Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.

While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under Indian and Asian on the Stats NZ website.

“The ‘Fijian Indian’ ethnic group is currently classified under ‘Asian,’ in the subcategory ‘Indian’, along with other diasporic Indian ethnic groups,” Stats NZ told RNZ Pacific.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Indo-Fijians as Pacific Islanders

“This has been the case since 2005 and is in line with an ethnographic profile that includes people with a common language, customs, and traditions.

“Stats NZ is aware of concerns some have about this classification, and it is an ongoing point of discussion with stakeholders.”

The Fijian Indian community in Aotearoa has long opposed this and raised the issue again at a community event Rabuka attended in Auckland’s Māngere ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa last month.

“As far as Fiji is concerned, [Indo-Fijians] are Fijians,” he said.

‘A matter of sovereignty’
When asked what his message to New Zealand on the issue would be, he said: “I cannot; that is a matter of sovereignty, the sovereign decision by the government of New Zealand. What they call people is their sovereign right.

“As far as we are concerned, we hope that they will be treated as Fijians.”

More than 60,000 people were transferred from all parts of British India to work in Fiji between 1879 and 1916 as indentured labourers.

Today, they make up over 32 percent of the total population, according to Fiji Bureau of Statistics’ 2017 Population Census.

Now many, like Sangam community NZ leader and former Nadi Mayor Salesh Mudaliar, say they are more Fijian than Indian.

“If you do a DNA or do a blood test, we are more of Fijian than anything else. We are not Indian,” Mudaliar said.

The indentured labourers, who came to be known as the Girmitiyas, as they were bound by a girmit — a Hindi pronunciation of the English word “agreement”.

RNZ Pacific had approached the Viti Council e Aotearoa for their views on the issue. However, they refused to comment, saying that its chair “has opted out of this interview.”

“Topic itself is misleading bordering on disinformation [and] misinformation from an Indigenous Fijian perspective and overly sensitive plus short notice.”

‘Struggling for identity’
“We are Pacific Islanders. If you come from Tonga or Samoa, you are a Pacific Islander,” Mudaliar said.

“When [Indo-Fijians] come from Fiji, we are not. We are not a migrant to Fiji. We have been there for [over 140] years.”

“The community is still struggling for its identity here in New Zealand . . . we are still not [looked after].

He said they had tried to lobby the New Zealand government for their status but without success.

“Now it is the National government, and no one seems to be listening to us in understanding the situation.

“If we can have an open discussion on this, coming to the same table, and knowing what our problem is, then it would be really appreciated.”

Lifting quality of data
Stats NZ said it was aware of the need to lift the quality of ethnicity data  across the government data system.

“Public consultation in 2019 determined a need for an in-depth review of the Ethnicity Standard,” the data agency said.

In 2021, Stats NZ undertook a large scoping exercise with government agencies, researchers, iwi Māori, and community groups to help establish the scope of the review.

Stats NZ subsequently stood up an expert working group to progress the review.

“This review is still underway, and Stats NZ will be conducting further consultation, so we will have more to say in due course,” it said.

“Classifying ethnicity and ethnic identity is extremely complex, and it is important Stats NZ takes the time to consult extensively and ensure we get this right,” the agency added.

This week, Fijians celebrate the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. The nation observes a public holiday to mark the day, and Fijians of all backgrounds get involved.

Prime Minister Rabuka’s message is for all Fijians to be kind to each other.

“Act in accordance with the spirit of Diwali and show kindness to those who are going through difficulties,” he told local reporters outside Parliament yesterday.

“It is a good time for us to abstain from using bad language against each other on social media.”

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

Labour leader Chris Hipkins and National leader Christopher Luxon have faced off in a fast-paced but unspectacular debate in the Aotearoa New Zealand general election campaign with co-governance and gangs among the issues producing the liveliest exchanges.

It was the first time the two leaders had squared off against each other outside Parliament and at times the mood was tense during last night’s debate.

Luxon, in particular, appeared frustrated when Hipkins interjected, while the Labour leader appeared to be enjoying himself a bit more.

• READ MORE: Other NZ election 2023 reports

However, with Labour behind in the polls, Hipkins was unable to deliver anything telling enough to put Luxon off his stride.

He did manage some amusing lines, however, such as “We have a proven track record of reducing our emissions . . . it’s not just a bunch of slogans”, “building EV stations is like building petrol stations”, and when asked what was his worst quality he responded with a smile: “I need to delegate more”.

Afterwards both leaders professed themselves happy with how they performed, however, commentators on TV1 were less enthusiastic, with former MP Tau Henare saying there was no excitement and Hipkins had been “too mild”.

Former Labour leader David Cunliffe believed Hipkins had allowed Luxon too much of a free run and the National party leader made the most of it. Both declared the debate a tie.

Wide-ranging debate
The debate was wide-ranging, covering health, housing, crime and gangs, climate change and the economy. 1News political editor Jessica Mutch-McKay kept it moving at a fast clip and co-governance, especially in health, led to some intense debate.

The leaders were both asked if Māori and Pacific people should get priority when it came to the health waitlist. Luxon said need should come first ahead of ethnicity, while Hipkins said Māori and Pacific people having priority was a positive due to their poor health outcomes when compared to the rest of the population.

Hipkins said other parties were using the issue to “race-bait”, to which Luxon interjected “rubbish”.

Luxon said he felt the definition of co-governance had been expanded since the last time National was in government and the public had not been given adequate explanations of what it entailed.

Hipkins said co-governance meant shared decision-making over natural resources which had been successful. He believed Māori and government working together benefited New Zealand.

Luxon said he supported it for Treaty of Waitangi settlements but not for national public services and repeated his party’s intention of axing the Māori Health Authority.

“The Māori Health Authority isn’t having two separate systems,” Hipkins said.

Luxon challenged in Māori health
He challenged Luxon on why he would keep Māori health providers if he did not want two systems of health. Luxon said he wanted to “turbo-charge” community organisations but it would be as part of one health system.

Hipkins said the health system was dealing with systemic issues and it would take time to build capacity to fix them.

But Luxon said every single health indicator had worsened under Labour — although Hipkins countered that by saying falling smoking rates were one example of effective action.

He said he did not feel safe in downtown Auckland and believed many New Zealanders felt the same.

Under Labour the prison population had been reduced by 30 percent — which might have been acceptable if the crime rate had gone down by the same amount — but in fact it had risen sharply, Luxon said.

On gangs he claimed: “We have nine gang members for every 10 police officers in this country.

“We’re going to make sure we ban gang patches in public places, we give police dispersal and powers to break them up from planning criminal activity, we get tough on the illegal guns that they have and we make being a gang member an aggravating factor in sentencing.”

Consequences for young offenders
He also promised there would be consequences for serious young offenders.

Hipkins said the escalation in gang activity was unacceptable and acknowledged that more New Zealanders were feeling unsafe. However, he advocated working with young offenders to turn their lives around which would reduce crime.

On boot camps, told that an expert had said 83 percent of young people who went through them re-offend, Luxon said National would make them “more effective”.

“We need targeted interventions in these young people’s lives. I’m not prepared to write them off.”

When Hipkins tried to intervene and say how boot camps did not get results, Luxon hit back saying Labour had had six years to get it right.

Hipkins said Labour had changed the law so police could be tougher on gang convoys, such as the recent one that closed down parts of Ōpōtiki over a tangi.

Insults fly on housing
Luxon slammed Labour’s record on housing while Hipkins said National’s plan was to offer incentives to landlords whereas Labour was focused on getting people into homes.

Hipkins said there were more “mega landlords” these days and that was not right.

“Will you guarantee your tax breaks for landlords will get passed on to tenants?” Hipkins asked Luxon.

Luxon avoided a direct answer so the Labour leader answered on his behalf, saying “We’ll take that as a no.”

Both leaders stated they supported building more state houses — although Hipkins was critical of how state houses had been sold off the last time National was in government.

Hipkins admitted KiwiBuild had been an “unrealistic promise” but since then Labour had created momentum in house supply which needed to be continued.

Afterwards both leaders were relaxed. Hipkins was reluctant to score himself, saying the voters would decide, but when pressed again opted for an eight.

Luxon said he had enjoyed it and hoped viewers did also while also choosing an eight.

