Anti-apartheid campaigner Terry Bell has died at the age of 84. A lifelong activist, journalist, and educator, Bell’s life was defined by his unwavering commitment to justice and democracy.

His early journalism career spanned several South African newspapers, where he also helped found the non-racial South African Journalists’ Union.

Bell was deeply involved in underground activism, editing the clandestine publication Combat. Detained under the 90-day law in 1964, he fled into exile in Zambia the following year. There, he worked as chief reporter for the Times of Zambia before being granted asylum in the UK.

• READ MORE: Terry Bell, struggle stalwart and journalist of ‘impeccable principles’, dies at 84

In London, he studied international affairs, edited Anti-Apartheid News, and worked at the Daily Worker.

Bell’s activism took him across continents, from Zambia to New Zealand, where he helped launch the Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1972.

In 1979, he and his wife, Barbara, established the primary division of Somafco in Tanzania, drafting the ANC’s first primary school curriculum. Disillusioned by abuses within the ANC, the Bells resigned in 1982 and later supported striking miners in Britain.

Returning to South Africa in 1991, Bell settled in Cape Town, choosing not to rejoin the ANC. Instead, he advocated for democratic socialism, urging citizens to “Vote ANC, but build a socialist alternative”.

From 1992, he edited Africa Analysis and contributed incisive labour columns to Business Report, Fin24, and City Press.

He was also a regular contributor to Radio 786’s programming, and was a staunch voice advocating for the rights of Palestinians.

His writing combined sharp analysis with a deep empathy for workers and marginalised communities. Bell remained a freelance journalist and commentator until his final years, never ceasing to challenge injustice.

Terry Bell’s life reminds us that resistance, even in exile, can shape nations and inspire generations.

Republished from Radio 786 in Cape Town, South Africa.

After many years of heated debate over whether January 26 is an appropriate date to celebrate Australia Day — with some councils and other groups shifting away from it — the tide appears to be turning among some groups.

Some local councils, such as Geelong in Victoria, are reversing recent policy and embracing January 26 as a day to celebrate with nationalistic zeal.

They are likely emboldened by what they perceive as an ideological shift occurring more generally in Australia and around the world.

• READ MORE: Other Australia Day reports

But what of young people? Are young Australians really becoming more conservative and nationalistic, as some are claiming? For example, the Institute for Public Affairs states that “despite relentless indoctrination taking place at schools and universities”, their recent survey showed a 10 percent increase in the proportion of 18-24 year olds who wanted to celebrate Australia Day.

However, the best evidence suggests that claims of a shift towards conservatism among young people are unsupported.

The statement “we should not celebrate Australia Day on January 26” was featured in the Deakin Contemporary History Survey in 2021, 2023, and 2024.

Respondents were asked to indicate their agreement level. The Deakin survey is a repeated cross-sectional study conducted using the Life in Australia panel, managed by the Social Research Centre. This is a nationally representative online probability panel with more than 2000 respondents for each Deakin survey.

Robust social survey
With its large number of participants, weighting and probability selection, the Life in Australia panel is arguably Australia’s most reliable and robust social survey.

The Deakin Contemporary History Survey consists of several questions about the role of history in contemporary society, hence our interest in whether or how Australians might want to celebrate a national day.

Since 1938, when Aboriginal leaders first declared January 26 a “Day of Mourning”, attitudes to this day have reflected how people in Australia see the nation’s history, particularly about the historical and contemporary dispossession and oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In 2023, we found support for Australia Day on January 26 declined slightly from 2021, and wondered if a more significant change in community sentiment was afoot.

With the addition of the 2024 data, we find that public opinion is solidifying — less a volatile “culture war” and more a set of established positions. Here is what we found:

This figure shows that agreement (combining “strongly agree” and “agree”) with not celebrating Australia Day on January 26 slightly increased in 2023, but returned to the earlier level a year later.

Likewise, disagreement with the statement (again, combining “strongly disagree” and “disagree”) slightly dipped in 2023, but in 2024 returned to levels observed in 2021. “Don’t know” and “refused” responses have consistently remained below 3 percent across all three years. Almost every Australian has a position on when we should celebrate Australia Day, if at all.

Statistical factors
The 2023 dip might reflect a slight shift in public opinion or be due to statistical factors, such as sampling variability. Either way, public sentiment on this issue seems established.

As Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer Nayuka Gorrie and Amangu Yamatji woman associate professor Crystal McKinnon have written, the decline in support for Australia Day is the result of decades of activism by Indigenous people.

Though conservative voices have become louder since the failure of the Voice Referendum in 2023, more than 40 percent of the population now believes Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26.

In addition, the claim of a significant swing towards Australia Day among younger Australians is unsupported.

In 2024, as in earlier iterations of our survey, we found younger Australians (18–34) were more likely to agree that Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26. More than half of respondents in that age group (53 percent) supported that change, compared to 39 percent of 35–54-year-olds, 33 percent of 55–74-year-olds, and 29 percent of those aged 75 and older.

Conversely, disagreement increases with age. We found 69 percent of those aged 75 and older disagreed, followed by 66 percent of 55–74-year-olds, 59 percent of 35–54-year-olds, and 43 percent of 18–34-year-olds. These trends suggest a steady shift, indicating that an overall majority may favour change within the next two decades.

What might become of Australia Day? We asked those who thought we should not celebrate Australia Day on January 26 what alternative they preferred the most.

Among those who do not want to celebrate Australia Day on January 26, 36 percent prefer replacing it with a new national day on a different date, while 32 percent favour keeping the name but moving it to a different date.

A further 13 percent support keeping January 26 but renaming it to reflect diverse history, and 8 percent advocate abolishing any national day entirely. Another 10 percent didn’t want these options, and less than 1 peecent were unsure.

A lack of clarity
If the big picture suggests a lack of clarity — with nearly 58 percent of the population wanting to keep Australia Day as it is, but 53 percent of younger Australians supporting change — then the task of finding possible alternatives to the status quo seems even more clouded.

Gorrie and McKinnon point to the bigger issues at stake for Indigenous people: treaties, land back, deaths in custody, climate justice, reparations and the state removal of Aboriginal children.

Yet, as our research continues to show, there are few without opinions on this question, and we should not expect it to recede as an issue that animates Australians.

Dr David Lowe is chair in contemporary history, Deakin University; Dr Andrew Singleton is professor of sociology and social research, Deakin University; and Joanna Cruickshank is associate professor in history, Deakin University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Four months ago, a group of lawyers in Aotearoa New Zealand called for a little reported inquiry into New Zealand spy agencies over whether there has been possible assistance for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a letter to the chief of intelligence and security (IGIS) on 12 September 2024, three lawyers argued that the country was in danger of aiding international war crimes, reported RNZ News.

Inspector-General Brendan Horsley, who had previously indicated he would look into conflict-related spying this year, confirmed he would consider the request, according to the report.

• READ MORE: Behind settler colonial NZ’s paranoia about dissident ‘persons of interest’
• Other SIS security reports

At least one of the lawyers had been confident of a positive response, said the news report.

“I’m actually very optimistic,” noted University of Auckland associate professor Treasa Dunworth in the media interview about their argument that New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) intelligence might be making its way to Israel via the US, “because our request is very, detailed, backed up with credible evidence, [and] is very careful.”

But she got a disappointing result. The following month, on October 9 — just seven weeks before the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity — Inspector-General Horsley ruled out an inquiry at this time.

He said in a statement he did not want to “stop the clock” and tie up his office’s “modest resources to a deeper review of activity I have already been monitoring” while armed conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine were currently “active and dynamic”.

Rapid deterioration
Yet rapidly the 15-month Israeli war has deteriorated since then with President-elect Donald Trump due to take office in Israel’s main backer the United States later this month on January 20.

As the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens with intensified attacks on hospitals and civilians, a breakdown of law and order at the border, and more than 50 complaints filed against Israel soldiers for war crimes in multiple countries, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has urged medical professionals worldwide to sever all ties with the pariah state.

I urge medical professionals worldwide to pursue the severance of all ties with Israel as a concrete way to forcefully denounce Israel’s full destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, a critical tool of its ongoing genocide.#FreeDrHussanAbuSafiya https://t.co/qzZ7CqufI6

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) December 30, 2024

Ironically, the New Zealand intelligence “debate” has coincided with the publication of a new book that has debunked the view that the SIS and GCSB have been working in the interests of New Zealand. The reality, argues social justice movement historian and activist Maire Leadbeater in The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of the State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand is that these agencies have been working in the interests of the so-called “Five Eyes” partners, including the United States.

Her essential argument in this robust and comprehensive 427-page book is that New Zealand’s state surveillance has been part of a structure of state control that “serves to undermine movements for social change and marginalise or punish those who challenge the established order. It had a deeply destructive impact on democracy.”

As she states, her primary focus is on the work of New Zealand’s main intelligence agencies, the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) “and their forerunners, the political police”.

The author explains that she is not concerned with the “socially useful work of the contemporary police in the detection of criminal activity, including politically motivated crime”. She notes also that unlike the domestic spies, police detection work is subject to detailed warrants, there is due process over arrests, and the process is open to public scrutiny.

Leadbeater points out that while New Zealand experience with terrorism has been limited, neither of the country’s two main intelligence agencies were much help in investigating the three notorious examples — the unsolved 1984 Wellington Trades Hall bombing that killed one, the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland that also killed one (but the casualties could easily have been higher), and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that murdered 51.

The regular police were the key investigators in all three cases.

Also, there is the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.

Working for ‘Five Eyes’ interests
Instead of working for the benefit of New Zealand, the intelligence agencies were set up to work closely with the country’s traditional allies and the so-called “Five Eyes” network — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

An example of this was Algerian professor and parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui who arrived in New Zealand in 2002 as an asylum seeker after a military coup against the elected government in his home country. Within nine days of arriving, his confidentiality was breached and he was falsely branded by The New Zealand Herald as an “international terrorism suspect”.

He was jailed for two years without charge (part of that time held in solitary confinement) because of an SIS-imposed National Security Risk certificate and this could have have led to “deportation of this honourable man” but for the tireless work of his lawyers and a well-informed public campaign, as told by Leadbeater in this book, and also by journalist Selwyn Manning in his 2004 book I Almost Forgot about the Moon: The Disinformation Campaign Against Ahmed Zaoui.

Set free and granted asylum, he later became a New Zealand citizen in 2014. (However, on a visit to Algeria in 2023 he was arrested at gunpoint in a house in Médéa and charged with “subversion”).

Leadbeater says a strong case could be made that New Zealand’s democracy “would be stronger and more viable without the repressive laws that currently support the secretive operations of the SIS and the GCSB”. The author laments that the resources and focus of the intelligence agencies have focused too much, and wastefully, on ordinary people who are perceived to be “dissenters”.

“Dissent is the lifeblood of democracy but SIS operations targeted many of our brightest and best, damaging their personal and professional lives in the process,” Leadbeater says.

Among those who have been targeted have been the author herself, and others in her “left-wing family milieu” — including her late brother longtime Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Keith Locke, as well as her parents Elsie and Jack, originally Communist Party activists prior to 1956.

The core of the book is based on primary sources, including declassified police records held in the National Archives and the declassified records of the SIS which have been released to individual activists – including her and she discovered she had been spied on since the age of 10 due to state paranoia.

At the launch of her book in Auckland last November, guest speaker and retired First Union general secretary Robert Reid — whose file also features in the book — said what a fitting way the narrative begins by outlining the important role the Locke family have played in Aotearoa over the many years.

The final chapter is devoted to another “Person of interest: Keith Locke” – “Maire’s much-loved friend and comrade.”

“In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country,” Reid said.

“The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.”

Surveillance stories and files
Among others whose surveillance stories and files have been featured are trade unionist and former Socialist Action League activist Mike Treen; Halt All Racist Tours founder Trevor Richards; economics lecturer Dr Wolfgang Rosenberg’s sons George and Bill; Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) organiser Murray Horton; antiwar activist and Peace Movement research Owen Wilkes; investigative journalist Nicky Hager; Dr Bill Sutch, who was tried and acquitted on a charge laid under the Official Secrets Act in 1975; and internet entrepreneur and political activist Kim Dotcom.

State paranoia in New Zealand was driven by issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, decolonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought.

Leadbeater reflects that she had never accepted that “anyone in my family ever threatened state security. Moreover, the solidarity, antinuclear and anti-apartheid organisations that I took part in should not have been spied on. Such groups were and are a vital part of a healthy democracy.”

At one stage when many activists were seeking copies of their surveillance files in the mid-2000s through OIA requests or later under the Privacy Act, I also applied due to my association with several of the protagonists in this book and my involvement as a writer on decolonisation and environmental justice issues.

I merely received a “neither confirm or deny” form letter on the existence of a file, and never bothered to reapply later when information became more readily available.

But I have had my own brushes with surveillance and threatened arrest as a journalist in global settings such as New Caledonia, including when I was detained by soldiers in January 1987 for taking photographs of French military camps for a planned report about the systematic intimidation of pro-independence Kanak villagers.

This was perfectly legal, of course, and the attempt by authorities to silence me did not work; my articles appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Sunday Times the following weekend and featured on the cover of Fiji’s Islands Business news magazine.

Watched become the watchers
The structure of The Enemy Within is in three parts. As the author explains, the first part focuses on the period from 920 to the end of the First World War, and the second on the impact of the Cold War and the Western anti-communist hysteria between 1945 and 1955.

The final part covers the period from 1955 to the present, when the intelligence and security services have been under greater public scrutiny and faced campaigns for their reform or abolition.

As Leadbeater notes, “the watched, to some extent, have become the watchers”.

Because of my Asia-Pacific and decolonisation interests, I found a chapter on “colonial repression in Samoa” and the Black Saturday massacre of the Mau resistance of particular interest and a shameful stain on NZ history.

As Leadbeater notes, it was an “unexpected find in the Archives New Zealand” to stumble across a record of the surveillance of the “citizens who mounted an opposition to the New Zealand government’s colonial rule in Samoa”.

She pays tribute to the “vibrant solidarity movement” in the late 1920s and early 1930s, inspired by the peaceful Mau movement and its motto “Samoa mo Samoa” — Samoa for the Samoans — in their resistance to New Zealand’s colonial project.

This solidarity movement was in the face of a “prevailing attitude of white settlement” and its leaders were influenced by the Parihaka resistance of the 1880s.

Leadbeater is critical of New Zealand media, such as The New Zealand Herald, for siding with the colonial establishment and becoming “positively hostile to the Mau movement”.

New Zealand administrators under the League of Mandate to govern Samoa following German rule were arrogant and regarded Samoans as “inferior” and were “aghast” at Samoan and European leaders collaborating in resistance.

