The 2026 general election was a vote for stability, says political analyst William Numanga, as preliminary results placed the governing Cook Islands Party (CIP) on track to secure a fifth consecutive term.

The Mark Brown-led CIP has secured 12 seats following the preliminary count, while independent candidates hold eight seats — including two from Atiu (Independent-Enuamanu) and one from Mauke (Independent Party).

The Cook Islands United Party has secured four seats. At least six independent candidates have confirmed their allegiance to the CIP.

• READ MORE: Democratic Party pledges ‘honest review’ after preliminary election wipeout in Cook Islands
• Other Cook Islands elections reports

Numanga said the preliminary results broadly reflect what he expected — “a very competitive election, particularly in Rarotonga, but with CIP remaining the strongest national political organisation”.

However, he said the final composition of Parliament was still not settled. Given the very close results in Manihiki, Rakahanga, Pukapuka, and Ngatangiia, “petitions or challenges could still affect the overall picture”.

There are over 1000 votes by declaration yet to be counted, while additional postal ballots are still arriving. The final count is expected either late this week or early next week.

“My initial assessment was that several Rarotonga constituencies would be highly competitive between CIP and United,” Numanga said. “That was certainly evident in Ngatangiia, while Matavera’s shift to United demonstrates that voters were prepared to change representation.”

“I expected RAPPA, Nikao and Ruaau to be particularly competitive, although ultimately Ruaau was the closest of those contests.”

Voters backed ‘stability’
According to Numanga, CIP’s performance suggests that, despite public concerns over some government decisions, “many voters ultimately placed considerable value on stability, continuity and confidence in government”.

“Cost of living remained important, but voters may also recognise that inflationary pressures are not unique to the Cook Islands,” he said.

“Geopolitical issues also appear not to have been decisive, while the easing of recent concerns in the New Zealand relationship may have reduced some political uncertainty.”

Numanga said for the opposition, fragmentation was probably its greatest weakness.

“United and the Democratic Party had four years to find common ground. By contesting separately, they divided the alternative vote in constituencies where cooperation may have produced different outcomes.”

He said the biggest story is the eight independents.

“They can no longer be viewed as peripheral to the political system,” said Numanga. “Their support could be important not only for forming a comfortable governing majority, but also for major legislation and constitutional reform.”

Final results, petitions
“The coming days will therefore be about final results, possible petitions and, importantly, discussions between the major parties and Independents about the shape and priorities of the next government.”

According to the preliminary count, about 8000 of the 11,000 registered voters cast their votes either in advance or on election day.

Chief Electoral Officer Taggy Tangimetua earlier stated that they had set tentative dates for the final count, which would depend on the Electoral Office receiving all the remaining postal votes and completing the verification process for special votes.

The count to finalise the August 12 election results is expected to take place over two afternoons, scheduled for either Thursday and Friday, Friday and Monday, or Monday and Tuesday (local time).

Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.

Cook Islands’ Democratic Party leader Tina Pupuke-Browne has pledged an “honest campaign review” after preliminary results showed the party losing all its seats.

Pupuke-Browne said the party will learn from its dismal 2026 general election performance, but added that it is “premature” to declare their final standing while official counts remain pending.

According to preliminary results released last week, the Democratic Party — which governed the country before the Cook Islands Party was voted into power in 2010 — failed to win a single seat.

• READ MORE: Mangaia trio backs CIP, bringing ‘supermajority’ within reach
• Other Cook Islands elections reports

However, two of its candidates remain locked in close contests, with a significant number of declaration votes yet to be counted.

In Rakahanga, incumbent and party leader Pupuke-Browne trails the Cook Islands Party’s Levi Teinaki by just three votes, with 14 declaration votes remaining.

In Matavera, incumbent MP and party deputy leader Vaitoti Tupa trails the Cook Islands United Party’s Taneao Ngamata by 18 votes, with 60 declaration votes left to verify.

“The preliminary results are deeply disappointing for the Democratic Party, and we must accept that the voters have spoken,” Pupuke-Browne told Cook Islands News.

“We will take responsibility, listen carefully, and conduct an honest review of our campaign and the party’s direction.”

Two disappointing campaigns
Asked whether she would reconsider her position as party leader after two disappointing election campaigns, Pupuke-Browne emphasised that the electoral process was not yet complete.

“Pukapuka is showing a closely fought seat,” she said.

“In Rakahanga, declaration votes remain to be finalised, as they do in several other constituencies. Any election petitions must also be heard and determined by the Court.”

“Until then, it would be premature to declare the party’s final position or any individual candidate’s position.”

She said once the process is complete, the party would meet and make “considered decisions about its leadership and future”.

“Those decisions should be made collectively and calmly, not in reaction to preliminary results.”

Pupuke-Browne thanked the party candidates, supporters and volunteers for their support.

“This is not the outcome we hoped for, but democracy requires us to respect the will of the people.

“We will learn from this result, rebuild and continue serving the Cook Islands.”

Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.

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.

The Cook Islands goes to the polls this week for its four-yearly general election.

Like all countries in the region, the Cooks has had its fair share of challenges due to global shocks in recent years, and there’s a sense that voters are looking for some stability, particularly around the cost of living

The prime minister and leader of the Cook Islands Party, Mark Brown is in no doubt about the priority for people in this election.

• READ MORE: Two-way battle — no clear majority as Cook Islands prepares for polls
• Other Cook Islands elections reports

He said for his party it is about consolidating the country’s growth and economic recovery since reopening borders four years ago when the Cooks emerged the covid pandemic.

“Now, that strong economic growth has allowed us to catch up, if you like, with pay increases that were halted or paused during the covid period,” he said.

“It’s allowed us to increase our welfare payments, to old age pensions, child benefit, and these are all things that we’re gearing up to try and meet the challenges of cost of living.”

Water charges
Water utility charges are another issue in this campaign.

The leader of the Cook Islands Democratic Party, who is also the Leader of the Opposition, Tina Browne, said if elected, her party would push to remove water use tariffs for residential and agricultural users on Rarotonga.

“And we will review the present structure of [water utility] To Tatou Vai,” she said.

“Of course, water infrastructure costs money. The real question is how that cost should fairly be met. I do not accept that another household bill should automatically be the first answer.”

For the United Party, “free water for all” is one of its main campaign points.

Leader Teariki Heather said his party would remove residential water tariffs should they form government.

“Absolutely, we will revoke whatever legislation is against that for the water tariffs,” he told RNZ Pacific.

His party’s position is “water is a basic human right” and families shouldn’t receive more bills during a cost-of-living crisis.

“On top of electricity, on top of this water tariff, the increase in cost in that, government should absorb that.

“Budget of the government is really looking at priority areas, especially this one.

“I believe that the government can assist and accommodate for the people of the Cook Islands at this particular time.”

But Mark Brown pointed out infrastructure maintenance was not free.

“The question is not whether water should be free. The question is actually who’s going to pay for it, because we’ve upgraded all of our water intakes, 10 of them, around the island in the hills of Rarotonga, and they all need to be maintained,” he said.

Brown said households received 38,000 litres free of charge per month, while churches, schools and agricultural spaces have no limit restrictions. Charges are currently only being imposed on commercial users.

“Most of these are, of course, in the tourism industry with hotels, Airbnbs, resorts, that sort of thing, and it’s only fair that they contribute to the upkeep and maintenance of our water systems.”

Progressive Party leader Te Tuhi Kelly said the free allocation for households is more than enough.

“If you can’t manage that 38,000 litres, there’s something quite wrong there because that’s a lot of water — a huge amount of water, but if you go over that, I’m sorry, but you should be paying for that.”

But he also thinks there are other ways government could cover water infrastructure costs.

“The water that we get from God is free; we don’t pay for that. But God never put in place a delivery system for us. We have to do that ourselves. Someone has to pay for that.

“Now, while I’m for user pays, I think there is probably a number of other options that we can look at.”

Seabed minerals
Another issue Cook Islanders are thinking about is whether the country should continue the current government’s direction towards more seabed mining activity.

Teariki Heather said he would push for a referendum on seabed mining if the United Party came to power.

While he acknowledged that exploration activities underway were potentially encouraging for generating long-term wealth in the country, he said it was so critical to protect the future health of the country, that the question of whether to progress seabed mining should be put to the people.

“But the one that we will do is put a referendum to ask the people of this country, whether this yes or no, so it’s up to the people of this country [to] actually decide. That’s number one that [we] will put out [to] a referendum when elected to be government.”

Tina Browne agreed that a referendum is the way to go, even if science proves there would be no negative environmental impact.

“Extraction should only be considered if the evidence demonstrates that it can be done safely and in the genuine interests of the Cook Islands people. Before extraction occurs, our policy is that Cook Islanders should have the final say through a referendum.”

But Te Tuhi Kelly said there was simply not enough scientific information to make a call yet.

“We’re neither for, nor we’re against it.

“The issue for us as a party is that the science doesn’t provide me with any enthusiasm. It’s young. The data is not there.”

Mark Brown reiterated that the Cook Islands was only conducting exploration and research currently.

“It’s important that we gain the knowledge and understanding of our deep sea before we make any decisions on whether we move to extraction or the harvesting of minerals.”

When asked if the Cook Islands Party would consider a referendum, Brown said the science needed to be complete first.

“Well, it’s a serious question, and again, letting people decide — first we must be able to provide the facts.

“We need to know the facts before we can make a decision, and that’s why it’s important that we conduct the exploration and research phase now thoroughly, in a way that ensures that, when we do ask questions of our people, our people are fully informed.”

Foreign affairs
The country’s relationship with New Zealand is a lingering issue too, at least in the eyes of the big parties.

This relationship came under strain after Wellington suspended some funding as a consequence of a deal that Brown’s government forged with China early last year.

Funding has been recently restored, and both governments say the relationship is back on track.

But Teariki Heather suggests there is a lot of work still to do to restore the healthy relationship

“New Zealand is a special one for us, and what we have discussed for this one, soon as becoming government, soon as forming the government, we make a trip, to show New Zealand how deep this relationship is.”

Tina Browne also believes the relationship is all-important and needs nurturing.

“The Cook Islands should have constructive relationships with New Zealand, China, Australia, the United States, and our Pacific neighbours. We do not strengthen ourselves by unnecessarily choosing between friends.”

But Mark Brown sees the situation as proof that the Cook Islands is able to “stand on their own two feet”.

“We have diplomatic relations with over 70 countries around the world, including some of the biggest economies around the world. We have a foreign policy that is an independent foreign policy for the benefit of Cook Islanders.

“The fact that we can negotiate with large international countries, and the fact that we signed off on our new security and defence agreement with New Zealand on our own standing, and our own footing, on our terms, is something that people now respect for the Cook Islands and the government, the stand that we’ve taken.”

Issues can be talked about all day, but it doesn’t mean much without connecting to voters.

All of the parties realise that having a good ground game, engaging with people in their community, is the key to success.

Te Tuhi Kelly said this is particularly the case with young people

“There are a lot of kids [who] don’t want to go to those political rallies because they find them boring. So what do you do if you want to get them into politics? You take politics to them.

“And what you do is you use a medium that they’ve grown up with, and it’s a thing called social media.”

The polls open at 8am Wednesday, 12 August, local time (Thursday, 13 August, New Zealand time).

The preliminary count for each constituency is expected to be released throughout the same night.

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.

Independent candidates are replacing traditional political parties in the Cook Islands, argues a veteran former politician — a claim rejected by a party leader who dismisses independents as a significant election threat.

Former Cook Islands Parliament speaker, deputy prime minister and cabinet minister Norman George weighs in on the political landscape as the nation prepares to head to the voting booths on Wednesday, 12 August.

According to George, who served as an MP for almost three decades, political parties appear to have lost their “attraction, drawcard and magic touch”.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands elections reports

“Normally one refers to the dying out of certain plants or animals as extinction; one can extend that to organisations surrounding social human interactions. Plants and animals disappear when humans eat them out of existence,” George said.

“Political parties are not eaten up, but ignored, written off or completely abandoned.

“In its place come individuals on their own, independent candidates! The power of one!”

In this year’s general election, independent candidates represent about a fifth of the 63 total candidates competing for 24 seats in Parliament.

One already retained
One independent, Agnes Armstrong, has already retained her Ivirua seat unopposed, leaving 23 seats up for contest.

The governing Cook Islands Party (CIP) fields the largest candidate slate (20), followed by the Cook Islands United Party (14) and the Democratic Party (12). The Progressive Party and the newly formed Independent-Enuamanu field two each, alongside one candidate from the new Independence Party.

Cook Islands United Party leader Teariki Heather disagrees with George.

He said the nation was too small to accommodate independent candidates.

Heather said he is feeling confident in going forward into the election, and believes independent candidates pose no threat to the Cook Islands United Party.

The Cook Islands News has contacted CIP leader and caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown and Democratic Party leader Tina Pukuke-Browne for comment.

While Pupuke-Browne had earlier ruled out any pre-coalition agreements — including with independent candidates — the CIP, which has formed successive governments with the help of independents, is counting on that “continued support” as it seeks a fifth consecutive term.

Three party banners
George, who served as an MP over two stints — from 1983 to 2004 and 2006 to 2014 — under three different political party banners, says it is now important for candidates to have powerful personalities.

“They have to be smart, intelligent, respectful and persuasive; male or female, makes no difference,” he said.

“Public speaking ability is a must; if unpolished, stand in front of the mirror over and over again, low key, high key, face adjustments, practice makes perfect.

“If you cannot handle public speaking, forget it.”

George says it is essential for candidates to create their own support teams.

“You cannot operate on your own; you will need a group around you, like a committee.

“You normally gather family and friends to make up your committee and while there could be a chair, secretary and treasurer, you will need a campaign manager. They will be your coach and chief adviser.”

Successful candidates
He said they would be the people who would accompany successful candidates to form the next government.

“Everyone has something to gain if you win; if you become a minister, then again, those people around you will become your aids and executives.

“This is how it works and there is nothing new about it.”

George said a critical tool of any political campaign was the policies.

“What you are going to do for your electorate, the services you will offer, what you will fight for, what you will build and the benefits your electors will gain if you make it into government.

“Candidates on their own cannot hide behind any political party because there will be none, there will be no place to hide.

“This is a clear advantage for election as these candidates have to declare what they will offer their electorate voters.

“It is not mission impossible and good luck to you all.”

Republished from the Cook Islands News with permission.

Cook Islanders are set to head to the polls in six weeks’ time, the King’s Representative of the Cook Islands, Sir Tom Marsters, has announced.

“As Speaker, I extend sincere appreciation to all Honourable Members for their service, deliberations and contributions throughout this term. The work of this House-debate, scrutiny, law making and representation-reflects our shared responsibility to the people of the Cook Islands.”

This story was first published on

An opposition Labour Party MP today paid tribute to the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, saying it should inspire Aotearoa New Zealand to maintain its own independence, embrace a strong regionalism, and be a “voice for peace and demilitarisation”.

But Phil Twyford, MP for Te Atatu and spokesperson on disarmament, warned that the current National-led coalition government was “rapidly going in the other direction”.

“It mimics the language of the security hawks in Washington and Canberra that China is a threat to our national interests,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other nuclear-free Pacific reports

“That is then the springboard for a foreign policy ‘reset’ under the current government to a closer strategic alignment with the United States and with what are often more broadly referred to as the ‘traditional partners’.

“For that read the Five Eyes members, but particularly the United States.”

Speaking at the opening of the week-long “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995” exhibition at the Ellen Melville Centre, Twyford referred to the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents on 10 July 2025.

“Much has been made in the years since of what a turning point this was, and how it crystallised in New Zealanders a commitment to the anti-nuclear cause,” he said.

However, he said he wanted to talk about the “bigger regional phenomenon” that shaped activism, public attitudes and official policies across the region, and what it could “teach us today about New Zealand’s place in the world”.

“I am talking about the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement.

“Activists and leaders from across the Pacific built a movement that challenged neocolonialism and colonialism, put the voices of the peoples of the Pacific front and centre, and held the nuclear powers to account for the devastating legacy of nuclear testing.”

The NFIP movement led to the creation of the Treaty of Rarotonga, the Pacific’s nuclear weapons free zone, Twyford said. It influenced governments and shaped the thinking of a generation.

However, he stressed the “storm clouds” that were gathering as indicated by former prime minister Helen Clark in her prologue to journalist and author David Robie’s new book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior just published this week.

Twyford said that with increasing great power rivalry, the rise of authoritarian leaders, and the breakdown of the multilateral system “the spectre of nuclear war has returned”.

New Zealand faced some stark choices about how it made its way in the world, kept their people and the region safe, and remained “true to the values we’ve always held dear”.

The public debate about the policy “reset” reset had focused on whether New Zealand would be part of AUKUS Pillar Two, “the arrangement to share high end war fighting technology that would sit alongside the first pillar designed to deliver Australia its nuclear submarines”.

While the New Zealand government had had little to say on AUKUS Pillar Two since the US elections, the defence engagement with the US had “escalated”.

It now included participation in groupings around supply chains, warfighting in space, interconnected naval warfare, and projects on artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities.

China’s growing assertiveness as a great power was not the main threat to New Zealand.

“The biggest threat to our security and prosperity is the possibility of war in Asia between the United States and China,” he said.

“Rising tensions could conceivably affect trade, and that would be disastrous for us. All-out war, especially if it went nuclear, would be catastrophic for the region and probably for the planet.”

Labour’s view was that security for New Zealand and the Pacific could be pursued through active engagement with the country’s partners across the Tasman and in the Pacific, and Asia — and be a voice for peace and demilitarisation.

Twyford acknowledged Dr Robie’s “seminal book” Eyes of Fire, thanking him for “a lifetime’s work of reporting important stories, exposing injustice and holding the powerful to account”.

Dr Robie spoke briefly about the book as a publishing challenge following his earlier speech at the launch on Thursday.

Other speakers at the opening of the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition included veteran activist such as Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua; Bharat Jamnadas, an organiser of the original Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) conference in Suva, Fiji, in 1975; businessman and community advocate Nikhil Naidu, previously an activist for the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG); and Dr Heather Devere, peace researcher and chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

The Te Vaerua O Te Rangi dance group also performed Cook Islands items.

The exhibition has been coordinated by the APMN in partnership with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, with curator Tharron Bloomfield and Antony Phillips; Ellen Melville Centre; and the Whānau Communty Centre and Hub.

It is also supported by Pax Christi, Quaker Peace and Service Fund, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

The exhibition recalls New Zealand’s peace squadrons, a display of activist tee-shirt “flags”, nuclear-free buttons and badges, posters, and other memorabilia. A video storytelling series about NFIP “legends” such as Hilda Halyard-Harawira and Dr Vijay Naidu is also included.

• “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-free Moana 1975-1995”, daily, 10am-4pm, Ellen Melville Centre’s Paddy Walker Room, Freyberg Place, July 13-18.

As French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls lands in New Caledonia tomorrow to pursue talks on its political future, the situation on the ground has again gained tension over the past few days.

The local political spectrum is deeply divided between the two main opposing camps, the pro-independence and those wanting New Caledonia to remain part of France.

The rift has already culminated in May 2024 with rioting resulting in 14 deaths, several hundreds injured, thousands of job losses due to the destruction, burning and looting of businesses, and a material cost of over 2 billion euros (NZ$3.7 billion).

• READ MORE: France’s top diplomat confirms ‘unfreezing’ of New Caledonia’s electoral roll back on table
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Valls hosted talks in Paris with every party represented in New Caledonia’s Congress on February 4-9.

Those talks, held in “bilateral” mode, led to his decision to travel to Nouméa and attempt to bring everyone to the same negotiating table.

It is all about finding an agreement that would allow an exit from the Nouméa Accord and to draw a fresh roadmap for New Caledonia’s political future.

However, in the face of radically different and opposing views, the challenge is huge.

The two main blocs, even though they acknowledged the Paris talks may have been helpful, still hold very clear-cut and antagonistic positions.

Each camp seems to have their own interpretation of the 1998 Nouméa Accord, which has until now defined a roadmap for further autonomy and a gradual transfer of powers.

The main bloc within the pro-independence side, Union Calédonienne (UC), which since last year de facto controls the wider FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front), has been repeatedly placing as its target a new “Kanaky Agreement” to be signed by 24 September 2025 and, from that date, a five-year “transition period” to attain full independence from France.

Within the pro-independence camp, more moderate parties, such as PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia), have distanced themselves from a UC-dominated FLNKS, and are favourable to some kind of “independence in association with France”.

On the pro-France side, the two main components, the Les Loyalistes and the Rassemblement-LR, have shown a united front. One of their main arguments is based on the fact that in 2018, 2020 and 2021, three successive referenda on self-determination have resulted in three votes, each of those producing a majority rejecting independence.

However, the third and latest poll in December 2021 was boycotted by most of the pro-independence voters.

The pro-independence parties have since challenged the 2021 poll result, even though it has been ruled by the courts as valid.

Pro-France parties are also advocating for a change in the political system to give each of New Caledonia’s three provinces more powers, a move they described as an “internal federalism” but that critics have decried, saying this amounted to a kind of apartheid.

Talks required since 2022
The bipartisan talks became necessary after the three referendums were held.

The Nouméa Accord stipulated that in the event that three consecutive referendums rejected independence, then all political stakeholders should “meet and examine the situation”.

There have been earlier attempts to bring about those talks, but some components of the pro-independence movement, notably the UC, have consistently declined.

Under a previous government, French Minister for Home Affairs and Overseas territories Gérald Darmanin, after half a dozen inconclusive trips to New Caledonia, tried to push some of the most urgent parts of the political agreement through a constitutional reform process, especially on a change to New Caledonia’s list of eligible registered voters at local elections.

This was supposed to allow citizens who have resided in New Caledonia for at least ten uninterrupted years to finally cast their votes. Until now, the electoral roll has been “frozen” since 2009 — only those residing before 1998 had the right to vote.

Pro-independence parties protested, saying this was a way of “diluting” the indigenous Kanak votes.

The protest — in the name of “Kanak existential identity” — gained momentum and on 13 May 2024 erupted into riots.

Now the sensitive electoral roll issue is back on the agenda, only it will no longer be tackled separately, but will be part of a wider and comprehensive scope of talks regarding New Caledonia’s political future.

Heavy schedule for Valls
On Thursday, Valls unveiled his programme for what is scheduled to be a six-day stay in New Caledonia from 22-26 February 2025.

During this time, he will spend a significant amount of time in the capital Nouméa, holding talks with political parties, economic stakeholders and representatives of the civil society and law and order agencies.

He will also travel to rural parts of New Caledonia.

In the capital, two solid days have been earmarked for “negotiations” at the Congress, with the aim of finding the best way to achieve a political agreement, if all parties agree to meet and talk.

On Tuesday, February 25, Valls also intends to pay homage and lay wreaths on independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur’s graves.

They were the leaders of FLNKS and (pro-France) RPCR, who eventually signed the Matignon Accords in 1998 and shook hands after half a decade of quasi civil war, during the previous civil unrest in the second half of the 1980s.

Valls was then a young member of French Prime Minister Michel Rocard (Socialist) who enabled the Matignon agreement.

On several occasions, over the past few days, Valls has stressed the grave situation New Caledonia has been facing since the riots, the “devastated” economy and the need to restore a bipartisan dialogue.

He told public broadcaster NC La Première that since the unrest started had France had provided financial support to sustain New Caledonia’s economy.

‘Fractures and deep wounds within New Caledonia’s society’
“But blood has been shed . . . there have been deaths, injuries, there are fractures and deep wounds within New Caledonia’s society,” Valls said.

“And to get out of this, dialogue is needed, to find a compromise . . . to prevent violence from coming back. I still believe those (opposing) positions are reconcilable, even though they’re quite far apart,” he said.

“I’m very much aware of the difficulties . . . but we have to find an agreement, a compromise.”

One clear indication that during his visit to New Caledonia the French minister will be walking on shaky ground came a few days ago.

When, speaking to French national daily Le Monde, he recalled the Nouméa Accord included a wide range of possible perspectives from “a shared sovereignty” to a “full sovereignty”, there was an immediate outcry from the pro-French parties, who steadfastly brandished the three recent referendums opposing independence and urging the minister to respect those “democratic” results.

“Respecting the Nouméa Accord means respecting the choice of New Caledonians”, said Les Loyalistes-Le Rassemblement-LR in a media release.

“Shared sovereignty is the current situation. It’s all in the Nouméa Accord, which itself is enshrined in the French Constitution”, Valls replied.

Over the past six months, several notions have emerged in terms of a political future for New Caledonia.

It all comes down to wording: from independence-association (Cook Islands style), to outright “independence” or “shared sovereignty” (as suggested by French Senate President Gérard Larcher during his visit in October 2024).

