A leading advocacy group supporting Palerstine has called on the government to follow Germany’s lead and suspend New Zealand military support for Israel to continue its mass killing and mass starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

Germany and New Zealand were two of the countries to sign a letter yesterday condemning Israel’s plans to extend its war to Gaza City, displacing another million Palestinians.

However, one of the other signatories, Australia, announced that it would go a step further by moving to recognise a state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly next month.

• READ MORE: Australia to recognise state of Palestine
• New Zealand urged to follow German lead and end military support for Israel
• CPJ condemns Israeli killing of Gaza journalist Anas al-Sharif and video crew of four
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia would work with the international community to make recognition a reality.

“I have said it publicly and I said it directly to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu: the situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world’s worst fears,” he said.

“Far too many innocent lives have been lost. The Israeli government continues to defy international law and deny sufficient aid, food and water to desperate people, including children.”

The decision rides on a condition that the Palestinian resistance group Hamas plays no role in its future governance.

Letter condemns Israel
New Zealand joined Australia, United Kingdom, Germany and Italy in signing a letter that said:

“The plans that the government of Israel has announced risk violating international humanitarian law. Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension violate international law.

It will aggravate the catastrophic humanitarian situation, endanger the lives of the hostages, and further risk the mass displacement of civilians.”

PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that Israel had a long history of ignoring outside opinion because they never included accountabilities.

“However, Germany has followed its condemnation with action. New Zealand needs to do the same,” he said.

Minto says New Zealand should:

• End approval for Rakon to export crystal oscillators to the US which are used in guided bombs sent to Israel for bombing Gaza;
• Ban all Rocket Lab launches from Mahia which are used for Israel reconnaissance in Gaza; and
• Launch an investigation by the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence into the sharing of intelligence with the US and Israel which can be used for targeting Palestinians.

“New Zealanders expect our government to end its empty condemnations of Israel and act to sanction this rogue, genocidal state,” Minto said.

Protesters have scaled the building of an international weapons company in Rolleston, Christchurch, in resistance to it establishing a presence in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Two people from the group Peace Action Ōtautahi were on the roof of the NIOA building on Stoneleigh Drive, shown in a photo on social media, and banners were strung across the exterior.

Banners declared “No war profiteers in our city. NIOA supplies genocide” and “Shut NIOA down”.

• READ MORE: Other genocide protests

In late December, the group hung a banner across the Bridge of Remembrance in a similar protest.

In 2023, the global munitions company acquired Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, an Australian-owned, US-based manufacturer of firearms and ammunition operating out of Tennessee.

According to the company’s website, its products are “used by civilian sport shooters, law enforcement agencies, the United States military and more than 80 State Department approved countries across the world”.

In a media release, Peace Action Ōtautahi said the aim was to highlight the alleged killing of innocent civilians with weapons supplied by NIOA.

NIOA has been approached for comment.

Police confirm action
A police spokesperson said they were aware of the protest, and confirmed two people had climbed onto the roof, and others were surrounding the premises.

In a later statement, police said the people on the ground had moved. However, the two protesters remained on the roof.

“We are working to safely resolve the situation, and remove people from the roof,” they said.

“While we respect the right to lawful protest, our responsibility is to uphold the law and ensure the safety of those involved.”

Fire and Emergency staff were also on the scene, alongside the police Public Safety Unit and negotiation team.

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

We live, to borrow a phrase, in interesting times. The pandemic aside, relations between the superpowers are tense. The sudden arrival of the new AUKUS security agreement between Australia, the US and UK simply adds to the general sense of unease internationally.

The relationship between America and China had already deteriorated under the presidency of Donald Trump and has not improved under Joe Biden.

New satellite evidence suggests China might be building between 100 and 200 silos for a new generation of nuclear intercontinental missiles.

• READ MORE: Australia to build nuclear submarines in a new partnership with the US and UK
• C’est fini: can the Australia-France relationship be salvaged after scrapping the sub deal?
• Why nuclear submarines are a smart military move for Australia — and could deter China further
• ANZUS at 70: Together for decades, US, Australia, New Zealand now face different challenges from China

At the same time, the US relationship with North Korea continues to smoulder, with both North and South Korea conducting missile tests designed to intimidate.

