By Pasifik/Pacnews

Fijian Prime Minister and incoming COP23 president Voreqe Bainimarama says he intends to use his position to reach out to US President Donald Trump to find common ground and move the global agenda forward on Climate Change.

“It is no secret that the United States federal administration under President Trump appears to be less enthusiastic about the Paris Agreement,” Bainimarama told the Fiji Parliament this week.

He said during their meeting with United Nations top climate change administrator Patricia Espinosa last week in Suva, both agreed that the world cannot afford to drop the ball at this critical stage.

“More than 120 countries have so far ratified the Paris Agreement, pledging their commitment to address the issues of climate change and to also reduce their carbon emissions so that we can keep the global temperature as close as possible to one-point-five degrees above that of the pre-industrial age,” Bainimarama said.

“But as you all know, there are worrying signs that the momentum for decisive action may be slowing.”

“As incoming COP president, I also intend to work closely with some of the big players such as China, India, the European Union, Japan, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Australia, New Zealand and others to keep the momentum rolling.

“And, of course, to work closely with our Pacific Island neighbours, international NGOs, civil society and the private sector.

‘Representing the world’
“My brief as incoming COP president is to represent the interests of the entire world. To be impartial and achieve consensus between all parties on the best way forward.

“But it is only natural that as Fijians we have a special interest in the needs of Small Island Developing States in our own region and beyond.”

Bainimarama said in the lead-up to the main COP gathering in Bonn in November, Fiji intends to hold a “Climate Champions” meeting in Suva.

“And bring Pacific leaders, NGOs, civil societies and representatives of the private sector together to discuss a common agenda for COP.

“And then in October, a month before Bonn, we will host a pre-COP gathering in Denarau of many of the major players to hone our approach to the main event itself.

“As the year progresses, we will be making a special effort to engage the Fijian people – and especially our young people and our artists – in the COP process. And that engagement has already begun, with the advertisement on Saturday calling for ideas for the COP logo.

“We are putting together a dedicated Fiji Secretariat to make preparations here in Fiji and to liaise with the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.

Team effort
“Our UN friends have stressed that this is a team effort in which Fiji will work closely with them and the German Government to make COP 23 an unqualified success. And we have hired the same expert team of consultants that assisted Morocco with its successful hosting of COP22.

“As to meeting the cost of our commitment, we have already begun the task of raising the necessary funds in the form of donations from an array of nations and foundations.

“These funds will be deposited into a trust fund here in Fiji that we are establishing with an Act of Parliament. The Bill setting up the fund will be tabled this week,” Bainimarama told Parliament.

• COP23 climate action

By Ami Dhabuwala, recently in Fiji

Fiji was the first country in the Pacific to ratify the United Nations climate change deal agreed on in Paris on February 12, and fulfilling the promise by signing the agreement on April 22.

According to The Guardian: “Under its national climate action plan, Fiji pledged to generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. It also promised to cut overall emissions from its energy sector by 30 percent by 2030 compared to business-as-usual, conditional on it receiving climate finance from industrialised nations.”

Asia Pacific Report recently spoke to young climate change advocates and researchers at the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for the Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD) in Suva about the Pacific’s response to the COP21 outcome in Paris. Here are the views of two of them:

‘Great news’
Diana Salili, a climate change masters’ student from the University of South Pacific, says: “The signed agreement is GREAT news. This is a positive step forward; although there is much that remains to be done.”

Salili was a part of the Vanuatu delegation coordination team during the COP21 Paris conference last year.

“Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) remain voluntary, and it’s difficult to know if or how nations will be penalised if they fail to live up to their promises.”

‘Issue of accountability’
Jenny Jiva was a member of the Fiji delegation at COP21.

“The agreement is voluntary and it is up to the individual countries to abide by the agreement.”

In the Paris conference, the countries agreed to reduce the carbon emission for holding the increase in the temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Jiva says INDCs currently submitted are “leading us to at least a 2.7 degrees Celsius temperature rise, not the 2 degrees that was agreed to in Paris.”

There is a major issue of accountability and transparency, says Salili.

“There is still no process to independently verify all 195 countries’ greenhouse gas inventories, or progress towards their targets.”

She says this could pose serious problems in the years to come as INDCs have been calculated and presented to the UN in many different ways.

“The lack of a common or comparable format will clearly make national emissions reductions even harder to assess and track. A solution needs be developed urgently.”

‘Loss and damage’
Jiva followed the “loss and damage” track during the COP21 Paris conference. She says ratifying the agreement is two-pronged.

“At least 55 parties need to ratify and they also need to make up at least 55 percent of emissions. This means it is crucial for developed countries and newly industrialising countries to be a part of this process and ratify the agreement. ”

There are 14 Pacific parties which contribute only 0.03 percent of emissions. “Therefore, it is a complex process and that will require collective action.”

Jiva says climate change is happening now. If we continue with ‘business as usual’, it will affect people all over the world.

“It is not just an issue for the future, it we don’t take action now, whole countries could disappear and their culture as well.”

Youth all over the world need to be encouraged to hold their leaders and governments accountable she says.

‘Positive action’
“If great numbers of young people collectively show they want positive action on climate change, I believe our leaders will listen.”

Salili says the youth should be pro-active in this movement. They should engage in community adaptation and excel in climate change in the Pacific.

“Why do they need inspiration?” asks Salili.

