Australia’s Labor government has successfully passed a “hate speech” bill that’s plainly aimed, at least in part, at suppressing pro-Palestine organizations as “hate groups”.

Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm about the new laws, saying their extremely vague wording, lack of procedural fairness and low thresholds for implementation mean groups can now be banned if they make people feel unsafe or upset without ever actually posing any physical harm to anyone.

For me the most illuminating insight into what these laws are actually designed to do came up in an ABC interview with Attorney-General Michelle Rowland on Tuesday.

• READ MORE: Australian Parliament backs tighter gun, hate crime laws after Bondi attack
• ‘We kill enemies’ – spy firm Palantir secures top Australian security clearance
• Other Australian hate speech reports

Over and over again throughout the interview Rowland was asked by ABC’s David Speers to clarify whether the new laws could see activist groups banned for criticising Israel and opposing its genocidal atrocities in a way that causes Jewish Australians to feel upset feelings, and she refused to rule out the possibility every single time.

Australia’s hate speech law            Video: ABC 7.30

“Let’s just go to what it means in practice: would a group be banned if it accuses Israel of genocide or apartheid, and as a result, Jewish Australians do feel intimidated?” Speers asked.

Rowland didn’t say no, instead saying “there are a number of other factors that would need to be satisfied there” and saying that agencies like the AFP and ASIO would need to make assessments of the situation.

“Okay, just coming back to the practical example though, if a group is suggesting that Israel is guilty of genocide, what other measures or factors would need to be met before they can be banned?” Speers asked.

“Under the provisions that are now before the Parliament, there would also need to be able to demonstrate that there are for example, some aspects of state laws that deal with racial vilification that have been met as well,” Rowland responded, again leaving the possibility wide open.

Australia’s frightening new ‘hate speech’ law         Video reading by Tim Foley

(It should here be noted that Greens justice spokesperson David Shoebridge has pointed out that “state laws that deal with racial vilification” can include “tests like ‘ridicule’ and ‘contempt’,” meaning people could wind up spending years in prison for associating with groups that were essentially banned for upsetting someone’s feelings.)

The only reason the Attorney General wouldn’t rule out the criminalisation of dissent and criticism of foreign countries and heads of state is if that’s exactly what Labor intends to cover here. pic.twitter.com/rV3e8TRB0l

— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) January 20, 2026

“Just to be clear, if a group is saying Israel is engaged in genocide, or they’re saying that Israel should no longer exist, that is not enough for that group to be banned?” asked Speers.

“Well, again, that would depend on the other evidence that is gathered, David, so I would be reluctant to be naming and ruling in and ruling out specific kinds of conduct that you are describing here,” Rowland replied.

All this waffling can be safely interpreted as a yes. Rowland is saying yes.

Speers pushed this question three different times from three different angles because it’s the most immediate and obvious concern about these new laws, and instead of reassuring the public that they can’t be used to target pro-Palestine groups and aren’t intended for that purpose, the nation’s Attorney General confirmed that it was indeed possible.

So that’s it then. Under the new laws we can expect to see the Israel lobby crying about Jewish Australians feeling threatened and unsafe by every pro-Palestine group under the sun, and then from there all it takes is the thumbs-up from ASIO to put the group on the banned list and cage anyone who continues associating with it for up to 15 years.

The bill that ended up making it through Parliament is actually a narrowed down version of an even scarier bill that was scrapped by Labor due to lack of support which went after individuals as well as groups.

The earlier version contained “racial vilification” components which could have been used to target any individual who voices criticisms of Israel or Zionism – so it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing any prison time for my writing any time soon. The new version moved its crosshairs to groups with the obvious intent to disrupt pro-Palestine organising in Australia.

And we’re already seeing the Israel lobby pushing to resurrect the laws targeting individuals. A new ABC article titled “Jewish leaders call for vilification offence to be revisited as Coalition splits over watered-down hate laws” cites Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler and Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim arguing that the new laws don’t go far enough.

So we can expect the Australian Israel lobby to both (A) push to get pro-Palestine groups classified as “hate groups” under the new laws and (B) keep pushing to make it illegal for individuals to criticize Israel in the form of new “racial vilification” laws.

They’ll keep trying over and over again, from government to government to government, until they get their way.

This comes after Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council executive manager Joel Burnie publicly stated that he wants to ban pro-Palestine protests and criticism of Israel throughout the nation, and as prosecutors drag an Australian woman to court for an antisemitic hate crime because she accidentally butt-dialed a Jewish nutritionist and left a blank voicemail.

So things are already ugly, and they’re getting worse.

It’s so creepy knowing I share a country with people who want to destroy my right to normal political speech. It would never occur to me to try to kill Zionists’ right to free speech, but they very openly want to kill mine.

They want to permanently silence me and anyone like me. I find that profoundly disturbing.

Israel supporters are horrible people. And I hope my saying that hurts their feelings.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

A group of Australian Palestine supporters in the state of Victoria have been attacked as tensions continue over the right to protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the wake of the Bondi massacre last month.

As Geelong and Victoria Southwest branch members of Independent Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) were packing up their “Peak Hour for Peace in Palestine” action — the first for the year on Friday — they were attacked.

A lone provocateur, on foot, snatched a Palestinian flag from one, ripping it and clipping the activists’ ear with the flagpole, before taunting and pushing another onto the road, before fleeing the scene.

• READ MORE: Palestinians in Gaza confront reality behind ceasefire’s second phase
  
• Hate crime laws may have unintended consequences – including chilling free speech
• Other pro-Palestinian protests

Police and an ambulance were called and an older activist was transported to hospital — they needed hip replacement surgery for a broken hip.

IPAN said the attack was “unprovoked”, given the network was “peacefully exercising their democratic, legal right to protest against the continuing genocide in Gaza”.

One IPAN member, who tried to retrieve the Palestine flag, told Green Left the attacker had called them “a bunch of terrorist bastards”.

IPAN Geelong and Victoria Southwest organiser Jaimie Jeffrey told GL that politicians and the media have whipped up a “blame game” that is “dangerously divisive”.

Blaming protest movement
“They have tried to blame the Palestine movement for the horrific Bondi massacre. This is outrageous, because the Palestine movement opposes violence, opposes all forms of racism, including antisemitism and is trying to stop a genocide.”

The group started a weekly action in April 2024 with three activists; it has now grown to a regular group of 15–20 activists flying Palestinian flags and holding signs opposing genocide and local weapons manufacturing that assists in arming Israel.

IPAN said that, before the cowardly attack, it had noticed “more supportive toots and less abuse than . . .  towards the end of last year”.

It said government and media spin about “hate speech” and “improving social cohesion” is “having the opposite effect”, by “tacitly encouraging violence against those of us campaigning to stop the genocide”.

“We have never let aggression from those who disagree with our views deter us from protesting the Israeli genocide of Palestinians or any other injustice,” IPAN said.

“We won’t be deterred after this latest incident. Because we are on the right side of history and our commitment is unshakeable.”

Tough hate speech law
Meanwhile, the Parliament in Canberra today passed the toughest federal hate speech laws in Australia’s history.

The Albanese government’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act 2026 faces growing criticism over the risk of restricting the ability of ordinary Australians to protest.

Republished from Green Left.

The calls by the Israel Institute of New Zealand for Peter Davis to resign from the Helen Clark Foundation because of comments he made with regard to an ugly, hateful piece of graffiti are absurd.

The graffiti in question said “I hated Jews before it was cool!” On social media, Davis made this comment :

“Netanyahu govt actions have isolated Israel from global south and the west, and have stoked anti-Semitism. Yitzak Rabin was the last leader to effectively foster a political-diplomatic solution to the Israel-Palestine impasse. He was assassinated by a settler. You reap what you sow.”

• READ MORE: World could be witnessing ‘another Nakba’ in Palestine, UN committee warns
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

IMO, this sounds like an expression of sorrow and regret about the conflict, and about the evils it is feeding and fostering. Regardless, the institute has described that comment by Davis as antisemitic.

“‘You cannot claim to champion social cohesion while minimising or rationalising antisemitic hate,’ the institute said. ‘Social trust depends on moral consistency, especially from those in leadership. Peter Davis’s actions erode that trust.'”

For the record, Davis wasn’t rationalising or minimising antisemitic hate. His comments look far more like a legitimate observation that the longer the need for a political-diplomatic solution is violently resisted, the worse things will be for everyone — including Jewish citizens, via the stoking of antisemitism.

The basic point at issue here is that criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government do not equate to a racist hostility to the Jewish people. (Similarly, the criticisms of Donald Trump’s actions cannot be minimised or rationalised as due to anti-Americanism.)

Appalled by Netanyahu actions
Many Jewish people in fact, also feel appalled by the actions of the Netanyahu government, which repeatedly violate international law.

In the light of the extreme acts of violence being inflicted daily by the IDF on the people of Gaza, the upsurge in hateful graffiti by neo-Nazi opportunists while still being vile, is hardly surprising.

Around the world, the security of innocent Israeli citizens is being recklessly endangered by the ultra-violent actions of their own government.

If you want to protect your citizens from an existing fire, it’s best not to toss gasoline on the flames.

To repeat: the vast majority of the current criticisms of the Israeli state have nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. At a time when Israel is killing scores of innocent Palestinians on a nightly basis with systematic air strikes and the shelling of civilian neighbourhoods, when it is weaponising access to humanitarian aid as an apparent tool of ethnic cleansing, when it is executing medical staff and assassinating journalists, when it is killing thousands of children and starving the survivors . . . antisemitism is not the reason why most people oppose these evils. Common humanity demands it.

Ironically, the press release by the NZ Israel Institute concludes with these words: “There must be zero tolerance for hate in any form.” Too bad the institute seems to have such a limited capacity for self-reflection.

Footnote One: For the best part of 80 years, the world has felt sympathy to Jews in recognition of the Holocaust. The genocide now being committed in Gaza by the Netanyahu government cannot help but reduce public support for Israel.

It also cannot help but erode the status of the Holocaust as a unique expression of human evil.

One would have hoped the NZ Israel Institute might acknowledge the self-defeating nature of the Netanyahu government policies — if only because, on a daily basis, the state of Israel is abetting its enemies, and alienating its friends.

Footnote Two: As yet, the so-called Free Speech Union has not come out to support the free speech rights of Peter Davis, and to rebuke the NZ Israel Institute for trying to muzzle them.

Colour me not surprised.

• Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a lawsuit brought by South Africa and 35 other countries and organisations while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on arrest warrants for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is a section of Gordon Campbell’s Scoop column published yesterday under the subheading “Pot Calls Out Kettle”; the main portion of the column about the new Pope is here. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Gordon Campbell: On The New Pope, And The Israeli Attack On Peter Davis https://t.co/UWiLiI6J7d pic.twitter.com/xkWXusJEio

— Scoop Independent News (@ScoopNZ) May 9, 2025

“Wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.” These were the words from New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow.

During a meeting with Philippa Yasbek from Jewish Voices for Peace, Dr Rainbow allegedly told her that information from the NZ Security Intelligence Services (NZSIS) threat assessment asserted that Muslims were the biggest threat to the Jewish community. More so than white supremacists.

But the NZSIS has not identified Muslims as the greatest threat to national security.

• READ MORE:  Stoush breaks out between NZ Human Rights Commissioner and Jewish leader at Parliament
• Baptist Church condemns ‘appalling’ Israeli Palm Sunday attack on hospital
• New chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow’s pro-Israel Facebook posts, ‘transphobia’ accusations
• Other articles by Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab at Asia Pacific Report

In the 2023 threat environment report, NZSIS stated that it: “Does not single out any community as a threat to our country, and to do so would be a misinterpretation of the analysis.

“White Identity-Motivated Violent Extremism (W-IMVE) continues to be the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Young people becoming involved in W-IMVE is a growing trend.”

Religiously motivated violent extremism (RMVE) did not come from the Muslim community, as Dr Rainbow has also misrepresented.

The more recent 2024 NZSIS report stated: “White identity-motivated violent extremism (W-IMVE) remains the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Terrorist attack-related material and propaganda, including the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto and livestream footage, continue to be shared among IMVE adherents in New Zealand and abroad.”

To implicate Muslims as being the greatest threat may highlight Dr Rainbow’s own biases, racist beliefs, and political agenda. These false narratives, that have recently been strongly pushed by the US and Israel, undermine social cohesion and lead to a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.

It is also deeply troubling that he has framed Muslim and Arab communities as potential sources of violent extremism while failing to acknowledge the very real and documented threats they have faced in Aotearoa.

The Christchurch Mosque attacks — the most horrific act of mass violence in New Zealand’s modern history — were perpetrated not by Muslims, but against them, by an individual radicalised by white supremacist ideology.

Since that tragedy, there have been multiple threats made against mosques, Arab New Zealanders, and Palestinian communities, many of which have received insufficient public attention or institutional response.

For a Human Rights Commissioner to overlook this context and effectively invert the victim-aggressor dynamic is not only factually inaccurate, but it also risks reinforcing harmful stereotypes and undermining the safety and dignity of communities who are already vulnerable.

Such narratives are inconsistent with the Human Rights Commission’s mandate to protect all people in New Zealand from discrimination and hate.

The dehumanisation of Muslims and Palestinians
As part of Israel’s propaganda, anti-Muslim and Palestinian tropes are used to justify violence against Palestinians by framing us as barbaric, aggressive, and as a threat. We are dehumanised in order to normalise the harm they inflict on our communities which includes genocide, land theft, ethnic cleansing, apartheid policies, dispossession, and occupation.

In October 2023, Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, described Palestinians as “horrible, inhuman animals” and was perplexed with the growing global concern for us.

That same month Yoav Gallant, then Israeli Defence Minister, referred to Palestinians as “human animals” when he announced Israel’s illegal and horrific siege on Gaza that included blocking water, food, medicine, and shelter to an entire population, the majority of which are children.

In making his own remarks about the Muslim community being a “threat” in New Zealand as a collective group, and labelling Palestinians being “barbaric”, Dr Stephen Rainbow has shattered the credibility of the Human Rights Commission. He has made it very clear that he is not impartial nor is he representing and protecting all communities.

Instead, Dr Rainbow is exacerbating divisions within society. This is a worrying trend that we are witnessing around the world; the de-humanising of groups to serve political agendas, retain power, or seek public support for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Dr Rainbow’s appointment also points a spotlight onto this government’s commitment to neutrality and inclusiveness in its human rights policies. Allowing a high-ranking official to make discriminatory remarks undermines New Zealand’s commitment to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A high-ranking official should not be allowed to engage in Islamic and Palestinian racist rhetoric without consequence. The public should be questioning the morals, principles, and inclusivity of those currently in power. Our trust is being eroded.

Dr Stephen Rainbow’s comments can also be seen as a breach of human rights principles, as he is supposed to uphold equality and non-discrimination. Yet his beliefs seem to be peppered with racism, often falsely based on religion, ethnicity, and race.

Foreign influence in New Zealand
This incident also shines accountability and concerns for foreign influence and propaganda seeping into New Zealand. The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) has published articles that some perceive as dehumanising toward Palestinians.

In one article written by Dr Rainbow titled “With every chant Israel’s case grows stronger”, he says:

“The Left has found a new underdog to replace the Jews — the Palestinians — in spite of the fact that the treatment of gay people, women, and political opponents wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.”

