Fiji got to celebrate World Oceans Day this week — a day when our conscience gets the occasional prick on matters related to the value of the ocean in sustaining life.

I like to brag about growing up surrounded by the sea and those unique moments during childhood I spent rowing across Qamea’s picturesque and mangrove-fringed Naiviivi Bay, plucking seashells from shallow tide pools and digging up vetuna (sandworm) from the sand.

Yes, the sea is a way of life for all of us.

• READ MORE: World Ocean Day, June 8

Think of this.

The ocean covers more than 70 percent of the planet.

It is our life source, supporting humanity’s sustenance and existence, and that of every other organism on earth.

The ocean produces much of the oxygen we breath and need to survive, it is the habitat of most of earth’s biodiversity and is the main source of meat protein for more than a billion people around the world.

40 million ’employees’
The ocean is key to our economy with an estimated 40 million people to be employed by ocean-based industries by 2030.

In Fiji, an estimated 60 percent of the 900,000 population are thought to live in coastal communities, surviving on activities linked to the ocean, and our fisheries and tourism sectors are so intrinsically connected to the health of the ocean.

But the ocean we call our home is facing a variety of threats that challenges its existence and endangers humanity.

United Nations statistics say that we have depleted 90 percent of big fish populations and destroyed 50 percent of coral reefs.

“We are taking more from the ocean than can be replenished. We need to work together to create a new balance with the ocean that no longer depletes its bounty but instead restores its vibrancy and brings it new life,” the UN says.

With such dreadful reality in the backdrop, the 2023 WOD theme seemed timely and relevant — “Planet Ocean: tides are changing”.

It provides us with an opportunity to rethink what we’ve done, what we need to do and how to work together with world leaders, decision-makers, indigenous leaders, scientists, private sector executives, civil society, celebrities, and youth activist to make the health of the ocean a public agenda.

Clean up day
On Wednesday this week, The Fiji Times’ front page photo was of Josaia Waqaivolavola, a Year 2 student from Veiuto Primary School who was captured on camera participating in a beach clean up at My Suva Picnic Park along the Nasese foreshore.

His group collected 10 trash bags filled with plastics, among others.

It’s when we see the amount of rubbish along our coastlines and in the sea around us that we begin to realise that all the talk about “putting rubbish in the bin” is not working.

We talk about responsible citizenship but plastics continue to pollute our communities, roads, streets and parks, and our oceans.

Plastics have become so cheap to produce that we are producing things we don’t intend to keep for long.

In other words, we are producing plastics only to throw them away.

We are now mass producing disposable plastics at a phenomenal rate that the world’s waste management systems are finding hard to keep up.

40% of plastics disposable
It is estimated that about 40 percent of the now more than 448 million tonnes of plastics produced every year is disposable and used in products intended to be discarded virtually soon after purchase.

Just go to the beach and you’ll find them on the sand.

World statistics estimate that each day billions upon billions of plastic material find their way into our rivers, streams and eventually into our oceans.

During my childhood years on Qamea, my family’s livelihood depended on the sea.

At a time, when village canteens had no refrigerators to store meat, the sea was our main source of daily meat protein.

Many years ago, scientists and environment experts were warning us that the amount of plastics in the world’s ocean would increase 10 times by 2020.

That was three years ago.

Too polluted for fish
They further advised that by 2050, if statistical predictions remain true, we’d have so much plastics in the sea and our oceans would too polluted that fish and other delicacies would be unsafe to eat or we’d not be able to even swim anymore.

Cleaning the ocean is good but may not be good enough.

We need to nip this spiralling issue in the bud.

We need to work before the plastic reaches the ocean.

We need to work on land where they are produced before we go to the ocean.

In Fiji, the concern over disposable plastic waste is the same as the threat in other countries of the world — we are using more disposable plastics at a rate faster than we are able to effectively dispose them that our waste managing systems are struggling to contain the problem.

Recycling not effective
Our recycling initiatives are not effectively solving our disposable plastic dilemma.

During this year’s WOD celebrations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the ocean as “the foundation of life”.

That pretty much sums everything up.

If the ocean is life, then why can’t we get out act together.

The ball is in everyone’s court and the time to act is now.

Until we meet again, stay blessed, stay healthy and stay safe!

John Mitchell is a Fiji Times journalist and writes the weekly “Behind The News” column. Republished with permission.

As world leaders meet in Glasgow for the UN Climate Summit (COP26), peaceful environmental activists are being threatened, silenced and criminalised around the world.

The host nation Scotland for this year’s meeting is one of many countries where activists are regularly facing rights violations.

New research from the CIVICUS Monitor looks at the common tactics and restrictions being used by governments and private companies to suppress environmental movements.

• READ MORE: Other COP26 climate reports

The research brief “Defenders of our planet: Resilient in the face of restrictions” focuses on three worrying trends:

• Bans and restrictions on protests;
• Judicial harassment and legal persecution; and
• The use of violence, including targeted killings.

As the climate crisis intensifies, activists and civil society groups continue to mobilise to hold policymakers and corporate leaders to account.

From Brazil to South Africa, activists are putting their lives on the line to protect lands and to halt the activities of high-polluting industries.

