The nauseating stench of dried blood hung in the air as we arrived in Karida village, a few kilometers outside of Tari in Papua New Guinea’s Hela province.
Through the landcruiser window, I could see two men carrying a corpse wrapped in blue cloth and a tarpaulin. They were walking towards the hastily dug graveyard.
A longstanding tribal fight by various factions in the Tagali area of the Hela province had triggered this attack. Several armed men came at dawn. The residents, mostly women and children, bore the brunt of the brutality.
The then Provincial Administrator, William Bando, advised us against travelling alone when we arrived in Tari. He requested a section of the PNG Defence Force to take us to Karida where the killings had happened less than 24 hours before.
Two men carrying the corpse, hesitated as we arrived with the soldiers. One of the soldiers ordered the men to disarm. The others who carried weapons fled into the nearby bush.
On the side of the road, the bodies of 15 women and one man lay tightly wrapped in cloth. The older men and women came out to meet the soldiers.
The village chief, Hokoko Minape, distraught by the unimaginable loss, wept beside the vehicle as he tried to explain what had happened.
“This, I have never seen in my life. This is new,” he said in Tok Pisin.
Complexity of tribal conflicts and media attention For an outsider, the roots of tribal conflicts in Papua New Guinea are difficult to understand. There are myriad factors at play, including the province, district, tribe, clan and customs.
But what’s visible is the violence.
The conflicts are usually reported on when large numbers of people are killed. The intense media focus lasts for days . . . maybe a month . . . and then, news priorities shift in the daily grind of local and international coverage.
Some conflicts rage for years and sporadic payback killings continue. It is subtle as it doesn’t attract national attention. It is insidious and cancerous — slowly destroying families and communities. In many instances, police record the one off murders as the result of alcohol related brawls or some other cause.
The tensions simmer just below boiling point. But it affects the education of children and dictates where people congregate and who they associate with.
Although, the villagers at Karida were not directly involved in the fighting, they were accused of providing refuge to people who fled from neighboring villagers. The attackers came looking for the refugees and found women and children instead.
According to a source, military guns are a fairly recent addition to tribal fighting in Papua New Guinea. Image: RNZ
The ‘hire man’ and small arms Over the next few weeks, local community leaders drew attention to the use of “hire men” in the conflicts. They are mercenaries who are paid by warring tribes to fight on their behalf. Their most valued possessions are either assault rifles or shotguns paid for by political and non-political sponsors.
The Deputy Commissioner for Police responsible for specialist operations, Donald Yamasombi, who has personally investigated instances of arms smuggling, said the traditional trade of drugs for guns along the eastern and southern borders of Papua New Guinea is largely a thing of the past.
“People are paying cash for guns. They are bringing in the weapons and then legitimising them through licensing,” Yamasombi said. “The businessmen who fund them actually run legitimate businesses.”
The involvement of political players is a subject many will state only behind closed doors.
In the highlands, the hire men are a recent addition to the complex socio-political ecosystem of tribal and national politics. Political power and money have come to determine how hire men are used during elections. They are tools of intimidation and coercion. The occupation is a lucrative means of money making during what is supposed to be a “free and fair” electoral process.
“Money drives people to fight,” Yamasombi said. “Without the source of money, there would be no incentive. There is incentive to fight.”
Rules of war At the end of elections, the hire men usually end up back in the communities and continue the cycle of violence.
In February, Papua New Guineans on social media watched in horror as the death toll from a tribal clash in Enga province rose from a few dozen to 70 in a space of a few hours as police retrieved bodies from nearby bushes.
The majority of the men killed were members of a tribe who had been ambushed as they staged an attack.
Traditional Engan society is highly structured. The Enga cultural center in the center of Wabag town, the Take Anda, documents the rules of war that dictated the conduct of warriors.
Traditionally, mass killings or killings in general were avoided. The economic cost of reparations were too high, the ongoing conflicts were always hard to manage and were, obviously, detrimental to both parties in the long run.
Engans, who I spoke to on the condition of anonymity, said high powered guns had changed the traditional dynamics.
Chiefs and elders who once commanded power and status were now replaced by younger men with money and the means to buy and own weapons. This has had a direct influence on provincial and national politics as well as traditional governance structures.
A roadblock is set-up in Wabag, the provincial capital of Enga. Image: Paul Kanda/FB/RNZ
Tribal conflicts, not restricted to the Highlands In 2022, a land dispute between two clans on Kiriwina Island, Milne Bay province, escalated into a full on battle in which 30 people were killed.
The unusual level of violence and the use of guns left many Papua New Guineans confused. Milne Bay province, widely known as a peaceful tourism hub, suffered a massive PR hit with embassies issuing travel warnings to their citizens.
In Pindiu, Morobe province, the widespread use of homemade weapons resulted in the deaths of a local peace officer and women and children in a long running conflict in 2015.
The Morobe Provincial Government sent mediators to Pindiu to facilitate peace negotiations. Provincial and national government are usually hesitant to intervene directly in tribal conflicts by arresting the perpetrators of violence.
This is largely due to the government’s inability to maintain security presence in tribal fighting areas for long periods.
Angoram killings Two weeks ago, 26 women and children were killed in yet another attack in Angoram, East Sepik.
Five people have been arrested over the killings. But locals who did not wish to be named said the ring leaders of the gang of 30 are still at large.
Angoram is a classic example of a district that is difficult to police.
The villages are spread out over the vast wetlands of the Sepik River. While additional police from Wewak have been deployed, there is no real guarantee that the men and women who witnessed the violence will be protected if they choose to testify in court.
Will new legislations and policy help? The Enga massacre dominated the February sitting of Parliament. Recent changes were made to gun laws and stricter penalties prescribed. But while legislators have responded, enforcement remains weak.
The killers of the 16 people at Karida remain at large. Many of those responsible for the massacre in Enga have not been arrested even with widely circulated video footage available on social media.
In April, the EU, UN and the PNG government hosted a seminar aimed at formulating a national gun control policy.
The seminar revisited recommendations made by former PNG Defence Force Commander, retired Major-General Jerry Singirok.
One of the recommendations was for the licensing powers of the Police Commissioner as Registrar of Firearms to be taken away and for a mechanism to buy back firearms in the community.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On a hastily-erected wall in the Marshall Islands International Conference Centre hang the names of dead women, victims of gender-based violence (GBV).
At least 300 Pacific women were killed in 2021, many at the hands of intimate partners or male relatives, yet there are but 14 names on the board after four days of a Triennial Conference.
Have these women died in obscurity, their deaths confined to the dust heap somewhere in the region’s collective memory?
Does the memory of their deaths invoke such pain or, perhaps, guilt, that it is impossible for delegates to pick up a pen and put names to paper?
Have these women become mere statistics, their names forgotten as civil society spreadsheets and crime reports log the death of yet another woman.
Or have the deaths of women due to gender-based violence become so common that in the minds of delegates it is normal for a woman to die at the hands of a husband, boyfriend, father or brother?
Falling victim to violence
It has been a conference attended largely by women — ministers, administrators, civil society representatives and local grassroots representatives. Each day there have been more than 200 women at the event.
The 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women addressed at its core the need to improve the health of women and children. That includes the need for better access to services and treatment of women who fall victim to violence.
JENELYN KENNEDY (Papua New Guinea) . . . a 19-year-old mother murdered in Port Moresby in 2020. Image: Netani Rika
Gender-based violence is also a key focus of the talks. It is that violence — past, present and future – which results in death.
Yet three times a day for three days, on their way to grab a quick coffee or indulge in lunch, friendly conversations or bilateral dialogue, delegates have walked past the wall paying scant attention to the names of their dead Pacific sisters.
No names have been added to the wall since the initial appeal on Day One for attendees to remember the dead, to memorialise women whose lives were cut short in actions which were largely avoidable.
In Fiji, 60 percent of women and girls endure violence in their lifetime. Two of every three experience physical or sexual abuse from intimate partners and one in five have been sexually harassed in the workplace.
The trend is common throughout the region with Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomon Islands recording the highest incidence of crimes against women.
LOSANA McGOWAN (Fiji) . . . a journalist who was murdered aged 32 during a domestic argument in 2015. Image: Netani Rika
Not one asked for silence
Delegates know these figures. The statistics are, sadly, nothing new.
On the third day, delegates quibbled over the nuances of language and the appropriate terms with which to populate a report on their deliberations. Yet not one asked for a moment of silence to remember the people whose names hung accusingly on a wall outside the meeting chamber.
When delegates left the convention centre on Friday afternoon, it is unlikely they would have remembered even one of the names on the wall.
Those names and the memories of all the women who have suffered violent deaths will await a team of cleaners, strangers, who will bury the Pacific’s collective shame in the sand of Majuro Atoll.
Netani Rikais an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.
On a hastily-erected wall in the Marshall Islands International Conference Centre hang the names of dead women, victims of gender-based violence (GBV).
At least 300 Pacific women were killed in 2021, many at the hands of intimate partners or male relatives, yet there are but 14 names on the board after four days of a Triennial Conference.
Have these women died in obscurity, their deaths confined to the dust heap somewhere in the region’s collective memory?
Does the memory of their deaths invoke such pain or, perhaps, guilt, that it is impossible for delegates to pick up a pen and put names to paper?
Have these women become mere statistics, their names forgotten as civil society spreadsheets and crime reports log the death of yet another woman.
Or have the deaths of women due to gender-based violence become so common that in the minds of delegates it is normal for a woman to die at the hands of a husband, boyfriend, father or brother?
Falling victim to violence
It has been a conference attended largely by women — ministers, administrators, civil society representatives and local grassroots representatives. Each day there have been more than 200 women at the event.
The 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women addressed at its core the need to improve the health of women and children. That includes the need for better access to services and treatment of women who fall victim to violence.
JENELYN KENNEDY (Papua New Guinea) . . . a 19-year-old mother murdered in Port Moresby in 2020. Image: Netani Rika
Gender-based violence is also a key focus of the talks. It is that violence — past, present and future – which results in death.
Yet three times a day for three days, on their way to grab a quick coffee or indulge in lunch, friendly conversations or bilateral dialogue, delegates have walked past the wall paying scant attention to the names of their dead Pacific sisters.
No names have been added to the wall since the initial appeal on Day One for attendees to remember the dead, to memorialise women whose lives were cut short in actions which were largely avoidable.
In Fiji, 60 percent of women and girls endure violence in their lifetime. Two of every three experience physical or sexual abuse from intimate partners and one in five have been sexually harassed in the workplace.
The trend is common throughout the region with Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomon Islands recording the highest incidence of crimes against women.
LOSANA McGOWAN (Fiji) . . . a journalist who was murdered aged 32 during a domestic argument in 2015. Image: Netani Rika
Not one asked for silence
Delegates know these figures. The statistics are, sadly, nothing new.
On the third day, delegates quibbled over the nuances of language and the appropriate terms with which to populate a report on their deliberations. Yet not one asked for a moment of silence to remember the people whose names hung accusingly on a wall outside the meeting chamber.
When delegates left the convention centre on Friday afternoon, it is unlikely they would have remembered even one of the names on the wall.
Those names and the memories of all the women who have suffered violent deaths will await a team of cleaners, strangers, who will bury the Pacific’s collective shame in the sand of Majuro Atoll.
Netani Rikais an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.
I assure the children that Ahmad is fine, that he’s coming back soon, but to live through this war, the constant displacement, the bombing and also have to fight to know where your husband is, not to hear his voice, is like a war within the war.
Horrific testimonies continue to emerge from Palestinian civilians captured by Israeli forces in Gaza and taken to Sde Teiman, Israel’s makeshift torture facility.
Our latest visual illustrates the testimony of Fadi Bakr, a law student from Gaza City, who was captured by Israeli soldiers in early January and spent more than 30 days in Sde Teiman. He was then released without charge back into Gaza to face an ongoing genocide.
By the end of May, approximately 4,000 Palestinians from Gaza, many arbitrarily rounded up from their homes, UN shelters, or while fleeing south, had spent up to three months in Sde Teiman. They were held hostage under Israel’s “Unlawful Combatants law,” where they are denied access to lawyers and their location is kept secret from rights groups and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). This form of incommunicado detention is a flagrant violation of international law and may amount to enforced disappearance. At least 36 Palestinians have died at Sde Teiman that we know of so far in the context of systemic torture and medical neglect.
The abuse of Palestinian detainees is not limited to Palestinians from Gaza. In the West Bank, Israel has arrested 9,430 Palestinians since October 7, of which 3,380 are held under administrative detention without charge or trial, and subjected to torture and inhumane and degrading treatment.
Violent attacks on three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north have reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 children, while several people were forced to flee after attackers set fire to their homes, the United Nations said.
“I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
The death toll could rise to more than 50 as PNG authorities search for missing people, Turk said.
Provincial Police Commander in East Sepik James Baugen said: “It was a very terrible thing, when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 men.”
