Pacific Media Centre students, staff and journalists gathered at Auckland University of Technology this week and debated reset strategies for the future in a “rollercoaster” symposium.

They also farewelled founding centre director Professor David Robie, who is departing after 18 years at AUT after a surprise announcement. He wishes to concentrate on his journalism, book, research and innovative projects.

Centre volunteer photographer and publications designer Del Abcede, who is also leaving, captured these images on the day. The programme featured a group of West Papuan postgraduate students from Auckland and Waikato who gave a cultural performance.

Master of ceremonies was Tagata Pasifika reporter and presenter John Pulu.

• Pacific journalism, media and diversity researchers tackle challenges ahead
• Former University of the South Pacific professor Dr Crosbie Walsh pens a tribute
• Media education messages of support on Cafe Pacific
• ‘Empowerment is really important. Journalism isn’t just about writing a good story … but empowering people with information in a democracy’

PMC highlights and new horizons

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Melanesian Media Freedom Forum – Day two: The second day of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum began with praise for the work of young Pacific journalists by Professor David Robie and ended with a warning that threats to journalism in the region were increasing.

In between forum delegates heard about the continued problems of female journalists, who continue to be under-represented at senior levels, and debated ways in which international organisations could help.

Many of the discussions took on a strong human rights theme and delegates were reminded that Article 19 of the United Nations’ International Declaration on Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Professor Robie, who is head of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology and editor of the highly respected Pacific Journalism Review, presented to the forum from Indonesia.

He also gave the pre-conference keynote address on October 28.

In a wide-ranging talk, Professor Robie spoke to delegates about some of the most serious issues facing journalists in Melanesia, including climate change and the independence struggle in West Papua.

Professor Robie has long been a trenchant critic of the way the West Papuan struggle has been almost completely  ignored  by the mainstream press in Australia and New Zealand.

He praised the work of younger journalists and students in exposing the dangers of climate change in the Pacific and screened excerpts from two student films during his talk.

After the opening session, delegates discussed where and how media workers in Melanesia could look for support from larger global organisations.

A special session on the experiences of women journalists took place later in the  morning, with women journalists, editors and free lancers speaking about common problems.

These included demands that they show “respect” for men they are interviewing, a  background of violence against women in many places and traditional notions of gender roles.

Statements  by conference delegates
Melanesian journalists face growing levels of political and legal threats, physical assaults, illegal detention and intimidation.

In a statement released after the conference, media delegates to the forum said the range and scope of threats was increasing, with prosecutions, restrictive legislation, online abuse and racism between ethnic groups a growing issue.

Female journalists faced the threat of violence both on the job and within their own homes.

The statement said threats to media freedom were having professional, personal and health affects on journalists across Melanesia.

The situation in West Papua was of particular concern with attacks on journalists resulting in deaths and injuries.

The unwillingness of politicians and officials to engage in dialogue was undermining the media’s accountability role.

Public figures were becoming more resistant to responding to direct questions from media, choosing instead to issue media releases, or statements on social media or to preferred media outlets.

In addition to undermining the crucial accountability role of the media, this placed broadcast media (which requires actuality) at a disadvantage.

In the statement, media delegates said the ability of journalists to exercise their professional skills without fear was critical to the functioning of Meleanesia’s democracies.

There needed to be a better understanding of the role of journalism in Melanesian democracies.

The issue of social media and fake news, which had been a feature of discussion on day one, was reflected in the statement, which said the media was ready to work with all parties that wanted to improve the social medialandscape.

“There is an urgent need to for the media to assert its role as a source of accurate and impartial information and to play a role in building social media literacy and public understanding of how to identify credible sources of information,” the statement said.

“The global decline of democracy is making it easier for our governments to silence the media. It is expected this will become a bigger challenge in the future if it is not addressed, as national leaders, media organisations and journalists come under pressure and misinformation campaigns continue.

“Misinformation, propaganda and fake news are a growing problem: there is widespread concern around misinformation and offensive material being posted on social media platforms, sometimes by anonymous sources, some of them state and politically-partisan actors.

“The media’s role as an antidote, and as a balancing source of verified information is under-recognised and under-supported.”

Solidarity
Academics at the forum read out a draft statement expressing solidarity with media workers in Melanesia in their struggle for freedom of expression, security and professional recognition.

The academic statement cited Article 19 of the United Nations’ International Declaration on Human Rights, but also the United Nations’ 2030 development goals, particularly those designed to strengthen peace, justice and strong institutions; climate action; reduce inequalities; and gender equality.

Academic delegates to the forum called for journalists  working in Melanesia and across the Pacific, to be guaranteed the following  basic rights as professional communicators:

• Freedom of expression
• Freedom from physical abuse, threats or intimidation in pursuit of their work
• Recognition of their status as professional communicators
• Security of digital communication
• Equality for all media workers in terms of their professional standing, regardless of gender.
• Recognition and protection under law of these rights.

Pacific Journalism Review
Pacific Journalism Review, which is produced through the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, will produce a special edition based around the main themes of the forum in 2020.

It will be edited by Dr Kasun Ubayasiri of Griffith University, Professor Robie and Dr Philip Cass.

Papers can include:

• The politics of press freedom in Melanesia.
• The intersection between custom and indigenous knowledge in contemporary Fourth Estate practice.
• Gender and identity in Melanesian journalism.
• Human rights journalism in Melanesia.
• Reporting climate change and human migration.
• Circumventing censorship and restrictions to free and fair publication
• Legal safeguards to press freedom.

Related topics that will be considered include social justice, human rights and environmental and climate change reporting in the Melanesian media. The journal also publishes an unthemed section and other papers related to journalism studies, and journalism education, theory and practice will also be considered by the editors.

The deadline for submissions is February 20, 2020.

Dr Philip Cass is acting editor of the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Journalism Review, one of the sponsors of the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum inaugural conference at Griffith University in Brisbane. Part one of his report is here.

• Call for PJR papers

When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.

A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.

Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.

Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.

Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia” (p. 314). But that wasn’t all.

[H]e brazenly navigated international hostility to his illegal regime. Then, having accepted an independent process for developing a new constitution, he rejected its outcome, fearing it threatened his hold on power and would restore much of what he had undone. (Ibid.)

Bainimarama reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji.

Landslide victory
Then he was voted in as legal prime minister of Fiji with an overwhelming personal majority and a landslide victory for his fledgling FijiFirst Party in September 2014. He left his critics in Australia and New Zealand floundering in his wake.

Robertson is well-qualified to write this well-timed book, The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, with Bainimarama due to be tested again this year with another election. He is a former history lecturer at the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific at the time of Rabuka’s original coups (when I first met him).

He and his journalist wife Akosita Tamanisau wrote a definitive account of the 1987 events and the ousting of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s visionary and multiracial Fiji Labour Party-led government, Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), ultimately leading to his expulsion from Fiji by the Rabuka regime. He also followed this up with Government by the Gun (2001) on the 2000 coup, and other titles.

Robertson later returned to Fiji as professor of Development Studies at USP and he has also been professor and head of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, as well as holding posts at La Trobe University, the Australian National University and the University of Otago.

He has published widely on globalisation. He is thus able to bring a unique perspective on Fiji over three decades and is currently professor and dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.

Since 2006, Fiji has slipped steadily away from Australian and New Zealand influence, as outlined by Robertson. However, this is a state of affairs blamed by Bainimarama on Canberra and Wellington for their failed and blind policies.

Ever since the 2014 election, Bainimarama has maintained a “hardline” on the Pacific’s political architecture through his Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) alternative to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus trade deal.

‘Turned their backs’
While in Brisbane for an international conference in 2015, Bainimarama took the opportunity to remind his audience that Australia and New Zealand “as traditional friends had turned their backs on Fiji”. He added:

How much sooner we might have been able to return Fiji to parliamentary rule if we hadn’t expended so much effort on simply surviving … defending the status quo in Fiji was indefensible, intellectually and morally (p. 294).

For the first time in Fiji’s history, Bainimarama steered the country closer to a “standard model of liberal democracy” and away from the British colonial and race-based legacy.

“Government still remained the familiar goose,” writes Robertson, “but this time, its golden eggs were distributed more evenly than before”. The author attributes this to “bypassing chiefly hands” for tribal land lease monies, through welfare and educational programmes no longer race-bound, and through bold rural public road, water and electrification projects.

Admittedly, argues Robertson, like Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (Fiji’s prime minister at independence and later president), Rabuka and Qarase, “Bainimarama had cronies and the military continues to benefit excessively from his ascendancy”. Nevertheless, Bainimarama’s “outstanding controversial achievement remains undoubtedly his rebooting of Fiji’s operating system in 2013”.

Robertson’s scholarship is meticulous and drawn from an impressive range of sources, including his own work over more than three decades. One of the features of his latest book are his analysis of former British SAS Warrant Officer Lisoni Ligairi and the role of the First Meridian Squadron (renamed in 1999 from the “coup proof” Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit – CRWU), and the “public face” of Coup 3, businessman George Speight, now serving a life sentence in prison for treason.

His reflections on and interpretations of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Board of Inquiry (known as BoI) into the May 2000 coup are also extremely valuable. Much of this has never before been available in an annotated and tested published form, although it is available as full transcripts on the “Truth for Fiji” website.

‘Overlapping conspiracies’
As Robertson recalls, by mid-May, “there were many overlapping conspiracies afoot … Within the kava-infused wheels within wheels, coup whispers gained volume”. Ligairi’s role was pivotal but BoI put most of the blame for the coup on the RFMF for “allowing” one man so much power, especially one it considered ill-equipped to be a director and planner’ (p. 140).

The BoI testimony about the November 2000 CRWU mutiny before Bainimarama escaped with his life through a cassava patch, also fed into Robertson’s account, although he admits Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka’s ANU doctoral thesis is the best account on the topic, “Sacred King and Warrior Chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics”.

It was a bloody and confused affair, led by the once loyal [Captain Shane] Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated, seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama. (p. 164)

The book is divided into four lengthy chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion – 1. The Challenge of Inheritance about the flawed colonial legacy, 2. The Great Turning on Rabuka’s 1987 coups and the Taukei indigenous supremacy constitution, 3. Redux: The Season for Coups on Speight’s attempted (and partially successful) 2000 coup, and 4. Plus ça Change …? on Bainimarama’s political “reset”. (The Bainimarama success in outflanking his Pacific critics is perhaps best represented by his diplomatic success in co-hosting the “Pacific” global climate change summit in Bonn in 2017.)

One drawback from a journalism perspective is the less than compelling assessment of the role of the media over the period, considering the various controversies that dogged each coup, especially the Speight one when accusations were made against some journalists as having been too close to the coup makers.

One of Fiji’s best journalists and editors, arguably the outstanding investigative reporter of his era, Jo Nata, publisher of the Weekender, sided with Speight as a “media minder” and was jailed for treason.

However, while Robertson in several places acknowledges Nata’s place in Fiji as a journalist, there is no real examination of his role as journalist-turned-coup-propagandist. This ought to be a case study.

Robertson noted how Nata’s Weekender exposed “morality issues” in Rabuka’s cabinet in 1994 without naming names. The Review news and business magazine followed up with a full report in the April edition that year, naming a prominent female journalist who was sleeping with the post-coup prime minister, produced a love child and who still works for The Fiji Times today (p. 118).

Nata then promised a special issue on the 21 women Rabuka had had affairs with since stepping down from the military. However, after Police Commissioner Isikia Savua spoke to him, the issue never appeared. (A full account is in Pacific Journalism Review – The Review, 1994).

NBF debacle
Elsewhere in the book is an outline of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) debacle that erupted when an audit was leaked to the media: “In fact, the press, particularly The Fiji Times and The Review, were pivotal in exposing the scandal.” Robertson added:

The Review had earlier been threatened with deregistration over its publication of Rabuka’s affair[s] in 1994; now both papers were threatened with Malaysian-style licensing laws to ensure that they remained respectful of Pacific cultural sensitivities and did not denigrate Fijian business acumen. (p. 121)

The bank collapsed in late 1995 owing more than $220 million or nearly 9 percent of Fiji’s GDP – an example of the nepotism, corruption and poor public administration that worsened in Fiji after Rabuka’s coups.

On Coup 1, Robertson recalls how apart from Rabuka’s masked soldiers inside Parliament, “other teams fanned out across the city to seize control of telecommunication power authorities, media outlets and the Government Buildings” (p. 65).

But there is little reflective detail about Rabuka’s “seduction” of the Fiji and international journalists, or how after closing down the two daily newspapers, the neocolonial Fiji Times reopened while the original Fiji Sun opted to close down rather than publish under a military-backed regime.

About Coup 3, Robertson recalls “[Speight] was articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according to some journalists. They felt that this intimate media presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone’ (p. 154) (see Robie, 2001).

