For nearly half a century, Papua New Guinea has been more than just a home for Laurence “Rocky” Roe — it has been his canvas, his inspiration, and his great love.

A master behind the lens, Rocky has captured the soul of the nation through his photography, preserving moments of history, culture, and progress.

He bid farewell to the country he has called home since 1976 in June 2021 and is now retired and living in Australia. We reflect on the extraordinary journey of a man whose work has become an indelible part of PNG’s visual history.

• WATCH: The Malum Nalu’s full interview with Rocky Roe
• Other Malum Nalu articles

A journey born of adventure
Rocky Roe’s story began in Adelaide, Australia, where he was born in 1947. His adventure in Papua New Guinea started in 1976 when he arrived as a mechanical fitter for Bougainville Copper. But his heart sought more than the structured life of a mining camp.

In 1979, he took a leap of faith, moving to Port Moresby and trading a higher salary for a passion — photography. What he lost in pay, he gained in purpose.

“I wanted to see Papua New Guinea,” Rocky recalls. “And I got an opportunity to get paid to see it.”

Capturing the essence of a nation
From corporate photography to historic events, Rocky’s lens has documented the evolution of Papua New Guinea. He was there when leaders rose to prominence, capturing moments that would later adorn national currency — his photograph of Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare graces the K50 note.

His work went beyond the formal; he ventured deep into the Highlands, the islands, and bustling townships, preserving the heart and spirit of the people.

With each shot, he chronicled the changing landscape of Port Moresby. From a city of well-kept roads and modest housing in the 1970s to its present-day urban sprawl, Rocky witnessed and documented it all.

The evolution of photography
Rocky’s career spanned a transformative era in photography — from the meticulous world of slide film, where exposure errors were unforgiving, to the digital revolution, where technology made photography more accessible.

“Autofocus hadn’t been invented,” he recalls. “Half the world couldn’t focus a camera back then.” Yet, through skill and patience, he mastered the art, adapting as the industry evolved.

His assignments took him to mine sites, oil fields, and remote locations where only helicopters could reach.

“I spent many hours flying with the door off, capturing PNG from above. Looking through the camera made it all feel natural. Without it, I might have been scared.”

The man behind the camera
Despite the grandeur of his work, Rocky remains humble. A storyteller at heart, his greatest joy has been the connections he forged—whether photographing Miss PNG contestants over the years or engaging with young photographers eager to learn.

He speaks fondly of his colleagues, the friendships he built, and the country that embraced him as one of its own.

His time in Papua New Guinea was not without challenges. He encountered moments of danger, faced armed hold-ups, and saw the country grapple with law and order issues. Yet, his love for PNG never wavered.

“It’s the greatest place on earth,” he says, reflecting on his journey.

A fond farewell, but not goodbye
Now, as Rocky returns to Australia to tend to his health, he leaves behind a legacy that will live on in the countless images he captured. Papua New Guinea will always be home to him, and its people, his extended family.

“I may come back if someone brings me back,” he says with a knowing smile.

Papua New Guinea bids farewell to a legend, a visual historian who gave us the gift of memories frozen in time. His photographs are not just images; they are stories, emotions, and a testament to a life well-lived in the pursuit of beauty and truth.

Farewell, Rocky Roe. Your work will continue to inspire generations to come.

Independent Papua New Guinea journalist Malum Nalu first published this article on his blog Happenings in Papua New Guinea as part of a series leading up to PNG’s 50th anniversary this year. Republished with permission.

For almost six decades photographer John Miller (Ngāpuhi) has been a protest photographer in Aotearoa New Zealand.

From his first photographs of an anti-Vietnam War protest on Auckland’s Albert Street as a high school student in 1967, to Hīkoi mō te Tiriti last week, Miller has focused much of his work on the faces of dissent.

He spoke of his experiences over the years in an interview broadcast today on RNZ’s Culture 101 programme with presenter Susana Lei’ataua.

• LISTEN: Photographer John Miller talks to RNZ’s Culture 101
• Other Hīkoi mō te Tiriti reports

Miller joined Hīkoi mō te Tiriti at Waitangi Park in Pōneke Wellington last Tuesday, November 19, ahead of its final walk to Parliament’s grounds.

“It was quite an incredible occasion, so many people,”  74-year-old Miller says.

“Many more than 1975 and 2004. Also social media has a much more influential part to play in these sorts of events these days, and also drone technology . . .

“I had to avoid one on the corner of Manners and Willis Streets flying around us as the Hīkoi was passing by.

“We ended up running up Wakefield Street which is parallel to Courtenay Place to get ahead of the march and we joined the march at the Taranaki Street Manners Street intersection and we managed to get in front of it.”

Comparing Hīkoi mō te Tiriti with his experience of the 1975 Māori Land March led by Dame Whina Cooper, Miller noted there were a lot more people involved.

“During the 1975 Hīkoi the only flag that was in that march was the actual white land march flag — the Pou Whenua — no other flags at all. And there were no placards, no, nothing like that.”