She says youth from the neighbouring countries are close enough to all the smaller Pacific Island countries to be aware of what is going on in the Pacific in terms of climate change.

“If they need to be inspired to do something about climate change; something is very wrong somewhere!”

• Video: Jenny Jiva speaks out on climate change

Aumua also spoke about the issues of negative Pacific stereotypes represented in the media.

“I know when I say the word ‘Pacific’ a lot of us think of the white sand beaches, clear waters, tropical heat and dream holiday destinations,” she said.

“But when I say Pacific people or Pacific Islanders, the atmosphere changes. People roll their eyes.”

Aumua said indigenous and minority communities in the world need opportunities and platforms to bring their truthful stories and human rights issues to the forefront.

The Sepik traditional storyboard was donated by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie a decade ago to encourage better diversity journalism.

Fellow AUT Communications Studies graduate Joshua Iosefo was jointly awarded the MediaWorks Award with Harriet Maire for television and screen production graduate of the year.

Film award
The trailer of Iosefo’s short film Forgotten Dawn Children, which pays tribute to people who suffered in the raids on the homes of alleged Pacific Island overstayers in the 1970s was screened.

He thanked his grandparents, and honoured the conflict they endured during the time of the raids.

Iosefo, also a passionate advocate for the Pacific community, and well known for his speeches on youth empowerment, is furthering his study in a Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies at AUT.

Niklas Pedersen of the Danish School of Media and Journalism, on an exchange programme with AUT last year, was also awarded the annual Radio New Zealand International Prize for the top student in the postgraduate Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies course.

He reported from Fiji on climate change and other issues on a two-week assignment last September.

Pedersen was not able to attend from Denmark and TJ Aumua accepted the award on his behalf.

In a message to the awards audience, he said:

It is my great honor to accept this award …

I had a wonderful time at AUT in the spring and especially in the Asia-Pacific Journalism class under the guidance of the inspirational Dr David Robie. I really enjoyed learning about journalism practices in cultures very different from the one that I’m used to in Denmark.

I was lucky enough to not only study about these practices in the Asia-Pacific Region but also experience them first-hand during my internship at Wansolwara and Repúblika Magazine in Suva, Fiji. This experience has given me invaluable tools and knowledge, which I know use in my job as a journalist back in Denmark. 

I’m sorry, I couldn’t be there tonight but I want to let you know that if there was anywhere in the world, I would travel 18.000 kilometers to be for just one night, it would be AUT. I sincerely hope that I will be able to return in the future and revisit the place that gave me the experiences of a lifetime.  

Once again, thank you for this award. And a special thanks to Dr David Robie, Radio NZ International and PMC who made all of this possible.

In another success for diversity, India-born Anuja Nadkarni, who spent two of her early years living in Fiji, won the National Business Review Award for outstanding Bachelor of Communication Studies journalism graduate.

• The awards at Pacific Media Watch
• Niklas Pedersen stories on Asia Pacific Report

From the Pacific Media Centre

A short documentary by Alistar Kata

In 2009, a short video was made by AUT television students John Pulu and Sophie Johnson about the work of the Pacific Media Centre.

Now a new programme, a 15min documentary by Pacific Media Watch project contributing editor Alistar Kata has been made.

Dubbed The PMC Project, it is a compelling video about the student journalists and staff involved and their research and media reports.

Among the people interviewed are founding PMC director Dr David Robie; award-winning documentary maker Jim Marbrook; graduating postgraduate student KP Lew, who was in internship in Fiji last year; and Alistar herself – and many others are featured.

The people tell their inspiring story themselves. Quote:

“The centre is quite unique in that it was actually founded as both a research unit and media producer. We have the PMC online itself, which has a range of news and current affairs resources, but then we also have an industry partnership with Pacific Scoop and we’re also about to start a new one called Asia Pacific Report. We also do research publications, we publish PJR… plus we have internships, we send our students from the centre around the Pacific, and also in the Asian region as well to work for media internships and so on. We run a very good monitoring service, the Pacific Media Watch service.”

Reporter/Editor: Alistar Kata, contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch project.

Special thanks to:
Pacific Media Centre
School of Communication Studies, AUT
Dr David Robie
Jim Marbrook
KP Lew

Credits include:
Asia Pacific Report
Cap Bocage documentary
Del Abcede
Florent Erisouké
Mads Anneberg
Niklas Pedersen
Pacific Scoop
Selwyn Manning
Te Waha Nui
Victor Mambor and Tabloid Jubi
Wansolwara

Archive: First published on Aug 27, 2015

Seven Pacific leaders have signed a strong document on climate change in Fiji, mapping out what they want to achieve at COP 21 in Paris later this year.

Meeting for three days, the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) leaders said they were speaking with “one voice” on their demands for action.

Host Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama described the Suva Declaration as an historic document and UN Special Envoy for Climate Change Mary Robinson called it a “strong statement”.

Reporter/editor: Niklas Pedersen, AUT University and Danish School of Media and Journalism student journalist on internship with Republika magazine, Suva

Speakers:
‘Akilisi Pohiva, PM of Tonga
Abel Gutierres, Ambassador of Timor-Leste
Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands
Manasseh Sogarave, PM of the Solomon islands
Voreqe Bainimarama, PM of Fiji
Mary Robinson, UN Special Envoy on Climate Change

(cc) Pacific Media Centre, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand. www.pmc.aut.ac.nz

Report by David Robie. This article was first published on Café Pacific
Professor David Robie’s speech at the University of the South Pacific 21st Anniversary Journalism Awards on 30 October 2015:

Kia ora tatou and ni sa bula vinaka,

FIRSTLY, I wish to acknowledge the people of Fiji for returning this wonderful country to democracy last year, and also to the University of the South Pacific and Dr Shailendra Singh and his team for inviting me here to speak at this 21st Anniversary Journalism Awards event.