By publicising these comments, The Israel Institute of New Zealand signalled its support of these offensive and racist serotypes. Such statements risk reinforcing a narrative that portrays Palestinians as inherently violent, uncivilised, and unworthy of basic rights and dignity.

This kind of rhetoric contributes to what many describe as anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, and it warrants public scrutiny, especially when shared by organisations involved in shaping public discourse.

Importantly, the NZSIS 2024 threat report stated that “Inflammatory and violent language online can target anyone, although most appears directed towards those from already marginalised minority communities, or those affected by globally significant conflicts or events, such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.”

Other statements and reposts published online by the IINZ on their X account include:

“Muslims are getting killed, is Israel involved? No. How many casualties? Under 100,00, who cares? Why is this even on the news? Over 100,000. Oh, that’s too bad, what’s for dinner?” (12 February 2024)

“Fact. Gaza isn’t ‘ancestral Palestinian land’. We’ve been here long before them, and we’ll still be here long after the latest propaganda campaign.” (12 February 2024)

Palestinian society was also described as being “a violent, terror-supporting, Jew-hating society with genocidal aspirations.” (16 February 2025)

The “estimate of Hamas casualties, the civilian-to-combat death ratio could be as low as 1:1. This could be historically low for urban warfare.” (21 February 2025)

“There has never been a country called Palestine.” (25 February 2025)

Even showing a picture of Gaza before Israel’s bombing campaign with a caption saying, “Open air prison”. Next to it a picture of a completely destroyed Gaza with a caption that says “Victory.” (23 February 2025)

“Palestinian society in Gaza is in my eyes little more than a death loving cult of murderers and criminals of the lowest kind.” (28 February 2025)

Anti-Palestinian bias and racism
Portraying Muslims and Palestinians as a threat and extremist reflects both Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias and potential racism. These statements risk dehumanising Palestinians and are typical of the settler colonial narrative used to erase indigenous populations by denying our history, identity and legal claim.

The IINZ has published content that many see as mocking the deaths of Palestinian Muslims and Christians, which is not only ethically questionable but can be seen as a complete lack of empathy.

And posting the horrific images of a completely destroyed Gaza, appears to revel in the suffering of others and contradicts basic ethical norms, such as decency and compassion.

There also appears to be a common theme among pro-Israeli organisations, not just the IINZ, that cast negative connotations on our national symbols including our Palestinian flag and keffiyeh.

In an article on the IINZ webpage, titled “A justified war”, they write “chorus of protesters wearing keffiyehs, waving their Palestinian and terrorist flags, and shouting about Israel’s alleged war crimes.”

It seemingly places the Palestinian flag — an internationally recognised national symbol– alongside so-called “terrorist flags,” suggesting an equivalence between Palestinian identity and terrorism. Many view this language as dehumanising and inflammatory, erasing the legitimate national and cultural characteristics of Palestinians and feeding into harmful stereotypes.

The Palestinian flag represents a people, their identity, and national aspirations.

There is nothing wrong with our keffiyeh, it is part of our national dress. The negative connotations of Palestinian cultural symbols have to stop, including vilifying other MPs or supporters who wear it in solidarity.

This is happening all too often in New Zealand and must be called out and addressed. Our keffiyeh is not just a scarf — it is a symbol of our Palestinian identity, our resistance, and our rich, historic and deeply rooted cultural heritage.

Pro-Israeli groups attack it because they aim to delegitimise Palestinian identity and resistance by associating it with violence, terrorism, or extremism.

In 2024, ISESCO and UNESCO both recognised the keffiyeh as an essential part of their Intangible Cultural Heritage lists as a way of safeguarding Palestinian cultural heritage and reinforcing its historical and symbolic importance.

As a safeguarded cultural artifact, much like indigenous dress and other traditional attire, attempts to ban or demonize it are acts of cultural erasure and need to be called out as such and dealt with accordingly.

In the same IINZ article titled “A Justified War”, the authors present arguments that appear to defend Israel’s military actions in Gaza, including the targeting of civilians.

Many within the community (most of us have been affected), including survivors and those with direct ties to the region, have found the article deeply distressing and feel that it lacks compassion for the victims of the ongoing violence, and the framing and tone of the piece have raised serious ethical concerns, especially as some statements are factually incorrect.

The New Zealand Palestinian communities affected by this unimaginable genocide are suffering. Our family members are being killed and are at threat daily from Israel’s aggression and illegal war.

Unfortunately, much rhetoric from this organisation aligns with Israeli state narratives and includes statements that some view as racist or immoral, warranting further scrutiny from the government.

There is growing public concern over the association of Human Rights Commissioner Dr Stephen Rainbow with the IINZ, which promotes itself as a research and advocacy body.

A Human Rights Commissioner requires neutrality and a commitment to protecting all communities from discrimination; aligning with Israel and publishing harmful rhetoric may lead to bias in policy decisions and discrimination.

It is also important to remember that we are not a monolithic group. Christian Palestinians exist (I am one) as well as Muslim and historically Jewish Palestinians. Christian communities have lived in Palestine for two thousand years.

This is also not a religious conflict, as many pro-Israeli groups wish the world to believe, and it is not complex. It is one of colonialism, dispossession, and human rights. A history that New Zealand is all too familiar with.

The need for accountability
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith’s inaction and disrespectful response, claiming that a staunchly pro-Israeli supporter can be impartial and will be “very careful” from now on, hints that he may also support some forms of racism, in this case against Muslims and Palestinians.

You cannot address only some groups who are discriminated against but then ignore others, or accept excuses for racist, intolerable actions or statements. This is not justice.

This is the application of selective principles, enforced and underpinned by political agendas, foreign influence, and racism. Does Goldsmith understand that justice is as much about human rights, fairness and accountability as it is about laws?

Without accountability, there is no justice at all, or perhaps he too is confused or uncertain about his role, as much as Dr Rainbow seems oblivious to his?

There needs to be accountability for Goldsmith. Why has he not removed Dr Rainbow from office and acted appropriately? If Dr Rainbow had said that Jews were the biggest threat to Muslims or that Israelis were the biggest threat to Palestinians, would this government and Goldsmith have sat back and said, “he didn’t mean it, it was a mistake, and he has apologised”?

Questions New Zealanders should be asking are, what kind of Human Rights Commissioner speaks of entire peoples this way? What kind of minister, like Paul Goldsmith, looks at that and does very little?

What kind of Government claims to champion justice, while turning a blind eye to genocide? This is betraying the very idea of human rights itself.

Although we are a small country here in New Zealand, we have remained strong by upholding and standing by our principles. We said no to apartheid in South Africa. We said no to nuclear weapons in the Pacific. We said no to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And we must now say no to dehumanisation — anywhere. Are we a nation that upholds justice or do we sit on the sidelines while the darkest times in modern history envelopes us all?

The attacks against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims must stop. We have already faced horrific acts of violence against us here in New Zealand and currently in Palestine. We need support and humanity, not dehumanisation, demonisation and cruelty. This is not what New Zealand is about, we must do better together.

There needs to be a formal enquiry and policy review to see if structural biases exist in New Zealand’s Human Rights institutions. This should also be done across some government bodies, including the Ministry of Education and Immigration NZ, to determine if there has been discrimination or inequality in the handling of humanitarian visas and how the Education Ministry has handled the complaints of anti-Palestinian discrimination at schools.

Communities have particular concern at how the curriculum in many schools deals with the creation of the state of Israel but is silent on Palestinian history.

Public figures should be held to a higher standard, with consequences for spreading racially charged rhetoric.

The Human Rights Commission needs to rebuild trust in our multicultural New Zealand society. The only way this can be done is through fair and just measures that include enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, true inclusivity and action when there is an absence of these.

We are living in a moment where silence is complicity. Where apathy is betrayal.

This is a test of whether New Zealand, Minister Goldsmith and this government truly uphold human rights for all, or only for some.

Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab is a New Zealand Palestinian advocate and writer.

Nothing, but nothing, is worse than those Jews who level totally unfounded allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the State of Israel. They are repulsive and revolting human beings. Their relatives who were murdered by the Nazis – the role models for Hamas – will…

— Mark Leibler (@LeiblerMark) February 8, 2025

COMMENTARY: By Jeffrey Loewenstein

As someone Jewish, the son of Holocaust survivors and members of whose family were murdered by the Nazis, it is hard to know whether to characterise Mark Leibler’s tweet as offensive, appalling, contemptuous, insulting or a disgusting, shameful and grievous introduction of the Holocaust, and those who were murdered by the Nazis, into his tweet — or all of the foregoing!

Leibler’s tweet is most likely a breach of recently passed legislation in Australia, both federally and in various state Parliaments, making hateful words and actions, and doxxing, criminal offences. It will be “interesting” to see how the police deal with the complaint taken up with the police alleging Leibler’s breach of the legislation.

In the end, Leibler’s attempted intimidation of those who might have been thinking of going to the rally failed — miserably!

• READ MORE: Israel bombs Syria; Hamas says deal reached on prisoner release
• Barred European Union politician brands Israel as ‘a rogue state’
• Hamas handover spectacles are demo to world of ‘keeping captives safe’, says analyst
• Other Israel’s war on Palestine reports

There are many Jews who abhor what Israel is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank) but feel intimidated by the Leiblers of this world who accuse them of being antisemitic for speaking out against Israel’s actions and not those rusted-on 100 percent supporters of Israel who blindly and uncritically support whatever Israel does, however egregious.

Leibler, and others like him, who label Jews as antisemites because they dare speak out about Israel’s actions, certainly need to be called out.

As a lawyer, Leibler knows that actions have consequences. A group of concerned Jews (this writer included) are in the process of lodging a complaint about Leibler’s tweet with the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission.

Separately from that, this week will see full-page adverts in both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age — signed by hundreds of Jews — bearing the heading:

“Australia must reject Trump’s call for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Jewish Australians say NO to ethnic cleansing.”

Jeffrey Loewenstein, LLB, was a member of the Victorian Bar and a one-time chair of the Anti-Defamation Commission and member of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations public policy journal and is republished here with permission.

This full-page ad appears in today’s @smh and @theage with the names of 500 Jews, many more signed but couldn’t fit onto the page!, to clearly say that they’re utterly opposed to removing Palestinians from Gaza. Notice the silence from most “mainstream” Jewish groups? It’s… pic.twitter.com/GuUqvVMWNZ

— Antony Loewenstein (@antloewenstein) February 24, 2025

Australians are being urged to stay united following the horrific events in Sydney last week, reports the ABC’s Saturday Extra programme.

Five women and one man were killed in a mass stabbing at Bondi Junction last Saturday by a man with a history of mental illness, and a nine-month-old baby baby was among the eight people wounded.

The attacker was shot by a police officer and died at the scene.

• READ MORE: NSW Premier flags permanent memorial for victims of Bondi Junction attack
• The weapon everyone has access to: Sydney’s horror week of stabbings puts spotlight on knife crime
• Representations of Islam and Muslims in New Zealand media – Khairiah A Rahman

Two days later at a church in Wakeley, a suburb in Western Sydney, controversial Assyrian Orthodox preacher Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel suffered lacerations to his head when he was attacked during a sermon that was being live-streamed. Nobody was killed.

Three other unrelated knife attacks took place in Sydney this week. Only the Wakely church attack was officially described as a “terror” attack although there had been widespread media speculation.

Those attacks coupled with anger and division caused by the war on Gaza as well as the polarising impact of the Voice referendum last year and Australians are seeing their sense of community and social cohesion challenged.

The ABC has spoken to a panel of analysts about the solutions to staying united and their comments were broadcast yesterday.

The panel included Khairiah A Rahman, an intercultural communications commentator from Auckland University of Technology who is also secretary of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a member of Muslim Media Watch.

The programme highlighted New Zealand’s experience in March 2019 when an Australian gunman entered two mosques in Christchurch and killed 51 people while they were praying.

Asked what her message had been to the New Zealand government through the Royal Commission established to look into the mass killing, Rahman replied:

“Overall, social cohesion when we think about it has got to do with the responsibility of all people and groups at all levels of society. So we can’t actually leave it to the government or the leaders, the Muslim leaders.

“At the end of the day, the media also had a hand in all of this and my research had to do with media representation of Islam and Muslims prior to the attack. One of the things I found was unfair reporting, so pretty much what you have experienced in your media reporting of Bondi.

“The route that extremists take from hate to mass murder is a proven one, and you need to report fairly and stay calm in a society.”

Interviewees:

Dr Jamal Rifi, Lebanese Muslim Community leader, Sydney

Tim Southphommasane, Australia’s former race discrimination officer

Khairiah A Rahman, intercultural communications researcher, Auckland University of Technology

Producer: Linda LoPresti

Aotearoa New Zealand has become hugely polarised and it is little wonder Jacinda Ardern has decided to call it a day, says Helen Clark.

The former New Zealand prime minister and Labour Party leader is no stranger to the ups and downs of politics. However, she said current politicians faced vitriol 24/7 thanks to social media.

She said Aotearoa was seeing some of the worst elements of US politics.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘It has been extraordinary to see this deterioration of basic science’ – Former PM Helen Clark
• READ MORE: ‘The shoes needing filling are on the large side of big’ – Jacinda Ardern’s legacy
• The hatred and vitriol NZ’s Jacinda Ardern endured ‘would affect anybody’
• Ardern’s resignation as NZ prime minister a game changer for 2023 general election
• Reaction from around the world
• Other Jacinda Ardern reports

Clark, who is in Switzerland at present, said she awoke to find she had received dozens of messages on her phone and was stunned, but, after a moment of reflection, not surprised by Ardern’s decision.

“I’ve seen the public pressures of vitriol and mouthing against Jacinda in a very, very unfair way and at some point, as she said, you’re human, at some point you don’t have any gas left in the tank, and she’s made the call that is absolutely right for her and her family.”

While Clark faced a huge amount of unpleasant criticism during her nine years as prime minister, she told RNZ Morning Report social media had given it more licence.

“The amount of anonymous trolling and venomous commentary is absolutely ghastly.

‘Anti-vaxxers . . . extreme language’
“I was going through the responses to the tweet I put up and the hate brigade is out in force — the anti-vaxxers, the people calling Jacinda a dictator, really just extreme and absurd language.”

In Clark’s time, talkback radio was the dominant outlet for people to express hateful views, but there was not the “24-hour trolling and viciousness on social media”.

Clark said she considered herself lucky to have led the country before the advent of social media which had made the role so much tougher.

She believed Ardern may have had an enjoyable summer and would have seriously considered if she could continue in the face of the antagonism she was experiencing.

The Waitangi Day barbecue had been cancelled late last year for security reasons and demonstrated the level of pressure the prime minister faced, Clark said.

Ardern’s programme could not be announced in advance because of the risk of “these militia-shouting crowds turn up”, she said.

“We haven’t experienced this in New Zealand for the most part. We’ve become very polarised. We’ve taken on a lot of the worst aspects of American politics, I think.

‘Time for society to reflect’
“So I think it is time to reflect as a society how we’re letting ourselves be so divided and polarised by this.”

Clark said normally mild-mannered people were proclaiming vicious views and the country did not used to be like this.

The covid-19 pandemic and the need for vaccinations had been a huge factor in the dissemination of extreme views.

Clark recalled going to school with a boy who had a withered leg, the result of polio, and there was a general acceptance of the need for vaccinations.

“It has been extraordinary to see this deterioration of basic science.”

She was not prepared to say publicly who should take over as Labour leader, but she was in no doubt there were well-qualified candidates within the caucus.

