ballots arrived, officials would inspect votes by declaration to determine whether the voters were qualified, adding that this verification process “will take time”.

A vote by declaration is a special type of ballot cast by an individual whose name does not appear on the printed main or supplementary electoral rolls.

There are several close constituencies, notably Rakahanga, Ngatangiia, Matavera and Pukapuka-Nassau, where the margins are close and the numbers of declaration votes could still change the preliminary results.

Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.

As Indonesia marks the 81st anniversary of its independence today — August 17 —  the republic has much to celebrate.

Over eight decades, Indonesia has transformed itself from a newly independent archipelago into one of the world’s largest democracies and economies, holding together an extraordinarily diverse nation across thousands of islands.

But anniversaries are not only moments for celebration. They are also moments for reflection.

• READ MORE: Indonesia at 81: Whose sovereignty are we celebrating?
• Indonesia’s magnitude 7.7 quake kills at least 51, displaces thousands
• Other Laurens Ikinia articles

From Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost region, one question deserves particular attention:

After 81 years of independence, what do development, equality and “Merdeka” (“freedom”) really mean for Indigenous Papuans?

Recent demographic figures make that question increasingly urgent.

Population data from May–June 2026 puts the population across the land of Papua — Indonesia’s six Papuan provinces — at 5,797,499 people. Of these, 2,283,703 are recorded as Orang Asli Papua (OAP), or Indigenous Papuans, in Indonesia’s centralised Population Administration Information System.

That is roughly 39.4 percent of the total population.

This could mean everyone outside that category is non-Papuan. Administrative records may include Indigenous Papuans whose status has not been properly identified. Better verification is essential.

Still, the figures point to a profound demographic transformation. Indonesia, at 81, needs to talk seriously about what that means.

Independence and Indigenous dignity
Indonesia’s independence was founded on a powerful principle: people should live with dignity and have a meaningful say over their future. That principle matters for Indigenous peoples too.

Around the world, Indigenous rights increasingly mean more than formal equality. They include protecting cultures, languages, customary institutions, and ancestral lands, while ensuring meaningful participation in decisions that affect Indigenous communities. Papua belongs in that conversation.

Indigenous Papuans are not simply another category in a population database. They represent hundreds of communities with distinct languages, customary systems, histories and relationships with ancestral territories.

Papua is among the most culturally and linguistically diverse places on Earth.

Protecting that diversity should not be seen as an obstacle to Indonesian nation-building. It should be one of its achievements.

After 81 years, Indonesia should be confident enough to recognise that national unity and Indigenous rights are not contradictory. A strong nation should be able to protect both.

Papua’s quiet demographic transformation
Papua has changed dramatically in recent decades. Roads now connect communities once accessible mainly by air or on foot. Towns have expanded. New provinces and districts have emerged. Airports, ports, telecommunications, mining, plantations and government institutions have transformed the economic landscape.

Alongside this development has come another powerful force: internal migration from other parts of Indonesia.

Migration itself is not the enemy. Many migrants have lived in Papua for decades. Some were born there. They teach in schools, work in hospitals, operate businesses, serve in government and contribute to local economies. The real issue is not whether non-Papuans should live in Papua.

The question is whether rapid demographic change, combined with unequal access to education, capital and economic networks, could gradually weaken Indigenous Papuans’ ability to shape the economic and social future of their ancestral homeland.

Across Papua’s growing urban centres, economic competition is intensifying. Land values are rising, businesses are expanding, and new opportunities are emerging. But people do not enter that competition from the same starting line.

A young Indigenous entrepreneur from Papua’s highlands may compete with someone raised with better schools, stronger business networks, easier access to banking and greater family capital. Calling that competition “equal” does not make the starting conditions equal.

What has Special Autonomy delivered?
Indonesia has already recognised that Papua requires a distinctive policy approach. That recognition lies at the heart of Special Autonomy, or Otonomi Khusus Papua.

Special Autonomy was intended, among other things, to give Papua greater authority and resources while strengthening the protection and empowerment of Indigenous Papuans.
More than two decades later, however, the important question is no longer simply how much money has been allocated. It is what that money has achieved.

How many Indigenous Papuan doctors, engineers, teachers, academics and entrepreneurs have been produced? How many OAP-owned companies have become competitive businesses? How many Indigenous Papuans hold senior positions in industries operating in their ancestral territories?

And how many children in remote Papuan communities now receive an education comparable to children elsewhere in Indonesia? These should be among the measures defining the next generation of Special Autonomy.

Papua does not simply need more government spending. It needs measurable Indigenous empowerment.

Land is more than an economic asset
Demographic change becomes particularly sensitive when it intersects with Indigenous land. For many Papuan communities, land is not simply property. It is identity. Mountains, forests, rivers and valleys carry genealogical, spiritual and historical relationships stretching across generations.

Modern development, however, also gives land commercial value. A road can turn customary territory into valuable real estate. An administrative centre creates demand for housing. Plantations transform forests into economic assets. Mining can turn mountains into resources worth billions.

In these situations, Indigenous communities may find themselves negotiating with institutions and corporations possessing far greater financial, legal and political resources. That imbalance cannot be ignored.

Indigenous rights should therefore become a central pillar of Papua’s development model, rather than something discussed only after disputes emerge.

Customary communities need stronger legal protection, transparent consultation and meaningful participation in decisions affecting their territories. Development should happen with Indigenous Papuans, not merely around them.

Better data, better policy
The 2026 figures expose another challenge: Indonesia needs more transparent and credible Indigenous demographic data.

The figure of 2.28 million registered OAP should be the beginning of the conversation, not its conclusion. A census is needed.

Indonesia should be able to answer basic questions: How many OAP live in each province and district? What are their education and health outcomes? How many attend university or own businesses? How much customary land remains under Indigenous control? And how is internal migration changing Papua’s demographic landscape?

Without reliable data, policy risks becoming guesswork. Special Autonomy cannot be properly evaluated if the government from the central to regional level cannot measure whether Indigenous Papuans themselves are progressing.

Education is the real battleground
Ultimately, Papua’s future will not be determined by population numbers alone. It will be determined by human capacity.

A population can be numerically smaller yet remain culturally, economically and politically strong when its people are educated, healthy and economically productive. That is why education should become the centrepiece of Indonesia’s next Papua strategy.

