As tensions rose ahead of Easter, US President Donald Trump publicly criticised Pope Leo XIV, accusing the pontiff of “interfering in political matters he does not fully understand”.

During a rally, Trump reportedly said: “The Vatican should focus on religion, not tell strong nations how they should defend themselves. America will always put its security first.”

The remarks quickly drew global attention and prompted a calm but firm response from the Pope.

• READ MORE: Pope: Easter drives out hatred and brings down the mighty
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Speaking at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV responded: “The Church cannot remain silent when power is used without moral responsibility. Faith must guide humanity toward peace, not justify conflict.”

Following the exchange of statements, many Catholic faithful around the world also began voicing their opinions.

Many believers expressed support for the message of peace and moral responsibility emphasised by Pope Leo XIV, arguing that faith should be used to bring people together and promote peace, rather than to justify conflict.

Across religious forums and social media platforms, Catholics called on political leaders to respect the spiritual role of the Church, while also encouraging dialogue between politics and religion to be conducted with humility, reconciliation, and mutual respect.

Many also expressed hope that the Pope’s message would continue to inspire efforts toward peace around the world.

A news report highlighting Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown yelling “free beer” at pro-Palestine protesters at an Auckland Council governing body meeting on Tuesday has stirred an angry response over the failure to face up to a serious human rights issue.

Mayor Brown was called a ”shameful man” by protesters after they were refused an opportunity to speak at the meeting over ethical procurement policies in response to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

At the start of the meeting, the mayor said a request from the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) to speak had been declined, saying the governing body did not have responsibility for Palestine.

• READ MORE: Mayor says ‘free beer’ to pro-Palestine group after refusing their request to speak
• Other Gaza genocide reports

A point of order was then raised by Councillor Mike Lee, who questioned the decision and asked for an explanation, said a Stuff news report.

Two other councillors also challenged the mayor, but Brown doubled down on his refusal to allow the PSNA deputation to speak.

When protesters started chanting “free Palestine”, Brown shouted “free beer”.

Brown again reiterated that the governing body did not have responsibility for Palestine, said the Stuff report.

‘Depraved comment’
“It’s hard to know who is more to blame for this story in Stuff,” said PSNA co-chair John Minto to supporters in a social media post.

“Is it Wayne Brown’s depraved comment ‘free beer’ in response to genocide in Gaza or is it the mainstream media which presents such a half-arsed account of our request to speak at the council meeting?”

Minto pointed out that so far the Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington and Palmerston North city councils — as well as Environment Canterbury and Environment Southland — had passed motions to exclude from their procurement policies any company on the United Nations Human Rights Council list of companies building and maintaining illegal Israeli settlements on illegally occupied Palestinian land.

“Brown is happy for Auckland ratepayer money to be spent on companies involved in flagrant violations of international law and is refusing to allow the council to discuss this,” Minto said.

“We will be back.”

Other pro-Palestinian protesters added comments in support.

West Coast environmental activist Pete Lusk wrote: “That’s like the age-old comment ‘get a job’. Such an ignorant man is Wayne Brown.”

Brown lacked ‘compassion’
In a lengthy response, Nancy McShane wrote in part: “I find Mr Brown’s cavalier response of ‘free beer’ entirely inappropriate. It’s a pity he was unable to demonstrate an appropriate level of concern, insight and compassion towards the Palestinian people, and engage constructively with this group of PSNA members who were advocating on their behalf.

“PSNA has worked extremely hard to ensure our local bodies are vigilant in ensuring they are not supporting genocide through poor purchasing choices.

“Aucklanders should be concerned that, unlike many other councils around New Zealand, their own council has refused to even have a discussion on this issue, let alone adopt an ethical, genocide-free procurement policy.

“Once upon a time, our country had a proud reputation as a progressor and defender of human rights. That is rapidly disappearing.

“New Zealanders should think carefully about how this shift away from our foundational values of peace, justice and equality will shape the future of Aotearoa.”

In the late 1960s, the prevailing opinion among Israeli Shin Bet intelligence officers was that the key to defeating the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was to assassinate its then-leader Yasser Arafat.

The elimination of Arafat, the Shin Bet commander Yehuda Arbel wrote in his diary, was “a precondition to finding a solution to the Palestinian problem.”

For other, even more radical Israelis — such as the ultra-nationalist assassin Yigal Amir — the answer lay elsewhere. They sought the assassination of Israeli leaders such as Yitzak Rabin who wanted peace with the Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Iran fires missiles at Israel; Trump claims ‘total control of Iran skies’
• Attack on Iran’s state media – Israel bombs IRIB building in new war crime
• Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade
• Other Israeli war on Iran reports

Despite Rabin’s long personal history as a famed and often ruthless military commander in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars, Amir stalked and shot Rabin dead in 1995. He believed Rabin had betrayed Israel by signing the Oslo Accords peace deal with Arafat.

Nothing has changed. Listen to how Yasser Arafat described the media and how they refused to comdemn Israeli war crimes. pic.twitter.com/BNbjp6ZEww

— Unfiltered Muslim (@muslimbants) November 9, 2023

It has been 20 years since Arafat died as possibly the victim of polonium poisoning, and 30 years after the shooting of Rabin. Peace between Israelis and the Palestinians has never been further away.

What Amnesty International and a United Nations Special Committee have called genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza have spilled over into Israeli attacks on the prominent leaders of its enemies in Lebanon and, most recently, Iran.

Since its attacks on Iran began on Friday, Israel has killed numerous military and intelligence leaders, including Iran’s intelligence chief, Mohammad Kazemi; the chief of the armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri; and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami. At least nine Iranian nuclear scientists have also been killed.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said:

We got their chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran.

Iran, predictably, has responded with deadly missile attacks on Israel.

Far from having solved the issue of Middle East peace, assassinations continue to pour oil on the flames.

A long history of extrajudicial killings
Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First argues assassinations have long sat at the heart of Israeli politics.

In the past 75 years, there have been more than 2700 assassination operations undertaken by Israel. These have, in Bergman’s words, attempted to “stop history” and bypass “statesmanship and political discourse”.

This normalisation of assassinations has been codified in the Israeli expression of “mowing the grass”. This is, as historian Nadim Rouhana has shown, a metaphor for a politics of constant assassination.

Enemy “leadership and military facilities must regularly be hit in order to keep them weak”.

The point is not to solve the underlying political questions at issue. Instead, this approach aims to sow fear, dissent and confusion among enemies.

Thousands of assassination operations have not, however, proved sufficient to resolve the long-running conflict between Israel, its neighbours and the Palestinians. The tactic itself is surely overdue for retirement.

Targeted assassinations elsewhere
Israel has been far from alone in this strategy of assassination and killing.

Former US President Barack Obama oversaw the extrajudicial killing of Osama Bin Laden, for instance.

After what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch denounced as a flawed trial, former US President George W. Bush welcomed the hanging of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy”.

Current US President Donald Trump oversaw the assassination of Iran’s leader of clandestine military operations, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020.

Martyr General Qassem Soleimani : No scholar or authority in Shiite history has been able to do what Imam Khomeini did#Baghdad0120#Soleimani pic.twitter.com/FgieLy1Rsu

— Soleimani TV (@Soleimani_TV) February 10, 2021

More recently, however, Trump appears to have baulked at granting Netanyahu permission to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And it’s worth noting the US Department of Justice last year brought charges against an Iranian man who said he had been tasked with killing Trump.

Elsewhere, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, it’s common for senior political and media opponents to be shot in the streets. Frequently they also “fall” out of high windows, are killed in plane crashes or succumb to mystery “illnesses”.

A poor record
Extrajudicial killings, however, have a poor record as a mechanism for solving political problems.

Cutting off the hydra’s head has generally led to its often immediate replacement by another equally or more ideologically committed person, as has already happened in Iran. Perhaps they too await the next round of “mowing the grass”.

But as the latest Israeli strikes in Iran and elsewhere show, solving the underlying issue is rarely the point.

In situations where finding a lasting negotiated settlement would mean painful concessions or strategic risks, assassinations prove simply too tempting. They circumvent the difficulties and complexities of diplomacy while avoiding the need to concede power or territory.

As many have concluded, however, assassinations have never killed resistance. They have never killed the ideas and experiences that give birth to resistance in the first place.

Nor have they offered lasting security to those who have ordered the lethal strike.

Enduring security requires that, at some point, someone grasp the nettle and look to the underlying issues.

The alternative is the continuation of the brutal pattern of strike and counter-strike for generations to come.

Dr Matt Fitzpatrick is professor in international history, Flinders University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Activists for Palestine paid homage to Pope Francis in Aotearoa New Zealand today for his humility, care for marginalised in the world, and his courageous solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza at a street theatre rally just hours before his funeral in Rome.

He was remembered and thanked for his daily calls of concern to Gaza and his final public blessing last Sunday — the day before he died — calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave.

Several speakers thanked the late Pope for his humanitarian concerns and spiritual leadership at the vigil in Auckland’s “Palestinian Corner” in Te Komititanga Square, beside the Britomart transport hub, as other rallies were held across New Zealand over the weekend.

• READ MORE: Pope Francis laid to rest after tens of thousands attend Vatican funeral
• Other photos, videos from today’s rally

“Last November, Pope Francis said that what is happening in Gaza was not a war. It was cruelty,” said Catholic deacon Chris Sullivan. “Because Israel is always claiming it is a war. But it isn’t a war, it’s just cruelty.”

During the last 18 months of his life, Pope Francis had a daily ritual — he called Gaza’s only Catholic church to see how people were coping with the “cruel” onslaught.

Deacon Sullivan said the people of the church in Gaza “have been attacked by Israeli rockets, Israeli shells, and Israeli snipers, and a number of people have been killed as a result of that.”

In his Easter message before dying, Pope Francis said: “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace.”

‘We lost the best man’
Also speaking at today’s rally, Dr Abdallah Gouda said: “We lost the best man. He was talking about Palestine and he was working to stop this genocide.

“Pope Francis; as a Palestinian, as a Palestinian from Gaza, and as a Moslem, thank you Pope Francis. Thank you. And we will never, never forget you.

“As we will always talk about you, the man who called every night to talk to the Palestinians, and he asked, ‘what do you eat’. And he talked to leaders around the world to stop this genocide.”

Pope Francis called Gaza’s Catholic parish every night.   Video: AJ+

In Rome, the coffin of Pope Francis made its way through the city from the Vatican after the funeral to reach Santa Maria Maggiore basilica for a private burial ceremony.

It arrived at the basilica after an imposing funeral ceremony at St Peter’s Square.

The Vatican said that more than 250,000 people attended the open-air service that was held under clear blue skies

Dozens of foreign dignitaries, including heads of state, were also in attendance.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogised Pope Francis as a pontiff who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” and urged people to build bridges and not walls.

In Auckland at the “Guerrilla for Gaza” street theatre event, several highly publicised examples of recent human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza were recreated in several skits with “actors” taking part from the crowd.

Palestinian Dr Faiez Idais role played the kidnapping of courageous Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya by the Israeli military last December and his detention and torture in captivity since.

Another Palestinian, Samer Almalalha, role played Columbia University student leader Mahmoud Khalil, who is also Palestinian and is a US permanent resident with an American wife and child.

Khalil was seized by ICE agents from his university apartment on March 8 without a warrant and abducted to a remote immigration prison in Louisiana but the courts have blocked his deportation in a high profile case.

He is one of at least 300 students who have been captured ICE agents for criticising Israel and its genocide.

The skits included condemnation of the US corporation Starbucks, the world’s leading coffee roaster and retailer, with mock blood being kicked over fake bodies on the plaza.

The backlash against the brand has caused heavy losses of US$15 million for the last six months of 2024 for the local franchise Berjaya Food and 100 outlets in Malaysia have been forced to shut down, reports Anadolu News.

Singers and musicians Hone Fowler, who was also MC, Brenda Liddiard and Mark Laurent — including their dedicated “Make Peace Today” inspired by Jesus’ “Blessed are the peacemakers” — also lifted the spirits of the crowd.

In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over its actions in the region.

When the US Embassy knocked on my door in late 2024, I was both pleased and more than a little suspicious.

I’d worked with them before, but the organisation where I did that work, Tohatoha, had closed its doors. My new project, Dark Times Academy, was specifically an attempt to pull myself out of the grant cycle, to explore ways of funding the work of counter-disinformation education without dependence on unreliable governments and philanthropic funders more concerned with their own objectives than the work I believed then — and still believe — is crucial to the future of human freedom.

But despite my efforts to turn them away, they kept knocking, and Dark Times Academy certainly needed the money. I’m warning you all now: There is a sense in which everything I have to say about counter-disinformation comes down to conversations about how to fund the work.

• READ MORE: US backing for Pacific disinformation media course casualty of Trump aid ‘freeze’
• Other Mandy Henk reports

There is nothing I would like more than to talk about literally anything other than funding this work. I don’t love money, but I do like eating, having a home, and being able to give my kids cash.

