COMMENTARY: By Michelle Pini, managing editor of Independent Australia

With President Donald Trump now into his second week in the White House, horrific fires have continued to rage across Los Angeles and the details of Elon Musk’s allegedly dodgy Twitter takeover began to emerge, the world sits anxiously by.

The consequences of a second Trump term will reverberate globally, not only among Western nations. But given the deeply entrenched Americanisation of much of the Western world, this is about how it will navigate the after-shocks once the United States finally unravels — for unravel it surely will.

• READ MORE: Palestinians reject Trump’s relocation plan as they return to Gaza’s north
• Other Donald Trump reports

Leading with chaos
Now that the world’s biggest superpower and war machine has a deranged criminal at the helm — for a second time — none of us know the lengths to which Trump (and his puppet masters) will go as his fingers brush dangerously close to the nuclear codes. Will he be more emboldened?

The signs are certainly there.

So far, Trump — who had already led the insurrection of a democratically elected government — has threatened to exit the nuclear arms pact with Russia, talked up a trade war with China and declared “all hell will break out” in the Middle East if Hamas hadn’t returned the Israeli hostages.

Will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division?

This, too, appears to be already happening.

Trump’s rants leading up to his inauguration last week had been a steady stream of crazed declarations, each one more unhinged than the last.

He wants to buy Greenland. He wishes to overturn birthright citizenship in order to deport even more migrant children, such as  “pet-eating Haitians” and “insane Hannibal Lecters” because America has been “invaded”.

It will be interesting to see whether his planned evictions of Mexicans will include the firefighters Mexico sent to Los Angeles’ aid.

At the same time, Trump wants to turn Canada into the 51st state, because, he said,

“It would make a great state. And the people of Canada like it.”

Will sexual predator Trump’s level of misogyny sink to even lower depths post Roe v Wade?

Probably.

Denial of catastrophic climate consequences
And will Trump be in even further denial over the catastrophic consequences of climate change than during his last term? Even as Los Angeles grapples with a still climbing death toll of 25 lives lost, 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures destroyed and 16,425 hectares (about the size of Washington DC) wiped out so far in the latest climactic disaster?

The fires are, of course, symptomatic of the many years of criminal negligence on global warming. But since Trump instead accused California officials of “prioritising environmental policies over public safety” while his buddy and head of government “efficiency”, Musk blamed black firefighters for the fires, it would appear so.

Will the madman, for surely he is one, also gift even greater protections to oligarchs like Musk?

Trump has already appointed billionaire buddies Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to:

 “…pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal agencies”.

So, this too is already happening.

All of these actions will combine to create a scenario of destruction that will see the implosion of the US as we know it, though the details are yet to emerge.

What happens Down Under?
US allies — like Australia — have already been thoroughly indoctrinated by American pop culture in order to complement the many army bases they house and the defence agreements they have signed.

Though Trump hasn’t shown any interest in making it a 52nd state, Australia has been tucked up in bed with the United States since the Cold War. Our foreign policy has hinged on this alliance, which also significantly affects Australia’s trade and economy, not to mention our entire cultural identity, mired as it is in US-style fast food dependence and reality TV. Would you like Vegemite McShaker Fries with that?

So what will happen to Australia once the superpower we have followed into endless battles finally breaks down?

As Dr Martin Hirst wrote in November:

‘Trump has promised chaos and chaos is what he’ll deliver.’

His rise to power will embolden the rabid Far-Right in the US but will this be mirrored here? And will Australia follow the US example and this year elect our very own (admittedly scaled down) version of Trump, personified by none other than the Trump-loving Peter Dutton?

If any of his wild announcements are to be believed, between building walls and evicting even US nationals he doesn’t like, while simultaneously making Canadians US citizens, Trump will be extremely busy.

There will be little time even to consider Australia, let alone come to our rescue should we ever need the might of the US war machine — no matter whether it is an Albanese or sycophantic Dutton leadership.

It is a given, however, that we would be required to honour all defence agreements should our ally demand it.

It would be great if, as psychologists urge us to do when children act up, our leaders could simply ignore and refuse to engage with him, but it remains to be seen whether Australia will have the mettle to be bigger than Trump.

Republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

No government likes to be called out for human rights abuses and it’s uncomfortable to do so, particularly when the abuser is either a friend or a country with which we have strong economic links.

In our relations with China, this is a difficult issue for us.

However, we should always expect our government to speak out for human rights and the case can be made that Chris Hipkins was too soft on his visit to China last week. The impression was of a laid-back Prime Minister failing to convey any of the serious concerns expressed by credible and principled human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

• READ MORE: ‘A real massacre’: Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Jenin
• Israelis kill nine in attack on Jenin refugee camp
• Other Palestine reports

It seems New Zealand is leaving the heavy lifting on human rights to Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta who, in her own words, had a robust discussion with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on these issues earlier this year.

An Australian report said she was “harangued” from the Chinese side, although this was denied by Mahuta.

Hipkins, as Prime Minister, has our loudest voice and he should have publicly backed up our Foreign Minister.

If we want to be regarded as a good global citizen, we have to speak out clearly and act consistently, irrespective of where human rights abuses take place. This is where New Zealand has fallen down repeatedly.

Looking the other way
We have been happy to strongly condemn Russia and announced economic and diplomatic sanctions within a few hours of its invasion of Ukraine but we look the other way when a country guilty of abuses is close to the US.

In regard to the longest military occupation in modern history, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, we have been weak and inconsistent over many decades in calling for Palestinian human rights.

It hasn’t always been like that.

In late 2016, the National government, under John Key as prime minister, co-sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSC2334 – NZ was a security council member at the time) which was passed in a 14–0 vote. The US abstained.

The resolution states that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”. It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.

Video shows the moment journalists said they were directly fired at by Israeli soldiers whilst they were covering the raid in Jenin refugee camp pic.twitter.com/OBQ5aS5c0A

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 3, 2023

So why does this matter now?

Because Israel has elected a new extremist government that has declared its intention to make illegal settlement building on Palestinian land its “top priority”. Early this week it announced plans for 5000 more homes for these illegal settlements, which a Palestinian official described as “part of an open war against the Palestinian people”.

Israel shows world middle finger
Israel is showing Palestinians, and the world, its middle finger.

At least nine people have been killed and scores wounded in the latest Israeli military attack on Palestinians in what is being described as a “real massacre” in Jenin refugee camp.

UNSC 2334 didn’t just criticise Israel. It called for action. It also asked member countries of the United Nations “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967″.

In practical terms, this means requiring our government and local authorities to refuse to purchase any goods or services from companies (both Israeli and foreign-owned) that operate in illegal Israeli settlements.

This ban should also be extended to the 112 companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as complicit in the building and maintenance of these illegal Israeli settlements.

The government should be actively discouraging our Superannuation Fund and KiwiSaver providers from investing in these complicit companies but an analysis earlier this year showed the Super Fund investments in these companies have close to doubled in the past two years.

Some countries have begun following through on UNSC 2334 but New Zealand has been inert. We have not been prepared to back up our words at the United Nations with action here.

West Papua deserves our voice
Following through would mean we were standing up for human rights for everyone living in Palestine. We could expect our government to face false smears of anti-semitism from Israel’s leaders and their friends here but we would receive heartfelt thanks from a people who have suffered immeasurably for 75 years.

Palestinians are the largest group of refugees internationally — 5.9 million — after being driven off their land by Israeli militias in 1947-1949. Every day, more of their land is stolen for illegal settlements while we avert our gaze.

The Indonesian military occupation of West Papua and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara also deserve our voice on the side of the victims.

Standing up for human rights is not comfortable when it means challenging supposed friends or allies. But we owe it to ourselves, and to those being brutally oppressed, to do more than mouth platitudes.

These peoples deserve our support and solidarity. Let’s not look the other way. Let’s act.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published in The New Zealand Herald but is republished with the permission of the author.

Although Israelis celebrate 1948 as the birth of the Jewish nation, for Palestinians this date is referred to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.

As the Palestinian scholar Edward Said points out, the Nakba is when “two thirds of the population were driven out, our property taken, hundreds of villages destroyed, an entire society obliterated” (Said, 2000, p. 185).

In 1948, Israeli forces killed an estimated 13,000 Palestinians, 531 Palestinian villages were entirely depopulated and destroyed, and almost three-quarters of a million Palestinians were made refugees (Passia, 2004, p. 1). Palestinians have been living with the consequences of the Nakba for 75 years.

• READ MORE:  The Naksa: How Israel occupied the whole of Palestine in 1967
• Other Nakba Day reports

My father is a Palestinian refugee who was born in Jerusalem. My grandfather began work at 13, transporting passengers in a horse-drawn cart on the relatively short distance of nine km along the old road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

He eventually developed a taxi business and then a chauffeur service. He ended up working as a transport manager for the Near East Arab Broadcasting Station which was run by the British Foreign Office.

In early May 1948, the station was moved to Cyprus, the “island of love” in the Mediterranean, where the British have a big army base. My grandfather was offered the opportunity to keep his job and relocate to Cyprus.

Eventually the family joined him there and they lived in Cyprus for about 10 years from 1948-1958. The family moved to Amman, Jordan — that’s where I was born.

On a good day you can stand on the hills overlooking the Jordan Valley, and you can see the Holy Land; on a clear evening you can just make out the lights of Jerusalem.

I grew up knowing that my homeland, this place called Palestine, was just over there — visible yet out of reach. It is a feeling common to many Palestinians. It is a feeling of displacement that Palestinians have been feeling for 75 years.

My family’s experience is like a lot of Palestinian refugee families that were forced to flee their homes because of the hostilities and ended up in nearby countries, waiting for the situation to be resolved so that we could go back to our homes, towns and villages.

We’ve been waiting for 75 years.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established by the United Nations in 1949 to carry out direct relief and works programmes for Palestine refugees.

According to UNRWA, some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for the agency’s services. Most of these refugees live in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

They have been living there for 75 years.

The UN General Assembly set forth the legal framework for resolving the Palestinian refugee issue in UN Resolution 194 (III) in December 1948 which demands repatriation for those refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours, or compensation for those choosing not to return.

This has become commonly referred to as the “right of return” — and it is a right that Palestinians hold particularly dear. In our minds and in our hearts we’ve been holding onto the right of return for 75 years.

Most Palestinian refugee families that were forced to flee their homes in 1947 still hold deeds or keys to their homes. The key has become a symbol of this right to return. The key is passed down from one generation to the next.

They’ve been passing down keys to the family home for 75 years.

When we think about the Nakba we often think about 75 years of statelessness, 75 years dispossession, 75 years of right denied. But the Nakba is also a story of 75 years of persistence.

Seventy five years of resilience. Seventy five years of steadfastness. It is 75 years of a commitment to rights and justice.

Dr Rand Hazou is a Palestinian-Kiwi theatre practitioner and scholar at Massey University. His research explores the intersections between the arts and social justice, and how creativity intersects with human rights, citizenship, justice and well-being. This speech was delivered to mark the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day at Aotea Square, Auckland, on 13 May 2023.

RNZ News

In just a few weeks the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply as millions cope without desperately needed international aid, New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis says.

Bellis is Al Jazeera’s senior producer in Afghanistan and reported on the turmoil in August as the Taliban took over the government and thousands of people tried to flee.

She has dealt with Taliban leaders for a long time, and has sensed a change in their attitudes since they first ruled the country before being toppled 20 years ago.

• LISTEN: ‘I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated’ – NZ journalist Charlotte Bellis in Afghanistan (Duration 10′:12″)
• READ MORE: Taliban takeover: Charlotte Bellis faces perils outside ‘enemy territory’ — Pacific Journalism Review

She had to leave the country in mid-September because the network feared for her safety and Bellis noted on Twitter that the Taliban were detaining and beating journalists trying to cover protests.

Now she has returned and told RNZ Sunday Morning that she was not worried about her safety.

“The situation here is pretty dire and there are a lot of stories still to be told and I feel invested in what’s happening here and I also just love the country. It’s a beautiful place to be with amazing people and I genuinely like being here.”

However, the country is facing an uncertain future with its population suffering more than ever now that international aid has been cut off.

UN warns of humanitarian crisis
This week the United Nations warned that Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and Bellis agrees.

“The Taliban took over about two months ago and I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated.

“People cannot find food, there’s no money, they can’t pay for things, employers can’t pay their workers because there’s no cash, they can’t get money out even from the ATMs.”

Millions of jobs have disappeared, half of the population does not know where their next meal is coming from and already children are dying from malnutrition, Bellis said.

All the aid agencies are appealing to the world to listen.

23 million need urgent help
She is about to go out with the UN Refugee Agency whose teams are organising some aid distribution as the temperatures drop to 2 degC overnight as winter approaches. They are handing out blankets, food and some cash to thousands of the needy in camps in Kabul.

“But it’s such a Band-Aid. There is no way they can reach the number of people they need to reach — it’s  like 23 million people who need that kind of assistance,” she said.

Neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran were very concerned, in part because they fear a huge influx of refugees. They have closed the borders to try and keep them away.

The process of getting money and food into people’s hands had broken down, she said, with a lot of it due to United States sanctions.

Three quarters of the country ran on foreign donations before the Taliban took over and that has dried up because no countries are recognising the Taliban’s legitimacy to govern.

Bellis has spoken to one senior Taliban official who said that at recent meetings between the Taliban and the US in Doha the Americans would not tell the Taliban what policies they needed to enact to unfreeze billions of dollars in funding.

“They [the Americans] are playing with millions of people’s lives.”

School problem for girls
She believes some Taliban leaders are pragmatic and would be willing to agree to high school girls being educated but are worried they will alienate their conservative base.

In the main, primary school age girls are able to attend their lessons but the problem is at secondary school level.

“If you’re a high school girl in Kabul it’s awful – sitting around thinking how did this happen. It’s really frustrating and really frustrating for everyone to watch and say this doesn’t make sense.”

Bellis said while she feels safe at the moment, the main problem is the terrorist group, ISIS-K, who have made threats against the hotel where she is staying.

The Taliban have said they will protect guests and have placed dozens of extra guards outside.

ISIS-K is believed to only number between 1200 and 1500 yet they are a potent force with their random attacks, such as beheading members of the Taliban, whom they hate.

She believes the Taliban’s biggest worry is that ISIS will appeal to its most fundamentalist members.

ISIS attracting recruits
ISIS is also believed to be trying to attract recruits who would be trained as fighters and be paid $400 a month which is a substantial amount of money in Afghanistan.

Bellis said she feels guilty staying at a hotel with the scale of poverty and deprivation she is witnessing.

“Right outside the door people are desperate,” she said.

She visited a major maternity hospital in Kabul yesterday and the only medication available for women giving birth was paracetamol.

“Imagine going into labour and thinking, OK if anything goes wrong I’ve got paracetamol. It’s just life and death on so many levels.”

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

For those of you wondering what you can do to help Afghans.. this @WFP project is the gold standard.
You donate meals direct to Afghans – choosing a set number of meals or month at a time. https://t.co/qgmuaTdpfo

— Charlotte Bellis (@CharlotteBellis) October 26, 2021

The Migrant Action Trust has condemned a proposal by a diversity academic calling for a New Zealand nation-building course before people are granted permanent residence or citizenship as “dangerous” and “discriminating”.

“This proposal is dangerous. It is dangerous because it comes at a time when the world — including Aotearoa — has demonised a religion and those associated with that religion,” the trust said.

“We have inculcated in the minds of others that ‘these people’, and by association, all people of colour are a danger.

• READ MORE: Auckland professor says ‘specific nation-building’ course to get citizenship could counter terrorism
• Losing NZ citizenship: What you need to know
• Other reports on the Lynnmall attack

“That is a dangerous, discriminating, and damaging legacy. Just ask Māori.”

The call for a “specific nation-building” course for potential citizens of Aotearoa has been made by Professor Edwina Pio, chair of diversity at Auckland University of Technology.

She made the plea in a paper titled “Diffusing Destructive Devotions: Deploying Counter Terrorism” days after last Friday’s knife attack at Auckland’s Countdown supermarket in LynnMall.

But the Migrant Action Trust chair, Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, described the proposal as “cynical”, saying it raised many questions.

‘Values of our colonisers?’
“Firstly, whose values will inform this nation-building paper? Will they be the values of the colonisers or of our tangata whenua? Will it be the values of those whose labour built this land or those whose dubious transactions stole this land?,” Dr Nakhid asked in a statement.

“Will it be the refugee with the ideologies of terrorist groups or the resident Pākehā with the ideologies of terrorist Pākehā  groups which hold the ideologies of the dominant Pākehā group which hold the ideologies of white supremacists?

“Who will be made to take this nation-building paper? Will it only be potential citizens such as migrants, asylum seekers and those from refugee backgrounds but not those wanting to remain permanent residents?

“What about citizens themselves who mistrust the government, challenge their laws and protest their policies?

“Will they need to go back to school to take this nation-building paper?”

Dr Pio’s research had found lone terrorists to be “dangerous and hard to combat” when compared to group terrorists.