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

News media in Indonesia act as “government loudspeakers” by advancing a one-sided narrative regarding the conflict in West Papua, a new study reveals.

The human rights abuses against indigenous Papuans, who have been under military occupation of the Indonesian armed forces since 1962-63 and their struggle for independence from Jakarta, remains a sticking point for the Indonesian government in the region.

However, the Indonesian national media provides an unfair coverage on the plight of the West Papuans by only amplifying the state’s narrative, according to research published in Pacific Journalism Review.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Journalism Review research reports
• Other West Papua reports

The paper, which looks at how six dominant news media organisations in Indonesia report on the Free West Papua movement, found that they “tend to be only a ‘loudspeaker’ for the government” by using mainly statements issued by state officials when reporting about West Papua.

The findings come from in-depth interviews that were conducted between 2021 and 2022 with six informants and journalists who have a history of writing on West Papua in the last five years.

Additionally, the research analysed over 270 news items relating to West Papua issues that appeared in the six Indonesian online media — Okezone, Detik, Kompas.com, Tribunnews, CNN Indonesia and Tirto — in the week after the Indonesian government formally labelled the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (TPNPB-OPM) as a terrorist group in April 2021.

“The Indonesian media does not use a balanced frame, for example, in terms of explaining why and how acts of violence are chosen on the path to fight for West Papuan independence,” the author of the research from Universitas Padjadjaran, Justito Adipresto, writes.

‘Prolonging human rights violations’
Non-state actors have acknowledged that “labelling West Papuan separatist groups as terrorist will not only not solve the problem, but that it also has the potential to prolong the human rights violations that have been taking place in West Papua,” Adipresto says.

While some point to the economic disparities as a starting point to the West Papua conflict, the research shows that the media fall significantly short of providing a nuanced coverage by ignoring the “haunting track record of violence and militarism, ethnicity and racism” in their reports.

“The imbalance of representation that occurs in relation to reporting on West Papua cannot be separated from Indonesia’s treatment of ethnic groups and the region of West Papua,” Adipresto says.

He says the government’s labelling of the Free West Papua movement has “severe implications for the current and future situation and conflict in West Papua”.

“Media in Indonesia is under the shadow of the state,” he said adding that reporting on West Papua lacks “explanation and sufficient context”.

He said Indonesian media were “very concerned about the readers clicks”, and therefore on the quantity of reports rather than the quality.

“The concentration of reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, also leads to reporting from reporters not located in or never having visited West Papua, potentially reducing empathy and understanding of human rights or economic aspects in their reporting.

‘Quality, ethics of journalists are an issue’
“The quality and ethics of journalists are an issue in reporting on West Papua, considering that journalists do not tend to cover the issue of labelling a ‘terrorist’ comprehensively.”

The research shows Indonesian media place greater importance on comments from government officials, often ignoring or not providing space for other voices, in particular the West Papuan community.

“It is necessary to develop a more systematic and consolidated strategy for the national media to cover West Papua better,” the author concludes.

The full paper, titled “Government loudspeakers: How Indonesian media amplifies the state’s narrative towards the Free West Papua movement”, can be found at Pacific Journalism Review, published by the Asia Pacific Media Network. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Iwi leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand have accused opposition parties National and ACT of “fanning the flames of racism”, urging the prime minister to be brave and not walk away from partnership on Three Waters.

With Waitangi events and festivities gearing up for the holiday weekend, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins attended the Iwi Chairs Forum yesterday.

He emerged from the closed-doors meeting saying they had asked the government to continue to work with Māori “to advance the issues that we’ve been working on previously”.

• READ MORE: Other Waitangi Day reports
• Other NZ politics reports

Iwi leaders had also, it seemed, laid down a wero [challenge].

“I have also heard their concern that they don’t want to see ethnicity, race, being used as a way of dividing New Zealanders and I was able to absolutely reiterate my government’s commitment to ensuring that we continue to work together to avoid that happening,” Hipkins said.

“Where there is uncertainty, where there is a lack of clarity, that can lead to fear. Politicians who use that fear or exploit that fear in order to try and gain political advantage need to really reflect on their own actions. That’s something my government will never do.”

He was not afraid to get into specifics, either.

“They don’t want the concept of co-governance to be used to stoke fear, and nor do we,” he said.

“I think it’s been misunderstood and those who seek to use misunderstanding around it for political advantage need to reflect on their own behaviour.

“People can form their own judgments about that but I certainly think the opposition — National and ACT have, as they’ve done in the past — they’ve used uncertainty to try and stoke fear.”

The devastating flooding in Auckland this week may have changed some minds about the need for change in management of drinking, waste and stormwater — something Hipkins will be looking to capitalise on.

“I think that we have to accept that as a result of climate change we’re going to see more extreme weather events, and stormwater — which is an integral part of the Three Waters system — is going to continue to come under more pressure,” he said.

The iwi leaders were not shy about it either, with Tukoroirangi Morgan telling reporters they wanted co-governance or a similar partnership retained in the Three Waters legislation.

“The challenge we’ve put to the prime minister today is will he succumb to the attack dogs of the National party and ACT as they fan the flames of racism and anti-Māori sentiments, and throw us under the bus for the sake of keeping alive Three Waters?”

Morgan, it must be noted, has been appointed chair of the entity set to oversee Auckland and Northland’s water.

“There is nothing mysterious about Three Waters — it’s all about pipes under the ground. Our view is as it has always been: we stand here at Waitangi, the cradle of the Treaty of Waitangi, and here is the embodiment of partnership,” he said.

“What we seek from this government is an ongoing commitment that partnership will amplified and affirmed through Three Waters, [it is an] opportunity for the Crown and Māori to work together in a meaningful and significant way.”

Jamie Tuuta, an iwi leader from Taranaki, also warned against allowing Māori to become a political football this election.

“One of the key messages we want to give to the prime minister and other ministers is that they need to stand up, they need to step up,” he said.

“It’s unacceptable — because again, the racist and biased attacks on Māori in 2023 are unacceptable.”

A Pou Tikanga of the forum, constitutional law expert Professor Margaret Mutu, said it was essential race rhetoric was removed from electoral debate.

“There’s a need to understand and address racism in this country and over recent times it’s got a lot more urgent,” Professor Mutu said.

“We need to make sure that work doesn’t slow down, particularly as the extreme attacks coming in are very, very hurtful. We want to try and stop that hurt.”

Te Arawa’s Monty Morrison said the meeting went “very well, it was very open.”

Ngāti Kuri’s Harry Burkhardt said they “were clear about our message, and I think Chris received that well”.

Luxon, Seymour respond
Co-governance was a topic National’s leader Christopher Luxon chose to address when he visited Rātana last week. His speech accused the government of failing to make its position on the matter clear, and allowing it to become a “divisive and immature” conversation.

National had been invited to meet with the Iwi Chairs Forum but declined. In a written statement after the kōrero at Waitangi today, Luxon said the party had been clear about its position.

“We support co-management between government and Māori for natural resources in the context of Treaty settlements. We do not support co-governance of public services or separate bureaucratic systems for Māori and non-Māori,” he said.

“Labour has progressed a divisive agenda and continually failed to set out its views clearly. It is disappointing to see the new Prime Minister try to shut down the discussion rather than clearly setting out Labour’s plans for the public to judge.”

Luxon has previously raised as examples National does not support:

• The Māori Health Authority, which sets strategy for overcoming racial health gaps and commissions kaupapa Māori health services
• The Three Waters legislation allowing equal representation between council and iwi appointees on a strategic oversight group which appoints the management board of the four entities set to take over management of water services

ACT leader David Seymour — who has Ngāpuhi roots — has been even more stridently critical of these, arguing they are race-based approaches which only further divide.

“If the prime minister thinks that ACT is making co-goverment divisive, wait till he hears what Labour’s been up to,” he said.

“Their modus operandi is to divide public affairs between two groups of people based on race — that is divisive and it’s unsurprising that opposition parties are raising concerns.”

He bristled at being labelled an “attack dog” by Morgan.

“Again, it’s a shame. The Iwi Chairs Forum were an organisation we’ve enjoyed good relationships with.

“That kind of language, calling people dogs, well it doesn’t exactly sound like they’re coming to the table to make the situation any better, now, does it.”