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

By Anusha Bradley, RNZ News investigative reporter

Within hours of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation announcement in Napier, a small crowd gathered outside the city’s conference centre.

Unlike the steady stream of shocked Labour MPs still coming to terms with the news, these folks were celebrating.

“Ding dong the witch is gone,” a placard read.

Online, there have been similar sentiments to be found among groups bitterly opposed to Ardern. The Freedom and Rights Coalition even takes credit for Ardern’s departure in a post on Facebook: “We can now celebrate the departure of this leader of division. We did it!”

• READ MORE: Ardern’s resignation as NZ prime minister a game changer for 2023 general election
• Reaction from around the world
• Other Jacinda Ardern reports

The comments on the post are unfit to repeat here.

Entering what would have been her sixth year, Ardern is the longest-serving Labour Prime Minister after Peter Fraser and Helen Clark. But in an emotional speech to her caucus in Napier she revealed she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job.

“It’s time,” she said.

“As much as I have taken great joy in this job, I would be giving a disservice to this country and to the Labour Party if I continued, knowing that I just don’t have enough in the tank for another four years.”

Violent abuse
While it wasn’t explicitly stated, it’s hard to imagine the increasingly violent abuse directed at her was not part of the reason.

“It is no surprise to me at all … she could not, not be affected by this,” says Disinformation Project director Kate Hannah.

Ardern probably tops the list for the amount of vitriol endured by any political leader in this country, Hannah believes.

“In the earlier parts of her first term we got sort of commentary about her looks and her lack of perceived experience. The fact that sort of she was, you know, well spoken, and really good at communicating complex issues was kind of a slur against her.”

But in the last two years the misogyny and violence directed towards Ardern has not only increased in volume, but also become more dangerous, says Hannah, who studies online hate speech and disinformation.

“The language and imagery used to talk about the Prime Minister has become more violent, more vulgar, more crude and repetitive.”

According to a recent study, published just before Christmas, which charts the rise of misogynistic language towards female leaders and women in the public sphere, the most prevalent word used to describe the Prime Minister in these circles is “the C word, and the most prevalent visual image is of witchcraft”.

“And this is old data. This is data from the middle of last year. So it’s actually got worse.”

Grim factoid
Another grim factoid from the paper shows the word “Neve” – referring to Ardern’s pre-school daughter — is also on the most prevalent list.

In June, it was revealed the number of threats towards Ardern has almost tripled in the past three years.

Hannah, who herself has been subjected to similar abuse — including death threats — says she presented the paper’s findings to Ardern and a range of MPs late last year.

How did Ardern react?

“As we all do . . . trying to laugh it off and saying the job is more important . . . and you just have to get on with the job,” says Hannah.

But this is no laughing matter, she says. This new virulent brand of misogyny is on the rise and it affects all women.

“The international disinformation, far right, pro-Putin community is incredibly misogynistic.

‘Incredibly abusive’
“It is incredibly abusive and derogatory, and what it does is attempts to reduce a person to their basic self, and in doing so signals to every other person who shares characteristics with that individual who has been targeted that they are equally worthless, equally base, equally loathed.

“So has this purpose of both targeting individually her as a woman, her role as prime minister, and then all women or all people who share some of those characteristics with her,” says Hannah.

Massey University senior lecturer Dr Suze Wilson, who studies leadership and has examined the vitriol aimed at Ardern, says even the coining of “Jacindamania”, referring to her meteoric rise in popularity as leader served as an early warning of what was to come.

“As if somehow people were losing their heads to be excited by the prospect of a potential Prime Minister, who was young and female and articulate, through to the last couple of years where it’s become increasingly violent, the kind of abuse to which she’s been subjected.”

While the pandemic has been a factor, research also shows that generally it is becoming more challenging for women to be taken seriously, says Wilson.

“Particularly if they are younger and particularly if they don’t cleave to a masculine style, which Ardern does not.”

Worryingly, misogynistic sentiment is also on the rise globally. The latest Reykjavik Index for leadership tracks views about whether a man or woman would be more suitable to a certain position.

Backwards trend
“The most recent data came out just before Christmas, and it is showing that in some countries for the first time that there was actually some backwards moving trends,” says Wilson.

“It was showing, alarmingly, that it’s particularly among younger men, and those are the ones that are being exposed to the likes of Jordan Petersons and Andrew Tates of the world who are learning from them a really just disrespectful and antagonistic view towards women.”

Wilson says she first started noticing a shift in sentiment towards Ardern during the first 2020 lockdown. But it didn’t come from the dark corners of the anti-vax movement, but on the mainstream business social networking site LinkedIn.

‘”I started seeing people, you know like business leaders, using words like tyrant and dictator to describe the prime minister, and I was kind of quite disturbed by that.

“The fact that they can make those kinds of statements and think that somehow that would be a credible statement, tells you kind of something about the shifting norms of what’s considered an OK way to talk about our prime minister.”

Dr Wilson believes this must have taken its toll on Ardern.

“It’s hard to believe that it wouldn’t affect you, right? I mean, it would affect anybody . . . Having people talk about wanting to hang her, wanting to harm her child, the persistent rumours about her partner. She’s human, of course it’s going to take quite a toll.”

‘Look in the mirror’
Ardern herself has rarely acknowledged the abuse publicly. Wilson can understand why.

“I can understand why she doesn’t want to highlight it, because it would be, perhaps for those that are engaged in that behaviour, some kind of reinforcement that what they’re doing is having an effect.

“But really, they should just look in the mirror and be deeply ashamed of their conduct.”

Hannah says it’s also worrying the violent rhetoric towards the prime minister is now considered the “new normal”.

“This type of language and abuse is now so normalised that it’s very hard to pull back from. When people have become accustomed to using the C word, as the most commonly used word to describe the prime minister, then, you know, I just don’t know how we come back from that in any kind of quick way.”

For some, the issue was so pervasive it defined the way they viewed the announcement of her resignation. A number of public figures referred to it in posts on Twitter:

#PrimeMinister @jacindaardern resigned today. I am not surprised nor do I blame her. Her treatment, the pile on, in the last few months has been disgraceful and embarrassing. All the bullies, the misogynists, the aggrieved. She deserved so much better. A great leader. Thanks PM! pic.twitter.com/7b1AhjBXrW

— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) January 19, 2023

History will judge Jacinda Ardern as a remarkable leader.

She is genuinely kind and has an incredible intellect, she’s made more of a contribution than she will ever appreciate.

I can’t help but feel like we need to find better ways to support women and mothers in politics.

— Fleur Fitzsimons (@FleurFitzsimons) January 19, 2023

Apart from wartime, no New Zealand Prime Minister has faced the challenges Jacinda Ardern has handled. And certainly none has had to govern through the kind of deranged abuse and threat to which she has been subject in the past two years.

— Russell Brown (@publicaddress) January 19, 2023

No matter what you thought of her politics, the sustained personal attacks and hatred levelled at Jacinda was unlike anything I’d seen- from critiques of her motherhood to hysteria and conspiracy theories to threats of violence.

It’s not safe to be a woman in public light

— Mohamed Hassan (@mohamedwashere) January 19, 2023

And on the streets of Auckland, kilometres away from the dwindling crowd outside Napier’s conference centre, an emotional Tessa Williams from Taupō, perhaps summed up the view of those most disturbed by the vitriol Ardern received.

“She’s put up with a lot of really tough stuff. I mean, I was surprised that she has hung in kind of as long as she did,” Williams said.

“It was pretty rough how she’s been treated. Yeah, I think it’s a good decision. It was so hard for her. She did a really good job.

“It’s sad that people were so mean to her.”

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

A human rights advocate appealed tonight for people in Aotearoa New Zealand to take personal responsibility in the fight against disinformation and to upskill their critical thinking skills.

Anjum Rahman, project lead of the Inclusive Aotearoa Collective Tāhono, said this meant taking responsibility for verifying the accuracy and source of information before passing it on and not fuelling hate and misunderstanding.

“Our democracy is very fragile,” she warned while delivering the annual David Wakim Memorial Lecture 2022 with the theme “Protecting Democracy in an Online World” at Parnell’s Jubilee Hall.

• READ MORE: A lot has changed since March 15, 2019 – but not enough

She said communities were facing challenging and rapidly changing times with climate change, conflicts, inflation and the ongoing pandemic.

“If our democracy fails, all those other things fail as well,” she said.

“And for those of us who are more vulnerable it is a matter of life and death.

“Who most stand to lose their freedom if democracy fails? Who will be on the frontline to be exterminated?”

Rahman is co-chair of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network and a member of the Independent Advisory Committee of the Global Internet Forum for Countering Terrorism.

Argued strongly for diversity
As an advocate, she has argued strongly for many years in support of diversity and inclusion and in 2019 was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

On the third anniversary of the 15 March 2019 mosque massacre, she wrote in a column for The Spinoff that “we don’t need any more empty platitudes of sorrow . . . we need firm action and strong resolve. Across the board.”

The David Wakim Memorial Lecture 2022.                      Video: Billy Hania

The recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry were more critical now than ever, and absolutely urgent, she wrote.

“In a world that feels chaotic, with war, rising prices, anger and hate expressed in protests across the world, our hearts seek a certainty that isn’t there.

“We need more urgency, and in many areas. I’m still disappointed with the Counter-Terrorism legislation passed last year, granting greater powers without evidence of any benefit. Hate speech legislation has been delayed, and we await a full review and overhaul of the national security system.”

A founding member of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand, Rahman gave a wide-ranging address tonight on the online challenges for democracy, and answered a host of questions from the audience of about 100.

“I’m really worried about trolls,” said one. “They affect government, they influence voters, they have an impact on all sorts of decision making – what can be done about it?”

Rahman replied that it was very difficult question – “I wish there was a simple answer.”

Removing troll incentives
She said there needed to be more education and greater awareness of the activities of trolls and the sort of social media platforms they operated on.

One problem was that the more attention paid trolls got, it often meant the more money they were getting.

A challenge was to remove the incentive being given to them.

Award-winning cartoonist Malcolm Evans asked Rahman what her response was to the global situation “right now” with the invasion of Ukraine where people were “under intense pressure to vilify the Russians . . . treating them as ‘evil’.”

He added that “we live in a time that is probably the most dangerous that I have experienced in my lifetime … we are facing an Armageddon and I blame the media for that.

“It’s a disgrace.”

This led to a discussion by Pax Christi Aotearoa’s Janfrie Wakim about how Evans lost his job as a cartoonist on The New Zealand Herald in 2003 for “naming Israeli apartheid” over the repression of Palestinians to the loud applause of the audience.

‘Quality journalism’ paywalls
In a discussion about media, Rahman said she was disturbed by the failures of the media business model that meant increasingly “quality journalism” was being placed behind paywalls while the public that could not afford paywalls were being served “poor quality” information.

Introducing Anjum Rahman, Pax Christi’s Susan Healy said how “especially delighted the Wakim whanau were” that she had agreed to give the lecture.

David Wakim was the inaugural president of Pax Christi Aotearoa, an independent section of Pax Christi International, a Catholic organisation founded in France at the end of World War Two committed to working “to transform a world shaken by violence, terrorism, deepening inequalities, and global insecurity”.

Growing up in a Sydney Catholic family, Wakim was an advocate of interfaith dialogue. His travels in Muslim countries strengthened his links with the three faiths of Abraham – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

He helped establish the Council of Christians and Muslims in Auckland, but was especially committed to Palestinian rights.

Wakim died in 2005 and the annual lecture honours his and Pax Christi’s mahi for Tiriti o Waitangi, interfaith dialogue, peace education, human rights and restorative justice.

We call for a world in which technology is built in service of humanity and where our global public square protects human rights above profits.

Right now, the huge potential of technology to advance our societies has been undermined by the business model and design of the dominant online platforms.

But we remind all those in power that true human progress comes from harnessing technology to advance rights and freedoms for all, not sacrificing them for the wealth and power of a few.

• READ MORE: ‘We must act now’: Ressa, Muratov launch action plan vs Big Tech information crisis

We urge rights-respecting democracies to wake up to the existential threat of information ecosystems being distorted by a Big Tech business model fixated on harvesting people’s data and attention, even as it undermines serious journalism and polarises debate in society and political life.

When facts become optional and trust disappears, we will no longer be able to hold power to account. We need a public sphere where fostering trust with a healthy exchange of ideas is valued more highly than corporate profits and where rigorous journalism can cut through the noise.

Many governments around the world have exploited these platforms’ greed to grab and consolidate power. That is why they also attack and muzzle the free press.

Clearly, these governments cannot be trusted to address this crisis. But nor should we put our rights in the hands of technology companies’ intent on sustaining a broken business model that actively promotes disinformation, hate speech and abuse.

The resulting toxic information ecosystem is not inevitable. Those in power must do their part to build a world that puts human rights, dignity, and security first, including by safeguarding scientific and journalistic methods and tested knowledge. To build that world, we must:

Bring an end to the surveillance-for-profit business model

The invisible “editors” of today’s information ecosystem are the opaque algorithms and recommender systems built by tech companies that track and target us. They amplify misogyny, racism, hate, junk science and disinformation — weaponising every societal fault line with relentless surveillance to maximise “engagement”.

This surveillance-for-profit business model is built on the con of our supposed consent. But forcing us to choose between allowing platforms and data brokers to feast on our personal data or being shut out from the benefits of the modern world is simply no choice at all.

The vast machinery of corporate surveillance not only abuses our right to privacy, but allows our data to be used against us, undermining our freedoms and enabling discrimination.

This unethical business model must be reined in globally, including by bringing an end to surveillance advertising that people never asked for and of which they are often unaware.

Europe has made a start, with the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts. Now these must be enforced in ways that compel platforms to de-risk their design, detox their algorithms and give users real control.

Privacy and data rights, to date largely notional, must also be properly enforced. And advertisers must use their money and influence to protect their customers against a tech industry that is actively harming people.

What an incredible, hopeful time in Oslo! Thank you for the dreams and the laughter, dear friends! #CourageON @NobelPeaceOslo https://t.co/zfvuHwWFxp

— Maria Ressa (@mariaressa) September 4, 2022

End tech discrimination and treat people everywhere equally
Global tech companies afford people unequal rights and protection depending on their status, power, nationality, and language. We have seen the painful and destructive consequences of tech companies’ failure to prioritise the safety of all people everywhere equally.

Companies must be legally required to rigorously assess human rights risks in every country they seek to expand in, ensuring proportionate language and cultural competency. They must also be forced to bring their closed-door decisions on content moderation and algorithm changes into the light and end all special exemptions for those with the most power and reach.

These safety, design, and product choices that affect billions of people cannot be left to corporations to decide. Transparency and accountability rules are an essential first step to reclaiming the internet for the public good.

Rebuild independent journalism as the antidote to tyranny
Big tech platforms have unleashed forces that are devastating independent media by swallowing up online advertising while simultaneously enabling a tech-fueled tsunami of lies and hate that drown out facts.

For facts to stand a chance, we must end the amplification of disinformation by tech platforms. But this alone is not enough. Just 13 percent of the world’s population can currently access a free press.

If we are to hold power to account and protect journalists, we need unparalleled investment in a truly independent media persevering in situ or working in exile that ensures its sustainability while incentivising compliance with ethical norms in journalism.