[Acknowledgements to various university and media VIPs]

As I started off these awards here at the University of the South Pacific in 1999 during an incredibly interesting and challenging time, it is a great honour to return for this event marking the 21st anniversary of the founding of the regional Pacific journalism programme.

Thus it is also an honour to be sharing the event with Monsieur Michel Djokovic, the Ambassador of France given how important France has been for this programme.

France and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme de Lille (ESJ) played a critically important role in helping establish the journalism degree programme at USP in 1994, with the French government funding the inaugural senior lecturer, François Turmel, and providing a substantial media resources grant to lay the foundations.

I arrived in Fiji four years later in 1998 as Head of Journalism from Papua New Guinea and what a pleasure it was working with the French Embassy on a number of journalism projects at that time, including an annual scholarship to France for journalism excellence.

These USP awards this year take place during challenging times for the media industry with fundamental questions confronting us as journalism educators about what careers we are actually educating journalists for.

When I embarked on a journalism career in the 1960s, the future was clear-cut and one tended to specialise in print, radio or television. I had a fairly heady early career being the editor at the age of 24 of an Australian national weekly newspaper, the Sunday Observer, owned by an idealistic billionaire, and we were campaigning against the Vietnam War.

Our chief foreign correspondent then was a famous journalist, Wilfred Burchett, who at the end of the Second World War 70 years ago reported on the Hiroshima nuclear bombing as a “warning to the world”.

By 1970, I was chief subeditor of the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, the best newspaper I ever worked on and where I learned much about human rights and social justice, which has shaped my journalism and education values ever since.

I travelled overland for a year across Africa as a freelance journalist, working for agencies such as Gemini, and crossed the Sahara Desert in a Kombi van. It was critically risky even then, but doubly dangerous today.

Eventually I ended up with Agence France-Presse as an editor in Paris and worked there for several years. In fact, it was while working with AFP in Europe that I took a “back door” interest in the Pacific and that’s where my career took another trajectory when I joined the Auckland Star and became foreign news editor.

The point of me giving you some brief moments of my career in a nutshell is to stress how portable journalism was as a career in my time. But now it is a huge challenge for you young graduates going out into the marketplace.

You don’t even know whether you’re going to be called a “journalist”, or a “content provider” or a “curator” of news – or something beyond being a “news aggregator” – such is the pace of change with the digital revolution. And the loss of jobs in the media industry continues at a relentless pace.

Fortunately, in Fiji, the global industry rationalisations and pressures haven’t quite hit home locally yet. However, on the other hand you have very real immediate concerns with the Media Industry Development Decree and the “chilling’ impact that it has on the media regardless of the glossy mirage the government spin doctors like to put on it.

We had a very talented young student journalist here in Fiji a few weeks ago, Niklas Pedersen, from Denmark, on internship with local media, thanks to USP and Republika’s support. He remarked about his experience:

I have previously tried to do stories in Denmark and New Zealand – two countries that are both in the top 10 on the RSF World Press Freedom Index, so I was a bit nervous before travelling to a country that is number 93 and doing stories there ….

Fiji proved just as big a challenge as I had expected. The first day I reported for duty … I tried to pitch a lot of my story ideas, but almost all of them got shut down with the explanation that it was impossible to get a comment from the government on the issue.
And therefore the story was never going to be able to get published.

At first this stunned me, but I soon understood that it was just another challenge faced daily by Fiji journalists.

[Screening of Niklas Pedersen news story on climate change – Pacific leaders speak out with one voice on climate change]

This was a nice piece of storytelling on climate change on an issue that barely got covered in New Zealand legacy media.

Australia and New Zealand shouldn’t get too smug about media freedom in relation to Fiji, especially with Australia sliding down the world rankings over asylum seekers for example.

New Zealand also shouldn’t get carried away over its own media freedom situation. Three court cases this year demonstrate the health of the media and freedom of information in this digital era is in a bad way.

•    Investigative journalist Jon Stephenson this month finally won undisclosed damages from the NZ Defence Ministry for defamation after trying to gag him over an article he wrote for Metro magazine which implicated the SAS in the US torture rendition regime in Afghanistan.

•    Law professor Jane Kelsey at the University of Auckland filed a lawsuit against Trade Minister Tim Groser over secrecy about the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (the judgment ruled the minister had disregarded the law); and

•    Investigative journalist Nicky Hager and author of Dirty Politics sought a judicial review after police raided his home last October, seizing documents, computers and other materials. Hager is known in the Pacific for his revelations about NZ spying on its neighbours.

Also, the New Zealand legacy media has consistently failed to report well on two of the biggest issues of our times in the Pacific – climate change and the fate of West Papua.

One of the ironies of the digital revolution is that there is an illusion of growing freedom of expression and information in the world, when in fact the reverse is true.

These are bleak times with growing numbers of journalists being murdered with impunity, from the Philippines to Somalia and Syria.

The world’s worst mass killing of journalists was the so-called Maguindanao, or Ampatuan massacre (named after the town whose dynastic family ordered the killings), when 32 journalists were brutally murdered in the Philippines in November 2009.