There were more flags and placards in the Foreshore and Seabed March in 2004.

“Of course, this time it was a veritable absolute forest of Tino Rangatira flags and the 1835 flag and many other flags,” Miller says.

“Te Mana Motuhake o Tuhoe flags were there, even Palestinian flags of course, so it was a much more colourful occasion.”

Miller tried to replicate photos he took in 1975 and 2004: “However this particular time I actually was under a technical disadvantage because one of my lenses stopped working and I had to shoot this whole event in Wellington using just a wide angle lens so that forced me to change my approach.”

Miller and his daughter, Rere, were with the Hīkoi in front of the Beehive.

“I had no idea that there were so many people sort of outside who couldn’t get in and I only realised afterwards when we saw the drone footage.”

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

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania was captured by several photographers who were standing at the stage before the shooting commenced.

The most widely circulated photograph of this event was taken by Evan Vucci, a Pulitzer Prize winning war photographer known for his coverage of protests following George Floyd’s murder.

A number of World Press Photograph awards have been given to photographers who have covered an assassination.

• READ MORE: The Trump assassination attempt has upended the US election race. How will both parties react now?
• Attempted assassination of Trump: The long history of violence against US presidents
• Other Donald Trump articles

In this vein, Vucci’s image can also be regarded as already iconic, a photograph that perhaps too will win awards for its content, use of colour and framing — and will become an important piece of how we remember this moment in history.

This incredible and dramatic photo by photographer Evan Vucci will be the next ‘World Press Photo of the Year’ and it will for sure be in history books.#trump #Pennsylvania #Butler #DonaldTrump #shooting #journalism #photography #photojournalism #EvanVucci #US #history pic.twitter.com/EaxDsqESmb

— Alessandro Di Maio (@alexdimaio) July 14, 2024

Social media analysis of the image
Viewers of Vucci’s photograph have taken to social media to break down the composition of the image, including how iconic motifs such as the American flag and Trump’s raised fist are brought together in the frame according to laws of photographic composition, such as the rule of thirds.

Such elements are believed to contribute to the photograph’s potency.

To understand exactly what it is that makes this such a powerful image, there are several elements we can parse.

Compositional acuity
In this photograph, Vucci is looking up with his camera. He makes Trump appear elevated as the central figure surrounded by suited Secret Service agents who shield his body. The agents form a triangular composition that places Trump at the vertex, slightly to the left of a raised American flag in the sky.

On the immediate right of Trump, an agent looks directly at Vucci’s lens with eyes concealed by dark glasses. The agent draws us into the image, he looks back at us, he sees the photographer and therefore, he seems to see us: he mirrors our gaze at the photograph.

This figure is central, he leads our gaze to Trump’s raised fist.

Another point of note is that there are strong colour elements in this image that deceptively serve to pull it together as a photograph.

Set against a blue sky, everything else in the image is red, white and navy blue. The trickles of blood falling down Trump’s face are echoed in the red stripes of the American flag which aligns with the republican red of the podium in the lower left quadrant of the image.

We might not see these elements initially, but they demonstrate how certain photographic conventions contribute to Vucci’s own ways of seeing and composing that align with photojournalism as a discipline.

A photographic way of seeing
In interviews, Vucci has referred to the importance of retaining a sense of photographic composure in being able to attain “the shot”, of being sure to cover the situation from numerous angles, including capturing the scene with the right composition and light.

For Vucci, all of this was about “doing the job” of the photographer.

Vucci’s statements are consistent with what most photographers would regard as a photographic way of seeing. This means being attuned to the way composition, light, timing and subject matter come together in the frame in perfect unity when photographing: it means getting the “right” shot.

For Susan Sontag, this photographic way of seeing also corresponded to the relationship between shooting and photographing, a relationship she saw as analogous.

Photography and guns are arguably weapons, with photography and photographic ways of seeing and representing the world able to be weaponised to change public perception.

Writing history with photographs
As a photographic way of seeing, there are familiar resonances in Vucci’s photograph to other iconic images of American history.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

Taken by Joe Rosenthal, it won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and has come to be regarded in the United States as one of the most recognizable images of World War II. https://t.co/Nv5HjF6XMq pic.twitter.com/AGxmQqonM6

— CHRISTINA VONIATIS (@VoniatisC) July 14, 2024

Take for instance, the photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal, The Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945) during the Pacific War. In the photograph, four marines are clustered together to raise and plant the American flag, their bodies form a pyramid structure in the lower central half of the frame.

This photograph is also represented as a war monument in Virginia for marines who have served America.

The visual echoes between the Rosenthal and Vucci images are strong. They also demonstrate how photographic ways of seeing stretch beyond the compositional. It leads to another photographic way of seeing, which means viewing the world and the events that take place in it as photographs, or constructing history as though it were a photograph.

Fictions and post-truth
The inherent paradox within “photographic seeing” is that no single person can be in all places at once, nor predict what is going to happen before reality can be transcribed as a photograph.