He told the ABC that all the houses in the village were burned, and the remaining villagers were sheltering at a police station, too scared to name the perpetrators.
“Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed, there were heads chopped off,” he said.
“The men are in hiding, police have been deployed but there have been no arrests yet.”
Turk called on PNG authorities “to conduct prompt, impartial and transparent investigations and to ensure those responsible are held to account”.
Impunity for criminals Governor Allan Bird of East Sepik, where the murders occurred, said the violence in the country had been getting worse during the past 10 years.
“The lack of justice in PNG is a problem, and it is getting worse,” he told the ABC.
A front page report in PNG’s The National . . . the picture shows the devastation left from an attack at Angoram’s Tambari village, East Sepik. Image: The National
“Over the last 10 years or so, if a crime is committed, investigations hardly result in arrest. Even if they are arrested, it’s difficult to go to court and go to jail. That is giving law-breakers more courage to do the wrong thing,” he said.
Advocating for stronger police enforcement and stronger prosecution mechanisms, he said there would be a reduction in crime when people started going to jail.
He told the ABC that the police force had had a long-standing problem with command and control.
“The head of police here, for some reason, is constantly changing. It’s a three-year contract, but they keep changing every six months, 12 months,” he said.
“They removed our provincial police commander in January and there’s no replacement even today.”
Tribal warfare exacerbated Home to hundreds of tribes and languages, Papua New Guinea has a long history of tribal warfare.
But an influx of mercenaries and automatic weapons has inflamed the cycle of violence.
During the past decade, villagers swapped bows and arrows for military rifles and elections have deepened existing tribal divides.
At the same time, the country’s population has more than doubled since 1980, placing increasing strain on land and resources, and stoking deepening tribal rivalries.
Eight people were killed and 30 homes torched in fighting in the Enga province in May, while at least 26 men were killed in an ambush in the same region in February.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and permission from ABC.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show in The Hague, where the International Court of Justice ruled last Friday that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, should come to an end — “as rapidly as possible”.
Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian Territories began in 1967, has since forcefully expanded, killing and displacing thousands of Palestinians. ICJ Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam read the nonbinding legal opinion, deeming Israel’s presence in the territories illegal.
JUDGE NAWAF SALAM: [translated] “Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity. Israel also has an obligation to repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the territory.
“Israel is also under an obligation to provide full reparations for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned.”
AMY GOODMAN: The court also said other nations are obligated not to legally recognise Israel’s decades-long occupation of the territories and, “not to render aid or assistance,” to the occupation.
The 15-judge panel said Israel had no right to sovereignty of the territories and pointed to a number of Israeli actions, such as the construction and violent expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across West Bank and East Jerusalem, the forced permanent control over Palestinian lands, and discriminatory policies against Palestinians — all violations of international law.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, praised Friday’s ruling.
RIYAD AL-MALIKI: “All states and the UN are now under obligation not to recognise the legality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to do nothing to assist Israel in maintaining this illegal situation.
“They are directed by the court to bring Israel’s illegal occupation to an end.
“This means all states and the UN must immediately review their bilateral relations with Israel to ensure their policies do not aid in Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinian people, whether directly or indirectly. … “[translated] All states must now fulfill their clear obligations: no aid, no collusion, no money, no weapons, no trade, nothing with Israel.”
Democracy Now! on the ICJ Palestine ruling. Video: Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: In 2022, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution tasking the International Court of Justice with determining whether the Israeli occupation amounted to annexation. This all comes as the ICJ is also overseeing a [separate and] ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and as the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Despite mounting outcry over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed some 39,000 Palestinians — more than 16,000 of them children — Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, DC, to address a joint session of Congress this Wednesday.
For more, we go to Brussels, Belgium, where we’re joined by Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Thank you so much for being with us. Diana, first respond to this court ruling. Since it is non-binding, what is the significance of it?
DIANA BUTTU: Even though it’s nonbinding, Amy, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any weight. It simply means that Israel is going to ignore it. But what it does, is it sets out the legal precedent for other countries, and those other countries [that] do have to respect the opinion of the highest court, the highest international court.
And so, what we see with this decision is that it’s a very important and a very necessary one, because we see the court makes it clear not only that Israel’s occupation is illegal, but it also says that all countries around the world have an obligation to make sure that Israel doesn’t get away with it, that they have an obligation to make sure that this occupation comes to an end.
This is very important, because over the years, and in particular over the past 30 years, we’ve seen a shift in international diplomacy to try to push Palestinians to somehow give up their rights. And here we have the highest international court saying that that isn’t the case and that, in fact, it’s up to Israel to end its military occupation, and it’s up to the international community to make sure that Israel does that.
AMY GOODMAN: And exactly what is the extended decision when it comes to how other countries should deal with Israel at this point?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, there are some very interesting elements to this case. The first is that the court comes out very clearly and not just says that the occupation is illegal, but they also say that the settlements have to go and the settlers have to go.
They also say that Palestinians have a right to return. Now, we’re talking about over 300,000 Palestinians who were expelled in 1967, and now there are probably about 200,000 Palestinians who have never been able to return back — we’re just talking about the West Bank and Gaza Strip — because of Israel’s discriminatory measures.
The other thing that the court says is that it’s not just the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are occupied, but also Gaza, as well. And this is a very important ruling, because for so many years Israel has tried to blur the lines and make it seem as though they’re not in occupation of Gaza, which they are.
And so, what this requires is that the international community not only not recognise the occupation, but that they take into account measures or they take measures to make sure that Israel stops its occupation.
That means everything from arms embargo to sanctions on Israel — anything that is necessary that can be done to make sure that Israel’s occupation finally comes to an end. And this is where we now see that instead of the world telling Palestinians that they just have to negotiate a resolution with their occupier, with their abuser, that the ball is now in their court.
It’s up to the international community now to put sanctions on Israel to end this military occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what’s happening right now in Gaza. You’ve got the deaths at — it’s expected to be well over 39,000. But you also have this new report by Oxfam that finds Israel has used water as a weapon of war, with Gaza’s water supplies plummeting 94 percent since October 7 and the nonstop Israeli bombardment.
Even before, their access was extremely limited. And then you have this catastrophic situation where you have, because of the destruction of Gaza’s water treatment plants, forcing people to resort to sewage-contaminated water containing pathogens that lead to diarrhoea, especially deadly for kids, diseases like cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has started to vaccinate the Israeli soldiers after Palestinian health authorities said a high concentration of the poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza. It’s taking place, the vaccination programme of soldiers, across Israel in the coming weeks. The significance of this, Diana?
DIANA BUTTU: This is precisely what we’ve been talking about, which is that Israel is carrying out genocide, they know that they’re carrying out genocide, and we don’t see that anybody is stopping Israel in carrying out this genocide.
So, here now we have yet another International Court of Justice ruling. This one — the previous ones are actually binding, saying that Israel has to take all measures to stop this genocide. And yet we just simply don’t see that the world has put into place measures to sanction Israel, to isolate Israel, to punish Israel.
Instead, it gets to do whatever it wants.
But there is something very important, as well, which is that Israel somehow believes that it’s going to be immune, that somehow this polio or all of these diseases aren’t going to boomerang back into Israeli society. They will.
And the issue here now is whether we are going to see some very robust action on the part of the international community, now that we have a number of decisions from the ICJ saying to Israel that it’s got to stop and that this genocide must come to end. Israel must pay a price for continuing this genocide.
Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/2id5cpOa58
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I wanted to end by asking you about Benjamin Netanyahu coming here to the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights tweeted, “Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered.”
If you can talk about the significance of Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress?
Also, it’s expected that the person who President Joe Biden has said he is supporting, as he steps aside, to run for president, Vice-President Kamala Harris, is expected to be meeting with Netanyahu. And what you would like to see happen here?
DIANA BUTTU: You know, it’s repugnant to me to be hearing that a war criminal, a person who has flattened Gaza, who said that he was going to flatten Gaza, who has issued orders to kill more than 40,000, upwards of 190,000 Palestinians — we still don’t know the numbers — who has made life in Gaza unlivable, who’s using Palestinians as human pinballs, telling them to move from one area to the next, who’s presiding over a genocide, and unabashedly so — it’s going to be shocking to see the number of applause and rounds of applause and the standing ovations that this man is going to be receiving.
It very much signals exactly where the United States is, which is complicit in this genocide.
And Palestinians know this. If anything, he should have not had received an invitation. He should simply be getting a warrant for his arrest, not be receiving applause and accolades in Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, joining us from Brussels, Belgium.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday ordered the shutdown of all Philippine offshore gaming operators after several of the companies were allegedly involved in scams, torture and other crimes.
The online casinos, known as POGOs in the Philippines, proliferated during the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose term ended in 2022. They attracted customers from mainland China, where gambling is illegal, and other foreigners and were frequently embroiled in controversy.
“We now hear the loud shouts of the people to ban POGOs,” Marcos said during his third state of the nation speech. “Disguising as legitimate entities, their operations have ventured into illicit areas, furthest from gaming,” he told a joint session of Congress.
“Effective today, all POGOs are banned,” Marcos said. The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation has been instructed to wind down and cease operations of the online casinos by the end of the year, he said.
The gaming industry regulator has said more than 250 POGOs were suspected of operating without a license.
Marcos’ announcement came amid a Senate probe involving a suspended mayor who had alleged links to illegal gaming operators.
In February and March, authorities raided two POGOs operating in a property allegedly owned by a company of Alice Guo, mayor of a town in Bamban, Tarlac province.
Documents that senators presented during their investigation alleged that Guo is a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who reportedly faked her identity as a Filipino.
Thousands of protesters from various groups and sectors air their grievances ahead of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s third State of the Nation Address in suburban Quezon City north of metro Manila, July 22, 2024. (Jojo Riñoza/BenarNews)
Guo’s case has surfaced against the backdrop of heightened tensions between Manila and Beijing in their maritime dispute in the South China Sea.
The Philippines and China are locked in a years-long dispute over the resource-rich waterway. Other countries including Vietnam, Brunei, and Malaysia have overlapping claims to the waters. Taiwan is also a claimant.
Various Philippine security officials had raised concerns that Beijing could be using illegal gaming operations to stir up trouble in the Southeast Asian country.
Marcos has blamed the pro-China stance of the Duterte administration for emboldening Beijing to be more assertive in the South China Sea.
Last month, the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines urged Manila to ban the online casino operators. It said Beijing “prohibits all forms of gambling.”
“POGO is detrimental to both Philippine and Chinese interests and images as well as China-Philippines relations,” the embassy said in a statement.
On July 1, officials from Manila and Beijing agreed to boost joint effort against transnational crimes, including illegal activities involving POGOs.
Manila’s fight in the South China Sea
In his speech, Marcos also said that Manila would not back down in a territorial dispute with Beijing, shortly after both sides issued conflicting statements over resupply missions to disputed outposts in the South China Sea.
“The Philippines cannot yield,” he said. Manila will continue to assert its rights through a “fair and pacific way.”
The president said the country continues to strengthen its “defensive posture, both through developing self-reliance and through partnerships with like-minded states.”
Early this month, the Philippines and Japan signed a historic Reciprocal Access Agreement, which allows the deployment of troops on each other’s soil.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said on Monday that the Philippines is eyeing similar defense pacts with France, Canada, and New Zealand. They will allow greater interoperability among Manila’s partners, he said.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (center) delivers his third SONA as Senate President Francis Escudero (left) and House Speaker Martin Romualdez (right) listen, July 22, 2024. (Gerard Carreon/BenarNews)
“The West Philippine Sea is not just a figment of our imagination. This is ours,” Marcos said in his speech. “And this will remain ours until the flames of our beloved country, the Philippines, continue to burn brightly.”
Manila refers to territories in the South China Sea within its exclusive economic zone as the West Philippine Sea.
On Monday, a diplomatic tit-for-tat between Manila and Beijing erupted hours before Marcos’ speech in Congress.
On Sunday, Manila’s Department of Foreign Affairs announced that the two countries reached a “provisional agreement” on the Philippines’ resupply missions to a military outpost in the Second Thomas (Ayungin) Shoal.
It did not provide any further details.
But on Monday, China’s foreign ministry imposed restrictions and demanded that the Philippines remove BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era ship deliberately grounded in the shoal in 1999 in response to China’s earlier occupation of nearby Mischief Reef.
“China is willing to allow it in a humanitarian spirit if the Philippines informs China in advance and after on-site verification is conducted. China will monitor the entire resupply process,” a ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
Shortly after, DFA spokesperson Teresita Daza denied such conditions in the deal.
Jojo Riñoza and Gerard Carreon contributed to this report from Manila.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Camille Elemia for BenarNews.
Papua New Guinea’s Chuave District Development Authority is condemning an attack on a priest and his team in Chimbu province.
Father Ryszard Wajda (SVD), three nurses, two doctors from Mingende hospital, and two Catholic education officers returned on a four-day foot patrol to Kiari in Nomane sub-district when they were attacked at Dulai village by villagers from Nomane.
