radiofree.asia

Category: Asia Report

  • Why West Papuans are raising a banned independence flag across Australia, NZ and the Pacific

    BACKGROUNDER: By Stefan Armbruster

    On 1 December each year, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, a small group of West Papuan immigrants and refugees and their supporters raise a flag called the Morning Star in an act that symbolises their struggle for self-determination.

    Doing the same thing in their homeland is illegal.

    This year is the 62nd anniversary of the flag being raised alongside the Dutch standard in 1961 as The Netherlands prepared their colony for independence.

    Formerly the colony of Dutch New Guinea, Indonesia controversially took control of West Papua in 1963 and has now divided the Melanesian region into seven provinces.

    In the intervening years, brutal civil conflict is thought to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses.

    Ronny Kareni represents the United Liberation Movement of West Papua in Australia.
    Ronny Kareni represents the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in Australia . . . “It brings tears of joy to me.” Image: SBS News

    The Morning Star will fly in Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra and will also be raised across the Pacific region and around the world.

    “It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in Australia told SBS World News.

    ‘Our right to self-determination’
    “Commemorating the anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”

    Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the act, including when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.

    A small group of people supporting indepedence for West Papua stand outside the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra holding Morning Star flags.
    Supporters of West Papuan independence hold the Morning Star flag outside the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra in 2021. Image: SBS News

    “It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” says Professor Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.

    “The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last six decades.

    “But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”

    The history of the Morning Star
    After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.

    The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.

    In 1957, Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.

    The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem – “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” – and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.

    Dutch and West Papua flags fly side-by-side in 1961.
    Dutch and West Papua flags fly side-by-side in 1961. Image: SBS News

    The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.

    “The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” says Kareni.

    The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.

    Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.

    Cold War in full swing
    The Cold War was in full swing and the Western powers were battling the Russians for influence over non-aligned Indonesia.

    The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on 1 December.

    On 19 December, Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.

    Then 20-year-old Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer, who now lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, was one of the thousands deployed to reinforce the nascent Papua Volunteer Corps, largely armed with WW2 surplus, arriving in June 1962.

    “The groups who were on patrol found weapons, so modern it was unbelievable, and plenty of ammunition,” he said of Russian arms supplied to Indonesian troops.

    Former Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer served in the then colony in 1962.
    Former Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer served in the then colony in 1962. Image: Stefan Armbruster/SBS News

    He did not see combat himself but did have contact with the local people, who variously flew the red and white Indonesian or the Dutch flag, depending on who controlled the ground.

    “I think whoever was supplying the people food, they belonged to them,” he said.

    He did not see the Morning Star flag.

    “At that time, nothing, totally nothing. Only when I came out to Australia (in 1970) did I find out more about it,” he said.

    Waning international support
    With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.

    The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.

    “I’m sort of happy it didn’t come to a serious conflict (at the time), on the other hand you must feel for the people, because later on we did hear they have been very badly mistreated,” says Scheenhouwer.

    “I think Holland was trying to do the right thing but it’s gone completely now, destroyed by Indonesia.”

    The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.

    The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.

    “Rightly or wrongly, in the Indonesian imagination, unlike East Timor for example, Papua was always regarded as part of the unitary Indonesian republic because the definition of the latter was based on the borders of colonial Dutch East Indies, whereas East Timor was never part of that, it was a Portuguese colony,” says Professor Hadiz.

    “The average Indonesian’s reaction to the flag goes against everything they learned from kindergarten all the way to university.

    Knee-jerk reaction
    “So their reaction is knee-jerk. They are just not aware of the conditions there and relate to West Papua on the basis of government propaganda, and also the mainstream media which upholds the idea of the Indonesian unitary republic.”

    West Papuans protest over the New York Agreement in 1962.
    West Papuans protest over the New York Agreement in 1962. Image: SBS News

    In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.

    The basis for Indonesian control of West Papua is rejected by what are today fractured and competing military and political factions of the independence movement, but they do agree on some things.

    “The New York Agreement was a treaty signed between the Dutch and Indonesia and didn’t involve the people of West Papua, which led to the so-called referendum in 1969, which was a whitewash,” says Kareni.

    “For the people, it was a betrayal and West Papua remains unfinished business of the United Nations.”

    Professor Vedi Hadiz standing in front of shelves full of books.
    Professor Hadiz says the West Papua independence movement is struggling for international recognition. Image: SBS News

    Raising the flag also raises the West Papua issue on an international level, especially when it is violently repressed in the two Indonesian provinces where there are reportedly tens of thousands of troops deployed.

    “It certainly doesn’t depict Indonesia in very favourable terms,” Professor Vedi says.

    “The problem for the West Papua [independence] movement is that there’s not a lot of international support, whereas East Timor at least had a significant measure.

    ‘Concerns about geopolitical stability’
    “Concerns about geopolitical stability and issues such as the Indonesian state, as we know it now, being dismembered to a degree — I think there would be a lot of nervousness in the international community.”

    Auckland Morning Star flag raising
    Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie with Pax Christi Aotearoa activist Del Abcede at a Morning Star flag raising in Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Australia provides significant military training and foreign aid to Indonesia and has recently agreed to further strengthen defence ties.

    Australia signed the Lombok Treaty with Indonesia in 2006 recognising its territorial sovereignty.

    “It’s important that we are doing it here to call on the Australian government to be vocal on the human rights situation, despite the bilateral relationship with Indonesia,” says Kareni.

    “Secondly, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and the leaders have agreed to call for a visit of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to carry out an impartial investigation.”

    Events are also planned across West Papua.

    “It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us,” he says.

    “We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”

    Stefan Armbruster is Queensland and Pacific correspondent for SBS News. First published by SBS in 2021 and republished by Asia Pacific Report with minor edits and permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Mediawatch: Media in the middle of Gaza claims and counterclaims

    RNZ MEDIAWATCH: By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

    Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it — even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government.

    “Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.

    “But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”

    That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.

    The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.

    “It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.

    “They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”

    Huge anger on streets
    “We can’t say for now, but I don’t think  — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.

    Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.

    CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.

    A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.

    Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.

    Among those who, alongside expert investigators, tried to sift the available evidence and cut through the information war was Alex Thompson, correspondent for UK broadcaster Channel Four

    "Who was behind the Gaza hospital blast? "
    “Who was behind the Gaza hospital blast? – visual investigation” Image: 4News Screenshot/PMW

    “Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.

    ‘A fierce information war’
    “Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.

    At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.

    Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.

    “We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.

    And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.

    “You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.

    “Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.

    “How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.

    An obligation to audiences
    The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.

    Jonathan Munro, Deputy CEO BBC News & Director of Journalism
    BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro . . . “We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are.” Image: RNZ Mediawatch

    “We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.

    “We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.

    “Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.

    “But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.

    A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.

    “We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.

    Need for transparency
    “So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.

    “We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”

    A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.

    The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.

    “There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.

    Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.

    For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.

    Independently verifying claims
    “It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.

    Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.

    “Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.

    “In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.

    “Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.

    “That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.

    Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
    “We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.

    “But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.

    “Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”

    Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.

    “The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch. 

    “The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF condemns Middle East ‘bloody week’ with seven journalists killed

    Pacific Media Watch

    Global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on Israeli authorities to end military pactices that “violate international law” with the deaths of civilians, including journalists.

    This came in the wake of seven journalists being killed by Israeli security forces in the space of a week — six in the besieged Gaza Strip and the seventh in Lebanon.

    “We’re stunned by this sad record of seven journalists killed in seven days during this bloody week, as a result of Israel’s indiscriminate response to the horrific massacre committed by Hamas,” said Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of RSF, in a statement.

    On Saturday, 14 October 2023, reporter Issam Abdallah was buried in the Lebanese town of El Khayam, where he was born and grew up.

    The videographer was killed the day before while reporting for the British news agency Reuters with several colleagues.

    The group of journalists, clearly identifiable according to several sources, was stationed near Alma al Chaab, in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel, to cover the clashes between Israeli military forces and those of the Islamist armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    In total, around 10 journalists were killed in the region within a week, including seven in Gaza and Lebanon under Israeli bombardment and fire.

    Protest to Israel
    These include photojournalists Mohammed Soboh of the Palestinian news agency Khabar, Hisham al-Nawajha of the independent Palestinian news channel Al Khamissa, Ibrahim Lafi of the production company Ain Media, and Mohammad al-Salihi of the Palestinian news agency al-Sulta al-Rabia, as well as Saïd al-Tawil, editor-in-chief of Al Khamissa, and Mohammed Abou Matar, correspondent for Roya News.

    “We solemnly call on the Israeli authorities to put an end to military practices that violate international law and result in the deaths of civilians, including journalists,” said RSF’s Deloire.

    “RSF calls on the parties involved to implement their obligations to protect journalists during conflicts, and on international institutions to ensure that these protection measures are respected.”

    Issam Abdallah, 37, had worked for Reuters in Beirut for 16 years.

    A videographer in areas of tension, he has covered the conflict in Ukraine in recent months and, in 2020, the explosion in the port of Beirut.

    In his last photo posted on his Instagram account on October 7, the reporter paid tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist from Al Jazeera and correspondent in Palestine, who was killed by an Israeli sniper in May 2022 while covering an Israeli army raid in Jenin on the West Bank.

    Six other journalists were wounded on Friday, October 13: two members of the Reuters team, Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, an image reporter (Dylan Collins), and a photographer (Christina Assi) from Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as two journalists from the Qatari television channel Al Jazeera, Carmen Jokhadar and cameraman Elie Barkhya.

    They were taken to the American University of Beirut hospital. Their lives are out of danger, but Christina Assi was still in intensive care.

    The seven journalists killed by Israeli hostilities this month
    The seven journalists killed by Israeli hostilities this month. Montage: Reporters Sans Frontières

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Janfrie Wakim: Time to take action over the Gaza bloodshed – hope isn’t enough

    About 5000 pro-Palestinian supporters gathered in Auckland’s Aotea Square and marched down Queen Street today calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid in the War on Gaza. A co-organiser, Ming Al-Ansan, said: “We want our voices heard. Palestinian lives matter, so if we don’t do this then the media is not going to notice us.” Palestinian human rights advocate Janfrie Wakim gave the following address to the supporters.

    SPEECH: By Janfrie Wakim

    Tena koutou Tena koutou Tena koutou katoa

    Salaam Aleikum Ma’haba

    Greetings to you all and thank you for coming here today to express your solidarity with the Palestinian people — in Gaza particularly — but Palestinians everywhere.

    Free Free . . . Palestine!

    I acknowledge the indigenous people of Aotearoa — Māori tangatawhenua, who 183 years ago signed the Tiriti o Waitangi with colonists from Britain. Also, Ngati Whatua of Orakei, manawhenua, on whose land we gather today and who battled the settler-colonialism at Takaparawha-Bastion Point in the 1970s.

    History matters!

    I stand here in solidarity with the indigenous people of Palestine who also have been dispossessed by the setter-colonialism of Zionist Jews.

    An unfolding catastrophe
    Today we are especially mindful of Palestinians in Gaza who are experiencing an unfolding catastrophe of epic and genocidal proportions.

    We appeal to our elected leaders, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, and outgoing prime minister Chris Hipkins, to demand an immediate ceasefire and stop the carnage.

    "From the river . . . "
    “From the river . . . ” placard in Auckland’s Aotea Square. Image: David Robie/APR

    Throughout the world we see the massive outpouring of support for Palestinians. Not from the leaders and politicians but from ordinary citizens — like us — especially those who have some capacity to act.

    History matters. Facts matter. Human rights of all people matter.

    To take a stand you must understand.

    Rightly we know and are reminded of European racism which culminated in the Holocaust.

    But the Nakba — the Palestinian catastrophe?

    About 5000 pro-Palestinian marchers took part in today's march down Queen Street
    About 5000 pro-Palestinian marchers took part in today’s march down Queen Street in the heart of Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR

    Sustained by lies
    The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to the colonisation of Palestinian land and the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation.

    Israel is sustained by lies: from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to its birth in 1948 when the indigenous Palestinians were driven out — most to Gaza. (750,000 of the 1 million inhabitants of historic Palestine).

    It’s a lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state.

    It’s a lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.

    Free Free . . . Palestine.