A former justice minister under Socialist President François Hollande, Jean-Jacques Urvoas, well-versed in New Caledonian affairs, suggested an innovative wording which, he believed, could bring about some form of consensus — the term “associated state”, could be slightly modified into “associated country” (“country” being one of the ways to describe New Caledonia, also described as a sui generis entity under French Law).

Urvoas said this would make the notion more palatable.

Pro-France meetings indoors
On Wednesday evening, in an indoor multi-purpose hall in Nouméa, an estimated 2000 sympathisers of pro-France Rassemblement and Loyalists gathered to hear and support their leaders who had come to explain what was discussed in Paris and reiterate the pro-France bloc’s position.

“We told [Valls] the ‘bilaterals’ are over. Now we want plenary discussions or nothing,” pro-France Virginie Ruffenach told the crowd.

“We will tell him: Manuel, your full sovereignty is No Pasaran! (in Spanish ‘Will not pass’, a reference to Valls’s Spanish heritage),” said Nicolas Metzdorf, who is also one of the two New Caledonian MPs in the French National Assembly, speaking to supporters brandishing blue, white and red French flags.

Metzdorf said he hoped that supporters would show up during the minister’s visit with the same flags “to remind him of three “no” votes in the three referenda.

A ban on all open-air public meetings is still in force in Nouméa and its greater area.

Double flags banned on driving licences
Adding to the current tensions, an announcement also came earlier this week regarding a court ruling on another highly sensitive issue — the flag.

The ruling came in an appeal case from the Paris Administrative Court.

It overturned a ruling made in 2023 by the former New Caledonian (pro-independence) territorial government to add the Kanak flag to the local driving licence, next to the French flag.

In its February 14 ruling, the Appeal Court stated that the Kanak flag could not be used on such official documents because “it is not the official flag” of New Caledonia.

The court once again referred to the Nouméa Accord, which said the Kanak flag, even though it was often used alongside the French flag, had not been formally endorsed as New Caledonia’s “identity symbol”.

The tribunal also urged the new government to make the necessary changes and to re-circulate the former one-flag version “without delay”.

Meanwhile, the government is bearing the cost of a fine of 100, 000 French Pacific francs (about US$875) a day, which currently totals over US$43,000 since January 1.

The “identity symbols”, as defined by the Nouméa Accord, also include a motto (the wording ‘Terre de Parole, Terre de Partage’ — Land of Words, Land of Sharing’ was chosen) and even a national anthem.

But despite several attempts since 1998, no agreement has yet been reached on a common flag.

This week, hours after the court ruling, an image is being circulated on social media declaring: “If this flags disturbs you, I’ll help you pack your suitcase” (“Si ce drapeau te dérange, je t’aide à faire tes valises”).

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

France’s top diplomat in the Pacific region says talks around the “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s highly controversial electoral roll are back on the table.

The French government intended to make a constitutional amendment that would lift restrictions prescribed under the Nouméa Accord, which disqualified around 20,000 French citizens who had not resided in the territory before 1998 from voting in the provincial elections.

The restrictions were viewed as a step to ensure indigenous Kanaks were not at risk of becoming a minority in their own country.

• ‘READ MORE: ‘France lost the plot’: Journalist David Robie on Kanaky/New Caledonia riots — David Robie
• Roch Wamytan: ‘New Caledonia is not France’
• ‘New Caledonia is France’: says French diplomat
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

However, the Paris decision by Paris to move ahead with the changes last year triggered five months of civil unrest that has cost the New Caledonian economy more than 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion).

The constitutional reforms were initially suspended in June, before the former Prime Minister Michel Barnier abandoned them.

However, this week, France’s Ambassador to the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, confirmed that the French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls is set to discuss the issue during next week’s high-level visit to Nouméa.

She said a date for the provincial elections, to be held at the end of this year, is also in the works.

Unfreezing of lists
“The provincial elections were due in December last year, and because there was discussion on the unfreezing of the electoral lists, the whole process was stopped,” Roger-Lacan said at a press briefing in Wellington.

“The discussion on the unfreezing of the electoral list for the provincial elections continues.”

She said in a normal democratic system, everyone who pays taxes has the right to vote.

“Because when you pay taxes to a government, you have the choice of the government [to whom] you give your money. [In New Caledonia] there is a discrepancy,” she said.

“This was one point of contention that led to the riots.”

She said the French constitution states that if any of its overseas territories want self-determination, “they can have it”.

Self-determination is defined by the United Nations as either independence, state association (as in the Cook Islands), or integration within an already independent country, which is the case in New Caledonia, she said.

Peaceful choice
“They can choose peacefully among those three solutions. But no riots, no insurrection.”

Roger-Lacan pointed out that there was a “strong split” within the pro-independence groups in New Caledonia.

She said there was a part of the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) who realised that “this discussion on the unfreezing of the electoral list does not make sense”.

“They agree that the unfreezing of this electoral list is the way to go. What are the criteria for the deferring of this electoral listing are a case of discussion.”

Roger-Lacan added that the provincial elections must take place before Christmas Day.

“The question is: with what type of electoral list they will take place.”

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

Out of the rubble of last year’s 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila on December 17 and the snap election due next week on January 16, a new leadership is required to reset the country’s developmental trajectory.

Persistent political turmoil has hampered the Pacific nation’s ability to deal with a compounding set of social and economic shocks over recent years, caused by climate-related and other natural disasters.

The earthquake is estimated to have conservatively caused US$244 million (VUV29 billion) in damage, and the Vanuatu government’s ability to pay for disaster response, the election, and resume public service delivery will require strong, committed and stable leadership.

• READ MORE: Pacific 2025: Vanuatu quake, Tongan and Kanaky shakeups, Trump questions set tone for coming year
• Other Vanuatu snap election reports

Prior to the devastating quake and dramatic dissolution of Parliament on November 18, economist Peter Judge from Vanuatu-based Pacific Consulting warned of an evolving economic emergency.

Vanuatu’s US$1 billion economy faced a concerning decline in government revenue from value-added tax, down 25 percent on the previous year.

This was a ripple effect from the decline in economic activity after the collapse of national airline Air Vanuatu last May, as well as the falling revenues from the troubled Citizenship by Investment Programme.

Both were plagued by lack of oversight by parliamentarians.

Struggling economy
In 2024, Vanuatu is expected to record about 1 percent economic growth, as it struggles to climb out of the red and back to pre-pandemic levels.

Conversely, Vanuatu has a much more positive, although somewhat contradictory democratic profile.

According to the Global State of Democracy Initiative, Vanuatu is one of the more democratic states in the Pacific islands region, and currently ranks as 45th in the world.

But this performance comes with a significant price. Leadership turnover is frequent, with 28 prime ministerial terms in just 44 years of statehood, 20 of those in the last 25 years — the highest frequency of change in the Melanesian region.

The impacts of disrupted leadership and political instability are highly visible. Government decision-making and service delivery is grindingly slow.

In Vanuatu’s Parliament, the legislative process is frequently deferred due to regular motions of no confidence, with several critical bills still awaiting MPs’ attention.

Last October, for example, the Vanuatu government proposed a 2025 budget 10 percent smaller than 2024’s, due to reduced economic activity and declining government revenue.

Sudden dissolution
Parliament was unable to approve this year’s budget due to its sudden dissolution on November 18, only two-and-a-half years into a four-year political term.

This is the second consecutive presidential dissolution of Parliament, the previous one in 2022 also occurring barely two-and-a-half years into its term.

The Bill for the appropriation of the 2025 budget now awaits the formation of the next legislature for approval. In the meantime, earthquake recovery and election management costs accumulate under a caretaker government.

With deepening economic hardship and industries facing slow economic growth across multiple sectors, voters are looking for leadership that can stabilise the compounding cost of living pressures.

The new government will need to urgently tackle overdue, unresolved issues pertaining to reliable inter-island transport and air connectivity, outstanding teacher salaries and greater opportunities for the nation’s restive youth.

The youth unemployment rate is at 10.7 percent and rising.

Democracy with political stability is the holy grail for Vanuatu. But attaining this legendary and supposedly miraculous prize comes with costs attached.

Rules come into force
In response to civic and youth activism in late 2023 calling for political stability and transparency, the last Parliament approved a national referendum to make political affiliation more accountable and end party hopping.The rules come into force in the next parliamentary term for the first time.

The referendum passed successfully on May 29, 2024, but cost US$2.9 million. The 2022 snap election required US$1.4 million and the 2025 poll is expected to require another US$1.6 million.

While revenue from candidature fees of US$250,000 does cover part of these costs, each legislature transition also weighs on the public purse.

The current crop of outgoing 52 parliamentarians were paid out US$1.62 million in gratuities and benefits — around US$31,000 per MP — even though most did not see out their full terms.

Vanuatu’s average annual household income in 2020 was US$9000.

Whatever the outcome of the 2025 snap election, the incoming government will need to refocus attention on stabilising the trajectory of Vanuatu’s economy and development.

The next legislature — the 14th — will need to commit to stability in the interests of Vanuatu’s people and the nation’s development.

Budget, earthquake recovery priorities
The most immediate priorities for a new government should be the passage of the 2025 national budget and the implementation of an earthquake recovery and reconstruction plan.

In the 45 years since throwing off the British and French colonial yoke, citizens have enthusiastically done their duty at elections in the expectation of a national leadership that will take Vanuatu forward.

Now their faith appears to be waning, after the 2022 poll saw voter turnout — a key indicator of the health of a democracy — dropped below 50 percent for the first time since independence.

This election therefore needs to see a return on the considerable investment made in Vanuatu’s democratic processes, both in terms of financial cost to successive governments and donors, and more to the point, a political dividend for voters.

Anna Naupa is a ni-Vanuatu scholar and currently a PhD student at the Australian National University. Republished from BenarNews with permission.

The Tongan and Fijian prime ministers are among the first Pacific Island leaders to congratulate US President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump, 78, returned to the White House on Wednesday by securing more than the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, according to Edison Research projections.

Tonga’s Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni, who is also the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum said on X, formerly Twitter, that he is looking forward to advancing Tonga-US bilateral relationship and the Pacific interests and initiatives.

• READ MORE: US votes as Gaza burns – Trump ‘declares victory’ in election
• US presidential election holds high stakes for Pacific relations
• How the US election may affect Pacific Island nations
• Donald Trump ‘unfit to lead’ – vote for Harris, warns New York Times
• Other US presidential elections reports

Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka said it was his sincere hope and prayer that Trump’s return to the White House “will be marked by the delivery of peace, unity, progress, and prosperity for all Americans, and the community of nations”.

Rabuka also said Fiji was looking forward to deepening bilateral ties with America as well as furthering shared aspirations including, promoting peace and economic prosperity in the Pacific and beyond.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minsiter James Marape today congratulated Trump, saying: “We look forward to reinforcing the longstanding partnership between our nations, grounded in shared values and mutual respect.”

Marape also expressed gratitude for outgoing President Joe Biden’s service and Kamala Harris’s “spirited challenge” for the presidency.

Similar policies
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said both the Democrats and Republics had similar policies on the Indo-Pacific and he did not expect much change.

“The US has reengaged with the Pacific in terms of diplomatic representation and increased people-to-people engagements,” Brown was quoted as saying by Cook Islands News.

“From a bipartisan perspective I don’t see any drastic changes in US policy on what they have termed as the Indo-Pacific strategy.

“Both Dems and Reps have similar policies on the Indo-Pacific. I don’t expect much change.”

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

The leading Cook Islands environmental lobby group says that if Donald Trump wins the United States elections — and he seemed to be on target to succeed as results were rolling in tonight — he will push back on climate change negotiations made since he was last in office.

As voters in the US cast their votes on who would be the next president, Trump or US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the question for most Pacific Islands countries is what this will mean for them?

“If Trump wins, it will push back on any progress that has been made in the climate change negotiations since he was last in office,” said Te Ipukarea Society’s Kelvin Passfield.

• READ MORE:  US presidential election holds high stakes for Pacific relations
• How the US election may affect Pacific Island nations
• Donald Trump ‘unfit to lead’ – vote for Harris, warns New York Times
• Other US presidential elections reports
• View the complete CNMI results

“It won’t be good for the Pacific Islands in terms of US support for climate change. We have not heard too much on Kamala Harris’s climate policy, but she would have to be better than Trump.”

The current President Joe Biden and his administration made some efforts to connect with Pacific leaders.

Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies senior lecturer Dr Anna Powles said a potential win for Harris could be the fulfilment of the many “promises” made to the Pacific for climate financing, uplifting economies of the Pacific and bolstering defence security.

Dr Powles said Pacific leaders want Harris to deliver on the Pacific Partnership Strategy, the outcomes of the two Pacific Islands-US summits in 2022 and 2023, and the many diplomatic visits undertaken during President Biden’s presidency.

Diplomatic relationships
The Biden administration recognised Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign and independent states and established diplomatic relationships with them.

The Biden-Harris government had pledged to boost funding to the Green Climate Fund by US$3 billion at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.

Harris has said in the past that climate change is an existential threat and has also promised to “tackle the climate crisis with bold action, build a clean energy economy, advance environmental justice, and increase resilience to climate disasters”.

Dr Powles said that delivery needed to be the focus.

She said the US Elections would no doubt have an impact on small island nations facing climate change and intensified geopolitics.

Dr Powles said it came as “no surprise” that countries such as New Zealand and Australia had increasingly aligned with the US, as the Biden administration had been leveraging strategic partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan since 2018.

She said a return to Trump’s leadership could derail ongoing efforts to build security architecture in the Pacific.

Pull back from Pacific
There are also views that Trump would pull back from the Pacific and focus on internal matters, directly impacting his nation.

For Trump, there is no mention of the climate crisis in his platform or Agenda47.

This is in line with the former president’s past actions, such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2019, citing “unfair economic burdens” placed on American workers and businesses.

Trump has maintained his position that the climate crisis is “one of the great scams of all time”.

Republished with permission from the Cook Islands News and RNZ Pacific.

As the US election unfolds, American territories such as the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, and Guam, along with the broader Pacific region, will be watching the developments.

As the question hangs in the balance of whether the White House remains blue with Kamala Harris or turns red under Donald Trump, academics, New Zealand’s US ambassador, and Guam’s Congressman have weighed in on what the election means for the Pacific.

Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies senior lecturer Dr Anna Powles said it would no doubt have an impact on small island nations facing climate change and intensified geopolitics, including the rapid expansion of military presence on its territory Guam, following the launch of an interballistic missile by China.

• READ MORE: Voiceless Guam feels ‘injustice’ of US presidential non-vote
• Other US elections reports

Pacific leaders lament the very real security threat of climate-induced natural disasters has been overshadowed by the tug-of-war between China and the US in what academics say is “control and influence” for the contested region.

Dr Powles said it came as “no surprise” that countries such as New Zealand and Australia had increasingly aligned with the US, as the Biden administration had been leveraging strategic partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan since 2018.

Despite China being New Zealand’s largest trading partner, New Zealand is in the US camp and must pay attention, she said.

“We are not seeing enough in the public domain or discussion by government with the New Zealand public about what this means for New Zealand going forward.”

Pacific leaders welcome US engagement but are concerned about geopolitical rivalry.

Earlier this month, Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Baron Waqa attended the South Pacific Defence Ministers meeting in Auckland.

He said it was important that “peace and stability in the region” was “prioritised”.

Referencing the arms race between China and the US, he said, “The geopolitics occurring in our region is not welcomed by any of us in the Pacific Islands Forum.”

While a Pacific Zone of Peace has been a talking point by Fiji and the PIF leadership to reinforce the region’s “nuclear-free stance”, the US is working with Australia on obtaining nuclear-submarines through the AUKUS security pact.

Dr Powles said the potential for increased tensions “could happen under either president in areas such as Taiwan, East China Sea — irrespective of who is in Washington”.

South Pacific defence ministers told RNZ Pacific the best way to respond to threats of conflict and the potential threat of a nuclear attack in the region is to focus on defence and building stronger ties with its allies.

New Zealand’s Defence Minister said NZ was “very good friends with the United States”, with that friendship looking more friendly under the Biden Administration. But will this strengthening of ties and partnerships continue if Trump becomes President?

US President Joe Biden, center, stands for a group photo with Pacific Islands Forum leaders following the Pacific Islands Forum Summit, at the South Portico of the White House in Washington on September 25, 2023. Photo: Jim Watson

US wants a slice of Pacific
Regardless of who is elected, US Ambassador to New Zealand Tom Udall said history showed the past three presidents “have pushed to re-engage with the Pacific”.

While both Trump and Harris may differ on critical issues for the Pacific such as the climate crisis and multilateralism, both see China as the primary external threat to US interests.

The US has made a concerted effort to step up its engagement with the Pacific in light of Chinese interest, including by reopening its embassies in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Tonga.

On 12 July 2022, the Biden administration showed just how keen it was to have a seat at the table by US Vice-President Kamala Harris dialing in to the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Fiji at the invitation of the then chair former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama. The US was the only PIF “dialogue partner” allowed to speak at this Forum.

However, most of the promises made to the Pacific have been “forward-looking” and leaders have told RNZ Pacific they want to see less talk and more real action.

Defence diplomacy has been booming since the 2022 Solomon Islands-China security deal. It tripled the amount of money requested from Congress for economic development and ocean resilience — up to US$60 million a year for 10 years — as well as a return of Peace Corps volunteers to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu.

Health security was another critical area highlighted in 2024 the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Declaration.

The Democratic Party’s commitment to the World Health Organisation (WHO) bodes well, in contrast to the previous Trump administration’s withdrawal from the WHO during the covid-19 pandemic.

It continued a long-running programme called ‘The Academy for Women Entrepreneurs’ which gives enterprising women from more than 100 countries with the knowledge, networks and access they need to launch and scale successful businesses.

Guam’s take
Known as the tip of the spear for the United States, Guam is the first strike community under constant threat of a nuclear missile attack.

In September, China launched an intercontinental ballistic test missile in the Pacific for first time in 44 years, landing near French Polynesian waters.

It was seen as a signal of China’s missile capabilities which had the US and South Pacific Defence Ministers on edge and deeply “concerned”.

China’s Defence Ministry said in a statement the launch was part of routine training by the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force, which oversees conventional and nuclear missile operations and was not aimed at any country or target.

The US has invested billions to build a 360-degree missile defence system on Guam with plans for missile tests twice a year over the next decade, as it looks to bolster its weaponry in competition with China.

Despite the arms race and increased military presence and weaponry on Guam, China is known to have fewer missiles than the US.

However, Guamanians are among the four million disenfranchised Americans living in US territories whose vote does not count due to an anomaly in US law.

“While territorial delegates can introduce bills and advocate for their territory in the US Congress, they have no voice on the floor. While Guam is exempted from paying the US federal income tax, many argue that such a waiver does not make up for what the tiny island brings to the table,” according to a BenarNews report.

US Congressman for Guam James Moylan has spent his time making friends and “educating and informing” other states about Guam’s existence in hopes to get increased funding and support for legislative bills.

Moylan said he would prefer a Trump presidency but noted he has “proved he can also work with Democrats”.

Under Trump, Moylan said Guam would have “stronger security”, raising his concerns over the need to stop Chinese fishing boats from coming onto the island.

Moylan also defended the military expansion: “We are not the aggressor. If we put our guard down, we need to be able to show we can maintain our land.”

Moylan defended the US military expansion, which his predecessor, former US Congressman Robert Underwood, was concerned about, saying the rate of expansion had not been seen since World War II.

“We are the closest there is to the Indo-Pacific threat,” Moylan said.

“We need to make sure our pathways, waterways and economy is growing, and we have a strong defence against our aggressors.”

“All likeminded democracies are concerned about the current leadership of China. We are working together…to work on security issues and prosperity issues,” US Ambassador to New Zealand Tom Udall said.

When asked about the military capabilities of the US and Guam, Moylan said: “We are not going to war; we are prepared to protect the homeland.”

Moylan said that discussions for compensation involving nuclear radiation survivors in Guam would happen regardless of who was elected.

The 23-year battle has been spearheaded by atomic veteran Robert Celestial, who is advocating for recognition for Chamorro and Guamanians under the RECA Act.

Celestial said that the Biden administration had thrown their support behind them, but progress was being stalled in Congress, which is predominantly controlled by the Republican party.

But Moylan insisted that the fight for compensation was not over. He said that discussions would continue after the election irrespective of who was in power.

“It’s been tabled. It’s happening. I had a discussion with Speaker Mike Johnson. We are working to pass this through,” he said.

If Trump wins
Dr Powles said a return to Trump’s leadership could derail ongoing efforts to build security architecture in the Pacific.

There are also views Trump would pull back from the Pacific and focus on internal matters, directly impacting his nation.

For Trump, there is no mention of the climate crisis in his platform or Agenda47.

This is in line with the former president’s past actions, such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2019, citing “unfair economic burdens” placed on American workers and businesses.

Trump has maintained his position that the climate crisis is “one of the great scams of all time”.

The America First agenda is clear, with “countering China” at the top of the list. Further, “strengthening alliances,” Trump’s version of multilateralism, reads as what allies can do for the US rather than the other way around.

“There are concerns for Donald Trump’s admiration for more dictatorial leaders in North Korea, Russia, China and what that could mean in a time of crisis,” Dr Powles said.

A Trump administration could mean uncertainty for the Pacific, she added.

While Trump was president in 2017, he warned North Korea “not to mess” with the United States.

“North Korea [is] best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met by fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

North Korea responded deriding his warning as a “load of nonsense”.

Although there is growing concern among academics and some Pacific leaders that Trump would bring “fire and fury” to the Indo-Pacific if re-elected, the former president seemed to turn cold at the thought of conflict.

In 2023, Trump remarked that “Guam isn’t America” in response to warning that the US territory could be vulnerable to a North Korean nuclear strike — a move which seemed to distance the US from conflict.

If Harris wins
Dr Powles said that if Harris wins, it was important to move past “announcements” and follow-through on all pledges.

A potential win for Harris could be the fulfilment of the many “promises” made to the Pacific for climate financing, uplifting economies of the Pacific and bolstering defence security, she said.

Pacific leaders want Harris to deliver on the Pacific Partnership Strategy, the outcomes of the two Pacific Islands-US summits in 2022 and 2023, and the many diplomatic visits undertaken during President Biden’s presidency.

The Biden administration recognised Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign and independent states and established diplomatic relationships with them.

Harris has pledged to boost funding to the Green Climate Fund by US$3 billion. She also promised to “tackle the climate crisis with bold action, build a clean energy economy, advance environmental justice, and increase resilience to climate disasters”.

Dr Powles said that delivery needed to be the focus.

“What we need to be focused on is delivery [and that] Pacific Island partners are engaged from the very beginning — from the outset to any programme right through to the final phase of it.”

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

France has been criticised for the “alarming” death toll in New Caledonia during recent protests and its “cold shower” approach to decolonisation by experts of the UN Human Rights Committee.

The UN committee met this week in Geneva for France’s five-yearly human rights review with a focus on its Pacific territory, after peaceful protests over electoral changes turned violent leaving 13 people dead since May.

French delegates at the hearing defended the country’s actions and rejected the jurisdiction of the UN decolonisation process, saying the country “no longer has any international obligations”.

• READ MORE: PM defends Fiji’s UN ‘ambush’ vote – challenged by human rights advocate
• Rabuka’s message to free Kanaky movement: ‘Don’t slap the hand that feeds you’
• ‘We’ll be talking about the future of negotiations’, says Rabuka on New Caledonia mission
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports
• Other CHOGM reports

A delayed fact-finding mission of Pacific Islands Forum leaders is due to arrive in New Caledonia this weekend to assess the situation on behalf of the region’s peak regional inter-governmental body.

Almost 7000 security personnel with armoured vehicles have been deployed from France to New Caledonia to quell further unrest.

“The means used and the intensity of their response and the gravity of the violence reported, as well as the amount of dead and wounded, are particularly alarming,” said committee member Jose Santo Pais, assistant Prosecutor-General of the Portuguese Constitutional Court.

“There have been numerous allegations regarding an excessive use of force and that would have led to numerous deaths among the Kanak people and law enforcement,” the committee’s vice-chair said on Wednesday.

Months of protests
Violence erupted after months of protests over a unilateral attempt by President Emmanuel Macron to “unfreeze” the territory’s electoral roll. Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their voting power and any chance of success at another independence referendum.

Eleven Kanaks and two French police have died. The committee heard 169 people were wounded and 2658 arrested in the past five months.

New Caledonia’s economy is in ruins with hundreds of businesses destroyed, tens-of-thousands left jobless and the local government seeking 4 billion euros (US$4.33 billion) in recovery funds from France.

France’s reputation has been left battered as an out-of-touch colonial power since the deadly violence erupted.

Santos Pais questioned France’s commitment to the UN Declaration on Indigenous People and the “sufficient dialogue” required under the Nouméa Accord, a peace agreement signed in 1998 to politically empower Kanak people, that enabled the decolonisation process.