The few villagers who fixed a damaged section of the Nomane feeder road demanded K1000 (NZ$425) from Father Wajda and his team and attacked them after alleging that they had missed out on disaster money given by Prime Minister James Marape to the province.
Father Wajda, who is the parish priest of Wangoi in Chuave district, said that his team gave K200 (NZ$85) but the Dulai villagers refused this.
“The villagers directed violent abusive language to me and more to my team members,” he said.
He said that one of the education officers was punched several times, and others were violently pulled out of my parish vehicle.
“I stayed in the car, and nobody touched me physically,” he said.
Teacher intervened
Father Wajda said that they were allowed to travel after a teacher from the area intervened and assured the villagers that he would pay K1000 when he received his fortnightly pay.
He said that he had helped the local teacher last Friday to pay K1000 demanded by the villagers.
“It took us one day to walk and cross Waghi to visit my new Catholic community in remote Kiari at their request and spend four days with them addressing different issues,” he said.
Father Wajda said the nurses and doctors treated 200 patients during the three days working from 8am-11am every morning. He said the two education officers inspected the education institution.
“It took us 12 hours to walk back to Dulai and another village a few kilometres further up when my parish vehicle waited and picked us up,” he said.
He said that that the attack was unfortunate and local community leaders were negotiated fr a peace reconciliation.
Chief executive officer Francis Aiwa of Chuave District Development Authority (CDDA) said the attack on Father Wajda’s group was “uncalled for”.
He said that the perpetrators must be arrested and put behind bars.
The Catholic Church played an important role in the lives of everyone and such attack and killing of a priest are uncalled for and must not be repeated, Aiwa said.
Republished from the Post-Courier with permission.
Family members keep silent on the issue of violence in Fiji and individuals continue to be the victims, according to Jonathan Veitch, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative to the South Pacific.
While raising his concern on the issue at Nasinu Gospel Primary School on Friday, he said 83 percent of children in Fiji had reported some level of violence, either in their family or in school over the past six months.
“This 83 percent rate is far too high, and it’s not acceptable,” he said.
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”
Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victim to deal with the trauma.
Speaking during a student-led press conference at Nasinu Gospel Primary School, Veitch expressed his concern about the alarming rate of violence against women and children in Fiji, whether physical or sexual.
“You (Fiji) do have high rates of violence against children,” Veitch said.
“This (83 percent rate) is far too high, and it’s not acceptable.
‘Curtain of silence’
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”
He said it was common in Fiji for family members to keep silent on the issue of violence while individuals continued to be victimised.
“If that particular person has to be stopped, we have to deal with it in our village.
“So, it’s not just UNICEF and the Government; it’s also the village itself.”
Veitch said significant pillars of communities must be involved in key conversations.
“We really need to talk about it in our churches on Sundays; we have to have an honest conversation about it.
“These kids shouldn’t be hurt; they shouldn’t be punished physically.”
Multifaceted approach
He said the issue should be dealt with through a multifaceted approach.
Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell expressed similar concerns and called for a change in norms.
“It requires government leadership and good laws,” she said.
“It requires the government to come together and say that this is a priority where violence against children is unacceptable.”
She said conversations regarding the matter needed to focus on changing the norms of what was acceptable and unacceptable in a community.
“A lot of times this issue is kept in the dark and not talked about, and I think it’s very important to have those conversations.”
She said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victims to deal with the trauma.
She added that society played a role in condemning violence against women and ensuring they were safe in their homes and in their communities.
Russell said while most cases were directed at men, there was a need to train the mindset of young boys to change their perspective of using violence as a solving mechanism.
Sainimili Magimagiis a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
Donald Trump narrowly avoided an assassin’s bullet this past weekend, and both Republicans and Democrats are calling for unity and healing in the wake of the event. But those words haven’t swayed many people, so what is the political fallout from all of this? Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a […]
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania was captured by several photographers who were standing at the stage before the shooting commenced.
The most widely circulated photograph of this event was taken by Evan Vucci, a Pulitzer Prize winning war photographer known for his coverage of protests following George Floyd’s murder.
A number of World Press Photograph awards have been given to photographers who have covered an assassination.
In this vein, Vucci’s image can also be regarded as already iconic, a photograph that perhaps too will win awards for its content, use of colour and framing — and will become an important piece of how we remember this moment in history.
Social media analysis of the image Viewers of Vucci’s photograph have taken to social media to break down the composition of the image, including how iconic motifs such as the American flag and Trump’s raised fist are brought together in the frame according to laws of photographic composition, such as the rule of thirds.
Such elements are believed to contribute to the photograph’s potency.
To understand exactly what it is that makes this such a powerful image, there are several elements we can parse.
Compositional acuity In this photograph, Vucci is looking up with his camera. He makes Trump appear elevated as the central figure surrounded by suited Secret Service agents who shield his body. The agents form a triangular composition that places Trump at the vertex, slightly to the left of a raised American flag in the sky.
On the immediate right of Trump, an agent looks directly at Vucci’s lens with eyes concealed by dark glasses. The agent draws us into the image, he looks back at us, he sees the photographer and therefore, he seems to see us: he mirrors our gaze at the photograph.
This figure is central, he leads our gaze to Trump’s raised fist.
Another point of note is that there are strong colour elements in this image that deceptively serve to pull it together as a photograph.
Set against a blue sky, everything else in the image is red, white and navy blue. The trickles of blood falling down Trump’s face are echoed in the red stripes of the American flag which aligns with the republican red of the podium in the lower left quadrant of the image.
We might not see these elements initially, but they demonstrate how certain photographic conventions contribute to Vucci’s own ways of seeing and composing that align with photojournalism as a discipline.
A photographic way of seeing In interviews, Vucci has referred to the importance of retaining a sense of photographic composure in being able to attain “the shot”, of being sure to cover the situation from numerous angles, including capturing the scene with the right composition and light.
For Vucci, all of this was about “doing the job” of the photographer.
Vucci’s statements are consistent with what most photographers would regard as a photographic way of seeing. This means being attuned to the way composition, light, timing and subject matter come together in the frame in perfect unity when photographing: it means getting the “right” shot.
For Susan Sontag, this photographic way of seeing also corresponded to the relationship between shooting and photographing, a relationship she saw as analogous.
Photography and guns are arguably weapons, with photography and photographic ways of seeing and representing the world able to be weaponised to change public perception.
Writing history with photographs As a photographic way of seeing, there are familiar resonances in Vucci’s photograph to other iconic images of American history.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
Taken by Joe Rosenthal, it won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and has come to be regarded in the United States as one of the most recognizable images of World War II. https://t.co/Nv5HjF6XMqpic.twitter.com/AGxmQqonM6
Take for instance, the photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal, The Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945) during the Pacific War. In the photograph, four marines are clustered together to raise and plant the American flag, their bodies form a pyramid structure in the lower central half of the frame.
This photograph is also represented as a war monument in Virginia for marines who have served America.
The visual echoes between the Rosenthal and Vucci images are strong. They also demonstrate how photographic ways of seeing stretch beyond the compositional. It leads to another photographic way of seeing, which means viewing the world and the events that take place in it as photographs, or constructing history as though it were a photograph.
Fictions and post-truth The inherent paradox within “photographic seeing” is that no single person can be in all places at once, nor predict what is going to happen before reality can be transcribed as a photograph.
In Vucci’s photograph, we are given the illusion that this photograph captures “the moment” or “a shot”. Yet it doesn’t capture the moment of the shooting, but its immediate aftermath. The photograph captures Trump’s media acuity and swift, responsive performance to the attempted assassination, standing to rise with his fist in the air.
As an Emeritus Professor at UC and the owner of a consulting company that does research, offers online modules and provides expert evidence in the areas of family and sexual violence (and unconscious biases). From 2001 to 2018 as a Law School academic, I taught the subjects Women and the Law,Employment Discrimination and the Law and Family Law while publishing more than 20 academic books and reports that focus on women and the law (and the intersections with violence against women or VAW).
This work has been acknowledged with a number of awards including an ALTC Excellence Award in Teaching in 2008, being named the Australian of the Year for the ACT in 2010 and appointment as a Member of the Order of Australia the same year.
In a nutshell, what’s your new book Dancing with Demons about?
The cover of ‘Dancing with Demons.’
This is my first work of fiction.
It has been described as an idiosyncratic psychological novel. It is pitched particularly to those who enjoy a book that tackles heavy subjects with a light touch and novel approach.
It’s about the life and times of ‘Triple F,’ a North American Jewish woman who migrates to Australia with the legacies of family violence and dysfunction and sexual abuse. Triple F is the moniker for Daddy’s Princess Franny, the precocious survivor of family violence and sexual abuse; then Frankie, whose extended adolescence is spent numbing trauma’s toxic effects in unhealthy ways such as starvation and substance abuse that lead to the salvation of twelve-step programs; and finally, Francine for whom the transformative power of therapy teaches her to accept and dance with her demons.
The story is told largely through an intriguing and at times humorous line-up of people who have been a part of Triple F’s life and endure as an inner presence. These include a substantial cohort of mental health practitioners, Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholism and Codependency Anonymous members, romantic partners, her PGA (Personal Guardian Angel), parents Henry and Miriam, sister Sandy, brother Jake and her four children.
Do you consider this to be a feminist book? If yes, why?
Definitely. It is written by me – a feminist. And the reader sees how feminism is born, develops and flourishes for Triple F despite, or perhaps because of, her upbringing in a family where the patriarch, Henry, was King.
Why have you included the themes of family violence and sexual abuse?
Although not a memoir, Dancing with Demons does draw extensively on my life experiences and academic expertise with family and domestic violence, sexual violence, its effects and recovering pathways.
Who are your main characters? Why is the therapist-patient narrative so important in this work?
The three main characters are the child Franny, teenager and young adult Frankie and Francine who migrates to Australia in her late 20s.
As I write in the book, although most of this story takes place during Franny and Frankie’s time, Francine, the ‘work in progress’, is seen and heard as she looks at her past selves and through the reflections of those who witness the post-trauma awakening and recovering years in the southern hemisphere.
Patricia Easteal. Picture: Supplied
The therapist-patient narrative is indeed crucial to the story. As stated in a Literary Titan review: “The dynamic between Francine and her therapist, Dr. Jaye, is a key element in the narrative, showcasing the therapeutic process as a means of self-reflection and empowerment. Dr. Jaye’s role in Francine’s story emphasizes the importance of taking ownership of one’s healing journey, a central theme in Dancing with Demons.”
What are you hoping your readers will take away about abuse, resilience, trauma, and healing?
The same reviewer accurately captured the essence of what I hope readers take away: “Easteal’s work is a profound exploration of the complexities of surviving trauma, particularly in contexts rife with abuse, addiction, and violence… She portrays recovery as a multifaceted journey, one that requires the protagonist to confront and reconcile with deep-seated inner turmoil. Even as Francine makes strides in her healing process, Easteal realistically presents the lasting impacts of her past, highlighting that growth often involves grappling with ingrained behaviors and responses shaped by prior adversities.”
You’ve mixed up genres in this work. Why have you done that?
Writing with different literary styles wasn’t a conscious decision but an organic process.
The story is told by those who have passed through Triple F’s life and continue to live rent-free in her head. As some of these cerebral residents – such as husband #3 Richard – are academics, the novel at times does have a scholarly tone. In other chapters though, the 12 step program members and the mental health practitioners who play a major role in Triple F’s recovering journey, conjure up a self-help ‘feel’ to the book. And readers may find that in parts of Dancing with Demons, they feel as though they’re in a theatre.
By taking the reader within the mind of a person experiencing and recovering from traumas and by its original writing style, Dancing with Demons offers fresh and original insights into the violence against women space.
Is there anything else you want to say?
As an academic, author and advocate I have been dedicated to turning on mental light bulbs: helping people to understand their unconscious biases and how these affect the legal and community response to VAW. In Dancing With Demons, I also want to turn on switches and, with humour and tears, foster more understanding.
Due to the growing neoliberal antipathy towards the First Amendment American poetry finds itself in a conundrum, as all who submit their work to literary reviews are straitjacketed by the same censorship constraints as those who write for the mainstream press. Consequently, those who regularly contribute to these publications have long since abandoned any effort at saying something meaningful about the world in which we live. As poetry is as old as humanity and cannot be extinguished without the destruction of human life, the art form has found new ways to survive, and to a somewhat unusual and albeit limited extent, this void has been filled by rappers.
Implausibly, this oldest of art forms has devolved into a strange place where it sees itself largely divided between MFAs with degrees from reputable schools that compete for a minuscule number of places in literary reviews which hardly anyone reads and which publish poetry which is either unintelligible or anchored in neoliberal cult ideology, and rappers who often have something to say (granted, not always something moral), yet typically lack the education with which to express themselves in a nuanced and intellectually substantive manner.