[Screening of Philippine National Union of Journalists video on the Ampatuan massacre – Keep the story alive]

But increasingly savage slayings of media workers in the name of terrorism are becoming the norm, such as the outrageous attack on Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Paris in January. Two masked gunmen assassinated 12 media workers – including five of France’s most talented cartoonists – at the satirical magazine and a responding policeman.

In early August this year, five masked jihadists armed with machetes entered the Dhaka home of a secularist blogger in Bangladesh and hacked off his head and hands while his wife was forced into a nearby room.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in figures released this year, 506 journalists were killed in the decade between 2002 and 2012, almost double the 390 slain in the previous decade. (Both Reporters Sans Frontières and Freedom House have also reported escalating death tolls and declines in media freedom.)

While there appear to be far more democracies in the world than ever before, the CPJ’s executive director Joel Simon says there is a sinister new threat.

And this is in some respects more troublesome than the old style dictatorships. Simon describes this new scourge in a recent book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Press Freedom, as the ‘democratators’, those leaders who profess to be democratic but are actually subverting their mirage of open governance. As Simon says:

“What are these differences between dictators and democratators? Dictators rule by force. Democratators rule by manipulation. Dictators impose their will. Democratators govern with the support of the majority. Dictators do not claim to be democrats – at least credibly. Democratators always do. Dictators control information. Democratators manage it.”

Simon points out that democratators win elections yet while they may be free, they are not really fair, meaning they are decided by fraud.

He has a growing list of leaders that fit this label, including Latin American “populists” like Rafael Correa of Equador and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, “European backsliders” like Viktor Orban of Hungary and Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed former president of Ukraine, and African leaders such as Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

Also high on Simon’s list of media threats is the way terrorism has impacted on how big media groups currently go about their global news-gathering. Conscious of the ever-present threat of ritualised kidnappings and bombings, journalists are sometimes forced to report from bunkers and are less enthusiastic about meeting uncertain sources in case they might be abducted.

Even the appearance of journalists sometimes makes them look like an extension of the military—with helmets, flak jackets and camouflage fatigues. This accentuates their targeting by fundamentalist groups who regard them as an extension of the “state”.

China is the elephant in the room when it comes to freedom of information. While China’s leaders embrace the internet, they believe they can, and ought to, control the web. It is clear that China has the technological means and resources to make internet control a reality.

Chinese authorities use monitoring and filtering to keep a lid on the cyberspace “conversation” to prevent repercussions.

United States responses to the Wikileaks scandal in 2013 and the massive surveillance revelations by Edward Snowden encouraged allegations of hypocrisy from critics pointing out that Washington’s commitment to internet freedom dragged when its own geopolitical interests appeared threatened.

Earlier this month, I had the good fortune to be in Brussels as one of the people giving feedback at a stakeholders meeting for a massive European Union-funded research project on the media reporting on six major violent conflicts around the world, including the Syrian civil war and conflict in Burundi.

While there I happened to pick up a new “Euro” style newspaper called Politico, which steered me to a remarkable media development in Spain with the headline “He brings news of the future”

Who was he? says the subeditor in me when it was always drummed into us to have a name in the headline. (The online version changed the headline).

This was the story of Pedro J. Ramírez, one of the leading editors in Spain, who had been in charge of El Mundo for 24 years. But he was sacked by his newspaper’s owners.

Why? Because under his leadership, El Mundo pursued a robust investigation into corruption implicating the governing Popular Party and the Prime Minister [Mariano Rajoy].

When he was fired, Ramírez used his massive €5. 6 million pay-out to help fund a new online newspaper, El Español. His pay-out plus record-breaking crowdfunding doubled what had been previously raised by a new Dutch publishing venture, De Correspondent.

Another interesting success story has been in France, where investigative journalist Edwy Plenel, famous for his Rainbow Warrior bombing investigation in 1985 for Le Monde, founded Mediapart.

He has assembled a team of some 60 journalists and his fearless brand of investigative journalism is shaking up the establishment.

Even in New Zealand, where the mediascape is fairly dire with hundreds of jobs cut in recent years—and a loss of 180 jobs in a recent shake-up at Fairfax New Zealand, the country’s biggest news publisher, there are stunningly innovative things happening.

The main independent New Zealand media group Scoop Media – and we at AUT’s Pacific Media Centre have a partnership project with them, Pacific Scoop – has launched a new crowdfunding business model and established a Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism.

This brings me to the achievements of the University of the South Pacific and its talented new crop of graduates. Close to 200 USP journalism graduates are now contributing to the Fiji and the Pacific region’s media and related careers.

Through its long-standing award-winning newspaper Wansolwara – now 19 years old, surely a remarkable accomplishment for any journalism school in the Australasian and Pacific arena, the student journalists have played an important role in independent, engaging and truth-seeking journalism.

Personally, I shall always remember with pride my experiences with USP and Wansolwara over the five years I was with the campus—the longest by far of any expatriate educator. Wansolwara was founded by student editor Stan Simpson and lecturer Philip Cass. And Pat Craddock of the USP Media Centre was another key person in building up the programme.

One of the highlights for me was the reporting of the George Speight coup in May 2000 by the courageous USP students. They won many awards for this.

It was thanks to the groundwork and experience that I gained at both USP and previously UPNG as a journalist turned academic that I was able to go to the next level at the Pacific Media Centre.