Black Saturday massacre
On 28 December 1929, what became dubbed the “Black Saturday massacre” happened in Apia. A peaceful Mau procession marches to the Apia wharf to welcome home exiled trader Alfred Smyth.

Police tried to arrest the Mau secretary, Mata’ūtia Karaunu, but the marchers protected him. More police were despatched to “assert colonial authority”, shots were fired at the crowd and in the upheaval a police constable was clubbed to death.

A police sergeant the fired a Lewis machine gun from the police station over the heads of the crowd, while other police fired directly into the crowd with their rifles.

Paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, dressed in white and calling for peace, was mortally wounded and at least eight other marchers were also killed. The massacre was chronicled in journalist Michael Field’s books Mau and later Black Saturday: New Zealand’s Tragic Blunders in Samoa.

Protests followed and the Mau Movement was declared a “seditious organisation” and the wearing of Mau outfits or badges became illegal.

A crackdown ensued on Mau activists with heavy surveillance and harassment and in New Zealand public figures and community leaders called for an “independent inquiry into Samoan affairs”.

Eventually, the Labour Party victory in the 1935 elections changed the dynamic and the following year the Mau was recognised as a legitimate political movement.

After the Second World War, New Zealand became committed to self-government in Western Samoa with indigenous custom and tradition “as an important foundation”. However, full independence did not come until 1962.

Four decades later, in 2002, Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised to the people of Samoa for the “inept and incompetent early administration of Samoa by New Zealand”.

She cited officials allowing the “influenza” ship Talune to dock in Apia in 1918, and the Black Saturday massacre as key examples of this incompetence.

However, Leadbeater notes that the “saga of surveillance and sedition charges” outlined in her book could well be added to the list. She adds that Samoans remember the Mau Movement and its martyrs with “pride and gratitude”.

“For New Zealanders, this chapter in our colonial history is one of shame that should be far better known and understood. The New Zealand Samoa Defence League was ahead of its time, and thankfully so.”

Behind settler colonial #NZ’s paranoia about dissident ‘persons of interest’ | #AsiaPacificReport #MaireLeadbeater #progressivebooks #RobertReid @miketreen #statesurveillance #dissidents #statespying @JohnJohnminto https://t.co/B9qws9s1La pic.twitter.com/5ELHTIDv4l

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 9, 2024

Looking for ‘subversives’ in wrong places
Leadbeater notes in her book that the SIS budget alone in 2021 was about $100 million with about 400 staff. Yet the intelligence services have been spending this sport of money for more than a century looking for “subversives and terrorists” — but in the wrong places.

This book is an excellent tribute to the many activists and dissidents who have had their lives disrupted and hounded by state spies, and is essential reading for all those committed to transparent democracy.

Following her section on more contemporary events and massive surveillance failures and wrongs, such as the 2007 Tūhoe raids, Leadbeater calls for a massive rethink on New Zealand’s approach to security.

“It is time to leave crime, including terrorist crime, to the country’s police and court system, with their built-in accountability procedures,” she concludes.

“It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics.”

• The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater. Potton & Burton, 2024. 427 pages.

“Only the struggle counts . . .  death is nothing.”  Éloi Machoro — “the Che Guevara of the Pacific” — said this shortly before he was gunned down by a French sniper on 12  January 1985.

Machoro, one of the leaders of the newly-formed FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — today the main umbrella movement for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people — slowly bled to death as the gendarmes moved in.

The assassination is an apt metaphor for what France is doing to the Kanak people of New Caledonia and has been doing to them for 150 years.

• READ MORE: Kanaky New Caledonia unrest: Macron ends day of political talks with both sides
• LISTEN TO RADIO WAATEA: Interview with Jessie Ounei and David Small
• Liberation for New Caledonia’s Kanak people ‘must come’, says media educator — Audio
• ‘You are not alone’ Pacific messages of solidarity for Kanaky
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

As the New Zealand and Australian media fussed and bothered over tourists stranded in New Caledonia over the past week, the Kanaks have been gripped in an existential struggle with a heavyweight European power determined to keep the archipelago firmly under the control of Paris.  We need better, deeper reporting from our media — one that provides history and context.

According to René Guiart, a pro-independence writer, moments before the sniper’s bullets struck, Machoro had emerged from the farmhouse where he and his comrades were surrounded.  I translate:

“I want to speak to the Sous-Prefet! [French administrator],” Machoro shouted. “You don’t have the right to arrest us.  Do you hear? Call the Sous-Prefet!”

The answer came in two bullets. Once dead, Machoro’s comrades inside the house emerged to receive a beating from the gendarmes.  Standing over Machoro’s body, a member of the elite mobile tactical unit said:  “He wanted war, he got it!”

Weeks earlier, New Zealand journalist David Robie had photographed Machoro shortly before he smashed open a ballot box with an axe and burned the ballots inside. “It was,” says Robie, “symbolic of the contempt Kanaks had for what they saw as the French’s manipulated voting system.”

Every year on January 12, the anniversary of Machoro’s killing, people gather at his grave. Engraved in stone are the words: “On tue le révolutionnaire mais on ne tue pas ses idées.” You can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill his ideas.  Why don’t most Australians and New Zealanders even know his name?

Decades after his death and 17,000 km away, the French are at it again. Their National Assembly has shattered the peace this month with a unilateral move to change voting rights to enfranchise tens of thousands of more recent French settlers and put an end to both consensus building and the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for self-determination and independence.

Thanks to French immigration policies, Kanaks now number about 40 percent of the registered voters. New Zealand and Australia look the other way — New Caledonia is France’s “zone of interest”.

But what’s not to like about extending voting rights?  Shouldn’t all people who live in the territory enjoy voting rights?

“They have voting rights,” says David Robie, now editor of Asia Pacific Report, “back in France.”  And France, not the Kanaks, control who can enter and stay in the territory.

Back in 1972, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer argued in a since-leaked memo that if France wanted to maintain control, flooding the territory with white settlers was the only long-term solution to the independence issue.

Robie says the French machinations in Paris — changing the boundaries of citizenship and voting rights – and the ensuing violent reaction, is effectively a return to the 1980s — or worse.

The violence of the 1980s, which included massacres, led to the Matignon Accords of 1988 and the Nouméa Accords of 1998 which restricted the voting to only those who had lived in Kanaky prior to 1998 and their descendents. Pro-independence supporters include many young whites who see their future in the Pacific, not as a white settler colonial outpost of France.

Most whites, however, fear and oppose independence and the loss of privileges it would bring.

After decades of calm and progress, albeit modest, things started to change from 2020 onwards. It was clear to Robie and others that French calculations now saw New Caledonia as too important to lose; it is a kind of giant aircraft carrier in the Pacific from which to project French power. It is also home to the world’s third-largest nickel reserves.

How have the Kanaks benefitted from being a French colony? Kanaks were given citizenship in their own country only after WWII, a century after Paris imposed French rule.   According to historian David Chappell:

“In practice, French colonisation was one of the most extreme cases of native denigration, incarceration and dispossession in Oceania. A frontier of cattle ranches, convict camps, mines and coffee farms moved across the main island of Grande Terre, conquering indigenous resisters and confining them to reserves that amounted to less than 10 percent of the land.”

It was a pattern of behaviour similar to France’s colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.  Little wonder the people of Niger have recently become the latest to expel them.

Deprived of education — the first Kanak to qualify for university entrance was in the 1960s — socially and economically marginalised, subjected to what historians describe as among the most brutal colonial overlordships in the Pacific, the Kanaks have fought to maintain their languages, their cultures and their identities whilst the whites enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world.

David Robie, author of Blood on Their Banner – Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, and a sequel, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, has been warning for years that France is pushing New Caledonia down a slippery slope that could see the country plunge back into chaos.

“There was no consultation — except with the anti-independence groups. Any new constitutional arrangement needs to be based around consensus.  France has now polarised the situation so much that it will be virtually impossible to get consensus.”

Macron also pushed ahead with a 2021 referendum on independence versus remaining a French territory. This was in the face of pleas from the Kanak community to hold off until the covid pandemic that had killed thousands of Kanaks had passed and the traditional mourning period was over.

Macron ignored the request; the Kanak population boycotted the referendum. Despite this, Macron crowed about the anti-independence vote that inevitably followed: “Tonight, France is more beautiful because New Caledonia has decided to stay part of it.”

Having created the problem with actions like the disputed referendum and the current law changes, Macron now condemns today’s violence in New Caledonia.  Éloi Machoro rebukes him from the grave: “Where is the violence, with us or with them?” he asked weeks before his killing. “The aim of the [law changes] is to destroy the Kanak people in their own country.”  That was 1985; as the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same thing.

By Peter Boyle in Gadigal Sydney

A new edition of the Okinawan Journal of Island Studies features social justice island activism, including a case study of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Pacific Media Centre, in what the editors say brings a sense of “urgency” in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion in scholarship.

In the editorial, the co-editors — Tiara R. Na’puti, Marina Karides, Ayano Ginoza, Evangelia Papoutsaki — describe this special issue of the journal as being guided by feminist methods of collaboration.

They say their call for research on social justice island activism has brought forth an issue that centres on the perspectives of Indigenous islanders and women.

• READ MORE: Other Okinawan Journal of Island Studies articles

“Our collection contains disciplinary and interdisciplinary research papers, a range of contributions in our forum section (essays, curated conversations, reflection pieces, and photo essays), and book reviews centred on island activist events and activities organised locally, nationally, or globally,” the editorial says.

“We are particularly pleased with our forum section; its development offers alternative forms of scholarship that combine elements of research, activism, and reflection.

“Our editorial objective has been to make visible diverse approaches for conceptualising island activisms as a category of analysis.

‘Complexity and nuance’
“The selections of writing here offer complexity and nuance as to how activism shapes and is shaped by island eco-cultures and islanders’ lives.”

The co-editors argue that “activisms encompass multiple ways that people engage in social change, including art, poetry, photographs, spoken word, language revitalisation, education, farming, building, cultural events, protests, and other activities locally and through larger networks or movements”.

Thus this edition of OJIS brings together island activisms that “inform, negotiate, and resist geopolitical designations” often applied to them.

Geographically, the islands featured in papers include Papua New Guinea, Prince Edward Island, and the island groups of Kanaky, Okinawa, and Fiji.

Among the articles, Meghan Forsyth’s ‘La langue vient de la musique’: Acadian song, language transmission, and cultural sustainability on Prince Edward Island engagingly examines the “sonic activism” of the Francophone community in Canada’s Prince Edward Island.

“Also focused on visibility and access, David Robie’s article ‘Voice of the Voiceless’: The Pacific Media Centre as a case study of academic and research advocacy and activism substantiates the need for bringing forward journalistic attention to the Pacific,” says the editorial.

Dr Robie emphasises the need for critical and social justice perspectives in addressing the socio-political struggles in Fiji and environmental justice in the Pacific broadly, say the co-editors.

In the article My words have power: The role of Yuri women in addressing sorcery violence in Simbu province of Papua New Guinea, Dick Witne Bomai shares the progress of the Yuri Alaiku Kuikane Association (YAKA) in advocacy and peacebuilding.

In ‘La Pause Décoloniale’: Women decolonising Kanaky one episode at a time, Anaïs Duong-Pedica, “provides a discussion of French settler colonialism and the challenges around formal decolonisation processes in Kanaky”.

Inclusive feminist thinking
The article engages with “women’s political activism and collaborative practice” of the podcast and radio show La Pause Décoloniale.

The co-editors say the edition’s forum section is a result of “inclusive feminist thinking to make space for a range of approaches combining scholarship and activism”.

They comment that the “abundance of submissions to this section demonstrates the desire for academic outlets that stray from traditional models of scholarship”.

“Feminist and Indigenous scholar-activists seem especially inclined towards alternative avenues for expressing and sharing their research,” the coeditors add.

Eight books are reviewed, including New Zealand’s Peace Action: Struggles for a Decolonised and Demilitarised Oceania and East Asia, edited by Valerie Morse.

• The full OJIS edition

If elected representatives have their work cut out for them to create the slightest social or political change through Parliament, spare a thought for activists.

For the committed activist, in it for the long term, their work brings them inevitably to engage with the parliament system.

Protesting at Parliament, demonstrating, submitting to select committees, sending in petitions, or just being there to watch, activists are an important, if sometimes misunderstood, part of the system.

And we’re not talking about the agitators who talk about “hanging MPs”.

The House offers a look at four activists who have long participated in the Parliament space — from single or multiple issue campaigners to the lifelong activist who became an MP and got out the other side alive:

Valerie Morse is a well established activist who has organised many campaigns in anti-war and climate justice spaces among others. Over the past 20 years, she’s been part of hundreds of protests to Parliament, and has made “dozens and dozens of submissions on everything from the environment to defence to the SIS to local body matters, everything under the sun”.

In order to get MPs to listen, Morse has sometimes used theatre in her activism. Some of the highlights include a naked protest on the forecourt in support of the genetic engineering moratorium, and entering a select committee hearing on  Security Intelligence Service legislation with a group who blew loud whistles to highlight the importance of whistle-blowing — to the dismay of the MPs.

There have been setbacks. In 2008, during an event to commemorate Vietnam War veterans, Morse attempted to enter Parliament with an A3-sized sign about then-prime minister Helen Clark and former foreign affairs minister Phil Goff’s anti-war activism during the Vietnam War being at odds with their subsequent support for the war in Afghanistan:

“Parliamentary security stopped me from coming to the grounds, and trespassed me from Parliament for two years,” Morse explained.

“Subsequently I challenged that by coming on to Parliament grounds at a protest around slashed funding for adult and community education in the John Key era. I came on to Parliament grounds with thousands of other people and was arrested by parliamentary security. I had to go all the way through the court system, and eventually, the speaker of the house at the time, Lockwood Smith, actually withdrew the trespass.”

There have been some wins too, such as when large protests against the Iraq war 20 years ago helped convince New Zealand’s government to not join it, as well as the work of Morse and others at the committee level to leverage some transparency from the intelligence services amidst heightened public interest in mass surveillance.

“Those processes are often very difficult to see very meaningful change in during the short term. Over the longer term, there’s been changes in the way those agencies operate, so there has been some greater openness.

“But particularly around submissions, unless you’re speaking to some very, very specific item that they (MPs) think is perhaps a mistake or a drafting error, they’re often hardened down party lines, so it can be really hard to make changes in that process.”

The Messenger

To convey a message of activism means to demonstrate it, according to Mike Smith, a leading figure in numerous environmental campaigns. Smith’s activism has encompassed “all manner of things” and he has proven effective at getting his message noticed. Almost three decades ago he took a chainsaw to the great pine on One Tree Hill, or Maungakiekie, to raise attention to Māori rights and shortcomings in the Treaty Settlement process.