She said “higher impact” policies were needed to combat terrorism and she called for legislation to require people to pass nation-building courses before being granted citizenship or permanent residence.

A Sri Lankan-born refugee, Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, 32, stabbed seven people in the Countdown supermarket before he was shot dead by police.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the Islamic State supporter as a “lone wolf terrorist”.

The mother of Auckland’s LynnMall shopping mall terror attacker in New Zealand says he was brainwashed by neighbours from the Middle East.

Ahamed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen, a 32-year-old refugee originally from Sri Lanka, was shot dead by undercover police after stabbing six people inside Countdown in LynnMall on Friday.

His mother, Ismail Fareeda, has told a television channel in Sri Lanka that neighbours from Syria and Iraq radicalised Aathil Samsudeen when he was injured in a fall in 2016.

• READ MORE: LynnMall terrorist’s family: ‘We are heartbroken’
• LynnMall terrorist named after suppression orders lapse
• Timeline leading to terrorist’s attack in NZ
• Other reports on NZ’s terror attack

She said her son then started posting radical views on social media.

Fareeda said there was a change in her son after he had left Sri Lanka and settled in New Zealand in 2011.

She said her two other sons had reprimanded the 32-year-old over his radical views.

‘Heartbroken by this terrible act’
In a statement released via a lawyer and credited to Samsudeen’s brother, Aroos, his whānau said they were “heartbroken by this terrible act” and they wanted to send love and support to those who were hurt.

The statement said Samsudeen, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 on a student visa, suffered from “political torture” and his mental health steadily declined over the years.

Samsudeen spent a lot of time on social media, it said.

“We saw his mental health got worse and worse during the last 10 years or so. He spent a lot of his time in prison and was always struggling with some court cases. When we heard that he was in prison in New Zealand, we thought it would do him some good but didn’t realise he would spend so much time there. He also had many problems in prison.”

Members of the wider family visited New Zealand in 2013.

“We love your country and your people and we know from what we have seen since the Christchurch attack that you are good people. We want to stand with you. We have lost Aathil. We don’t know what to do while our father is still very ill and doesn’t know about this situation.

Sri Lankan government collaboration
The Sri Lankan government was promising to work with New Zealand authorities over the supermarket stabbings, AFP reported.

It had been investigating whether Samsudeen was linked to the bombings in Colombo on Easter Sunday 2019, which killed 279 people in attacks on three churches and three hotels.

The bombings were blamed on a group that pledged allegiance to the then Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

A spokesperson for Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said the government there condemned the senseless violence of the west Auckland attack and would cooperate with the New Zealand authorities in any way necessary.

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

By AUT News

Guled Mire says his new Fulbright NZ scholarship to study at an Ivy League university in the United States sends a strong message to other refugee kids that they can believe in themselves.

The policy adviser and advocate for ethnic communities graduated from Auckland University of Technology with a Bachelor of Arts in 2013, majoring in international studies and policy.

Now he will take up his award, initially studying online, at Cornell University after being awarded a Fulbright General Graduate Award.

READ MORE: Guled Mire’s mission is to improve lives for migrants and refugees in NZ

“Getting this Fulbright scholarship means a lot. Growing up, I was a high school dropout and since I was young I’ve had messages instilled in me telling me I was not good enough for university,” Mire says.

“It sends a strong message to other refugee kids growing up in the country that they too can do it. I’m really excited to be helping to help shape and inspire the next generation of youth who are growing up in this country.”

Guled says New Zealand likes to consider itself as a country that is free of bias and discrimination.

“Perhaps it’s not as overt and open as it is in places overseas, but when you start to dig deeper you start to realise that isn’t the case,” he says.

“I want to look at that and I want to explore how that informs the narratives around discourse, around race, ethnicity and so forth – and I want to actually influence our policy direction.”

Academic success not a given
Mire’s path to academic success was not a given, however.

As a toddler he fled from Somalia to Kenya with his mother and eight siblings, where they spent time in a refugee camp. Four years later, Guled’s family was fortunate to resettle in New Zealand.

Escaping Somalia’s civil war was lifesaving, but the relocation to Hamilton presented new battles for the youngster in the form of racism and negative stereotypes.

Chased by skinheads and told by school teachers that university was not a place for people like him, Mire says he began to internalise these negative messages and wider societal stereotypes of people from refugee and ethnically-diverse backgrounds.

“Those messages that were relayed to me when I was growing up impacted on me, in terms of having confidence in my own abilities,” he says.

“I want young kids to see my success and, I hope, believe in their own abilities – regardless of those negative messages passed down, either unintentionally or intentionally.”

His thinking changed when he later visited Africa again. The trip instilled a new sense of inspiration and he returned to New Zealand and attended AUT.

Education opened doors and opportunities. He developed a keen interest for research and became involved in a highly-publicised study with AUT Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, the chair of the Pacific Media Centre advisory board, on African youth experiences with the New Zealand police and within the justice system.

Mire went on to spend years as a senior public policy adviser in the public service, as well as volunteering in community and governance roles.

“It sends a strong message to other refugee kids growing up in the country that they too can do it. I’m really excited to be helping to help shape and inspire the next generation of youth who are growing up in this country.”

In 2017, Mire co-founded Third Culture Minds with Veena Patel, a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing positive mental health and wellbeing outcomes for ethnic youth in Aotearoa.

Third Culture Minds recently launched a three-episode mini-documentary series, with the support of the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

Simon Smith is a writer for AUT News. It was first published here.

Immigration New Zealand has confirmed that Behrouz Boochani has been given refugee status in New Zealand.

Boochani has been in New Zealand since November. He had travelled to Christchurch for a writers’ festival on a one-month visa and was supported by Amnesty International.

He was detained in Manus Island and in Port Moresby for six years under the Australian government’s policy to deter asylum seekers arriving by boat.

READ MORE: The journalist who became the victim of Australia’s punitive detention policies

• National Party ‘hate speech’ a problem, says Boochani

He catapulted to worldwide fame in 2019 after his book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison, won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literature prize.

He wrote the book with WhatsApp on his phone.

Boochani’s 374-page book, detailing his experiences in detention, was written in secret and was smuggled out of the detention centre via hundreds of text messages to his translators and editors in Australia.

Boochani discovered he had been granted asylum by New Zealand almost seven years to the day from the moment he was arrested by the Australian Navy, taken to Christmas Island, and subsequently flown to PNG.

Moved to transit centres
Following the closure of the Manus Island centre in 2017, Boochani and his fellow detainees were moved to refugee transit centres near the island’s main town of Lorengau, and later, to the country’s capital Port Moresby.

The executive director of Amnesty, Meg de Ronde, said it is wonderful news that Boochani has been given asylum.

“This means that he’s now a free man. He is free from the persecution as a Kurdish journalist. He’s free from the persecution of Australia’s torturous detention system and he is able to enjoy his life as anyone should be able to under our human rights system.”

She said 400 asylum-seekers like him were still trapped in limbo however, and it was time for Australia to accept New Zealand’s offer to take 150 of those refugees per year.

“Some of them are still on Nauru, some of them are still in Papua New Guinea and some are now in various hotels in Australia in very poor conditions,de Ronde said.

“This issue continues to go on, and Australia needs to act to ensure no more people are put through the torturous regime that Behrooz Boochani was.”

Last month the National Party said it was surprised New Zealand immigration officials did not consult their Australian counterparts before granting a visa to Boochani.

Excluded from Australia
The party’s immigration spokesperson, Stuart Smith, said Boochani appeared to have been excluded from Australia, making him ineligible to come to New Zealand without a special direction.

He said despite that, the response to a parliamentary written question showed no contact was made with Australian officials before he was granted the visa.

“Which was surprising given the high profile nature of Boochani and the fact that the Australian foreign minister said that Boochani would never set foot in Australia.”

Boochani travelled through the Philippines to get to Auckland so that his flight did not touch down in Australia.

Green Party human rights spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman – herself an Iranian refugee – said it was a day of celebration.

“I’m just so excited for us and for him and so grateful for our refugee authorities demonstrating – at least to Australia – that it is possible to actually process and asylum seeker fairly.”

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

Refugees and asylum seekers in Brisbane have begun daily protests urging for their release after doctors and human rights lawyers flagged fears that a repurposed hotel could become a coronavirus infection hotspot.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UN Human Rights Commissioner this week issued a global call for detainees to be released, where possible, for their safety.

Concern among more than 80 detainees at the Kangaroo Point Central Hotel has been heightened after a guard employed by contractor Serco tested positive last month.

READ AND WATCH: The full SBS story and video

In a statement, the Department of Home Affairs said “infection control plans are in place” and “no detainees across the immigration detention network have tested positive to Covid-19.”

Most of the detainees at Kangaroo Point were medivaced from Australian offshore-processing on Manus in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Some have been held there for medical treatment for more than six months.

This article has been republished in brief with SBS and the author’s permission.

About 250 West Papuans have been served notices of eviction to leave their settlement in Port Moresby, reports The National.

National Capital District Commission officials, escorted by police officers, handed the settlers demolition orders last Thursday and told them to leave their home in the suburb of Rainbow where they had lived for 11 years.

Communal leader Elly Wangai said that some of them were now PNG citizens after former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill allowed them to gain citizenship without paying the K10,000 application fee.

READ MORE: West Papuan refugees ordered to demolish houses – Pacific Beat

“But unlike other PNG citizens, we don’t have any land to go to. When we were given citizenship, the government did not give us land to settle. And this is the fifth time we have been evicted since 2007.

“We were first evicted from 8-Mile settlement and we settled outside the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Office at Ela Beach.

“Then we moved to the Boroko Police station. Then to Apex Park at Boroko and now to here.”

Wangai said they were willing to move from the settlement.

‘Drainage area’
“This is a drainage area and we know that and we will move. But we want NCDC to provide land for us.

“If NCDC can evict other PNG settlements from 2-Mile and resettle them at 6-Mile, they should do the same for us.”

Wangai said they had once been given land at Red Hills in the suburb of Gerehu.

“But when we went there, developments were already taking place.

“So we had to return here. Since we were given eviction notices, our children were traumatised and did not attend school.

“Our mothers who are involved in small economical activities like selling doughnuts and ice blocks have stopped.

“They are finding it hard to earn money to look after their family. If we are given land to move, we will be confident to live our daily lives.”

According to ABC, Port Moresby Governor Powes Parkop was unaware of the move to serve the demolition orders or what had prompted it.

A vocal supporter of the West Papua cause, Parkop said he would work to stop – or at least stall – the process to carry out the demolition orders, and fulfill his promise to find the settlers a permanent home.

“I hope I can sort it out soon and get proper allocation of the land so they’ve got security and can build a future.”

The Australian government has conceded it won’t meet its target of resettling 1250 refugees held on Nauru and Manus Island.

Home affairs minister Peter Dutton said on Sunday the US had hampered its deal with Australia by rejecting more than 300 refugees.

He told the ABC they were rejected for various reasons and he didn’t think the target of the 2016 deal would be met.

READ MORE: Manus Island refugee granted Swiss asylum to fight on

Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said that leaves several hundred people without any clear resettlement plan.

“It’s interesting that the Australian government has now admitted that, it’s something that it had denied or tried to avoid even from the very beginning of the deal, but now that it’s a very public admission that the US deal is seriously flawed, the pressure is on the Australian government to provide resettlement options.”

Ian Rintoul said Australia should also take up New Zealand’s offer to take 150 of the refugees.

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
• More refugee stories

A Manus Island refugee granted asylum in Switzerland will continue to fight for the freedom of refugees Australia detains in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

Abdul Aziz Muhamat, 25, fled Sudan in 2013 but was detained for travelling by boat to Australia to seek asylum.

During almost six years in detention on the PNG island, Muhamat was an outspoken critic of the regime that imprisoned him and thousands of other refugees indefinitely without trial.

READ MORE: Manus Island police chief calls for state action over suicidal refugees

He regularly provided comment and interviews to journalists from around the world and was the subject of The Messenger podcast.

In February, Muhamat was given a special visa to travel to Switzerland to receive an international award for human rights defenders.

From Geneva on Saturday, he posted a video on social media to announce his claim for asylum had been accepted.

WATCH VIDEO: Abdul Aziz Muhamat announces his claim for asylum has been accepted

“Thanks for the Swiss for granting my asylum today. They gave me lots of energy and that energy will make me concentrate on what is happening on Manus Island, and also will make me fight harder than the way that I used to fight before.

“Now I have the tools and I have everything it takes for me to fight for the freedom of each and everyone.

“And the fight has just started. I have no idea how long this fight will take but I can assure you this fight will never be completed until the last person will leave the island of Manus or Nauru.”

About a thousand refugees are still unable to leave the two Pacific countries.

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
• More refugee stories

As the number of refugees attempting suicide continues to rise on Manus Island, the local police commander has called for the government to intervene.

For years, the Manus Provincial Police Commander David Yapu has dealt with the impact of hundreds of young, male refugees foisted on his community by Australia.

Conflict and crime are just some of the problems Yapu has faced, but its only now with refugee suicide attempts reaching epidemic proportions that the police commander has turned to policy makers in Port Moresby.

READ MORE: Canberra cannot ignore Manus Island suicide attempt crisis, warns advocate

“There must be some intervention from the government because the trend of attempted suicide is growing,” Yapu said.

“Anything drastic can happen, meaning that they can lose their life. This is something that I don’t want to see.”

Refugees have reported about 40 suicide attempts or incidents of self harm since the Australian election on May 18, a statistic borne out by Yapu’s plea in which he described two attempted hangings and a failed self immolation last week, while admitting the situation was beyond his control.

In desperation he has tasked a division of PNG’s notorious Mobile Squad squad to police the three refugee compounds on the island.

“Our presence there is very important so that that will deter any situation that arises in those camps.”

Seven deaths so far
Seven men have died on Manus, some from suicide, during six years of detention without trial for seeking asylum in Australia.

The recent suicide attempts have so far been foiled by other refugees and security staff but with a new cabinet soon to be unveiled in Port Moresby, the Catholic Dean of Manus province said it was time for the government to step in.

Father Clement Taulam said the church would continue to petition politicians to take a fresh look at the situation on Manus.

“It’s important for us to look at the plight of these refugees and try to present it to the new government that we have now,” Taulam said.

“We can only hope that they can do something for them, because the people of Manus when we look at them, we feel sorry for them.”

Inadequate healthcare
Advocate Ian Rintoul of Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) said the PNG government should also take note of what he called inadequate refugee healthcare being provided by Pacific International Hospital (PIH) and the subsequent pressure put on Lorengau General Hospital.

“The PIH clinic is effectively just a GP clinic, it’s got no real facilities. What’s happening in terms of the attempted suicides and the self harm, it’s just not equipped and they’ve been sending people to the Lorengau hospital but it’s not equipped either,” Rintoul said.

“The Lorengau hospital has sent everybody back to their compounds because it just can’t cope. It needed beds for local people. It’s got no psychologist whatsoever.”

Father Taulam agreed the hospital was under pressure and that PIH was failing the refugees.

“When these men go up to the hospital, there’s no one looking after them at the hospital. Sometimes we have another refugee looking after another in the hospital, and you know with two of them with those kind of difficulties that they’re going through, how would they look after themselves?

“So I don’t think the hospital has that medication for them. PIH was engaged, but again, it doesn’t seem to work out well. I think people are not really fulfilling their responsibilities to look after these people.”

PIH did not respond to questions regarding its ability to cope with the attempted suicides.

Refugees refusing food
But the refugee and celebrated author Behrouz Boochani said depressed refugees refusing food were also being failed by the Australian contracted health provider.

“In fact they are doing nothing, and the sick refugees and the people who attempt suicide or self harm rely on the local hospital.

“So that’s why I think the local people and the authorities are very angry at Australian government and PIH company, because they spend so much money for this company, but they are doing nothing.”

Boochani said the new PNG government should prioritise ending the “humanitarian crisis” on Manus Island over the money Australia is paying to prolong it.

Where to get help
These are services across the Pacific for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends:

Tonga:
Lifeline 23000 or 25144

Fiji:
Lifeline +679 667 0565

Papua New Guinea:
Lifeline Port Moresby – 675 326 0011 –

Samoa:
Lifeline 800-5433

New Zealand:
Need to Talk? Free call or text 1737 any time to speak to a trained counsellor, for any reason.

Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or text HELP to 4357

Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 / 0508 TAUTOKO (24/7). This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.

Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 (24/7)

Samaritans: 0800 726 666 (24/7)

Youthline: 0800 376 633 (24/7) or free text 234 (8am-12am), or email talk@youthline.co.nz

What’s Up: online chat (7pm-10pm) or 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 9428 787 children’s helpline (1pm-10pm weekdays, 3pm-10pm weekends)

Kidsline (ages 5-18): 0800 543 754 (24/7)

Rural Support Trust Helpline: 0800 787 254

Healthline: 0800 611 116

Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

Where to get help:

Lifeline: 0800 543 354

Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 / 0508 TAUTOKO (24/7). This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.

Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 (24/7)

Samaritans: 0800 726 666 (24/7)

Youthline: 0800 376 633 (24/7) or free text 234 (8am-12am), or email talk@youthline.co.nz

What’s Up: online chat (7pm-10pm) or 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 9428 787 children’s helpline (1pm-10pm weekdays, 3pm-10pm weekends)

Kidsline (ages 5-18): 0800 543 754 (24/7)

Rural Support Trust Helpline: 0800 787 254

Healthline: 0800 611 116

Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

• This article is published under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.
• More refugee stories

I visited the city of Christchurch on May 23, 2018, as part of a larger speaking tour in New Zealand that also took me to Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Dunedin.

New Zealand is an exceptional country, different from other countries that are often lumped under the generalised designation of the “Western world”. Almost immediately after my arrival in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest and most populous city, I was struck by the overt friendliness, hospitality and diversity.

This is not to downgrade the ongoing struggles in the country, lead among them being the campaign for land rights as championed by the Māori people, the original inhabitants of New Zealand; but, indeed, there was something refreshingly different about New Zealanders.

READ MORE: Ramzy Baroud’s articles at Counterpunch

Just the fact that the Māori language, “Te Reo”, is one of the three official languages in the country, the others being English and Sign Language, immediately sets New Zealand apart from other colonised spaces, where indigenous peoples, cultures, languages and rights are, to various extents, inconsequential.

It is due to the empowered position of the indigenous Māori culture, that New Zealand is, compared to other countries, more inclusive and more accepting of refugees and immigrants. And that is likely why New Zealand – and Christchurch, in particular – was chosen as a target for the terrorist attacks carried out by an Australian national on March 15.

The Australian terrorist – whose name will not be mentioned here in honour of a call made by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, as not to celebrate the infamy of the senseless murderer – wanted to send a message that immigrants, particularly Muslims, are not safe, not even in New Zealand.

But his attempt backfired. Not only will he live “the rest of his life in isolation in prison”, as promised by New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, who was speaking at the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) emergency conference in Turkey on March 22, but the horrific crime has brought New Zealanders even closer together.

Sorrowful, yet beautiful
There is something sorrowful, yet beautiful, about Christchurch. This small, welcoming city, located on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, was devastated on February 22, 2011, by a massive earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed much of the town.

Last May, I spoke at Christchurch’s Cardboard Cathedral, an innovative structure that was built as a temporary replacement to the Anglican Cathedral that was destroyed in the earthquake.

In my talk, I commended the people for their beautiful church, and for their own resilience in the face of hardship. The diversity, openness and solidarity of the audience reflected the larger reality throughout the city, in fact, throughout the country.

For me, Christchurch was not a place of tragedy, but a source of hope.

My audience, which also included members of the Muslim community, some coming from Al Noor Mosque – the main target of the recent attack – listened and engaged me as I argued that the genuine authentic voices of ordinary people should be placed at the core of our understanding of the past, and our hope for a better future.

While the focus of my talk was the history of the Palestinian people, the message exceeded the struggle for freedom in Palestine into the struggle and rights of all indigenous groups, guided by such uplifting experiences as that of the Māori people of New Zealand itself.

Unconditional solidarity
I also had the chance to meet with Marama Davidson, co-leader of the Green Party, among other MPs. It was strange to be in a position where solidarity from politicians came across as genuine as that of the unconditional solidarity of ordinary activists – once again, highlighting the uniqueness of New Zealand’s progressive politics and leadership.

Experiencing that myself, it was no surprise to see the outpouring of genuine love and support by Prime Minister Ardern and many members of her cabinet and parliament following the mosque attack. The fact that she, along with numerous women throughout the country, wore symbolic head-scarves in order to send a message to Muslims that they are not alone, while countless thousands of New Zealanders mourned the victims who perished in Al Noor and Linwood mosques, was unprecedented in the recent history of Western-Muslim relationship.

In fact, on Friday, March 22, when all of New Zealand’s TV and radio stations transmitted the call for Muslim prayer, and as Muslims and non-Muslims rallied together in a massive display of human solidarity while mourning their dead, for a moment, all Muslims became New Zealanders and all New Zealanders became Muslims.

At the end of my talk, a group of Muslims from the mosque approached me with a gift, a box of dates to break my fast, as it was the month of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and repentance for Muslims worldwide. With much gratitude, I took the box of dates and promised to visit Al Noor when I return to the country in the future.

A few months later, as I watched the horrific images on television of the terrorist attack that struck this peaceful city, I immediately thought of the Cardboard Cathedral, of the beautiful solidarity of the Māori, of the numerous embraces of so many New Zealanders, and, of the kindly Muslims and the box of dates.

Peaceful co-existence
I also understood why the undeserving-to-be named terrorist chose to strike Christchurch, and the underlying message he wanted to send to Muslims, immigrants, New Zealanders and all of those who champion peaceful co-existence and tolerance worldwide.

But he failed. In fact, all other foot soldiers of racism and hate will continue to fail because tragedy often unites us. Collective pain helps us see each other as human beings first, where our differences, however great, can never be enough to justify or even explain why 3-year-old Mucad Ibrahim had to die, along with 49 other, beautiful and innocent people.

However, one can be comforted by the Māori saying, “Ka mate te kāinga tahi, ka ora te kāinga rua” – “when one house dies, the second lives”. It means that good things can always emerge from misfortune.

It will take much time for Christchurch, and the whole of New Zealand, to heal from this terrible misfortune. But the strength, will and courage of so many communities should be enough to turn a horrific terrorist act into an opportunity to heal our collective wounds, not just in New Zealand, but the world over.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This article is republished with the permission of the author.

• More Christchurch mosque terror tragedy reports
• Earlier Ramzy Baroud articles

An Iranian asylum-seeker detained in Papua New Guinea under Australian asylum laws has won Australia’s most valuable literary prize for a book he reportedly wrote using the online messaging service WhatsApp, reports France 24/AFP.

Behrouz Boochani, a Kurd who has been held on PNG’s Manus Island since 2013, was awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature yesterday, said a statement on a government website for the state of Victoria.

The journalist and filmmaker was awarded the A$100,000 (NZ$106,000) prize for his book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison.

READ MORE: The book written one text at a time

He will receive an additional A$25,000 after it also won the non-fiction category.

“(Boochani’s) award was accepted by the book’s translator Omid Tofighian, who worked with Boochani over five years to bring the stories to life,” the state website said.

Media reports said Boochani wrote the work on his phone and sent it to Tofighian bit-by-bit in text messages.

This was because he felt unsafe in the guarded camp, which was shut last year after a local court ruling and the asylum-seekers moved elsewhere on the island.

For years Canberra has sent asylum-seekers who try to enter the country by boat to Manus Island or Nauru in the Pacific for processing, with those found to be refugees barred from resettling in Australia.

The harsh policy is meant to deter people embarking on treacherous sea journeys, but the United Nations and other rights groups have criticised the camps’ conditions and long detention periods.

Boochani’s book beat 27 other shortlisted works published last year in Australia to win the overall prize.

• The Guardian’s account of the award
• Other Behrouz Boochani stories

By RNZ Pacific

Civic freedoms in three Pacific nations are under threat, according to the international civil society watchdog group Civicus.

The watchdog, which represents civil society groups around the world, has released its annual “People Power Under Attack” report which tracks respect for fundamental freedoms in nearly 200 countries.

It downgraded Papua New Guinea and Nauru to join Fiji in the “obstructed” category.

READ MORE: Civic freedoms occupy a shrinking space in Asia Pacific

Nauru’s rating is due to increasing restrictions on press freedom in the country.

Civicus said this hampered independent scrutiny of Nauru’s policies and practices, especially of the Australian-run refugee detention centres on the island, where there have been widespread reports of abuse.

In Papua New Guinea, media freedom continues to deteriorate with journalists subject to harassment and attacks because of their reporting, it said.

Condemned censorship
The report condemned censorship it said was prevalent in parts of the Pacific and pointed to governments such as Fiji’s that tried to control the public narrative by interfering with the media.

However, there are seven countries in the Pacific deemed to be in the Civicus “open” category, although it said freedoms continued to be impinged on in two other Pacific countries in its “narrowed” category.

And it noted improvements such as Solomon Islands’ new Whistleblowers Protection Act, which protects activists exposing corruption.

Civicus also said land rights, environmental and anti-corruption activists faced threats and arrests in the Pacific.

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

Students and staff gathered in Auckland last night to launch a cookbook with a difference celebrating culinary delights from refugee or immigrant families – and to taste some of the special 15 recipes.

The recipes in Tastes of Home, published by Auckland University of Technology to support an educational scholarship for refugees, were an instant success.

Chapters and the recipes have been provided by volunteer student contributors drawing on their family culinary secrets.

READ MORE: Diversity at Auckland University of Technology

“These recipes have been tested and standardised by the culinary art students for the cook book,” says Lian-Hong Brebner, a diversity manager at AUT and one of the co-editors with Professor Alison McIntosh.

“This is more then a cookbook, it’s about celebration of AUT’s diversity that refugee and migrant background students bring to us, and their their tradition of hospitality,” says Brebner.

Encouraging diversity
AUT as a university encourages diversity and was also the first university in New Zealand to appoint a professor of diversity – Professor Edwina Pio.

“We are also proud to be the first and only New Zealand university to appoint a professor of diversity,” says Dr Andrew Codling, who is the head of the vice-chancellors office.

“We are proud that our students and staff are from over 100 nationalities on our campuses, and in fact over 52 percent of our staff were born overseas – and I am one of them,” says Dr Codling.

Seven percent of the staff are from the Pacific, 6 percent are Māori and 64 percent of the professional staff are female.

AUT scholarship programme
Proceeds from the book sales will go towards a scholarship programme for future refugee students.

About 50 volunteers from diverse backgrounds worked around the clock to make the book possible.

“I volunteered to be part of the project because I loved that the proceeds would be going towards a scholarship for refugees,” says Leilani Sitagata, who is a final year AUT student journalist.

“As I’m a journalism major, I knew how to write, and I love my food – so I thought why not combine the two and help write a cookbook.”

Homemade cuisines from around the world featured in the book include Afgan, Iranian, Iraqi, Kurdish and Māori and many other dishes.

On launch day, 38 copies were sold with a further 100 copies already being pre-ordered online.

• Tastes of Home at AUT Shop

Health and human rights advocates fear the mental ill-health of refugees on Nauru could worsen following the Pacific government’s move to scrap a vital support service.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières) was told on Friday its free psychological and psychiatric services, provided to both Nauruans and refugees since November 2017, were “no longer required”.

The medical aid agency was given 24 hours to cease operations which is comprised of a clinic at the Republic of Nauru Hospital and home visits.

READ MORE: Manus and Nauru background and updates

The organisation indicated a desire to find a way to continue its work, reports Australian Associated Press.

“At this stage MSF wishes to reiterate our strong commitment to providing quality mental health care to all those in need on the island,” a spokesperson said.

“We are extremely concerned that the health of our patients may be affected by this decision and urge the authorities to grant us permission to continue our lifesaving work.”

The abrupt dismissal follows a report by two prominent Australian refugee organisations saying most refugee children on Nauru are experiencing life-threatening mental health problems, including not eating or drinking and showing suicidal symptoms.

‘Add to distress’
Advocacy group Refugee Action Coalition said MSF’s absence would “add enormously to the distress among asylum seekers and refugees” because the Australian government’s contracted mental health care provider, International Health and Medical Services, was “stretched to breaking point”.

The Department of Home Affairs said on Saturday MSF’s dismissal was a matter for the Nauruan government and that it would continue to provide “appropriate healthcare and mental health support to refugees and asylum seekers through contracted service providers”.

MSF uses more than 30,000 doctors, nurses and other mostly volunteer personnel to provide medical aid in more than 70 countries.

• Nauru government evicts Médecins Sans Frontières from the island

While controversy dogged Nauru’s detention of TVNZ Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver during the Pacific Islands Forum earlier this month, some critics question how the reporting “overshadowed” climate change and other critical Pacific issues.

New Zealand journalists have expressed their outrage against the holding of Dreaver during the summit, but Massey University’s Pasifika director Associate Professor Malakai Koloamatangi says reporting of important issues discussed at the forum was sidelined by attention focused on media freedom.

“Because of what happened to Barbara Dreaver, and the lack of access to refugees, it was kind of a distraction and it detracted from maybe covering the main business at the forum,” he says.

READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: Mana counts in the Pacific

Dr Koloamatangi says issues such as climate change, regional security, immigration and trade are significant concerns for the Pacific and the forum.

However, these issues had been overshadowed by Dreaver and Nauru’s refugee camps.

“The refugee issue is probably not as important in the Pacific as it is in New Zealand and Australia, that’s really the reality of the situation.

People here and Australia have a lot of time to be concerned about the refugees in Nauru and Papua New Guinea, but unfortunately for Pacific Islanders themselves there are other pressing issues like poverty and domestic violence, third world diseases and so on that they are probably more concerned about.”

Highly sensitive
Dr Koloamatangi says the refugee issue is a highly sensitive one for Nauru.

He says he does not condone limiting press freedom, but it is a sensitive and complicated issue which needs to be looked at from many points of view.

“All journalists need to be respectful of the laws and regulations of the countries where they work…but on the other hand you have people who have decided that this is the way they’re going to work, regardless of the fact that they will be punished by the law.

“Some of them have been to prison, so it’s a choice.

“Obviously when Barbara decided not to follow the directions given by the Nauruan government she was obviously taking a risk, and with risk come possibilities of penalties and punishment…but it’s what makes her the quality journalist that she is.”

Nauru issued a statement explaining Dreaver’s detention by police, saying her accreditation and access for the Pacific Islands Forum had been revoked due to a breach in visa terms, but was reinstated the next day.

Dreaver said the interview she held with a refugee was outside a restaurant, not inside a camp.

Detained three hours
However during the interview she said she was questioned by police and held at a police station for three hours for breaching her visa.

“I was under the impression, and I know, we were allowed to talk to refugees. I think it probably shows that things are a wee but sensitive here. In fact, a lot sensitive.”

Nauru’s statement said the government expected media to portray the detention of Dreaver as preventing press freedom.

“We have only asked for co-operation from the media in order to preserve public safety, and this is not unreasonable.”

Nauru President Baron Waqa said media attending the forum were not interested issues in the Pacific – only issues for their own nations and they should have had a stronger focus on the forum.

“How many leaders here? But we’re having to deal with these other issues which do not even touch on the concerns of the Pacific and the rest of the leaders. It disappoints us,” he said.

“Don’t tell me about refugees being an issue. How can it be an issue for Tonga, for Kiribati? No, it’s an issue for Australia and for all those refugee advocates out there.”

‘Selling news’
President Waqa said journalists were invited and came to Nauru to report on the forum but chose to report on other issues on the island.

He said the “media are impressing your will on us” and “sell our news”.

However, Radio New Zealand journalist Gia Garrick, who reported on the forum, rejected the President’s statement.

“Sell the stories? For money? Well, being part of [public broadcaster] RNZ I would completely refute that.

“It’s kind of a double standard from the President because on the first day he invited journalists to go and talk to refugees in the community, saying things along the lines of the refugees here live harmoniously, they live in the community, we’re not going to stop access to them, we invite you to talk to them and you’re more than welcome.”

A journalist who attended the forum provided Pacific Media Centre with the guidelines issued to journalists covering the event which states:

“You are only authorised to report on, or take photos or videos of, the PIF (Pacific Islands Forum). Any other subjects must be approved by the RON (Republic of Nauru).”

Mixed messages
Garrick said journalists were sent mixed messages from the get go because guidelines were vague and as the refugee situation was raised at the forum it was not clear what the restrictions were.

“There was no way a set of very vague visa guidelines and a direction from the media person was going to stop us from reporting the story.

“We still covered the forum as we would previous years, but there was also the matter of the refugees, the 900 refugees that they were keeping in detention centres on the island.”

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) supported Dreaver after her detention by Nauru police, stating in a release that her detention was unacceptable.

MFAT spokesperson Todd McClay said: “Freedom of the press is a fundamental part of any democracy and journalists must be free to tell important stories.”

Union E Tū, stood by the TVNZ Pacific correspondent, welcoming the support shown by MFAT, while challenging Australia for its alleged role in her detention.

“This is a story of huge public interest to audiences across the world and Barbara did not shy away from tackling it, even though it has always been clear authorities in both Nauru and Australia are not keen on a light being shone on the issue, E Tū said.

“While Barbara was detained by Nauru police, Australia too must take some responsibility for this attack on press freedom.”

Maxine Jacobs is a postgraduate student journalist on the Asia Pacific Journalism Studies course at AUT University.

The Nauru government has taken to Twitter to warn journalists they are not above the law as they cover the Pacific Islands Forum.

Journalists covering the Forum are operating on visas with restrictions on reporting – in particular about the Australian-run detention camps.

New Zealand Television Pacific affairs journalist Barbara Dreaver lost her accreditation yesterday after Nauru said she had violated visa regulations.