    The Fiji flag flies high among the pro-Palestinian demonstrators
    The Fiji flag flies high in the middle of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Auckland’s Aotea Square today. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    We must ensure the history of the Palestinian struggle for justice is known and understood. Hold our media and leaders to account.

    John Minto is the chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) and he regularly speaks out.

    Western politicians and Western media are the source of the problem. If this war had been reported accurately from the outset, Palestinians would have the state of Palestine where religion, ethnicity and human rights were respected — as they were before European colonisation of Palestine early last century.

    Hope is not enough. We must take action — Go to www.psna.nz and keep in touch with the local movement. Voice your alarm. Educate your friends, inform your workmates, challenge politicians — local as well as national.

    Show your solidarity
    Visit your MPs — insist on meeting face to face. This is especially important now that we have new MPs.

    Join our monthly rallies in Takutai Square . . . show your solidarity.

    That justice for Palestinians is achieved is not only a matter for the Palestinian people but also a symbol of overcoming injustice everywhere for all humanity.

    As a mother and grandmother, I say: “Make Peace Not War!”

    Nelson Mandela, who roundly applauded actions of the anti-apartheid movement in Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

    Justice is the seed . . . peace is the flower. Kia Kaha Mauri Ora!

    Janfrie Wakim is an Auckland campaigner for human rights in Palestine.

    "Israel and the USA have blood on their hands"
    “Israel and the USA have blood on their hands” and New Zealand’s “silence” over the Gaza genocide came in for condemnation in today’s pro-Palestinian demonstration. Image: David Robie/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The West’s double standards are once again on display in Israel and Palestine

    ANALYSIS: By M. Muhannad Ayyash, Mount Royal University

    American President Joe Biden is among the latest Western politicians to land in Tel Aviv in a show of support to Israel.

    As Israel’s primary backer, the United States has sent two aircraft carriers to the region and indicated it could deploy 2000 American troops to Israel.

    Biden was also set to meet Palestinian and Arab leaders in the Jordanian capital Amman. But Jordan cancelled the meeting after a reported airstrike on October 17 killed about 500 people at a Gaza hospital.

    In the days after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, European and North American governments (with few exceptions) were quick to provide a unified and consistent message of support for Israel.

    That message contains at least four interconnected elements:

    • Israel is the victim of an unprovoked terrorist attack;
    • Israel has the right to defend itself;
    • The West fully stands with Israel against the barbaric and wanton violence of the Palestinians; and
    • Hamas is to blame (either partially or fully) for all civilian deaths on both sides since they began these hostilities and forced Israel’s hand while hiding behind civilians.

    Palestinians erased
    There are a few important features of this message, but I want to focus on two that highlight the West’s double standards.

    First, is the advancement of anti-Palestinian racism in the West. It is critical to underscore a salient feature of anti-Palestinian racism: the silencing of the Palestinian critiques of Zionism and Israel.

    This is a dynamic which has its roots in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and erases Palestinian voices, history, presence, aspirations and identity from public discourse.

    Political, media and educational institutions in the West regularly sideline and silence Palestinians and their supporters. This is not just an issue among the right-wing or even centrists, but occurs across the political spectrum.

    Left-wing politics, including progressive spaces, that purport to be anti-racist often remain hostile to Palestinian voices

    Here in Canada, a statement by progressive Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow painted a rally in support of Palestinians as allegedly supporting violence and as a threat to the safety and security of Canadian Jews. That statement is still up on her X account.

    This is precisely the anti-Palestinian narrative that has permeated in the West for years: that all support for Palestine is inherently violent and driven by antisemitic hatred of all Jews. Thus, in the name of anti-racism, Palestinians and their supporters are denounced and even criminalised.

    Differing reactions to civilian death
    Second, the double standard is on display in the reactions we have seen to the killing of Israeli civilians and the reactions — or lack thereof — to the killing of Palestinian civilians. Many are rightly highlighting Western hypocrisy by drawing comparisons to how the West responded to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

    We need to look at how Western governments have responded to the killing of Israeli civilians versus the killing of Palestinian civilians. For the Israeli state and Israeli victims, political, military, economic, cultural and social institutions have fully mobilised to provide support.

    The same is entirely absent for the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, there are no evacuations. Aircraft carriers are not sent to provide military support. Mainstream political and cultural discourse does not humanise Palestinian life and mourn Palestinian death.

    Aid relief is withheld and used as a bargaining counter. Economic support is not forthcoming. Institutions do not send Palestinians messages of support.

    In some ways, this silence is not surprising. No one expressing support for Israel risks losing their livelihood. Many who have voiced solidarity with Palestinians have lost their jobs, been rebuked, suspended and faced doxing.

    Western self-interest
    States are not moral entities, but act purely in self-interest. Palestinian freedom and liberation does not align with the interests of the US-led West.

    Therefore, Western institutions repeat the increasingly weak talking point that “terrorism” is the cause of all the violence. This talking point is used to provide Israel with the green light to unleash uninhibited violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem.

    The idea that Western governments and institutions are horrified by violence against civilians rings hollow because of their silence when it comes to violence against Palestinian civilians and other groups around the world.

    For decades, Palestinians have been expelled from their land, killed and maimed in great numbers, including in mass atrocities and many well-documented cases of sexual violence and torture in Israeli prisons.

    This only scratches the surface of the violence that Palestinians continuously experience, and have experienced, since well before Hamas was formed.

    Palestinians continue to suffer what Palestinian scholars Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha have called an ongoing Nakba and genocide of the Palestinian people. Yet, when Palestinians suffer, as they are now in Gaza, what Israeli historian and expert on genocide Raz Segal has called “a textbook case of genocide,” Western governments remain silent.

    There was no Western outrage when Israel ordered more than a million Palestinians to leave their homes in 24 hours. In February, Israeli settlers went on an hours-long rampage in the Palestinian town of Huwara after two settlers were shot by a Palestinian.

    Western condemnations of the rampage were muted or non-existent.

    Hundreds of scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies are now sounding the alarm about the possibility of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    The stories of Palestinian lives that end with the sudden drop of a bomb are not told. Palestinian voices that explain the settler colonialism they suffer remain sidelined. And Palestinian aspirations for decolonised liberation are denied.

    The West’s institutional reaction is not just hypocritical, it is an expression of where Western governments stand on the question of Palestine. The West is an active participant in the erasure of Palestine, and when moments of intensified violence like this happen, the West’s true position becomes clear for all to see.

    However, people power across the world, including in the US, provide reason for hope. Increasingly, many in the West are disgusted and ashamed by the erasure of Palestine and the killing of Palestinian civilians.

    More people are joining the protests and calling for the siege on Gaza to be lifted once and for all. More people power is needed to demand that governments do everything they can to resolve this issue, which can only begin to move towards peace and justice when the Palestinian people are free.The Conversation

    M. Muhannad Ayyash is professor of sociology, Mount Royal University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • When all the world’s failings end in Gaza – Selwyn Manning, Paul Buchanan assess the crisis

    By Selwyn Manning, editor of Evening Report

    As we prepared for this podcast, representatives of Arab states have presented a united front at the United Nations, criticising the UN Security Council of doing nothing to protect civilians from Israeli bombing and missile attacks on Gazan civilians and locations.

    Since then, the UN Security Council has considered two resolutions, the latter calling for a pause in hostilities to allow a humanitarian effort to enter Gaza to assist civilians.

    The United States vetoed that Security Council resolution.

    Al Jazeera has detailed that Israel forces have targeted and bombed civilian facilities include hospitals, schools, residential areas resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, civilians – around one-third of the deaths are children.

    It remains contested by all sides in this conflict as to who, or what, is responsible for the deadly attack on Gaza Hospital, resulting in the deaths of at least 471 people.

    Additional to this, Israel has sealed the borders of Gaza while it prevents food, water and medical supplies from reaching civilians — in breach of international law requirements and laws of conflict.

    Israel ordered Gazan civilians, who wish to get to safety, to get out of North Gaza and move toward the south, to the border with Egypt.

    Heavy bombing, sealed border
    But as people fled south toward what appeared to be safety, Israel bombed the southern Gaza region killing more civilians and sealing off that corridor for others who sought refuge.

    As a consequence of the bombing, Egypt responded by sealing the Gaza-Egypt border.

    Humanitarian aid now sits on trucks, waiting, on the Egypt side of the border, while United Nations officials implore Israel and Egypt to allow medical supplies, food and water to get through to those who are injured and dying.

    The Israel Defence Force strikes followed a surprise-attack on Israeli citizens by soldiers operating under the Hamas banner.

    Civilians were slaughtered and others taken hostage, only to be used as bargaining chips and leverage against their enemies.

    Even Palestinian advocacy groups like the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa suggested that breaches of international humanitarian Law, crimes against civilians, have been committed by those Hamas-aligned fighters.

    But they are clear, as others are too, that crimes against humanity, war crimes, have been committed by Israel, without consequence, as we all give witness to its response which is disproportionate, brutal, and disregarding of the thousands of Palestinian lives that have already been taken.


    The View From Afar podcast on Gaza.

    Getting worse
    That is the grave current situation and it is likely to get much worse.

    In this episode, Selwyn Manning and global security and geopolitics analyst Dr Paul Buchanan discuss the crisis yesterday:

    • What are the world’s leaders doing to stop the carnage?
    • Are the world’s nations being drawn into what will be an ever-expanding war?
    • Are we witnessing the beginning of a war where on one side authoritarian-led states like Russia, Iran, the wider Arab states, and possibly China stand unified against the United States, Britain, Germany, and other so-called liberal democratic allies representing the old world order?
    • Is what we are witnessing, what happens when a global rules-based order, multilateralism and institutions like the United Nations no longer have influence to prevent war, or restore peace and stability, or assert principles of international justice and enforce the rights of victims to see recourse to the law?
    • Why has this slaughter become an opportunity for the US and Russia to square-off against each other at the UN Security Council — a body that was once designed to advocate and achieve peace, but has now become a geopolitically divided entity of stalemate and mediocrity?
    • Eventually, will humanitarianism prevail? Will the world recognise that all people, the elderly, women, children, people of all ethnicities and religions, that they all bleed and die irrespective of their state of origin, when leaders of all sides, while sitting back in their bunkers, unleash weapons designed to kill as many people as is possible?

    Watch this episode of A View from Afar

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Te Pāti Māori calls for NZ to insist on Israel-Gaza ceasefire, ‘absolute peace’

    RNZ News

    Te Pāti Māori wants the incoming and outgoing governments of Aotearoa New Zealand to use the country’s strong international voice to insist on an urgent ceasefire between Israel and Gaza.

    And they say the government should be prepared to “kick the Israeli ambassador out” if the fighting does not stop and humanitarian aid corridors into Gaza are not opened.

    “I’d like anyone in the government to come out loud and clear in the condemnation of the killing of thousands of innocent people in Palestine,” Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer told RNZ Morning Report today.

    “We’ve got a history in Aotearoa of indigenous people in a colonial context and I am deeply upset as Te Pāti Māori on the absolute failure of our [country’s] leadership and our foreign policy which talks about a values-based approach.

    “We talk about supporting a peace-based approach and the two-state solution but we have failed horrifically to do anything proactive since the beginning.

    “And we have seen the contradiction in [contrast to] how we have been with Afghanistan and Ukraine in the recent past.

    “What we need to see is Aotearoa take a strong stance on the killing of innocent people.

    ‘Not two-sided’
    “It is not a two-sided situation here [in the war on Gaza]. We only have one side living under military occupation and we need to be much stronger on what we have called for — absolute peace and allowing humanitarian aid in.”

    Outgoing Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta declined RNZ’s request for an interview, citing the constraints of the current caretaker government provisions.

    While National — which also said no to our request to speak to their foreign policy spokesperson Gerry Brownlee — referred to Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon’s statement that the government should be speaking for all New Zealanders on the situation.

    Pacific Media Watch reports at least 3785 people have been killed in the bombing of Gaza and 81 in the Occupied West Bank and 12,493 have been wounded — including 2000 children and 1400 women.

    Since the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, at least 1403 people have been killed, including 306 soldiers and 57 police.

