New Zealand journalist and video story teller Cole Martin has given a heartfelt and challenging personal account of what it is like living in Palestine under siege.

At a recent public kōrero hosted by the Whānau Community Centre and Hub in Auckland’s Mt Roskill, he described the challenges and highlights of several extended visits to Palestine bearing witness as a Christian — the most recent trip for six months last year.

Since returning to Aotearoa New Zealand he has been giving kōrero at public meetings and church groups, talking to news media, and exhibiting collections of his photographic evidence.

• READ MORE: Improvements in Pacific media freedom, but a shameful silence on Gaza ‘death trap’ — Pacific Media Watch
• Other Talanoa TV reports

He spoke to hosts Nik Naidu and David Robie of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) for Talanoa TV’s Community Lens programme.

“I’ve been to Palestine a number of times over the last few years, mostly recently I was living there for six months in 2025,” he says.

“I first got became aware of what was happening and got involved when I travelled there in 2019 and I kind of saw the tip of the iceberg of how bad things were.

“And I was really shocked and when I came back to Aotearoa and hearing some of the narratives going on and the ignorance of what was happening on the ground — particularly narratives within my own Christian faith community.

“People were making the assumption that the modern state of Israel was a continuation of the ancient land of the Israelites, and a lot of other harmful narratives that go with that.”

Journalist Cole Martin on Palestine                 Video: Talanoa TV

• Sky TV Channel 83 Face TV : Community Lens Show
• Episode 05 – Palestine with Cole Martin, Rotuman Language Week 2026 Hula Fit, Kite Festival — as seen on TV

Community Lens is a programme “celebrating local events in our communities and conversations with leaders and residents”

It is a TV show that highlights what’s happening in our local communities.

We explore the stories, events, people, and grassroots initiatives that are shaping our neighbourhoods. And we help amplify the voices of community leaders, organisers, and residents.

Through celebrating and better understanding our diverse communities, Community Lens aims to improve social cohesion and help build a better future for all people and our beautiful nation.

Featuring and appreciation to :
Cole Martin
Dr David Robie
Asia Pacific Media Network
Niki Maro & the Hula Fit Team
NZ Rotuman Community Centre
Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group
Auckland Kite Show
and all other participants and interviewees

PRODUCER
The Whānau Community Trust

PRODUCTION MANAGERS
Ernestina Bonsu-Maro and Rachael Mario

Hosted by Nik Naidu, Ernestina Bonsu-Maro and Rachael Mario

A Talanoa TV Production with Face TV Sky Channel 83

Broadcast on 1 July 2026.

REVIEW: By Lee Duffield

The journalist, professor and peace activist Dr David Robie, was one of a media party on the ill-fated voyage of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before its sinking by French security operatives in Auckland Harbour.

He wrote a definitive book about the lead-up in the region to the fatal sinking of the ship with limpet mines; unmasking of the plot made in Paris; attempts to obtain justice and a long aftermath with demands for empowerment by former “colonial” people to prevent such outrages in their island homelands.

The book is Eyes of Fire, first published in 1986, then successively updated as the story unfolded, with new facts and consequences of the outrage coming to light.

It ran to three revised editions, the latest out now to commemorate 40 years since the attack took place. It therefore marked 40 years since the death of the Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, a Portuguese-born Dutch national, aged 35, father of two children, Marelle and Paul, drowned on board after the second of two blasts that hit the ship.

Eyes of Fire is a highly professional work of journalism, built out of investigation and documentation of facts, then fashioned into an accessible read; illustrated also with easy-to-comprehend maps and diagrams, showing where the ship travelled and where the bombs were planted against its hull, plus photographs from a copious accumulation built up as the Greenpeace movement generated publicity for its actions worldwide.

Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
One section describes the Rainbow Warrior, appreciatively and affectionately: a former fisheries research vessel, a trawler type, 50-metres in length, with some difficulty converted for sail as well as power, made into a “proud campaign ship”, painted a strong green with a long rainbow-emblem along the sides.

“The wheelhouse was rather lumpy and unattractive but the rest of the ship was appealing. She had a high North Sea prow, graceful sheerline and round-the-corner stern.”

For the record…
The Rainbow Warrior sailed from Hawai’i on the Pacific Voyage — taking on board seven journalists and some leading figures from the Pacific communities, to the Marshall Islands — where it evacuated the inhabitants of a nuclear afflicted island, Rongelap, to an uninhabited island Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll.

Pacific distances are great. They transported 350 people — with house lumber and belongings — in four trips, 250 km there and back.

The islanders were suffering from contamination by the infamous upwind explosion of the experimental thermonuclear weapon, Castle Bravo, in 1954 — causing thyroid disorders, cancers and constant miscarriages and birthing disorders.

Dissatisfied that health officials sent by the United States administration were more interested in research than care, they decided to leave. The key instigator was the late Marshall Islands legislator Senator Jeton Anjain. He was one of two Pacific Islands leaders with prominent roles in Robie’s narrative.

The other was Oscar Temaru, a nuclear-free town mayor in Tahiti, also elected as the territory’s President on five occasions.

Temaru, now 81, spoke for many when he said:

“The sad truth is that the only ones who tried to help us are the Greenpeace ecologists…”

According to folklore among Greenpeace founders, a native American woman named “Eyes of Fire” told of a legend that where there was dispossession and despoilation of the land and culture, in time mythical warriors — deliverers — would come, who would mend and restore both. So the peaceship offering aid would be a “Rainbow Warrior”.

The author, Robie, in his news despatches for Radio New Zealand and other media (for which he was awarded the 1985 NZ Media Peace Prize, judged the evacuation project a change for Greenpeace towards humanitarian work connected with environmental destruction:

“This isn’t a game or the sort of action publicity stunt that Greenpeace would do so successfully.”

But the next part of the journey was another dramatic action, in Marshall Islands, at the US missile testing base on Kwajalein Atoll. A party from the ship went ashore, got through perimeter wires and hoisted a banner inscribed “Stop Star Wars” onto a space tracking dome, escaping before the arrival of security guards.

The banner was a reference to the American Strategic Defence Initiative, “Star Wars”, testing for which had increased the heavy traffic of missiles of different levels at the Kwajalein range (dubbed by the empire as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Site).

The scene was then being set for the tragedy as the vessel made its way 5000 km to Auckland through friendly territory, calling in at Kiribati, the country hosting the former Christmas Island base for British nuclear tests (1957-58), and Vanuatu, where the leader of the then five year-old Republic, Father Walter Lini, a champion for a nuclear free Pacific, organised a big public welcome.

The strike
Celebration fitted the mood of the “Warrior” crew a lot of the time, in this account; a group of 11 skilled and idealistic younger people, sharing a mission they considered important to the world, and enjoying it as an adventure. They wanted to protect nature and promote peace, never violent, but charismatic, given to direct action, often enough dangerous.

They had others on board — in the case of David Robie, for an extended time, 11 days, time enough to get to know the characters and introduce them to readers in his book.

A further leg of the voyage was intended, to take them to Moruroa Atoll — where France was continuing with underground nuclear testing — as flagship for a flotilla of protest boats. In the event, the flotilla sailed, led by another Greepeace ship, Greenpeace III. One boat was arrested penetrating the 12-kilometre territorial limit around the atoll, where a series of tests was about to begin.

The planned disruption of activities on Moruroa may have been the death warrant for Rainbow Warrior — a solution to the riddle of what purposes its destruction was supposed to serve.

As the ship made its way towards Auckland, two French infiltrators got to work in that City, penetrating the Greenpeace operation. A group of military divers from a training base in Corsica was en route to New Zealand on a charter boat and two officers of France’s security service, DGSE, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, flew in under cover as a honeymoon couple.

Rainbow Warrior came in on Sunday, 7 July 1985, surrounded by an escort of small boats and was sunk at the dock in shallow water just before midnight on 10 July.

Divers using an inflatable boat set off the two explosions. Prieur and Mafart were spotted picking up one of the divers on a beach by men doing night watch at their boat club, who got the number of their vehicle, enabling the police to apprehend them, and begin a tortured process to try and secure justice.

Aftermath
Updating of the book takes in the negotiations over holding Prieur and Mafart, their eventual transfer to France and subsequent early release; the fate of other conspirators spirited home, promoted, decorated, “looked after” in early retirement; intensive and large scale work by the New Zealand police to find out about the charter boat carrying some of the divers, said to have transferred them onto a submarine, the Rubis; and investigative work by the French press to sheet home responsibility for the attack.

Very soon after Rainbow Warrior was sunk, the Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, was sacked and the head of the DGSE Admiral Pierre Lacoste resigned. The book has a positive impression of the replacement Minister, Paul Quiles and the Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius, who admitted the obvious — that it had been done by French agents and was apologetic.

Subsequent negotiations between New Zealand and France, under United Nations auspices were made very difficult; a formal apology was avoided for some time; eventually both New Zealand and Greenpeace received financial packages in compensation and exemplary damages.

After the 1996 death of François Mitterrand, French President at the time, an investigation by Le Monde turned up circumstantial evidence that he knew of the attack in advance and a statement by Lacoste that he had approved it. Fabius evidently had not known.

Mitterrand’s motive was said to have been realpolitik — to support nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union in tandem with the US, which supplied France with highly strategic computer technology.

Reviewer intercession…
Mitterrand, as a highly equivocal and manipulative politician, walked a tightrope, always watching his soft electoral margins — in this case knowing there was 60 percent support for nuclear testing in France.

In office for four years in 1985, it may have been a new government still failing to face down entrenched security identities, undisciplined, considering themselves to be “deep state”, attached to violent solutions, with potential to go rogue.

Most of Robie’s work here is a narrative, a strong true story, but it has space for analysis, and in particular registers the correlation between devastation brought by the nuclear testing, and colonial management and manipulation of islands affairs.

The post-war wave of independence had come to the Pacific, though not to French Polynesia nor New Caledonia. In addition, the United States still held its Micronesian dependencies in trust or, for Sovereign states, via signed compacts of free association, accompanied by substantial aid payments.

France’s position against independence is incentivised by maintaining colonies of more than 200,000 settlers; and in New Caledonia, the nickel deposits, around 15 percent of world resources, as well as the 200 kilometre territorial zone off the long coast of Grande Terre island, opening onto as yet unsurveyed undersea resources.

For the Americans, the priority has been both weapons testing and maintaining a strategic barrier against Russia, then China.

Old problems, future challenges
These considerations help to address the always unanswered question of what the plotters thought they had to gain. The book suggests a clumsy and excessive attempt to stop the ship leading a flotilla to Moruroa Atoll as most likely.

It goes on to identify same-old patterns of resistance in latter-day moves, successful, to get better recognition of the impacts of nuclear contamination and in the moves through international forums — such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, South Pacific Forum, United Nations agencies, the international courts — to get recognition and action on the impacts of climate change.

Pacific communities mindful of the rising seas, and other problems like impacts on sea-life, have struggled to get a hearing, finding, again, that “great powers” outside the region which hold resources that can help hold off the crisis, hold back their response.

Nuclear testing in the atmosphere was made to stop in 1974; tests underground on the atolls continued to 1996, leaving a very brief interregnum before global warming reared its head.

The current edition of Eyes of Fire has a prologue by Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister from 1999-2008, a staunch keeper of the faith in a nuclear-free Pacific. Saying, “storm clouds are gathering”, she warns against renewed militarisation especially with Australia and perhaps other Pacific states acquiring nuclear submarines under the 2021 AUKUS agreement.

It is time for “de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific”, writes Clark in her contribution to the new edition. With its peace policy, New Zealand wanted to be “a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering”.

Clark warns withdrawal of funding from the United Nations, led by the US, is a new threat: “Its humanitarian, development, health, human rights, political and peacekeeping, scientific and cultural arms all face fiscal crises.”

David Robie reports on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1985 events by Greenpeace, sending the new purpose-built ship, the new Rainbow Warrior, sometimes known as Rainbow Warrior III, to carry out independent radiation research. He follows up the lives and careers of the crew members and the islanders they worked with, several of whom have passed away.

While the writer’s own message, as in much good journalism, emerges from true handling of the facts, Robie does privilege a quotation from the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, Russel Norman, on the crew of Rainbow Warrior, to close the story:

“They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific. Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?”

• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie (Little Island Press), 2025, 225 pages.

Dr Lee Duffield reported on Australia’s dispute with France over atmospheric testing for ABC News in Sydney and then from Paris as the ABC European Correspondent. His work entailed monitoring police actions against Kanak activists in New Caledonia, including the killings on Ouvéa Island; confrontations with French Ministers over the test programme; and negotiations between France and New Zealand, in Paris, on Rainbow Warrior, especially the jailing then early release of Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. He later taught Journalism at QUT in Brisbane and was a contributor to Pacific Journalism Review. Dr Duffield is also one of the co-owners of Independent Australia, and the chair of its editorial board. This review is republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

A massive Stop Wars Aotearoa coalition rally and march on the US Consulate took place in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau last Saturday, 11 April 2026.

“We’re going to stand up for the people of Iran, stand up for the people of Palestine, stand up for the people of Lebanon, stand up for the people of Venezuela, stand up for the people of Cuba, stand up for this fight against the American empire,” declared organiser Joe Carolan.

US and Israeli imperialism was strongly denounced by political, civil society, human rights and migrant speakers.

Protesters staged a “die-in” on the street in front of the consulate to mark the targeted slaughter of 168 children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the southeastern Iranian city of Minab by US bombs. This tragedy took place on February 28, the opening day of the illegal and unprovoked US-Israel war on the Islamic Republic.

Photographs: David Robie

• See other images and video clips
• Full story — Protesters rally across Aotearoa in condemnation of Israel, US ‘warmongering’ and ‘shameful’ NZ

Stop Wars Aotearoa

1 of 13

The legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific is unfinished business. From the 1997 disappearance of journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud to the 2025 return of the Rainbow Warrior, these stories are part of a continuous struggle for justice.

In the Pacific, the “Atomic Age” and the climate crisis are not competing issues, they are the same fight for habitability and truth. To face our future, we must first address the lingering shadows of the past.

In “French” Polynesia, there are concerns about the mysterious fate of former anti-nuclear investigative journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, known as “JPK” (his byline),  who was editor of the now closed Les Nouvelles de Tahiti newspaper.

Early in 2015, a judge upheld prosecution against three men accused of a kidnapping that led his death in Tahiti in 1997.

More than a decade earlier, JK’s family lodged an allegation of murder with the police following claims that he had been assassinated by a (now disbanded) local presidential militia. An investigating commission had alleged that three men, Rere Puputauki, Tino Mara and Tutu Manate, had abducted JK and dumped his body at sea.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports
• The Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years on: re-energising for global peace
• Eyes of Fire website (Little Island Press)

Twenty two years later, the family are still waiting for justice, and fed up with France’s “investigation”. When the Rainbow Warrior bombing on 10 July 1985 is set against its broader political context in the Pacific, it can be seen that this event was much more than the dramatic, isolated episode against the Greenpeace flagship as portrayed by most New Zealand media.

An “Eyes of Fire” video project in 2015, which included more than 40 student journalists, also demonstrated the importance of a continuing interpretation of these events for the future of Aotearoa New Zealand and its citizens. The students looked back at the past, but were asking questions relevant to the present and future when they interrogated me and my Greenpeace colleagues involved in the Rongelap voyage.

My own baptism in French nuclear arrogance and perfidy was thanks to the late Swedish activist, researcher, and writer Bengt Danielsson, who was awarded the 1991 Right Livelihood Award for “exposing the tragic results… of French colonialism”. He and his wife Marie-Thérèse Danielsson wrote the classic and chilling books Moruroa, Mon Amour and Poisoned Reign.

In 2021, a French investigation team published a book and website that introduced new revelations about the nuclear testing programme and its health and environmental harm inflicted on Tahitians. The book, Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie, by Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, and the associated website Moruroa Files, were a forensic analysis of about 2,000 French government documents declassified in 2013.

Consistently lied about the tests
According to former Auckland University of Technology scholar Ena Manuireva, who was born in Mangareva (an atoll near the French nuclear testing sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa), these publications confirmed what Tahitian people already knew: “That since 1966, the French government has consistently lied about and concealed the deadly consequences of their nuclear tests, which they now seem to acknowledge, to the health of the populations and their environment.”

Following the third test after French nuclear bombs began in the Pacific, on 7 September 1966, local Tahitian lawmaker John Teariki challenged then French president Charles de Gaulle by saying: “No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenseless ones — bear the burden.”

“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.”

De Gaulle ignored the advice. And it took another 30 years and 190 further tests before France stopped its ruthless nuclear pollution in the Pacific.

France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) was reported in early 2025 to have spent 90,000 euros in a big public relations campaign in a vain attempt to discredit the research in Toxique and the Moruroa Files, according to documents obtained by the investigative outlet Disclose.

The CEA published 5000 copies of its booklet, titled ‘Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences’ and distributed them across Oceania.

The Rainbow Warrior bombing, with the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, was a terrible tragedy. But a greater tragedy remains in the horrendous legacy of Pacific nuclear testing for the people of Rongelap, the Marshall Islands and “French” Polynesia; associated military oppression in Kanaky New Caledonia; and lingering secrecy.

New Zealand and the PIF states should now require full investigation of nuclear testing in French Polynesia and seek a more robust compensation programme than currently exists. New Zealand and the PIF states also need to take a less ambiguous position on decolonisation in the Pacific, give greater priority to that issue and seek a “re-energising” of the activities of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation.

This is especially important in relation to “French” Polynesia, Kanaky New Caledonia and the end of the Bougainville transitional political autonomy period with a unilateral declaration of independence slated for 1 September 2027.

Decolonisation is also a critical issue that has a bearing on New Zealand’s relations with Indonesia, particularly over the six Melanesian provinces that make up the region known in the Pacific as “West Papua” and Indonesia’s growing politically motivated role in the region over climate change aid.

A massive new transmigration programme under current President Prabowo Subianto is taking place at the same time as Jakarta’s “ecocidal” deforestation regime intensifies in the Melanesian region with the destruction of millions of hectares of tropical rainforest.

“The wealth of West Papua — gas from Bintuni Bay, copper and gold from the Grasberg mine. Palm oil from Merauke — has been sucked out of our land for six decades, while our people are replaced with Javanese settlers loyal to Jakarta,” says a West Papuan leader, Benny Wenda.

Taking the lead
It is critically important that New Zealand and the PIF states take a lead from the Melanesian Spearhead Group — at least those states other than Fiji and Papua New Guinea, which have both been co-opted by Indonesian bribery through economic aid.

They should take a more pro-active stance on West Papuan human rights and socio-political development, with a view to encouraging a process of political self-determination and a new, more credible United Nations supervised vote replacing the 1968 “Act of No Choice”.

With regard to climate change issues, it is essential to address the lack of an officially recognised category for “climate refugee” under international law. It is also important to seek an international framework, convention, protocol and specific guidelines that can provide protection and assistance for people crossing international borders because of climate change.

The existing rights guaranteed refugees — specifically the right to international humanitarian assistance and the right of return — must be extended to “climate refugees” or climate migrants.

This issue should be acted on systematically and with a practical vision by the PIF with the Australian and New Zealand governments. Australia and New Zealand need to respond to Pacific Island States’ (PIS) concerns over climate change and global warming with a greater sense of urgency and resolve.

Regional and country specific climate change plans and policies are needed to deal with large numbers of Pacific refugees or climate-forced migrants, in the event of worsening climate-change scenarios in the future.

This is especially important for New Zealand, as a country with a significant Pacific population (442,632 — 8.9 percent, 2023 NZ Census) with island communities well integrated into the national infrastructure and as a country that is well placed to welcome more Pacific Islanders.

In April 2025, the New Zealand government announced plans to double defence spending as a share of GDP over the next eight years under its long-awaited Defence Capability Plan.

Trump-inspired global arms race
However, the priority appeared to be New Zealand joining a new Donald Trump-inspired global arms race while the country faced no threat, at the expense of the climate crisis, nuclear free and Pacific peace-making capacity that have forged the country’s global reputation.

Speculation was also rife about the possibility of New Zealand joining a second tier of the controversial AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the US, which would raise geopolitical tensions with little benefit for the Pacific region.

As Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson has remarked, the people of Rongelap changed the course of history for Pacific nuclear justice by taking control of their destiny with the help of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior.

However, the relocation of the islanders four decades ago has revealed that the legacy of nuclear tests remains unfinished business.

“In the current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament,” says former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.

“New Zealanders were clear — we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

“On the fateful last voyage,” reflects Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman, “the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, look at us in black and white through the lens of time, and lay down the wero — the challenge. They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific.

“Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?’

To Ngāti Kura kaumatua Dover Samuels, the Rainbow Warrior was “probably the biggest battleship that ever traversed the oceans of the world. But she wasn’t armed with guns, she was armed with peace”.

An edited extract from the final chapter of New Zealand journalist Dr David Robie’s recent book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing. He sailed with the Greenpeace crew to Rongelap Atoll for the evacuation of the nuclear health-damaged community and remained on board for 11 weeks. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa.

• David is speaking about the Rainbow Warrior and nuclear justice tomorrow, 24 March 2026, at Grey Lynn Library, 6-8pm, as part of EcoFest.

Pacific Media, a new regional research journal, made its debut today with a collection of papers on issues challenging the future, such as independent journalism amid “intensifying geostrategic competition”.

