Although New Zealand and Australia seem to have escaped the worst of Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, some Pacific Islands stand to be hit hard — including a few that aren’t even “countries”.
The US will impose a base tariff of 10 percent on all foreign imports, with rates between 20 and 50 percent for countries judged to have major tariffs on US goods.
Nauru, one of the smallest nations in the world, has been slapped with a 30 percent tariff, the US claimed they are imposing a 59 percent tariff.
Vanuatu will be given a 22 percent tariff.
Norfolk Island, which is an Australian territory, has been given a 29 percent tariff, this is despite Australia getting only 10 percent.
Most other Pacific nations were given the 10 percent base tariff.
This included Tokelau, despite it being a non-self-governing territory of New Zealand, with a population of only about 1500 people living on the atoll islands.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A stoush between the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and a Jewish community leader has flared up following a showdown at Parliament.
Appearing before a parliamentary select committee today, Dr Stephen Rainbow was asked about his recent apology for incorrect comments he made about Muslims earlier this year.
“If my language has been injudicious . . . then I have apologised for that,” he told MPs.
“I’ve apologised publicly. I’ve apologised privately. I’ve met with FIANZ [The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand] to hear their concerns and to apologise to them, both in person and publicly, and I hold to that apology.”
The apology relates to a meeting he had with Jewish community leader Philippa Yasbek, from the anti-Zionist Jewish groups Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu, in February.
Yasbek said Rainbow claimed during the meeting that the Security Intelligence Services (SIS) threat assessment found Muslims posed a greater threat to the Jewish community in New Zealand than white supremacists.
In fact, the report states “white identity-motivated violent extremism [W-IMVE] remains the dominant identity-motivated violent extremism ideology in New Zealand”.
Rainbow changed his position
Rainbow told the committee he had since changed his position after receiving new information.
He said was disappointed he had “allowed [his] words to create a perception there was a prejudice there” and he would do everything in his power to repair his relationship with the Muslim community.
“Please be assured that I take this as a learning, and I will be far more measured with my comments in future.”
But Rainbow disputed another of Yasbek’s assertions that he had also raised the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“It’s going to be really unhelpful if I get into a he-said-she-said, but I did not say the comments that were attributed to me about that. I do not believe that,” Rainbow said.
“I emphatically deny that I said that.”
‘It definitely stuck in my mind’ – Jewish community leader Yasbek, who called for Rainbow’s resignation yesterday, was watching the select committee hearing from the back of the room.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Yasbek said she was certain Rainbow had made the comments about Afghan refugees.
“It was particularly memorable because it was so specific and he said that he was concerned about the risk of anti-semitism in the community of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“It’s very specific. It’s not a sort of detail that one is likely to make up, and it definitely stuck in my mind.”
Yasbek said the race relations commissioner and two Human Rights Commission staff members were also in the room and should be interviewed to corroborate what happened.
“There were multiple witnesses. I am concerned that he has impugned my integrity in that way which is why there should be an independent investigation of this matter.”
Alternative Jewish Voices’ Philippa Yasbek . . . “there should be an independent investigation of this matter.” Image: RNZ
Raised reported comments
Speaking to RNZ later, FIANZ chairman Abdur Razzaq said he raised the commissioner’s reported comments about Afghan refugees when he met with Rainbow several weeks ago.
“I raised it at the meeting with him and he did not correct me. At my meeting there were other members of the Human Rights Commission. He did not say he didn’t [say that].”
Razzaq said it was up to the justice minister as to whether or not Rainbow was fit for the role.
“When you hear statements like this, like ‘greatest threat’, he has forgotten it was precisely this kind of Islamophobic sentiment which gave rise to the terrorist of March 15, rise to the right-wing extremist terrorists to take action and they justify it with these kinds of statements.”
“[The commissioner] calls himself an academic, a student of history. Where is his lessons learned on this aspect? To pick a Muslim community by name… he has to really genuinely look at himself as to what he is doing and what he is saying.”
Minister backs Rainbow: ‘Doing his best’ Speaking at Parliament following the hearing, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said he backed Rainbow and believed the commissioner would learn from the experience.
“The new commissioner is doing his best. By his own admission he didn’t express himself well. He has apologised and he will be learning from that experience, and it is my expectation that he will be very careful in the way that he communicates in the future.”