Undoubtedly, there are notable exceptions to this, such as Mike Shinoda (“Kenji”), Meth U (“Mensch Bleibt Mensch”), and Sage Francis (“Conspiracy to Riot,” “Makeshift Patriot,” and “Slow Down Gandhi”), but in general, rappers are illiterate poets. This cataclysmic divide between the soulless literate and the passionate illiterate is deeply emblematic of the alienation, dehumanization, and uniquely destructive powers of neoliberalism.
Let’s begin our discussion of this peculiar poetic form with Lil’ Kim’s “Lighters up,” which draws the listener into the violent underbelly of inner city Brooklyn, specifically in this case Bedford–Stuyvesant, also known to New Yorkers as Bed–Stuy. (Difficult slang words have been translated and are bracketed). The song opens by immediately drawing the listener into a harrowing, tribal, and lawless world:
I come from Bed-Stuy, niggas either do or they gon’ die
Gotta keep the ratchet close by
Someone murdered, nobody seen, nobody heard it
Just another funeral service
Niggas will get at you, come through shinin’ they yap [rob] you
In broad day light kidnap you
Feds get clapped [shot] too, police stay on us like tattoos
Niggas only grind cause we have to
Money is power, sling crack, weed and powder
Fiends [drug addicts] come through every hour
S’all about that dollar and we nuh deal with cowards
Weak lambs get devoured by the lion
In the concrete jungle, the strong stand and rumble
The weak fold and crumble, it’s the land of trouble.
The reference to murders where no one is willing to testify or talk to the police lest they be deemed a “snitch” is indicative of a breakdown in the rule of law, allowing violent criminals to commit serious crimes unimpeded. The authorities also frequently look the other way in the face of black on black violence, which further endangers the peaceful residents of these communities. This de facto empowerment of nefarious inner city elements by the ruling establishment is not unrelated to what Washington has long done to debase and humiliate people in foreign countries.
“Lighters up” raises a motif, which rappers are seldom intellectually conscious of but which is present in virtually all music of this genre, which is the tragedy of post-New Deal and post-civil rights America, a deindustrialized and ghettoized wasteland, where in order to maintain a decent standard of living Americans are increasingly coerced into becoming yes-men for corporations, and where a once robust middle class has been reduced to a distant memory.
Lil’ Kim portrays the police as oppressors but also as victims who can likewise be assaulted without warning. “Lighters up” emphasizes the problems of substance abuse, gambling, and prostitution that plague, not only inner city Brooklyn, but ghettos across the country:
Some are boostin [boasting] 12 year olds prostitutin’
Hitmen hired for execution there’s no solution
Niggas still piss in the hallways
Fiends get high in ’em all day
Another motif in “Lighters up,” and which is common in many rap songs such as Eminem’s “Like Toy Soldiers,” is how tribalism, illiteracy, and the destruction of the middle class have given birth to a new Wild West mired in systemic violence and bloody vendettas:
For a pound leave your face on the wall
R.I.P in memory of
Never show thy enemies love
Is this not the same attitude that Biden has towards Putin? And is NATO not a gang, albeit one armed with F-35s, Black Hawk helicopters, and nuclear weapons? If Russia followed suit with the same infantile and thuggish behavior would we even be sitting here having this conversation?
Furthermore, what is the motivation for the oligarchy to rein in this culture of gang wars when it serves the convenient purpose of deflecting anger and rage away from the ruling establishment and on to one’s fellow workers and countrymen?
This hellscape devoid of security, education, and lawful employment is inextricably linked with a society that has been hijacked by corporations which are really nothing more than organized crime syndicates, and of which the inner city gangs are mere minnows in comparison. Her line that “Niggas only grind cause we have to” acknowledges the bleak reality that in the hyper-privatized “concrete jungle” the poor are forced to do everything in their power to survive. The final lines of the introduction (“S’all about that dollar and we nuh deal with cowards…”) could be emblazoned over the entrance to the headquarters of such august and civic-minded institutions as the CIA, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin or Pfizer. Undoubtedly, many inner city drug dealers are conscious of the fact that they are preying on their own people but know of no other way to earn a living.
Just as America is endowed with a plethora of literate and illiterate poets, there is likewise no shortage of literate and illiterate drug dealers, with the former being permitted to don a white coat, carry a stethoscope, and create drug addicts with impunity.
While addressing the systemic poverty in Jamaica, Junior Gong’s “Welcome to Jamrock” bemoans a similar scenario where youths trapped in poverty are chewed up by an avaricious machine devoid of education, jobs, the rule of law, and where elections are a rigged charade:
Welcome to Jamdown
Poor people a dead at random
Political violence, can’t done
Bare ghost and Phantom
The youth dem get blind by stardom
Now the king of kings ah call
Old man to pickney, so wave unno hand if you with me
To see the sufferation sick me
Dem suit nuh fit me
To win election dem trick we
At the end of the music video Damian Marley (the youngest son of Bob Marley) departs Jamrock in his BMW revealing that he too is enslaved to consumerism and the same economic system which places profits and possessions over human lives.
Tupac Shakur’s touching “Dear Mama” acknowledges that his own mother struggled with a crack addiction, but the song humanizes her and reminds the listener that drug addicts are suffering human beings in need of compassion:
And even as a crack fiend, Mama
You always was a black queen, Mama
I finally understand
For a woman, it ain’t easy tryin’ to raise a man
You always was committed
A poor single mother on welfare, tell me how you did it
There’s no way I can pay you back
But the plan is to show you that I understand
You are appreciated
Wu-Tang Clan, whose members hail from Staten Island and Brooklyn, created the hip-hop song “C.R.E.A.M.,” which stands for “cash rules everything around me,” and which relentlessly and almost hypnotically drives home the stark reality of America’s money-obsessed culture where the ghetto serves as a microcosm to a wider America in the throes of unfettered capitalism. Here the gangsters don Timberland boots and baggy pants rather than Brooks Brothers suits and Allen Edmonds shoes, and unlike their more bourgeois counterparts, have had the misfortune of being born into a prison whose walls are forged not out of concrete but with segregation, illiteracy, an illicit black market economy and virtually nonexistent checks and balances. Inspectah Deck gives a glimpse in “C.R.E.A.M.” of the horrors he experienced growing up in a city where the cards are stacked against the descendants of slavery, and even minors are frequently devoured by the insatiable prison beast:
“I went to jail at the age of fifteen
A young buck sellin’ drugs and such, who never had much
Tryin’ to get a clutch at what I could not—
The court played me short, now I face incarceration
Pacin’, goin’ upstate’s my destination
Handcuffed in the back of a bus, forty of us
Life as a shorty shouldn’t be so rough
But as the world turned, I learned life is hell
Livin’ in the world no different from a cell”
In Nas’ “N.Y. State of Mind” the rapper describes life in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as “each block is like a maze full of black rats trapped.” However, instead of supporting a progressive position rooted in unionization, checks and balances, and good public health care and education for all Americans, he laments, albeit in his inimitable and ironic way, that he is unable to engage in gangsterism in a more respectable and law-abiding fashion:
I dream I can sit back
And lamp [relax] like Capone, with drug scripts sewn
Or the legal luxury life, rings flooded with stones, homes
I got so many rhymes, I don’t think I’m too sane
Life is parallel to Hell, but I must maintain
And be prosperous, though we live dangerous
Cops could just arrest me, blamin’ us; we’re held like hostages
As is invariably the case with the most talented rappers, Nas exhibits real poetic gifts such as his masterful line from “N.Y. State of Mind” that, “I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death.” One can only imagine what he could have accomplished had he gotten a good education.
While it is easy for “educated Americans” (a euphemism for morons with expensive degrees) to thumb their nose at the gangsters of the ghetto, the latter are in fact imitating the behavior of their “successful” countrymen. Indeed, do we not have countless doctors, professors, journalists, politicians, Wall Street jihadists, armaments industry executives, intelligence agents, career officers in the military, lawyers, employees of the prison-industrial complex and the medical-industrial complex, etc., that will do literally anything for money?
The scourge of bullying in America’s public schools is the subject of Eminem and Lil Wayne’s “No Love,” a problem spawned by the demise of social democracy and a post-apocalyptic wasteland whose denizens can increasingly be broken down between the tormented and the tormentor. As with “N.Y. State of Mind,” “No Love” has lines of striking poetry:
I’m rollin’ Sweets, I’m smokin’ sour
Married to the game, but she broke her vows
That’s why my bars are full of broken bottles
And my nightstands are full of open Bibles
A disturbing element to “No Love” is the clarion call, not merely for the right to self-defense, but for a revenge rooted in extreme forms of violence:
Money outweighin’ problems on a triple beam
I’m stickin’ to the script, you niggas skippin’ scenes
Uh, be good or be good at it
Fuckin’ right, I got my gun, semi-Cartermatic [semi-automatic]….
I’m high as a bitch, up, up and away, man, I’ll come down in a couple of days
Okay, you want me up in the cage? Then I’ll come out in beast mode
I got this world stuck in the safe, combination is the G code
It’s Weezy, motherfucker, Blood gang, and I’m in bleed mode
All about my dough, but I don’t even check the peephole
So you can keep knockin’, but won’t knock me down
No love lost, no love found
How many bullied kids have watched this music video (which has over 675 million views) and been inculcated with this very mentality? What does it do to a child’s psyche when all they see around them are sadistic predators and defenseless prey – those who are “up in the cage?” Is it surprising that with so many humiliated people and a country that has more guns than human beings that a certain percentage will seek to “come out in beast mode?” And what could be more tragically American than the notion that life without money is a living death, a Tartarean chasm, and that camaraderie and solidarity are but an elusive ephemeral dream?
In order to understand the demonic nature of the American ruling establishment one must acknowledge the horrors unleashed on Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, etc., but it is also necessary to understand the terrible suffering inflicted on the weakest and most vulnerable who reside within the Stygian bowels of empire. One example of this is the many American children who grow up in poverty, in broken homes and communities, and who are exposed to egregious acts of violence at an early age, something Lil Wayne hauntingly intimates in “No Love:”
Yeah, my life a bitch, but you know nothing ’bout her
Been to hell and back, I can show you vouchers
Harlem’s Immortal Technique unnerved the hip-hop world in 2001 with his controversial “Dance with the Devil,” a gruesome tale of an alienated and ambitious hoodlum whose brain has been warped by materialism and the egregious inequality of “the new economy,” who yearns to join a gang, yet is told he must participate in a sexual assault of a random woman at night as an initiation rite. Upon seeing this through, he ends up inadvertently raping his own mother:
I once knew a nigga whose real name was William
His primary concern was makin’ a million
Bein’ the illest [toughest] hustler that the world ever seen
He used to fuck movie stars and sniff coke in his dreams
A corrupted young mind at the age of 13
Once the protagonist realizes what he has done he commits suicide by jumping off the roof where the assault has taken place:
And so he jumped off the roof and died with no soul
They say death takes you to a better place, but I doubt it”
Unlike in Crime and Punishment, the crime is too heinous. There can be no absolution.
In “Empire State Of Mind” Jay-Z raps about the magic, mystery, and awesome power of New York City, but also cautions his listeners regarding the false gods of materialism and celebrity worship which have slain countless souls:
Lights is blinding, girls need blinders
Or they could step out of bounds quick, the side lines is
Lined with casualties who sip the life casually
Then gradually become worse—don’t bite the apple Eve
Caught up in the in-crowd, now you’re in-style
Into the winter gets cold, en vogue with your skin out
City of sin is a pity on a whim
Good girls gone bad, the city’s filled with them
Mami took a bus trip, now she got her bust out
Everybody ride her, just like a bus route
‘Hail Mary’ to the city, you’re a virgin
And Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church end
Came here for school, graduated to the high life
Ball players, rap stars, addicted to the limelight
As is extremely common in rap music, Jay-Z holds it to be inevitable that we live in a ruthless Darwinian world where one is either rich or poor, and where it is only natural that New Yorkers are perpetually locked in a brutal war of all against all:
Eight million stories, out there in the naked
City is a pity, half of y’all won’t make it
In a country where public health and education lie in ruins, and millions of lives have been destroyed due to mass unemployment, a catastrophic substance abuse epidemic, unprecedented forms of sectarianism, mass incarceration, and trillions of dollars of household debt Jay-Z boasts a net worth of 2.5 billion USD. Is this “democracy?”
Undoubtedly, there is a lot of shameful rap music that glorifies banditry, conspicuous consumption, anti-intellectualism, black nationalism and misogyny. However, unlike literary review poets who have no other ambition than to see their gibberish in print and acquire tenure, good rappers have something to say, yet due to a lack of education typically struggle to see serious socio-economic problems through any prism other than that of race and tribalism. However, unlike their insipid brethren who speak in the abstruse language of academia and extreme specialization, rappers frequently “fight the power” (to quote Public Enemy), and in so doing, connect with the masses. Alas, the poet is cleft in twain.