Severe rights abuses
The most severe rights abuses are often experienced by civil society groups that are standing up to the logging, mining and energy giants who are exploiting natural resources and fueling global warming.

As people take to the streets, governments have been instituting bans that criminalise environmental protests. Recently governments have used covid-19 as a pretext to disrupt and break up demonstrations.

Data from the CIVICUS Monitor indicates that the detention of protesters and the use of excessive force by authorities are becoming more prevalent.

In Cambodia in May 2021, three environmental defenders were sentenced to 18 to 20 months in prison for planning a protest against the filling of a lake in the capital.

In Finland in June, more than 100 activists were arrested for participating in a protest calling for the government to take urgent action on climate change.

From authoritarian countries to mature democracies, the research also profiles those who have been put behind bars for peacefully protesting.

“Silencing activists and denying them of their fundamental civic rights is another tactic being used by leaders to evade and delay action on climate change,” says Marianna Belalba Barreto, lead researcher for the CIVICUS Monitor.

Troubling indicator
“Criminalising nonviolent protests has become a troubling indicator that governments are not committed to saving the planet.”

The report shows that many of the measures being deployed by governments to restrict rights are not compatible with international law. Examples of courts and legislative bodies reversing attempts to criminalise nonviolent climate protests are few and far between.

Despite the increased risks and restrictions facing environmental campaigners, the report also shows that a wide range of campaigns have scored important victories, including the closure of mines and numerous hazardous construction projects.

Equally significant has been the rise of climate litigation by activist groups.

As authorities take activists to court for exercising their fundamental right to protest, activist groups have successfully filed lawsuits against governments and companies in more than 25 countries for failing to act on climate change.

The Pacific Islands are in grave danger and at the frontline of global climate change and the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, known as COP26, in Glasgow this week is vitally important for islanders, says Reverend James Bhagwan.

The general secretary of the Suva-based regional Pacific Conference of Churches visited Geneva last week on his way to COP26 in Scotland’s largest city taking place from today until November 12.

“COP26 is important because if this doesn’t work, then we’re in serious danger. It’s already obvious that many of the targets set during the Paris Agreement in 2015 have not been met,” says Reverend Bhagwan with passion and sadness tinging his voice.

• READ MORE: COP26: Time for New Zealand to show regional leadership on climate change
• Other COP26 articles

“We’re in danger of going well beyond the 1.5C limit of carbon emissions that we need to maintain where we’re at.”

The Pacific Conference has a membership of 33 churches and 10 national councils of churches spread across 19 Pacific Island countries and territories, effectively covering one-third of the world’s surface.

Some progress on countering the effects of climate change have been made in global awareness, says Reverend Bhagwan, a Methodist minister.

The return of the United States to the treaty around it helps.

“And even though there is significant commitment to reduce carbon emissions by countries to as much as 26 percent of those countries that have committed, globally we’re going to see an increase of carbon emissions by 19 plus percent by 2030, which isn’t far away—that’s nine years away,” rues Reverend Bhagwan.

Greenhouse gases warning
On October 25, the World Meteorological Organisation secretary-general Dr Petteri Taalas, releasing a report on greenhouse gases, confirmed Reverend Bhagwan’s worries in a warning:

“We are way off track. At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”

Reverend Bhagwan said his churches’ group covers from the Marshall Islands in the northern Pacific across to Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia) in the eastern Pacific, down to Aotearoa New Zealand in the southern Pacific.

The conference also has member churches in West Papua and Australia, and it serves a population of some 15 million people.

For the members of the Pacific region churches, climate change is not an abstract issue.

‘Frontline’ of climate change
“We are on the frontline of climate change; we have rising seas we have ocean acidification which affects our fish and the life of the ocean,” says Reverend Bhagwan.

“We have extreme weather events now regularly, and the category five cyclones which, in the past, would be the exception to the rule for us, now are the baseline for our extreme weather events. During the cyclone season, at least one cyclone will be category five.

“And so, you just pray that either it goes past, or it drops enough when it reaches us, and usually these systems do not affect just one country.”

Reverend Bhagwan notes that the churches in the Pacific region play a much more integral role in society than they do in some of the secular nations.

Because of the covid-19 pandemic, “we’re not getting as many Pacific Islanders attending COP26 as we would like, both in governments and in civil society.

“And so, it’s important that those who can come do so. We, the church, play a very significant role in the Pacific. The Pacific is approximately 90 percent Christian, particularly within the island communities.

“And so, we have significant influence within the region, working with governments. But we also recognise ourselves as part of the civil society space,” said Reverend Bhagwan.

“And so, we have that ability in the Pacific to walk in these spaces, because leaders, government leaders, ministers, workers, civil servants — they’re members of our churches.

“So, we are providing pastoral care and engagement with those in leadership and government leadership, but also that prophetic voice.”

Peter Kenny is a journalist of The Ecumenical.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff has appealed to the 1.7 million people in the city to “roll up your sleeves” and get vaccinated immediately to help New Zealand cope better with the covid-19 pandemic.

Writing in The New Zealand Herald today to back the newspaper’s 90% Project for maximum vaccination, Goff said the the city should be aiming for a “summer of freedom for Tāmaki Makaurau”.