On the introduction of the 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, which still casts a shadow over the country and is mainly responsible for the lowest Pacific “partly free” rankings in the global media freedom indexes, Robertson notes how it was “Singapore-inspired”. The decree “came out in early April 2010 for discussion and mandated that all media organisations had to be 90 percent locally owned. The implication for the News Corporation Fiji Times and for the 51 percent Australian-owned Daily Post were obvious” (p. 254).

The Fiji Times was bought by Mahendra Patel, long-standing director and owner of the Motibhai trading group. (He was later jailed for a year for “abuse of office” while chair of Post Fiji.) The Daily Post was closed down.

Facing a long history of harassment by various post-coup administrations (including a $100,000 fine in January 2009 for publishing a letter describing the judiciary as corrupt, and deportations of publishers), The Fiji Times is heading into this year’s elections facing a trial for alleged “sedition” confronting the newspaper.

In spite of my criticism of limitations on media content, The General’s Goose is an excellent book and should be mandatory background reading for any journalist covering South Pacific affairs, especially those likely to be involved in coverage of this year’s general election in Fiji.

The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, by Robbie Robertson. Canberra: Australian National University. 2017. 366 pages. ISBN 9781760461270.

References
Baledrokadroka, J. (2012). The sacred king and warrior chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Canberra: Australian National University.

Robertson, R., & Sutherland, W. (2001). Government by the gun: The unfinished business of Fiji’s 2000 coup. Sydney & London: Pluto Press & Zed Books.

Robertson, R., & Tamanisau, A. (1988). Fiji: Shattered coups. Sydney: Pluto Press.

Robie, D. (2001). Coup coup land: The press and the putsch in Fiji. Asia Pacific Media Educator, 10, 149-161. See also for an extensive media coverage examination of the 1987 Rabuka coups: Robie, D. (1989). Blood on their banner: Nationalist struggles in the South Pacific. London: Zed Books; 2006 coup and 2014 elections: Robie, D. (2016). ‘Unfree and unfair’?: Media intimidation in Fiji’s 2014 elections. In Ratuva, S., & Lawson, S. (Eds.), The people have spoken: The 2014 elections in Fiji. Canberra: ANU Press.

The Review (1994). Rabuka and the reporter. Pacific Journalism Review, 1(1), 20-22.

Half of all race-related opinion pieces in the Australian mainstream media are likely to contravene industry codes of conduct on racism.

In research released this week, the Who Watches the Media report found that of 124 race-related opinion pieces published between January and July this year, 62 were potentially in breach of one or more industry codes of conduct, because of racist content.

Despite multiple industry codes of conduct stipulating fair race-related reporting, racist reporting is a weekly phenomenon in Australia’s mainstream media.

We define racism as unjust covert or overt behaviour towards a person or a group on the basis of their racial background. This might be perpetrated by a person, a group, an organisation, or a system.

The research, conducted by not-for-profit group All Together Now and the University of Technology Sydney, focused on opinion-based pieces in the eight Australian newspapers and current affairs programmes with the largest audiences, as determined by ratings agencies.

We found that negative race-related reports were most commonly published in News Corp publications. The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and Herald Sun were responsible for the most negative pieces in the press. A Current Affair was the most negative among the broadcast media.

Muslims were mentioned in more than half of the opinion pieces, and more than twice as many times as any other single group mentioned (see chart 2).

Portrayed more negatively
Muslims were portrayed more negatively than the other minority groups, with 63 percent of reports about Muslims framed negatively. These pieces often conflated Muslims with terrorism. For example, reports used terrorist attacks in the UK to question accepting Muslim refugees and immigrants to Australia.

This was a recurring theme in race-based opinion pieces over the study period. In contrast, there were more positive than negative stories about Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.

Negative commentary about minority groups has lasting impacts in the community. An op-ed in The New York Times recently highlighted the impact that racism in the media has on individuals. It explained:

…racism doesn’t have to be experienced in person to affect our health — taking it in the form of news coverage is likely to have similar effects.

The noted effects include elevated blood pressure, long after television scenes are over. Racism is literally making us sick.

Note also that given the lack of cultural diversity among opinion-makers, particularly on television, social commentators are largely talking about groups to which they do not belong. According to the 2016-20 PwC Media Outlook report, the average media employee is 27, Caucasian and male, which does not reflect the current population diversity of Australia.

This creates a strong argument for increasing the cultural diversity of all media agencies to help minimise the number of individuals or groups being negatively depicted in race-related reports.

Our research echoes the findings of the UN expert panel on racial discrimination, which reported last week that racist media debate was on the rise in Australia. The UN recommended the Australian media “put an end to racist hate speech” in print and online, and adopt a “code of good conduct” with provisions to ban racism.

Urgent recommendations
Our report makes urgent recommendations to strengthen media regulations in relation to race-based reporting, to support journalists to discuss race sensitively, and to continue media monitoring.

While media regulations enable audiences to make complaints about racism in the media, under some codes, audiences have only 30 days to do so. The research report recommends that this deadline be removed to allow audiences to make complaints about racist media content at any time.

It also calls for the definition of racism be broadened in the codes of conduct to include covert forms of racism. Covert racism includes subtle stereotyping, such as the repeated depiction of Muslim women with dark veils, implying secrecy and provoking suspicion.

News agencies need to do more to help journalists address race issues responsibly. They can do this by providing training, recruiting more journalists of colour, and ensuring that their editorial policies are racially aware.

The media are meant to hold up a mirror to society. When it comes to race-related reporting, we need a more accurate portrayal of the successes of Australian multiculturalism.

Dr Christina Ho is senior lecturer and discipline coordinator in Social and Political Sciences, University of Technology Sydney. Priscilla Brice and Deliana Iacoban from All Together Now, a not-for-profit group working to combat racism, also contributed to this article. Republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.

Professor David Robie, director of the Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, and seven academics from Indonesia’s Universitas Gadjah Mada will be on exchange next month in the first communication and publication research collaboration of its kind in New Zealand.

The seven academics from Yogyakarta, led by Gadjah Mada University’s Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni, arrive in Auckland in October for a two-week visit featuring workshops, seminars and joint research projects.

They will also be collaborating with their newly published research journal IKAT, the PMC’s 23-year-old Pacific Journalism Review and AUT Library’s new Tuwhera open access research and journal publication platform.

A major project involving the environment, ecological communication and Asia-Pacific maritime disasters is planned.

Dr Robie is one of six academics invited by CESASS as part of the Indonesian government’s World Class Professor (WCP) programme to strengthen international publication and research studies.

The others are: Professor Thomas Hanitzsch, chair and professor of Communication Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, Germany; Professor Judith Schlehe, professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at University of Freiburg, Germany; Dr Magaly Koch from the Centre for Remote Sensing at Boston University; Professor Hermann M. Fritz from Georgia Institute of Technology; and Dr David Menier, associate professor HDR at Université de Bretagne-Sud, France.

AUT’s Head of the School of Communication Studies, Professor Berrin Yanikkaya, said: “David has for many years run a vibrant and dynamic research centre out of the School of Communication Studies. The Pacific Media Centre has become a focus for research and political commentary and thanks to David’s energy and commitment has attracted many overseas scholars whose research has further enriched the unique perspective that the centre offers on Asia-Pacific affairs.

“One of David’s most notable contributions has been to become the voice of the voiceless, and to carry their stories to the world.  Both the print and the digital publications that the PMC produces are remarkable for their interest and accurate, compassionate reporting.

PMC 10th anniversary
“This award made by Gadjah Mada University is particularly timely because 2017 is the 10th anniversary of the founding of the PMC, and it honours the achievements of an outstanding scholar and journalist.”

“I’m extremely pleased to host our guests from Indonesia and to join with them in congratulating David on this acknowledgement of his life’s work.”

“We hope to implement the knowledge we share with the Pacific Media Centre and AUT to create a better academic environment for our staff and to increase our writing competence in international journals.”

The WCP programme, launched this year, was initiated by the Directorate General of Science and Technology Resource and Education, Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia.

The programme involves inviting professors from various top universities, both from Indonesia and abroad, as visiting professors to be placed in different universities in Indonesia for a maximum of six months.

Dr Robie will visit Gadjah Mada University for two weeks later in October.

CESASS has collaborated with two other universities in Indonesia – the Centre for Coastal Rehabilitation and Disaster Mitigation Studies (CoREM) from Universitas Diponegoro, and the Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center (TDMRC) from Universitas Syiah Kuala.

The consortium proposed the programme under the theme “Ecological Communication in Maritime Disaster”.

• The Universitas Gadjah Mada academics visiting AUT

Indonesia’s Coalition to Safeguard the National Human Rights Commission has conducted research on the track record of 60 National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) candidate members.

The results of the research found that there were indications that some candidates have been involved in cases of corruption, gratification, are affiliated with radical groups, or have committed sexual violence.

Although House of Representatives (DPR) Deputy Speaker Fahri Hamzah was reluctant to comment on the 60 candidates, he has instead stated that Komnas HAM as a quasi-government institution is no longer needed.

Hamzah said that Komnas HAM, like the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), was no longer needed and called for the two institutions to be dissolved.

“[What’s happened with] the Komnas HAM is like the KPK. There’s a trend, I believe, what’s happened is like this. These institutions are actually not needed anymore because basically the state has undergone a democratic consolidation and a strengthening of its institutions in terms of quality,” he said.

Hamzah said that it was reasonable to dissolve the Komnas HAM because no one was prepared to commit human rights violations anymore. Moreover, he believed that human rights matters could now be dealt with by the Ministry of Human Rights and Justice (Kemenkum HAM) through the Human Rights Directorate General (Dirjen HAM).

The politikus [lit: political rat] from West Nusa Tenggara is proposing that human rights matters be handled by the Dirjen HAM which should be converted into a new institution that is not under the authority of the Kemenkum HAM so that it is independent.

Management ‘increasingly disorderly’
“Currently if there are [human rights] violations you can hire law enforcement officials. Lawyers. In the end these institution’s activities are no longer relevant. Because the activities of these institutions are no longer relevant, in the end their internal management has also become increasingly disorderly,” he said.

Because of this therefore, Hamzah will submit a proposal to President Joko Widodo to dissolve the Komnas HAM, KPK and several other semi-government institutions. He cited 106 quasi-state institutions that should be dissolved.

“Of what use are they to us? They just waste money. Including the Komnas HAM, KPK,” he said.

“Because they function within the state. So they are referred to as state auxiliary agencies because basically these functions are part of the state but in the past because they were deemed ineffective, [the Komnas HAM and the KPK] were considered necessary.

“Now if their function is within the state then what’s the point of them? Just dissolve them.”

Currently, the Komnas HAM, which is in the process of selecting candidate members for the period 2017-2022, has reached the stage of selecting the 28 best candidates. Sixty or so candidates underwent a public screening on May 17-18.

The Coalition to Save Komnas HAM’s research into the track record of the 60 candidates covered indicators of their capacity, integrity, competence and independence.

Research results
The results of the research found that 19 candidates had a good level of competence, 23 candidates had a fair level of competence and five candidates needed a deeper understanding of human rights issues.

There were also five candidates that refused to provide information and seven candidates that failed to provide complete information.

“In terms of independence, 13 candidates were found to be affiliated with political parties, 13 were affiliated with industry or corporations and nine people had links with radical groups or organisations”, said Indonesian Human Rights and Legal Aid Association (PBHI) director Totok Yulianto at a press conference in Cikini, Central Jakarta, on Monday.

According to Yulianto, if viewed in terms of capacity there were 11 candidates that had problems with cooperation issues, 16 candidates with communication issues, nine candidates with decision making issues, 12 candidates with performance issues and 12 candidates with problems in managerial principals.

“If viewed in terms of integrity five people were found to have links with corruption and or gratification issues, 11 people had issues with honesty, eight people were linked with sexual violence and 14 people had problems with the issue of religion”, he said. [noe]

Translated by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the report was “Fahri Hamzah minta Komnas HAM & KPK dibubarkan karena tak berguna“.

The Cook Islands is part of a 12-nation research project to comprehensively map Pacific Islands journalism culture at a time of immense political, economic, technological and cultural change.

Part of the baseline research project entitled “Study of journalists, journalism culture and climate change reporting in 12 University of the South Pacific (USP) member countries”, the Cook Islands leg was conducted last week.

The high-powered research team includes Professor Folker Hanusch (University of Vienna), Professor David Robie (director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology) and Dr Baljeet Singh, a specialist in social and economic survey methods at USP.

The researchers envisage that the study will provide media companies, journalism academics and policy makers a deeper appreciation of the worldviews and changes taking place in the professional orientation of Pacific journalists.

Research team leader and project manager Dr Shailendra Singh, journalism coordinator at USP in Suva, Fiji, was in the Cook Islands last week collecting data relevant to the research.