I have also repeatedly found myself in roles where other people look to me for their livelihoods; a responsibility that I carry heavily and with more than a little clumsiness and reluctance.

But if we are to talk about President Donald Trump and disinformation, we have to talk about money. As it is said, the love of money is the root of all evil. And the lack of it is the manifestation of that evil.

Trump and his attack on all of us — on truth, on peace, on human freedom and dignity — is, at its core, an attack that uses money as a weapon. It is an attack rooted in greed and in avarice.

In Trump’s world, money is power
But in that greed lies his weakness. In his world, money is power. He and those who serve him and his fascist agenda cannot see beyond the world that money built. Their power comes in the form of control over that world and the people forced to live in it.

Of course, money is just paper. It is digital bits in a database sitting on a server in a data centre relying on electricity and water taken from our earth. The ephemeral nature of their money speaks volumes about their lack of strength and their vulnerability to more powerful forces.

They know this. Trump and all men like him know their weaknesses — and that’s why they use their money to gather power and control. When you have more money than you and your whānau can spend in several generations, you suddenly have a different kind of  relationship to money.

It’s one where money itself — and the structures that allow money to be used for control of people and the material world — becomes your biggest vulnerability. If your power and identity are built entirely on the power of money, your commitment to preserving the power of money in the world becomes an all-consuming drive.

Capitalism rests on many “logics” — commodification, individualism, eternal growth, the alienation of labour. Marx and others have tried this ground well already.

In a sense, we are past the time when more analysis is useful to us. Rather, we have reached a point where action is becoming a practical necessity. After all, Trump isn’t going to stop with the media or with counter-disinformation organisations. He is ultimately coming for us all.

What form that action must take is a complicated matter. But, first we must think about money and about how money works, because only through lessening the power of money can we hope to lessen the power of those who wield it as their primary weapon.

Beliefs about poor people
If you have been so unfortunate to be subject to engagement with anti-poverty programmes during the neoliberal era either as a client or a worker, you will know that one of the motivations used for denying direct cash aid to those in need of money is a belief on the part of government and policy experts that poor people will use their money in unwise ways, be it drugs or alcohol, or status purchases like sneakers or manicures.

But over and over again, there’s another concern raised: cash benefits will be spent on others in the community, but outside of those targeted with the cash aid.

You see this less now that ideas like a universal basic income (UBI) and direct cash transfers have taken hold of the policy and donor classes, but it is one of those rightwing concerns that turned out to be empirically accurate.

Poor people are more generous with their money and all of their other resources as well. The stereotype of the stingy Scrooge is one based on a pretty solid mountain of evidence.

The poor turn out to understand far better than the rich how to defeat the power that money gives those who hoard it — and that is community. The logic of money and capital can most effectively be defeated through the creation and strengthening of our community ties.

Donald Trump and those who follow him revel in creating a world of atomised individuals focused on themselves; the kind of world where, rather than relying on each other, people depend on the market and the dollar to meet their material needs — dollars. of course, being the source of control and power for their class.

Our ability to fund our work, feed our families, and keep a roof over our heads has not always been subject to the whims of capitalists and those with money to pay us. Around the world, the grand multicentury project known as colonialism has impoverished us all and created our dependency.

Colonial projects and ‘enclosures’
I cannot speak as a direct victim of the colonial project. Those are not my stories to tell. There are so many of you in this room who can speak to that with far more eloquence and direct experience than I. But the colonial project wasn’t only an overseas project for my ancestors.

In England, the project was called “enclosure”.

Enclosure is one of the core colonial logics. Enclosure takes resources (land in particular) that were held in common and managed collectively using traditional customs and hands them over to private control to be used for private rather than communal benefit. This process, repeated over and over around the globe, created the world we live in today — the world built on money.

As we lose control over our access to what we need to live as the land that holds our communities together, that binds us to one another, is co-opted or stolen from us, we lose our power of self-determination. Self-governance, freedom, liberty — these are what colonisation and enclosure take from us when they steal our livelihoods.

As part of my work, I keep a close eye on the approaches to counter-disinformation that those whose relationship to power is smoother than my own take. Also, in this the year of our Lord 2025, it is mandatory to devote at least some portion of each public talk to AI.

I am also profoundly sorry to have to report that as far as I can tell, the only work on counter-disinformation still getting funding is work that claims to be able to use AI to detect and counter disinformation. It will not surprise you that I am extremely dubious about these claims.

AI has been created through what has been called “data colonialism”, in that it relies on stolen data, just as traditional forms of colonialism rely on stolen land.

Risks and dangers of AI
AI itself — and I am speaking here specifically of generative AI — is being used as a tool of oppression. Other forms of AI have their own risks and dangers, but in this context, generative AI is quite simply a tool of power consolidation, of hollowing out of human skill and care, and of profanity, in the sense of being the opposite of sacred.

Words, art, conversation, companionship — these are fiercely human things. For a machine to mimic these things is to transgress against all of our communities — all the more so when the machine is being wielded by people who speak openly of genocide and white supremacy.

However, just as capitalism can be fought through community, colonialism can and has been fought through our own commitment to living our lives in freedom. It is fought by refusing their demands and denying their power, whether through the traditional tools of street protest and nonviolent resistance, or through simply walking away from the structures of violence and control that they have implemented.

In the current moment, that particularly includes the technological tools that are being used to destroy our communities and create the data being used to enact their oppression. Each of us is free to deny them access to our lives, our hopes, and dreams.

This version of colonisation has a unique weakness, in that the cyber dystopia they have created can be unplugged and turned off. And yet, we can still retain the parts of it that serve us well by building our own technological infrastructure and helping people use that instead of the kind owned and controlled by oligarchs.

By living our lives with the freedom we all possess as human beings, we can deny these systems the symbolic power they rely on to continue.

That said, this has limitations. This process of theft that underlies both traditional colonialism and contemporary data colonialism, rather than that of land or data, destroys our material base of support — ie. places to grow food, the education of our children, control over our intellectual property.

Power consolidated upwards
The outcome is to create ever more dependence on systems outside of our control that serve to consolidate power upwards and create classes of disposable people through the logic of dehumanisation.

Disposable people have been a feature across many human societies. We see it in slaves, in cultures that use banishment and exile, and in places where imprisonment is used to enforce laws.

Right now we see it in the United States being directed at scale towards those from Central and Latin America and around the world. The men being sent to the El Salvadorian gulag, the toddlers sent to immigration court without a lawyer, the federal workers tossed from their jobs — these are disposable people to Trump.

The logic of colonialism relies on the process of dehumanisation; of denying the moral relevance of people’s identity and position within their communities and families. When they take a father from his family, they are dehumanising him and his family. They are denying the moral relevance of his role as a father and of his children and wife.

When they require a child to appear alone before an immigration judge, they are dehumanising her by denying her the right to be recognised as a child with moral claims on the adults around her. When they say they want to transition federal workers from unproductive government jobs to the private sector, they are denying those workers their life’s work and identity as labourers whose work supports the common good.

There was a time when I would point out that we all know where this leads, but we are there now. It has led there, although given the US incarceration rate for Black men, it isn’t unreasonable to argue that in fact for some people, the US has always been there. Fascism is not an aberration, it is a continuation. But the quickening is here. The expansion of dehumanisation and hate have escalated under Trump.

Dehumanisaton always starts with words and  language. And Trump is genuinely — and terribly — gifted with language. His speeches are compelling, glittering, and persuasive to his audiences. With his words and gestures, he creates an alternate reality. When Trump says, “They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the dogs!”, he is using language to dehumanise Haitian immigrants.

An alternate reality for migrants
When he calls immigrants “aliens” he is creating an alternate reality where migrants are no longer human, no longer part of our communities, but rather outside of them, not fully human.

When he tells lies and spews bullshit into our shared information system, those lies are virtually always aimed at creating a permission structure to deny some group of people their full humanity. Outrageous lie after outrageous lie told over and over again crumbles society in ways that we have seen over and over again throughout history.

In Europe, the claims that women were consorting with the devil led to the witch trials and the burning of thousands of women across central and northern Europe. In Myanmar, claims that Rohinga Muslims were commiting rape, led to mass slaughter.

Just as we fight the logics of capitalism with community and colonialism with a fierce commitment to our freedom, the power to resist dehumanisation is also ours. Through empathy and care — which is simply the material manifestation of empathy — we can defeat attempts to dehumanise.

Empathy and care are inherent to all functioning societies — and they are tools we all have available to us. By refusing to be drawn into their hateful premises, by putting morality and compassion first, we can draw attention to the ridiculousness of their ideas and help support those targeted.

Disinformation is the tool used to dehumanise. It always has been. During the COVID-19 pandemic when disinformation as a concept gained popularity over the rather older concept of propaganda, there was a real moment where there was a drive to focus on misinformation, or people who were genuinely wrong about usually public health facts. This is a way to talk about misinformation that elides the truth about it.

There is an empirical reality underlying the tsunami of COVID disinformation and it is that the information was spread intentionally by bad actors with the goal of destroying the social bonds that hold us all together. State actors, including the United States under the first Trump administration, spread lies about COVID intentionally for their own benefit and at the cost of thousands if not millions of lives.

Lies and disinformation at scale
This tactic was not new then. Those seeking political power or to destroy communities for their own financial gain have always used lies and disinformation. But what is different this time, what has created unique risks, is the scale.

Networked disinformation — the power to spread bullshit and lies across the globe within seconds and within a context where traditional media and sources of both moral and factual authority have been systematically weakened over decades of neoliberal attack — has created a situation where disinformation has more power and those who wield it can do so with precision.

But just as we have the means to fight capitalism, colonialism, and dehumanisation, so too do we — you and I — have the tools to fight disinformation: truth, and accurate and timely reporting from trustworthy sources of information shared with the communities impacted in their own language and from their own people.

If words and images are the chosen tools of dehumanisation and disinformation, then we are lucky because they are fighting with swords that we forged and that we know how to wield. You, the media, are the front lines right now. Trump will take all of our money and all of our resources, but our work must continue.

Times like this call for fearlessness and courage. But more than that, they call on us to use all of the tools in our toolboxes — community, self-determination, care, and truth. Fighting disinformation isn’t something we can do in a vacuum. It isn’t something that we can depersonalise and mechanise. It requires us to work together to build a very human movement.

I can’t deny that Trump’s attacks have exhausted me and left me depressed. I’m a librarian by training. I love sharing stories with people, not telling them myself. I love building communities of learning and of sharing, not taking to the streets in protest.

More than anything else, I just want a nice cup of tea and a novel. But we are here in what I’ve seen others call “a coyote moment”. Like Wile E. Coyote, we are over the cliff with our legs spinning in the air.

We can use this time to focus on what really matters and figure out how we will keep going and keep working. We can look at the blue sky above us and revel in what beauty and joy we can.

Building community, exercising our self-determination, caring for each other, and telling the truth fearlessly and as though our very lives depend on it will leave us all the stronger and ready to fight Trump and his tidal wave of disinformation.

Mandy Henk, co-founder of Dark Times Academy, has been teaching and learning on the margins of the academy for her whole career. As an academic librarian, she has worked closely with academics, students, and university administrations for decades. She taught her own courses, led her own research work, and fought for a vision of the liberal arts that supports learning and teaching as the things that actually matter. This article was originally presented as an invited address at the annual general meeting of the Asia Pacific Media Network on 24 April 2025.

As 2024 came to a close and we have stepped into a new year overshadowed by ongoing atrocities, have you stopped to consider how these events are reshaping your world?

Did you notice how your future — and that of generations to come — is being profoundly and irreversibly altered?

The ongoing tragedy in Palestine is not an isolated event. It is a crisis that reverberates far beyond borders, threatening your safety, the well-being of your children and family.

• READ MORE: ‘Gaza is a death trap’: At least 50 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks — the number of aid people killed rises to 736
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Even fragile ecosystems and creatures have been obliterated and affected by the fallout from Israel’s chemicals and pollution from its weapons.

The deliberate targeting of civilians, rampant violations of international law, and the obliteration of the rights of children are not distant horrors. They are ominous warnings of a world unravelling — consequences that are slowly seeping into the comfort of your home, threatening the very foundations of the life you thought was secure.

But here’s the hard truth: these outcomes don’t just happen in a a vacuum. They persist because of the silence, indifference, or complicity of those who choose not to act.

The question is, will you stand up for a better future, or will you look away? And how could Palestine possibly affect you and your family? Read on.

Israel acting with impunity for decades
Israel has been acting with impunity for decades, flouting the norms of our legal agreements, defying the United Nations and its rulings and requests to act within the agreed global rules set after the Holocaust and the Nazis disregard for humanity.

The Germans, under Nazi rule, pursued a racist ideology to restructure the world according to race, committing crimes against humanity and war crimes that resulted in a devastating world war and the deaths of millions of people, including millions of Jews. A set of rules were formed from the ashes of these victims to ensure this horror would never happen again. It’s called international law.

However, after the Nazis defeat, it took less than a few years before atrocities began again, perpetrated by the very people who had just been brutally massacred and targeted.