And, of course, Biden has just presided over the foreign policy disaster of withdrawal from Afghanistan. His administration needs something new with a positive spin.

Enter AUKUS, more or less out of the blue. So far, it is just a statement launched by the member countries’ leaders. It has not yet been released as a formal treaty.

As The Conversation reports, the initiative coincides with the Morrison government deciding it is best for Australia to accelerate the production of a more capable, integrated, nuclear-powered submarine platform — at a vastly higher cost — with the US and the UK.

Australia’s previous A$90 billion deal with the French company DCNS to build up to 12 submarines has been canned.

The Indo-Pacific pivot
The new agreement speaks of “maritime democracies” and “ideals and shared commitment to the international rules-based order” with the objective to “deepen diplomatic, security and defence co-operation in the Indo-Pacific region”.

“Indo-Pacific region” is code for defence against China, with the partnership promising greater sharing and integration of defence technologies, cyber capabilities and “additional undersea capabilities”. Under the agreement, Australia also stands to gain nuclear-powered submarines.

To demonstrate the depth of the relationship, the agreement highlights how “for more than 70 years, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have worked together, along with other important allies and partners”.

At which point New Zealand could have expected a drum roll, too, having only just marked the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS agreement. That didn’t happen, and New Zealand was conspicuously absent from the choreographed announcement hosted by the White House.

Having remained committed to the Five Eyes security agreement and having put boots on the ground in Afghanistan for the duration, “NZ” appears to have been taken out of ANZUS and replaced with “UK”.

Ardern responds to new Australia, UK, US group, says NZ nuclear stance ‘unchanged’ https://t.co/Ot3Ehi0R92

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) September 15, 2021

Don’t mention the nukes
The obvious first question is whether New Zealand was asked to join the new arrangement. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed the new partnership, she has confirmed: “We weren’t approached, nor would I expect us to be.”

That is perhaps surprising. Despite problematic comments by New Zealand’s trade minister about Australia’s dealings with China, and the foreign minister’s statement that she “felt uncomfortable” with the expanding remit of the Five Eyes, reassurances by Ardern about New Zealand’s commitment should have calmed concerns.

One has to assume, therefore, that even if New Zealand had been asked to join, it might have chosen to opt out anyway. There are three possible explanations for this:

The first involves the probable provision to Australia of nuclear-powered military submarines. Any mention of nuclear matters makes New Zealand nervous. But Australia has been at pains to reiterate its commitment to “leadership on global non-proliferation”.

Similar commitments or work-arounds could probably have been made for New Zealand within the AUKUS agreement, too, but that is now moot.

Ardern on NZ being left out of new AUKUS security pact https://t.co/zmjjWQWIuo pic.twitter.com/DEp13JUGWZ

— nzherald (@nzherald) September 16, 2021

The dragon in the room
The second reason New Zealand may have declined is because the new agreement is perceived as little more than an expensive purchasing agreement for the Australian navy, wrapped up as something else.

This may be partly true. But the rewards of the relationship as stated in the initial announcement go beyond submarines and look enticing. In particular, anything that offers cutting-edge technologies and enhances the interoperability of New Zealand’s defence force with its allies would not be lightly declined.

The third explanation could lie in an assumption that this is not a new security arrangement. Evidence for this can be seen in the fact that New Zealand is not the only ally missing from the new arrangement.

Canada, the other Five Eyes member, is also not at the party. Nor are France, Germany, India and Japan. If this really was a quantum shift in strategic alliances, the group would have been wider — and more formal than a new partnership announced at a press conference.

Nonetheless, the fact that New Zealand’s supposedly extra-special relationship with Britain, Australia and America hasn’t made it part of the in-crowd will raise eyebrows.

Especially while no one likes to mention the elephant – or should that be dragon? – in the room: New Zealand’s relationship with China.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law at the University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A cabinet submission by the Police Minister to dismiss Police Commissioner Steve Caldwell has revealed concerns over an importation of prohibited weapons and large amounts of ammunition by Armed Forces and police after the King dissolved Parliament last year.