The papers have been largely drawn from an inaugural Pacific International Media conference hosted by The University of the South Pacific in the Fiji capital Suva in July last year.

“It was the first Pacific media conference of its kind in 20 years, convened to address the unprecedented shifts and challenges facing the region’s media systems,” said conference coordinator and edition editor Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor in journalism at USP.

• READ MORE: The Pacific Media portal
• Pacific Journalism Review
• Pacific Media 2024 conference reports

“These include pressures arising from governance and political instability, intensifying geostrategic competition—particularly between China and the United States—climate change and environmental degradation, as well as the profound impacts of digital disruption and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Topics included in the volume include “how critical journalism can survive” in the Pacific; “reporting the nuclear Pacific”; “Behind the mic” with Talking Point podcaster Sashi Singh, the “coconut wireless” and community news in Hawai’i,; women’s political empowerment in the Asia Pacific; “weaponising the partisan WhatsApp group in Indonesia; and “mapping the past to navigate the future” in a major Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) publishing project.

Other contributors include journalists and media academics from Australia and New Zealand featuring a “Blood on the tracks” case study in investigative journalism practice, and digital weather media coverage in the Pacific.

This inaugural publication of Pacific Media has been produced jointly by The University of the South Pacific and the New Zealand-based Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), with Dr Amit Sarwal, one of the conference organisers, joining Dr Singh as co-editor.

Designer is Pacific Journalism Review’s Del Abcede.

APMN managing editor Dr David Robie welcomed the new publication, saying “this journal will carry on the fine and innovative research mahi (work) established by Pacific Journalism Review during a remarkable 30 years contributing to the region”.

It ceased publication last year, but is still ranked as a Q2 journal by SCOPUS.

The new journal will open up some new doors for community participation.

Both the PJR and PM research archives are in the public domain at the Tuwhera digital collection at Auckland University of Technology.

Khairiah A Rahman has been appointed by APMN as Pacific Media editor and her first edition with a collection of papers from the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Vietnam last October will also be published shortly.

Published with permission from Asia Pacific Media Network.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark warned activists and campaigners in a speech on the deck of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior III last night to be wary of global “storm clouds” and the renewed existential threat of nuclear weapons.

Speaking on her reflections on four decades after the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985, she said that New Zealand had a lot to be proud of but the world was now in a “precarious” state.

Clark praised Greenpeace over its long struggle, challenging the global campaigners to keep up the fight for a nuclear-free Pacific.

• READ MORE: ‘Storm clouds are gathering’: 40 years on from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
• Operation Exodus: The Rainbow Warrior’s last Pacific mission
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

“For New Zealand, having been proudly nuclear-free since the mid-1980s, life has got a lot more complicated for us as well, and I have done a lot of campaigning against New Zealand signing up to any aspect of the AUKUS arrangement because it seems to me that being associated with any agreement that supplies nuclear ship technology to Australia is more or less encouraging the development of nuclear threats in the South Pacific,” she said.

“While I am not suggesting that Australians are about to put nuclear weapons on them, we know that others do. This is not the Pacific that we want.

“It is not the Pacific that we fought for going back all those years.

“So we need to be very concerned about these storm clouds gathering.”

Lessons for humanity
Clark was prime minister 1999-2008 and served as a minister in David Lange’s Labour government that passed New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987 – two years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents.

She was also head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2009-2017.

“When you think 40 years on, humanity might have learned some lessons. But it seems we have to repeat the lessons over and over again, or we will be dragged on the path of re-engagement with those who use nuclear weapons as their ultimate defence,” Clark told the Greenpeace activists, crew and guests.

“Forty years on, we look back with a lot of pride, actually, at how New Zealand responded to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. We stood up with the passage of the nuclear-free legislation in 1987, we stood up with a lot of things.

“All of this is under threat; the international scene now is quite precarious with respect to nuclear weapons. This is an existential threat.”

Nuclear-free Pacific reflections with Helen Clark         Video: Greenpeace

In response to Tahitian researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva who spoke earlier about the legacy of a health crisis as a result of 30 years of French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa, she recalled her own thoughts.

“It reminds us of why we were so motivated to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific because we remember the history of what happened in French Polynesia, in the Marshall Islands, in the South Australian desert, at Maralinga, to the New Zealand servicemen who were sent up in the navy ships, the Rotoiti and the Pukaki, in the late 1950s, to stand on deck while the British exploded their bombs [at Christmas Island in what is today Kiribati].

“These poor guys were still seeking compensation when I was PM with the illnesses you [Ena] described in French Polynesia.

Testing ground for ‘others’
“So the Pacific was a testing ground for ‘others’ far away and I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’. Right? It wasn’t so safe.

“Mind you, they regarded French Polynesia as France.

“David Robie asked me to write the foreword to the new edition of his book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and it brought back so many memories of those times because those of you who are my age will remember that the 1980s were the peak of the Cold War.

“We had the Reagan administration [in the US] that was actively preparing for war. It was a terrifying time. It was before the demise of the Soviet Union. And nuclear testing was just part of that big picture where people were preparing for war.

“I think that the wonderful development in New Zealand was that people knew enough to know that we didn’t want to be defended by nuclear weapons because that was not mutually assured survival — it was mutually assured destruction.”

New Zealand took a stand, Clark said, but taking that stand led to the attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French state-backed terrorism where tragically Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira lost his life.

“I remember I was on my way to Nairobi for a conference for women, and I was in Zimbabwe, when the news came through about the bombing of a boat in Auckland harbour.

‘Absolutely shocking’
“It was absolutely shocking, we had never experienced such a thing. I recall when I returned to New Zealand, [Prime Minister] David Lange one morning striding down to the party caucus room and telling us before it went public that it was without question that French spies had planted the bombs and the rest was history.

“It was a very tense time. Full marks to Greenpeace for keeping up the struggle for so long — long before it was a mainstream issue Greenpeace was out there in the Pacific taking on nuclear testing.

“Different times from today, but when I wrote the foreword for David’s book I noted that storm clouds were gathering again around nuclear weapons and issues. I suppose that there is so much else going on in a tragic 24 news cycle — catastrophe day in and day out in Gaza, severe technology and lethal weapons in Ukraine killing people, wherever you look there are so many conflicts.

“The international agreements that we have relied are falling into disrepair. For example, if I were in Europe I would be extremely worried about the demise of the intermediate range missile weapons pact which has now been abandoned by the Americans and the Russians.

“And that governs the deployment of medium range missiles in Europe.

“The New Start Treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty between what was the Soviet Union and the US expires next year. Will it be renegotiated in the current circumstances? Who knows?”

With the Non-proliferation Treaty, there are acknowledged nuclear powers who had not signed the treaty — “and those that do make very little effort to live up to the aspiration, which is to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons”.

Developments with Iran
“We have seen recently the latest developments with Iran, and for all of Iran’s many sins let us acknowledge that it is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” she said.

“It did subject itself, for the most part, to the inspections regime. Israel, which bombed it, is not a party to the treaty, and doesn’t accept inspections.

“There are so many double standards that people have long complained about the Non-Proliferation Treaty where the original five nuclear powers are deemed okay to have them, somehow, whereas there are others who don’t join at all.

“And then over the Ukraine conflict we have seen worrying threats of the use of nuclear weapons.”

Clark warned that we the use of artificial intelligence it would not be long before asking it: “How do I make a nuclear weapon?”

“It’s not so difficult to make a dirty bomb. So we should be extremely worried about all these developments.”

Then Clark spoke about the “complications” facing New Zealand.

Teariki’s message to De Gaulle
In his address, Ena Manuireva started off by quoting the late Tahitian parliamentarian John Teariki who had courageously appealed to General Charles De Gaulle in 1966 after France had already tested three nuclear devices:

“No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenceless ones — bear the burden.”

“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.

“Then, later, our leukemia and cancer patients would not be able to accuse you of being the cause of their illness.

“Then, our future generations would not be able to blame you for the birth of monsters and deformed children.

“Then, you would give the world an example worthy of France . . .

“Then, Polynesia, united, would be proud and happy to be French, and, as in the early days of Free France, we would all once again become your best and most loyal friends.”

‘Emotional moment’
Manuireva said that 10 days earlier, he had been on board Rainbow Warrior III for the ceremony to mark the bombing in 1985 that cost the life of Fernando Pereira – “and the lives of a lot of Mā’ohi people”.

“It was a very emotional moment for me. It reminded me of my mother and father as I am a descendant of those on Mangareva atoll who were contaminated by those nuclear tests.

“My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.

“French nuclear testing started on 2 July 1966 with Aldebaran and lasted 30 years.”

He spoke about how the military “top brass fled the island” when winds start blowing towards Mangareva. “Food was ready but they didn’t stay”.

“By the time I was born in December 1967 in Mangareva, France had already exploded 9 atmospheric nuclear tests on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, about 400km from Mangareva.”

France’s most powerful explosion was Canopus with 2.6 megatonnes in August 1968. It was a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb — 150 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

‘Poisoned gift’
Manuireva said that by France “gifting us the bomb”, Tahitians had been left “with all the ongoing consequences on the people’s health costs that the Ma’ohi Nui government is paying for”.

He described how the compensation programme was inadequate, lengthy and complicated.

Manuireva also spoke about the consequences for the environment. Both Moruroa and Fangataufa were condemned as “no go” zones and islanders had lost their lands forever.

He also noted that while France had gifted the former headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEP) as a “form of reconciliation” plans to turn it into a museum were thwarted because the building was “rife with asbestos”.

“It is a poisonous gift that will cost millions for the local government to fix.”

Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman spoke of the impact on the Greenpeace organisation of the French secret service bombing of their ship and also introduced the guest speakers and responded to their statements.

A Q and A session was also held to round off the stimulating evening.

Nuclear-free and independent Pacific advocates are treating Aucklanders to a lively week-long exhibition dedicated to the struggle for nuclear justice in the region.

It will be opened today by the opposition Labour Party’s spokesperson on disarmament and MP for Te Atatu, Phil Twyford, and will include a range of speakers on Aotearoa New Zealand’s record as a champion of a nuclear-free Pacific and an independent foreign policy.

Speaking at a conference last month, Twyford said the country could act as a force for peace and demilitarisation, working with partners across the Pacific and Asia and basing its defence capabilities on a realistic assessment of threats.

• READ MORE: ‘Storm clouds are gathering’: 40 years on from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
• Foreign affairs leaders expose widening rift over NZ’s place in world
• Other nuclear-free Pacific reports

The biggest threat to the security of New Zealanders was not China’s rise as a great power but the possibility of war in Asia, Twyford said.

Although there have been previous displays about the New Zealand nuclear-free narrative, this one has a strong focus on the Pacific.

it is called the “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-free Moana 1975-1995” and will run from tomorrow, July 13 until Friday, July 18.

Veteran nuclear-free Pacific spokespeople who are expected to speak at the conference include Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua; Bharat Jamnadas, an organiser of the original Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) conference in Suva, Fiji, in 1975; businessman and community advocate Nikhil Naidu, previously an activist for the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) and Dr Heather Devere, peace researcher and chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

A group of Cook Islands young dancers will also take part.

Knowledge to children
One of the organisers, Nik Naidu, told Asia Pacific Report, it was vital to restore the enthusiasm and passion around the NFIP movement as in the 1980s.

“It’s so important to pass on our knowledge to our children and future generations,” he said.

“And to tell the stories of our ongoing journey and yearning for true independence in a world free of wars and weapons of mass destruction. This is what a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific is.”

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

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

It recalls New Zealand’s peace squadrons, a display of activist tee-shirt “flags”, nuclear-free buttons and badges, posters, and other memorabilia. A video storytelling series about NFIP “legends” is also included.

Rainbow Warrior bombing: 40 Years On                           Video: Stuff

Timely exhibition
Author Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the APMN, who wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior just published on Thursday, and dedicated to the NFIP movement, said the the exhibition was timely.

“It is a sort of back to the future situation where the world is waking up again to a nuclear spectre not really seen since the Cold War years,” he said.

“With the horrendous Israeli genocide on Gaza — it is obscene to call it a war, when it is continuous massacres of civilians; the attacks by two nuclear nations on a nuclear weapons-free country, as is the case with Iran; and threats against another nuclear state, China, are all extremely concerning developments.”

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

The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has sailed into Auckland to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

Greenpeace’s vessel, which had been protesting nuclear testing in the Pacific, sank after French government agents planted explosives on its hull, killing Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

Today, 40 years on from the events on July 10 1985, a dawn ceremony was held in Auckland.

• READ MORE: Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior is a timely reminder
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

Author Margaret Mills was a cook on board the ship at the time, and has written about her experience in a book entitled Anecdotage.

The 95-year-old told TVNZ Breakfast the experience on board “changed her life”.

“I was sound asleep, and I heard this sort of bang and turned the light on, but it wouldn’t go on.

She said when she left her cabin, a crew member told her “we’ve been bombed”.

‘I laughed at him’
“I laughed at him, I said ‘we don’t get bombs in New Zealand, that’s ridiculous’.”

She said they were taken to the police station after a “big boom when the second bomb came through”.

“I realised immediately, I was part of a historical event,” she said.

Journalist David Robie. who travelled on the Rainbow Warrior and wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior published today, told Breakfast it was a “really shocking, shocking night”.

“We were so overwhelmed by the grief and absolute shock of what had happened. But for me, there was no doubt it was France behind this.”

“But we were absolutely flabbergasted that a country could do this.”

He said it was a “very emotional moment” and was hard to believe it had been 40 years since that time.

‘Momentous occasion’
“It stands out in my life as being the most momentous occasion as a journalist covering that whole event.”

Executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa Russel Norman said the legacy of the ship was about “people who really stood up for something important”.

“I mean, ending nuclear testing in the Pacific, imagine if they were still exploding bombs in the Pacific. We would have to live with that.

“And those people back then they stood up and beat the French government to end nuclear testing.

“It’s pretty inspirational.”

He said the group were still campaigning on some key environmental issues today.

On the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior prior to its sinking by French secret agents in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 the ship had evacuated the entire population of 320 from Rongelap in the Marshall Islands.

After conducting dozens of above-ground nuclear explosions, the US government had left the population in conditions that suggested the islanders were being used as guinea pigs to gain knowledge of the effects of radiation.

Cancers, birth defects, and genetic damage ripped through the population; their former fisheries and land are contaminated to this day.

• READ MORE: The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence
• Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
• Other Rainbow Warrior reports

Denied adequate support from the US – they turned to Greenpeace with an SOS: help us leave our ancestral homeland; it is killing our people. The Rainbow Warrior answered the call.

Human lab rats or our brothers and sisters?
Dr Merrill Eisenbud, a physicist in the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) famously said in 1956 of the Marshall Islanders:  “While it is true that these people do not live, I might say, the way Westerners do, civilised people, it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

Total US tests equaled more than 7000 Hiroshimas.  The Clinton administration released the aptly-named Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), report in January 1994 in which it acknowledged:

“What followed was a program by the US government — initially the Navy and then the AEC and its successor agencies — to provide medical care for the exposed population, while at the same time trying to learn as much as possible about the long-term biological effects of radiation exposure. The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment’.

This impression was reinforced by the fact that the islanders were deliberately left in place and then evacuated, having been heavily radiated. Three years later they were told it was “safe to return” despite the lead scientist calling Rongelap “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

Significant compensation paid by the US to the Marshall Islands has proven inadequate given the scale of the contamination.  To some degree, the US has also used money to achieve capture of elite interest groups and secure ongoing control of the islands.

Entrusted to the US, the Marshall Islanders were treated like the civilians of Nagasaki
The US took the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944.  The only “right” it has to be there was granted by the United Nations which in 1947 established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, to be administered by the United States.

What followed was an abuse of trust worse than rapists at a state care facility.  Using the very powers entrusted to it to protect the Marshallese, the US instead used the islands as a nuclear laboratory — violating both the letter and spirit of international law.

Fellow white-dominated countries like Australia and New Zealand couldn’t have cared less and let the indigenous people be irradiated for decades.

The betrayal of trust by the US was comprehensive and remains so to this day:

Under Article 76 of the UN Charter, all trusteeship agreements carried obligations. The administering power was required to:

• Promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the people
• Protect the rights and well-being of the inhabitants
• Help them advance toward self-government or independence.

Under Article VI, the United States solemnly pledged to “Protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.”  Very similar to sentiments in New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi.  Within a few years the Americans were exploding the biggest nuclear bombs in history over the islands.

Within a year of the US assuming trusteeship of the islands, another pillar of international law came into effect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) — which affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. Exposing colonised peoples to extreme radiation for weapons testing is a racist affront to this.

America has a long history of making treaties and fine speeches and then exploiting indigenous peoples.  Last year, I had the sobering experience of reading American military historian Peter Cozzens’ The Earth is Weeping, a history of the “Indian wars” for the American West.

The past is not dead: the Marshall Islands are a hive of bases, laboratories and missile testing; Americans are also incredibly busy attacking the population in Gaza today.

Eyes of Fire – the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
Had the French not sunk the Rainbow Warrior after it reached Auckland from the Rongelap evacuation, it would have led a flotilla to protest nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.  So the bookends of this article are the abuse of defenceless people in the charge of one nuclear power — the US —  and the abuse of New Zealand and the peoples of French Polynesia by another nuclear power — France.

This incredible story, and much more, is the subject of David Robie’s outstanding book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, published by Little Island Press, which has been relaunched to mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack.

A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

Between them, France and the US have exploded more than 300 nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Few people are told this; few people know this.

Today, a matrix of issues combine — the ongoing effects of nuclear contamination, sea rise imperilling Pacific nations, colonialism still posing immense challenges to people in the Marshall Islands, Kanaky New Caledonia and in many parts of our region.

Unsung heroes
Our media never ceases to share the pronouncements of European leaders and news from the US and Europe but the leaders and issues of the Pacific are seldom heard. The heroes of the antinuclear movement should be household names in Australia and New Zealand.

Vanuatu’s great leader Father Walter Lini; Oscar Temaru, Mayor, later President of French Polynesia; Senator Jeton Anjain, Darlene Keju-Johnson and so many others.

Do we know them?  Have we heard their voices?

Jobod Silk, climate activist, said in a speech welcoming the Rainbow Warrior III to Majuro earlier this year:  “Our crusade for nuclear justice intertwines with our fight against the tides.”

Former Tuvalu PM Enele Sapoaga castigated Australia for the AUKUS submarine deal which he said “was crafted in secret by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison with no public discussion.”

He challenged the bigger regional powers, particularly Australia and New Zealand, to remember that the existential threat faced by Pacific nations comes first from climate change, and reminded New Zealanders of the commitment to keeping the South Pacific nuclear-free.

Hinamoeura Cross, a Tahitian anti-nuclear activist and politician, said in a 2019 UN speech: “Today, the damage is done. My people are sick. For 30 years we were the mice in France’s laboratory.”

Until we learn their stories and know their names as well as we know those of Marco Rubio or Keir Starmer, we will remain strangers in our own lands.

The Pacific owes them, along with the people of Greenpeace, a huge debt.  They put their bodies on the line to stop the aggressors. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, killed by the French in 1985, was just one of many victims, one of many heroes.

A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

You cannot sink a rainbow.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has warned the country needs to maintain its nuclear-free policy as a “fundamental tenet” of its independent foreign policy in the face of gathering global storm clouds.

Writing in a new book being published next week, she says “nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present.

“The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now sits at 89 seconds to midnight,” she says in the prologue to journalist and media academic David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

• READ MORE: 40 years on: Reflecting on Rainbow Warrior’s legacy, fight against nuclear colonialism
• Other Eyes of Fire reports

Writing before the US surprise attack with B-2 stealth bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, Clark says “the Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons”.

The Doomsday Clock references the Ukraine war theatre where “use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia”.

Also, the arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals, she says.

“North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity.”

‘Serious ramifications’
Clark, who was also United Nations Development Programme administrator from 2009 to 2017, a member of The Elders group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, and is an advocate for multilateralism and nuclear disarmament, says an outright military conflict between China and the United States “would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.”

She advises New Zealand to be wary of Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States.

“There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry,” Clark says.

“This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.

“Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development
of more lethal weaponry.”

In the face of the “current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.

Clark says that the years 1985 – the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 — and 1986 were critical years in the lead up to New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987.

“New Zealanders were clear – we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

Chronicles humanitarian voyage
The book Eyes of Fire chronicles the humanitarian voyage by the Greenpeace flagship to the Marshall Islands to relocate 320 Rongelap Islanders who were suffering serious community health consequences from the US nuclear tests in the 1950s.

The author, Dr David Robie, founder of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, was the only journalist on board the Rainbow Warrior in the weeks leading up to the bombing.

His book recounts the voyage and nuclear colonialism, and the transition to climate justice as the major challenge facing the Pacific, although the “Indo-Pacific” rivalries between the US, France and China mean that geopolitical tensions are recalling the Cold War era in the Pacific.

Dr Robie is also critical of Indonesian colonialism in the Melanesian region of the Pacific, arguing that a just-outcome for Jakarta-ruled West Papua and also the French territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia are vital for peace and stability in the region.

Eyes of Fire is being published by Little Island Press, which also produced one of his earlier books, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific.