“It’s a much better scenario than staying at home in our bubbles, locked down at level 4, and at risk of a disease that may put you or your family in hospital,” he said.

• READ MORE: In spite of relentless media negativity, NZ’s covid story is largely successful
• Covid-19 update: 15 new community cases in NZ, all in Auckland, ministry says
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

“The first option is one we all crave. To help achieve it, we need to get as many Aucklanders vaccinated as possible, as soon as possible.

“Ninety percent of the eligible population is a good target, which is why I support The New Zealand Herald’s 90% Project. If we can get higher than 90 per cent, that’s even better.

Goff said that yesterday the city had hit the target of 80 percent of Aucklanders having had at least one dose, with more than half of that number becoming fully vaccinated.

“More than 20,000 people a day have been getting immunised, but more than 200,000 still need to book or get their first vaccination,” he said.

Stringent measures
“New Zealand did the right thing in putting in place stringent measures to stop the incursion of covid-19 into our community. We did better than almost any other country.

“However, new variants of covid, currently delta, make it really hard to stop community transmission and we can’t continue indefinitely closing down our economy to stop its spread. The human and financial costs are huge. And sooner or later we will have to open up again to the world.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at today’s covid media briefing that tools used in the future to fight covid-19 did not need to be as disruptive as the ones used now — such as lockdowns — as long as the country achieved a high vaccination rate.

Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield were speaking after the release of new modelling which suggests lockdowns may still be needed if the country achieved an 80 percent vaccination rate.

Ardern said vaccine certificates, better ventilation, some mask use, and the possibility of changing border restrictions so a full 14-day quarantine was not required could be used in the future.

But for now vaccination was the main tool.

“It all comes down to vaccination.”

Lockdowns needed in first phase
She said lockdowns were needed in the first phase of the pandemic because there were no vaccines and everyone had to be isolated.

“With vaccines, we can turn that model on its head,” she said, so positive cases could be isolated as others have the protection of vaccines.

“Children can’t be vaccinated. It will reach them. And we’ve seen it reach them in this outbreak,” she said.

The plan was never zero cases, but “zero tolerance” for covid, she said.

The Health Ministry announced 15 new community cases of covid-19 today, a drop of seven on yesterday.

Ardern said the government’s plan for the future, included aggressively isolating cases, catching cases at the border, and ensuring the health system was not overwhelmed.

“It’s not the Aotearoa way to leave anyone behind,” she said.

“There remains one simple message – Get vaccinated.”

Today was the second day that Auckland was at alert level 3 after five weeks in lockdown.

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

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.

Unions in Fiji say it is hard to believe the Prime Minister only found out about the controversial draft Police Bill after public uproar.

The draft legislation would have given police more surveillance powers if passed in Parliament.

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama pulled the plug on the bill last week following widespread condemnation from civil society groups, individuals and opposition parties.

READ MORE: More reports on the Fiji Police Bill

The prime minister had said he only found out about the controversial draft legislation after the public uproar.

But the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) said it was surprised that Bainimarama had pulled the plug on the proposed Bill.

FTUC national secretary Felix Anthony said the whole country was aware of the draft bill because the consultations were launched publicly.

He said there was even a cake-cutting ceremony to mark the occasion in Suva with representatives from the New Zealand High Commission and UN development programme present.

NZ, UNDP funding consultations
Both New Zealand and the UNDP are co-funding the public consultations.

Anthony said the prime minister was obliged to tell the public how he was not made aware of it.

“Bainimarama needs to tell the public what actually happened and not only that, but we believe that there needs to be full consultation on any proposed Bill with the public and all parts need to be addressed,” the FTUC said in a statement.

The unions said it was “crazy and an insult” to the people of Fiji to ask them for their opinions on the proposed Bill which breached the Constitution.

“It is simply crazy that they know what was wrong with it, they know it was breaching the Constitution, yet they wanted to ask the people to tell them what is wrong with it, which is simply crazy and an insult to the people of Fiji.’

Following the prime minister’s retraction of the public consultations, his minister in charge of the police force, issued an apology.

Defence Minister Inia Seruiratu said he was sorry for allowing the draft Police Bill to go for public consultations.

Seruiratu said the ministry had overlooked the process the draft document needed to go through.

“I did the launching because of the work we had prepared,” Seruiratu said. “We have overlooked the process and we sincerely apologise for that.”

The Draft Bill is now under review, the minister said.

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

By CIVICUS in Manila

There has been a hostile environment for civil society in the Philippines since President Rodrigo Duterte took power in 2016. Killings, arrests, threats, and intimidation of activists and government critics are often perpetrated with impunity.

According to the United Nations, the vilification of dissent is being “increasingly institutionalised and normalised in ways that will be very difficult to reverse.”

There has also been a relentless crackdown against independent media and journalists.

• READ MORE: Nine killed after Duterte’s order to ‘finish off communists’
• More Philippines reports

Threats and attacks against journalists, as well as the deployment of armies of trolls and online bots, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, have contributed to self-censorship—this has had a chilling effect within the media industry and among the wider public.