Consider a Papuan child born today in Puncak, Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Nduga or Pegunungan Bintang districts. One day, that child may compete for a university place or professional job with students from Jakarta, Surabaya, Makassar or Yogyakarta.

But that competition begins long before the university entrance examination. It begins with maternal nutrition and early childhood development. It continues through primary education, teacher quality, electricity, internet access, books, laboratories and healthcare.

If those foundations are radically unequal, the final competition cannot reasonably be called equal.

The most powerful affirmative-action policy Indonesia can pursue is therefore not simply reserving positions for Indigenous Papuans. It is preparing Papuans so well that they can compete for those positions with confidence.

Papua does not need permanent dependency. Papua needs capacity.

A new meaning of Merdeka
Every August 17, the word “Merdeka” echoes across Indonesia.

It means freedom. But 81 years after independence, perhaps freedom should also be measured by whether people have the capacity to shape their own future.

For Indigenous Papuans, Merdeka should mean that a child born in a remote village has a realistic pathway to become a doctor, engineer, professor, entrepreneur or national leader.
It should mean communities can participate in development without losing their ancestral land. It should mean Papuan languages and cultures survive modernisation rather than becoming its casualties.

And it should mean demographic change does not translate into cultural, economic or political marginalisation.

This is not an argument against migration, nor a call to divide Papuans from other Indonesians. It is a call for Indonesia to make the promise of independence meaningful for one of its most distinctive Indigenous populations.

The demographic figures should not create fear. They should create urgency.
Indonesia still has an opportunity to build a model in Papua where economic growth, national integration and Indigenous rights reinforce rather than undermine one another.

That means better demographic data, stronger protection of customary land, investment in education and healthcare, affirmative economic opportunities, accountable Special Autonomy institutions and meaningful OAP participation in decisions affecting Papua.

Ultimately, Indonesia’s Papua policy should be judged by a simple question: Are Indigenous Papuans becoming stronger or weaker in their own homeland?

By Indonesia’s centenary in 2045, Papua will look very different. Its cities will be larger, its infrastructure more extensive and its economy more closely connected to Indonesia and the wider Asia-Pacific.

But infrastructure alone will not define success.

The real test will be whether Indigenous Papuans stand at the centre of that transformation — educated, healthy, economically competitive, culturally confident and capable of shaping their communities’ future.

A nation can build roads, airports, ports and cities. The greater achievement is building a country where development does not require Indigenous peoples to disappear.

Eighty-one years after independence, Indonesia has an opportunity to prove that Papua can modernise without losing Papuans — and that “Merdeka” can mean progress without erasure.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta. He is also an honorary member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) in Aotearoa New Zealand, and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

A country currently indicted for genocide has no business training our teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand on the topic of genocide. The notion is ludicrous.

Under this National policy Kiwi teachers are going to be trained about genocide by Israelis.

It is intended that some Kiwi teachers will be sent to Israel for indoctrination tours.

• READ MORE: Holocaust education now part of the NZ curriculum
• Israel has no business teaching anyone’s children about the systematic dehumanisation of others — Marilyn Garson
• When truth in protest is under attack, don’t give disinformation a platform

Kiwi teachers will be able to meet happy Palestinians in Israel. That is what South Africa’s apartheid government used to do — come meet the happy Blacks in Johannesburg. Soweto? Where’s that?

Israel is currently indicted for genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an arrest warrant out for him issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) — for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The ICJ declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to be unlawful on 19 July 2024.

Any and all Israeli presence in Palestinian territory is unlawful. Notwithstanding that, Israel carries on its slaughter as though the law itself does not exist.

It is beyond belief that a New Zealand government could have come up with a policy so ludicrous and so deeply offensive.

Tracy-Moana Campbell is an employment relations advocate based in Masterton and an activist on Palestinian human rights. She had a commercial orange grove in Lebanon 10km from the Israeli border in 2005-2011. Israel bombed her oranges in 2006. It is a war crime to destroy civilian food sources. This commentary was originally a social media post but has been republished with the author’s permission.

Palestine protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand celebrated an unprecedented 150 weeks of continuous Gaza genocide rallies in the heart of Auckland today and were told by a human rights advocate they were the “rainbow people — offering hope”.

Kathy Voyles, who describes herself as a global citizen dividing her time between New Zealand and The Netherlands, said Gaza was “standing at a knife’s edge” and sometimes hope seemed far away.

“And then I remember the late, great Susi Newborn, who said, ‘You can’t sink a rainbow.’

• READ MORE: Resident in Israeli-besieged Qusra home in Palestine says food and water running low
• Other Gaza protest reports

“We are that rainbow people. We are that hope.”

She warned that the Israeli leaders would face justice for their horrendous crimes and atrocities, and spoke of a former head of state who had eventually paid a price.

“I will never forget that day in June 2001 when the former Serbian leader, Slobodan Milošević, who was responsible for so many deaths in the former Yugoslavia who came to The Hague to be put in prison.”

Voyles remembered so many people who had worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“The ICC, ICTY and other tribunals have tried 200 people from all around the world. The Serbian government got him to The Hague despite his followers objecting.”

Breached Genocide Convention
Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006 before the genocide trial could conclude, but the ICC separately found him guilty of breaching the Genocide Convention.

Another former leader, ex-Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, is currently in The Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity or murder and attempted murder over mass killings during the eight-year so-called “war on drugs”.

The ICC also wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on arrest warrants for the alleged war crimes of starvation, and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

“Now we know that Israel and the US are doing their best to close down the ICC — and that must not happen,” said Voyles.

“They are doing that because they are scared.

“One thing that I did learn while working in that field in The Hague is that national governments hate to be shamed and embarrassed, no matter how strong they think they are.

“We have signed up to various [human rights] conventions even though our government is doing its best to forget that.

“So let’s keep reminding them.”

Message of hope
Voyles reminded the protesters of her initial message today of hope.

“So I say there is hope. And for our own mental health we must continue to do what we do.

“Every week until there is a rainbow and hope for the people left in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, for Sudan, for the Congo, for Yemen, for West Papua, for the people of Myanmar and so many others.

“We cannot forget them ever.”

One way of taking action was to get everyone enrolled to vote in New Zealand and “then we change this inept government”.