21st century newsrooms must also forge a new, distinct path, recognising that to advance justice and rights, they must represent the diversity of the communities they serve. Governments must ensure the safety and independence of journalists who are increasingly being attacked, imprisoned, or killed on the frontlines of this war on facts.

We, as Nobel Laureates, from across the world, send a united message: together we can end this corporate and technological assault on our lives and liberties, but we must act now.

It is time to implement the solutions we already have to rebuild journalism and reclaim the technological architecture of global conversation for all humanity.

We call on all rights-respecting democratic governments to:

1. Require tech companies to carry out independent human rights impact assessments that must be made public as well as demand transparency on all aspects of their business — from content moderation to algorithm impacts to data processing to integrity policies.

2. Protect citizens’ right to privacy with robust data protection laws.

3. Publicly condemn abuses against the free press and journalists globally and commit funding and assistance to independent media and journalists under attack.

We call on the EU to:

4. Be ambitious in enforcing the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts so these laws amount to more than just “new paperwork” for the companies and instead force them to make changes to their business model, such as ending algorithmic amplification that threatens fundamental rights and spreads disinformation and hate, including in cases where the risks originate outside EU borders.

5. Urgently propose legislation to ban surveillance advertising, recognizing this practice is fundamentally incompatible with human rights.

6. Properly enforce the EU General Data Protection Regulation so that people’s data rights are finally made reality.

7. Include strong safeguards for journalists’ safety, media sustainability and democratic guarantees in the digital space in the forthcoming European Media Freedom Act.

8. Protect media freedom by cutting off disinformation upstream. This means there should be no special exemptions or carve-outs for any organisation or individual in any new technology or media legislation. With globalised information flows, this would give a blank check to those governments and non-state actors who produce industrial scale disinformation to harm democracies and polarize societies everywhere.

9. Challenge the extraordinary lobbying machinery, the astroturfing campaigns and recruitment revolving door between big tech companies and European government institutions.

We call on the UN to:

10. Create a special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General focused on the Safety of Journalists (SESJ) who would challenge the current status quo and finally raise the cost of crimes against journalists.

Presented by 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov at the Freedom of Expression Conference, Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway, on September 2, 2022. Republished from Rappler with permission.

• Full list of more than 100 signatories

Social media is a mixed bag, with both democratic and undemocratic tendencies.

But then few things in life are perfect.

And in that regard social media poses a major dilemma. Not just in Fiji, but many countries are grappling with how best to tackle social media.

• READ MORE: Social media ‘to the rescue’
• Dialogue Fiji

This includes even developed countries like Australia.

But it is in fragile states like Fiji that the threat of social media is more pronounced.

This is partly because of long-standing ethnic tensions and political differences.

The ills of social media — racism, xenophobia, cyberbulling and hate speech — are rife in Fiji.

Disinformation peaks around elections
We have also seen sophisticated examples of disinformation, which peak around elections.

The election period has been the riskiest time in Fiji, even before social media.

There were appalling examples of disinformation in the 2018 elections.
Some of it was so convincing that it may well have swayed some voters.

We might even see more disinformation in this year’s elections.

However, in Fiji, as in many other countries, social media can be empowering and liberating as well.

Even then, it seems disenchantment with social media’s undemocratic traits is greater than the appreciation for its democratising tendencies.

I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that social media is sometimes over-demonised, under-appreciated.

This is a major challenge.

Access to mainstream news
Not everyone has access to mainstream news media to express views.

But any Tom, Dick and Harry can have their say about governments, or about anything and anyone, on social media.

This is priceless in controlled countries.

In Fiji, social media is pivotal because mainstream media are hampered by the punitive Media Industry Development Act 2010.

Social media is also important because mainstream media can also be biased.

We analysed mainstream media coverage of the 2018 Fiji elections, to be published soon.

We found that all national media gave overwhelming positive coverage to the ruling party, except one.

Opposition parties shut out
The opposition parties were shut out — this claim is not based on hearsay but solid research.

Besides The Fiji Times, the only place to find dissenting views during the 2018 elections was social media.

When mainstream media fails to hold truth to power, social media is the saviour for the opposition and the pubic.

Unlike social media, mainstream cannot be everywhere 24/7. Social media created citizen journalists out of citizens.

This is not to say that social media and mainstream media are always competing. Not only do they complement each other, each is a check and balance on the other.

My main point is, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater by over legislating social media or under appreciating its value.

Education, not just legislation is the way to deal with issues like disinformation.

Many disillusioned with social media
In Fiji, this is not as simple as it seems: Many people are disillusioned with social media, with good reason.

And government is bent on legislating social media as well, with a certain level of public support.

We should remember that mainstream media are also caught in the crossfire of social media legislation. Their space is also restricted even though professional journalists are not normally party to the abuse of social media.

Education would mean more than just how to spot disinformation, or use social media responsibly.

Education also means understanding the value of social media and the need to protect our access to it, rather than unknowingly surrender these rights.

Education should become part of the school curriculum.

This is because any government, by nature, will try to control social media to curtail criticism, win elections and stay in power.

Only if the population is well educated in what social media means in a democracy will they challenge governments trying to take over social media.

Dr Shailendra Singh is associate professor in Pacific journalism and coordinator of journalism at the University of the South Pacific. He is the 2022 Pacific Research Fellow at the Australian National University. His views are not necessarily shared by the universities that he is associated with. This address was made at a “Building public confidence in elections in Fiji through civil society action” panel discussion at the Coral Coast, Sigatoka, Fiji, on 29 April 2022.

Journalist and publisher Maria Ressa has called on tech and social media giants to practise “enlightened self-interest” amid a global call for platforms to step up in the fight against disinformation.

“The world that you’ve created has already shown that we must change it. I continue to appeal for enlightened self-interest,” said Ressa, chief executive and founder of Rappler, in an online lecture for the Facebook and the Big Lie series.

Ressa, a veteran journalist and Nobel Peace laureate who will be receiving the award this Friday, has been studying, reporting on, and sounding the alarm against the use of social media platforms as a means to spread lies and hate.

• READ MORE: Rappler’s Maria Ressa, Russia’s Dmitry Muratov win 2021 Nobel Peace Prize

The Rappler boss herself has been the subject of harassment online and of legal cases against her in the Philippines.

Platforms like Facebook, said Ressa, give the same weight on posts, whether it is a lie or a fact, in a bid to increase user engagement.

While it has meant more revenue for the platforms, it also means that posts that spark emotion — whether or not they are based on fact — gain the most traction online.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen had earlier revealed that the algorithm for instances, puts weight on “angry” reactions more than regular likes.

‘Moderate the greed’
“In the Philippines, we say ‘moderate the greed.’ [These platforms] are part of our future, that’s why we’re partners,” she explained.

The stakes are even higher in countries like the Philippines, which will be electing a new president in May 2022.

“Why we must fight disinformation. It weakens, and ultimately subverts, democracy, by undermining the factual basis of reality, by denying the standards of truth.”

— #FightDisinfo

“We cannot not do anything because we in the Philippines have elections on May 9. If we do not have integrity of facts, we won’t have integrity of elections,” warned Ressa.

Platforms, after all, are anything but clueless and helpless.

Facebook, for instance, put more weight on “news ecosystem quality” or NEQ after employees found that election-related information were spreading on the platform in the days following the US elections in 2021.

The NEQ, according to The New York Times, is a “secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.”

The lies asserted that the elections were rigged and that Donald Trump, then US president, was the true winner.

The ‘big lie’ persists
he “big lie,” as it has since been called, persists to this day.

Ressa said she woud be asking Facebook “behind the scenes and in front,” via Rappler’s partnerships, to turn up the NEQ locally.

Increasing the weight of the NEQ, at least in the US, meant that for a while, mainstream media accounts — The New York Times, CNN, and NPR — were more prominent on the Facebook feed than hyperpartisan pages.

“The foundational problem is that facts and lies are treated equally, which is what has poisoned the information ecosystem,” added Ressa.

Duterte, who won the 2016 elections by a wide margin in a plurality, is among the first national candidates to effectively use social media in a Philippine election.

Social media hasn’t just changed how regular citizens act and candidates campaign, it has also changed sitting leaders’ tactics.

“Leaders in the past that would take over, their first challenge is always how to unite people. Now, with social media because of the incentive schemes, we’re seeing leaders awarded if they divide,” said Ressa.

More manipulation tools
“Illiberal governments have gotten more tools to manipulate people,” she added. Rappler investigations later found that pro-Duterte networks used fake accounts to spread lies and disinformation well into his term as president.

Rappler started out as a Facebook page in mid-2011 and has since grown to be among the leading news sites in the Philippines. The news organisation faces at least seven active pending cases before different courts in the Philippines.

These are on top of online attacks over its reporting on the Duterte administration, including its bloody “war on drugs” and allegations of corruption among the President’s allies.

Ressa and a former researcher were convicted in June 2020 for a cyber libel law that hadn’t even been legislated when the article first came out.

Ressa is the first Filipino individual awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize and is the only woman in this year’s roster of laureates.

Ressa won the Peace Prize alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.

They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

Republished from Rappler with permission.

A Filipina journalist who cut her teeth as a young reporter in the Marcos dictatorship years and now heads an investigative digital media outlet and a New Zealand journalist who was on board the bombed Rainbow Warrior environmental campaign ship are keynote speakers at an Asia-Pacific conference opening in Auckland today.

The Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) is hosting the three-day 2021 virtual conference in partnership with Auckland University of Technology with the theme “Change, Adaptation and Culture: Media and Communication in Pandemic Times”.

Glenda Gloria, an award-winning investigative journalist and author of Under The Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, is co-founder and executive editor of Rappler, which is at the forefront of media freedom struggles in the Philippines.

• READ MORE: The ACMC 2021 conference

Her colleague, Maria Ressa, recently jointly won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, for championing a free press and she has been the target of multiple lawsuits in an attempt by the Duterte administration to silence the media.

Gloria will talk about current challenges facing the media in the Philippines and across the Asia Pacific region.

David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and recently retired professor of Pacific journalism, is speaking about the media and covid-19 “disinformation and hate speech”.

Dr Robie sailed on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior that was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland in 1985 and he has reported on environmental issues, climate issues and independence struggles.

He has been the head of three Pacific university journalism programmes and the author of several media and politics books, including Eyes of Fire and Blood on their Banner.

‘International sharing’
Senior communications lecturer at AUT Khairiah A Rahman, principal organiser of the event, said there was much to be achieved from the conference.

“We will be looking at international sharing, networking, future collaborative projects, and research publications in journals and books,” Rahman said.

The ACMC received more than 60 paper submissions and approved 44 peer-reviewed abstracts for the biannual conference which was established in the Philippines and began in 2008.

Six international ACMC conferences have been hosted by universities in Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong; Philippines; Taiwan; and now at AUT in Auckland.

“We had several pre-conference talks which yielded as many as 94 participants. In real — not virtual — ACMC conferences, we welcome 130 to 160 attendees from 22 countries,” Rahman said.

The opening addresses will be made by Professor Felix Tan, associate dean research and acting dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and professor Azman Azwan Azmawa of Malaysia, president of the ACMC.

Among papers to be presented are topics such Media, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Pandemic Times; Lockdown Love: Computer-mediated Romantic Intimacies among Select Gay Filipino Couples; The Articulation of Papuan Women Ethnic Identity on Facebook; AUT’s Cindy Wang on Anyone can be a Vlogger: Sri Lankan Moviegoers in Covid-19 Pandemic Era.

Critical thinking
AUT’s Rahman and associate professor Petra Theuissen will jointly present a paper titled Concept Maps as Foundations for Critical Thinking in Public Relations Study.

Other papers to be presented include The Weibo Discussion about Taiwanese Legislation of Same-Sex Marriage presented by Massey University’s Fei Xiao.

Also, Rahman will present a timely paper after the New Zealand’s 2019 mosque massacre titled Shifting Dynamics in Popular Culture on Islamophobia Media Narratives.

Among the conference moderators is Jim Marbrook, a filmmaker and an AUT senior lecturer in screen production who in 2020 was co-producer of the documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears that won the 2021 FIFO grand jury prize in Tahiti. He will moderate a “media in quarantine” session.

Other moderators include associate professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre which has been in hiatus for a year, Dr Theuissen and Deepti Bhargava, who will moderate a “crisis in communication challenges” session.

The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.

• The conference programme

October 2021 was a horror month for Facebook as the headlines screamed “Facebook under fire” which started with the social media behemoth suffering an outage for several hours.

Then it had a whistleblower — American data scientist Francis Haugen — who accused the company of:

• prioritising growth over user safety;
• bowing to the will of state censors in some countries;
• allowing hate speech to burgeon in other countries;
• ignoring fake accounts that may influence voters and undermine elections;
• allowing the antivaccine message to proliferate; and
• having algorithms that fuel noxious behaviour online.

Add to that, a major impending problem of capturing a young audience who are flocking elsewhere and turning their backs on the oldest social media platform which was founded in 2004 by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.

• READ MORE: Facebook profits top $9bn amid whistleblower revelations
• Other Pacific Newsroom reports
• The Pacific Newsroom

Even so, its success as the leading platform is undeniable with it announcing a $9 billion quarterly profit in October with a massive 3 billion users.

It was the access to smartphones when they were offered in the Pacific and technology that drove Facebook’s popularity to largely receptive devotees. The uptake of the social media platform in French Polynesia (72.1 percent penetration by 2020), Fiji (68.2 percent, Guam (87.8 percent), Niue (91.7 percent), Samoa (67.2 percent) and Tonga (62.3 percent) made it a no-brainer for Sue Ahearn, founder of the highly credible The Pacific Newsroom page to use the platform.

Measured success
The success of The Pacific Newsroom page can be measured by the site garnering in excess of 40,500 members most of who can participate actively by contributing to the page.

Ahearn is no stranger to the Asia-Pacific region. An Australian journalist for more than 40 years, 25 at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), who originally hails from Martinborough in New Zealand, she was drawn to set up the page primarily because of misinformation that tends to flourish in the Pacific news.

“It came to me about four years ago when the ABC cut back on all of its coverage of the Pacific, and I could see there was a big gap there,” she says.

“The ABC was only providing a small service and there was a lack of interest in most of the Australian media. You could see the technology was changing, how the information was flowing from the region was changing.’’

The apathy for a thirst for Pacific knowledge has had a profound effect on insularity in the media, especially in Australia and New Zealand, although the Public Interest Journalism Fund is attempting to address that in some way in New Zealand.

“I wish I knew, Sean Dorney, Jemima Garrett and all of the Pacific journalists just can’t fathom why is there so little interest in our region among the Australian media,’’ says Ahearn.

“It doesn’t make sense. There tends to be three or four journalists that cover the region and try to convince news outlets to run their stories or send reporters, and that has become very difficult.”

Only Pacific correspondent based in Pacific
Natalie Whiting of the ABC and the recipient of the Dorney-Walkley Foundation grant 2021 is the only journalist from Australasia who is based in the Pacific. She is stationed in the Papua New Guinean capital of Port Moresby.

“In New Zealand, that’s not a problem and New Zealand does good coverage of the Pacific. New Zealand has a much closer relationship with the Pacific,” Ahearn says.

However, Michael Field in Auckland, a page administrator and a veteran of the Pacific who went to journalism school with Ahearn, had qualms about the coverage out of New Zealand.

“The thing that really bugs me is that only Radio New Zealand (RNZ) seems to be doing Pacific news. For example, you’d pick up the (New) Herald and see who’s covering the hurricane out in Fiji only to see it is a re-run of a RNZ story,” says Field.