• Greenpeace executive director Dr Russel Norman is launching Eyes of Fire at the Ellen Melville Centre Pioneer Women’s Hall at 6pm on the bombing anniversary, July 10, following a memorial vigil in the morning on board the current flagship Rainbow Warrior III.
• Eyes of Fire microsite (Little Island Press)

Despite the many challenges faced by Pacific journalists in recent years, the recent Pacific International Media Conference highlighted the incredible strength and courage of the region’s reporters.

The three-day event in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month co-hosted by the University of South Pacific, Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), was the first of its kind for Fiji in the last 20 years, marking the newfound freedom media professionals have been experiencing in the nation.

The conference included speakers from many of the main newsrooms in the Pacific, as well as Emmy award-winning American journalist Professor Emily Drew and Pulitzer-nominated investigative journalist Irene Jay Liu, as well as New Zealand’s Indira Stewart, Dr David Robie of APMN and Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor of RNZ Pacific.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

Given Fiji’s change of government in 2022, and the ensuing repeal of media laws which threatened jail time for reporters and editors who published stories that weren’t in the “national interest”, many spoke of the extreme challenges they faced under the previous regime.

And two of Fiji’s deputy prime ministers, Manoa Kamikamica and Professor Biman Prasad, also gave keynote speeches detailing how the country’s newly established press freedom is playing a vital role in strengthening the country’s democracy.

Dr Robie has worked in the Pacific for several decades and was a member of the conference’s organising committee.

He said this conference has come at “critical time given the geopolitics in the background”.

Survival of media
“I’ve been to many conferences over the years, and this one has been quite unique and it’s been really good,” he said.

“We’ve addressed the really pressing issues regarding the survival of media and it’s also highlighted how resilient news organisations are across the Pacific.”

Dr David Robie talks to PMN News on the opening day.   Audio/video:PMN Pacific Mornings

The conference coincided with the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, which is the only academic journal in the region that publishes research specifically focused on Pacific media.

As founder of PJR, Robie says it is heartening to see it recognised at a place — the University of the South Pacific — where it was also based for a number of years.

“It began its life at the University of Papua New Guinea, but then it was at USP for five years, so it was very appropriate to have our birthday here. It’s published over 1100 articles over its 30 years, so we were really celebrating all that’s been published over that time.”

Climate change solutions
RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepla-Taylor spoke on a panel about how to cover climate change with a solutions lens.

She says the topic of sexual harassment was a particularly important discussion that came up and it highlighted the extra hurdles Pacific female journalists face.

“It’s a reminder for me as a journalist from New Zealand and something I will reinforce with my own team about the privilege we have to be able to do a story, jump in your car and go home, without being tailed by the police or being taken into barracks to be questioned,” she says.

“It’s a good reminder to us and it gives a really good perspective about what it’s like to be a journalist in the region and the challenges too.”

Another particular challenge Tuilaepa-Taylor highlighted was the increase in international journalists coming into the region reporting on the Pacific.

“The issue I have is that it leads to taking away a Pacific lens on a story which is vitally important,” she said.

“There are stories that can be covered by non-Pacific journalists but there are really important cultural stories that need to have that Pacific lens on it so it’s more authentic and give audiences a sense of connection.”

But Dr Robie says that while problems facing the Pacific are clear, the conference also highlighted why there is also cause for optimism.

“Journalists in the region work very hard and under very difficult conditions and they carry a lot of responsibilities for their communities, so I think it’s a real credit to our industry … [given] their responses to the challenges and their resilience shows there can be a lot of hope for the future of journalism in the region.”

Justin Latif is news editor of Pacific Media Network. Republished with permission.

A group of regional and international media representatives met at a forum in Fiji last week to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities facing journalists in the Pacific.

The three-day conference brought together people from the media industry, academics, civil society, and other interested parties.

A budding Fiji journalist Shivaali Shrutika said that newsrooms needed to evolve with the times.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports

“Transformation is important, wherever you are, and this is my observation,” she said.

“But in any space we work, particularly in mainstream media, we are reaching out to the communities that we want to become the voice for, but first we need to work on ourselves to be better people to understand them and then portray their minds and their thoughts to our audiences.”

She said every journalist and person involved in the newsroom should have a positive environment to work in.

“Because in journalism there is pressure, and there are deadlines in that space, it is important to have positive energy and a flexible environment to work in where everyone’s work is appreciated, especially for those trying as it is important to help boost people’s confidence and create those spaces.”

Lack of support
She said some young journalists left the profession due to a lack of support from more experienced reporters.

“Young journalists need this as they are new to the industry and unsure of their job, and when they are ignored, it can lower their confidence.”

Kaneta Namimatau is a final-year journalism student at the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme.

“This is the biggest media conference I have been to and the first one in Fiji in 20 years,” he said.

He said the stories of intimidation and harassment that journalists in Fiji had faced, under the Media Industry Development Act, were very challenging to hear.

For him, the most powerful discussion at the conference was a panel on the “prevalence and impact of sexual harassment on female journalists”.

The sexual harassment of women journalists in Fiji is a major problem, according to a study published earlier this year.

‘Disheartening’ experience
“I found that disheartening to hear as it is something that I would hate for my sisters to have to experience in the workplace.”

Namimatau said the conference reinforced his decision to become a journalist and work in the Fiji news arena.

“I think I can contribute more to Fiji and tell the stories of the Banaba people, my people. I also want to represent my people from Rabi.”

The conference included academics, like USP’s associate professor Shailendra Singh, who was chair of the Pacific International Media Conference.

Dr Singh said it was a critical time for journalists in the region.

“Mainly, for two reasons, the digital disruption that we know has siphoned off huge amounts of advertising revenue from the media industry and mainstream media, as well as covid-19 which worsened the situation.

“I think most media organisations are struggling to survive.”

Dr Singh is coordinator of the journalism course at the University of the South Pacific.

He said the papers tabled and some of the discussions that took place would be published in Pacific Journalism Review.

The 2023 lifting of the FijiFirst government’s 2010 draconian media act, which involved constant censorship, has created a new environment in which Fiji journalists no longer operate in fear.

No ‘shying away’
Asia Pacific Report publisher and editor Dr David Robie said this was the sort of conference that Fiji needed right now” — a forum that did not “shy away” from the challenges facing reporters in the region.

Dr Robie described the panels, in particular the discussion around sexual harassment in Pacific journalism, as the best he had ever attended.

Other panels dealt with similarly difficult topics such as climate change, and stress/burn-out within the industry.

This is the first conference of its kind in Fiji in 20 years, and Dr Singh hopes that the delegates can take back what they have learned, to their newsrooms.

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

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then an army of journalists has assembled in Fiji’s capital to discuss the state and future of the industry in the region.

The three-day Pacific Media Conference 2024 on July 4-6 is organised and hosted by the University of the South Pacific, in collaboration with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), with more than 50 speakers from 11 countries.

A keynote speaker and veteran journalist Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, says the conference is crucial.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Media Conference reports
• Full Radio 531pi interview with Dr David Robie on Pacific Mornings

“It’s quite a trailblazer in many respects, because this is probably the first conference of its kind where it’s blended industry journalists all around the region, plus media academics that have been analysing and critiquing the media and so on.

“So to have this joining forces like this . . .  it’s really quite a momentous conference.”

Dr Robie is a distinguished author, journalist and media educator and was recognised last month as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for his contribution to journalism and education in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region for more than 50 years.

Speaking to William Terite on Radio 531pi’s Pacific Mornings, Dr Robie said the conference was a way to bolster solidarity to others in the industry and address common challenges.

“In many Pacific countries a lot of their fledgling institutions, and essentially, politicians, have no understanding of media generally, and have a tendency to crack down on media when they have half a chance.

“So it’s partly to get a much better image of journalism and how important journalism is in democracy and development in many countries in the Pacific.”

Turning the page for media
The conference theme is “Navigating challenges and shaping futures in Pacific media research and practice”.

In April last year, Fiji revoked media laws that restricted media content. PMN chief-of-news Justin Latif is attending the conference, and said Fijian media were in celebration-mode, saying “democracy has returned to Fiji”.

“They talked about how such a conference had happened under previous regimes, basically the police and army would have had a presence there and would have been just noting names and checking up that nothing was said that was anti-government.”

Latif said regional journalists showed a deep sense of purpose and drive.

“People do see their roles as a calling, and so often are willing to take less pay and harder conditions,” he said.

“They see their job as building their nation and being part of helping strengthen the country, and so it’s probably quite different if you were to get a group of journalists together in New Zealand, they probably wouldn’t have quite the same sense of that kind of fervour for the role in terms of what it can mean for the country.”

The Pacific Journalism Review, a journal examining media issues and communication in the region, celebrated its 30-year anniversary. It has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and is regularly cited by scholars.

Global tussle for Pacific attention
The United States is one of the main funders of the conference, and there are representatives from some Asia-Pacific countries such as Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan.

Latif said China’s involvement in Pacific media was openly questioned by the US deputy chief of mission, John Gregory.

“He gave a very detailed breakdown of all the ways that China are influencing elections: using Facebook to spread misinformation to try and basically encourage the three Pacific nations who still support or maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan, how they’re trying to influence those nations to have a regime change, and it was quite shocking information about the lengths that China is going to, or that the State Department believed China is going to.”

The United States in putting investment into journalism in the Pacific, said Latif, sending 13 journalists from Fiji to the US for exchanges.

“There is a clear US agenda here about wanting the media to be strengthened and to be supported so that they can have a strong foothold in the Pacific, because the influence of China is definitely being felt.”

A bold, future vision for Pacific media
Dr Robie has described the current state of news media in the Pacific as “precarious”, and warned some nations can be susceptible to “geopolitics and the influences of other countries”.

“We’ve got China trying to encourage media organisations to be very much under an authoritarian wing, taking journalists across to China . . .  but now we’re getting a lot more competition from Australia and the US and so on, upping the game, putting more money into training, influencing, whereas for many years they didn’t care too much about the media in the region.

“Journalists very often feel like they’re the meat in the sandwich in the competition between many countries, and it’s not good for the region generally.”

Dr Robie has worked across the Pacific, including five years as head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea, and then as the coordinator of the journalism programme at USP.

He encouraged Pacific media to continue upholding democratic values while holding leaders to account.

“Most media organisations in the Pacific are quite small and vulnerable in the sense that they’ve got small teams, limited resources, and it’s always a struggle, to be honest, and things are probably the toughest they’ve been for a while.

“Pacific countries and media need to stand up tall and strong themselves, be very clear about what they want and to stand up for it, and not be overshadowed by the influence of major countries.”

The conference ends on Saturday.

Republished from PMN News with permission.

Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths of Plains FM96.9 radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Robie has just been made a Member of the NZ Order of Merit (MNZM) and Earthwise ask him what this means to him. Why has he campaigned for so long for Pacific issues to receive media attention?

Do Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia really feel like part of the Pacific world? What are the growing concerns about increasing militarisation in the Pacific and spreading Chinese influence?

• LISTEN AT PLAINS FM: The interview with Dr David Robie on Earthwise

And why is decolonisation in Kanaky New Caledonia from France such a pressing issue? Dr Robie also draws parallels between the Kanak, Palestinian and West Papuan struggles.

Dr Robie also talks about next month’s Pacific Media International Conference in Suva, Fiji, on 4-6 July 2024.

Broadcast: Plains Radio FM96.9

Interviewee: Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a semiretired professor of Pacific journalism. He founded the Pacific Media Centre.
Interviewers: Lois and Martin Griffiths, Earthwise programme

Date: 12 June 2024 (28min), broadcast June 17.

Youtube: Café Pacific: https://www.youtube.com/@cafepacific2023

https://plainsfm.org.nz/

Café Pacific: https://davidrobie.nz/

The Earthwise interview with David Robie.                         Video: Plains Radio FM96.9FM

New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) awardee Professor David Robie has called on young journalists to see journalism as a calling and not just a job.

Dr Robie, who is also the editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network, was named in the King’s Birthday Honours list for “services to journalism and Asia Pacific media education”.

He was named last Monday and the investiture ceremony is later this year.

• READ MORE: 50 years of challenge and change: David Robie reflects on a career in Pacific journalism – RNZ Pacific
• King’s Birthday Honours: Journalist reflects on work in the Pacific – PMN News
• Other reports

The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh told Wansolwara News: “David’s mountain of work in media research and development, and his dedication to media freedom, speak for themselves.

“I am one of the many Pacific journalists and researchers that he has mentored and inspired over the decades”.

Dr Singh said this recognition was richly deserved.

Dr Robie was head of journalism at USP from 1998 to 2002 before he resigned to join the Auckland University of Technology ane became an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies in 2005 and full professor in 2011.

Close links with USP
Since resigning from the Pacific university he has maintained close links with USP Journalism. He was the chief guest at the 18th USP Journalism awards in 2018.

He has also praised USP Journalism and said it was “bounding ahead” when compared with the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he was the head of journalism from 1993 to 1997.

Dr Robie has also co-edited three editions of Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) research journal with Dr Singh.

He is a keynote speaker at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference which is being hosted by USP’s School of Pacific Arts, Communications and Education (Journalism), in collaboration with the Pacific Island News Association (PINA) and the Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN).

The conference will be held from 4-6 July at the Holiday Inn, Suva. This year the PJR will celebrate its 30th year of publishing at the conference.

The editors will be inviting a selection of the best conference papers to be considered for publication in a special edition of the PJR or its companion publication Pacific Media.

Referring to his recognition for his contribution to journalism, Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific he was astonished and quite delighted but at the same time he felt quite humbled by it all.

‘Enormous support’
“However, I feel that it’s not just me, I owe an enormous amount to my wife, Del, who is a teacher and designer by profession, and a community activist, but she has given journalism and me enormous support over many years and kept me going through difficult times.

“There’s a whole range of people who have contributed over the years so it’s sort of like a recognition of all of us, especially all those who worked so hard for 13 years on the Pacific Media Centre when it was going. So, yes, it is a delight and I feel quite privileged.”

Reflecting on his 50 years in journalism, Dr Robie believes that the level of respect for mainstream news media has declined.

“This situation is partly through the mischievous actions of disinformation peddlers and manipulators, but it is partly our fault in media for allowing the lines between fact-based news and opinion/commentary to be severely compromised, particularly on television,” he told Wansolwara News.

He said the recognition helped to provide another level of “mana” at a time when public trust in journalism had dropped markedly, especially since the covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of a “global cesspit of disinformation”.

Dr Robie said journalists were fighting for the relevance of media today.

“The Fourth Estate, as I knew it in the 1960s, has eroded over the last few decades. It is far more complex today with constant challenges from the social media behemoths and algorithm-driven disinformation and hate speech.”

He urged journalists to believe in the importance of journalism in their communities and societies.

‘Believe in truth to power’
“Believe in the contribution that we can make to understanding and progress. Believe in truth to power. Have courage, determination and go out and save the world with facts, compassion and rationality.”

Despite the challenges, he believes that journalism is just as vital today, even more vital perhaps, than the past.

“It is critical for our communities to know that they have information that is accurate and that they can trust. Good journalism and investigative journalism are the bulwark for an effective defence of democracy against the anarchy of digital disinformation.

“Our existential struggle is the preservation of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa  — protecting our Pacific Ocean legacy for us all.”

Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965, after part-time reporting while a trainee forester and university science student with the NZ Forest Service, and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris.

In addition to winning several journalism awards, he received the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing. He was on a 11-week voyage with the bombed ship and wrote the book Eyes of Fire about French and American nuclear testing.

He also travelled overland across Africa and the Sahara Desert for a year in the 1970s while a freelance journalist.

In 2015, he was awarded the AMIC Asian Communication Award in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Geopolitics, climate crisis and decolonisation
Dr Robie mentions geopolitics and climate crisis as two of the biggest issues for the Pacific, with the former being largely brought upon by major global players, mainly the US, Australia and China.

He said it was important for the Pacific to create its own path and not become pawns or hostages to this geopolitical rivalry, adding that it was critically important for news media to retain its independence and a critical distance.

“The latter issue, climate crisis, is one that the Pacific is facing because of its unique geography, remoteness and weather patterns. It is essential to be acting as one ‘Pacific voice’ to keep the globe on track over the urgent solutions needed for the world. The fossil fuel advocates are passé and endangering us all.

“Journalists really need to step up to the plate on seeking climate solutions.”

Dr Robie also shared his views on the recent upheaval in New Caledonia.

“In addition to many economic issues for small and remote Pacific nations, are the issues of decolonisation. The events over the past three weeks in Kanaky New Caledonia have reminded us that unresolved decolonisation issues need to be centre stage for the Pacific, not marginalised.”

According to Dr Robie concerted Pacific political pressure, and media exposure, needs to be brought to bear on both France over Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia, or Māohi Nui, and Indonesia with West Papua.

He called on the Pacific media to step up their scrutiny and truth to power role to hold countries and governments accountable for their actions.

Monika Singh is editor-in-chief of Wansolwara, the online and print publication of the USP Journalism Programme. Published in partnership with Wansolwara.

By Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital lead, and Margot Staunton, RNZ journalist

Police brutality will further escalate tensions between pro-independence activists and French security forces in New Caledonia, a senior church leader in Nouméa says.

On Tuesday night, video footage which shows a French security officer, who appears to have apprehended a Kanaky activist, then pushed the handcuffed man to the ground, before kicking him in the head and knocking him out.

The clip — shared on a Nouméa neighbourhood watch Facebook group — is being widely circulated online and has been shared almost 400 times (as on Wednesday 3pm NZT).

• READ MORE:  ‘I can’t just stand back’: Kanak pro-independence activist follows mum’s footsteps
• Blood in the Pacific: 30 years on from the Ouvéa Island cave massacre
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

According to sources, the incident occurred at the Six Kilometre district in Nouméa.

They are concerned it is due to actions like this that Paris has banned TikTok in New Caledonia so human rights abuses by the French security are not exposed.

RNZ Pacific has contacted the French High Commissioner’s office and the French Ambassador to the Pacific for comment, seeking their response to this footage.

Reverend Billy Wetewea from the Protestant Church of Kanaky New Caledonia told RNZ Pacific the police action was “not helping to bring calmness to the people on the ground”.

“Like this kind of action from the police is not helping in our people to not go into violence against [sic],” he said.

Reverend Watewea said the Kanak people on the ground had been advised to record all the movements of the security forces.

“Especially when police forces are starting to attack [indigenous pro-independence Kanaks].”

He said the footage that surfaced on Tuesday night was “not the first” such incident.

“Some other situations in videos has been recorded as well. The people in responsibility will take those issues to the court because that’s not acceptable coming from police to have this kind of behaviour.”

The death toll during two weeks of violent and destructive riots in New Caledonia has risen to seven.

In a statement, the French High Commission said 134 police officers had been injured and nearly 500 people had been arrested.

The state of emergency in the territory was lifted on Tuesday.

The statement said that while the state of emergency had been lifted, the ban on gatherings, the sale and transport of guns and alcohol, as well as the curfew, remained in place.

Resistance will continue
A Kanak pro-independence activist Jimmy Naouna predicts police brutality and riots will continue as long as New Caledonia is highly militarised.

A security force of 3000 remains in Nouméa with a further 484 on the way.

The economic cost as a result of the unrest is estimated to be almost 1 billion euros (US$1.8 billion).

Pro-independence alliance FLNKS member Naouna told RNZ Pacific the territory needed a political solution, not a military one.

“They keep sending in more troops but that won’t solve the issue,” he said.

“This is a political issue and it needs a political solution. The more you have the military and the police on the ground, the more violence there will be on both sides,” he said.

‘People want to be heard’
Wetewea told RNZ Pacific while the presence of the French army on the streets has eased tensions, the decisions made at the political level in Paris are not helping to calm the people on the ground.

He said the French President Emmanuel Macron is not listening to the indigenous people’s voices and the indigenous people have “had enough”.

“For the people on the ground, they have had enough,” he said.

“They want change. People want to be heard, people on the ground, people who are suffering in their houses. And we are facing now a situation that will be hard to recover from.”

Naouna said Macron’s visit to the territory was merely a “political manoeuvre”.

He said the pro-independence groups were expecting the French President to abate tensions by suspending and withdrawing the electoral reform bill.

“[Macron] is losing support in his own political groups. In France, coming up in June. He is losing support for the European elections.

“So, it is mainly for his own political gains that he has had to come to New Caledonia.”

Wetewea said there was a realisation in New Caledonia that the events were led by indigenous young people in the city who have been denied opportunities and discriminated against.

“That is the the part of the population that France was not taking care of for a long time, the part of the population that faced discrimination every day in schools, in seeking employment.

He said the young people expressed all of these frustration towards a system that did not acknowledge them.

“But looking more largely against the system that does not really incorporate or acknowledge our the Kanak people and their culture.”

‘Stifling free speech’
Asia Pacific Report editor and Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) deputy chair Dr David Robie deplored what he called the “the French tactics of reverting back to the brutality of the crackdowns during the 1980s”.

“It’s no wonder the French authorities were quick to ban TikTok, trying unsuccessfully to stifle free debate and hide the brutality,” he said in response to the disturbing footage.

He said there was a need for dialogue and a genuine attempt to hear Kanak aspirations, and public goodwill, in a bid to reach a consensus for the future.

“If there had been more listening than talking by Paris and its ministers over the past three years, this crisis could have been avoided. But repression now will only backfire.