In Vucci’s photograph, we are given the illusion that this photograph captures “the moment” or “a shot”. Yet it doesn’t capture the moment of the shooting, but its immediate aftermath. The photograph captures Trump’s media acuity and swift, responsive performance to the attempted assassination, standing to rise with his fist in the air.

In a post-truth world, there has been a pervasive concern about knowing the truth. While that extends beyond photographic representation, photography and visual representation play a considerable part.

Whether this image will further contribute to the mythology of Donald Trump, and his potential reelection, is yet to be seen.

Sara Oscar, senior lecturer in visual communication, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney.  This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

New Zealand police are being commended for tightening the rules for officers photographing young people, but there are concerns it could lead to the perverse outcome of more Māori being arrested.

The changes come after RNZ revealed in December 2020 that officers in Wairarapa were unlawfully photographing young Māori.

Police there admitted illegally taking pictures of young people on three occasions.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘This change in policy practice and procedure will not result in more young people being arrested’ – Police community partnerships director Eric Tibbott (duration 5′:53″)
• READ MORE: Questions raised after police officers stop youths to take their photos

Whānau described their sons — some as young as 14 — walking alone in broad daylight, when police approached and insisted they take their picture.

The rangatahi were not doing anything wrong, nor being arrested.

Further RNZ reporting by Te Aniwa Hurihanganui suggested the practice was far more widespread than just in Wairarapa.

Police subsequently launched a review, and as a result of that, officers will no longer take pictures or fingerprints of young people unless they have been arrested or are being summonsed.

Photos being deleted
They will delete all photos of young people already taken on police-issued phones.

From now, when a picture is taken, only official cameras or photographers should be used.

At a pinch, a mobile device can still be used by officers, but the photo must be deleted off the phone once it has been uploaded into the police’s national intelligence database.

Barrister Marie Taylor-Cyphers said there was the risk it could lead to more Māori being arrested, rather than just being given a warning.

“If a police officer, in the course of their investigation, needs to for some reason identify the child by photographing them, then they’re going to be incentivised to place that child under arrest more readily than previously.”

Police deny there will be an increase in Māori arrests as a result, calling the changes a procedural issue.

Police community partnerships and prevention director Eric Tibbott told RNZ Morning Report the change would “definitely not” lead to more Māori youth being arrested.

Policy to reflect community expectations
“This is more about policy to reflect community expectations,” he said.

Taylor-Cyphers said the way the policy was worded appeared to give police permission to photograph young people in wider range of circumstances than adults.

Police said the law allowed them to take pictures of people under custody.

But Taylor-Cyphers said the new rules also let police snap photos of young people under summons — which often happened for lower level offences like traffic or driving infringements — and the policy needed to be tightened up.

Dr Karaitiana Taiuru, who has completed a PhD on indigenous ethics in data collection, described the changes by police as a “huge step forward”, but was also worried it could lead to more rangatahi facing charges.

Dr Taiuru said it would be necessary to wait and see how the policy was implemented.

“In a year’s time, it would be really interesting to see the statistics on … how many Māori youth were arrested for low-level crimes rather than non-Māori youth.

“And then compare the amount of photos taken of Māori youth compared to non-Māori youth.”

The full findings from the police’s internal review are expected early this year, as is a joint Independent Police Conduct Authority and Privacy Commission inquiry.

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

Internationally acclaimed documentary photographer Robin Hammond recently made a visit to the Wellington campus of Massey University to meet with his former lecturers and students, reports Massey University News.

Hammond’s work focuses on amplifying the stories of marginalised groups through visual storytelling and has graced the covers of National Geographic and Time magazine.

He shared stories from his career as a photojournalist and his not-for-profit organisation Witness Change with students in a guest lecture and student workshop.

• READ MORE: Witness Change – ‘Stigmatised people are often excluded from their own stories’

Hammond studied an “intensive” two-year Diploma in Photography at the Wellington School of Design, graduating in 2001, and was welcomed into Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts’ Hall of Fame Te Pae Tātāriki in 2014.

He credits his photography diploma with exposing him to what photography could do.

“When I started studying I knew that I vaguely liked photography and maybe there could be a job at the end of it, but the lecturers exposed us to the work of some of the really committed photojournalists who were working on social change issues and I was really inspired by that,” he says.

“Within two or three months of being at Massey I knew that was the direction I wanted to go.

‘Most exciting years’
“I have to say that was probably two of the most exciting years of my life. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that I was taught to literally see the world differently.

“It really opened my eyes to a new possibility for what my life could be. I totally credit the passion of the lecturers for photography and a big part of that was exposing me to the work that had come before me from traditional photojournalism practice and they [the lecturers] have always been a constant encouragement.”

After graduating, Hammond worked at the New Zealand Listener before moving to London. His first job was scanning negatives in the basement of a photo agency, during the time when photography was moving from film to digital.

“I got a job in the north of England at a photo agency and that was probably my real start, and has been my only actual salaried job as a photographer.