He said the news media sector in the Cook Islands had been co-operative and responded strongly to the survey.

Dr Singh said that in his time in the Cook Islands he had noted how the national news media faced many challenges in terms of human and technological capacity, but at the same time it was fairly robust and resourceful.

Committed media sector
“The media sector is driven by some very committed and technologically adept individuals investing personal time and funds for sometimes very little return. They see it as a hobby, a calling and a labour of love,” said Dr Singh.

Journalism, considered to be a crucial pillar of any democracy, was changing radically throughout the world, said Dr Singh.

He said rapid technological advancements and other influences, such as social media and citizen journalism were transforming the role, functions and very meaning of journalism.

Pacific news media had not been spared, even if the changes may be occurring at a slower pace, added Dr Singh.

“In this climate, the USP research seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of journalists’ professional views in order to better understand Pacific journalists and journalism.”

Factors include the conditions under which journalists operate, the kinds of pressures they face and how they might deal with them, and the social functions of journalism in a changing world.

“Such research is crucial during a time of major upheavals taking place within the institution of journalism globally and the Pacific news sector cannot be left behind during this history-making period,” said Dr Singh.

So far Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu have been surveyed, with Fiji and Vanuatu to follow shortly.

Besides USP, the research has received funding from the United States Embassy in Suva (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, Tuvalu); the Australian government-sponsored Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS), administered by Australian Broadcasting Corporation; and the Pacific Media Centre (Auckland University of Technology).

Rashneel Kumar is a Cook Islands News journalist and a graduate of the University of the South Pacific regional journalism programme.

• Pacific-wide media study aims to examine climate change

By David Robie in Yogyakarta

A vision for a progressive activists, writers and researchers retreat in the lush outskirts of Indonesia’s most cultural city, Yogyakarta, is close to becoming reality.

The Indonesian Community and Activists Library (ICAL) is already an impressive “shell” in the front garden of Australian author and socio-political analyst, intellectual and consultant Max Lane, arguably the most knowledgeable English-language writer on Indonesian affairs.

Dr Lane, who has been writing and commenting about cultural and political developments in Indonesia, Philippines, Timor-Leste and his homeland since the 1970s, is delighted that completing the centre is so close.

“We have almost completed this building, the library, which will have a reading room, an office, and also some accommodation for those who would like to stay for a few days, or even longer to use the library,” he says, gesturing towards the empty rooms at the complex in the rice-producing and tourist village of Ngepas.

“The library will have about 4000 to 5000 books in the field of social sciences, humanities, history, feminism and so on.”

The books have been donated, but they mainly comprise the collections of some of Australia’s leading activists, such as John Percy, over more than five decades of his life.

Percy was a veteran socialist who co-founded the radical youth organisation Resistance and the Socialist Workers Party in Australia. He edited Direct Action for many years and helped establish Green Left Weekly. He died in 2015 and his passing inspired the library project with Lane, a close friend.

Filling a gap
The progressive book collection will help fill a gap in the literature for young activists and lecturers.

“We think the books are going to be very much put to use because this particular collection is probably still very difficult to find in Indonesia because of 35 years of authoritarian rule. Many books were not allowed, or difficult to be positioned, in libraries,” Lane says.

Under the Suharto regime between 1965 and 1998, book acquisitions for Indonesian school, university and community libraries were “underfunded and, when funded, narrow and censored”.

Lane hopes that ICAL will, in a “small but effective way”, help improve the situation.

“The books will comprise the collections of Australian progressive activists and intellectuals,” he says.

“The complex here is a very nice area to work in. It is less than half an hour from the three main university campuses and we expect university students, lecturers, NGO activists, political activists and others to be using the facilities here.

“It’s almost finished. We are still short of funds — we need US$3000 or $4000 to finish the central part of the library so people can start to use it. And probably another $5000 or $6000 to finish the accommodation area so people can stay over.

Team managing
“So I can say it is 80 percent or 90 percent funded and it will only take one or two months for the builder to complete work on it.”

Dr Max Lane and his wife, Faiza Mardzoeki, will manage the centre. She is one of Indonesia’s leading women playwrights and theatre directors, whose works include the 2006 play Nyai Ontosoroh (Madame Ontosoroh). She will be the day-to-day manager of the library programme.

Their home is a bungalow next door, on the banks of an attractive stream. Dr Lane injected about US$25,000 into the project himself and provided the land on their property.

Between them, Lane and Mardzoeki hope to see the centre become a lively base for creative and cultural activity. Classes, forums, discussions, short course training sessions on a range of topics relating to social sciences and humanities, and literature will be on the bucket list.

Dr Lane introduced the English-speaking world to the celebrated revolutionary Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Toer, who was imprisoned by Suharto for a decade on the Maluku island of Buru, by translating his classic Buru Quartet novels, starting with Bumi Manusia (The Earth of Mankind) in 1980. He was an officer working at the Australian Embassy at the time and it was not a popular move among his superiors.

According to an Asymptote profile of Dr Lane by Fadli Fawzi and Nazry Bahrawi, it was a dangerous era.

“At this time, Indonesian president Suharto’s New Order regime (the Partai Golongan Karya — Party of the Functional Groups, known as Golkar) was in power, propped up by foreign investment and backed by the army.

Heavy-handed repression
“It was also when heavy-handed repression was the norm in Southeast Asia, and Suharto’s New Order government was no exception. In the early 1980s, corpses began surfacing in public places as a result of extrajudicial killings.”

This was also a period when the Indonesian military was involved in bloody repression in East Timor after the country was invaded at the end of 1975.

Dr Lane’s own extraordinary literary outputs, apart from his translations, include his Unfinished Revolution: Indonesia Before and After Suharto (2008), Catastrophe in Indonesia (2010), and Unfinished Nation (2014) and collections of poetry.

Currently, Dr Lane is visiting senior fellow at the Institute for Southeast Asia Studies in Singapore. Previously he has lectured at universities across the region, including the University of Sydney in Australia and Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, and internationally.

The ICAL venture will be supported by a membership drive with the original members being invited on the basis of recommendations from of a panel of university professors and social justice activists.

Prospective new members will need to be recommended by two existing members.

More information about ICAL and a donations link are on the centre’s crowdfunding page.

• Green Left Weekly

In an ever-changing news environment, one academic and researcher has “gone backstage” at Switzerland’s public broadcasting company to better understand what “news” and “doing news” is.

In a talk “The making of a report for a news bulletin: when conflicting identities have to collaborate“, delivered at Auckland University of Technology, media discourse analysis researcher Dr Marcel Burger used a case study from 10 years of research to highlight the journalism practices behind broadcast news.

Dr Burger, a lecturer at the University of Lausanne’s Centre of Linguistics and Language Sciences, presented his findings on Friday to academic staff, students and multimodal researchers.

Focusing on the 2007 runway crash of Garuda Indonesia Flight 200, which killed about 20 people, including several Australian diplomats and journalists, Burger used the filmed interaction between two staff at channel TRS1 – a part of Television Suisse Romande (now Radio Télévision Suisse), one of the main French language networks in Switzerland.

The interaction was between a journalist and “cutter” (film editor) to show how, when and why antagonistic editorial norms may emerge.

“We focus on one moment, on one potentially critical context – the editing phase, when a journalist is engaged with a film editor to achieve a report.”

‘Fire and blood’
Burger detailed how an analysis of the cutter and journalist’s working relationship revealed their opposing styles and the prominence of negotiation in navigating this difference.

While the cutter was “amazed” by the plane crash footage captured by one of the survivors, he was rather flippant about its “fire and blood” nature, which did not sit well with the journalist who was conflicted because of his “civic concerns and tortured mind”, Dr Burger said.

Dr Burger noted much negotiation takes place because broadcast news reports are a “process, not a structure”, in which conflicting journalistic identities must collaborate.

“Negotiating in the editing phase is very common.”

The journalist and cutter only found themselves at odds because it was a slow news day, Burger admitted.

Slow news day
“This was the same day as a flu epidemic. Sixteen out of 20 journalists were sick in Geneva.”

Burger also explained how the newsroom had no other breaking news or fresh stories and the afternoon bulletin was fast approaching.

Moreover, many in the newsroom believed the crash was not in the public interest due to the small number of deaths.

This all changed when it was discovered a Swiss journalist was on board for the evening report, Burger explained.

When asked how often or rare such collaboration was, Burger said it all came down to timing.

“It depends. Most of the time on the timing.”

Dr Helen Sissons, a journalism lecturer at AUT, observed that having most of the morning for editing was rare.

“This is not long for the studied newsroom. There were constant bugs with the tech,” Dr Burger replied.

Good journalism practice
But more importantly, good journalism practice was also at stake.

“There are common contradictions by these sorts of reports: ‘shocking images, but don’t watch.’”

Dr Burger revealed that indeed the newsroom had been subject to public ridicule because of the footage’s graphic nature.

He also added in the Q and A session following his presentation that the case study sat as part of a wider body of research funded by a grant from the Swiss National Council of Science.

The Swiss National Council of Science sought a better understanding of public service broadcasting in Switzerland, Dr Burger said.

“How is it producing news accordingly, or not.”

Public service broadcasters such as SRG-SSR are required to promote Swiss identity and cultural understanding.

“We show how this is done or not done, achieved or not achieved.”

Newsrooms studied
Twenty journalists from three different newsrooms were studied between 2006 and 2016, with researchers conducting interviews with these journalists, sitting in on editorial meetings, observing interactions with fellow staff and analysing the reports and stories generated by the journalists themselves.

From this, Dr Burger has been able to highlight the identity, interaction and negotiation which takes place in news media.

By highlighting the media constraints, journalistic choices and properties of a news product, Dr Burger has been able to further reveal the processes which lie at the heart of informing the public on a daily basis.

“It’s a non-naïve, non-apocalyptic view on what journalists do,” he said.

“We wanted to make the link between what they say they do and what they actually do.”

Kendall Hutt is Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor for the Pacific Media Centre.

• Radio Télévision Suisse

The director of Va’aomanū Pasifika at Victoria University in Wellington, Dr Teresia Teaiwa, has died following a short illness.

She was described in a statement by Victoria University today as a friend, colleague, renowned scholar and poet, and a generous and warm personality of the academic community.

Dr Teaiwa died yesterday in close company of friends and family after a short battle with cancer.

Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) Luamanuvao Winnie Laban said the loss would be felt widely among the Pasifika community in New Zealand, the Pacific region and elsewhere around the world.

“She was a wonderful Pacific woman and leader who was a role model for all Pacific people. She was hugely committed and passionate about people and social justice in the Pacific, and she will be missed dearly.”

Dr Teaiwa was internationally known for her ground-breaking work in Pacific studies.

Her research interests in this area embraced her artistic and political nature, and included contemporary issues in Fiji, feminism and women’s activism in the Pacific, contemporary Pacific culture and arts, and pedagogy in Pacific Studies.

Marsden Fast Start
In 2007, she was awarded a Marsden Fast Start research grant for her oral history and book project on Fijian women soldiers.

In 1996, Dr Teaiwa turned down a job with Greenpeace to take up her first lecturer position at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

During this time, Dr Teaiwa enjoyed being part of intellectual communities that stemmed from the university environment such as the Niu Wave Writers’ Collective, the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement and the Citizens’ Constitutional Forum.

In 2000, she moved to New Zealand to join Victoria University to teach the world’s first undergraduate major in Pacific studies, of which she was programme director until 2009.

Most recently she was promoted to director of Va’aomanū Pasifika, home to Victoria’s Pacific and Samoan Studies programmes.

Dr Teaiwa’s talents in the classroom were formally recognised in 2015 when she won the Pacific People’s Award for Education, in 2014 when she received the Victoria Teaching Excellence Award and as the first Pasifika woman awarded the Ako Aotearoa Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award.

In 2010, she received the Macaulay Distinguished Lecture Award from the University of Hawai’i.

Outside of her Victoria role, Dr Teaiwa was co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2008-2011), and was an editorial board member of the Amerasia Journal and AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples.

‘An inspiration’
Pacific Media Centre director and Asia Pacific Report editor Professor David Robie, a contemporary of Dr Teaiwa at the University of the South Pacific, described her as an extraordinary academic and creative talent and cultural icon, adding she was “an inspiration to Pacific peoples right across the region”.

The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement farewelled Dr Teaiwa with sadness.

“This is a huge loss for Fiji and the Pacific as Dr Teaiwa inspired many as an educator, researcher, friend and colleague,” said FWRM executive director Nalini Singh.

Dr Teaiwa was a trailblazer in research and education, Singh added.

A memorial service will be held for Dr Teaiwa at Victoria University in the coming weeks.

A new study by the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report shows secondary school textbooks from the 1950s until 2011 missed or misrepresented key priorities now shown as crucial to achieve sustainable development.