One tactic increasingly used by the government to target activists and journalists is to label them as “terrorists” or “communist fronts,” particularly those who have been critical of Duterte’s deadly “war on drugs” that has killed thousands.

Known as “red-tagging” in the Philippines, this process often puts activists at grave risk of being targeted by the state and pro-government militias.

In some cases, those who have been red-tagged were later killed. Others have received death threats or sexually abusive comments in private messages or on social media.

Rampant impunity means that accountability for attacks against activists and journalists is virtually non-existent. Courts in the Philippines have failed to provide justice and civil society has been calling for an independent investigation to address the grave violations.

Filipina journalist Inday Espina-Varona tells her story:
‘Silence would be a surrender to tyranny’

The sound of Tibetan chimes and flowing water transformed into a giant hiss the night dozens of worried friends passed on a Facebook post with my face and a headline that screamed I’d been passing information to communist guerrillas.

Old hag, menopausal bitch, a person “of confused sexuality”—I’ve been called all that on social media. Trolls routinely call for my arrest as a communist.

But the attack on 4 June 2020 was different. The anonymous right-wing Facebook page charged me with terrorism, of using access and coverage to pass sensitive, confidential military information to rebels.

That night, dinner stopped at two spoonsful. My stomach felt like a sack with a dozen stones churning around a malignant current. All my collection of Zen music, hours of staring at the stars, and no amount of calming oil could bring sleep.

Strangers came heckling the next day on Messenger. One asked how it felt to be “the muse of terrorists”. Another said, “Maghanda ka na bruha na terorista” (“Get ready, you terrorist witch”).

A third said in vulgar vernacular that I should be the first shot in the vagina, a reference to what President Rodrigo Duterte once told soldiers to do to women rebels.

I’m 57 years old, a cancer survivor with a chronic bad back. I don’t sneak around at night. I don’t do countryside treks. I don’t even cover the military.

Like shooting range target
But for weeks, I felt like a target mark in a shooting range. As a passenger on vehicles, I replaced mobile web surfing with peering into side mirrors, checking out motorcycles carrying two passengers—often mentioned in reports on killings.

I recognised a scaled-up threat. This attack didn’t target ideas or words. The charge involved actions penalised with jail time or worse. Some military officials were sharing it.

Not surprising; the current government doesn’t bother with factual niceties. It uses “communist” as a catch-all phrase for everything that bedevils the Philippines.

Anonymous teams have killed close to 300 dissenters and these attacks usually followed red-tagging campaigns. Nineteen journalists have also been murdered since Duterte assumed office in 2016.

Journalists, lawmakers, civil liberties advocates, and netizens called out the lie. Dozens reported the post. I did. We all received an automated response: It did not violate Facebook’s community standards.

It feels foolish to argue with an automated system but I did gather the evidence before getting in touch with Facebook executives. My normal response to abusive engagement on Facebook or Twitter is a laughing emoji and a block. Threats are a different matter.

We tracked down, “Let’s see how brave you are when we get to the street where you live,” to a Filipino criminology graduate working in a Japanese bar. He apologised and took it down.

Threat against ‘my daughter’
After I fact-checked Duterte for blaming rape on drug use in general, someone said my “defending addicts” should be punished with the rape of my daughter.

“That should teach you,” said the message from an account that had no sign of life. Another said he’d come to rape me.

Both accounts shared the same traits. They linked to similar accounts. Facebook took these down and did the same to the journalist-acting-as-rebel-intel post and page.

The public pressure to cull products of troll farms has lessened the incidence of hate messages. But there’s still a growth in anonymous pages focused on red-tagging, with police and military officials and official accounts spreading their posts.

Some officers were actually exposed as the masterminds of these pages. When Facebook recently scrapped several accounts linked to the armed forces, government officials erupted in rage, hurling false claims about “attacks on free expression.”

This reaction shows the nexus between unofficial and official acts and platforms in our country. It can start with social media disinformation and then get picked up by the government, or it leads with an official pronouncement blown up and given additional spin on social media.

Official complaints
We’ve officially filed complaints against some government officials, including those involved with the top anti-insurgency task force. But justice works slowly. In the meantime, I practise deep breathing and try to take precautions.

Officials dismiss any “chilling effect” from these non-stop attacks because Filipinos in general, and journalists in particular, remain outspoken. But braving dangers to exercise our right to press freedom and free expression isn’t the same as having the government respect these rights.

Two years ago, journalist Patricia Evangelista of Rappler asked a small group of colleagues what it could take for us to fall silent.

“Nothing,” was everyone’s response.

And so every day I battle fear. I have to because silence would be a surrender to tyranny. That’s not happening on my watch.

Inday Espina-Varona is an award-winning journalist from the Philippines and contributing editor for ABS-CBNNews and the Catholic news agency LiCASNews. She is a former chair of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and the first journalist from the country to receive the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Prize for Independence.

Plans for spending NZ$5.3 on construction of the Fiji Prime Minister’s new office should be diverted to people affected by the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, civil society groups say.

The groups, which form the Civil Society Organisation Alliance for Covid-19 Humanitarian Response, said requests they had received for assistance from families prompted them to urge the government to reconsider the construction.