“It was an amazing and steep learning curve in that I was doing two, three, four jobs a day, every day, working six or seven days a week – it was a real sweat shop, but it was an amazing learning opportunity.”

Hammond has gone on to win multiple awards including two World Press Photo prizes, the RF Kennedy Journalism Award, six Pictures of the Year International Awards, the W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, six Amnesty International awards for Human Rights journalism and was named by Foreign Policy as one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2015.

He says getting his work first published in National Geographic and on the covers of National Geographic and Time magazine were huge career milestones, as was winning the W. Eugene Smith award in 2013.

‘Massive influence’
“I remember very clearly when it was announced that I [had] won, his work was a massive influence on me. Like a lot of artists I suffer from imposter syndrome, and I think having my work recognised at that level when I knew that some of the best photojournalists in the world have won that award really made me feel that maybe I could do something with my work,” he says.

His not-for-profit organisation Witness Change was created to amplify the voices of marginalised groups. At the moment, it has three main areas of focus: Where Love is Illegal, for LGBTQ+ people who live in countries where who they are or who they love makes them illegal; In My World, which focuses on mental health stories around the world and amplifies the voices of people living with mental health conditions; and 1000 Dreams, a refugee project which is stories about/by refugees in order for refugees to take back control of the narratives of their lives.

The organisation relies on volunteers from all over the world and organisations who offer their services pro-bono.

Hammond says for him, doing this work is his obligation as a privileged person.

“I was largely motivated to found Witness Change out of frustration. I had covered some really important work for some of the biggest newspapers in the world but I didn’t see that translated into change for the people whose lives I was documenting.

“I was deeply moved by their stories and felt a level of obligation to them and I realised that raising awareness wasn’t necessarily going to be enough.

“I had to have this much more change-focused approach to the storytelling. And I had to be able to ensure that if there were other people who were moved like me by these people’s situations, that they had an avenue to be able to support them because I think the great injustice of our world is that your health/life outcomes comes down to essentially an accident of where you’re born.

‘It’s an obligation’
“I don’t feel like what I do is a good thing, I feel it’s an obligation that I have to carry out in order to support people that I meet in my work.”

He will stay in New Zealand until July with his wife and 16-month-old child while they spend time with family, before returning to the United Kingdom to carry on the 1000 Dreams project.

“That will keep us going for the rest of the year,” he says. He also has ongoing work as part of a grant from the National Geographic Society, and some more mental health work in South Sudan.

“Every time I come back to New Zealand I try to get in touch with my lecturers and do workshops like this. The world of photography is pretty small really. It’s amazing just being back here.

“This place definitely holds a special place in my heart and I feel the roots of my career started here.”

Former Air New Zealand cabin attendant Taaniko Nordstrom, and her sister-in-law Vienna Nordstrom, are the creative duo behind Soldiers Rd Portraits, a photography-based business they set up together in 2011.

Based in Cambridge, they dress their customers in Māori, Pasifika, Native American and First Nations’ clothing and then photograph them to create a vintage-style portrait.

Soldiers Rd have taken this idea overseas to Australia, the US, Europe and India, and in 2016 started a project called Behind the Wire – Rangatahi ki Rangatira.

LISTEN: Presenter Julian Willcox talks to Taaniko Nordstrom

This social enterprise involves them taking portraits of inmates at the Te Ao Mārama Māori Focus Unit at Waikeria Prison in the Waikato as a means of re-connecting them with their cultural identity and whakapapa through portraiture.

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

Two damning and contrasting books about Indonesian colonialism in the Pacific, both by activist participants in Europe and New Zealand, have recently been published. Overall, they are excellent exposes of the harsh repression of the Melanesian people of West Papua and a world that has largely closed a blind eye to to human rights violations.

In Papua Blood, Danish photographer Peter Bang provides a deeply personal account of his more than three decades of experience in West Papua that is a testament to the resilience and patience of the people in the face of “slow genocide” with an estimated 500,000 Papuans dying over the past half century.

With See No Evil, Maire Leadbeater, peace movement advocate and spokesperson of West Papua Action Auckland, offers a meticulously researched historical account of New Zealand’s originally supportive stance for the independence aspirations of the Papuan people while still a Dutch colony and then its unprincipled slide into betrayal amid Cold War realpolitik.

Peter Bang’s book features 188 examples of his evocative imagery, providing colourful insights into changing lifestyles in West Papua, ranging through pristine rainforest, waterfalls, villages and urban cityscapes to dramatic scenes of resistance to oppression and the defiant displays of the Morning Star flag of independence.

Some of the most poignant images are photographs of use of the traditional koteka (penis gourds) and traditional attire, which are under threat in some parts of West Papua, and customary life in remote parts of the Highlands and the tree houses of the coastal marshlands.

Besides the photographs, Bang also has a narrative about the various episodes of his life in West Papua.

Never far from his account, are the reflections of life under Indonesian colonialism, and extreme racism displayed towards the Papuan people and their culture and traditions. From the beginning in 1963 when Indonesia under Sukarno wrested control of West Papua from the Dutch with United Nations approval six years later under a sham “Act of Free Choice” against the local people’s wishes, followed by the so-called ‘Transmigrassi’ programme encouraging thousands of Javanese migrants to settle, the Papuans have been treated with repression.