“The 1980s ended in the terrible Ouvéa massacre. Surely some lessons have been learnt from history? Independence is inevitable in the long run.”

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

Today is the 24th anniversary of renegade and failed businessman George Speight’s coup in 2000 Fiji. The elected coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry, the first and only Indo-Fijian prime minister of Fiji, was held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days in the country’s new Parliament by Speight’s rebel gunmen in a putsch that shook the Pacific and the world.

Emerging recently from almost 24 years in prison, former investigative journalist and publisher Josefa Nata — Speight’s “media minder” — is now convinced that the takeover of Fiji’s Parliament on 19 May 2000 was not justified.

He believes that all it did was let the “genie of racism” out of the bottle.

• READ MORE: Coup coup land: the press and the putsch in Fiji – David Robie
• FIJI: I was just PR consultant — Joe Nata
• USP 2000 coup student journalism archive

He spoke to Islands Business Fiji correspondent, Joe Yaya on his journey back from the dark.

The Fiji government kept you in jail for 24 years [for your media role in the coup]. That’s a very long time. Are you bitter?

I heard someone saying in Parliament that “life is life”, but they have been releasing other lifers. Ten years was conventionally considered the term of a life sentence. That was the State’s position in our sentencing. The military government extended it to 12 years. I believe it was out of malice, spitefulness and cruelty — no other reason. But to dwell in the past is counterproductive.

If there’s anyone who should be bitter, it should be me. I was released [from prison] in 2013 but was taken back in after two months, ostensibly to normalise my release papers. That government did not release me. I stayed in prison for another 10 years.

To be bitter is to allow those who hurt you to live rent free in your mind. They have moved on, probably still rejoicing in that we have suffered that long. I have forgiven them, so move on I must.

Time is not on my side. I have set myself a timeline and a to-do list for the next five years.

What are some of those things?

Since I came out, I have been busy laying the groundwork for a community rehabilitation project for ex-offenders, released prisoners, street kids and at-risk people in the law-and-order space. We are in the process of securing a piece of land, around 40 ha to set up a rehabilitation farm. A half-way house of a sort.

You can’t have it in the city. It would be like having the cat to watch over the fish. There is too much temptation. These are vulnerable people who will just relapse. They’re put in an environment where they are shielded from the lures of the world and be guided to be productive and contributing members of society.

It will be for a period of up to six months; in exceptional cases, 12 months where they will learn living off the land. With largely little education, the best opportunity for these people, and only real hope, is in the land.

Most of these at-risk people are [indigenous] Fijians. Although all native land are held by the mataqali, each family has a patch which is the “kanakana”. We will equip them and settle them in their villages. We will liaise with the family and the village.

Apart from farming, these young men and women will be taught basic life skills, social skills, savings, budgeting. When we settle them in the villages and communities, we will also use the opportunity to create the awareness that crime does not pay, that there is a better life than crime and prison, and that prison is a waste of a potentially productive life.

Are you comfortable with talking about how exactly you got involved with Speight?

The bulk of it will come out in the book that I’m working on, but it was not planned. It was something that happened on the day.

You said that when they saw you, they roped you in?

Yes. But there were communications with me the night prior. I basically said, “piss off”.

So then, what made you go to Parliament eventually? Curiosity?

No. I got a call from Parliament. You see, we were part of the government coalition at that time. We were part of the Fijian Association Party (led by the late Adi Kuini Speed). The Fiji Labour Party was our main coalition partner, and then there was the Christian Alliance. And you may recall or maybe not, there was a split in the Fijian Association [Party] and there were two factions. I was in the faction that thought that we should not go into coalition.

There was an ideological reason for the split [because the party had campaigned on behalf of iTaukei voters] but then again, there were some members who came with us only because they were not given seats in Cabinet.

Because your voters had given you a certain mandate?

Well, we were campaigning on the [indigenous] Fijian manifesto and to go into the [coalition] complicated things. Mine was more a principled position because we were a [indigenous] Fijian party and all those people went in on [indigenous] Fijian votes. And then, here we are, going into [a coalition with the Fiji Labour Party] and people probably
accused us of being opportunists.

But the Christian Alliance was a coalition partner with Labour before they went into the election in the same way that the People’s Alliance and National Federation Party were coalition partners before they got into [government], whereas with us, it was more like SODELPA (Social Democratic Liberal Party).

So, did you feel that the rights of indigenous Fijians were under threat from the Coalition government of then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry?

Perhaps if Chaudhry was allowed to carry on, it could have been good for [indigenous] Fijians. I remember the late President and Tui Nayau [Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara] . . .  in a few conversations I had with him, he said it [Labour Party] should be allowed to . . . [carry on].

Did you think at that time that the news media gave Chaudhry enough space for him to address the fears of the iTaukei people about what he was trying to do, especially for example, through the Land Use Commission?

I think the Fijians saw what he was doing and that probably exacerbated or heightened the concerns of [indigenous] Fijians and if you remember, he gave Indian cane farmers certain financial privileges.

The F$10,000 grants to move from Labasa, when the ALTA (Agricultural Landlord and Tenants Act) leases expired. Are you talking about that?

I can’t remember the exact details of the financial assistance but when they [Labour Party] were questioned, they said, “No, there were some Fijian farmers too”. There were also iTaukei farmers but if you read in between the lines, there were like 50 Indian farmers and one Fijian farmer.

Was there enough media coverage for the rural population to understand that it was not a one-sided ethnic policy?

Because there were also iTaukei farmers involved. Yes, and I think when you try and pull the wool over other people, that’s when they feel that they have been hoodwinked. But going back to your question of whether Chaudhry was given fair media coverage, I was no longer in the mainstream media at that time. I had moved on.

But the politicians have their views and they’ll feel that they have been done badly by the media. But that’s democracy. That’s the way things worked out.

Pacific journalism educator, David Robie, in a paper in 2001, made some observations about the way the local media reported the Speight takeover. He said, “In the early weeks of the insurrection, the media enjoyed an unusually close relationship with Speight and the hostage takers.”

He went on to say that at times, there was “strong sympathy among some journalists for the cause, even among senior editorial executives”.

David Robie is an incisive and perceptive old-school journalist who has a proper understanding of issues and I do not take issue with his opinion. And I think there is some validity. But you see, I was on the other [Speight’s] side. And it was part of my job at that time to swing that perception from the media.

Did you identify with “the cause” and did you think it was legitimate?

Let me tell you in hindsight, that the coup was not justified
and that is after a lot of reflection. It was not justified and
could never be justified.

When did you come to that conclusion?

It was after the period in Parliament and after things were resolved and then Parliament was vacated, I took a drive around town and I saw the devastation in Suva. This was a couple of months later. I didn’t realise the extent of the damage and I remember telling myself, “Oh my god, what have we done? What have we done?”

And I realised that we probably have let the genie out of the bottle and it scared me [that] it only takes a small thing like this to unleash this pentup emotion that is in the people. Of course, a lot of looting was [by] opportunists because at that time, the people who
were supporting the cause were all in Parliament. They had all marched to Parliament.

So, who did the looting in town? I’m not excusing that. I’m just trying to put some perspective. And of course, we saw pictures, which was really, very sad . . .  of mothers, women, carrying trolleys [of loot] up the hill, past the [Colonial War Memorial] hospital.

So, what was Speight’s primary motivation?

Well, George will, I’m sure, have the opportunity at some point to tell the world what his position was. But he was never the main player. He was ditched with the baby on his laps.

So, there were people So, there were people behind him. He was the man of the moment. He was the one facing the cameras.

Given your education, training, experience in journalism, what kind of lens were you viewing this whole thing from?

Well, let’s put it this way. I got a call from Parliament. I said, “No, I’m not coming down.” And then they called again.

Basically, they did not know where they were going. I think what was supposed to have happened didn’t happen. So, I got another call, I got about three or four calls, maybe five. And then eventually, after two o’clock I went down to Parliament, because the person who called was a friend of mine and somebody who had shared our fortunes and misfortunes.

So, did you get swept away? What was going on inside your head?

I joined because at that point, I realised that these people needed help. I was not so much as for the cause, although there was this thing about what Chaudhry was doing. I also took that into account. But primarily because the call came [and] so I went.

And when I was finally called into the meeting, I walked in and I saw faces that I’d never seen before. And I started asking the questions, “Have you done this? Have you done that?”

And as I asked the questions, I was also suggesting solutions and then I just got dragged into it. The more I asked questions, the more I found out how much things were in disarray.

I just thought I’d do my bit [because] they were people who had taken over Parliament and they did not know where to go from there.

But you were driven by some nationalistic sentiments?

I am a [indigenous] Fijian. And everything that goes with that. I’m not infallible. But then again, I do not want to blow that trumpet.

Did the group see themselves as freedom fighters of some sort when you went into prison?

I’m not a freedom fighter. If they want to be called freedom fighters, that’s for them and I think some of them even portrayed themselves [that way]. But not me. I’m just an idiot who got sidetracked.

This personal journey that you’ve embarked on, what brought that about?

When I was in prison, I thought about this a lot. Because for me to come out of the bad place I was in — not physically, that I was in prison, but where my mind was — was to first accept the situation I was in and take responsibility. That’s when the healing started to take place.

And then I thought that I should write to people that I’ve hurt. I wrote about 200 letters from prison to anybody I thought I had hurt or harmed or betrayed. Groups, individuals, institutions, and families. I was surprised at the magnanimity of the people who received my letters.

I do not know where they all are now. I just sent it out. I was touched by a lot of the responses and I got a letter from the late [historian] Dr Brij Lal. l was so encouraged and I was so emotional when I read the letter. [It was] a very short letter and the kindness in the man to say that, “We will continue to talk when you come out of prison.”

There were also the mockers, the detractors, certain persons who said unkind things that, you know, “He’s been in prison and all of a sudden, he’s . . . “. That’s fine, I accepted all that as part of the package. You take the bad with the good.

I wrote to Mr Chaudhry and I had the opportunity to apologise to him personally when he came to visit in prison. And I want to continue this dialogue with Mr Chaudhry if he would like to.

Because if anything, I am among the reasons Fiji is in this current state of distrust and toxic political environment. If I can assist in bringing the nation together, it would be part of my atonement for my errors. For I have been an unprofitable, misguided individual who would like to do what I believe is my duty to put things right.

And I would work with anyone in the political spectrum, the communal leaders, the vanua and the faith organisations to bring that about.

I also did my traditional apology to my chiefly household of Vatuwaqa and the people of the vanua of Lau. I had invited the Lau Provincial Council to have its meeting at the Corrections Academy in Naboro. By that time, the arrangements had been confirmed for the Police Academy.

But the Roko gave us the farewell church service. I got my dear late sister, Pijila to organise the family. I presented the matanigasau to the then-Council Chairman, Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba (Roko Ului). It was a special moment, in front of all the delegates to the council meeting, the chiefly clan of the Vuanirewa, and Lauans who filled the two buses and
countless vehicles that made it to Naboro.

Our matanivanua (herald) was to make the tabua presentation. But I took it off him because I wanted Roko Ului and the people of Lau to hear my remorse from my mouth. It was very, very emotional. Very liberating. Cathartic.

Late last year, the Coalition government passed a motion in Parliament for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Do you support that?

Oh yes, I think everything I’ve been saying so far points that way.

Do you think it’ll help those that are still incarcerated to come out and speak about what happened in 2000?

Well, not only that but the important thing is [addressing] the general [racial] divide. If that’s where we should start, then we should start there. That’s how I’m looking at it — the bigger picture.

It’s not trying to manage the problems or issues of the last 24 years. People are still hurting from [the coups of] 1987. And what happened in 2006 — nothing has divided this country so much. Anybody who’s thought about this would want this to go beyond just solving the problem of 2000, excusing, and accusing and after that, there’s forgiveness and pardon.

That’s a small part. That too if it needs to happen. But after all that, I don’t want anybody to go to prison because of their participation or involvement in anything from 1987 to 2000. If they cooked the books later, while they were in government, then that’s a different
matter.

But I saw on TV, the weeping and the very public expression of pain of [the late, former Prime Minister, Laisenia] Qarase’s grandchildren when he was convicted and taken away [to prison]. It brought tears to my eyes. There is always a lump in my throat at the memory of my Heilala’s (elder of two daughters) last visit to [me in] Nukulau.

Hardly a word was spoken as we held each other, sobbing uncontrollably the whole time, except to say that Tiara (his sister) was not allowed by the officers at the naval base to come to say her goodbye.

That was very painful. I remember thinking that people can be cruel, especially when the girls explained that it was to be their last visit. Then the picture in my mind of Heilala sitting alone under the turret of the navy ship as she tried not to look back. I had asked her not to look back.

I deserved what I got. But not them. I would not wish the same things I went through on anyone else, not even those who were malicious towards me.

It is the family that suffers. The family are always the silent victims. It is the family that stands by you. They may not agree with what you did. Perhaps it is among the great gifts of God, that children forgive parents and love them still despite the betrayal, abandonment, and pain.

For I betrayed the two women I love most in the world. I betrayed ‘Ulukalala [son] who was born the same year I went to prison. I betrayed and brought shame to my family and my village of Waciwaci. I betrayed friends of all ethnicities and those who helped me in my chosen profession and later, in business.

I betrayed the people of Fiji. That betrayal was officially confirmed when the court judgment called me a traitor. I accepted that portrayal and have to live with it. The judges — at least one of them — even opined that I masterminded the whole thing. I have to decline that dubious honour. That belongs elsewhere.

This article by Joe Yaya is republished from last month’s Islands Business magazine cover story with the permission of editor Richard Naidu and Yaya. The photographs are from a 2000 edition of the International Press Institute’s Global Journalist magazine dedicated to the reporting of The University of the South Pacific’s student journalists. Joe Yaya was a member of the USP team at the time. The archive of the award-winning USP student coverage of the coup is here.   

As Israel drives the Palestinians deeper into another Nakba in Gaza with its assault on Rafah, the Palestine Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and solidarity supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand tonight commemorated the original Nakba — “the Catastrophe” — of 1948.

• READ MORE: As Israel bombs Gaza, sirens echo in West Bank marking 76 years since Nakba
• Fiji abstains from new UN vote on Palestinian membership bid
• 1000 protest in Auckland over Israel’s war on Gaza, honour Nakba victims
• Other War on Gaza reports

This was when Israeli militias slaughtered more than 15,000 people, perpetrated more than 70 massacres and occupied more than three quarters of Palestine, with 750,000 of the Palestinian population forced into becoming refugees from their own land.

The Nakba was a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing followed by the destruction of hundreds of villages, to prevent the return of the refugees — similar to what is being wrought now in Gaza.

The Nakba lies at the heart of 76 years of injustice for the Palestinians — and for the latest injustice, the seven-month long war on Gaza.

Participants told through their stories, poetry and songs by candlelight, they would not forget 1948 — “and we will not forget the genocide under way in Gaza.”

Photographs: David Robie

Nakba Day vigil in Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa 2024

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About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children.

Marking the annual May 3 World Press Freedom Day “plus two”, the crowd also strongly applauded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano Award being presented to the Palestinian journalists for their “courage and commitment”.

Several speakers gave tributes to the journalists, the more than 100 Gazan news workers killed had their names read out and put on display, and cellphones were lit up due to the breeze preventing candle flames.

• READ MORE: Auckland academics call out university stance over pro-Palestine protest
• Media freedom award for the Gaza journalists who have paid a terrible price in Israel’s genocidal war
• Other War on Gaza reports

Activist MC Anna Lee, wo represents several groups including NZEI Te Riu Roa Educators for Gaza/Palestine, praised the journalists and said they set an example to the world.

Shut the Gaza war down chants in Auckland.     Video: Café Pacific

Journalist Dr David Robie, convenor of Pacific Media Watch, said 143 journalists had been killed, according to Al Jazeera and the Gaza Media Office, and it was mostly targeted “assassination by design”.

He paid tribute to several individual journalists as well as the group, including Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by an Israeli sniper more than a year before the October 7 war outbreak, and Hind Khoudary, a young journalist who had inspired people around the world.

The Guillermo Cano Prize was awarded to the Gaza journalists in Santiago, Chile, as part of World Press Freedom Day global events.

Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), received the UNESCO prize on behalf of his colleagues in Gaza.

‘Unique suffering, fearless reporting’
The UN cultural agency has recognised the “unique suffering and fearless reporting” of Gaza’s journalists by awarding them the freedom prize.

Apart from those journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since October 7, nearly all the rest have been injured, displaced or bereaved.

From the start of the conflict, Israel closed Gaza’s borders to international journalists, and none have been allowed free access to the enclave since.

A thousand Gazan journalists were working at the start of the war, and more than a 100 of them have been killed.

“As a result,” reports the IFJ, “the profession has suffered a mortality rate in excess of 10 percent — about six times higher than the mortality rate of the general population of Gaza and around three times higher than that of health professionals.

PJS president Baker said: “Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity — but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them.

“It is justified that they should be honoured on World Press Freedom Day.

Naming the martyred Gaza journalists.   Video: Café Pacific

‘Most deadly attack on press freedom’
“What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information.”

IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “This prize is a real tribute to the commitment to information of journalists in Gaza.

“Journalists in Gaza are starving, homeless and in mortal danger. UNESCO’s recognition of what they are still enduring is a huge and well-deserved boost.”

Kia Ora Gaza – doctors speak out.      Video: Café Pacific

Gaza Freedom Flotilla blocked
Also at the rally today were Kia Ora Gaza’s organiser Roger Fowler and two of the three New Zealand doctors who travelled to Turkiye to embark on the Freedom Flotilla which was sending three ships with humanitarian aid to break the Gaza siege.

Israel thwarted the mission for the time being by pressuring the African nation of Guinea-Bissau to withdraw the maritime flag the ships would have been sailing under.

However, flotilla organisers are working hard to find another flag country for the ships and the doctors vowed to rejoin the mission.

Pacific Media Watch

Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of any vibrant democracy and society’s collective responsibility to safeguard and protect it, says Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Information and Communication Technology Timothy Masiu.

Masiu was chief guest at the 2023 University of the South Pacific Journalism Student Awards function held in Suva on Friday evening.

“The USP Journalism Awards not only recognises excellence in reporting, but also the commitment to ethical journalism, unbiased storytelling, and the pursuit of truth,” said Masiu.

• READ MORE: Communication Minister Masiu’s full speech at Café Pacific
• USP journalism award winners
• Journalists responsibilities vital, says Masiu
• Hostile climates and journalism challenges – David Robie speaking at the 2016 USP awards

“In an era where information flows abundantly, the responsibility of journalists to uphold these principles has never been more critical.”

While recognising the hard work and dedication put in by the student journalists in their stories, Masiu took the time to acknowledge the challenges that journalists face in the pursuit of truth.

“Today, we recognise the hard work, dedication, and exemplary storytelling that have emerged from the vibrant and diverse community of journalists who have made their mark within USP.”

This year 16 students from the USP journalism programme were recognised for their outstanding achievements in journalism.

Sponsorship media
The awards this year were sponsored by the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC), The Fiji Times, Islands Business, FijiLive and Sports World.

“The journalists we celebrate today have embraced this responsibility with vigour, showcasing the power of words and the impact they can have on shaping our world,” said Masiu.

Being a former journalist himself, Masiu said the role of journalism as the Fourth Estate could not be understated — “the role of journalism is pivotal in our society, serving as the watchdog, the voice of the voiceless, and the bridge that connects communities”.

Masiu thanked the journalism school faculty heads and mentors who have guided these aspiring journalists for their dedication in nurturing the next generation of storytellers.

“Your influence goes beyond the classroom; it shapes the future of journalism in the Pacific and beyond,” he said.

The event included presentation of a $10,000 cheque by the PNG government to the USP journalism programme as part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the USP School of Journalism and the PNG National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) on June 19, 2023.

The minister described the collaboration as a testament to recognition that the exchange of knowledge, resources, and expertise was essential in nurturing the next generation of journalists who would shape the narrative of the Pacific region.

Shared training vision
Signifying more than just a formal agreement, he said the MoU represented a shared vision for the future of journalism training and mentoring in the Pacific.

“Through this collaboration, students will have the opportunity to engage with seasoned professionals, gaining insights into the ever-evolving landscape of journalism,” he said.

“I request that the USP School of Journalism or wider USP will have appropriate programmes to upskill or re-train our deserving NBC staff who are non-journalists.”

Journalism head Associate Professor Dr Shailendra Singh acknowledged the support from the PNG government for the USP Journalism Program.

Speaking about the USP Journalism Awards, Dr Singh said these were the longest running and most consistent journalism awards in the Pacific in any category.

He paid tribute to the founder of the awards in 1999, former USP journalism head Professor David Robie, adding that he wished that journalism awards would be revived in Fiji and the region.

“Journalists carry out a crucial function — sometimes it’s a thankless task. Our best journalists should be recognised and helped in their work,” said Dr Singh.