“Out with Chris Luxon, Winston Peters and David Seymour. We want leaders who are us, not the I.”

Honour to speak
Voyles said it was an honour to speak for the people of Palestine – Gaza and the Occupied Territories. At least 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in the genocide and more than 1200 people since the so-called “ceasefire” declared in October 2025.

She challenged the crowd to keep “endlessly, ceaselessly talking, tweeting and emailing about it.”

The kaikōrero for the rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square, Lamees Elthiny, paid tribute to the crowd for their resilient 150 weeks of protest.

Everyone had been “fighting the battle of Palestine in their own way”, she said.

“Everyone is standing for humanity, but doing it differently. And we decided to keep coming over and over again here to Britomart and our voices will be heard until Palestine is free.”

Adnan Swaid, a Nakba victim, son of Palestinian refugee parents and freedom activist who had lived for 50 years as a stateless human being, spoke of Israel’s ever-growing Zionist crimes.

“Since the establishment of the Zionist idea in the 18th century, the Zionist lying machine was established as well for producing and spreading of Zionist lies,” he said.

Compelling poems
Jacqueline “Jax” Taylor of the Stand With Palestine Waiheke community group recited two compelling poems.

“All the world’s best poets have a little drinkie to help when the words won’t flow,” she said introducing one of her poems that she had compiled in dedication to the ‘150 Weeks’!”

Ihumatao and Rocket Lab protester Brendan Corbett praised a Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa-backed lawsuit that was filed in the High Court at Wellington this week seeking a judicial review of the New Zealand government approval for the launching of BlackRock spy satellites that are alleged to be complicit with the Gaza genocide.

“The lawsuit is charging that our Ministers of Space, Judith Collins, and the latest one, Chris Penk, and now Paul Goldsmith, who is yet to be selected, but he has got the job,” Corbett said.

“These people had signed a launch certificate to allow Rocket Lab to launch BlackSky satellites that have a contract to act with the IDF to target across Israel, across Palestine.

“The research after months and months has resulted in the lawyers being super confident that they can get a conviction — so well done to these lawyers.”

Lawyers for two Palestinian advocates with strong family ties to the Nakba in Gaza and a Māori medical doctor critical of the “colonial violence” in the occupied territories have filed a lawsuit today against New Zealand government support for BlackSky spy satellite launchings from the Rocket Lab site in Māhia.

Their lawsuit seeks a judicial review of government policy, arguing that the satellites risk supplying Israeli military forces with targeting data in attacks on the population of the besieged Gaza Strip.

New Zealand-founded space company Rocket Lab is BlackSky’s primary launch provider, says a statement by the Palestine Solidarity Media Network (PSNA) that is supporting the lawsuit filed at the Wellington High Court.

• READ MORE:  Justice For Palestine welcomes legal challenge to govt approval of BlackSky spy satellite launches from NZ
• Other Rocket Lab reports

Rocket Lab launched a BlackSky satellite from Māhia in March, with further launches recently approved by the Minister for Space.

The three plaintiffs bringing the lawsuit are New Zealanders — Christchurch engineer Yasser Abdulaal; Auckland-based information technology professional Maher Nazzal; and Dr Timoti Te Moke (Ngāti Rangitihi, Tapuika and Tonga), a medical doctor.

Abdulaal’s family sought refuge in Gaza when Zionist militia inflicted the Nakba (the “Catastrophe”) in 1948 and have suffered the devastation of Israel’s air strikes on Gaza since October 2023.

“More than 85 of my extended family have been killed in multiple air strikes by Israel, Abdulaal said. “My two sisters have had to live in terrible conditions with their families in tents in the Al Mawasi area for more than two years now.

Israel still bombing, killing
“Israel is still bombing and killing in Gaza. We hope that we will stop these satellite launches.”

Nazzal’s parents were displaced from their homes during the 1967 Naksa (the “Setback”), when Israel occupied the West Bank.

“I have seen firsthand the struggles Palestinians face, including members of my own family,” he said.

“They continue to endure severe oppression and displacement in the West Bank and Gaza.

“I am proud to be part of this legal action. We are asking our government to take meaningful action in support of Palestinian rights and to uphold its obligations under international law.”

Dr Te Moke said he was joining this case because he felt a strong affiliation with the Palestinian people.

“Tangata whenua and Palestinians have both suffered colonial violence and so have a powerful connection with each other,” he said.

Independent candidate
He is an independent candidate in the Māngere electorate for the 2026 general election in November.

The lawsuit, laid under the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017, challenges former Space Minister Judith Collins’ approval of four launches, in spite of protests at BlackSky’s links to Israel.

The proceedings are also filed against new Space Minister Chris Penk, who in April approved 26 more satellite launches, which the plaintiffs hope to halt.

The pleadings note that former Space Minister Collins and MBIE knew, when they approved the launch of BlackSky’s spy satellites in late 2023, that BlackSky’s satellites had been used by Israel.

At the time, air strikes by Israel over Gaza had killed nearly 20,000 people. To total has since risen to more than 73,000 killed — mostly women and children — and at least 173,000 wounded.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa raised its concern over Israeli military use for BlackSky satellites with Collins in November 2024.

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement the result was “wilful ignorance”.

No questions on Israel
“Neither Collins nor MBIE questioned, when they were deciding to grant BlackSky’s payload permit in December 2023, whether the Israeli military was a current end-user of the satellites.

“All Collins or her ministry needed to do was pick up the phone and ask whether the Israelis were part of the deal. But it’s most likely they feared they would get an answer they didn’t want.”

Collins refused all PSNA requests to reconsider her approval of the satellite launches.

France-based publication Intelligence Online reported in July 2024 that Israel was BlackSky’s “main foreign customer” with a secret US$150 million contract.

A recent Federal Court outcome in Australia requires the Australian Defence Minister to release information on Australian arms exports to Israel.

Australia-based Palestine advocacy organisations say they sought the information so they could assess whether these exports, such as F35 aircraft spare parts, could be used to commit human rights abuses, or were contrary to Australia’s international obligations or commitments.

“Right throughout the Western world there is a pattern of secrecy about arms exports to Israel. It’s now unravelling,” Tamimi said

Complicity exposed
“Complicity with genocide is being exposed. Our government is part of that duplicity and now exposure.”