In recent times, Smith (Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Kuri) has been absorbed in legal action against major fossil fuel users and suppliers over their polluting activities. But as we sat by the statue of Richard Seddon on Parliament’s forecourt, Smith took stock of his various forays to Parliament, from protests to petitions. He recalled the Foreshore and Seabed hikoi, mobilisations over asset sales as well as protests related to the Treaty — occasions on which he has delivered a message to Parliament.

“I think it was here that we presented the petition to stop deep sea oil drilling after a ten-year campaign. The prime minister came out and greeted us. We handed her a petition to halt deep sea oil drilling. She went back to her office, and within about two weeks the announcement came through that the government had indeed decided to put a moratorium on issuing new exploration permits,” he recalled.

“I think politics and indeed the law should reflect the morality or mood of the society at any particular time. However there will be powerful voices and vested interests that pull against popular opinion. It’s important that there are opportunities for the public to express themselves.

“The word ’demonstration’ sort of sums it up. We’ve got to demonstrate what that feeling is amongst the public.”

The activist from the far north said Parliament should be receptive to the expression of widespread public sentiment, and that it is up to the public to hold politicians’ feet to the fire if they are not responding constructively, or conversely if they are being accountable, to reward them at the polls.

“Anybody can arrange a meeting with ministers and they may or may not be listened to or heard, but there’s something far more powerful about an expression of a substantive section of society. I’ve been on marches where 50, 60,000 people have mobilised in Auckland or Wellington particularly on climate issues or (issues) about mining on conservation land. I know that the politicians, when they see that amount of people, they really do take notice of that.”

The Outsider Insider

Catherine Delahunty isn’t the only activist to have been a member of Parliament, but perhaps what marks her out is the seamlessness with which she has resumed her activism and maintained a critical voice to power forged during her three-term stint, which ended in 2017. If there was any motivation to enter Parliament, she said it was to advance various kaupapa of her many years of activism.

“There were some issues I’d been involved in over many years that I wanted to see if I could advance. For example, the sawmill workers who were poisoned in the Bay of Plenty to whom I’m still deeply connected to and (on their behalf) lobbying ACC for change. I thought well, if I can get into Parliament, maybe I can make some change. And I did actually manage to get the National government to set up a national register of toxic sites and things like that,” the former Green Party MP explained.

In a sense, Delahunty never ceased being an activist when she came to Parliament. She used her wide range of connections with interlocutors from grassroots communities to media to civil society and political leaders in order to advance causes such as sustainable forestry, opposition to mining on conservation land, highlighting human rights abuses and the West Papuan struggle for independence.

“I started by protest. Been on many, many protests here in my life. In fact when I was an MP I probably went to more protests, because you’d see them out the window so you’d just go out to join them,” she explained.

“What you find out of course when you get here is: yes, you can make a difference, and no, you can’t. So if there was any conclusion I came to as an activist after leaving Parliament it’s that we need constitutional transformation of this country based on Te Tiriti (o Waitangi) and He Whakaputanga. But having said that, I still engage with select committees and I still engage with the system to get small things done. But I’m not under any illusion that we’re changing the world.”

“I always felt the system was rotten, but actually when you’ve been inside it you do have more knowledge and more contact. So it’s easier for me to walk in the door here now and have a chat with somebody that I wouldn’t have known before. Whether I can have an impact is another matter, but the first thing is to get through the door.”

When asked about the difference between activists and lobbyists, Delahunty said “we don’t have a PR firm who work for us to massage our messages, we are activists who will take our truth to power. And I don’t think lobbying is necessarily about taking truth to power. It’s about vested interests that pay for their interests to be privileged inside the power system. That’s very different from activists challenging the power system to actually do something in the name of justice.”

The ‘Gallery Stalker’

Gary Chiles was only 13 years old when the Misuse of Drugs Act was passed in 1975, and it remains a bugbear for him that it’s still law 50 years later and that people are being criminalised for cannabis use or association with it. Drug law reform is Chile’s singular focus when it comes to his long running activism at Parliament.

Another regular protester outside Parliament during the Key years, Chiles decided to start going to the House to soak up the action inside the chamber. He made it his mission to attend each Question Time — around 90 days in a typical sitting year.

“It was all a bit of an eye opener. But I decided that I needed to know how things worked inside Parliament if I wanted to make change happen,” he explained.

“You’re not allowed to wave signs or wear sloganed t-shirts and things in parliament. But I found out the dress code allowed me to get in there if I have a suit on, so I bought a cannabis suit.”

Chiles stands out clearly in his dark suit emblazoned with bright green cannabis leaves, worn each time he attends Question Time. There he sits up in the public gallery, on one side or another, moving around to stay visible to MPs across the divide. A silent, persistent reminder of the need for drug reform.

“I think of myself as being the gallery stalker. They all know I’m there whether they’re engaging with me or not, and they all know what I’m about because of what I’m wearing. And it’s about reminding them (about the need for drug reform). What are you going to do about it? Do we have to wait another 50 years, what’s going on?”

Attending Parliament has given Chiles a greater appreciation for the work of the various parts of the system. He said that it has also humanised MPs for him, and that what goes on in parliament is often quite different to what is portrayed in the news media. Getting angry at the news isn’t political engagement, he pointed out, adding that the access the public has to this country’s Parliament is something unique and to be treasured.

“My whole attitude to Parliament changed the day that there was a person who set themselves on fire on the forecourt, and the first people on the scene to try and deal with that were Parliament security. That made me reappraise my attitude to them, because they walk the fine line every day between allowing public access and maintaining security, and I think they do a really good job of it.”

Short-term thinking
The four activists all point to short-term thinking — the focus on retaining power in a quick electoral cycle — as something holding Parliament back from enabling systemic change. On the other hand, their own work to transform these views and inject a public voice into the deliberations of the lawmakers is very much long-term.

RNZ’s The House — parliamentary legislation, issues and insights — is made with funding from Parliament. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Peacemonger is a collection of essays about the much travelled Aotearoa peace activist and researcher Owen Wilkes, who died in May 2005. Wilkes was an extraordinary peace campaigner who discovered a foreign spy base at Tangimoana and was once charged with espionage in Norway and again while on a cycling holiday in Sweden.

After he took up beekeeping near Karamea on the West Coast in 1983, it was discovered that Customs was helping the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service to read his mail, apparently worried about his legendary ability to snuffle out secret installations by foreign powers in countries from New Zealand to Norway.

They were right to note his impact – this book explains just how enormously influential Wilkes was.

• READ MORE: Other Owen Wilkes book reports

Many of these short essays are by big names in the Aotearoa peace firmament, such as Maire Leadbeater, Murray Horton, David Robie, Nicky Hager and Peter Wills. Each chapter contains gems; some hilarious, others sobering.

Wilkes was a rare beast, a man who could be, as Mark Derby writes, “unpretentious, fearless, indefatigable, at times insufferable”.

Hager, a phenomenal investigative journalist, has contributed the chapter “The Wilkes How-to Guide to Public Interest Researching’.

Coming from Hager, one of the greatest public interest researchers in the country, this should be catnip to a new generation of proto-Hagers, Thunbergs and Wilkeses.

The last chapter, “Memories of Owen”, was written by his partner, peace activist May Bass.

It is a heartfelt send-off to a human comet who lit up everything he touched, one who may never have realised in his arc across the sky what a void he left behind him, not just in the peace movement, but in the hearts of his friends and loved ones.

• Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby (NZ$35.00, Raekaihau Press and Steele Roberts Aotearoa). ISBN 9781991153869

Jenny Nicholls writes reviews for The Listener and this review has been republished from the Waiheke Weekender with permission. She is also a graphic designer: designandtype.org

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is pleased that a Sydney magistrate jailed protester Deanna “Violet” Coco on Friday. But he is out of step with international and Australian human rights and climate change groups and activists, who have quickly mobilised to show solidarity.

On Monday, protests were held in Sydney, Canberra and Perth calling for the release of Coco who blocked one lane of the Sydney Harbour Bridge for half an hour during a morning peak hour in April.

She climbed onto the roof of a truck holding a flare to draw attention to the global climate emergency and Australia’s lack of preparedness for bushfires. Three other members of the group Fireproof Australia, who have not been jailed, held a banner and glued themselves to the road.

• READ MORE: What Violet Coco’s jailing says about the Australian justice system – Crikey

Coco pleaded guilty to seven charges, including disrupting vehicles, possessing a flare distress signal in a public place and failing to comply with police direction.

Magistrate Allison Hawkins sentenced Coco to 15 months in prison, with a non-parole period of eight months and fined her $2500. Her lawyer Mark Davis has lodged an appeal which will be heard on March 2, 2023.

Unusually for a non-violent offender, Hawkins refused bail pending an appeal against the sentence. Davis, who will again apply for bail in the District Court next week, said refusal of bail pending appeal was “outrageous”.

Climate change protester sentenced to jail over Sydney Harbour Bridge protest. Video: News 24

‘People shouldn’t be jailed for peaceful protest’
In Sydney, about 100 protesters gathered outside NSW Parliament House and then marched to the Downing Centre. The crowd included members of climate action groups Extinction Rebellion, Knitting Nannas and Fireproof Australia but also others who, while they might not conduct a similar protest themselves, believe in the right of others to do so.

One of the protest organisers, Knitting Nanna Marie Flood, was unable to attend due to illness. Her message called for the release of Coco and an end to the criminalisation and intimidation of climate activists.

It was read by another Knitting Nanna, Eurydice Aroney:

“Nannas have been on Sydney streets protesting about gas and coal mines for about 8 years now. Over that time we’ve had lots of interactions with the Sydney Events police, and not a lot of trouble.

“You could say we are known to the police. We were amused and surprised at the recent climate emergency rally at town hall, when one of the police said to some Nannas that he thought we’d fallen in with the wrong crowd!

“Looks like we better clear some things up.”

“We ARE the crowd who knows that climate action is urgent and it starts with stopping new gas and coal. We know the importance of public protests to bringing about social and political change.

“We will stand up against any move to take away the democratic right to protest. What is happening to Violet Coco is a direct result of the actions of the NSW government with the support of the ALP opposition.”

The message ended with a call to all climate activists: “Now is the time to BE THE CROWD — we can’t afford to fall for attempts to divide the climate movement. We all want to save the climate, and to do that we need to protect democracy.”

The Knitting Nannas have launched a challenge to the validity of the protest laws through the Environmental Defenders’ Office.

Snap rally at NSW Parliament and a march to the courts at the Downing Centre where climate activist Violet Coco was sentenced to 15 months in prison last week.

We demand repeal of the draconian anti-protest laws, an end to new fossil fuel projects and serious climate action now! pic.twitter.com/F1Yxs8L0DG

— Padraic Gibson (@paddygibson) December 5, 2022

One of those attending the protest was Josh Pallas, president of NSW Council for Civil Liberties. Civil Liberties has been defending the right to protest in NSW for more than half a century.

In a media release, he said: “Peaceful protest should never result in jail time. It’s outrageous that the state wastes its resources seeking jail time and housing peaceful protesters in custody at the expense of taxpayers.

“Protesters from Fireproof Australia and other groups have engaged in peaceful protest in support of stronger action on climate change, a proposition that is widely supported by many Australians across the political divide and now finding themselves ending up in prison.

“Peaceful protest sometimes involves inconvenience to the public. But inconvenience is not a sufficient reason to prohibit it. It’s immoral and unjust.”

Deputy Lord Mayor and Greens Councillor Sylvie Ellsmore told the crowd that they had the support of the City of Sydney which recently passed a unanimous motion calling for the repeal of the NSW government’s draconian anti-protest laws.

“If you are a group of businesses in the City of Sydney and you want to close the street for a street party, this state government will give you $50,000. If you are a non-violent protester who cares about climate change and you are blocking one lane of traffic for 25 minutes, they will give you two years [in jail].

“We know these laws are designed to intimidate you… Thank you for being the front line in the fight. you are the ones to put your bodies on the line to protest about issues we all care about, ” she said.

Amnesty International support for democracy
Amnesty International spokesperson Veronica Koman emphasised how important it was to see the defence of democratic rights from a regional perspective. She said that Amnesty was concerned that severe repression of pro-independence activists in West Papua was spreading across to other parts of Indonesia.

She fears the same pattern of increasing repression taking hold in NSW.

Human Rights Watch researcher Sophie McNeil, who has won many awards for her journalism, was another person who was quick to respond.

“Outrageous. Climate activist who blocked traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge jailed for at least eight months” she tweeted on Friday.

Since then she has followed the issue closely, criticising the ABC for failing to quote a human rights source in its coverage of the court case and speaking at a protest in Perth on Monday.

Today she posted this tweet with a short campaigning #FreeVioletCoco video that has already attracted nearly 13,000 views:

Authorities in #Australia are disproportionately punishing climate activists in violation of their basic rights to peaceful protest

Violet Coco has been sentenced to 15 months in prison

Her crime? A peaceful protest that lasted 25 minutes#FreeVioletCoco @hrw pic.twitter.com/5qhyCWs2fk

— Sophie McNeill (@Sophiemcneill) December 5, 2022

‘If you’re reading this, you’ll know I am in prison’
In jailing Coco, Magistrate Hawkins went out of her way to diminish and delegitimise her protest. She described it as a “childish stunt’ that let an “entire city suffer” through her “selfish emotional action”.

Coco has been involved with climate change protests for more than four years and has been arrested in several other protests. On one occasion, she set light to an empty pram outside Parliament House.

Rather than fight on technicalities, she chosen to plead guilty, knowing that if the magistrate was hostile, she could be taken into custody at the end of Friday’s hearing.

Several steps ahead of her critics, she made a video and wrote a long piece to be published if she went to prison.

The piece begins: ”If you are reading this, then I have been sentenced to prison for peaceful environmental protest. I do not want to break the law. But when regular political procedure has proven incapable of enacting justice, it falls to ordinary people taking a stand to bring about change.”

She describes how her understanding of the facts of climate science and the inadequacy of the current response led her to decide to give up her studies and devote herself to actions that would draw attention to the climate emergency.

“Liberal political philosopher John Rawls asserted that a healthy democracy must have room for this kind of action. Especially in the face of such a threat as billions of lives lost and possibly the collapse of our liveable planet.

“But make no mistake — I do not want to be protesting. Protest work is not fun — it’s stressful, resource-intensive, scary and the police are violent. They refuse to feed me, refused to give me toilet paper and have threatened me with sexual violence.

“I spent three days in the remand centre, which is a disgusting place full of sad people. I do not enjoy breaking the law. I wish that there was another way to address this issue with the gravitas that it deserves.”