READ MORE: Media freedom commentators condemn Nauru ‘gag’ actions

The TVNZ reporter was detained for more than three hours and stripped of her Forum accreditation – however that was reinstated today.

She had been interviewing a refugee outside a restaurant on the island when she was asked to go to a police station.

The Nauru government said journalists from New Zealand were not above the law and walking into certain areas unannounced increased risk.

The government also tweeted about the need for journalists to follow the rules, and accused some of reporting misinformation.

News reports disputed
At a news conference as part of the Forum President, Baron Waqa disputed news reports about what happened to Dreaver.

“No she wasn’t detained, she was taken in for questioning,” he said.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who is also in Nauru, said freedom of the press was critical to democracy.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arrived earlier for the main day of the Forum and said she would be asking more questions about what happened during the course of the day.

She is joining other leaders in the traditional retreat, after which they will sign the Boe Declaration, making commitments about action on regional security, including transnational crime, illegal fishing and cybercrime.

RNZ political reporter Gia Garrick said journalists there did get a warning of sorts yesterday.

‘Wrong issues’
“We did have a warning. I guess that there was some displeasure or unrest from the Nauru government about the New Zealand reporting while we are here,” said Gia Garrick.

“We had an MFAT official sit the seven of us down, or actually it was the six of us minus Barbara [Dreaver], she wasn’t back at this stage …and tell us that the Nauru government would like to pass on a message to us that it would prefer if we reported on the Forum instead of just focusing on the one issue here.

“The government felt that we had not been reporting on the Forum to its satisfaction and been focusing on the wrong issues and so he wanted to pass on that it would be going against our visa conditions should we be going into these refugee camps and it was just a few hours later that Barbara Dreaver was detained or was taken to the police station.”

The Pacific Islands Forum ends today.

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

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arrived today for the leader’s retreat at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru where she is expected to ask for details about the detention of TVNZ journalist Barbara Dreaver yesterday.

Dreaver, who is there to cover the Forum, was interviewing a refugee outside a restaurant when she was picked up by police.

She says they asked for her visa, told her she was breaching her conditions and cancelled her accreditation for the Pacific Islands Forum.

LISTEN: RNZ Morning Report

It is part of a wider pattern of restricting media coverage across the Pacific.

Sally Round is among a team of RNZ Pacific reporters who have been covering Nauru for many years.

Professor David Robie is the director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology.

They talk to Susie Ferguson.

Both commentators criticised the media restrictions and obstruction by Nauruan authorities.

“There is nothing like being on the ground in a place when you are covering it – you get the firsthand view of everything,” Round said.

Having the Forum in Nauru presented the first opportunity for many years for journalists to be on the ground to independent reporting of the country.

There is no independent media on the island.

“We were building up to this with the ban on the ABC participating. It’s a clear pattern that’s being going on,” said Dr Robie.

“In fact, I’d say there has been erosion of peace freedom in the Pacific steadily over the last five years – ironically over the same period of the detention centres in Nauru and on Manus.”

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

By RNZ Pacific

Journalist Barbara Dreaver has been released after being detained in Nauru today while covering the Pacific Islands Forum summit, reports TVNZ.

RNZ’s reporter on Nauru said it was understood Dreaver was taken to the police station on the island after trying to interview a refugee outside of the camp.

She said they asked for her visa, told her she was breaching her conditions and stripped her of her accreditation for the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders summit being held on the island.

EARLIER STORY: TVNZ’s Barbara Dreaver detained

World Vision New Zealand said it helped Dreaver connect with refugees on Nauru and it was contacted by its liaison person this afternoon.

A spokesperson said Dreaver’s interview had been stopped by the Nauru police, and she was taken by them.

The Nauru government has limited the movements of journalists covering the summit and placed restrictions on who they can talk to.

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was with Dreaver during the ordeal.

PM pleased over release
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she was pleased that Dreaver was released.

Ardern leaves for Nauru early tomorrow morning, and says once she gets there she will seek more advice about the situation.

She said the New Zealand government believed in freedom of the press throughout the world, and that includes the entire Pacific region.

The Nauru government had limited the journalists covering the summit and placed restrictions on those who got approval to go, limiting who they could talk to and what issues they could discuss.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was also banned from covering the Forum summit after the Nauruan government accused the public broadcaster of “continued biased and false reporting” about the country.

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

New Zealand journalist Barbara Dreaver has been detained by authorities in Nauru while covering the Pacific Islands Forum summit, reports Television New Zealand.

TVNZ said Dreaver was conducting an interview with a refugee when detained by police early this afternoon.

READ MORE: TVNZ reporter released after being held 4 hours

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was with Dreaver but TVNZ reported that it was unsure of her whereabouts.

The Nauru government had limited the journalists covering the summit and placed restrictions on those who got approval to go, limiting who they could talk to and what issues they could discuss.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was also banned from covering the Forum summit after the Nauruan government accused the public broadcaster of “continued biased and false reporting” about the country.

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

The village of Baliau on Papua New Guinea’s Manam island has publicly apologised to an assaulted journalist reporting for The National daily newspaper and praised media coverage in the wake of

.

Henry Konaka, chair of the Manam Development Association, said in a social media statement on behalf of the Baliau villagers and the village kukurai (leader), Casper Kauke, it was an “unfortunate and deplorable act of physical violence” on reporter Dorothy Mark and the media team.

He added that the “perpetrators” had been handed over to the police less than 24 hours later.

The assault has stirred protests from media freedom groups across the Pacific.

Konaka also condemned the neglect of the Manam islanders, many who live in refugee camps on the mainland in poverty since an evacuation after an eruption in 2004.

Konaka’s full apology:

“I extend on behalf of the people of Baliau village and the village kukurai, Casper Kauke, apology on the unfortunate and deplorable act of physical assault on Ms Dorothy Mark and the media team.

“We understand the fear and trauma Ms Mark and the rest of the media team have endured and we deeply regret. We the Baliau people assure 110 percent safety of Ms Mark and the rest of the media entourage.

“The kukurai regrets the incident which happened without his consent and knowledge. In assuring the entourage’s safety, the chief will be hosting a reconciliation as soon as possible and customarily apologise to Ms Mark and the affected entourage.

“The perpetrators had been handed over to the police less than 24 hours after the incident. A conciliatory meeting was held between the parties led by Acting Yabu LLG President Kenny Boli with police where compensatory agreement reached. A reconciliation ceremony is planned for within the next two weeks.

“With the gravest heart I had extended our profound sorrow and apology with shame and regret to Ms Mark, the husband (Peter Gupuri Mase), Ms Mark’s children, the extended family including the wider media community on the deplorable act of my frustrated people of Baliau. We deplore these acts in the strongest term possible, orchestrated and venged (sic) by a small minority.

“It is regrettable that our people have venged their frustrations and anger on an innocent party, least of which, the media fraternity and more particularly a woman. The Manam people are so indebted to the media fraternity on the news coverage of our continuing plight and despair. We value and hold the media fraternity with the highest regard.

“We hope that the government accepts responsibility on such an unfortunate incident due to its continuing neglect of our plight. The people of Manam had been demanding permanent and lasting solution to our plight and have agree to resettlement. However, no progress had been made since the enactment of the Manam Resettlement Authority (MRA) Act in April 2016.

“With regret to the assault, leaders and people of Baliau will continue to express their frustrations to government by not accept relief supplies including attempts to move to temporary care centres unless a permanent resettlement area is identified and allocated.

” feel for my people of Manam and on our continuing plight. I am prepared and happy to accept all ridicule and criticism on behalf of my people of Baliau and the wider Manam community.

“God bless you all.

Henry Konaka
Chairman
Manam Peoples’s Sustainable Development Association

• Plea from Manam islanders
• More Manam volcano images

The oldest refugee camp on Nauru is being demolished to hide abusive conditions from the Pacific Islands Forum, an advocate says.

Regional Processing Centre Three (RPC3) most recently housed about 130 people in mould-infested tents thought to have cause widespread respiratory and skin infections.

Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said the camp contained families, including children and single women who had recently petitioned the Australia Border Force to move them to better accommodation.

LISTEN:  The full interview with Ian Rintoul on Dateline Pacific

They were told earlier this month they would not be moved but were now being taken to vacant units and a new refugee area on the island, Rintoul said.

“They were the same tents that were put up in 2013,” he said.

“They’ve held the most vulnerable people in the worst possible conditions in this camp for the past five years.

“To say it’s riddled with mould is an understatement. The tents, because of the environment on Nauru, they’re covered in mould and there’s been substantial medical evidence that the mould may well be one of the things, along with the phosphate, that has caused respiratory problems and skin fungal infections which is an epidemic on Nauru.”

Medical problems
In 2014, microbiologist Dr Cameron Jones was hired to analyse the mould which had reportedly caused medical problems for at least a dozen former staff.

Dr Jones said as well as the staff quarters, refugee tents were covered in mould along with something call black yeast.

“The black yeast infections are an emerging worldwide health threat,” Dr Jones said.

Adult onset asthma and cognitive impairment were among conditions those exposed to the mould could develop, he said.

“Certainly inner ear infections, I noted multiple samples of inner ear drops in some of the asylum seeker tents.

“I would imagine that there are numerous health problems and I can only imagine this is why I was not allowed to talk to any members of the medical staff,” Dr Jones said.

Deliberate attempt
The hasty decision to remove RPC3 was a deliberate attempt to hide the worst refugee facility from visiting dignitaries and journalists, Rintoul said.

“I think it’s quite clear when you see the context of what’s happening on Nauru, the Nauruan government and the Australian Border Force are desperate to try and present a better image of Nauru to the Pacific Islands Forum which starts on September 1,” he said.

With a refugee service centre temporarily being moved away from where the forum was to be held, Rintoul said it seemed that rumoured “security zones” were being set up on the island.

“Whether that will prevent media or dignitaries leaving the security zone, we’re not sure but it will certainly prevent refugees approaching those zones,” he said.

Although the camp’s removal was good news for refugee health, Rintoul agreed the timing of the demolition was cynical.

“It’s clearly not a humanitarian gesture. They could have done this a long time ago. There is simply no doubt they are trying to dress Nauru up.”

Benjamin Robinson-Drawbridge is a journalist with RNZ Pacific. This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

The elephant in the room about the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ban that has people tip-toeing through the frangipani and whispering in hushed tones is the Canberra’s asylum seeker detention centre in the small Pacific state of Nauru.

Nauru is the host of the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit on September 3-6 and the ban on the ABC has been widely condemned by media freedom groups, including the Pacific Media Centre.

The Nauru detention centre has become a significant part of Nauru’s economy since 2001, and in the wake of the strip mining of phosphate (guano) which left it bereft of resources and finances.

READ MORE: NZ Pacific journalists ‘appalled’ by Nauru ban on ABC at Forum

“Nauru’s Australian-managed detention camp is a disgrace, just as the one on Manus island was (now closed). It shows the profound hypocrisy of both Australian and Nauruan authorities,” says Daniel Bastard, head of the Asia-Pacific Desk for Reporters with Borders (RSF).

“Canberra outsources its absurd anti-immigration policy and washes its dirty hands in paying huge amounts of money to Yaren which, in exchange, accepts to carry on human rights violations.

“For sure, Nauruan authorities don’t want journalists to investigate this issue, to report on the living or surviving conditions of the refugees and to interview the numerous men, women and children arbitrarily detained in the camp,” he told Asia Pacific Report.

“And the Australian government doesn’t want this hypocrisy to be exposed either, since Canberra is responsible for this matter.”

No illusion
Veteran New Zealand journalist Michael Field, who has covered the Pacific for three decades, is under no illusion why Nauru has banned the ABC and imposed restrictions on the accredited media that will be covering the Forum.

“It is hardly surprising given the way Nauru has been turned into an Australian concentration camp – Nauru and Australian authorities are desperate to avoid an independent view of it all,” says Field.

“Australia has treated Nauru as a colony long after independence. But the current Nauru government is strongly opinionated and has a deep sense of its own point of view.”

Associate Professor Joseph Fernandez, a media law specialist and academic at Curtin University, Western Australia, and an RSF correspondent, believes Canberra should use its influence to get Nauru to back down on its ban.

“This kind of attitude from governments towards the media should be checked and it should be done convincingly. After all, Australia does provide financial aid to Nauru,” Dr Fernandez says.

“It should use this as a leverage to ensure such governments do not behave in an unacceptable way especially when Australian interests are at stake.

“The Australian public are entitled to not have a representative from their public broadcaster denied permission to cover the event only on the grounds that the host government is not happy with the broadcaster’s previous coverage.”

Not surprised
He is not surprised by Canberra treading warily around the issue.

“It is disappointing that the Australian government has not been more active in opposing this ban, but it isn’t surprising because our leaders tend to take a ‘softly, softly’ approach,” Dr Fernandez says.

He does think that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should be a bit more vocal on ABC’s banning from a free media point-of-view, than washing its hands of the affair and claiming Nauru has “sovereign” rights.

“Yes, of course. Even though Nauru may be right to say that it should have the final say about who it grants an entry visa to, in the present case the grounds for such refusal are very flimsy and an affront to the notion of a free press,” says Dr Fernandez.

The ABC more than any other media organisation in the Pacific has arguably covered Nauru better than the rest, and by doing so has got under the thin veneer of democracy of Baron Waqa’s presidency.

“The ABC has a history of investigation in Nauru. In 2015, it investigated a bribery scandal of President Waqa by an Australian phosphate dealer,” RSF’s Bastard says.

Michael Field says: “I guess it is simply because the ABC has covered Nauru more than other news outlets.”

‘Fearless reporting’
Dr Fernandez explains: “The ABC is well regarded for its fearless reporting, not just in Australia but also on other countries.

“The ABC coverage of Nauru has been quite critical in the past and this is not something countries with less established democracies are comfortable with.

“Those in power sometimes allow that power to go to their heads. If the Nauruan government has a complaint about specific ABC reporting it should use the proper channels to take these complaints forward.

“The ABC has one of the most elaborate complaints mechanisms in the country. That aside, if something is legally actionable they should take action through the courts. After all, governments and their leaders are better placed to seek redress through the courts.”

Bastard bluntly states that the Nauruan government is authoritarian in its outlook.

“Nauruan authorities don’t have a strong history of promoting freedom to inform, especially since 2013. What with the US$8000 fee to apply for a visa (waived for the Forum), with no guarantee of approval, the blocking of Facebook for almost three years, increasing cases of blatant censorship on domestic media in the recent years…

“There is nothing to gain in acting like this if you want to build a long-term democracy. But if the current government wants to remain in power…?”

To boycott or not?
The news media appears divided on the proposed boycott of the Forum, as threatened by the Australian Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery president David Crowe last month.

Bastard agrees with the boycott: “Yes, absolutely,” he says.

“Media and journalists have to show solidarity with their colleagues. If a government doesn’t want to abide by democratic rules in letting the press do its work freely, then the press as a whole doesn’t have to abide by authoritarian decisions.”

But, says Field: “Journalists should report the news – not boycott it…. And if there are handicaps in that reporting, then tell the readers. Not run off into the corner and have a cry.”

News Corp in Australia has already rejected the boycott, and while the New Zealand Press Gallery sympathises with its Australian counterparts it will not be boycotting the Forum.

“We share the concerns expressed by our Australian counterparts in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery about the Nauru Government’s decision to ban the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from the Pacific Islands Forum,” says Stacey Kirk, chair of the NZ Parliamentary Press Gallery.

“There is no intention for the NZ Parliamentary Press Gallery to boycott the forum at this stage,” she told Asia Pacific Report.”

With only a matter of weeks to the Forum there is water to run under the bridge yet.

Sri Krishnamurthi is a journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies (Digital Media) reporting on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.

• ABC still planning to go to Forum
• Protests gather force over Nauru ban on ABC
• Pacific Media Centre condemns ‘flagrant’ Nauru ban on ABC at Forum

Protests have been gathering force over the Nauru government ban on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from entering the country to cover the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Summit in September.

Nauru accused ABC, which is Australia’s public broadcaster, of biased and false reporting.

The summit is an annual gathering of Oceania’s heads of state, where important matters concerning the region are addressed.

READ MORE: Nauru government’s move against press freedom ‘disgraceful’

On July 2, 2018, the Nauru government issued a statement restricting the number of people who can attend the summit because of “very limited accommodation.” But it singled out ABC and explained why it banned the broadcaster:

…no representative from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation will be granted a visa to enter Nauru under any circumstances, due to this organisation’s blatant interference in Nauru’s domestic politics prior to the 2016 election, harassment of and lack of respect towards our President in Australia, false and defamatory allegations against members of our Government, and continued biased and false reporting about our country. It is our right, as it is the right of every nation, to choose who is allowed to enter.

ABC aired a documentary in 2016 alleging torture and child abuse linked to Australian government’s offshore asylum-seeker processing centers, which are managed by Nauru. It also published a report which alleged that Nauru’s president and some of his ministers received bribery from an Australian phosphate dealer.

Nauru condemned both reports as “racist” and “biased political propaganda”.