“It would seem that current violence in the territory is linked to the lack of progress in decolonisation,” said Santos Pais.

Last week, the new French Prime Minister announced controversial electoral changes that sparked the protests had been abandoned. Local elections, due to be held this year, will now take place at the end of 2025.

Pacific mission
Tomorrow, Tonga’s prime minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni will lead a Pacific “observational” mission to New Caledonia of fellow leaders from Cook Islands, Fiji and Solomon Islands Minister for Foreign Affairs, together known as the “Troika-Plus”.

The PIF leaders’ three-day visit to the capital Nouméa will see them meet with local political parties, youth and community groups, private sector and public service providers.

“Our thoughts have always been with the people of New Caledonia since the unrest earlier this year, and we continue to offer our support,” Sovaleni said in a statement on Friday.

The UN committee is a treaty body composed of 18 experts that regularly reviews compliance by 173 member states with their human rights obligations and is separate from the Human Rights Council, a political body composed of states.

Serbian committee member Tijana Surlan asked France for an update on investigations into injuries and fatalities “related to alleged excessive use of force” in New Caledonia. She asked if police firearms use would be reviewed “to strike a better balance with the principles of absolute necessity and strict proportionality.”

France’s delegation responded saying it was “committed to renewing dialogue” in New Caledonia and to striking a balance between the right to demonstrate and protecting people and property with the “principle of proportionality.”

Alleged intimidation by French authorities of at least five journalists covering the unrest in New Caledonia was highlighted by committee member Kobauyah Tchamdja Kapatcha from Togo. France responded saying it guarantees freedom of the press.

France rejects ‘obligations’
The French delegation led by Ambassador for Human Rights Isabelle Rome added it “no longer administers a non-self-governing territory.”

France “no longer has any international obligations in this regard linked to its membership in the United Nations”, she told the committee on Thursday.

New Caledonia voted by modest majorities to remain part of France in referendums held in 2018 and 2020 under a UN-mandated decolonisation process. Three referendums were part of the Nouméa Accord to increase Kanaks’ political power following deadly violence in the 1980s.

A contentious final referendum in 2021 was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing with the status quo. Supporters of independence rejected its legitimacy due to a very low turnout — it was boycotted by Kanak political parties — and because it was held during a serious phase of the covid-19 pandemic, which restricted campaigning.

“France, through the referendum of September [2021], has therefore completed the process of decolonisation of its former colonies,” ambassador Rome said. She added that New Caledonia was one of the most advanced examples of the French government recognising indigenous rights, with a shared governance framework.

Another of its Pacific territories — French Polynesia — was re-inscribed on the UN decolonisation list in 2013 but France refuses to recognise its jurisdiction.

No change in policy
After a decade, France began attending General Assembly Decolonisation Committee meetings in 2023 to “promote dialogue” and that it was not a “change in [policy] direction”, Rome said.

“There is no process between the French state and the Polynesian territory that reserves a role for the United Nations,” she added.

Santos Pais responded saying, “what a cold shower”.

“The General Assembly will certainly have a completely different view from the one that was presented to us,” he said.

Earlier this month pro-independence French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson told the UN Decolonisation Committee’s annual meeting in New York that “after a decade of silence” France must be “guided” to participate in “dialogue.”

The Human Rights Committee is due to meet again next month to adopt its findings on France.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, says he will “apologise” to fellow Melanesian leaders later this month after failing to secure agreement from Indonesia to visit its restive West Papua province.

At last year’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meeting in Cook Islands, the Melanesian Spearhead Group appointed Rabuka and PNG Prime Minister James Marape as the region’s “special envoys” on West Papua.

Several Pacific officials and advocacy groups have expressed anguish over alleged human rights abuses committed by Indonesian forces in West Papua, where an indigenous pro-independence struggle has simmered for decades.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

Rabuka and Marape have been trying to organise a visit to West Papua for more than nine months now.

But in an exclusive interview with the ABC’s Pacific Beat, Rabuka said conversations on the trip were still “ongoing” and blamed Indonesia’s presidential elections in February for the delay.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t go . . .  Indonesia was going through elections. In two months’ time, they will have a new substantive president in place in the palace. Hopefully we can still move forward with that,” he said.

“But in the meantime, James Marape and I will have to apologise to our Melanesian counterparts on the side of the Forum Island leaders meeting in Tonga, and say we have not been able to go on that mission.”

Pacific pressing for independent visit
Pacific nations have been pressing Indonesia to allow representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct an independent visit to Papua.

A UN Human Rights committee report released in May found there were “systematic reports” of both torture and extrajudicial killings of indigenous Papuans in the province.

But Indonesia usually rejects any criticism of its human rights record in West Papua, saying events in the province are a purely internal affair.

West Papua Resistance Leader, Victor Weimo: I must thank the colonialists for continuously teaching us to aspire to true humanity by means of rebellion. pic.twitter.com/h9n4rN9yyN

— Sina Brown-Davis سينا (@uriohau) December 1, 2022

Rabuka said he was “still committed” to the visit and would like to make the trip after incoming Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto takes power in October.

The Fiji prime minister made the comments ahead of a 10-day trip to China, with Rabuka saying he would travel to a number of Chinese provinces to see how the emerging great power had pulled millions of people out of poverty.

He praised Beijing’s development record, but also indicated Fiji would not turn to China for loans or budget support.

“As we take our governments and peoples forward, the people themselves must understand that we cannot borrow to become embroiled in debt servicing later on,” he said.

“People must understand that we can only live within our means, and our means are determined by our own productivity, our own GDP.”

Rabuka is expected to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing towards the end of his trip, at the beginning of next week.

Delegation to visit New Caledonia
After his trip to China, the prime minister will take part in a high level Pacific delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia, which was rocked by widespread rioting and violence earlier this year.

While several Pacific nations have been pressing France to make fresh commitments towards decolonisation in the wake of a contentious final vote on independence back in 2021, Rabuka said the Pacific wanted to help different political groups within the territory to find common ground.

“We will just have to convince the leaders, the local group leaders that rebuilding is very difficult after a spate of violent activities and events,” he said.

Rabuka gave strong backing to a plan to overhaul Pacific policing which Australia has been pushing hard ahead of the PIF leaders meeting in Tonga at the end of this month.

Senior Solomon Islands official Collin Beck took to social media last week to publicly criticise the initiative, suggesting that its backers were trying to “steamroll” any opposition at Pacific regional meetings.

Rabuka said the social media post was “unfortunate” and suggested that Solomon Islands or other Pacific nations could simply opt out of the initiative if they didn’t approve of it.

“When it comes to sovereignty, it is a sovereign state that makes the decision,” he said.

Republished with permission from ABC Pacific Beat.

ADDRESS: By Professor Vijay Naidu

I have been given the honour of launching the 30th anniversary edition of the Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) at this highly significant gathering of media professionals and scholars from the Asia Pacific region.

I join our chief quests and others to commend and congratulate Dr Shailendra Singh, the head of USP Journalism, and his team for the organisation of the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference.

This evening, we are also gathered to celebrate the 30th birthday of Pacific Journalism Review/Te Koakoa.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

At the outset, I would like to warmly congratulate and thank PJR designer Del Abcede for the cover design of 30th anniversary issue as well as the striking photoessay she has done with David Robie.

Hearty congratulations too to founding editor Dr David Robie and current editor Dr Philip Cass for compiling the edition.

The publicity blurb about the launch states:

“USP Journalism is proud to celebrate this milestone with a journal that has been a beacon of media excellence and a crucial partner in fostering journalistic integrity in the Pacific.”

This is a most apt description of the journal, and what it has fostered over three decades.

Dr Lee Duffield and others have written comprehensively on the editorials and articles covered by the Pacific Journalism Review.

I will just list some of the diverse subject matter covered over the past 10 years:

• PJR edition celebrating the journal’s existence for 20 years with the coverage of political journalism in the Asia Pacific — a book edition (2015);
• Documentary Practice in the South Pacific (2015);
• Endangered Journalists (2016);
• Journalism Education in the Pacific (2016);
• Climate Change in Asia-Pacific (2017);
• Journalism Education in Asia-Pacific (2017);
• Disasters, Cyclones and Communication (2018);
• Journalism Under Duress (2018);
• Terrorism Dilemmas and Democracy (2019);
• Media Freedom in Melanesia (2020);
• Climate Crisis and Corona Virus: Rethinking the social world (2020);
• Pacific Crises: Covid, Climate Emergency and West Papua (2021);
• Media Change, Adaptation and Culture (2022);
• Governance, Disinformation and Training (2023); and
• Gaza, genocide and media — PJR 30 years on, another special double edition (2024)

The editorial in the 30th anniversary double edition manifests this focus — “Will journalism survive?”, by David Robie

Unfolding genocide
Mainstream media, except for Al Jazeera, have collectively failed to provide honest accounts of the unfolding genocide in Gaza, as well as settler violence, and killings in the West Bank. International media stand condemned for its complicity in the gross human rights violations in Palestine.

The media have been caught out by the scores of reports directly sent from Gaza of the bombings, maiming and murder of mainly women, children and babies, and the turning into rubble of the world’s largest open-air prison.

The widespread protests the world over by ordinary citizens and university students clearly show that the media is not trusted.

Can the media survive? Indeed!

These are not the best of times for the media.

“At the time when we celebrated the second decade of the journal’s critical inquiry at Auckland University of Technology with a conference in 2014, our theme was ‘Political journalism in the Asia Pacific’, and our mood about the mediascape in the region was far more positive than it is today,” writes David.

“Three years later, we marked the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre, with a conference and a rather gloomier ‘Journalism under duress’ slogan.”

The editorial continues:

“Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of in the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists — do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of a people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes? The answer is simple surely.

“And it is about saving journalism, our credibility and our humanity as journalists.” (emphasis added).

Contemporary issues
Besides the editorial, the 30th anniversary edition continues the PJR tradition of addressing contemporary issues head on with 11 research articles, 2 commentaries, 7 book reviews, a photo-essay, 2 obituaries of Australia’s John Pilger and West Papua’s Arnold Ap, and 4 frontline pieces. A truly substantial double issue of the journal.

The USP notice on this 30th anniversary launch says “30 years and going strong”. Sounds like the Johnny Walker whisky advertisement, “still going strong”. This is an admirable achievement as well as in PJR’s future.

It is in contrast to the NZ Journalism Review (University of Canterbury), for example, which survived only for nine years.

Founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 by David Robie, PJR was published there for four years and at the University of the South Pacific for a further four years, then at Auckland University of Technology for 18 years before finally being hosted since 2021 at its present home, Asia Pacific Media Network.

According to Dr Robie, Pacific Journalism Review has received many good wishes for its birthday. Some of these are published in this journal. For a final message in the editorial, he recalled AUT’s senior journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell who wrote in 2020:

“‘Many Aotearoa New Zealand researchers found their publishing feet because PJR was dedicated to the region and interested in their work. PJR is central to journalism studies, and so to journalism and journalism education, in this country and further abroad. Long may that continue’.

“In answer to our editorial title: Yes, journalism will survive, and it will thrive through new and innovative niche forms, if democracy is to survive.

“Ra whānau Pacific Journalism Review!

Steadfast commitment
I have two quick remaining things to do: Professor Wadan Narsey’s congratulatory message, and a book presentation.

Professor Narsey pays tribute to David Robie for his steadfast commitment to Pacific journalism and congratulates him for the New Zealand honour bestowed on him in the King’s Birthday honours. He is very thankful that David published 37 of his articles on a range of issues during the dark days of censorship in Fiji under the Bainimarama and Sayeed-Khaiyum dictatorship.

I wish to present a copy of the recently published Epeli Hau’ofa: His Life and Legacy to Professor David Robie and Del Abcede to express Claire Slatter and my profound appreciation of the massive amount of work they have done to keep PJR alive and well.

It is my pleasure to launch the 30th anniversary edition of PJR.

‘Far more than a research journal’
In response, Dr Robie noted that PJR had published more than 1100 research articles over its three decades and it was the largest single Pacific media research repository but it had always been “far more than a research journal”.

“As an independent publication, it has given strong support to investigative journalism, sociopolitical journalism, political economy of the media, photojournalism and political cartooning — they have all been strongly reflected in the character of the journal,” he said.

“It has also been a champion of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as reflected especially in its Frontline section, pioneered by retired Australian professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon.

“Keeping to our tradition of cutting edge and contemporary content, this anniversary edition raises several challenging issues such as Julian Assange and Gaza.”

He thanked current editor Philip Cass for his efforts — “he was among the earliest contributors when we began in Papua New Guinea” — and the current team, assistant editor Khairiah A. Rahman, Nicole Gooch, extraordinary mentors Wendy Bacon and Chris Nash, APMN chair Heather Devere, Adam Brown, Nik Naidu and Gavin Ellis.

He also paid tribute to many who have contributed to the journal through peer reviewing and the editorial board over many years — such as Dr Lee Duffield and professor Mark Pearson of Griffith University, who was also editor of Australian Journalism Review for many years and was an inspiration to PJR — “and he is right here with us at the conference.”

Among others have been the Fiji conference convenor, USP’s associate professor Shailendra Singh, and professor Trevor Cullen of Edith Cowan University, who is chair of next year’s World Journalism Education Association conference in Perth.

Dr Robie also singled out designer Del Abcede for special tribute for her hard work carrying the load of producing the journal for many years “and keeping me sane — the question is am I keeping her sane? Anyway, neither I nor Philip would be standing here without her input.”

Liberation “must come” for Kanaky New Caledonia, says one of the few New Zealand journalists who have worked consistently on stories across the French Pacific territories.

Journalist David Robie was arrested at gunpoint by French police in January 1987, and is no stranger to civil unrest in New Caledonia.

Writing his first articles about the Pacific from Paris in 1974 on French nuclear testing when working for Agence France-Presse, Robie became a freelance journalist in the 1980s, working for Radio Australia, Islands Business, The Australian, Pacific Islands Monthly, Radio New Zealand and other media.

• READ MORE: Liberation for New Caledonia’s Kanak people ‘must come’, says media educator — Audio
• President Emmanuel Macron to fly to New Caledonia within hours
• ‘You are not alone’ Pacific messages of solidarity for Kanaky
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

The Asia Pacific Report editor, who has been on the case for 50 years now, arrived at his interview with RNZ Pacific with a bag of books packed with images and stories from his days in the field.

“I did get arrested twice [in Kanaky New Caledonia], in fact, but the first time was actually at gunpoint which was slightly unnerving,” Robie explained.

“They accused me of being a spy.”

Liberation ‘must come’
Robie said liberation “must come” for Kanaky New Caledonia.

“It’s really three decades of hard work by a lot of people to build, sort of like a future for New Caledonia, which is part of the Pacific rather than part of France,” Robie said.

He said France has had three Prime Ministers since 2020 and none of them seem to have any “real affinity” for indigenous issues, particularly in the South Pacific, in contrast to some previous leaders.

“From 2020 onwards, basically, France lost the plot,” after Édouard Philippe was in office, Robie said.

He called the current situation a “real tragedy” and believed New Caledonia was now more polarised than ever before.

“France has betrayed the aspirations of the indigenous Kanak people.”

Robie said the whole spirit of the Nouméa Accord was to lead Kanaky towards self determination.

New Caledonia on UN decolonisation list
New Caledonia is listed under the United Nations as a territory to be decolonised — reinstated on 2 December 1986.

“Progress had been made quite well with the first two votes on self determination, the two referendums on independence, where there’s a slightly higher and reducing opposition.”

In 2018, 43.6 percent voted in favour of independence with an 81 percent voter turnout. Two years later 46.7 percent were in favour with a voter turnout of 85.7 percent, but 96.5 percent voted against independence in 2021, with a voter turnout of just 43.8 percent.

Robie labelled the third vote a “complete write off”.

France maintains it was legitimate, despite first insisting on holding the third vote a year earlier than originally scheduled, and in spite of pleas from indigenous Kanak leaders to postpone the vote so they could properly bury and mourn the many members of their communities who died as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.

Robie said France was now taking a deliberate step to “railroad” the indigenous vote in Kanaky New Caledonia.

He said the latest “proposed amendment” to the constitution would give thousands more non-indigenous people voting rights.

“[The new voters would] completely swamp indigenous people,” Robie said.

‘Hope’ and other options
Robie said there “was hope yet”, despite France’s betrayal of the Kanaks over self-determination and independence, especially over the past three years.

French President Emmanuel Macron is under increasing pressure to scrap proposed constitutional reform by Pacific leaders which sparked riots in New Caledonia.

Pacific leaders and civil society groups have affirmed their support for New Caledonia’s path to independence.

Robie backed that call. He said there were options, including an indefinite deferment of the final stage, or Macron could use his presidential veto.

“So [I’m] hopeful that something like that will happen. There certainly has to be some kind of charismatic change to sort out the way things are at the moment.”

“Charismatic change” could be on its way with talk of a dialogue mission.

Having Édouard Philippe — who has always said he had grown a strong bond with New Caledonia when he was in office until 2020 — on the mission would be “a very positive move”, said Robie.

“Because what really is needed now is some kind of consensus,” he said.

‘We don’t want to be like the Māori in NZ’
New Caledonia could still have a constructive “partnership” with France, just like the Cook Islands has with New Zealand, Robie said.

“The only problem is that the French government doesn’t want to listen,” New Caledonia presidential spokesperson Charles Wea said.

“You cannot stop the Kanak people from claiming freedom in their own country.”

Despite the calls, Wea said concerns were setting in that Kanak people would “become a minority in their own country”.

“We [Kanak people] are afraid to be like Māori in New Zealand. We are afraid to be like Aboriginal people in Australia.”

He said those fears were why it was so important the controversial constitutional amendments did not go any further.

Robie said while Kanaks were already a minority in their own country, there had been a pretty close parity under the Nouméa Accord.

Vote a ‘retrograde step’
“Bear in mind, a lot of French people who’ve lived in New Caledonia for a long time, believe in independence as well,” he said.

But it was the “constitutional reform” that was the sticking point, something Robie refused to call a “reform”, describing as “a very retrograde step”.

In 1998, there was “goodwill” though the Nouméa accord.

“The only people who could participate in New Caledonian elections, as opposed to the French state as a whole, were indigenous Kanaks and those who had been living in New Caledonia prior to 1998,” something France brought in at the time.

Robie said a comparison can be drawn “much more with Australia”, rather than Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Kanak people resisting French control a century and a half ago were executed by the guillotine,” he said.

To Robie, Aotearoa was probably the better example of what New Caledonia could be.

“But you have to recall that New Caledonia began colonial life just like Australia, a penal colony,” he said.

Robie explained how Algerian fighters were shipped off to New Caledonia, Vietnamese fighters were also sent during the Vietnam War, among other people from other minority groups.

“A lot of people think it’s French and Kanak. It’s not. It’s a lot more mixed than that and a lot more complicated.”

The media and the blame game
As Robie explained the history, another issue became apparent: the lack of media interest and know-how to cover such events from Aotearoa New Zealand.

He said he had been disappointed to see many mainstream outlets glossing over history and focusing on the stranded Kiwis and fighting, which he said was significant, but needed context.

He said this lack of built-up knowledge within newsrooms and an apparent issue of “can’t be bothered, or it’s too problematic,” was projecting the indigenous population as the bad guys.

“There’s a projection that basically ‘Oh, well, they’re young people… looting and causing fires and that sort of thing’, they don’t get an appreciation of just how absolutely frustrated young people feel. It’s 50 percent of unemployment as a result of the nickel industry collapse, you know,” Robie explained.

When it came to finger pointing, he believed the field activist movement CCAT did not intend for all of this to happen.

“Once the protests reached a level of anger and frustration, all hell broke loose,” said Robie.

“But they [CCAT] have been made the scapegoats.

“Whereas the real culprits are the French government, and particularly the last three prime ministers in my view.”

Dr David Robie’s updated book on the New Caledonia troubles, news media and Pacific decolonisation issues was published in 2014, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific (Little Island Press).

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

The referendum on the indigenous Voice in Australia last Saturday was an historic event. Australians were asked to vote on whether to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia in the Constitution through an indigenous Voice.

The voters were asked to vote “yes” or “no” on a single question:

“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

“Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

• READ MORE: Other reports on the Voice

The Voice was proposed as an independent, representative body for First Nations peoples to advise the Australian Parliament and government, giving them a voice on issues that affect them.

Here are some key points:

• The proposal was to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution by creating a body to advise Parliament, known as the “Voice”.
• The “Voice” would be an independent advisory body. Members would be chosen by First Nations communities around Australia to represent them.
• The “Voice” would provide advice to governments on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, such as health, education, and housing, in the hope that such advice will lead to better outcomes.
• Under the Constitution, the federal government already has the power to make laws for Indigenous people. The “Voice” would be a way for them to be consulted on those laws. However, the government would be under no obligation to act on the advice.
• Indigenous people have called for the “Voice” to be included in the Constitution so that it can’t be removed by the government of the day, which has been the fate of every previous indigenous advisory body. It is also the way indigenous people have said they want to be recognised in the constitution as the First Nations with a 65,000-year connection to the continent — not simply through symbolic words.

It was necessary for a majority of voters to vote “yes” nationally, as well as a majority of voters in at least four out of six states, for the referendum to pass.

Unfortunately, it was rejected by the majority with more than 60 percent with the vote still being counted. In all six states and the Northern Territory, a “No” vote was projected.

According to the ABC, a majority of voters in all six states and the Northern Territory voted against the proposal.

New South Wales
81.2 percent counted, 1.81 million voted yes (40.5 percent) and 2.67M million voted no (59.5 percent).

Victoria
78.5 percent counted, 1.56 million voted yes (45.0 percent), and 1.91 million voted no (55.0 percent).

Tasmania
82.7 percent counted, 134,809 voted yes (40.5 percent), and 198,152 voted no (59.5 percent).

South Australia
79.1 percent counted, 355,682 voted yes (35.4 percent), 648,769 voted no (64.6 percent).

Queensland
74.3 percent counted, 835,159 voted yes (31.2 percent), 1.84 million voted no (68.8 percent).

Western Australia
75.3 percent counted, 495,448 voted yes (36.4 percent), and 866,902 voted no (63.6 percent).

Northern Territory
63.4 percent counted, 37,969 voted yes (39.5 percent), and 58,193 voted no (60.5 percent).

ACT
82.8 percent counted, 158,097 voted yes (60.8 percent), and 102,002 voted no (39.2 percent).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the next steps after the failed Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum are yet to be decided and called the expectation of having a plan just days after the vote “not respectful”.

For the latest news, visit: https://t.co/X6qtu24rNp pic.twitter.com/smgqgeV55Y

— SBS News (@SBSNews) October 17, 2023

In addition to being viewed as divisive along racial lines, concerns about how the Voice to Parliament would work (whether indigenous Australians would be given greater power) and uncertainties about how the new body would result in meaningful change for indigenous Australians contributed to the rejection.

Australia has held 44 referendums since its founding in 1901. However, the referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in 2023 was the first of its kind to focus specifically on Indigenous Australians.

As part of a broader push to establish constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, the Voice proposal was seen as a significant step towards reconciliation and was the result of decades of indigenous advocacy and work.

A key turning point came in 2017 when 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates from across the country met at Uluru for the First Nations’ National Constitutional Convention. The proposal, known as the Voice, sought to recognise Indigenous people in Australia’s constitution and establish a First Nations body to advise the government on issues affecting their communities.

However, the Voice proposal was not unanimously accepted. In the course of the campaign, intense conflict and discussion ensued between supporters and opponents, resulting in what supporters viewed as a tragic outcome, while the victorious opponents celebrated their victory.

The support of Oceania’s indigenous leaders
Pacific Islanders expressed their views before the referendum on the Voice to Parliament.

Henry Puna, Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum, said that Australia’s credibility would be boosted on the world stage if the yes vote won the Indigenous voice referendum. He stated that it would be “wonderful” if Australia were to vote yes, because he believed it would elevate Australia’s position, and perhaps even its credibility, internationally.

The former Foreign Minister of Vanuatu (nd current Climate Change Minister), Ralph Regevanu, warned Australia’s reputation would plummet among its allies in the Pacific if the Voice to Parliament was defeated.

These views indicate the potential impact of the voice referendum on Australia’s relationship with Pacific Island nations, which it often refers to as “its own backyard”.

The “No” camp claimed the Voice was an “elite” idea, that “real” Indigenous people didn’t want it, because Peter Dutton had spoken to “shoppers”. Even with the results, they still insist communities did not want one – taking away what little voice they gothttps://t.co/kWt0hjDHEC

— Rachel Withers (@rachelrwithers) October 17, 2023

Division, defeat and impact
A tragic aspect of the Voice proposal is the fact that not only were Australian settlers divided about it, but even worse, indigenous leaders themselves, who were in a position to bring together a fragmented and tormented nation, were at odds with each other — including full-on verbal wars in media.