European Jews, including holocaust survivors, armed by Czechoslovakia, funded by the Nazis (Havaara agreement), aided militarily by Britain, the US, Italy and France among others, arrived on foreign shores to a land that did not belong to them.

Once there, they began to disregard the very rules established to protect not only them, but the rest of humanity — rules designed to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust, safeguard against the resurgence of ideologies like Nazism, and ensure impunity for such actions would never occur again.

These rules were a shared commitment by countries to conduct themselves with agreed norms and regulations designed to respect the right of all to live in safety and security, including children, women and civilians in general. Rules that were designed to end war and promote peace, justice, and a better life for all humankind.

Rules written to ensure the sacred understanding, implementation and respect of equal rights for all people, including you, were followed to prevent us from never returning to the lawlessness and terror of World War Two.

But the creation of Israel less than 80 years ago flouted and violated these expectations. The mass murder of children, women and men in Palestine in 1948, which included burning alive Palestinians tied to trees and running them over as they lay unable to move in the middle of town squares, was only the beginning of this disrespectful dehumanisation.

Terrorised by Jewish militia
Jewish militia terrorised Palestinians, lobbing grenades into Palestinian homes where families sheltered in fear, raping women and girls, and forcing every man and boy from whole villages to dig their own trenches before being shot in the back so they fell neatly into their graves.

Pregnant Palestinian women had their bellies sliced open, homes were stolen along with everything in it — including my families — and many family members were murdered.

This included my great grandmother who was shot, execution style, in front of my mother as she carried a small mattress from our home for her grandchildren when they were forcibly displaced. I still don’t know what happened to her body or where she is buried. I do know where our house is still situated in Jerusalem, although currently occupied.

These atrocities enabled Israel’s birth, shameful atrocities behind its creation. There is not one Israeli town or village that is not built on top of a Palestinian village, or town, on the blood and bones of murdered Palestinians, a practice Israel has continued.

As I write, plans to build more illegal settlements on the buried bodies of Palestinians in Gaza have already been drawn up and areas of land pre-sold.

These horrific crimes have continued over decades, becoming worse as Israel perfected and industrialised its ability to exterminate human souls, hearts and lives. Israel’s birth from its inception was only possible through terrorist actions of Jewish militia. These militia Britain designated as terrorist organisations, a designation that still stands today.

Jewish militia such as (Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) formed into what is now known as the Israeli Defence Force, although they aren’t defending anything; Palestine was not theirs to take in the first place.

There was never a war of independence for Israel because the state of Israel did not exist to liberate itself from anyone. Instead, Britain illegally handed over land that already belonged to the Palestinians, a peaceful existing people of three pillars of faith — Palestinian Christians Muslims and Jews. If there were any legitimate war of independence, it would be that of the Palestinian people.

Free pass to act above the law
Israel continues to rely on the Holocaust’s memory to give it a free pass to act above the law, threatening world peace and our shared humanity, by using the memory of the horrors of 1945 and the threat of antisemitism to deter people from criticising and speaking out against the state’s unlawful and inhumane actions.

Yet Israel echoes the horrors of Nazi Germany and its destruction with its behaviour, the difference being the industrialisation of mass killing, modern warfare and weapons, the use of AI as a killing machine, the creation of chemical weapons and huge concentration and death camps which far surpass Germany’s capabilities.

Jews around the world have been deeply divided by Israel’s assertion that it represents all Jewish people. Not all Jews religiously and politically support Israel, many do not feel a connection to or support Israel, viewing its actions and policies as separate from their Jewish identity. For them, Israel’s claims do not define what it means to be Jewish, nor do they see its conduct as aligned with Jewish values.

This is not a “Jewish question” but a political one and conflating the two undermines the diverse perspectives within Jewish communities globally and is harmful to Jewish people. It is important to maintain a clear distinction between Judaism and the political actions of Israel.

How does a genocide across the world affect you?
The perpetration of genocide and gross violations of human rights, facilitated or supported by Western powers, erodes the very foundations of the global legal framework that protects us all. This assault weakens democracy, undermines international law, and destabilises the structures you rely on for a secure future.

It leaves your defences crumbling, your safety compromised, and your vulnerabilities exposed to the chaos that follows such lawlessness as a global citizen of this world under the same protections and with the same equality as the Palestinians.

Palestinian children are no less deserving of safety and rights than any other children. When their rights are ignored and violated, it undermines protections for children worldwide, creating a precedent of vulnerability and injustice. If violations are deemed acceptable for some, they risk becoming acceptable for all.

Sitting safely in Aotearoa does not guarantee protection. The actions of Israel and the US, Western countries — massacring and flattening entire neighbourhoods — send a dangerous message that such horrors are only for “others”, for “brown people” who speak a different language.

But Western countries are the global minority. Many nations now view the West with growing disdain, especially in light of Israel and America’s actions, coupled with the glaring double standards and inaction of the West, including New Zealand, as they stand by and witness a genocide in progress.

When children become a legitimate target, the safety of all children is compromised. Your kids are at risk too. Just because you live on the other side of the world does not mean you are immune or beyond the reach of those who see such actions as justification for retaliation.

If such disregard for human life is deemed acceptable for one people, it will inevitably become acceptable for others. Justice and equality must extend to all children, regardless of nationality, to ensure a safer world for everyone.

But why should you care?
Because Israel and the US are undermining the framework that protects you. Israel’s violations of International and humanitarian law including laws on occupation, war crimes and bombing protected institutions such as hospitals, schools, UN facilities, civilian homes and areas of safety, undermines these and sets a dangerous precedent for others to follow. Israel does not respect global peace, civilians, human rights nor has respect for life outside of its own. This lawlessness and lack of accountability is already giving other states the green light to erode the norms that protect human rights, including the decimation of the rights of the child.

The West’s support for Israel, namely the US, the UK, Canada, much of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, despite its clear violations of international law, exposes a fundamental hypocrisy. This weakens the credibility of democratic nations that claim to champion human rights and justice.

The failure of institutions like the UN to hold Israel accountable erodes trust in these bodies, fostering widespread disillusionment and scepticism about their ability to address other global conflicts. This has already fuelled an “us versus them” mentality, deepening the divide between the Global South and the Global North.

This division is marked by growing disrespect for Western governments and their citizens, who demand moral authority and adherence to the rule of law from nations in the East and South yet allow one of their “own” to brazenly violate these principles.

This hypocrisy undermines the hope for a new, respectful world order envisioned after the Holocaust, leaving it damaged and discredited.

Israel, despite its claims, has no authentic ties to the Middle East. What was once Palestinian land deeply rooted in Middle Eastern culture, has been overtaken and reshaped into to an artificial state imposed by mixed European heritage. It now stands as a Western outpost in stark contrast and isolated from surrounding Eastern cultures.

The failure of the West and the international community to stop the Palestinian genocide has begun a new period of genocide normalisation, where it becomes acceptable to watch children being blown up, women and men being murdered, shot and starved to death.

This acceptance then becomes a part of a country’s statecraft. Palestinian genocide, while it might be a little “uncomfortable” for many, has still been tolerable. If genocide is tolerable for one, then its tolerable for another.

Bias and prejudice
If you can comfortably go about your day, knowing the horror other innocent human beings are facing then perhaps it might be time to reflect on and confront any underlying biases or prejudices you hold.

An interesting thought experiment is to transform and transfer what is happening in Palestine to New Zealand.

Imagine Nelson being completely flattened, and all the inhabitants of Auckland, plus some, being starved to death.

Imagine all New Zealand hospitals being destroyed, Wellington hospital with its patients still inside is blown up. All the babies in the neonatal unit are left to die and rot in their incubators, patients in the ICU units and those immobile or too sick to move are also left to die, this includes all children unable to walk in the Starship hospital.

Electricity for the whole country is turned off and all patients and healthcare workers are forced to leave at gunpoint. New Zealand doctors and nurses are stripped down to their underwear and tortured, this includes rape, and some male doctors are left to die bleeding in the street after being raped to death with metal poles and electrodes.

Water is then shut down and unavailable to all of you. You cannot feed your family, your grandchildren, your parents, your siblings, your best friends.

Imagine New Zealanders burying bodies of their children and loved ones in makeshift mass graves, while living in tents and then being subjected to chemical weapon strikes, quad copters or small drones’ attacks that drop bombs and exterminate, shooting people as they try to find food, but targeting mostly women and children.

Imagine every single human being in Upper Hutt completely wiped out. Imagine 305 New Zealand school buses full of dead children line the streets, that’s more than 11,000 killed so far. Each day more than 10 New Zealand kids lose a limb, including your children.

This number starts to increase with the hope to finally ethnically cleanse Aotearoa to make way for a new state defined by one religion and one ethnicity that isn’t yours, by a new group of people from the other side of the world.

These people, called settlers, are given weapons to hurt and kill New Zealanders as they rampage through towns evicting residents and moving into your homes taking everything that belongs to you and leaving you on the street. All your belongings, all your memories, your pets, your future, your family are stolen or destroyed.

Starting from January 2025, up to 15 New Zealanders will die of starvation or related diseases EVERY DAY until the rest of the world decides if it will come to your aid with this lawlessness. Or maybe you will die in desperation while others watch you on their TV screens or scroll through their social media seeing you as the “terrorist” and the invaders as the “victims”.

If this thought horrifies you, if it makes you feel shocked or upset, then so too should others having to endure such illegal horrors. None of what is happening is acceptable, as a fellow human being you should be fighting for the right of all of us. Perhaps you might think of our own tangata whenua and Aotearoa’s own history.

What could this mean for New Zealand?
We are not creating a bright future for a country like New Zealand, whose remote location, dependence on trade, and its aging infrastructure, leaves it vulnerable to changing global dynamics. This is especially concerning with our energy dependence on imported oil, our dependence on global supply chains for essential goods including medicine (Israel’s pager attack against Hezbollah has compromised supply chains in a dangerous and horrific violation that New Zealand ignored), our economic marginalisation, and our security challenges.

All of this while surrounded by rising tensions between superpowers like the US and China which will affect New Zealand’s security and economic partnerships. Balancing economic and political ties is complicated by this government’s focus on strengthening strategic alliances with Western nations, mainly the US, whose complicity in genocide, war crimes, and disrespect for the rule of law is weakening its standing and threatens its very future.

Targeting marginalised groups
The precedent set in Palestine will embolden oppressive regimes elsewhere to target minority groups, knowing that the world will turn a blind eye. Israel is a violent, oppressive apartheid state, operating outside of international law and norms and has been compared to, but is much worse than the former apartheid South Africa.

This will have a huge impact felt all over the world with the continued refugee crisis. Multicultural nations such as New Zealand will struggle to cope with the support needed for the families of our citizens in need.

An increase of the far right reminiscent of Nazi ideology and extremism
Israel is a pariah state fuelled by radicalisation and extremism with an intolerance to different races, colour and ethnicity and indigenous populations. This has created a fertile ground for extremist ideologies, destabilising regions far beyond the Middle East as we have seen in Europe with the rejuvenation of the far-right movement.

Israel’s genocidal onslaughts will continue to be the cause for ongoing instability in the region, affecting global energy supplies, trade routes, and security. The Palestinian crisis will not be answered with violence, oppression and war. We aren’t going anywhere, and neither should we.

Weaponising aid and healthcare
Israel’s deliberate restriction of food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza weaponises humanitarian aid, violating basic principles of humanity. A new weapon in the arsenal of pariah states and radical violent countries and a new Israeli tactic to be copied and used elsewhere. Targeting hospitals, healthcare workers, distribution centres, ambulances, the UN, and collectively punishing whole populations has never been and will never be acceptable.

If it is not acceptable that this happens to you in Aotearoa, then nor is it acceptable for Palestinians in Palestine. It is intolerable for other “terror regimes” to commit such acts, so why is it deemed acceptable when carried out by Israel and the US?

Undermining the rights to free speech, peaceful protest and freedoms
During the covid pandemic, many New Zealanders were concerned with government-imposed restrictions that could be used disproportionately or as pretexts for authoritarian control. This included limitations on freedom of movement, speech, assembly, and privacy.

And yet Palestinians endure military checkpoints, curfews, restricted movement within and between their own territories, and the suppression of their right to protest or voice opposition to occupation — all due to Israel’s oppressive and illegal control. This is further enabled by the political cover and tacit support provided by this government’s failure to speak out and strongly condemn Israel’s actions.

Through its failure to take meaningful action or fulfil its third-party state obligations, this government continues to maintain normal relations with Israel across diplomatic, cultural, economic, and social spheres, as well as through trade. Moreover, it wrongly asserts on its official foreign affairs websites and policies that an occupying power has the right to self-defence against a defenceless population it has systematically abused and terrorised for decades.

The silencing of pro-Palestinian activists and criminalisation of humanitarian aid also create a chilling effect, discouraging global solidarity movements and undermining the moral fabric of societies. The use of victimhood to shroud the aggressor and blame the victim is a low point in our harrowed history. As is the vilification of moral activism and those that dare to stand against the illegal and sickening mass killing of civilians.