The small island nation was a mining site for several decades until phosphate deposits were exhausted in the 1980s. It received aid from Australia and hosted an Australian immigration detention facility.

ABC news director Gaven Morris criticised the decision of Nauru:

The Nauruan Government should not be allowed to dictate who fills the positions in an Australian media pool.

It can hardly claim it is “welcoming the media” if it dictates who that media will be and bans Australia’s public broadcaster.

The Nauru government quickly responded by describing the ABC statement as “arrogant, disrespectful and a further example of the sense of entitlement shown by this activist media organisation.” It added:

We remind the ABC that we – like Australia – have every right to refuse a visa to any person or organisation that we believe is not of good character, and that entry into our country is a privilege not a right. The Australian media do not decide who enters Nauru.

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Nauru’s decision was “regrettable” but refused to intervene on behalf of ABC.

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, an Australian network of media workers, said the government should pursue the issue with Nauru officials:

This is an attack on press freedom that our government needs to condemn in the strongest possible terms. Recognising the sovereignty of another nation does not extend to accepting they have the right to prevent free and open reporting.

Australia’s Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery threatened to boycott the event in Nauru:

If the ban is not reversed, the media pool will be disbanded. If one cannot go, none will go.

We oppose the Nauru edict because it is wrong in this instance and because it sets a dangerous precedent. What other Australians might be banned from a similar group by another government in future? We stand for a free press, not a banned one.

Red Ink of Australia’s Nine Network expressed support to ABC:

ABC is our competitor, and a tough one at that, but there is something bigger at stake here than beating a rival.

The ABC ban was also denounced by other media groups in the region. The New Zealand Parliamentary Press Gallery said:

This decision follows already restrictive conditions, limiting the number of journalists who can attend this important regional summit. While infrastructure constrains play a role in limited pooling numbers, we are appalled by this attempt to control media coverage.

Dan McGarry, the media director of Vanuatu Daily Post, explained why the newspaper will not be sending a delegate to Nauru in September:

I instructed the Daily Post’s editor to withdraw our reporter from the Vanuatu media delegation allotted to covering this event.

This isn’t a self-righteous, moralising action. It’s a survival tactic. If we allow ourselves to get into a situation where our ability to report is predicated on how positive our coverage is, then we can’t do our job.

Pacific Island News Association urged Nauru to reconsider its decision to promote media diversity:

The Pacific is on display and can be proud of its media diversity and efforts to strengthen our communities through dialogue and communication.

The International Federation of Journalists said Nauru had set a dangerous precedent:

Governments, leaders and politicians must remember the role of the media, and not use their powers to control and stifle press freedom. The Nauru government is setting a dangerous precedent by barring ABC journalists’ from covering the Pacific Island Forum.

The September event hosted by Nauru is the 49th Pacific Islands Forum.

Pacific Media Watch reports that the New Zealand-based Pacific Media Centre condemned the selective ban by the Nauru government in what it said was an authoritarian affront to media freedom in the region.

Director Professor David Robie, who also criticised Australian hypocrisy over Pacific media freedom, said:

Clearly the Nauru government is determined to gag any independent efforts to speak truth to power …

This is shocking and painfully obvious that Australia has much to hide in the region just like the Nauru government.

Nauru is unranked in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. However, the Nauru ban was criticised at an RSF Asia-Pacific media freedom summit in Paris last week.

Mong Palatino is an activist contributor to Global Voices and a two-term congressman in the Philippine House of Representatives. He blogs at Mongster’s Nest. This article is republished from Global Voices under a Creative Commons licence.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Papua New Guinea has been condemned for violent mob attacks on people accused of sorcery – especially women or girls, repeated assaults and robberies on refugees, failure to address police brutality and corruption in the latest country report by Human Rights Watch.

The New York-based rights watchdog flagged a Madang trial that began in March of 122 people accused of killing five men and two children suspected of witchcraft and serial attacks on women.

Almost 40 percent of the country’s 8 million people live in poverty, and the government is far too reliant on religious groups and non-government organisations to provide charitable services for the economic and social rights of citizens.

Among other key points of the chapter in its annual world report:

• The government has not taken sufficient steps to address gender inequality, violence, excessive use of force by police;
• Rates of family and sexual violence are among the highest in the world, and perpetrators are rarely prosecuted; and
• Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world.

‘Electoral violence’
Last August, Peter O’Neill was reelected as prime minister following an “election marred by widespread electoral irregularities and violence”, Human Rights Watch says.

“Soldiers and extra police were sent to the Highlands in response to fighting triggered by the election, where dozens of people, including police, had been killed in election-related violence.

“Refugees and asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have suffered repeated violent attacks and robberies by locals, with inadequate hospital care on the island and no action by police.”

The watchdog says that more than three years after the 2013 Family Protection Act was adopted, Parliament in May finally passed regulations to implement the law, which criminalises domestic violence and allows victims to obtain protection orders.

However, police and prosecutors “rarely pursue investigations or criminal charges against people who commit family violence” — even in cases of attempted murder, serious injury, or repeated rape — and instead prefer to resolve such cases through mediation and/or payment of compensation.

Police often demand money (“for fuel”) from victims before acting, or simply ignore cases that occur in rural areas.

There is also a severe lack of services for people requiring assistance after having suffered family violence, such as safe houses, qualified counselors, case management, financial support, or legal aid, the report says.

Violent mobs
Violent mobs attacked individuals accused of sorcery or witchcraft, particularly women and girls.

In March, a trial involving 122 defendants began in Madang. The defendants were charged in connection with the killing of five men and two children suspected of sorcery in 2014, Human Rights Watch says.

The prosecution alleged that the men raided a village in search of sorcerers to kill, armed with “bush knives, bows and arrows, hunting spears, [and] home-made and factory-made shotguns.”

No further details were available at time of the watchdog’s report regarding the trial’s progress.

Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world. Just over 50 percent of women and girls give birth in a health facility or with the help of a skilled birth attendant.

Although the PNG government supports universal access to contraception, two out of three women still cannot access contraception due to geographic, cultural, and economic barriers.

Abortion remains illegal in PNG, except when the mother’s life is at risk.

Police abuse rampant
Police abuse remained rampant in Papua New Guinea, says Human Rights Watch.

In May, police detained and assaulted a doctor at a police roadblock on his way home in Port Moresby. The case triggered a public outcry, but no one had been charged for the offence at time of writing.

Few police are ever held to account for beating or torturing criminal suspects, but in December 2016, a mobile squad commander was charged with the murder of a street vendor, six months after the alleged offence occurred.

A court granted him bail in January 2017. In September, police charged a former police officer with the 2013 murder of two people in Central Province.

Despite the ombudsman and police announcing investigations into the 2016 police shooting of eight university students during a protest in Port Moresby, at time of writing no police had been charged or disciplined and neither body had issued a report.

About 770 male asylum seekers and refugees from countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, and Iran, live on Manus Island.

Another 35 or so have signed settlement papers to remain in PNG, although only four of these are working and financially independent.

Temporary living
About 70 are temporarily living in Port Moresby. All were forcibly transferred to PNG by Australia since 2013, says Human Rights Watch.

Australia pays for their upkeep but refuses to resettle them, insisting refugees must settle in PNG or third countries, such as the United States.

Refugees and asylum seekers do not feel safe on Manus due to a spate of violent attacks by locals in the town of Lorengau.

Local youths attacked refugees and asylum seekers with bush knives, sticks, and rocks and robbed them of mobile phones and possessions.

Police failed to hold perpetrators to account.

In April, soldiers fired shots at the main regional processing center, injuring nine people including refugees and center staff.

The International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) has been providing healthcare for refugees on Manus for several years but their contract is due to expire today.

However, despite the end date, the government did not publicly indicate a new provider was confirmed until last Friday. Although details remained scant.

In a statement, the Department of Home Affairs said it had “engaged a new health services provider from 1 May 2018 (and) IHMS will work with the new health service provider during a transition period”.

“Individuals will continue to have access to appropriate primary health services,” it said.

A spokesperson from IHMS confirmed the April 30 end date but said “it will, however, maintain a core group of staff in Manus and Port Moresby to support the transition to a new health service provider”.

New provider
But neither the Department of Home Affairs or IHMS would say who the new provider would be, leaving open questions about the quality of the care.

Greens Senator Nick McKim said Australians were once again “in the dark” about the treatment of refugees on Manus.

McKim said getting information from the Department of Home Affairs was “like getting blood from a stone”.

“And of course that’s deliberate and part of the intent of establishing Australia’s offshore detention system in the first place – to drop a veil of secrecy over what’s happening in those places.”

He said although IHMS had a very checkered history, there was now a danger of gaps in health care over the coming months and beyond.

“Ultimately the risk is yet more people will come to harm … as a result of Peter Dutton’s negligence.”

McKim said the use of Manus and other offshore immigration detention facilities will go down as “one of the darkest chapters” in Australian history.

Harm ‘very rare’
“Because it’s very rare that in Australia’s history we’ve deliberately caused harm to innocent people and that’s exactly what Peter Dutton is doing.”

Refugee coordinator at Amnesty International Australia Graham Thom similarly expressed concerned around healthcare for those on Manus after today.

“Ever since the Australian government began shipping refugees out to detention centres on remote tropical islands, they have been trying to hide from the consequences of this cruel policy.”

“Withdrawing healthcare is Australia’s latest deplorable attempt to shift the responsibility for the suffering it has caused.”

“The health situation for refugees and asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea is already dire, but the end of the IHMS contract threatens to turn this into an all-out crisis.”

“The only way for Australia to ensure the health of the refugees and asylum seekers on Manus is to end offshore processing for good.”

SBS News coverage on the Pacific.

Donald J Trump poses major problems to world order. His administration is unraveling, he has no coherent foreign or domestic policy strategy and the Mueller inquiry is beginning to expose serious criminal activity on the part of the President and his close associates.

As a consequence, Trump, is showing signs of personal as well as political unraveling. He is exhibiting classic symptoms of too many stress hormones in his body which is having a major impact on his hipppocampal and frontal lobe functioning.

As a result, Trump is experiencing confusion, has difficulty concentrating, trouble learning new information, and is experiencing major problems with his decision-making.

This was noted first in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury and most recently in James Comey’s new book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

Trump’s decision to launch a missile strike against chemical weapons facilities in Syria owes more to personal and cognitive stress than political or military calculation. It is a classic diversionary tactic aimed more at boosting popularity and deflecting attention from Trump’s domestic political woes rather than addressing ways of bringing the Syrian Civil War to a conclusion.

It was an impulsive high risk strategy and the fig leaf of approval from Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron does little to give it either Alliance or United Nations legitimacy.

Without peace in Syria the prospect of dealing with Assad’s chemical weapons or his gross violations of human rights are very slim indeed. The US, UK and French interventions will impede a negotiated solution to the Syrian Civil War and they do little or nothing to deal with Bashar Assad’s gross violations of human rights and other mass atrocities which continue to this day.

Hollow justification
The message from yesterday’s strike against the chemical weapons plants is that Assad is free to keep killing his people by any non-chemical means.

President Trump and his Secretary of Defence have said that the strike was to enforce international laws and norms regarding the use of chemical weapons. This justification seems hollow when no Trump administration officials have articulated how these strikes fit into a larger Syrian diplomatic and military strategy.

The risks of this military intervention remain high. The Russians, Syrians and the Iranians are now all united against the United States and its allies; we are witnessing the beginning of a new cold war and the prospects for negotiated solutions to the Civil War in Syria and peace in the Middle East seem even more remote now than before the strikes began.

This is a big challenge to the whole world. We are all affected by the behaviour of a man who has demonstrated his singular unsuitability for any political office and whose actions have implications for global peace and stability.

How do those of us who are not American citizens, deal with psychopathology at the heart of the US government? In the first place we must work with American individuals and organisations who are as worried about this action as we are.

There are some hopeful signs. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, for example, called Trump’s decision “reckless” and “illegal”, and expressed concern that the action might embolden Trump to bomb Iran or North Korea.

Senators Chris Murphy and Bernie Sanders and Representatives Ro Khanna, Barbara Lee and Jerry Nadler, have called the attack unconstitutional, illegal and destructive and demanded congressional authority for any war making, and an investment in diplomacy instead of missile strikes.

Republican disquiet
There was disquiet in the president’s own party, also, as Republican Congressman Thomas Massie called it “unconstitutional.”

Second , we need to focus on real solutions to alleviate the terrible suffering of the Syrian people. There are 3.2 million people within Syria in need of direct humanitarian assistance. There are millions more who remain as refugees in Turkey and other parts of Europe.

Most importantly, we need to take the issues of chemical weapons and a negotiated peace in Syria back to the United Nations where it belongs.

Third, Americans and the rest of the world have to work out ways in which we can both monitor and resist the hawkish policies of Mike Pompeo (about to be confirmed as the new Secretary of State) and John Bolton the new National Security Advisor.

They will encourage Trump’s impulsiveness and desire to distract attention from domestic and personal issues with reckless foreign policy adventures that will do nothing to maintain American security or build global peace.

I hope that the American people mobilise to ensure that this illegal and unilateral decision to attack chemical weapons facilities is challenged and contained. But more importantly, I hope that more attention will be given in the US and the rest of the world to the development of rational Middle East and global foreign policy positions so that the unilateral use of force and coercive diplomacy is resisted .

I also hope that there are some wise heads in or near the White House who might suggest that the President take some time off to seek professional help for his serious personal pathology which, if left unchecked, will have negative consequences not only for his administration and the well being of America, but the peace of the whole world.

Professor Kevin P Clements is director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies,
University of Otago.

• US ‘locked and loaded’ if Syria uses ‘toxic gas’ again
• Is chemical inspectors’ mission in Syria still relevant?

A former New Zealand prime minister has warned that climate change has the potential to force a legal and political upheaval that the world would underestimate “at its peril”.

Speaking in a keynote address at the Pacific Ocean Climate Conference at Te Papa Museum in Wellington yesterday, Sir Geoffrey Palmer said a largely unexplored aspect of climate change lay in the “potential to force the revision of many fundamental and long accepted methods of doing government and organising its institutions”.

New Zealand would not be able to solve this problem alone and it would need levels of international cooperation “not yet achieved”.

“The four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the [biblical] book of Revelation were pestilence, war, famine and death. Climate change has the capacity to produce those conditions to a worrying extent in the future,” said Sir Geoffrey, now distinguished fellow in Victoria University’s Faculty of Law.

“We underestimate at our peril the challenges that it will bring and that it has brought already.”

He cited riots and massive refugee flows as some early examples.

Sir Geoffrey said New Zealand would need to ensure that the instruments of government – both domestically and internationally – were adjusted to meet the challenges and this “poses a formidable set of issues”.

Climate change lawsuit
Sir Geoffrey made the comments in an analysis of a recent landmark, but unsuccessful, legal challenge to the New Zealand government over climate policy made by a 26-year-old law student, Sarah Thompson.

He also gave an in-depth overview of the state of environmental law in the country.

Commentators at the Te Papa conference, including Sir Geoffrey, hailed Thompson for bringing the test case, which sought a court ruling over the National-led government’s two key climate goals and argued these no longer met New Zealand’s obligations under the COP21 Paris targets.

Media publicity about Justice Jillian Mallon’s 25-page judgement delivered on November 2 was relatively muted, however, given that New Zealand’s climate policies changed with a Labour-New Zealand First-Green government taking office.

Sir Geoffrey said Sarah Thompson’s name would always be remembered in relation to climate change lawsuits.

“Endless further iterations of the Paris agreement will be necessary before substantial progress is made [over climate change jurisprudence],” Sir Geoffrey said.

He added that as he had written in other legal papers, he was “not sanguine that the mechanisms for making international law and enforcing it effectively are adequate to allow us to be confident that climate change can be properly addressed”.

In Paris in June 2017, the Global Pact for the Environment had been unveiled and it was a “powerful document that would remedy many difficulties with the international law for the environment were it binding”.

Not binding
The problem was that it was not binding and there did not seem “an immediate possibility” that it would become binding.

New Zealand’s domestic legal situation now needed to be designed with a durable framework that could endure over time and would not be the subject of “sudden policy lurches” due to changes of government.

Sir Geoffrey said the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Waitangi Tribunal had the potential to provide alternatives to the official narrative and “these could both be helpful in stimulating public opinion to demand more from elected representatives”.

Also, New Zealand was one of only three countries in the world without a written constitution and provision of an environmental right in such a written, codified constitution would offer the courts “more capacity than they have now” to rule on climate change issues.

However, it was unrealistic to expect the courts to become major players in climate change policy.

“You would be better off talking to politicians,” he added.

Two activist lawyers from the North Pacific disagreed with Sir Geoffrey’s pessimistic view while also giving keynotes at the Te Papa conference session, although they were dealing mostly with American-based legal jurisdictions.

Invoking indigenous rights
Dr D. Kapua Sproat, acting director of Ka Huli Ao Centre for Excellence in Native Hawai’ian Law and director of the Environmental Law clinic at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, said Native Hawai’ians could invoke indigenous rights to environmental self-determination.