Winners of the 2023 USP Journalism Awards:

• Most Promising First-Year student: Riya Bhagwan
• Best News Reporting: Aralai Vosayaco and Nikhil Kumar
• Best Radio Student: Josepheen Tarianga
• Best Television Students: Nishat Kanti and Maretta Putri
• Best Sports Reporting: Sera Navuga
• Best Feature Reporting: Prerna Priyanka and Viliame Tawanakoro
• Best Regional Reporting: Lorima Dalituicama
• Best Online Reporting: Brittany Nawaqatabu
• Most Outstanding Journalism Student of the Year: Yukta Chand and Viliame Tawanakoro

Awards sponsored by the Journalism Students Association:

• Wansolwara Outstanding Reporting Award: Ema Ganivatu
• Best Inclusive Award, Best Editorial Team, and Best Professional Award: Nikhil Kumar
• Team player Award: Ivy Mallam
• Students Choice Award: Andrew Naidu
• Outstanding Social Service to USP Community: Rhea Kumar

Monika Singh is a reporter for Wansolwara, the online and print publication of the USP Journalism Programme. Republished in partnership with Wansolwara.

ANALYSIS: By Heather Devere, David Robie and Philip Cass

An urgent rethink is needed on several aspects of the Draft National Media Development Policy. In summary, we agree with the statement made by the Community Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC) on 16 February 2023 criticising the extraordinary “haste” of the Ministry’s timeframe for public consultation over such a critical and vitally important national policy.

However, while the ministry granted an extra week from 20 February 2023 for public submissions this was still manifestly inadequate and rather contemptuous of the public interest.

In our view, the ministry is misguided in seeking to legislate for a codified PNG Media Council which flies in the face of global norms for self-regulatory media councils and this development would have the potential to dangerously undermine media freedom in Papua New Guinea.

• READ MORE: APMN calls for ‘urgent rethink’ over PNG draft media regulation plan
• PNG must withdraw media control project, says RSF
• Inside PNG: Media must be watchdog not government-controlled
• Other PNG media freedom reports

The draft policy appears to have confused the purpose of a “media council” representing the “public interest” with the objectives of a government department working in the “national interest”.

If the ministry pushes ahead with this policy without changes it risks Papua New Guinea sliding even further down the RSF World Press Freedom Index. Already it is a lowly 62nd out of 180 countries after falling 15 places in 2021.

Some key points:

• Article 42 of the Papua New Guinea Constitution states that “Every person has the right to freedom of expression and the right to receive and impart ideas and information without interference, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” (Our emphasis)

• Article 43 of the Constitution further states that “Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the freedom to manifest and propagate their religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

• These provisions in the Constitution reflect the importance of media freedom in Papua New Guinea and the commitment to a free, diverse, and independent media environment. There are existing laws in PNG that support these principles.

• In September 2005, Pacific Journalism Review published a complete edition devoted to “media ethics and accountability” which is available online here. In the Introduction, the late Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand, a global expert in M*A*S (Media Accountability Systems) and media councils and free press in democracies, wrote: “Accountability implies being accountable, accountable to whom? To the public, obviously. [i.e. Not to governments]. While regulation involves only political leaders and while self-regulation involves only the media industry, media accountability involves press, profession and public.” The PJR edition cited published templates and guidelines for public accountability systems.

• On World Press Freedom Day 2019, António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, declared: “No democracy is complete without access to transparent and reliable information. It is the cornerstone for building fair and impartial institutions, holding leaders accountable and speaking truth to power.”

• On 12 November 2019, the Melanesia Media Freedom Forum (MMFF) was established and it declared: “A better understanding is needed of the role of journalism in Melanesian democracies. Awareness of the accountability role played by journalists and the need for them to be able to exercise their professional skills without fear is critical to the functioning of our democracies.”

• The Forum also noted: “The range of threats to media freedom is increasing. These include restrictive legislation, intimidation, political threats, legal threats and prosecutions, assaults and police and military brutality, illegal detention, online abuse, racism between ethnic groups and the ever-present threats facing particularly younger and female reporters who may face violence both on the job and within their own homes.” The full declaration is here.

• Media academics who were also present at this inaugural Forum made a declaration of their own in support of the journalists, saying that they “expressed strong concerns about issues of human rights, violence, and freedom of expression. They also expressed concerns about the effect of stifling legislation that had the power to impose heavy fines and prison sentences on journalists.” (Our emphasis). The full statement is here.

APMN proposals regarding PNG’s Draft Media Policy:

• That the Ministry immediately discard the proposed policy of legislating the PNG media Council and regulating journalists and media which would seriously undermine media freedom in Papua New Guinea;

• That the Ministry extend the public consultation timeframe with a realistic deadline to engage Papua New Guinean public interest and stakeholders in a meaningful dialogue;

• That the Ministry ensures a process of serious consultation with stakeholders such as the existing PNG Media Council, which do not appear to have had much opportunity to respond, journalists, media organisations and many other NGOs that need to be heard; and

• That the Ministry consult a wider range of media research and publications and take guidance from media freedom organisations, journalism schools at universities, and an existing body of knowledge about media councils and systems.

• Essentially journalism is not a crime, but a fundamental pillar of democracy as espoused through the notion of a Fourth Estate and media must be free to speak truth to power in the public interest not the politicians’ interest.

Dr Heather Devere, formerly Director of Practice for the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies; Dr David Robie, founding Professor of Pacific Journalism and director of the Pacific Media Centre, convenor of Pacific Media Watch and a former Head of Journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea; and Dr Philip Cass, a PNG-born researcher and journalist who was chief subeditor of the Times of Papua New Guinea and worked on Wantok, and who is currently editor of Pacific Journalism Review.

• More information

Veteran Fijian journalist Netani Rika and his wife were resting in their living room when suddenly a Molotov cocktail went crashing through their living room window.

It was one of the many acts of violence and intimidation he endured after the 2006 military coup.

For the past decade Fiji’s media have operated under tight restrictions and scrutiny, with strict rules governing how stories can be reported.

• READ MORE: Fiji’s media veterans recount intimidation under FijiFirst government – eye on reforms
• WATCH ON ABC PACIFIC: The stories on this page
• ‘No Fiji TV broadcast tonight due to censorship’ – Rika recalls Fiji media intimidation
• Other Fiji media freedom reports

Now journalists are hoping for changes to Fiji’s controversial Media Act, or its complete removal, to protect the freedom of the press.

Credits:
Lice Movono, Reporter
Hugo Hodge, Producer

Featuring:
Netani Rika, former editor-in-chief of The Fiji Times and manager of Fiji Television News
Sean Dorney, former ABC Pacific correspondent
Professor David Robie, former director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre
Samantha Magick, editor of Islands Business International

A new Asia Pacific nonprofit group has taken up the role of publishing the independent Pacific Journalism Review and other research and publication ventures.

The launch of the Asia Pacific Media Network | Te Koakoa Inc. (APMN) has ensured the viability of the New Zealand-based 28-year-old journal that was founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994.

The journal has a focus on Asia Pacific, Australian and New Zealand media research but also publishes widely on global issues.

• READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review at Informit

Chair Dr Heather Devere says the members of the network — mostly in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand — aim to “show support and work for the benefit of First Nations and other communities in Aotearoa and the Asia-Pacific region”.

But, adds Dr Devere, an author and retired director of research practice at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS): “The first and most urgent aim is to enable the continued publication of the nonprofit media research journal Pacific Journalism Review”.

The journal has already produced two double editions since becoming independent of its last host, Auckland University of Technology, which had followed the University of the South Pacific as publisher.

Professor David Robie, founding editor of the journal and who retired as AUT’s Pacific Media Centre (PMC) director in 2020, says he is “delighted” with this development and thanked colleagues for their support for the vision.

After organising the establishment of the APMN, he is now deputy chair and is looking for new projects. Dr Robie is also country representative of the Manila-based Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and looks to strengthen the Asian aspects of APMN’s research.

Dr Philip Cass, who succeeded Dr Robie as PJR editor, says APMN is intended to provide a focal point for academics and practitioners with a strong interest in the region and “a desire to use their expertise to contribute to the Pacific media through publications and hands-on projects”.

PJR is the only journal covering media, communication and journalism issues in the Pacific, he adds.

“It draws on the experiences and knowledge of educators, journalists, film-makers and photographers from across the region to provide a unique insight and analysis into a range of issues.”

A short video marking PJR’s 20 years of publication in 2014.   Video: PMC

Need for network ‘urgent’
Dr Devere says it was urgent to establish such a network “to continue the work on Aotearoa New Zealand’s role in the Asia Pacific region following the demise of the Pacific Media Centre at AUT”.

There is no longer a space for those working on the PJR, a journal that has been publishing research related to important and on-going issues in New Zealand’s immediate region.

Dr Devere says no New Zealand university is doing the work being done by APMN.

“While there is a current focus on Pacific issues, there is no stable space for those working on media issues in the Asia Pacific region,” she says.

“There is also a conflict of interest between universities that are now functioning as commercial institutions, and investigative journalism that is engaged in providing accurate and reliable information for citizens.”

• More information about APMN
• Call for papers for PJR

Fiji’s National Federation Party leader and Member of Parliament Dr Biman Prasad is confident that the incumbent Voreqe Bainimarama government will be defeated in this year’s general election, because — as he says — “People have had enough; they want a change”.

Speaking to the media in Auckland on Wednesday, he said Fiji was suffering from an economic downturn, inept policies and an unfriendly government.

“Bainimarama does not hold any hope for our people. His government has been in power since December 5, 2006, when he ousted a democratically elected coalition government,” he said.

• READ MORE: Prasad confident ‘fed up’ Fijians will make a change in this year’s election
• Other Fiji elections reports

“Since then, Fiji has been sliding on the economic scale. We are in dire straits.”

Describing the Constitution of Fiji, adopted in 2013 as “draconian”, he said that several provisions of the document were detrimental to human rights and freedom of speech.

“There are human rights breaches, media cannot operate freely and even the Opposition is also not allowed to function as per democratic standards,” he said.

Fiji’s electoral system
Fiji follows a single, nationwide constituency method of electing members to its Parliament through the open list proportion with an electoral threshold of 5 percent.

The House has 50 seats allocated using the D’Hondt method. Also known as the “Jefferson Method” or the “Greatest Divisors Method”. This allows for the allocation of seats in Parliament among federal states or in the party-list proportional representation system.

It belongs to the class of highest average methods.

The method was first described in 1772 by future US President Thomas Jefferson and was reinvented in 1878 by Belgian mathematician Victor D’Hont — hence the name.

The Election Office in Fiji has not set the date for this year’s election but said in an announcement on March 17, 2022, that it would be held during November this year.

Candidates can begin campaigning on April 26, 2022, but must conclude two days before the polling date.

The first general election was held in September 2014 with the Parliamentary term set at four years. Bainimarama and his close friend, Attoney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, established the FijiFirst Party, which won 32 seats, followed by the Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) (15 seats) and NFP (3).

However, in the 2018 election, FijiFirst won only 27 seats, with SODELPA gaining 21 seats, while NFP retained its three seats in the 51-Member House.

An accomplished academic
Dr Prasad, who served the University of South Pacific as a lecturer and professor for 28 years, gave up his academic career to enter politics. He was the associate editor of the Journal of Fijian Studies and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pacific Studies, the head of the School of Economics and later dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics.

He said that the Fijian economy suffered from mismanagement and wasteful expenditure.

“Poverty, which was placed at 29 percent of the population in 2019, has risen sharply since the covid-19 pandemic hit the country. Today another 20 percent of our people are on the margin of poverty. The government received budget support of F$300 million from Australia and New Zealand,” Dr Prasad said.

“The total amount obtained in the last two years from various sources is F$1.3 billion. Covid has exposed the extent of mismanagement. Our growth has been negative for the past three years.

“The agriculture and sugarcane sectors have been neglected and all the money has been spent on tourism. Our infrastructure is in a pathetic state.”

IMF expects contraction
According to the December 2021 report of the International Monetary Fund, Fiji’s real gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by an estimated 15.7 percent in 2021 and is projected to contract by another 4 percent in the fiscal year 20211-2022 in the wake of the delta variant covid outbreak.

“The fiscal deficit reached a record 13.1 percent of GDP in the fiscal year 2020-2021 with an accompanying rise in public debt to 89.8 percent of the GDP by March 2022. Year-on-year consumer price inflation reached -2.8 percent at the end of 2020.

“Increases in international commodity prices and local food prices are expected to drive consumer price inflation to 1.4 percent by end of 2021.

“Both lending and deposit rates have decreased, and private sector credit contracted by 3.1 percent in 2020 and is expected to shrink by a further 3.6 percent by the end of the 2021 financial year. Non-performing loans have risen to record levels,” the IMF report said.

Pact with Rabuka
Dr Prasad said that NFP would work with People’s Alliance party leader Sitiveni Rabuka, who is expected to emerge strongly in the 2022 election, saying that he had changed and favoured inclusive politics.

“We will restore the rights of the people, including freedom of speech, and freedom of the media and repeal the draconian laws within the first 100 days in office. We will have a strong focus on social welfare and improve the availability of healthcare and medicines,” Dr Prasad said.

“Fiji wants a free government. As a politician, I was arrested more than once for speaking out against the Constitution.”

He is confident that the people of Fiji will elect the opposition parties to form the government later this year.

“Our people want a good, accountable and transparent government. Our Constitution does not allow a coalition government but we are confident of reaching an agreement with other parties. We have plenty of work to do,” he said.

Dr Prasad ruled out another coup saying, “Fijians will not tolerate any more of them”.

Earlier, New Zealand Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono spoke about the plight of West Papuan students who have been facing hardship since the Indonesian government stopped funding their scholarships at the beginning of this year.

He said that he had written to the Labour government asking for urgent financial support through the Scholarship Fund and including the affected students in the “2021 Pathway to Residency Programme”.

Venkat Raman is editor and general manager of Indian Newslink. Republished with permission.

I spent five years as the lone journalist on the remote Pacific island of Yap. During that time I was harassed, spat at, threatened with assassination and warned that I was being followed.

The tyres on my car were slashed late one night.

There was also pressure on the political level. The chiefs of the traditional Council of Pilung (COP) asked the state legislature to throw me out of the country as a “persona non grata” claiming that my journalism “may be disruptive to the state environment and/or to the safety and security of the state”.

• READ MORE:  Pacific media freedom and news ‘black holes’ worsen for World Press Freedom Day
• Pacific Media Watch reports
• Media freedom in the Asia Pacific region

During a public hearing of the Yap state legislature in September 2021, 14 minutes of the 28-minute meeting was spent complaining about an article of mine that reported on the legislature’s initially unsuccessful attempt to impeach the governor.

One politician then posted about me on his Facebook page, under which a member of the public posted a comment saying I should be assassinated.

American Bill Jaynes, editor of the Kaselehlie Press in Pohnpei, one of Yap’s sister states in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), has had his share of death threats over the years, too.

Several death threats
“In the 15 or so years I’ve been at this desk I have had several death threats,” he said.

“Early on in my tenure, some angry individual carved a request for me to perform an act of physical impossibility into the hood of my car which then rusted for posterity. Most of that was during the early days before I came to be trusted to view things from an FSM rather than a foreigner’s point of view and to handle things factually rather than sensationally.”

Freedom of the press is included in both the FSM and the Yap State Constitution, but as Leilani Reklai, publisher and editor of the Island Times newspaper in Palau and president of the Palau Media Council, says: “Freedom of the press in the constitution is pretty on paper but not always a reality.”

These incidents are shocking, but sadly are not isolated. Journalists in the Pacific face imprisonment, loss of employment and banishment from their homes.

“While there might not be assassinations, murders, gagging, torture and ‘disappearances’ of journalists in Pacific island states, threats, censorship and a climate of self-censorship are commonplace,” professor David Robie, founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, wrote in a 2019 article for The Conversation.

A Fijian journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that after he posed questions to a politician during a public forum, the politician replied that he knew where the reporter lived. The following day, the reporter’s car was broken into.

Soon after, the reporter was told that if he didn’t stop being critical, he would be kicked out of his job “and can go bag groceries instead” and he was evicted from his housing. The reporter believes all of these incidents stemmed from the questions he asked of the politician.

“Within one week my life changed completely,” he said. “I do not see a future for me or any other journalist who is curious and questioning to make a career in journalism in Fiji.”

Fiji ranked 55th in world
According to the Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 World Press Freedom Index, Fiji is ranked as 55th out of 179.

The index highlights the “draconian” Media Industry Development Decree, introduced in 2010 and turned into law in 2018. “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship,” said Reporters Without Borders.

In 2018, senior journalist Scott Waide of Papua New Guinea was suspended by EMTV after the airing of his report critical of the government for purchasing 40 luxury Maseratis and three Bentleys to drive attendees during the APEC conference.

Reinstated after a public and media outcry, Waide stated during an interview on ABC’s Pacific Beat programme: “Increasingly, not just EMTV, but nearly every other media organisation in Papua New Guinea has been interfered with by their boards or with politicians, or various other players in society.

“They’re doing it with impunity. It’s a trend that’s very dangerous for democracy.”

Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific director of Reporters Without Borders, said the situation is complicated by how small and connected many Pacific nations are.

“The fact is that political leaders are also economic bosses so there’s a nexus. It’s symptomatic of the small journalistic communities in the Pacific islands that need to deal with the political community to get access to information. They have to be careful when they criticise knowing the government can cut advertising, publicity, etc. There’s still a strong level of intimidation.”

While there are particular dangers faced by local journalists, foreign reporters living in the Pacific are not safe either.

Denied renewal of work permit
Canadian Dan McGarry, former media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post and a resident of the island nation for nearly 20 years, was denied renewal of his work permit in 2019. The reason given was that his job should be held by a local citizen.

But McGarry said he believed it was politically motivated due to his reporting on “Chinese influence” in the small nation. He was then denied re-entry to Vanuatu after ironically attending a forum on press freedom in Brisbane.

Regional and international news organisations came to his defence and the court granted McGarry re-entry, but the newspaper’s appeal to have his work permit renewed is ongoing.

I have written about some sensitive and difficult topics and like to think of myself as pretty fearless. In 2018 I wrote about illegal fishing by Chinese commercial fishing boats around the Outer Island of Fedrai. That coverage resulted in the expulsion of the fishing vessel and significant political consequences.

I’ve written about issues in the customs and immigration processes in FSM, that were potentially jeopardising tourism to Yap, which is so important to so many people’s livelihoods, and also about a huge and controversial proposed resort that would have seen thousands and thousands of Chinese tourists flown in to that tiny island on charter flights.

These stories matter and just because some Pacific nations are small and remote does not mean that they do not need or deserve the scrutiny of a free press.

But eventually, the threats to my safety were too much to handle. I spent too much time looking over my shoulder, living behind locked doors and never going out alone after dark.

In mid-2021, I moved to Guam for greater peace of mind where I am continuing to write about this largely invisible, but crucial part of the world.

Joyce McClure is a freelance journalist based in Guam. This article was first published by The Guardian’s Pacific Project and has been republished with permission.

On 10 July 1985 the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, was sunk at an Auckland wharf.

Two French secret agents planted two limpet mines on the ship while it was berthed at Marsden wharf. The second explosion killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira when he got trapped on board while retrieving his cameras.

Author and academic David Robie, a recently retired journalism professor at AUT University, spent more than 10 weeks on board the ship as a journalist shortly before it was attacked, and wrote about his experience in the 1986 book Eyes of Fire.

• READ MORE: The Auckland event on Sunday mirroring the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete on July 17
• LISTEN TO THE PODCAST: The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
• Eyes of Fire, by David Robie – the 30th anniversary book edition

In the Crimes NZ series of RNZ podcasts, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior is described as the first act of state terrorism against New Zealand.

RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan talks to Dr Robie about the Rainbow Warrior, the humanitarian voyage to Rongelap to help islanders suffering from the legacy of US nuclear tests and his 1986 book Eyes of Fire (Little Island Press Ltd).

The interview was in 2020 to mark the 10 July 1985 date and has just been re-released by RNZ as a podcast.

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

• More information – microsite: Eyes of Fire – 30 Years On

A retired university professor and a Tahitian doctoral candidate have appealed to Auckland University of Technology to “listen” to the Asia-Pacific people and stakeholders involved in the Pacific Media Centre when making decisions about its future.

The centre has been embroiled in controversy over its leadership succession since early last month when the 13-year centre’s office was suddenly closed and all its memorabilia, archives and Pacific taonga were packed up and stashed in a locked office.

Also, the centre’s media website has not been active for the past three months since the founding director retired last December.

• LISTEN TO Radio 531pi: The Pacific Media Centre controversy
• Who is killing off top Pacific journalism – and why?
• Concerns grows over PMC after shock office ‘closure’ and no director
• Pacific reaction to ‘end of an era’
• Outcry over signs of upheaval at PMC – Dateline Pacific
• Outcry over signs of upheaval at Pacific Media Centre – APR
• LISTEN to RNZ Dateline Pacific

While the university’s School of Communication Studies has claimed that the office was being “moved”, staff involved in the centre were said to be unaware where this was located.

Expressions for interest in the leadership were called for a week ago by the school management and a new director (or co-directors) – an internal appointment – is expected to be announced next month.

Radio 531pi Pacific Days Show host Ma’a Brian Sagala today interviewed the founding director of the centre, Professor David Robie, a former head of journalism at both the universities of Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, and a Tahitian doctoral candidate, Ena Manuireva, who played a key role in the centre’s nuclear-free Pacific project last year, about the future of the centre.

Both expressed serious concern about the future direction with Dr Robie saying there was a serious gap between AUT’s promises and the reality and Manuireva saying that any dilution of the PMC’s cross-disciplinary role would have a negative impact on the “space” that the PMC had provided for Asia-Pacific voices marginalised by mainstream media.