With textbooks only revised every 5-10 years, the analysis reveals the need for governments to urgently reassess their textbooks to ensure that they reflect core values for sustainable development, including human rights, gender equality, environmental concern, global citizenship and peace and conflict resolution.

Released around International Day of Human Rights, the analysis looked at secondary school textbooks in history, civics, social studies and geography.

The materials were drawn from the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany, which holds the most extensive collection of textbooks from around the world in these subjects.

The paper had the following key findings:

Human rights:
· The percentage of textbooks mentioning human rights increased from 28 percent to 50 percent between 1970-1979 and 2000-2011, with the greatest increase in sub-Saharan Africa.

· But, from 2000-2011, only 9 percent of textbooks discussed rights of people with disabilities and 3 percent cover the rights of LGBTI people.

· Only 14 percent of textbooks from 2000-2011 mention immigrant and refugee rights.

Gender:
· The percentage of textbooks mentioning women’s rights increased from 15 percent in the 1946-1969 period to 37 percent in the 2000-2011 period. Only a sixth of textbooks in Northern Africa and Western Asia mention women’s rights at all.

· Despite the explicit messages advocating against gender inequality, gender bias remains a significant problem. Many textbooks, including in Algeria, France, Italy, Spain, Uganda, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Kenya and Zimbabwe show women in submissive or traditional roles like cleaning and serving men.

· Some countries like Vietnam, have revised their textbooks to better illustrate gender equality.

Environmental issues:
· During 2000-2011, environmental protection or damage was discussed in half of all textbooks; more than double the percentage between 1970-1979.

· From 2000-2011, only 30 percent of textbooks discussed environmental issues as a global problem.

Peace:
· Only 10 percent of textbooks from 2000-2011 explicitly mention conflict prevention or resolution. Sri Lanka is one country that has introduced reconciliation mechanisms into textbooks recently in order to promote peace and social cohesion.

· Over half of 72 secondary school textbooks analysed in 15 countries related Islam and Arab societies to conflict, nationalism, extremism or terrorism.

Global citizenship:
· From 2000-2011, 25 percent of textbooks mention global citizenship, compared with 13 percent in the 1980s.

· But, 60 percent of countries’ textbooks in the late 2000s have no mention of activities outside of their borders.

Aaron Benavot, Director of the GEM Report UNESCO, said: “Textbooks convey the core values and priorities of each society and are used extensively in classrooms around the world to shape what students learn.

“Our new analysis shows the extent to which most former students now in their 20s were taught from textbooks that had little if anything to say about the core values of sustainable development.

“Textbook revision is infrequent, and often involves slight revisions, rather than overhauls of content. In addition, governments simply don’t realise just how out of touch their textbooks are. Our research shows that they must take a much closer look at what children and adolescents are being taught.”

The GEM Report calls on governments to urgently review the content of their textbooks to ensure values are in line with the principles in the new UN Sustainable Development Agenda (SDGs).

It calls for the values of the SDGs to be built into national guidelines used during textbook review, and taught in workshops for textbook writers and illustrators.

A checklist of highly relevant textbook content that governments should look out for when reviewing currently approved textbooks is included in the paper.

A separate version of that list is available for teachers and students to use in classrooms, enabling them assess their own textbooks, and hold their governments to account.

The full GEM report on sustainable futures

The Arab Spring opened the door to some greater freedoms in Middle East news media and some social change in spite of reverses from the political upheaval in the region.

By Elena Cavalione of Euronews

In a world torn apart by conflicts old and new, the issue of the media’s role seems to have growing importance.

Media coverage of atrocities committed during wars is opening up debate on the power images have to influence public opinion and political decisions.

INFOCORE is an international research study funded by the 7th European Framework Programme of the European Commission. It brings together experts from the Social Sciences to investigate the media’s role in violent conflicts in three regions: the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Africa.

Romy Frohlich from Ludwig Maaximilians University in Munich explains that journalism is under a state of tremendous transformation as a result of the ever-changing, global media landscape.

“What we see so far”, she says, “is that this change in journalism does affect or had an effect on the power balance within the shaping of public discourse, for example the relation between journalism and political actors or journalism and propaganda and public relations.”

Reporting in the Middle East
In Israel, the press enjoy very good standards of freedom, which is unique in the Middle East.

However, Palestinian and foreign journalists face military censorship and frequent abuses by both the Israeli army and Hamas in Gaza.

Since 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has had a grip over the communications portfolio. This gives him control over the entire media sector. He blocked a bill aimed at reforming a new broadcasting authority, fearing the new body would be critical of the government.

Digital media can guarantee more government transparency and even help change the military’s attitude towards journalists. But Professor Gadi Wolfsfed of theInterdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, says it can also undermine certain sensitive types of negotiations like peace deals.

“The positive of the fact that every citizen’s walking around with a camera”, he explains, “means that, for example, if police or soldiers are beating someone or killing them it could very well be caught on tape and uploaded onto YouTube.

“This changes the whole dynamic of the ability of the authorities to abuse people on the other side.

“However, we must be aware that there are some secrets that governments need to keep. And of course the negotiations in Oslo, that’s why it is called the Oslo peace process, were kept secret. Today it is not sure that it would be possible.

“In other words there wouldn’t have been secret negotiations because eventually something would have leaked out.”

According to the INFOCORE study, as one would expect, the Israeli and Palestinian press are extremely polarised. Hebrew language media tell their audiences one version of the facts, while the Arab media support the opposite narrative.

Meanwhile, the situation in Syria is more complex. Each side in the multifaceted civil war has set up their own media outlet.

It is almost impossible for Syrian citizens to access reliable, independent information and journalists can barely get into the country let alone report effectively on the conflict.

In this context social media have become essential for monitoring what is happening on the ground and sharing information, as Annabelle Van Den Berghe outlined: “The first sign of something going on is often on social media, is often on twitter, is often on Facebook, and it is also often on WhatsApp – she points out – I am on WhatsApp with several people inside Syria: reporters but also just civilians who are living there and updating me on the situation.

“Because WhatsApp is a bit safer than Facebook to communicate they often use that to let me know what’s happening, what is going on”.

Journalism in the Balkans
In the Balkans, foreign media played a key role in supporting the NATO interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and in Macedonia (FYROM) in 2001.

Their role was a controversial one. As with the case of the 11-week-campaign of NATO airstrikes in Kosovo in 1999, which claimed to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population from the Serbian government, and the intervention in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) in 2001, when Alliance troops entered the country with a mandate to disarm the Albanian rebels.

Today, the press in Kosovo face considerable financial challenges and structural problems. According to the INFOCORE study, one of the consequences of this is that journalists are not receiving appropriate training.

Abit Hoxcha, researcher at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich told Euronews: “Journalists don’t really have proper training to report and sensitive reporting.

“Also we are dealing with a generation that has experienced war, so there is a lot of baggage attached to reporting and one of the problems we see on a daily basis in our research is that journalists carry a dose of patriotism and identity and a sense of belonging into their daily reporting.”

Kosovo is a potential candidate for EU membership. However, the European Commission report in 2016 expressed worries about the increase in attacks on journalists and the lack of transparency regarding media ownership.

In Macedonia (FYROM) press freedom is severely threatened. The INFOCORE study found that politically-controlled media are fomenting tensions between Macedonians and the Albanian minority.

Dr Snezana Trpevska, from the Institute of Communication Studies in Skopje illustrated the results of the study:

“The inter-ethnic tension in the country does not emerge only as a result of the friction between the communities themselves but also they are created from the politically manipulated media,” she says.

“So they are created from above. The discourses of conflict, of violence, of hate speech are coming from the politicians themselves who control and misuse the media to provoke tensions in order to divert the public attention from the other controversial and important issues in the society.”

People then stop relying on traditional media and go in search of alternative sources of information.

Freedom of the press in the African Great Lakes region
Ethnic conflicts, political instability and starvation typify the realities of the Great Lakes region in Africa.

In Burundi a crisis erupted in May 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term. More than 400 protesters were killed and 6 independent media outlets were shut down.

Currently about 80 journalists are in exile, mostly in Rwanda, and local press is controlled by the government.

Marie Soleil Frere, vice-rector at Université Libre de Bruxelles, says the situation used to be very different.

“The situation in Burundi used to be different because most of these independent registrations that were closed in May 2015 were radios that were established with the support of the international community and they were established with the aim of contributing to peace building, reconciliation, so there was a real pluralism inside of those media they would employ Hutu and Tutsi journalists and they would devote a lot of broadcasting time to programs about peace building and reconciliation.”

In the Democratic Republic of Congo independent media struggle with journalists often being threatened, attacked or arrested.

Recently, international media have also been targeted. In November 2016 Radio France International’s frequencies were suspended.

A new law making foreign media enter into partnerships with local firms was enforced.

Ernest Sagaga, from the International Federation of Journalists, believes the law aims to bring money and false credibility to the government: “They are now targeting international media broadcasters because of course they come with great credibility,” Sagaga said.

“These countries whatever they do – both Burundi and DRC- they need money to run the economies and they want to come back to their funders including the EU for the kind of assistance they get. So, there is a dichotomy if you like: on one hand they don’t want people to know what is going on in the country and on the other hand they want help or support allegedly for running the affairs of their countries.”

Neutrality, trustworthiness and independence are cornerstones to delivering reliable news reports. But according to INFOCORE’s findings, journalism could go beyond the simple reporting of facts in conflict zones.

“We can find three main kinds of journalist”, says Rosa Berganza from University Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. “The responsible one who promotes peace and who is looking for solutions, the peacemaker journalist who specifically proposes solutions, and the watchdog role that is played by several journalists in order to account for all the violations of human rights that can be committed in different countries.”

The Pacific Media Centre is part of the 28-member INFOCORE Stakeholders Network.

INFOCORE media and conflict project

News media’s role in conflict – The Huffington Post

The new law would apply to those who tried to reach Australia by boat from July 19, 2013, and will inhibit them from obtaining any visa, including tourist and business visas.

The executive director of Amnesty International New Zealand, Grant Bayldon, said in a statement that the move by the Australian government is in breach of Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention which, declares countries are prohibited from imposing penalties based on people’s mode of arrival.

‘Unlikely deal’

Bayldon also responded to the comments made by New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, about the unlikely deal with Australia to resettle 150 refugees detained in the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres.

He said recent research showed 79 percent of New Zealanders want the Government to take a stronger stance in speaking out against the evidence of abuse in the offshore detention centres.

“What’s more, a full 86 percent said the Prime Minister and Government have a responsibility to speak out on evidence of human rights violations being committed by other countries,” Bayldon said.

Meanwhile, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Crepeau, arrives in Australia today.

During his 18-day trip Crepeau will examine the detention center’s in question.

According to ABC News, Crepeau would also meet with border protection officials and migrants.

“This is an opportunity for me to understand how Australia manages its overall migration policies, and their impact on the human rights of migrants,” he said.

• Leaked documents reveal children sexually abused at Nauru prison
• Confirm ‘time frame’ for closing Manus Island detention centre, demands NGO

A Historic Choice: West Papua, Human Rights and Pacific Diplomacy at the Pacific Island Forum and Melanesian Spearhead Group also supports a request before the Pacific Island Forum for an international human rights fact finding mission.

It covers the period between January 2014, when a delegation of MSG Foreign Ministers’ visited the territory, and July, 15, 2016, the day after MSG Special Leaders meet in Honiara and decided to defer a decision on the ULMWP’s application for full membership.

The findings of the report depict a detailed picture of the human rights violations against the people of West Papua carried out largely, but not exclusively, by the Indonesian police.

It provides a summary on the conflict; mindful that many in the Pacific and the world are still not aware of the human rights issues surrounding West Papua.

An abstract from the report:

“Human rights violations in West Papua, particularly denial of the West Papuans freedom of expression, has dramatically increased since the formation of the ULMWP in Vanuatu on the 6th of December 2014. The ULMWP and their supporters in particular are being targeted by the Indonesian state.

“In 2014, prior to the formation of the West Papuan umbrella group, 105 people were arrested for nonviolent political activity. In 2015, 710 people were arrested for unarmed political activity in support of West Papuans right to self-determination.

“According to data provided by the Papuan Coalition for Human Rights and the Legal Aid Institute in Jakarta, by July 2016, 4,198 West Papuans were arrested, an increase of more than 4000% since the MSG foreign minister mission in 2014. Disturbingly, that data is only for the first half of 2016.

“All of these arrests 8 were for nonviolent actions – handing out leaflets, public oration, displaying banners, and participating in public demonstrations – calling for the ULMWP to be granted full membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group. Most of those arrested were young people, of high school or university age. Even primary school aged students as young as 11 years old were also arrested by the police for participating in nonviolent action.”

• Download the full report.