She said human rights and constitutional restorative justice legal principles could and were being used to challenge the dominant culture.

Julian Aguon of Guam, founder of boutique Blue Ocean Law, said it was a challenge to confront deep-sea mining negotiators and corporate lawyers in “wild west” style cases in the Pacific.

He said he had been working on the issue in several countries and was concerned that 27 deep sea exploration contracts had been awarded in a field of law where there was no or little oversight or regulation.

Aguon said an unsavoury “cast of characters” had embarked on a new “minerals gold rush” in the Pacific’s so-called “rim of fire” region since 2012.

He was dedicated to protecting indigenous customary and traditional rights, which were already being negatively impacted on by the “catastrophic” deep-sea exploration disturbances.

“The Pacific has always been a place where you can dump your trash,. blow up your bombs,. and now to mine your seabed,” he said.

• NZ’s first climate change lawsuit rejected by High Court
• Global Pact for the Environment

Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, southwestern district of Bangladesh, as part of his official visit to Bangladesh at the weekend.

During his visit on Sunday, Widodo said his country would continue to support Rohingya Muslims fleeing state persecution in Myanmar.

Earlier in the day, Widodo met Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the capital Dhaka to discuss bilateral relations and the Rohingya issue.

During his meeting with Hasina, the leader of the largest Muslim populated country said Jakarta would continue its support to resolve the Rohingya crisis.

Indonesia’s attitude towards the solution of the Rohingya crisis in the United Nations and the UN Commission on Human Rights will continue in the international arena in the same manner, Widodo said.

He stressed a peaceful and swift solution of the issue on the basis of bilateral ties between Bangladeshi and Myanmar government.

Five agreements
During his visit, both countries signed five agreements in different sectors, including fishing, trade, diplomacy and energy.

Another agreement was signed between Bangladeshi oil company PetroBanla and Indonesian oil and gas company Pertamina, envisaging import of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Indonesia.

More than 700,000 refugees, mostly children and women, have fled Myanmar since August 25, 2017, when Myanmar forces launched a bloody crackdown.

The Rohingya, described by the UN as the world’s most persecuted people, have faced heightened fears of attack since dozens were killed in communal violence in 2012.

At least 9000 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state from August 25 to September 24, according to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders.

In a report published on December 12, 2017, the global humanitarian organisation said the deaths of 71.7 percent or 6700 Rohingya were caused by violence. They include 730 children below the age of 5.

The UN has documented mass gang rapes, killings — including of infants and young children — brutal beatings and disappearances committed by security personnel. In a report, UN investigators said such violations may have constituted crimes against humanity.

• More Indonesian artices

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) has expressed its deep concern about reports that Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian-Kurdish journalist and regular contributor to Australian publications, was arrested on Manus Island early last Thursday.

He was released later in the day.

READ MORE: Médecins Sans Frontières denied access to refugees as thousands rally in Australia

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) chief executive, Paul Murphy, said Boochani appeared to have been deliberately targeted by Papua New Guinea (PNG) police in the crackdown on November 23 because he was well known as a journalist reporting from inside the detention centre.

“Behrouz has been one of the main sources of factual information about conditions inside the Manus Island detention centre for the past few years, and his reporting has been published in Australia and internationally,” Murphy said.

“His reporting in the finest traditions of journalism has been critical when the Australian and PNG governments have done everything they can to prevent media from having access to the asylum seekers on Manus Island.

“If, as the case appears to be, he has been targeted and arrested because of his profile and his role as a journalist in an attempt to silence him, this is an egregious attack on press freedom that cannot be let stand.”

Like MEAA, JERAA has called on the Australian and PNG governments to inform the public about his safety, and allow him to continue doing the journalistic work he has been for so many months.

Amnesty Award for journalism
Just three weeks ago, Boochani was awarded the Amnesty International Australian Media Award for his journalism from Manus Island.

JERAA president, Matthew Ricketson, was a guest speaker at the awards in Sydney, and testified to the loud applause that greeted the award as well as the heartfelt admiration of his colleague at Guardian Australia, Ben Doherty, who accepted the award in Boochani’s absence.

Professor Ricketson said: “Behrouz Boochani’s reporting has been brave and inspiring, not least because he has been pursuing it while at the same time he has been detained indefinitely.

“Governments for nearly two decades now have been fighting determinedly to hide from public view – and the possibility of public empathy – what has been happening inside offshore detention centres.

“Boochani’s reporting is a vital counterweight to this campaign”.

Earlier this year, MEAA, the journalists’ union, co-ordinated an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, calling for him to be resettled in Australia. Dozens of high-profile journalists and writers co-signed the open letter.

Boochani’s work has been published in The Saturday Paper as well as Guardian Australia, while his film about life inside the Manus detention centre, Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time has been screened at the Sydney and London film festivals. He tweets at @BehrouzBoochani

• Earlier story – IFJ blasts ‘press freedom attack’
• More Manus Island stories

The plight of the Rohingya people has hit the international headlines again. Following the August clashes in Rakhine State between Myanmar police and army and an armed opposition group, Myanmar has seen an accelerated exodus of Rohingya people into Bangladesh.

There are estimated to be about one million Rohingya in Bangladesh with between 500,000 to 700,000 left in Myanmar. Moreover, since the late 1970s, 350,000 Rohingya have fled to Pakistan, 200,000 to Saudi Arabia and 150,000 to Malaysia to escape persecution.

Others are in Thailand and countries of resettlement such as New Zealand and Australia.

The most recent situation is so tragic that a recent Times Higher Education article called for some of the world’s top universities to cease educational partnerships in Myanmar until human rights abuses, especially towards the Rohingya people have ceased.

Rohingya are Muslims living in Northern Rakhine State (formerly Arakan) in Myanmar (formerly Burma) who constitute an ethnic, linguistic and religious minority. They were stripped of citizenship in 1982 and, subsequently, have been the victims of severe discrimination and persecution.

For the last few years, there has been evidence of Rohingya risking their lives and fleeing Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh and other countries. In August this year, with the insurgence of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the Myanmar army began a “clearance operation”, characterised as “ethnic cleansing” by the United Nations, that lasted for several weeks.

Amnesty International published a report on October 18 claiming the Myanmar Army operation which involved “widespread and unlawful killing” including rape and other sexual violence and the burning of Rohingya villages, constituted “serious human rights violations” and “crimes against humanity”.

Tragic situation
The situation is tragic and needs urgent international attention.

The underlying problem for the Rohingya people is that Myanmar refuses to accept they are a recognisable ethnic minority and therefore citizens of Myanmar.

While scholars are divided over the Rohingya’s earliest settlement in Rakhine, the 2017 Advisory Commission on Rakhine State led by former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, maintained the Rohingya people are an integrated population of Muslims who have lived in Rakhine since at least the Kingdom of Mrauk U, the final Rakhine kingdom (1429-1775), and possibly 600 years earlier.

Others are 19th and 20th-century migrants from Bangladesh and West Bengal of India.

In any case, all Rohingya have been living in Rakhine state for at least several generations and many of them much, much longer. To put this into perspective, Rohingya have been living in Northern Rakhine in some cases perhaps before the Māori settlement of Aotearoa and at least as long as European settlement here.

Moreover, in light of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights conventions relating to statelessness (Article 3) and reduction of statelessness (Article 1), the Rohingya people are entitled to citizenship, their human rights should be upheld, and they are entitled to non-discrimination.

Above all, in no way ought they or anyone else be the victims of ethnic cleansing.

From the UNHCR’s perspective, there are three durable solutions for refugees: repatriation, local integration, and resettlement.

Since Bangladesh is already hosting close to a million Rohingya and is a low-middle income country, it may not be feasible to integrate all the new Rohingya who have fled Rakhine state since August.

Repatriation very slow
As for repatriation, Bangladesh and Myanmar recently agreed to form a joint working group by the end of November. However, with current documentation issues outstanding for the Rohingya, repatriation could take a very long time.

In the meantime, global leaders, including from the United States, European Union, and UN Security Council, have expressed extreme concern over the Rohingya situation. International pressure on Myanmar needs to be reinforced to expedite the repatriation.

Regarding resettlement, although Bangladesh did not ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, it started a third-country resettlement programme in 2006 and this continued until the Bangladeshi government suspended it in November 2010.

However UNHCR, being the global refugee-resettling facilitator, may approach Bangladesh and mediate with refugee-resettling countries to open a special quota for the Rohingya and extend the opportunity to resettle them in third countries.

Because New Zealand is a refugee resettling country and some Rohingya have been successfully resettled here, New Zealand needs to urgently create provision for a special intake of Rohingya refugees, as it has done recently for the Syrian refugees.

The new government has the opportunity to demonstrate its credibility to the world by extending compassion to a community in deep crisis and thereby upholding Labour’s election slogan “Let’s do this”.

Associate Professor Sharon Harvey is head of the school of language and culture at Auckland University of Technology. Sorowar Chowdhury, a PhD student from Bangladesh, is researching the resettlement of Rohingya in New Zealand. This article has been republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the authors and was originally published by The New Zealand Herald.

You have to go a long way to find anything remotely resembling Australia’s current treatment of New Zealand.

For a supposedly friendly government to deliberately inject inflammatory disinformation into the political bloodstream of its supposedly closest neighbour is an extraordinarily provocative act. Not quite an act of war, but the sort of intervention that can all-too-easily provoke a catastrophic loss of trust.

It’s the sort of thing that the Soviets and the Americans used to do to one another all the time during the Cold War. Except, of course, those two superpowers were ideological and geopolitical rivals of the first order. It takes a real effort to re-cast the relationship between New Zealand and Australia in similar terms. Nevertheless, it’s an effort we are now obliged to make.

So, what is it that Australia has done? Essentially, its national security apparatus (presumably at the instigation of their political leaders) has released, mostly through media surrogates, a number of related stories calculated to inflame the prejudices of a certain type of New Zealander.

Like Australia, New Zealand harbours a frighteningly large number of racists. Politically-speaking, such people are easily aroused and have few qualms about setting-off ugly, racially-charged, debates on talkback radio, in the letters columns of the daily newspapers and across social media. These individuals are trouble enough when all they have to fight with are their own stereotypes and prejudices. Arm them with the carefully assembled disinformation of “fake news” and they instantly become quite dangerous.

Planting stories
And yet, this is exactly what the Australian authorities have done. Planting stories in their own press (knowing they will be picked up almost immediately by our own) about at least four boatloads of illegal immigrants that have set out for New Zealand only to be intercepted and turned back by the ever-vigilant officers of the Royal Australian Navy and their Coast Guard comrades.

The purpose of this story (unsourced and lacking in detail, making it, almost certainly, fake news) was to paint New Zealand’s prime minister as an ill-informed and ungrateful diplomatic naïf: an inexperienced young idealist who doesn’t know which way is up when it comes to dealing with real-world problems.

This, alone, was an extraordinary intervention. To gauge how extraordinary, just turn it around. Imagine the reaction in Australia if some unnamed person in New Zealand’s national security apparatus leaked a memo to one of this country’s daily newspapers in which the negative diplomatic and economic consequences of being tainted by association with Australia’s flouting of international law is set forth in clinical detail. If the memo also contained a collection of highly critical assessments of Turnbull’s cabinet colleagues, allegedly passed-on by a number of unnamed western diplomats, then so much the better!

Canberra would not be impressed!

If the Australians had left it at just one intervention, then perhaps New Zealanders could simply have shrugged it off as yet another case of bad behaviour from the land of the under-arm bowlers. But when have the Aussies ever left it at “just one”?

Former guard’s ‘intervention’
The next intervention came in the form of “Ian” – formerly a guard (or so he said) at both the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres. For reasons it has yet to adequately explain, RNZ’s Checkpoint programme provided “Ian” with nearly ten, largely uninterrupted, minutes of air-time during which he poured-forth a stream of accusations and characterisations which, to put it mildly, painted the protesters occupying the decommissioned Manus Island facility in the most lurid and disquieting colours. The detainees were criminals, drug-dealers – paedophiles even! Not at all the sort of people New Zealanders would want in their country.

“Ian”, it turns out, is a “witness” well-known to the many Australian NGOs that have taken up the cause of the detainees on Manus and Nauru. They have noted the curious similarities between “Ian’s” supposedly personal observations and experiences, and the inflammatory talking-points constantly reiterated by Australia’s hard-line Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton. A cynic might describe the grim “testimony” of “Ian” and Dutton as mutually reinforcing.

No matter. New Zealand’s racist, Islamophobic and militantly anti-immigrant community had been supplied with yet another truckload of Australian-manufactured ammunition.

Enough? Not hardly! Only on Friday morning New Zealanders were fed the shocking “news” that the protesting Manus Island detainees are harbouring within their ranks an unspecified number of men guilty of having debauched and prostituted local girls as young as 10 and 13!

Too much? Over the top? Redolent of the very worst instances of the murderous racial-incitement for which the Deep South of the United States was so rightly infamous? It sure is! Which is why we must hope that the internet does not operate on Manus Island. Because, if the local inhabitants were to read on-line that the detainees were responsible for prostituting their daughters, what might they NOT do?

Disinformation campaign
One almost feels that the Australian spooks behind this extraordinary disinformation campaign would actually be delighted if the locals burned down the Manus Island detention centre with the protesting detainees inside it.

“This is what comes of 37-year-old Kiwi prime ministers meddling in matters they know nothing about!” That would be the consistent theme of the right-wing Australian media. It would not take long for the same line to be picked up here: first on social media, and then by more mainstream media outlets.

Right-wing outrage, mixed with a gleeful “we told you so!”, could not, however, be contained within the news media for very long. Inevitably, the more outré inhabitants of the Opposition’s back bench would take possession of the controversy, from there it would cascade down rapidly to Opposition politicians nearer the front.

Before her enemies could say: “It’s all your fault!”, Jacinda would find herself under withering political fire from both sides of the Tasman. Canberra would register her increasingly fragile government’s distress with grim satisfaction.

As the men and women responsible for organising “Operation Stardust” deleted its final folder, and fed the last incriminating document into the paper-shredder, one or two of them might even have voiced a judiciously muted “Mission Accomplished!”

This essay, by Chris Trotter, was originally posted on the Bowalley Road blog of Saturday, 18 November 2017, under the title: “Not quite an act of war: Analysing Australia’s push-back against Jacinda’s Manus Island outreach.  It is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the author.

• RNZ believed Manus Island staff but why should we?

OPINION: By Murray Horton of the Aotearoa Independence Movement

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is to be congratulated for trying to do the decent thing by, in her words, “offering to lend a hand” with regards to Australia’s appalling treatment of refugees detained, then abandoned, on Manus Island (not to forget the others detained on Nauru).

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull tried to swat her away by saying that he has a deal with the US to take the Manus men – I think pigs will fly before Donald Trump honours what he calls “the worst deal ever”, made by Barack Obama.

Nor do I see why there is anything stopping Jacinda from dealing directly with Papua New Guinea. After all, the Manus Island men are being detained in its country and Australia has abandoned them. NZ and PNG are two independent countries, so what’s to stop the two governments sorting out this mess of Australia’s making?

And let’s give credit where credit’s due – the John Key National government made the same offer, namely to take some of the Manus men. It got the same response from Australia. That just goes to show that NZ Tories have got more humanity (in this case, at least) than their Aussie counterparts.

And, to his further credit, Key refused to countenance creating a new category of second class New Zealanders, ones with no rights to travel to Australia. Because that’s why pig-headed Turnbull and co won’t take up NZ’s bipartisan offer.

The excuse given is that the Manus men could then enter Australia through the New Zealand “back door” — i.e. via the free entry allowed to New Zealanders.

That is just so much crap. There is a precedent for New Zealand cleaning up Australia’s refugee mess, namely the Clark government taking in a swag of people from the Norwegian freighter Tampa, which was famously blocked by John Howard in 2001. Not only that, NZ did the decent thing and let their families join them.

‘Back door’ myth
Hands up if you’ve heard of any of those people going to Australia via the “New Zealand back door” and becoming “terrorists”. No, I thought not. Those Tampa refugees made their lives in New Zealand and have become an asset to this country.

“Resettled in New Zealand and allowed to bring in their families, Tampa refugees have become doctors, civil engineers, lawyers, police officers, nurses, architects and business owners, employing others. About two dozen in the trades worked on the Christchurch rebuild, ” said the Christchurch Press in an editorial. I’ve met one of the Tampa people myself – a young Afghan woman working as a checkout operator, complete with headscarf, in a central Christchurch supermarket. She told me she was a baby on the Tampa. So that’s what big tough Australia’s scared of – babies.

Australia needs to hang its head in shame (this crime against humanity has been perpetrated by both Liberal and Labor governments). If you read, heard or saw a news report about civilians imprisoned without charge, trial or hope of release, who were then abandoned without food, water, power or toilets and in imminent fear of attack and/or death by hostile locals, your first reaction would probably be that this was the latest atrocity by ISIS.

And that’s how we need to judge this – Australia is enacting a policy of state terrorism. Its “Pacific Solution” is starting to resemble the Final Solution that Australia and New Zealand fought to defeat in World War Two.