Director of the Social Empowerment and Education Programme (SEEP) Chantelle Khan said children needed to be cared for during the crisis.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – World ‘nowhere close’ to needed herd immunity, says WHO

“The F$7.4m (NZ$5.3m) that’s supposed to go to the PM’s Office – give all of it to the future generation of this country and to our elderly. Our Social Welfare recipients and our children who need to be fed,” she said.

Khan also called for the government to work with stakeholders for the betterment of the country. This would reflect a democratic government that cared for its people, she said.

“We need to work together, so please relocate this funding to children who are unable to be fed by their families because of the impact of this pandemic.”

The alliance includes the Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM), the Social Education Empowerment Programme (SEEP), the Foundation for Rural Integrated

Enterprises and Development (FRIEND), the Women’s Crisis Centre, FemLink Pacific and the Citizens Constitutional Forum (CCF).

Shamima Ali of the Women’s Crisis Centre said Fiji was not “out of the woods yet” and that there was a dire need in community for the money devoted to the office.

Humanitarian centre opens
People in the Western Division whose lives have been affected by the pandemic can now access basic assistance from the Alliance’s Humanitarian Response Centre in Navakai, Nadi.

The centre opened last week and is the brainchild of Fiji’s largest NGO, Then India Sanmarga Ikya Sangam (TISI Sangam), to establish a one-stop shop in the west that provides school lunches for children.

TISI Sangam president Sadasivan Naicker said the centre was timely because it would assist Fijians who had lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.

“We have branches all over Fiji and with the manpower we have, we can help in this programme to make it successful,” Naicker told The Fiji Times.

“We are in a better position and this is the first time we have forged such a partnership with the NGOs and we look forward to this.”

The Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises and Development (FRIEND) said there was a need to establish the centre because it would make work easier for people who needed assistance.

FRIEND director Sashi Kiran said in recent months, more than 40 percent of its food bank applicants were from Nadi.

Kiran said they were mostly people who had no employment as a result of the pandemic.

The centre will also distribute seedlings, facilitate training, and provide counselling and legal services.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Facebook has had a bad few weeks. The social media giant had to apologise for failing to protect the personal data of millions of users from being accessed by data mining company Cambridge Analytica.

Outrage is brewing over its admission to spying on people via their Android phones. Its stock price plummeted, while millions deleted their accounts in disgust.

Facebook has also faced scrutiny over its failure to prevent the spread of “fake news” on its platforms, including via an apparent orchestrated Russian propaganda effort to influence the 2016 US presidential election.

Facebook’s actions – or inactions – facilitated breaches of privacy and human rights associated with democratic governance. But it might be that its business model – and those of its social media peers generally – is simply incompatible with human rights.

The good
In some ways, social media has been a boon for human rights – most obviously for freedom of speech.

Previously, the so-called “marketplace of ideas” was technically available to all (in “free” countries), but was in reality dominated by the elites.

While all could equally exercise the right to free speech, we lacked equal voice. Gatekeepers, especially in the form of the mainstream media, largely controlled the conversation.

But today, anybody with internet access can broadcast information and opinions to the whole world. While not all will be listened to, social media is expanding the boundaries of what is said and received in public.

The marketplace of ideas must effectively be bigger and broader, and more diverse.

Social media enhances the effectiveness of non-mainstream political movements, public assemblies and demonstrations, especially in countries that exercise tight controls over civil and political rights, or have very poor news sources.

Social media played a major role in co-ordinating the massive protests that brought down dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as large revolts in Spain, Greece, Israel, South Korea, and the Occupy movement.

More recently, it has facilitated the rapid growth of the #MeToo and #neveragain movements, among others.

READ MORE: #MeToo is not enough: it has yet to shift the power imbalances that would bring about gender equality

The bad and the ugly
But the social media “free speech” machines can create human rights difficulties. Those newly empowered voices are not necessarily desirable voices.

The United Nations recently found that Facebook had been a major platform for spreading hatred against the Rohingya in Myanmar, which in turn led to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Video sharing site YouTube seems to automatically guide viewers to the fringiest versions of what they might be searching for. A search on vegetarianism might lead to veganism; jogging to ultra-marathons; Donald Trump’s popularity to white supremacist rants; and Hillary Clinton to 9/11 “trutherism”.

YouTube, via its algorithm’s natural and probably unintended impacts, “may be one of the most powerful radicalising instruments of the 21st century”, with all the attendant human rights abuses that might follow.

The business model and human rights
Human rights abuses might be embedded in the business model that has evolved for social media companies in their second decade.

Essentially, those models are based on the collection and use for marketing purposes of their users’ data. And the data they have is extraordinary in its profiling capacities, and in the consequent unprecedented knowledge base and potential power it grants to these private actors.

Indirect political influence is commonly exercised, even in the most credible democracies, by private bodies such as major corporations. This power can be partially constrained by “anti-trust laws” that promote competition and prevent undue market dominance.

Anti-trust measures could, for example, be used to hive off Instagram from Facebook, or YouTube from Google. But these companies’ power essentially arises from the sheer number of their users: in late 2017, Facebook was reported as having more than 2.2 billion active users. Anti-trust measures do not seek to cap the number of a company’s customers, as opposed to its acquisitions.