Sam Vincent, one of the lawyers acting for the plaintiffs, said BlackSky was well known for the sophistication of its geospatial data.

“It is no secret that Israel has systematically relied on geospatial intelligence, such as BlackSky provides, for its targeting.

“The case against the former space minister is that she did not take into consideration New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention nor broader international human rights law when she approved these satellite launches,” he said.

“This was despite the likelihood that Israel was using these satellites, and would continue to use them for military targeting.

“Against protestations, the four BlackSky satellites Judith Collins approved are now in space.”

“There are 26 more BlackSky satellites now approved for launch by the new minister — while Israel continues to strike Gaza. We are seeking an order that will quash the minister’s approval and direct that he inquire into BlackSky’s likely supply of data to Israel.”

UN commission found genocide
Another of the lawyers acting for the plaintiffs, Ruby Haazen, said the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel had found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

“Many scholars, such as Omar Bartov, and international organisations such as Amnesty International, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have also found Israel has committed genocide in Gaza,” Haazen said.

“In January 2024, the International Court of Justice found it plausible that Israel’s military operations in Gaza risked irreparable harm to Palestinians rights under the Genocide Convention, putting all states on notice of their duty to act to prevent genocide.

“New Zealand is obliged to live up to that duty.”

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

When is it possible to declare that a society has moved from liberal democracy, however imperfectly realised, to authoritarian rule?

Is there a moment when it is suddenly obvious the change has occurred? Does authoritarianism announce its arrival?

Or is it a process that gradually unfolds, where restraints on executive power are dismantled piece by piece until the tide cannot be reversed?

• READ MORE: Other Jonathan Cook articles
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Is the turn to authoritarianism something that can only be understood after the event, when all opportunities to halt the slide have been missed?

And how do we admit to ourselves that we have been stripped of our most basic and cherished freedoms — of speech, assembly and protest — when we are no longer free to speak, meet or protest?

The unpalatable truth is that Britain is already far down this path. And if you are unaware of the earthquake that has been taking place, that may be because — just as you might expect when authoritarianism comes calling — the very first to be smothered are the voices sounding the alarm.

A media owned by billionaires and the state — the parties that, in an age of growing popular discontent, have most to gain from the accretion of executive power and the silencing of dissent — have no reason to illuminate the encroaching darkness.

Foot work for authoritarianism
An ostensible Labour government under the outgoing Keir Starmer has done much of the foot work to usher in the new, ominous political climate.

It was precisely Starmer’s credentials as a human rights lawyer that provided the British state with the cover story it needed for an unprecedented assault on the freedoms fought for by earlier generations.

There are few signs that his successors, whether it be a new figurehead in the genocide-supporting Labour Party or Nigel Farage’s immigrant-bashing Reform, will change direction.

The logic driving Britain’s slide towards authoritarianism is being set not just by politicians, but by a British establishment that needs to sell its collusion in genocide and illegal wars abroad and to find easy scapegoats — immigrants — to blame for its failures at home.

The job of the main political parties, reliant on billionaire donors who also own the corporate media, is to shore up these narratives.

It was Starmer’s Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who incautiously gave the clearest expression to the British state’s vision of our future.

In a speech in January she laid out her ambition to harness new developments in AI to create an all-powerful, all-seeing “Big Brother” surveillance state of the kind foretold by George Orwell in his dystopian novel 1984.

‘Panopticon’, the perfect prison
Mahmood even compared this future to the “panopticon” — a reference to 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s perfect prison: a central watchtower (the state) surrounded by a circle of windowed cells where the inmates (the public) would be visible at all times.

Bentham understood that this was not just about physical control. As he observed, the sense of being constantly observed would be a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind”. The inmates would police their own behaviour to avoid punishment.

Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, is reportedly keen to keep Mahmood a key figure in his government. But this isn’t about a single government minister.

Mahmood is the symptom of a deeper malaise, not its cause. The architecture of the new systems of control, as well as the erosion of freedoms and the cultural traditions that supported them, were already well advanced when she was appointed to the Home Office.

Whoever holds the reins of power in the months and years to come will be able to exploit these existing powers to the maximum, and then extend them further.

Once the spirit of authoritarianism takes hold, it becomes ever harder to stuff it back into the box. Only concerted mass protest can remind the state where ultimate power resides. And it is precisely this kind of protest that is being demonised and criminalised one step at a time.

If it is possible to identify a single moment when the new authoritarianism moved out of the shadows, it was some 15 years ago. That was the moment the state launched its protracted campaign against Julian Assange to vilify and incarcerate him.

Incensed US over war crimes
The founder of the whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks had incensed the United States and its loyal British sidekick by publishing details of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq both wanted to be kept secret.

It was probably no coincidence that, at the time, Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service and making repeated trips to meet Washington’s most senior law officers. Contrary to protocols, records of these discussions were destroyed by his officials.

We will never know what instructions Starmer was given by the US regarding Assange. But a possible clue survived the further, and highly irregular, destruction by Starmer’s department of related correspondence between UK and Swedish prosecutors from that time.

One of the few surviving emails is revealing. It shows that Sweden was considering dropping an investigation into Assange for lack of evidence, as he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London fearful of what lay in store.

Starmer’s staff, who were supposed to be neutral arbiters between Sweden and Assange’s legal team, angrily told the Swedes: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

In another email, the same CPS official told Swedish counterparts: “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.”

Later, with the active connivance of the UK and its courts, the US showed its true hand. Washington began extradition proceedings on the preposterous grounds that Assange had committed “espionage” by publishing details of its war crimes.

Caged in prison
Assange was caged in a high-security prison in London for years, often unable to meet his lawyers, his health failing, on a trumped-up, nakedly political charge.

This was a terrifying, unprecedented assault on the right of journalists to publish evidence of state wrongdoing in the public interest. And yet the billionaire-owned media could barely stifle their yawns.

There was a two-fold gain from Assange’s decade-long abuse and the trampling of his legal rights.

First, it established a very visible precedent in which the rule of law was turned on its head. The roles of victim and victimiser were reversed.

Assange, who had published incontrovertible evidence of US and British war crimes, was the one behind bars. British officials who approved and hid those crimes not only evaded justice but were free to hound and smear Assange.