I’ve experienced a little bit of this deprivation myself – no power, water or toilet for several days after the February 2011 Christchurch quake, and it was no fun in a First World society where we had the expectation that somebody would do something about it ASAP. How much worse it must feel then on a Third World island, with no such expectation.

But if our government is serious about “lending a hand”, then it needs to look much further than the (admittedly spectacular) symptoms like Manus Island, and do something about the causes of the global refugee crisis.

Why are these tens of millions of people (of whom only a few hundred are the victims of Australia’s unforgiveable cruelty) fleeing their home countries?

Plenty will be economic refugees, they simply want a better life for their children and themselves. That is a story as old as humanity. That is why several hundred thousand New Zealanders have moved to Australia, after all. It is the same reason why my Australian grandfather moved from Queensland to Wellington – to get a job.

Global poverty, wars
The cause is global poverty and inequality. That’s a very big problem, and tiny little New Zealand can only do so much about that. But we can do our share, and we can start from the recognition articulated by the most unlikely of sources – Winston Peters – that more and more people see capitalism as their foe and not their friend.

He was talking about New Zealanders, so multiply that by the billions of people living at the coalface of global capitalism and you start to get an idea of the scale of the problem. Capitalism is predicated on a few winners and an awful lot of losers.

Not unreasonably, tens of millions of these “losers” want to move to where they think they can join the “winners” (they are bound to be disillusioned by what they discover upon arrival, but that’s another story).

Hand in glove with global poverty as a cause of refugees is war. This is a direct and immediate cause of huge numbers of people fleeing for their lives. There is nothing unusual about people running away from a big disaster, whether man-made or natural – tens of thousands of Christchurch people fled the city in the hours after that February 2011 killer quake (and plenty of them have not come back).

This is an area where the new government can deal with the root cause of the global refugee crisis – get out of other people’s wars that we’re already involved in (such as Afghanistan and Iraq); stay out of the absolute tarpit that is Syria; don’t go haring off after Donald Trump if he goes to war in Korea.

More fundamentally, build on the good work done in the 1980s (which made NZ nuclear free and out of ANZUS) and get out of the Five Eyes spy network and break the remaining military ties that bind NZ to the US Empire. Build a truly non-aligned and independent foreign policy that prioritises peace over war.

There is a direct cause and effect between war and refugees. Our “traditional allies” are very good at creating the mess via war, then expressing indignant surprise when that very same mess comes back to bite them in the bum in the form of a human tide. Libya is a textbook case – NATO military powers, with US assistance, played a vital role in violently overthrowing the Gaddafi regime in 2011 (including being complicit in his being tortured to death).

Even Iraq’s Saddam Hussein got a show trial before his enemies killed him. Funnily enough, Libya has been a failed state ever since and Europe has been inundated with refugees arriving by sea – dead or alive – from Libya. I imagine Gaddafi is laughing in his grave.

‘Charity begins at home’
So, there is self-interest for New Zealand in staying out of other people’s wars and in working to end existing wars and preventing new ones. And for those who say “charity begins at home” – I agree.

We can help our immediate neighbours on tiny Pacific islands that are threatened by inundation due to climate change. These people did nothing to cause that problem but New Zealand certainly did and continues to do – we have an obligation to open our doors to these climate change refugees.

That is not a solution to the problem (at least this government recognises there is a problem and has pledged to do something about it) but it is an amelioration of the dire effects of that problem. Even if we took in all of those affected Pacific islanders, plus the prisoners from Manus and Nauru, it would all only add up to a few thousand people. We bring in more foreigners than that every year to milk them in shonky “education” courses and to supply New Zealand employers with cheap labour.

How about we change the emphasis from bringing people in to exploit and rip them off to bringing them to help them and, as the Tampa experience shows, helping ourselves in the process? Sounds like a win-win to me.

Murray Horton
Spokesperson
Aotearoa Independence Movement (AIM)

• NZ protesters lock gates of Australian High Commission in Manus protest
• NZ urged to bypass Australia to resolve refugee crisis
• Turnbull urges respect for PNG law as NZ offer on Manus refugees stirs up Senate

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

New Zealand activists have chained themselves to the gates of the Australian High Commission in Wellington while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reaffirmed the country’s offer to take some of the refugees and asylum-seekers from Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

News reports said the purpose of the Wellington protest was to prevent anyone inside from leaving, Peace Action Wellington spokeswoman Emma Cullen said.

About 20 protesters were reported outside the high commission yesterday afternoon, of whom three or four were chained to the gates.

The protesters hoped to stop high commission staff leaving last evening, to highlight the plight of the about Manus detainees whose basic services have been cut off by the authorities.

“We’re shutting them down for as long as we can … at least until the evening, to affect these people, and for these people to acknowledge and question what their government is doing,” Cullen said, according to Stuff.

In Manila for the APEC meeting, Prime Minister Ardern has been seeking a meeting with Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull to discuss further New Zealand’s offer to take 150 refugees from Manus.

Turnbull has suffered a disastrous popularity slump, according to The Australian newspaper.

The PNG Supreme Court has forced the closure of Ausytralia’s offshore detention centre for asylum seekers but many have refused to leave in spite of the power, water and food supplies being cut off.

By Jeremaiah M. Opiniano in Adelaide

Allowing refugees to be economically active in host societies may help solve a “broken” refugee system, says an Oxford University academic.

Professor Alexander Betts of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre told the audience at a public lecture hosted by the University of Adelaide’s Hugo Centre for Migration and Population Research recognition of refugees’ economic potentials would possibly create a “sustainable refugee system fit for purpose in the 21st century”.

Dr Bett’s view comes as European countries continue to struggle to accommodate Syrian refugees fleeing civil conflict and extremism.

In the US, President Donald Trump has slashed the maximum number of refugee entries to 45,000 in 2018, said to be the world leader in refugee resettlement’s most restrictive number in 70 years.

Myanmar and its Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, continue to receive flak over the country’s brutal crackdown on some 370,000 Rohingya refugees.

Australia has been criticised by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture for “violating” the rights of asylum seekers to be free from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, all of which was dismissed by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The country continues to hold some 2200 refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention centres on Nauru.

Refugees own businesses
Citing findings by a Refugee Studies Centre’ survey of South Sudanese and Somali refugees in Uganda, Dr Betts said refugees are not economically isolated.

Dr Betts said a fifth of refugees surveyed by the centre owned a business, with 40 percent of employees being Ugandan.

He said refugees in Uganda had approximately 200 “distinct livelihood activities” run by skilled professionals.

Less than one percent of refugees surveyed had no formal income-generating activity, Dr Betts added.

“The findings in Uganda show what’s possible when refugees are given those opportunities,” Dr Betts said.

Over the past year, Uganda had taken in 1.3 million people – the equivalent of 2000 people a day fleeing famine, drought and violence – more than what any European country accommodated in the 2016 refugee crisis, Dr Betts added.

The economic success of refugees presented a different picture in Kenya amid stricter regulations, the centre’s survey showed.

Reliance on community
This is due to the fact refugees are only able to work in some refugee camps.

Dr Betts and his team found refugees in the camp at Kakuma rely more on community leaders, family and neighbours than they do on the social services provided by international organisations and NGOs.

His team also found the greatest barriers to being economically active related to supply and demand for goods, rather than life’s daily struggles in refugee camps.

Well known for research which reframes refugees as economic contributors, Dr Betts has pushed for the fusion of refugees into countries special economic zones.

The Refugee Studies Centre worked with Jordan to pilot the “Jordan Compact”, which allowed Syrian refugees to work in manufacturing companies found in these special economic zones.

Jordan was willing to grant 200,000 work permits to Syrian refugees across three to five years. In return, multilateral organisations gave Jordan concessionary loans and tariff exemptions.

Dr Betts said the project had achieved “mixed results”, however.

‘Innovative’ pilot project
Only 51,000 Syrian refugees had work permits – 2 percent of which were women – while a handful of multinational investors invested in Jordan.

“The Jordan Compact is an innovative pilot where lessons can be learned in spite of the most strict regulatory environments.

“Refugees have access to work, labour rights and forms of labour protection while helping rebuild post-conflict Syria,” Dr Betts said.

With global data revealing 10 developing countries host 60 percent of the world’s refugees, Dr Betts called on countries to rethink their refugee systems.

He said refugee assistance should be a combination of rescue, autonomy, and a “route out of limbo”.

This could be achieved through reimagining resettlement policies and visa systems for refugees.

“Even with rescue and autonomy, it is surely not reasonable for refugees to remain in limbo for more than five years,” he said.

“There may be alternative ways to manage these movements sustainably to benefit refugees and host countries.

“It will start by helping people help themselves.”

Most of Golriz Ghahraman’s childhood memories are of war.

She remembers howling sirens, sending families scurrying into basements. She remembers people being trapped. She remembers families trying to escape the country, fearful of being targeted for their beliefs.

Others simply disappeared.

“We knew one guy… a 16-year-old, a friend’s cousin. He was writing graffiti on a wall and then he was gone,” she says. “In the 1980s people would just disappear. There’s unmarked mass graves of people who had registered as communists. The regime was particularly harsh on political dissidents.”

READ MORE: Election 2017: Labour-Green bloc picks up two seats

Ghahraman, the Green Party’s newest Member of Parliament following the special vote count, was born in Iran in 1981 amid the post-revolution conflict with Iraq.

She was confirmed on Saturday as a new MP after the counting of almost 390,000 special votes.

The fighting stopped when she was eight. A year later the borders opened and her parents found a way to leave, booking a government-sanctioned “holiday” to Malaysia.

“I think people knew what was happening because they were crying at the airport, but we had to be like, ‘Bye, we’re going to have a great time.’ We couldn’t sell the house or anything.”

Seeking asylum
From Malaysia they booked flights to Fiji that had a stopover in Auckland, where they hoped they could seek asylum as political refugees.

After slipping out of transit and declaring themselves to an airport official, the family found staff more worried about potential biosecurity hazards than their visa status.

“There was a leaf in one of my shoes,” Ghahraman says. “They were intensely interested in that, like almost sending it away for analysis.”

Ghahraman liked her new country. It was okay to be a refugee in West Auckland; it was okay to be poor. Auckland Girls’ Grammar was similarly diverse. She didn’t feel special, or different to the other girls.

It wasn’t until university – where she studied law to keep her parents happy and history to please herself – Ghahraman began to think more about her heritage.

“We aren’t the proponents of terror”

“Nine-eleven shifted things for me,” she says. “I’d forgotten that we were Iranian or Middle Eastern. I was just doing my thing and then I realised the way other people see you can be defining.

“So I started to own that identity.”

‘Rescued’ from her culture
Because she wore Western clothes – Ghahraman isn’t Muslim – and went to university, people liked to think she had been “rescued” from her own culture.

“But it’s not like that. Yes we are from the Middle Eastern world but we aren’t the proponents of terror. We’ve had to escape the terror but that doesn’t make us not Middle Eastern.

“Our culture has diversity too, it has feminism and democracy movements.”

The interest in her country’s war and a broader interest in human rights led her to Amnesty International, where she set her sights on working as a prosecutor at international war crimes tribunals.

“I’m one of those freak shows that had a 10-year plan,” she says. “I knew I had to get criminal law experience and a masters degree. So I did the bar, I did criminal law and I had an Oxford course bookmarked on my computer.”

Her CV, which includes prosecuting leaders of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, sounds intimidatingly impressive. In person, however, Ghahraman is comfortingly human, answering the door for our interview pre-election in stockinged feet, having rushed to finish her make-up.

Prosecuting for the United Nations
She says the international tribunals weren’t so different to her early work as a defence lawyer in Manukau.

“It’s just like any criminal trial – although the politicians are so charismatic. You have to simply focus back on the evidence and just be a lawyer.”

Ghahraman left her job in Cambodia in 2012, arriving back at the end of National’s second term. She felt like everything had changed.

“We used to pride ourselves on being a country where our values were about everyone having a certain basic level of life,” she says. “We were so big here on taking care of everyone and suddenly that was gone.”

She cites the plans to prospect for coal in national reserves, child poverty and democracy issues – like dissolving the Canterbury regional council – as incidents that jolted her into joining politics.

The other was the family carers bill, passed into legislation under urgency, which explicitly removed families’ rights to challenge funding decisions in court. Ghahraman later worked on the case.

“We had never seen that in New Zealand before, never had this willingness politically to interfere with the other institutions – the courts, the free press, the human rights agencies – and that’s concerning.”

Forging a political career
Those are the kinds of issues she says she wants to focus on in Parliament.

During the campaign, however, she faced abuse over a number of other unrelated issues – mainly from Twitter – such as comments about her ethnicity, her intelligence and her looks.

“It didn’t bother me at all at first, but some days you open it and it’s like, really?” she says. “And to think that some people are being silenced by this. At least I can respond.”

In her increasingly rare spare time, Ghahraman likes to travel with her partner, comedian Guy Williams. She also likes to host dinner parties, despite confessing to being a bad cook.

She remains a member of the executive of the NZ Criminal Bar Association, and says her criminal law experience – where she spent a lot of time trying to help people into rehab or other support – is central to the way she wants to approach her political career.

“How we treat everyone, including the delinquents, that’s the making of us,” she says.

Kirsty Johnston is an investigative reporter at The New Zealand Herald. This article has been republished with permission.

• What the specials mean for the NZ election result
• More NZ election stories

By Charlie Angela in Venice

“Two people drowned at sea. I wish they were still with us,” a middle-aged man says, his voice breaking.

“They appear in my dreams at night. I see them in my sleep and they tell me what to do. What am I supposed to do?” he asks, breaking down in tears.

This is just one of the many powerful scenes captured in Human Flow, the new documentary by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei exploring the global refugee crisis.

VIEW MORE: Ai Weiwei’s photos from Lesbos capture refugee life

The film is one of the most talked-about entries in this year’s Venice Film Festival, and was one of the top contenders for its top prize, the Golden Lion.

It might have missed out on the main prize – which went to an American romantic fantasy The Shape of Water about a cleaning lady who falls in love with an aquatic creature – but Human Flow has still had a dramatic impact on global thinking about refugees.

Shot in more than 40 refugee camps across 23 countries, the documentary offers a fresh look at the refugee crisis from Europe and Asia to Africa, peppered with poetry, heartbreaking stories and dramatic aerial footage shot mostly with drones.

Speaking at the festival, Ai said a solution to the crisis could easily be reached once people realise that the refugee problem is “about all of us”.

“It takes individuals to act, to be involved, to push the politicians, to create the right discussion,” he said.

As many as 70 countries have placed walls to stem the flow of refugees. In an interview with the Huffington WorldPost, filmmaker Ai said that he planned to screen his documentary to legislators involved in the refugee policies.

“My art is a personal effort to help viewers understand, through experiences and emotions, another person or another condition,” he said.

WATCH MORE: Drifting – art, awareness and the refugee crisis

Lee Marshall, a critic for Screen Daily, said he was impressed by the way Ai had approached his role in the film.

“One nice thing about it, for me, is that he does appear in the film but very much as a guy who is just hanging out with refugees,” Marshall told Al Jazeera, “rather than going in … and being very pushy and trying through irony or provocation to get his agenda through”.

A major artist of our times, Ai is renowned for his activism.

• More refugee stories

Despite the fundamental challenge of making ends meet, 49-year-old Bareto and her husband decided to stay and avoid the political instability back home.

More than 250,000 people fled Timor-Leste or were forcibly transferred west following violence that escalated around an independence referendum, August 30, 1999.

The initial attacks on civilians by anti-independence militants expanded to general violence throughout the country.

Many returned to Timor-Leste after the declaration of independence in 2002. But about 100,000 people chose to continue their lives in East Nusa Tenggara province, including 60,000 people in Belu regency.

Since her arrival, Bareto, now widowed, has not received any assistance from the government, causing great frustration for her family and many others living in similar conditions.

Their lives began to change when they met Holy Spirit Sister Sesilia Ketut. Seven years ago the nun gave Bareto some money to start her own cloth-weaving business. Working in a group of widows she learned to weave and cook, and make bags, rosaries, flowers and wallets, which were then sold to markets.

Weaving every day
“Every day our job was weaving and we never stopped, although the products were sold at a cheap price,” said the mother of six.

Now, more than 300 widows – whose husbands either died before or after the 1999 conflict – are receiving help from the 59-year-old nun.

Sister Ketut said she decided to work with the widows because she felt moved by their suffering in the early days when they first sought shelter in western Timor.

To help those in Belu regency, Sister Ketut established the Forum for Women and Children in 2000. The forum continues its operations today providing aid to the people in cooperation with non-government organisations such as the Jesuit Refugee Service, UNICEF and Save the Children.

They provide critical support services to domestic violence and rape victims and deliver much-needed education.

Lourdes Clara Dedeus, 23, a former refugee from Timor-Leste who became a volunteer for the forum in 2013 said she helped Sister Ketut because of her noble service to the people.

“I was educated by the nun,” Dedeus said and now she accompanies the nun in helping victims of domestic violence and rape.