Power through knowledge
In 2010, Facebook conducted an experiment by randomly deploying a non-partisan “I voted” button into 61 million feeds during the US mid-term elections. That simple action led to 340,000 more votes, or about 0.14 percent of the US voting population. This number can swing an election. A bigger sample would lead to even more votes.

So Facebook knows how to deploy the button to sway an election, which would clearly be lamentable.

However, the mere possession of that knowledge makes Facebook a political player. It now knows that button’s the political impact, the types of people it is likely to motivate, and the party that’s favoured by its deployment and non-deployment, and at what times of day.

It might seem inherently incompatible with democracy for that knowledge to be vested in a private body. Yet the retention of such data is the essence of Facebook’s ability to make money and run a viable business.

Microtargeting
A study has shown that a computer knows more about a person’s personality than their friends or flatmates from an analysis of 70 “likes”, and more than their family from 150 likes. From 300 likes it can outperform one’s spouse.

This enables the micro-targeting of people for marketing messages – whether those messages market a product, a political party or a cause. This is Facebook’s product, from which it generates billions of dollars. It enables extremely effective advertising and the manipulation of its users.

This is so even without Cambridge Analytica’s underhanded methods.

Advertising is manipulative: that is its point. Yet it is a long bow to label all advertising as a breach of human rights.

Advertising is available to all with the means to pay. Social media micro-targeting has become another battleground where money is used to attract customers and, in the political arena, influence and mobilise voters.

While the influence of money in politics is pervasive – and probably inherently undemocratic – it seems unlikely that spending money to deploy social media to boost an electoral message is any more a breach of human rights than other overt political uses of money.

Yet the extraordinary scale and precision of its manipulative reach might justify differential treatment of social media compared to other advertising, as its manipulative political effects arguably undermine democratic choices.

As with mass data collection, perhaps it may eventually be concluded that that reach is simply incompatible with democratic and human rights.

‘Fake news’
Finally, there is the issue of the spread of misinformation.

While paid advertising may not breach human rights, “fake news” distorts and poisons democratic debate. It is one thing for millions of voters to be influenced by precisely targeted social media messages, but another for maliciously false messages to influence and manipulate millions – whether paid for or not.

In a Declaration on Fake News, several UN and regional human rights experts said fake news interfered with the right to know and receive information – part of the general right to freedom of expression.

Its mass dissemination may also distort rights to participate in public affairs. Russia and Cambridge Analytica (assuming allegations in both cases to be true) have demonstrated how social media can be “weaponised” in unanticipated ways.

Yet it is difficult to know how social media companies should deal with fake news. The suppression of fake news is the suppression of speech – a human right in itself.

The preferred solution outlined in the Declaration on Fake News is to develop technology and digital literacy to enable readers to more easily identify fake news.

The human rights community seems to be trusting that the proliferation of fake news in the marketplace of ideas can be corrected with better ideas rather than censorship.

However, one cannot be complacent in assuming that “better speech” triumphs over fake news. A recent study concluded fake news on social media:

… diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information.

Also, internet “bots” apparently spread true and false news at the same rate, which indicates that:

… false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.

The depressing truth may be that human nature is attracted to fake stories over the more mundane true ones, often because they satisfy predetermined biases, prejudices and desires. And social media now facilitates their wildfire spread to an unprecedented degree.

Perhaps social media’s purpose – the posting and sharing of speech – cannot help but generate a distorted and tainted marketplace of fake ideas that undermine political debate and choices, and perhaps human rights.

What next?
It is premature to assert the very collection of massive amounts of data is irreconcilable with the right to privacy (and even rights relating to democratic governance).

Similarly, it is premature to decide that micro-targeting manipulates the political sphere beyond the bounds of democratic human rights.

Finally, it may be that better speech and corrective technology will help to undo fake news’ negative impacts: it is premature to assume that such solutions won’t work.

However, by the time such conclusions may be reached, it may be too late to do much about it. It may be an example where government regulation and international human rights law – and even business acumen and expertise – lags too far behind technological developments to appreciate their human rights dangers.

At the very least, we must now seriously question the business models that have emerged from the dominant social media platforms.

Maybe the internet should be rewired from the grassroots, rather than be led by digital oligarchs’ business needs.

Dr Sarah Joseph is director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University, in Melbourne, Australia.This article was first published by The Conversation and has been republished by Asia Pacific Report under a Creative Commons licence.

• More social media reports

West Papua has experienced a “significant aggravation” of the human rights situation in the past two years compared to previous years, says a new report from more than 40 faith-based and civil rights organisations.

“Reports by local human rights defenders describe an alarming shrinking of democratic space,” says the report.

“Although Indonesian President Joko Widodo pushed economic development and granted clemency to five long-term political prisoners, the police strictly limited even the most peaceful dissident political activities.”

READ MORE: Pacific Media Watch on Indonesia’s hit back at Oceania nations

The report says that Indigenous Papuans – particularly women – “continued to have a high risk of becoming victims of human rights violations.”

It adds that “racist attitudes toward West Papuans among the police and military, insufficient legal protection, the lack of proper law enforcement, inconsistent policy implementation and corruptive practices among government officials contributed to the impunity of security forces.”