    Hamas is reported to be holding 203 civilian and military hostages.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • War on Gaza: Bombed hospital a turning point? Hegemonic security v true justice

    ANALYSIS: By Marwan Bishara

    The Israeli bombing of the Baptist hospital in Gaza killing hundreds of innocent Palestinians may have been a turning point in the war on Gaza.

    The October 17 attack led instantly to mass protests throughout Palestine and the Middle East and forced the Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders to cancel a summit meeting the following day with US President Biden.

    The deadly bombing of the hospital was preceded by bombardment of a UN-run school on the same day, in which at least six people were killed.

    These tragedies have highlighted the humanitarian consequences of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, waged under the pretext of “self-defence”. Which mirrors its long history of pursuing maximum security at the expense of Palestinian lives, through disproportionate and indiscriminate use of military force.

    Israel has tried to muddy the waters as it did after the assassination of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, by blaming the Palestinians for the hospital bombing.

    It is easy to get lost in the midst of mayhem, death and destruction and forget how and why we have arrived at such madness.

    Disenchanted old-timers, like the baffled newcomers, find it ever more challenging to make sense of the perpetual bloodshed and the endless recriminations, and wonder if there is ever a solution to this protracted and tragic conflict, after a dozen wars, countless peace initiatives and innumerable “creative” solutions failed to resolve the conflict.

    Main contradiction
    That is why it is paramount during these chaotic times to zero in on the main contradiction driving and inflaming the conflict, namely the clash between what Israel claims is its “security” drive and what Palestinians demand as their rights under international law.

    This primary contradiction has evolved over the years into a zero-sum conflict, as Israel has pursued maximum “security” at the expense of justice for the Palestinians.

    Since its inception, Israel has defined its security all too broadly, in both military and nonmilitary terms that undermine basic Palestinian rights and freedom.

    After its establishment through terror and violence, the tiny colonial entity developed a formidable security doctrine that matches its heightened perception of threats — real and imagined — from a cynical world, a hostile region, and a defiant indigenous population.

    From the outset, Israel focused on the relentless preparation for and pursuit of war; even when its state of affairs did not require it, its state of mind justified it.

    First and foremost, Israel pursued military superiority, strategic preemption and nuclear deterrence, to compensate for its strategic depth and small population, and to ensure the country does not lose a single war, believing any such loss would mean total annihilation.

    Armed with an aggressive military doctrine, Israel went on to win three wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967, resulting in its permanent control of all of historic Palestine, including a perpetual military occupation of millions of Palestinians, all under the pretext of preserving its security.

    "Stop massacre on Gaza" placards abound at last night's candlelight vigil in Auckland
    “Stop massacre on Gaza” placards abound at last night’s candlelight vigil in Auckland for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the Israeli bombing of the besieged enclave. Image: David Robie/APR

    Israel perpetuated injustices
    Israel has perpetuated injustices against the Palestinians, incessantly breaking international law. After the Nakba of 1948, Israeli “security” has meant preventing millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from returning to their homes and homeland in contravention to UN Resolution 194.

    It also led to the confiscation of their land in order to settle new Jewish immigrants and ensure Jewish demographic majority.

    Likewise, after the 1967 war and the subsequent occupation, Israel confiscated Palestinian lands to settle hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, whose illegal presence became a justification for a greater, more repressive Israeli military deployment, rendering Israeli withdrawal in line with United Nations Security Council resolutions ever more improbable.

    Even after Israel reached “historic peace accords” with the Palestinians in 1993, it continued to settle Jewish immigrants onto occupied Palestinian land, with the population of illegal Jewish settlers reaching 700,000 today.

    It has had to massively expand its national security provision to include the security of these settlements. This, of course, was done at the direct expense of Palestinian life, land, dignity and well-being.

    To safeguard its illegal settlements, Israel has also carved up and fragmented the Palestinian territories into 202 separate cantons, erecting a system of apartheid, and diminishing the Palestinians’ access to employment, health and education.

    Like other settler colonial powers, Israel’s ideological approach to security has been no less dangerous than its strategic approach to its military doctrine.

    Security the magic word
    Security became the magic word that trumps all others; it explains all and justifies all. Its mention silences any criticism or dissent.

    It is the answer to every question: why build here not there — security; why sustain the occupation — security; why expand the Jewish settlements — security; why carry out the bloodshed — security; why maintain a state of no war or peace — security.

    Indeed, security emerged as the state ideology; it is Zionism’s answer to its colonial reality. It is no coincidence that what Israel calls security, the Palestinians call hegemony.

    In that way, security went beyond police, military, intelligence and surveillance, to an all-encompassing hegemonic, even racist concept covering demography, immigration, settlement, land confiscation, as well as, theology, archaeology, indoctrination and propaganda.

    These became the essential and complimentary ingredients to Israeli military power, deterrence, prevention and preemption.

    But Israel’s disproportionality in response to the Palestinian struggle for freedom has always failed to deter Palestinian resistance. The suffering of the Palestinian people has produced greater frustration and anger, leading to cycles of retaliations, as we have seen this month in Gaza.

    Since it withdrew its several thousand illegal settlers and redeployed its forces outside the Gaza in 2005, Israel has laid siege, an unjust and inhumane blockade to the densely populated strip, making life ever more unbearable for its over 2.3 million Palestinians, most of whom are refugees from the southern part of what today is Israel.

    Preparing land invasion
    Eighteen years, five wars, and tens of thousands of casualties later, Israel is back to bombing the ill-fated Palestinian territory, in retaliation for Hamas’s October 7 attack on its soldiers and civilians, and is preparing for a full land invasion of Gaza with incalculable cost to its residents.

    Israel’s insistence on the exclusive right to defend its citizens, while denying the Palestinians the right to protect their own civilians under military occupation and siege, has long backfired. This month, it backfired spectacularly.

    The myth of Israel’s security and invincibility has been shattered once and for all. It is high time to pursue security through a just peace, instead of pursuing peace through bloody security.

    This is the reality the new self-appointed sheriff in town, Joe Biden, must address during his visit to the region, instead of egging Israel on as in its genocidal war in Gaza.

    As my brother, seasoned scholar Azmi Bishara, argued in his recent book, Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice, at the heart of the conflict lies not a dilemma in need of creativity, but rather a tragedy in dire need of justice.

    Any decent mediator will have to find and maintain the balance between the two, starting with putting an end to Israel’s occupation and the colonial mindset that governed the conflict.

    It’s not bothsidesism and it’s not whataboutism, it’s common sense and sober reading of the historical dynamic that governed the reality in the land.

    Marwan Bishara is a senior analyst for Al Jazeera English. He is an author who writes extensively on global politics and is widely regarded as a leading authority on US foreign policy, the Middle East and international strategic affairs. He was previously a professor of international relations at the American University of Paris.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PNG’s trade minister pledges China, Indon free trade deals are ‘in sights’

    By Matthew Vari, editor of the PNG Post-Courier

    Papua New Guinea’s Minister for International Trade and Investment Richard Maru has assured investors in Asia that his government has its sights set on free trade agreements with China and Indonesia.

    He said his ministry, in tandem with a new parliamentary committee, would look into the “impediments to business”, with the aim to ease such disincentives to investors coming into the country in all sectors.

    “We need to reduce the cost of doing business. Our Parliament last week established a new committee which is tasked to look at how we can reduce the difficulties in doing business and the committee has been established for the first time and they will look into
    that aspect,” he said.

    “How do we make it easier — that aspect of business and the cost of doing business?

    “We are now going to undertake a 6-month study on the viability of having a free trade agreement with China.

    “I’m working to be in Indonesia in the coming weeks to start the discussions with the trade minister of Indonesia. We want to also undertake the study of Papua New Guinea looking at the viability of a free trade agreement with Indonesia,” Maru said.

    He said PNG was serious about growth and economic partnership with the two large economies.

    Maru reiterated that while the extractive sectors did raise revenue, they did not generate jobs except in their construction stage.

    “Fisheries, forestry, hospitality, tourism — that is where the big jobs are.

    “We will start putting trade commissions in cities with trade commissioners right around the world,” he added.

    Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Donna Miles: We can condemn the Hamas attacks and Israel’s occupation

    An Israeli air strike has hit Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City where thousands of civilians are seeking medical treatment and shelter from relentless attacks. The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 500 people were killed in the hospital blast. Donna Miles, an Iranian-Kiwi columnist, penned this article before news of the attack on the hospital.

    COMMENTARY: By Donna Miles

    Of everything that I have read and watched about the unfolding events in Israel and Gaza, a tweet and a short video have stood out the most.

    The tweet came from Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. It read:

    “To the people celebrating the mass murder of Israeli citizens, you have lost your humanity. To the people enthusiastically calling for Israel to decimate Gaza, densely populated with 2 million Palestinian citizens, you have lost your humanity. Israelis and Palestinians are real people, just like you and me.”

    The video, posted on X, is a short clip of an interview with the distressed father of the young Israeli woman whose video of being taken hostage on a motorbike went viral on social media.

    The father speaks in Hebrew with a voice full of pain. A written translation reads:

    ”Also Gaza has casualties… mothers who cry… let’s use this emotion, we are two nations from one father, let’s make peace, a real peace.”

    The heroic words of this Israeli father and his belief in peace, despite his incredible suffering, reduced me to tears.

    We, the international community, bear a big responsibility for the bloodbath of the past few days and the hell that is to come by failing to bring “a real peace” for Palestinians and Israelis.

    A Gazan schoolgirl looks into the BBC camera and says: “I wish I could be a normal child, living with no war”.

    We, the international community, have failed this child and one million other Gazan children who are about to pay “a huge price” for the crimes that they’ve had no parts in.

    Protesters at the Auckland rally last Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian right to freedom
    Protesters at the Auckland rally last Saturday in solidarity with the Palestinian right to freedom and calling for an end to the killing of civilians. Image: David Robie/APR

    For more than 40 years, hundreds of UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, including one co-sponsored by New Zealand, have stated that “Israel’s annexation of occupied territory is unlawful, its construction of hundreds of Jewish settlements are illegal, and its denial of Palestinian self-determination breaches international law”, but there has been no accountability for Israeli occupation and its apartheid practices.

    But now that we have this horror unfolding before our eyes, we are, at last, prepared to pay attention and listen to Palestinians as they are finally invited to the likes of CNN and BBC to tell us that what we have seen in the past few days, they have been experiencing for the past 75 years.

    Husam Zomlot, the head of Palestinian Mission to the UK, described Gaza as the biggest open air prison, where 2 million people have been taken hostage by Israel for the last 17 years.

    As I type this, Israel has ordered a total siege of the densely-populated Gaza, cutting off fuel, food and electricity to an already deprived population while conducting massive retaliatory airstrikes.

    Half of Gaza is children
    Half of Gaza’s 2.2 million population are children. These children have no Iron Dome to stop the rockets, and no sophisticated army to protect them as their houses are flattened and their bodies are charred and mangled.

    An airstrike has already wiped out 19 members of the same Palestinian family who were sheltering in their house in a jam-packed refugee camp in Gaza.

    A shell-shocked survivor of the strike said he didn’t understand why Israel struck his house. “There were no militants in his building, he insisted, and his family was not warned”.

    Many Gazans have already lost family members, including children and infants, in previous wars.

    The 2-year-old son and wife of Israel’s most wanted man, the leader of Hamas’ military arm, Mohammed Deif, were killed as Israel tried and failed to kill him during the 2014 Israeli offensive on Gaza which, shockingly, killed over 500 Palestinian children.

    Targeting schools, hospitals, mosques and marketplaces, as Israel is doing now and has done in the past, in a densely populated area where people have nowhere to flee, can only reflect Israel’s total disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.

    If we expect occupied people not to target civilians then surely we must demand the same from their powerful occupier.

    Staggering failure
    There has been much talk about the staggering failure of Israeli intelligence on multiple fronts. But Israel’s biggest intelligence failure is the ongoing assumption that occupation can ever co-exist with peace — it cannot.

    Columnist Donna Miles
    Columnist Donna Miles . . . “We have been here before, and have learnt that collective punishment of Palestinians will only strengthen their resolve to fight for their freedom.” Image: DM/APR

    I have no doubt that Netanyahu will do as he has promised and will exact “a huge price” for Hamas’ murderous attacks.