Dr Robie said that his experience over the past two years had been that management had “not listened” to key people involved in the centre or the Pacific and diversity stakeholders represented by the PMC advisory board.

He said he was concerned that an “agenda” was being pushed.

Manuireva said that AUT should demonstrate greater commitment to the centre and listen to the people who ought to be leading in the future.

The Radio 531pi interview today by Ma’a Brian Sagala.

Incoming editor Philip Cass highlights the recent “covid-free” success of several Pacific countries while acknowledging the recent reversals in that impressive record.

He laments the appalling record of the United States under the failure of covid leadership by defeated US President Donald Trump, a situation that has been echoed in the American territories in the Pacific such as Guam.

• READ MORE: Pacific Journalism Review – the full archives

“Comparatively safe as we are in New Zealand, this is still the second edition of Pacific Journalism Review we have produced with covid-19 in the background and even when the pandemic is over, or at least brought under control, we will still be threatened by a host of challenges—not least that of climate change, which has already forced internal migration in Papua New Guinea and Fiji and threatens to do the same in the ASEAN region, with its incomparably larger population,” writes Dr Cass in the editorial.

He says it is significant that the first national leader to congratulate US president-elect Joe Biden was Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who has played a proactive climate change leadership role in the Pacific.

This 306-page edition was launched by the deputy dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, Professor Fiona Peterson, at this week’s Pacific Media Centre symposium  with a theme of “2020 and Beyond: Highlights and New Horizons”.

Dr Cass spoke of the challenges facing PJR at the launch, including continuing its international trajectory and the need for a new “home base”, preferably a Pacific institution.

Being named editor was a “great honour and a fantastic opportunity”, he said.

“We have set  our standards very high. Our focus on the Pacific, our growing links with Asian academics and our openness to cross disciplinary approaches has created a truly unique journal.

“I am grateful to the board members and contributors who have offered some innovative ideas for developing PJR in the future.”

The latest issue has been published in partnership with Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, with several climate and covid papers about ASEAN countries from UGM’s “Rethinking the Social World” symposium in August being published.

Other climate change papers
Other climate and coronavirus papers include an analysis of the role of the churches in the Pacific; public discourses about climate displacement in Oceania; and Malaysian newspaper coverage of environmental NGOs.

A strong Frontline section of four articles features a critique of the new fields of research classifications adopted in Australia and New Zealand, which the author, Dr Chris Nash, a former Monash journalism professor and author of What is Journalism? The Art and Politics of a Rupture, says “pose considerable opportunities and challenges” for the discipline.

Frontline also includes a profile by Vivien Altman and Wendy Bacon of Australian-Tongan journalist Jill Emberson, who made a significant contribution to journalism in the Pacific with “issues relevant to Indigenous Australians and to women” before she died of ovarian cancer in 2019; a case study of political documentary and alternative journalism based on the film Obrero about Filipino labour migrants in Christchurch after the 2011 earthquake; and a project analysis on a covid reportage initiative at an Auckland university to counter the virus “disinfodemic”.

Unthemed articles include deaths in custody journalism in Australia, Rotumans and the “coconut wireless” over the 2018 Fiji elections; and the media framing of attacks on West Papuan students in Indonesian online media.

Wewak-born Dr Cass succeeds founding editor Professor David Robie who started the journal at the University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, in 1994 as a publication to speak truth to power through research.

Dr Robie recalled in this edition’s joint editorial what he had said at the 20th anniversary celebration of the journal in 2014, “we have achieved precisely what we set out to do, being a critical conscience of Asia-Pacific socio-political and development dilemmas”.

“Tenk yu tumas … lukim yu Philip, and good luck to you and your future crew for the media waka journey ahead,” he wrote.

The journal will be on sabbatical for some months and plans a seminar and book project next year in Australia on “Journalism, creative arts, and Indigenous studies”.

• The full edition
• PJR archives

New Zealand established its credentials as an independent small nation after the fatal bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, says an author and academic who spent weeks on the vessel shortly before it was attacked.

On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was sunk at an Auckland wharf by two bombs planted on the hull of the ship by French secret agents.

The event is often referred to as the first act of terrorism in New Zealand.

LISTEN: The Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan Crime NZ interview with David Robie
WATCH: Eyes of Fire archival videos
READ: The Eyes of Fire book

Two French agents planted two explosives on the ship while it was berthed at Marsden wharf, the second explosion killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

Dr David Robie, who is an AUT professor of journalism and communication studies, as well as the director of the university’s Pacific Media Centre, had spent more than 10 weeks on the ship as a journalist covering its nuclear rescue mission in the Pacific.

He wrote about his experience in Eyes of Fire, a book about the last voyage of the first Rainbow Warrior – two other Rainbow Warrior ships have followed.

In 1985, Rongelap atoll villagers in the Marshall Islands asked Greenpeace to help them relocate to a new home at Mejato atoll. Their island had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

Environmental journalism
“At the time I was very involved in environmental issues around the Pacific and in those days Greenpeace was very small, a fledgling organisation,” he tells Jesse Mulligan.

“They had a little office in downtown Auckland and Elaine Shaw was the coordinator and she was quite worried that this was going to be a threshold voyage.

“It was probably the first campaign by Greenpeace that was humanitarian, it wasn’t just environmental – to rescue basically the people who had been suffering from nuclear radiation.”

Shaw, he says, was looking for media publicity on the issue and several journalists from Europe and the US had been invited on board as the Greenpeace crew carried out their mission.

“There were about six journalists who went onboard but I ended up being the only one from the Southern Hemisphere.

“It was a big commitment at the time because I was a freelance journalist and it meant joining the Rainbow Warrior in Hawai’i and being onboard until 10-to-11 weeks, right up until the time of the bombing.”

He says the 49m ex-fishing trawler, originally named the Sir William Hardy, built in Aberdeen, Scotland, had been comfortable enough at sea, having been refitted as an environmental sailing ship as well as engines. “It had a lot of character… I guess all of us onboard grew to love it incredibly.”

Moruroa protest planned
The US had carried out 67 nuclear tests at the Marshall Islands. France was also carrying out 193 tests in the Pacific and Greenpeace had planned on confronting that situation at Moruroa Atoll after its Marshall Islands rescue effort.

New Zealand had already voiced disapproval of the testing in the region, with then Prime Minister David Lange in 1984 rebuking the French for “arrogantly” continuing the programme in the country’s backyard.

Dr Robie left the ship when it docked in Auckland after the Marshall Islands stage of the mission. Three days after the ship had docked, a birthday celebration was held for  Greenpeace campaign organiser Steve Sawyer onboard. The attack happened after the party.

Just before midnight on the evening of 10 July 1985, two explosions ripped through the hull as the ship.

Portuguese crew member Fernando Pereira was killed after returning on board after the first explosion.

“I think it was an incredible miracle that only one person lost his life,” Dr Robie says. He was not at the party at the time and joined the crew early it the morning when he heard the news.

He objects to the prominent media angle at the time, which he says focused on suggestions it was not the perpetrator’s intention to kill anyone.

‘Outrageous act of terrorism’
“It was an outrageous act of terrorism and the bombers knew very well, as they were getting information all the time, that there was a large crowd onboard the Rainbow Warrior that night and the chances were very high that there could have been a loss of life.”

Two of the cabin crew were situated immediately above the engine room when the first bomb planted there went off. The second bomb was planted near the propeller to ensure the ship was hobbled.

Dr Robie had been able to visit the ship later after it had been towed to Devonport naval base.

“I was quiet staggered – my old [cabin] floor had sort of erupted, Fernando had a cabin right close to that and he probably got trapped there.”

Thirteen foreign agents were involved, operating in three teams. The first team brought in the explosives, the second team would plant these and the third was on stand-by in case anything went wrong with the first two teams.

“A commanding officer kept an overview of the whole operation. I think there was an element of arrogance, the same arrogance as with the testing itself. There was a huge amount of arrogance about taking on an operation like this in a peaceful country – we were allies of France at the time – and it is extraordinary that they assumed they could get away with this outrageous act.”

Two of the spies were caught. Two General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) officers, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were arrested on July 24. Both were charged with murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.

Repression of independence movements
“You have to see it within the context of the period of the time,” Dr Robie says.

He says that the French policy of repression against independence movements in New Caledonia and Tahiti, with assassinations of Kanak leaders like Eloi Machoro, needed to be understood to put the Rainbow Warrior attack in perspective. France was bitterly defending its nuclear force de frappe.

“New Zealand was unpopular with the major nuclear powers and there was certainly no sympathy for New Zealand’s position about nuclear testing. So, there wasn’t really any co-operation, even from our closest neighbour, Australia.

“Had we had more cooperation… we probably would have got agents who were on board the Ouvea, the yacht that carried the explosives, in Norfolk Island. But it is extraordinary we got two [agents] anyway.

“But we did not benefit in any way from [state] intelligence… so I think we were very much let down by our intelligence community.”

The case was a source of considerable embarrassment to the French government.

“They did pay compensation after arbitration that went on with the New Zealand government and Greenpeace. But justice was never really served… the 10 years were never served, both Prieur and Mafart were part of the negotiations with French government.

NZ was held ‘over a barrel’
“Basically, France had New Zealand over a barrel over trade and the European Union, so compromises were reached and Prieur and Mafart were handed over to France for three years. Essentially house arrest at Hao atoll, the rear base of the French nuclear operations in Polynesia.”

Dr Robie said the rear base was widely regarded as a military “Club Med”.

He says they didn’t even spend three years there, but left for France within the time period.

While the attack was on an international organisation rather than New Zealand itself, most New Zealanders saw it as an attack on the sovereignty of the nation

Dr Robie says it left a long-lasting impression on New Zealanders.

“It was a baptism of fire. It was a loss of innocence when that happened. And in that context, we had stood up as a small nation on being nuclear-free. Something we should have been absolutely proud of, which we were, with all those who campaigned for that at the time. I think that really established our independence, if you like, as a small nation.

“I think we have a lot to contribute to the world in terms of peace-making and we shouldn’t lose track of that. The courage that was shown by this country, standing up to a major nuclear power. We should follow through on that kind of independence of thought.”

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

• Eyes of Fire – Thirty Years 0n – a microsite of Rainbow Warrior bombing archival stories, videos and reports made in 2015

What should we expect for the future of media freedom in the Pacific? And how do we sift through the “bullshit” as emerging journalists? These were two of the many questions raised at the pre-conference keynote for the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum at Griffith University, Brisbane.

Attending on the night where various media professionals, many with extensive careers in the Pacific. A few notable attendees included SBS correspondent Stefan Armbruster, retired foreign correspondent Sean Dorney, radio journalist Pauline Nare and academic Dr Tess Newton Cain.

Key note speaker, Professor David Robie focused the night’s conversation on the lack of media freedom in West Papua with the main issue being the lack of international media attention and its effect on opportunities to make positive humanitarian changes.

READ MORE: WEST PAPUA: PMC director blasts politicians, media over ‘shameful silence’ on rights violations

To date, 528,000 West Papuans have lost their lives to a slow-motion genocide.

Dr Robie and audience members expressed their disgust and concern at the silence and inaction from international governments and the lack of media reporting on these events.

With a death toll as high as this, it becomes clear that the lack of journalistic reporting on this issue is a deliberate decision. This is not a number that can simply be ignored.

Dr Robie likened the media situation in West Papua to the cases of imprisoned female investigative journalists in Iran. The deliberate action of imprisoning critical journalists who are exposing human rights abuses is a mirrored pattern in the Pacific.

However, although there are international journalists being imprisoned there is an exciting emergence of “citizen journalism” a term that describes the creation, collection and distribution of news and information by the public on the internet and social media.

West Papuans are using the resources that they have on the ground and in their hands to capture the human rights abuses they are experiencing and actively sharing these online, forcing open the eyes of the world onto the slow genocide occurring in West Papua.

The “citizen journalism” coming out of West Papua has created global pressure on the Indonesian Government, which initiated a blackout across West Papua on August 21, 2019  in response to the growing unrest. Black spots are still active today in Jayapura and Manokwari.

Coming to the end of the keynote presentation, Dr Robie unfurled the West Papuan flag  from behind the podium. In an act of solidarity, he asked all attendants to stand with him and make the promise that they would endeavour to be honest, passionate and critical journalists when it came to writing about the atrocities in West Papua.

If mainstream media are deliberately choosing not to report on the events in West Papua, then independent journalists must make the conscious decision to do so instead.

As the lecture came to an end it became clear that conversations around West Papua did not simply end with the slideshow. Conversations and deliberate actions of those present following this event are sure to be the catalyst for change for media freedom in not only West Papua but across the Pacific.

Papua Merdeka from Sorong to Samarai.

• Moale James is a student at the University of Queensland undertaking her Bachelor in Journalism. Moale also proudly identifies as a mixed-race Papua New Guinean-Australian.

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie condemned the Australian and New Zealand governments and mainstream media for their “deafening silence” over the West Papua crisis last night.

Speaking in the pre-conference keynote for next month’s Melanesian Media Freedom Forum (MMFF) at Griffith University’s South Bank campus in Brisbane, Dr Robie said Canberra and Wellington needed to get behind the Vanuatu-led Pacific initiatives on West Papuan self-determination or face growing insecurity in the region.

He told the audience – which included experienced “Pacific hands” Dr Tess Newton Cain, Lee Duffield, Sean Dorney, Bob Howarth and Stefan Armbruster – that the 1969 UN-mandated plebiscite on the future of West Papua was a sham and that a fresh vote was needed.

READ MORE: Veronica Koman wins prize for West Papua work

While praising public broadcasters ABC and RNZ Pacific for their coverage of West Papua, Dr Robie described the mainstream commercial media’s reporting of recent protests in Papua as “shameful.”

Dozens of people have been killed and many thousands forced to flee over the past three months as Indonesian military and police clashed with Papuan demonstrators protesting against racism.

Dr Robie said some Pacific media were doing a better job of covering the crisis than mainstream Australian and NZ news organisations.

Dr Robie also said it was embarrassing that international news agencies were doing a better job of covering something “right on our own doorstep”.

“West Papua has generally been poorly covered by New Zealand mainstream media – and only slightly better in Australia – apart from RNZ Pacific and a handful of specialist websites such as the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report,” he said.

Dr Robie spoke about the principles of “human rights journalism” as a guiding framework for covering conflicts in the region.

Journalists with ‘guts’
He commended specific journalists and media practitioners who have incorporated this into their work and “stuck their necks out in defence of a free press.”

“It takes serious guts to do so in the Pacific.”

Scott Waide, Neville Choi and Sincha Dimara from Papua New Guinea’s EMTV were praised as was the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Dan McGarry and the Post Vila-based independent journalist Ben Bohane.

“Fiji’s Simpson @ Eight – Stan Simpson is doing an excellent job on the University of the South Pacific expose at the moment – and Alex Rheeney and Mata’afa Keni Lesa at the Samoa Observer are examples,” he said.

“West Papua Media is one of the networks of citizen journalists which has also played a key role. And Stefan Armbruster of SBS News and Johnny Blades of RNZ Pacific are key contributors too.”

“But there are many more journalists who deserve credit.”

MMMF conference
A select group of Pacific journalists will be gathering for the MMFF conference at Griffith University on November 11-12 to map out a media freedom strategy for Melanesia.

Some of their presentations are expected to be published in a special edition of Pacific Journalism Review research journal.

During his keynote, Dr Robie presented a “wish list” for journalist action, including pressing for an impartial investigation into cases of arbitrary arrest and impunity in West Papua; open access to news workers, diplomats and human rights advocates; and a new independent plebiscite on West Papuan self-determination.

After his speech, Dr Robie unfurled the West Papuan flag of independence – the Morning Star – and wrapped it around himself, saying: “Journalists really need to decide where they stand in relation to the issue.”

The whole room of journalists, academics and activists then came up to the front and joined Dr Robie around the flag.

• The Melanesia Media Freedom Forum
• Wamena riot death toll remains shrouded in mystery

A Pacific Media Centre collaborator has been awarded the inaugural Sean Dorney Grant for Pacific Journalism at the 2019 Walkley Mid-Year Celebration.

Vanuatu-based Australian photojournalist Ben Bohane was awarded the $10,000 grant out of 22 applicants for his ongoing work in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea.

He told Pacific Media Watch he was honoured to received the grant and hoped it would “grow interest and respect for Pacific-based journalists to better inform Australians about what is going on.”

READ MORE: Ben Bohane: China? No, let’s face the elephant in the Pacific room

WATCH: Ben Bohane responds at the mid-year Walkleys

“For too long this region has been ignored by the Australian media, not to mention global media, but now that it is on the frontline of climate change and geopolitical contest then I expect there to be more interest from now on.”

Bohane has covered the Pacific for 30 years. His work has been both acclaimed and arresting and has featured photos and interviews from all South Pacific conflicts, including West Papua and East Timor.

He has the largest personal photo archive of the South Pacific in the world and two of his portfolios have featured in Pacific Journalism Review.

While travelling and living with tribal groups in the Solomon Islands in the early 1990s, he was able to secure the first pictures of Bougainville Revolutionary Army leader Francis Ona and the only interview and pictures of Guadalcanal warlord Harold Keke.

He said that he would use the grant money to cover the upcoming Bougainville referendum on October 17.

“I plan to do a series of print stories, mainly for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which will highlight the background to the referendum and why Bougainville matters to Australia and the region.”

According to Dr Tess Newton Cain, an academic and the principal of TNC Pacific Consulting, who helped establish the grant, Bohane’s extensive coverage of Bougainville stood out among other grant nominees.

“His was one of several proposals that focused on Bougainville,” she said.

“Ben has been covering Bougainville for many years, including during the civil war period,”

“It was in Bougainville that he and Sean Dorney first met,” said Newton Cain.

Grant namesake Sean Dorney is an Australian journalist and foreign correspondent who has covered Papua New Guinea and the Pacific for 40 years.

The grant was sponsored in recognition of his huge contribution and the importance of getting the real stories of the Pacific and of Pacific people in front of Australian audiences, Newton Cain said.

“I hope this grant will go some way to stimulating an interest in the Australian media to tell their audiences more and better stories about the countries in their immediate region.”

Bohane said he was honoured to receive the grant in Dorney’s name.

“I can’t think of anyone who has done more to keep Australians and the rest of the Pacific informed about Pacific affairs over the past 40 years.”

“He is one of the great correspondents of our time and a pioneering spirit in the development of journalism in the Pacific, along with David Robie, Mary Louise O’Callaghan and a handful of others.”

Award recipients in other categories in the Walkley Mid-Year celebration included Oliver Gordon who won the Walkley Young Australian Journalist of the Year for his ABC investigation The Black & White Hotel: Inside Australia’s Segregated Hotel Rooms.

Another was Laura Murphy-Oates, who won the Public Service Journalism award for her SBS story exploring historical abuses against Aborigines. 

A dozen other journalists won awards for coverage ranging from the Australian African community to the gender disparity in the Australian theatre.

While many there were many journalists who came away empty handed, Newton Cain said there was other good news which came from the celebrations.

“Next to seeing the grant awarded, the best news I could hear is that an editor has said to one of the unsuccessful applicants ‘that Pacific story you pitched is an important one, we are going to do it anyway’.”

The full list can be found at the 2019 Walkley Mid-Year Celebration website.

• Michael Andrew is contributing editor of the PMC’s Pacific Media Watch project.
• Francis Ona – last rebel standing – SBS and Ben Bohane

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

News media need to empower people over climate change and to encourage them to take action in their communities and press governments to do more, says a New Zealand environmental journalist and advocate.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, told researchers at a recent seminar at Indonesia’s Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta that journalists in the Asia-Pacific region needed to step up to the mark.

“We are rapidly running out of time,” he said in an interview with UGM’s Centre for Southeast Asia Social Studies (CESASS).

“The news media itself is not terribly good when it comes to long term planning, and long-term issues. It tends to respond to immediate issues and consequences. It lacks the attention span for longer term challenges.”

Climate change was not just a simple “news round” but an issue of planetary survival.

There were examples in some countries of where the media was working quite well to empower people.

“The micro states in the Pacific have taken a lead in this way.”

He spoke about the achievements in the Pacific – especially Fiji leading up to COP23 in Bonn – and also about the PMC’s award-winning Bearing Witness climate journalism project in partnership with the University of the South Pacific.

• Bearing Witness project wins DART award

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

The Pacific Media Centre kicked off its 10th anniversary celebrations last night with the launch of an investigative photojournalism book.

The book, Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, was launched by Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

“We celebrate the launch of Conflict, Custom & Conscience. The book is an honest and moving account of some of the biggest issues in the Pacific region. It’s a fitting milestone to mark this important day,” Dr Yanıkkaya said.

READ MORE: The new photojournalism book

The book, co-edited by Jim Marbrook, Del Abcede, Natalie Robertson and David Robie, features the work of 15 photographers throughout the Asia-Pacific region, from Gil Hanly to Russian photographer Vlad Sokhin, who have been involved with the PMC since its founding in 2007.

Marbrook, an award-winning documentary maker, told Asia Pacific Report the title speaks to three major themes in the book.

“It speaks to custom – the customary and indigenous world, while conflict defines a lot of news coverage in the area,” he said.

Marbrook explained the idea of “conscience”, however, came through clearly on the part of the photographer.