The attempt to persecute brave students standing up to Zionist and Israeli-run organisations and those supporting Israel (including academic and cultural institutions), by both trigger-happy billionaire Jewish investors and elite families and company investors whose answer to peaceful resistance is violence, demonstrates how far we have fallen from democracy and the rights of the citizen.

I find it completely bizarre that standing up against a genocide of helpless, unarmed civilians is demonised in order to protect the thugs, criminals and psychopaths that make up the Israeli state and its criminal actors, and the elite families and corporations profiting from this war.

Even here in Aotearoa, protesters have been vilified for drawing attention to Israel’s war crimes and double standards at the ASB Classic tennis tournament. Letting into New Zealand an IDF soldier who is associated with an institution directly implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity should be questioned.

These protesters were falsely labelled as “pro-Hamas” by Israeli and Western media. They were portrayed negatively, seen as a nuisance. Their messages about supporting human rights and stopping a horrific genocide from continuing were not mentioned.

The focus was the effect their chants had on the tennis match and the Israeli tennis player, who was upset. Exercising their legal rights to demonstrate, the protesters were not a security issue. Yet Lina Glushko, the Israeli tennis player, claimed she needed extra security to combat a dozen protesters, many over the age of 60, who were never in any proximity of the controversial player nor were ever a threat.

No mention that Lina Glushko lives in an illegal settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or that she was in service from 2018-2020 during the Great March of Return. Or that this tennis player has made public statements mocking the suffering of Palestinians, inconsistent with Aotearoa’s commitment to combating hate speech and promoting inclusivity and respect.

Her presence erodes the integrity of international sports and sends a dangerous message that war crimes and human rights violations carry no meaningful consequences despite international law and the recent UNGA (UN General Assembly) and ICJ (International Court of Justice) resolutions and advisory opinions.

Allowing IDF soldiers entry into New Zealand disregards the pain and suffering of Palestinians and the New Zealand Palestinian community, dehumanising their plight. It sends a message of complicity to the broader international community, one that was ignored by most Western media.

Similarly, Israel’s attempts to not just control the Western media but to shut down and kill journalists, is not only a war crime, but is terrifying. Journalists’ protection is enshrined in international law due to the essential nature of their work in fostering accountability, transparency, and justice. They expose corruption, war crimes, and human rights abuses. Real journalism is vital for democracy, ensuring citizens are informed about government actions and global events.

Israel’s targeting of journalists undermines the rule of law and emboldens it and other perpetrators to commit further atrocities without fear of scrutiny or consequences.

The suffering of Palestinians is a human rights issue that transcends borders. Allowing genocide and oppression to continue undermines the shared humanity that binds us all.
Israel’s actions reflect the dehumanisation of an entire population and our failure to enforce accountability for these crimes weakens international systems designed to protect your family and you.

Israel’s influence is far reaching, and New Zealand is not immune. Any undue influence by foreign states, including Israel, threatens New Zealand’s sovereignty and ability to make independent decisions in its national interest. Lobbying efforts by organisations like the Zionist Federation or the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the Jewish Council and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand push policies that do not align with New Zealand’s broader public interest.

Aligning with a state that is violating rights and in a court of law on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, leaves citizens wide open to the same controls and concerns we are now seeing Americans and Europeans face at the mercy of AIPAC and Israeli influence.

Palestine is a test of the international community’s commitment to justice, human rights, and the rule of law. If Israel is allowed to continue acting with impunity, the global system that protects us all will be irreparably weakened, paving the way for more injustice, oppression, and chaos. It is a fight for the moral and legal foundations of the world we live in and ignoring it will have far-reaching consequences for everyone.

So, as you usher in 2025, don’t sit there and clink your glasses, hoping for a better year while continuing to ignore the suffering around you. Act to make 2025 better than the horrific few years the world has been subjected to, if not for humanity, then for yourself and your family’s future. Start with the biggest threat to world peace and stability — Israel and US hegemony.

What you can do
You can make a difference in the fight against Israel’s illegal occupation and violations of human rights, including the deliberate targeting of children by taking simple yet impactful steps. Here’s how you can start today:

Boycott products supporting oppression:
Remove at least five products from your weekly supermarket shopping list that are linked to companies supporting Israel’s occupation or that are made in Israel. Use tools like the “No Thanks” app to identify these items or visit the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) website for detailed advice and information.

Hold the government accountable:
Write letters to your government representatives demanding action to uphold democracy and human rights. Remind them of New Zealand’s obligations under international law to stand against human rights abuses and violations of global norms. Demand fair and equitable foreign policies designed to protect us all.

Educate yourself:
Learn about the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict, especially the events of 1948, to better understand the roots of the ongoing crisis. Knowledge is a powerful tool for advocacy and change.

Seek alternative news sources:
Expand your perspective by accessing a wide range of news sources including from platforms such as Al Jazeera, Double Down News, and Middle East Eye.

Be a citizen, not a bystander:
Passive spectatorship allows injustice to thrive. Take a stand. Whether by boycotting, writing letters, educating yourself, or raising awareness, your actions can contribute to a global movement for justice for us all.

Together, we can challenge systems of oppression and demand accountability for crimes against humanity. Let 2025 not just be another year of witnessing suffering but one where we collectively take action to restore justice, uphold humanity, and demand accountability.
The time to act is now.

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

A Fiji solidarity group for the Palestinians has accused the Rabuka-led coalition government of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide and relentless war on Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children — over the past year.

The Fijians4Palestine have called on the Fiji government to “uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes”.

“We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians,” the movement said in a statement  marking the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

• READ MORE: Palestinian musicians, poets and solidarity partners in vibrant NZ cultural celebration
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The group said it was “ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians”.

It said that it expected the Fiji government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

The Fijians4Palestine group’s statement said:

It has been over one year since Israel began its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.

At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades. More than 17,000 children have lost one or both parents.

At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza — equal to one in 23 people.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, every day 10 children lose one or both legs, with operations and amputations conducted with little or no anaesthesia due to Israel’s ongoing siege.

In addition to the killed and injured, more than 10,000 people are feared buried under the rubble.

With few tools to remove rubble and rescue those trapped beneath concrete, volunteers and civil defence workers rely on their bare hands.

We, the #Fijians4Palestine Solidarity Network join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.

Families torn apart
The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.

As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.

Today, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

We unequivocally condemn the State of Israel for its actions that amount to war crimes, genocide, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the disproportionate use of force, and the destruction of essential infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.

The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is evident. The continuous displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, and the systematic erasure of their history and culture are indicative of genocidal intent.

The State of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, characterised by racial segregation, discrimination, and domination, amount to apartheid as defined under international law.

Oppressive regime
The construction of settlements, the separation wall, and the system of checkpoints are manifestations of this oppressive regime. Palestinians are subjected to different laws, regulations, and treatments based on their ethnicity, clearly violating the principle of equality.

We call upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes. We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians.

We are ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians. We expect our government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.

The silence of the Fiji government is complicity, and history will not forgive their inaction.

Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect. We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.

There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation.

The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.

The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is like a big house or boat, says Reverend Dr Ambirek G. Socratez Yoman, owned by the people and the nation of West Papua.

Upon this big boat rests prayers, hopes, longings, struggles, dreams, and ideals with a profound sense of justice, peace, and dignity.

According to Reverend Dr Yoman, the ULMWP is a symbol of unity among the Papuan people. It is a representation of their collective desires and relentless pursuit of justice.

• READ MORE: Benny Wenda says dream of MSG full membership ‘will happen’ in Port Vila
• Dukung ULMWP jadi anggota penuh MSG, demonstran kenakan simbol Bintang Kejora — Tabloid Jubi
• Other Yamin Kogoya reports

Therefore, West Papuans living in the Land of West Papua, including those living abroad, all pray, hope, and support ULMWP. It is the responsibility of the nation of West Papua and its people to safeguard, maintain, care for, and protect ULMWP as their common home.

Because ULMWP provides a collective shelter for many tears, blood droplets, bones, and the suffering of West Papua.

Reverend Dr Yoman says in his message to me that I have translated that the ULMWP carries the spirits of our ancestors, fallen heroes, and comrades. The ULMWP is the home of their spirits, and he wrote some of their names as follows:

1. Johan Ariks
2. Lodewijk Mandacan
3. Barens Mandacan
4. Ferry Awom
5. Permenas Awom
6. Aser Demotekay
7. Bernandus Tanggahma
8. Seth Jafet Rumkorem
9. Jacob Prai
10. Herman Womsiwor
11. Markus Kaisiepo
12. Eliezer Bonay
13. Nicolaas Jouwe
14. F. Torrey,
15. Nicolass Tanggahma
16. Dick Kereway
17. Melky Solossa
18. Samuel Asmuruf
19. Mapia Mote
20. James Nyaro
21. Lambert Wakur
22. S.B. Hindom,
23. Louis Wajoi
24. Tadius Yogi
25. Martin Tabu
26. Arnold Clemens Ap
27. Eduard Mofu
28. Willem Onde
29. Moses Weror
30. Clemens Runaweri
31. Andy Ayamiseba
32. John Octo Ondowame
33. Thomas Wapay Wanggai
34. Wim Zonggonauw
35. Yawan Wayeni
36. Kelly Kwalik
37. Justin Morip
38. Beatrix Watofa
39. Agus Alue Alua
40. Frans Wospakrik
41. Theodorus Hiyo Eluay
42. Aristotle Masoka
43. Tom Beanal
44. Neles Tebay
45. Mako Tabuni
46. Leoni Tanggahma
47. Samuel Filep Karma
48. Prisila Jakadewa
49. Babarina Ikari
50. Vonny Jakadewa
51. Mery Yarona and Reny Jakadewa (the courageous female spirits who raised the Morning Star flag at the Governor’s Office on August 4, 1980).
52. Also, the spirit of Josephin Gewab/Rumawak, the tailor who created the Morning Star flag.

In honour of these fallen Papuan heroes and leaders, Reverend Yoman says:

“It is you, the young generation, who carry forward the baton left by the names and spirits of these fighters, as well as the hundreds and thousands of others who have not been named.

“If there is someone who fights and opposes the political platform of the ULMWP, that individual is questionable and is damaging the big house and the big boat, which contains the tears, blood, bones, and suffering of the People and Nation of Papua as well as the spirits of our ancestors and leaders.

“The eyes and faces of the LORD, the spirits of our ancestors, and the spirits of our leaders who have passed on always guard, protect, and nurture the honest, humble, and respectful members of the ULMWP.”

By this message, he urges the ULMWP to never forget these names and stand bravely with courage on their shoulders.

Indonesian delegation walks out of MSG leaders summit before West Papuan leader Benny Wenda’s speech. pic.twitter.com/qW0YMxnrVk

— Ben Bohane (@ben_bohane) August 23, 2023

Reverend Yoman’s letter: a brief comment
Indigenous people view life as a system of interconnected relationships between beings, spirits, deities, humans, animals, plants, and the celestial heavens.

Their holistic cosmology is held together by this interconnectedness — a sacred passageway to multidimensional realities. Although Indigenous cosmologies differ, most, if not all, subscribe to the tenet of interconnectedness.

Having a strong connection to one’s ancestors’ roots is an integral part of being Indigenous.

During times of need, rituals, and grief, ancestral and fallen heroes are mentioned and invoked. A specific ancestor’s name may be mentioned in response to a specific situation, such as grief, conflict, sacred ceremonies, or rituals.

This helps to connect modern generations to the ancestral spirits, providing a source of strength and guidance while honouring the legacy of those who have gone before.

Those who adhere to original cultural values understand why Reverend Dr Yoman mentioned some of these Papuans.

In the chronicle of Papuans’ liberation story, these names are mentioned.

There were some who suffered martyrdom, some who became traitors, who died of old age, and others who died from disease. However, they all have stories connected to West Papua’s Liberation.

Mentioning these names is intended to invoke a specific energy within the consciousness of West Papua’s independence leaders. Inviting the new generation of fighters to take up the cause of their fallen comrades.

It is important to encourage Papuans to see the greater picture of a nation’s liberation struggle — which spans generations. Calling on them to revive their minds, spirits, and bodies through the spirit of fallen Papuans and the spirit of Divine during times of turmoil.

Who is Rev Dr Yoman and why did he mention these names?
Most people are familiar with Reverend Dr Yoman. He is everywhere — on television, on the news, known in churches, involved in human rights activism, mentioned in public speeches, appears in seminars, and lectures and so on.

He is well known, or at least heard of, by the Papuan and Indonesian communities, as well as the broader community.

Reverend Dr Socratez Sofyan Yoman is a public figure, leader, academic, church leader, prolific writer, and media commentator. He is a descendant of the Lani people of Papua.

He is one of the seeds of the civilisation project launched by Christian missionaries in the Highlands between the 1930s and 1960s. His life has been shaped by four significant events in his homeland — the teachings of his elders, the arrival of Christianity, Indonesian invasions, and the resistance of the Papuans.