Two shipments of reloading machines, guns and ammunition – which arrived in Tonga before the November snap election – were seized by the Ministry of Customs and Police after an order by Police Minister Māteni Tapueluelu.

Tapueluelu said the reloading machines were prohibited in Tonga

These machines were made to assemble ammunition by re-using cases or shells that had previously been fired.

Only the Minister of Police had the power to authorise any importation of weapons to the country, he said.

Tapueluelu said he was concerned after he found out the request by the Armed Forces to allow them to import the firearms bypassed his office and was addressed to the Police Commissioner who, he said, had no power to approve it.

Tapueluelu said he was also concerned about the timing of the order of the weapons and the shipment’s arrival in Tonga after Parliament was dissolved.

Weapons order ‘too large’
He described the amount as “too large” compared to the population of Tonga and the Armed Forces.

He said he was worried that the police ordered ammunition while existing stocks met current requirements.

It is understood the claims byTapueluelu had concerned Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva while his government was in caretaker mode after the dissolution.

Lord Ma’afu was the Minister of His Majesty’s Armed Forces at the time the weapons were ordered and the shipments arrived in Tonga.

It is also understood this was one of the reasons why Pōhiva planned to remove Lord Ma’afu from the portfolio after his party won last year’s snap election.

But after a meeting with the King, Pōhiva re-appointed Lord Ma’afu as Minister of His Majesty’s Armed Forces.

It was not clear whether the Prime Minister informed the King about the importation of the weapons.

Lord Ma’afu resigned last week after the Minister of Police submitted his proposal to the Cabinet. Pohiva accepted his resignation.

The reason for Lord Ma’afu stepping down has not been made public.

Lord Ma’afu could not be reached for comment.

Deputy Commissioner Fa’aoa left Tonga
Documents seen by Kaniva News appear to show that Deputy Commissioner of Police ‘Unga Fa’aoa signed and approved a letter by Commander Sione Lino of His Majesty’s Armed Forces on October 2, 2017.

The letter sought the Police Commissioner’s approval to import firearms and ammunition including 100,000 rounds of 14085 ammunition, 300,000 rounds of 5.56 mm FIAI ball cartridges, 150,000 small pistol primers, three reloading machines and 38, 000 ADI 5.56.

Tapueluelu claimed Deputy Commissioner Fa’aoa had no power to approve the Armed Forces request.

The weapons were ordered from New Zealand from Ordnance Development Ltd, Castlecliff, Whanganui.

It is understood Fa’aoa left Tonga for the United States last year.

Move to dismiss Police Commissioner
The submission to dismiss Caldwell was submitted to cabinet on February 26, one day before Tapueluelu tendered his resignation, which Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva did not accept.

The Prime Minister said Tapueluelu wanted to resign because, he was frustrated and believed there was a lack of support for his submission from his cabinet colleagues.

Tapueluelu’s submission read: “Honourable Members of Cabinet are invited to consider and approve the recommendation to the Judicial Appointments and Discipline Panel and to Privy Council the dismissal of Police Commissioner Stephen John Caldwell, under Section 13 (b) and (c), of the Tonga Police Act 2010.”

It said the purpose of this submission was to seek approval of the cabinet ministers to recommend to the Judicial Appointments and Discipline Panel, to dismiss the Commissioner of Police.

Tapueluelu’s submission claimed Commissioner Caldwell had said the signing by Fa’aoa was likely the result of “human error”.

Tapueluelu said Fa’aoa was also a lawyer and he should have known better.

Tapueluelu said that on November 21, 2017, he advised Caldwell in writing of what he considered to be a serious breach of discipline by the Deputy Commissioner.

He said he told Caldwell Fa’aoa had approved the order without consulting or seeking the Minister’s approval for the importation of ammunition and reloading machines on October 4, 2017.

“Deputy Fa’aoa’s ignorance of the Laws of Tonga, is a serious breach of Discipline, as it is ruled that applications for importation of ammunitions, should and can only be approved by the Minister of Police…”, the minister’s submission to cabinet said..

Police order without permission
Tapueluelu said police also ordered ammunition from New Zealand around the same time without a permit.