Three Waters changes yet to be decided
Since taking over as Prime Minister from Jacinda Ardern, Hipkins has promised his government will focus more on the “bread-and-butter” issues, targeting cost-of-living pressures and cutting back some of the government’s work programme.

Media speculation has highlighted the unpopularity of the government’s RNZ-TVNZ merger and the Three Waters projects, and therefore likely on the chopping block.

Hipkins signalled announcements within weeks about the slimmed-down work programme, but when pressed about Three Waters early this week spoke about the need to change the status quo — statements he repeated today.

“We’ve been doing so many different things, actually we probably haven’t created the space to make sure people understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and that is absolutely, I think, a lesson for us over the last five years and it’s something we have all reflected on and you’ll see some change in that regard.

“I haven’t said a lot in terms of ruling things in and out, but one thing I will rule out is no reform . . .  we can’t continue with the status quo — it is not delivering New Zealanders the water services they need and that they deserve.

“If we leave it just with the status quo, one thing it will deliver is significantly higher rates for households, and I’m not willing to just stand back and say ‘that’s a council problem to deal with’.”

He has, to date, refused to outline what any of the changes to the project might be — saying those decisions are yet to be made by the full Cabinet — but speculation has centred on the co-governance aspect.

“I think everybody acknowledges that what we’re doing now or around the way we manage our water infrastructure in New Zealand is not sustainable, and it has left us with a pretty disgraceful legacy, frankly, of that core infrastructure being run down.”

Taranaki iwi leader Jamie Tuuta said whatever changes came, they expected the same level of engagement and partnership.

“By and large what we ask is that we are respected and that [Hipkins] and his ministers engage openly with us in the event that there are any changes.”

With an election in October, Morgan and the other leaders present at today’s forum are clear: they want bold leadership and partnership, and however this year’s election plays out — they will still be there.

“This is a ongoing journey for us,” Morgan said. “Absolutely, we would want a very clear and unfettered response and commitment from this government that they’re not going to walk away, nor are they going to throw us under the bus for their own political means.

“Iwi will be at this side of the table come the election, we’ll deal with whoever the government is. What is clear in this situation is we are enduring, iwi will remain as the Treaty partner.

“Whether we deal with Hipkins after the election or the National Party, we will see, but all we say is that we want an equitable share in the major decisions that affect our people – that’s our bottom-line expectation.”

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

Iwi leaders warn Hipkins not to bow on Three Waters co-governance https://t.co/upsPqJEbMm

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 3, 2023

The “politics of fear” pervading Fiji must go away, says National Federation Party (NFP) candidate Agni Deo Singh.

The former general secretary of the Fiji Teachers Union (FTU) attacked the “politics of fear” aimed at the hearts of voters, especially Fijians of Indian descent.

“Every time we hear about politics of fear from the FijiFirst government,” he claimed.

• READ MORE: The Fiji elections

“They are doing it currently. Trying to instil that fear in the Indo-Fijian community.

“The worst part is that this is bringing about an ethnic divide.

“We are here to bring the two major ethnic groups together.

“We don’t talk ethnicity, we don’t talk race or religion.”

Singh said people should not worry and leave security to the authorities such as the police.

Shayal Devi is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

I couldn’t help but be drawn to the constant flow of emotions that came in the wake of the death of Professor Brij Lal on Christmas Day.

People from all walks of life shared their innermost feelings. There was no holding back for many.

Although he wrote books and learned articles in academic journals, Professor Lal also wrote, when he had time, for The Fiji Times.

• READ MORE:  Professor Brij Lal: A champion of democracy and Fiji’s finest scholar
• Renowned Fijian academic dies in exile
• Professor Brij Vilash Lal passes away
• Fiji’s finest scholar dies

So he and I shared a correspondence. And what came through so often in his writing was that this man, whose intellect would carry him in any place in the world, regarded the country of his birth — our country — as a special place.

The good professor came from a farming family in Tabia, Vanua Levu. They weren’t rich, but that is from where he rose — to become an emeritus professor of Pacific and Asian history at the Australian National University.

He was your average farm boy, but he had it in him to become someone who would be held in very high regard.

He would eventually walk the corridors of the well-established, in many countries around the world, before he finally settled in Brisbane, Australia. Yet he never lost that touch of humility and appreciation of others.

Today we look at that connection. From Tabia to Brisbane! From a farm boy to an emeritus professor! Professor Lal’s life leaves many lessons to appreciate and value.

There are platforms for us to achieve, or aspire for. Yet despite the fact that he lived in a more developed country, with better available resources and the potential for a better life, Professor Lal never forgot his roots on Vanua Levu.

He yearned to return to see once more the “green undulating hills of Tabia”.

He considered it a special place. We are fortunate to live in a beautiful country abundant with rich resources.

We are friendly people who have learnt to embrace multiracialism, religion and ethnicity. In the face of all our differences, we have learnt to live together, appreciating these differences, and instinctively embracing them.

For his part, Professor Lal was proud to tell the world about Tabia. He lived with very strong memories of his childhood, and the special connection he had with people he knew and grew up with.

Perhaps, when we are able to take a moment, to get a jolt of reality, to truly appreciate what we have now, and the endless possibilities, we should reflect on how hard it would be to be denied the right to return home.

In one of his most recent pieces for The Fiji Times, Professor Lal wrote:

“Fiji is a bit like Churchill’s Russia, a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’.

“Here is a beautiful country full of a talented population, sophisticated infrastructure and abundant natural resources which is sadly prone to debilitating self-inflicted wounds that hobble its present and dent its future.”

Professor Lal epitomised the value Fijians have for their connection to their homeland.

In the face of the covid-19 pandemic, we are reminded about this sense of appreciation and value. We are reminded about who we are — Fijians!

This editorial was published in The Fiji Times on 28 December 2021 under the original title of “Our special place in the world”. Republished with permission.

Distinguished Professor Steven Ratuva is the first Pacific person ever to be promoted to the highest professorial status of distinguished professor.

The award-winning Fiji-born University of Canterbury political sociologist was recognised for his global leadership and pioneering interdisciplinary research in a range of fields including ethnicity, security, politics, affirmative action, development, and social protection.

Director of UC’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, he is a prolific author. In the last two years alone he has authored and edited five books, including a three-volume global project on ethnicity — the largest and most comprehensive on the subject.

• READ MORE: Steven Ratuva: Repression not the answer to Fiji’s political dilemma
• USP and Canterbury University partner for Pacific climate research

Among his academic leadership roles, he has led pioneering projects on global security in collaboration with international agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as chair of the International Political Science Association research committee on security, conflict and democratisation.

Dr Ratuva currently leads projects worth several million dollars and is co-leading a UC and University of the South Pacific joint project on climate crisis and resilience, covering 16 Pacific countries. The climate project is funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

He is also leading a New Zealand Health Research Council-funded health and social protection project.

Last year, distinguished professor Ratuva was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and won the society’s Mertge Medal for New Zealand social science research excellence.

In 2019, he won the University of Canterbury Research Medal and received a Senior Fulbright Fellowship in 2018 to conduct research on ethnicity and affirmative action with leading experts in the field at University of California, Duke University and Georgetown University.

Republished with permission.

In my household, the 1970s BBC comedy Fawlty Towers is on regular repeat for family entertainment.

Only two years ago it was authoritatively ranked as the greatest British sitcom ever.

Starring the six-foot-five manic comedian John Cleese, it depicts life in a chaotic English seaside hotel.

• READ MORE: Fiji government sacking of chief statistician branded ‘shameful’

Its owner, Basil Fawlty, is a man who thinks he is always right. His attempts to cover up small problems quickly turn into major disasters.

If you are already drawing comparisons between Fawlty Towers and the current Fiji government, you would not be the only one.

The most popular of its (only 12) episodes is called “The Germans”. A group of German tourists comes to stay. Basil doesn’t much like Germans but it’s money after all. Obsessed with not offending them he instructs everybody “don’t mention the war”.

The more he tries not to mention the war, the worse it gets. By the end of the episode he is doing frog-marching Hitler impressions and his guests are asking: “How did they ever win?”

This is what comes to mind when I think of our government and ethnic population data.

The more the government tries to pretend it doesn’t exist, the more public the issue becomes.