“It bothers me. The Herald should have had a different angle on the story, RNZ a different angle, The Dominion Post would be different and there would be work for stringers in the Pacific. Now that is not the case because RNZ takes up everybody else’s work and runs it that way,

“I guess that is the reality of it now, but it seems the voice of the Pacific these days is state radio.

“Call me old fashioned, but I’d be too embarrassed to run a story quoting another media organisation, and if you had to do it you’d do it grudgingly. We are starting to fail in the coverage of the region,” he says.

Success stirs amazement
The success and growth of The Pacific Newsroom as an organic, quasi news agency akin to Reuters, Agence France Press (AFP) or Australian Associated Press (AAP) in a tiny way, has caught Ahearn by amazement.

“I am surprised because we have a lot of engagement, some stories get 80,000 or 90,000 engagements so there is a lot of interest in it, and I think it fills a huge niche.

She speaks about the talanoa concept of The Pacific Newsroom.

“It’s like a town square where people can meet, share stories and talk about what is happening. Michael (Field) and I spend an enormous time on this project and we’re basically volunteers, we’re not being paid or making any money from it,” she says.

Nor would she entertain the thought of applying for funding either in New Zealand or Australia, preferring instead to maintain their editorial independence.

“Mike and I have discussed this, and we think one of the main attractions of our site is it is not monetised, that it is a voluntary site, there are no advertisements on it, we try and keep it independent, and we are both at the stage in our lives where we’re not working fulltime in the media,” Ahearn says.

“We’ve got time to spend doing this as a public interest, we really enjoy doing it too, it’s a lot of fun.

Many great stories
“There are so many great stories in the Pacific that need to be amplified to the world.

“Things are happening with technology and it’s giving a much stronger voice to the Pacific whether it’s on climate change or fishing or other important issues and that is why it is going to get stronger and stronger,” Ahearn says.

Among the stories that gained the site momentum was the University of the South Pacific (USP) having its vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia at the centre of controversy during his first term when Fiji government and educational officials tried to oust him from office in the so-called USP saga, eventually unceremoniously deporting him in a move widely condemned around the Pacific.

“The big story which moved us along was the USP saga last year, for quite political reasons which had to do with the players, we were leaked all the reports and people could see if it got a certain amount of information on Pacific Newsroom that things might happen, and it did,” Field says.

“More recently we’ve had the same with the Samoan elections where a number of players wanted to be interviewed directly; the former Prime Minister (Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi) seemed to have some misinformed view that we are more powerful than we are. We cope with that so it is constantly moving thing.”

Another worrying development were the libel laws in Australia where last month the court ruled publishers to be liable for defamatory comments.

“The libel laws, it’s another tension and another thing we’ve got to watch. We watch it like a hawk (as moderators) and that is not to characterise the particular audience we’ve got,” Field says.

‘Shooting your mouth off’
“Shooting your mouth off seems to be regarded in much of the Pacific as a God-given right — ‘why you trying to stop me from saying this’, we just delete people now. We tried saying to people right at the beginning we didn’t need expletives, swear words and all that stuff, and we were going to take them down.

“It is learning experience, moderating a site like Pacific Newsroom can be hard, depressing work and sometimes there’s a lot of people that sort of feel they have to say something even though it is a complete nonsense, and it is hard yakka that sort of stuff,’’ Field says.

On the flip side of it were the tangible rewards that make it all worthwhile.

“I can remember one particular point where we were tracking a superyacht that was tripping around Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga; there were people from quite remote village areas of these countries that would send us pictures saying, ‘here is a picture of the yacht that has just passed my village ‘. Whereas back in the day you tried to get a shortwave radio operator to tell you what happened three weeks after the event.

“The Pacific is now full of people with smartphones and with good connections so we can cover everything in the Pacific,” Field says.

As for the credibility of the site, Field declined an approach from a major mainstream New Zealand media company that sought copyright and permission to use the material that was published.

Then there was the young journalist from another mainstream media company who asked Field for a contact in relation to a Vanuatu story, telling Field that they all shared their contacts in the newsroom. Needless to say, he went away disappointed and empty-handed.

Ancient settler societies
Just how well The Pacific Newsroom is regarded in the Pacific is summed up eloquently by history associate professor Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano of the USP who tells it with a Pacific panache.

“Apart from Australia, New Zealand, Tokelau, Hawai’i, Guam, American Samoa, West Papua, Rapanui, and the French territories (New Caledonia, Uvea and Futuna, Tahiti), the nature of independent and self-governing Pacific societies is that they are ancient settler societies steeped in conservatism,” Tuimaleali’ifano says.

“While their constitutions have absorbed Western influences, imperial laws, Christianity, fundamental freedoms/rights, monetary capitalism, they remain steeped in ancient systems of governance based largely on hereditary hierarchies.

“Two worlds co-exist with the constitutional democratic model heavily influenced by kinship patterns of thought and behaviour. Within kinship hierarchies, there exists diverse governance structures and no two villages share the exact governing structure,” he says.

“Equally important are the constitutions and parliamentary legislation. These law-making institutions together with the judiciary are constantly evolving as they must with changing circumstances and best practices.

“It is within these social dynamics that journalism provides the Fourth or Fifth Estate to maintain an even keel on the Pacific’s growth as a viable region of nation-states.

“The Pacific Newsroom plays a vital role, of mirroring the changing Pasifika people needs and commenting on sensitive matters that many may find unsavoury difficult and overwhelming to articulate within ultra-conservative societies.

‘Without fear or favour’
“Without fear or favour, The Pacific Newsroom and its sister networks provide a critical service for a multi-faceted Pasifika struggling to reconcile and reshape a new consciousness for Pasifika.

“These include the enduring issues of regional identity and solidarity and unity within the context of relentless ideological and geopolitical power plays.”

As associate professor and head of journalism at USP Shailendra Singh in Suva, who continues to strive to keep his students well abreast in journalism under draconian media laws in Fiji, says:

“It is indeed a success story, due to a large following, because of media restrictions in Fiji. Users from Fiji especially feel more comfortable expressing themselves on this page.

“The page is prudently and professionally moderated, so it is respectable. The page uses information from credible news sources. (Independent sources like Bob Howarth on Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste; former Vanuatu Daily Post publisher Dan McGarry; current Pacific Island Times publisher Mar-Vic Cagurangan; and photojournalist Ben Bohane, until he returned to Australia from Vanuatu; as well as David Robie‘s Asia-Pacific Report which is a huge contributor to the page).

“I promote USP journalism students’ work on Pacific Newsroom. It is exemplary of how Facebook can support democracy.”

A vital source of information in the covid era. You get a cross-section of news and views on one platform. It is definitely the most popular virtual “kava bar” in the Pacific.

• Browse The Pacific Newsroom

The Pacific Newsroom – the virtual ‘kava bar’ news success story #ThePacificNewsroom #AsiaPacificReport @shrek45 #mediafreedom #independentmedia @RSF_inter @RSF_AsiaPacific @sueahearn @MichaelFieldNZ @ShailendraBSing @wansolwara @USPWansolwara https://t.co/9m7DJ0DUq6 pic.twitter.com/QIJUlvsbFu

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 5, 2021

Hate speech will become a criminal offence in New Zealand and anyone convicted could face harsher punishment under proposed legislative changes.

The government has today released for public consultation its long-awaited plan for the laws governing hate speech.

The plan is part of the government’s work to strengthen social cohesion, in response to the Royal Commission of inquiry into the Christchurch mosque terror attack.

• READ MORE: Jacinda Ardern promises to close ‘gaps in hate speech legislation’

Justice Minister Kris Faafoi said yesterday that abusive or threatening speech that incites can divide communities.

“Building social cohesion, inclusion and valuing diversity can also be a powerful means of countering the actions of those who seek to spread or entrench discrimination and hatred,” he said.

Protecting free speech and protecting people from hate speech would require careful consideration and a wide range of input, Faafoi said.

That would mean anyone who “intentionally stirs up, maintains or normalises hatred against a protected group” by being “threatening, abusive or insulting, including by inciting violence” would break the law.

The punishment for hate speech offences could also increase — from up to three months’ imprisonment or a fine of up to $7000, to up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000.

The groups protected from hate speech could also grow – the government is considering changing the language and widening the incitement provisions in the Human Rights Act.

It has not yet decided which groups will be added. That is expected to happen following public consultation.

It is currently only an offence to use speech that will “excite hostility” or “bring into contempt” a person or group on the grounds of their colour, race or ethnicity. Gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or disability are not protected grounds.

The government is proposing several changes to the civil provision of the Human Rights Act, including making it illegal to incite others to discriminate against a protected group.

Protection from discrimination
It also wants to amend the Human Rights Act to ensure trans, gender-diverse and intersex people are protected from discrimination.

The proposed changes were recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack on 15 March 2019, which found hate crime and hate speech were not adequately dealt with.

“The current laws do not appropriately recognise the culpability of hate-motivated offending, nor do they provide a workable mechanism to deal with hate speech.”

The Ministry of Social Development will simultaneously consult with the public about what can be done to make New Zealand more socially cohesive.

Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who is leading the social cohesion programme, told a media conference today the government wanted to build from existing Māori-Crown values.

“We are not starting from scratch,” she said. “We are generally regarded as a country with a high level of social cohesion and we’ve seen that as our team of 5 million has largely come together to rally around both in the aftermath of March 15 and also during the covid-19 lockdown.”

However, she said there were underlying vulnerabilities that New Zealand needed to address as the country grew in diversity and that this effort would be grounded in the values of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Māori-Crown relationship.

Ethnic programme
She said the government had accepted in principle all 44 recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks and had made progress on implementing those. Subsequent hui with ethnic groups had fed into the government’s response, she added.

“We’ve set up an ethnic communities graduate programme to provide a pathway into the public service for skilled graduates from ethic communities and also as one way to inject that broader cultural competence into government agencies, including the intelligence agencies.

“And the new Ministry for Ethnic Communities will come into effect next week and will take the place of the Office for Ethnic Communities.”

Radhakrishnan said the programme had a broader reach than ethnicity and that others who feel marginalised were being included.

She said the government wanted input from the public on how the programme can be forwarded.

Public submissions open today and close on August 6. The government’s discussion document includes steps on how to submissions.

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

More than a thousand people have turned out for a rally in central Auckland calling for discrimination against Asians to stop.

They claim Asians have been the target of derogatory comments since covid-19 broke out.

They say Asian communities in New Zealand and around the world have suffered discrimination for too long.

• LISTEN TO RNZ AFTERNOONS: March against Asian hate crime in NZ – (Duration 12’35”)

Organiser Steph Tan is calling on the government to do more to prevent hate crime, especially toward Asian communities.

During an interview with RNZ Afternoons this week, she said the march yesterday was a chance to express solidarity with Asian-Americans as they grieved over the loss of six Asian women among the eight people killed by a gunman in Atlanta.

She said that during 2020 hate crimes committed towards Asian-Americans had risen by 1900 percent during the covid-19 pandemic as they were blamed for the origin of the virus.

It has been a deeply troubling time for the Asian community in New Zealand as well, she said.

“Sadly in parallel we are seeing some of that in New Zealand … this peaceful march or rally is to create awareness of the pain that Asians are feeling when we see one of our people killed purely motivated by racial concerns or just based on our skin colour.”

She said violent incidents against Asian people in this country included the beatings of some Asian people at a spa in Rotorua last year.

Chinese people, in particular, had also been made the scapegoats for the country’s housing crisis, she said.

“Love our culture, love our people!”

Protesters marching in Auckland in support of the #StopAsianHate movement @rnz_news pic.twitter.com/zf34rmjCoX

— Kate Gregan (@KateGregan) March 27, 2021

Tan said that while the Black Lives Matter movement was supporting Asian protests in the US, she was not seeing the same links between ethnic minorities here.

She is appealing to people to reach out to their Asian friends and ask if they are okay.

“Asian hate does truly exist – it just hasn’t been brought to light as much and a huge part of the rally is doing that in a compassionate way…”

Both in the US and New Zealand a higher number of businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic, she said.

The aim of the rally was to support each other, encourage people to stand up for Asians when they are racially abused and it might also act as an encouragement if people felt they need mental health support.

She is calling on politicians to introduce harsher sentences for hate crimes against people of all races.

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

In a lawsuit filed with the public prosecutor in Paris this week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has accused Facebook of “deceptive commercial practices” on the grounds that the social media company’s promises to provide a “safe” and “error-free” online environment are contradicted by the large-scale proliferation of hate speech and false information on its networks.

Using expert analyses, personal testimony and statements from former Facebook employees, RSF’s lawsuit demonstrates that the California-based company’s undertakings to its consumers are largely mendacious, and that it allows disinformation and hate speech to flourish on its network (hatred in general and hatred against journalists), contrary to the claims made in its terms of service and through its ads.

To condemn this large-scale, unprecedented phenomenon, RSF filed a lawsuit in France, where consumer law is especially well suited to deal with the issue and where Facebook has a huge number of consumers – 38 million overall users, including 24 million who use it every day.

• READ MORE: Under the surface: Covid-19 vaccine narratives, misinformation and data deficits on social media

As Facebook’s terms of service are the same all over the world, a court ruling in France on its deceptive practices has the potential for a global impact. RSF is considering filing similar lawsuits in other countries.

This suit concerns Facebook France and Facebook Ireland.

Under articles L121-2 to L121-5 of the French consumer code, a commercial practice is considered deceptive “if it is based on false claims, statements or representations or is likely to mislead,” especially with regard to “the essential characteristics of the goods or service” or “the extent of the advertiser’s promises”. This offence is punishable by a fine up to 10 percent of annual turnover (article L132-2 of the consumer code).

In its terms of service, Facebook undertakes to exercise professional diligence in providing “a safe, secure and error-free environment,” one that cannot be used to “share anything (…) that is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent”.

In its Community Standards, it undertakes to “significantly reduce the distribution” of false information. And in an ad published in French media in early 2021, Facebook claims to offer “precise information in real-time to better combat the pandemic” and says it is working with governments and international organisations to “share reliable information about covid-19”.

A different reality
The reality is quite different. First Draft, a non-profit organisation founded in 2015 to combat online disinformation, recently identified Facebook as “the hub of vaccine conspiracy theories” in French-speaking communities.

According to the German Marshall Fund (GMF), Facebook posts linking to deceptive sites resulted in 1.2 billion interactions in the fourth quarter of 2020. A UNESCO report published in 2020 named Facebook as the “least safe” social media platform.

The evidence provided by RSF in support of its lawsuit confirms the scale of this phenomenon and provides emblematic examples.

With regard to combatting online hatred, RSF provides two legal officer’s reports (of 80 and 73 pages, respectively). The first concerns the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page at the time it published the “Tout ça pour ça” issue in September 2020, coinciding with the start of the trial of those accused of complicity in the massacre at the magazine’s headquarters in January 2015.

RSF registered dozens of comments containing insults, threats and calls for violence against the magazine and its journalists.

The second concerns the hate messages and threats against journalists working on the French TV programme Quotidien, which were posted on public Facebook pages, and comments threatening the French regional newspaper L’Union, one of whose photographers was viciously attacked in February 2021.

Verbal violence
The newspaper provided the RSF case with a statement about the verbal violence to which its journalists are routinely subjected on Facebook.