“Usually I countersign orders from overseas, but not in this case,” said Tapueluelu.

“It was during the Christmas season that the Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashley Fua asked that I approve the importation of ammunition worth of $20,000 already ordered and in the warehouse in New Zealand.

“I asked for the current stock of ammunition in Tonga and was informed there were 10,800 rounds of ammunition in stock. I sought advice from the Head Operation of Tactical Response Unit, Sikulu Fakateli and was informed that stock was enough.

“Consequently my office saw no need to approve this order. They ordered prior to asking for approval hoping they can force my office to an approval without proper consideration of the circumstances.”

Tapueluelu alleged no disciplinary action had been taken against the Deputy Commissioner.

Asia Pacific Report has a republication arrangement with Kaniva News.

• More Tongan news

In his documentary, The Coming War on China being launched in New Zealand next week,  the multi-award winning journalist and filmmaker says he aims “to break the silence”.

Pilger sets out several remarkable historic facts which bear testament to America’s “sabre-rattling” in the Asia-Pacific region.

RNZ Sunday’s Wallace Chapman talks to John Pilger today about his new documentary.

‘Giant US noose’ around China
In the West, “the threat of China is becoming big news, the media is beating the drums of war as the world is being primed to regard China as a new enemy,” the UK-based Australian journalist says.

The mainstream media such as CNN get exclusive access to classified US surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea, which “have become a flashpoint for war between China and America”.

But “what is not in the news is that China itself is under threat.”

“American bases form a giant noose encircling China with missiles, bombers, warships all the way from Australia through the Pacific to Asia and beyond,” Pilger’s documentary states.

As one of the film’s contributors, author of The China Mirage book, James Bradley put it, “if you were in Beijing and stood on the tallest building and looked out at the Pacific Ocean, you would see American warships, you would see Guam is about to sink because there are so many missiles pointed at China.”

1. ‘The secret of the Bikini Islands’
The site of US atomic bomb testing for many years, which notoriously lent its name to the swimsuit design, the Bikini Atoll within the Marshall Islands is “America’s strategic secret.”

Lying in the vast Pacific Ocean between the US and Asia, the “once bountiful” atoll is a “stepping stone to Asia and China” for the US.

In 1946, the US took over the Marshall Islands as a trust territory, but turned it into a “laboratory for the testing of nuclear weapons, and its people into guinea pigs,” the film says, adding that effects of the atomic bomb were also tested on animals.

While the revealing swimsuit was named after US H-bomb detonations in Bikini Atoll, the bodies of the people on the islands were less celebrated than its wearers. They were among “the most radiated in the world”.

With test sites at sea, in the air, on reefs and underwater, the total yield of the nuclear experiments on and around the Marshall Islands was equal to 7200 Hiroshima bombs, meaning the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima bomb was exploded in the area every day for 12 years, Pilger says.

Bikini Island is till nowadays unfit for human life, he adds.

The area surrounding the crater of one of the greatest man-made explosions, from a hydrogen bomb called Bravo, is “by far the most contaminated place on Earth,” the film cites a US atomic energy official as saying.

“It will be interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment,” the official added, while the film explores the sufferings of the atoll locals, many of whom died of cancer.

“What the Americans did was no accident. They came here and destroyed our land. They came to test the effects of a nuclear bomb on us,” a local woman told the filmmaker.

In a weekend interview on Radio NZ’s Sunday with Wallace Chapman, Pilger also talked about US research on the impact of nuclear radiation on Marshall Islands “guinea pigs”, notably on Rongelap Atoll just 120km from Bikini where the islanders were encouraged to return to live.

In May 1985, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior ferried the Rongelap people to a new home on Mejato island on the rim of Kwajalein Atoll just weeks before the vessel was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland Harbour.

2. ‘Apartheid in the Pacific’
Moving to another American base in the region, cited as “one of its most important and secretive” locations, known as the Ronald Reagan Test Site, the journalist explores the US missile launch pad that, according to him, “commands the Pacific Ocean all the way to Asia and China.”

With weapons of mass destruction being “designed for a coming war,” the base is part of a “remarkable” US Space Command plan known as Vision 2020. Devised in the 1990s, its aim is officially described as “full spectrum” dominance, the film says.