Statistics saga
The media was treated last week to an 8pm peroration from Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum. Maybe he forgot that this was way past every media company’s news deadline (the editors of the Fiji Sun, however, seemed to extend theirs so they could report the speech the next day).

The head of the Statistics Bureau was fired, marched out from his office by security personnel.

That guaranteed another cycle of bad press as opposition parties and NGOs issued statements and social media lit up.

Immediately the critics reminded us of what happens when the Attorney-General loses an argument. Vice-chancellors get deported.

The media is attacked for bias. He blasts his own lawyers for losing a court case (the “winning argument” he says they missed would be laughed out of any remotely sane court).

Why?

Comedy aside, surely the question to ask about this disaster-prone policy is “why”? I know of no other nation in the world where the government tells the people “you are not allowed to know the ethnic breakdown of people in your own country because it is bad for you”.

Those who question this policy are attacked by the Attorney-General as “obsessed with ethnicity”.

But a lot of effort and drama has gone into suppressing what is usual (and critically important) demographic information. Now it has been applied to punishing the man who made it available.

All of this seems to suggest that it is the Attorney-General, not us, who is obsessed.

“It is a big issue,” he told the media. “If you are going to start having compassion for people based on their ethnicity, then you are losing your sense of humanity and that’s precisely what has happened”.

Really? When did that happen?

When did we all decide that we would “have compassion” for only one ethnic group? We’ve barely had time to understand the data.

Mind-numbingly obvious
It is mind-numbingly obvious why ethnic data is important to government policymaking and operations.

As opposition MP Lenora Qereqeretabua put it two years ago, calling us all “Fijians” doesn’t make us the same”.

New Zealand health authorities have heart disease profiles for Indo-Fijians, a tiny slice of their own society. Why? Because they are “obsessed with ethnicity”?

No, because they understand that different ethnic groups have particular physiologies, diets and even lifestyles. They use the information to save lives.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that in Fiji the take up of coronavirus vaccines is lower in the indigenous population than for other races.

If everybody had the data, NGOs and health authorities could co-operate in working out why. They could upgrade the messaging and vaccination strategies to respond.

Because as we are all reminded, no Fijian is safe until everyone is vaccinated.

In the middle of the coronavirus it took weeks for the government to even start communicating virus information in vernacular languages.

Why? Were they instructed not to be “obsessed with ethnicity”?

Affirmative action
We need to understand ethnic performance gaps in critical areas such as education and poverty, representation in business and professional life. If we don’t, how are we going to fix them?

Are we going to pretend that cultures and lifestyles play no part in these gaps? Are we going to pretend that we can’t use targeted programmes and information to close them?

Past governments – yes, those evil “past governments” which get blamed for everything bad — tried to respond to these gaps with “affirmative action” policies in education and economic support. They were not, in my opinion, very effective.

In my view they addressed the symptoms, rather than the causes, of these gaps. So (in my view) it was necessary to re-think the affirmative action policies, look critically at what had gone wrong, and re-design them.

The gaps have not gone away. But for 15 years we have not been allowed to talk about them. So that is 15 years in which we have lost the opportunity to look for new, imaginative ways to deal with the gaps.

Fiji is like every other multiracial country in the world. Race is a natural fault line.

You cannot paper it over by saying “the Constitution says we are all Fijians now”.

When things go wrong, in times of economic, social and political stress, people look for simple answers to their problems.

Sometimes they are encouraged to find those simple answers by blaming people who do not look like them or speak like them.

And that’s when things go wrong. The explosions of 1987 and 2000 are not so long ago.

Are we all trying to pretend that these things could not happen again?

The current government seems to think that warning us against racism, or arresting people who criticise Bill 17, will deal with the problem (or maybe solve their own future election problems).

Nation-building
But like everything in the stunted and short-sighted vision they have offered us for 15 years, this government doesn’t seem to understand the essence of nation-building.

Our government seems to think that a nation is built when everyone is brought under control by the government and ordered around.

So, apparently, we must all call ourselves “Fijians”. We must pretend that we are all the same.

We must not be allowed our own local governments in case they disagree with the people in Suva. We must not be allowed autonomy in the schools that in many cases our own forefathers or religious communities built.

In the midst of our worst ever health and economic crisis, non-governmental organisations, charities and private citizens should not get government support because they cannot be controlled.

Instead, government will do everything. Dial 161 and take your chances.

But nations are not built like that. Nations are built by their people, helped by (not ordered around by) their governments.

Citizens do the building
In a well-run nation, it is the citizens who do the building. It is the citizens working together, in business, in community organisations, schools, health, in advocacy for minority groups, in town and city councils, who build.

They know what their communities need and respond to those needs.

The citizens, through their councils and committees and charitable trusts, argue with and criticise and demand things from the government. Because after all, the people who run the government are supposed to work for them.

It is citizens who can come up with the ideas and demand action and support from the government to deal with the obvious ethnic differences in income and poverty levels, in education and in other critical areas of national life.

But how can they do that when they don’t have the information and are not allowed to talk about it? All we have to talk about, it seems, is what will be the next episode in our very own series of Fawlty Towers.

Richard Naidu is a Suva lawyer, media commentator and former journalist in New Zealand and Fiji. His workmates think he is a bit like Basil Fawlty. This article was originally published in The Fiji Times and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Diversity was in the spotlight last week. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and Te Wā Tuku Reo Māori were embraced throughout organisations and homes. We also had the annual Diversity Awards NZ celebrating the organisations championing diversity and inclusion in workplaces.

Tellingly, most award recipients talked about ensuring our workplaces are representative of our society.

Having diversity at the table is an excellent and important start, but just as with Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, if our engagement ends there, we lose the full potential diversity and inclusion offer.

Research shows that diverse teams are more creative, innovative, resilient and empathetic. They are more productive and profitable. Shareholders and customers are starting to vote with their wallets too – requiring organisations to embrace diversity and inclusion.

Across New Zealand, our organisations are becoming more diverse due to changing demographics. The latest census data shows almost 40 percent of Kiwis identify as Māori, Pacific or Asian; and more than 55 percent in Auckland.

More than half of us identify as female, a quarter of us weren’t born here, and a quarter have disabilities. We also have an aging population.

But diversity without inclusion is meaningless.

Typical approach
The typical approach to diversity is to record the number of people in each diversity box, including: gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical ability, age, beliefs, socio-economic background, and education.

And we are seeing more and more organisations reporting in this way.

In many of my roles throughout my career, I have been the youngest, the only ethnic Indian, and migrant from the Pacific, a religious minority, and one of few women. That’s a few boxes I tick.

And yet I have been told that had I identified with the rainbow community and had a disability, I would be a better poster child for diversity.

We are in such a hurry to put people in boxes, we miss the intersectionality that arises as a result of the multiple forms of diversity they represent. We also fail to see that people have the potential to bring a lot more to the table than ticks in boxes.

A few years ago, a high-achieving Māori woman recalled to me her early experiences on boards. One of her board chairs would seek input from the males at the table and ignore her.

The reporting metrics would have shown a Māori woman on that board, but her knowledge, skills and experience were underutilised.

Tick box exercises
Sadly, such tick box exercises are still prevalent today. If anything, perhaps even more so as appointment panels are under more pressure now to ensure teams are diverse.

A tick box approach to diversity and inclusion also perpetuates stereotypes. By having a token Māori, or Pacific or Asian person at the table, we expect them to represent the views of entire communities. This ignores the huge diversity within Pacific and Asian communities.

We also forget that while we may identify with an ethnicity and its cultural values, our education, socio-economic background, life and work experiences all mean that our views are not going to be representative of everyone in our community. The same applies for people who identify with disabilities or gender minorities.

Just as we need all of us for diversity to exist, the responsibility for harnessing the value of diversity and inclusion lies with all of us too – not only those who are considered diverse, which is often minorities. While it is important leaders set the tone, the onus is on each of us to learn about those different from ourselves – whatever dimension that difference may take.

Step in someone else’s shoes for a day. Covid-19 and the lockdowns magnified some of these differences. Consider that 90 percent of the newly unemployed as a result of covid-19 have been women.

Consider that Māori and Pacific people are more likely to end up in unemployment statistics than other communities.

Consider older colleagues unable to work because they were vulnerable or immunocompromised. Contrast those worried about how to put food on the table with those who complained about missing their regular coffee fix.