Dubious erudition aside, these passages demonstrate that gifted rappers can be poets and prophets in their own right; and like Tiresias, poets don’t always tell us what we’d like to hear. Indeed, in their own way they are trying to alert us to the terrible abyss which we are frenetically galloping towards. It would be wise to heed their warnings.
According to CCTV’s latest investigative report, the US troops in Syria have been smuggling local wheat crops out of Syria, using more than 10 trucks every day. To cover the smuggling activity, local checkpoints would stop all passers-by and check their phones to delete any related photos. What’s your comment?
Mao Ning: Once a wheat exporter, Syria now finds around 55 percent of its population facing food insecurity. The US is undeniably responsible for this. The US says it’s there to fight terrorism, but the reality says it’s there to plunder. The US keeps emphasizing human rights, but the reality abounds with US violations of people’s rights to subsistence and life in other countries. The US brands itself as a guardian of democracy, freedom and prosperity, but the reality shows its true identity as a manufacturer of humanitarian crises.
The US needs to earnestly respect Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, immediately end its illegal military occupation in Syria, stop plundering Syria’s resources, and take concrete actions to make up for the damages done to the Syrian people.
Let’s talk about that Black Mirror episode we all witnessed on Thursday known as CNN’s debate featuring a prolific liar, indicted criminal, and serial rapist, without any fact-checkers save for one overworked 81-year old man with the busiest job in the world. What were your thoughts on the debate? Leave a comment below or email us at GaslitNation@gmail.com!
To our subscribers at the Democracy Defender ($10/month) and higher, get your questions in by July 11th for our next Q&A bonus show, publishing Saturday July 13th. And be sure to tune into our next live-taping featuring cult expert Dr. Janja Lalich, author of the books Take Back Your Life and Bounded Choice. She is the founder of the nonprofit, the Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion. To get your ticket to the live-taping, be sure to subscribe at the Truth-teller level or higher. Thank you to everyone who supports the show!
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Cult Expert Dr. Janja Lalich Live-Taping – July 11 8pm ET
July 15th kicks off the Republican National Convention/Hitler rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. To help us cope with the mainstream media, especially the New York Times, continuing to normalize Trump and his MAGA cult, we’re producing a live taping with cult expert Dr. Janja Lalich. Bring your questions about how to navitage this perilous time of rampant disinformation and manipulation, learn the signs of cult grooming, and how to help loved ones who have fallen victim. This will be Dr. Lalich’s second time on the show. You can listen to the interview with her from April 2022 here.
In the Shadow of Stalin Book Launch – September 4 7pm ET
Gaslit Nation will host a live taping at a book launch in New York City for In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of Mr. Jones. It includes scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut of the film, or it would have been three hours long! The evening will include a special meet-up just for Patreon supporters. We look forward to sharing more details as we get closer. If you want a book event/live taping of Gaslit Nation in your town or city, let us know!
Indivisible x Gaslit Nation Phonebank Party! – July 18 at 7pm ET
Open to all, Gaslit Nation and Indivisible are kicking things off early this year, really early! When there’s such a thing as Project 2025, there’s no time to waste. Come join us for our first phone bank party of the season, as we make calls to our fellow citizens in Republican hostage states, to refuse to abandon those on the frontlines of American authoritarianism, and to plant seeds of change. We’re going in!
Decision could result in retailers being prosecuted if they import goods made through forced labour, campaigners say
The UK National Crime Agency’s decision not to launch an investigation into the importation of cotton products manufactured by forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province was unlawful, the court of appeal has found.
Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), which brought the action, said Thursday’s decision was a landmark win that could lead to high street retailers being prosecuted under the Proceeds of Crime Act (Poca) if they import goods made through forced labour.
Decision could result in retailers being prosecuted if they import goods made through forced labour, campaigners say
The UK National Crime Agency’s decision not to launch an investigation into the importation of cotton products manufactured by forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province was unlawful, the court of appeal has found.
Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), which brought the action, said Thursday’s decision was a landmark win that could lead to high street retailers being prosecuted under the Proceeds of Crime Act (Poca) if they import goods made through forced labour.
Fresh violence has erupted in several parts of New Caledonia over the past three days, with more burning and destruction and at least one death connected to unrest.
The amendment, which is now suspended, purported to change voter eligibility in New Caledonia’s local elections by opening the vote to French citizens having resided there for an uninterrupted ten years.
French security forces vehicle burnt down in the south of Dumbéa, New Caledonia, yesterday. Image: NC la 1ère/RNZ
The pro-independence movement strongly opposed this change, saying it would marginalise the indigenous Kanak vote.
Because of the dissolution of the French National Assembly (Lower House) in view of a snap general election (due to be held on June 30 and 7 July 7), the Constitutional Bill however did not conclude its legislative path due to the inability of the French Congress (a joint sitting of both Upper and Lower Houses) to convene for a final vote on the controversial text.
At the weekend, of the 11 CCAT officials who were heard by investigating judges after their arrest on June 19, seven — including CCAT leader Christian Téin– were indicted and later transferred to several prisons to serve their pre-trial period in mainland France.
Since then, roadblocks and clashes with security forces have regained intensity in the capital Nouméa and its surroundings, as well as New Caledonia’s outer islands of Îles des Pins, Lifou and Maré, forcing domestic flights to be severely disrupted.
In Maré, a group of rioters attempted to storm the building housing the local gendarmerie.
In Dumbéa, a small town north of Nouméa, the municipal police headquarters and a primary school were burnt down.
Other clashes between French security forces and pro-independence rioters took place in Bourail, on the west coast of the main island.
Several other fires have been extinguished by local firefighters, especially in the Nouméa neighbourhoods of Magenta and the industrial zone of Ducos, French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc told the media on Monday.
Fire-fighters and their vehicles were targeted by rioters yesterday. Image: Union des Pompiers Calédoniens/FB/RNZ
But on many occasions firefighters and their vehicles were targeted by rioters.
Many schools that were preparing to reopen on Monday after six weeks of unrest have also remained closed.
More roadblocks were erected by rioters on the main highway linking Nouméa to its international airport of La Tontouta, hampering international air traffic and forcing the reactivation of air transfers from domestic Nouméa-Magenta airport.
In the face of the upsurge in violence, a dusk-to-dawn curfew has been maintained and the possession, sale and transportation of firearms, ammunition and alcohol, remain banned until further notice.
The fresh unrest has also caused at least one death in the past two days: a 23-year-old man died of “respiratory distress” in Nouméa’s Kaméré neighbourhood because emergency services arrived too late, due to roadblocks.
Another fatality was reported on Monday in Dumbéa, where a motorist died after attempting to use the express road on the wrong side and hit an oncoming vehicle coming from the opposite direction.
Le Franc said just for yesterday, June 24, a total of 38 people had been arrested by police and gendarmes.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
National politicians and pastors are fuelling the tribal fighting in Papua New Guinea by supplying guns and ammunition, says Enga’s Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka.
Tsaka’s brother was killed a fortnight ago when a tribe on a war raid passed through his clan.
“[My brother] was at home with his wife and kids and these people were trying to go to another village, and because he had crossed paths with them they just opened fire,” he said.
Enga has seen consistent tribal violence since the 2022 national elections in the Kompiam-Ambum district. In May last year — as well as deaths due to tribal conflict — homes, churches and business were burnt to the ground.
Subsequently, PNG’s lawmakers discussed the issue of gun violence in Parliament with both sides of the House agreeing that the issue is serious.
“National politicians are involved; businessmen are involved; educated people, lawyers, accountants, pastors, well-to-do people, people that should be ambassadors for peace and change,” Tsaka said.
Tsaka said an M16 or AR-15 rifle retails for a minimum of K$30,000 (US$7710) while a round costs about K$100 (US$25).
“The ordinary person cannot afford that,” he said.
“These conflicts and wars are financed by well-to-do people with the resources.
“We need to look at changing law and policy to go after those that finance and profit from this conflict, instead of just trying to arrest or hold responsible the small persons in the village with a rifle that is causing death and destruction.
“Until and unless we go after these big wigs, this unfortunate situation that we have in the province will continue to be what it is.”
Tsaka said addressing wrongs, in ways such as tribal fighting, was “ingrained in our DNA”.
Motivation for peace
After Tsaka’s brother died, he asked his clan not to retaliate and told his village to let the rule of law take its course instead.
He said the cultural expectation for retaliation was there but his clan respected him as a leader.
He hopes others in authority will use his brother’s death as motivation for peace.
“If the other leaders did the same to their villages in the communities, we wouldn’t have this violence; we wouldn’t have all these killings and destruction.
“We need to realise that law and order and peace is a necessary prerequisite to development.
“If we don’t have peace, we can’t have school kids going to school; you can’t have hospitals; you can’t have roads; you can’t have free movement of people and goods and services.”
Tsaka said education was needed to change perceptions around tribal fighting.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
As practically everyone on planet Earth must now know, Donald Trump has become the first former US president to be convicted of felonies after leaving office. The response to the outcome of the trial from Democrats and Republicans has been predictably binary. Democrats have been reveling in the outcome and seem to think that the trial’s conclusion has delivered a final blow to Trump’s credibility and, in turn, his chances of winning the upcoming election. Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, are largely condemning the trial as politically motivated “lawfare” waged by the “radical left” in order to derail Trump’s chances of winning the upcoming election, which might end up galvanizing his base.
For those of us on the independent left, however, focusing on whether Trump is guilty in this case or whether the trial was politically motivated misses a much bigger point. Either way, the crimes he has been convicted of are small fry compared to the crimes of state that he committed while in office. And these crimes are, at most, only marginally worse than those committed by every US president in living memory, irrespective of which of the two major parties they have belonged to. And the fact that he, all his recent predecessors and, indeed, his successor to the White House, have committed these crimes in an atmosphere of complete impunity is the real issue that the public should be focusing on.
Of course, documenting the crimes of state committed by Trump and all of his predecessors in the White House would take up volumes. But surveying just his most recent four predecessors shows a consistent record of creating chaos, destruction and lawlessness across the world for the sole purpose of advancing Washington’s geostrategic and economic interests.
Foreign policy: Illegal wars, self-interested interventions, and support for destabilizing coups
In terms of foreign policy, Trump’s crimes of state include launching a coup attempt in Venezuela that drastically destabilized the country and exacerbated an economic crisis that itself had been caused in large part by Washington-imposed sanctions. During Trump’s time in office, Washington also increased sanctions against Nicaragua, added new sanctions to the economic blockade against Cuba, and reimposed sanctions on Iran by unilaterally withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (known colloquially as the ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’). These unilateral sanctions are illegal under international law and have overwhelmingly had the effect of harming these countries’ civilian populations.
But Trump’s predecessors were hardly much better. His immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, for example, failed to end the war in Afghanistan and increased Bush’s drone assassination program by a factor of ten. The Obama administration also played a hand in the illegal coup against the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and intervened in Libya, which turned the once-stable North African nation into a medieval throwback with slave markets operating out in the open.
Readers will hardly need to be reminded of George W. Bush’s own foreign policy antics. In addition to launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration also played a hand in the 2001 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and hypocritically imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program – in spite of scant evidence that Iran seeks nuclear weapons and even though Israel, the US’s major ally in the Middle East, already holds such weapons in violation of non-proliferation treaties.
As for Bill Clinton, his administration bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and launched a disastrous intervention in the Balkans. George H. W. Bush, meanwhile, invaded Panama, launched the First Gulf War, and began expanding NATO ominously close to Russia’s borders – a process that ultimately became a major factor in the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.
Israel: Only marginally worse servility to the US’s Middle East proxy state
With respect to the conflict in Palestine, Trump did take US toadying to the Zionist state to previously unseen heights, in particular with his administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and legitimization of Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights. But again, previous administrations were hardly much better.
Obama, for instance, failed to issue any punitive measure against Israel during the three major massacres that it committed in Gaza during his time in office (Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and 2009, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and Operation Protective Edge in 2014). On the contrary, throughout this time the US continued supplying Israel with weapons via lucrative arms contracts.
Needless to say, as Israel’s military operations in Gaza have unfolded since the October 7 attack, Trump’s successor in the White House (who, of course, served as Obama’s vice president) has taken US enabling of Israel’s crimes to a new low of outright complicity in genocide. Current US President Joe Biden also failed to take any action against Israel following its storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in May 2021 and subsequent brutality against Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.
George W. Bush’s policy toward Palestine included enabling Israel’s human rights abuses throughout the Second Intifada and during its reckless war against Lebanon in 2006. The Bush administration also played a hand in Hamas’s eclipsing of Fatah in Gaza by insisting that the election go ahead, and that the Islamist group participate as part of its policy of so-called “democracy promotion.”
During Bill Clinton’s time in the White House, he launched the shambolic Camp David summit, which culminated in no agreement whatsoever between the two sides and whose failure was a factor in the outbreak of the Second Intifada. While George H. W. Bush was slightly better on policy toward Israel than his successors by imposing consequences on Israel for bad behavior, he nonetheless oversaw the Madrid Conference and subsequent signing of the first Oslo Accord, which has had the effect of subcontracting out the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to a collaborationist Palestinian Authority.