The AUT Food Network has celebrated the commercial launch of the Nothing Else bar, a milestone achievement after years of rigorous research and taste trials.

The Nothing Else bar is a healthy snack bar, made up of just eight simple ingredients – the date and almond flavour contains oats, dates, almonds, oat bran, manuka honey, sunflower oil, flaxseed (linseed) and cinnamon.

The bars are not only more nutritious than typical muesli bars, but also have a low glycaemic index (GI) to keep hunger pangs at bay for longer.

The bars are now being manufactured and distributed by South Auckland food manufacturer AB Foods, in consultation with Auckland University of Technology’s professor of nutrition Elaine Rush and advertising creativity lecturer Dave Brown, who created the Nothing Else brand.

The product has been four years in the making, and was commercialised through AUT Enterprises Ltd (AUTEL).

Professor Rush says the collaboration brought organisations, experts and partners from many disciplines together, with the goal of providing a healthier food choice for consumers.

“Globally, there is a call for better value food. Yet there’s no shortage of unhealthy food in the market, so we need to work harder to improve the nutrition of New Zealanders – one bar at a time,” she says.

Ingredient transparency
On the creation of the Nothing Else brand, Brown explains it was specifically designed to be transparent about products’ ingredients.

“Consumers are surrounded by product labels with tempting yet questionable health claims. By being upfront and displaying the familiar, natural ingredients that go into Nothing Else products, we’re making it easier for customers to make their own choices,” he says.

The Nothing Else team has also introduced a vegan option for consumers, adding to the original date and almond bar with the addition of a cranberry and cashew version.

“The new flavour contains the sugar in the sweetened cranberries, rather than honey, making this bar a suitable option for consumers following a vegan diet,” says Professor Rush.

For decades activists and intellectuals as diverse as Bruce Jesson, Annette Sykes, Brian Easton, Jane Kelsey and Bryce Edwards have lamented the lack of any progressively oriented policy institution capable of mounting a serious challenge to the neoliberal hegemony which has dominated New Zealand’s political life since the 1980s.

The NZ Business Round Table, the Maxim Institute, the NZ Institute and more recently the NZ Initiative have all played major roles as think tanks influencing and advocating on economic and social issues.

When I commenced doctoral research (2010 – 2013) exploring the reasons why we had no major left think tank in New Zealand, two of the most frequent responses received were that we’d never succeed because we don’t have the money and because the left is too fragmented and factionalised.

On the question of money, there is no question that ESRA is very much on the back foot.  There is no secret source of funding for ESRA and so far no substantial donors have emerged, although of course such support will always be welcomed as long as our kaupapa remains uncompromised.

What has enabled us to commence and sustain the project so far has been the tremendous goodwill, time and commitment shown by a large group of skilled activist and academic volunteers, backed by a comparatively low but steady stream of donations and automatic payments from supporters.

We don’t have enough money, but we make the most of what we have… and every dollar you contribute is another step towards our sustenance and growth.

At the core of ESRA’s being we are the opposite of the major think tanks mentioned above. While we don’t have their financial resources, we do have the ability to harness and nurture a collective determination to build a counterhegemonic institution capable of quality research, acute comment, and the generation of lively public debate and thoughtful policy development.

In touch with realities
We will become a very different kind of think tank to those which already exist, grounded in the unions and community-based organisations whose interests we wish to serve, and closely in touch with the realities of life for the ever growing numbers of people who are paying the price in poverty, homelessness, alienation and despair for New Zealand’s love affair with neoliberal capitalism.

The second barrier raised to the potential development of a major think tank on the left was that traditional left factionalism had the potential to impede such a project right from the start.  This has not proved to be the case at all.  In the slow, careful process of establishing ESRA we have aimed to put a stake in the ground, inviting those who support the initiative to become part of it, but not seeking to colonise or take over people and organisations whose political interests lie elsewhere.

ESRA in fact looks forward to the day when other substantial left think tanks will emerge.  Meanwhile, we will always welcome debate and interaction with other entities, no matter their place on the political spectrum.

It is cautious, deliberative work building an organisation without major funding support.  Our ability to progress all the activities in which we would ideally like to engage is inhibited by a lack of paid staff and resources.

But we have come a long way already and feel sure that our current model of quiet, determined long-haul organising will lay the groundwork for a thriving ESRA, working for the better, more hopeful future to which we are committed.

Sue Bradford is a former Green MP, researcher and activist. She gave this address at the launch of ESRA at the Counterfutures conference at Victoria University of Wellington on Friday night.

• ESRA – Economic and Social Research Aotearoa
• Counterfutures – left thought and practice Aotearoa
• Talkin’ bout a revolution, in NZ – Bryce Edwards
• Sue Bradford talking in a Radio Waatea interview
• The first real left-wing think tank in NZ
• ESRA ‘a lemon’ – Chris Trotter

She said it was a popular journal globally as well as in the Asia-Pacific region, and noted the presence of many international contributors to the latest edition at the launch.

“This journal has progressed through the persistence of Professor David Robie, Dr Philip Cass and Professor Wendy Bacon with support of the wonderful production efforts of Del Abcede and proof reading of Susan O’Rourke,” said Dr Nakhid, who is an associate professor in AUT’s School of Social Science and Public Policy at Auckland University of Technology.

She said this latest issue of the journal, the only one regularly publishing New Zealand journalism research, was timely as it coincided with the WJEC conference and an Australian and Pacific Preconference.

There had been much attention on alleged corruption in New Zealand under the current government, particularly in reference to the Panama Papers, and ongoing corruption in the Pacific and wider Oceania region.

“This issue of the journal covers articles by those journalists and media researchers who have brought these issues to light,” she said.

“The articles also discuss the lives of journalists and their risks and dangers, our damage to the environment and many other issues.

“We need young journalists to live to become old journalists and so we very much welcome this journal and the launch of this current issue theme titled ‘Endangered Journalists’.”

• Pacific Journalism Review
• Full text articles from the latest edition
• Still stealing the generations
• PJR at AUT Shop

Research journal editors and publishers are often faced with a range of challenges when producing publications outside the Northern Hemisphere elite. At the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) being held at the Auckland University of Technology, editors from the Asia-Pacific region shared perspectives of their “perils and pitfalls” of publishing.

Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Journalism Review and Pacific Journalism Monographs, highlighted the challenges and successes of publishing the only journal in the world that produces in-depth research about journalism and media in the Asia-Pacific.

Dr Robie said the journal was established in 1994 at the University of Papua New Guinea to bring attention to urgent Pacific issues.

“It was started to publish Pacific issues and situations that were otherwise ignored.”

Press freedom was a major issue in that time, but according to Dr Robie, PJR played a major role in making the issue aware among the masses.

No easy feat
But it has been no easy feat, admitted Dr Robie, saying the production of the “global South” journal had moved three times, finally being established in New Zealand.

After leaving Papua New Guinea, it was then moved to Fiji in 1998 because he had been appointed as head of the University of South Pacific in Suva which also had better resources to support the journal.

In 2000, “maverick businessman” George Speight staged Fiji’s third coup.

Because of this the media environment in Fiji was threatened and PJR moved to New Zealand. The first edition was published in 2003, at AUT and later at AUT’s Pacific Media Centre when it was established in 2007.

Dr Robie explained that journals like the PJR were at the “nexus” between industry and the research.

Support needed
Professor Linda Claire Steiner, of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the editor of Journalism & Communication Monographs (JCM), said more support was needed from “budding journalists”.

“There is no particular value in doing a lot of research if you don’t share it with people. Research is meant to be shared and if you want to make a contribution, the way to do that is to get it published somewhere,” Dr Steiner said.

She also commented on the difficulty of producing in-depth articles that often reach limited audiences.

“All of that important research you have done to be seen by other researchers, who might use it, cite it and assign it to their students, goes in vain,” she said.

• The Pacific Journalism Review launched its latest journal edition titled ‘Endangered Journalists’ this week at the WJEC. The edition includes a special focus on media missions in West Papua and includes contributions from significant journalists such as Johnny Blades, Ricardo Morris, Jason MacLeod, Alexandra Wake, Lee Duffield and many others.

Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre’s advisory board, praised the quality of research contemporary issues in the edition.

Editor Professor David Robie of the journal confessed to experiencing a deju vu feeling as the journal had celebrated 20 years of publishing in November 2014 at the very same venue.

But this time it was being launched as part of the cluster of activities marking the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) conference at Auckland University of Technology this week.

Dr Robie took the opportunity to thank the many contributors and researchers from over the years who had contributed to the journal from the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia, Journalism Education Association of New Zealand and the Pacific.

The journal, printed and distributed by Auckland’s Little Island Press, was also released as an online edition today at INFORMIT database.

PJR launch at JERAA

1 of 8

The World Journalism Education Congress preconference for JERAA and the region began today and brought together Pacific journalism educators to improve the role of the Fourth Estate in the region.

Toeolesulusulu Associate Professor Damon Salesa, director of the New Zealand Institute of Pacific Research, opened the preconference, saying journalism was important for bringing the community together for people to engage in the public sphere.

“Journalism is central to the public interest of the Pacific, it protects culture and especially language,” Toeolesulusulu said.

“However the world has changed drastically, making it difficult for journalists to keep up with the scale of some of the issues affecting Pacific.”

He referred to health issues, like the Zika virus where communities are struggling to understand how the media are easing the issue.

This was an “exciting” time for educators to gather and face these issues together at the conference.

The day-long preconference was organised by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA), Pacific Media Centre (PMC) and the Media Educators Pacific (MeP).

The NZ Institute of Pacific Research was the main donor for the preconference, funding five media educators from Fiji, Papua New Guinea (2), Samoa and Tonga to attend JERAA and WJEC.

The institute is a collaboration between the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and Otago University.

Critical thinking — the ability to reason effectively — is declining and it’s worrying.

Dr Jito Vanualailai, director of the research office at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, has attributed this to the excessive use of new technology and that reading is regarded as no longer important.

Reading, he said, developed imagination, critical thinking as well as vocabulary.

“People are more interested in social media, the internet – but text there is not reflective reading. They use words that cannot be read by our generation through visual media. As a result of which our critical thinking skills have declined,” Dr Vanualailai said.

“Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and it engages imagination in a way visual media such as internet, social media and video games do not.”

He said schools didn’t need the internet and discouraged the use of calculators until children reached tertiary level.

He also encouraged teachers to read to their students and parents to their children.

Global society students
Dr Vanualailai was making a presentation at the 117th Fiji Principals Association’s conference in Lami.

The conference theme was Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global Society.

Fiji National University’s dean of the College of Humanities and Education, Dr Eci Nabalarua, shared in her presentation that teachers had indicated to her that most of their students, especially in island schools, do not know how to read or write in English.

She said reading disability was worrying.

This was backed up by a principal of an urban Viti Levu school who said they had to have extra reading classes for Year 9 students simply because they did not know how to read.

The principal believed the compulsory education in the education sector was also a contributing factor.

He said students were allowed to pass on after secondary school and they remained non-readers all their lives.

He said if teachers were failing to teach them to read, they were failing them for life.

Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are some of the greatest challenges facing humanity from climate change.

Recently at least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and a further six islands have been severely eroded.

These islands lost to the sea range in size from one to five hectares. They supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old.

Nuatambu Island, home to 25 families, has lost more than half of its habitable area, with 11 houses washed into the sea since 2011.

This is the first scientific evidence, published in Environmental Research Letters, that confirms the numerous anecdotal accounts from across the Pacific of the dramatic impacts of climate change on coastlines and people.

A warning for the world
Previous studies examining the risk of coastal inundation in the Pacific region have found that islands can actually keep pace with sea-level rise and sometimes even expand.

However, these studies have been conducted in areas of the Pacific with rates of sea level rise of 3-5 mm per year – broadly in line with the global average of 3 mm per year.

For the past 20 years, the Solomon Islands have been a hotspot for sea-level rise. Here the sea has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993. This higher local rate is partly the result of natural climate variability.

These higher rates are in line with what we can expect across much of the Pacific in the second half of this century as a result of human-induced sea-level rise. Many areas will experience long-term rates of sea-level rise similar to that already experienced in Solomon Islands in all but the very lowest-emission scenarios.

Natural variations and geological movements will be superimposed on these higher rates of global average sea level rise, resulting in periods when local rates of rise will be substantially larger than that recently observed in Solomon Islands. We can therefore see the current conditions in Solomon Islands as an insight into the future impacts of accelerated sea-level rise.

We studied the coastlines of 33 reef islands using aerial and satellite imagery from 1947-2015. This information was integrated with local traditional knowledge, radiocarbon dating of trees, sea-level records, and wave models.

Waves add to damage
Wave energy appears to play an important role in the dramatic coastal erosion observed in Solomon Islands. Islands exposed to higher wave energy in addition to sea-level rise experienced greatly accelerated loss compared with more sheltered islands.