But while Washington spends huge amounts of money on military ambitions, with the US Air Force testing its intercontinental missiles by firing them at the Marshall Islands from California almost 5000 miles away, locals have been subjected to poverty.

America’s treatment of people living across the bay from the US base Kwajalein is called the “Apartheid of the Pacific” by Pilger, and their native island Ebeye “the slum of the Pacific”.

More than 12,000 people, most of whom are refugees from what is now a US missile base, and from islands poisoned by nuclear testing, are brought to work on that very base site to water golf courses for the Americans. After a whole day of work, they are “ferried back to their poverty”.

3. ‘Island people against the greatest military power on Earth’
Japan’s island of Okinawa has become the “frontline of a beckoning war with China,” while the outstanding non-violent resistance of the local people challenges US’ pivot to Asia.

The documentary reveals that in 1962 America’s atomic weapons were almost launched from the island, when a military base there allegedly received an order to prepare an attack on China, but then was abruptly ordered to stop.

One of the American servicemen whose job was to fire Mace cruise missiles told Pilger that China was Washington’s nuclear target during the Cuban missile crisis.

“We must not have the misery of war ever again,” one of the leaders of the protest movement on Okinawa told the journalist, adding that her “duty” as a survivor of World War II is to see the US military bases leave the Japanese island.

READ MORE: Stationing American troops in Japan will lead to bloody tragedy – ex-PM of Japan

Yet, American aircraft are constantly flying low on Okinawa, the film shows, with its author saying that “the threat is a constant presence”.

Teachers often can’t teach because of the noise and the fear, with a memory of a US fighter crashing into Miyamori Elementary School and surrounding houses still vivid for many. Back in 1959, the pilot ejected to safety, but the plane caused carnage, with more than 200 people, mostly children, having been killed and injured in the accident.

“Another tragedy waits to happen on Okinawa, with US military aircraft having been involved in 44 accidents on the island,” Pilger says, while also recalling cases of violence and sexual assault against local women, allegedly committed by American servicemen.

One more outstanding “US war station” is located on the South Korean island of Jeju, where a resistance movement has also been persistent against America’s naval base.

“One of the most provocative military bases in the world” has been built on the world heritage site land, less than 400 miles from Shanghai.

According to the film, it’s aimed at China’s lifelines to the world in oil trade and resources.

There are also numerous secret bases constructed by Washington within a hosting country base to disguise the US presence, with such locations generally not referred to as “bases,” the film claims.

Many have been “set up to combat China’s worldwide economic influence,” while bases on China’s doorstep are “a provocation of war”.

4. ‘Gold mine of drugs’ and Mao ‘paranoia’
Starting from the 19th century, an anti-Chinese “racial stereotype” has been spread across the United States.

According to the film, such a policy concealed a deeper agenda – opium. For the American elite back then China was a “gold mine of drugs”.

Warren Delano, the grandfather of America’s 32nd president Franklin D. Roosevelt, “was the American opium king of China,” author James Bradley says. “Much of the east coast of America – Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton were born from opium money.

“The American industrial revolution was funded by huge pools of money which came from illegal drugs [from] the biggest market in the world – China,” he says, adding that of course it wasn’t talked about, but called it “the China trade.”

Later in the 20th century, a new way to present China as a threat was invented, with Mao’s revolution having ignited paranoia in Washington. With Richard Nixon proclaiming China “the basic cause of all of our trouble in Asia” in 1953, the father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller over a decade later claimed a defence was needed against the eastern power.

“I believe that for the sake of our safety it is necessary to be prepared for the possibility of a Chinese missile attack on the United States,” the film quotes him as saying.

“China … matched America at its own great game of capitalism, and that is unforgivable,” Pilger says.

The journalist uncovers a secret message that was sent by Mao Zedong to Washington five years before the communist revolution of 1949. “China must industrialise right now, this can only be done by free enterprise.

“Chinese and American interests fit together economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be cooperative – we cannot risk crossing America, we cannot risk any conflict,” Pilger cites Mao’s message as saying.