While their opinions on the proposal were divided, some had practical and realistic ideas to address the problems faced by indigenous communities in remote towns. Others proposed a treaty between settlers and original indigenous people.

There are also those who advocate for a strong political recognition within the nation’s constitutional framework.

Despite these divisions among indigenous leaders, the referendum on Voice represents a significant milestone in the ongoing indigenous resistance that spans over 200 years.

It is a resistance that began on January 26, 1788, when the invasion began (Pemulwuy’s War), and continued through various milestones such as the 1937 Petition for citizenship, land rights, and representation, the 1938 Day of Mourning, the 1963 Yirrkala bark petitions, the 1965 Freedom Rides, and the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972.

It further extended to 1990-2005 with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the 1991 Song Treaty by Yothu Yindi, Eddie Mabo overturning terra nullius in 1992, Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology, and the Uluru Statement from the Heart until the recent defeat of the Voice Referendum in 2023.

A dangerous settlers’ myth and its consequences
The modern nation of Australia (aged 235 years) has been shaped by one of European myths: “Terra Nullius”, the Latin term for “nobody’s land”. This myth was used to describe the legal position at the time of British colonisation.

Accordingly, the land had been deemed as terra nullius, which implies that it had belonged to no one before the British Crown declared sovereignty over it.

Eddy Mabo: A Melanesian Hero
An indigenous Melanesian, Eddy Mabo, overturned this myth in 1992, known as “the Mabo Case,” which recognised the land rights of the Meriam people and other indigenous peoples.

The Mabo Case resulted in significant changes in Australian law in several areas. One of the most notable changes was the overturning of the long-standing legal fiction of “terra nullius,” which posited that Australia was unpopulated (no man’s land) at the time of British colonisation.

In this decision, the High Court of Australia recognized the legal rights of Indigenous Australians to make claims to lands in Australia. It marked a historic moment, as it was the first time that the law acknowledged the traditional rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In addition, the Mabo Case contributed directly to the establishment of the Native Title Act in 1993.

Even though these changes are significant, debates persist regarding the state of indigenous Australians under colonial settlement.

Indigenous Affairs reporter Isabella Higgins says the No victory in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum could change the way Indigenous Australians will want to interact with the rest of the country going forward. pic.twitter.com/g5CxBaU0Op

— ABC News (@abcnews) October 15, 2023

Indigenous leaders need to see a big picture
The recent referendum on the Voice sparked heated debates on a topic that has long been a source of contention: the age-old battle of “my country versus your country, my mob versus your mob, I know best versus you know nothing.”

While it’s important to celebrate and protect cultural diversity and the unique perspectives it brings, it’s equally important to recognise that British settlers didn’t just apply the myth of terra nullius to a select few groups or regions — they applied it to all areas inhabited by indigenous peoples, treating them as a single, homogenous entity.

This means that any solution to indigenous issues must be rooted in a collective, unified voice, rather than a patchwork of fragmented groups.

Indigenous leaders need to prioritise the creation of a unified front among themselves and mobilise their people before seeking support from Australians. Currently, they are engaging in competition, outdoing each other, and fighting over the same issue on mainstream media platforms, indigenous-run media platforms, and social media.

This approach is reminiscent of the “divide, conquer, and rule” strategy that the British effectively employed worldwide to expand and maintain their dominion. This strategy has historically caused harm to indigenous nations worldwide, and it is now harming indigenous people because their leaders are fighting among themselves.

It is important to note that this does not imply a rejection of every distinct indigenous language group, clan, or tribe. However, it is crucial to recognise that indigenous peoples throughout Oceania were viewed through a particular European lens, which scholars refer to as “Eurocentrism”.

This “lens” is a double-edged sword, providing semantic definition and dissection power while also compartmentalising based on a hierarchy of values. Melanesians and indigenous Australians were placed at the bottom of this hierarchy and deemed to be of no historical or cultural significance.

This realisation is of utmost importance for the collective attainment of redemption, unity and reconciliation.

The larger Australian indigenous’ cause
From Vasco Núñez de Balboa’s momentous crossing of the Isthmus of Panama to Ferdinand Magellan’s pioneering Spanish expedition across the Pacific Ocean in 1521, and Abel Janszoon Tasman’s remarkable exploration of Tasmania, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji, to James Cook’s renowned voyages in the Pacific Ocean between 1768 and 1779, the indigenous peoples of Oceania have endured immense suffering and torment as a consequence of the European scramble for these territories.

The indigenous peoples of Oceania were forever scarred by the merciless onslaught of European maritime marauders. When the race for supremacy over these unspoiled regions unfolded, their lives were shattered, and their communities torn asunder.

The web of life in Australia and Oceania was severely disrupted, devalued, rejected, and subjected to brutality and torment as a result of the waves of colonisation that forcefully impacted their shores.

The colonisers imposed various racial prejudices, civilising agendas, legal myths, and the Discovery doctrine, all of which were conceived within the collective conceptual mindset of Europeans and applied to the indigenous people.

These actions have had a lasting and fatalistic impact on the collective indigenous population in Australia and Oceania, resulting in dehumanisation, enslavement, genocide, and persistent marginalisation of their humanity, leading to unwarranted guilt for their mere existence.

The European collective perception of Oceania, exemplified by the notion of terra nullius, has resulted in numerous transgressions of indigenous laws, customs, and cosmologies, affecting every aspect of life within the entire landscape. These violations have led to the loss of land, destruction of language, erasure of memories, and imposition of British customs.

Furthermore, indigenous peoples were forcibly relocated to concentration camps, missions, and reserves.

The Declaration received support from a total of 144 countries, with only four countries (which have historically displaced indigenous populations through settler occupation) voting against it — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

However, all four countries subsequently reversed their positions and endorsed the Declaration. It should be noted that while the Declaration does not possess legal binding force, it does serve as a reflection of the commitments and responsibilities that states have under international law and human rights standards.

The challenges and concerns confronting indigenous communities are undeniably more severe and deplorable than the current “yes or no” referendum. It is imperative for the entire nation, including indigenous leaders, to acknowledge the profound extent of the Indigenous human tragedy that extends beyond the divisive binary.

Old and new imperial vultures
Similar to the European vultures that once encircled Oceania centuries ago, partitioned its territories, subjugated its people, conducted bomb experiments, and eradicated its population in Tasmania, the present-day vultures from the Eastern and Western regions exhibit comparable behaviours.

It is imperative for indigenous leaders hailing from Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia to unite and demand that the colonial governments be held responsible for the multitude of crimes they have perpetrated.

Message to divided indigenous leaders
Simply assigning blame to already fragmented, tormented, and highly marginalised Indigenous communities, and endeavouring to empower them solely through a range of government handouts and community-based development programs, will not be adequate.

Because the trust between indigenous peoples and settlers has been shattered over centuries of abuse, deeply impacting the core of Indigenous self-image, dignity, and respect.

My personal experience in remote indigenous communities
I am a Papuan who came to Australia over 20 years ago to study in the remote NSW town of Bourke. I lived, studied, and worked at a small Christian College called Cornerstone Community.

During my time there, I was adopted by the McKellar clan of the Wangkumara Tribe in Bourke and worked closely with indigenous communities in Bourke, Brewarrina, Walgett, Cobar, Wilcannia, and Dubbo.

Unfortunately, my experiences in these places left me traumatised.

These communities have become so broken. I found myself succumbing to depression as a result of the distressing experiences I witnessed. It dawned upon me being “blackfella” — Papuan indigenous descent — was and still consistently subjected to similar mistreatment regardless of location.

This realisation instilled within me a sense of guilt for my own identity, as I was constantly made feel guilty of who I was. Tragically, a significant number of the young indigenous whom I endeavoured to aid and guide through diverse community and youth initiatives have either been incarcerated or committed suicide.

West Papua, my home country, is currently experiencing a genocide due to the Indonesian settler occupation, which is supported by the Australian government. This is similar to what indigenous Australians have endured under the colonial system of settlers.

Indigenous Australians in every region, town, and city face a complex and diverse set of issues, which are unique, tragic, and devastating. These issues are a result of how the settler colony interacted with them upon their arrival in the country.

Nevertheless, the indigenous people were not subjected to centuries of abuse and mistreatment solely based on their tribal affiliations. Rather, they were targeted by the settler government as a collective, disregarding the diversity among indigenous groups.

This included the indigenous people from Oceania, who have endured dehumanisation and racism as a result of colonisation.

It is imperative to acknowledge that the resolution of these predicaments cannot be attained by a solitary leader representing a particular group. The indigenous leaders need a unified vision and strategy to combat these issues.

All indigenous individuals across the globe, including Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, and West Papua, are afflicted by the same affliction. The only distinguishing factor is the degree of harm inflicted by the virus, along with the circumstances surrounding its occurrence.

A statement from Indigenous Australians who supported the Voice referendum. https://t.co/UlW2kvd9oa pic.twitter.com/1159uz3bxk

— ulurustatement (@ulurustatement) October 15, 2023

A paradigm shift
Imagine a world where indigenous peoples in Australia and Oceania reclaim their original languages and redefine the ideas, myths, and behaviours displayed on their land with their own concepts of law, morality, and cosmology. In this world, I am confident that every legal product, civilisational idea, and colonial moral code applied to these peoples would be deemed illegal.

It is time to empower indigenous voices and perspectives and challenge the oppressive systems that have silenced them for far too long.

Commence the process of renaming each island, city, town, mountain, lake, river, valley, animal, tree, rock, country, and region with their authentic local languages and names, thereby reinstating their original significance and worth.

However, in order to accomplish this, it is imperative that indigenous communities are granted the necessary authority, as it is ultimately their power that will reinforce such transformation. This power does not solely rely on weapons or monetary resources, but rather on the determination to preserve their way of life, restore their self-image, and demand the recognition of their dignity and respect.

Last Saturday’s No Vote tragedy wasn’t just about the majority of Australians rejecting it. It was a heartbreaking moment where indigenous leaders, who should have been united, found themselves fiercely divided.

Accusations were flying left and right, targeting each other’s backgrounds, positions, and portfolios. This bitter divide ended up gambling away any chance of redemption and reconciliation that had reached such a high national level.

It was a devastating blow to the hopes and aspirations for a better world for one of the most disadvantaged originals continues human on this ancient timeless continent — Australia.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front)  says the advice of the International Court of Justice is being sought over the contested 2021 referendum on independence from France.

The movement — represented by Roch Wamytan, who is President of New Caledonia’s Congress — told a UN Decolonisation Committee meeting in Bali, Indonesia, that it considered holding the vote violated the Kanaks’ right in their quest for self-determination.

New Caledonia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986, and under the terms of the Noumea Accord three referendums on restoring New Caledonia’s full sovereignty were held between 2018 and 2021.

• READ MORE: Other New Caledonia decolonisation reports

The date for the last one was set by Paris but because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population, the pro-independence parties asked for the vote to be postponed.

The French government refused to agree to the plea and as a consequence, the pro-independence parties boycotted the poll in protest.

The FLNKS told the Bali meeting that the final referendum went ahead “under pressure from the French state with more than 2000 soldiers deployed and under a hateful and degrading campaign against the Kanaks”.

A total of 57 percent of registered voters stayed away, almost halving the turnout over the preceding referendum in 2020.

Among those who voted, more than 96 percent rejected independence, up from 56 percent the year before.

In view of the low turnout, the FLNKS stated “it is inconceivable that one can consider that a minority determines the future of New Caledonia”.

‘Legal and binding’, says France
However, the French government insists that the vote was legal and binding, being backed by a French court decision which last year threw out a complaint by the customary Kanak Senate, calling for the result to be annulled.

The court found that neither constitutional provisions nor the organic law made the validity of the vote conditional on a minimum turnout.

It added that the year-long mourning declared by the Kanak customary Senate in September 2021 was not such as to affect the sincerity of the vote.

The court also noted that by the time of the referendum on December 12, more than 77 percent of the population was vaccinated.

The anti-independence parties in New Caledonia also consider the referendum outcome as the legitimate outcome despite only a tiny minority of the indigenous Kanak population having voted.

The FLNKS has been pleading for international support to uphold the rights of the indigenous people and in its campaign to have the last referendum annulled.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group said in 2021 that the referendum should not be recognised but the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum Mark Brown, of Cook Islands, did not back the move when asked about it this month, saying the Forum would not “intrude into the domestic matters of countries”.

‘French law has failed the Kanaks’
The statement by the FLNKS to the Bali meeting said that “international bodies are our last resort to safeguard our rights as a colonised people”, adding that French domestic law has failed to give the Kanaks such protection.

It pleaded for the UN Decolonisation Committee to support the FLNKS in its case at the International Court of Justice.

The FLNKS said the ICJ was established with one of the principal purposes of the United Nations, which is to maintain, by peaceful means and in accordance with international law, peace and security.

It also said he would like to get support for an official request so that the FLNKS can get observer status at the United Nations.

A Kanak leader, Julien Boanemoi, told the gathering the decolonisation process in New Caledonia was at risk of “backtracking”, alleging that France was engaged in a modern version of colonisation.

He said with the French proclamation of the “Indo-Pacific axis”, the Kanak people felt a repeat of the French behaviour of 1946 and 1963 when Paris withdrew the territory from the decolonisation list and stifled the pro-independence Caledonian Union.

Boanemoi said with the lack of neutrality of the administering power France, he wanted to warn the Decolonisation Committee of “the risks of jeopardising stability and peace in New Caledonia”.

Darmanin back in Noumea
On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin is due in New Caledonia for talks on a new statute for the territory.

Central to his talks with the FLNKS on Friday will be discussions about the roll used for provincial elections.

Darmanin signalled in March that the restricted roll would be opened to more voters, which the FLNKS regards as unacceptable.

Last month, the president of the Caledonian Union, which is the main party within the FLNKS, said there was a risk of there being no more provincial elections if the rolls changed.

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

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has invited the United Nations Decolonisation Committee members to visit New Caledonia.

Controlled by France since 1853, New Caledonia was returned to the UN decolonisation list as prolonged political violence threatened in 1986 — 39 years after France had withdrawn it and its other major Pacific colony from the 19th century, French Polynesia, from the list.

France says it has complied with the UN decolonisation process and regularly exchanged with the UN about New Caledonia.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Walter Zweifel talks about Tahiti’s recent election

During a visit to the United States last week, Darmanin stopped at the UN in New York to discuss the aftermath of the three referendums on independence which France organised in New Caledonia between 2018 and 2021.

Darmanin, who as Interior Minister is also responsible for France’s overseas possessions, said he had a constructive exchange, without elaborating.

He said, however, he wondered how “to trigger this right to self-determination on the scale of one or two generations”.

Darmanin also told the committee that after the referendums, France was trying to negotiate with both the pro- and anti-independence camps to formulate a future status for New Caledonia.

What next for New Caledonia?
The outcome of the referendum process as outlined in the 1998 Noumea Accord is in dispute, with the pro-independence parties claiming the rejection of independence is illegitimate because of the low turn-out of the colonised Kanak people in the last vote.

France had gone ahead with the third referendum despite a plea by pro-independence parties to postpone it because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population.

The pro-independence side refuses to recognise the result, saying that the referendum was not in the spirit of the 1998 Noumea Accord and the UN resolutions on the territory’s decolonisation.

It said the path of dialogue had been broken by the stubbornness of the French government, which was unable to reconcile its geostrategic interests in the Pacific with its obligation to decolonise New Caledonia.

The pro-independence camp has been lobbying for support to get the referendum outcome annulled.

However, a legal challenge in Paris last year by the customary Kanak Senate was unsuccessful while a further challenge of the referendum result filed with the International Court of Justice is pending.

New PIF chair taking ‘neutral’ position
This month, the Pacific Islands Forum said it would “not intrude” into New Caledonia’s affairs although a subgroup, the Melanesian Spearhead Group, had earlier backed calls for the UN to declare the result null and void.

Asked for the Forum’s view, its chair, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, said the “Forum respects the due process of each country”.

“It is not the Forum’s role to intrude into the domestic matters of countries as they determine their independence or their dependence on other countries,” Brown said.

The pro-independence side has refused to engage with the anti-independence side in discussions about any new statute. Instead, it has insisted on having bilateral talks with only the French government on a timetable to conclude the decolonisation process and restore New Caledonia’s sovereignty.

In March, Darmanin visited New Caledonia for talks with a cross-section of society, and last month New Caledonia’s political leaders were in Paris for more discussions.

None of these meetings have yielded a consensus on a way forward.

Audition cet après-midi à l’@ONU_fr par le C24, comité des Nations Unies en charge des sujets de décolonisation, afin de faire le point sur la Nouvelle-Calédonie.
Merci à la présidente du comité et aux pays membres pour cet échange riche et constructif. Au nom du Gouvernement,… pic.twitter.com/Ya5BY1k9Kc

— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) May 19, 2023

Next week, Darmanin is due back in Noumea in a renewed effort to advance discussions on New Caledonia’s future status.

The anti-independence parties want Paris to honour the referendum result and move towards reintegration of New Caledonia into France by abolishing the restricted rolls created with the Noumea Accord.

The push received support last week from the deputy leader of France’s Republicans François Xavier Bellamy who visited Noumea.

He said his side would support changes to the French constitution to allow for the rolls to be opened up — a move firmly resisted by the pro-independence side.

French Polynesia marks 10th reinscription anniversary

The ruling pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira party in French Polynesia marked the 10th anniversary of the territory’s reinscription in Faa’a where the party founder and leader Oscar Temaru is mayor.

His decades-long campaign succeeded in 2013 when the UN General Assembly approved a resolution — sponsored by Solomon Islands — and re-inscribed French Polynesia on the world body’s decolonisation list.

The decision, which came in the dying days of the last government led by Temaru, was vehemently criticised by the Tahitian government, which succeeded his, as well as France, which labelled the UN decision an “interference”.

While France has refused to attend any UN discussion on French Polynesia, the pro-autonomy government of the past decade regularly sent delegates to the annual gathering in New York.

Marking the anniversary this year, Tavini’s youngest assembly member Tematai Le Gayic told Tahiti Nui TV he was disappointed that the “French state agrees to negotiate when there is bloodshed”, referring to New Caledonia’s unrest of the 1980s.

“But when it’s with respect of law and democracy, France denies the process,” he added.

The opposition Tapura’s Tepuaraurii Teriitahi said that it would be good “if France accepted once and for all, to avoid any controversy, that UN observers could come to French Polynesia”.

While viewing independence as a long-term goal, the newly elected President Moetai Brotherson has been critical of France shunning the UN process, having described it as a “bad look”.

At the event in Faa’a, Brotherson said they went to ask the UN “to give us the possibility of choice, with a neutral arbiter”.

He said it was then up to his party to awaken consciences so that an overwhelming majority would vote for independence, which he said was not an end in itself but an essential step to building a nation.

“We don’t want a 50 percent-plus-one-vote victory,” he said.

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

Dr Sitiveni Halapua, former deputy leader of Tonga’s Democratic Movement, has died aged 74.

Born on February 13, 1949, he was a respected academic, a pioneer of Tonga’s democratic reforms and pioneer of a conflict resolution system based on traditional practices.

Halapua earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Kent in the UK and went on to lecture in economics at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji.

• READ MORE: Disarray in Tonga’s Democratic Party revealed
• Taione denies he conspired to make Halapua Prime Minister

He was director of the Pacific Islands Development Programme at the East-West Centre at the University of Hawai’i for more than 20 years.

It was while working at the East-West Centre that he developed a conflict-resolution system based on the Polynesian practice of Talanoa, known as the “Talanoa conflict-resolution” system.

It has been used in the Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga.

In November 2005, Dr Halapua was appointed to the National Committee for Political Reform, aimed at producing a plan for the democratic reform of Tonga.

Blame over report
In October 2006 the commission recommended a fully elected Parliament. He later accused Prime Minister Feleti Sevele’s of hijacking the report and blamed this for the 2006 Nuku’alofa riots, which destroyed much of central Nuku’alofa.

Dr Halapua was elected to Parliament as a People’s Representative for Tongatapu 3 in the 2010 elections.

Four years later, he was ousted as candidate for the Democratic Party after party leader and Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva’s newspaper, Kele’a, accused him of being at the centre of a plot to seek the premiership.

As Kaniva News reported at the time, Kele’a claimed that three Democratic Party members, including People’s Representatives Semisi Tapueluelu and Sione Taione planned in 2012 to replace Pohiva with fellow parliamentarian Dr Sitiveni Halapua.

Kele’a alleged that the plan was made in 2012 when the Democratic government lodged a motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister, Lord Tu’ivakano.

Both Taione and Halapua denied the story.

Relations between Pohiva and Halapua had been strained since October 2013 when Dr Halapua abstained from voting for a bill that would have let the Prime Minister be popularly elected.

Popular bill lost
The bill was laid before the Tongan Parliament by Democrat MP Dr ‘Aisake Eke and had received massive support from many of the 17 popular electorates, nine of which elected Democrat Members of Parliament. However, the motion was lost 15-6.

Dr Halapua’s abstention drew strong criticisms from the local media and the Democrats.

Kele’a lashed out at Dr Halapua’s behaviour, with the editor saying he no longer trusted him as one of the front benchers of the party.

Dr Halapua had long been an advocate of what he called Pule’anga Kafataha or “Coalition Government”.

Under the proposal all parliamentarians, whether nobles or commoners, would work together as a coalition.

In 2010 Halapua told Kaniva News that Democratic Party Parliamentarians voting as members of a coalition could elect a noble rather than his party leader, ‘Akilisi Pohiva, but still keep their allegiance to Pohiva and the Democratic Party.

After he was removed as a Democrat candidate, Dr Halapua said he would stand as an independent at the next election, but did not run. He stood unsuccessfully in the 2017 election.

Republished from Kaniva Tonga with permission from the authors.

The Queen’s Representative in the Cook Islands, Sir Tom Marsters, has confirmed Mark Brown as the Prime Minister.

In a statement issued from Mark Brown’s office, Sir Tom said he was “satisfied” that Mark Brown had the majority of the MPs elected to Parliament.

Following the final count of the Cook Islands general elections, the Cook Islands Party (CIP) gained 12 seats in the 24-seat Parliament, including the Ngatangiia seat which was initially tied between CIP’s candidate Sonny Williams and Cook Islands United Party’s Margaret Matenga.

• READ MORE: Brown reappointed PM – CIP wins key seats
• Ruling party in Cook Islands closer to power after gaining 2 extra seats
• Other Cook Islands election reports

Brown thanked the community for a fair and peaceful election process.

“The people of the Cook Islands have spoken and I will now go through the process of confirming a government,” he said.

Petitions post-elections ‘expected’
Despite a clear majority, all candidates and parties have one week to lodge petitions and Cook Islands News editor Rashneel Kumar said it would be surprising if there were not any petitions.

“The bigger news normally is if we don’t have any petitions. So we do expect it,” he said.

“Since the Cook Islands gained self governing status from New Zealand, we have had petitions every elections so we do expect it and I think there are already parties that have been walking on that, so we will know by early next week, how many petitions have been filed.”

Flights start between Cook Islands and Tahiti
An inaugural flight from Rarotonga to Tahiti-Faa’a airport in Pape’ete, French Polynesia, took place today.

Prime Minister Mark Brown was boarding the flight along with a delegation.

The flight comes after a deal between Cook Islands and French Polynesian airlines — Air Rarotonga and Air Tahiti Nui — in hopes to attract visitors from America and Europe to the Cook Islands.

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

The Cook Islands Party has gained two more seats following the final count of the general election, edging it closer to power.

The party, which is led by caretaker Prime Minister Mark Brown, now has 12 seats — with 13 required for a clear majority.

The results, issued by the Chief Electoral Officer, show that Kaka Ama of the Cook Islands Party (CIP) has claimed the Ngatangiia seat.

• READ MORE: Cook Islands: Navigating the rise of third party politics and a new era
• Other Cook Islands election reports

The seat initially ended in a tie with the United Party candidate following the preliminary count on August 1.

In Titikaveka, Sonny Williams from the CIP has claimed the seat, beating United Party’s Margaret Matenga who finished six votes ahead of Williams on election night.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Brown said he was confident of continuing the coalition arrangement with two independents to form a new government.

The Democrats have six seats — down from 11, United has three, and there are three independents.

Neither the One Cook Islands Movement nor the Progressive Party appear to have won any seats.

The newspaper said the final results showed 62 percent voted “yes”, 35 percent voted “no” and the remaining 3 percent were “informal”.

The referendum is non-binding but Prime Minister Brown said in June the question was “deliberately broad” and the referendum would allow room for wider debate on medicinal cannabis.

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

By Jason Brown

Tens of thousands of Cook Islanders celebrated 57th Constitution Day events these last weeks.

Not just in the homeland, but overseas as well, with communities across New Zealand, Australia and beyond celebrating language, dance, culture and other arts.

How many in all might be celebrating?