    But we have been here before, and, time and time again, have learnt that collective punishment of Palestinians will only strengthen their resolve to fight for their freedom.

    In his first message after the attacks, Netanyahu quoted from the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik: “Vengeance… for the blood of a small child, / Satan has not yet created.”

    Netanyahu left out the preceding line: “Cursed be he who cries out: Revenge!”.

    Killing more Palestinians will not solve Israeli’s security problems. The only path to peace is by ending the illegal settlements, annexations and dispossession of Palestinians.

    Donna Miles is an Iranian-Kiwi columnist and writer based in Christchurch. This article was first published in The Press last Friday and is published here with the permission of the author.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • John Minto: A shameful NZ response to genocide of Palestinians in Gaza

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    The Aotearoa New Zealand government announcement of $5 million in humanitarian aid to “Israel, Gaza and the West Bank” is a cowardly, shameful response to Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

    The priority for Gaza is not bandages and aspirins — they need loud voices condemning Israeli genocide. They need the bombing and killing to stop.

    Early last week Hipkins condemned the killing of civilians in the Hamas attack on Israel but has refused to condemn Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.

    Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa John Minto . . .

    The “collective punishment” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; the withholding of food, water, electricity and fuel; the intensive massive bombing of densely populated civilian areas of Gaza — these are all war crimes. Genocide is the only name that fits.

    More than 700 children have been killed so far by Israeli bombing with civilian casualties of more than 2800.

    Green light to orgy of killing
    By refusing to condemn these killings, Hipkins is giving Israel the green light to continue its orgy of killing in Gaza.

    Hipkins says he is “deeply saddened” by civilians deaths. But not deeply saddened enough to call out the colonial, apartheid state of Israel whose racist policies against Palestinians are the cause of the slaughter in Gaza.

    Similarly, when Hipkins says “we call on all parties to respect international humanitarian law, and uphold their obligations to protect civilians, and humanitarian workers, including medical personnel”, it is a meaningless gap-filler in a government media release.

    Hipkins’ announcement will be welcomed in Washington and Tel Aviv but will be deplored by decent people around the world who call for human rights for Palestinians and accountabilities for apartheid Israel.

    The Prime Minister has our loudest voice — we demand he use it to help end the slaughter of civilians in Gaza by sheeting home blame where it belongs — with the policies of the racist, apartheid state of Israel.

    John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidaity Network Aotearoa.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel-Gaza conflict: NZ govt providing $5m towards humanitarian aid

    RNZ News

    The New Zealand government is putting $5 million to address urgent humanitarian needs in Gaza, Israel and the occupied West Bank.

    The initial contribution would include $2.5 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and a further $2.5 million to the World Food Programme (WFP) under the umbrella of the United Nations appeal.

    The Defence Force also remains on standby to help with evacuations of New Zealanders from the area, if required.

    In a statement, caretaker Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths and conflict in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

    “The situation continues to evolve rapidly, and New Zealand is joining other likeminded countries to support those civilians and communities affected by the conflict.

    “The ICRC protects and assists victims of armed conflicts under international humanitarian law, and is working to gain access to people held hostage, distributing cash and other assistance to displaced people, and providing essential medical assistance and supplies.”

    With the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings shut, the Rafah border was the only way into and out of the Gaza Strip for people and also for humanitarian aid. But that had shut in October too.

    Safe passage
    Western countries are also getting involved to try to secure safe passage through Rafah for both foreign passport holders in Gaza and humanitarian aid, and there have been conflicting reports about whether it would open temporarily or not.

    The WFP aid would help address food insecurity concerns in Gaza and the West Bank, and ensure emergency stock was prepared once access was guaranteed, Hipkins said.

    The Gaza civilian casualties keep climbing . . . 2750 Palestinian adults and 1030 children
    The Gaza civilian casualties keep climbing . . . 2750 Palestinian adults and 1030 children. Al Jazeera screenshot/APR

    “New Zealand calls for rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to enable the delivery of crucial life-saving assistance.

    “We call on all parties to respect international humanitarian law, and uphold their obligations to protect civilians, and humanitarian workers, including medical personnel.”

    Both the ICRC and WFP act with full independence and neutrality.

    With the Labour-led government being in the caretaker position and trying to transition to the National Party after the general elections, the decision for aid had been made after consultation with National leader Christopher Luxon, Hipkins’ statement read.

    Luxon said he was appreciative of the communication between the outgoing government and the incoming one.

    “It’s important that the government owns those decisions, we are consulted, and when we’re consulted we can give our support.”

    NZDF on standby
    On Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said most New Zealanders who were registered as being in Israel had already left, but 50 Kiwis were still there, and 20 were registered as being in the occupied Palestinian territories (Gaza and the West Bank).

    But the government has asked for the New Zealand Defence Force to remain on standby in case it is needed to help with evacuations.

    “While not everyone wanting to leave can necessarily get themselves to a departure point, the government has requested NZDF to remain on standby to deploy if necessary,” Hipkins said.

    “Commercial routes remain the best option to depart the region, and MFAT is actively providing consular assistance to New Zealanders who remain in the affected region,” he said.

    “Anyone who wishes to depart should take the earliest commercial opportunity to do so.”

    New Zealand was also working with its partners on evacuation points for people who could not access commercial routes, but Hipkins acknowledged “the security situation on the ground make this difficult”.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pro-Palestine supporters call on Auckland Museum to apologise over lights fiasco

    Asia Pacific Report

    A peace researcher and other pro-Palestinian supporters are calling on Auckland Museum to apologise over a furore about the “unethical” lighting of the main building in the blue and white colours of the Israeli flag.

    Researcher Dr Arama Rata said she wanted the museum to issue a formal apology to the community over the insensitivity over the lights incident last night.

    Israeli security forces have been bombing Gaza daily for the past week with at least 2215 Palestinians killed and 8714 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Among the dead are 720 children.

    The Israeli forces are poised for a massive air, sea and ground invasion of the enclave of about 2.3 million people.

    The bombing is in retaliation for an attack by the Hamas military wing into southern Israel last Saturday which left 1300 people dead, including 265 soldiers, and more than 3300 wounded.

    “Auckland Museum is supposed to be a welcoming place for all members of our community. Their actions tonight have caused deep divisions for people who are already hurting,” Dr Rata said.

    ‘Horrors of wars’
    “The museum is entrusted with many of our taonga, and regularly holds exhibitions helping us to remember the horrors of wars.

    “Their actions today show they have no respect for human suffering. Their actions were highly unethical.”

    Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa chair John Minto also sent a protest note to the museum’s chief executive, David Reeves.

    “We were appalled to see Auckland Museum lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag at a time when Israel is conducting slaughter — there is no other word for it — of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

    “Palestinians are used to seeing such awful behaviour from Euro-centric institutions such as the museum.”

    According to a statement by the protest group, the museum posted on its Instagram social media account a message saying, “This evening, your museum is lit in blue and white in solidarity with Israel. Our thoughts go out to the many civilians impacted as a result of the terrorist attack a week ago today.”

    An image of the main building showing the blue and white light accompanied the message.

    ‘Free Palestine’ call
    Within hours, about 100 people had gathered outside the museum, many holding Palestine flags and chanting “free Palestine”.

    Cars with Palestinian flags also drove in procession around the museum, drivers honking their horns and blaring music.

    An argument developed between Palestine supporters and a small group of Israel supporters who had also gathered at the foot of the hill below the museum, holding Israeli flags.

    Police arrived and calmed the row.

    By 9pm, the museum lights had been turned off.  Later, white lights were turned back on, according to the protesters’ statement.

    Palestine supporters subsequently covered the lights with red fabric.

    Israel faces widespread condemnation from the international community for issuing an evacuation order for more than a million people living in northern Gaza.

    The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, Paula Gaviria Betancur, said she was “horrified” by the order and demanded that Israel immediately rescind it, saying “forcible population transfers constitute a crime against humanity, and collective punishment is prohibited international humanitarian law”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asian states shocked by Hamas raids but no ‘blind support’ for Israel

    ANALYSIS: By Kalinga Seneviratne in Singapore

    In the aftermath of Palestinian group Hamas’ terror attack inside Israel on October 7 and the Israeli state’s even more terrifying attacks on Palestinian urban neighbourhoods in Gaza, the media across many parts of Asia tend to take a more neutral stand in comparison with their Western counterparts.

    A lot of sympathy is expressed for the plight of the Palestinians who have been under frequent attacks by Israeli forces for decades and have faced ever trauma since the Nakba in 1948 when Zionist militia forced some 750,000 refugees to leave their homeland.

    Even India, which has been getting closer to Israel in recent years, and one of Israel’s closest Asian allies, Singapore, have taken a cautious attitude to the latest chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

    Soon after the Hamas attacks in Israel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “deeply shocked by the news of terrorist attacks”.

    He added: “We stand in solidarity with Israel at this difficult hour.” But, soon after, his Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) sought to strike a balance.

    Addressing a media briefing on October 12, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi reiterated New Delhi’s “long-standing and consistent” position on the issue, telling reporters that “India has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine” living in peace with Israel.

    Singapore has also reiterated its support for a two-state solution, with Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam telling Today Daily that it was possible to deplore how Palestinians had been treated over the years while still unequivocally condemning the terrorist attacks carried out in Israel by Hamas.

    “These atrocities cannot be justified by any rationale whatsoever, whether of fundamental problems or historical grievances,” he said.

    “I think it’s fair to say that any response has to be consistent with international law and international rules of war”.

    Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has blamed the rapidly worsening conflict in the Middle East on a lack of justice for the Palestinian people.

    Lack of justice for Palestinians
    “The crux of the issue lies in the fact that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people,” Beijing’s top diplomat said in a phone call with Brazil’s Celso Amorim, a special adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, according to Japan’s Nikkei Asia.

    The call came just ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on October 13 to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Brazil, a non-permanent member, is chairing the council this month.

    Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo called for an end to the region’s bloodletting cycle and pro-Palestinian protests have been held in Jakarta.

    “Indonesia calls for the war and violence to be stopped immediately to avoid further human casualties and destruction of property because the escalation of the conflict can cause greater humanitarian impact,” he said.

    “The root cause of the conflict, which is the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, must be resolved immediately in accordance with the parameters that have been agreed upon by the UN.”

    Indonesia, which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has supported Palestinian self-determination for a long time and does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

    But, Indonesia’s foreign ministry said 275 Indonesians were working in Israel and were making plans to evacuate them.

    Many parts of Gaza lie in ruins following repeated Israeli airstrikes
    Many parts of Gaza lie in ruins following repeated Israeli airstrikes for the past week. Image: UN News/Ziad Taleb

    Sympathy for the Palestinians
    Meanwhile, Thailand said that 18 of their citizens have been killed by the terror attacks and 11 abducted.

    In the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo said on October 10 that the safety of thousands of Filipinos living and working in Israel remained a priority for the government.

    There are approximately 40,000 Filipinos in Israel, but only 25,000 are legally documented, according to labour and migrant groups, says Benar News, a US-funded Asian news portal.

    According to India’s MEA spokesperson Bagchi, there are 18,000 Indians in Israel and about a dozen in the Palestinian territories. India is trying to bring them home, and a first flight evacuating 230 Indians was expected to take place at the weekend, according to the Hindu newspaper.

    It is unclear what such large numbers of Asians are doing in Israel. Yet, from media reports in the region, there is deep concern about the plight of civilians caught up in the clashes.

    Benar News reported that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has spoken with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict according to UN-agreed parameters.

    Also this week, the Malaysian government announced it would allocate 1 million ringgit (US$211,423) in humanitarian aid for Palestinians.

    Western view questioned
    Sympathy for the Palestinian cause is reflected widely in the Asian media, both in Muslim-majority and non-Muslim countries. The Western unequivocal support for Israel, particularly by Anglo-American media, has been questioned across Asia.

    Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post’s regular columnist Alex Lo challenged Hamas’ “unprovoked” terror attack in Israel, a narrative commonly used in Western media reporting of the latest flare-up.

    “It must be pointed out that what Hamas has done is terrorism pure and simple,” notes Lo.

    “But such horrors and atrocities are not being committed by Palestinian militants without a background and a context. They did not come out of nowhere as unadulterated and uncaused evil”.