There I have been able to blend some of the best elements of academic media studies and practical journalism that makes a difference.

A tribute too to Dr Shailendra Singh and his team, Irene Manarae, Eliki Drugunalevu and Dr Olivier Jutel. Shailen was recently the first home-grown academic at USP to gain a PhD in journalism at the University of Queensland with the first major survey of the Fiji mediascape for more than a decade. Congratulations Shailen for a very fine thesis!

My concluding message to graduating student journalists is that no matter what government, political or industry pressure you face, you should hold on strongly to your core values of truth, accuracy, honesty and courage in the public interest.

Our communities deserve the best from their media in these deceitful times. University media are among the few that can still be trusted and they should do their best to contribute to democracy with integrity.

So go for it and change the world to the way it should be!

STOP PRESS: Before we move on, I have also been given the honour of launching the USP Journalism Alumni Network, which I am happy to do – as a USP alumni myself, I did my own PhD here at USP and I am very proud of that. It was a combination of three decades of history of journalism education and the impact of politics on the media.

The purpose of the USP Journalism Alumni Network is to reconnect with alumni, make them part of the USP journalism family and give them an opportunity to contribute to the development of journalism education at USP in the region.

More details will be released later. Today, we launch the network with a short video about USP Journalism Graduate Destinations.

Dr David Robie is Professor of Journalism and the Director of the Pacific Media Centre in Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies.He was head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific between 1998 and 2002.

—

A suicide or attempted suicide is now reported every day and a half in Fiji, say police.

Over the past three years, 422 people has taken their own lives in Fiji. This is almost three times the number of road fatalities in the same period.

Those numbers were highlighted as hundreds of people marched through Suva for World Suicide Prevention day in the middle of September.

“This is one of the reports, I’ve noticed a sudden increase in over the last two years. As of now we’re almost receiving a report on suicide or attempted suicide every one and a half days,” says Rusiate Tudravu, Associate Police Commisioner.

The suicide prevention day came only two weeks after three young schoolchildren took their own lives in Suva by drinking paraquat. This year ten children under 16 have committed suicide in Fiji.

“Suicide is something we really need to raise awareness of. We can all play a part in Fiji in reducing the statistics by simply being more aware and more supportive and knowing where to find expert help, where it’s needed”, says Fiji’s Minister of Health and Medical Services, Jone Usamate.

And expert help has been easier to find since the National Child Helpline was launched in April.

Almost 4700 calls have been placed to the helpline in the first five months of its existence from children as young as five.

“It’s a good tool, because this gives children a platform, where they can voice whatever is bothering them. And slowly we are trying to raise awareness of how the wider community can use our helpline”, says Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Rosy Akbar.

This week the Fiji government is also taking more extraordinary measures to keep young people from taking their own lives.

All schoolchildren have been told to take an anti-suicide pledge,  reports Radio New Zealand.

Teacher Mareani Sanegar left Rewa at 6am with her Year Three and Year Four students, taking a boat to attend the Literacy Day celebration in Suva. Image: KP Lew/PMC

Pacific Scoop: Report – By Kai Ping Lew in Suva

Education Minister Dr Mahendra Reddy says there is a “deficit culture” of thinking and reading in Fiji.

Speaking at the Literacy Day celebrations at Ratu Sukuna Park, Suva, today, he added that in order to have a knowledgeable society, Fiji needed to have a literate generation.

He appealed to parents to spend time with their children, encouraging them to read.

Statistics from the 2012 Educational Quality and Assessment Programme survey showed that only three in 10 Pacific children had acceptable levels of literacy for their age, Dr Reddy said.

Pacific Community director-general Colin Tukuitonga has also expressed concern, saying that improving literacy rates in the Pacific Islands is a priority for the development aspirations of the region to be realised.

Better opportunities
Read to Lead project chairperson Gazala Akbar said: “Not everyone has access to the same resources, especially in the rural and maritime areas. Read to Lead is trying to level the playing field and give everyone the same opportunities.”

The second phase of Vision Fiji’s Read to Lead project kicked off today. It will deliver 240 box library sets to primary schools in Fiji.

The Read to Lead project also includes a component monitoring and evaluating the literacy levels before and after receiving these books. The findings will be compiled into a report and shared with the Ministry of Education.

Having the same books in all schools will allow the report to gather more accurate information about the level of literacy in across the country.

“This is the first step building a more literate society,” said Akbar.

Inadequate libraries
Mereani Sanegar has been a teacher in Nukui Village School, one of the most rural schools in Rewa, for six years.

Her excited Year Three and Year Four students left Rewa with her at six in the morning, taking a boat to attend the Literacy Day celebration in Suva.

“We’re grateful for an opportunity like this because we really need those books,” she said.

“Currently in our library we only have very old books donated by schools overseas and the books prescribed in the syllabus. We use them.”

She added that one of the challenges in getting children to read was the second language barrier which discouraged her students, as they would rather do sports or watch television.

“It’s a challenge, but it’s attainable,” said Sanegar.

Reading alternatives
Ana Ledua, mother of five, echoed the need for school libraries to be upgraded and told Republika magazine that she bought books for her children two or three times a year and.

However, she added that they were not the only way for children to gain literacy nowadays.

“They have access to technology and the media, so its much better now than it used to be before.

“If its introduced in schools and they have e-books, then that’s an effective way of getting it across to kids to read more.”