• READ MORE: Cook Islanders ‘suprised’ by election results
• Other reports on the Cook Islands elections

With 12,000+ in the homeland, 80,000+ in New Zealand, and 22,000+ in Australia? A conservative estimate would have to start at 126,000+ Cook Islanders worldwide, including perhaps 6000 others worldwide.

Fast-forward seven years from those 2016 census figures? Closer to 150,000 total Cook Islanders around the planet.

Not counting tens of thousands more second, third, fourth generations who may identify by different heritage.

Some 150,000 Cook Islanders some time last week — and at least another 150,000 partners and papa’a family and friends. Hundreds of thousands around the world marking 57 years since the first constitution day on Wednesday, 4 August 1965.

Surge for #CookIslands
Boosted by overseas news coverage of the 2022 general elections, social media networks surged with #CookIslands content via public updates — 12,000 on Facebook alone.

Many more pics, video and jokes, laughs, tears and aro’a shared privately between profiles, groups, and chat apps.

Combined online audience for Cook Islanders?

Easily in the millions.

Most precious, video from home.

For one day — but really a few weeks — homelanders largely put aside politics, questions, controversy and criticism after what one veteran politician called the “quietest” election in a long time.

A world-changing pandemic, and an entire industry vanishing almost overnight? Saw generations of homeland Cook Islanders catching a breath after nearly 40 years of exponential tourism growth, from when the Rarotongan Hotel first opened in 1982.

Empty … almost … everything?
Suddenly, for the first time since then, four decades later — empty roads, empty beaches, empty .. almost … everything?

Empty vistas led to a lot of Cook Islanders falling in love with their own home again, seeing it empty yet afresh; friendly like the “old days” in the 1970s. Easier to see what’s lost when suddenly it’s back again?

More flowers, hugs, kisses — time to pray, think, talk and, yes, the magic of the islands.

Cook Islanders kept breathing through a low-key campaign, voting then celebrating constitutional self-governance; following 57 years of colonialism, and a millennia or so of Māori dominion.

Voting 14 to ten against a ruling party, sure, but calmly, including three independents. And record votes for a third party.

All achieved without a ranked voting system like MMP in New Zealand, under plain old FFP — first past the post, not mixed member representation.

Voters drew on a long history of coalitions — creating their own systems of mixed representation, finally winning against a two-party majority after decades of political trial and error.

Strong vote for balanced power
Whatever new coalition eventually wins from all the backroom texts, calls, messages, emails and face-to-face negotiations — with the incumbent Cook Islands Party edging in front —  Cook Islanders have shown a strong vote for balanced power.

Just as originally hoped for by a father of the Cook Islands. Before self-government, Albert Henry warned against party politics as a colonial divide-and-rule threat, aimed at Māori, Polynesian and Pacific Way unity.

Nearly six decades after that warning, Cook Islanders still prove an ancient instinct for what one coalition administration once termed #taokotaianga — a demand for solidarity.

Published as a Sunday newspaper for four years from December 1994, the Cook Islands Press was refounded in 2021 as an online news outlet, soft launching on social media with analysis of current affairs.

The Cook Islands Parliament looks set for a shake up after today’s general elections.

In preliminary results, the ruling Cook Islands Party has performed solidly — but the new party, United, appears to have secured as many as five seats, while the Pa Enua has returned three independents.

Prime Minister Mark Brown looks set to win a resounding victory in his Takuvaine-Tutakimoa seat — he has very substantial lead over the Democrats contender Davina Hosking-Ashford.

• READ MORE: Cook Islands News coverage
• Other Cook islands election reports

Democrats leader Tina Brown should be safe in her Rakahanga seat, but her deputy William ‘Smiley’ Heather appears to have lost out to the United Party’s Tim Tunui Varu in Ruaau.

The preliminary figures also show United’s Robert Stanley Heather well ahead in Akaoa, and New Zealand netball legend, Margaret Matenga, taking Titikaveka, both at the expense of the Democrats.

Two of the independents in the outer islands were incumbents and they will be joined by Stephen Matapo from Mauke.

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

Cook Islanders go to the polls tomorrow to choose a new 24 member Parliament.

Voters will have four parties — and a movement calling for a collegial approach to government — to choose from.

Cook Islands politics has been dominated for years by the Cook Islands Party led by the current Prime Minister Mark Brown — a man who is very confident of holding on to power.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands elections reports

He believes his government has done a very good job keeping the country together in very trying circumstances over the past two or so years.

There are 69 candidates in all contesting the poll, and one, marine scientist Teina Rongo, hopes this election will be third time lucky for him.

Rongo wants to be in Parliament to correct what he sees as faults in the country’s approach to the environment and education.

He said the sectors are interconnected with the education system not properly reflecting Cook Islands Māori values.

‘Disconnected from environment’
“We are disconnected from our environment and I think part of the reason is because we have an education system or a curriculum that does not teach these things to our children,” he said.

“We have a more New Zealand-based curriculum than a Cook Islands one that teaches in the context of the Cook Islands.”

Te Tuhi Kelly moved to the Cooks some years ago and recently got permanent residency.

He has set up his own political party, the Progressive Party, for which he is the only candidate standing.

A human resources specialist, he said he was motivated to stand by what he saw as corruption in government and nepotism.

“I don’t have any issues around putting nieces, nephews, uncles, cousins and aunties into roles, as long as they can do it and as long as they can perform,” he said.

Teina Bishop is a veteran in Cook Islands politics and he said what he has learned is party politics is very divisive and that’s why his group is styled as a movement.

Collegial approach
He wants the One Cook Islands Movement to foster a more collegial approach to politics, bringing everyone together.

He agreed it meant they were essentially independents, “an independent movement with a purpose”.

Bishop said it is very rare for one party to win a clear majority, so the One Cook Islands Movement candidates, if elected, were well placed to be in government.

The new party in the contest this year is the United Party, and uniting the country is their mantra.

Leader Teariki Heather said the way to do this was by investing in the people, and not spending on buildings that were unnecessary — such as, he said, cyclone shelters on islands that did not experience cyclones.

He envisages slashing the wages MPs get by 45 percent while increasing the minimum wages by 25 percent in Rarotonga and more in the outer islands.

Prices for imported foods have soared, with cartons of chicken nearly doubling in price in Rarotonga and double that again in the Pa Enua.

Minimum wage increase
“So our plan is to increase the minimum wage and that will hopefully keep our people there, but also the increase in the cost of living [needs] to be more affordable for them,” he said.

United can also boast former New Zealand netball legend Margaret Matenga as one of its 17 candidates.

Cook Islands elections have typically been contests between the Cook Islands Party and the Democrats, although this time round this could well be shaken up by the newcomers.

Democrats deputy leader William “Smiley” Heather is another claiming Mark Brown’s government is ignoring the plight of the people who are struggling to cope with the soaring cost of living.

He said his party would redirect money that he said the government was putting towards development on Rarotonga.

“We believe the previous government is looking to build all these new buildings, $60 million — why are we spending money on that when our people are suffering, running out of money,” William Heather said.

Pandemic challenge
Mark Brown replaced Henry Puna as Prime Minister just before covid-19 hit, so this will be the first time he has led the party into an election.

He said the pandemic had been one of the most testing times, especially given the reliance on tourism, but his Cook Islands Party had handled it successfully.

Brown dismissed criticism of the way government was spending as unfounded.

He said a lot of their focus has been on those who had needed support through this time, “we put out a big package on covid economic support for over a two-year period, now we are focussing on recovery, bearing in mind that we are coming back from a contracted economy.”

The Cook Islands Party is promising small increases in the pension and the minimum wage.

The Electoral Office said all results should be available within several hours of the close.

• Voting booths open at 9am on August 1 — Tuesday New Zealand time — closing at 6pm.

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

A plan to create three new provinces in the Papua region highlights how Jakarta’s development approach has failed to resolve a long-running conflict.

In April of this year, Indonesia’s Parliament approved a plan to create three new provinces in Papua, the easternmost region of the archipelago.

Government officials have described the creation of the new administrative units as an effort to accelerate the development of the outlying region, which has long lagged behind the other more densely populated islands.

• READ MORE: Other West Papuan independence reports

But Papua’s problem isn’t a lack of development — it’s a lack of justice for West Papuans.

In the plan to subdivide Indonesia’s two most sparsely populated provinces — Papua and West Papua — many people sense a kind of “end game” strategy by Indonesia’s government that is expected to worsen the long-running conflict in Papua, something countries in the region can ill afford to ignore.

The province plan comes in the twilight of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s second and final term in office, a term marked by an escalation of violence between fighters of the pro-independence West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) and the Indonesian security forces.

Jokowi has ordered huge military operations in the central regencies of Nduga, Puncak Jaya, Intan Jaya, Maybrat and regions near the border with Papua New Guinea (PNG).

1960s armed wing
The TPNPB is the armed wing of the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM), or Free Papua Movement, which was created in the 1960s by so-called West Papuan freedom fighters.

They opposed the Indonesian Army, which had begun occupying parts of West Papua after the Dutch withdrew in 1962, even before the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority had completed its period of mandated administration in 1963.

After Papua officially joined Indonesia in a 1969 UN referendum that many Papuans view as flawed, the OPM grew rapidly in the late 1970s, with fighters joining its ranks across West Papua. Their operations mainly consisted of attacking Indonesian patrols.

In 1984, when a West Papuan insurgent attack sparked large Indonesian military deployments in and around the capital Jayapura, the subsequent brutal sweep operations triggered a mass exodus of around 10,000 Papuan refugees to PNG.

At the time, when questioned in Jakarta about the impacts of military operations in Papua, a leading Indonesian Foreign Ministry official shrugged it off and stated that the government was introducing colour television in Papua and was doing its best to accelerate development there.

Nearly 40 years later, with the Papuan conflict reaching a new pitch of tension, the government’s narrative has barely changed.

Conflict continues at the cost of mass displacement in Papua’s highlands. Human rights bodies have stated that intensified bursts of fighting between TPNPB guerrillas and the Indonesian army since late 2018 have displaced at least 60,000 Papuans.

Figures hard to verify
Exact figures remain difficult to verify because Jakarta still obstructs access to the region for foreign media and human rights workers. Since the Indonesian takeover of Papua in the 1960s, West Papua’s history has been marked by persistent human rights abuses.

In recent years, the UN Human Rights Commissioner has repeatedly pressed for access to the region, without success.

In April, Jokowi’s cabinet, including Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian, a former police chief, and fellow hardliner Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto, introduced a draft for a long-anticipated creation of three new provinces — Central Papua, South Papua, and Central Highlands Papua –– in addition to the two existing provinces of Papua and West Papua.

This initiative has met with strong opposition from indigenous Papuans. Well before the recent cabinet decision, Papua’s provincial Governor Lukas Enembe warned against it, fearing new provinces could pave the way for more transmigrants and more problems for Papuans, although in recent days he has reportedly offered qualified support for dividing Papua based on customary territories.

He was not alone in speaking up. On May 10, thousands of Papuans from the Papuan provinces and in major cities in other parts of Indonesia took to the streets to protest Jakarta’s creation of extra provinces.

Protests were met head on by heavy security forces responses including the use of water cannons and detention. Papuans were frustrated because their views had not been incorporated in Jakarta’s decision making.

As Emanuel Gobay, director of the Papua Legal Aid Institute, told The Diplomat, the region’s Special Autonomy Law, passed in 2001, requires the central government to conduct a public survey starting from the village level to the head of districts where the expansion will be carried out.

“The central government has introduced the planned expansion policy on its own initiative, without any aspirations from the grassroots communities,” Gobay explained.

Delineated history
For years, the Indonesian government has characterised West Papua as being backward in terms of social and human development, claiming that it needs Indonesian help to advance.

Certainly, poverty has been a problem in Papua, but that’s not unique across the republic. Yet, for decades Papua was effectively isolated by central government, often leaving the public in the dark about what has been going on there.

The social media age has lifted the lid on Papua a little, stirring international attention intermittently. As part of Jakarta’s response, social media bots have been deployed across the internet, spreading state propaganda and targeting human rights workers, journalists, or anyone drawing attention to Papua.

The bots say everything is good in Papua, look at all the development happening, 3G internet, roads. In a sense, it’s true that infrastructure development has increased in recent years.

Compared to neighbouring PNG, Papua and West Papua provinces are well developed in terms of basic services and roads. But it’s not necessarily the sort of development that Papuans themselves want or need.

The lack of a genuine self-determination process in the 1960s remains a core injustice that holds Papua back. Since then, thousands of indigenous Papuans have lost their lives in what is considered one of the most militarised zones in the wider region. Some research puts the death toll as high as 500,000.

One of them was Theys Eluays, a tribal chief who became a figurehead for Papuan independence aspirations and a strong critic of the first plan to divide Papua into two provinces, until he was assassinated by members of the Kopassus special forces unit in 2001.

Military elite have major interests
Indonesia’s political elite and military establishment have extensive interests in Papua’s abundant natural resource wealth. The new provincial divisions would enable more opportunities for the exploitation of these resources, largely for the benefit of people other than Papuans themselves.

The new provinces would be merely the latest in a series of delineations imposed on Papua by others, a process that runs from the marking of the western half of New Guinea as a Dutch colony in the 1880s, to the contentious transferal of control of the territory to Indonesia in the 1960s, to Jakarta’s subsequent reconfigurations of the province, especially after the enactment of the Special Autonomy Law in response to Papuan demands for independence.

The plan for further subdivisions did not emerge overnight. It has been mooted for decades by Indonesia’s powerful Golkar party as a way to cement sovereign control of the restive eastern region. In the 1980s, proposals for dividing Irian Jaya, as it was then known, into as many as six provinces were fleshed out at national seminars on regional development and gained interest from elites in Jakarta.

Even in these early seminar discussions, Papuan representatives warned that provincial splits could have a negative impact on local indigenous communities, whose interests were clearly not represented in provincial subdivision plans.

Although the idea of provincial expansion in Irian Jaya ended up on President Suharto’s desk, it hadn’t got off the ground by the time he stepped down in 1998.

During the subsequent tenure of President B.J. Habibie, Papuan tribal and civil community leaders were among the “Team of 100″ Papuans invited to the presidential palace for a dialogue, during which they asked for independence. Habibie told the Team to go home and rethink its request.

During the term of President Abdurrahman Wahid, the spiritual leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia’s largest Islamic organisation, West Papuans were granted the concession of being able to raise the banned Papuan nationalist Morning Star flag, on the condition that it be hoisted two inches beneath the flag of the Indonesian republic.

The administration of the next president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, initiated a law that granted Papua Special Autonomy status and created a second province, West Papua (Papua Barat) — the first splitting of provinces.

Local resentment
Since Papua became a part of the Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta has introduced various laws aimed ostensibly at improving the welfare of indigenous Papuans. These have overwhelmingly been met with suspicion and skepticism by the Papuans.

Special Autonomy is widely regarded by Papuans to have failed on the promise to empower them in their own homeland, where they instead continue to be victims of racism and human rights violations, and their indigenous culture is increasingly threatened.

Due to large scale exploitation of Papua’s natural wealth, Papuans have been losing access to the forests, mountains, and rivers which were essential to their people’s way of life for centuries.

International companies such as Freeport McMoRan, Rio Tinto, BP, Shell, and multinational oil palm players operate here in commercialising Papua’s mineral, gas, forestry and other resources. There is little consideration about the sustainability of indigenous customs, which has only added to the long list of Papuan grievances.

Now that Jakarta is drawing more administrative lines through this cradle of native rainforest and immense biodiversity, Gobay expects new provinces to have three major impacts.

“First, it will create an environment for more land grabbing. Either through the granting of mining permits to foreign exploration companies or through the construction of other additional government enterprises on customary land,” he said.

“Secondly, marginalisation of Papuans on their own land would only increase,” he added.

Thirdly, he expected a rise in human rights violations.

The Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP), a cultural protection body born from the Special Autonomy Law, has filed for a judicial review of the provincial subdivision plan with Indonesia’s Constitutional Court, and asked the House of Representatives in Jakarta to postpone the New Autonomous Region Bill for Central Papua, South Papua, and Central Highlands Papua.

The court is expected to hold a hearing in the next month.

Minorities in their own land
The provincial split is bound to accelerate the steady reconfiguration of Papua’s demographics.

“If we make a rough estimate, almost 50 percent of the population of West Papua is not indigenous anymore,” said Cahyo Pamungkas of the Jakarta-based National Research and Innovation Agency.

He noted that transmigrants from other parts of Indonesia not only dominated Papua’s local economy but also its regional politics. For instance, there remain only three native Papuan representatives out of 21 legislative members in Merauke district, where some 70 percent of the population are non-Papuans.

Pamungkas also disputed the recent claims of Indonesia’s coordinating minister for legal, political and security affairs, Mahfud MD, that 82 percent of Papuans supported the proposed province splits.

“The survey should have been opened to the public. Who were interviewed and how many respondents participated? What was the survey method?” he asked, adding that such misleading statements are likely to foster additional distrust in the government.

So too can repeated arrests of young Papuans for exercising their democratic voice. Esther Haluk, a democratic rights activist from Papua, was arrested by security forces during the May 10 protests.

“New provinces will pave the way for more new military bases, new facilities for security apparatus. More military, more opposition, more human rights violations. This is like reinstating the Suharto era all over again in Papua,” she said.

Sectarian tensions
Sectarian tensions between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian settlers remain a tinderbox, particularly since major anti-racism protests in 2019. A disturbing factor in the deadly unrest around those protests was the role of pro-Indonesian militias, recalling the violence-soaked last days of Timor-Leste prior to its independence in 2002.

More transmigrants could pave way for more conflict in Papua, and more conflict could potentially justify more military deployment, which adds to the climate of persistent human rights abuses against Papuans.

Haluk said newly arrived migrants are often favored by officials in being able to take up local privileges such as jobs within the public service and government, especially if they have relatives already in Papua. Many have also been able to buy land.

“This is a real form of settler colonialism, a form of colonization that aims to replace the indigenous people of the colonised area with settlers from colonial society,” she said. “In this type of colonialism, indigenous people are not only threatened with losing their territory, but also their way of life and identity that’s been passed down to them from generation to generation.”

Regional implications
By exacerbating conflict in West Papua, the provinces plan could also prove problematic for neighbouring countries, none more so than PNG. Through no fault of its own, PNG has long been lumped with spillover problems from the conflict in West Papua, including the movement of arms and military actors across the two regions’ porous 750km border, refugees fleeing from Indonesian authorities, and the displacement of village communities in the border area.

The covid-19 pandemic also showed that when things get bad on the western side of the border, the problem spreads to PNG, beyond the control of either government.

PNG leaders have cordial exchanges with Indonesian counterparts but the Melanesian government is all too aware of the power imbalance when it comes to the elephant in the room, West Papua.

PNG’s Petroleum Minister Kerenga Kua, who has previously travelled to Jakarta as a member of high-level government delegations, attested to the limited options available to PNG for addressing the West Papua crisis.

“PNG has no capacity to raise the issue,” Kua said. “We can express our concern and our grief and disappointment over the manner in which the Indonesian government is administering its responsibilities over the people of West Papua.

“However there’s nothing much else we can do, especially when larger powers in our region like Australia remain tight-lipped over the issue. Of what constructive value would it be for PNG to venture into that landscape without proper support?”

He added: “So we are very guarded about what we say, because there’s no doubt about the concern that we have in this country.”

Refugees there to stay
Kua says many West Papuans who came across the border as refugees are there to stay: “We don’t complain about that. We just feel that this part of the country is theirs as much as the other side of the island is theirs.”

PNG’s policy on West Papua, where it rarely exercises a voice, has left it looking weak on the issue. The most vocal of the leading political players in PNG, the governor of the National Capital District, Powes Parkop, says that for too long, PNG government policy on West Papua has been dictated by fear of Indonesia and assumptions that make it convenient for leaders to not do anything about it.

While PNG hopes the West Papua problem will go away, Indonesia’s government is also burying its head in the sand by portraying West Papua’s problems as a development issue.

“It’s a human rights issue and we should solve it at that level. It’s about the right to self-determination,” Parkop said.

“PNG holds the key to the future peaceful resolution of Papua. If we rise above our fear and be bold and brave by having an open dialogue with the Indonesian government, I’m sure we’ll make progress.”

Following upcoming elections in PNG, a new government will take power in early August. It’s unwise to bet on the result, but former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill is one of the contenders to take office, and he, more than incumbent James Marape, has been able to project PNG’s role as a regional leader among the Pacific Islands.

He is also one of the few to have expressed strong concern about human rights abuses and violence against West Papuans.

‘Hope government will be brave’
“I hope the new government will be brave enough and have a constructive dialogue with Indonesia’s government so we can find a long-lasting solution,” Parkop said.

“As long as Indonesia and PNG continue to pretend it won’t go away, it will only get worse, and it is getting worse.”

Parkop added that because of the huge economic potential of New Guinea, “the future can be brighter for both sides if the problem is confronted with honesty”.

According to Kua, Indonesia’s government made a commitment to empowering Papuans to run their own territory within the structure of the Republic, a pledge which should be honored. Regional support would help encourage Indonesia in this direction.

“Australia, New Zealand, PNG, those of us from the Pacific all have to stand united until some other wholesale answers are found to the plight of the people of West Papua,” he said. “The interim relief is to continue to press for increased delegated powers to (Papua). So they have more and more say about their own destiny.”

The Papuan independence movement has managed to gain a foothold in the regional architecture, most notably with the admission of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) to the Melanesian Spearhead Group regional bloc, whose founding aim is the decolonisation of all Melanesian peoples. But Indonesia’s successful diplomatic efforts in the region have provided a counterweight to regional calls for Papuan independence.

However, 2019 saw a rare moment of regional unity when the Pacific Islands Forum, which is made up of 18 member countries, including French territories New Caledonia and French Polynesia, resolved to push Indonesia to allow the UN Human Rights Commissioner access to Papua to produce an independent report on the situation.

Human rights unity stalled
Then the pandemic came along and the matter stalled.

“Following that, the Pacific Island states who are members of the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific bloc) supported the same resolution at (its) General Assembly in Kenya,” said Vanuatu’s opposition leader Ralph Regenvanu, who was foreign minister at the time of the Forum resolution. Since then, he said, there had been “nothing explicit.”

Papua remains of great concern to Pacific Islanders, Regenvanu explained, noting that Indonesia’s plan for new provinces was set to cause “accelerated destruction of the natural environment and the social fabric, more dissipation of the political will.”

The Papua conflict has fallen largely on deaf ears in both Canberra and Wellington, each of which is hesitant to jeopardise its relations with Indonesia. Australia’s new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Jakarta soon after coming to power last month, showing that the country’s relationship with Indonesia is a priority.

But as the conflict worsens in neighboring West Papua, Australia’s involvement in training and funding of Indonesian military and police forces who are accused of human rights violations in Papua grows ever more problematic.

Under Albanese, Canberra is unlikely to spring any surprises on Jakarta regarding West Papua, but neither can it ignore the momentum for decolonisation in the Pacific without adding to the sense of betrayal Pacific Island countries feel towards Canberra over the question of climate change.

Major self-determination questions are pressing on its doorstep, both in New Caledonia, where the messy culmination of the Noumea Accord means the territory’s future status is uncertain, and in Bougainville where 98 percent of people voted for independence from PNG in a non-binding referendum in 2019.

Ratifying the referendum
PNG’s next Parliament is due to decide whether to ratify the referendum result, and while political leaders don’t wish to trigger the break-up of PNG, they know that failure to respond to such an emphatic call by Bougainvilleans would spell trouble.

While in Parkop’s view Bougainville and West Papua are not the same, there are lessons to be drawn from the two cases.

“In the past PNG has been looking at (Bougainville) from the development perspective, and we have tried so many things: changed the constitution, gave them autonomy, gave them more money, and so on.

“It did not solve the problem,” he said. “And now in PNG, it’s a reckoning time.”

He added: “So the Indonesians have to come to terms with this. Otherwise if they only see this as a development issue, they will miss the entire story, and it can only get worse, whatever they do.”

Much is riding on the Bougainville and New Caledonia questions, and fears that China could step in to back a new independent nation are part of the reason why Australia would prefer the status quo to remain in place, and probably the same for West Papua and Indonesia.

The 2006 Lombok Treaty between Indonesia and Australia, which prohibits any interference in each nation’s sovereignty, makes it hard for Canberra to speak out. But it could also play into China’s hands if Australia and New Zealand keep ignoring the requests of Pacific Island nations about West Papua.

Opportunities for resolution
Means of resolving the Papua conflict exist, but they aren’t development or military-based approaches. And as far as Jakarta is concerned, independence is out of the question.

Professor Bilveer Singh, an international relations specialist from the National Singapore University, told The Diplomat in 2019 that West Papuan independence was a pipe dream. Internal divisions among the Papuan independence movement are identified as a barrier.