Business claims
Many businesses claim they seek to maximise diversity, but their systems promote similarity. Recruiting practices emphasise hiring from historically reliable sources.

Job ads give cues which help attract or turn off certain candidates. Selection practices often tend to choose candidates based on what’s worked in the past.

Within an organisation, dominant cultures tend to subsume all others. This is also reflected in approaches to performance and pay reviews, and promotions, which mean minorities and women continue to stagnate and plateau.

Diversity and inclusion cannot be a one-off exercise. Organisations need strong, sustained and inclusive leadership and culture. A culture where all people feel respected and valued, and not viewed as ticks in a box.

Ziena Jalil is an independent director, strategic consultant, and diversity and inclusion advocate. This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre with the author’s permission and was originally published by Stuff.

How racially prejudiced is Aotearoa New Zealand? Well, we saw just how racially prejudiced it is a weekend ago when a Stuff reporter showed us pictures of the breaches of alert level 3 at the skate park and basketball court in Victoria Park.

In one photo, there was a group of young Pakeha males, in the other, there was a group of young Asian males playing basketball.

The reporter also mentioned an Auckland councilor who was “gutted” at the numbers of skate boarders in a park on the North Shore and lamented that the skaters and basketballers had removed the yellow caution tapes that ran around the areas.

• READ MORE: Did lockdown end early for this North Shore beach?

During my walk in my West Auckland neigbourhood and around our playgrounds during the same time, and again the next day, there was no one on the playground and not anyone I could see in the skate parks.

My friend who lives in South Auckland said the playgrounds in her area were also empty.

When New Zealand was hit by that first wave of covid-19, there were few Māori and Pasifika peoples who had contracted the disease. Yet almost everyone went into lockdown.

Almost everyone. Māori and Pasifika were nowhere near as affected as Pakeha, yet they understood what community and community transmission meant and went into lockdown, for the sake of Aoteaora.

Disproportionate impact
Now this second wave has disproportionately affected some Pasifika communities in South Auckland. Yet to those on the North Shore and in Ponsonby, they could not give a damn.

To them, people (in South Auckland) are not their people. That community is not their community.

Gutted to see this again. People keep taking the caution tape and signs off our CLOSED playgrounds and skateparks. 400 people have died in Melbourne from their second outbreak. 2000 healthcare workers have Covid in Melbourne. pic.twitter.com/ZPKZPjxtWZ

— Richard Hills (@richardhills777) August 23, 2020

They will flout the lockdown rules because this time it is not their people or community impacted on. South and West Auckland have significant numbers of Pasifika, Māori and ethnic communities.

We understand the concept of community. When one falls, we gather to lift them up.

David Farrier wrote about how easy it is for a rumour to travel. He spoke to the young professional who was the cause of the vile rumour against a Pasifika family in South Auckland and who had erroneously and cruelly linked the family to the cause of the second outbreak.

But Farrier was gentle with this person, almost apologising to him for having to interview him about his “misdemeanour”. Would he have been so sympathetic had the transgressor been a person of colour?

It is time that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the government start implementing alert levels to put the country in lockdown due to the ongoing racism and racial prejudice pandemic.

If Ardern can take bold steps to eliminate the virus, even putting the economy into hibernation for the sake of the country’s wellbeing, surely she can do the same for the sake of the country’s humanity.

As for those unempathetic, racially prejudiced dullards in Ponsonby and the North Shore, go to South Auckland and learn what community means.

• My New Zealand: Four women’s unique experience

A New Zealand youth MP Shaneel Lal is speaking out against education policies that exclude some Pacific Island people from Pasifika programmes and scholarships as unfair.

Lal, who is eighth generation Indo-Fijian, applied for a Pasifika scholarship at the University of Otago only to be told he had to prove he had “indigenous” Pacific Island ancestry because Indo-Fijians did not qualify.

He is not the only one to be rejected on the basis of race – even though he was born in Fiji – but he aims to take the matter up with the Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

• READ MORE: Universities excluding Pacific minorities from Pasifika programmes

Lal told Stuff: “I know I’m Fijian. I’m eighth generation Fijian. I have indigenous [ancestry] along the lines I just cannot draw a family tree and say, ‘this person is an indigenous person’.”

Lal said the policies were unfair as Indo-Fijian people experienced many of the same challenges as other Pacific Island groups.

He said that some universities that did not recognise Indo-Fijians as Pacific people “kind of highlights the subtle racism that’s going on in our Pacific community”.

The Auckland-based student said he struck the same problem when applying for Pasifika leadership opportunities while at secondary school and his cousin had a similar experience when she tried to apply for a place in the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) at the University of Auckland.

‘Not enough evidence’
He was told his passport and birth certificate were not enough evidence of him being of Pacific descent and he would need to get a Pacific community leader to vouch for him.

He said that would be difficult having come from Fiji to New Zealand in 2014.

The irony in his circumstance was that he was chosen as youth MP for Minister for Building and Construction, Minister for Customs and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa, who was not responding on the issue.

When asked for a response, a spokesperson from her office said: “Yes, but probably not from the minister. It will be around definitions and criteria.”

Meanwhile, Professor Vijay Naidu from the University of the South Pacific based in Suva – where all Fiji citizens are recognised as Fijian and the indigenous people are recognised as I-Taukei – had a historical perspective on the issue.

“Some years ago, Loraine Pillai who migrated to New Zealand many years ago and retired as a senior high school teacher over there wrote to then Prime Minister Helen Clark about Pasifika identity and Indo-Fijians,” he said.

“Her response was that Indo-Fijians were Pasifika. Apparently, Aotearoa had arrived at this decision when [founding Fiji prime minister] Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had expressed his disaffection with the absence of Fijians of Indian descent at an official reception hosted for him.

“Back to Loraine’s letter. She wrote her letter because, at a workshop for school administrators in Wellington, she had been told by a woman by the surname of Wendt that Indo-Fijians were not regarded as Pasifika people.”

Education Minister Chris Hipkins has said universities set the criteria for Pasifika scholarships, not the government.

A call has been made to members of the Pacific community in New Zealand to check on loved ones during the current Auckland lockdown and to remember there is no stigma or shame in getting tested for covid-19.

Dr Jemaima Tiatia-Seath, co-head of the School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland, said it was important in these extraordinary times to check in on family, friends, colleagues and students.

“Through my work around suicide prevention, it has always been a key message to check in on each other, and that was born from siblings checking in on each other once they have lost a loved one to suicide,” Dr Tiatia-Seath said.

• READ MORE: Vaccine diplomacy heats up in the Pacific

Dr Tiatia-Seath, a specialist in mental health and well-being among Pacific people, said it made complete sense to continue such connection in the covid-19 era.

“Sometimes we get so caught up in our own bubbles that we seem to not realise that other people may not be doing so well, and it is so hard to detect that when you’re not physically near or seeing people on the daily,” she said.

The Auckland family at the centre of the current covid-19 cluster received a lot of negative comments on social media, and Dr Tiatia-Seath said the stigmatisation of that response had not helped with stress levels in the Pacific community.

“Covid-19 knows no ethnicity, so it was extremely unhelpful to point out the ethnicity of the family. The virus is the problem here,” she said.

Negative social media
The Auckland family at the centre of the current covid-19 cluster received a lot of negative comments on social media, and Dr Tiatia-Seath said the stigmatisation of that response had not helped with stress levels in the Pacific community.

“Covid-19 knows no ethnicity, so it was extremely unhelpful to point out the ethnicity of the family. The virus is the problem here,” she said.

Dr Tiatia-Seath pointed out that when people are disconnected from others, it could be hard to pick up signs of distress without being physically present.

“I think when you notice people close down their social media accounts, people that were usually active or engaging online have suddenly gone quiet, I would check up on that person.

“Ensuring families in need have food, checking that our elderly are okay and connected and that our young people are staying engaged after being disconnected from their schools. These are the kind of people we need to look out for,” she said.

The University of Auckland academic said parents needed a lot of support especially if they were having to also be educators for their children.

“We need to be vigilant about our own wellbeing as well as other people’s. Part of that is watching for digital fatigue.

Long Zoom calls
“Zoom video calls should not be so long, and be mindful and respectful of the spaces people are in. It can sometimes be intrusive for some, as you are inviting people into your home.”