She describes how she has already been forced to comply with onerous bail conditions:

“I was under 24 hour curfew conditions for 20 days in a small apartment with no garden. After 20 days effectively under house arrest, my curfew hours changed — at first I could leave the house for only 5 hours a day for the following 58 days, then 6 hours a day under house arrest for the following 68 days.

“This totalled 2017 hours imprisoned in my home for non-violent political engagement in the prevention of many deaths. Cumulatively, that is 84 days or 12 weeks of my freedom.”

Premier Perrottet says he does not object to protest so long as it does not interfere with “our way of life”.

If it does, individuals should have the “book thrown at them.”

His “way of life” is one in which commuters are never held up in traffic by a protest while endlessly sitting in traffic because of governments’ poor transport planning.

A way of life in which it is fine for governments to take years to house people whose lives are destroyed by fires and floods induced by climate change, to allow people to risk death from heat because they cannot afford air conditioners, open more coal and gas operations that will increase carbon emissions and turn a blind eye to millions of climate refugees in the Asia Pacific region.

It involves only protesting when you have permission and in tightly policed zones where passers-by ignore you.

Labor still backs anti-protest laws
Leader of the Opposition Chris Minns also says he has no regrets for supporting the laws which he says were necessary to stop multiple protests.

But laws don’t target multiple actions, they target individuals. He has not raised his voice to condemn police harassment of individual activists even before they protest and bail conditions that breach democratic rights to freedom of assembly.

There was no visible Labor presence at Sydney’s rally.

Perrottet and Minns may be making right wing shock jocks happy but they are out of line with international principles of human rights.

They also fail to acknowledge that many of Australia’s most famous protest movements around land rights, apartheid, Green Bans, womens’ rights, prison reform and environment often involved actions that would have led to arrest under current anti-protest laws.

They display an ignorance of traditions of civil disobedience. As UNSW Professor Luke Macnamara told SBS News: “[V]isibility and disruption have long been the hallmarks of effective protest.”

He believes disruption and protest need to go hand in hand in order to result in tangible change.

“There’s an inherent contradiction in governments telling protesters what are acceptable, passive, non-disruptive means of engaging in protests, when the evidence may well be that those methods have been attempted and have proven to be ineffective,” he said.

“It’s not realistic on the one hand to support the so-called ‘right to protest’, and on the other hand, expect the protest has no disruptive effects. The two go together.”

Wendy Bacon was previously a professor of journalism at the University of Technology Sydney and is an editorial board member of Pacific Journalism Review. She joined the protest. This article was first published by City Hub and is republished with the author’s permission.

Community organisers representing multiple Aotearoa struggles gathered at the Ponsonby Community Centre in Tāmaki Makaurau last Sunday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Ponsonby People’s Union (1972-1979).

Organised by former PPU activists, representatives of many Aotearoa social justice movements and struggles from around the country came together to honour the PPU’s work.

The gathering was simultaneously a birthday celebration; a communal remembering of activist history, and a hui to launch the important PPU commemorative book project.

• READ MORE: Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand
• The Dawn Raids: causes, impacts and legacy
• 50 years of the Polynesian Panthers: ‘It was a time of revolution’
• Polynesian Panthers: Radical group celebrates 50 years of activism in Aotearoa
• The Polynesian Panthers Party
• Other PPU and Polynesian Panthers reports

Taura Eruera was a founding member of Nga Tamatoa and the PPU, doing important food co-op work for the union. He opened the hui with a mihi whakatau.

PPU activist Farrell Cleary chaired the meeting and provided excellent introductions for all speakers.

The speakers
Roger Fowler co-founded the PPU and coordinated the group between 1972-1979. He spoke of how the PPU emerged from the Aotearoa countercultural movement; growing public opposition to the Vietnam War; Progressive Youth Movement activism, and Resistance Bookshop labours in Auckland.

Fowler paid tribute to his friend and PPU co-founder Cliff Kelsell. He acknowledged the writings of the Black Panther Party as formative to thinking concerning community activism — in particular, the writings of Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and George Jackson.

Fowler explained why Huey P. Newton’s concept of “intercommunalism” was vital for developing the PPU’s community resilience and network building praxis in Ponsonby from 1972.

He said the issues the Ponsonby community confronted were:

• people needing food;
• people needing protection from police harassment and racism; and
• local tenants needing assistance against unjust treatment from property owners.

Fowler spoke about the PPU’s food co-op, prison visitors bus service, and free community newspaper and leaflet work. He said the PPU used the food co-op as an organising tool to mobilise people for multiple community interventions.

He expressed concern that knowledge of activism in the seventies may be disappearing — but he acknowledged Nick Bollinger’s recent history Jumping Sundays as an important addition to keeping public memory of activist history alive.

Fowler paid tribute to the Polynesian Panther Party (PPP) — the PPU’s sister organisation — and acknowledged the Polynesian Panther Party Legacy Trust’s (PPPLT) contemporary community organising in schools.

Pam Hughes was an activist in the PPU. She spoke about the impact of the anti-Vietnam War Movement and the writings of Karl Marx upon her early life. She said she felt she possessed theoretical but not practical knowledge of struggle until she moved to Auckland and joined the PPU in the middle 1970s.

She spoke about the lives of working-class women who lived in Grey Lynn, Herne Bay, and Ponsonby at the time.

Hughes spoke of the terrible hardship these women endured: these women had to make the weekly choice of either paying their rents or buying food for families — they did not have the money to do both.

She spoke of the impact of the 1973 oil crisis; the racism Māori and Pacific people faced during the period, and the emergence of the Dawn Raids strategy as an approach to Pacific “overstayers” initiated by Norm Kirk’s Labour government — before the strategy was intensified under Muldoon’s National government.

Hughes said the PPU had stood up for collective rights and improved living standards in inner city Auckland. She acknowledged the PPU as an early forerunner to contemporary community development programme initiatives in Aotearoa today.

Fuimaono Norman Tuiasau is chairperson of the PPPLT and a former PPP member. He worked closely with the PPU from the early 1970s.

Fuimaono said he felt honoured to attend the 50th celebration for the PPU. He acknowledged all the brothers and sisters from different movements in attendance.

Fuimaono talked about the long, 50-year struggle of the PPU (and others) to uphold the mana of the poor, homeless, and lost in inner city Auckland. He talked about his deep alofa and gratitude for the PPU.

He told rich stories about the work the PPP did in partnership with the PPU. He told the story of how the PPP and the PPU worked together concerning the PPP’s Dawn Raids activist campaign.

Fuimaono talked about how the PPU, and PPP worked together to organise the PIG Patrol to monitor team policing in Auckland. He also shared the narrative of how the PPP assisted the PPU concerning tenancy eviction direct action activism in Ponsonby.

He acknowledged the PPU and his great friends, Roger Fowler and Lyn Doherty. He thanked the PPU for supporting the PPP.

At the conclusion of Fuimaono’s talk, PPP and PPPLT members Melani Anae, Tigilau Ness, Alec Toleafoa, and Fuimaono Norman Tuiasau stood together and sang the beautiful Samoan song “Ua Fa’afetai” to thank members of the PPU for their long years of community service.

Tigilau Ness is a distinguished community activist, musician, PPPLT trustee, and former PPP member. He worked closely with the PPU from the early 1970s.

He offered warm salutations to the PPU at the 50th birthday celebration event. He spoke of how the loss of Panther sister Ama Rauhihi’s brother Peter in Vietnam galvanised the PPP’s anti-Vietnam War activism.

He articulated the bonds of fellowship between the PPP and the PPU via song. He performed songs such as “Teach Your Children”, and “American Pie” for the audience. These songs were sung by PPU and PPP members travelling on buses together to visit prisoners in Auckland.

Ness spoke about the importance of sharing histories of struggle with the youth of today. He spoke humbly about the community organising work the PPPLT do today speaking to youth in schools about PPP history. He warned that if activists did not tell their historical narratives, then outsiders might come and potentially misrepresent those stories.

Nick Bollinger is an eminent broadcaster and creative writer. He has written the important 2022 Aotearoa Counterculture Movement history Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Bollinger evoked the 1960s as a period where communes formed, music festivals abounded, and younger Kiwis challenged social norms from hairstyles and dress codes to social assumptions concerning racism and sexism.

He talked about his book’s title and where the term “Jumping Sundays” came from. He said he wanted to explore ideas important to this emerging counterculture in his book. He wanted to explore whether ideas from this historical conjuncture had survived, been diluted, or had been hijacked.

Bollinger said he felt PPU’s ideas of community service still existed today in the lives and service of former PPU members. He talked about writing about the PPU in his book. He said that if we do not tell these stories, the stories will not survive. He quoted lines from Bob Marley’s renowned community struggle anthem, “No Woman, No Cry” to emphasise his point: “In this great future, you can’t forget your past.”

Alec Hawke is a Ngati Whatua activist and kaumatua. He collaborated closely with Roger Fowler and PPU members at the Takaparawhau Occupation in Tāmaki Makaurau in 1977-1978.

He talked about his early engagement in the anti-Vietnam War Movement as a high school student at Selwyn College in Tāmaki, and his involvement in anti-Vietnam War protests alongside the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM). Hawke spoke about the Takaparawhau struggle and said that Roger Fowler had asked protestors to remain peaceful as police arrested them at the Point in 1978.

Hawke said that Roger had supported Ngati Whatua kuia and kaumatua’s request that arrested protesters remain non-violent. He said Roger Fowler was the last person arrested at Takaparawhau because he refused to move off the wharenui roof!

Hawke thanked the PPP for always helping Takaparawhau protesters when his people called for assistance. He spoke about the death of his daughter Joannie at Takaparawhau: and how Tigilau Ness had written a beautiful song in tribute of Joannie. Alec said that Tāmaki Makaurau would not be the same place but for the work of Roger Fowler and Lyn Doherty.

Musicians Sam Ford and Trudi Green performed for the PPU in the 1970s. They played several fine songs after Alec Hawke spoke. As Sam and Trudi performed their music, guests gathered to converse, share food, and mix and mingle.

Huey P. Newton once said, “I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.”

Alongside other organisations and movements, the PPU embodied this great alofa/aroha for others in their tireless community labours. Their work offers living inspiration for new generations today.

The author, Tony Fala, wishes to pay respects to the work of all former PPU members living and deceased. People can send photographs and stories by October 31, 2022, to Roger Fowler for the PPU book project at: roger.fowler@icloud.com People can learn more about the PPU by reading Roger Fowler’s contribution in the important PPP history edited by Melani Anae, Lautofa (TA) Iuli, and Leilani Tamu in 2015 titled, Polynesian Panthers: Pacific Protest and Affirmative Action in Aotearoa New Zealand 1971-1981. Nga mihi nui to Roger Fowler for providing insightful editing comments concerning this article.

A new Aotearoa New Zealand book focusing on activists and their causes against militarism and for social struggles and climate justice across the Asia-Pacific is being launched in Wellington today.

Peace Action: Struggles for a decolonised and demilitarised Oceania and East Asia, edited by Wellington-based activist Valerie Morse, is the first book published by Left of the Equator Press.

“This book highlights the role of militarism as an ongoing colonial force,” says Morse.

“It is a collection of stories about activists, their organising and their causes, and the interconnections between social struggles separated by the vast expanse of Te Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa.”

• READ MORE: Other reports on Pacific militarism

It includes chapters on the Doctrine of Discovery (Tina Ngata), on protecting Ihumātao (Pania Newton, Qiane Matata-Sipu mā), on anti-militarist organising in South Korea, on campaigning against US military training in Hawai’i and Japan, on French colonialism in Mā’ohi Nui and Kanaky, about Korean peace movements in Aotearoa and Australia, about Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, on feminist resistance to war in so-called Australia, on NZ’s history of Chinese-Māori solidarity, and on peace gardening at Parihaka.

“The increasing military build up across the Pacific has come into sharp focus this year,” said Morse.

“Having any influence over issues of war and international affairs can feel impossible, but grassroots movements for decolonisation and peace are the heart of countering this spiralling militarism and addressing the region’s most pressing issues, including climate justice.”

She says she was inspired to do the book from learning about the kinds of organising across the Pacific rim.

“I wanted to share that learning in order to inspire and inform others.”

The book launch was an “awesome way to celebrate solidarity and connection with each other” and to build a collective knowledge for change.

It is being hosted at Trades Hall on Vivian Street in Wellington at 5.30pm today.

Trade Unions based at the hall were deeply involved in the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement.

More information: leftequator@gmail.com

James “Jimmy” O’Dea (18 October 1935-27 November 2021) was a mighty activist, community organiser, family man, and working-class defender. He died in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland after a long, brave battle against prostate cancer. He was 86.

Friends, neighbours, and activists representing many historical struggles joined the O’Dea whanau at All Saints Chapel in Purewa Cemetery on December 4 for a celebration of Jimmy’s life.

Chapel orators narrated O’Dea’s life as a much-loved husband, father, grandfather, and uncle. Moreover, speakers gave rich, oral historical accounts of his service in the whakapapa of many struggles in Aotearoa and the world.

The speakers:
Kereama Pene:
Minister Kereama Pene of Ngati Whatua opened the service with a poignant reflection on O’Dea’s 62 years of service for Māori communities in Aotearoa. Pene spoke of Jimmy O’Dea’s close friendships with Whina Cooper and a generation of kuia and kaumatua who have all passed over. He said O’Dea attended many marae throughout the country over his long life.

Pat O’Dea:
His eldest son, Pat O’Dea, expanded upon Kereama Pene’s fine introductory comments. He spoke about his father arriving in Aotearoa in 1957. Patrick wove oral histories of his father’s long commitment to many struggles in Aotearoa.

Pat elaborated upon Jimmy O’Dea’s many years of work for Māori communities.

Pat O’Dea explained that his father first got involved in anti-racist activism for Māori in 1959 when Jimmy supported Dr Henry Bennett. This eminent doctor was refused a drink at the Papakura Hotel in South Auckland because he was Māori.

Pat O’Dea told stories concerning Jimmy O’Dea’s involvement in the Māori Land March of 1975.

The audience was told that Jimmy O’Dea drove the bus for the land march in 1975 — a bus Jimmy received from Ponsonby People’s Union leader Roger Fowler.

Pat O’Dea wove wonderful narratives concerning Jimmy’s role in the 1977 struggle at Takaparawhau (Bastion Point). He articulated rich oral histories regarding Jimmy’s close friendship with Takaparawhau leader Joe Hawke. Pat also spoke of the genesis of that struggle in his oration.