He rose to become an exceptionally accomplished thinker, speaker, writer, and critic of injustice, oppression, and upholds humanity’s values as taught by the Judeo-Christian worldview within these collusions of worlds.

Growing up among Lani village elders taught him many sacred teachings of the original ways — centred around Wone’s teachings. This is one of the most important aspects of his story.

Wone is the cornerstone of life for the Lani people. Wone is the principle of life and the foundation for analysing, interpreting, evaluating, debating, understanding, and exchanging life.

As with many other Lani, Papuan, Melanesian, and Indigenous leaders, Wone is the reason for his birth, survival, and leadership. He has thus a deep sense of duty and responsibility to serve and fight for his people, as well as other marginalised and oppressed members of society.

Reverend Dr Yoman stands firmly in his beliefs in the face of grief, tragedies, and death in his ancestral homeland. His commitment is unwavering, as he continually strives to stand up for and protect the rights of those who are most vulnerable and in need of a voice.

Wone has inspired him to lead a life of purpose and integrity, making him a pillar of strength and an example to others. In a dying forest, he becomes the voice of the falling leaves.

Among his greatest contributions to West Papua, Indonesia, and the world, will be his writings. Generations to come will remember his research and writings regarding history and the fate of his people.

West Papua will be high on the agenda at the Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit in Vanuatu this week.

West Papua’s United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is also present in Vanuatu. Other factions have arrived and are on their way to witness MSG’s decision on West Papua’s fate as well as their own leaders’ summit.

A feeling of anxiety pervades Reverend Dr Yoman as he prays — prompting him to write this letter as he recognises the many challenges ULMWP faces and warns them that they cannot afford even the slightest misstep.

This is the time inspiring Papuans and the ULWMP leadership must remember their fallen comrades, heroes and ancestors.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

The aims of Peace Action: Struggles for a Decolonised and Demilitarised Oceania and East Asia as stated by the editor, Valerie Morse, are “to make visible interconnections between social struggles separated by the vast expanse of Te Moana Nui-A-Kiwi [the Pacific Ocean] … to inspire, to enrage and to educate, but most of all, to motivate people to action” (p. 11).

It is an opportunity to learn from the activists involved in these struggles. Published by the Left of the Equator Press, there are plenty of clues to the radical ideas presented. The frontispiece points out that the publisher is anti-copyright, and the book is “not able to be reproduced for the purpose of profit”, is printed on 100 percent “post consumer recycled paper”, and “bound with a hatred for the State and Capital infused in every page”.

By their nature, activists take action and do things rather than just speak or write about things, as is the academic tradition, so this is an important, unique, and rare opportunity to learn from their insights, knowledge, and experience.

• READ MORE: Other Asia Pacific Report reviews

Twenty-three contributors representing some of the diverse Peoples of Aotearoa, Australia, China, Hawaii, Japan, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tahiti, Tokelau, Tonga, and West Papua offer 13 written chapters, plus poetry, artworks, and a photo essay. The range of topics is extensive too, including the history of the Crusades and the doctrine of discovery, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist movements, land reclamation movements, nuclear resistance and anti-racist movements, solidarity and allyship.

Both passion and ethics are evident in the stories about involvement in decolonised movements that are “situated in their relevant Indigenous practice” and anti-militarist movements that “actively practice peace making” (p. 11).

While their activism is unquestioned, the contributors come with other impressive credentials. Not only do they actively put into practice their strong values, but many are also researchers and scholars. Dr Pounamu Jade Aikman (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Apakura, Ngāti Wairere, Tainui, Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Arawa and Ngāti Tarāwhai) holds a Fulbright Scholarship from Harvard University. Mengzhu Fu (a 1.5 generation Tauiwi Chinese member of Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga) is doing their PhD research on Indigenous struggles in Aotearoa and Canada-occupied Turtle Islands. Kyle Kajihiro lectures at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and is a board member of Hawai’i Peace and Justice. Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic from the Yikwa-Kogoya clan of the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands. Ena Manuireva is an academic and writer who represents the Mā’ohi Nui people of Tahiti. Dr Jae-Eun Noh and Dr Joon-Shik Shin are Korean researchers in Australian universities. Dr Rebekah Jaung, a health researcher, is involved in Korean New Zealanders for a Better Future.

Several of the authors are working as investigators on the prestigious Marsden project entitled “Matiki Mai Te Hiaroa: #ProtectIhumātao”, a recent successful campaign to reclaim Māori land. These include Professor Jenny Bol Jun Lee-Morgan (Waikato, Ngāti Mahuta and Te Ahiwaru), Frances Hancock (Irish Pākehā), Carwyn Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu), Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Waiohua ki te Ahiwaru me te Ākitai, Waikato Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Pikiao), and Pania Newton (Ngāpuhi, Waikato, Ngāti Mahuta and Ngāti Maniapoto) who is co-founder and spokesperson for the SOUL/#ProtectIhumātao campaign.

Others work for climate justice, peace, Indigenous, social justice organisations, and community groups. Jungmin Choi coordinates nonviolence training at World Without War, a South Korean antimilitarist organisation based in Seoul. Mizuki Nakamura, a member of One Love Takae coordinates alternative peace tours in Japan. Tuhi-Ao Bailey (Ngāti Mutunga, Te Ātiawa and Taranaki) is chair of the Parihaka Papakāinga Trust and co-founder of Climate Justice Taranaki.

Zelda Grimshaw, an artist and activist, helped coordinate the Disrupt Land Forces campaign at a major arts fair in Brisbane. Arama Rata (Ngāruhine, Taranaki and Ngāti Maniapoto) is a researcher for WERO (Working to End Racial Oppression) and Te Kaunoti Hikahika.

Some are independent writers and artists. Emalani Case is a writer, teacher and aloha ‘āina from Waimea Hawai’i. Tony Fala (who has Tokelauan, Palagi, Samoan, and Tongan ancestry) engages with urban Pacific communities in Tāmaki Makaurau. Marylou Mahe is a decolonial feminist artist from Haouaïlou in the Kanak country of Ajë-Arhö. Tina Ngata (Ngäti Porou) is a researcher, author and an advocate for environmental Indigenous and human rights.

Jos Wheeler is a director of photography for film and television in Aotearoa.

Background analysis for this focus on Te Moana Nui A Kiwi, provides information about the concepts of imperial masculinity, infection, ideas from European maritime law Mare Liberum, that saw the sea as belonging to everyone. These ideas steered colonisation and placed shackles, both figuratively and physically, on Indigenous Peoples around the world.

In the 17th century, Japan occupied the country of Okinawa, now also used as a training base by the US military. European “explorers” had been given “missions” in the 18th century that included converting the people to Christianity and locating useful and profitable resources in far-flung countries such as Aotearoa, Australia, New Caledonia and Tahiti.

In the 19th century, Hawai’i was subject to US imperialism and militarisation.

In the 20th century, Western countries were “liberating other nations” and dividing them up between them, such as the US “liberation” of South Korea from Japanese colonial rule. The Dutch prepared West Papua for independence 1960s after colonisation, but a subsequent Indonesian military invasion left the country in a worse predicament.

However, the resistance from the Indigenous Peoples has been evident from the beginnings of imperialist invasions and militarisation of the Pacific, despite the arbitrary violence that accompanied these. Resistance continues, as the contributors to Peace Action demonstrate, and the contributions reveal the very many faces and facets of non-violent resistance that works towards an eventual peace with justice.

Resistance has included education, support to help self-sufficiency, medical and legal support, conscientious objection, human rights advocacy, occupation of land, coordinating media coverage, visiting sites of significance, being the voice of the movement, petitions, research, writing, organising and joining peaceful marches, coordinating solidarity groups, making submissions, producing newsletter and community newspapers, relating stories, art exhibitions and installations, visiting churches, schools, universities, conferences, engaging with politicians, exploiting and creating digital platforms, fundraising, putting out calls for donations and hospitality, selling T-shirts and tote bags, awareness-raising events, hosting visitors, making and serving food, bearing witness, musical performances, photographic exhibitions, film screenings, songs on CDs.

In order to mobilise people, activists have been involved in political engagement, public education, multimedia engagement, legal action, protests, rallies, marches, land and military site occupations, disruption of events, producing food from the land, negotiating treaties and settlements, cultural revitalisation, community networking and voluntary work, local and international solidarity, talanoa, open discussions, radical history teaching, printmaking workshops, vigils, dance parties, mobile kitchens, parades, first aid, building governance capacity, sharing histories, increasing medical knowledge.

Activist have been prompted to act because of anger, disgust, and fear. The oppressors are likened to big waves, to large octopuses (interestingly also used in racist cartoons to depict Chinese immigrants to Aotearoa), to giants, to a virus, slavers, polluters, destroyers, exploiters, thieves, rapists, mass murderers, war criminals, war profiteers, white supremacists, racists, brutal genocide, ruthless killers, subjugators, fearmongers, demonisers, narcissistic sociopaths, and torturers.

The resisters often try to “find beauty in the struggle” (Case, p. 70), using imagery of flowers and trees, love, dancing, song, braiding fibers or leis, dolphins, shark deities, flourishing food baskets, fertile gardens, pristine forests, sacred valleys, mother earth, seashells, candlelight, rainbows, rays of the rising sun, friendship, alliance, partners, majestic lowland forests, ploughs, watering seeds, and harvesting crops.

Collaboration in resistance requires dignity, respect, integrity, providing safe spaces, honesty, openness, hard work without complaint, learning, cultural and spiritual awareness. The importance of coordination, cooperation and commitment are emphasised.

And readers are made aware of the sustained energy that is needed to follow through on actions.

The aim of Peace Action is to inspire, enrage, educate and motivate. These chapters will appeal mostly to those already convinced, and this is deliberately so.

In these narratives, images we have guidance as to what is needed to be an activist. We admire the courage and bravery, we are educated into the multitude of activities that can be undertaken, and the immense amount of work in planning and sustaining action.

This can serve as a handbook, providing plans of action to follow. Richness and creativity are provided in the fascinating and informative narratives, storytelling, and illustrations.

I find it difficult to criticise because its goal is clear, there is no pretence that it is something else, and it achieves what it sets out to do. It remains to be seen whether peace action will follow. But that will be up to the readers.

• Peace Action: Struggles for a Decolonised and Demilitarised Oceania and East Asia, edited by Valerie Morse. Te Whanganui-A-Tara (Wellington): Left of the Equator Press, 2022, 178 pages. NZ$25.99. ISBN 9780473634452.

Dr Heather Devere is former director of practice, National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, and chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN). This review is published in collaboration with Pacific Journalism Review.

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.

Three years on from the Christchurch terror attacks on 15 March 2019, Mahvash Ikram writes an open letter to her young son telling him one day he will learn how the Muslim community was targeted, but that shouldn’t scare him from going to a mosque.

Dear son,

You’re not yet two, but you’ve already been to the mosque several times. You don’t understand what happens there, but you love to copy what everyone does. You already know how to say Allah-o-Akbar, and it has become an essential part of your ever-growing vocabulary.

Some would say Muslims start early with their young and I agree wholeheartedly.

So, here’s your first lesson — never be ashamed of your beliefs.

• READ MORE: Mosque attack survivor Temel Atacocugu finishes 350km Walk for Peace
• Other Christchurch mosque attack reports

But, remember your vocabulary also includes salam, which means peace. So, practise your faith in peace.

Not long from now, you will understand the concept of standing in prayer behind the imam.

And that’s when we will take you to the mosque for your first ever Friday prayer, Jummah.

We will most likely go as a family, and maybe a few friends will come along too. I will make a big deal out of it. Mothers are embarrassing in all cultures — especially your mum, just ask your older sister.

A white shirt
We will dress you in new clothes, probably a white shirt that will be a bit tight around your pudgy little tummy. It will no doubt get stained with your favourite lunch, which will be ready for you when you come home.

Soon you will learn Friday prayer is a bit of a celebration for Muslims — clean clothes, a hearty home-cooked meal and lots of people to meet at the mosque. It will be an important part of your social calendar, second only to the two big festival prayers.

I look forward to all of it, except one thing — one day you will learn about the March 15 terrorist attacks.

You will learn someone targeted innocent members of your community for their faith.

And that’s your second lesson, sometimes you will be treated unkindly for your beliefs. You are not alone, there are other communities that suffer the same fate.

Remember — this has nothing to do with you. You are not responsible for a fault in another person’s head.

Trust me, it will be a rude awakening — just like it was for the rest of our country. It is often called the end of Aotearoa’s innocence. Lots of people, including children, were killed and injured that day.

It still hurts
One of those who died was a three-year-old who went to the mosque with his older brother.

Another child was shot but survived. Lots of children lost their parents too. It still hurts.

Most grown-ups around you are trying to make sure something like this never happens again in Aotearoa and around the world.

Sometimes we fail, but we are trying.

Hate is an ugly emotion, too big for one’s body. When it takes over, it makes people cruel. They say and do things that can seriously hurt for a very long time. The worst part is these people don’t even realise how horrible they are.