This has been the theme ever since, as the British state has intensified its curbs on speech and protest, with Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians often serving as the testing ground for authorising this new crackdown.

In the second half of the 2010s, Jeremy Corbyn — Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader — found himself and his supporters roundly vilified as “antisemites”.

Forewarning of the future
Why? Because they tried to bring attention to Israel’s criminal actions — a forewarning of what was to come, as Israel unleashed what legal experts, Holocaust scholars, human rights groups and United Nations investigators have all concluded is a genocide in Gaza.

In a properly functioning democracy, those who smeared Corbyn and other critics of Israel would have been permanently discredited.

Instead, UK officials — the same officials colluding in Israel’s current crimes by shipping arms to Israel, by carrying out surveillance flights to guide Israel’s bombing campaigns against Gaza’s civilians, and by offering diplomatic cover — simply stepped up the demonisation campaign.

As millions of Britons took to the streets, the Starmer government — and the British state behind it — not only labelled them as antisemites but radically rewrote the statute books to criminalise opposition to Israel’s genocide.

Direct action group Palestine Action, which had been targeting Israeli arms factories operating on UK soil, was proscribed as a “terrorist” group equivalent to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.

Holding placards protesting the genocide, as thousands of respectable British citizens did, became “support for terrorism”, risking a jail term of up to 14 years.

Reality was once again inverted.

UK supports state terrorism
Britain continues to actively support Israeli state terrorism.

But it was those ringing the alarm — those trying to stop these shipments, those opposed to British collusion in Israeli state terrorism, or those simply appalled by the undermining of basic rights to protest — who were arrested and charged as “terrorists”.

Meanwhile, documents show Elbit Systems continues to enjoy unrestricted access to British government officials.

Second, in stigmatising and isolating Assange for publishing details of US and UK war crimes, the British state was able to draw its own fake distinction between “good” and “bad” journalism — a distinction the billionaire-owned media was only too happy to embrace.

Assange, whose independent platform WikiLeaks had held Washington and London’s feet to the fire for committing war crimes, had in the process shamed the establishment media for their unwillingness to do likewise.

He exposed the extent to which corporate journalists, dependent on access to the rich and powerful for stories, conspire in the covert, unaccountable ways power is exercised by the state.

The media are not watchdogs; they are lap dogs, representing the interests of the billionaire class.

Independent media not tolerated
The British state — and its security services — made clear they would not tolerate truly independent or critical media that could expose their hypocrisies or bring them to book.

In response, the billionaire-owned media not only hung Assange out to dry. It joined the government in a chorus of claims that independent outlets were either peddling “fake news” or serving as “Kremlin assets” spreading “disinformation“.

It amplified the pressure from politicians on social media platforms, the billionaires’ new plaything, to tighten their algorithms to hide independent journalists, and stymie these dangerous new competitors in the battle for truth.

Similarly, corporate media cheerled the government’s decision to ban Russia Today, the Russian state’s news channel. It quickly became all but impossible for UK audiences to hear Russia’s version of events in the mainstream media, as Britain and European states built the case for permanent confrontation with Moscow.

The European Union imposed an even more draconian ban — upheld last month by the EU’s Court of Justice — that makes it a criminal offence to repeat any information reported by RT, and other banned outlets, even if demonstrably true. The law’s purpose is to supposedly “protect public order and safety”.

In recent weeks, two prominent US commentators, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, have been denied entry to the UK over their criticisms of Israel. Uygur was due to speak at an Oxford University debate.

In this new authoritarian climate, truth is defined as whatever the state wants their citizens to know. Meanwhile, disinformation — “Russian propaganda” or “antisemitism” — is whatever those same states insist their citizenry must not hear.

Brazen reversal of Enlightenment
This is a brazen reversal of 350 years of the Western Enlightenment, with its professed belief both in the primacy of reason and that ideas must be tested through debate and critical scrutiny.

Now it matters not what is being said, but only who is saying it.

And unsurprisingly, the billionaire-owned, Western media has endorsed this new regime. After all, its voice — representing the interests of the super-rich — is guaranteed a hearing.

No surprise, then, that this same privileged media corps has continued to meekly accept its exclusion from Gaza by Israel as the biggest crime in modern history unfolds — even now, in the midst of a supposed ceasefire that Israel keeps breaking.

Because what matters is who is allowed to speak: Israel, not Gaza’s Palestinians, whether what Israel says is true or, as invariably turns out to be the case, a lie.

In line with this precept, the billionaire-owned media has barely raised a murmur as Israel has slaughtered Gaza’s journalists in unprecedented numbers — killing more of them than in two world wars, Vietnam, the Yugoslav wars and Afghanistan combined.

The lives of Palestinian journalists — like the reporting they have had to do alone under Israeli bombardment — count for nothing in the Western media because of who they are.

Genocide ‘erased as a crime’
Genocide — the what — has been erased as a crime because it is we — the West — who are helping to carry it out.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, reportedly facing a political and donor backlash, scrapped last year its annual Global Impunity Index — which measured where journalists are murdered with impunity — after it became clear Israel would top the rankings.

Now the same committee is being accused of caving in to these pressures by raising doubts about who counts as a journalist in Gaza — doubts that will serve to embolden Israel, which claims that Palestinian journalists, indeed all Palestinians, are terrorists in disguise.

The who has to be rewritten because the what cannot be denied.

The same story is unfolding in the UK, where independent British journalists have been detained at the airport or had their homes raided at dawn by counterterrorism police for “wrong-think” about the Gaza genocide and British complicity in it. They too face up to 14 years in jail.

That has sent a chilling message to other journalists, those that lack the protection of a billionaire patron or the state, about what can be said.

None of this is, or will be, confined to Gaza. The upending of Enlightenment values, as should be clear by now, is part of a much bigger political project to normalise and entrench this creeping authoritarianism.

Hard to reverse precedent
The proscription of Palestine Action and placard-holding has paved the way for the British state to designate any opponent — challenging its lawbreaking or contesting its right to dictate truth — as a criminal or a supporter of terrorism. A precedent has been set, and now approved by the UK courts, that will be hard to reverse.

The state has many tools at its disposal, some of which it is already wielding, again to no protest from billionaire-owned media “watchdogs”.