    Thus Lo argues, that to claim that the latest terror attacks were “unprovoked” is to whitewash the background and context that constitute the very history of this unending conflict in Palestine.

    US media’s ‘morally reprehensible propaganda’
    “It’s morally reprehensible propaganda of the worst kind that the mainstream Anglo-American media culture has been guilty of for decades,” he says.

    “But the real problem with that is not only with morality but also with the very practical politics of searching for a viable peace settlement”.

    He is concerned that “with their unconditional and uncritical support of Israel, the West and the United States in particular have essentially made such a peace impossible”.

    Writing in India’s Hindu newspaper, Denmark-based Indian professor of literature Dr Tabish Khair points out that historically, Palestinians have had to indulge in drastic and violent acts to draw attention to their plight and the oppressive policies of Israel.

    “The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), under Yasser Arafat’s leadership, used such ‘terrorist’ acts to focus world attention on the Palestinian problem, and without such actions, the West would have looked the other way while the Palestinians were slowly airbrushed out of history,” he argues.

    While the PLO fought a secular Palestinian battle for nationhood, which was largely ignored by Western powers, this lead to political Islam’s development in the later part of the 1970s, and Hamas is a product of that.

    “Today, we live in a world where political Islam is associated almost entirely with Islam — and almost all Muslims,” he notes.

    Palestinian cause still resonates
    But, the Palestinian cause still resonates beyond the Muslim communities, as the reactions in Asia reflect.

    Indian historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, writing in Bangladesh’s Daily Star, notes the savagery of the impending war against the Palestinian people will be noted by the global community.

    He points out that Hamas was never allowed to function as a voice for the Palestinian people, even after they won a landslide democratic election in Gaza in January 2006.

    “The victory of Hamas was condemned by the Israelis and the West, who decided to use armed force to overthrow the election result,” he points out.

    “Gaza was never allowed a political process, in fact never allowed to shape any kind of political authority to speak for the people”.

    Prashad points out that when the Palestinians conducted a non-violent march in 2019 for their rights to nationhood, they were met with Israeli bombs that killed 200 people.

    “When non-violent protest is met with force, it becomes difficult to convince people to remain on that path and not take up arms,” he argues.

    Prashad disputes the Western media’s argument that Israel has a “right to defend itself” because the Palestinians are people under occupation. Under the Geneva Convention, Israel has an obligation to protect them.

    Under the Geneva Convention, Prashad argues that the Israeli government’s “collective punishment” strategy is a war crime.

    “The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into Israeli war crimes in 2021 but it was not able to move forward even to collect information”.

    Kalinga Seneviratne is a correspondent for IDN-InDepthNews, the flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate (IPS). Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Jakarta workers protest outside US Embassy, call for end to Hamas-Israeli war

    By Novianti Setuningsih in Jakarta

    Many labour organisations have protested in front of the US Embassy in Central Jakarta, calling for an end to the Hamas-Israeli war — as protests in their tens of thousands have spread across the world.

    The workers gathered across the street from the US Embassy with a command vehicle being used to give speeches.

    Protesters could be seen putting up large banners with the message “Stop the Palestine-Israeli war”.

    “Today, the Labour Party and the KSPI (Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions) are holding an action in front of the United States Embassy and later it will be continued at the United Nations offices in the context of calling for an end to the Palestine and Israeli war”, Labour Party president Said Iqbal told the protesters.

    Iqbal said they were asking US President Joe Biden not to send troops to Israel.

    They gave speeches in front of the US Embassy so that the message they are conveying is immediately implemented by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council.

    “The Labour Party and trade unions in Indonesia reject the presence of American troops entering Israel, and the American aircraft carrier that has already entered the Mediterranean,” said Iqbal.

    Heavy death toll
    A heavy police presence was deployed around the event and the officers redirected traffic when it became too congested.

    The Israel-Hamas conflict has been heating up since Saturday, October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel and since then the Israeli Defence Forces have been bombing the Gaza Strip enclave.

    At least 2215 Palestinians have been killed and 8714 wounded in Israeli air attacks on Gaza in the past week, reports Al Jazeera.
    The dead include more than 700 Palestinian children.
    In the occupied West Bank, more than 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in a matter of days.

    In Israel, the death toll stands at some 1300 killed and more than 3400 wounded since last weekend’s attack by Hamas.

    Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Buruh Demo di Depan Kedubes AS, Serukan Hentikan Perang Hamas-Israel”.

    The pro-Palestinian workers' protest rally in Jakarta, Indonesia
    The pro-Palestinian workers’ protest rally in Jakarta, Indonesia, this week. Image: Kompas

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Big Auckland rally shows solidarity with Palestine over ‘genocidal’ war

    Asia Pacific Report

    About 2000 people from Aotearoa New Zealand communities, including many families, staged a vibrant rally in Auckland’s Aotea Square and marched down Queen Street today in support of freedom for #Palestine and an end to the Gaza massacre.

    Marchers held placards proclaiming “This is a massacre not war”, “Free Palestine – End the Occupation now”, “Land back” — with reference to Israel seizing Palestinian land on a banner also displaying the Aboriginal, Māori (Tino Rangatiratanga) and West Papua (Morning Star) flags.

    Warning about a “new Nakba” — the 1948 forced eviction of 750,000 Palestinian refugees from their homeland — the Jewish Voice for Peace advocacy group said in a statement that the Israeli government had declared a “genocidal war” on Palestinians in Gaza.

    Israeli officials are openly planning to open “the gates of hell” on Gaza, referring to the two million Palestinians trapped inside as “human animals”, the statement said.

    “The Israeli military has launched non-stop airstrikes and bombing over Gaza.

    “Our partners tell us of entire neighbourhoods being flattened, schools and hospitals being bombed, apartment buildings being brought down.”

    At least 583 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli military offensive on Gaza so far, representing one-third of the total death toll with casualty count rapidly rising, reports Defence for Children International.

    The Gaza "evacuation" zone as ordered by the Israeli military
    The Gaza “evacuation” zone as ordered by the Israeli military which has been condemned by global critics as a “death sentence”. Image: JVP

    “The Israeli government has shut off all electricity to Gaza. Hospitals cannot save lives, the internet will collapse, people will have no phones to communicate with the outside world.

    “Gaza will be plunged into darkness as Israel turns its neighborhoods to rubble. Still worse, Israel has openly stated an intention to commit mass atrocities and even genocide, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the Israeli response will ‘reverberate for generations’.

    “All of this with the full throated support of the US.

    "End the occupation now" says a placard held by these young Palestinian women protesters
    “End the occupation now” says a placard held by these young Palestinian women protesting in Auckland today in solidarity with the Gaza suffering. Image: David Robie/APR

    “On Friday, the Israeli military called for all civilians of Northern Gaza — over one million people, including half a million children — to relocate south within 24 hours, as it amassed tanks for an expected ground invasion.

    “According to the UN, it is impossible to evacuate everyone with power supplies cut and food and water in the Palestinian enclave running short after Israel placed Gaza under total siege.

    The UN said this invasion would have “devastating humanitarian consequences”, the statement said.

    “For 16 years, Palestinians blockaded in Gaza have lived in the most densely populated place in the world. That density is set to double, if one million Palestinians are pushed from the North into the South.

    “We shudder to think what will happen if the north is vacated: Israel could annex the territory. Another Nakba could be imminent.”

    Solidarity with Palestine marchers in Auckland's Queen Street
    Solidarity with Palestine marchers in Auckland’s Queen Street today. Image: David Robie/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • IPI calls for respect of journalists’ safety amid Israel-Hamas war

    Pacific Media Watch

    The International Press Institute (IPI) global network has called on all parties involved in the ongoing hostilities in Israel and Gaza to ensure all measures are taken to protect the safety of journalists.

    IPI said in a statement that it was deeply alarmed by reports that at least seven Palestinian journalists had been killed since Saturday, with several others wounded.

    There are also reports that one Israeli journalist was abducted in southern Israel while two additional Palestinian journalists are reportedly missing.

    “We urge all sides involved in the hostilities to respect the right of journalists and media organiSations to safely cover armed conflict in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law,” said the statement.

    According to reports, freelance journalist Mohammad Al-Salhi was shot and killed while reporting on the border to the east of al-Bureij, a Palestinian refugee camp in central Gaza on October 7.

    Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, a photographer for Ain Media news agency was killed while reporting near Beit Hanoun checkpoint, close to the border in northern Gaza.

    According to a fellow journalist, he was wearing a press vest.

    Mohammad Jargon, a reporter with Smart Media, was shot dead while reporting in the east of Rafah city in southern Gaza.

    Killed in airstrikes
    Another four journalists, Saeed Al-Taweel, Asaad Shamlikh, Mohammad Rizq Sobh, and Hisham Al-Nawajha, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, according to IPI sources.

    Meanwhile, the Israeli news organisation Ynet has reported that one of its photojournalists, Roy Idan, was abducted from his home in southern Israel by Hamas militants on Saturday, October 7.

    In addition, there were reports that two Palestinian photojournalists — Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdelwahid — went missing on Saturday while covering events at the Beit Hanoun checkpoint.

    IPI sid it was also disturbed by reports that the offices of several Palestinian news organisations in Gaza were completely or partially destroyed in Israeli bombing raids.

    The Palestine Government Media Office said in a statement that more than 40 media offices in Gaza were targeted.

    “Amid the horrific developments that have taken place since Saturday in Israel and Gaza, we remind all parties of their obligations to protect journalists in situations of armed conflict, in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law”, IPI director of advocacy Amy Brouillette said.

    “We are extremely disturbed by reports that at least seven Palestinian journalists have been killed and call on all parties involved to protect the right of journalists to cover the ongoing events. The flow of information remains essential during war and conflict.”

    Under the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, journalists and media workers covering armed conflict must be treated and protected as civilians and must be allowed to report on events without undue interference.

    The intentional targeting of journalists, as civilians, is a war crime.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel-Gaza crisis: NZ must condemn atrocities but keep pushing for a two-state solution

    ANALYSIS: By Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato

    It was perhaps inevitable that the shock Hamas attack on Israel would become a minor election sideshow in New Zealand. Less than a week from the Aotearoa New Zealand polls, a crisis in the Middle East offered opposition parties a brief chance to criticise the foreign minister’s initial reaction.

    But if it was a fleeting and fairly trivial moment in the heat of a campaign, the crisis itself is far from it — and it will test the foreign policy positions of whichever parties manage to form a government after Saturday.

    It can be tempting to see the latest eruption of violence in Gaza and Israel as somehow “normal”, given the history of the region. But this is far from normal.

    What appear to be intentional war crimes and crimes against humanity, involving the use of terror against citizens and guests of Israel, will provoke what will probably be an unprecedented response.

    Israel’s declaration of war and formation of an emergency war cabinet — backed by threats to “wipe this thing called Hamas off the face of the Earth” — were the start.

    The bombardment and “complete siege” of Gaza, and preparation for a possible ground invasion, have catastrophic potential.

    Hundreds of thousands may be forced towards Egypt or into the Mediterranean, with the fate of the hostages held by Hamas looking dire. Israel has now said there will be no humanitarian aid until the hostages are free.

    There is a risk the war will spread over Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, with Hezbollah (backed by Iran) now involved.

    US President Joe Biden’s warning to Iran to “be careful”, and the deployment of a US carrier fleet to the Eastern Mediterranean, only ups the ante.

    Rules of war
    Given the suspension of some commercial flights to and from Israel, New Zealand’s most meaningful first response has been practical: arranging a special flight from Tel Aviv for citizens and Pacific Islanders, and their families, currently in Israel or the Palestinian territories who wish to leave.

    Beyond these immediate concerns, however, the world is divided. Outrage in the West is matched by support in Arab countries for Palestinian “resistance”. Despite US efforts to get a global consensus condemning the attack, the United Nations Security Council could not agree on a unified statement.

    With no global consensus, New Zealand can do little more than assert and defend the established rules-based international order. This includes stating clearly that international humanitarian law and the rules of war are universal and must be applied impartially.

    That’s akin to New Zealand’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: the rules of war apply to all, both state and non-state forces (irrespective of whether those parties agree to them). War crimes are to be investigated, with accountability and consequences applied through the relevant international bodies.