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

—

Report – By Niklas Pedersen in Suva

Fiji’s Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, Rosy Akbar, has branded Fiji’s crisis on violence against women as a “national shame”.

Figures from the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre shows more than 750 new cases of domestic violence just this year.

The minister spoke at this week’s third meeting of Interagency Taskforce on Elimination of Violence against Women and Children on Tuesday and called for a united stand against the crisis.

“Many times, we see, that though we work for the same cause, we work in different directions. That time has gone. We really need to come together as one,” said the minister.

“It’s not enough, that we meet up in this room, and when we walk out of the room, we have different agendas. That’s not going to work.”

On Wednesday, the Ministry for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation also signed a bilateral agreement with Australia and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

One of the goals with that agreement is to combat domestic violence in Fiji.

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

—

Seven Pacific leaders have signed a strong document on climate change in Fiji, mapping out what they want to achieve at COP 21 in Paris later this year.

Meeting for three days, the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) leaders said they were speaking with “one voice” on their demands for action.

Host Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama of Fiji described the Suva Declaration as an historic document and UN Special Envoy for Climate Change Mary Robinson called it a “strong statement”.

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

Suva Declaration pushes losses, damages issue for COP 21 in Paris

Suva Declaration signed

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By Kai Ping Lew in Suva

Recognising losses and damages as a separate issue from adaptation in climate change policy is one of the major developments featured in the Suva Declaration signed by seven Pacific leaders.

The third Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) summit in Suva saw leaders, civil society representatives and the private sector convening to form the declaration which will be brought before COP21 Paris in 12 weeks’ time.

The previous COP agreement featured losses and damages as an element under adaptation, forcing governments to prioritise between both.

Other significant clauses in yesterday’s declaration include the need for the Paris agreement to be ambitious in its measures with a five-year review, be a legally binding protocol and be committed to keeping average global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees centigrade.

The Pacific nations most affected by climate change in the short term include Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands.

At an average of two metres above sea level, Kiribati could be underwater by the end of the century if nothing is done.

Tuvalu faces similar fears, with its highest land mass only five metres above sea level.

Village relocation
Kiribati has to relocate one of its villages, Tebunginako, and has bought 2430 hectares of land on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu to relocate its people.

“We want to come away from Paris with some clear guarantees that something will be done to ensure the future generations will have a chance of survival, that we would remain a sovereign state,” said Kiribati President Anote Tong.

“On the broader scale, we are hoping for the good of humanity to come away with meaningful agreements, not agreements that are cosmetic in nature.”

Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga said natural disasters had been highly exacerbated by climate change, and there was a need to ensure COP21 took that into account.

“We are dealing with the lives of human beings. It’s not about saving economies, or proving science.”

He added that there were limits to how much Tuvalu could adapt, and already they did so in their everyday lives.

Huge vulnerability
United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change Mary Robinson said the Pacific faced huge vulnerability from the effects of climate change, and there was a need to ensure that their fundamental right to live on their ancestral homes was preserved.

“We’ve come to the realisation that adaptation for us is going to be beyond our borders, because we don’t have the high grounds most other countries have,” said Tong.

However, he had also committed towards building up the island so it will still exist in some form when the sea level rises.

Tongan Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva said relocation was no longer the issue – the issue was when and where they would migrate to as it had become a matter of survival.

Tonga has one of the largest diasporas within the Pacific Island communities, with an estimated 100,000 Tongans living overseas.

Migration with dignity
President Tong spoke of the uncertainty in the future of Kiribati – in the prospects of its citizens and the fate of its low-lying island country.

He rejected the term “climate refugees”, and instead hoped that his people could migrate with dignity, and the preparations needed to begin immediately.

“It’s going to take a long time to train them so that if and when they do migrate, they will not be migrating as we are seeing in Europe, but will migrate within existing processes as people with skills,” said Tong.

Prime Minister Sopoaga stressed the importance of solidarity within the region and emphasised the danger of settling for less in the COP21 negotiations.

“We cannot allow others to say “we’ll relocate you somewhere else” but come away with a loose agreement.

“We must come away with legally binding and ambitious agreements, because failing that we will have failed altogether,” said Sopoaga.

Marshall Islands Minister of Foreign Affairs Tony de Brum said: “There is nothing more humiliating for anyone than to become wards of another civilisation.”

Aggravated crisis
Special Envoy Robinson affirmed that the refugee crisis already seen in Europe would only be aggravated by climate change.

She urged the leaders of the Small Island Developing States to discuss what they needed to take away from COP21 further to present a united front and demand a strong agreement.

“We can get past this if we have enough human solidarity.”

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

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He is interviewing a spokesperson of the Tikina Namosi Landowners Committee, Sipiriano Nariva, about a current dispute with the Fiji government over mining in Namosi.

More on that story soon. Other Fiji Report stories on Storify

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A panel of violence against women at the University of South Pacific has provided insights into the feminist movement in Fiji, the challenges in ending violence against women, and some of the innovative methods being used to tackle the issue.

Panellists speaking at USP last night were Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre co-ordinator Shamima Ali, Fiji Women’s Rights Movement executive director Tara Chetty, LGBTIQ and human rights activist Jasmine Kaur and UN Women Pacific Fund project manager Roshika Deo.

Ali spoke about the challenges to ending violence against women in the Pacific region, citing its entrenched patriarchal culture as one of the major factors resulting in the high number of incidents.