She said not spending a lot of time on social media could also be beneficial for wellbeing.

“There’s no stigma or shame in being tested for covid-19”

Pacific union members also encouraged people in the communities to get tested for covid-19 if they were showing symptoms.

Komiti Pasefika, the Council of Trade Unions Pacific Island worker representative group, have learnt through their engagement with Pacific workers that there was fear in regards to taking a test.

“A negative test provides the assurance that you and your family are safe. Where there is a positive result then it is about following the correct procedures to make sure our families are safe and well,” co-convenor Brian Palalagi said.

“We encourage our Pacific families that if they are not well, go and get tested.

Time for GP
“Take the time to go to your GP or Community Based Assessment Centres (CBAC) to get tested.

Palalagi said if people are were concerned about what this means for their work, talk to their union organiser or union delegate in the workplace.

“Our view is that you should be accommodated with full pay to be able to make your contribution to the team of 5 million who are wanting to stamp this virus out of our communities.

He agreed with Tiatia-Seath that people were the solution to the coronavirus.

“We know that covid-19 is a tricky virus, which doesn’t discriminate who it infects. The virus doesn’t discriminate, and neither should we,” Palalagi said.

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

• All RNZ coverage of covid-19
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.

The Pacific community has contributed immensely to New Zealand’s economy – but that isn’t the only contribution, says a leading development studies academic.

Dr Crosby Walsh, founding professor of development studies at Massey University and at the University of the South Pacific – and a blogger on Pacific issues, was commenting about some perceived shortcomings of a new report on the Pacific’s contribution to the New Zealand economy.

The Pacific community has contributed $48.4 billion, reports the New Zealand Pacific Economy document published by the treasury last week.

READ MORE: Community input key to the new report

“Our censuses allow people to declare more than one ethnicity, thus, the footballer Reiko Ioane played for the Māori All Blacks,” said Dr Walsh.

This report was prepared to identify and define the economic footprint of the Pacific community within New Zealand’s economy.

Although the statistics show the contribution of the entire Pacific community to the New Zealand economy, it is unwise to “lump all [Pacific communities] together with a single identity,” said Dr Walsh.

“Their contributions vary. For example, Cook Islanders in the orchards of Hawkes Bay; Tokelauans in forestry in Tokorua and car assembly in Lower Hutt,” said Dr Walsh, who publishes Croz Walsh’s blog on the Pacific.

Challenging formulas
This research, funded by the Treasury and the Pacific Business Trust, was welcomed by Tagaloatele Professor Peggy Fairborn-Dunlop, professor emeritus at Auckland University of Technology.

“This publication is groundbreaking in its revisioning and challenging of commonly used formulas of economic and economic contribution,” said Tagaloatele.

“In doing so, the data has set a comprehensive and really realistic picture of Pacific people’s significant actual contribution to the New Zealand economy but also – and very importantly – what Pacific peoples believe to be important in life, such as social capital,” she said.

“We have a strength -based platform to go forward. I strongly congratulate the Treasury on their boldness in setting these new baselines and directions,” said Tagaloatele.

Low income
About 310,000 Pacific New Zealanders living in the country residing primarily in Auckland, says the new report.

More than 163,000 Pacific employers and employees contribute $6.6 billion into the New Zealand economy, or six percent of the total economy, but with an unequal spread in individual pay.

An average individual income of $40,300 contrasted with an average income of $53,500 of non-Pacific New Zealanders, said the report.

There was a huge inequality in the highest paying job sector but the wages were consistently in the low paid or unskilled jobs.

The highest paying job was in the mining sector for all New Zealanders, the report said, yet, the non pacific people earned an average of $104,900 in contrast to $69,000 of Pacific Islanders.

In the lowest paying industry (accommodation and food services industries), the pay scale for all New Zealanders was the same, averaging about $25,000.

Tertiary education
“Often this work is low or unskilled,” said the report. But in order to combat the low wages, it is important that increasing tertiary education qualifications of young Pacific will enable growing income levels and wealth creation.

As cited in Beehive, “Improving Pacific people’s education success will lead to increased employment, higher incomes, home ownership and overall health and wellbeing for all our people,” said ‘Aupito William Sio, Labour MP and Minister for Pacific Peoples.

The income from the 101,000 Pacific households contributes $12 billion into the economy with an average of $119,000 in comparison to 114,000 to non-Pacific.

The Pacific community also pumped $8 billion dollars into the gross domestic product (GDP) as an income from various fields either by working as employees or employers across a range of sectors in both Pacific and non-Pacific enterprises.

Their contribution to production GDP is $3.1 billion whereas the contribution to expenditure GDP is $10.4 billion.

The total contribution is $48.4 billion.

And the Pacific community spent 27,000 hours a week involved in an unpaid voluntary labour.

The report said that the “Pacific religious organisations (churches) hold over $500 million in assets” and these operations relied on 27,000 Pacific volunteers a week.

• NZ Law Society elects first Pasifika woman as president in ‘sea change’
• New report reveals contribution Pacific New Zealanders make to economy

Fiji’s prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama has again hit out at opposition parties, calling them liars and accusing them of sowing division in the ethnically diverse country.

Bainimarama devoted much of his speech at the opening of a provincial council meeting in Fiji’s west to sharp criticism of his opponents.

He accused them of infighting, peddling lies and promoting hatred between different religious and ethnic communities.

In his most critical speech yet during election year, Bainimarama spoke out against talk of a Muslim or Chinese “takeover” of Fiji.

He said it made him angry to hear of Muslims being pitted against Hindus and provincialism in the indigenous iTaukei community.

Sayed-Khaiyum defended
He defended the Muslim Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, who he said had made great contributions to Fiji’s development and was a trusted partner and friend.

Bainimarama said Fiji Muslims, like every other citizen, were an integral part of the nation.

He said there was no chance of a Chinese takeover in Fiji and Fiji owed China only 10.6 percent of total national debt.

The prime minister said his government had delivered genuine change and that would be seen in the budget due to be delivered today.

With the election date still to be announced, Bainimarama urged people to use their vote wisely.

The Pacific Media Centre has a content sharing partnership with RNZ Pacific.

• More Fiji stories

The recent sentencing of Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, the Christian Chinese-Indonesian Governor of Jakarta, to two years in jail for blasphemy will leave many people in the Asia-Pacific region confounded if not, sadly, further averse to Indonesia.

The court’s decision is not a small thing. Jakarta alone has a population roughly that of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia combined – and more than double the entire population of New Zealand.

Jailing its governor is the equivalent of putting an Australian state premier or the New Zealand prime minister behind bars, conceivable only for the most egregious of crimes.

When the official in question is also widely admired for his competency, opposition to corruption, and drive to reform the massive mess which is Jakarta, one could be forgiven for assuming his blasphemy must have been of medieval proportions.

Did he denounce Islam as “evil’ like the American evangelist Franklin Graham? Did he publicly denounce God as ‘stupid’ like Stephen Fry, now the subject of investigation for blasphemy by the Irish police?

On the contrary. Ahok is deeply respectful of Islam and has many Muslim supporters. Though a Christian, he is also impressively Islam-literate and can quote the Koran, an unusual ability for a Christian.

Ironically, it is this knowledge that worked against him. He asked an Indonesian audience not to be persuaded to vote against him by opponents who claimed the Koran prohibits Muslims from voting for non-Muslims. The implication that leaders should be chosen for their competence not their religion or ethnic background will sound like common sense rather than blasphemy to most people.

Huge numbers mobilised
But extreme Muslims claimed his comment vilified the Koran and that voting for an infidel is apostasy. Their campaign mobilised huge numbers, mainly from outside Jakarta, and resulted in Ahok losing the recent election for the governorship — and his freedom.

Unless his appeal to the Supreme Court succeeds, the blasphemy finding also means he will be banned for life from running for public office.

The affair has already done a serious disservice to Indonesia. It presents Indonesia as fanatical, racist and sectarian. While these perceptions are patently unfair, the affair also reveals some aspects of contemporary Indonesia that are obscured by Canberra’s often lavish praise of our important neighbour.

Radical Islam is increasing in strength and confidence in Indonesia. “Be careful what you wish for,” an Indonesian academic said to me during the anti-democratic Suharto years.