Pat O’Dea also spoke of his father’s long commitment to Moana (Pasifika) communities in Aotearoa. He told a wonderful story of how Jimmy O’Dea, and his Māori friend, Ann McDonald, both helped prevent a group of Tongan “overstayers” from being deported by NZ Police by boat during the Dawn Raids in the mid-1970s in Tāmaki Makaurau.

Narrating stories of his father’s long commitment to the CPNZ, the trade union movement, and the working class in Aotearoa, Pat O’Dea spoke of how Jimmy was hated by employers and union leaders alike because he always told the working-class people the truth!

Pat O’Dea narrated stories concerning Jimmy’s involvement in the anti-nuclear struggle in Aotearoa from 1962. Pat recounted the story of his father voyaging out into the ocean on a tin dinghy with outboard motor — protesting against the arrival of a US submarine making its way up Waitemata Harbour in 1979.

Pat also briefly addressed Jimmy’s long years of work with the Aotearoa front of the international struggle against Apartheid in South Africa.

Pat also highlighted Jimmy’s anti-racist labours as one landmark in his many contributions to activism.

Kevin O’Dea:
Jimmy’s son Kevin O’Dea joined the celebration by video link from Australia. He introduced the audience to his father as a wonderful family man who loved music and poetry. Kevin elaborated upon the aroha that conjoined Jimmy’s large, extended family. He read a poem for his father about the place of music in times of grief and healing.

Nanda Kumar:
Nanda Kumar spoke on behalf of Jimmy’s Indo-Fijian wife Sonya and the extended family. A niece of Sonya, Nanda talked of her Uncle Jimmy’s rich contributions to family life at Kupe Street in Takaparawhau.

Jimmy’s grandsons:
One of Pat O’Dea’s sons gave a profound mihi in te reo for his grandfather. He also read an Irish poem to honour Jimmy. This grandson said that the greatest lesson he learnt from his grandfather was that one should always defend those who cannot defend themselves.

Another of Jimmy’s grandsons gave a strong mihi. He told the story of travelling with his grandfather and learning how much Jimmy cared for people. This grandson performed a musical tribute for his grandfather on the flute.

Taiaha Hawke:
Taiaha Hawke of Ngati Whatua gave a noble oration concerning Takaparawhau. He informed guests of the close working relationship between his father Joe Hawke and Jimmy O’Dea as all three men fought for Takaparawhau in the middle 1970s. Taiaha told rich stories of the spirituality that underpinned that struggle — in words too precious to be recorded here. He affirmed his whanau’s commitment to working together with the O’Dea family on a project to honour Jimmy.

Alastair Crombie:
Alastair Crombie was Jimmy’s neighbour on Kupe Street, Takaparawhau, for 20 years. He told the audience of how he exchanged plates of food with the O’Dea’s — and how his empty plates were always returned heaped with wonderful Indian cooking from Sonya’s kitchen! Alistair shared stories of how his friendship with Jimmy transcended political differences.

Andy Gilhooly:
Jimmy’s friend Andy Gilhooly introduced the audience to James O’Dea’s early life in Ireland. He told the story of Jimmy’s early life of poverty as an orphan boy. Andy spoke of Jimmy’s natural brilliance in the Gaelic language at school: But Jimmy was unable to complete his schooling because of poverty. He talked of Jimmy’s love of the sea — and how O’Dea joined the Merchant Marine and sailed from Ireland to Australia and Aotearoa. Finally, Andy located Jimmy’s love for the oppressed in O’Dea’s Irish Catholic upbringing.

Stories about Jimmy after the funeral:
After the funeral, Roger Fowler told me that Jimmy was heavily involved in anti-Vietnam War activism in the 1960s and 1970s. He talked of Jimmy’s long years of work in the anti-apartheid struggle to free South Africa. Moreover, Roger spoke of Jimmy’s long commitment to the Palestinian cause. He also elaborated upon Jimmy’s dedication to his Irish homeland through work in support of the James Connolly Society.

Jimmy’s place in the whakapapa of struggles in Aotearoa:
I only knew Jimmy O’Dea as a friend and fellow activist (in SWO and beyond) for 26 years. The experts on Jimmy’s place in the wider whakapapa of struggles in Aotearoa between 1959-2021 are those who fought alongside him on many campaigns.

Representatives of the Te Tino Rangatiratanga and anti-apartheid struggles in Aotearoa have already paid tribute to Jimmy after he died. John Minto’s obituary for Jimmy is superlative.

The stories of Jimmy O’Dea in struggle in Aotearoa are borne living in the oral histories held by many good people — including Kevin O’Dea; Patrick O’Dea; the wider O’Dea whanau; Grant Brookes; Joe Carolan; Lynn Doherty & Roger Fowler; Roger Gummer; Hone Harawira; Joe Hawke; Taiaha Hawke; Bernie Hornfeck; Will ‘IIolahia; Barry & Anna Lee; John Minto; Tigilau Ness; Pania Newton; Len Parker; Kereama Pene; Delwyn Roberts; Oliver Sutherland; Annette Sykes; Alec Toleafoa; Joe Trinder, and many others.

Memories of Jimmy O’Dea are held in the hearts of many other ordinary folk — who, like Jimmy, and people mentioned above, helped build collective struggles and collective narratives of emancipation in Aotearoa and abroad.

Jimmy and Te Tiriti:
In conclusion, I feel Jimmy embodied the culture, history, language, and values of his Irish people. His life also pays testimony to the hope that Māori and Pakeha can come together as peoples under Te Tiriti.

Distinguished Ngati Kahu, Te Rarawa, and Ngati Whatua leader Margaret Mutu provides an insightful introduction to Māori understandings of Te Tiriti in her 2019 article, “‘To honour the treaty, we must first settle colonisation’ (Moana Jackson): the long road from colonial devastation to balance, peace and harmony”

I believe Jimmy upheld a vision of partnership outlined by Professor Mutu in the above article. As a Pakeha, Jimmy honoured his Māori Te Tiriti partner throughout his life in Aotearoa.

James “Jimmy” O’Dea upheld Māori Te Tino Rangatiratanga under Te Tiriti in his actions and words.

Perhaps Pakeha can find a model for partnership under Te Tiriti in Jimmy’s rich life — a model of partnership characterised by genuine power-sharing, mutual respect, and a commitment to working through legitimate differences with aroha and patience. When this occurs, there will be a place for Kiwis of all cultures in Aotearoa.

For me, Jimmy O’Dea’s lifelong contributions to a genuine, full partnership between Pakeha and Tangata Whenua under Te Tiriti constitute one of his greatest legacies for all living in Aotearoa.

The author, Tony Fala, thanks the O’Dea whanau for the warm invitation to attend Jimmy’s funeral. The author thanks Roger Fowler for his generous korero regarding Jimmy’s activism. This article only tells a small part of Jimmy’s story. Finally, Fala wishes to acknowledge the life and work of two of Jimmy O’Dea’s mighty comrades and contemporaries — Pakeha activists Len Parker and Bernie Hornfeck. Len served working-class, Māori, and Pacific communities for more than 60 years in Tamaki Makaurau. Bernie Hornfeck spent more than 60 years working as an activist, community organiser, and forestry worker.

PART 1: Divide and rule with Māori and Pacific communities

White Supremacy (WS) has proliferated during covid-19 lockdowns in Aotearoa from 17 August 2021. Supremacist activism, aspirations, attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, concepts, ideas, languages, media output, organising praxes, political slogans, political thought, and political party policies have all flourished as people protested against government covid restrictions and lockdowns.

In this writing, I distinguish between anti-vaccination and freedom protesters who are not advocating for WS and those who are part of anti-lockdown protests and anti-vaccination organising who do support white supremacy.

Similarly, the focus of this commentary is not to examine conspiracy theories. Moreover, I am not seeking to examine the work of Māori or Pacific people engaged in anti-vaccination and freedom from lockdown protests.

• READ MORE: Covid disinformation and extremism are on the rise in New Zealand. What are the risks of it turning violent?
• The protest that revealed a new, ugly, dangerous side to our country
• Ardern loses the gloss as New Zealanders protest about covid restrictions
• Other reports on covid disinformation

WS works best when it can divide and rule Māori and Pacific communities. My focus in this article is on Pakeha involvement in WS as it evolves in contemporary Aotearoa.

This article seeks to offer ways to understand the contemporary emergence of the supremacy phenomenon. This article will offer a thumbnail sketch outline of some of the features of supremacy in an Aotearoa context.

I assume colonial and historical forms of WS already existent in Aotearoa are coalescing and are being energised by contemporary, hybrid variations of supremacy emerging from the US, Europe, Australia, and other countries.

Supremacists in Aotearoa are clearly drawing upon WS activism, aesthetics, hostility, media output, messaging, modes of organising, and political thought from overseas.

White supremacy in Aotearoa
I attempt to group these variegated expressions of white supremacy in this article. I seek to outline this phenomenon as a composite of ideas, concepts, languages, beliefs, ideologies, attitudes, activisms, praxes, aspirations, narratives, and political positions — all situated in a time, space, and condition in Aotearoa.

I feel that WS must also be understood as embodying modes of being, living, and knowing operational in community, family, political, and social life. WS is occurring at multiple levels of our communities.

Further, I believe people must be able to analyse WS; group supremacist phenomena, and assess it vis-à-vis a framework such as a spectrum. Further, we must invite African, Asian, Māori, Pacific, and Pakeha communities to consider WS from within values specific to each cultural group.

Most importantly, we must invite community groups to question WS from their many different community standing places. I hope this modest work offers communities a framework for assessing WS from within their own flax roots community perspectives.

We need more work considering these issues from the perspectives of women, LGBTG, working class, and disabled sectors of the wider community also.

The online Merriam Webster Dictionary defines WS in two ways. Firstly, WS is defined at its most basic as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races”.

In this definition, WS is defined as a component of an attitudinal sphere.

Secondly, the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines WS as “the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races”.

Structural and societal level
This shifts discussion of WS from an individual attitudinal sphere to a structural and societal level. I deploy both these definitions of white supremacy in this article — and expand upon the definition in regards to specific concerns such as activism, language, and the media.

I argue white supremacy is one component of a wider colonial settler project in Aotearoa. Alicia Cox at Oxford Bibliographies defines Settler Colonialism as “an ongoing system of power that perpetuates genocide and repression of indigenous peoples… normalises continuous settler occupation… exploiting lands and resources to which indigenous people have genealogical relationships…includes interlocking forms of oppression such as racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism”.

In sum, I will argue that all forms of WS outlined in this article contribute to Settler Colonialism in Aotearoa.

I have examined commentary, comments, interviews, and video footage of well-known Pakeha WS activists and media pundits in Aotearoa. I have examined Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, and internet commentary from flax roots people. I considered fringe parliamentary political parties’ policies of those positioning themselves for entry into mainstream politics.

I viewed video footage of freedom and anti-vax protests around the country. I looked at internet sites of groups organising anti-lockdown protests around Aotearoa. I researched QAnon, the ALT-Right, and white supremacist organisations overseas. Similarly, I read work on concepts, language, and political thought that underpins some of these movements.

I see WS as a formation existing along a spectrum for the transformation of specific sectional interests; for those seeking to use direct action to challenge the government; for those seeking representation in Parliament, and finally for people seeking a potential white ethno-state.

We should be sensitive to the aspirations, attitudes, beliefs, concepts, ideas, use of language, and ideals concerning economic, social, and political thought underpinning WS in the list introduced below.

Expressions of WS
When examining sources I found expressions of WS regarding:

(1) contempt for Te Tiriti,
(2) rejection of power sharing between Pakeha and Māori as articulated in Te Tiriti,
(3) appropriation of He Whakaputanga alongside a rejection of Te Tiriti,
(4) antagonism towards the historical experience of Māori,
(5) privileging of a mythology of “peaceful” or “just” race relations in Aotearoa — thereby erasing histories of racism suffered by Africans, Asians, Māori, or Pacific communities in Aotearoa,
(6) political policies of different fringe parties antagonistic to “race”-based privileges for Māori in health, in law, or at the United Nations,
(7) vilification of the NZ Labour as “socialistic”,
(8) attacks on Māori activist, community, political, or scholarly leaders,
(9) assumptions WS is on same side as “ordinary” Māori, Pacific, Asian, African, or Pakeha communities,
(10) attacks on independent university based critical scholarship,
(11) abuse of Māori language users,
(12) championing of bellicose forms of Pentecostal Christianity as the only legitimate faith for Aotearoa,
(13) attacks on the United Nations and governments as cabals of evil,
(14) contempt for migrants rights,
(15) deployment of language hijacked from liberation struggles,
(16) deployment of narratives of WS,
(17) refusal to debate honestly,
(18) antagonism and personal attacks against those considered enemies of WS using different media,
(19) articulation of action programmes,
(20) modes of praxis,
(21) introduction of Alt Right and QAnon concepts, language use, and values, and
(22) lauding of former US President Donald Trump, Republicans, and Q.

I deploy one example of the techniques Pakeha WS proponents use to articulate their programme re language hijacked from liberation struggles. Pakeha WS adherents have sought to appropriate, disrupt, interrupt, colonise, and then occupy the languages of Māori and African-American liberation — and, implicitly, the epistemologies underpinning these languages.

For example, Pakeha WS figures have called acclaimed Māori community leader Hone Harawira a “sell out”, a “house negro”, and a “traitor” for his community work for Māori families during covid-19 lockdowns in Northland in 2021.

Here, WS folk have attempted to colonise the Black Liberation language of Malcolm X. This “house negro” language was deployed by Malcolm X in a specific time, place, and condition- as Manning Marable articulates in his controversial history, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Māori activists deployed this language in debates with their more conservative elders in years gone by.

But Pakeha WS advocates deploying this language are no friends of Malcolm or the Black Liberation struggle — these Pakeha are bitter opponents of the BLM movement. Similarly, these Pakeha are no friends of Māori liberation struggles such as the one at Ihumatao.

The whakapapa of struggle
WS adherents are trying to colonise, disrupt, and occupy this language so as to appropriate it to better undermine the links connecting Hone to his own people. But Hone is conjoined to his people by whakapapa and the whakapapa of struggle.

Moreover, who would Malcolm X stand with? WS representatives attacking indigenous people — or an indigenous Māori brother, like Hone Harawira?

I invite Asian, African, Māori, Pacific, and Pakeha communities standing in their own cultures, community values, experiences, and histories to consider these questions.