Chetty spoke about the GIRLS programme, encouraging young girls from a young age to use the power of voice to encourage more assertive and independent behaviour and prevent incidence of violence against women.

Kaur’s speech featured the need to end the culture of silence in many Pacific societies which allows violence against women to continue and the need to have comprehensive sexual education in schools from a young age.

Deo touched on the role that technology can play in providing support networks for women facing violence, and the importance of sharing effective regional solutions in the Pacific in response to solving social problems including discrimination and violence against women.

The panel was organised and moderated by USP government, development, and international affairs lecturer Dr Andreea Torre.

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

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By Kai Ping Lew in Suva

Despite trials of various individuals charged with sedition in Western Fiji, life goes on as normal in the capital city, Suva, the hub of the country.

But beneath the surface there is some concern among businesses, students, and the public about the potential effects of any escalation of political unrest.

Seventy people have been arrested in the Ra province on charges of sedition and inciting communal antagonism.

Of those arrested, 43 were charged with undergoing military-style training for the formation of a Christian state.

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has stressed to the public that sedition is a serious offence, and that the Fijian authorities will mete out justice to anyone involved.

He added that the Fijian government could only serve the citizens if there was stability and confidence in its future.

Opposition SODELPA leaders Ro Teimumu Kepa and Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu were quick to point out that Bainimarama himself seized power in 2006 through a military coup.

This argument has been held against him by the opposition continuously in the years following the formation of Bainimarama’s government.

Fresh start
For some Fijians, the democratic elections last year represented a fresh start, especially for those who want to look to the future past the coups that have socially and economically devastated the country since 1987.

“I think we just want to get on with our lives and let the government do their thing,” said second year University of the South Pacific (USP) student Sakiusa Volavola.

Treehouse Boutique manager Sera Kasaqa was among the store managers who said their businesses were unaffected since they had loyal customers who continued to make purchases.

Kasaqa added that business was going on as normal for the average Fijian consumer.

Eagle Boys Pizza manager Niko Bulai said consumption had been constant and he was confident that the arrests had contained the issue.

“Right now everything is normal. If they continued with what they were doing it may have affected our customers because they will be too scared to go around,” he added.

He said if Fiji experienced political instability, the economy would be affected because it would hinder tourism.

“Without tourists, there will be lots of workers laid off, there would be no jobs,” said Bulai.

Badly affected
Tourism, Fiji’s major revenue earner and largest source of foreign exchange, was badly affected by the 1987 and 2000 coups.

The sector provides direct and indirect employment for an estimated 40,000 people, representing approximately 17 percent of the economy.

Several business owners declined to comment due to the uncertain political climate and the sensitivity of the issue.

For the student population, the expenses continue as per usual.

“I can say that it doesn’t affect me because I will spend on what I spend, even if something happens,” said USP student Safia Nisha, who is in the second year of her business programme.

“Being a carefree student [the arrests] don’t worry me, but if something happens then of course I will worry,” she added.

Students closer to graduation are concerned about how potential political instability could affect their employment opportunities.

Looking for options
“Already at hand we have a situation where only a small percentage of graduates are hired. In the event of political instability, the number would decline,” said USP third year business student Joshua Autar.

His colleague Christian Wendt agreed, saying he would have to look for options overseas.

“I would rather stay in Fiji because my family is here,” said Wendt.

“But if I didn’t get a job within a year of graduating then I would leave, probably to the United States where I have relatives.”

Investment Fiji said 108 foreign investments worth over F$315 million had been registered in the first quarter of the year, according to Investment Fiji chief executive officer Godo Müeller-Teut.

These investments where anticipated to generate 1473 jobs.

Potential instability could affect foreign investments negatively as overseas investors raise concerns over the security of their assets.

Lost growth
Analysis by economist Professor Wadan Narsey showed that the 2006 coup cost Fiji four years of economic growth.

He also compared the economy of Mauritius to the Fijian economy, both dependent on the same industries of sugar and tourism and on similar growth paths in 1976.

The comparison shows how Mauritius has increased its economy five-fold between 1976 and 2014, whereas Fiji’s has only doubled.

“Any instability is bad for the economy,” said the head of a major Fijian company who asked to remain anonymous.

“It’s a pity that the dissent has happened in the Ra district, which is part of the region the government has singled out for aggressive economic expansion.

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

Fiji PM warns ‘plotters’

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Comment – By Kai Ping Lew

Started work yesterday at Wansolwara, the award-winning University of the South Pacific student newspaper, and met with the team of co-ordinators of the regional journalism programme in Fiji.

Tried to get our wi-fi sorted out, but no luck. I found the journalism students really helpful in getting me settled in, and really friendly.

Some of them were really passionate about the ideals of journalism, doing it as a public service, and the need to do it well. I could relate to that.

I spoke to Shailendra Singh, who is the co-ordinator of the Journalism Programme at USP. I wanted to understand why he chose to work here at the university in Fiji.

He told me that he prefers the way of life, the people, the mannerisms. It’s familiar and it’s something that he’s grown up around.

He moved his family overseas to Australia, but for himself, he chose to continue to work in Fiji, where he says many interesting things are happening.

It’s a struggle many Fijians face, as the educated portion of the population moves away in search of a faster-growing economy. It’s an issue that splits many families, as the ones who are able to find employment go abroad to greener pastures.

Escape dynamics
It’s something I can also understand, as part of a family who is in the middle of migrating to Australia to escape the very same dynamics happening in Fiji – racial inequality, government corruption, and economic stagnation.