And of course, just as during Trump’s time in office, throughout the Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush administrations as well, Washington has continually used its veto power at the UN to block resolutions that condemn, let alone take meaningful action against, Israel’s crimes.
Civil Liberties: Bipartisan support for authoritarianism and trampling over legal norms
After leaving the White House, Obama publicly denounced Trump for his authoritarian tendencies. But while Obama didn’t engage in the brazen authoritarianism of Trump – such as threatening the press, pledging to jail political opponents, airing the idea of delaying elections, or stating he is “not going to be beholden to courts” – Obama was hardly a paragon of civil liberties during his time in office either. A 2013 Washington Post exposé, for example, documented the National Security Agency’s repeated abuses of power under Obama’s watch, including deliberate interception of emails and phone calls as well as illegal surveillance of both foreign and domestic intelligence targets.
Despite promises to shut it down during his presidential campaign, Obama also failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where torture, rendition and indefinite incarceration (in flagrant breach of international law) continue to this day. While president, Obama also declined to repeal the Patriot Act (again, after promising to do so as a presidential candidate) and even renewed some of the law’s major provisions, such as roving wire taps.
It was, of course, his predecessor, George W. Bush, who first introduced the Patriot Act – which has undermined some of the most core modern legal principles such as habeas corpus – and opened the Guantanamo Bay detention center in 2002 as part of his so-called “War on Terror.” Since then, nine detainees have died while incarcerated there and an unknown number have been subjected to so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” – known in common parlance as torture.
During Clinton’s time in the White House, he signed the so-called ‘Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996,’, which like the Patriot Act also undermines the legal principle of habeas corpus.
George H. W. Bush, meanwhile, in the 1970s served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), an organization that is notorious for its civil liberties violations including wiretapping, illegally monitoring postal correspondence, and interrogating people against their will. At that time, it was notorious for its role in Operation Condor in which right-wing governments throughout South America engaged in political repression campaigns against perceived enemies. Bush remained close to the CIA as vice president in the Reagan administration in the 1980s, when it became embroiled in the Iran-Contra Affair, and as president in the early 1990s, when it faced accusations of involvement in drug trafficking.
Time to stop singularizing Trump as uniquely evil
Clearly, it is time we take a step back from the narrow focus on Trump’s latest legal wranglings. Focusing on his shady business dealings committed when out of office obscures the fact that, if there were any justice in this world, Trump as well as all his recent predecessors would be tried for much bigger crimes of state that dwarf in severity anything about hush money payments or falsifying business records.
South African police arrested freelance journalist Sandiso Phaliso while he was photographing a crime scene in the country’s legislative capital of Cape Town on April 25 and held him for about two hours, the journalist told CPJ.
Phaliso, who regularly writes for the non-profit news agency GroundUp, said that he went to a crime scene in Philippi, a suburb of Cape Town, after he received a news tip about the attempted robbery of a security vehicle. A police officer approached Phaliso and told him to stop photographing the scene or face arrest. Phaliso identified himself as a freelance journalist and continued to take photographs with his mobile phone.
“The crime scene was not cordoned off, so it was open to everyone,” Phaliso told CPJ.
Phaliso said that the officer confiscated his phone and took him in a police van to the nearby Nyanga police post where he was held on allegations of obstructing police work.
Phaliso handed over his belongings, including his belt, bank cards and 230 rand (about $12.35) in cash, to the arresting officer, the journalist said. After two hours, Phaliso was released on the condition that he deleted all photographs of the crime scene.
Upon his release, Phaliso learned that the police had given his belongings to his daughter, who visited him while he was detained,and found that 110 rand (about $5.89) of his money was missing.
On April 26, GroundUp editor Nathan Geffen wrote to the police, protesting the arrest. The letter was copied to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate,an oversight body that investigates allegations of police misconduct.
“It is unlawful to detain people for taking photographs. It is unlawful to force them to delete photographs,” Geffen wrote in the letter, reviewed by CPJ. “Please instruct your officers that they are not to arrest people taking photos of crime scenes.”
In the letter, Geffen said it was a breach of procedure that Phaliso’s money was given to his daughter and asked the police to pay the journalist the disputed money. On June 5, Geffen told CPJ that police had yet to respond to GroundUp’s protest letter.
National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe did not respond to CPJ’s repeated requests for comments sent via messaging app. The public relations department of the Independent Police Investigative Director also did not respond to CPJ’s email query.
Western Cape provincial spokesperson Colonel Andrè Traut told CPJ via messaging app that the South African Police Service were aware of the incident and encouraged Phaliso to lodge an official complaint with the Nyanga police station management or the Independent Police Investigative Directorate before his office can comment further.
Editor’s note: CPJ Head of Africa program Angela Quintal is a member of the GroundUp board.
Tributes are pouring in for an acclaimed American Samoan poet and teacher who was murdered last Saturday in Apia allegedly by a fellow poet.
According to local police Dr Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, a retired professor from the University of Hawai’i Manoa, was found dead at the Galu Moana Theatre in Vaivase-Uta.
Novelist and poet Papalii Sia Figiel . . . charged with murder. Image: (cc) Wikipedia
The 78-year-old Dr Sinavaiana-Gabbard, who was also a historian and environmentalist, has been described as a peaceful and calm person.
The Samoa Observer reports a friend of Dr Sinavaiana-Gabbard said she was completely shocked and saddened when she found out.
She said Dr Sinavaiana-Gabbard was a kindred spirit, a brilliant writer, and a supporter of writers.
“Someone who did not deserve to die like that. She was a very private person despite being a giant in the literary world,” they told the Observer.
Shocked literary friends Dr Sinavaiana-Gabbard’s death has also shocked many of her literary friends, who have been posting messages of condolence, and resulted in an outpouring of grief on social media reacting to the news.
Mele Wendt (from left), Eteuati Ete and Dr Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard . . . she taught creative writing at the University of Hawai’i for nearly 20 years. Image: Mele Wendt/RNZ
In 2022, Dr Sinavaiana-Gabbard warned of the implications of the Samoa government’s inaction to address concerns about the adverse effects of paraquat. She was part of the group advocating for the ban on the dangerous weedkiller.
Born in 1946, she was an American Samoan academic, writer, poet, and environmentalist and was the first Samoan to become a full professor in the United States. She is the sister of American politician Mike Gabbard and the aunt of politician Tulsi Gabbard.
She was born in Utulei village in American Samoa and educated at Sonoma State University, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawai’i.
Her PhD thesis called ‘Traditional Comic Theatre in Samoa: A Holographic View’. She taught creative writing at the University of Hawai’i for nearly 20 years and was an associate professor of Pacific literature at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
In 2002, she published her collection of poetry, Alchemies of Distance and in August 2020, she was named by USA Today on its list of influential women from US territories.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner David Manning has commended the coordinated efforts between police and defence intelligence units in the lead up to and during the current sitting of Parliament.
Commissioner Manning said claims made over the past five months, particularly on social media, had led to heightened public awareness of safety during significant national events, and the nation’s disciplined forces were working together to ensure security.
“The RPNGC [Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary] and the PNGDF [PNG Defence Force] are working closely to collate and share information on potential criminal activities that might be instigated while Parliament is in session during May and June,” Commissioner Manning said.
“This includes ongoing cooperation between RPNGC specialist units and the PNGDF Long Range Reconnaissance Unit in the analysis of information of law-and-order significance.
“Respecting legislative and constitutional compliance, this engagement in providing for enhanced public safety and security as the nation’s leaders debate matters of policy.
“Ongoing co-operation between police and military units further sends a very clear message to opportunists thinking they can get away with crimes with the misconception that police are distracted during this period.
“These measures, as approved by the National Executive Council and the Governor-General, have served the country well in the lead-up to and during the current sitting of Parliament.”
Collaborative approach
Commissioner Manning said he had briefed NEC on the importance of ensuring a collaborative approach to criminal intelligence to ensure that PNG communities remained safe and secure during events of national significance.
The collaborative approach, approved by NEC, was enabled by the continuing callout of the Defence Force by the Head of State.
“The collaboration of security forces, particularly when it comes to criminal intelligence, supports a secure environment for the democratic process and to protect the community and businesses,” Commissioner Manning said.
“It is essential that while matters of national importance are taking place, be these Parliament sittings, high level visits or even protests, that people can go about their normal business without hindrance.”
Commissioner Manning said the job of the police force was to preserve peace and good order in the country so that PNG communities could go about their daily lives.
“We remain focused on delivering upon this job,” he said.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged Trump last year with 34 counts of criminal behavior, alleging that the Republican politician sought “to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”
The jury deliberated for two days and returned the verdict just before 5pm on Thursday: guilty on all counts, making Trump the first US president to ever be convicted of a felony.
“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial,” Trump told reporters after the verdict was announced. “The real verdict will be on November 5, by the people. And we will keep fighting, and we’ll fight till the end and we’ll win.”
The 34 counts refer to 11 invoices, 12 vouchers and 11 checks of Trump’s monthly reimbursement payments to his then-layer, for the $130,000 paid to Daniels. According to Bragg, this amounted to “falsifying business records.”
The case was based on claims by Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, that Trump instructed him to pay $130,000 to the adult film actress so she would keep quiet about an alleged affair with the presidential candidate. Trump has denied any relationship with the porn star. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges of campaign-finance violations as well as tax and bank fraud, and spent two and a half years in a federal prison. He also lost his New York bar license.
Numerous Republicans have denounced the trial as a farce, saying that Merchan violated the state constitution by taking the case even though his daughter works for the Democrats.
If Trump is acquitted, “the country will see the damage done to our country by corrupt prosecutors,” former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News ahead of the verdict. “If he’s found guilty, they’ll see that a man is being sentenced for a crime that no one can actually name.”
“Either way, the real verdict is in November,” Ramaswamy added, referring to the date of the presidential election pitting Trump against the incumbent Joe Biden.
“Even a cursory review of the evidence shows this case does not have a leg to stand on,” Jonathan Turley, a Georgetown University professor and constitutional scholar, argued in a blog post. Turley pointed out that Bragg revived what could at best be an expired misdemeanor by claiming that it was done to influence the election, describing the entire argument as “so circular as to produce vertigo.”
We speak with Kenneth Roth, international affairs scholar and former head of Human Rights Watch, about revelations that Israel waged a nearly decadelong campaign to intimidate the International Criminal Court in order to stop possible war crimes prosecutions of Israeli officials. A joint investigation by The Guardian and the Israeli +972 Magazine revealed that Israel surveilled, hacked, smeared and threatened top ICC officials, including chief prosecutor Karim Khan and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda. The former head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, is said to have personally threatened Bensouda. The revelations come just a week after Khan announced he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three top leaders of Hamas. “This is a crime,” Roth says of the Israeli campaign against the ICC. He says the revelations also undermine U.S. claims that Israel can hold itself accountable. “There is no good-faith Israeli investigation. There is a concerted, high-level effort to undermine justice to protect Netanyahu, Gallant and others from war crime charges.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Three Nouméa municipal policemen are now facing a prosecution after a disturbing video was posted in a Facebook neighbourhood watch group, allegedly implicating them in acts of severe violence against a Kanak man they had just arrested.
The municipal police officers are not part of the French security forces that have been sent to restore law and order, RNZ Pacific understands.
Initial investigations established that the violence took place on at 6th Kilometre, on the night of May 25-26, and that it “followed the arrest of several persons suspected of a theft attempt”, Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas said in a statement yesterday.
The incident was captured in a brief video, later posted on social networks, being shared hundreds of times and going viral.
“It is the management of municipal police themselves who have signalled this to us”, Dupas said.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had verified the authenticity of the short footage which depicted a “representative of the security forces striking a violent foot kick to the head of a person sitting on the ground after he was arrested”.
On the same video, the other two officers, all equipped with riot gear, are seen to be standing by, surrounding the victim.
Dupas said a formal inquiry was now underway against the three municipal police officers who were now facing charges of “violence from a person entrusted with public authority and failure to assist a person in peril”.
“This case will be treated with every expected severity, being related to presumed facts of illegitimate violence on the part of officers entrusted with a mission of administrative and judicial police”, the statement said.
It added that “this is the first case being treated for this type of act since the beginning of civil unrest in New Caledonia” and further stressed that law enforcement agencies deployed on the ground have displayed “professionalism” in the “difficult management of the law enforcement operations carried out”.
“The victim remains to be approached by investigators in order to undergo medical examination and assess his current health condition.”
TikTok ban lifted New Caledonia has also now lifted a ban on TikTok imposed earlier this month in response to grave civil unrest and rioting.
The announcement was made as part of the French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc during his daily update on the situation.
“As a follow-up to the end of the state of emergency since Tuesday, 28 May, 2024, the ban on the platform TikTok has been lifted,” a statement said.