Does WS in its various forms as outlined in brief above:

(1) Resonate with your community values?
(2) Articulate your vision of the country?
(3) Uphold the mana of the diverse sections of each of your communities?
(4) Sympathise with your communal experiences or histories?
(5) Align with your notions of community service?
(6) Voice your community needs?
(7) Articulate your community aspirations for your young people, women, or your elders?
(8) Support your concerns in the parliamentary party sphere?
(9) Offer a valid means to find a way out of covid-19 in a time of great uncertainty?
(10) Make Aotearoa/New Zealand a safer place for your community?
(11) Make Aotearoa/New Zealand a more tolerant society?
(12) Uphold the mana of the first people of this land, the Māori people?
(13) Offer a means to advance the concerns of all communities in Aotearoa?
(14) Does settler colonialism offer a positive vision for a united and prosperous Aotearoa/ New Zealand in the future?

Only communities in Aotearoa have the answers to these questions. I hope the definitions, analysis, articulation of a spectrum, and the final questions provide an accessible and safe framework for communities to assess, critically engage, and strategise concerning this contemporary phenomena known as WS.

Tony Fala is an activist, researcher, and volunteer for a small charitable trust engaged in food rescue and distribution to communities in South Auckland. He acknowledges his own racism in years gone by — something he had to overcome. Fala wishes to acknowledge the anti-racist contributions of Joe Carolan, Tina Ngata, Rawiri Taonui, and Joe Trinder — and all other activists, journalists, and scholars engaged in responding to WS. He also wishes to acknowledge the important work of The Disinformation Project in Aotearoa.

• Tomorrow: Part 2: WS storytelling in more detail

Yesterday I worked a 13-hour day unpaid. It’s pretty common in my world. It’s pretty common in the worlds of Indigenous women.

Kaupapa always come first.

Why? Because we are the drivers of change, and positive social and environmental change comes at a cost to someone – and it’s never the rich white man.

• READ MORE: Kennedy Point protectors say occupation is only option to stop Waiheke marina

The most marginalised have dreams to see a different future for the 7 generations in front of them, so they give up their today for the tomorrow of their mokopuna.

The more Indigenous women I sit down with, the more it becomes cemented in my mind that it is Indigenous women that keep us alive as a planet. They are the matauranga holders, the frontliners, the carers, the whale whisperers, the teachers, the ahi kaa, the boundary pushers, the leaders, the workers, the innovators, the motivators, they are empowering across generations by being unapologetically themselves.

I ended my day yesterday at Putiki Bay (Kennedy Point) where mana whenua and the community of Waiheke are fighting against the destruction of yet another of our taonga species, our natural resources, and our life giving taiao.

I shared in talanoa with two indigenous wāhine and heard a number of solutions that are ignored by governments, scientists and corporations because they come from the mouths of brown women.

We could roll our eyes and accept the dismissal, or we could gather, grow, strengthen, learn, observe, stand up, open our mouths and kick down the doors with our steel capped boots.

What are you going to do this Tuesday morning?

Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Wai-o-hua, Waikato-Tainui) is a journalist, photographer and social activist based in South Auckland’s Ihumātao. She is an indigenous storyteller celebrating wahine toa. She is the founder of the Nuku wahine project and is giving a public kōrero at Western Springs Garden Community Hall, Auckland, tomorrow night at 7pm.

The Governor-General, Dame Patsy Reddy, this week invested social justice advocate and former Green Party MP Keith Locke as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit “for services to human rights advocacy”.

Locke described the the award in the New Year Honours list as recognition of the great work of human rights advocates in the many organisations he had worked in, such as those mentioned in the tribute read out at the ceremony.

“Mr Keith Locke has been a long-term human rights activist at both national and international levels,” said the citation.

• READ MORE: 2021 New Year Honours List

“Mr Locke became the National Co-ordinator of the Philippines Solidarity Network from 1986 to 1991 and created exchange programmes between social justice groups in New Zealand and their counterparts in the Philippines.

“Around this time he opened the progressive One World Books store, which provided a hub for activists in Auckland.

“He was Secretary of the Wellington Latin America Committee from 1980 to 1985.

In the 1990s he was a Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the NewLabour, Alliance and Green parties and was a Green Member of Parliament between 1999 and 2011.

“During this time, he advocated on politically unpopular international human rights issues and drew attention to human rights abuses in Tibet, China, East Timor, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East.

“He was recognised by Amnesty International with the Human Rights Defender Award in 2012 and the Harmony Award from the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand in 2013.

“Since retiring from Parliament, Mr Locke has served on the Boards of the Auckland Refugee Council from 2012 to 2017 and the New Zealand Peace and Conflict Studies Centre Trust until 2019.”

The arrest, detention, and deportation of University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor Pal Ahluwalia and his wife are significant issues for Fiji and the “Sea of Islands”.

As a son of the Pacific committed to Oceania, I am dismayed by recent events at USP. I write in support of all the peoples of Fiji. Moreover, I uphold the mana of the many artistic and intellectual ancestors USP has provided for the education of younger generations of Pacific people across Oceania.

I acknowledge USP’s educational leadership for all peoples in Oceania with humility and respect. I extend solidarity to all USP staff and students from Fiji and around the Moana.

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• Other reports on the USP saga

I do not have the right to tell USP staff or students how they might resolve their issues. We Pasifika in Aotearoa are not qualified to lecture our brothers and sisters at USP about conflict resolution. USP has the collective culture, history, people, and protocols to resolve some of the issues about the expulsion of their vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia.

But I wish to provide some humble suggestions to empower those seeking to resolve the issues that USP in Fiji confronts today.

Speaking as a Pasifika activist, I acknowledge that the only resolutions will be holistic ones involving all parties. But I think the Fiji government can perform an important role in resolving all issues. In broader terms, I feel the Fiji government could perform an important leadership role in allowing USP to heal and move forward in a spirit of Moana unity.

Ramifications for Fiji, region
The Fiji government’s expulsion of Professor Pal Ahluwalia and his wife from Fiji has had tremendous ramifications for Fiji and the region.

Academic organisations, activists, legal organisations, NGOs, journalists, Fiji members of Parliament, regional politicians, and USP alumni, staff, and students have all clarified relevant issues about the Fiji government’s unilateral decision to expel Ahluwalia and his wife.

In summary, some of these issues are:

1. The rule of law and the right of due process;
2. Protection of human rights;
3. The protection of the right to dissent;
4. Academic freedom;
5. Unilateral government intervention into the affairs of USP;
6. Protection of USP staff from unfair dismissal,
7. Safety and the wellbeing of USP staff, students at USP in Fiji, including safe from arrest or detention;
8. Claims of corruption at USP;
9. Allegations against Pal Ahluwalia;
10. Claims of punitive action against Ahluwalia by the Fiji government and Fiji members of the USP Council;
11. Issues of staff remuneration;
12. The health of relationships between Fiji and other member states who co-own USP;
13. Distinctions between state and civil society, i.e. the distinctions between the Fiji government and the regional university campus in Fiji; and
14. Calls for a relocation of the office of USP’s vice-chancellor from Fiji to other member nations, such as Samoa or Vanuatu.

Helpful resolutions
The Fiji government could help resolve these matters by engaging in a number of actions, discussions and processes. It could:

• Invite Professor Pal Ahluwalia and his wife back into the country so the issues could be resolved in Fiji.
• Clarify precisely what part of the law Ahluwalia his wife are alleged to have breached.
• Recommit to protecting the human rights of all in Fiji. More specifically, the government could ensure that all USP employees’ human rights are guaranteed so academic freedom can be exercised responsibly.
• Acknowledge that Pal Ahluwalia and his wife’s human rights have been breached. Moreover, the government could act to ensure this does not happen again to any other USP employee.
• Take precautions not to directly intervene in the affairs of USP again by expelling employees of the university. Moreover, Fiji government representatives on the USP Council could work to ensure this is never carried out again at the university.
• Release the funding the Fiji government owes USP without strings attached.
• Work closely with USP’s member nations to work out collective resolutions to enhancing the regional nature and character of the institution. This could be achieved through the creation of innovative policies that ease current immigration restrictions on the recruitment and retention of staff particularly from the region, and, further, by helping to facilitate an easing of inter-country movement of USP staff and students among member countries.
• Uphold the sanctity of USP as a learning space and strongly discourage police and military units from entering any USP grounds in Fiji and elsewhere.
• Respect the autonomy of USP’s staff and student organisations.
• Ensure the University Council-commissioned 2019 BDO Report, which independently investigated all allegations of corruption, is officially released to all stakeholders including staff and students. The only way to investigate criticisms of Ahluwalia is for independent people to assess the truth of these allegations. Similarly, only independent voices can consider the truth of claims made on Ahluwalia’s behalf. The government agrees to accept the outcomes of such investigations. The search for truth and fact are being politicised because of the Fiji government’s interference in university matters. Truth can only prevail if it is not weaponised for political purposes.
• Ensure all concerns regarding staff remuneration are scrutinised fully and fairly by investigators acting independently of both the Fiji government and USP. The government could respect the independence of investigator’s findings. Moreover, the issue of remuneration for those staff who have served the region selflessly over long years could be examined with sensitivity and respect by investigators.
• Allow USP staff and students privacy to work through issues raised by Professor Ahluwalia’s deportation. The government could step back and encourage USP’s people on all sides of this issue to engage in toktok or talanoa in order to heal and move forward in unity. This might encourage people not to settle scores with one another via government and/or university politics.
• Articulate and clarify the lines of autonomy existing between the spheres of the Fijian state – and USP as part of Moana civil society. Then healthy lines of intersection between state and civil society might be established. If such lines are not clearly established, the Fiji government could be accused of trying to absorb USP in Fiji into an apparatus of the state.
• Seek assistance from Pacific neighbours to help sort out issues. Pacific unity is perhaps best demonstrated when we support one another. Working with Pacific Island friends ensures USP’s vision of re-shaping the future in Oceania continues. Moreover, working in partnership with other Pacific Island peoples ensures USP’s mission of empowering Moana peoples in the region continues for the foreseeable future.

Tony Fala is an activist, volunteer community worker and researcher living in Auckland, Aotearoa. He has Tokelau ancestry. According to genealogies held by family elders, Fala also has ancestors from Aotearoa, Samoa, Tonga, and other island groups in Oceania. He works as a volunteer for the Community Services Connect Trust rescuing food and distributing this to families in need. Fala is currently producing a small Pan-Pacific research project, and is also helping organise an Auckland anti-racist conference.

When the US formally left the Paris climate agreement, Joe Biden tweeted that “in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it”.

The US announced its intention to withdraw from the agreement back in 2017. But the agreement’s complex rules meant formal notification could only be sent to the United Nations last year, followed by a 12-month notice period — hence the long wait.

While diplomacy via Twitter looks here to stay, global climate politics is about to be upended — and the impacts will be felt in Australia if President-elect Biden delivers on his plans.

• READ MORE: New polling shows 79% of Aussies care about climate change. So why doesn’t the government listen?
  

Under the Biden administration, the US will have the most progressive position on climate change in the nation’s history. Biden has already laid out a US$2 trillion clean energy and infrastructure plan, a commitment to rejoin the Paris agreement and a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

As Biden said back in July when he announced the plan:

If I have the honour of being elected president, we’re not just going to tinker around the edges. We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity, meet this moment in history.

And his plan is historic. It aims to achieve a power sector that’s free from carbon pollution by 2035 — in a country with the largest reserves of coal on the planet.

Biden also aims to revitalise the US auto industry and become a leader in electric vehicles, and to upgrade four million buildings and two million homes over four years to meet new energy efficiency standards.

Can he do it under a a divided Congress?
With the US elections outcome, Democrats control the presidency and the House, but not the Senate.

This means President-elect Biden will be able to rejoin the Paris agreement, which does not require Senate ratification. But any attempt to legislate a carbon price will be blocked in the Senate, as it was when then-President Barack Obama introduced the Waxman-Markey bill in 2010.

In any case, there’s no reason to think a carbon price is a silver bullet, given the window to act on climate change is closing fast.

What’s needed are ambitious targets and mandates for the power sector, transport sector and manufacturing sector, backed up with billions in government investment.

Fortunately, this is precisely what Biden is promising to do. And he can do it without the Senate by using the executive powers of the US government to implement a raft of new regulatory measures.

Take the transport sector as an example. His plan aims to set “ambitious fuel economy standards” for cars, set a goal that all American-built buses be zero emissions by 2030, and use public money to build half a million electric vehicle charging stations. Most of these actions can be put in place through regulations that don’t require congressional approval.

And with Trump out of the White House, California will be free to achieve its target that all new cars be zero emissions by 2035, which the Trump administration had impeded.

If that sounds far-fetched, given Australia is the only OECD country that still doesn’t have fuel efficiency standards for cars, keep in mind China promised to do the same thing as California last week.

What does this mean for Australia?
For the last four years, the Trump administration has been a boon for successive Australian governments as they have torn up climate policies and failed to implement new ones.

Rather than witnessing our principal ally rebuke us on home soil, as Obama did at the University of Queensland in 2014, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has instead benefited from a cosy relationship with a US president who regularly dismisses decades of climate science, as he does medical science. And people are dying as a result.

Obama on climate change at the University of Queensland.

For Australia, the ambitious climate policies of a Biden administration means in every international negotiation our diplomats turn up to, climate change will not only be top of the agenda, but we will likely face constant criticism.

Indeed, fireside chats in the White House will come with new expectations that Australia significantly increases its ambitions under the Paris agreement. Committing to a net zero emissions target will be just the first.

The real kicker, however, will be Biden’s trade agenda, which supports carbon tariffs on imports that produce considerable carbon pollution. The US is still Australia’s third-largest trading partner after China and Japan — who, by the way, have just announced net zero emissions targets themselves.

Should the US start hitting Australian goods with a carbon fee at the border, you can bet Australian business won’t be happy, and Morrison may begin to re-think his domestic climate calculus.

And what political science tells us is if international pressure doesn’t shift a country’s position on climate change, domestic pressure certainly will.

With Biden now in the White House, it’s not just global climate politics that will be turned on its head. Australia’s failure to implement a serious domestic climate and energy policy could have profound costs.

Costs, mind you, that are easily avoidable if Australia acts on climate change, and does so now.

Dr Christian Downie is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

On June 2, the Jayapura District Prosecutor’s Office issued 33 pages containing charges against the defendant Irwanus Uropmabin.

In the document, the Public Prosecutor concluded that Irwanus Uropmabin was proven to have violated Article 106 in conjunction with Article 55 paragraph (1) of the Criminal Code, and stipulated a five-year prison sentence for the defendant.

READ MORE: Seven more people in Indonesia detained for ‘treason’

Irwanus is a student activist who was arrested on August 29, 2019, for participating in an anti-racism protest in West Papua in September last year.

In the demonstration, he was appointed as the security coordinator.

Papuans Behind Bars reported that Irwanus, along with six other political prisoners, were moved from Mako Brimob Jayapura to BalikPapan Class IIB East Kalimantan prison on October 4, 2019.

The transfer violated the Criminal Procedure Code.