Twelve islands we studied in a low wave energy area of Solomon Islands experienced little noticeable change in shorelines despite being exposed to similar sea-level rise. However, of the 21 islands exposed to higher wave energy, five completely disappeared and a further six islands eroded substantially.

The human story
These rapid changes to shorelines observed in Solomon Islands have led to the relocation of several coastal communities that have inhabited these areas for generations. These are not planned relocations led by governments or supported by international climate funds, but are ad hoc relocations using their own limited resources.

The customary land tenure (native title) system in Solomon Islands has provided a safety net for these displaced communities. In fact, in some cases entire communities have left coastal villages that were established in the early 1900s by missionaries, and retraced their ancestral movements to resettle old inland village sites used by their forefathers.

In other cases, relocations have been more ad hoc, with indivdual families resettling small inland hamlets over which they have customary ownership.

In these cases, communities of 100-200 people have fragmented into handfuls of tiny family hamlets. Sirilo Sutaroti, the 94-year-old chief of the Paurata tribe, recently abandoned his village. “The sea has started to come inland, it forced us to move up to the hilltop and rebuild our village there away from the sea,” he told us.

In addition to these village relocations, Taro, the capital of Choiseul Province, is set to become the first provincial capital in the world to relocate residents and services in response to the impact of sea-level rise.

The global effort
Interactions between sea-level rise, waves, and the large range of responses observed in Solomon Islands – from total island loss to relative stability – shows the importance of integrating local assessments with traditional knowledge when planning for sea-level rise and climate change.

Linking this rich knowledge and inherent resilience in the people with technical assessments and climate funding is critical to guiding adaptation efforts.

Melchior Mataki who chairs the Solomon Islands’ National Disaster Council, said: “This ultimately calls for support from development partners and international financial mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund. This support should include nationally driven scientific studies to inform adaptation planning to address the impacts of climate change in Solomon Islands.”

Last month, the Solomon Islands government joined 11 other small Pacific Island nations in signing the Paris climate agreement in New York. There is a sense of optimism among these nations that this signifies a turning point in global efforts.

However, it remains to be seen how the hundreds of billions of dollars promised through global funding models such as the Green Climate Fund can support those most at need in remote communities, like those in Solomon Islands.

The authors are Simon Albert, senior research fellow, School of Civil Engineering, University of Queensland; Alistair Grinham, senior research fellow, University of Queensland; Badin Gibbes, senior lecturer, School of Civil Engineering, University of the Sunshine Coast;  Javier Leon, lecturer, University of the Sunshine Coast; and John Church, CSIRO research fellow, CSIRO. This article was first published by The Conversation and republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

Indonesia is experiencing an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBT sentiment.

If there was a single event that has incited the current wave of violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Indonesia we might settle upon a minister’s affront at LGBT becoming visible in solidarity.

Having been advised of a university-based LGBT support group, Indonesia’s Technology, Research and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir publicly stated in January 2016 that universities must uphold standards of “values and morals” and therefore should not support organisations that promote LGBT activities.

Nasir’s supposed evidence was the existence of the Support Group and Resource Center on Sexuality Studies (SGRC) based at the University of Indonesia—it missed Nasir’s attention that SGRC was not an LGBT organisation and that the LGBT Peer Support group under its auspice was not trying to convert people but provide information to students on such things as sexual health.

The ensuing backlash against the minister’s statement resulted in Nasir stressing that he was not against LGBT and, indeed, that LGBT had the right to join organisations, like every Indonesian citizen.

Nasir further noted, “We are not against LGBTs but the activity … [T]he problem is when they are showing romance, kissing, and making love (in public).”

In other words, Nasir was not concerned about LGBT per se, but rather felt threatened by moves perceived to increase LGBT collective visibility. Similarly, the Speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly and Chair of the National Mandate Party, Zulkifli Hasan, commented, “As a movement, the existence of LGBT must be opposed. We must limit its room to move. However, as individual people, they must be protected like any other citizen.”

At issue is fear of LGBT being visible in solidarity and, as anthropologist Tom Boellstorff notes, national belonging.

Sanctuary with invisibility
Invisibility has provided many LGBT people in Indonesia with some sanctuary. Invisibility has been achieved by marrying heterosexually, ostensibly reinforcing heteronormativity and being discerning in undertaking political activities.

A few individuals have been staunchly visible and transwomen such as television personality Dorce Gamalama are known by many—indeed, President Joko Widodo has appeared alongside Dorce at public events.

By and large, tolerance, and at times acceptance, has been accorded to LGBT in Indonesia through the community keeping an often reserved profile and through strategic political engagement. Considering this value of invisibility, the event that precipitated the current wave of aggression was unsurprisingly one perceived as an effort to increase a collective profile of LGBT Indonesians.

While homosexuality has never been illegal in Indonesia, persecution of LGBT is not new. Police and extremist Islamist groups, such as the Islamic Defenders Front, have previously targeted LGBT.

In 2013, the Pew Research Centre reported that 93 percent of Indonesians thought homosexuality should not be accepted in Indonesia—a higher percentage than any other Asia-Pacific country surveyed and worryingly close to Nigeria’s score of 98 percent.

We can’t take this figure as reliable though—only 1000 people were surveyed and the framing of the question was loaded towards getting a homophobic response.

While Indonesia is far more accommodating of LGBT than such a figure suggests, homophobia is not new to Indonesia. However, the swiftness and duration of this wave of anti-LGBT sentiment is unprecedented.

Nasir’s comment that universities should not support LGBT activities was reported in inflammatory headlines such as “LGBT not welcome at university”.

Media frenzy
National and international media went into a frenzy, quickly presenting the issue as LGBT being banned from attending university in Indonesia. Buoyed perhaps by the belief that their homophobic sentiments might suddenly get traction and win them support, conservative political ministers and religious leaders weighed in on the debate.

The debate became framed in increasingly polarised and violent terms. In the two months that followed Nasir’s outburst, numerous incendiary statements were issued and actions taken.

Republika, a conservative Islamic publication, ran the headline “LGBT poses serious threat to nation.”

Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Muslim organisation in Indonesia with possibly 40 million members, stated that non-heterosexual orientation is incompatible with human nature and that LGBT activities must be prohibited by law.

Berliana Kartakusumah, secretary-general of the People’s Conscience Party, claimed: “Being LGBT is an infectious and dangerous disease. LGBT must be banned, like we banned communism and drug trafficking.”

Former communications minister Tifatul Sembiring effectively exhorted his one million Twitter followers to kill any gay people they find.

Direct threat
LGBT were presented as directly threatening Indonesia, with the chair of the commission of the House of Representatives, and the person in charge of defence, foreign affairs, communications, information and intelligence, Mahfudz Siddiq, stating, “LGBT issues can damage national security, identity, culture and the faith of Indonesians.”

Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu described efforts to recognise LGBT rights as an attempt by western nations to undermine Indonesia’s sovereignty and he called the LGBT movement a “proxy war” aimed at brainwashing Indonesians.

Indonesia’s vice-president Jusuf Kalla explicitly rejected UN funding that would support work on ending stigma, discrimination and violence towards LGBT people.

The Indonesian Psychiatrists Association (PDSKJI) classified homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism as mental disorders and issued a statement noting, “We need to promote, prevent, cure and rehabilitate LGBT people.”

PDSKJI member Suzy Yusna Dewi commented that “We really do care about them. What we are worried about is, if left untreated, such sexual tendencies could become a commonly accepted condition in society.”

Following the World Health Organisation’s 1990 lead, Indonesia declassified homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder in 1993, although gender identity disorder remained. PDSKJI’s move to now classify homosexuality as a treatable disorder drew on Indonesia’s Law No.18/2014 on Mental Health and the Mental Disorder Diagnostic Guidelines.

While neither the law nor the guidelines mention LGBT, such omission did not stop PDSKJI from using it as support for framing homosexuals and bisexuals as ‘people with psychiatric problems’ and transgender people as having ‘mental disorders.’ That the law has been prejudicially extended to support this classification of LGBT is deeply concerning.

Radio and television bans
The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission banned radio and television stations from airing any program portraying LGBT behaviour as “normal”. This move was supported by law-makers and others who claimed that such a ban would protect children and teenagers ‘susceptible to duplicating deviant LGBT behaviours’.

Efforts were made by politicians to mandate ‘rehabilitation for every person who has LGBT characteristics’ and prohibit online content viewed as promoting homosexuality.

The fear and anxiety caused by these events forced many in the LGBT community into hiding

While it was reported that the Social Affairs Minister advocated bathing LGBT in boiling water infused with spices to cure homosexuality—she actually thinks this would only work for drug addicts—she promoted spiritual training as a cure. The world’s first Islamic school for transwomen was forced to close. A number of anti-LGBT protests took place while pro-LGBT demonstrations were supressed by police.

The fear and anxiety caused by these events, all of which occurred between January and March 2016, forced many in the LGBT community into hiding. LGBT friends in Indonesia have changed their mobile phone numbers so they cannot be contacted; they have moved out of their boarding houses to undisclosed safe houses; and they have deleted social media postings and unfriended people for fear of being identified and potentially blackmailed.

Police are checking identity cards at LGBT hangouts and detaining those without ID or from out of area. Dede Oetomo, who founded the LGBT rights group GAYa NUSANTARA in 1987, has told employees to stay away from the office for fear of harassment. Forced reclusion means, among other things, that people who need sexual health care and HIV treatment are too afraid to access services.

What is behind the intensity of current unrest? I identify six key converging factors:

First, the perception that LGBT were trying to stake a collective claim on Indonesia precipitated outbursts from high-ranking government and religious leaders.

While for Nasir and others, LGBT are not troublesome individually, as a group they are. The view that LGBT were gaining visible solidarity (under university auspice) provoked homophobic rhetoric and media furore painted the issue as an “LGBT crises”. Notably, the homophobia was not sparked by demands amongst the LGBT community for right to marry or adopt children or to ban discrimination.

Communist association
The timing of the “LGBT crises” has not gone unnoticed with at least one commentator noting that that the furore came about just as revisions were to be made to the anti-corruption law. Moreover, framing LGBT as a movement (gerakan) drew on negative connotations of the term in Indonesia, with its association with communism.

Second, once the fire was stoked, the simmering issue of perceived Indonesian moral decay rose to the surface. Tight social controls under authoritarian President Suharto (1965–98) have given way to an era of reformation, synonymous for some with sexual promiscuity.

The passing of the Pornography Bill in 2008 is one reaction to fears of sexual deviance. The current anti-LGBT movement is an extension of this fear.

Third, increasing religiosity in Indonesia is providing ammunition and support for anti-LGBT rhetoric. While religious freedom is felicitous (e.g. the 2013 revoking of a law prohibiting policewomen from wearing the veil at work), the use of Islam to justify killing LGBT, and the support that such messages are receiving, is deeply concerning.

Fourth, antagonistic relations between Indonesia and the West (primarily Australia in the aftermath of spying allegations and Indonesia’s execution of two Australian prisoners) have fuelled anti-LGBT sentiment. LGBT are framed as a western import threatening Indonesia’s sovereignty and security, a dangerous and erroneous message embraced in many parts of Indonesia.

Fifth, economic disenfranchisement among a younger generation has produced a class of men and women with little outlet for their anger. An easy target for the frustrations of neoconservative youth is the LGBT community.

Sixth, Indonesia’s embrace of social media fostered swift and widespread public engagement in the disputation. Twitter hashtags such as #TolakLGBT (RejectLGBT) quickly trended and reactions to the banning of LGBT emojis provoked comment from across the nation, propelling the debate with extraordinary fervour.

Is there hope for an Indonesia that tolerates, accepts and celebrates its LGBT community? I think so, for three key reasons. First, while much of the LGBT persecution has stemmed from a religious base, the vast majority of Indonesians follow an Islam that is accepting and accommodating of diversity.

Second, even ministers who abhor the LGBT community condemn violence and state that LGBT are part of Indonesia. And third, amidst all the malicious rhetoric and violence, the debate is making LGBT visible in a way not previously possible. There is a community of LGBT and their supporters, both in Indonesia and across the world, and while the community is discrete it is one hard to subdue.

Thanks to Dede Oetomo, Tom Boellstorff, Saskia Wieringa, Nurshabani Katjasungkana and Ben Murtagh for helpful comments and suggestions.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully has welcomed the launch of a New Zealand-based Pacific think-tank aimed at supporting sustainable development in the region.

“We have identified the need for more targeted research on the Pacific, to underpin development initiatives and support Pacific decision makers,” said McCully, who launched the new institute at Auckland University’s Fale Pasifika last night.

“The New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research will work in support of Pacific governments and regional agencies, and will focus on producing the kind of hard-headed analysis that can support sustainable economic development.