‘Telling stories that weren’t being told’
“It’s the commitment to telling stories that weren’t being told before and in a respectful, ethical way.”

Conflict, Custom & Conscience is also divided into four themes – culture, environment, women, and politics, protest and conflict – through which Marbrook hoped the richness of the region would come through.

“Hopefully it gives a window into women’s rights issues, climate change, and the intersection between traditional culture and modernity, which is really interesting in the Pacific,” he said.

Marbrook also hoped people would gain an insight into the region and be “charmed” by the photographs.

“Some of the photographs are quite horrific, but I’m hoping they can tell stories that don’t often come through in a couple of column inches in a daily paper. I’m hoping it will pique their curiosity and they’ll go and look for more images from these photographers,” he said.

Professor Yanıkkaya also launched the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

Those gathered also honoured the work of PMC founding director Professor David Robie and the photography of Pacific Journalism Review designer and TOKTOK newsletter editor, Del Abcede, which was on display.

‘Forefront of journalism’
“Professor David Robie has been the face of the centre since it opened. We applaud his energy, his dedication and commitment to the ideals of the centre and to keeping it running at a high level of professionalism,” said Dr Yanıkkaya.

“Since the centre was opened by Luamanuvao Winnie Laban in 2007, it has been at the forefront of journalism and human rights activism, reporting human rights violations in our region,” Dr Yanıkkaya added.

Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, who opened the PMC 10 years ago as Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, reflected:

“The spirit of the PMC is our ability to keep together and hang together. The reality is no canoe is on its own.

“The word Pasifika, the word Oceania, will tell you it is very important we honour that sacredness and connection that we have with each other, whether we are from Melanesia, Polynesia – which is Aotearoa New Zealand – and Micronesia.

“I particularly wanted to acknowledge Professor David Robie. For his vision and the team on the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Pacific Media Centre.

“Congratulations to your team and all of the beautiful frangipanis that you have developed that are now on our screens and on our radio,” Luamanuvao said.

“It’s indeed an honour to attend this celebration. To see the Pacific Media Centre in good heart 10 years on, still working hard to ensure that we have a quality, free, free media in the Pacific that continues the tradition you have established for critical thinking and shining a light into the dark spaces, telling the stories that need to be told.

‘Voice of humanity’
“I remember people saying, and as you know, there’s sometimes numerous shutdowns of the media and universities in the Pacific. People said when they heard the voice from here and Radio New Zealand, ‘it’s like the voice of humanity and hope when everything else has been closed down’.

“But today, the title of today’s programme and celebration is ‘Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific’. This is evidence the Pacific Media Centre is still doing the important work that started a decade ago.

“You’ve continued to contribute to the economic, political, cultural and social development of our region by providing informed journalism and media research, raising awareness, showing respect for the cultures and environment of our region that we love so very much and in empowering our peoples of the Pacific.

“Thank you so much for your service, for your vision and leadership to our region and good luck for the next 10 years.”

• Livestream link 
• Media freedom under the spotlight in PMC anniversary event

Like apartheid South Africa, I kept hearing. For a long time, the horrors behind the curtain thrown up by South Africa’s racist government weren’t widely known in this country. It wasn’t until the 1981 Springboks tour that the small band of activists, who had all the time been committed to the cause, were able to turn that affair into a nation-splitting episode—and to put increased international pressure on the regime.

West Papua hasn’t had its Springbok tour yet; it is often called the world’s forgotten occupation.

Indonesia has held formal control over West Papua since 1962’s New York Agreement granted the South East Asian superpower the former Dutch colony, with the promise of a fair vote on self-determination by 1969. That never arrived: 1969’s Act of Free Choice, in which just 0.2 percent of the population voted—under extreme duress—determined that West Papua was to remain part of Indonesia, a country with which it had no linguistic, cultural, or racial links.

Ever since, the repression of the indigenous population has been ruthless. The figure of 100,000 people killed by Indonesian security forces is commonly cited, but estimates run as high as 500,000. Mass killings of Papuans in the tribal highlands in the 1970s met the criteria for genocide, the Asia Human Rights Commission reported.

And the brutality continues: a 2016 report conducted by the Archdiocese of Brisbane titled We Will Lose Everything contains reports of atrocities committed throughout 2015, including extrajudicial executions, torture, and firing on peaceful protestors. Methods of torture, another report claims, include rape, slashing with bayonets, and electrification.

Clearly, something horrific is happening—and has been for a long time—in the South Pacific. New Zealand’s response? Successive governments, perhaps wary of aggravating an important trading partner, have refused to dispute Indonesia’s territorial borders. The media hasn’t done much better—VICE NZ was one of just a handful of outlets (including the Pacific Media Centre) to cover a visit to New Zealand by Benny Wenda, the leader-in-exile of the West Papuan independence movement and a man twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, earlier this year.

He’s a man with a fascinating tale to tell—a childhood spent on the run in the bush, horrors witnessed, arrest, escape, a life-long commitment to the cause of his people. And it’s a story that is percolating at some political level, with 11 New Zealand MPs across four parties now signatories of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua declaration.

Where in the media?
Where, then, I wondered, were the profiles in the Saturday newspapers, the coverage on Sunday-night current-affairs shows?

Dr Pala Molisa, of Victoria University’s School of Accounting and Commercial Law, is a long-time supporter of West Papuan independence. Addressing why the New Zealand media is reluctant to take on the story of the subjugation of an entire people, happening so close to home, he says, means confronting an “uncomfortable thing”.

“It shouldn’t be too controversial [to say] today that black and brown lives, when you look at the patterns—socioeconomic, police shootings, mass-incarceration—are devalued when compared to white lives.”

Molisa is from Vanuatu, a country that also had to fight for its independence from colonial rule. He bemoans how dependent Pākehā awareness is upon coverage in established media: “Most of our educated Pākehā population is highly reliant on mainstream media. As long as [West Papua is] kept out, that’ll affect the amount of participation.”

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of the Asia Pacific Report, has, as a journalist, been reporting on West Papua since the early 1980s, and finds the lack of interest “puzzling”. A veteran journalist (“I think I’ve got a reasonable handle on what is international news”), he wonders why the majority of the press has for so long largely ignored West Papua.

“It has so many elements that have resonance with New Zealand—indigenous issues, land issues, development issues. And in the past we’ve had an affinity with the people of the Pacific, going right back to the nuclear-free policies, which were very intertwined in Polynesia with indigenous self-determination.”

Momentum gathering
In the wider Pacific, at least, there is some momentum gathering. In March this year, seven nations—Vanuatu, Tonga, Tuvalu, Palau, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, and the Solomon Islands—addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, raising concerns about human rights abuses in West Papua.

“Within their suffering we see our own.”

Māori, too, have been vocal about West Papua. When Wenda visited Auckland, he was welcomed onto Ōrākei Marae by Ngāti Whātua. Wayne Pihema, a Ngāti Whātua Board Trust member who helped organise the hui, says shared experiences of colonialism motivated the invitation to Wenda to speak.

“We’ve got somewhere in our genetic history a memory of that kind of experience… We can relate to people in West Papua as being part of the Pacific and being indigenous Pacific people like us. Within their suffering we see our own.”

Oceania Interrupted is an Auckland-based group of Pacific and Māori women who use visual and performance art to raise awareness of the suffering of West Papuans. The group, which has included women from as many as 13 different Pacific ethnicities or nations, has staged 10 of the 15 “artistic interventions” it plans to hold—15 years being the mandatory prison sentence for raising the West Papuan Morning Star flag within the Indonesian-occupied territory.

In a similar fashion to Pihema, spokesperson Leilani Salesa calls the group’s duty to West Papua an “ideological commitment”, one borne of a sense of Pacific solidarity. “The ocean is what binds us together, the ocean is our sea of islands… the ocean is what our ancestors conquered.”

Salesa, though, highlights the role that Pākehā activists have played in raising awareness, singling out veteran campaigner and writer Maire Leadbeater: “If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t know who I know and what I know.”

Māori, Pacific groups taking the lead
I put it to Leadbeater that Māori and Pacific groups within New Zealand are now taking the lead, something she said was “amazing”.

“I see it in the context that the interest in West Papua has extended so much through the Pacific recently. Communities here are linking up with really strong movements in the Solomons and Fiji, and to some extent in Tonga and Samoa, and so on. It’s really important people here are getting engaged because they are in touch with their families in those countries, and it’s those countries that are actually taking action at the moment—it’s not New Zealand, unfortunately.”

While it’s great, Leadbeater says, that impetus comes from Māori and Pacific communities, it’s important there is wider—and whiter—support. “Look at the tino rangatiritanga movement in this country: it’s always had strong allies in the Pākehā community, hasn’t it? And that’s always been important to the success of campaigns.”

“The anti-apartheid activists would’ve felt like they were just spitting into a cyclone…you just need to keep having faith.”

She remains upbeat about the effect protest and public opinion have on government action, citing her previous research that, she says, proves the government is attuned to public opinion on Indonesian activity, especially as it has related to atrocities committed in East Timor and, to a lesser extent, in West Papua. “You think the government is not taking any notice, but they do have to take account of public opinion and the stronger it gets the more they have to take notice. [But] you can’t expect people to identify with an issue they’ve hardly ever heard of.”

Molisa, too, is optimistic. “What gives me faith, to put it in that historical perspective, is that this is in the early stages, and the anti-apartheid activists would’ve felt like they were just spitting into a cyclone. If you look at the long arch of history, that tells you that you just need to keep having faith because these sorts of things have a way of building in ways you can’t expect.”

James Borrowdale is an Auckland-based writer for VICE. This article is republished with the permission of VICE NZ and the author.

• Other West Papua stories

Off The Wall: with Padre James Bhagwan in Suva

As we conclude the month of June 2017, it would be remiss of me not to draw our attention to our neighbour New Zealand, which yesterday broke a 14-year drought on the water to convincingly win the oldest trophy in international sport — the America’s Cup.

However, the emergence of New Zealand as a yachting superpower is not the only reason it makes history this month. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Aotearoa becoming a “nuclear-free” country when the NZ Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act came into force on 8 June 1987, the day we globally mark as World Ocean’s Day.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, believes activist movements in New Zealand through the 1980s helped spark the change needed for the country’s nuclear-free stance in the Pacific.

“What pushed NZ in the direction it did with the nuclear-free approach was the masses of activism, of just ordinary people, people getting out on their boats on Auckland harbour for example.”

Speaking at an event, “Celebrating 30 years of Nuclear-Free Aotearoa/New Zealand 1987/2017,” organised by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) — Aotearoa, Dr Robie said the process to achieve the nuclear-free stand was a David and Goliath struggle to make NZ nuclear-free against the US and global pressure.

“The real ‘David’ were the ordinary people of New Zealand who exerted extraordinary pressure on the government to deliver. The barrages of letters from citizens, constant lobbying by peace campaigners, local councils … declaring themselves nuclear-free, the door-knocking petitioners and, of course, the spectacular protests.”

Pacific ‘ahead of the game’
The author of Eyes of Fire: the Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior (1986, 2005 and 2015), and Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific (2014) also reflected on the impact of what happened in NZ on the Pacific, acknowledging some small Pacific countries and communities who were “actually ahead of the game”:

• 1979 — The Republic of Palau (Belau) adopted a nuclear-free Constitution and was forced by the US to hold a further 10 referenda in attempts to undermine the document. The “father” of the Constitution, President Haruo Remeliik, was assassinated on June 30, 1985. In the end, the people of Belau were ironically forced to vote to drop their nuclear-free status for “economic survival” a month after New Zealand’s Bill became law;
• 1980 — The newly independent nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, also adopted a nuclear-free Constitution and banned nuclear ships from its territorial waters. The country was led by the inspirational Father Walter Lini, who linked nuclear weapons with colonialism;
• 1983 — Tahiti’s airport suburb of Fa’aa led by mayor Oscar Temaru, who later became president of French-occupied Polynesia several times, declared itself nuclear-free; and
• 1987 — The first Fiji Labour Party government led by Dr Timoci Bavadra also planned to bring in a nuclear-free law but was deposed at gunpoint in the first military coup of Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka in May that year.

Why is this 30th anniversary of a nuclear-free NZ and the Pacific struggle to also be nuclear-free important today?

According to ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), nine countries together possess around 15,000 nuclear weapons. The US and Russia maintain roughly 1800 of their nuclear weapons on high-alert status — ready to be launched within minutes of a warning.

Many times more powerful
Most are many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. A single nuclear warhead detonated on a large city could kill millions of people with the effects persisting for decades.

The failure of the nuclear powers to disarm has heightened the risk of other countries acquiring nuclear weapons. The only guarantee against the spread and use of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them without delay. Although the leaders of some nuclear-armed nations have expressed their vision for a nuclear-weapon-free world, they have failed to develop any detailed plans to eliminate their arsenals and are modernising them.

Someone, who participated in the early Pacific-wide protest movement against nuclear weapons testing and militarisation of the Pacific region, Fiji-based Vanessa Griffen says: “In the Pacific, we have collectively experienced the known and unknown consequences of nuclear weapons use, the push by non-nuclear states for a ban on nuclear weapons is the only sensible, humane and responsible course of action to take.

“Nuclear weapons states should be regarded, collectively, as lawless and flouting international humanitarian standards.”

Griffen became aware of the environmental and genetic impacts of radioactivity from French nuclear weapons testing in French Polynesia as a student at the University of the South Pacific. She joined the anti-nuclear movement ATOM (Against Testing on Moruroa) and helped form the early Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) network.

Concurrently, she was part of the Pacific women’s movement which was always against nuclear weapons testing and for a peaceful Pacific.

She has been a representative of FemLINKPacific, a partner member of ICAN and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).

Plea to use statehood
“Pacific Island states, with an unusually high experiential qualification for speaking up for nuclear disarmament, are a significant number in the United Nations and should use their statehood collectively and effectively on this global issue of nuclear disarmament,” she said.

From 1946 to 1958, the US conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands, accounting for 32 percent of all US atmospheric tests. In the 1960s, there were 25 further US tests at Christmas (Kiritimati) Island and nine at Johnston (Kalama) Atoll.

The UK tested nuclear weapons in Australia and its Pacific colonies in the 1950s. Starting in 1952, there were 12 atmospheric tests at the Monte Bello Islands, Maralinga and Emu Field in Australia (1952-57).

There were also more than 600 “minor” trials, such as the testing of bomb components and the burning of plutonium, uranium and other nuclear materials, conducted at Maralinga.

Under “Operation Grapple”, the British Government conducted another nine atomic and hydrogen bomb tests at Kiritimati and Malden islands in the central Pacific from 1957 to 1958.

After conducting four atmospheric tests at Reggane (1960-61) and 13 underground tests at In Eker (1961-6) in the Sahara desert of Algeria, France established its Pacific nuclear test centre in French Polynesia.

For 30 years between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

Fragile ecology
Their impact on the fragile ecology of the region and the health and mental wellbeing of its peoples has been profound and long-lasting. Pacific Islanders continue to experience epidemics of cancers, chronic diseases and congenital abnormalities as a result of the radioactive fallout that blanketed their homes and the vast Pacific Ocean, upon which they depend for their livelihoods.

As you read this, the United Nations is convening negotiations in 2017 on “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. This new international agreement will place nuclear weapons on the same legal footing as other weapons of mass destruction, which have long been outlawed.

The negotiations began at UN headquarters in New York for one week in March and will continue from June 15 to July 7, with governments, international organisations and civil society participating.

Despite being the most destructive, inhumane weapons ever invented, nuclear weapons are the only “weapons of mass destruction” that are not yet banned under international law. (Chemical and biological weapons are both banned internationally.)

In December 2016, the UN General Assembly took action to address this crucial gap, voting to begin negotiations in 2017 for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

Pacific Island governments have joined the historic talks at the United Nations that should result in an international treaty that bans nuclear weapons as the second, and possibly final round of negotiations aims to have a final text on a treaty adopted in early July.

Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained Methodist minister and a citizen journalist. He contributes the regular “Off The Wall” column to The Fiji Times and this article is republished with permission. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Methodist Church in Fiji or the newspaper.

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• A David and Goliath struggle
• John Pilger’s documentary The Coming War On China

Media access to West Papua, where more than half a million of its indigenous people have reportedly been killed over five decades, remains restricted.

News coverage of the alleged genocide is extremely difficult because of the restrictions on local and foreign media.

Some West Papuan journalists have also died in their effort to tell the truth about the deaths that largely occur in remote rural areas.

This makes news coverage of the alleged atrocities in the Indonesia-occupied land extremely difficult.

West Papuan independence leader Benny Wenda, in an online interview, told Wansolwara the restrictions allowed for the atrocities to remain “silenced”.

And even if access was granted after the labyrinthine effort, “journalists cannot go freely to report on politics in West Papua,” he said.

“They will get followed and questioned by Indonesian intelligence and West Papuans will suffer intimidation and threats if they speak to journalists.”

Recent prominence
Papua New Guinea Media Council president Alexander Rheeney said West Papua’s struggle of more than 50 years had only been given prominence in the region’s mainstream media in recent years.

Less than 10 years ago, the mainstream news media – in neighbouring countries like Fiji, Australia and New Zealand, ignored the situation in West Papua. It was effectively a media “black hole”.

Rheeney said it was more challenging for Pacific journalists whose governments recognised the sovereignty Indonesia had over West Papua.

“The media in PNG have reported on West Papua and all the human rights abuses but not as much as we would want it to despite the fact that PNG and West Papua share a land order,” he said.

The increasing coverage by Pacific news media should be commended, said journalism educator Professor David Robie.

Dr Robie, director of the Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre, who has regularly written and published news on West Papua’s struggle for more than three decades, said it was a huge relief that the Pacific was “finally waking up to the issue of West Papua”.

“This an issue of Melanesian solidarity, Pacific solidarity – an issue of self-determination, and the Pacific countries that got independence on a plate ought to be telling this story,” he said.

Jakarta media freedom conference
Dr Robie was one of the keynote speakers invited last month to the Free Media in West Papua forum at the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day 2017 conference in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta.

He spoke along with Indonesian and Papuan human rights activists and Tabloid Jubi editor Victor Mambor of Jayapura.

Pacific Freedom Forum editor Jason Brown said it was an utter disgrace that some in mainstream media published or broadcast stories on wars from other regions and “not in our own backyard”.

“In recent years, RNZI has done a much better job of covering West Papua. The recent closure of shortwave services by Radio Australia, however, means that the region has lost reliable access to news on West Papua from that source,” said Brown.

Rheeney warned that the region could not afford to fail fellow Pacific Islanders of West Papua.

He said to do so would be to doom the Pacific region to more instability.

“If a prosperous Pacific region is to be ensured, the issue of West Papua must be addressed,” he said.

Timor-Leste lessons
“As journalists we can no longer continue to turn a blind eye on all the human rights abuses that is happening.

“The PNG government can no longer turn a blind eye on what is happening on the other side of the border.”

Dr Robie said that informed political decisions could not be reached if the news media were not allowed to report freely on West Papua.

He said this lesson could easily be drawn from East-Timor’s road to independence.

East Timor, which was also occupied by Indonesia in 1975, secured its independence after a handful of journalists exposed the human rights violations through video smuggled out of the Indonesian-ruled territory, especially after the Santa Cruz massacre in the capital Dili in 1991.

Indonesia’s control rapidly fell apart after international pressure.

“In-depth and timely media coverage will save lives as West Papua lurches towards independence — which will come eventually — no matter how hard Jakarta tries to block this,” said Dr Robie.

Rheeney is also optimistic. He said Pacific journalists should continue to report on the issue, to keep the struggle in the news so that lasting solutions were found sooner and more bloodshed is prevented.

Vilimaina Naqelevuki is a final year journalism student with the USP Journalism Programme. Naqelevuki is pursuing a double major in journalism and politics, and is pictures editor of Wansolwara, the student news publication produced by the Journalism Programme.

• Rave hospitality, but Indonesia fails West Papua with media freedom hypocrisy
• Wansolwara media freedom edition, May 2017
• The tragedy of West Papua – The Diplomat

“I realised that the thinking of a society is greatly influenced by what they read, listen to, and watch — for better or worse.” Kalafi Moala’s Pacific voice and commitment comes through loud and clear in our email interview between Nuku’alofa and Wellington.

For me, these words summarise my passion for journalism and my goal of bringing knowledge to our people here in New Zealand about the Pacific through the art of storytelling.

For centuries, our ancestors have passed down a wealth of knowledge through storytelling. Growing up as a Pacific Islander, there was always a story to be told, whether it be around the kava bowl, in church, in our communities or at home. I remember listening to the words that were spoken, soaking up every detail, and going away with my own thinking and understanding of the stories told.

Media has taken storytelling to a whole other level giving us an opportunity to hear and tell stories at any given moment through the convenience of social media.

So, why aren’t there more Pacific journalists?

In 2013, a Statistics New Zealand census summary reported that 7.4 percent of New Zealand’s population identified with one or more Pacific ethnic groups.

However, in 2015, a survey of journalists in New Zealand showed that Pacific people were still underrepresented in newsrooms making up only 1.8 percent of the journalism workforce.

Opened the Pacific doors
Twenty-eight years ago Kalafi Moala changed the Tongan media and opened the doors for Pacific journalists, but at a cost.

As a popular newspaper publisher, he became a threat to the Tongan government.