Accused of ‘being the brains’
On the same day, the Public Prosecutor also read out charges against Buchtar Tabuni, a leader of “National Parliament of West Papua” accused of being the brains behind the Papua Uprising of 2019.

Despite maintaining his innocence of involvement in organising the Uprising, Tabuni has been charged with Articles 106, 110, and 160 of the Criminal Code, including treason charges.

The District Prosecutor’s office has demanded 17 years imprisonment for Buchtar Tabuni.

Tabuni is a prominent leader who has been repeatedly imprisoned for peaceful protests demanding independence for West Papua.

He has been repeatedly tortured by the Indonesian authorities during these imprisonments. This latest detention is his third.

“These sentences are excessive and at best an attempt to make examples out of West Papuan political activists who are simply trying to exercise their civil and political rights,” said TAPOL in a statement.

“These rights are protected by international principles as well as Indonesia’s national Constitution.

“West Papuans have been denouncing the injustice of these heavy sentences, as the racist perpetrators in Java who triggered the mass protests were either freed or only sentenced to 5, 7, and 10 months imprisonment.”

Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s threat to pursue anyone who impedes investment has worried environmental activists who said that such actions could criminalise those fighting for the environment, reports CNN Indonesia.

Jokowi made the threat during his July 14 “Vision Indonesia” speech, in which he said he would chase and “soundly thrash” those who obstruct Indonesian investment.

“Slow or complicated permit processes, especially illegal levies. Be careful, going forward I guarantee that I will chase, I will control, I will check and I will soundly thrash [them] if necessary! There should no longer be any obstructions to investment because this is the key to creating more jobs,” said Widodo in the speech.

READ MORE: Indonesian schoolgirls tell Trump ‘take back your toxic rubbish’

The head of The Indonesian Forum for the Environment, Khalisa Khalid, said such language could implicate anyone defending their livelihoods.

“When Jokowi uses threatening diction like that, then the apparatus underneath him will pursue it, so we are worried that it will increase the violence and criminalisation of people who are fighting for their livelihoods and the environment.”

She said that this narrative was worrying because ever since the New Order regime of former president Suharto people who have defended their sources of livelihood and the environment have been accused of obstructing investment.

“On the other hand investment permits which have been issued recklessly since the New Order regime have resulted in hundreds of thousands even millions of people losing their sources of livelihood.”

She said this kind of investment has forced farming communities to become factory workers or plantation labourers. Land evictions have also resulted in traditional communities losing their local identity.

“The culture of saving and holding the environment sacred is being sacrificed for the sake of pursuing macro-economic growth,” she said.

Khalid called on president elect Widodo and his new vice president Ma’ruf Amin not to play around with environmental issues and to start implementing the political pledges made in Nawa Cita (Widodo’s nine point priority program).

“This is not about me or you, it’s also not about us or them. But this is about the fate of the environment and the future of the nation’s next generation,” she said.

• Translated by James Balowski of the Indoleft News service. The original title of the article was Walhi Risau Diksi Jokowi Kriminalisasi Pejuang Lingkungan

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior 3 was welcomed in Matauri Bay at the start of a month-long tour of New Zealand yesterday to celebrate a victory in the fight against fossil fuels and to launch filming on a documentary drawing on the links between the nuclear-free and climate change struggles.

The tour began following the laying of a wreath at sea to honour the memory of Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira who was killed by French secret service saboteurs who bombed the original Rainbow Warrior in Auckland on 10 July 1985.

Greenpeace New Zealand executive director Russel Norman gave an emotive speech about Pereira’s legacy being the ultimate success of the antinuclear struggle with the end of French nuclear testing in the Pacific in 1996 and the ongoing climate change campaign.

READ MORE: Rainbow Warrior tour begins tour at site of bombed predecessor

Rainbow Warrior crew, Greenpeace stalwarts and local hapu members were treated to  seafood kai at Matauri marae.

Also launched yesterday was a new interactive documentary, Nuclear Dissent, a cautionary tale about haunting nuclear destruction, told through the lens of some of the world’s bravest activists and experts – the successful leaders of disarmament efforts from French Polynesia and New Zealand to Canada, the United States, and Greenpeace, who influenced outcomes and fought for change.

In five short video chapters available on desktop, mobile and webVR, the true story of the battle to end French nuclear weapons testing between 1966 and 1996 is told through dynamic 360º panoramas on land, afloat in the fallout zone, amid riots, and underwater, Greenpeace says in a statement.

The story is capped off with a raw assessment of where the world is today – the greatest global nuclear threats, risks and effects unpacked.

Extreme health and environmental damage to French Polynesia was caused by test nuclear explosions in the South Pacific, spreading cancerous plutonium across continents and into the food chain.

Activist persistence
Due to the persistence of activists braving the fallout zone and widespread protests and a growing nuclear free movement, the French government eventually shut down its testing programme.

More than a decade later, those affected have yet to receive justice for the intergenerational trauma inflicted on their land, their health and their resources by the French government, the Greenpeace statement said.

With historical accounts from protesters Anna Horne and Greenpeace’s David McTaggart who sailed into the test zone, expert opinions from nuclear policy analyst and Harvard professor Matthew Bunn, Dr Ira Hefland and climatologist Alan Robcock, viewers are guided through an eye-opening journey.

Alongside each chapter’s video content, 360 x-ray environments and journals filled with evidence and artifacts bring otherwise invisible details and deadly damages to light.

An interactive fallout map enabled with address entry visualises what the scope of destruction, death and injury would look like in any city, from a selection of current nuclear weapons that exist in the arsenals of the world’s most dangerous superpowers.

‘Making oil history’
Anna Horne joined Rainbow Warrior 3 yesterday as the ship prepared to sail from Matauri Bay to Auckland where Greenpeace will launch its “Making Oil History” tour of New Zealand”.

Earlier, the Rainbow Warrior had been joined by David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire about the Rongelap voyage and the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior, and currently director of the Pacific Media Centre.

In 2015, Professor Robie and a group of student journalists combined with Little Island Press and Greenpeace to create a microsite dedicated to Rainbow Warrior and environmental activist stories and videos, Eyes of Fire: 30 Years On, as a public good resource.

Both Horne and Dr Robie are among at least 10 activists, writers and changemakers being interviewed for the new Greenpeace documentary being directed by journalist Phil Vine.

• Eyes of Fire: 30 Years On
• Gallery: From fighting nukes to stopping oil – Rainbow Warrior

The wreath laying ceremony in memory of Fernando Pereira on board the Rainbow Warrior yesterday. Image: David Robie/PMC

The Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior 3, will arrive in Auckland tomorrow on the next stage of her “Making Oil History” tour of New Zealand.

The ship is a custom designed eco-campaign vessel designed to replace the original Rainbow Warrior bombed by French secret agents trying to stop her antinuclear voyage to Moruroa – this is now a living reef under water in Matauri Bay.

Tour programme | Video

The Rainbow Warrior is now “part of our national identity, as a symbol of New Zealand’s successful nuclear free movement”, says Greenpeace New Zealand executive director Russel Norman.

He says New Zealand must rediscover bold action now for the struggle against oil and catastrophic climate change.

The Pacific Media Centre was on hand for the Rainbow Warrior welcome in Matauri Bay, Northland, yesterday.

Photographs: David Robie

• Rainbow Warrior returns to NZ for ‘oil free’ future and activist doco

Rainbow Warrior at Matauri Bay

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Detained Australian missionary Sister Patricia “Pat” Fox’s “release” by the Philippines Bureau of Immigration has been greeted with relief by human rights advocates

Peter Murphy, chair of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP), told Pacific Media Watch today it was a “great relief” that Sister Pat had been released by the Philippines Bureau of Immigration on Tuesday.

According to a media release by ICHRP, 71-year-old Fox is a member of the Catholic congregation Sisters of Our lady of Sion, an Australian citizen who holds a missionary visa to work in the Philippines, where she has worked since 1991.

She now works with the Union of Agricultural Workers (UMA) and Alliance for Genuine Agrarian Reform (PATRIA), and is a past national coordinator of Rural Missionaries of the Philippines.

Murphy said he read in Philippines news media that Sister Fox had been due to be imprisoned in Taguig in the city of Manila but authorities thought it would be too harsh for her.

“So they let her sleep on an office bench in the Bureau of Immigration and she had some company,” said Murphy.

Murphy said while the Bureau of Immigration had released Fox, it was holding her passport while continuing to investigate her.

“They say the reason for releasing her is that when the Bureau of Immigration officers met her, she wasn’t breaking any laws.”

‘Megalomaniac statement’
“They met her in her house so it was a sort of face saving statement.”

“They aren’t going to proceed with the political charges they started with I think because there was such a big outcry from Australia, church and human rights groups in the Philippines.”

“Yesterday evening [President Rodrigo] Duterte said it was he who [had] personally ordered her detention. He said he had the power to do this and decide who was a suitable foreigner to be in the country and who wasn’t, which is sort of a megalomaniac statement.”

Murphy said he believed the president did not have this power but “it shows the attitude and how vindictive he can be when he is as arrogant and authoritarian as he is”.

“After Sister Fox was arrested, Duterte announced that if the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court came to investigate him, they would also be deported.”

The week before, Murphy said another priest tried to enter on a similar mission to Fox and he was deported.

“It’s part of a significant escalation of attempts to shut down outsiders making comments.”

Duterte’s ‘terrorist list’
Murphy said that Duterte had an increasing number on his list of alleged terrorists, including the expert at the UN for indigenous peoples’ rights.

Filipino Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, visited Australia recently and made some damning statements about the treatment of indigenous peoples under Dutuerte, said Murphy.

“Duterte has put her name under the list of about 400 people who he is alleging are terrorists and should be arrested

“It’s another case of him trying to shut up an international voice that’s critical of him.”

Murphy believes Duterte’s actions are part of a plan to seize greater control over the Philippines.

“I think what’s going on behind that as a strategy is to separate out the international networks that are supportive of trade unions, farmers organisations women’s groups, fisher folk…all of these people’s organisations in the Philippines have their international connections so he’s trying to put a barrier between the two and so have a freer hand to engage in more repression,” said Murphy.

‘No national boundaries’
In response to Durterte’s comments that Fox should criticise her own government instead of the Philippines, Murphy doesn’t think Fox has held back from condemning the Australian government.

“I don’t think Fox has had any inhibitions about criticising the Australian government either.

“For Fox, I don’t think there’s any national boundaries to divide up whose rights you should defend and whose rights you shouldn’t,” said Murphy.

“Human rights are codified to some extent in the International Declaration of Human Rights in which the Philippines is a signatory

“President Duterte can’t say anyone else in the world outside of his borders is not entitled to comment on what’s happening to Human Rights in the Philippines.”

Rappler reports the Bureau of Immigration released Fox on Tuesday after keeping her in detention for almost a day. She was released because the bureau found she had a valid missionary visa and because she was not violating immigration laws.

Duterte personally responsible
President Rodrigo Duterte took “full responsibility” for the temporary detention of Australian missionary nun Sister Patricia Fox, admitting he had ordered the bureau to investigate her.

Duterte said he ordered only an investigation into Fox’s “disorderly conduct,” not her detention.

Fox is expected to undergo preliminary investigation to determine if she is to be deported.

According to Rappler, the bureau had said that Fox was accused of “engaging in political activities and anti-government demonstrations”.

Fox said she had been active in standing up for human rights issues because of her religious beliefs, not because of any political leanings.

“I haven’t joined political rallies in terms of party politics, but I have been active in human rights issues,” the nun said.

• More Philippine stories

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights plans to send a mission to Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua following reports of abuses against its indigenous population.

“I am also concerned about reports of excessive use of force by security forces, harassment, arbitrary arrests and detentions in Papua,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told reporters during his three-day visit to Indonesia.

He added that the Indonesian government had extended an invitation to the UN to visit Papua — the country’s poorest region.

READ MORE: UN rights chief warns ‘intolerance’ and political extremism making inroads in Indonesia

“I think it’s important for us to go and see ourselves what is happening there … and I hope we can do this as soon as possible,” Al-Hussein said.

Accounts of rights violations in Papua have prompted concerns from activists and the larger international community.

The government was earlier accused of restricting access for foreign correspondents to the region.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration has prioritised development in Papua through massive infrastructure projects aimed at boosting the province’s economic growth.

More recently, dozens of Papuans – mostly children – died from malnutrition-related diseases in the province’s Asmat district.

The health crisis has led to allegations that the government’s focus on development in the region does not serve the welfare of its population.

“They [the UN] can visit Papua. I told them that if they find faults, we will take action [to address them],” Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said after his meeting with Al-Hussein.

The UN human rights chief also warned of the “dark clouds” of political extremism and intolerance that are building over Indonesia.

Al-Hussein highlighted the blasphemy laws that were used to imprison Jakarta’s governor last year, and planned new legislation that will criminalise gay sex.

“If Muslim societies expect others to fight against Islamophobia, we should be prepared to end discrimination at home too,” said al-Hussein, who is Muslim.

Sheany is a journalist with the Jakarta Globe.

• Asian rights body calls for more action over Papuan health crisis
• More West Papuan articles

The director of Va’aomanū Pasifika at Victoria University in Wellington, Dr Teresia Teaiwa, has died following a short illness.

She was described in a statement by Victoria University today as a friend, colleague, renowned scholar and poet, and a generous and warm personality of the academic community.

Dr Teaiwa died yesterday in close company of friends and family after a short battle with cancer.

Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) Luamanuvao Winnie Laban said the loss would be felt widely among the Pasifika community in New Zealand, the Pacific region and elsewhere around the world.

“She was a wonderful Pacific woman and leader who was a role model for all Pacific people. She was hugely committed and passionate about people and social justice in the Pacific, and she will be missed dearly.”

Dr Teaiwa was internationally known for her ground-breaking work in Pacific studies.

Her research interests in this area embraced her artistic and political nature, and included contemporary issues in Fiji, feminism and women’s activism in the Pacific, contemporary Pacific culture and arts, and pedagogy in Pacific Studies.

Marsden Fast Start
In 2007, she was awarded a Marsden Fast Start research grant for her oral history and book project on Fijian women soldiers.

In 1996, Dr Teaiwa turned down a job with Greenpeace to take up her first lecturer position at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

During this time, Dr Teaiwa enjoyed being part of intellectual communities that stemmed from the university environment such as the Niu Wave Writers’ Collective, the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement and the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum.

In 2000, she moved to New Zealand to join Victoria University to teach the world’s first undergraduate major in Pacific studies, of which she was programme director until 2009.

Most recently she was promoted to director of Va’aomanū Pasifika, home to Victoria’s Pacific and Samoan Studies programmes.