Local journalists in West Papua also continued to face “intimidation and obstruction” from the security forces.

This is the fifth report of the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) covering events from January 2015 until December 2016.

Human rights analysis
More than 40 organisations in West Papua, Jakarta, and worldwide have brought their analysis on the human rights and conflict situation in West Papua together.

The executive summary of the 218-pages report explains how several human rights standards have deteriorated over the last two years.

The report is compiled by the International Coalition for Papua (ICP) and the German Westpapua-Netzwerk (WPN). The executive summary says:

“The years 2015 and 2016 were characterised by a significant aggravation of the human rights situation in West Papua compared to previous years. The term West Papua refers to the Indonesian easternmost provinces of ‘Papua’ and ‘Papua Barat’. Reports by local human rights defenders describe an alarming shrinking of democratic space.

“Although Indonesian President Joko Widodo pushed economic development and granted clemency to five long-term political prisoners, the police strictly limited even the most peaceful dissident political activities.

“Indigenous Papuans, particularly women, continued to have a high risk of becoming victims of human rights violations. Racist attitudes toward West Papuans among the police and military, insufficient legal protection, the lack of proper law enforcement, inconsistent policy implementation and corruptive practices amongst government officials contributed to the impunity of security forces.

“Government critics and activists faced legal prosecution with varying charges. Using a charge of treason (‘makar’) remained common against non-violent offenders.

Increasing ‘incitement’ charges
“West Papuan political activists also faced an increasing number of charges incitement or violence despite the non-violence of protest and almost all activism.

“The deterioration of the political and civil rights situation in West Papua during the past two years was most obvious in the sheer number of political arrests.

“Those arrests drastically increased to 1083 in 2015, and then quadrupled in 2016 to 5361 arrests, in tandem with growing political protest for self-determination.

“Almost all of the arrests came during peaceful protest in support of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). In addition, the Indonesian government and the regional police in West Papua increasingly restricted the right to freedom of opinion and expression using official statements (Makhlumat) issued by the Papuan Regional Police in 2016.

“Local journalists in West Papua faced continued intimidation and obstruction from the security forces. In comparison to previous years, the number of reported cases against local journalists has slightly decreased throughout the reporting period 2015 and 2016.

“President Joko Widodo’s promise in May 2015, to make West Papua freely accessible to foreign journalists and international observers was not implemented. Foreign journalists were in an increasing number of cases prevented from entering West Papua or when permitted to enter, they faced obstruction, surveillance, intimidation and physical violence.

“International human rights organisations and humanitarian organisations such as the Inter­national Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) remained banned from freely accessing West Papua.

Threatened, obstructed
“Human rights defenders in West Papua had to work under fear of being monitored, threatened and obstructed by the security forces. The killing of well-known human rights defender Joberth Jitmau, marked the sad highlight of attacks against human rights defenders during these two years.

“The police termed Jitmau’s killing a traffic accident and did not conduct a criminal investigation. Jitmau’s case was a representative example of the widespread impunity in West Papua.

“Only in rare instances were security forces prosecuted in public or military trials. Two of the three cases of prosecution resulted in considerably low sentences for the perpetrators in view of the severity of the criminal offences.

“Security force members also continued to use torture and ill-treatment as a common response to political protest or incidents of alleged disturbance of public order. Extra-judicial killings occurred particularly often as an act of revenge or retaliation for violent acts or other non-violent interactions with members of the security forces.

“The situation with regard to economic, social and cultural rights in West Papua was stagnant. The quality of education in West Papua remained considerably low, due to poor management of the education system, inadequate competencies, high absence rates amongst teachers, and inadequate funding. (Less than 1 percent of Papua Province’s annual budget goes to education.)

“There is still no culturally appropriate curriculum in place, which is capable of improving the educational situation of indigenous Papuan children and of preserving local cultures.

“Health care and education remained in a devas­tating condition, far below the national average, despite the large amount of special autonomy funds that flow to the two administrative provinces Papua and Papua Barat.

Strong imbalance
“There is a strong imbalance in the fulfillment of minimum standards in terms of health, education, food and labor rights between the urban areas and the remote inland areas of West Papua.

“Indigenous Papuans, who mostly reside outside the urban centres, suffer the most of this imbalance. Both Papuan provinces are amongst the regions with the highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS infections and child mortality of any ‘Indonesian province’, while the quality of health services is alarmingly low.

“Insufficient equipment in rural health care institutions and a lack of adequate health monitoring and response mechanisms remained strikingly evident. These shortcomings were highlighted when a pertussis epidemic broke out in the remote highland regency of Nduga, killing least 51 children and three adults within a span of three months in late 2015. Malnutrition enabled the rapid spread of the epidemic.

“The case also mirrors the government’s growing challenge to guarantee indigenous Papuans right to food. Palm oil plantations and other agri­cultural mega-projects have led to the destruction of local food sources, livestock and access to clean drinking water.

“Cases of domestic violence are often settled in non-legal ways, which fail to bring justice for the victims and lack a deterrent effect for perpetrators. Women living with HIV/AIDS are particularly often facing discrimination and stigmatization.