The ban was announced on May 15 in what was then described as an attempt to block contacts between rioting groups in the French Pacific territory.
It had since then been widely contested as a breach of human rights.
Doubts had also been expressed on how effective the measure could have been, with other platforms (such as Facebook, WhatsApp or Viber) remaining accessible and the fact that the ban on Tiktok could be easily dodged with VPN tools.
Christian Karembeu speaking to Europe 1 on Monday . . .. Photo: Screenshot/Europe1.fr
World Cup 1998 winner Karembeu ‘in mourning’ Earlier this week, former footballer and 1998 World Cup champion Christian Karembeu made a surprise revelation saying two members of his family had been shot dead during the riots.
“Two members of my family have been shot with a bullet in the head. These are snipers. The word is strong but they have been assassinated and we hope investigations will be made on these murders”, the Kanak footballer said, adding the victims were his nephew and his niece.
Karembeu’s career involves 53 tests for the French national football team, one world cup victory (1998), playing for prestigious European clubs such as Nantes, Sampdoria, and Real Madrid (where he won two Champions League titles), Olympiakos, Servette, and Bastia.
He is now a strategic advisor and ambassador for Greek club Olympiakos.
Reacting to Karembeu’s announcements, Chief Prosecutor Dupas told public broadcaster NC la Première on Tuesday he believed Karembeu was referring to the two Kanak people who were killed earlier this month in Nouméa’s industrial zone of Ducos.
“I do not know what his family kinship relation is with those two victims who were assassinated in Ducos,” he said.
“But concerning these facts, an investigation is underway, it has gotten pretty far already, one (European) company manager has been arrested and remains in custody. The Justice is processing all the facts, crimes, committed.”
“We have, among the civilian victims, four persons of the Kanak community and it is a possibility that some of those could be related to Christian Karembeu”, he said.
Asked on a possibly higher number of fatalities, he stressed the death toll so far remained at seven.
“We have not received any other complaint regarding people shooting civilians”, he maintained, while encouraging members of the public who would be aware of other fatal incidents to come forward and contact his office.
Targeted by civilian gunmen However, on Tuesday, La Première TV reported that unidentified Kanak people spoke out to say that they were directly targeted by gunshots on May 15 while they were at a roadblock held by alleged members of armed militia groups in Nouméa’s industrial zone of Ducos.
“We arrived in our car, I saw the roadblock, I barely had time to reverse and go back and they started to shoot. About 10 times,” the unidentified witness said, showing two bullet holes on his car.
“I have lodged a complaint for murder attempt and now the investigation is ongoing,” he said.
Two other Kanaks said the following day, on May 16, while in the streets of their neighbourhood, they were shot at by balaclava-clad passengers of two driving by pick-up trucks.
“We started to run and that’s when we heard the first gunshots. My little brother managed to take shelter at a neighbour’s home, and I went on running with the 4WD behind me. When I arrived at my family’s home, I jumped into the garden and that’s when I heard a second gunshot”, he told La Première.
“We never thought this would happen to us”.
Dupas said another, wider investigation, was underway since May 17 in order to identify “those who are pulling the ropes and who led the “planning and committing of attacks that have hit New Caledonia”.
“This means anyone, whatever his/her level of implication, whether order-givers or just actors”.
Latest update The state of emergency was lifted on Tuesday in New Caledonia following an announcement from French President Emmanuel Macron, who was in New Caledonia on a 17-hour visit last Thursday.
The end of the state of emergency was described by Macron as being part of the “commitments” he made while meeting representatives of New Caledonia’s pro-independence movement last week and to allow leaders to spread the message to people to lift roadblocks and barricades and “loosen the grip”.
However, a dusk-to-dawn (6pm to 6am) curfew remains in place, including a ban on public meetings, the sale of alcohol and the possession and transportation of firearms and ammunition, French High Commissioner Louis Le France said yesterday.
An estimated 3500 security forces (police, gendarmes and special riot squads) remain on the ground.
Taxis have announced they were now resuming service, but bus services remain closed because “too many roads remain impracticable”.
High Commissioner Le Franc said that since the unrest began on May 13, a total of 535 people had been arrested, 136 security forces (police and gendarmes) had been injured and the death toll remained at seven (including two gendarmes, four indigenous Kanaks and one person of European ascent).
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open.
What Gallant wanted from Netanyahu was a plan for how Gaza is to be governed once the fighting ends and an assurance that the Israel Defence Force will not end up being Gaza’s de facto civil administrator.
To that end, Gallant wanted to know what Palestinian entity (presumably the Palestinian Authority) would be part of that future governing arrangement, and on what terms.
To Gallant, that is essential information to ensure that the IDF (for which he is ultimately responsible) will not be bogged down in Gaza for the duration of a forever war. By voicing his concerns out loud, Gallant pushed Gantz into stating publicly what his position is on the same issues.
What Gantz came up with was a set of six strategic “goals” on which Netanyahu has to provide sufficient signs of progress by June 8, or else Gantz will resign from the war Cabinet.
Maybe, perhaps. Gantz could still find wiggle room for himself to stay on, depending on the state of the political/military climate in three weeks time.
The Gantz list
For what they’re worth, Gantz’s six points are:
The return of the hostages from Gaza;
The overthrow of Hamas rule, and de-militarisation in Gaza;
The establishment of a joint US, European, Arab, and Palestinian administration that will manage Gaza’s civilian affairs, and form the basis for a future alternative governing authority;
The repatriation of residents of north Israel who were evacuated from their homes, as well as the rehabilitation of Gaza border communities;
The promotion of normalisation with Saudi Arabia; and
The adoption of an outline for military service for all Israeli citizens. [Gantz has already tabled a bill to end the current exemption of Hadadim (i.e. conservative Jews) from the draft. This issue is a tool to split Netanyahu away from his extremist allies. One of the ironies of the Gaza conflict is that the religious extremists egging it on have ensured that their own sons and daughters aren’t doing any of the fighting.]
Almost instantly, this list drew a harsh response from Netanyahu’s’ office:
“The conditions set by Benny Gantz are laundered words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandonment of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas-rule intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Our soldiers did not fall in vain and certainly not for the sake of replacing Hamastan with Fatahstan,” the PM’s Office added.
In reality, Netanyahu has little or no interest in what a post-war governing arrangement in Gaza might look like. His grip on power — and his immunity from criminal prosecution — depends on a forever war, in which any surviving Palestinians will have no option but to submit to Gaza being re-settled by Israeli extremists. (Editor: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has today filed an application for arrest warrants for crimes against humanity by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders for war crimes.)
— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 20, 2024
Gantz, no respite Palestinians have no reason to hope a Gantz-led government would offer them any respite. Gantz was the IDF chief of staff during two previous military assaults on Gaza in 2012 and 2014 that triggered accusations of war crimes.
While Gantz may be open to some minor role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in helping to run Gaza in future, this would require the PA to be willing to duplicate in Gaza the same abjectly compliant security role it currently performs on behalf of Israel on the West Bank.
So far, the PA has shown no enthusiasm for helping to run Gaza, given that any collaborators would be sitting ducks for Palestinian retribution.
In sum, Gantz is a centrist only when compared to the wingnut extremists (e.g. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich) with whom Netanyahu currently consorts. In any normal democracy, such public dissent by two senior Cabinet Ministers crucial to government stability would have led directly to new elections being called.
Not so in Israel, at least not yet.
Counting the cost in Nouméa A few days ago, the Chamber of commerce in Noumea estimated the economic cost of the ongoing unrest in New Caledonia — both directly and to rebuild the country’s trashed infrastructure — will be in excess of 200 million euros (NZ$356 million).
Fixing the physical infrastructure though, may be the least of it.
The rioting was triggered by the French authorities preparing to sign off on an expansion of the eligibility criteria for taking part in decisive votes on the territory’s future. Among other things, this measure would have diluted the Kanak vote, by extending the franchise to French citizens who had been resident in New Caledonia for ten years.
This thorny issue of voter eligibility has been central to disputes in the territory for at least three decades.
This time around, the voting roll change being mooted came hard on the heels of a third independence referendum in 2021 that had been boycotted by Kanaks, who objected to it being held while the country was still recovering from the covid pandemic.
With good reason, the Kanak parties linked the boycotted 2021 referendum — which delivered a 96 percent vote against independence — to the proposed voting changes. Both are being taken as evidence of a hard rightwards shift by local authorities and their political patrons in France.
An inelegant inégalité On paper, New Caledonia looks like a relatively wealthy country, with an annual per capita income of US$33,000 __ $34,000 estimated for 2024. That’s not all that far behind New Zealand’s $US42,329 figure, and well in excess of neighbours in Oceania like Fiji ($6,143) Vanuatu $3,187) and even French Polynesia ($21,615).
The New Caledonian economy suffers from a lack of productivity gains, insufficient competitiveness and strong income inequalities… Since 2011, economic growth has slowed down due to the fall in nickel prices… The extractive sector developed relatively autonomously with regard to the rest of the economy, absorbing most of the technical capabilities. Apart from nickel, few export activities managed to develop, particularly because of high costs..[associated with] the narrowness of the local market, and with [the territory’s] geographic remoteness.
No doubt, tourism will be hammered by the latest unrest. Yet even before the riots, annual tourism visits to New Caledonia had always lagged well behind the likes of Fiji, and French Polynesia.
Over the past 50 years, the country’s steeply unequal economic base has been directly manipulated by successive French governments, who have been more intent on maintaining the status quo than on establishing a sustainable re-balance of power.
History repeats The violent unrest that broke out between 1976-1989 culminated in the killing by French military forces of several Kanak leaders (including the prominent activist Eloï Machoro) while a hostage-taking incident on Ouvea in 1988 directly resulted in the deaths of 19 Kanaks and two French soldiers.
Tragically in 1989, internal rifts within the Kanak leadership cost the lives of the pre-eminent pro-independence politician Jean-Marie Tjibaou and his deputy.
Eventually, the Matignon Accords that Tjibaou had signed a year before his death ushered in a decade of relative stability. Subsequently, the Noumea Accords a decade later created a blueprint for a 20-year transition to a more equitable outcome for the country’s various racial and political factions.
Of the 270,000 people who comprise the country’s population, some 41 percent belong to the Kanak community.
About 24 percent identify as European. This category includes (a) relatively recent arrivals from mainland France employed in the public service or on private sector contracts, and (b) the politically conservative “caldoches” whose forebears have kept arriving as settlers since the 19th century, including an influx of settlers from Algeria after France lost that colony in 1962, after a war of independence.
A further 7.5 percent identify as “Caledonian” but again, these people are largely of European origin. Some 11.3% of the population are of mixed race. Under the census rules, people can self-identify with multiple ethnic groups.
In sum, the fracture lines of race, culture, economic wealth and deprivation crisscross the country, with the Kanak community being those most in need, and with Kanak youth in particular suffering from limited access to jobs and opportunity.
Restoring whose ‘order’? The riots have been the product of the recent economic downturn, ethnic tensions and widely-held Kanak opposition to French rule. French troops have now been sent into the territory in force, initially to re-open the international airport.
It is still a volatile situation. As Le Monde noted in its coverage of the recent rioting, New Caledonia is known for its very high number of firearms in relation to the size of the population.
If illegal weapons are counted, some 100,000 weapons are said to be circulating in a territory of 270,000 inhabitants.
Even allowing for some people having multiple weapons, New Caledonia has, on average, a gun for every three or four people. France by contrast (according to Franceinfo in 2021) had only 5.4 million weapons within a population of more than 67 million, or one gun for every 12 people.
The restoration of “order” in New Caledonia has the potential for extensive armed violence. After the dust settles, the divisive issue of who should be allowed to vote in New Caledonia, and under what conditions, will remain.
Forging on with the voting reforms regardless, is now surely no longer an option.
Today is the 24th anniversary of renegade and failed businessman George Speight’s coup in 2000 Fiji. The elected coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry, the first and only Indo-Fijian prime minister of Fiji, was held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days in the country’s new Parliament by Speight’s rebel gunmen in a putsch that shook the Pacific and the world.
Emerging recently from almost 24 years in prison, former investigative journalist and publisher Josefa Nata — Speight’s “media minder” — is now convinced that the takeover of Fiji’s Parliament on 19 May 2000 was not justified.
He believes that all it did was let the “genie of racism” out of the bottle.
He spoke to Islands Business Fiji correspondent, Joe Yaya on his journey back from the dark.
The Fiji government kept you in jail for 24 years [for your media role in the coup]. That’s a very long time. Are you bitter?
I heard someone saying in Parliament that “life is life”, but they have been releasing other lifers. Ten years was conventionally considered the term of a life sentence. That was the State’s position in our sentencing. The military government extended it to 12 years. I believe it was out of malice, spitefulness and cruelty — no other reason. But to dwell in the past is counterproductive.
If there’s anyone who should be bitter, it should be me. I was released [from prison] in 2013 but was taken back in after two months, ostensibly to normalise my release papers. That government did not release me. I stayed in prison for another 10 years.