    This applies to crimes of terror, murder, hostage-taking and indiscriminate rocket attacks carried out by Hamas. But the government needs also to emphasise that war crimes do not justify further retaliatory war crimes.

    Specifically, unless civilians take a direct part in the conflict, the distinction between them and combatants must be observed. Military action should be proportionate, with all feasible precautions taken to minimise incidental loss of civilian life.

    International law prohibits collective punishments, and access for humanitarian relief should be permitted. To hold an entire population captive – as a siege of Gaza involves – for the crimes of a military organisation is not acceptable.

    The two-state solution
    It is also important that New Zealand carefully considers definitions of terrorism and legitimate force. Terrorists do not enjoy the political and legal legitimacy afforded by international law.

    Unlike other members of the Five Eyes security network, New Zealand designates only the military wing of Hamas, not its political wing, as a prohibited “terrorist entity” under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

    Whether this distinction is anything more than a fiction needs to be reviewed. If this were to change, it would mean the financing, participation in or recruitment to any branch of Hamas would be illegal. This might have implications for any future peace process, should Hamas be involved.

    At some point, most people surely hope, the cycle of violence will end. The likeliest route to that will be the so-called “two-state solution”, requiring security guarantees for Israel, negotiated land swaps and careful management of Jerusalem’s holy sites.

    New Zealand has long supported this initiative, despite its apparent diplomatic near-death status. An emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo this week urged Israel to resume talks to establish a viable Palestinian state, and China has also reiterated support such a solution.

    New Zealand cannot stay silent when extreme, indiscriminate violence is committed by any group or nation. But joining any movement of like-minded nations to continue pushing for the two-state solution is still its best long-term strategy.The Conversation

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 7 journalists killed since beginning of Israeli aggression on Gaza

    Pacific Media Watch

    Israeli occupation forces are intentionally targeting Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip, media outlets warned after three reporters were killed Tuesday bringing the total number of journalists killed since Saturday to seven, reports Middle East Monitor.

    The Government Media Office’s Monitoring and Follow-up Unit in Gaza has documented dozens of attacks and crimes against journalists and media outlets.

    Israeli attacks have resulted in the killing of seven journalists: Ibrahim Lafi, Muhammad Jarghun, Muhammad Al-Salhi, Asaad Shamlikh, Saeed Al-Taweel, Muhammad Subh Abu Rizq and Hisham Al-Nawajaha.

    In addition, “more than 10 journalists have been injured with varying degrees of severity, and they lost contact with two colleagues, Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdul-Wahed”.

    The monitoring unit added that the homes of journalists Rami Al-Sharafi and Basel Khair Al-Din had been targeted and destroyed.

    In contrast, the homes of dozens of other journalists were partially damaged.

    Furthermore, dozens of media institutions were either completely or partially damaged by Israeli strikes including on Palestine Tower and Al-Watan Tower, with more than 40 media headquarters being affected, the unit reported.

    Despite the risks, the government media office emphasised that their journalists will continue their professional role and national duty in covering the events, exposing the crimes of the occupation and debunking its false claims.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Foreign policy group Te Kuaka calls on NZ to urge immediate Gaza ceasefire

    Asia Pacific Report

    A progressive foreign policy group is calling for the New Zealand government to condemn the siege of Gaza, and demand an immediate ceasefire to allow the establishment of a humanitarian aid corridor in the region.

    Israel’s complete siege on the Gaza Strip has cut off power, food, water, electricity and fuel to the region, as the death toll from Israeli air strikes climbs over 1,100.

    Human rights advocates are condemning this action as a crime against humanity.

    Thousands of Palestinians — including the deaths of seven journalists bearing witness — and humanitarian workers have been targeted, injured and killed by Israeli air strikes.

    Hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed, as fuel supplies needed to run generators have been cut off, resulting in a power blackout across the region.

    “We are horrified by the New Zealand government’s failure to demand an end to Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Te Kuaka co-director Dr Arama Rata.

    “We call for the New Zealand government to urge an immediate ceasefire and the provision of healthcare and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.”

    Reckless rhetoric
    Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant justified the siege by claiming: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

    US President Joe Biden condemned Hamas as a “terrorist” organisation, and affirmed “Israel’s right to defend itself”.

    Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta reiterated these statements.

    A member of Te Kuaka, researcher and writer Dr Max Harris, said: “There is a pressing danger right now that claims about Israel’s right to self-defence are being used as cover for profound violations of international law, and the destruction of families and communities in Gaza.”

    The UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, has expressed deep concern about the situation, and about UK Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments claiming Israel’s right to self-defence justified the cutting off of electricity and supplies to Gaza.

    Albanese has called the intentional starvation of civilians as part of a broader attack on civilians a “war crime and, potentially, a crime against humanity”.

    Dr Harris said: “New Zealand must set other countries’ sights on the need for a humanitarian aid corridor, and our political leaders must avoid reckless rhetoric that will pave the way for war crimes and further senseless loss of life.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Genocidal language being used to justify a massive death toll on Palestinian refugees in Gaza

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    The tragic events in Israel/Palestine these past few days have highlighted the absolute failure of Western governments like New Zealand to hold Israel accountable for its myriad war crimes against the Palestinian people for more than 75 years.

    Even in the past year the New Zealand government has failed to speak up despite obvious signs that unbearable pressure was building in Palestine following the election in late 2022 of the most extreme far-right government in Israel’s history.

    This new government has taken numerous steps to ramp up pressure on Palestinians everywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories by:

    • Announcing the building of more illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land;
    • Encouraging attacks on Palestinian towns villages and rural communities by illegal Israeli settlers and provided Israeli military support for the settlers;
    • Organising highly provocative incursions into the Al Aqsa mosque compound by Israeli government ministers; and
    • Justifying and casualised the killing of Palestinians resisting the Israeli occupation of their country (more than 250 Palestinians were killed in the first nine months of this year including dozens of children)

    The total silence of Western governments such as New Zealand to these developments has emboldened Israel to act with impunity as it bulldozes more Palestinian land, builds more illegal settlements.

    The reaction from Hamas when its attack came has shocked and appalled Israelis, Palestinians and most of the world community.

    Attacks on civilians condemned
    Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has condemned the Hamas attack on civilians as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, just as we condemn any attack on civilians no matter who the attacker is.

    But unlike our Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, and most Western governments, we also condemn Israeli war crimes.

    It is a war crime to use collective punishment against civilian populations. In other words it is unlawful to punish a whole group for the actions of a few.

    It is also unlawful to withhold, food, water and the essentials of life from people living under military occupation as Israel is doing to Gaza.

    The New Zealand government must not only condemn war crimes committed by Hamas but it must also condemn war crimes against the Palestinian people.

    But Prime Minister Hipkins has not once this year condemned Israeli war crimes and even after the events of the past few days he is silent. For the government, Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli lives.

    A grief-stricken Gaza man weeps for his dead loved ones and the destruction of his home
    A grief-stricken Gaza man weeps for his dead loved ones and the destruction of his home in indiscriminate Israeli air strikes. Image: Al Jazeera

    More war crimes
    Meanwhile, Israel has announced preparations to commit more war crimes against Palestinians.

    “We are fighting against human animals” said Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant yesterday as he announced what he called a “complete siege” on Gaza which Israel is set to impose.

    Hearing racist, dehumanising, language about Palestinians from Israeli politicians is nothing new but this time Israel is using genocidal language to justify the massive death toll which they are planning to inflict on Palestinian refugees in Gaza — refugees created through war crimes committed by Israeli militias in 1948.

    On Saturday, Palestinians and their supporters are holding rallies and vigils around New Zealand to demand our government speak out and condemn not only the killing of Israeli civilians but also the slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

    We will be demanding the government take action to hold Israel to account for the crimes of its occupation of Palestine in the same way we have held Russia to account for its crimes against the Ukrainian people in its occupation of Ukraine.

    The start of each rally will include a minute of silence to remember all the civilians — Palestinians and Israelis — who have been killed in the last week.

    John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • War on Gaza: A prime minister with blood on his hands

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is correct to condemn Hamas killing Israeli civilians in its attacks on Israel this week.

    The killing of civilians or taking them hostage is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be universally condemned.

    However, the Labour government has been deathly silent on the war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians under Labour’s watch these past six years.

    Under his prime ministerial watch this year, Chris Hipkins has looked the other way while Israel has built more illegal Israeli settlement homes on Palestinian land; killed more than 250 Palestinian civilians; supported Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank and encouraged highly-provocative Israeli ministerial and settler incursions into the Al Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

    Why does he only wake up when Israelis are killed? Why does he think Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives?

    The Prime Minister’s pro-Israel stance is one-sided and blatantly racist.

    New Zealand, along with other Western countries, bears heavy responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis in recent days because we have never held Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

    We have given Israel a free pass to murder and abuse Palestinians and this led to the inevitable tragedy last weekend.

    It is precisely the attitude of Western leaders such as our Prime Minister which has meant so many lives have been lost.

    The Prime Minister has the blood of Palestinians and Israelis on his hands.

    John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    Gaza Strip . . . about 2.3 million people have been living trapped under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007
    Gaza Strip . . . about 2.3 million people have been living trapped under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007. Image: Al Jazeera (CC)

    The besieged Gaza Strip
    The Palestinian enclave — home to about 2.3 million people — has been under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007, reports Al Jazeera.
    More than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and thousands have taken shelter in UN schools as Israeli attacks intensify, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.

    Buildings, mosques and offices have been targeted as Netanyahu promised “mighty vengeance” for the deadly attacks that has sent shockwaves across Israel.

    Harrowing images from inside Gaza have emerged with 19 members of a family killed when an air strike on Sunday hit their residential building. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes currently in Israel.

    Israel has maintained a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza since 2007, a year after Hamas was democratically elected into power. The voting came nearly two years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the enclave.

    The blockade gives Israel control of Gaza’s borders, and Egypt has stepped in to enforce the western border.

    Israel has stated it has blocked the borders to protect its citizens from Hamas, but the act of collective punishment violates the Geneva Conventions and has long been considered illegal by groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Gaza blockade: Hamas’s tragic attack a response to longterm and escalating, immediate violence

    COMMENTARY: By Marilyn Garson Fred Albert Sue Berman Justine Sachs  of the Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ)

    Hamas has responded to Israel’s escalating violence with an unprecedented attack. This is not a new tragedy; it is an extension of the same old cycle.

    We grieve all the losses of this calamity, and we call on our government not to speak the same old words but to finally act.

    To call today’s act “unprovoked” is wilful blindness. Choose your timeframe; choose your provocation.

    Israel is carrying out the longest, now-illegal, now-apartheid occupation in modern history. Gaza has been illegally blockaded for 17 years, confining more than two million mostly civilian human beings in deteriorating conditions, subjecting them to repeated bombardments and ceaseless deprivation.

    More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in 2023 so far, including four the other day. The latest of Israel’s settler-state pogroms in the West Bank took place in Huwara one day before Hamas’s action.

    Hamas’s attack is a response to longterm and escalating, immediate violence.

    The blockade wall that was breached is an illegal structure. A million children have been born behind that wall; did you expect them to sit quietly?

    Wall deserves to fall
    That wall deserves to fall — but we, here in Aotearoa and throughout the world, should have brought it down with diplomatic and economic and legal sanctions long before it came to this.

    Now Hamas’s violent resistance has broken through the wall.

    Palestinians have a legal right to armed resistance, but no one has a right to unlimited violence. There is no honour in attacking civilians in their homes or bombing Gazan apartment buildings.

    It is a core principle of international humanitarian law that the violations of one armed group do not release another armed group from its constant obligation to uphold the rights of civilians. Armed groups are responsible to the law, to the idea of minimising the harm done in this world.

    We who demand the protection of Palestinian civilians can best do that by calling for the protection of all civilians: human rights are either everyone’s rights or they are nothing.

    If we lose sight of that, the world becomes even more dangerous — and Palestinians have always borne the brunt of that danger.

    No military solution
    There is no military solution. Solutions call for political will here, outside Israel/Palestine.

    The rage and despair accumulated through generations and decades of brutality will not reset. Do not call for the return to the status quo ante because it was intolerable, unjust and illegal.

    We, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, need to act on the basis of law and the equal rights of human beings to protection, to justice, to self-determination.