“The very existence of West Papuans is threatened by the uncontrolled migration from other parts of Indonesia. This particularly applies to the urban centers where they have largely become a marginalised minority facing strong economic competition.

“In most rural areas, where indigenous Papuans are still the majority, government-promoted large-scale natural resource exploitation projects attract migrants and continue to cause severe environmental degra­dation as well as the destruction of live­ stock of indigenous communities.

“Govern­ment institutions continued to facilitate the interests of private Indonesian and foreign companies. This practice negatively impacts indigenous people’s right to their ancestral lands and resources as well as their right to determine their development.

“Resource extraction often means clearing large forest areas and polluting of water resources, thereby forcing indigenous communities to change their very way of life. Destruction of forests and hunting grounds as a life source puts an additional burden on women, in particular.”

• Read the full report here
• Banned West Papua independence petition handed to UN

The scene happens every day in capitals across south-east Asia: a strategy session in an ambassador’s ornate sitting room over coffee with like-minded senior diplomats from the US, Canada, and EU member states trying to figure out how to persuade a national government to reverse course on human rights.

On this particular day in Bangkok the ask was a tough one, demanding the government stop arresting and roughing up critics, chastising and censoring the media, and cracking down on public protests.

Human Rights Watch got a rare invite, and during the inevitable brainstorming, I asked “Where is Australia, why aren’t they here?”

Eyes lowered and heads shook ever so slightly around the room. Talking like a friend has fallen off the wagon, one diplomat said “We’re not sure of them anymore. They’re going a different way.”

Left unsaid in this polite circle is that the human rights principles once a core part of Australia’s foreign policy have been undermined by its single-minded determination to stop boats of asylum seekers and migrants “by hook or by crook.”

Last year was a hard one for human rights in many parts of Asia, with governments arresting and jailing critics in opposition parties and civil society, trying to put the internet genie back in the bottle through censorship and cyber-crime laws, and cracking down on NGOs and community groups with new draconian regulations.

Repression in Thailand is in full swing under the military government. Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia has arrested dozens of people for publicly criticising his government. Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam routinely arrest and jail dissidents using ruling-party controlled courts.

Myanmar has a new government but no solution to end the repression of ethnic Rohingyas. Religious minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia face blasphemy charges, death threats, and massacres.

Rights-respecting solutions rare
Australia is rarely pushing for rights-respecting solutions these days – and more than that, is too often part of the problem. Politicians trapped in the refugee policy dialogue in Canberra frequently fail to recognise that Australia’s boat push-back policies, and offshoring asylum seekers into abusive conditions of detention in Nauru and on Manus Island, are seen as a green-light by Asian governments to do the same: send asylum seekers and refugees back into harm’s way or lock them up in indefinite detention.

For example, during the south-east Asia boat people crisis in May 2015, the Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian navies played a cruel game of “human ping-pong” by pushing away boats of starving and sick Rohingya.

At a time when the governments were prepared to let these people float around waiting to die, then prime minister Tony Abbott did the unconscionable by justifying those tactics, saying “if other countries choose to do that, frankly that is almost certainly absolutely necessary if the scourge of people smuggling is to be beaten.”

It suddenly became much harder for non-governmental organisations, governments, and UN agencies to persuade those three countries to bring the Rohingya to shore.

By soliciting governments to help stop boats, Australia also ends up looking the other way on other rights abuses. By cooperating with Australia to take back boats of their nationals, both Sri Lanka and Vietnam know they could count on Australia not to publicly raise concerns about the rights abuses that drove those people into the boats in the first place.

Push backs by other countries are also met with silent acquiescence from Canberra. Australia said nothing when Thailand sent back 109 ethnic Uighurs in July to China to face torture in custody and long prison terms, and has kept silent as Beijing pursues its dissidents in Bangkok.

China arrests and sends fleeing North Koreans back to the brutal regime of dictator Kim Jong-Un, and is met by deafening silence from down under.

Praised Cambodia
Australia has praised Cambodia for signing the September 2014 Cambodia-Australia deal to resettle refugees from Nauru to Phnom Penh. Prime minister Hun Sen told Australia that Cambodia was safe for refugees to resettle – but don’t tell that to ethnic Montagnards fleeing political and religious persecution in Vietnam who Cambodia hunted down in the border forests of Ratanakiri province and forced back into Hanoi’s hands, all after the Australia deal was signed.

Meanwhile, Cambodia is laughing all the way to the bank with at least $55 million of Australia’s taxpayer dollars for taking just five refugees so far from Nauru. All this for a deal that the UN high commissioner for refugees termed “a worrying departure from international norms” of refugee protection.

With the recent high court ruling, Australia now faces the return of 267 asylum seekers to Nauru and Manus Island, where they face possible renewed physical and sexual assault, and life in limbo.

Australia’s international reputation has suffered enough – it’s time to do the right thing by accepting its responsibilities, not only as a party to the UN Refugee Convention but also as a responsible neighbour and member of the international community, and provide this group with fair and timely refugee status determination in Australia.

And for those found to be refugees, let them stay.

Phil Robertson is the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. This article was first published in The Guardian.