The head of the ULMWP, Benny Wenda, sought to address this with decisive leadership by declaring an interim government of West Papua last year, but the move was criticised by some key players in the movement.

While Papua is unlikely to be another Timor-Leste, Singh wrote, an Aceh or Mindanao model with greater autonomy would be more achievable. Furthermore, Jakarta could allow Papuans to hoist their own colors under Indonesian sovereignty.

Declaring tribal areas as conservation regions is an option, too. More significantly, Papua could also become a self-governing state in free association with Indonesia, like the Cook Islands and Niue are with New Zealand, or even follow the model of Chechnya in Russia.

To be able to manage their own security and governance, and allow their culture to thrive, would answer a lot of Papuans’ grievances. A non-binding independence referendum, as PNG has allowed for Bougainville, would be a good starting point.

If Papuans are as content with Indonesian rule as Jakarta claims, a referendum would be instructive.

Meaningful dialogue necessary
At the very least, in a bid to stop the conflict, meaningful dialogue is necessary. Jokowi has reportedly given approval for Indonesia’s national human rights body to host a dialogue with pro-independence factions, including those residing abroad.

Leaders of the TPNPB and ULMWP have indicated they are interested in a dialogue only on condition that it is brokered by a foreign, neutral third party mandated by the UN.

The Papuans aren’t in a position to dictate such terms, unless international pressure weighs into the equation. They are however also highly unlikely to stop resisting Indonesian rule while their sense of injustice remains.

“The Papuan conflict is not about colour television or 3G internet, it’s about indigenous dignity and a stand against militarism,” Haluk said.

As well as drawing new lines on the map, the plan for more provinces in Papua draws a new line in the sand, beyond which the conflict in Indonesia’s easternmost region will become much more intractable.

No amount of development will stop this until Jakarta shifts its thinking on how to address the region’s core problem. The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth, it’s justice.

Co-authors and journalists Aprila Wayar (West Papua) and Johnny Blades (Aotearoa New Zealand) are contributors to The Diplomat. Republished with permission by the authors.

Timor-Leste, the youngest independent nation and the most fledgling press in the Asia-Pacific, has finally shown how it’s done — with a big lesson for Pacific island neighbours.

Tackle the Chinese media gatekeepers and creeping authoritarianism threatening journalism in the region at the top.

In Dili on the final day of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s grand Pacific tour to score more than 50 agreements and deals — although falling short of winning its Pacific region-wide security pact for the moment — newly elected (for the second time) President José Ramos-Horta won a major concession.

• READ MORE: Outcry as China stops Pacific journalists questioning Wang Yi
• Chinese foreign minister’s visit to the Solomon Islands has been shrouded in secrecy and press restrictions
• Timor-Leste: Deals signed with China at start of visit by Chinese minister
• China calls for a ‘reset’ in relations with Australia
• Other China in Pacific media freedom reports

Enough of this paranoid secrecy and contemptuous attitude towards the local – and international – media in democratic nations of the region.

Under pressure from the democrat Ramos-Horta, a longstanding friend of a free media, Wang’s entourage caved in and allowed more questions like a real media conference.

Lusa newsagency correspondent in Dili Antonió Sampaio summed up the achievement in the face of the Pacific-wide secrecy alarm in a Facebook post: “After the controversy, the Chinese minister gave in and agreed to speak with journalists. A small victory for the media in Timor-Leste!”

Small victory, big tick
A small victory maybe. But it got a big tick from Timor-Leste Journalists Association president Zevonia Vieira and her colleagues. He thanked President Ramos-Horta for his role in ending the ban on local media and protecting the country’s freedom of information.

Media consultant Bob Howarth, a former PNG Post-Courier publisher and longtime adviser to the Timorese media, hailed the pushback against Chinese secrecy, saying the Chinese minister answering three questions — elsewhere in the region only one was allowed and that had to be by an approved Chinese journalist — as a “press freedom breakthrough”.

On the eve of Wang’s visit, Timor-Leste’s Press Council had denounced the restrictions being imposed on journalists before Horta’s intervention.

“In a democratic state like East Timor not being able to have questions is unacceptable,” said president Virgilio Guterres. “There may be limits for extraordinary situations where there can be no coverage, but saying explicitly that there can be no questions is against the principles of press freedom.”

The Chinese delegation justified the decision to ban questions from journalists or to exclude from the agenda any statements with “lack of time” and the “covid-19 pandemic” excuses.

However, Ramos-Horta was also quietly supportive of the Chinese overtures in the region.

According to Sampiaio, when questioned in the media conference about fears in the West about China’s actions in the Pacific, Ramos-Horta said “there is no reason for alarm” and noted that Beijing had always had interests in the region, for example in fishing.

‘A lot of lobbying’
“These Pacific countries have done a lot of lobbying with China to get more support and China is responding to that. These one-off agreements with one country or another, they don’t affect the long-standing interests of countries like Australia and the United States,” he said.

An article by The Guardian’s Pacific Project editor Kate Lyons highlighted China’s authoritarian approach to the media this week, saying “allegations raise press freedom concerns and alarm about the ability of Pacific journalists to do their jobs, particularly as the relationship between the region and China becomes closer.”

But one of the most telling criticisms came from Fiji freelance journalist Lice Movono, whose television crew reporting for the ABC, was deliberately blocked from filming. Pacific Islands Forum officials intervened.

“From the very beginning there was a lot of secrecy, no transparency, no access given,” she told The Guardian.

“I was quite disturbed by what I saw. When you live in Fiji you kind of get used to the militarised nature of the place, but to see the Chinese officials do that was quite disturbing.

“To be a journalist in Fiji is to be worried about imprisonment all the time. Journalism is criminalised. You can be jailed or the company you work for can be fined a crippling amount that can shut down the operation … But to see foreign nationals pushing you back in your own country, that was a different level.”

Media soul-searching

China was moderately successful in signing multiple bilateral agreements with almost a dozen Pacific Island nations during Wang’s visit to the region. The tour began 11 days ago in Solomon Islands — where a secret security pact with China was leaked in March — and since then Wang has met Pacific leaders from Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Niue (virtually), Cook Islands (virtually) and Vanuatu.

However, the repercussions from the visit on the media will lead to soul searching for a long time. Some brief examples of the interaction with Beijing’s authoritarianism:

Solomon Islands: The level of secrecy and selective media overtures surrounding Wang’s meetings with the government sparked the Media Association of the Solomon Islands (MASI) to call on local media to boycott coverage of the visit in protest over the “ridiculous” restrictions.

Samoa: Samoan journalist Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson criticised the Chinese restrictions on the media with only a five-minute photo-op allowed and no questions or individual interviews. There was also no press briefing before or after Wang’s visit.

Fiji: No questions were allowed during the brief joint press conference between Wang and Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama. Local media later reported that, according to Fijian officials, the no-question policy came from the Chinese side.

Examples of local media publishing propaganda were demonstrated by the pro-government Fiji Sun, with a full page “ocean of peace” op-ed written by Chinese Ambassador Qian Bo claiming China’s engagement with Pacific Island countries was “open and transparent”. The Sun followed up with report written by the Chinese embassy in Fiji touting the “great success” of Wang’s visit.

Tonga: Matangi Tonga also published an article by Chinese Ambassador Cao Xiaolin a day before Wang’s visit claiming how “China has never interfered in the internal affairs of [Pacific Island countries]” and would “adhere to openness.”

Papua New Guinea: As a joint scheduled press conference was about to start, media were told that after both ministers had spoken, only one Chinese journalist and one PNG journalist could ask a question of their own foreign minister. However, according to the ABC correspondent Natalie Whiting, when PNG Post-Courier’s Mirriam Zarriga “asked a question about the Solomons security deal, both the PNG and Chinese foreign ministers responded”.

Wang then “made a point of calling on the ABC to also ask a question”. The ABC asked about the “inability to get the 10 Pacific nations to sign on to the proposed regional deal”.

China has called for a “reset” in relations with Australia and blamed a “political force” for the deteriorating relations.

China’s Foreign Minister speaks about resetting relations with Australia as he finishes his 8 country tour of the region. Blames a “political force” in Australia that views China as a rival and its development as a threat:https://t.co/5dEde87taD #auspol #PNG pic.twitter.com/qB5Ygi2eXv

— Natalie Whiting (@Nat_Whiting) June 4, 2022

Global condemnation
The secrecy and media control surrounding Wang’s tour was roundly condemned by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and other media freedom watchdogs.

“The restriction of journalists and media organisations from the Chinese delegation’s visit … sets a worrying precedent for press freedom in the Pacific,” said the IFJ in a statement.

“The IFJ urges the governments of Solomon Islands and China to ensure all journalists are given fair and open access to all press events.”

#RSF condemns #Chinese curb on #reporters during #Pacific island tour #AsiaPacificReport @PNGAttitude @pngfacts @RSF_AsiaPacific #mediafreedom #pressfreedom #ChinaInPacific #WangYi #securitypacthttps://t.co/CGxwNn2O5U pic.twitter.com/XbBIfDIt2u

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 3, 2022

Likewise, RSF’s Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard said the actions surrounding the events organised by the Chinese delegation with several Pacific island states “clearly contravenes the democratic principles of the region’s countries”.

He added: “We call on officials preparing to meet Wang Yi to resist Chinese pressure by allowing local journalists and international organisations to cover these events, which are of major public interest.”

University of the South Pacific journalism head Associate Professor Shailendra Singh also criticised the Chinese actions, saying “we have two different systems here. China has a different political system — a totalitarian system, and in the Pacific we have a democratic system.”

In Papua New Guinea, the last country to be visited in the Pacific before Timor-Leste, “there appeared to be little resistance” to the authoritarian screen, according to independent journalist Scott Waide, a champion of press freedom in his country.

“There’s not a lot of awareness about the visit,” he admits. “I would have liked to have seen a visible expression of resistance at least of some sort. But from Hagen, where I was this week. I didn’t see much.”

Waide has been training journalists as part of the ABC’s Media for Development Initiative (MDI) programme as a prelude to the PNG’s general election in July.

‘Problems to be resolved’
“We have problems that need to be resolved. Over the last month, I’ve tried to impart as much as possible through training workshops on the elections,” he told Pacific Media Watch But there are huge gaps in terms of journalism training. I believe that is a contributor to the lack of obvious pushback over Wang’s visit.”

The #WangYi Pacific tour reached #Fiji to tight security and a clear message that #China doesn’t welcome foreign media coverage around its officials. Were it not for Pacific media solidarity that is inclusive of ANZ press, today would have been (even more) interesting. #FijiNews pic.twitter.com/C3xwARRGuc

— Lice Movono (@LiceMovono) May 29, 2022

Reflecting on China’s Pacific tour, Lice Movono, said: “At the time of my interview with The Guardian, I think I was still pretty rattled. Now I think the best way to describe my response is that I feel extremely disturbed.”

She expressed concerns that mostly women journalists from the region noted “but that didn’t get enough traction when other media covered the incident(s) — that China was able to behave that way because the governments of the Pacific allowed it, or in the case of Fiji, preferred it that way.

Movono said that since her criticisms, she had come in for nasty attention by trolls.

“I’m getting some hateful trolling from Chinese twitter accounts – got called a ‘fat pig’ yesterday,” she told Pacific Media Watch.

“Also I’m being accused of lying because some photos have come out of the doorstop we did on the Chinese ambassador here and some have purported that to be an accurate portrayal of Chinese ‘friendliness’ toward media.”

So the pushback from President Ramos-Horta is a welcome sign for media freedom in the region.

Timor-Leste rose to 17th in the 2022 RSF World Press Freedom Index listing of 180 countries — the highest in the Pacific region — while both Fiji and Papua New Guinea fell in the rankings. There are some definite lessons there for media freedom defenders.

Frustrated Pacific journalists hope that there will be a more concerted effort to defend media freedom in the future against creeping authoritarianism.

As China seeks greater influence in the South Pacific, its manipulation of local news outlets is having a serious impact on media independence.

Most Pacific media organisations are struggling financially, many journalists have lost their jobs and China is offering a way for them to survive — at the cost of media freedom.

It’s not just the “no strings attached” financial aid and “look and learn” tours of China for journalists; it’s about sharing an autocratic media model.

• READ MORE: An unprecedented RSF investigation: The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China
• China on the RSF World Press Freedom Index
• Other Chinese media in the Pacific reports

Prominent journalists and media executives say Pacific leaders are copying Chinese media tactics and stopping them from doing their jobs.

China is one of the worst countries in the world for media freedom. It ranks 177 on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

Now it’s trying to influence media around the world, especially in countries which have signed up to its Belt and Road Initiative. That includes 10 Pacific island nations. Four remain with Taiwan.

China has spent an estimated US$6.6 billion over 13 years strengthening its global media presence. It took over Radio Australia’s shortwave transmitter frequencies in the Pacific when the ABC shut down its shortwave service in 2017.

Satellite service for Vanuatu
China’s national television service is about to start broadcasting by satellite into Vanuatu.

In a 2020 report, the International Federation of Journalists warned that foreign journalists were wooed by exchange programs, opportunities to study in China, tours and financial aid for their media outlets. Beijing also provides free content in foreign newspapers and ambassadors write opinion pieces for local media.

The federation’s report found that journalists frequently think their media is strong enough to withstand this influence, but a global survey suggests that’s not the reality and China is reshaping the media round the world.

These attempts at ‘sharp power’ go beyond simply telling China’s story, according to Sarah Cook, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House. Their sharper edge often undermines democratic norms, erodes national sovereignty, weakens the financial sustainability of independent media, and violates local laws.

Journalists say this is an ideological and political struggle, with China determined to combat what it sees as decades of unchallenged Western media imperialism.

There’s mounting evidence from the Pacific of the impact of Beijing’s worldwide campaign, particularly in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The situation for journalists in Solomon Islands has rapidly changed since the country swapped diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing in 2019. Media freedom has deteriorated and journalists say leaders are now taking their cues from China.

Vulnerable media outlets
Media outlets are vulnerable to offers of financial help. Many journalists have lost jobs and others haven’t been paid for months. It’s estimated there are just 16 full-time journalists left in Honiara.

There’s been little advertising since the November 2021 riots, a situation exacerbated by the covid pandemic. The only income for one privately owned media outlet is from the small street sales of its newspapers.

Earlier this month, the Solomon Islands government held its first news conference for 2022 after months of pressure to talk to journalists. The government denied there were restrictions on media freedom.

As the media struggles to survive, China’s ambassador is offering support, such as more trips to China (after the pandemic) and donations including two vehicles to the Solomon Star and maintenance of the newspaper’s printing presses. In the experience of other media, these offers are often followed with pressure to adhere to editorial positions congruent with those of the Chinese embassy.

While some journalists are resisting the pressure and holding a strong line, others are being targeted by China with rewards for “friends”.

Chinese embassies throughout the South Pacific are active on social media. In Solomon Islands, the embassy’s Facebook site includes posts about its aid assistance for covid-19, joint press releases with the Solomons government and stories from official Chinese news outlets.

There are numerous examples of the growing impact on media freedom.

Harassment over investigation
A freelance journalist has relocated to Australia after her investigations into the relationship between Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and a Chinese businessman resulted in harassment from police. She said police told her an order for her arrest came directly from the prime minister.

She was advised by Australia’s high commissioner to move to Australia for her safety.

Veteran journalist Dorothy Wickham was among a group of Solomon Islands journalists who accepted an invitation for a “look and learn” tour of China soon after the Sogavare government swapped allegiance to China in 2019.

She said the trip left her concerned about how Solomon Islands would deal with its new diplomatic partner.

“By the time our tour concluded in Shanghai, I was personally convinced that our political leaders are not ready or able to deal effectively with China. Solomon Islands’ regulatory and accountability mechanisms are too weak,” she says.

“We have already shown some spirit with our attorney-general rejecting a hasty deal to lease the island of Tulagi, the capital of one of our provinces, to a Chinese company, but I fear how fragile and weak my country is against any large developed nation let alone China,’ she wrote in an article for The Guardian.

One senior media executive that said if his own government, Australia, and New Zealand didn’t assist, he would look to China.

“There is too much talk about the role of media in democracy,” he said. He thought the Chinese ambassador understood that his organisation had its own editorial policy.

Soon after that, though, he was asked to publish a press release word for word.

No expense spared
Another media executive said he only had to ring the Chinese embassy and help arrived. He said China was rapidly moving into his country’s media space with no expense spared.

High-profile Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry says he has no doubt that some Pacific governments are following China’s lead and adopting its contempt for critical speech and dissent.

In 2019, McGarry left Vanuatu to attend a forum in Australia, but his visa was revoked and he was banned from re-entering Vanuatu. He told the ABC’s Media Watch programme at the time that he had no doubt it was because of a story he wrote about the secret deportation of six Chinese from Vanuatu.

The six were arrested and detained without charge on the premises of a Chinese company with numerous large government contracts before being escorted out of Vanuatu by Chinese and Vanuatu police. McGarry said he was summoned by the prime minister, who told him he was disappointed with his negative reporting.

McGarry said he had no evidence that China tried to influence the Vanuatu government over his residence, but he’d seen a tendency in Pacific leaders to emulate behaviour they saw elsewhere.

Now back in Vanuatu, he said the decision to refuse his work permit was still under judicial review and he’s seeking financial compensation.

In 2018, Papua New Guinea journalist Scott Waide was suspended by EMTV under pressure from Prime Minister Peter O’Neill for a story he wrote about a diplomatic Chinese tantrum and a scandal over the purchase of Maserati cars for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Port Moresby.

Waide told the ABC that Pacific governments were taking lessons from China in dealing with their critics using media clampdowns and intimidation. That didn’t necessarily involve direct instructions from Beijing, “but people watch, people learn”.

Head of news sacked
A dispute over media freedom has escalated with the sacking of the head of news and 24 journalists at EMTV in PNG. They were initially suspended but later terminated for supporting their editor over interference from a government minister about a story involving an Australian man charged with drug trafficking.

On March 9, the EMTV news manager was sacked for insubordination. The network has since hired a new team of recent graduates with little experience — just months before the scheduled elections in June.

These examples give a sharper edge to concerns about China’s growing influence in the South Pacific and the lack of an Australian media voice there. The ABC’s presence has been described as a whisper.

There’s only one Australian journalist based in the region, the ABC’s Natalie Whiting in PNG. Meanwhile, Xinhua has a correspondent based in Fiji and China has recently been recruiting Pacific journalists for its global TV network.

The situation worries Australia’s national broadcaster. ABC managing director David Anderson told a Senate hearing in February 2022 of growing Chinese influence in the Pacific.

“The single biggest piece of information that comes back to us from the public broadcasters is concern over the pressure the Chinese government put on them to carry content,” he said.

In November 2019, the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum at Griffith University expressed concern about growing threats to media freedom. It called on Pacific governments to fund public broadcasters properly to ensure they have sufficient equipment and staff to enable their services to reach all citizens and to adequately play their watchdog role.

Australian journalist, media development consultant and trainer Jemima Garrett says media executives are at risk of being captured by China.

She has no doubt that China’s growing influence is a major story, but with so few Australian journalists based in the region, even significant developments in the China story are going unreported.

Sue Ahearn is the creator and co-editor of The Pacific Newsroom and co-convenor of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative. She was a senior executive at ABC Radio Australia and is currently studying Pacific development at the Australian National University. Image: Media Association of Solomon Islands/Facebook. This article was first published by The Strategist and is republished with the author’s permission.

• Author’s note: Some of the Pacific journalists in this story have asked not to be named or identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The Pacific year has closed with growing tensions over sovereignty and self-determination issues and growing stress over the ravages of covid-19 pandemic in a region that was largely virus-free in 2020.

Just two days before the year 2021 wrapped up, Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama took the extraordinary statement of denying any involvement by the people or government of the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea being involved in any “secret plot” to overthrow the Manasseh Sogavare government in Solomon Islands.

Insisting that Bougainville is “neutral” in the conflict in neighbouring Solomon Islands where riots last month were fuelled by anti-Chinese hostilities, Toroama blamed one of PNG’s two daily newspapers for stirring the controversy.

• READ MORE: Flashback to Kanaky in the 1980s – ‘Blood on their Banner’
• New Caledonia referendum: France’s last pocket of settler colonialism
• Solomon Islands riots push nation into slippery slide of self-implosion
• ‘Secret plot’ uncovered

“Contrary to the sensationalised report in the Post-Courier (Thursday, December 30, 2021) we do not have a vested interest in the conflict and Bougainville has nothing to gain from overthrowing a democratically elected leader of a foreign nation,” Toroama said.

The frontpage report in the Post-Courier appeared to be a beat-up just at the time Australia was announcing a wind down of the peacekeeping role in the Solomon Islands. A multilateral Pacific force of more than 200 Australian, Fiji, New Zealand and PNG police and military have been deployed since the riots in a bid to ward off further strife.

PNG Police Commissioner David Manning confirmed to the newspaper having receiving reports of Papua New Guineans allegedly training with Solomon Islanders to overthrow the Sogavare government in the New Year.

According to the Post-Courier’s Gorethy Kenneth, reports reaching Manning had claimed that Bougainvilleans with connections to Solomon Islanders had “joined forces with an illegal group in Malaita to train them and supply arms”.

The Bougainvilleans were also accused of “leading this alleged covert operation” in an effort to cause division in Solomon Islands.

However, Foreign Affairs Minister Soroi Eoe told the newspaper there had been no official information or reports of this alleged operation. The Solomon Islands Foreign Ministry was also cool over the reports.

Warning over ‘sensationalism’

Toroama warned news media against sensationalising national security issues with its Pacific neighbours, saying the Bougainville Peace Agreement “explicitly forbids Bougainville to engage in any foreign relations so it is absurd to assume that Bougainville would jeopardise our own political aspirations by acting in defiance” of these provisions.

This is a highly sensitive time for Bougainville’s political aspirations as it negotiates a path in response the 98 percent nonbinding vote in support of independence during the 2019 referendum.

In contrast, another Melanesian territory’s self-determination aspirations received a setback in the third and final referendum on independence in Kanaky New Caledonia on December 12 where a decisive more than 96 percent voted “non”.

However, less than half (43.87 percent) of the electorate voted – far less than the “yes” vote last year – in response to the boycott called by a coalition of seven Kanak independence groups out of respect to the disproportionate number of indigenous people among the 280 who had died in the recent covid-19 outbreak.

The result was a dramatic reversal of the two previous referendums in 2018 and 2020 where there was a growing vote for independence and the flawed nature of the final plebiscite has been condemned by critics as undoing three decades of progress in decolonisation and race relations.

In 2018, only 57 percent opposed independence and this dropped to 53 percent in 2020 with every indication that the pro-independence “oui” vote would rise further for this third plebiscite in spite of the demographic odds against the indigenous Kanaks who make up just 40 percent of the territory’s population of 280,000.

The result is now likely in inflame tensions and make it difficult to negotiate a shared future with France which annexed Melanesian territory in 1853 and turned it into a penal colony for political prisoners.

Kanaky turbulence in 1980s
A turbulent period in the 1980s – known locally as “Les événements” – culminated in a farcical referendum on independence in 1987 which returned a 98 percent rejection of independence. This was boycotted by the pro-independence groups when then President François Mitterrand broke a promise that short-term French residents would not be able to vote.

The turnout was 59 percent but skewed by the demographics. The UN Special Committee on Decolonisation declined to send observers as that plebiscite did not honour the process of “decolonisation”.

A Kanak international advocate of the Confédération Nationale du Travail (CNT) trade union and USTKE member, Rock Haocas, says from Paris that the latest referendum is “a betrayal” of the past three decades of progress and jeopardises negotiations for a future statute on the future of Kanaky New Caledonia.

The pro-independence parties have refused to negotiate on the future until after the French presidential elections in April this year. A new political arrangement is due in 18 months.

In the meantime, the result is being challenged in France’s constitutional court.

“The people have made concessions,” Haocas told Asia Pacific Report, referencing the many occasions indigenous Kanaks have done so, such as:

• Concessions to the “two colours, one people” agreement with the Union Caledonian party in 1953;
• Recognition of the “victims of history” in Nainville-Les-Roches in 1983;
• The Matignon and Oudnot Agreement in 1988;
• The Nouméa Accord in 1998; and
• The opening of the electoral body (to the native).

‘Getting closer to each other’
“The period of the agreements allowed the different communities to get to know each other, to get closer to each other, to be together in schools, to work together in companies and development projects, to travel in France, the Pacific, and in other countries,” says Haocas.

“It’s also the time of the internet. Colonisation is not hidden in Kanaky anymore; it faces the world. People talk about it more easily. The demand for independence has become more explainable, and more exportable. There has been more talk of interdependence, and no longer of a strict break with France.

“But for the last referendum France banked on the fear of one with the other to preserve its own interests.”

Is this a return to the dark days of 1987 when France conducted the “sham referendum”?