“Our aim is for the NZPIR to become a centre of excellence for research on Pacific development, governance, public policy, and security issues.

“The government has provided a cornerstone investment of $7.5 million over five years to establish the Institute and develop an initial programme of research,” McCully said.

The NZPIR will be based at the University of Auckland.

The research programme will be delivered by a consortium led by the University of Auckland, and including Auckland University of Technology and Otago University.

• Pacific Media Watch’s TJ Aumua reports on the new institute
• New NZ think-tank launched to advance Pacific research

The launch of the New Zealand Institute of Pacific Research (NZIPR) at the University of Auckland last night has been hailed as a milestone for advancing student learning on Pacific issues.

The new institute has been established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and Otago University as a consortium for Pacific research and engagement.

Newly appointed director of the NZIPR, Associate Professor Damon Salesa, said it was the first time the NZ government had funded a national centre of excellence in Pacific research.

“It is a remarkable opportunity not only to research but to deliver opportunities to learn and to grow our students and research, especially our Pacific students, which our consortium has counted are in the thousands.”

Salesa said the institute also created opportunities for solo researchers to engage in conversations for purposeful and transformative Pacific relationships and resolutions.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully launched the institute at the Fale Pasifika, saying the think-tank’s objective was to support sustainable development in the Pacific region.

A pro vice-chancellor of Otago University, Tony Ballantyne, said the intellectual programme of the NZIPR would connect students with “cutting edge” research on the Pacific region.

The NZIPR will also offer students supervision in specific Pacific postgraduate research, postgraduate scholarships and student internships and placements.

The Head of Pacific Advancement at AUT, Walter Fraser, said the move for a nationally recognised Pacific institute had been desired for a long time.

Informed position
He said the NZIPR was a result of two years of discussions but its launch finally gave an opportunity for institutions to advise governance with an informed position on Pacific issues.

Professor Jenny Dixon, deputy vice-chancellor of strategic engagement at the University of Auckland and chair of the new institute, said the challenges of the consortium had concerned how the three institutions would achieve a strategy and operations consensus for the new institute.

“I think we have to remember the institute will be present at a number of places, events are going to take pace at the other universities and also overseas, so it is very much a collective effort.”

“AUT, like Otago, has a large representation of Pacific students, Pacific staff. AUT has the Pacific Media Centre — these were assets the collective bid offered.”

A launch statement noted:

• The three universities in collaboration educate 75 percent of all Pacific Island university students in New Zealand, and produce 60 percent of Pacific PhDs. They also employ 90 percent of the 175 Pacific academics working in universities across New Zealand.

• The ministry is contributing $7.5 million over five-years to the NZIPR.

• Research of the NZIPR is agenda-driven by the ministry. The first five research cases of interest for the institute are: Mapping donor contributions in the Pacific, labour markets for sustainable and economic development in the Pacific, commercial potential of land in the Pacific, private-sector investment in the Pacific and the role of sovereign trust funds.

The University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology and the University of Otago have collaborated to form the New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research (NZIPR).

The institute is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to deliver a world-class research programme focused on Pacific development, investment and foreign-policy issues.

Drawing on further support from a range of international partners across the Pacific region, the NZIPR will advance New Zealand’s thinking on Pacific research.

The Ministry is contributing $7.5 million over five years to the NZIPR, which was launched at the University of Auckland’s Fale Pasifika tonight by Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully.

By joining forces, the three universities have created a consortium that brings together their multi-disciplinary expertise. The NZIPR will be hosted at the lead institution, the University of Auckland.

The University of Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor, Stuart McCutcheon says that the NZIPR marks a milestone both in Pacific research and New Zealand’s relationship with its Pacific neighbours.

“The New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research will be a national and global focal point for research in the Pacific region, a chance to highlight and develop innovative research and engagement,” he says.

“This is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with our New Zealand partners, and with researchers in the Pacific region and beyond, in order to offer thought leadership on Pacific research.”

Founding director
The University of Auckland’s head of Pacific studies, Associate Professor Damon Salesa, has been appointed the NZIPR director.

“The University of Auckland is honoured to be hosting the NZIPR, an innovative collaboration with AUT and the University of Otago, which also includes researchers from the Pacific and the US.

“The NZIPR is a groundbreaking initiative to develop research and understanding about the Pacific and its opportunities and challenges.

“The collaborative model of the NZIPR means it is committed to research that is anchored in the relationships that come from New Zealand’s unique position as a Pacific nation itself, a country with a rich Pacific heritage.”

AUT Head of Pacific Advancement Walter Fraser says the formation of the NZIPR consortium is a significant step in enhancing New Zealand’s Pacific research capacity.

“AUT is proud to be a key partner in producing world-class multi-disciplinary research on the Pacific,” Fraser says.

“Together, we look forward to advancing a much deeper understanding of the issues and challenges that face the communities in the entire Pacific region, so that we can collectively provide tangible, sustainable and durable solutions and recommendations for the region.

“AUT students and researchers already conduct world-leading research in and on the Pacific – across the areas of health, nutrition, media, tourism, culture, environment, and more. Our strengths in Pacific research, together with University of Auckland and University of Otago, will help ensure national policy in the Pacific is informed and effective.”

Long tradition
Professor Tony Ballantyne, pro-vice-chancellor of humanities at the University of Otago, says the university is keen to be involved in this initiative because of its long tradition of research on the Pacific.

“The creation of the NZIPR means that Otago researchers have the opportunity to bring their expertise into much more direct engagement with the complex processes that frame government policy and aid strategies.

“The institute will enable our researchers and students to build new research connections, to undertake more fieldwork in the Pacific, and to participate in a research consortium that will regularly bring leading international and national experts on the Pacific to Otago.”

The three universities educate 75 percent of all Pacific Island university students in New Zealand, and produce 60 percent of Pacific PhDs.

They also employ 90 percent of the 175 Pacific academics working in universities across New Zealand.

The consortium will work to make the NZIPR a focal point for the sharing of knowledge in the Pacific region to governments, businesses, community groups and other stakeholders.

The aim is to produce research that charts the changing shape of Pacific Island societies, the challenges they face and the opportunities for their future development.

Five-year programme
Over the next five years the three universities will deliver a five-year programme of world-class research on Pacific development.

Research projects set to start in 2016 include mapping donor contributions in the Pacific and their impact on the region, an analysis of labour markets and the skills needed to underpin economic development, and a study of the drivers and barriers to private sector investment in the region.

The three universities will also work with associated universities and organisations including the University of Hawai’i, University of the South Pacific, Australian National University and Peking University.

Visit the New Zealand Institute for Pacific Research here, and follow them on Twitter.

McCully welcomes launch of new Pacific think-tank

Prominent Auckland academics and community leaders have called on the New Zealand police to formally apologise for “rubbishing” new research alleging that police are racially harassing and assaulting African youth.

The two-year research project was led by Auckland University of Technology associate professor in social sciences, Dr Camille Nakhid.

Last week, New Zealand police issued a press statement claiming that the research was nothing more than “unsubstantiated claims from anonymised individuals” made online.

Yesterday, at the official launch of the research in Mt Roskill, Auckland, about 400 people called on the police to acknowledge that the research was credible and legitimate.

AUT associate professor of public policy, Love Chile, said the police had been “completely dismissive”.

“This research went through a stringent ethics approval. We are demanding an apology”, said Dr Chile.

Dr Chile called on police to issue everyone they stopped with a leaflet advising them of their human rights, similar to those displayed in hospitals.

‘Tip of the iceberg’
“The issue of racism within the police is fundamental. We may deny it but what we are seeing in this report is only the tip of the iceberg. Insidious racism has to be addressed” said Dr Chile.

Noah Ghebremichael, vice-president of the African Communities Forum Inc. (Acofi), also called on the police to retract their claims that the research was unsubstantiated.

Marvin Kamau – Postgraduate student, AUT University

Presenting the report, co-researcher Kizito Essuman said it was very unfair that the positive relationship African youth organisations had tried to foster with the police did not seem to positively influence the culture of policing on the streets.

Dr Nakhid emphasised that the alleged police abuses were not isolated incidents.

“It is not one or two police. It is a police culture” said Dr Nakhid.

The police abuses of African youth had far reaching effects – the African community in general did not trust the police and so even when they were victims of crime, they did not always call the police, Dr Nakhid said.

Māori activists at the meeting welcomed the new research, pointing out that Māori were the original victims of police racism.

‘Country based on racism’
“This country is based on racism. If you stand up now, maybe you can stop the mass incarceration of African youth” said one speaker.

The police have said they will not take action based on the research unless individual participants (whose identities were protected in the report) come forward and lay complaints.

This was rejected by the audience at the meeting with one speaker saying that the Independent Police Conduct Authority of New Zealand was not “independent” at all, but was “80 percent police investigating police”.

Dr Nakhid said instead of arguing about why African youth did not come to police after being abused by other police, the police could solve the problem by ending their mistreatment of African youth.

Members of the audience also rejected the notion that the arrests and alleged abuses of African youth may have come about because of “unconscious bias” on the part of the police.

With “prisons full of Māori and Pacific Islanders, that is a bit more than unconscious bias” said criminologist Dr John Buttle of AUT, while another speaker said Muslim youth were also racially profiled by the police.

The police, represented at the meeting by Senior Sergeant Joe Tipene, the police Māori Responsiveness Adviser, would not commit to apologising for their dismissal of the report and maintained that “the full details of everything that has been said” should be brought to them.

Anna Majavu is an independent journalist and a former contributing editor on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

Photo gallery at the forum by Del Abcede

Africa On My Sleeve website

African Youth: Experiences with the police and the New Zealand justice system – the full report

Full story on the African youth forum on Asia Pacific Report

Africa On My Sleeve

Background to the African youth forum

African Youth: Experiences with the police and the NZ justice system

Young Africans tell of being harassed by NZ police

Young Africans say they are being treated unfairly a racist justice system

African Youth and the NZ police – full research report

“The maximum effect of the programme, if successful, could be to furnish 5 million people with electricity, or about 8 percent of the French population,” Ségolène Royal, France’s Minister of Ecology and Energy, said according to Global Construction Review.

The project is the result of five years of research between French road construction company Colas and the French National Institute of Solar Energy.

The project, “Wattway,” was introduced last October. The technology consists of extremely thin (7 millimeters) yet durable panels of polycrystalline silicon that can transform solar energy into electricity. The panels are also said to be 15 centimeters wide and heavy-duty skid resistant to reduce auto accidents.

“These extremely fragile photovoltaic cells are coated in a multilayer substrate composed of resins and polymers, translucent enough to allow sunlight to pass through, and resistant enough to withstand truck traffic,” Colas said in a press release.

Panels rainproof
The panels are rainproof and have passed snowplow tests “with flying colors,” according to the Wattway FAQ page. The company also boasts that their panels can last as long as conventional pavement, or 10 years depending on the traffic. Wattway panels can last roughly 20 years if the section is not heavily trafficked, such as stadium parking lot.

In terms of efficiency, Wattway said its panels have a 15 percent yield, compared to 18-19 percent for conventional photovoltaic panels.

The solar roads concept isn’t new. SolaRoad, the world’s first “solar road,” has been in operation in the Netherlands since November 2014, but it’s already generating more power than expected. EcoWatch has also featured a similar Idaho-based project, Solar Roadways, whose Indiegogo campaign became extremely successful when their video went viral last year.

Although there are detractors, solar roadways have been touted as an excellent way to harness the sun’s energy.

“Roads spend 90 percent of their time just looking up into the sky. When the sun shines, they are of course exposed to its rays,” Jean-Lic Gautier, manager of the Center for Expertise at the Colas Campus for Science and Techniques, said in a press release. “It’s an ideal surface area for energy applications.”

Minister Royal said installation of the panels would begin this spring and proposes to pay for them by raising taxes on fossil fuels, Gas2.org reported.

She said it was “natural” to raise taxes on fossil fuels given that the cost of oil is currently so low, adding that new taxes would contribute between 200-300 million Euros ($220-440 million) to the Positive Energy initiative.

Professor Guilford opened the three-day conference in Wellington focusing on the threat of climate change in the Pacific, stressing his heartfelt concern over the issue.

“My anger arises from the breath-taking ignorance, complacency and self-interest that surround the global challenge of climate change,” he said.

Professor Guilford said the science behind climate change was “crystal clear” and cannot be ignored.

“Our politicians must grasp the gravity of the situation, disentangle themselves from vested interest, abandon their myopic focus on the costs of mitigation, and embrace the criticality of energy reform. Not to do so is an abject failure of leadership.”

Victoria University’s own Climate Change Research Institute is working to provide a better link between science and policy, while its Antarctic Research Centre is looking at the Antarctic climate and its influence on the global climate system.