As regards disinformation, RSF provides two legal officer’s reports compiled in December 2020 (478 and 86 pages, respectively) showing how easy it is to access large amounts of significant disinformation about covid-19 that Facebook has not labeled as such.

For example, five different posts of the conspiracy theory video Hold-up – five of the many available on Facebook – were viewed more than 4.5 million times in two months.

Another film, Manigances-19, containing numerous falsehoods about covid-19 according to AFP analysis, was viewed an average of nearly 4000 times a day for two months.

The lawsuit also cites the case of a post including a link to a video entitled UN member Claire Edwards denounces the planned Covid-19 genocide (Censored), which has potentially been viewed by nearly 400,000 users.

Asia Pacific Report and its Pacific Media Watch freedom project collaborate with RSF in Paris.

It was September 2019, and exiled Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman was enjoying her final days in Australia. Her studies at the Australian National University in Canberra were almost over and all that was left was to wait for graduation day.

One afternoon, Koman’s mobile phone rang. There was an SMS message from a friend in Indonesia.

Her colleague informed her that the police had declared Koman a suspect.

• READ MORE: More reports on Papuan human rights issues

Since August 17, 2019, the Papua issue had been heating up. Racist actions by rogue security personnel against Papuan students in the East Java provincial capital of Surabaya had triggered a wave of public anger.

Protest actions were held in several parts of the country, including in Papua. The government even cut internet access in Papua after several of the demonstrations ended in chaos.

In the mist of this critical situation, Koman was actively posting on Twitter, sharing information about the mass movement in Papua.

On September 4, Koman was officially declared a suspect. Police charged her under multiple articles, including the Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law.

ITE law ‘is so rubbery’
Aside from the ITE Law, Koman was also indicted under Law Number 1/1946 on Criminal Regulations, Article 160 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) and Law Number 40/2008 on the Elimination of Racial and Ethnic Discrimination.

“I had thought about what articles would perhaps be used to criminalise me. I strongly suspected it would be the ITE. It turned out to be true, because the ITE is so rubbery,” explained Koman when contacted by CNN Indonesia.

Koman said that it was easy to use the ITE Law to criminalise people. Aside from the “rubber” (catchall) articles, the law does not require much evidence. A screen capture from the internet is enough, and the case can go ahead.

She believes there has been a tendency to use the ITE Law to silence activists over the last few years and she gave several examples of cases in Papua.

Koman said that several Papuan activists were indicted under the ITE Law in 2020. They were accused of committing hate speech, yet the activists only criticised police policy.

“Hate speak must contain SARA [hatred based on ethnic, religion, race or inter-group]. Not for hating the police, that has now become hate speech. The tendency in Papua is like that, the ITE Law’s interpretation of hate speech is like that.

“Yeah, I was confused, upset,” she said laughing.

After being declared a suspect, Koman was also put on the wanted persons list (DPO). Because she had been declared fugitive, she was unable to return to Indonesia after her graduation.

“The problem was, if I got imprisoned, who would report alternative information (about Papua)? If they want to arrest me, then arrest me, but I’m not going to turn myself in,” she said.

Agreement with Widodo
Koman supports President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s recent proposal to revise the catchall articles in the ITE law, saying that the law violates freedom of expression.

She related how she was often teased by her followers on Twitter. They say she wasn’t afraid to criticise the government because she had unwillingly ended up on the DPO. Meanwhile, they are afraid to criticise because of the ITE Law.

For Vero – as Koman is known – there is a serious issue behind the jokes by her followers. She says freedom to express an opinion in Indonesia is violated by the ITE law.

“[Indonesian] citizens don’t have to be imprisoned by the ITE law for their rights to be violated, no. When citizens feel afraid to express themselves, express an opinion, then their rights have already been violated,” said Koman.

Nevertheless, Koman warned that the struggle to uphold democracy will not end with the planned revisions to the ITE Law. She hopes that the public will take part in monitoring steps to improve the quality of democracy in Indonesia.

“Don’t be satisfied because President Jokowi hopes that the move to revise the ITE law will restore democracy. That’s just one step, there’s still a lot of homework to be done to restore democracy”, she said.

Nasib Jerat UU ITE: Jadi DPO dan Tak Bisa Pulang Kampung https://t.co/uMLOLx4zwB

— CNN Indonesia (@CNNIndonesia) February 19, 2021

Waiting for Widodo’s ‘seriousness’
Many are now waiting for Widodo to demonstrate his seriousness in abolishing the catchall articles in the ITE law. So far he has asked Indonesian police chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo to draft guidelines on interpreting the law.

“All that it needs is political will. Does he want to do it or not, or is it just lip service?” asked Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) chairperson Asfinawati when contacted by CNN Indonesia.

According to data released by the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet), the catcall articles in the law which need to be abolished include Article 26 Paragraph (3), Article 27 Paragraph (1), Article 27 Paragraph (3), Article 28 Paragraph (2), Article 29, Article 36, Article 40 Paragraph (2) a, Article 40 Paragraph (2) b, and Article 45 Paragraph (3).

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Nasib Jerat UU ITE: Jadi DPO dan Tak Bisa Pulang Kampung”.

To echo the prime minister, you are one of us.

I’m not sure that pre-Christchurch and post-Christchurch are that different to be honest.

In mid-2017 Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux arrived here, suddenly interest in hate speech evaporated and we got a focus on free speech.

The question I was asked to address, was whether or not hate speech has become normalised. In a word yes, I think it has.

What is the social harm that’s been caused and how can we respond to it?

When you look around the world you see an escalation in online hate speech, year-on-year there has been an escalation of hate speech.

The fact that has changed really has been the possibility of the internet.

Changing world
The world is changing enormously because of the internet. Not just technological transformation but philosophical and political transformation.

The problem is not free speech; the problem is an excess of information and the growth of the information has privileged opinion over fact.

The world of hate has expanded as the internet has expanded.

The world of the internet, the digital world, not only has increased the possibility for extreme groups but it has also increased the degree of scepticism, there is often a low level of trust in our core institutions, including the media.

So, we have this very alternative information sources in which there in no moderation.

One of the things I am doing research on for my book is look at the dark web, it’s a deeply depressing place, you would have probably heard of four chan and eight chan but there is a whole lot of websites, these websites are now decentralised platforms like zero net which are hosted by the users.

But these are not platforms that are subject to material being moderated or reacted to, they are self-determining in every sense of the word. What’s happened in the world is disinformation, defamation and racial vilification has increased.

Toxic myths
I have been influenced by a book that came out last year by Nesrine Malik, We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent.

And, another writer who I really value, Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote a book, Why I Am No Longer Talking to White People About Race – both of them argue that the idea of somehow free speech under threat at the moment and the enlightened values of open debate is being threatened is really incorrect.

Both of them argue that what is happening is that these extreme views, and the activists who advocate for them, are wanting to secure the right to speak without impunity.

Somehow bigotry has become a legitimate point of view and when they don’t get the right to speak it leads to outrage.

The Renaud Camus book, in which he argued that the white Western World was being colonised by non-whites and he talks about the “great replacement” idea has been now central to many of the politics that we’ve seen emerge.

The second question I was asked to address is whether or not this speech is having an impact on our community? And March 15 tells us immediately it has.

There is very good research in Europe and the United States in which the increase of hate speech has real world impacts.

Largely invisible
Talking to many New Zealanders is that they do not understand what the impact of that is on communities, it is largely invisible to them

But there is some very good research in Europe which shows hate speech online leads to hate crimes and when there are outages in the internet there is a decline in both hate speech and also in hate crimes.

Many New Zealanders do not experience hate speech because many of them are not members of ethnic and religious minorities.

We don’t know the extent of hate speech; my sense is it’s growing but we don’t have hard evidence of that.

If we want a sense what’s happening out there, the Human Rights Commission and others are all places you can begin to understand what hate speech does in contemporary New Zealand.

The first thing that needs to be contested in opposition to hate speech, as we found with Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux, was that free speech arguments were made.

There is no such thing as free speech in this country. There are all sorts of restrictions on speech.

Ironical parliamentarians’ talk
It is ironic that parliamentarians talk about the importance of free speech in the House, but their speech is limited in all sorts of ways.

The second myth is it is too hard define hate speech, no it’s not. Facebook has got a perfect definition and there is nothing wrong with our section 61 of the Human Rights Act, of course there are a whole lot of groups that should be included.

The minister (Andrew Little) has signalled he is going to look at that.

The third myth is, hate speech is not a threat to our society and particular communities, it absolutely is.

Despite that rather pessimistic view of hate speech, whether it has increased or decreased, my view is that it has continued much the same as prior to 15 March 2019.

As recorded and edited by by Pacific Media Watch contributing editor Sri Krishnamurthi.

Social media and tech industries have been replicating the ugliest aspects of capitalism from the 1800s, according to an AUT computer science lecturer.

Associate Professor Tony Clear says that social media and tech executives are taking advantage of unregulated markets in a similar way as the wealthy industrialists or “robber barons” that exploited abundant resources and cheap labour in the 19th century.

Only now according to Dr Clear, the resources are not gold, coal or silks managed out of London or New York. Now it’s data out of Silicon Valley.

READ MORE: Bring ethics into global smart tech, warns UN cyber expert

“The world of the robber barons has come back to life again with data as the gold dust,” he says.

While the resources might have changed, he says the masses of “manipulated” people are still needed to turn the cogs and drive the profits of the giant digital machine.

“They’re manipulating us through their algorithms. The more we use their platforms, the more we give them, the more they can know about us, the more they can manipulate and control our behaviour.”

“I don’t think it’s a far deal.”

A editor and columnist for computer education magazine ACM Inroads, Dr Clear has written extensively on the flaws in the tech and computing sectors.

He says a lack of ethics throughout the industry, coupled with rampant growth and innovation have made social media platforms dangerous environments where hate – such as that which lead to the Christchurch Mosque Attack – can fester and spread rapidly.

Letter to PM

Which is why after that atrocity, he penned a letter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office urging for a “regulatory regime” to be imposed on social media platforms in New Zealand.

While the “robber barons” comparison is not a new one, Clear believes that regulation is key to moderating the potentially dangerous whims of industry heads.

“Because these guys [social media executives] have no moral base we need to regulate the hell out of them,” he says.

Governments appear to have taken steps on this. At the May 15 “Christchurch Call” in Paris, Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron implored social media platforms to take more of a hand in regulating their content.

It’s not as simple as just asking however, as according to Dr Clear, few industry heads actually know what harmful or bigoted content looks like.

“They don’t know the difference between free speech and hate speech,” he says.

“They neatly wrap it around the US constitution and freedom of speech idea which means you can say any hateful bloody thing that you like.”

While globally Facebook deletes 66,000 posts per week which breach its own definition of hate speech, Clear argues that the platform hides behind the argument that it is not a publisher and does not need to take a strong moral position like newspapers would.

Domestic regulation

This grey area with freedom of speech is the reason some countries are regulating platforms based on their own laws.

Massey University’s Professor Paul Spoonley is an advocate of such a move. An expert on hate speech, he doesn’t think the “Christchurch Call” will make much difference. However, he praises some European countries for already taking the initiative and regulating social media platforms based on domestic law.

“See what the Germans have done which is quite successful. The ethics is not that of Facebook, it is that which has been deemed important by an individual country, in this case Germany,” he says.

Introduced in January 2018, the German law as known NetzDG puts the onus on Facebook and Twitter to differentiate between hate speech and free speech, requiring them to remove any “obviously illegal” hate speech from their sites within 24 hours or face a potential 50 million Euro fine.

As a result Facebook now has 1200 reviewers based in Essen and Berlin deleting at least 15,000 posts each month in Germany.

While regulation appears to be the most obvious tool to fix the tech sector’s ethical vacuum, there is one option that targets the root of the issue. And it starts in the universities.

Ethics in schools

Dr Clear says that young computer science students need to be exposed to more “social good” or ethics papers which can help lay down sound moral foundations on which they will build their careers.

“Its about teaching young computer scientists that there is a bigger world than what they see technically,” he says.

This comes with challenges however.

Along with other leading academics, Dr Clear wrote a paper on value-driven computer science education. It found that many students do not see a link between computer science and societal benefit as they would in careers like nursing and teaching. This also discourages more women from enrolling in computing courses.

“Many avoid taking CS classes because they do not perceive a computing career as having the power to do good and make a difference,” the paper read.

It also read that if there are papers on ethics or social good available, they are usually not introduced until the third or fourth year of studies, long after many students with such inclinations have become discouraged and dropped out of the courses.

Wellington-based computer programmer Oliver Bridgman agrees, saying he couldn’t recall many ethics papers during his studies a decade ago.

“If they were there they were optional and only made up about 5 of 200 points” he says.

He too, draws comparisons between low and mid-level computer science workers and the proletariat of old.

“In my opinion the coders on the front lines are basically your coal miners in the early 1900s except now they get paid a ton more so have to care even less.”

“So your real ethics conundrum is the money behind it all, which is almost always driven by the same capitalism.”

‘Careless’ code

Senior software developer Alex Frere expressed a similar opinion, citing such incidents as the recent Boeing 737 jet malfunction as a result of carelessly written code.

“It’s staggering really that no real code of ethics, or industry standard regulation exists across the tech sector, despite how deeply it’s rooted in modern society.”

However, he points out that there are big players addressing the ethics issue within the industry such as Robert Martin, or Uncle Bob – renowned as one of the fathers of computer science.

“Uncle Bob has coined a bullet point list called the “Programmers Oath”,” Frere says.

“It’s of a similar vein to a doctors Hippocratic Oath, or a lawyer being sworn in after passing the bar.”

While Frere couldn’t recall much ethics being taught in his university course, he hopes that more grassroots teaching along with an increased focus on societal good from an “enlightened youth” will eventually revolutionise the industry.

Industry changes

Such changes are already taking place, with Facebook reportedly introducing artificial intelligent to block and remove violent content like the video that was live streamed from the Christchurch Mosque Attack.

According to Tony Clear, these types of changes are inevitable as more end users begin to comprehend the insidious perils of technology and the price that must be paid to enjoy it.

“We’ve got a pact with the devil at the moment,” he says.

“But I think the people realise when they’re being exploited.”

Religion and race-based attacks will continue as a result of the rise of online hate speech, says a leading New Zealand academic.

Professor Paul Spoonley, pro vice-chancellor of Massey University, told Asia Pacific Report that online hate speech “provides an enabling environment which green lights racial and religious vilification”.

He was responding to a media focus on racism and Islamophobia in news media this week, following last Friday’s massacre in which 50 people were killed by a right-wing terrorist.

READ MORE: Hate speech – we need to understand the damage it does

“It provides unfiltered ideas and arguments for those who are pliable and interested. And it tells others what you have done and got away with,” said Dr Spoonley, who gave a public lecture on the topic at the National Library on Tuesday.

Prior to the Christchurch attack, the accused terrorist was active on far-right online forums that promoted anti-Islamic sentiment.

In a recent article published by the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Spoonley wrote that he had personally encountered such hate speech.

Hateful comments
“I looked at what some New Zealanders were saying online. It did not take long to discover the presence of hateful and anti-Muslim comments.

“It would be wrong to characterise these views and comments as widespread, but New Zealand was certainly not exempt from Islamophobia.”

Recent research reports similar findings. According to a 2018 Netsafe survey of adult New Zealanders, 30 percent of participants had encountered online hate speech targeting someone else while 11 percent of all participants had been personally targeted themselves.