He went on to observe that democracy would allow Muslim organisations sidelined during the Suharto years to operate freely and accept generous funding from benefactors like the Saudi regime whose King Salman recently made a historic visit to Indonesia. The majority of Muslims are moderate and disagree with the hard right but the Ahok case shows that, in a country of 240 million people, a minority can comprise millions and exercise significant political influence.

This influence extends to the nominally independent judiciary whose pronouncement on Ahok is widely considered to have been dictated by the protesters. In effect Ahok was “lynched”.

Aggressive sectional politics
Most fair-minded people in Indonesia and beyond, not least in places like England and Wales where blasphemy laws have been abolished, would struggle to see what was blasphemous about Ahok’s reference to the Koran. The court put aggressive sectional politics ahead of its duty to comply with the rule of law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which post-Suharto Indonesia is a signatory.

As with Indonesia’s mock trials on human rights violations in East Timor when the court absolved the powerful military, the court has compromised its independence and bowed to external pressure.

The sidelining of Ahok also demonstrates the continuing power of entrenched political and economic interests in Indonesia. Ahok stood for clean government. He is a vigorous opponent of corruption, a vice roundly condemned in the Koran. Arguably Ahok’s opposition to this Indonesian curse should have earned the admiration of all Muslims, not jail.

Ahok’s removal is also a victory for Prabowo Subianto, recently headlined by The Age as Indonesia’s possible next president. The ex-general’s candidate beat Ahok in the governship elections, thereby delivering Prabowo a major platform from which to conduct his assault on the presidency, currently held by Joko Widodo, himself a former governor of Jakarta.

The Age reported that Prabowo forbids the killing of insects on his ranch. Timorese would laugh in disbelief. Their truth commission report lists him as having command responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the many years he was active in East Timor.

The Catholic archbishop of Jakarta has publicly condemned growing fundamentalism and intolerance in Indonesia and the Protestant Council of Churches has called for Ahok’s release and the revocation of the blasphemy law.

Nuns, priests, seminarians and laity have rallied in support of Ahok. One sincerely hopes that the Supreme Court will overrule in Ahok’s favour and that the campaign to scrap the blasphemy law will succeed.

Both measures would do much to restore faith in Indonesia and its future.

Pat Walsh is a human rights activist and former adviser to the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. He co-founded Inside Indonesia magazine.

“One of the greatest challenges of our country is understanding our demographic,” says New Zealand’s Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy.

In Devoy’s words, the increased demographic shift of cultural diversity in the country has happened in “less than a generation”.

The question at the center of the debate, “Where are you from?”, was discussed by the audience at the Pacific Women’s Watch (PWW) Celebrating our Diversity conference in Auckland last month and was referring to institutional diversity and casual racism in the New Zealand work place.

For many employers, it may seem a harmless question to ask during the recruitment process. But a question so casual is demeaning for the person on the receiving end.

Devoy spoke about this in the same conversations surrounding “casual or accidental racism” in New Zealand.

“The term ‘casual or accidental racism’ is misleading here because when you or your children are being humiliated or stereotyped it doesn’t feel casual or accidental,” she told Asia Pacific Report.

You’re not a Kiwi
PWW member and E Tū democratic union campaigner Fala Haulangi agrees, saying it’s not the right way to ask what a person’s ethnicity is.

Haulangi told Asia Pacific Report that as a Pacific Islander living in New Zealand, being asked that question makes a person feel like she or he doesn’t belong.

“I am a migrant, but I have been living here for so long,” says Haulangi.

“Having people constantly asking you that question, makes you feel like you’re not a Kiwi, like you’re still regarded as a person from outside New Zealand— when we have actually been living here for so long.”

I’m asked that question too often, she said.

“So we just have to be more bold and when someone asks you that question, say I’m from New Zealand, what about you? Where are you from? Ask that question back again.”

“Blind recruitment’
Bev Cassidy-Mackenzie, chief executive of Diversity Works NZ and also a key speaker at the conference, says employers should never ask that question during the interview recruitment process and in the workplace.

She says Diversity Works NZ is providing training to organisations that want to better “institutionalise diversity”.

“There is cultural competency being undertaken in that space for organisations,” says Cassidy-Mackenzie.

“They’re helping their staff to be more culturally competent in terms of how to better act or react in the workplace and how to better interact with staff and their organisation,” she says.

Blind recruitment
However an area that needs to be improved is better Māori and Pacific diversity in the New Zealand workforce, Cassidy-Mackenzie told Asia Pacific Report.

An issue that could be made better by employers adopting “blind recruitment strategies”.

This is a method of removing details from an applicant’s CV, such as their name and age, during the recruitment process as a way to avoid unconscious bias.

According to the Human Rights Commission, Tracking Equality at Work Key Findings 2016 young Māori and Pacific women in New Zealand are the most affected by unemployment.

Young Māori women under 25-years-old have an unemployment rate of 23.6 percent while Pacific women in the same age bracket have an unemployment rate of 31.4 percent

“It’s not necessarily about who you are, what school you go to, where you live, it’s about what you can bring to the role. Who you are is far more important than where you are from,” says Cassidy-Mackenzie.

She added that more needs to be done to improve institutional diversity and that blind recruitment is only a small part in solving a complex issue.

Auckland-based lawyer and the national president of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Prue Kapua, attended the conference and told Asia Pacific Report, she shared the view that increasing Māori and Pacific diversity in the workplace is much deeper than deleting certain aspects from a person’s resume.

“It’s a whole issue of how you change people attitudes,” she says.

“Which is how to deal with institutional racism, how you deal with the kinds of aspects of people who get into positions of power and then exercise that through their own prejudices.”

To have diverse representation in institutional organisations and the New Zealand workforce, Kapu said, goes back to fundamental issues.

“Issues around education, poverty, the opportunity that presents or doesn’t present itself and inequality that’s where you begin this whole debate really.”

Fair go
Dame Susan Devoy told Asia Pacific Report that the answer to addressing diversity issues isn’t easy.

“Many Kiwis I talk with are older men and women.

“When I tell them we are one of the most ethnically diverse and peaceful nations on the planet and that our multicultural change took place in less than a generation they nod,” Devoy says.

“This is a very different New Zealand to the one they grew up in.

“This is our challenge for all New Zealanders – everyone deserves a fair go.”

Today’s timely and important topic is “I Know What the Media Tells You – But Do You Know Who I Am?”.

Most of us already realise New Zealand’s mainstream media has a powerful influence on the lives of everyday people.

What some of us do not already realise is that our media is neither neutral nor objective, the media reflects the society we live in.

Chinese New Zealanders, Muslim New Zealanders, Jewish New Zealanders, Pacific New Zealanders, Indian New Zealanders, African New Zealanders and of course Māori New Zealanders –  members of these communities regularly tell us that the media too often misrepresents, sensationalises or fails to include their voices in news stories about them.

Often news stories about ethnic minorities have negative themes and present minorities as problems and not as people.

This is not a new phenomenon and with the advent of social media, communities tell us prejudices are often amplified.

Anyone who has read the online comments in an online news report about racism will know what I am talking about.

Secular language
Seven days after last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris we were contacted by a reporter who told us that a migrant trust was banning the word Christmas to appease Muslims.

The reporter wanted to know if I agreed with them.

Before we commented, we contacted the trust people – who were stunned.

They’d been told the paper was working on a positive feature story about how diverse Auckland celebrated Christmas: they’d not been asked if they were banning the word Christmas to appease Muslims.

They had told the paper about their party plans and confirmed that they’d always used secular language.

The reporter demanded that we either condemn or support the trust’s use of secular language.

We refused to do either.

Instead, we defended the trust’s right – and every New Zealanders right – to decide what kind of language they use.

We said that New Zealanders should choose how they observe Christmas.

Free country
We live in a free country, where tolerance and freedom of religion are things the Human Rights Commission stands for.

But in spite of this, the next day the article announced that the trust and I wanted to get rid of Christmas to placate migrants who were not Christian.

Ironically while we were taking media calls over this Christmas issue – we were also attending interfaith peace vigils.

But the paper didn’t want to know about the interfaith meetings taking place in mosques across the country – the paper wanted to write a story about how New Zealand’s way of life was at risk from migrants and newcomers.

It was not lost on us that the article’s timing was strategic and cynical – it had only been 7 days since terrorists had murdered 130 people in coordinated attacks across Paris.