Yet the fact that he could have moved abroad but chooses to stay in Fiji, to educate the young journalists who will play a part in shaping the path of the country while it makes its slow, meandering way… I find that selfless, and worthy of respect.

For me, it sits perpendicular my intention not to be a journalist in Malaysia, where media freedom is suppressed and journalists risk much for a poorly-paid job.

On the other hand, Shailendra may not be a journalist, but he has chosen to stay with this developing country, nurture it even as it works its way through its growing pains.

Running away, avoiding something is easy, but it takes real perseverance and tenacity continue to pursue the ideal of accountability journalism, despite the barriers placed in the way by the governments.

And it is arguably in the areas where press freedom is suppressed the most where the stories need to be told, because if the government had nothing to hide, they would have no reason to fear transparency.

For me, it’s hard to balance this continuum of wanting to be an accountability journalist, yet also wanting to be able to do so in an environment where my personal safety is not at risk from the very institutions meant to be protecting it.

Niklas Pedersen and Kai Ping Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

Kai Ping Lew’s Fiji blog

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Pacific Scoop:
Comment – By Niklas Pedersen in Suva

Today, I arrived at the humble headquarters of Repúblika Magazine in an office complex just a couple of minutes in the bus from our home base at the University of the South Pacific.

Already here on the first day of my weeklong internship at Repúblika, editor Ricardo Morris showed me some examples of the challenges he and his magazine face in the Fiji mediascape.

Yesterday both the Sunday editions of The Fiji Times and Fiji Sun carried a warning from the Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama, on their front page.

Bainimarama warned the Fiji people and others abroad, that any form of “insurrection” would be severely punished in regard to the latest “sedition” cases in the country.

Nowhere to be found was the obvious point that “rebellious activities” was exactly how the now-elected Prime Minister gained power in the 2006 coup.

The media here are full of contradictions like that. Just today, I bought The Fiji Times, which on the front page featured a story about the Permanent Secretary for iTaukei Affairs urging the Fijian people to keep using their native iTaukei-language and stop it from disappearing.

That story was continued on page 6, right next to this headline: “PM stresses need to master English language,” in which Bainimarama is quoted saying:

“I realise that for many people, English is not their mother tongue at home. But it is our national language […] so we need to master it properly.”

Maybe there’s a lesson in the art of timing political announcements.

Niklas Pedersen and KP Lew are postgraduate student journalists from AUT University on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course. They are in Fiji on a two-week internship with Repúblika Magazine and Wansolwara and will also file a series of reports for Pacific Scoop about their experience.

KP’s journalism blog on Fiji

Watch for the Pacific Scoop team’s Fiji Report via Storify.

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Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Niklas Pedersen

A new bill due to be passed by Japan’s diet next month could counteract the longstanding Japanese opposition against nuclear weapons.

Japan’s Defence Minister, Gen Nakatani, said that the bill would formally allow the military to transport nuclear weapons of foreign forces.

This proposition goes against one of the three non-nuclear principles of Japan, which states that the country shall not possess, manufacture or let nuclear weapons be transported on their soil.

“This is a pretty dramatic change. Allowing nuclear weapons into Japan reverses the policy of the last half century,” said Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Auckland University, Dr Stephen Hoadley.

The bill passed the lower chamber of the Japanese diet last month despite public outcry and demands from the opposition to scrap it.

For some countries the foreign policy development in Japan is more troubling than others. The Pacific Islands have had a tempestuous history with nuclear weapons and commentators say a new stance from Japan could make those feelings come rushing back.

‘Great concern’
“This is an issue of great concern to the [Pacific] region, given that so many nuclear tests were conducted in the Pacific,” said Asia-Pacific Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Tim Wright.

Associate Professor Steven Hoadley pointed out that especially the republic of Kiribati and the French Polynesian islands as two nations could fear a possibly more aggressive Japanese nuclear policy given their proximity to nuclear test zones.

“They will be concerned that a renewal of any nuclear capability might result in future tests,” he said.

There are still 15.000 nuclear weapons left in the world. 1800 of them are on high alert and are ready to be launched with few seconds notice.

Asia-Pacific Journalism video report by Niklas Pedersen of AUT University and the Danish School of Media and Journalism.

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Video report by Niklas Pedersen of Asia-Pacific Journalism.

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Niklas Pedersen

Leading climate voices from the Pacific Islands are trying to raise greater global warming awareness in New Zealand through a “Climate Tour” to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

The very existence of many of the island nations is threatened by the impact of climate change and they feel that their “big brother”, New Zealand, isn’t doing enough to help them.

Among the leaders speaking out, is the general secretary of the Christian Church of Tuvalu and founder of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, Rev Tafue Lusama.

His homeland, Tuvalu, is projected to be underwater in less than 50 years.

“We can’t sit back and look at our big brother turning its back on us. We need to tap on the shoulder of New Zealand to look back at us and do more, than what it is doing now,” he says.

In a statement to Pacific Scoop, the Minister for Climate Change Issues, Tim Groser, stands by New Zealand’s goal to cut emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels over the next 15 years.

“This is a fair and ambitious contribution to the global effort, reflecting New Zealand’s circumstances and the uncertainties still facing us. We are providing significant support for climate action in the Pacific,” he said.

Asia-Pacific Journalism video report by Niklas Pedersen of AUT University and Danish School of Media and Journalism.

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