“We’re not really in the same context. We are here in the framework of the Nouméa Accord with three consultations — and for which we asked for the postponement of the last one scheduled for December 12,” says Haocas.

“It was for health reasons with its cultural and societal impacts that made the campaign difficult, it was not fundamentally for political reasons.

“The French state does not discuss, does not seek consensus — it imposes, even if it means going back on its word.”

Haocas says it is now time to reflect and analyse the results of the referendum.

“The result of the ballot box speaks for itself. Note the calm in the pro-independence world. Now there are no longer three actors — the indépendantistes, the anti-independence and the state – but two, the indépendantistes and the state.”

Rock Haocas in a 2018 interview before the the three referendums on independence. Video: CNT union

Comparisons between Kanaky and Palestine
In a devastating critique of the failings of the referendum and of the sincerity of France’s about-turn in its three-decade decolonisation policy, Professor Joseph Massad, a specialist in modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York, made comparisons with Israeli occupation and apartheid in Palestine.

“Its expected result was a defeat for the cause of independence. It seems that European settler-colonies remain beholden to the white colonists, not only in the larger white settler-colonies in the Americas and Oceania, but also in the smaller ones, whether in the South Pacific, Southern Africa, Palestine, or Hawai’i,” wrote Dr Massad in Middle East Eye.

“Just as Palestine is the only intact European settler-colony in the Arab world after the end of Italian settler-colonialism in Libya in the 1940s and 1950s, the end of French settler-colonialism in Morocco and Tunisia in the 1950s, and the liberation of Algeria in 1962 (some of Algeria’s French colonists left for New Caledonia), Kanaky remains the only major country subject to French settler-colonialism after the independence of most of its island neighbours.

“As with the colonised Palestinians, who have less rights than those acquired by the Kanaks in the last half century, and who remain subject to the racialised power of their colonisers, the colonised Kanaks remain subject to the racialised power of the white French colonists and their mother country.

“No wonder [President Emmanuel] Macron is as ebullient and proud as Israel’s leaders.”

West Papuan hopes elusive as violence worsens
Hopes for a new United Nations-supervised referendum for West Papua have remained elusive for the Melanesian region colonised by Indonesia in the 1960s and annexed after a sham plebiscite known euphemistically as the “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 when 1025 men and women hand-picked by the Indonesian military voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control of their former Dutch colony.

Two years ago the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) was formed to step up the international diplomatic effort for Papuan self-determination and independence. However, at the same time armed resistance has grown and Indonesia has responded with a massive build up of more than 20,000 troops in the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua and an exponential increase on human rights violations and draconian measures by the Jakarta authorities.

As 2021 ended, interim West Papuan president-in-exile Benny Wenda distributed a Christmas message thanking the widespread international support – “our solidarity groups, the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, the International Lawyers for West Papua, all those across the world who continue to tirelessly support us.

“Religious leaders, NGOs, politicians, diplomats, individuals, everyone who has helped us in the Pacific, Caribbean, Africa, America, Europe, UK: thank you.”

Wenda sounded an optimistic note in his message: “Our goal is getting closer. Please help us keep up the momentum in 2022 with your prayers, your actions and your solidarity.
You are making history through your support, which will help us achieve independence.”

But Wenda was also frank about the grave situation facing West Papua, which was “getting worse and worse”.

“We continue to demand that the Indonesian government release the eight students arrested on December 1 for peacefully calling for their right to self-determination. We also demand that the military operations, which continue in Intan Jaya, Puncak, Nduga and elsewhere, cease,” he said, adding condemnation of Jakarta for using the covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to prevent the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visiting West Papua.

New covid-19 wave hits Fiji
Fiji, which had already suffered earlier in 2021 along with Guam and French Polynesia as one of the worst hit Pacific countries hit by the covid-19 pandemic, is now in the grip of a third wave of infection with 780 active cases.

Fiji’s Health Ministry has reported one death and 309 new cases of covid-19 in the community since Christmas Day — 194 of them confirmed in the 24 hours just prior to New Year’s Eve. This is another blow to the tourism industry just at a time when it was seeking to rebuild.

Health Secretary Dr James Fong is yet to confirm whether these cases were of the delta variant or the more highly contagious omicron mutant. It may just be a resurgence of the endemic delta variant, says Dr Fong, “however we are also working on the assumption that the omicron variant is already here, and is being transmitted within the community.

“We expect that genomic sequencing results of covid-19 positive samples sent overseas will confirm this in due course.”

A DevPolicy blog article at Australian National University earlier in 2021 warned against applying Western notions of public health to the Pacific country. Communal living is widespread across squatter settlements, urban villages, and other residential areas in the Lami-Suva-Nausori containment zone.

“Household sizes are generally bigger than in Western countries, and households often include three generations. This means elderly people are more at risk as they cannot easily isolate. At the same time, identifying a ‘household’ and determining who should be in a ‘bubble’ is difficult.

“‘Stay home’ is equally difficult to define, because the concept of ‘home’ has a broader meaning in the Fijian context compared to Western societies.”

While covid pandemic crises are continuing to wreak havoc in some Pacific communities into 2022, the urgency of climate change still remains the critical issue facing the region. After the lacklustre COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, Pacific leaders — who were mostly unable to attend due to the covid lockdowns — have stepped up their global advocacy.

End of ’empty promises’ on climate
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown appealed in a powerful article that it was time for the major nations producing global warming emissions to shelve their “empty promises” and finally deliver on climate financing.

‘As custodians of these islands, we have a moral duty to protect [them] — for today and the unborn generations of our Pacific anau. Sadly, we are unable to do that because of things beyond our control …

“Sea level rise is alarming. Our food security is at risk, and our way of life that we have known for generations is slowly disappearing. What were ‘once in a lifetime’ extreme events like category 5 cyclones, marine heatwaves and the like are becoming more severe.

“Despite our negligible contribution to global emissions, this is the price we pay. We are talking about homes, lands and precious lives; many are being displaced as we speak.”

Perhaps the most perceptive reflections of the year came from a young Kanak pro-independence and climate change student activist, Marylou Mahé. Saying that as a “decolonial feminist” she wished to put an end to “injustice and humiliation of my people”, Mahé added a message familiar to many Pacific Islanders:

“As a young Kanak woman, my voice is often silenced, but I want to remind the world that we are here, we are standing, and we are acting for our future. The state’s spoken word may die tomorrow, but our right to recognition and self-determination never will.”

When tomorrow’s referendum on independence for New Caledonia goes ahead, it won’t have my vote.

I am a young Kanak woman, a pro-independence and decolonial feminist who wants to stop the injustice and humiliation of my people, colonised for more than a century by France.

But this referendum is undemocratic, and should be postponed.

• READ MORE: Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days
• Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge? — Backgrounder
• Covid, mourning and the fear of violence: New Caledonia prepares for blighted independence vote
• Other New Caledonia referendum reports

For more than 30 years, New Caledonia has undergone a unique process of decolonisation. After the Matignon (1988) and Nouméa (1998) agreements, the indigenous Kanak people and the various communities on the archipelago have worked to build a common society.

A process driven by constant dialogue, the spoken word, and recognition of the Kanak culture, which had long been ignored.

This was done under the watchful and “neutral” eye of the French state. The spoken word refers to a Melanesian way of navigating the world — it determines actions and assures the perpetuity of the collective existence of the group.

It is sacred, with a moral and spiritual commitment, and cannot be betrayed.

Three referendums on independence
The Nouméa agreements included up to three referendums, asking New Caledonians to vote on the sovereignty and independence of the islands.

The first took place in November 2018. The “No” vote, which “loyalists” had initially predicted would win by 70 per cent, ended up with only 56.7 per cent, while 43.3 per cent said “Yes” to independence.

In October 2020, the second referendum was held, in which 53.3 per cent voted “No” and 46.7 per cent voted “Yes”. There were only 10,000 votes between the two camps.

We felt that we were touching independence with our fingertips; the momentum was in our favour.

For this third and final referendum, the state initially announced that the consultation could not be held between September this year and August 2022, because of French presidential campaigns and elections taking place until April. It later contradicted itself by setting the date for December 12.

As the referendum campaign was about to begin, New Caledonia, which until then had been covid-free, recorded its first local cases on September 6.

The pandemic rapidly spread: 276 people have died since, and a light lockdown has been put in place. Despite this crisis, the state is maintaining the referendum date, and the pro-independence movement has called on its supporters not to vote.

And I wouldn’t vote. The future of New Caledonia cannot be built without its indigenous people. The Kanak voice is the cornerstone of New Caledonia’s common destiny.

Campaign conditions are not met
With covid-19 health restrictions, it is impossible to create the democratic conditions for a normal and fair election campaign. Large rallies are now impossible, and many pro-independence Kanak tribes do not have easy access to the internet.

The digital divide is real, and the idea of a “fair” online campaign is an illusion. Beyond this, the virus is likely to demobilise voters.

Time of mourning
This is a time for traditional Kanak mourning. More than 50 percent of the people who have died from the virus are Kanak. The Customary Senate, the representative body of the Kanak people, has declared a period of mourning of one year.

Yet the state has dismissed this issue. We felt this was a sign of contempt. I have the impression that my culture is being ignored, that my Kanak identity is being denied, and that we are being set back more than 30 years. To a time when our voice did not count. As if I and we didn’t exist.

Betrayal of the spoken word
The spoken word is of considerable importance in Kanak culture. Sunday’s vote will be perfectly “legal”, even if half the electorate does not participate. But what political and moral legitimacy can be given to an independence referendum without the participation of the colonised people?

The French state, with the support of local loyalists, is undermining 30 years of negotiations. It risks taking us back to the violence of the 1980s. The state’s failure to keep its word is bringing us closer to the shadows of the past.

As a young Kanak woman, my voice is often silenced, but I want to remind the world that we are here, we are standing, and we are acting for our future. The state’s spoken word may die tomorrow, but our right to recognition and self-determination never will.

Marylou Mahé is a decolonial feminist artist and student in English studies, in France. She was born in Houaïlou, in the Kanak country of Ajë-Arhö, of mixed Kanak and French descent. She is currently finishing her master’s thesis on Hawai’ian feminism. This article is published via the Pacific Cooperation Foundation as part of the Pacific Voices series and was previously published by Stuff.

The United Nations has glaring problems in Samoa where the government is calling for the UN’s role in the country to be reviewed.

The most pressing immediate problem concerns the UN Resident Co-ordinator in Samoa, Simona Marinescu, and the local government’s allegation that she has interfered in domestic politics.

Samoa’s ruling Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party has accused Marinescu of breaching UN principles of neutrality by actively working against the party during this year’s election.

• READ MORE: More Samoan politics reports

The FAST claim partly relates to Marinescu’s involvement in the push to increase the number of women MPs in Samoa. The issue of a quota for women’s seats in Parliament became a central point of contention in the drawn out impasse between the former ruling Human Rights Protection Party and FAST over election the election in April, which was won by FAST.

Marinescu, a former politician in Romania who took up the Apia post in early 2018, is a vocal advocate of women’s rights.

However, by pushing the women MPs issue during the testy initial post-election stages, she was accused of having favoured HRPP and its leader, Samoa’s long-time prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielagaoi, who aimed to prevent Fiame Naomi Mata’afa becoming the country’s first woman prime minister.

After months of court action over the election outcome, as well as rallies by HRPP supporters which FAST has accused Marinescu of helping to instigate, Fiame is now installed as prime minister — and her government has the knives out for the UN representative.

Push for law change
FAST party chairman deputy prime minister La’auli Leuatea Schmidt has also questioned Marinescu’s role in a reported recommendation to legalise abortion in Samoa made as part of a submission by the UN country office for Samoa’s recent Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council.

La’auli said it was not Marinescu’s place to have pushed for changes to Samoa’s laws in the area of women’s rights, adding that she had crossed a line.

“She should not affiliate with our local domestic politics,” he said.

“That is our main concern, because we found out that she has been involved with our political affairs locally.”

The diplomat has been unavailable for RNZ Pacific’s requests to comment. Having attended COP26 in Glasgow, Marinescu remains out of the country, and it is uncertain if she is welcome to return to Samoa given the new government’s feelings.

Tuilaepa, now the opposition leader, came out in defence of Marinescu and called for an apology from La’auli whose attacks he described as “uncalled for”.

Sources close to the UN in Samoa described it as unlikely that Marinescu had sought to help HRPP win government over FAST, but said her interventions were ill-judged, badly timed and came across as high-handed.

Climate project under UN corruption probe
During Marinescu’s tenure in Samoa, a major climate change resilience project under the UN umbrella has gone awry with the emergence of corruption allegations.

The Vaisigano River Catchment Project, a US$65 million flood proofing project to fortify a main river in Samoa’s capital Apia from rising sea levels, was to be 90 percent funded by the UN’s Green Climate Fund.

But the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has been investigating allegations of corruption in the project since last year, and the project has stalled. In its preliminary form, the work proved insufficient to prevent significant damage from last December’s floods in Apia.

Furthermore, the Samoa Observer recently revealed that the UN’s Samoa office (a multi-country desk which also oversees the UN’s Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau programmes) was stripped of its authority to manage the Vaisigano Catchment and other development projects due to the concerns about its financial mismanagement.

The UN’s Bangkok office is now controlling expenditure over up to a dozen projects under the Samoa office, also including a US$52 million project for increasing the country’s production of renewable energy, and several projects in Niue and the Cooks.

Regarding the Vaisigano project, the UNDP said formal investigations were launched by its Office of Audit and Investigation, “appropriate follow-up actions have been initiated”, and the case had been referred to national authorities.

Mismanagement of major climate resilience projects is a concern for regional countries like New Zealand, which last month committed US$900 million over four years to support mainly Pacific countries on climate change efforts.

Climate partnership funding
NZ Climate Change Minister James Shaw said New Zealand’s work in climate funding was primarily geared toward working with partner countries directly, rather than through multi-lateral funds such as the Green Climate Fund.

“One of the reasons for that is when you’re working bilaterally, directly, you’ve got much better line of sight of the projects, and so that helps us to manage around any issues of corruption that might arise.”

Sources have told RNZ Pacific of their concern that there was a lack of checks and balances over the Vaisigano Catchment Project, as well as a lack of progress in the project generally since it was signed off in 2016.

Marinescu has not had direct oversight of UNDP projects since the role was de-linked from that of Resident Co-ordinator, and new UNDP Resident Representative Jorn Sorensen arrived in late 2019.

However, Samoa’s prime minister has said she was considering lodging a formal complaint about Marinescu’s behaviour in relation to alleged interference in local politics.

FAST party wins four byelections
The emerging problems in the UN Samoa relationship came as the country headed back to the polls last week for six byelections — four of them being won by the FAST party to boost their numbers in the House to 31.

The byelections were the result of post-election legal challenges, which led to HRPP election-winners for these electorates giving up their seats.

Meanwhile, Fiame’s government has called for a review of the UN role in Samoa.

La’auli has acknowledged the good work that the UN has done over many years in Samoa.

But he said the new issues that had arisen highlighted a need to revisit the relationship with the UN in the interests of protecting Samoa’s culture and Christian values.

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

On August 17, a 58-year-old man from Auckland became symptomatic and tested positive for covid-19. It was New Zealand’s first community case of the coronavirus in almost six months.

Within hours, the nation of five million moved into alert level four, part of its “go hard, go early” approach. All travel outside of people’s homes was forbidden, except to fetch supplies, visit pharmacies or exercise.

The country largely ground to a halt.

• READ MORE: If NZ’s covid elimination strategy is abandoned now ‘more Māori and Pasifika people will die’
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“We have seen the dire consequences of taking too long to act in other countries, not least our neighbours,” said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, while announcing the cabinet’s decision to impose a lockdown that evening.

Within a few days, one case had grown to 21 cases. After a week, to 148 cases. By August 31, the cluster contained 612 cases.

Snap lockdown
One month after imposing the snap lockdown, New Zealand has bent the curve and may be able to eliminate an outbreak of the potent delta variant of COVID-19 – though it is no sure thing.

As of September 20, some 1051 people in Auckland and 17 people in the capital city, Wellington, have been infected with the virus, of whom 694 have recovered.

Contact tracers have methodically identified tens of thousands of contacts – and hundreds of locations of interest – part of an updated track-and-trace system repurposed to cast a much wider net around the far more transmissible delta variant.

The outbreak, now spread across 20 subclusters, 10 of which have been epidemiologically linked, presents the most serious challenge to elimination that New Zealand has faced so far. With its fragmented public health system under intense strain from decades of under-funding, any unchecked spread of the delta variant would see hospitals rapidly overwhelmed.

But New Zealanders rallied behind the restrictions, sticking to their “bubbles”, masking up and watching patiently as cases peaked, then began to decline – though the outbreak’s tail is proving persistent.

If the country does eliminate this outbreak, it would once again validate the “go hard, go early” approach that officials have taken over the past 18 months.

With Auckland moving yesterday to the more permissive alert level three, case numbers over the coming weeks will be closely watched for any sign of uncontained spread.

Entitlement and denunciation
Yet, as with previous outbreaks, the clamour from critics of the government started almost immediately, a chorus of whinge.

Business special interests laundered their messaging through an uncritical media – “certainty” they chanted, while pressuring for a move down alert levels.

“We also know that in lockdown Treasury has forecast it to cost the country NZ$1.45 billion per week – and that’s just the economic impact,” Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce chief executive Leeann Watson told broadcaster Newstalk ZB.

Incredibly, less than a week into lockdown, Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard complained to Stuff, the country’s most popular news website, that the business environment was getting “tough” for exporters, while lobbying for more managed isolation spots for business travellers – or self-isolation.

“Some of these are multimillion-dollar deals, so the situation is very stressful,” she said.

Some in the hospitality sector complained about limits on gatherings and threatened to withhold tax, while demanding “targeted” assistance from the government.

“Now it’s 100 percent [Ministry of] Health running the show,” said Hospitality New Zealand chief executive Julie White, according to Stuff. “No one is advising them commercially.”

Most New Zealanders would, presumably, prefer that the Health Ministry – as opposed to hospitality interest groups – responds to the threat presented by a lethal, airborne pathogen.

‘Glacial’ pace criticised
The “glacial” pace of the country’s vaccine rollout was also riffed off in headline after headline.

Perhaps, as the political opposition and reporters contend, the rollout has been “sluggish”.

Perhaps the government could have instructed the medical regulator Medsafe to conduct a less rigorous assessment of the Pfizer vaccine, under emergency protocols.

“Another [possibility] is,” Craig McCulloch, Radio New Zealand’s deputy political editor speculated, “that the government’s negotiators came late to the party, did a poor job and got a raw deal.”

Or perhaps soaring global demand amid the pandemic, Pfizer’s finite ability to supply vaccines to a vast suite of countries and New Zealand’s limited purchasing power and largely covid-free status explains the “delay”.

Certainly, the World Health Organisation has described vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations as approaching a “catastrophic moral failure”.

When Pfizer became able to deliver large shipments midway through July, New Zealand saw a dramatic scale-up in the vaccination programme, as officials had promised for months.

Rollout a success story
If anything, the nation’s rollout — a massive logistical undertaking — has largely been a success story, conducted in an environment of incredible uncertainty and reliant upon an already stretched workforce.

It has additionally played a key role in supporting vaccination efforts in the Cook Islands.

As of September 20, some 4,711,410 doses of the vaccine have been administered, tracking close to supply, with 1,618,673 people now fully vaccinated.

Amid the rising racket, the entitlement and denunciation, even commentators from abroad got in on the act.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson — agitating anti-lockdown sentiment — suggested that New Zealand provided a model for how his viewers would be subjugated by Joe Biden’s administration.

“How far can they go? […] A single covid case in New Zealand, not a death from covid, but a case of covid has shut down the entire country.”

Writing in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, one commentator called the outbreak “poetic justice” and claimed a “once-welcoming nation is turning into an isolated dystopia, where liberties are taken away in a heartbeat and outsiders are shunned”.

While these criticisms are couched in the language of defending civil liberties, they reduce to variants of the “learn to live with covid” argument.

Or put another way: “The cure cannot be worse than the disease”.

The economy must reign supreme, after all.

Sound familiar?

‘Needles in my eyes’
New Zealand’s elimination strategy relies on public buy-in. Recent polling shows that some 84 percent of the public supports the latest lockdown.

As with previous outbreaks, Ardern has used clear, empathetic language to reassure and unify an often politically divided nation. These briefings are held in Parliament’s theatrette and usually feature the Director-General of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

For many in New Zealand, the daily press briefings provide a detailed window into how authorities manage outbreaks and have been the most visible key to the elimination strategy’s success.

“To all Aucklanders, you have done an amazing job so far protecting yourselves, your family and your community,” Ardern said on September 13, while announcing that Auckland would stay in alert level four for another week. “We owe you a huge debt of gratitude … but the cases are telling us we have additional work to do.”

Voters rewarded Ardern’s Labour Party for this kind of humane approach and its exceptional management of the viral threat in the national elections last October, granting it an outright majority.

The political opposition judges these briefings a political threat, and routinely denigrates them as Ardern speaking from “The Podium of Truth”.

With the return of daily briefings on August 17, right-wing broadcasters and some journalists began to deride the briefings, at exactly the moment when trust in the authorities needed to be reinforced.

Undermining public perceptions
There is a difference between “holding power to account” and deliberately attempting, for purely partisan political reasons, to undermine public perceptions that the covid-19 response is being well managed.

“I tried, I really did, but I wanted to stick needles in my eyes by about four minutes in,” said Newstalk ZB’s Kate Hawkesby, the day after the return of the 1pm press conferences. “I’d forgotten how soul-destroying it is to be spoken to like a three-year-old.”

On the same station, Hawkesby’s husband, Mike Hosking, overdubbed turkey “gobbles” and truck horn sound effects onto an interview recorded with Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall.

Newstalk ZB’s political editor, Barry Soper, in a report about an Auckland man whose kidney surgery was postponed due to staffing shortages, loaded his story’s preamble with phrases like “their altar” and “practise what they preach”.

He also issued a remarkable dog-whistle to New Zealand’s far-right, the kind of people who believe Ardern – a fairly mild political centrist – is turning the country into a “communist dictatorship”.

“If you have ever wondered what it must have been like to live in a totalitarian state, then perhaps wonder no more.”

This nonsense went on and on.

Moaning media
Some press gallery reporters began to complain about the length of Ardern’s introductions, while Jason Walls, a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, took to Twitter to moan about Dr Bloomfield saying “finally” two times.

This speaks to how the media has fundamentally misunderstood what the briefings are: public service announcements.

They are for the public. Reporters are invited as a check and, as such, should resist the urge to demand a say in how these announcements are structured.

Even The New York Times managed to launder messaging that targeted the briefings, quoting former National Party staffer and political commentator Ben Thomas – who appears fixated on denigrating Dr Bloomfield.

“He [Dr Bloomfield] has … a cult-like following,” said Thomas. “The country has a huge kind of parasocial devotion to him, which is very new to New Zealand.”

Apparently, Thomas has not heard of Michael Joseph Savage, who founded New Zealand’s welfare state in the 1930s and whose framed photo hung in homes throughout the country for decades.

Regardless, all of this is a fairly obvious partisan political effort, driven by both ideology and market dynamics.

Many reporters and commentators at New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME), which owns The New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB, seem unable to accept that their preferred political tribe is no longer in power.

More critically, in an age where the news media increasingly attempts to attract subscribers by catering to their social and political values, NZME appears to be ring-fencing centre-to-far-right eyeballs.

It is, essentially, becoming New Zealand’s Fox News.

A brave new world
The sense in New Zealand is that this may be the last of the nation’s sledgehammer-style lockdowns, though one hopes officials do not retire lockdowns altogether.

The goal is to get as many people as possible vaccinated, assess the impact of opening up, and then tentatively start easing some border restrictions, if possible.

No doubt, certain industries – tourism, hospitality, horticulture, media – will continue to apply relentless pressure.

Yet, when the nation reconnects more fully to the networks of global trade and travel, the super-highways of hyper-globalisation that have spread disease and death around the world, when the inevitable outbreaks come, there will be a toll.

Glen Johnson is an independent New Zealand journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for 11 years, predominantly out of the Middle East and North Africa. His work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Seattle Times, Vice, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Reuters, Le Monde Diplomatique, Balkan Insight, Al Jazeera and The New Zealand Herald, among others. His article was first published by Al Jazeera English and is republished with the permission of the author.

US President-elect Joe Biden’s pledge to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement is “fresh air” news for Pacific Islands countries, say some commentators.

The US formally left the Paris pact a day after the US elections last week – a year after the Trump administration gave notice it was quitting.

However, the same day Biden promised that his incoming administration would restore US commitment to the agreement.

• READ MORE: New Biden era heralds global climate politics switch with US rejoining Paris
• More US elections reports

The UN agency that oversees the agreement expressed regret over the Trump administration action, saying: “There is no greater responsibility than protecting our planet and people from the threat of climate change.”