Goldsmith said he stood by his appointment of Rainbow, despite the independent panel tasked with leading the process taking a different view.
“There’s a range of opinions on that. The advice that I had originally from the group was a real focus on legal skills, and I thought actually equally important was the ability to communicate ideas effectively.”
Speaking in Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Rainbow had got it “totally wrong” and it was appropriate he had apologised.
“He completely and quite wrongfully mischaracterised a New Zealand SIS report talking about threats to the Jewish community and he was wrong about that.
“He has subsequently apologised about that but equally Minister Goldsmith has or is talking to him about those comments as well.”
‘Not elabiorating further’
RNZ approached the Human Rights Commission on Thursday afternoon for a response to Yasbek doubling down on her recollection Rainbow had talked about the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.
“The Chief Commissioner will not be elaborating further about what was said in the meeting,” a spokesperson said.
“He’s happy to discuss the matter privately with the people involved,” a spokesperson said.
“Dr Rainbow acknowledges that what was said caused harm and offence and what matters most is the impact on communities. That is why he has apologised unreservedly and stands by his apology.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.
Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.
Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:
“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.
“Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.
“Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”
As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned…
Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).
Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.
This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.
Brutally targeted Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.
PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.
Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.
That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.
The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.
“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.
Under fire: Israel’s war on medics. Video: Middle East Eye
‘Killed on way to save lives’
The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.
“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”
Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.
Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.
Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.
The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.
#GAZA – New images emerge from the execution and burial site of 15 Red Crescent and Civil Defense members in Tal al-Sultan, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip
On March 24, the #IDF surrounded the five ambulances and their crew members, handcuffed them, executed them, buried them in a… pic.twitter.com/KM5DLWpfyH
Official silence On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”
The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.
Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.
His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”
No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.
In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.
“We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”
As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”
Age of lawlessness The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.
The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.
Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).
This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.
Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.
International law and international aid are out.
In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.
Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.
This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.
Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
“I started filming when we started to end.” With these haunting words, Basel Adra begins No Other Land, the Oscar-winning documentary that depicts life in Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank that are under complete occupation – military and civil – by Israel.
For Basel and his community, this land isn’t merely territory — it’s identity, livelihood, their past and future.
No Other Land vividly captures the intensity of life in rural Palestinian villages and the everyday destruction perpetrated by both Israeli authorities and the nearby settler population: the repeated demolition of Palestinian homes and schools; destruction of water sources such as wells; uprooting of olive trees; and the constant threat of extreme violence.
While this 95-minute slice of Palestinian life opened the world’s eyes, most are unaware that No Other Land takes place in an area of the West Bank that is ground zero for any viable future Palestinian state.
Designated as “Area C” under the Oslo Peace Accords, it constitutes 60% of the occupied West Bank and is where the bulk of Israeli settlements and outposts are located. It is a beautiful and resource-rich area upon which a Palestinian state would need to rely for self-sufficiency.
For decades now, Israel has been using military rule as well as its planning regime to take over huge swathes of Area C, land that is Palestinian — lived and worked on for generations.
This has been achieved through Israel’s High Planning Council, an institution constituted solely of Israelis who oversee the use of the land through permits — a system that invariably benefits Israelis and subjugates Palestinians, so much so that Israel denies access to Palestinians of 99 percent of the land in Area C including their own agricultural lands and private property.
‘This is apartheid’
Michael Lynk, when he was serving as UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to Israel’s planning system as “de-development” and stated explicitly: “This is apartheid”.
The International Court of Justice recently affirmed what Palestinians have long known: Israel’s planning policies in the West Bank are not only discriminatory but form part of a broader annexation agenda — a violation of international humanitarian law.
To these ends, Israel deploys a variety of strategies: Israeli officials will deem certain areas as “state lands”, necessary for military use, or designate them as archaeologically significant, or will grant permission for the expansion of an existing settlement or the establishment of a new one.
Meanwhile, less than 1 percent of Palestinian permit applications were granted at the best of times, a percentage which has dropped to zero since October 2023.
As part of the annexation strategy, one of Israel’s goals with respect to Area C is demographic: to move Israelis in and drive Palestinians out — all in violation of international law which prohibits the forced relocation of occupied peoples and the transfer of the occupant’s population to occupied land.