‘Disaster for Papuans’
Bang describes the massive migration of Indonesians to West Papua as “not only a disaster for the Papuan people, but also a catastrophe for the rainforest, earth and wildlife” (p. 13).

“Police soldiers conducted frequent punitive expeditions with reference to violation of ‘laws’ that the indigenous people neither understood nor had heard about, partly because of language barriers and the huge cultural difference,” writes Bang (p. 11). The list of atrocities has been endless.

“There were examples of Papuans who had been captured, and thrown out alive from helicopters, strangled or drowned after being put into plastic bags. Pregnant women killed by bayonets. Prisoners forced to dig their own graves before they were killed.” (p. 12)

A book that provided an early impetus while Bang was researching for his involvement in West Papua was Indonesia’s Secret War by journalist Robin Osborne, a former press secretary for Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, the leader who was later ousted from office because of his bungled Sandline mercenary affair over the Bougainville civil war. Osborne’s book also influenced me when I first began writing about West Papua in the early 1980s.

After travelling through Asia, a young Peter Bang arrived in West Papua in 1986 for his first visit determined to journey to the remote Yali tribe as a photographer and writer interested in indigenous peoples. He wanted to find out how the Yali people had integrated with the outside world since missionaries had first entered the isolated tribal area just 25 years earlier.

When Bang visited the town of Angguruk for the first time, “the only wheels I saw at the mission station were punctured and sat on a wheelbarrow … It was only seven years ago that human flesh had been eaten in the area” (p. 16).

During this early period of jungle trekking, Bang rarely “encountered anything besides kindness – only twice did I experience being threatened with a bow and arrow” (p. 39). The first time was by a “mentally disabled” man confused over Bang’s presence, and he was scolded by the village chief.

Political change
Ten years later, Peter Bang again visited the Yali people and found the political climate had changed in the capital Jayapura – “we saw police and military everywhere” following an incident a few months earlier when OPM (Free Papua Movement) guerrillas had held 11 captives hostage in a cave.

He struck up a friendship with Wimmo, a Dani tribesman and son of a village witchdoctor and healer in the Baliem Valley, that was to endure for years, and he had an adoptive family.

On a return visit, Bang met Tebora, mother of the nine-year-old boy Puwul who was the subject of the author’s earlier book, Puwul’s World. At the age of 29, Puwul had walked barefooted hundreds of kilometres across the mountains from the Jaxólé Valley village to Jayapura, and then escaped across the border into Papua New Guinea. A well-worn copy of Puwul’s World was the only book in the village apart from a single copy of the Bible.

Years later, Bang met tribal leader and freedom fighter Benny Wenda who, with the help of Australian human rights activist and lawyer Jennifer Robinson, was granted asylum in the United Kingdom in 2003: “I felt great sympathy for Benny Wenda’s position on the fight for liberation. By many, he was compared to Nelson Mandela, although he was obviously playing his own ukelele” (p. 81)

Wenda and Filip Karma, at the time imprisoned by the Indonesian authorities for 15 years for “raising the Morning Star flag”, were nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.

Bang founded the Danish section of the Free West Papua Campaign and launched an activist Facebook page.

One of the book’s amusing and inspirational highlights is his secret “freedom paddle” on the Baliem River when Peter Bang used a yellow inflatable rubber boat and a pocket-sized Morning Star flag to make his own personal protest against Indonesia (p. 123). This was a courageous statement in itself given the continued arrests of journalists in West Papua by the military authorities in spite of the “open” policy of President Joko Widodo.

As a special section, Bang’s book devotes 26 pages to the indigenous people of West Papua, profiling some of the territory’s 300 tribes and their cultural and social systems, such as the Highlands communities of Dani and Yali, and the Asmat, Korowai and Kombai peoples.

Fascinating insight
This book is a fascinating insight into West Papuan life under duress, but would have benefitted with tighter and cleaner copy editing by the English-language volunteer editors. Nevertheless, it is a valuable work with a strong sociopolitical message.

Peter Bang concludes: “Nobody knows what the future holds. In 2018, the Indonesian regime continues the brutal crackdown on the native population of West Papua.”

In contrast to Bang’s authentic narrative of life in West Papua, Maire Leadbeater’s See No Evil book – launched yesterday – is an activist historical account of New Zealand’s shameful record over West Papua, which is just as disgraceful as Wellington’s record on Timor-Leste over 24 years of Indonesian illegal occupation (tempered by a quietly supportive post-independence role).

Surely there is a lesson here. For those New Zealand politicians, officials and conservative journalists who prefer to meekly accept the Indonesian status quo, the East Timor precedent is an indicator that we should be strongly advocating self-determination for the Papuans.

One of the many strengths of Leadbeater’s thoroughly researched book is she exposes the volte-face and hypocrisy of the stance of successive New Zealand governments since Walter Nash and his “united New Guinea” initiative (p. 66).