You will also hear of people who practise your faith, but carry a similar hatred. Stay away from them. They, too, destroy families. Denounce them openly.

People may call you names, they may provoke you to fight back and say your religion teaches violence. It is not true. Ignore them.

Keep this verse of the Quran close to your heart and have patience with what they say and leave them with noble (dignity).

Don’t be scared
Don’t let all of this scare you from going to the mosque.

In fact, when you are a bit older I encourage you to go to all sorts of places of worship, whether it’s a mosque, a temple or a church, you will find tranquility and calm.

Don’t be afraid to know others and learn about their views, it is how we rid the world of hate.

Our religion teaches us to respect all other humans regardless of their faith, race, ethnic origin, gender, or social status.

I understand all this information might make you a bit nervous. It is a lot to take in for a little boy your age. But some grown ups just never got on to it and look at what that’s done.

So, let’s get started. After all, we Muslims do start a bit early with our young.

All my love,

Xoxoxo

Mummy

Mahvash Ikram is on the staff at Radio New Zealand. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Twenty years ago, I was on a plane from Rarotonga to Auckland. Lovely flight, with a path at the end I had never experienced before.

Almost from the tip of the North Island, down to Tamaki Makaurau — the rising sun bathing the hills and coastline in rich, almost mango, orange. So rich and orange that for a second I wondered if I had mistakenly got on a flight to Aussie, not Aotearoa.

It was the most stunningly beautiful sight.

• READ MORE: 9/11 killed it, but 20 years on global justice movement is poised for revival
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Half asleep from the then usual awake-all-night, early morning departure, dawn arrival, I floated through duty free and customs, not noticing anything really different — until our old Cook Islands Press photographer Dean Treml who was on the same flight came up looking alarmed.

“There’s been an attack in New York – two planes have flown into the World Trade Towers,” or words to that effect. I was like, “..whaaat? No …Really??”

He nodded, hurried off.

I blinked a bit, shook off my disbelief, and forgot about it as we moved through the lines, looking forward to seeing my younger son, Mikaera.

He was there in arrivals. Rushed to give my three-year-old a kneeling hug. Smiled up at his grandparents.

‘Stay calm’
“Stay calm,” the grandfather told me, “and don’t get upset, but terrorists have attacked the Twin Towers in America,” or words to that effect. “It’s on the screen behind you.”

In those days, news was still played on the big multiscreens over the arrival doors. I turned, looked, and caught sight of a jet slicing into one of the towers. Over the rest of the day, that scene, and its twin, were replayed over and again, as a stunned world witnessed an unthinkably cinematic display of destruction.

And then, hours later, one by one, the towers dropped.

Like billions of others, I watched, in my case in between playing with my young son, alone at his mum’s home, looking over his shoulder at the television.

A few times it got too much. Made sure Mikaera was okay with toys and/or food, then stepped outside to the garage to cry, the replay sight of people jumping from the smoking towers to their deaths; hiding my tears and low moans of stunned despair.

Big breaths, wipe away the tears, back inside to play with blocks and trucks, and … planes. One eye on the TV.

Nearly 3000 people died that day. Almost all Americans, with a few hundred other nationalities.

Since then?

Tragedy of so-called ‘War on Terror’
Millions of non-Americans have died in the Middle East, mostly from economic blockades resulting in deaths from starvation and treatable diseases. Hundreds of thousands dying in a so-called “War on Terror” that served to produce tens of thousands more “terrorists”, vowing to avenge the deaths of their children, siblings, parents, aunties, cousins and uncles.

Western states have spent trillions of dollars, weapons dealers making obscenely fat profits on the back of jingoistic propaganda from news media which, to this day, counts Western deaths to the last man and woman, but barely mentions any civilian deaths from their bullets, bombs and drones.

Profits that have been used to bribe officials at home and abroad, via a network of secrecy havens such as New Zealand and the Cook Islands, but mostly via American states like Delaware, or financial centres like London in the UK, flushing trillions more through millions of secret companies for the benefit of a few.

9/11, they said, changed everything.

Twenty years later, with the war on terror a complete and utter failure, everything certainly has changed.

For the worse.

Western financial hypocrisy
Trillions continue to be hidden, including with our help, legally or otherwise. Legality being a very moveable feast. Western states pick on tiny offshore banking centres like the Niue, Samoa and the Cook Islands, while ignoring the gaping holes in their own banks and finance centres.

Governments like New Zealand and Australia fund corruption studies in the Pacific, as one regional example, but not their own.

And, like little children, we are still over-awed when famous people come to visit our homelands, happily posing and smiling in delight whenever big country people deign to visit our shores.

Unlike when then Tahitian president Gaston Flosse came to Rarotonga in 1996, and Cook Islanders protested nuclear testing, for example, the Cook Islands happily welcomed then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012.

Even media people and supposed journalists lined up to grin, to grip the hand of a leader reported as once asking about using a drone to assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

In fact, in 1996, I was one of those people, “meeting” Clinton on a rope line at the Atlanta Olympics when I was “Press Attache” for our Olympics team.

“Greetings from the South Pacific!” I said cheerily when she offered her hand to me, among a hundred or so others who had suddenly gathered.

“Outstanding!”, she replied, equally delighted.

Of course, none of us knew then what was coming.

But we know now.

Cook Islands in lockstep
And still the Cook Islands walks in lockstep with our powerful neighbours, a “dear friend” of Australia’s ruling party and its unbelievably corrupt mining, military and media networks.

Two decades later, the Homeland seems yet to learn any lessons from 9/11, yet to admit any responsibility for its part in enabling #corruption, money laundering and terrorism which breeds extremism, hate, and death, on all sides.

Instead, our government works against the interests of our own region, a Pacific pawn used and abused in age-old colonial tactics of divide et empera – divide and conquer – a phrase going back over two millennia.

Today our peoples are further misled by a tsunami of fake news – misinformation and disinformation – from mysteriously well-resourced sources. Distracted from real responses to the #covid19 pandemic, which distracts further from even bigger threats from global warming — or “climate change” as it was known for so long, before leaders started only recently admitting we face a “climate crisis” — but still locked to “market mechanisms” as a supposed solution.

So, what are the solutions?

Fight fake news. Fight corruption. Fight the hateful, extremist, death cults hiding behind religion, especially within the largest, most powerful faith in the world — Christianity.

Fight for a world where shorelines are bathed in mango dawns, and our children don’t grow up watching death replayed every single day of their lives.

Jason Brown is founder of Journalism Agenda 2025 and writes about Pacific and world journalism and ethically globalised Fourth Estate issues. He is a former co-editor of Cook Islands Press. This article is republished with permission.

By Rambo Talabong in Manila

After her repeated urgings were unheeded, Erlinda Echanis formally has formally demanded that Pink Petals Memorial Homes release the body of her husband, assassinated Anakpawis chair Randall “Randy” Echanis.

The QCPD wants either a fingerprint or a DNA test to establish the body’s identity.

Meanwhile, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines has protested in the very strongest terms over the murder of Randall Echanis. Its statement published online says:

‘Crime of state terrorism’
“In a letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, ICHRP reports the crime of state terrorism in the killing of veteran activist and peace consultant Echanis.

“At about 1.20am Manila time, on August 10, 2020, five men were seen leaving the Echanis’ rented home in Novaliches, Quezon City. Inside the bodies of Echanis and an unnamed neighbour were found, with stab and gunshot wounds. Echanis was at home receiving medical attention.

“‘This murder is almost certainly a calibrated operation of the Duterte counter-insurgency programme, Oplan Kapanatagan. It is designed to destroy any dialogue that may resolve the five-decade long armed conflict in the Philippines, and instead pursue all out political violence against civilians,’ says ICHRP chairperson Peter Murphy in a letter to the UN High Commissioner.

“Echanis was a peace consultant for the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, a member of the 2016-17 Reciprocal Working Committee on Social and Economic Reforms in the formal peace talks sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Government.

“He advocated for the mass of poor peasant farmers, for he was the deputy secretary-general of the Peasant Movement of the Philippines (KMP) and chairperson of the Anakpawis Party-List, a political party for peasants, fisherfolk and workers.

“On the same day, Erlinda Echanis, wife of the slain peace consultant, reported that police officers forcibly took the body of her husband which is now being guarded by state authorities.

“‘I have positively identified his lifeless body which bore torture marks, multiple stab and gunshot wounds,’ says Echanis.

UN plea for justice
“ICHRP urged the UN High Commissioner’s office and the United Nations Security Council to lead international condemnation of the murder of Echanis, and to urge the Philippines government to bring the perpetrators to justice. In the same letter, it also appeals to the government to abandon its war on all political opposition, and instead to release all political prisoners and resume the stalled peace talks.

“‘We call on all member states of the UN Human Rights Council to be seized of the seriousness of the human rights situation in the Philippines and to adopt all the recommendations in your June 30 report on the human rights situation in the Philippines,’ says ICHRP.

“Lastly, Murphy addresses the international community, calling on it ‘to unequivocally condemn the state killing of Echanis’.

A Papuan church leader and advocate for social justice has penned an open letter to the Indonesian government calling for justice and an end to racism to enable a genuine self-determination process for the Melanesian region.

“The problem of Papua has become increasingly complex and severe because the root of the problem is racism and injustice, not separatism and treason,” says Reverend Dr Socratez S. Yoman, president of the Alliance of West Papuan Baptist Churches.

“It has now [become] increasingly complicated due to the global mobilisation of ‘Black Lives Matter and West Papua Lives Matter’ [movements] which has become part of the international community.

READ MORE: Background articles with Reverend Socratez Yoman

“However, no matter how difficult and complicated, there must be a way out for a win-win solution.”

Criticising the Indonesian government’s preparation of Special Autonomy Version II plans for the “Land of Papua” from an indigenous perspective, he cites an Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) report stating that racism and injustice against indigenous Papuans is the root of the problem.

Reverend Yoman also calls for the Indonesian government to hold “peaceful dialogue without limitations” with the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) mediated by a third party in a neutral place.

This would be comparable to the RI-GAM negotiations over Aceh in Helsinki, Finland, on 15 August 2005. “This goal is a win-win solution.”

Open letter to Indonesia
Reverend Yoman’s letter states:

Dear Dr Tito Karnavian
Interior Minister of the Republic of Indonesia
Jakarta

Through this letter, as one of the leaders of the Church in the Land of Papua I would like to convey to the Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Indonesia about the disappointment and anxiety faced by the people in the Land of Papua, especially Indigenous Papuans in addressing the Evaluation of Special Autonomy and the preparation of Special Autonomy Version II which is currently being prepared by the government.

I hear and follow and read on social media or in messages shared through WhatsApp that Indigenous Papuans are increasingly voicing their rejection of the Draft Law on Special Autonomy II. I cite one example of the rejection of the government’s version of the Special Autonomy Draft Law.

“We on behalf of the people of Region III Doberay (Birds Head), West Papua reject the Interior Ministers version of Papua’s Special Autonomy Bill. Return it to the Papuan people so that what they want is included in the Special Autonomy Bill so that in the future they can get the best solution for the future of the Land of Papua,” chairperson of the Papua Region III Customary Council Doberay, Mananwir Paul Fincent Major (Tuesday (6/23).

In my opinion, this voice of rejection is very reasonable and can be accepted with common sense because it has seen the real dynamics of Special Autonomy over the last 19 years, which is that Special Autonomy cannot answer the demands and fulfil the expectations of Indigenous Papuans.

For example: The 2001 Special Autonomy which mandated for protection, recognition of the basic rights of Indigenous Papuans, empowerment, and affirmative action, has failed, causing deep disappointment among Indigenous Papuans.

During Special Autonomy many Indigenous Papuans were killed at the hands of the security apparatus. Local political parties have not been allowed.

The Morning Star flag is prohibited from flying. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has never been implemented.

While the people of Aceh were given a special place in the hearts of the Indonesian government by being provided with a space for peace negotiations between GAM and the Republic of Indonesia mediated by a third party in a neutral venue in Helsinki on August 15, 2005.

Local political parties were able to be formed and GAM flags were allowed to fly freely.

Looking at the background of the birth of the Special Autonomy Law No. 21/2001, it is clear that it was not a gift from the Indonesian government to the people of Papua, but it was established because the people of Papua demanded independence in order to leave the Republic of Indonesia.

So, Special Autonomy is a win-win solution between the Indigenous Papuans and the Indonesian government.

Papuans are demanding independence because there is a historical background of injustice, racism and state crime in the implementation of the 1969 Act of Free Choice (PEPERA). I have carefully studied the documents resulting from the Act of Free Choice.

Annex 1 was prepared by the UN representative, Dr Fernando Ortiz Sanz from Bolivia and Annex II report is the version of the Indonesian government. The Annex II report has significant differences to the Annex 1 report.

When the Indonesian government promoted the word “wellbeing” to Papuans, the word was not a new expression, but was a repetition of what had been conveyed by the Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Indonesia Amir Machmud during the implementation of the Act of Free Choice (Pepera) of July 14, 1969 in Merauke, in the presence of participants of the Members of the Forum for the Act of Free Choice.