A particularly powerful one is “debanking”: forcing individuals or groups who disrupt the narrative of Western state moral and legal authority out of the financial system, driving them into a kind of purdah that makes it near-impossible for them to function in the modern, Western world.

Notably again, Assange and WikiLeaks were an early victim of the use of debanking as a political weapon. Washington imposed sanctions in late 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks exposed US and British war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, cutting off almost all of its donor revenue.

Sanctions — what some describe as a “financial death penalty” — have already been imposed on several judges and staff of the International Criminal Court over the issuing of an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for committing crimes against humanity in Gaza.

UN legal expert Francesca Albanese, at the forefront of highlighting Western complicity in Israel’s genocide, has also been debanked.

In Britain, Palestinian and Islamic-run charities have long faced harsh restrictions on their ability to operate financially, usually on the basis of claims that they may be funnelling donations to proscribed groups.

But this has gradually expanded to mainstream Palestine solidarity organisations and to individuals caught up in the ban on Palestine Action.

The Canary debanked
In an even more disturbing, if predictable, development, Lloyds Bank has now debanked The Canary, a leftwing publication whose criticisms of Labour’s capture by Big Business have long proved a thorn in the party bureacracy’s side. The Canary can no longer pay staff, and its news operation is in jeopardy.

This is the same Canary that the Labour Together project led by Morgan McSweeney — who propelled Starmer to power on behalf of the billionaire-friendly, pro-genocide Labour right — identified early on as a threat. His mantra was reportedly: “Destroy The Canary or The Canary destroys us.”

As investigative journalist Paul Holden sets out in his book The Fraud, which documents Labour Together’s covert, law-breaking operations, McSweeney almost succeeded in destroying The Canary. He created an astroturf group, Stop Funding Fake News, that lobbied advertisers to boycott the publication.

Labour Together under McSweeney’s successor, Josh Simons, would then launch a smear campaign on Holden and refer him to British security services as a supposed Kremlin asset.

Like a bad penny, Simons has turned up again, this time giving up his Makerfield seat for Andy Burnham to return to Westminster. Simons is now one of Burnham’s political advisers.

This systematic assault on the right to scrutinise the British state’s actions has been extended to the legal profession too.

Last month, Dan Kovalik, a respected US human rights lawyer and professor, was detained at Liverpool airport by counterterrorism police and questioned over his criticisms of Western foreign policy in Gaza and Iran.

Detained by police
Fahad Ansari, a British human rights lawyer, was detained by police last year on return to the UK from a family holiday in Ireland under Schedule 7 of the draconian Terrorism Act of 2000.

Both men had their electronic devices seized, despite protests that this was unlawful and violated their privileged lawyer-client communications.

Ansari’s detention appears to be a blatant act of political retaliation and intimidation. He had made legal representations challenging a Home Office decision in 2021 to expand the proscription of Hamas to its political wing. Hamas has never launched a military operation in Britain.

For the submission, Ansari had assembled a group of experts to argue that the expanded proscription — long desired by Israel — was having a profoundly chilling effect on the work of lawyers, scholars, human rights groups and journalists in documenting and discussing Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Five UN legal experts wrote protesting the abuse of Ansari’s rights as a lawyer, warning that “such measures threaten to criminalise, stigmatise and have chilling effects against lawyers and legal associations carrying out lawful work in national security and counter-terrorism matters”.

That seems to be precisely the point. Harassing lawyers is a feature, not a bug, of Britain’s new authoritarianism.

An even more visible victim of this new assault on the legal profession is the highly respected barrister Rajiv Menon.

Key human rights cases
He has worked on some of the most important human rights cases of modern times, challenging failures and abuses of power by the state in relation to the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, the deaths of nearly 100 Liverpool football fans at Hillsborough, and the 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

He is currently facing contempt of court proceedings after making a closing speech in January that persuaded a jury not to convict six Palestine Action defendants of any of the charges brought by the British state against them. In 2024, the six had targeted an Elbit factory.

It is believed to be the first time that a lawyer has been prosecuted for contempt of court over a closing speech. Garden Court Chambers, where Menon has practised for three decades, said the proceedings had sent “shock waves through the legal profession”.

It warned of a severe chilling effect on barristers, who might be more reluctant to mount a strong defence, especially in politically charged trials, for fear of reprisals.

All of this should be seen in the context of the government’s equally unprecedented moves to erode the cornerstone legal principle of the right to trial by jury.

Authoritarian states permit no meaningful restraints on their ability to impose their will. Independent-minded lawyers and juries are just such a brake.

But perhaps the most sustained assault by the British state has been on the rights to protest and assembly, making it increasingly dangerous to express a view in the public space.

2 million in street power
Since some two million people took to the streets to oppose Britain’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, new ways have been sought to restrict the ability of ordinary citizens to raise their voice against the abuse of governmental and state power.

Recent legislation allows police to ban protests because they are “too noisy” or cause “serious unease”. Disruption has been redefined to now include hindrance to any daily activity. Protests can be barred if they have a “cumulative” impact.

These are all inherent features of protest. The mass demonstrations against Britain’s illegal attack on Iraq were noisy, disruptive and repeated — as have been the marches against Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

By judging the legality of protest according to these selective and largely subjective criteria, the state has given the police huge latitude to decide which protests should be criminalised and which allowed. It is hardly surprising then that the police are currently concentrating their efforts on the anti-genocide marches, which highlight British collusion in Israel’s crimes.

Facial recogition technology — pioneered by Israel against Palestinians — is being rolled out too, normalising the Panopticon state so beloved by Mahmood.

Where is all of this leading? The answer is to a new piece of legislation that was hurried through Parliament by the Home Secretary.

The National Security (State Threats) Act gives the state unprecedented powers to proscribe groups, as it did with Palestine Action, but now without having to claim to have evidence of a terrorist threat.

Claiming a ‘hostlle’ group
The Home Secretary can make such a designation unilaterally, without any parliamentary oversight, simply because he or she claims the group is a “hostile” foreign state actor that poses a threat to national security or public safety.

Mahmood has already done so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), effectively Iran’s military.

Further, anyone who works with or receives a “material benefit” — defined to include “information” — from a proscribed group can be jailed for up to 14 years. That includes expressing support for the group or sharing information it has provided.