“A stroke of the pen in the shape of the 1962 New York Agreement, signed by the colonial Dutch and the Indonesian government, sealed the fate of the people of West Papua,” the author notes in her introduction. Prior to this “selling out” of a people arrangement, New Zealand had been a vocal supporter of the Dutch government’s preparations to decolonise the territory.

In fact, the Dutch had done much more to prepare West Papua for independence than Australia had done at that stage for neighbouring Papua New Guinea, which became independent in 1975.

Game changer
Indonesia’s so-called September 30th Movement crisis in 1965 – three years after paratroopers had been dropped on West Papua in a farcical “invasion” – was the game changer. The attempted coup triggered massive anti-communist massacres in Indonesia leading to an estimated 200,000 to 800,000 killings and eventually the seizure of power by General Suharto from the ageing nationalist President Sukarno in 1967 (Adam, 2015).

As Leadbeater notes, the bloodletting opened the door to Western foreign investment and “rich prizes” in West Papua such as the Freeport’s Grasberg gold and copper mine, one of the world’s richest.

“New Zealand politicians and diplomats welcomed Indonesia’s change in direction. Cold War anti-communist fervour trumped sympathy for the victims of the purge; and New Zealand was keen to increase its trade, investment and ties with the ‘new’ Indonesia.” (p. 22)

The first 13 chapters of the book, from “the Pleistocene period” to “Suharto goes but thwarted hope for West Papua”, are a methodical and insightful documentation of “recolonisation”, and New Zealand’s changing relationship are an excellent record and useful tool for the advocates of West Papuan independence.

However, the last two contemporary chapters and conclusion, do not quite measure up to the quality of the rest of the book.

For example, a less than two-page section on “Media access” gives short change to the important media role in the West Papuan independence struggle. Leadbeater quite rightly castigates the mainstream New Zealand media for a lack of coverage for such a serious issue. Her explanation for the widespread ignorance about West Papua is simplistic:

“A major reason (setting aside Radio New Zealand’s consistent reporting) is that the issues are seldom covered in the mainstream media. It is a circular problem: lack of direct access results in a dearth of objective and fully rounded reporting; editors fear that material they do receive may be inaccurate or misrepresentative; so a media blackout prevails and editors conflate the resulting limited public debate with a lack of interest.” (p. 233)

Mainstream ‘silence’
Leadbeater points out that the mainstream media coverage of the “pre-internet 1960s did a better job”. Yet she fails to explain why, or credit those contemporary New Zealand journalists who have worked hard to break the mainstream “silence” (Robie, 2017).

She dismisses the courageous and successful groundbreaking attempts by at least two New Zealand media organisations – Māori Television and Radio New Zealand – to “test” President Widodo’s new policy in 2015 by sending crews to West Papua in merely three sentences. Since then, she admits, Indonesia’s media “shutters have mostly stayed shut” (p. 235).

One of the New Zealand journalists who has written extensively on West Papua and Melanesian issues for many years, RNZ Pacific’s Johnny Blades, is barely mentioned (apart from the RNZ visit to West Papua). Tabloid Jubi editor Victor Mambor, who visited New Zealand in 2014, Paul Bensemann (who travelled to West Papua disguised as a bird watcher in 2013), Scoop’s Gordon Campbell, Television New Zealand’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver and Tere Harrison’s 2016 short documentary Run It Straight are just a few of those who have contributed to growing awareness of Papuan issues in this country who have not been given fair acknowledgement.

Also important has been the role of the alternative and independent New Zealand and Pacific media, such as Asia Pacific Report, Pacific Scoop (both via the Pacific Media Centre), West Papua Media and Evening Report that have provided relentless coverage of West Papua. Other community and activist groups deserve honourable mentions.

Even in my own case, a journalist and educator who has written on West Papuan affairs for more than three decades with countless articles and who wrote the first New Zealand book with an extensive section on the West Papuan struggle (Robie, 1989), there is a remarkable silence.

One has a strong impression that Leadbeater is reluctant to acknowledge her contemporaries (a characteristic of her previous books too) and thus the selective sourcing weakens her work as it relates to the millennial years.

The early history of the West Papuan agony is exemplary, but in view of the flawed final two chapters I look forward to another more nuanced account of the contemporary struggle. Merdeka!

David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Journalism Review. He was awarded the 1983 NZ Media Peace Prize for his coverage of Timor-Leste and West Papua, “Blood on our hands”, published in New Outlook magazine.

Papua Blood: A Photographer’s Eyewitness Account of West Papua Over 30 Years, by Peter Bang. Copenhagen, Denmark: Remote Frontlines, 2018. 248 pages. ISBN 9788743001010.
See No Evil: New Zealand’s Betrayal of the People of West Papua, by Maire Leadbeater. Dunedin, NZ: Otago University Press, 2018. 310 pages. ISBN 9781988531212.