Trained in business
According to Sister Ketut, besides helping the widows, she also trains other former refugees in business and education and helps them to reconnect with their relatives back home.

Each year, she offers loans with low interest to more than 30 former refugees. Sadly, only a few people succeed, while others spend the money on parties and other non-essentials.

“Most of them cannot return the money,” she said. “So there’s a need to train them in business.”

In the early years, many children born to former refugees had no access to school in the settlement areas. This inspired the nun to establish early childhood education and development services. “We started the school under trees because there were no facilities,” she said.

When Save the Children joined the fold in 2010, a school house was constructed. Now there are two schools that accommodate more than 60 children.

Yosep Benediktus Lake, chairman of a school committee, said each family has five to eight children and most of them do not go to school.

“The sister has helped the children free of charge but many parents were unaware of the importance of education for their children,” he said.

Reconnecting in Timor-Leste
Every year, dozens of former refugees return to Timor-Leste, and since 2000 the nun has facilitated the return of more than 400 people to their homeland.

“We accompany them until they reunite with their families and they are welcomed with custom rituals and parties,” she said.

But lately, the number of those repatriating to Timor-Leste has decreased due to the high US$384 (NZ$520) fee for administration costs and the long waiting times for passports to be issued.

Bishop Dominikus Saku of Atambua gave high praise, saying “I see her service is good for the former East Timorese refugees and I support her.”

Bareto, who is the head of a community unit, said the local government has also expressed its gratitude to Sister Ketut for her extensive work and commitments to the former refugees.

• Timor-Leste elections

Australia’s offshore refugee detention centres in the Pacific are facing further controversy as the gradual closure and demolition of the institution on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea begins.

Following the announcement of Papua New Guinean authorities last month, one compound has already been closed, with another planned for June 30.

The closure and demolition comes after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled in April last year the centre was illegal and unconstitutional.

It is expected to be fully demolished by October 31 when Ferrovial’s contract expires – the company accused of profiting off refugees’ suffering.

However, Amnesty International says the move will not end the suffering of the 829 refugees on the island.

“These people are to be left in limbo,” Kate Schuetze, a Pacific research and policy adviser with Amnesty International based in Australia, told Asia Pacific Report.

Despite the apparent hope provided by Papua New Guinea’s announcement on the surface, Schuetze said the reality for refugees was “a lot darker”.

‘No plans to resettle refugees’
“Essentially refugees are being shifted from one camp to another.”

Papua New Guinea authorities say refugees will be repatriated or settled in the nearby town of Lorengau, where the Manus Refugee Transit Centre is located.

Shuetze said Australia’s ultimate goal with this announcement is what it had always been — pressure for refugees to return home.

“I mean, there were no plans to resettle these refugees in Papua New Guinea to start with.”

The centre’s closure and demolition – described by Shuetze as a “phasing out” – also means refugees will endure worsening conditions, as many are moved to other compounds within the centre.

“Essentially this means harsher conditions for refugees.”

Shuetze said there would be no air conditioning and communities, forged over four years, would be disbanded. “There is no rationale behind this added torture.”

‘It’s not safe’
Grant Bayldon, executive director of Amnesty New Zealand, believes things are more unclear.

“It’s very unclear what the planned closure means at this stage. Clearly it’s not safe for the refugees and asylum seekers to be settled into Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“It’s therefore essential that the Australian government comes up with a plan to resettle refugees back to Australia or safely in a third country like New Zealand.”

Bayldon fears the centre’s closure will also not remove its fundamental problems.

“Refugees are not safe and there’s really no hope for them in being able to restart their lives and living in safety due to the minimal protection they’ve been offered.”

Amnesty International fears refugees may also be sent to Australia’s other refugee detention centre on Nauru, which reportedly has the second highest rate of mental illness of any refugee population in the world.

Security before empathy
The move by Australian and Papua New Guinean authorities has increased calls by Amnesty International New Zealand for the government to stand by its 2013 offer to resettle 150 refugees a year from Australia’s detention centres.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has in the past rejected New Zealand’s offer claiming Australia’s national security has to come before its empathy.

Turnbull claimed in 2016 resettlement in New Zealand would be used by people smugglers as a “marketing opportunity”.

Despite such statements, New Zealand should renew its offer, Bayldon said.

“It doesn’t look like the Australian government’s going to do the right thing any time soon, so it’s really important that other governments — including New Zealand’s — put up their hands and offer to safely resettle refugees so that they can restart their lives.”

Bayldon believes New Zealand has remained silent on Australia’s detention centres for far too long.

“Through two different New Zealand foreign ministers and two different New Zealand prime ministers, we are yet to hear the New Zealand government properly call out Australia for its abuse and illegal treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

‘New Zealand needs to speak out’
“It’s absolutely incoherent for it not to call out Australia with appalling abuses going on in its own neighbourhood, right here in the Pacific. New Zealand needs to speak out more strongly than it has so far.”

Primary responsibility, however, rested with Australia, he said.

“It’s the Australian government which put people in these abusive detention centres in breach of international law and it’s the Australian government’s responsibility to get them to safety.”

Despite this, Manus Island refugees have written to New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English seeking asylum.

“We can understand why they’ve written to the New Zealand government, and while the primary responsibility lies with the Australian government, this really is an opportunity for the New Zealand government to stand up for its own values and do the right thing,” Bayldon said.

“What we see from refugees and asylum seekers is what they want is to be able to get on with their lives. They want to be able to work, they want to be able to contribute, and New Zealand is a place where they could do that.”

• Amnesty blasts foreign companies over ‘profiting’ from Nauru refugees abuse

Digital verification of images and videos establish that bullets were fired directly into the Manus refugee centre last month, putting the lives of refugees and asylum-seekers there in danger, a new Amnesty International briefing report says today.

The new briefing, In the Firing Line, directly contradicts initial claims made by the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Papua New Guinea Police, suggesting that the soldiers only fired bullets into the air.

“Our investigation shows there is no doubt that on 14 April 2017 bullets were fired not only into the air but directly into the Manus refugee centre in a way that seriously endangered the lives of the people inside,” said Kate Schuetze, Amnesty International’s Pacific researcher.

“This was not an isolated incident. Refugees trapped on Manus Island have faced several violent attacks in the past.  They are the direct result of an inherently abusive system put in place by the Australian government. Until that system is dismantled and the refugees are brought to safety, the threat to their lives will remain.”

Amnesty International is calling for a prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigation into what exactly happened on April 14 (“Good Friday”).

One month after the incident, the Australian government had failed to conduct an investigation, issue a formal statement, or release the CCTV footage of the shooting for independent verification and analysis, Amnesty International said in a statement.

Blaming the victims
Peter Dutton, Australia’s Immigration Minister, sought to diminish the seriousness of the shooting, drawing a link, on the basis of no evidence, to an incident weeks before, when a 10-year-old boy had entered the centre, implying that the child was at risk.

“Instead of waiting for the results of an investigation, Dutton has inflamed matters by making an irresponsible and unfounded claim about the shooting incident,” said Schuetze.

Refugees at Manus have expressed shock and dismay at Dutton’s resort to innuendo and allegations on the basis of no proof. An Afghan refugee said that he and other friends only gave him some food after he found him asking for food and money.

The 34-year-old Afghan refugee told ABC: “I experienced hunger, I experienced being thirsty, I experienced poverty and I know how it feels for a child to be hungry. And when I see that I cannot just close my eyes and not help.”

Refugees at Manus have said that guards at the centre and CCTV footage could verify their account.

“For Dutton to make such a claim is outrageous behaviour unworthy of a senior government official. For him then to try and connect it, weeks later, to drunken soldiers shooting at a refugee centre is reckless in the extreme and will put the lives of people there at even greater risk,” said Schuetze.

The refugees have now lodged a formal complaint with the Australian authorities about Dutton’s comments and are pleading for the authorities to release the CCTV footage which they say will exonerate them.

‘Shut down Manus now’ call
Following a Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruling last year that said the Manus Island detention centre is operating illegally, the Australian government has said that it will be shut down later this year.

Amnesty International has called on the Australian government to take action immediately.

• Background to the Manus Island detention centre

Foreign companies are profiting off human rights abuses carried out at the Australian offshore refugee processing centre on Nauru, Amnesty International says.

In its new report, Treasure I$land: How companies are profiting from Australia’s abuse of refugees on Nauru, Amnesty International has detailed how Spanish multinational Ferrovial and its wholly-owned Australian subsidiary Broadspectrum have been reaping vast profits from  contracts on the island nation.

Broadspectrum’s three-and-a-half-year contract, set to expire in October, is worth A$2.5 billion, which has risen from A$350 million between September 2012 and February 2014, the Amnesty International report said.

“Broadspectrum is well aware of the conditions faced on Nauru by refugees and people seeking asylum and, in some cases, its employees and sub-contractors are directly responsible for neglect and abuse.”

‘Open-air prison’
Amnesty International describes Nauru’s refugee processing centre as an “open-air prison” designed to deter some of the world’s most vulnerable people from seeking safety on Australia’s shores.

“Australia’s offshore processing system on Nauru subjects refugees and people seeking asylum to a daily diet of humiliation, neglect, abuse and poor physical and mental health care.”

It said such suffering had come in the face of Australia’s efforts to deter people from entering the country irregularly, efforts the Australian government claimed were “necessary”, Amnesty International alleged.

This “necessary” deterrence by the government and the functioning of Nauru’s offshore processing system would not be possible without Broadspectrum’s involvement.

“It is Amnesty International’s view that Broadspectrum runs the refugee processing centre (RPC) on a daily basis and has effective control over the day-to-day lives of refugees and asylum-seekers at the RPC, and that it does so on behalf of the Australian government and with the government’s ultimate oversight and control,” the report said.

Such a statement comes despite Australia’s denial it has any responsibility for refugees and people seeking asylum after it forcibly deports them to Nauru.

Human rights abuses
The human rights abuses the report has detailed include physical abuse of children, sexual assault, and the fact refugees are living in poor conditions exacerbated by the fact there is significant environmental damage due to large-scale phosphate mining.

All of this is compounded by the fact employees must adhere to strict confidentiality agreements.

It is also a criminal offence for medical and welfare professionals to speak out.

The international media itself has also been continuously barred from the island by the Nauru government.

In light of the report’s findings, Amnesty International has also issued a stern warning for those thinking of picking up Broadspectrum’s contract and says it is putting them on notice.

“You will be complicit in an intentionally and inherently abusive and cruel system, you will be acting in direct contravention of your human rights responsibilities and you will be exposing yourself to potential legal liability.”

End ‘indefinite limbo’
Speaking to Asia Pacific Report from Brisbane, Kate Schuetze, a Pacific researcher and policy adviser with Amnesty International for the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, said Broadspectrum needed to end the “indefinite limbo” in Nauru as soon as possible before October and withdraw its services.

She said Amnesty International had “consistently called for Nauru to be closed” and “alternative arrangements” made for the some 1000 refugees on the island.

Amnesty International said the government of Australia needed to end its policy of offshore processing and detention and permanently close its centres on Nauru and Manus Island.

“It should change its policy” Schuetze said.

She said the report should “serve as a warning” for anyone else considering taking over Broadspectrum’s contract.

Broadspectrum, however, has denied all allegations by Amnesty International that it has committed human rights abuses.

“Broadspectrum does not agree with the multiple assertions that we have caused, contributed to, or are complicit in, human rights abuses.

“The care and wellbeing of asylum seekers and refugees is paramount in our processes and actions,” Broadspectrum said.

• Treasure I$land — the full Amnesty International report on Nauru
• Oppressive culture of secrecy

By Daisy Pakawa in Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court at Waigani has given the government and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Immigration, Rimbink Pato, the green light to deport 166 non-refugees.

Last November, Behrouz Boochani and 730 other refugees, non-refuges and asylum seekers who were held at Manus Regional Processing Center (MIRPC) commenced proceedings in the Supreme Court seeking damages for the breach of their constitutional rights.

As the substantive application was heading towards trial, 166 non-refugees filed an interlocutory application to restrain the government and Pato from deporting them, until final determination of the case.

This week, a bench comprising of Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia, Deputy Chief Justice Sir Gibbs Salika and Justice Derek Harthshorn refused that application.

Justice Harthshorn and Justice Salika agreed that the interlocutory application failed to provide relevant laws that gave the court jurisdiction to grant such orders.

The two judges added that even if this was not so, the application would still be dismissed as there is a disconnection between it and the substantive application; the substantive application concerns their detention whereas the interlocutory application concerns their status as non- refugees, a point which was not addressed in the substantive application.

The two judges pointed out that the applicants could still pursue the substantive application even if they were not in PNG.

Chief Justice Sir Salamo Injia agreed with the two judges.

Detentions ruled illegal
According to the Chief Justice’s recount of events, on April 26 last year, a five men Supreme Court bench found the detention of transferees held at the MIRPC to be unconstitutional and illegal.

MIRPC was closed down and they were accommodated at the nearby PNGDF Navy base (Lombrum).

“It is now eleven months since the full court’s decision.

‘‘The result is that of the 888 transferees population as at March 6, 2017, 614 have been determined to be genuine “refugees”, 205 (including the 166 applicants) determined to be “non-refugees” and 69 categorised as “asylum seekers” are awaiting processing.

‘‘Those determined to be non-refugee have had their exception from entry requirements given to them when they first entered PNG, to be withdrawn, thus rendering their presence in PNG unlawful and liable to deportation back to their home country.

Those transferees who have been determined to be genuine refugees will be given the option of returning to their own country or secure a third country including PNG and Australia.”

Daisy Pakawa is a PNG Post-Courier journalist.

Sawari was on his way to Suva with his lawyer, Aman Ravindra-Singh, when police stopped them near Sigatoka and took him back to Nadi.

Singh claimed his client was deported without following due process despite assurances given by Immigration Director Nemani Vuniwaqa and Human Rights Commission Director Ashwin Raj, Newswire Fiji reports.

The Lautoka lawyer said the police and immigration officials acted “aggressively and illegally” in detaining and deporting Sawari.

The Iranian national was believed to have entered Fiji on a Papua New Guinea passport and was due to make his application for asylum today.

Singh said Sawari was in a “very, very horrible state” because of the aggression used to remove him.

“He could have walked to the vehicle. He’s been through a lot. The way they did things, it was almost like special forces jumping out of nowhere, making the whole atmosphere so aggressive,” he said.

“It was totally uncalled for. Serious criminals walk free in this country whereas asylum seekers, genuine refugees, are treated like criminals.”

Singh said police waved a letter in front of him but sped off at “breakneck speed” with Sawari before he could read it.

“I’m in utter shock,” he said.

Fiji TV News reports that Amnesty International said Fiji had breached international treaties in its handling of Sawari’s deportation.

Speaking from Brisbane, Pacific researcher Kate Scheutze said Amnesty International was disappointed in the Fiji authorities.

Fiji is a party to the 1961 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees.

Navin Kumar of Newswire Fiji reports that 22 refugees from Middle Eastern countries are currently registered with the Fiji Immigration Department, with four people having been granted asylum by the government.

Deputy Director of Immigration Edward Brown said Fiji was duty-bound to take in refugees as a signatory of the Convention And Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees under the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

• Iranian refugee in tears on board flight to PNG
• Fiji authorities unaware as Iranian refugee slips into Fiji
• 22 refugees from Middle East in Fiji safe house

By Cristiano Lima

President Donald Trump has criticised a deal by the Obama administration to take in spurned refugees from Australia, tweeting that he planned to study the “dumb deal”.

“Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia,” Trump said on Twitter. “Why? I will study this dumb deal!”

The “illegal immigrants” Trump references are predominantly Muslim refugees who are seeking asylum and have been resettled in island camps on the Pacific nations of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

The Manus Island camp was declared illegal by PNG’s Supreme Court last year.

Former President Barack Obama’s administration agreed to take in an unspecified number of the refugees — which have been variously reported to total from 1600 to 3000 in number — after they were refused by Australia.

The tweet came after Trump reportedly spoke with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the phone on Saturday.

The Washington Post reported earlier Wednesday that during the conversation Trump described the refugee agreement as “the worst deal ever” and accused Turnbull of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers,” a reference to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two Kyrgyzstan-born American citizens behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three and injured over 260 people.

The report also claimed Trump abruptly ended their conversation after telling the Australian prime minister that of all the conversations he had had with world leaders that day, “This is the worst call by far.”

In a follow-up by the Associated Press, the prime minister declined to comment on the report.

“It’s better that these things — these conversations — are conducted candidly, frankly, privately,” Turnbull said.

The Australian leader also reiterated that that the relationship between Australia and the U.S. remained “very strong”.

Cristiano Lima is a journalist for Politico Magazine published under the slogan “Powerful journalism – powerful audience”.

• PNG Supreme Court rules detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island illegal

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, deplores the immigration policy issued by newly inaugurated United States President Donald Trump, says Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla.

The policy bans citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen from entering the United States.

However, Kalla said Indonesia would not issue any statements against the policy at the moment, as it did not have any direct impact on the country.