“We’ve also taken very real-world steps of stopping investing in fossil fuels and actively reducing our own carbon footprint,” says Professor Guilford.

“What we need on a bigger scale is a cross-party and international consensus, bold policy, firm regulation, and very significant investment.”

Speakers at the conference include Republic of Kiribati President Anote Tong, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, international experts, and Victoria University’s James Renwick and Tim Naish.

Radio NZ interview with Victoria University’s VC

In the Eye of the Storm conference

Climate crises in post-Paris Pacific

One of 53 doctoral students who have graduated at Auckland University of Technology this week is the first Papua New Guinea to gain a PhD at the New Zealand institution.

Jonah Tisam’s research focuses on governance and the new public management outcomes in the Cook Islands.

He studied in the Faculty of Culture and Society under the supervision of Professors Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlopand Marilyn Waring.

Originally from Papua New Guinea, he has worked most of his life with the Cook Islands government.

Tisam said he wanted to look at what is behind the Cook Islands public management system – whose idea it was, the theories behind this phenomena and where they came from.

“I wanted to find out how the people at ‘grassroots’ level of society, the wider village communities, felt about the new system and how it affected them,” he said.

Through his research, Tisam found many people did not know what this new public management system was, even though it had an impact on their lives and on their island communities.

Informed decisions
It was also his aim to bring to light findings that could help government and policymakers to make informed decisions.

Tisam was praised by his examiners for giving the people of the Cook Islands a voice.

“It is hard work but it pays off. Research is important to let our people know what is going on,” Tisam said.

Tisam is one of only 18 students from Papua New Guinea studying at AUT in 2015.

Across all New Zealand Universities in 2014 there was a total or 67 international equivalent full-time students (EFTS) from Papua New Guinea.

A total of 3838 students received their qualifications at one of the eight ceremonies held this week at AIT, New Zealand’s fastest growing university.

There has been a dramatic increase in postgraduate students studying at AUT, with 343 or 15 percent more postgraduate students than at the same time last year.

Follow the hashtag #AUTGRAD to see the graduates’ experience on social media.

PARIS: Top news media are failing to identify climate change as a contributor to some of the world’s biggest crises – including migration, food insecurity and conflict – says a new research report funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and presented at the 21st UNCCD Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris.

“The media, whether local or global, are among the world’s most influential institutions and how they shape the climate change narrative remains vitally important,” said IFAD President, Kanayo F. Nwanze about why his organisation sponsored the research.

“If the world becomes aware of how climate change threatens our food security or why it is a catalyst for migration and conflict, then we can expect better support for policies and investments that can pre-empt future crises.”

The report, Food, Migration and Climate Change: The Untold Story, was prepared by Sam Dubberley, a journalist and director of Kishnish Media Ltd and presented at COP21 on Friday.

The research was conducted in September and includes an analysis of eight popular and highly influential news outlets in the United Kingdom and France, including the BBC, Channel 4, TF1, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Le Monde, Libération  and France 2.

Dubberley explained: “We chose to conduct our research in September so that it wouldn’t be skewed by all of the reporting we’re seeing now because of the COP21 in Paris.”

The report looks at the depth of media reporting around climate change and whether it was being linked to issues of food security, agriculture and migration and, if so, whether those stories were given prominent placement such as on front pages.

It asked what power voices were heard throughout the stories and if farmers or migrants themselves were ever interviewed or quoted. And finally, it looks at what news readers understand about food and migration-related climate change impacts and their impression of media coverage provided.

“The research clearly shows that media analysed did not make the connection between climate change and many of the other stories dominating the news agenda at that time,” Dubberley said.

“In fact, our research shows that climate change never once reached the front page of the news outlets we looked at.”

As an example, Dubberley pointed out that while the civil war in Syria and migration from the region dominated the headlines in September, media focus for the conflict was on regime change and not on climate change triggers including drought, unsustainable agricultural practices and poor environmental policies which pushed migrants into cities and contributed to civil unrest in the first place.

Among the reports key findings:

– Climate stories were few and far between on the front pages or main television news bulletins analysed;
– News consumers did not believe that major media helped them understand climate change and, in particular, that a connection exists between climate change and issues such as agricultural failure, food insecurity, conflict and migration from developing countries;
– Editorial decisions made by news organisations have a direct impact on audience views and beliefs about climate change;
– News consumers believe climate change-related impacts need to be taken more seriously by news organisations and given higher prominence;
– Those on the front lines directly impacted by climate change rarely have a voice or are mentioned in stories.

Impact on farmers
With over three-quarters of the world’s poorest people living in the rural areas of developing countries, Nwanze emphasized that, small-scale farmers are always impacted by the latest global crises – whether it be violence and conflict, the rise of extremism or climate change.

“It’s clear – if we don’t recognise the signs earlier, if we don’t make those crucial links then poverty, migration, hunger and conflict will continue to make headlines,” he said.

Last year, IFAD funded a research report that looked at how 19 large global and regional news organisations covered issues related to migration and, in particular, food security and agriculture and how it impacted on migration.

It focused on two stories that made headlines over the summer of 2014 – the US/Mexico border crisis and the ongoing conflict in South Sudan, which created a large numbers of migrants.

That report also found that the depth of coverage on the topics was lacking, and in particular that the voices of migrants were often left out of the stories.

Source: Pacific Media Watch 9503

The full Untold Story report

ANALYSIS: Wednesday, December 2, was the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. It marks the date of the adoption, by the General Assembly, of the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others (resolution 317(IV) of 2 December 1949).

The focus of this day is on eradicating contemporary forms of slavery, such as trafficking in persons, sexual exploitation, the worst forms of child labour, forced marriage, and the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.

The day also marks the beginning of the second week (eighth day) of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. One form of gender-based violence is structural violence. Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures or social institutions may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

Hunger and poverty are two prime examples of the physical and psychological harm that results from exploitive and unjust social, political and economic systems.

One form of structural violence is lack of progress toward equality of men and women in the news media.

This is according to the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), a five-yearly study which has conducted research in 114 countries over 20 years. The study was undertaken on sampling the news of one particular day around the world — Wednesday March 25, 2015.

The study reveals continuing severe disparity between representation of women and men in news media, indicating the portrayal of women in day-to-day journalism does not reflect their contribution to society.

Portrayal of women
This year’s study was GMMP’s fifth and largest on the portrayal and representation of women in the news media. Findings indicate that, worldwide, women make up about 50 percent of the general population but only 24 percent of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news — exactly the same level found in the 2010 report.

Women’s relative invisibility in traditional news media has also crossed over into digital news delivery platforms. Only 26 per cent of the people in internet news stories and media news “tweets” combined are women.

“The GMMP 2015 report examined the visibility, voice and mention of women and men in the news media and finds a sexism that has endured across decades and geographical boundaries, adapting to emerging media forms and thriving in all spaces in which news content is produced and shared,” said Dr Sarah Macharia, GMMP global co-ordinator.

The report also found that, overall, women remain more than twice as likely as men to be portrayed as victims as they were a decade ago, at 16 and 8 per cent respectively.

Findings indicated that there is a global glass ceiling for female news reporters in newspaper bylines and newscast reports, with 37 per cent of stories reported by women, the same as a decade ago.

The GMMP is a project of the World Association for Christian Communication, with support from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

The Pacific has participated in the GMMP since 1995 when Fiji was the sole Pacific Island country to contribute towards the global study. In 2010 Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Australia and New Zealand joined enabling data to be collated across the wider Pacific region.

Highlights decade
The Pacific report from the GMMP highlights that from the last 10 years of data that women are still in the minority of news topics reflecting the gender inequality in the formal structures of decision-making and power of Pacific media outlets:

* Overall the presence of women in news items averaged at 25 percent (26 percent in traditional media and 24 per cent in online media. Women were more present in news topics on Science and Health (54 per cent women) in traditional media.

* However, in the remaining six topics, women were present far fewer times than men in both traditional and online media sources.

* The top three story topics which featured the most female news subjects were employment with 75 percent. Female subjects made up 67 percent of stories on celebrity, arts and media while sources on medicine, health, hygiene and safety topics featured 65 percent female news subjects. Women also made up 50 percent of stories featuring beauty contests, models, fashion and cosmetic surgery.

* Overall males were portrayed as victims more commonly than females (59 percent males and 41 percent females) across a wider range of situations. However females were more likely to be victimised in situations of non-domestic sexual violence, assault, rape (11 percent females and 4 per cent males).

* Out of the total number of news stories featured in newspapers in the region, stories that featured women were more likely to be photographed compared with news stories featuring male news subjects (34 percent of news stories featuring women were photographed and 19 percent of news stories featuring men were photographed).

* Overall 45 percent of reporters in the Pacific region were female. While there were 47 percent of reporters and presenters in print who were female and 46 percent of television reporters were female in radio 61 percent of announcers were female.

* Across the seven major news topic categories women were the central focus in only 16 percent of stories including 2 per cent in politics and governance, 11 percent in economy, 29 percent in science and health, 15 percent in Social and Legal, 20 percent in crime and violence, 23 percent in celebrity, arts and media and sports and 20 percent in other categories.

* Only five out of a total 359 news stories (1 per cent) raised issues of gender equality/inequality: Women politicians (20 per cent), other domestic policies (20 percent), employment (20 percent), human rights (20 percent) and legal system (20 percent).

* Overall, the majority of major news topics did not challenge gender stereotypes — an average of 1 percent of stories clearly challenged stereotypes.

* Female news sources were more likely to be found in stories reported by females (35 percent of all female sources were interviewed by female reporters while 26 percent of all female sources were interviewed by male reporters).

* Overall the gender of reporters made no difference in the proportion of stories that challenged stereotypes (97 percent of stories by female reporters did not challenge stereotypes while 98 percent of stories by male reporters did not challenge stereotypes).

More female presenters
The Pacific GMMP report does point out, however, that there has been a marked increase in the number of female reporters and presenters making the news from less than 30 percent in 2005 to nearly 50 percent across a wider scope of traditional media outlets.

“Although more women have made it into mainstream media as the makers of news there still has not been a wider structural change in media institutions therefore not only is the content of media reflective of society it is at the same time as affected by the gaps in gender mainstreaming as any other organisation, company or community in the Pacific.”

Because of the recent rise in online media platforms Twitter and internet sources were also monitored in 2015. However there exists a digital divide between more developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand and small Pacific Island countries which accounts for the dominance in online data from the two former countries.

“Nevertheless online media is still largely dominated by male reporters and male news subjects. This highlights the growing need for newer forms of media sources to also be utilised as platforms for advancing gender equality.”

Given these findings, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and its GMMP coordinators are calling for an end to media sexism by 2020.

Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) added the WCC’s voice to that call. “Our prayer and hope is that, by the time we reach 2021, at the 11th WCC Assembly, we shall read a report that shows the news media has adopted a wider vision of equality and inclusion,” said Phiri. “With the guidance of the Holy Spirit, together we can transform the media to make women more visible.”

Report highlights
Highlights of the 2015 GMMP can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/highlights/highlights_en.pdf while the full report can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/global/gmmp_global_report_en.pdf

The Pacific report can be found at: http://cdn.agilitycms.com/who-makes-the-news/Imported/reports_2015/regional/Pacific_Islands.pdf

It is not only the news media that is challenged to widen its coverage of women and women’s issues in the news. All of us must recognise the similar challenge to pay attention to who and what makes the news and open our own eyes to see and understand the issues affecting those who don’t.

“Simplicity, serenity, spontaneity.”

Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church in Fiji and a citizen journalist. He is also the vice-president of the World Association of Christian Communication-Pacific Region. This article was first published in The Fiji Times. The opinions expressed in this article represent the personal views of the author. He can be contacted on padrejames@gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

Welcome to the 4th World Journalism Education Congress that will be held in Auckland, from July 14 to July 16, 2016.

The conference, hosted by Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies, will provide a discussion forum on the development of journalism and journalism education worldwide. Contemporary developments signal significant shifts in the place of journalism programmes within the university and broader educational environment and in relationships with industry and wider society.

The implications of this transition will be the focus of the 4th World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC).

Journalism Education in the Asia-Pacific will also be a strong feature of the conference in partnership with the Pacific Media Centre.

Topics to be discussed at the congress will include:

• Mobile/Social/User-generated Media and Journalism
• Research Trends in Journalism
• Utilising the Professional Connection Work in Journalism Education
• 21st Century Ethical Issues in Journalism
• Journalism Education and an Informed Citizenry
• Journalism Programmes Offered by the Industry
• Journalism Education in the South Pacific
• Journalism Education in Asia

Call for abstracts

Contact: Steering Committee chair Associate Professor Verica Rupar
Asia-Pacific inquiries: Professor David Robie, New Zealand country representative of AMIC

WJEC conference website at AUT

AUT School of Communication Studies

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