References
Adam, A. W. (2015, October 1). How Indonesia’s 1965-1966 anti-communist purge remade a nation and the world. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/how-indonesias-1965-1966-anti-communist-purge-remade-a-nation-and-the-world-48243

Bang, P. (1996). Duianya Puwul. [English edition (2018): Puwul’s World: Endangered native people]. Copenhagen, Denmark: Remote Frontlines.

Osborne, R. (1985). Indonesia’s secret war: The guerilla struggle in Irian Jaya. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: Nationalist struggles in the South Pacific. London, UK: Zed Books.

Robie, D. (2017). Tanah Papua, Asia-Pacific news blind spots and citizen media: From the ‘Act of Free Choice’ betrayal to a social media revolution. Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa, 23(2), 159-178. https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v23i2.334

Facebook has been under fire for some time for distributing misinformation and fake news to a potential audience of around two billion users. Only now is it making a concerted effort to filter it out.

But Facebook has also faced criticism for the ways in which it has filtered the news in the past.

Back in September 2016, it censored a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the Vietnam war.

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A Norwegian writer posted Nick Ut’s famous picture of severely burned nine year-old Vietnamese girl Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack in 1972.  It was part of an online discussion about photographs that had changed history.

Facebook quickly deleted his post and suspended his account, claiming he had violated Facebook’s content standards which prohibit most forms of nudity.

Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten then wrote about this on its own Facebook page – and that was summarily deleted by Facebook too.

Norway’s Prime Minister posted the image on her own official Facebook account. Facebook deleted that as well.

An American technology company had censored a foreign head of state, and struck out a sovereign government’s communications.

‘This is serious’
Under the headline “Listen, Mark, this is serious” Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief called out Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg on the newspaper’s front page and online.

Eventually Facebook took the photograph off its blacklist and said: “We’ll keep working to make Facebook an open platform for all ideas.”

Last weekend the Vanuatu Daily Post newspaper published a two-page spread on the growing influence of Indonesia and China in the Melanesian region. It was written by journalist and photographer Ben Bohane who lives in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila and runs picture agency Wakaphoto.

Ben illustrated his story with one of his own pictures taken in 1995. It shows fighters from the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and several other men wearing traditional protective penis sheaths – called nambas.

The article was subsequently republished by  the Pacific Media Centre on its Pacific Media Watch freedom feed and on Asia Pacific Report – which also raised the West Papua political connection – at the Auckland University of Technology on Monday.

Facebook alerts on the newsfeeds of Ben Bohane, Vanuatu Daily Post, the Pacific Media Centre and its director Professor David Robie were all removed by Facebook, which said that the featured image had breached its “community standards” policy.

On Tuesday, Ben Bohane posted his picture featuring the men in the nambas again and was immediately notified that the content has been removed again. He was blocked from posting anything on Facebook for 24 hours.

‘Memo to Facebook’
“Memo to Facebook – this is how Papuans live! Your ‘Community Standards’ obviously don’t include Melanesian culture,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Meanwhile, the Vanuatu Daily Post re-edited Ben Bohane’s story image online to avoid falling foul of Facebook’s policy.

The image is still there but a black box appears over the top where the nambas could once be seen, with these words in white:

THIS IMAGE was censored by FACEBOOK’s COMMUNITY STANDARDS

And off to the side:

Happy now, Facebook?

The problem is millions of Facebook’s users are unhappy with Facebook for episodes like this.

This article has been republished as part of the content sharing agreement between Radio New Zealand and the AUT Pacific Media Centre.

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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Dondi Tawatao went from feature photographer in Manila to chasing crime scenes across the city.

The so-called war on drugs in the Philippines has resulted in the deaths of more than 7000 people so far – deaths Tawatao has been capturing through his camera.

Since President Rodrigo Duerte took office last June, there has been a rise in targeted attacks on drug users and suspected dealers.

Backed by a culture of impunity, a wave of vigilantism has resulted in bodies being left in the street and in homes with warning signs.

Tawatao also documents stories of survivors devastated by the killings, some of whom deny their killed relative had any drug ties.

• ‘I will have you jailed too,’ Trillanes warns President Duterte

Auckland-based Samoan photographer Evotia Tamua will use an artist residency at the National University of Samoa to complete a 20-year photography project documenting the changing lives of people in Salelesi village.

Creative New Zealand, in partnership with the National University of Samoa, offers an annual three-month artist residency in Apia. Established in 2006, the residency celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

Describing herself as related to almost everyone in Salelesi, on Upolu Island, Evotia will continue her photography culminating in a solo exhibition at MADD Gallery in Samoa this year and in Auckland in 2017.

“I started this project in 1994 when I began my career as a professional photographer. Travelling to Samoa almost yearly I have photographed how the village has adapted to social, political and environmental change,” says Evotia.

“The village has gone from box type TVs or no TVs to large flat screens in open fale. People have migrated from the village, been banished from the village, married into the village, died in the village or are now growing old there.”