But the Chinese leader got no reply, and his “reaching hand was tossed away,” as Bradley put it.

5. ‘Smartest weapons need enemies, money is the prize’
The film suggests that a “stereotype of communist dictatorship” is widely spread by the US, preventing from understanding “China as it is”.

“In America you can change political parties but you cannot change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies … China is a vibrant market economy, but it is not a capitalist country,” entrepreneur and social scientist, Eric Li says.

He adds that in China, “capital does not rise above political authority,” and there is no way a group of super rich people can control the politburo, “as billionaires control America’s policy making.”

The Chinese government is “not trying to run the world, they are not even trying to run Asia Pacific. I think they want to keep America from dominating [the region], so they have what they believe is their rightful place because of the long history of civilisation,” Li says, adding that Chinese “objectives are really modest compared with their capacity.”

As the world’s economic power moves rapidly towards Asia, the response of the United States is to deploy the majority of its naval forces to the region, according to Pilger.

“This massive military build-up is known in Washington as the ‘pivot to Asia’. The target is China,” he says, also citing president Barack Obama, who in 2011 said that creating an American presence in the Asia Pacific was his “top priority”.

“For America’s unchallenged arms industry, the annual prize is huge profits from almost $600 billion of military spending,” the journalist suggests, adding that “the smartest weapons need enemies”.

• NZ premiere on Thursday, March 30, 6pm at Petone’s Lighthouse Cinema. Q & A with Nicky Hager, Abi King-Jones and Gordon Campbell.
• John Pilger – a looming Pacific war
• ‘A live issue that could change the world, or end the world’ – Review on Rotten Tomatoes
• David Robie’s Eyes of Fire – The Rongelap nuclear story
• US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands and French testing in Polynesia microsite

Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama used what would normally have been a bland official speech in Suva earlier this month to bluntly air continuing grievances over the policies of the region’s key powers, directing his remarks to his visiting New Zealand counterpart John Key.

The diplomatic strains are a sign of unresolved and deepening geostrategic tensions in the Pacific.

Australia and New Zealand are determined to ensure their continued regional dominance as part of the US-led drive to counter growing Chinese influence and prepare for war.

Key’s 24-hour visit on June 9, the first by a New Zealand prime minister to the impoverished South Pacific country since Bainimarama’s 2006 military coup, was intended to advance New Zealand’s foreign policy interests.

Australia and New Zealand both regard Fiji, the South Pacific island state at the crossroads of Polynesia and Melanesia, as critical to their influence.

Following the coup, Canberra and Wellington imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions. These had nothing to do with defending democratic rights in Fiji but were driven by concerns that the coup could destabilise the region and open the way for Chinese influence.

Sanctions backfired
The sanctions, however, backfired. Bainimarama responded with a “Look North” policy, seeking and receiving economic, diplomatic and military aid from China, Russia and elsewhere.

In 2007, New Zealand’s High Commissioner to Fiji, Michael Green, was accused of interfering in the country’s affairs and was expelled.

In January this year a consignment of gifted weapons arrived from Russia for the Fiji army, followed by a 10-member team of Russian military instructors. The response by the Australian and New Zealand governments was muted, at least publicly, but Murdoch’s The Australian declared that Bainimarama was “making a bad mistake” if he believed that the consignment was “a good idea for his nation.”

Canberra and Wellington are determined to counteract the growing presence of “outside” powers in what they regard as their own backyard. In March, the two governments exploited the devastation caused by Cyclone Winston to send warships, aircraft and hundreds of military personnel to Fiji.

It was New Zealand’s biggest military deployment since World War II. While the intervention was characterised as a “humanitarian and disaster aid” mission, it was consistent with the intensifying militarisation of the Pacific.

Following the cyclone, China provided aid of US$100,000 to the Fiji Red Cross Society, the first country to do so. Beijing later increased its disaster relief package to US$10 million. Key derided the contribution, telling reporters that “when the need was great for Fiji … it was Australia and New Zealand that turned up.”

New Zealand Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee visited Fiji in March to reinforce Wellington’s “help” in the disaster relief. It followed a visit by Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

‘Big opportunity’
The Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank, noted that Bishop’s visit presented “a big opportunity for Fiji” to put behind it “all the bad blood between the two countries since the 2006 coup” and “normalise relations.”