“… the Indonesian government, desires and is able to protect the wellbeing of the people of West Irian, therefore, there is no other choice, but to stay with Indonesia.” See Source Material: United Nations Official Records: 1812th Plenary Meeting of the UN Assembly, agenda item 98,19 November 1969, paragraph 18, p.2).

The Minister of Home Affairs from The Government of the Republic of Indonesia promised that they were: “… willing and able to protect the welfare of the people of West Irian …”

But, the reality in the course of the 51 years from 1969 to 2020 is in contradiction with these beautiful and sweet words which turned the Land of Papua into a human disaster and tragedy with suffering, tears, blood and bones scattered over the Land of Papua.

Indigenous Papuans are slaughtered like animals with the stigma of being “separatists”, treasonous, and criminals in the interests of national sovereignty and national security.

Professor Dr Franz Magnis-Suseno, a Catholic cleric acknowledged the humanitarian tragedy experienced by the Indigenous Papuans as follows..

“There is an impression that Papuans are treated as if they have not been recognised as human beings …”

He adds “… The situation in Papua is bad, abnormal, uncivilized, and shameful, because it is closed to foreign media. Papua is a rotting wound on the body of the Indonesian people.” (Source: Magnis: Nationality, Democracy, Pluralism: 2015, p. 255)

Historical facts prove that the incorporation of Papua into Indonesian territory was a bloody history and filled with injustice because the Indonesian military forced Papuans with the muzzles of their weapons.

Most of the people of Indonesia, including the Minister for Home Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, H. Dr. Tito Karnavian do not necessarily know much about the process of incorporating Papua into Indonesian territory. The process of integration was through cruel, brutal and inhumane processes.

According to Amiruddin al Rahab: “Papua integrated with Indonesia through the force of the military.” (Source: The Papuan Secret War, Trauma and Separatism, 2010: p. 42).

What Amiruddin said is not excessive. There is evidence of the military being directly involved and leading the implementation of the 1969 Act of Free Choice (PEPERA). The Ambassador of Gabon at the United Nations General Assembly in 1989 queried question number 6: “Why is there no secret representation, but an open consultation attended by the government and the military? ” (Source: United Nations Official Records: 1812th Plenary Meeting of the UN GA, agenda item 108, 20 November 1969, paragraph 11, p.2).

“On July 14, 1969, the Referendum (PEPERA) began with 175 Members of the Deliberation Forum for Merauke. On this occasion a large group of Indonesian soldiers were present …” (Source: UN Official Report Annex 1, paragraphs 189-200).

The letter of the military leadership reads: “Intensify all activities in each field by using all organic and material forces both from the Army and other forces. Stick to the guidelines. The Referendum in West Irian (IRBA) 1969 MUST BE WON, MUST BE WON … ” (Source: Official Telegram Letter Col. Inf. Soepomo, Regional Military Command
Tjenderawasih Number: TR-20 / PS / PSAD / 196, dated 20-2-1967, based on Radio Gram MEN / PANGAD No: TR-228/1967 TBT dated 7-2-1967, regarding: Facing the Referendum at the IRBA (West Irian) in 1969).

In 1969 a majority of 95 percent of West Papuans voted for independence: “… that 95 percent of Papuans support the Papuan independence movement.” (Source: Secret Meeting of the United States Ambassador to Indonesia with UN Team Member Fernando Ortiz Sanz, in June 1969: Summary of Jack W. Lydman’s report, July 18, 1969, in NAA).

The Indonesian Ambassador, Sudjarwo Tjondronegoro admitted: “Many Papuans may not agree to live with Indonesia.” (Source: UNGA Official Records MM.ex 1, paragraph 126).

Dr Fernando Ortiz Sanz reported to the UN General Assembly in 1969:

“The majority of Papuans show a desire to separate from Indonesia and support the vision to establish an independent Papuan state.” (Source: UN Doc. Annex I, A / 7723, paragraph 243, p.47).

The political rights of the people of Papua have been truly betrayed along with their basic rights and conscience. The hope of Papuans has been sacrificed by the muzzle of Indonesian military weapons.

As for the history of the Papuan people, December 1, 1961 is Independence Day for the People and Nation of Papua. Independence was dissolved by Ir. Sukarno on 9 December 1961 by stating: “Disband the Netherlands-Made Country”.

This historical resistance and political status of Papua is the longest running conflict in Asia.

This is proven by the long struggle and resistance carried out by strong educated native Papuans before Papua was forcibly joined into Indonesian territory at the muzzle of a weapon.

Here are the names of some of the virtuous warriors: Herman Womsiwor, Markus Kaisiepo, Nicolaas Jouwe, F. Torey, Nicolaas Tanggafma, Bernadus (Ben) Tanggafma, Hermanus Wayoi, Fritz Kihirio and many others not mentioned here.

These figures had travelled the world including to the UN in the 1960s. It can be said that these educated native Papuans felt betrayed by the United Nations, America, the Netherlands and Indonesia because they were not involved in the New York agreement on August 15, 1962. These Papuan leaders expressed their feelings as follows.

“We were traded as goats by the Americans.” (Source: Maire Leadbeater: See No Evil: New Zealand’s betrayal of the people of West Papua: 2018, pp. 94).

This brief historical process has been written and conveyed to the Indonesian government, so that the government does not ignore it and does not take the view that we do not yet know these historical facts. If this history is ignored in the process of solving the Papua problem, then there will never be a peaceful solution between Indonesia and the people of Papua.

During this time the government and the security services have quietly taken cover behind the political stigma that Papuans are separatists, rebels, along with the latest myth that they are part of criminal gangs. So, the basic problem is not the political stigma used by the state to suppress the Indigenous Papuans. The root or heart of the problem between Indonesia and the people of Papua is actually racism and injustice. From racism and injustice, four major problems have been discovered by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

The LIPI team was very careful in formulating the root causes of the Papuan conflict. The LIPI team, were of the opinion that it was dangerous to even reveal the root of the problem. However, the LIPI team succeeded in mapping the consequences of 4 problems which were the result of the real root of the problem, namely racism and injustice.

In this letter I rank the root of the problems suffered by the Papuans so far as follows:

1. RACISM as the main source of the problem.
2. INJUSTICE as the main source of the problem.
3. The history of the integration and political status of West Papua in Indonesia as a result of RACISIM AND INJUSTICE.
4. Gross human rights violations committed by the state for 57 years as a result of RACISIM AND INJUSTICE
5. Discrimination and marginalisation as a result of RACISM and INJUSTICE
6. The failure of development in the fields of education, health and economy for the Indigenous Papuans because Indigenous Papuans are considered to be “Monkeys” and therefore they do not need to be developed. This is caused by RACISM and INJUSTICE.

Through this letter, I submit, that as long as the roots of the problem, namely Racism and Injustice, have not yet been resolved, Papuans will continue to fight for political rights and dignity and a future over their ancestral lands.

Instead the Indonesian government uses the strength of the security services and the legal system of the state to suppress and oppress Papuans. Also, the government will incur significant costs to bribe diplomats and Prime Ministers of states who sympathise with the struggle of the Papuan people.

The problem of Papua has become increasingly complex and severe because the root of the problem is racism and injustice, not separatism and treason. It has now been increasingly complicated due to the global mobilisation of “Black Lives Matter and West Papua Lives Matter” which has become part of the international community. However, no matter how difficult and complicated, there must be a way out for a win-win solution.

Therefore, through this open letter, I submit to the government of the Republic of Indonesia through the Minister of Home Affairs as follows:

1. Self-determination for the People of Papua as the final and peaceful solution to end RACISM and INJUSTICE towards Indigenous Papuans NOT Special Autonomy Version II.
2. To move towards the process of Self-Determination for the people of Papua, the Indonesian government should hold peaceful dialogue without limitations with the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) mediated by a third party in a neutral place. Like RI-GAM in Helsinki on 15 August 2005. This goal is a win-win solution.
3. Cooperation agreements between Indonesia and West Papua will be discussed further at the negotiating table between Indonesia and ULMWP.

Thank you. God Bless Us
Ita Wakhu Purom, Monday, 29 June 2020.

Reverend Dr Socratez S.Yoman, MA
President of the Alliance of West Papuan Baptist Churches
Member: Papuan Council of Churches (WPCC)
Member: Pacific Council of Churches (PCC)
Member : Baptist World Alliance (BWA)

Pacific Media Centre

Veteran campaigner John Minto, UNITE union national director Mike Treen and other speakers today called on New Zealanders to “mobilise” against involvement in any war on Iran.

Hundreds were at the rally in Aotea Square in Auckland followed by a march to the United States consulate in protest over its “warmongering” in the Middle East.

Protests also took place in Wellington and Waihopai, the NZ spy base for the Western “Five Eyes” communications network led by the US.

READ MORE: ‘We want them out call’ Iraqi call over US troops

“Don’t Attack Iran”, “No war with Iraq or Iran!”, “NZ Troops out Now!” and “Shut down the Waihopai Spy Base!” and other slogans featured on placards at all three protests.

“All foreign troops – including New Zealand soldiers – need to leave Iraq now,” said Minto.

“We need to mobilise much bigger numbers than we did in 2003 – and I think we will.”

Minto said for NZ and other foreign soldiers to remain there in defiance of the Iraqi government’s recent request for them to leave was an “act of war”.

Minto, a co-founder of GPJA, now lives in Christchurch.

Protest support
Support for the Auckland protest came from the Green Party, First Union, Unite Union, Love Aotearoa Hate Racism, Radio Inqilaab, Migrant Workers Association of Aotearoa, Anti-Bases Campaign and Socialist Aotearoa.

“Since calling this protest we have received endorsements from across New Zealand and as a result, GPJA has changed its name to Global Peace and Justice Aotearoa,” said Treen.

“We seek to link activists from around the country to build a strong movement for peace and justice.”

Those backing the protest include Iranian-born MP Golriz Ghahraman, Green Party foreign affairs, defence, and human rights spokesperson. who was unable to attend in person.

“My apologies and huge appreciation for the kaupapa of the anti-war march in Auckland, especially as a victim of American war profiteering in Iran and Iraq,” she told the organisers in a message of support.

Advocacy groups have called on children and young people to defeat the “ultimate supervillain” – silence – to help end violence in and around schools.

The Holy Trinity Primary School students’ superheroes will be entered in this global competition organised by UNICEF and Comics Uniting Nations.

During the workshop at Holy Trinity Primary School, UNICEF Pacific ambassador Pita Taufatofua said: “Every child in Fiji, in the Pacific islands and throughout the world, has the right to go to school and feel safe.

“Let’s talk about the kind of superpowers that your superhero might have that will help every child feel safe in school.”

The students also had the chance to work with Tui Ledua, from Kanalevu Animation and Illustration.

“How will we create a superhero to prevent bullying?” Ledua told the students.

He responded to the students’ ideas on the characteristics his superhero should have and brought this character to life right in front of their eyes, a superhero complete with a sasa broom to be used as a magic wand to create a peaceful world.

Silencing children
Silence is a supernatural character that uses its powers to stop children from speaking up and taking action against violence in and around schools.

Children and young people aged 25 years and under have been invited to design their own comic superhero that will defeat Silence and help keep children safe in school.

UNICEF Pacific representative Sheldon Yett said: “From fighting and bullying to sexual harassment and corporal punishment, violence in and around schools can have devastating, long-term consequences for children.”

The Silence superhero comic contest will encourage children and young people in
Fiji and around the world to be part of UNICEF’s global campaign to shed light on and spark action to #ENDviolence in schools through the creative medium of comic design.

The top submissions in the contest will be chosen after the closing date on October 25 by a special panel of judges, including comic artist Gabriel Picolo and last year’s comic contest winner Sathviga “Sona” Sridhar.

The public will then have the opportunity to vote online for their favourite comic hero between November 16 and 25.

The winner will be announced in December and will work with a professional team to turn their winning idea into a full-length comic book. Their comic will be presented to World Leaders at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development at the United Nations in July 2019, as well as distributed to schools and children worldwide.

• The Superhero contest

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Norway has asked Israel to “explain” its unlawful capture of the Norwegian-flagged ship Al Awda that last month tried to breach the Gaza Strip’s 10-year maritime blockade.

The international Freedom Flotilla was in a bid to deliver medical supplies to Palestinians in the coastal enclave.

“We have asked the Israeli authorities to clarify the circumstances around the seizure of the vessel and the legal basis for the intervention,” said a Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman.

READ MORE: Israel’s attack on the Gaza Flotilla – looking back a year later 

“While this is certainly far more than the New Zealand government’s response (which appears to be nothing at all, since Kiwi Mike Treen was bashed and arrested in the same attack), the Freedom Flotilla’s Norwegian campaign is demanding their government takes a stand,” said the NZ humanitarian group Kia Ora Gaza.

The full statement from the Ship to Gaza Norway human rights group yesterday said:

“When will Norway protest against hijacking and extensive violence against people on board?