Simply hosting an event where someone expresses support for the group could open one to prosecution, as could posting something on social media that the British state claims is a hostile foreign state “talking point” — whether or not the information is true.

Once again, this is an assault on the most fundamental of Enlightenment values.

In the National Security Act, it matters only who is passing on the information, not what the information is, or whether it is truthful. There is no public interest defence, such as exposure of criminality by the British state or its allies.

There is no exemption for journalists, lawyers, scholars or human rights groups. It will be impossible for them to do the most essential part of their job: digging out information, testing claims from one side against the other’s, and allowing audiences to determine the truth.

Baring of journalists
Assuming Hamas is declared a hostile foreign actor, as seems all but certain, journalists will be barred from collecting details of Palestinian casualties from Gaza’s Health Ministry or speak to doctors there. Why? Because the Hamas government runs the Health Ministry and hospitals.

Worse, it would be impossible for journalists to visit Gaza to investigate Israeli crimes — something that will delight Israel — because such a visit would need to be organised through the Hamas government. To do so would risk 14 years in jail.

The same will be true for reporting from Iran or Russia, if the Home Secretary so decides.

The only apparent carve-out will be for journalists who get approval from the British government beforehand.

That should ensure that only the most compliant, access-driven journalists, belonging to state and billionaire-owned media, will be able to engage with “hostile” foreign actors — in ways the British state can be sure will best represent its interests.

Under this new law, the search for truth, and potentially the truth itself, will be criminalised.

The National Security Act systematises all the other developments we noted earlier. It gives the state carte blanche to criminalise anyone who scrutinises or challenges its moral or legal authority.

Search for the truth
Who should be in uproar over this monstrous legislative assault on the right to search for truth, to hold the state accountable, to act as a watchdog on the abuse of power?

If the billionaire-owned media did any of the above, news outlets would be leading the pushback. As it is, they are mostly silent — because they do none of these things.

It will be independent journalists, commentators, lawyers and human rights activists who will be picked off one by one, sending a message to everyone else to keep their heads down.

Starved of real information and critical scrutiny of the British state’s actions, the public, so it is hoped, will become more ignorant, more docile, more passive as their rights are steadily stripped away.

As the climate crisis intensifies, as resource wars accelerate, as austerity at home bites deeper, the finger will be pointed not at the real culprits — the super-rich, their media and the captured state — but at earlier victims of the West: those fleeing from the wars we initiated, from an increasingly unstable climate our inflated consumption provoked, and from a paucity of resources following centuries of colonial theft.

While we are encouraged to blame “the immigrants”, or “the Muslims”, or “the left”, or “the Israel haters”, the state is in a race to erect a scaffolding of control to protect itself before we wake up to the deception.

Time is running out on all fronts. The lack of urgency to address these crises is not because the crises don’t exist, but because our passivity has been engineered. The truth is we are already in the Panopticon, and our minds are already deeply fashioned for obedience.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by Middle East Eye and republished from the author’s Substack with permission.

An exclusive poll reveals a tight election with no clear winner, as the surging Cook Islands United Party (CIUP) challenges the governing Cook Islands Party (CIP) while cost-of-living concerns dominate voter focus.

With just two days to go before the country heads to the elections on Wednesday (Thursday NZ time), a Cook Islands News election poll shows no clear winner, indicating a coalition will be required to form the next government.

None of the political parties contesting the election achieved a majority in a sample of voters — representing just over one percent of those registered to vote — polled across the country.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands elections reports

The governing CIP, which is seeking a fifth consecutive term, holds a narrow baseline lead with 30.5 percent popular support but faces a fierce challenge from the surging CIUP at 26.7 percent.

The Democratic Party, which lost ground in the 2022 general election, has slumped further in the polls to 8.6 percent — tying with the Independents.

With more than a quarter of the electorate (25.7 percent) still undecided and Independents capturing over 20 percent of votes in the Pa Enua (outer islands), no single party currently possesses a clear, unassisted path to a 13-seat parliamentary majority.

CIP leader and caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown said they were grateful to be in front, which matched what their candidates were hearing at the doors — “a lot of quiet support for a team that has delivered”.

Taking ‘nothing for granted’
“But a lead is not a result, and we take nothing for granted,” Brown told Cook Islands News. “With a field this wide, every vote has to be earned, and we intend to keep earning them right up to election day.

“The only poll that counts is the one on August 12, and that one belongs entirely to our people.”

Compared to previous electoral baseline, Teariki Heather-led Cook Islands United Party has experienced a major surge and has effectively displaced the Democratic Party as the primary challenger to the incumbent CIP.

Heather welcomed the poll, saying they were “grateful” for the surge in support and adding, “we [moved] at least from a minority party to a major party now”.

He said he expected this level of support and foresaw becoming a major challenger to the governing CIP.

Democratic Party leader Tina Pupuke-Browne said they took the poll result “seriously”.

“Of course I would like to see the Democrats polling higher, but I am not going to dismiss a poll simply because one part of it is uncomfortable,” Pupuke-Browne said.

25.7 percent undecided
She noted that 25.7 percent of those polled remain undecided.

“That tells me many people are still weighing up their choices and looking closely at what each party and candidate is offering,” Pupuke-Browne said.

“I do not believe any political party is entitled to anyone’s vote, including people who want a change of government. We have to earn their support.”

She said the Democrats would continue to do that by talking about the issues people raise with them every day, “the cost of living, support for families and pensioners, opportunities for our young people, the Pa Enua, better public services, and accountable government”.

“We are putting forward a serious alternative. Ultimately, it is for the voters, not politicians, to decide who they trust to form the next government.”

Brown said he respected undecided voters.

“In a serious election, weighing it up carefully is exactly what a thoughtful voter should do, and I would never take their vote for granted,” he said.

‘Look at the record’
“My message to them is simple: look at the record, and look at the plan. Over 10 years we rebuilt the economy after covid, halved the government’s debt, lifted pensions, the Child Benefit and the minimum wage, and kept the buses free.

“Our manifesto carries that forward with five clear promises.

“For us it’s important that we keep working to prove to those undecided voters that we are the government of choice.”

United Party’s Heather asked the undecided voters to “reconsider and work with the United Party, because definitely we need change”.