Biden posted a tweet saying that the US would restore membership in “exactly 77 days”.

Biden’s victory will also help make the issue of human rights violations in West Papua more prominent.

This is because Biden and the Democratic Party have greater concerns about raising human rights issues, says international relations academic Dr Teuku Rezasyah of Padjajaran University.

Human rights pressure
“As a democratic country, [the United States] often argues, it gets pressure from within the country to pay attention to human rights aspects in Papua,” said Dr Rezasyah.

Last week, a renewed call was made for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua by the UK government through the Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Nigel Adams.

“The UK supports a visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) to Papua,” the statement said.

“Officials from the British embassy have discussed the proposed visit with the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and continue to encourage the Indonesian Government to agree on dates as soon as possible.”

Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 5, 2020

The former Minister for Asia and the Pacific, Heather Wheeler, attended the Pacific Island Forum in August 2019.

“It is our longstanding position that we regard Papua and West Papua provinces as being part of Indonesia and consider dialogue on territorial issues in Indonesia as a matter for the Indonesian people,”Adams said.

Pacific leaders have congratulated Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris for their success.

Ardern welcomes Biden
In Wellington, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it was important for New Zealand to have tight connections with the US on big global issues – including trade, covid, and climate change – and she would pursue a strong relationship with Biden.

In Fiji, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama is reported to have become the first world leader to publicly congratulate US President-elect Joe Biden on his victory – despite there being no clear winner on Saturday morning when he did so.

RNZ Pacific reports that Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said he admired Biden’s patience as results had trickled in and his calming comments assuring people their votes would be counted.

Brown also praised Biden’s unifying speeches, describing them as “inspirational” to the American people and many internationally.

Northern Marianas Governor Ralph Torres, a Republican and staunch supporter of Trump, said his administration hoped it could work with the incoming Biden-Harris administration for the betterment of the people of the US and the islands.

Torres recognised the historic milestone of leadership for women in the US with the election of Harris.

“We look forward to working with them and their Democratic administration, just as we did with President Obama and his administration to great success,” Torres said.

Presidency for ‘all’ Americans
NMI Democratic Party chair Nola Hix said they were confident that the Biden-Harris team would be a presidency for all Americans.

American Samoa’s Congresswoman, Aumua Amata Radewagen, a Republican, expressed the need for bipartisan work across the political spectrum.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape congratulated Biden yesterday and mentioned Harris, who would be the first woman and first Black and Asian-American person to serve as vice-president.

He thanked departing President Trump for his support, particularly for sending former Vice-President Mike Pence to APEC 2018 in Port Moresby, and for signing a $US2.3 billion deal with Australia, New Zealand and Japan to improve PNG access to electricity and the Internet.

“The US election was an event that captivated the world, including PNG, with our people glued to their TV screens and internet to get the latest updates,” Marape said.

In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison congratulated Joe Biden and Kamila Harris, wishing them “every success” in office.

“The Australia-US Alliance is deep and enduring and built on shared values. I look forward to working with you closely as we face the world’s many challenges together,” he said.

However, The Guardian reports that Biden’s election would increase diplomatic pressure on Australia to step up its commitments on climate change.

Laurens Ikinia is a Papuan Masters in Communication Studies student at the Auckland University of Technology who has been studying journalism. He is on an internship with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

The unfolding in French Polynesia of the latest judiciary entanglements of pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru versus the French administration is being closely followed by members of the Tahitian community in Tahiti and in Aotearoa New Zealand.

There are undeniable similarities between Temaru’s upcoming trial on November 4 in Nouméa after many deferrals, and the expedient trial of Te metua – Pouvana’a a O’opa, the leading figure of the Ma’ohi people, 60 years ago.

Pouvana’a was accused of plotting to burn down Tahiti’s capital Pape’ete, but trumped up charges were made against him because of his fight for an independent Ma’ohi nation.

• READ MORE: 35 years on, Oscar Temaru guest in Rainbow Warrior rewind
• French nuclear tests: ‘I bury people nearly every day, what was our sin?’
• Tahiti’s Temaru challenges court over French judicial ethics

Exiled for 23 years to France after a mockery of a judgment, he was allowed back in Tahiti in 1968 after being pardoned.

Temaru’s judgment has all the makings of a déjà-vu. History is kind enough to remind us about the many disagreements and annoyances caused by Temaru to the French administration spanning more than 50 years:

• Temaru was arrested and jailed for protesting against the nuclear tests in Moruroa
• France’s military intervention in the French Polynesia presidential elections won by Temaru in 2004 for fear of social unrest
• Temaru put French Polynesia back on the UN decolonisation list in 2013, denouncing France’s non-commitment to decolonisation – the politics of the “empty chair” (1)

A string of anti-French actions that have displeased the Paris establishment and, to some extent, the local autonomist government.

So, what has been the straw that broke the camel’s back and why is this new trial so different that the French judicial machine felt justified in seizing money from Temaru’s personal bank account?

Background to the Radio Tefana affair
In June 2020, French prosecutor Herve Leroy seized NZ$145,000 from Temaru’s personal bank account after the former territorial president and current mayor of Faa’a was convicted of exercising undue influence because the court ruled that community Radio Tefana benefited his own pro-independence political party.

According to many lawyers in Tahiti and in France (the CNB – National Council of the Bar), this action suggested that Temaru had already been pre-judged of having “committed a crime” and the presumption of innocence was simply discarded by prosecutor Leroy.

This trial can only be understood as a retaliation against Temaru’s decision in 2018 to take France’s living presidents to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity over the nuclear weapons tests between 1966 and 1996. This was clearly the last straw for the French political establishment.

Questions related to why the French judiciary could not perform its duty on Tahitian soil but prioritised first the High Council for the Judiciary in France before deciding to send the case to Kanaky New Caledonia remains enigmatic to say the least.

There is overwhelming support for Temaru from the local Tahitian population – from the religious, the social, the political even judicial corners.

As mayor of the most populated district in French Polynesia, he refuses to be intimidated and from our personal communication, he has vowed to take the fight to the highest authority nationally or internationally.

In Nouméa, “our brothers and sisters Kanak”, as he calls them, are ready to welcome us and they will be a tremendous support during the trial – both indigenous people are fighting for their independence from France.

According to a close family member, Temaru is holding on for a trial expected to last 3 days (November 4-7) and has carried out a hunger strike and fasting since his six month suspended sentence and a fine of NZ$66,000 for this affair in 2019 (2) – despite his age at 76.

His fast was also to teach the population a new way of fighting obesity and all the various diseases that it causes. He is not advocating violence and unrest, but he is fighting legally through the courts.

Temaru’s hopes about this trial
At a time when the media is being muzzled and reporters are being silenced worldwide, the voice of the pro-independence community Radio Tefana remains the only and last media platform calling for accountability from both the local Tahitian and French governments.

The hope for Temaru is for a not guilty verdict and for the court to allow the radio to perform its duty of providing public information, especially during this period of covid-19 that has heavily hit his airport town of Faa’a and the capital Pape’ete.

But Temaru questions French justice and will not back down even if it means requesting a meeting with New Zealand’s newly re-elected Prime Minister Jacinda Arden to assist a decolonisation programme that France has so far failed to discuss.

It is also at the back of Temaru’s mind that the decision to move the trial outside of Tahiti was designed and planned by the French judicial authorities to put yet another spanner in the works.

Financially, Temaru will need to meet the cost of an attorney to represent him; Temaru will not be physically able to be present at his own trial as New Caledonia is covid-19 free and has suspended all commercial flights until March 2021.

Popular sympathy might be less in New Caledonia with a bigger French proportion of the population (27 percent) than in French Polynesia (10 percent).

According to Temaru, France has not ceased “to put him on trial” and whatever the outcome this time, France will stick to the same agenda – and so will Temaru.

His fight for independence for the nuna’a Ma’ohi (Ma’ohi people) is a lifelong battle as he celebrates his birthday in Tahiti.

The last fighter of an era
The Tahitian pro-independence leader might be one of the last iconic figures of his generation who sits beside other political leaders, friends and sympathisers alive – or not – of the same era such as Jean-Marie Tjibaou (Kanaky New Caledonia), Walter Lini (Vanuatu), Henry Puna (Cook Islands).

Regardless of the verdict after the judgment, Temaru will be remembered as the force who will still stand up strong like Pouvana’a a O’opa against French neo-colonialism six decades ago.

Ena Manuireva is an Auckland University of Technology academic and PhD candidate who is from Mangareva, one of the French Polynesian islands most affected by the French nuclear tests for three decades until they ended in 1996. He wrote this article especially for the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report.

Notes:
1. France is never at its UN seat when the question of decolonising French Polynesia is on the agenda.
2. In 2019, the current territorial President Édouard Fritch was convicted and condemned for the same amount for arranging for the town administration of Pirae, where he was mayor, to pay for the water supply to the upmarket Erima neighbourhood, where longtime President Gaston Flosse lived.

1774: James Cook “discovers” Grande Terre island for Europe and renames it New Caledonia because the landscapes remind him of Scotland.

1853: Admiral Febvrier-Despointes plants the French tricolour at Balade on the east coast of Grande Terre, and takes possession of the island for Emperor Napoleon III to establish a penal colony.

1864: France despatches some 21,630 prisoners between 1864 and 1897. The convicts include 4250 “communard” revolutionaries from Paris.

1874: Exploitation of the nickel reserves begins after being discovered by engineer Jules Garnier a decade earlier.

1878: Grand Chief Ataï leads the first Kanak rebellion against colonisation, with a death toll of about 1200 Kanaks and 200 Europeans. Chief Ataï is beheaded and his skull is sent to the Anthropology Society in Paris for further study.

1917: When the First World War breaks out in Europe, the colonial administration tries to pressure Kanaks into enlisting (they are not yet full citizens of the republic). Following another revolt, three Kanak leaders are guillotined.

1931: Authorities take 111 Kanaks to a colonial exhibition in Paris as “authentic cannibals”. The same year the penal colony is finally closed.

1946: The Kanaks, deprived of rights under the Code Indigénat since 1887, which makeas all French-governed indigenous peoples second class citizens, gain full citizenship.

1984: The FLNKS (Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste) is created and organises a Kanak boycott of the territorial elections. The islands are on the edge of insurrection. On December 5, near Hienghène, 10 unarmed Kanak activists are assassinated in an ambush by mixed-race Caldoche (settlers).

1987: On September 13, the people of New Caledonia vote in a referendum on independence that is boycotted by the FLNKS and other pro-independence groups. The vote against independence is 98.3 percent with just 1.7 percent voting yes.

1988: On Ouvéa island, 4 gendarmes are killed by FLNKS militants during the kidnap of a local police garrison. On May 5, French security forces storm the Gossanah cave where 27 gendarmes are being held hostage. Nineteen Kanaks and two soldiers are killed. On June 26, the Matignon Accord is signed by Jean-Marie Tjibaou, president of the FLNKS; Jacques Lafleur, leader of the anti-independence Rassemblement pour la Caledonie dans la republique (RPCR); and Prime Minister Michel Rocard. The accord envisages self-determination in 10 years.

1989: On May 4, Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéne Yeiwéne, his FLNKS deputy, are assassinated on Ouvea by Djubelly Wéa, a Kanak indépendantiste opposed to the Matignon Accord.

1998: The Nouméa Accord is signed by French prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Jacques Lafleur and Roch Wamytan, the new president of the FLNKS. This accord envisages progressive “emancipation” for New Caledonia. A referendum shows 72 percent in favour of the accord.

2004: Bittedrly divided for 15 years, the Tjibaou, Yeiwéne and Wéa families meet at the Tjibaou tribu village of Tiendanite for a custom “forgiveness” ceremony.

2010: Prime Minister François Fillon makes official the flying of both the French and Kanak flags on official buildings and at events. Jacques Lafleur dies on December 4.

2014: The Museum of Natural History in Paris returns the skull of Chief Ataï to his descendants, 136 years after the death of the revolutionary chief.

2018: On November 4, the eligible voters of New Caledonia vote on independence with 56.4 percent rejecting independence and 43.6 percent voting in favour. Up to two further votes on independence are provided for in the Nouméa Accord for 2020 and 2022.

2020: And next …?

Source: Translated and adapted from Geo, September 2018

• New Caledonia votes to stay with France, but independence supporters take heart
• New Caledonia’s independence referendum and how it could impact on the region

New Caledonia, a group of picturesque islands in Melanesia that are the closest neighbour to Australia and New Zealand, have been French-owned since 1853. But this may change at the weekend.

On Sunday, November 4, those eligible among its 270,000 residents will go to the polls to answer “yes” or “no” to one question: “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?”

Settlers first arrived in New Caledonia about 3000 years ago, but it was given its current name by Captain James Cook on a brief visit in 1774. He said it reminded him of Scotland.

SBS VIDEO: A new Pacific neighbour – view on Facebook

The remainder are a mix of French, Polynesians, and people from other former French colonies, including descendants of Algerians sent to the penal colony in the late 1800s after an uprising.

READ MORE: Flashback to the 1980s – ‘Blood on their banner’

New Caledonia’s economy relies heavily on subsidies from France, has about a quarter of the world’s nickel resources and a thriving tourism industry based on the country’s rich Kanak culture and many natural wonders, including the second largest barrier reef in the world.

Why a referendum?
Relations between Kanaks and non-indigenous people have been defined by uprisings in 1878 and 1917 during which hundreds were killed, creating lasting distrust between the traditional landowners and the colonists.

Ethnic tensions erupted into violence again in the 1980s and a hostage-taking crisis in 1988 ended in bloodshed, leaving 19 Kanaks and six French security personnel dead.

The French government and New Caledonian representatives signed the Noumea Accord in 1998 that established a framework for the transfer of more autonomy to the territory and allow up to three referendums on independence, of which this is the first.

Charles Wea, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) spokesman in Australia, told SBS News: “We want to build a new society and new country and set up effectively a new relationship with France because we can no longer accept French colonialism in New Caledonia.”

But many New Caledonians fear what will happen if there is a yes vote.

Among them is Louise Vignols, who is studying in Sydney. She said: “France support us a lot with everything and if they’re not here anymore then we are just going to drop, it would be like Vanuatu, and we would be poor.”

How will it affect Australia and New Zealand?
New Caledonia holds a strategic position as a French territory with military headquarters in the Pacific, meaning Australia currently shares a maritime boundary with a nuclear-armed, permanent member of the UN Security Council.

In May, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Australia before heading to New Caledonia as part of the referendum preparations. He proposed an axis between France, India and Australia in the Indo-Pacific in which New Caledonia would play a key role.

Denise Fisher, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University (ANU) and former consul-general to New Caledonia, said: “Any Australian strategic analyst would see the benefit of having a Western ally, a global leader, in the South Pacific to share the strategic burden, especially as we face geo-strategic change with China coming into the region.”

What is the expected outcome?
A special and controversial electoral roll has been created on which all Kanaks and only long-term New Caledonian residents can register. It is separate from registers for French and local government elections.

If there is a yes result, New Caledonia will enter a phase of transition to an independent sovereign nation.

If it is “no”, under the agreements signed by the French government 30 years ago, there can be another referendum in 2020, which if negative again can be followed by a third in 2023.

“There have been a number of polls. Indications would suggest, for this first vote at least, the answer is likely to be a ‘no’ to independence,” Fisher said.

French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe recently announced a surprise visit to New Caledonia. He is due to arrive in the capital Noumea the day after the referendum for talks with all parties.

FLNKS spokesman Wea said: “We took almost 30 years to prepare. Kanak people, we are ready to get independence in terms of economic, in terms of social, in terms of cultural.”

This SBS News report by Stefan Armbruster is republished with permission.

• After 165 years of French colonisation, New Caledonia’s Kanaks could win independence
• More New Caledonian referendum stories

When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.

A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.

Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.

Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.

Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia” (p. 314). But that wasn’t all.

[H]e brazenly navigated international hostility to his illegal regime. Then, having accepted an independent process for developing a new constitution, he rejected its outcome, fearing it threatened his hold on power and would restore much of what he had undone. (Ibid.)

Bainimarama reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji.

Landslide victory
Then he was voted in as legal prime minister of Fiji with an overwhelming personal majority and a landslide victory for his fledgling FijiFirst Party in September 2014. He left his critics in Australia and New Zealand floundering in his wake.

Robertson is well-qualified to write this well-timed book, The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, with Bainimarama due to be tested again this year with another election. He is a former history lecturer at the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific at the time of Rabuka’s original coups (when I first met him).

He and his journalist wife Akosita Tamanisau wrote a definitive account of the 1987 events and the ousting of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s visionary and multiracial Fiji Labour Party-led government, Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), ultimately leading to his expulsion from Fiji by the Rabuka regime. He also followed this up with Government by the Gun (2001) on the 2000 coup, and other titles.

Robertson later returned to Fiji as professor of Development Studies at USP and he has also been professor and head of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, as well as holding posts at La Trobe University, the Australian National University and the University of Otago.

He has published widely on globalisation. He is thus able to bring a unique perspective on Fiji over three decades and is currently professor and dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.

Since 2006, Fiji has slipped steadily away from Australian and New Zealand influence, as outlined by Robertson. However, this is a state of affairs blamed by Bainimarama on Canberra and Wellington for their failed and blind policies.

Ever since the 2014 election, Bainimarama has maintained a “hardline” on the Pacific’s political architecture through his Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) alternative to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus trade deal.

‘Turned their backs’
While in Brisbane for an international conference in 2015, Bainimarama took the opportunity to remind his audience that Australia and New Zealand “as traditional friends had turned their backs on Fiji”. He added:

How much sooner we might have been able to return Fiji to parliamentary rule if we hadn’t expended so much effort on simply surviving … defending the status quo in Fiji was indefensible, intellectually and morally (p. 294).

For the first time in Fiji’s history, Bainimarama steered the country closer to a “standard model of liberal democracy” and away from the British colonial and race-based legacy.

“Government still remained the familiar goose,” writes Robertson, “but this time, its golden eggs were distributed more evenly than before”. The author attributes this to “bypassing chiefly hands” for tribal land lease monies, through welfare and educational programmes no longer race-bound, and through bold rural public road, water and electrification projects.

Admittedly, argues Robertson, like Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (Fiji’s prime minister at independence and later president), Rabuka and Qarase, “Bainimarama had cronies and the military continues to benefit excessively from his ascendancy”. Nevertheless, Bainimarama’s “outstanding controversial achievement remains undoubtedly his rebooting of Fiji’s operating system in 2013”.

Robertson’s scholarship is meticulous and drawn from an impressive range of sources, including his own work over more than three decades. One of the features of his latest book are his analysis of former British SAS Warrant Officer Lisoni Ligairi and the role of the First Meridian Squadron (renamed in 1999 from the “coup proof” Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit – CRWU), and the “public face” of Coup 3, businessman George Speight, now serving a life sentence in prison for treason.

His reflections on and interpretations of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Board of Inquiry (known as BoI) into the May 2000 coup are also extremely valuable. Much of this has never before been available in an annotated and tested published form, although it is available as full transcripts on the “Truth for Fiji” website.

‘Overlapping conspiracies’
As Robertson recalls, by mid-May, “there were many overlapping conspiracies afoot … Within the kava-infused wheels within wheels, coup whispers gained volume”. Ligairi’s role was pivotal but BoI put most of the blame for the coup on the RFMF for “allowing” one man so much power, especially one it considered ill-equipped to be a director and planner’ (p. 140).

The BoI testimony about the November 2000 CRWU mutiny before Bainimarama escaped with his life through a cassava patch, also fed into Robertson’s account, although he admits Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka’s ANU doctoral thesis is the best account on the topic, “Sacred King and Warrior Chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics”.

It was a bloody and confused affair, led by the once loyal [Captain Shane] Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated, seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama. (p. 164)

The book is divided into four lengthy chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion – 1. The Challenge of Inheritance about the flawed colonial legacy, 2. The Great Turning on Rabuka’s 1987 coups and the Taukei indigenous supremacy constitution, 3. Redux: The Season for Coups on Speight’s attempted (and partially successful) 2000 coup, and 4. Plus ça Change …? on Bainimarama’s political “reset”. (The Bainimarama success in outflanking his Pacific critics is perhaps best represented by his diplomatic success in co-hosting the “Pacific” global climate change summit in Bonn in 2017.)

One drawback from a journalism perspective is the less than compelling assessment of the role of the media over the period, considering the various controversies that dogged each coup, especially the Speight one when accusations were made against some journalists as having been too close to the coup makers.

One of Fiji’s best journalists and editors, arguably the outstanding investigative reporter of his era, Jo Nata, publisher of the Weekender, sided with Speight as a “media minder” and was jailed for treason.

However, while Robertson in several places acknowledges Nata’s place in Fiji as a journalist, there is no real examination of his role as journalist-turned-coup-propagandist. This ought to be a case study.

Robertson noted how Nata’s Weekender exposed “morality issues” in Rabuka’s cabinet in 1994 without naming names. The Review news and business magazine followed up with a full report in the April edition that year, naming a prominent female journalist who was sleeping with the post-coup prime minister, produced a love child and who still works for The Fiji Times today (p. 118).

Nata then promised a special issue on the 21 women Rabuka had had affairs with since stepping down from the military. However, after Police Commissioner Isikia Savua spoke to him, the issue never appeared. (A full account is in Pacific Journalism Review – The Review, 1994).

NBF debacle
Elsewhere in the book is an outline of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) debacle that erupted when an audit was leaked to the media: “In fact, the press, particularly The Fiji Times and The Review, were pivotal in exposing the scandal.” Robertson added:

The Review had earlier been threatened with deregistration over its publication of Rabuka’s affair[s] in 1994; now both papers were threatened with Malaysian-style licensing laws to ensure that they remained respectful of Pacific cultural sensitivities and did not denigrate Fijian business acumen. (p. 121)

The bank collapsed in late 1995 owing more than $220 million or nearly 9 percent of Fiji’s GDP – an example of the nepotism, corruption and poor public administration that worsened in Fiji after Rabuka’s coups.

On Coup 1, Robertson recalls how apart from Rabuka’s masked soldiers inside Parliament, “other teams fanned out across the city to seize control of telecommunication power authorities, media outlets and the Government Buildings” (p. 65).

But there is little reflective detail about Rabuka’s “seduction” of the Fiji and international journalists, or how after closing down the two daily newspapers, the neocolonial Fiji Times reopened while the original Fiji Sun opted to close down rather than publish under a military-backed regime.

About Coup 3, Robertson recalls “[Speight] was articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according to some journalists. They felt that this intimate media presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone’ (p. 154) (see Robie, 2001).

On the introduction of the 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, which still casts a shadow over the country and is mainly responsible for the lowest Pacific “partly free” rankings in the global media freedom indexes, Robertson notes how it was “Singapore-inspired”. The decree “came out in early April 2010 for discussion and mandated that all media organisations had to be 90 percent locally owned. The implication for the News Corporation Fiji Times and for the 51 percent Australian-owned Daily Post were obvious” (p. 254).

The Fiji Times was bought by Mahendra Patel, long-standing director and owner of the Motibhai trading group. (He was later jailed for a year for “abuse of office” while chair of Post Fiji.) The Daily Post was closed down.

Facing a long history of harassment by various post-coup administrations (including a $100,000 fine in January 2009 for publishing a letter describing the judiciary as corrupt, and deportations of publishers), The Fiji Times is heading into this year’s elections facing a trial for alleged “sedition” confronting the newspaper.

In spite of my criticism of limitations on media content, The General’s Goose is an excellent book and should be mandatory background reading for any journalist covering South Pacific affairs, especially those likely to be involved in coverage of this year’s general election in Fiji.

The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, by Robbie Robertson. Canberra: Australian National University. 2017. 366 pages. ISBN 9781760461270.

References
Baledrokadroka, J. (2012). The sacred king and warrior chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Canberra: Australian National University.

Robertson, R., & Sutherland, W. (2001). Government by the gun: The unfinished business of Fiji’s 2000 coup. Sydney & London: Pluto Press & Zed Books.

Robertson, R., & Tamanisau, A. (1988). Fiji: Shattered coups. Sydney: Pluto Press.

Robie, D. (2001). Coup coup land: The press and the putsch in Fiji. Asia Pacific Media Educator, 10, 149-161. See also for an extensive media coverage examination of the 1987 Rabuka coups: Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: Nationalist struggles in the South Pacific. London: Zed Books; 2006 coup and 2014 elections: Robie, D. (2016). ‘Unfree and unfair’?: Media intimidation in Fiji’s 2014 elections. In Ratuva, S., & Lawson, S. (Eds.), The people have spoken: The 2014 elections in Fiji. Canberra: ANU Press.

The Review (1994). Rabuka and the reporter. Pacific Journalism Review, 1(1), 20-22.