“On July 29, the Norwegian former fishing vessel Kårstein [renamed Al Awda] was hijacked in international waters, with extensive violence by Israeli navy soldiers.

“For more than a week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ follow-up of the case has limited itself to asking Israeli authorities to ‘clarify the course of events’ and say why they ‘encroached on the vessel’.

“No indication of protest.

“Now Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide has continued this game. After talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu she said that ‘we asked the Israeli authorities for an explanation of why the ship was captured, the course of events and the use of power’.

“Still no indication of protest.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ gathering of facts in the case limits itself to the embassy personnel’s talks with five Norwegian citizens in Israeli prison the day after the hijacking. After they were deported and able to speak freely, they have not been contacted by the MFA.

“There were people from 16 nations on board. Their version has not been obtained. The ship’s highly recognised doctor, who delivered a shocking report on Saturday, has not been contacted.

No legal basis for hijacking, violence
“However, in the talks with the five Norwegian citizens in prison, there were revealed more than enough [grounds] to justify a strong protest. The MFA knows that our action was non-violence based and that the ship had a load of desperately needed medical equipment.

“Independent of possible differences in view on international law, there is of course no legal basis for hijacking a ship in international waters by knocking out peaceful, non-violent people and using heavy violence against them.

“Nor is there any legal basis for stealing everything of valuables and clothing. From Mikkel Grüner, a member of Bergen City Council, the soldiers stole everything except for the ship’s Norwegian flag, which they had trampled on.

“The Foreign Minister obviously does not know that the soldiers have taken all the belongings of the people on board.

Lies and nonsense
“Israel has always lied about how they use military power. Every time they say that the operation has been done without violence, but we have documented through video footage that it is a lie.

“This time, violence was worse than ever [since the Israeli commando attack that killed 10 civilians on the Mavi Marmara-led flotilla in 2010] and Israel’s ambassador continues with the same nonsense.

“What Israel does in this case is of course just a pale shadow of what they do to the Palestinians, including daily attacks on the fishermen in Gaza. A pleasant chat with those responsible for violence, terror and mass murder will lead to nothing except for the game to continue.

“Since governments do nothing that may stop this, people with conscience and knowledge must do something. That is why we sailed to Gaza.

“The result is international effects that show that it is ordinary people’s action, pressure and protest that can eventually produce results.”

Asia Pacific Report has a content sharing arrangement with Kia Ora Gaza.

• Remember Marvi Marmara: ‘ We really believed we would reach Gaza’

The Aotearoa Independence Movement (AIM) congratulates Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for explicitly defying President Trump’s bullying in relation to New Zealand’s United Nations vote against the US declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. She went on to say that “New Zealand has, and always has had, an independent foreign policy“.

Fine words. If only they bore some semblance of reality. The fact is that New Zealand is the most loyal, albeit junior, satellite of the US Empire.

AIM assumes that Jacinda is referring to things like the nuclear free policy. Yes, that is commendable – but never let it be forgotten that if the 1980s’ Labour government that implemented it had had its way, NZ would have been both nuclear free and still in the ANZUS military alliance with the US.

New Zealand did not leave ANZUS, it was kicked out by the US.

New Zealand’s most important contribution to the US Empire is as a decades-long member of the Five Eyes spy alliance and hosting the Waihopai spy base, which is operated by the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) on behalf of the the US National Security Agency (NSA)

Within the past few weeks Andrew Little, the Minister Responsible for the GCSB, has stated in writing that this government has no intention of closing Waihopai.

AIM is happy to give the Prime Minister some suggestions that would make her statement actually be true.

What would a non-aligned foreign policy look like?

It’s time for this country to pull the plug, to finish the business started in the 1980s which saw NZ both nuclear free and out of ANZUS; and to break the chains – military, intelligence, economic and cultural – that continue to bind us to the American Empire.

The Americans are very proud of having won their independence from the British Empire; it’s time for us to do the same from the American Empire. Let’s deal with the world on our terms, not on those dictated from whichever empire we happen to be a junior member of at the time.

AIM thinks that gaining true independence from the American Empire, and becoming non-aligned, is an idea whose time has well and truly come. It is not “anti-American” (or “racist” or “xenophobic”, for that matter). We stand with the American people who are fighting back in their millions against the daily outrages being perpetrated by Trump and his reactionary billionaire cronies.

We stand with them as we have stood with them in common causes ranging from the war in Vietnam to the invasion of Iraq and the campaign to impose the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) on our peoples.

It doesn’t mean isolationism. It would mean that New Zealand would pick our allies and, if necessary, our wars, on a case by case basis, decided first and foremost by what is in the interests of the New Zealand people, not the interests of foreign governments and/or corporations.

It would involve cutting the strings that continue to bind us to the American Empire. Specifically:

• get out of the Five Eyes spy alliance (with the US, UK, Canada and Australia), and pull the plug on the ANZUS-in-all-but-name military and intelligence alliance with Trump’s increasingly dangerous and unhinged US. Renounce the recent Wellington and Washington Declarations with the US. Get out of the American wars that we are already in, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan and definitely stay out of any new wars that Trump may try to drag us into, such as in Korea.
• the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spy bases at Waihopai and Tangimoana (which are US National Security Agency bases in all but name) must be closed;
• the GCSB, which is simply a junior subcontractor for the NSA, must be abolished. Cyber-security (the excuse offered for its existence) can be provided by a dedicated non-spy Government agency.
• the US military transport base at Christchurch Airport, which has been there for more than 60 years, must be demilitarised, to end it providing cover for US military and intelligence activities that have nothing to do with providing logistic support for peaceful scientific research in Antarctica.

Cutting the Empire ties
AIM believes that not only should the national dialogue be about cutting the ties with the American Empire but also about cutting all vestigial ties with our original Empire, namely dear old Mother England.

Get shot of Mother England and Uncle Sam. It’s called leaving home and living your own life and it’s what all of us do in the much vaunted “real world” that we keep getting told about. It’s called being independent.

But we do not advocate NZ transferring its allegiance to become a loyal servant of the arising Chinese Empire. Why jump from the frying pan into the fire? Let’s stay independent of anyone’s empire.

Neutrality should be on the agenda of that dialogue. Armed neutrality is a well-established practice globally. Does anybody think counties like Switzerland, Sweden or Austria are disadvantaged, poor, or isolated as a result of their long entrenched national policy of armed neutrality?

The NZ peace movement put in a lot of work promoting positive neutrality in the 1980s as part of the successful campaign that made NZ nuclear free and out of ANZUS.

A non-aligned Aotearoa would be the opposite of “isolationist”. It would pursue an activist foreign policy. There is plenty of unfinished business.

Spreading the ‘Kiwi disease’
Let’s spread “the Kiwi disease” and actively work for a nuclear free world, one country or region at a time, if necessary.

Let’s demand that all the nuclear powers, overt or covert, disarm and dismantle their weapons of mass terror and genocide. Let’s speak truth to power and tell countries such as Australia and the US what we find abhorrent in areas such as their human rights and race relations practices. Because that’s what’s friends do.

There have been some encouraging signs of this with the Ardern government politely offering to help Australia solve its self-imposed mess vis a vis the refugees cruelly imprisoned and then abandoned on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. But the Aussies said “mind your own business, little brother”.

New Zealand’s response should be: “This is our own business. Human rights abuses are everyone’s business”.

Regionally, Aotearoa needs to be much more activist.

Take in more refugees
As a First World capitalist economy we are part of the climate change problem that threatens the whole world and nowhere more imminently than our tiny Pacific neighbours. There is clamour for NZ to take in more refugees and AIM fully supports that – the inhabitants of these doomed atolls need to be at the top of the list. All of them, if necessary – we’re only talking thousands of people.

This is not a solution to the problem of climate change (that’s a whole other, but vitally related, issue, one which Trump is actively making worse) – it is merely a reaction to the problem, a recognition that we have a responsibility to help our neighbours whom we have harmed.

There are other regional issues that Aotearoa should be addressing. Decolonisation of France’s Pacific empire is an obvious one. Support the benighted people of West Papua to gain their freedom from Indonesia, in the same way we (very belatedly) supported the East Timorese people.

Confront the government of the Philippines over its shocking human rights record (President Duterte makes Trump look like a sensitive new age guy). Offer the peace-making skills that we demonstrated so successfully in Bougainville to help the Philippines to find an end to the wars that have wracked it for more than half a century.

These are some regional examples of where Aotearoa could offer to “lend a hand” (to quote Jacinda Ardern on the Manus Island refugees).

This material is an extract from a longer AIM generic flyer, which can be read online here.

AIM will be officially launched in Blenheim, as part of the Waihopai spy base protest activities, on Saturday, January 27. Details online at AIM Launch Event page updated.

Murray Horton
Spokesperson
Aotearoa Independence Movement

• Dear Lorde, here’s why we are urging you not to play in Israel

The Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, reports Al Jazeera English.

In an announcement in Oslo, Norway, yesterday, the Nobel committee cited ICAN’s role in pushing for a global prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons, through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted at the United Nations in July 2017 by a vote of 122-1 with one country abstaining.

ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn told reporters that given the current political atmosphere around the world, the call to ban nuclear weapons is more imperative.

“The treaty is meant to make it harder to justify nuclear weapons, to make it uncomfortable for states to continue the status quo, to put more pressure on them,” she said.

Here are some things to know about the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize:

Banning nukes

• In a landmark resolution, 123 countries voted to start talks on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons” in the First Committee of the UN General Assembly in October 2016.
• In July, a UN conference adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
• It is the “first multilateral legally-binding instrument for nuclear disarmament to have been negotiated in 20 years”, the UN said in a statement.
• The treaty opened for signature during the annual UN General Assembly last month.
• As of September 20, 50 states had signed the treaty, which bans the use, development, testing or storing of nuclear weapons under any circumstances.
• However, some of the top nuclear powers have yet to sign on to the pact, including the United States, Russia and China.
• Significantly, Iran, which has been accused by the US President Donald Trump of pursuing a nuclear programme, has signed the treaty.

INSIDE STORY: Will the US pull out of the Iran nuclear deal? (25:30)

Strength in numbers
Before Friday, ICAN was a little-known organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Originally founded in Australia in 2007, ICAN has now become a global coalition of 468 non-government organisations spread over 100 countries.

International partners include peace organisations to humanitarian and environmental groups.

Among its coalition partners are The Ceasefire Campaign in South Africa and the Africa Peace Forum in Kenya.

Physicians for Social Responsibility in Bangladesh is also a partner, as well as the Arab Network for Research on Landmines and Explosive Remnants of War.

Public figures who have voiced support for ICAN include Nobel Prize winners the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, as well as artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and internationally-known artists Herbie Hancock and Yoko Ono.

“Let’s act up! Ban nuclear weapons completely and unconditionally,” Ai Weiwei was quoted as saying as he declared his support for the nuclear weapons ban treaty.

Its roots
In 2006, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, adopted ICAN as a major priority at its world congress in Helsinki Finland. A year later, ICAN was formed in Australia, and its international campaign was officially launched in Vienna, Austria.

Beatrice Fihn said ICAN founders were also inspired to establish the group following the success of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the Nobel Prize in 1997.

As part of its work to push for the nuclear prohibition treaty, ICAN launched in 2012 the campaign “Don’t Bank on the Bomb”, pushing for divestment from hundreds of banks, pension funds and insurance companies with investments in companies producing nuclear arms.

Call for global responsibility
Online, many celebrated the news that ICAN was awarded this year’s prize.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres congratulated the campaign, saying “now more than ever we need a world without nuclear weapons”.

Others called the Nobel committee’s decision a “resounding call to global responsibility”.

Challenges
While ICAN’s Beatrice Fihn said that the prize is a “huge” boost for her organisation and other groups working on the nuclear weapons issue, the world faces significant hurdles related to the nuclear weapons and threats of war.

Just before the Nobel committee made the announcement in Oslo, US President Donald Trump had threatened not to re-certify the nuclear deal agreed between world powers and Iran.

“We must not allow Iran … to obtain nuclear weapons,” Trump said.

“The Iranian regime supports terrorism and exports violence, bloodshed and chaos across the Middle East. That is why we must put an end to Iran’s continued aggression and nuclear ambitions. They have not lived up to the spirit of their agreement,” he said.

Iran has denied it is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme and said it would continue to abide by the deal. The UN nuclear monitor also said that Iran is in compliance with the deal.

Trump has also threatened “to destroy North Korea” if necessary after its leader Kim Jong-un said that nothing could stop his country from acquiring ballistic missiles with the capability of carrying nuclear warheads.

• Peace Movement Aotearoa’s response

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WIPLF) and the Devonport Peace Group organised the event, marking the 30th anniversary of the NZ Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act. This came into force on 8 June 1987.

The pictures were taken by the Pacific Media Centre’s Dr David Robie and Pacific Media Watch editor Kendall Hutt.

• Flashback to NZ’s nuclear-free law in 1987 — Challenging Goliath

Devonport and WILPF Aotearoa celebrate N-free NZ

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