To be bitter is to allow those who hurt you to live rent free in your mind. They have moved on, probably still rejoicing in that we have suffered that long. I have forgiven them, so move on I must.
Time is not on my side. I have set myself a timeline and a to-do list for the next five years.
Jo Nata’s journey from the dark, Islands Business, April 2024. Image: IB/Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
What are some of those things?
Since I came out, I have been busy laying the groundwork for a community rehabilitation project for ex-offenders, released prisoners, street kids and at-risk people in the law-and-order space. We are in the process of securing a piece of land, around 40 ha to set up a rehabilitation farm. A half-way house of a sort.
You can’t have it in the city. It would be like having the cat to watch over the fish. There is too much temptation. These are vulnerable people who will just relapse. They’re put in an environment where they are shielded from the lures of the world and be guided to be productive and contributing members of society.
It will be for a period of up to six months; in exceptional cases, 12 months where they will learn living off the land. With largely little education, the best opportunity for these people, and only real hope, is in the land.
Most of these at-risk people are [indigenous] Fijians. Although all native land are held by the mataqali, each family has a patch which is the “kanakana”. We will equip them and settle them in their villages. We will liaise with the family and the village.
Apart from farming, these young men and women will be taught basic life skills, social skills, savings, budgeting. When we settle them in the villages and communities, we will also use the opportunity to create the awareness that crime does not pay, that there is a better life than crime and prison, and that prison is a waste of a potentially productive life.
Are you comfortable with talking about how exactly you got involved with Speight?
The bulk of it will come out in the book that I’m working on, but it was not planned. It was something that happened on the day.
You said that when they saw you, they roped you in?
Yes. But there were communications with me the night prior. I basically said, “piss off”.
So then, what made you go to Parliament eventually? Curiosity?
No. I got a call from Parliament. You see, we were part of the government coalition at that time. We were part of the Fijian Association Party (led by the late Adi Kuini Speed). The Fiji Labour Party was our main coalition partner, and then there was the Christian Alliance. And you may recall or maybe not, there was a split in the Fijian Association [Party] and there were two factions. I was in the faction that thought that we should not go into coalition.
There was an ideological reason for the split [because the party had campaigned on behalf of iTaukei voters] but then again, there were some members who came with us only because they were not given seats in Cabinet.
Because your voters had given you a certain mandate?
A masked gunman waves to journalists to duck during crossfire. Image: IPI Global Journalist/Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
Well, we were campaigning on the [indigenous] Fijian manifesto and to go into the [coalition] complicated things. Mine was more a principled position because we were a [indigenous] Fijian party and all those people went in on [indigenous] Fijian votes. And then, here we are, going into [a coalition with the Fiji Labour Party] and people probably
accused us of being opportunists.
But the Christian Alliance was a coalition partner with Labour before they went into the election in the same way that the People’s Alliance and National Federation Party were coalition partners before they got into [government], whereas with us, it was more like SODELPA (Social Democratic Liberal Party).
So, did you feel that the rights of indigenous Fijians were under threat from the Coalition government of then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry?
Perhaps if Chaudhry was allowed to carry on, it could have been good for [indigenous] Fijians. I remember the late President and Tui Nayau [Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara] . . . in a few conversations I had with him, he said it [Labour Party] should be allowed to . . . [carry on].
Did you think at that time that the news media gave Chaudhry enough space for him to address the fears of the iTaukei people about what he was trying to do, especially for example, through the Land Use Commission?
I think the Fijians saw what he was doing and that probably exacerbated or heightened the concerns of [indigenous] Fijians and if you remember, he gave Indian cane farmers certain financial privileges.
The F$10,000 grants to move from Labasa, when the ALTA (Agricultural Landlord and Tenants Act) leases expired. Are you talking about that?
I can’t remember the exact details of the financial assistance but when they [Labour Party] were questioned, they said, “No, there were some Fijian farmers too”. There were also iTaukei farmers but if you read in between the lines, there were like 50 Indian farmers and one Fijian farmer.
Was there enough media coverage for the rural population to understand that it was not a one-sided ethnic policy?
Because there were also iTaukei farmers involved. Yes, and I think when you try and pull the wool over other people, that’s when they feel that they have been hoodwinked. But going back to your question of whether Chaudhry was given fair media coverage, I was no longer in the mainstream media at that time. I had moved on.
But the politicians have their views and they’ll feel that they have been done badly by the media. But that’s democracy. That’s the way things worked out.
“The Press and the Putsch”, Asia Pacific Media Educator, No 10, January 2021. Image: APME/Joe Yaya/USP Journalism
Pacific journalism educator, David Robie, in a paper in 2001, made some observations about the way the local media reported the Speight takeover. He said, “In the early weeks of the insurrection, the media enjoyed an unusually close relationship with Speight and the hostage takers.”
He went on to say that at times, there was “strong sympathy among some journalists for the cause, even among senior editorial executives”.
David Robie is an incisive and perceptive old-school journalist who has a proper understanding of issues and I do not take issue with his opinion. And I think there is some validity. But you see, I was on the other [Speight’s] side. And it was part of my job at that time to swing that perception from the media.
Did you identify with “the cause” and did you think it was legitimate?
Let me tell you in hindsight, that the coup was not justified
and that is after a lot of reflection. It was not justified and
could never be justified.
When did you come to that conclusion?
It was after the period in Parliament and after things were resolved and then Parliament was vacated, I took a drive around town and I saw the devastation in Suva. This was a couple of months later. I didn’t realise the extent of the damage and I remember telling myself, “Oh my god, what have we done? What have we done?”
And I realised that we probably have let the genie out of the bottle and it scared me [that] it only takes a small thing like this to unleash this pentup emotion that is in the people. Of course, a lot of looting was [by] opportunists because at that time, the people who
were supporting the cause were all in Parliament. They had all marched to Parliament.
So, who did the looting in town? I’m not excusing that. I’m just trying to put some perspective. And of course, we saw pictures, which was really, very sad . . . of mothers, women, carrying trolleys [of loot] up the hill, past the [Colonial War Memorial] hospital.
So, what was Speight’s primary motivation?
Well, George will, I’m sure, have the opportunity at some point to tell the world what his position was. But he was never the main player. He was ditched with the baby on his laps.
So, there were people So, there were people behind him. He was the man of the moment. He was the one facing the cameras.
Given your education, training, experience in journalism, what kind of lens were you viewing this whole thing from?
Well, let’s put it this way. I got a call from Parliament. I said, “No, I’m not coming down.” And then they called again.
Basically, they did not know where they were going. I think what was supposed to have happened didn’t happen. So, I got another call, I got about three or four calls, maybe five. And then eventually, after two o’clock I went down to Parliament, because the person who called was a friend of mine and somebody who had shared our fortunes and misfortunes.
So, did you get swept away? What was going on inside your head?
George Speight’s forces hold Fiji government members hostage at the parliamentary complex in Suva. Image: IPI Global Journalist/Brian Cassey/Associated Press
I joined because at that point, I realised that these people needed help. I was not so much as for the cause, although there was this thing about what Chaudhry was doing. I also took that into account. But primarily because the call came [and] so I went.
And when I was finally called into the meeting, I walked in and I saw faces that I’d never seen before. And I started asking the questions, “Have you done this? Have you done that?”
And as I asked the questions, I was also suggesting solutions and then I just got dragged into it. The more I asked questions, the more I found out how much things were in disarray.
I just thought I’d do my bit [because] they were people who had taken over Parliament and they did not know where to go from there.
But you were driven by some nationalistic sentiments?
I am a [indigenous] Fijian. And everything that goes with that. I’m not infallible. But then again, I do not want to blow that trumpet.
Did the group see themselves as freedom fighters of some sort when you went into prison?
I’m not a freedom fighter. If they want to be called freedom fighters, that’s for them and I think some of them even portrayed themselves [that way]. But not me. I’m just an idiot who got sidetracked.
This personal journey that you’ve embarked on, what brought that about?
When I was in prison, I thought about this a lot. Because for me to come out of the bad place I was in — not physically, that I was in prison, but where my mind was — was to first accept the situation I was in and take responsibility. That’s when the healing started to take place.
And then I thought that I should write to people that I’ve hurt. I wrote about 200 letters from prison to anybody I thought I had hurt or harmed or betrayed. Groups, individuals, institutions, and families. I was surprised at the magnanimity of the people who received my letters.
I do not know where they all are now. I just sent it out. I was touched by a lot of the responses and I got a letter from the late [historian] Dr Brij Lal. l was so encouraged and I was so emotional when I read the letter. [It was] a very short letter and the kindness in the man to say that, “We will continue to talk when you come out of prison.”
There were also the mockers, the detractors, certain persons who said unkind things that, you know, “He’s been in prison and all of a sudden, he’s . . . “. That’s fine, I accepted all that as part of the package. You take the bad with the good.
I wrote to Mr Chaudhry and I had the opportunity to apologise to him personally when he came to visit in prison. And I want to continue this dialogue with Mr Chaudhry if he would like to.
Because if anything, I am among the reasons Fiji is in this current state of distrust and toxic political environment. If I can assist in bringing the nation together, it would be part of my atonement for my errors. For I have been an unprofitable, misguided individual who would like to do what I believe is my duty to put things right.
And I would work with anyone in the political spectrum, the communal leaders, the vanua and the faith organisations to bring that about.
I also did my traditional apology to my chiefly household of Vatuwaqa and the people of the vanua of Lau. I had invited the Lau Provincial Council to have its meeting at the Corrections Academy in Naboro. By that time, the arrangements had been confirmed for the Police Academy.
But the Roko gave us the farewell church service. I got my dear late sister, Pijila to organise the family. I presented the matanigasau to the then-Council Chairman, Ratu Tevita Uluilakeba (Roko Ului). It was a special moment, in front of all the delegates to the council meeting, the chiefly clan of the Vuanirewa, and Lauans who filled the two buses and
countless vehicles that made it to Naboro.
Our matanivanua (herald) was to make the tabua presentation. But I took it off him because I wanted Roko Ului and the people of Lau to hear my remorse from my mouth. It was very, very emotional. Very liberating. Cathartic.
Late last year, the Coalition government passed a motion in Parliament for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Do you support that?
Oh yes, I think everything I’ve been saying so far points that way.
Do you think it’ll help those that are still incarcerated to come out and speak about what happened in 2000?
Well, not only that but the important thing is [addressing] the general [racial] divide. If that’s where we should start, then we should start there. That’s how I’m looking at it — the bigger picture.
It’s not trying to manage the problems or issues of the last 24 years. People are still hurting from [the coups of] 1987. And what happened in 2006 — nothing has divided this country so much. Anybody who’s thought about this would want this to go beyond just solving the problem of 2000, excusing, and accusing and after that, there’s forgiveness and pardon.
That’s a small part. That too if it needs to happen. But after all that, I don’t want anybody to go to prison because of their participation or involvement in anything from 1987 to 2000. If they cooked the books later, while they were in government, then that’s a different
matter.
But I saw on TV, the weeping and the very public expression of pain of [the late, former Prime Minister, Laisenia] Qarase’s grandchildren when he was convicted and taken away [to prison]. It brought tears to my eyes. There is always a lump in my throat at the memory of my Heilala’s (elder of two daughters) last visit to [me in] Nukulau.
Hardly a word was spoken as we held each other, sobbing uncontrollably the whole time, except to say that Tiara (his sister) was not allowed by the officers at the naval base to come to say her goodbye.
That was very painful. I remember thinking that people can be cruel, especially when the girls explained that it was to be their last visit. Then the picture in my mind of Heilala sitting alone under the turret of the navy ship as she tried not to look back. I had asked her not to look back.
I deserved what I got. But not them. I would not wish the same things I went through on anyone else, not even those who were malicious towards me.
It is the family that suffers. The family are always the silent victims. It is the family that stands by you. They may not agree with what you did. Perhaps it is among the great gifts of God, that children forgive parents and love them still despite the betrayal, abandonment, and pain.
For I betrayed the two women I love most in the world. I betrayed ‘Ulukalala [son] who was born the same year I went to prison. I betrayed and brought shame to my family and my village of Waciwaci. I betrayed friends of all ethnicities and those who helped me in my chosen profession and later, in business.
I betrayed the people of Fiji. That betrayal was officially confirmed when the court judgment called me a traitor. I accepted that portrayal and have to live with it. The judges — at least one of them — even opined that I masterminded the whole thing. I have to decline that dubious honour. That belongs elsewhere.
This article by Joe Yaya is republished from last month’s Islands Business magazine cover story with the permission of editor Richard Naidu and Yaya. The photographs are from a 2000 edition of the Commonwealth Press Union’s Global Journalist magazine dedicated to the reporting of The University of the South Pacific’s student journalists. Joe Yaya was a member of the USP team at the time. The archive of the award-winning USP student coverage of the coup is here.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Political opposition is not a crime 
Before 