“Obviously, there is quite a number of those who are not sure who they would decide — that’s what the poll says, but honestly, I believe, the people will vote on the 12th for United Party … the people just sitting on the fence and not coming out loud, but on the 12th, they will come out loud and you will have the absolute figures then.”

Incumbent Mark Brown is the preferred prime minister at 35.2 percent followed by Heather at 19 percent and Pupuke-Browne trails at 5.7 percent.

A majority — 50.5 percent — of respondents across the Pa Enua and Rarotonga identified the cost of living and inflation — including fuel prices, water and power bills, housing, transportation and consumer goods — as their primary concern.

Republished from the Cook islands News with permission.

The environmental and human rights documentary Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in Our Time has been awarded both the 2026 Udin and Tasrif Awards from Indonesia’s Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) during the organisation’s 32nd anniversary celebration at the Press Council Hall in Jakarta.

The Udin Award was presented to director Dandhy Dwi Laksono and the production
team behind Pesta Babi — which premiered in New Zealand in March — while the Tasrif Award went to the documentary’s production team.

Producer Victor C. Mambor, publisher of Jubi Media, who accepted the awards on behalf of the team, said they were dedicated to Papuans who had experienced discrimination and been denied their rights.

• READ MORE: West Papuan doco Pig Feast exposes oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under noses of military
• Read other Pesta Babi documentary reports

“These awards are also for the journalists, particularly the Pig Feast team, for their
consistency in producing this film,” he said.

“The team faced many challenges during production, and some of those problems continue today. But we’re happy because being an AJI member has always meant being no stranger to problems.”

He said journalists must continue to speak out about issues that needed to be brought
to public attention and stand alongside people experiencing oppression.

Anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Cypri Jehan Paju Dale, who accepted the Tasrif Award on behalf of the team, said receiving the two awards was an honour and an opportunity to affirm shared values.

‘Destruction of ecosystems’
“A major injustice is still taking place in Papua. Land appropriation, the destruction of
ecosystems and military operations have continued for more than 60 years and are
now occurring on a scale we have not seen before,” Paju Dale said.

He said Papua was experiencing extractive mining, while thousands of people had been displaced from their villages by military operations and mining concessions.

Paju Dale said the film’s screenings had helped encourage communities to speak out and that the awards should be understood as recognition of Papuan communities and their right to resist.

“Resistance by Papuan Indigenous communities is legitimate,” he said.

He cited the opening paragraph of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, which states that independence is the right of all nations and that colonialism must be abolished because it is inconsistent with humanity and justice.

“We also dedicate this award to AJI. Journalists are on the front lines of exposing practices of ecocide and genocide in Papua, while reminding us that the Constitution states that colonialism must be abolished,” he said.

AJI Indonesia secretary-general Bayu Wardhana said the decision to award Pesta Babi was made independently by the respective juries and was not subject to intervention from AJI.

‘The right choice’
“We believe the juries made the right choice. It reflects Indonesia’s current situation, and the position journalism must take: standing with those who cannot speak for themselves—the voiceless,” Bayu told ABC Indonesia.

The Udin Award itself is one of AJI’s highest recognitions for individuals or groups
that contribute to the struggle for press freedom, civil liberties, democratic development and human values.

The award is named after Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin, known as Udin, a journalist
with the Bernas daily in Yogyakarta who was killed on 16 August 1996 after reporting
on corruption in Bantul.

Udin became a symbol of the fight against corruption and journalists’ resilience in the
face of threats and attacks from those accused of crimes against humanity.

The Tasrif Award is named after Suardi Tasrif, a prominent Indonesian journalist regarded as the “Father of Indonesia’s Journalistic Code of Ethics”.

During his lifetime, Tasrif was a prominent advocate for press freedom and freedom
of expression, which he regarded as fundamental human rights.

AJI Indonesia first presented the award in 1998 to Munir, then coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS). It has since been awarded regularly to individuals and groups that consistently defend freedom of expression and press freedom.

The 2026 Udin Award jury comprised Arif Maulana, deputy chair of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI); Almas Sjafrina of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW);
and Masduki, an AJI official and representative of PR2Media.

The Tasrif Award jury consisted of Gema Gita Persada of the Legal Aid Institute for
the Press (LBH Pers), Daniel Awigra of the Human Rights Working Group (HRWG),
and Ignatius Haryanto of Multimedia Nusantara University (UMN).

Republished from Jubi News/West Papua Daily in collaboration.

The Free Palestine Party is now an official list party and will be on every ballot paper for New Zealand’s general election on November 7.

The Free Palestine Party is the only party in this election dealing with the most pressing economic, political and moral issue facing Aotearoa and the world today, said a statement by the party.

This crisis is caused by the “apartheid colony of Israel backed by US military power destabilising the Middle East”.

• READ MORE: ‘Triple tap’ in Gaza, Iran and the Hind Rajab atrocities condemned at Stop Wars rally
• Other Gaza genocide reports

More than 60 percent of the people of Aotearoa believe that the New Zealand government should sanction Israel for its human rights abuses, this rises to 68 percent among 18-29 year olds.

The only way to bring peace to the Middle East, stop a global depression and end the holocaust of our time, is to put an end to the apartheid state of Israel, just like apartheid South Africa.

The people of Aotearoa helped fight for the end of the apartheid state of South Africa and thousands of Kiwis today have joined the ongoing protests against the crimes of Israel.

“It is time for Kiwis and Aotearoa to be leaders in the struggle against Zionism and Israel, as we were in the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements,” said the Free Palestine Party statement.

Centre of NZ politics
“The party has become registered with the Electoral Commission to push this issue to the centre of New Zealand politics “where it should be”.

Protesters over the Gaza genocide have held weekly demonstrations at multiple venues across New Zealand for 149 weeks — the longest continuous protests on an issue in New Zeakand’s history.

Six main principles in the party’s platform would help in the fight against apartheid and would stop New Zealand from being complicit in the crimes against humanity of Israel and the United States, said the statement:

The principles are:

• The right of Return for all Palestinians;
• The primacy of international law and UN resolutions;
• Upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in relation to Zionist abuses;
• Single State Solution for the whole of Palestine;
• Unconditional support for all forms of Palestine resistance; and
• Independent NZ foreign policy and withdrawal from military and security alliances with US.
• More information on the Free Palestine Party