    We call on our government to initiate, to pick up the phone and lead in mustering international action.

    For anyone to be safe, Palestinians must be free and civilians must be protected.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • John Minto: Systemic NZ misreporting on Israeli occupation of Palestine and Palestinian resistance

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    The Hamas attack on Israel yesterday has brought the usual round of systemic misreporting by New Zealand news outlets as they repost stories from the BBC, AP and Reuters which bend the truth in favour of Israeli narratives of “terrorism” and “victimhood”.

    The worst comes from the BBC which is dutifully reposted by Radio New Zealand.

    As we said in a commentary earlier this year the systemic anti-Palestinian in reporting from the Middle East includes:

    Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa John Minto
    Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa John Minto . . . “‘Occupied’ is the status these Palestinian territories have under international law, United Nations resolutions and NZ government policy, and should be consistently reported as such.” TVNZ screenshot/APR

    The BBC, AP and Reuters typically talk about the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem when they should be reported as the occupied West Bank, occupied Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.

    “Occupied” is the status these territories have under international law, United Nations resolutions and NZ government policy and should be consistently reported as such.

    The BBC, AP and Reuters typically refer to Palestinians resisting Israel’s military occupation Palestinian “militants” or “terrorists” or similar derogatory and dismissive descriptions.

    We would not call Ukrainians attacking Russian occupation forces as “militants” so why do our media think it’s OK to use this term to describe Palestinians attacking Israeli occupation forces?

    Palestinian right to resist
    Under international law, Palestinians have the right to resist Israel’s military occupation, including armed resistance and should not be abused for doing so by our media.

    Palestinian resistance groups should be described as “resistance fighters” or “armed resistance organisations” while Israeli soldiers should be described as “Israeli occupation soldiers”.

    The BBC, AP and Reuters typically give sympathetic coverage to Israelis killed by Palestinians but do not give similar sympathetic coverage to Palestinians killed, on a near daily basis, by the Israeli occupation (more than 240 killed so far this year, including dozens of children.

    Labour leader and NZ Prime Minister Chris Hipkins
    Labour leader and NZ Prime Minister Chris Hipkins . . . New Zealand “condemns unequivocally the Hamas attacks on Israel.” Image: TVNZ screenshot/APR

    The vast majority of these killings are simply ignored.

    Palestinians are the victims of Israeli apartheid policies, ethnic cleansing, land theft, house demolitions, military occupation and unbridled brutality and yet our media ends up giving the impression it’s the other way round.

    Wide coverage is given to Israeli spokespeople in most stories with rudimentary reporting, if any, from Palestinian viewpoints.

    For example, so far Radio New Zealand has reported on the views of New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses but has yet to interview any Palestinian New Zealanders who suffer great anxiety every time Palestinians are killed by Israel.

    Support for self-determination
    New Zealanders overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. They rightly reject Israel’s racist narratives and its apartheid policies towards Palestinians.

    Our government policy needs to change.

    We should not be calling for negotiations between the parties because Palestinians face both Israel and US at the negotiating table and this will never bring justice for Palestinians and will therefore never bring peace.

    Killings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
    Killings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict . . . a graph showing the devastating loss of life for Palestinians compared with Israelis in the past 15 years. Source: Al Jazeera (cc)

    Instead, we need a timeline for Israel to abide by international law and United Nations resolutions. This would mean:

    • Ending the Israeli military occupation of Palestine;
    • Ending Israel’s apartheid policies against Palestinians, and Allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land in Palestine

    This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF hails decision to award Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian journalist

    Pacific Media Watch

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has hailed the news that Narges Mohammadi — an Iranian journalist RSF has been defending for years — has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her “fight against the oppression of women in Iran,” her courage and determination.

    Persecuted by the Iranian authorities since the late 1990s for her work, and imprisoned again since November 2021, she must be freed at once, RSF declared in a statement.

    “Speak to save Iran” is the title of one of the letters published by Mohammadi from Evin prison, near Tehran, where she has been serving a sentence of 10 years and 9 months in prison since 16 November 2021.

    She has also been sentenced to hundreds of lashes. The maker of a documentary entitled White Torture and the author of a book of the same name, Mohammadi has never stopped denouncing the sexual violence inflicted on women prisoners in Iran.

    It is this fight against the oppression of women that the Nobel Committee has just saluted by awarding the Peace Prize to this 51-year-old journalist and human rights activist, the former vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, the Iranian human rights organisation that was created by Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was herself awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

    It is because of this fight that Mohammadi has been hounded by the Iranian authorities, who continue to persecute her in prison.

    She has been denied visits and telephone calls since 12 April 2022, cutting her off from the world.


    White Torture: The infamy of solitary confinement in Iran with Narges Mohammadi.

    New charges
    At the same time, the authorities in Evin prison have brought new charges to keep her in detention.

    On August 4, her jail term was increased by a year after the publication of another of her letters about violence against fellow women detainees.

    Mohammadi was awarded the RSF Prize for Courage on 12 December 2023. At the award ceremony in Paris, her two children, whom she has not seen for eight years, read one of the letters she wrote to them from prison.

    “In this country, amid all the suffering, all the fears and all the hopes, and when, after years of imprisonment, I am behind bars again and I can no longer even hear the voices of my children, it is with a heart full of passion, hope and vitality, full of confidence in the achievement of freedom and justice in my country that I will spend time in prison,” she wrote.

    She ended the letter with a call to keep alive “the hope of victory”.

    RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said:

    “It is with immense emotion that I learn that the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to the journalist and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi.

    At Reporters Without Borders (RSF), we have been fighting for her for years, alongside her husband and her two children, and with Shirin Ebadi. The Nobel Peace Prize will obviously be decisive in obtaining her release.”

    On June 7, RSF referred the unacceptable conditions in which Mohammadi is being detained to all of the relevant UN human rights bodies.

    During an oral update to the UN Human Rights Council on July 5, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran expressed concern over the “continued detention of human rights defenders and lawyers defending the protesters, and at least 17 journalists”.

    It is thanks to Mohammadi’s journalistic courage that the world knows what is happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prisons, where 20 journalists are currently detained.

    They included three other women: Elaheh Mohammadi, Niloofar Hamedi and Vida Rabbani.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestine solidarity group calls on NZ to end ‘blind eye’ policy over brutal Israeli occupation

    Asia Pacific Report

    The New Zealand government bears heavy responsibility for loss of life of Palestinians and Israelis in the latest fighting in Israel/Palestine and must revisit its policy, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair John Minto.

    “Whatever the eventual outcome of the Hamas attacks on Israel today [Saturday], the New Zealand government bears heavy responsibility for the loss of life of Palestinians and Israelis,” he said in a statement.

    “Like other Western countries, New Zealand has failed to hold Israel to account for its multiple crimes, including war crimes, against the Palestinian people, day after day, year after year and decade after decade.

    “We have ignored human rights reports of Israel’s apartheid policies. Our government has been looking the other way.”

    Hamas launched a large-scale military operation “Al-Aqsa Flood” against Israel, describing it as in response to the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and increased settler violence.

    The group running the besieged Gaza Strip (population 2.1 million) said it had fired thousands of rockets and sent fighters into Israel. Early reports said at least 5 Israelis, had been killed, 35 people  taken captive and more than 500 had been wounded and taken to hospitals.

    Repeated Israeli attacks
    Minto described the Hamas attacks as “understandable”.

    “Over recent months Western countries have turned a blind eye to the brutality of the Israeli army and settler groups engaging in repeated attacks on Palestinian towns and villages and the killing of civilians and children,” he said.

    “The result is now playing out in more violence initiated by Israel’s brutal occupation — the longest military occupation in modern history. The occupation includes Israel’s 17-year-old blockade of the Gaza strip — the largest open-air prison in the world.”

    Al Jazeera reports that almost 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces so far this year.

    “New Zealand must reassess its policy on the Middle East and demand Israel adopt a timetable to implement international law and United Nations resolutions.”

    “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finished. Politically and otherwise,” declared Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara, who says Israel has never learnt from history of colonialism.

    “His arrogance has finally caught with him. No matter how many Palestinians this corrupt opportunist kills before his final downfall, he will go down in utter humiliation.

    “Israel gets a glimpse of the real future days after Netanyahu cavalierly showed us at the United Nations future maps of the new Middle East centered around Israel — with no Palestine existence.”

    Israel launched air strikes on Gaza in retaliation in an operation called “Iron Swords”.

    Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara
    Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara . . . Israel has never learnt from the history of colonialism and the suffering of a third generation of Palestinians in the Gaza “open prison”. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Indigenous rights group highlights rise in land grabs under Jokowi’s watch

    Indoleft News in Jakarta

    The Nusantara Traditional Community Alliance (AMAN) and the Nusantara Traditional Community Defence Association (PPMAN) have highlighted the polemic over the forced relocation of residents from Rempang Island, Batam, in Indonesia’s Riau Islands, to make way for the Eco City national strategic project (PSN).

    AMAN Deputy Secretary General for political and legal affairs Erasmus Cahyadi believes that safety and identity of Malayu (Malay) traditional communities, who have lived for generations in 16 ancient villages on Rempang, is currently under serious threat.

    “This is because the state is more pro-foreign investment, which takes refuge in the name of national strategic projects and is backed by [government] policies and oppressive state officials”, Cahyadi said in a statement.

    According to Cahyadi, the government through the Batam Free Port Agency (BP Batam) had “arrogantly mobilised the armed forces” and was attempting to forcibly remove the indigenous peoples on Rempang Island from their land and cultural roots that they had inherited from their ancestors for hundreds of years, or at least since the beginning of the 18th century.

    Cahyadi believes that this incident adds to the “black list of cruelty by the state” towards indigenous peoples, particularly over the last 10 years of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s rule.

    Under the administration of President Widodo, said Cahyadi, incidents of land grabs of traditional community lands had increased in concert with the implementation of national strategic projects and other investments.

    “In the name of investment, the government does not hesitate to seize, displace and commit violence against indigenous peoples who have lived for hundreds of years on customary lands”, he said.

    Agrarian conflicts
    The National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) has reported that 692 agrarian conflicts occurred over the last eight months of 2023.

    Meanwhile, said Cahyadi, AMAN had also noted that there had been 301 cases related to the deprivation of customary land in 2019-2023.

    “The various cases that have occurred show that the government has been playing with its power, is arrogant and shameless because it violates the basic principles of the country and does not meet the aims of Indonesia’s independence,” he said.

    Cahyadi believes that the current government has forgotten that the state is obliged to advance the public’s welfare and “protect every drop of Indonesia’s blood” as aspired to in the country’s struggle for independence.

    “Meaning, all of the administration’s actions should refer to the aims of the country. That is also the reason why an independent country should be different from its colonisers,” he said.

    Cahyadi said that AMAN condemned, opposed and was urging both the government and investors to stop the seizure of indigenous communities’ land and all acts of violence against the residents and indigenous peoples of Rempang Island.

    “We also urge the government, especially BP Batam, to avoid escalating the conflict that will result in even more casualties by not continuing to pursue the relocation target of September 28, 2023,” said Cahyadi.

    Making way for Eco City
    President Widodo has spoken out about residents’ opposition to being relocated to make way for the Eco City project on Rempang Island. According to Widodo, the opposition that ended in a clash between residents and police occurred because of a lack of communication.

    He said that the residents that will be affected have already been provided with compensation in the form of land and houses. In relation to the location however, there was a lack of good communication.

    “This is just a miscommunication, there’s been a miscommunication. They’ve been given compensation, given land, given houses but maybe the location is not right yet, that should be resolved”, said Widodo during an event in Jakarta titled “Eight Years of National Strategic Projects” on Wednesday September 13.

    Thousands of Rempang Island residents are threatened with having to leave their villages to make way for the Eco City strategic national project.

    The project, which is being worked on by the company PT Makmur Elok Graha (MEG), will use 7572 hectares of land or around 45.89 percent of a total of 16,000 hectares of land on Rempang Island for the project.

    The thousands of residents however do not accept that they have to leave the land they have lived on long before Indonesia proclaimed independence. They are determined to defend their land even though the TNI (Indonesian military) and police have been deployed so that they will agree to be relocated.