The article pushed the buttons of fear and intolerance and served an existing undertone of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric and the immediate response from many New Zealanders was angry, abusive and offensive.

The article definitely got people talking, but after a month or so the majority of editorials and commentators had realised what we had been saying for weeks. No one was banning Christmas, Kiwis can decide for themselves, New Zealand’s way of life was not in danger.

Biased treatment
Māori New Zealanders have endured biased treatment by the media in this country since the time the first newspapers were printed.

Māori are viewed as “different” whereas Pakeha things are viewed as “normal”.

Our Treaty of Waitangi settlements process is a judicial form of truth and reconciliation that acknowledges human rights abuses faced by generations of New Zealanders — and yet some describe settlements as privilege and special treatment.

Earlier this year we came out publicly about a TVNZ online survey that if you took it, would tell you what kind of Kiwi you are.

The Kiwimeter was touted as the biggest survey of national identity ever undertaken and in one question the survey stated:

Māori should not receive any special treatment – and respondents were asked for their opinion on this.

We called this out as a leading statement that demonstrated a clear bias: Kiwi meter had decided that Māori receive “special treatment” even though they did not explain what this actually meant.

How much control?
During the last General Election, TVNZ’s Vote Compass asked respondents: “How much control should Māori have over their own affairs?”

This effectively asked us whether Māori New Zealanders deserve fewer human rights than other New Zealanders. We are incredulous that a state broadcaster in 2016 would even pose this kind of question.

If the question was “How much control should Pakeha have over their own affairs?” it is unlikely this question would have made it onto our television screens.

We support open discussion about national identity but urged our media and specifically the team behind Kiwimeter and Compass – whose members include journalists and political scientists in New Zealand and Canada – to think carefully about where their leading questions are taking us.

We live in one of the most ethnically diverse nations on the planet and that demographic change has taken place in less than a generation.

What we do now matters.

Whether we choose to actively work at peace will help decide what kind of country we leave behind us.

I have great faith in our future leaders.

Incredible changing face
It is to our children that we look to as we consider our nation’s changing face and it’s a beautiful, talented and incredible changing face.

One of our top female athletes is a young Korean Kiwi called Lydia.

Our most successful female artist, Lorde, is the daughter of Dalmatian immigrants.  One of our top All Blacks is a Samoan Kiwi who’s also Muslim.

Our first NBA star is a proud Tongan Kiwi as his Olympic Champion sister.

Our Parliament looks more like the people it represents than ever before: three political party leaders are Māori New Zealanders.

Our journalists have names like Ali Ikram, Ruwani Perera, Mihingarangi Forbes, Chris Chang and Mohamed Hassan.  We hear from economists like Ganesh Nana and Shamubeel Eaqub.

There is an entire television channel broadcast in te reo Māori.

This is a different kind of New Zealand than the one I grew up and it’s an awesome New Zealand.

While the media may not be neutral or objective, the media reflects the society we live in. We have a choice and responsibility in how we engage with one another. How we choose to shape the New Zealand we want for ourselves and for our children and their children after them.

• Human Rights Commission
• Migrant Action Trust
• Multicultural New Zealand
• News story | Image gallery
  

The summit was organised to create a platform for better understanding and engagement, and celebrate the role of many cultural groups in New Zealand society; build a sense of unity among other ethnic people; and to explore how they can contribute and add value to the community and the nation.

Asia Pacific Report was at the summit and this photogallery by the Pacific Media Centre’s Del Abcede features the diverse nature of the summit.

• Mainstream NZ media takes a pasting at multicultural summit

Do you know who I am?

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Both deputy mayor Penny Hulse and Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Devoy were critical in the opening session about communities that were rendered “invisible” and challenged the media to give a more balanced reflection of the diversity in New Zealand.

Various speakers also described most mainstream media as being biased in its representations of Māori communities and failure to live up to the obligations of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi partnership.

Several speakers were critical of the “whiteness” of the country’s major newsrooms, saying they did not “represent the face of Auckland today”.

But the strongest criticisms came in a panel addressing the theme “ethnic communities and their representation by mainstream and ethnic media” facilitated by broadcaster Wallace Chapman and featuring both mainstream journalists and community commentators.

Agricultural researcher Dr Mustafa Farouk, chairman of the Federations of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), cited research in both Britain and New Zealand that indicated news media coverage about Islam and Muslims was overwhelmingly negative (ranging between 90 percent and 70 percent).

Asked by a member of the audience how long had this gone on for, he replied: “Ever since 9/11”, in reference to the September 11, 2001, attack on New York’s Twin Towers by jihadists.

Muslim diversity
Dr Farouk stressed the diversity of New Zealand’s Muslim population at just over 46,000, noting that a quarter of them were born in this country. Of the overseas Muslims, 21 percent were from the Pacific, 27 percent Asian and 23 percent African or Middle East origin, with the balance being Māori or European.

New Zealand Herald’s social issues reporter Simon Collins and diversity, ethnic affairs and immigration reporter Lincoln Tan commented on how mainstream media could improve the quality of their reporting with greater diversity among news teams.

Both journalists were complimented on their own contribution to reporting ethnic affairs.

Several speakers acknowledged that there had been an improvement in recent years but there was still a long way to go.

Jenny Rankine, co-founder of Kupu Taea: Media and the Tiriti research project, advised seminar participants to “ignore mainstream media” and “tell your own story through ethnic and social media”.

• Asia Pacific Report picture gallery at the summit
• NZ attitudes improving on ethnic diversity
• Migrant Action Trust
• Multicultural New Zealand

Six of the Auckland participants who attended the UN Commission of the Status of Women held in New York in March have had an opportunity to report back on the discussions that were held on the international stage.

An echoed concern among the participants was the lack of Pacific and indigenous representation at the commission.

Some even feel disappointed with a particular presentation and report by New Zealand’s Ministry for Women at the commission that “named and shamed” Māori and Pacific women.

At the “report back” session held by the Pacific Women’s Watch NZ (PWW), Denise Ewe, area representative for Tāmaki Makaurau and national executive at the Māori Women’s Welfare League (MWWL), said she felt honoured to participate in the commission but was “ashamed” over the ministry’s presentation.

Ewe said singling out these specific ethnicities and attaching them to domestic violence data on a world stage was “sloppy” when there were groups in New Zealand that have concerns around the same issue.

“There was over 4000 women from every country and no other country specifically and deliberately named [the ethnicity].

“That for me was one of the lows I have to say,” said Ewe.

Formal letter
Another participant who is also national president of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Prue Kapua, said the league was in the process of writing a formal letter about the issue to the ministry and will be meeting with them for a debrief within the next month.

“The issue about that particular report, and how it was used has already been raised, we have discussed that with the minister last year but it seems to find its way back into that forum.”

Kapua said the commission was a huge learning experience where she gained perspectives on the process of negotiating on human right laws.

But she was disappointed with the “invisibility” of indigenous women in the world arena.

PWW board member and former Shakti Community Council employee Sara Daneshvar was also present at the commission and told Pacific Media Watch that in future she would like to see increased Pacific “grassroots” representation.

She said the Pacific was unfamiliar territory on the world stage and urged the New Zealand government to provide assistance for island nations to attend UN conferences and commissions like this one.

“For example, Papua New Guinea was not represented but we know there are plenty of organisations doing work on the ground there, but they barely have the funds to run their services. How are they going to have the funds to go to these conferences?”

Real issues
Daneshvar emphasised the real issues affecting indigenous and Pacific women were not going to be heard unless their voices and perspectives were presented directly by them.

Her message to women in New Zealand is the need to be aware of the resources they can access if their rights are abused.

“A lot of women do not know the threats committed against them are actually [human rights] abuses. All of them need to be aware that they should be treated as equals to men, that is their right as women, and if that is abused they need to know what can they do about it.”

Beverley Turner, international secretary for PWW, said New Zealand had got a reputation of being “this first country for women to vote, but [other world countries] don’t realise all the other issues beneath the surface.

“We would very much like an action plan for women,” Turner said. “This government refuses to have a plan of action for women; categorically refused that recommendation from the Human Rights Council.”

Turner’s message: “You are women, you have the same rights as women anywhere—go for it.”

TJ Aumua is contributing editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.