Religion was the most common reason for the abuse, followed closely by race and ethnicity.

While the internet has enabled such abuse to be shared more effectively, some argue that hate speech is an inherent issue in New Zealand society and has been since the days of early colonisation.

“This country was founded on hate speech,” said Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, an AUT sociologist and chair of the PMC advisory board.

“I suppose they didn’t call it hate speech at the time, but the taking of Māori land, the denigration of people considered worthless, the marginalisation of their customs through laws and media, I’m still struggling to think why New Zealanders cannot see the correlation.”

Racism unchecked
A researcher of marginalised and minority groups, Dr Nakhid said the attacks such as the mosque ones in Christchurch were an inevitable result of the racism that went unchecked in New Zealand society.

“We saw the danger of hate speech on Friday. If you look at what New Zealand media personalities have said about migrants and refugees, this is what it would lead to.”

There has been a number of recent controversies involving on-air racism, most notably when Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan referred to Pacific countries as leeches.

In the wake of Friday’s massacre there has been a public outcry calling for the regulation and censorship of such speech in order to prevent further race and religion-based attacks.

However, AUT professor of history Paul Moon said that while a desire for censorship was an instinctive response to hate-based events, it would not address the root cause of the problem.

“Censorship would be fruitless as a means of prevention because it addresses only a small part of the symptom, rather than the underlying cause” he said.

“The problem of socially-conditioned hatred is so much larger and more intricate than the capacity of any sort of censorship to control it.”

Isolation dangerous
While he said that there was cause to re-evaluate the limits of free speech in New Zealand, stifling speech could often create a dangerous climate of isolation.

“What the Christchurch killer’s manifesto revealed was a profound degree of ignorance, isolation, and self-loathing,” he said.

“It was precisely a lack of exchange of ideas with the wider community that contributed to such a warped and manifestly dangerous view of the world.”

While the national grief has been palpable in the days following the massacre, the majority of the public has galvanised around New Zealand’s Muslim community, offering support, laying flowers at mosques and holding vigils of solidarity.

This, said Dr Moon, was the best way to counter hate speech.

“Participation, learning, and sharing are among the best antidotes to isolation, and the sort of hatred that can ferment from such social separation.”

Michael Andrew is the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor.

Fake news and hate speech are inundating Indonesia on and offline with the country’s general election just two months away and with presidential candidates Prabowo Subianto and incumbent Joko Widodo locked in a contest for the top spot.

Jokowi, as the president is known, remains clearly in the lead with as much as 20 percent of the voters picking him despite his being the target of torrents of fake news, according to several recent surveys.

The Prabowo team claims the race is closer based on internal surveys – which they decline to share.

READ MORE: Meet the fake news trolls who influenced the US and Indonesian polls for money

A survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) shows Jokowi and his partner, Islamic leader Ma’ruf Amin, with voter approval at 54.8 percent, while Prabowo and his running mate, businessman Sandiaga Uno, are well behind at 31.0 percent.

But in an example of the depth of misleading advertising, survey results of the Indonesian Telematics Society (Mastel) say nearly 45 percent of 1,116 respondents surveyed said they receive fake news and hoaxes every day.

Unfortunately, 30.3 percent of respondents say they have difficulty checking the truth of such reports, with more than 75 percent of respondents agreeing that false news can disrupt community harmony.

Political issues dominate the fake news transmissions, according to the survey, followed by misleading reports on religion and health.

Chat applications
They can take the form of photos, videos, and narratives, and are mostly distributed via social media (Facebook and Twitter) and chat applications such as Whatsapp.

Among Indonesia’s 265.4 million population, fully half or 132.7 million are internet users, based on research conducted by We Are Social, with almost all of them – 130 million – active social media users.

At least 192 million voters will select the president and their representatives in parliament simultaneously across the country on April 17.

The latest research by the social media monitoring site PoliticaWave found that hoaxes mostly target Jokowi.

“From the presidential elections in 2014 to 2019, it appears that Jokowi is a victim of political hoaxes,” said executive director PoliticaWave Jose Rizal at a press conference in Jakarta.

PoliticaWave also found that the numbers of hoax issues have been rising. The 10 biggest hoax issues relating to the 2019 election include a fake attack on activist Ratna Sarumpaet, who first accused the Jokowi camp of being behind it.

She later switched her allegiance to the president. Others deal with reports of very large government debt; allegations that several containers filled with ballots had been discovered as already cast for Jokowi; toll electronic transactions associated with debt to China; and fake e-KTPs from China.

Many accusations
Jokowi has been accused of being a member of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), of being a closet Christian, of using foreign consultants and of having a fake high school certificate.

Others include that 10 million workers from China have entered Indonesia; and that vice presidential candidate Ma’ruf Amin will be replaced by the former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaya Purnama, who was arrested on trumped up blasphemy charges that played an integral role in his defeat.

“The ten biggest hoax issues are aimed at attacking Jokowi,” said Yose.

Claiming that he was fed up with accusations and hoaxes against him, Jokowi in recent speeches has sought to clarify the various negative allegations and to go after his political opponents.

In early February, he hinted – without mentioning specifically – a campaign team that carried out so-called “Russian propaganda,” a name that has gained increased currency with spectacular charges over Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

The term is construed as an accusation against Prabowo’s camp.

“The problem is that there is a campaign team that prepares Russian propaganda which is (marked) at any time to issue a blast of slander and hoax,” Jokowi said while addressing thousands of supporters in the city of Surabaya.

Foreign consultants
Jokowi accused the Prabowo camp of hiring foreign consultants, who he said were only oriented to victory without considering that their strategy could potentially divide society. He also criticised the opposition for often accusing him of being pro-foreigners even though they themselves used the services of foreigners.

“Their consultants are foreign consultants,” he said. “Then who is the foreign stooge? Do not let us be treated continuously by lies. Our people are smart, whether in the city or in the village,” he said.

Gerindra deputy chairman Fadli Zon denied the allegations.

“We do not use foreign consultants. We can’t afford to pay (foreign consultants),” he said.

Prabowo’s team responded by accusing Jokowi himself of using the services of a foreign consultant named Stanley Greenberg. The accusation was based on an article on a website stating that Stanley had been a consultant to Jokowi.

“A note for all these inquiries,” Greenberg responded publicly. “I have never worked for Mr Widodo in any way. The website you mention is not accurate nor affiliated with me in any capacity.

“Accurate information on our past clients is listed on my official website,” Greenberg wrote through his Twitter account @stangreenberg, attaching his official website.

‘Russian propaganda’
The controversy about “Russian propaganda” also provoked the Russian Embassy in Jakarta to comment.

“We underline that Russia’s principal position is not to intervene in domestic affairs and electoral processes in foreign countries, including Indonesia which is our close friend and important partner,” wrote the Russian Embassy through its official Twitter account @RusEmbJakarta.

But Jokowi’s special team of Cakra 19 said it was convinced that “Russian propaganda” was now being applied in Indonesia, by adopting what is known as “firehoses of falsehoods,” an operation used by Russian hackers between 2012-2017 in the Crimea crisis, the Ukrainian conflict and the civil war in Syria.

“In Russia, this modus operandi has emerged as long ago as the 1870s through the Narodniki movement. This movement was used to bring down the Russian Czar by continually raising negative issues,” said the chairperson of the Cakra 19 team, Andi Widjajanto in a written statement.

“Operation blast of slander aims to make lies defeat the truth. This operation wants to destroy public trust in political authorities, including the media,” said the former Cabinet Secretary and defense expert.

Prabowo’s campaign team, known as the National Winning Agency (BPN), has launched allegations that the Jokowi government has used legal means to get rid of political opponents ahead of the upcoming election.

“Now people who have the potential to gain votes in the BPN circle have begun to be crushed one by one,” Gerindra Party general secretary Ahmad Muzani said.

Hate speech
He charged that a musician-turned politician, Ahmad Dhani, and a cleric leading the Movement 212 – a group of conservative Muslims who held a series of demonstrations against former Jakarta governor Basuki – named Slamet Ma’arif had been the target of what he called “criminalisation”.

Dhani was sentenced to 18 months in prison at the end of January on a charge of hate speech. Ma’arif members are now suspected of a series of alleged campaign violations.

Several other names in Prabowo’s camp were also involved in legal cases or even jailed. Muzani claimed the police were quick to investigate cases involving Prabowo’s sympathizers but not with cases involving or suspected of involving Jokowi’s supporters.

“We have submitted many reports (to the police), but it seems that there is not enough evidence. Whereas when our party was reported, (it was said) there was enough evidence. This is no longer inequality, it is bias,” Muzani said.

Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko denied Muzani’s allegations, emphasizing that the government did not intervene in the legal process.

“That there are (BPN members) who are entangled in legal matters, look to yourselves. It may be something that is wrong (with themselves). So don’t always blame the government,” Said Moeldoko as quoted by kompas.com

• Jakarta media activist threatens to sue Facebook for shutting accounts

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo appears to have gone on the offensive against his challenger in the upcoming presidential election Prabowo Subianto as the second presidential debate draws nearer, reports The Jakarta Post.

Over the weekend, Jokowi made strong remarks slamming his rival in his speeches, ranging from criticising Prabowo’s statement that Indonesia could become extinct to accusing the rival camp of using foreign consultants to prepare themselves for the election.

The incumbent also defended Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati against Prabowo’s statement that described her as a “debt-printing minister” in relation to swelling government debt, as Widodo implied that the former military general did not understand macroeconomic issues.

READ MORE: Facebook, Twitter try to safeguard Indonesian elections

“I can only convey [the facts] as they are. How can I stay silent and continue to remain patient? I will not,” President Widodo said in Jakarta on Sunday, “I can [play rough] once in a while.”

The statement came two weeks before the second election debate, in which Jokowi and Prabowo are expected to trade blows on issues surrounding food, energy, natural resources, the environment and infrastructure, reports The Jakarta Post.

During his 2019 presidential campaign event in Semarang, Central Java, President Widodo said the most important thing was that he conveyed facts and data in his statements.

“What’s important is [we] don’t produce outbursts of lies […] and hoaxes,” he said on Sunday, in an apparent jab at Prabowo supporters who have been implicated in spreading misinformation.

Hate speech
Last week, musician Ahmad Dhani was sentenced to imprisonment for hate speech and violating the Information and Electronic Transactions (ITE) Law.

Dhani was found guilty for hate speech in connection with a tweet he posted that incited people to attack supporters of former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.

Fellow opposition activist Ratna Sarumpaet, a former member of the Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team, is currently in police custody awaiting trial for violation of the same law, after falsely claiming that she had been assaulted by three unknown assailants last September.

She later admitted that the bruises on her face were the result of cosmetic surgery.

President Widodo’s recent remarks, however, are not the first time that the incumbent has taken the offensive against political attacks that have targeted his administration over the last four years.

In the past few months, the incumbent fumed over accusations that he was affiliated to the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), a rumor which started during his 2014 presidential election campaign.

He has also refuted allegations that he is a foreign puppet, pointing out that Indonesia had officially become the majority owner of PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) with 51.23 percent of ownership during his tenure.

• More Indonesian stories

By RNZ Pacific

OPINION: An open letter to broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan on behalf of New Zealanders who have worked, and those are who are still working, in development in Solomon Islands:

Heather du Plessis-Allan’s recent comments on [Newstalk ZB] that the Pacific are leeches on New Zealand is dangerously ignorant, insulting to Pacific Islanders working hard for their countries, and undermines New Zealand itself.

This open letter is supported by a group of New Zealanders who have worked and those are who are still working in development in the Solomon Islands and condemns Ms du Plessis-Allan’s remarks on Newstalk ZB as well as Newstalk ZB’s implicit support.

History has shown that the dehumanisation of a group of people by referring to them as a class of non-human animals liberates aggression and has far-reaching consequences in enabling one group of people to hurt the other group. Well-known examples of this have been shown in the calling of Tutsi people as “cockroaches”, Bosniaks and Croatians as “aliens”, and Jews as “rats and parasites”.

READ MORE: Tongan scholars lodge protests over broadcaster’s ‘leeches’ jibe

Journalism and broadcasting plays a crucial role in all countries as voices and opinions are distributed nationwide, and so the spread of hatred should have no place in this process. National broadcasters should know better.

Here in the Solomon Islands, we work alongside many hardworking people. We work across a range of sectors, including governance, justice, climate change, health, education, youth, tourism, infrastructure, and journalism.

We work with people from the country leader level down to the staff out on the field. While of course no country is without bad people here and there, they are always outnumbered by the many good people who are dedicated to the development of the country.

It would not be surprising to find that Solomon Islanders are vastly dedicated to their own development, equally if not more so, than those in New Zealand. We have no doubt that the Solomon Islands are not unique in the Pacific in this aspect.

‘Hellholes’ insult
To paint entire countries and regions as hellholes and leeches is an insult to the good people working hard to make a change.

Finally, as there are many exemplary New Zealanders who have dedicated many years working across the Pacific Islands to help build capacity and strengthen institutions, it follows that the remarks belittle our efforts. To say that Pacific Islanders are leeching off us is a gross misunderstanding of the situation and undermines the credibility of the work of New Zealanders in the field.

Foreign aid exists not simply as a charity, but it is well understood that helping our neighbours helps us in return. In turn, we have more trade partners, better prevention of epidemics, better regional and national security, improved international relations, and of course a better reputation for New Zealand. To say that the Pacific Islands don’t matter shows a lack of understanding. The fraction of money that the New Zealand government spends here is well worth the returns we receive.

We understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. We simply hope that the opinions are well-formed, evidence-based, and do not spread hatred due to gross generalisations and misinformation.

However, while her comments have certainly not gone unnoticed here in the Solomon Islands, the general reaction from Solomon Islanders indicates an understanding that the unfortunate actions of a few individuals do not represent an entire nation, let alone an entire region.

Solomon Islanders continue to hold New Zealand and New Zealanders in high regard and we New Zealanders working here are confident that this remains the case.

On behalf of:

Nid Satjipanon
Howard Lawry
Rosalind Lawry
Kate Haughey
Anna O’Keefe
Sophie Lewis-Smith
Elisabeth Degremont
Jack Thompson
Craig Hooper
Pip Stevenson
Catherine Hanson-Friend
Patrick Rose
Nicole Herron
Jackie Cronin

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

Indonesia’s National Police continue to dig deeper into the Saracen group, an online syndicate accused of creating and spreading hoax news and hate speech for money, including by investigating their funding over the past three years.

“We are still investigating Saracen. We are looking back about three or four years ago to investigate their funding,” said National Police spokesman Rikwanto reports The Jakarta Post quoting kompas.com.

The police have teamed up with the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) to investigate at least 14 bank accounts allegedly used in the Saracen campaign.

“We are still waiting for the results from the PPATK to see what has being going on with the bank accounts, including whether there were flows of funds,” Rikwanto added.

Police have named at least three suspects in the case, individuals who had allegedly acted as the group’s administrators since July and spread hate speech and hoaxes on social media.

The group is believed to have been involved in spreading hoaxes and hate speech against President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, among others.

National police chief General Tito Karnavian previously promised to solve the case and bring all the culprits before the law.

• More Indonesian stories

In 2016, two of Fiji’s main media organisations, the privately owned Fiji Times and state-owned Fiji Broadcasting Corporation, came to public attention, for the wrong reasons — laws regarding ethnic sensibilities in multiracial Fiji.