    A clash was inevitable. On September 7 and 11 clashes broke out.

    Police fired teargas, some of which landed in a school, and children had to be rushed to hospital. So far, 43 people opposing the relocation have been arrested and accused of being provocateurs.

    Translated by James Balowski from CNN Indonesia for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “AMAN Soroti Rempang dan Lonjakan Perampasan Wilayah Adat Era Jokowi”.

  • Ailing former Papuan governor Enembe now in detention cell after army hospital

    ANALYSIS: By Yamin Kogoya

    An Indonesian court has held a hearing to consider whether the ailing former Papua Governor, Lukas Enembe, is well enough to go on trial for the allegations of bribery and gratification that he is facing.

    The hearing was held in the Central Jakarta District Court yesterday to consider a second medical opinion provided by the Indonesian Medical Association (IDI).

    Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) public prosecutors read out the IDI medical report, which stated that the defendant Enembe was fit to face trial.

    Former Governor Enembe was not present at the hearing and his lawyers and family protested against the second opinion of IDI’s decision, arguing that the judgment was not based on a proper medical report but rather a view formed and collected by KPK’s doctors through interviews.

    The family refused to accept this result because they believe it did not accurately represent the medical issues facing the governor.

    The governor’s lawyers contend that their client is seriously ill, and they have now received an accurate medical report from the army hospital’s specialist, who has been treating  Enembe for the past two weeks, since he was moved from KPK’s detention cell to Gatot Soebroto Army Central Hospital (RSPAD) in Jakarta on July 16 due to serious health concerns.

    “As a result of the explanation given by the RSPAD doctor’s team who visited Mr Enembe’s in-patient room on Monday (24/7), it was determined that Mr Enembe’s kidney function had decreased dramatically. According to Bala Pattyona, Mr Enembe’s chronic kidney has deterorated rapidly,” reports ODIYAIWUU.com.

    From army hospital to cell — emotional for family
    Despite serious health concerns, on July 31 the KPK came to the Army hospital and picked up Enembe, taking him to KPK’s detention cell.

    Enembe’s lawyer, Petrus Bala Pattyona, revealed an emotional atmosphere when Enembe was removed from the hospital.

    His wife, siblings and other relatives who were at the RSPAD were reportedly crying.

    “The governor was taken by wheelchair from his room to the ambulance,” Petrus told Kompas.com on Monday night.

    Petrus said that before being picked up by the KPK prosecutors, the family had refused to sign administrative documents for Enembe’s departure from RSPAD.

    “Because the person who brought Mr Enembe to the hospital was a KPK prosecutor, then they are the ones who are responsible for Mr Enembe’s discharge from the hospital,” said Pattyona.

    The KPK officials signed the hospital discharge papers.

    Health priority request
    The governor’s lawyers asked for the unwell governor to remain in the city to prioritise his medical treatment.

    In response to his deteriorating health, the governor’s legal advisory team sent a letter on Thursday, July 20, to the Jakarta District Court judges.

    They requested that Lukas Enembe be granted city arrest status because of his serious life-threatening illness.

    The letter was signed by the governor’s legal team, including Professor Dr OC Kaligis, Petrus Bala Pattyona, Cyprus A Tatali, Dr Purwaning M Yanuar, Cosmas E Refra, Antonius Eko Nugroho, Anny Andriani and Fernandes Ratu.

    According to the governor’s senior lawyer, Professor Kaligis, the application was submitted on the grounds that Enembe’s health had not improved since he had been detained in KPK’s detention cell.

    Professor Kaligis said: “Our client is suffering from many complicated, serious illnesses. His kidney disease has reached stage five, he has diabetes, and he has suffered from four strokes. He is suffering from low oxygen saturation, swelling in his legs, and other internal diseases.”

    In a written statement, Kaligis said Enembe’s legal counsel requested the judges to consider bail for the governor. He pleaded with the legal authorities to empathise with Enembe’s suffering.

    Suharto’s case a valuable lesson
    Kaligis said that while defending the late Indonesian President Suharto, his party went to Geneva on 13 June 2000 and met with the Centre for Human Rights and specifically the Human Rights Officer, Mrs Eleanor Solo.

    “During that time, I was accompanied by Dr Indriyanto Seno Adji and two members of the TVRI crew because a seriously ill individual would not be suitable to [be examined] at the trial. Regardless of accusations a person might be facing, no one should be subjected to inhumane or degrading conduct,” Kaligis said.

    During Kaligis’s visit to Geneva, a human rights delegation visited the residence of Suharto, ensuring that the judge who tried Suharto, the late Chief Justice of South Jakarta State, Judge Lalu Mariun, stopped the examination after receiving a fatwa from the Supreme Court.

    Because Lukas Enembe is incarcerated under the authority of a panel of judges — not the KPK — Profewsaor Kaligis said they were hopeful that the request would be granted.

    According to Elius Enembe, the governor’s brother and spokesman for the governor’s family, the governor was in a critical condition.

    Nothing good will come from returning him to KPK’s prison cells. This is bad news for us and given the governor requires full support in terms of care needs, KPK should be held responsible should something grave occur while under their council. The Papuan people and the world are watching. There is nothing more torturous than this.

    On Wednesday, 26 July 2023, the governor had his birthday, turning 56.

    What should have been a happy celebration with family and the people of his homeland was abandoned for a hospital bed.

    The trial is due to resume next week.

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

  • Papuan police investigate spate of fires razing offices, houses in Dogiyai

    Jubi News

    Papuan police are investigating a spate of mysterious fires in the Dogiyai area in Central Papua province.

    The razed structures include the offices of the National Unity and Politics Agency and the Dogiyai Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises Office.

    Also eight boarding houses in Ekemanida Village, Kamu District, were engulfed in flames on the same day.

    Dogiyai police chief Commander Surraju said his team was examining all available information regarding the fires, including the possibility that a specific group set fire to the buildings.

    No casualties were reported.

    The incidents occurred at different locations with a fire on Trans Nabire–Enarotali Road happening around 10am.

    The fire in Ekemanida Village happened about 20 minutes later. The boarding house was unoccupied at the time.

    Papua Police spokesperson Senior Commander Ignatius Benny Ady Prabowo said the fire destroyed a former office building in Kimupugi Village, Kamu District.

    The authorities are still investigating the cause of the fires and the extent of the damage.

    Prabowo urged the public to remain calm and avoid being provoked by the situation. He emphasised that the police were handling the case.

    Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • CIVICUS protests to Marcos over ‘judicial harassment’, ‘terrorist’ label on human rights activists

    Asia Pacific Report

    A global alliance of civil society organisations has protested to Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in an open letter over the “judicial harassment” of human rights defenders and the designation of five indigenous rights activists as “terrorists“.

    CIVICUS, representing some 15,000 members in 75 countries, says the harassment is putting the defenders “at great risk”.

    It has also condemned the “draconian” Republic Act No. 11479 — the Anti-Terrorism Act — for its “weaponisation’ against political dissent and human rights work and advocacy in the Philippines.

    The CIVICUS open letter said there were “dire implications on the rights to due process and against warrantless arrests, among others”.

    The letter called on the Philippine authorities to:

    • Immediately end the judicial harassment against 10 human rights defenders by withdrawing the petition in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84;
    • Repeal Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating the six human rights defenders as terrorist individuals and unfreeze their property and funds immediately and unconditionally;
    • Drop all charges under the ATA against activists in the Southern Tagalog region; and
    • Halt all forms of intimidation and attacks on human rights defenders, ensure an enabling environment for human rights defenders and enact a law for their protection.

    The full letter states:

    President of the Republic of the Philippines
    Malacañang Palace Compound
    P. Laurel St., San Miguel, Manila
    The Philippines.

    Dear President Marcos, Jr.,

    Philippines: Halt harassment against human rights defenders

    CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is a global alliance of civil society organisations (CSOs) and activists dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society worldwide. Founded in 1993, CIVICUS has over 15,000 members in 175 countries.

    We are writing to you regarding a number of cases where human rights defenders are facing judicial harassment or have been designated as terrorists, putting them at great risk.

    Judicial harassment against previously acquitted human rights defenders
    CIVICUS is concerned about renewed judicial harassment against ten human rights defenders that had been previously acquitted for perjury. In March 2023, a petition was filed by prosecutors from the Quezon City Office of the Prosecutor, with General Esperon and current NSA General Eduardo Ano seeking a review of a lower court’s decision against the ten human rights defenders. They include Karapatan National Council members Elisa Tita Lubi, Cristina Palabay, Roneo Clamor, Gabriela Krista Dalena, Dr. Edita Burgos, Jose Mari Callueng and Fr. Wilfredo Ruazol as well as Joan May Salvador and Gertrudes Libang of GABRIELA and Sr Elenita Belardo of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP).

    The petition also includes the judge that presided over the case Judge Aimee Marie B. Alcera. They alleged that Judge Alcera committed “grave abuse of discretion” in acquitting the defenders. The petition is now pending before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84 Presiding Judge Luisito Galvez Cortez, who has asked the respondents to comment on Esperon’s motion this July and has scheduled a hearing on 29 August 2023.

    Human rights defenders designated as terrorists
    CIVICUS is also concerned that on 7 June 2023, the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) signed Resolution No. 41 (2022) designating five indigenous peoples’ leaders and advocates – Sarah Abellon Alikes, Jennifer R. Awingan, Windel Bolinget, Stephen Tauli, and May Casilao – as terrorist individuals. The resolution also freezes their property and funds, including related accounts.

    The four indigenous peoples’ human rights defenders – Alikes, Awingan, Bolinget and Tauli — are leaders of the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA). May Casilao has been active in Panalipdan! Mindanao (Defend Mindanao), a Mindanao-wide interfaith network of various sectoral organizations and individuals focused on providing education on, and conducting campaigns against, threats to the environment and people of the island, especially the Lumad. Previously, on 7 December 2022, the ATC signed Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating indigenous peoples’ rights defender Ma. Natividad “Doc Naty” Castro, former National Council member of Karapatan and a community-based health worker, as a “terrorist individual.”

    The arbitrary and baseless designation of these human rights defenders highlights the concerns of human rights organizations against Republic Act No. 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act, particularly on the weaponization of the draconian law against political dissent and human rights work and advocacy in the Philippines and the dire implications on the rights to due process and against warrantless arrests, among others.

    Anti-terrorism law deployed against activists in the Southern Tagalog region
    We are also concerned about reports that the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) has been deployed to suppress and persecute human rights defenders in the Southern Tagalog region, which has the most number of human rights defenders and other political activists criminalised by this law. As of July 2023, up to 13 human rights defenders from Southern Tagalog face trumped-up criminal complaints citing violations under the ATA. Among those targeted include Rev. Glofie Baluntong, Hailey Pecayo, Kenneth Rementilla and Jasmin Rubio.

    International human rights obligations
    The Philippines government has made repeated assurances to other states that it will protect human rights defenders including most recently during its Universal Periodic Review in November 2022. However, the cases above highlight that an ongoing and unchanging pattern of the government targeting human rights defenders.

    These actions are also inconsistent with Philippines’ international human rights obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which Philippines ratified in 1986. These include obligations to respect and protect fundamental freedoms which are also guaranteed in the Philippines Constitution. The Philippines government also has an obligation to protect human rights defenders as provided for in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and to prevent any reprisals against them for their activism.

    Therefore, we call on the Philippines authorities to:

    • Immediately end the judicial harassment against the ten human rights defenders by withdrawing the petition in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84;
    • Repeal Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating the six human rights defenders as terrorist individuals and unfreeze their property and funds immediately and unconditionally;Drop all charges under the ATA against activists in the Southern Tagalog region;
    • Halt all forms of intimidation and attacks on human rights defenders, ensure an enabling environment for human rights defenders and enact a law for their protection.

    We urge your government to look into these concerns as a matter of priority and we hope to hear from you regarding our inquiries as soon as possible.

    Regards,

    Sincerely,

    David Kode
    Advocacy & Campaigns Lead
    CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation

    Cc: Eduardo Año, National Security Adviser and Director General of the National Security Council
    Jesus Crispin C. Remulla, Secretary, Department of Justice of the Philippines
    Atty. Richard Palpal-latoc, Chairperson, Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.