“At that time only government and church owned newpapers published newspapers. Most governments continue to try and control media, by violating media’s ethics. Either by threat and bribe, rendering media ineffective in its role.”

In 1996 he was forced to put his newspaper on the line in a thrilling pursuit to release the media from the bondages of the Constitution.

He became the first voice to dare to criticise the Tongan system in the mid 1990s with his now famous publication Taimi ‘o Tonga.

In the Pacific, cultural beliefs and values often clash with the practice of journalism.

Power in the Pacific doesn’t usually come from a gun like most countries. Instead it comes from the social structures which Moala says are “hierarchical and rooted in status”.

Kalafi Moala explains that in Tongan society and many Pacific cultures, it is forbidden to criticise those in authority and exposing any weakness or corruption was seen as criticism. Some things have changed, but some have not since Kalafi Moala’s actions 28 years ago.

Moala’s actions cost him a 30-day sentence in jail for contempt of Parliament, but that did not stop him from smuggling out editorials written on toilet paper.

‘Truth covered up’
“Truth is often covered up in order to maintain a false image about that person in leadership and anyone who tries to expose that often becomes the enemy of the ruling elite,” he says.

He was physically threatened, harassed and jailed by the government, and banned from Tonga for a period of time.

However, Moala’s courageous actions opened doors for a new generation journalists from all over the Pacific to follow.

“For others to aspire to what you are doing you have to inspire them and inspiration comes through life actions, not just persuasion by words. Nothing will ever be achieved if people only look at journalism as a job, instead of a tool for change and improvement. I look at journalism as a ‘call’, a destiny so to speak, for those of us so deeply involved.”

For me, journalism was an unexpected calling which I stumbled across when a family member took on journalism. That person is my brother Isileli Sau, whose stories at home of studying journalism first sparked my interest.

Before the interview started for this feature, things were already awkward because we weren’t used to talking to each other on a personal level. It’s a Tongan thing.

Growing up in a Tongan household we were taught the pillars of Tongan society that have been practised by my parents and those before them in Tonga. Those core values are Ofa (love), Faka’apa’apa (respect), Anga fakato ki lalo (humility) and Tauhi Vaha’a (gratitude).

So, for example, an aspect of faka’apa’apa is traditional brother-sister avoidance. This meant never discussing personal issues with each other, or doing activities together such as watching television. So for my brother and I this interview was a huge cultural hurdle.

Dinner table discussions
But growing up there were some exceptions which was dinner time, when we would all gather around the table and discuss how school was going. As my brother discussed how school was, I became fascinated by his stories, but mostly by how he got the opportunity to voice the stories of our Pacific people which were rare for us growing up.

Journalism wasn’t his first pick. His first choice was to join the army, but after school he decided to give studying one last shot. “I picked journalism because I enjoyed writing and English was a favourite subject of mine,” he says.

He clears his throat, takes a deep breath and slowly begins to reveal things I had not been aware of in his struggle as a Pacific journalist in training. “I knew it was pretty random and interesting that someone with my heritage and background would choose this path.”

When I asked if he faced difficulties, he shifts his seating position, and I know it is our ingrained faka’apa’apa he is negotiating with these personal questions

He pauses, and says quietly: “I just wasn’t used to the environment and not having a good knowledge of things.” But the volume in his voice begins to louden as he continues to speak. “I was over being in an environment I wasn’t familiar with,” he says with a staunch tone.

So he joined the army

He assures me that the path he chose was a great experience. “I just needed more life experience before committing to journalism.”

Lack of career path knowledge
Why does he think there are not many Pacific people in journalism in New Zealand? “They think they aren’t capable, which isn’t true. Some just lack knowledge of the career path and where it can lead,” he says with a slight grin which suggests he is talking about himself.

Editor of Asia-Pacific Report and director of the Pacific Media Centre Professor David Robie knows a lot about Pacific students’ capabilities, and the challenges they face, having taught journalism in Papua New Guinea and Fiji before joining AUT University in Auckland. Asia Pacific Report was launched as a platform for AUT’s Asia-Pacific student journalism in the “real world” competing with other mainstream media. It not only publishes their own students’ work, but articles and multimedia by students all across the Pacific and articles by academics.

In 2000, David Robie recounts the story of his young media students at the University of the South Pacific being in the front line for one of the strangest coups in Fiji.

In a 2010 Pacific Journalism Review article Dr Robie and his students explain how the day unfolded.

May 19 was the day it started. Students reported protests in downtown Suva, the capital, which was a diversion while the actual coup was happening at Parliament. Another student, on internship for Radio Fiji, reported the actual coup from a cassava patch outside Parliament.

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tupeni Baba was speaking at the time and then, just like that, everything turned into an unforgettable dream. In the 2010 Pacific Journalism Review paper, Dr Robie quotes one of his students at the time: “We heard somebody yelling and telling people to remain seated in Parliament and gunshots fired”.

George Speight, a mixed race and bankrupt businessman seized Parliament and the elected government at gunpoint. Everyone in the Radio Fiji newsroom couldn’t believe what was going on so “we left everything and moved closer to the radio and then the lines were cut,” says the student.

Published ‘in defiance’
The USP journalism website was then forced to shut down for no apparent reason. David explains “the journalism programme was still publishing its newspaper and its website” in defiance. By that time the students had posted 109 stories, dozens of soundbites and scores of digital photographs, and the University of Technology Sydney journalism programme began publishing their stories.

He says the university authorities considered their actions as a risk, but as a journalist a good story is sometimes worth the risk. “I thought well this is an opportunity that students only have once in a blue moon sort of thing. So I wasn’t going to deny them the opportunity,” he says with a firm tone.

David used the coup as an example of the cultural challenges Pacific people face overseas as journalists, which are rarer here in New Zealand. “The first 10 days of the coup was really risky. The government was being held at gunpoint in Parliament in Fiji and now students were going in every day,” says David.

Students wandered blindly through the first day, in some cases speechless over what was unfolding in front of their very eyes. “There were some that had a problem and realised that journalism really wasn’t their field.”

Fiji’s worst nightmare soon came to an end 10 weeks later, on July 26, when Speight and many of his followers were arrested by Fiji’s army.

As our conversation comes to an end, I asked David one last question on how Pacific people can overcome difficult situations they will have to endure as a Pacific journalists and his answer was quite simple. “Don’t be afraid of the difficulties — go for it and take on as many challenges as you can.”

In New Zealand, one of those challenges is Pacific role models, because of the lack of visibility.

It is not common to see or hear a Pacific journalist on mainstream media or radio.

No consistent coverage
In a 95bFM podcast interview published this month, E-Tangata online magazine founder Gary Wilson says mainstream media here in New Zealand doesn’t have consistent coverage on the Pacific population. “With all the media platforms there are now it is still very much a niche thing,” says Wilson, who focused on Māori and Pacific when he was involved in journalism training decades ago. “They don’t get as much viewers as mainstream media.” he says.

Being a journalist has its challenges, and Kalafi Moala, Isi Sau and David Robie it’s how we tackle those challenges that will define the future of Pacific journalists.

For me being a Pacific journalist in training has been a difficult process as I wasn’t used to people being so open about things that are quite personal to them, and for me having to ask the tough questions. As a Pacific islander we are raised in an environment that doesn’t really allow space for heart to heart talks or questioning the action of those in authority, whether it is in church, government and family.

Cultural values and beliefs will always be the main struggle for those planning to take on the journalism industry, but if we don’t overcome that fear we will never achieve anything sitting in silence.

If we want more Pacific people in the journalism industry it has to start with us.

As Kalafi Moala says: “The best motivation for Pacific people to join the journalism industry is for practising journalists to carry out their job the best possible way, and to make a difference.”

Kateni Sau is a student journalist at New Zealand’s Whitireia Community Polytechnic Journalism School, Wellington.This article was originally published by NewsWire and has been republished here with permission.

• Kalafi Moala – Inspiring Islanders — Tagata Pasifika

“Moving on without justice being served is not moving on—it’s giving up.”

This was the reminder of University of the Philippines professor and anti-Martial Law advocate Professor Crispin Maslog to University of Santo Tomas journalism students and faculty in a public forum held in Metro Manila at the weekend.

Dr Maslog, a former publisher of a weekly newspaper in Dumaguete that was closed down due to Martial Law between 1972 and 1981, urged millennials to open their eyes to the damages to the mass media the Marcos era had brought, even though they were not yet born at the time it happened.

“People without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture [are] like [trees] without roots,” Dr Maslog said, quoting Jamaican political leader and journalist Marcus Garvey.

“The mass media became very critical and Marcos clamped down on the mass media with his military forces,” he said.

“There were the years of protest, social unrest…The youth were taking to this stage to rally against corruption, that’s an old issue.”

Protesters and journalists were beaten and students were tortured, went missing, or found dead, Maslog added, citing Ricardo Manapat’s book on Martial Law.

The chairman of the Manila-based Asian Media Information and Communication Center also slammed the government for its poor education system and the mass media for misleading stories about Martial Law that caused ignorance of the people on the issue.

“It is not the students’ fault. It should be the government and the mass media that should be blamed for misleading information,” Dr Maslog said.

Likewise, Pacific Media Center director Professor David Robie emphasized truth as the core of journalism.

“Journalism is really about truth, any experience of truth, and establishing that truth,” Dr Robie said.

He was speaking about a digital strategy on human rights for journalists and cited the PMC’s own Asia Pacific Report of successful examples of independent campus based media.

Dr Robie added that it was important for journalists to achieve independence in their job of disseminating stories, noting that fact verification through multiple crosschecking and research is a fundamental part of a journalist’s job.

The forum titled Asia-Pacific Journalism for Filipinos Lessons by Seasoned Journalists and Journalism Educators was organised by the Faculty of Arts and Letters Department of Communication and Media Studies in partnership with the Journalism Graduate School, Research Center for Culture, Education and Social Issues-Research Interest Group on Communication.

Dr Robie also ran a workshop on Asia-Pacific reporting.

Maria Eden T. Dino reports for The Flame, official student publication of the University of Santo Tomas’ Faculty of Arts and Letters Department of Communication and Media Studies.

• Martial law amnesia
• Martial law and independent media forum

Above all, David Robie’s Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem  and Human Rights in the Pacific is a damning indictment of the parlous state of affairs in parts of this region.

The book is also a telling account of the continuous failure of leadership on a fairly grand scale, with ordinary people bearing the brunt of it.

Dr Robie, professor of journalism at the Auckland University of Technology and director of the Pacific Media Centre, deals with the vital issues of environmental degradation, media censorship, social chaos and human suffering (largely caused by bad governance), various types of violent and nonviolent conflicts, and colonialism and neocolonialism.

Allegedly apathetic international and local media also attract some flak. Robie, who has a long record of service in the Pacific Islands, laments that a region with so much promise due to its relative tranquility, natural beauty, and richness of culture has been in such a prolonged state of decline, despite the postindependence optimisms.

That tranquility has been shattered by coups, civil uprisings, and corruption; the region’s pristine environments damaged by nuclear testing, wanton resource exploitation, and the spectre of climate change; and indigenous cultures threatened by the twin forces of neocolonialism and neoliberal economics.

These adversities are superimposed on growing incidences of human rights abuses and draconian  media legislation in some countries.

The looming threats of global warming and sea-level rise only complicate matters.

Robie has been reporting these trends in the Asia-Pacific region since the 1980s, both as a journalist and as a media educator, covering self-determination for indigenous minorities in New Caledonia, the struggles in Timor-Leste and West Papua, the Bougainville rebellion, nuclear testing in French Polynesia and the Marshall  Islands, and the ethnically motivated coups in Fiji.

Documented conflicts
Some of these conflicts are documented in his earlier books: Blood on the Banner (1980) highlighted indigenous Pacific Islanders’ struggle against the remnants of colonialism, while Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific (1992) depicted a continuing battle against environmental catastrophe, communal unrest, growing militarisation,  ongoing  poverty, colonialism, and neocolonialism.

In Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face, Robie reproduces some of his previous writings as a yardstick and a backdrop for deeper insights into the Pacific’s seemingly intractable problems. Reflecting on his two-and-a-half decades of Asia-Pacific coverage, Robie intones, “Sadly, not a lot has changed” (page 6).

He adds, “Political independence has not necessarily rid the Pacific of the problems that it faces, and in many cases, Pacific political leaders are themselves part of the problem” (27). One of the more startling statistics, at least for the uninitiated, is the deaths of an estimated 120,000 Pacific Islanders in various disputes over the past quarter-century, plus another 200,000 when Timor-Leste is included (311).

If the narrative sounds depressing, it is regrettably all  too predictable: long-term ethnic and political tensions coupled with low growth rates and underdevelopment are usually fodder for violent conflict in fragile states (see Securing a Peaceful Pacific, by John Henderson and Greg Watson  [2005]).

Robie is forthright in putting the blame for these serious issues squarely on various corrupt Pacific Island leaders, whom he views as having been part of the problem for far too long. But it is not only rogue Pacific Island leaders who are causing problems.

Robie also faults leaders from developed countries for their inaction in the face of what he describes as a litany of tortures, murders, exploitation, rapes, military raids, and arbitrary arrests. Most affected is West Papua, where the brutal repression of the native Melanesians by the Indonesian security services is well documented.

The book reminds us why the Pacific is still struggling despite copious amounts of bilateral aid over the decades. It is in the interest of nuclear powers France and the United States to keep their territories in a dependent state in order to further their own military, economic, and geopolitical ambitions.

Exploitation ‘normalised’?
The question is whether the exploitation of Island countries by economically and militarily powerful nations has become normalised. Recently, Australia and New Zealand remained unmoved in the face of Pacific Islander anger over the two countries’ apparent intransigence regarding a joint proposal by Pacific Island nations for a tougher global target on greenhouse gas emissions. Is the world resigned to the bullying and maltreatment of Pacific Island nations by the bigger powers?

Robie does not hide his disappointment with what he sees as the media’s failure to tackle these crucial issues.

He feels that the international media ignore or underreport major issues, such as Indonesian repression of West Papua and the assassination of journalists in the Philippines. In his eyes, Australian media failed to sufficiently probe their country’s 2006 security treaty with Indonesia. Robie insists that the treaty led to Australia’s overt repression of pro-independence Papuan activists.

To be fair to the media, the Indonesian government has banned foreign journalists from West Papua for years. However, Robie argues that the problem goes deeper. He links it to the media’s commercially driven priorities, which he feels supersede social, humanitarian, and public-interest obligations.

Under this journalistic framework, West Papua would be deemed too costly an assignment for sustained coverage, financially and politically.

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face tries to prod the media’s conscience by highlighting the suffering in the region. Robie advocates a new, more thorough, considered, and inclusive reporting approach, which he describes as “critical development journalism.”

This proposed framework sources grassroots rather than just elite views, emphasises conflict resolution,  promotes  human rights, and supports development (325–330).

Empowered media
Robie’s views are consistent with a growing recognition among some policy makers that an empowered media could play an important role in regional development, especially in politically fragile Island societies. However, new ideas often face resistance.

As a result of challenging the orthodoxy, Robie has attracted criticism from some traditionalists, who believe that concepts such as “peace journalism” contravene media objectivity, what with Bainimarama’s military-backed government in Fiji touting its version of “journalism of hope,” fueling suspicions about government control of the media under the guises of stability and development.

Robie is adamant that critical development journalism is not soft journalism, and neither would it pander to political slogans such as “cultural sensitivity,” which he sees as  a cover-up for abuse of power.

To the contrary, Robie envisions an approach based on a greater level of intensive journalism focused on exposing the truth, reporting on alternatives, and offering solutions. Robie’s central thesis is that the Pacific is caught in a vicious cycle of conflicts and underdevelopment.

Traditional subsistence lifestyles have been under sustained pressure from globalisation and other forces. The media are duty-bound to keep track of these trends and draw attention to them, but their response has largely been inadequate.

Robie is calling for a new media strategy, based on greater journalistic effort, commitment, and foresight. Some may question whether such a new direction is even possible, given media’s entrenched, deadline-driven, profit-focused economic model.

These ideological arguments aside, the post–Cold War trend  of mayhem in the Pacific demands investigation into the media-politics-conflict nexus in the Pacific context. Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face seeks to fill this gap.

Dr Shailendra Singh is a senior lecturer and coordinator of journalism at the University of the South Pacific. This review was commissioned by The Contemporary Pacific journal and has been republished with permission.

• Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, by David Robie. Auckland: Little Island Press. [Second edition.] ISBN 978-1-8774- 8425-4; 363 pages, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Paper, NZ$40.00.

Andrew Winstanley talked to Pacific Media Centre director professor David Robie about the unrest and the latest developments.

The University of Papua New Guinea has abandoned the 2016 academic year and suspended the Student Representative Council, stripping it of its campus power.

• Listen to the 95bFM interview here
• 95bFM live streaming
• UPNG abandons 2016 academic year

Dear Professor Robie,

I was very moved and appreciative to read the Asia Pacific Report account of your speech in which you pilloried the lack of reporting on West Papua and the murders of the Balibo Five in New Zealand.

Not only was their torture, according to Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jose Ramos-Horta designed to humiliated them; the subsequent murder of Roger East witnessed by 100 unwilling Timorese resulted in genocide visited upon innocent Timorese people and their children.

I’m particularly pleased to know of your praise for Mark Davis for his dedication to the truth, which was the aim of my husband, Greg Shackleton, in 1975.

For me the most terrible basis for the behaviour of my own Australian government (from successive Prime Minister’s down, over 24 years and still operating today)  is based upon trade, a very dirty word.

The rape of West Papua and the destruction of the people is worse because it has gone on much longer.

In failing to report Indonesian’s undemocratic tidal wave of destruction in West Papua and the Act of NO Choice so-called democracies, devalues the freedom of all New Zealanders’ freedoms.

Shirley Shackleton
South Melbourne, Vic
Australia

Shirley Shackleton was a recipient of the Order of Timor Leste Medal (Ordem de Timor-Leste and the Walkley Book Award for her The Circle of Silence: A personal testimony before, during and after Balibo.

• NZ media ‘ignore’ West Papua human rights
• Balibo House Trust

By Alastair Wanklyn in Tokyo

Radio Waatea and The Daily Blog featured the Pacific and climate change on their daily live Fifth Estate programme tonight.

Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury spoke to a panel, including Labour spokesman on Pacific affairs Sua William Sio who was stranded at Tarawa on a fact-finding mission to Kiribati.

Sua spoke about the “fighting spirit” of Pacific islanders trying to sustain life in the face of the reality of climate change and called for a better United Nations framework for Pacific people impacted on by the dramatic changes as a result of global warming.

Many of the speakers talked about New Zealand needing to accept Pacific climate change migrations, adopt humanitarian policies and tackle the issue of sovereignty of their communities.

“We have to recognise and have a serious discussion about people from the vulnerable climate change frontline states who are overstayers in New Zealand because I now recognise that some of them, depending on which islands they belong to, cannot go back to those islands,” said Sua.

“You can’t be an overstayer if you have got nowhere to go back to,” said Bradbury.

In the studio for the programme were:

International refugee Michael Timmins, a lawyer who has worked internationally with NGOs and the UN refugee agency UNHCR

Professor David Robie, director of AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre

On the phone from Samoa: Ötara-Papatoetoe Local Board Councillor Efeso Collins

And on Skype live from Kiribati as part of his fact-finding mission in the Pacific: Labour Party Spokesperson on Pacific Affairs and Pacific Climate Change Sua William Sio

• Watch Fifth Estate and climate change on YouTube
• Discussion plus at The Daily Blog

Report by Pacific Media Watch

A team of Auckland University of Technology student journalists has won the 2015 Ossie Award for Best Innovation for a series of video reports about the Rainbow Warrior bombing and the environment.

The student team entry, coordinated by Kendall Hutt, is featured on the Eyes of Fire microsite published by Little Island Press in collaboration with AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and Greenpeace New Zealand.

The Rainbow Warrior project involved interviews with crew members on board the sabotaged Greenpeace campaign ship 30 years on, stories on contemporary environmental issues, and profiles of photojournalists who covered the anti-nuclear struggle.

The project was inspired by a new 2015 edition of David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. Dr Robie, director of the PMC, was an independent journalist on board ship for 10 weeks until the bombing by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.

The Ossie Award, presented at the annual conference of the Journalism Education and Research Association (JERAA) at Bathurst this week, was warmly welcomed by AUT staff and students and microsite publisher Tony Murrow.

‘Multimedia-rich’
“The Eyes of Fire project used the online medium well, through a clear, easy-to-navigate and multimedia-rich website, but also contained significant amounts of more traditional video and print reporting, which was tightly edited and interesting,” said the judge’s citation.

“The two were combined well to both entertain and impart information. Looking through it was an education in the Rainbow Warrior and its significance.”

The teaching team leading the project were Gilly Tyler, Danni Mulrennan and Dr Robie. Television lecturer Mulrennan coordinated the student news reporting team.

The list of students involved in the project is here.

The Ossie Awards are named after Australian foreign correspondent Osmar S. White.

Pacific Media Watch project editor Alistar Kata also reported a series of in-depth stories on the Rainbow Warrior and environmental activism.

The latest edition of the Pen Sydney freedom of expression magazine has published a four-page article by Dr Robie about Eyes of Fire and the Rainbow Warrior experience.

Eyes of Fire microsite