The international community needs to note that taken together, they call into question the neutrality of Fiji’s prosecuting, regulating and defending institutions.

I make no statement on the neutrality of the judiciary presiding on the case currently — the public can make their own minds up when the judgments are given.

The Fiji Times (Na Lalakai)
On the 27 April 2016, Nai Lalakai (the Fijian vernacular publication owned and published by The Fiji Times) printed an article by one Josaia Waqabaca who pointed out that a petition had been handed to Aiyaz Khaiyum (Fiji’s Attorney-General) to either engage in a “veisorosorovi” (a formal indigenous Fijian reconciliation) with indigenous Fijians or leave Fiji.

The article also alleged:

“The Muslims are not indigenous Fijians. These people are the very ones who have invaded various countries, including Bangladesh in India, and have committed murder there and raped the women and abused their children, until they have come to power, and are now in possession of it.”

The generalisations about Muslims are abhorrent to most decent Fiji citizens and me, while the statement conveniently ignores that some indigenous Fijians are also Muslims.

The Director of Public Prosecutions promptly pressed charges, not just against the article’s author (Waqabaca) and the editor of Nai Lalakai editor (Anare Ravula), but also against the editor of the English language daily, The Fiji Times (Fred Wesley), to whom Ravula reports to, the Fiji Times publisher (Hank Arts) and Fiji Times Limited as well.

The charge was that they made or caused to be published, a statement in the iTaukei language Nai Lalakai newspaper that was likely to incite dislike, hatred or antagonism of the Muslim community.

While the original charges were laid in August 2016 with Magistrate Shageeth Somaratne presiding, the case has dragged on (justice delayed is justice denied?), with the presiding judge being changed at least once.

Opposing the bail variation for Arts
The DPP’s Office has subjected itself to even great public scrutiny through their opposition to a request for a bail variation by publisher Hank Arts.

The State Prosecutor and Deputy DPP (Lee Burney) alleged that the charges against publisher Hank Arts were “serious” and he should not be allowed to travel to New Zealand for two weeks.

No doubt the presiding judge will decide whether the charges against Arts are serious.

But why on earth would the DPP’s Office think that this responsible elderly citizen, who has not a hint of a criminal record, might abscond in New Zealand?

Arts had even offered his two properties in Fiji and his FNPF balance as surety, basically his life savings.

Even more, two prominent Fiji businessmen with unquestionable reputations in Fiji (David Aidney and Jinesh Patel), had also agreed to be Arts’ surety and not travel abroad while he was away.

But not just the previous magistrate, but also the current judge, Justice Thushara Rajasinghe, concluded that these financially massive sureties were not enough to grant the bail variation.

The judge’s judgment cannot be called into question by mere mortals like me.

But the treatment of Hank Arts and Fred Wesley by the DPP’s Office is extraordinary when viewed alongside the contrasting treatment accorded to the CEO of the government-owned Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) in a comparable situation of the division of responsibility between the producer/editor and the CEO.

Is FBC privileged?
In November 2016, complaints were made by members of the public (Peter Waqavonovono, Seni Nabou and Jope Tarai) against the state-owned Fiji Broadcasting Corporation to the Police, Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) and the Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission (FHRADC), about the allegedly racist contents of an FBC programme Wasea Bhasha in which the host Nemani Bainivalu said in the Fijian vernacular words to the effect that Fijian education was lagging because:

* iTaukei did not speak English; some teachers drank grog all night and came to work lazy; if only iTaukei boys concentrated on their studies and not play, they too could reach universities and graduate.

Bainivalu is also supposed to have said that  “many iTaukei boys roam around in the night with their mobile phones, wasting time”  and that  “Indo-Fijian boys and girls do not roam around in the night”.

The complainants claimed that the content was tantamount to “explicit racism” insinuating that iTaukei people are inferior because they fail in universities because they spend more time participating in sports and that iTaukei people are academically poor because they do not know how to read in English.

The Citizens’ Constitutional Forum issued a statement noting that “promoting broad generalised comparisons between Fiji’s major ethnic groups without facts to base them is irresponsible journalism.” The CCF urged MIDA follow on with necessary investigations and recourse.

The Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Ro Kepa, called on the CEO of FBC to resign and for an investigation to be made.

The Leader of the opposition National Federation Party (NFP), Professor Biman Prasad,  asked if MIDA was being neutral and asked him to resign from one of his two posts so that he could do an effective job.

Government reactions
The Chairman of MIDA and FHRCAD Ashwin Raj stated that that the Wasea Bhasha episode contained generalisations and stereotypes that lacked “accuracy, balance and fairness about social progress of the iTaukei community”.

But he concluded that “the programme failed to meet the threshold for inciting communal discord.. There was no overt call to violence. …  there is no pattern of hostility towards any community…  The journalist has offered a public apology in all of the three major languages admitting negligence on his part as the producer and presenter of the programme.”

Raj determined that the issue would not be referred to the Media Tribunal.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (New Zealander Christopher Pryde) considered laying charges against the Wasea Bhasha producer and presenter (Bainivalu), the chief executive officer (Vimlesh Sagar), and the acting manager (Mohammed Faiyaz Khan).

He concluded: “In order for a charge of inciting communal antagonism to succeed, the broadcast must have been of such a nature and sufficiently egregious to justify the sanction of the criminal law. In other words, the broadcast must do more than simply insult or cause offence to people. .. the item does not reach the necessary threshold for a reasonable prospect of conviction were the matter to go to trial”.

He announced regally “I decline to sanction a prosecution”.

Contrasting the two cases
It is clear that many indigenous Fijians took offence at the ethnic generalisations.

But I might even largely agree with the sentiments expressed by Cristopher Pryde and Ashwin Raj on the content of the sentences being translated by Nemani Bainivalu, Bainivalu’s statements were made as examples in a mere language translation programme, probably based on Nemani Bainivalu’s own personal observations and views. They were not presented as definitive statements by an FBC expert on the issues.

My personal view is that some of Bainivalu’s statements on ethnic behavioural differences are probably correct in general (for example the detrimental effects of not speaking English, drinking grog excessively, playing sports excessively) and can be backed by survey data from the Fiji Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Education.

One of Bainivalu’s statements is anecdotal (which ethnic community in general roams around more at night) while one is probably incorrect (which ethnic community wastes more time on mobile phones).

But the real issue is not the content of Bainivalu’s translation examples, but the contrasting approaches taken by DPP Pryde and MIDA Chairman Raj to the Fiji Times case, as to who exactly are charged for mistakes made by subordinates.

The approach with FBC
In the FBC case, it is reported that the DPP considered laying charges against the Wasea Bhasha producer and host Nemani Bainivalu (as expected), but only against the acting chief executive officer Vimlesh Sagar and the acting manager Mohammed Faiyaz Khan.

There was no mention of the possible charging of the CEO of FBC, Riyaz Khaiyum or even of the board members of the FBC or the relevant government minister who are ultimately responsible for FBC, just as some Patels are owners of The Fiji Times and are being charged.

Riyaz Khaiyum hedged that it was an “unfortunate choice of words by the producer/presenter that was in total contradiction to the intention and policy of FBC as a responsible national broadcaster”.

When asked if FBC TV has checks and balances in place for the program before it goes on air, Riyaz Sayed-Khaiyum easily passed the buck, alleging that Nemani Bainivalu eventually became responsible for the content of the show, implying that he himself, the CEO or his organization was not in any way responsible.

While the DPP thought that the charges against the FBC were not “egregious” enough (Pryde’s obfuscating version of “outstandingly bad” or “shocking”), the FBC CEO Riyaz Khaiyum thought it bad enough to terminate Bainivalu’s contract.

FBC then ran a slot on TV in English, Fijian and Hindi in which Bainivalu admitted abjectly that he had “acted irresponsibly” and said he had resigned, when he could have also asked “why only me?”

Before you rush to compare it all to Pontius Pilate washing his hands off the matter, remember it was not Pilate but the Jews who  crucified Jesus, whereas here it was Riyaz Khaiyum himself who gave Bainivalu “the boot” rather than taking any responsibility himself.

But more important than futile biblical comparisons, the Fiji public needs to ask why the DPP’s prosecution of the five entities associated with The Fiji Times case was so different when it came to those higher up.

The book is thrown at The Fiji Times
Every Fiji citizen with common sense understands that the language proficiency requirements of vernacular papers means that in practice, it is the vernacular editor who makes the day to day decisions on the content of each issue before it goes to print, just as the FBC CEO alleged for his program producer, Bainivalu, before it went to air.

In practice, neither the English edition editor, nor the publisher nor the owners of the parent publishing company can be reasonably expected to have direct daily roles in the vetting of content in the vernacular, as they cannot reasonably be expected to know the vernacular language enough, just as I doubt if FBC CEO (Riyaz Khaiyum) has any in-depth knowledge of the Fijian vernacular, enough to vet its sophisticated content.

Nevertheless, in The Fiji Times case, the DPP chose to prosecute not only the article author (Waqabaca) and the Nai Lalakai editor (Ravula) but also the English medium editor (Fred Wesley), the English-speaking publisher (Hank Arts) and the (English-speaking) Gujarati owners of The Fiji Times Limited.

Whether the English-speaking publisher Hank Arts and Fiji Times editor Fred Wesley can be held responsible for allegedly racist content in the vernacular newspaper they do not vet in practice, will be decided by the presiding Sri Lankan judge, even if cynics note that it will be under the constitution and media decrees that have been imposed on Fiji without the approval of any Parliament (before any generalisations are made about Sri Lankan judges, note that at least one Sri Lankan judge – in the Soko case- has gone against the political tide).

Note that there was no explicit call for violence in the Nai Lalakai/Fiji Times case either, a fact deemed by Ashwin Raj to be pertinent in not charging FBC’s producer/presenter of Wasea Bhasha.

But the public can legitimately ask, and indeed, if they want a free media in Fiji, it is their deep social responsibility to ask: are there different prosecuting standards for The Fiji Times CEO and for the FBC CEO?

Is the more severe and protracted treatment of The Fiji Times by the DPP’s Office intended to intimidate them further than has already occurred?

The public (and researchers into Fiji media) are reminded that Riyaz Khaiyum is the brother of the Attorney General (Aiyaz Khaiyum) and he not only became the CEO of FBC in “unusual” circumstances after the 2006 military coup, but his editorial policies have arguably favored the Bainimarama Government, while receiving preferential financial assistance from Government, assistance denied to their primary television competitor (Fiji One) or the private radio communication companies like Communications Fiji Limited.

The peculiar roles of Pryde, Raj and Riyaz
Historians of contemporary Fiji will one day put under the microscope all the many individuals (such as Christopher Pryde, Ashwin Raj and Riyaz Khaiyum) who have kept the Bainimarama regime ticking over.

Christopher Pryde appeared in Fiji soon after the 2006 coup and quickly assumed prominent positions in the military state’s apparatus, despite the military government being declared illegal by the 2009 Fiji Court of Appeal, a judgment never reversed.

Six years ago, Ashwin Raj was relatively unemployed or underemployed at the University of the South Pacific until two economics professors (no prizes for guessing who) prevailed upon the USP Vice Chancellor to offer him more substantive work, which he eventually obtained under a belligerent and aspiring Deputy VC of USP managing USP’s STAR project (now apparently gone into a Black Hole).

It was not long before the Bainimarama government discovered that Raj’s gift of the gab requiring the public to futilely buy dictionaries, would be a great asset as Chairman of MIDA.  Indeed, media censorship, intimidation and media funding biases flourished under Ashwin Raj’s benign gaze, while he pounced on any allegedly anti-government statements, such as the so-called “kerosene and water” comment by Ratu Timoci Vesikula at a village meeting.

Then Ashwin Raj was also appointed as the Chairman of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission, apparently or conveniently choosing not to recognise the many possible conflicts of interest in the two roles (“power corrupts absolutely”?).

The public might note (if they care) that the websites of both MIDA and the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission are virtually empty of serious content, probably an accurate reflection of the extent to which Ashwin Raj is fulfilling his responsibilities to the wider Fiji society (although no doubt pleasing the Bainimarama government).

Raj has made no public statement about the curtailment of the basic human right of Hank Arts to travel abroad for two weeks for an important family occasion — the marriage of his stepdaughter — despite his giving more than ample sureties.

Riyaz Khaiyum was once a good journalist and we oldies will remember his penetrating and humorous interview of Prime Minister Rabuka while both were jogging on the Suva Point sea front after the 1987 coup.

One of the sad outcomes of all of Fiji’s military coups is that the smears generated by the coup leaders inevitably sticks to even the well-intentioned citizens who choose to support illegal governments, their laws and their unfair prosecutions (no doubt personal benefits also help).

History may be harsh on coup supporters and accomplices who think that a few “good things” done by the coup makers justify the coups, and their own behavior.  But that is no comfort to those who continue to suffer the ill effects of coups and even more into the future when the huge increase in public debt has to be paid.

Especially when Fiji history proves that such individuals will merely brush off the dirt before they depart, scot-free and with their ill-gotten gains, to their eventual peaceful permanent abodes abroad, which follow rules of law and social behavior that they so readily helped to trash in Fiji.

An even bigger tragedy for indigenous Fijians and their future, is that those that remain in Fiji will be forgiven in “true Fijian tradition” and welcomed back into the fold, without ever fully and honestly revealing,  atoning or being punished for their sins.

While the carrots have always been there for those who have supported coups, there have been no sticks to discourage future coup makers.

The incarceration of George Speight is merely a reminder to sleeping historians to explain why that one jailed sparrow does not represent the caging of summer.

Academic and media commentator Professor Wadan Narsey blogs at Narsey on Fiji – Fighting Censorship and this article is republished here from his blog with permission.

• Muslim bashing in Fiji is a crime. But why is the law not applied equally to others? — FijiLeaks
• Court bars overseas travel for accused Fiji Times publisher

Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab has called on the Indonesian government to pull from circulation the newly-issued rupiah banknotes, which he claims have an image that resembles the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party’s (PKI) hammer and sickle logo.

Rizieq attended on Monday the Jakarta police’s summons for questioning on his statement, during which he brought several new rupiah banknotes, from Rp 1000 (less than NZ$1) to Rp 100,000 (NZ$10) bills, and showed them to investigators to try to prove his claims.

Rizieq said the banknotes’ rectoverso image, which according to Bank Indonesia (BI) functions as an anti-counterfeit feature, resembled the PKI logo.

“We ask the government to explain to us why, from thousands of rectoverso images they could have used, they chose the one that looks like a hammer and sickle logo. This is dangerous,” Rizieq told reporters.

“We ask the government to retract all new banknotes, from the Rp 1,000 to Rp 100,000 bills, because they can all give the perception that there is a hammer and sickle logo on our banknotes,” said the firebrand preacher, who had to answer 23 questions from the police regarding his statement.

In an earlier statement, the bank brushed off Rizieq’s claim, saying that the rectoverso image on the bills was actually the central bank’s logo printed in such a way to protect the money from counterfeiting.

Mass organisation Jaringan Intelektual Muda Anti-Fitnah (Young Intellectuals Anti-Slander Network, or Jimaf) reported Rizieq to the police, in which they said the FPI leader’s statement constituted hate speech because his claim was baseless and could provoke public unrest.

Jakarta Police spokesman Senior Commander Raden Prabowo Argo Yuwono said Rizieq’s status was still that of a witness.

• FPI leader denies allegations of provoking public unrest with communism symbol claim