Key’s visit this month had a similar agenda. Before leaving Wellington, Key told reporters that following the 2014 elections in Fiji, the military coup was now “ancient history.”

Although democratic rule was still not “absolutely perfect,” the time was “right” for the highest-level diplomatic relations to resume.

No sooner had Key arrived in Suva than it became clear the trip would not go according to script. At the welcoming banquet, Bainimarama reminded Key that he won Fiji’s 2014 election with an overwhelming majority.

“It is on that basis I stand before you tonight. Not as a coup maker or dictator, as some in your country would still have it, but as a properly elected, freely chosen leader of Fiji,” he declared.

During Key’s visit, Bainimarama refused to give way on two central matters. Firstly, he refused to rescind a ban on New Zealand journalists identified as being critical of the regime.

Bainimarama claimed there was “a substantial body of opinion” in New Zealand, led by “your generally hostile media,” that “what is happening in Fiji somehow lacks legitimacy. That somehow I lack legitimacy. And my government lacks legitimacy.”

Such claims, Bainimarama stated, were “not borne out by the facts.”

Military still key
In reality, the government still rests directly on the military. The election in which Bainimarama’s Fiji FirstParty purportedly won 60 percent of the ballot was held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties.

The government remains anti-working class and authoritarian, ruling largely through fear and intimidation.

A week before Key arrived, Bainimarama’s government used its numbers in Parliament to suspend an opposition MP, the National Federation Party’s Roko Tupou Draunidalo, for more than two years after alleging she called a minister a “fool.”

Secondly, Bainimarama again refused to return to meetings of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), from which Fiji was earlier suspended.

The Australian and New Zealand-dominated PIF rescinded the suspension after the 2014 elections. Bainimarama declined Key’s invitation to re-join the PIF.

In return, Key said New Zealand would not quit the regional organisation, as Bainimarama previously sought.

Fiji has encouraged other Pacific nations to take a more “independent” stance, setting up the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) in 2012, from which Australia and New Zealand were excluded.

Greenhouse gases
In the lead-up to the COP21 environmental summit in Paris last year, Pacific leaders were highly critical of Australia and New Zealand for refusing to support their call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees centigrade.

The PIDF declared the target was required to protect their tiny island states from rising sea levels.

Tensions between the official parties following Bainimarama’s outburst in Suva were reportedly palpable. Fairfax Media columnist Tracy Watkins described Wellington’s delegation as “seething over the Fijian prime minister’s extraordinary diplomatic slapdown.”

Nor did it go unnoticed that Bainimarama was “hardly effusive” in his low-key acknowledgement of New Zealand’s assistance during Cyclone Winston. Watkins declared that, by the time it finished, Key’s trip had been stripped of any “diplomatic wins.”

New Zealand Labour Party foreign affairs spokesperson David Shearer described Key’s trip as a “disaster,” writing: “He [Bainimarama] didn’t step back from the restrictions on media [or] the heavy-handedness within Parliament.”

Key’s government needed to keep pushing Fijian officials “for a better democracy,” he declared.

Labour’s position is completely hypocritical. It was the previous Labour government that imposed New Zealand’s sanctions regime on Fiji after the 2006 coup.

In 2014, Labour endorsed the “democratic” election of Bainimarama and the rehabilitation of his regime.

The Russian Ambassador to Fiji, Vladimir Morozov, and Russia’s head of the Missile Artillery Chief Directorate, Lieutenant-General Nikolay Parshin, have formally handed over military equipment from their government to the Republic of Fiji Military Forces.

Russian interpreter Captain Andrey Voroshilov, speaking on behalf of Lt-Gen Parshin, said at the handover yesterday the Russian government was hoping to strengthen its relationship with its Fijian counterparts.

The handover of the military equipment included a gunsmith workshop MPC-OP.1, maintenance workshop MPM-M3P, grenade launchers and grenade simulators.

Fiji’s acting military commander, Commodore Viliame Naupoto, was present to receive the assistance from the Russian government.

Negotiations on for second consignment from Russia

—