Arts Council member Luamanuvao Winnie Laban said: “This is a fascinating project which I am sure will generate great interest in Samoa and New Zealand.  I am looking forward to seeing this wonderful collection of images by such a gifted photographer in one space.”

Evotia Tamua specialises in documenting the Pacific way of life in the islands and in Auckland. She has exhibited her work in New Zealand, Samoa, Australia and England.  Her photography has appeared in Pacific New Zealand and Samoa: Pacific Pride.

Gap in market
In 2007, seeing a gap in the market for Pacific book publishing, she helped found Little Island Press.

In 2008, she published Pacific Auckland, which documents the lives of Pacific Islanders in Auckland, and Polynesian Festival which has a selection of 15 years of photographs from the ASB Polyfest.

Evotia has also worked on projects with visual artist Fatu Feu’u and multi-disciplinary artist Yuki Kihara.

Evotia works as a commercial photographer and has also worked as a tutor and newspaper photographer.

The residency offers New Zealand Pasifika artists the opportunity to develop their potential, skills and practice and is open to established mid-career and senior Pasifika artists who are resident in New Zealand.

Previous recipients include visual artist Siliga Setoga, multidisciplinary artist Shigeyuki Kihara, choreographer/director Lemi Ponifasio, actor/director Nathaniel Lees, the late curator Jim Vivieaere, playwright Fiona Collins, installation artist Tiffany Singh, and the VaHine Collective (Lonnie Hutchinson, Lily Laita and Niki Hastings-McFall).

A unique photographic exhibition in Amsterdam shows what the Dutch state tried to hide from its people about the grueling war it fought against Indonesia, its former colony.

An Indonesian girl playing a tiny banjo sits among smiling Dutch soldiers on a military vehicle, surrounded by locals. This jovial image belies the fact that the streets of Surakarta, Central Java, on December 21, 1948 ­ the day the photo was shot ­ were deserted as the Dutch had just renewed its military offensive on Java.

“The official image of the war on Java and Sumatra aimed at manipulating public opinion,” said the opening text of the exhibition “Colonial War 1945–1949: Desired and Undesired Images” at Amsterdam’s Dutch Resistance Museum.

“Without images of violence there seemed to be no war.”

During World War II, the Netherlands was occupied by Germany on their home soil and by Japan in their colony of the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch barely had time to savour their freedom after Germany’s surrender in May 1945 when it was jolted by its colony’s independence proclamation on August 17, 1945.

In the next four years, close to 100,000 Dutch soldiers ­ out of a population of just under 10 million ­ were sent off to Indonesia in what the exhibition calls “the biggest war the Dutch had ever fought”. Most of the soldiers were drafted. Almost 6,000 Dutch soldiers lost their lives, while 150,000 Indonesians ­ military and civilian ­ died during the clashes.

The Dutch government, however, did its best to hide the intensity of that war, calling it a politionele actie, police action.

‘Serving the people’
“The government wanted to present the image that their soldiers were serving the people in the colony,” said historian Erik Somers of the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies NIOD,  ­ one of the exhibition’s initiators.

During that war the Dutch military information service DLC, the exhibition explains, “basically decided what could be reported”.

“There were barely any Dutch journalists and photographers in the country [Indonesia] at the time and many areas were extremely dangerous […] people in the Netherlands saw very little pictorial evidence of the violence.”

The exhibition lets the images tell the story: it chronologically goes through the four years of war, with “desired” and “undesired” images put side by side.

One corner, for example, shows photos of Dutch soldiers distributing food to villagers, while the next panel shows unpublished photos of terrified Indonesian prisoners. Or corpses in a ditch.

The censorship went as far as staging pictures, said exhibition co-initiator Louis Zweers.

“There is one photo of a supposedly jubilant local crowd welcoming Dutch soldiers in Malang [East Java]. If you look closely, however, you can see a soldier on the sidelines directing the crowd,” historian Zweers said during a seminar in January at Amsterdam’s Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW.

Photos that did not pass the censor include one from August 1946, which still had the original caption written by photographer H. Wilmar: “An extremist who fired on our marines from a ditch tried to escape, but was captured by a marine. The marines would possibly take the man as a prisoner to extract information about the enemy”.

“I’d be surprised if this man made it out alive,” commented a visitor at the exhibition, Klaas Westrene, as he scrutinised the photograph. “It’s good that this exhibition sheds some light on this episode.”

Also on display are illustrated magazines, such as Panorama and De Spiegel,which “showed little of the military operations”, and instead presented “soldiers on patrol, distributing clothes and providing medical care to the native population”.

Somers points out that “there was hardly any reporting in the Dutch press on the euphoric mood among Indonesians regarding their independence [in August 1945]”.

The most stirring part comes at the end of the exposition, where ageing photo albums belonging to soldiers are displayed.

One yellowed page shows small black-and-white photos: first of Indonesian prisoners marching, while the next are of their corpses. The neat hand-written captions read: “There were prisoners being held, but when we’re being fired upon things get nasty, and then some people die”.

Linawati Sidarto is a Jakarta Post contributor in Amsterdam.