Dr Teaiwa’s talents in the classroom were formally recognised in 2015 when she won the Pacific People’s Award for Education, in 2014 when she received the Victoria Teaching Excellence Award and as the first Pasifika woman awarded the Ako Aotearoa Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award.

In 2010, she received the Macaulay Distinguished Lecture Award from the University of Hawai’i.

Outside of her Victoria role, Dr Teaiwa was co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2008-2011), and was an editorial board member of the Amerasia Journal and AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples.

‘An inspiration’
Pacific Media Centre director and Asia Pacific Report editor Professor David Robie, a contemporary of Dr Teaiwa at the University of the South Pacific, described her as an extraordinary academic and creative talent and cultural icon, adding she was “an inspiration to Pacific peoples right across the region”.

The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement farewelled Dr Teaiwa with sadness.

“This is a huge loss for Fiji and the Pacific as Dr Teaiwa inspired many as an educator, researcher, friend and colleague,” said FWRM executive director Nalini Singh.

Dr Teaiwa was a trailblazer in research and education, Singh added.

A memorial service will be held for Dr Teaiwa at Victoria University in the coming weeks.

The Timor-Leste government has extended it condolences for the passing of Dr George Junus Aditjondro on December 10. Aditjondro was an Indonesian academic, activist, researcher and journalist who exposed conditions in Timor-Leste during the country’s time of struggle.

Dr Aditjondro was also a committed advocate for proper development following Timor-Leste’s independence in 2002.

Timor-Leste government spokesman Minister of State Agio Pereira said that “the voice of George Aditjondro was crucial in challenging the thinking of many in Indonesia and Australia about the events occurring in Timor-Leste between 1975 and 1999”.

Pereira added that Aditjondro’s commitment in exposing injustice played an important role in moving Timor-Leste towards the restoration of its independence.

“His voice of advocacy, warm friendship towards the Timorese people and unremitting support in the struggle will not be forgotten,” Pereira added.

Aditjondro first visited Timor on May 1974 as a correspondent of Tempo magazine, and later interviewed various Timorese leaders about political persuasions that occurred inside and outside of Indonesia.

Following the Santa Cruz massacre in 1991, Dr Aditjondro became the leading figure who opposed Indonesian occupation, and had a critical role in exposing media reporting on Timor and the positions of Indonesian intellectuals, who according to Dr Aditjondro, had allowed themselves to become influenced by censorship and media manipulation.

On 20 May 2010, the National Parliament of Timor-Leste recognised Dr Aditjondro’s contribution by awarding him the Princess Grace of Monaco medal.

In addition to his passion for Timor-Leste, Dr Aditjondro was also known as an unrelenting critic of corruption in Indonesia, a dedicated advocate for empowering local agricultural communities and a key figure in nurturing environmental awareness.

Earlier obituary for Dr Aditjondro

Name: Jale Samuwai Curuki

Age: 30

Occupation: PhD candidate, University of the South Pacific

Passion: Accounting, climate financing

Country: Fiji

Climate change activist, Jale Samuwai Curuki, sends a powerful message from Fiji to the sceptics of climate change.

“I come from the second largest island in Fiji, Vanua Levu,” says the 30-year-old.

“There’s a village there called Vunidogoloa and [this is] the first village in the world to be relocated due to climate change.

“I’ve been to Vunidogoloa and seen the consequences. The entire village is gone and it’s not habitable anymore, they have had to shift so that in itself is a testament that climate change is real.”

“We’re not making this up,” he says. “If you are still a climate denier, I feel sorry for you.”

Currently completing his PhD in climate financing at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Curuki can often be found clicking away at the keyboard, getting stuck into his thesis.

Climate financing is one of the issues that affect small island countries in their effort to combat climate change, Curuki explains.

Climate financing
“The issue of climate financing is new. No matter how you spin it, no matter how many fancy words you apply to it, all comes down to money.”

Curuki followed the climate finance track at the 2015 COP21 conference in Paris, which he attended as apart of a selected delegation for Fiji.

“To actually live and experience how agreements and how treaties are made on the highest level is something else, it’s totally mind-blowing,” he says.

He recalls busily running from meetings to negotiations that would sometimes finish in the early hours of the morning.

“We can really appreciate the effort all these diplomats and negotiators do on our behalf,” he says.

Curuki encourages all Pacific communities especially those in New Zealand and Australia to mobilise and take action against climate change.

He makes it clear that if you’re still not convinced, the Pacific isn’t far away for people to come and see the effects for themselves.

“[We are all linked and] for now we might be crying, tomorrow it might be you.”

• Pacific profile: Jenny Jiva

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

Name: Jenny Jiva

Age: 23

Occupation: Masters student, University of the South Pacific

Passion: Pacific diplomacy and climate change

Country: Fiji

Jenny Jiva, a master’s student from the University of the South Pacific in Suva, is giving Pacific climate change a voice on the world stage.

Her master’s research concerns the loss and damage impacts related to climate change, as an issue, which can include the loss of livelihood, territory and property.

Jiva’s research focuses on the Pacific’s role in getting loss and damage issues on the negotiating table, and successfully into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) outcomes and documents.

In 2015, the 23-year-old was selected as a country delegate to represent Fiji at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris, a global meeting where world leaders reached a legally binding agreement to address climate change.

“I went to the meetings and the negotiations about loss and damage,” she says.

“My main role was to take notes and do briefings for our main negotiator so that’s what really consolidated my research question.”

A goal for Jiva is to attend COP22 in November this year, which will be held in Marrakech, Morocco.

She told Asia Pacific Report that this year the conference would be reviewing the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, a policy that aims to address climate-related loss and damage in developing countries vulnerable to extreme effects of climate change.

In 2013, in Warsaw, the Pacific fought strongly for this mechanism, she says.

The young activist is also a member of Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), an organisation that brings together Pacific NGOs and civil society actors who advocate for climate change.

“Climate change is a very real thing, we now know that it is happening, it’s not debatable anymore,” she says.

Review by David Robie

When Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, a collection of 33 tiny atolls sprawling across the Pacific equator in the frontline of climate change, believed he wasn’t being listened to, he thought of a simple strategy – polar bears.

By comparing himself and his country’s meagre population of 102,000 to the endangered creature, he suddenly got more headlines.

And he got the idea after having just seen a polar bear in the wild.

“I drew a comparison that what happens to polar bears will also be happening to us in our part of the world,” he explained.

Tong feared that the bears in their Arctic habitat, like the people of Kiribati in the Pacific, were in danger of losing their homes in the near future.

Today the polar bear is the mojo adopted by Greenpeace skipper Peter Willcox on his Facebook page.

The adventurous lifetime mariner and dedicated sailor was captain of the original Rainbow Warrior on her visit to Kiribati in 1985 en route from Rongelap atoll – where the crew evacuated an entire community whose health and wellbeing had been compromised by US nuclear tests in the 1950s – to Auckland where the ship was bombed by French secret agents in a madcap sabotage operation.

Russian bear
Willcox is well known Down Under as the relatively young skipper at the time of the sinking of his beloved ship at Marsden Wharf, but it is the Russian bear rather than its Arctic cousin that dominates his adventures while trying to save our planet.

Six chapters of his new book, Greenpeace Captain: My Adventures in Protecting the Future of our Planet (with Ronald B. Weiss), due for release next week, deal with Russian or Soviet security forces and hatchet men.

For the only captain to have skippered all three Rainbow Warriors over three decades of campaigning, the Arctic 30 arrest in 2013 – and the prospect of being imprisoned for up to 15 years for “piracy” – eclipsed the bombing shock 28 years earlier.

But his jailhouse diary written in a clutch of bitterly cold prison cells in Murmansk and then Saint Petersburg to keep track of the two-month-long saga – and his sanity – note several comparisons with his brush with French state terrorism in New Zealand.

The diary entries helped keep up his spirits when facing the demoralising Kafkaesque intrigue of the Russian justice system and lack of communication with the outside world, especially his new wife of just six months at the time (he had been in prison for about a month before he was finally able to speak to Maggy who was valiantly crusading to get him set free).

In his cell, Willcox had little idea of the enormous rallies and support that had spread out around the world seeking the release of him and his 29 crew and campaigners since their arrest and the seizure of their icebreaker ship Arctic Sunrise in September 2013.

Their “crime”. Attempting to scale the Gazprom “Goliath’s” Prirazlomnay oil rig in the Pechora Sea in the Arctic Circle. Willcox recalls:

“It’s an amazing feeling to realise that hundreds of ‘Free the Arctic 30’ protests demanding your release have taken place in dozens of countries around the world. Words cannot describe it, so I won’t try. The bottom line is that the international reaction makes me believe that what Greenpeace is doing is deeply appreciated and important.”

Among the supporters was folk singer and activist Pete Seeger – “We shall overcome” – a family friend who gave Willcox his first major deep-water sailing opportunity on board the Hudson River campaign sloop Clearwater.

Pete Seeger’s letter
Seeger penned a letter to President Putin at the age of 94 and then died a few weeks after Willcox was finally freed under a presidential amnesty and he had returned to his home in Maine.

“Dear, President Putin,” Seeger wrote, “I am one of the thousands now who believe you should let Captain Peter Willcox out of jail to explain why they climbed an offshore oil rig.

“Thank you very much for reading this letter. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision – the people of the world are watching.”

And Putin’s government finally did the right thing.

After the failure to pin any piracy case against Willcox and the crew – in spite of attempts to portray them as part of “an organised crime group” (i.e. Greenpeace) and that the Arctic 30 had “attacked the rig with weapons for our own personal gain”, the charge was downgraded to “hooliganism” – a vague category for any perceived enemy of the state.

And then they were freed — initially on bail, and then as part of an amnesty.

The Willcox prison diary makes sobering reading – especially as he suffered from claustrophobia and high blood pressure. Some brief highlights:

Wednesday, October 2:
“This was a bad day. The investigator met us on the ship. The first thing he did was point out that there was a bag of “drugs” in Katya’s backpack. Katya had picked a few wildflowers in Norway and was saving them to be dried and pressed …”

‘Scary charges’
Thursday, October 3:
“Half of us were dragged off to the investigator’s office today. We are now officially accused, not just suspected, and there was no reduction in the charges. The charges are quite humorous, or scary. They actually say we are not environmentalists but only pretending to be. How do they make this shit up?”

Wednesday, October 16:
“Today, I got my first phone call, but Maggy wasn’t home … I am afraid that my voice … broke at the end of the message…”

After a month, the investigators completely changed and the case seemed to be back to square one.

Wednesday, October 23:
“One bit of very, very good news is the ‘marijuana’ in Dr Katya’s bag was dried flowers she was doing artwork with. I guess Hatchet-Face [the lead investigator] never saw pot before…”

Thursday, October 24:
“Red letter day, I guess. Maybe …Olysha [my translator] showed up: ‘You’re not a “pirate” any more …’ Turns out we are now ‘hooligans’ [like the Pussy Riot feminist punk collective]. The difference? Zero to seven years versus ten to 15 years.”

No wonder Willcox titled this chapter “One happy hooligan”. Encouraging progress.

Saturday, November 9:
“Spent the day (part of it) reading the Isleboro Island News [his wife’s newspaper with an editorial supporting Willcox]. I am so proud when I read ‘Maggy Willcox, editor’…”

November 2013:
The Arctic 30 were “sent to Kresty Prison – officially the ‘Investigative isolator Number One of the Administration of the Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments for the city of Saint Petersburg. Built in the late 1800s, it is the oldest prison in Europe and still the largest.”

Monday, November 18:
“I have now decided to take the heavenly observations of the last two days as a good sign. Not that I have always read the signs correctly. Note the rainbows in New Zealand in 1985 [just before the RW bombing] …”

Ordeal over

They were all released after individual same day bail hearings.

Massive international publicity prompted Putin’s government to include the Arctic 30 in an amnesty bill passed to mark the 20^th anniversary of the post-Cold War Russian constitution.

A fascinating and gripping yarn, which will be read avidly by many Greenpeace activists and campaigners globally over the years who are named by Willcox with many amusing and endearing anecdotes about the various struggles from a dawn raid in Peru to “something toxic in Denmark” to “Al-Qaeda, guns and diamonds” to icebreaking up the Amazon.

Willcox brings alive the many campaigns that he has been involved with and he isn’t coy about acknowledging the many mistakes along the way involved in Greenpeace’s particular brand of non-violent direct action.

I had the privilege of being with Willcox on the Rainbow Warrior for more than 10 weeks on the voyage from Hawai’i to Rongelap and the evacuation of the Rongelap community – which had an enormous lifelong impact on all of us on board – and then finally to Vanuatu and New Zealand.

His style of unflappable and committed leadership impressed me. We have crossed paths at various times since then as friends, notably around the 20^th and 30^th anniversary of the bombing.

Reading his opening chapter on the tragic death of photographer Fernando Pereira and demise of the first Rainbow Warrior and the fifth chapter on Rongelap were especially poignant moments for me.

I also noted that his sailboat back home in Maine is called Eyes of Fire, named after the Cree Indian wise woman usually credited with the Rainbow Warrior legend – and also the title of my own book on that ill-fated voyage.

Yet the breadth and range of all his adventures – and the crews serving with him – in the thick of almost every inspiring environmental challenge in the past three decades make gripping reading.

Would he give it up? No way. Climate change is now the greatest challenge of our generation, and Willcox wants to help make sure we get the future right – for his daughters, wife and our next generation.

In his most recent campaigns, Captain Willcox and his crews have been tackling the plundering of Pacific tuna fish stocks and bearing witness to the Fukushima nuclear disaster legacy five years ago last month.

An amusing footnote to the book is a Peter Willcox final memo to President Putin. Read it to find out.

Greenpeace Captain: My Adventures in Protecting the Future of Our Planet, by Peter Willcox (with Ronald B. Weiss). Penguin Random House, Australia, release date, April 18.

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The conference at Victoria University will bring together scientists, politicians and activists from around the Pacific with the aim of coming up with a plan of action.

Professor Renwick says even though their emissions are so low they have done almost nothing to contribute to global warming, small island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu and Niue disproportionately feel its effects.

He says things could turn ugly quickly in the Pacific with sea level rises, storm surges and more frequent cyclones.

“The best thing that we can do, the people across the Pacific can do, is make a lot of noise. Agitate. I think the small island nations as a group, have been pretty effective. The COP21 meeting in Paris just before Christmas talked about keeping global warming well below 2 degrees and ideally 1 and a half degrees. That’s been the line that’s been pushed from the island states for a number of years.”

Professor Renwick says the ultimate goal of the conference is to empower people so they feel they can take action.

>> LISTEN to the Radio Waatea interview with Professor Renwick

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