Regardless, Israel is achieving its goal with impunity: between 2023 and 2025 more than 7,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in Area C due to Israeli settler violence and access restrictions.
At least 16 Palestinian communities have been completely emptied, their residents scattered, and their ties to ancestral lands severed.
The government has increased funding for settlements by nearly 150 percent; more than 25,000 new Israeli housing units in settlements have been advanced or approved; and Israel has been carving out new roads through Palestinian lands in the West Bank, severing Palestinians from each other, their lands and other vital resources.
Israeli authorities have also encouraged the establishment of new Israeli outposts in Area C, housing some of the most radical settlers who have been intensifying serious violence against Palestinians in the area, often with the support of Israeli soldiers.
None of this is accidental. In December 2022, Israel appointed Bezalel Smotrich, founder of a settler organisation and a settler himself, to oversee civilian affairs in the West Bank.
Since then, administrative changes have accelerated settlement expansion while tightening restrictions on Palestinians. New checkpoints and barriers throughout Area C have further isolated Palestinian communities, making daily life increasingly impossible.
Humanitarian organisations and the international community provide much-needed emergency assistance to help Palestinians maintain a foothold, but Palestinians are quickly losing ground.
As No Other Land hit screens in movie houses across the world, settlers were storming homes in Area C and since the Oscar win there has been a notable uptick in violence. Just this week reports emerged that co-director Hamdan Ballal was himself badly beaten by Israeli settlers and incarcerated overnight by the Israeli army.
Israel’s annexation of Area C is imminent. To retain it as Palestinian will require both the Palestinian Authority and the international community to shift the paradigm, assert that Area C is Palestinian and take more robust actions to breathe life into this legal fact.
The road map for doing so was laid by the International Court of Justice who found unequivocally that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unlawful and must come to an end.
They specified that the international community has obligations in this regard: they must not directly or indirectly aid Israel in maintaining the occupation and they must cooperate to end it.
With respect to Area C, this includes tackling Israel’s settlement policy to cease, prevent and reverse settlement construction and expansion; preventing any further settler violence; and ending any engagement with Israel’s discriminatory High Planning Council, which must be dismantled.
With no time to waste, and despite all the other urgencies in Gaza and the West Bank, if there is to be a Palestinian state, Palestinians in Area C must be provided with full support – political, financial, and legal — by local authorities and the international community, to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.
Leilani Farha is a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and author of the report Area C is Everything. Republished under Creative Commons.
The second of a two-part series on the historic Rongelap evacuation of 300 Marshall islanders from their irradiated atoll with the help of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior crew and the return of Rainbow Warrior III 40 years later on a nuclear justice research mission. Journalist and author David Robie, who was on board, recalls the 1985 voyage.
SPECIAL REPORT:By David Robie
Mejatto, previously uninhabited and handed over to the people of Rongelap by their close relatives on nearby Ebadon Island, was a lot different to their own island. It was beautiful, but it was only three kilometres long and a kilometre wide, with a dry side and a dense tropical side.
A sandspit joined it to another small, uninhabited island. Although lush, Mejatto was uncultivated and already it was apparent there could be a food problem.Out on the shallow reef, fish were plentiful.
Shortly after the Rainbow Warrior arrived on 21 May 1985, several of the men were out wading knee-deep on the coral spearing fish for lunch.
But even the shallowness of the reef caused a problem. It made it dangerous to bring the Warrior any closer than about three kilometres offshore — as two shipwrecks on the reef reminded us.
The cargo of building materials and belongings had to be laboriously unloaded onto a bum bum (small boat), which had also travelled overnight with no navigational aids apart from a Marshallese “wave map’, and the Zodiacs. It took two days to unload the ship with a swell making things difficult at times.
An 18-year-old islander fell into the sea between the bum bum and the Warrior, almost being crushed but escaping with a jammed foot.
Fishing success on the reef The delayed return to Rongelap for the next load didn’t trouble Davey Edward. In fact, he was celebrating his first fishing success on the reef after almost three months of catching nothing. He finally landed not only a red snapper, but a dozen fish, including a half-metre shark!
Edward was also a good cook and he rustled up dinner — shark montfort, snapper fillets, tuna steaks and salmon pie (made from cans of dumped American aid food salmon the islanders didn’t want).
Returning to Rongelap, the Rainbow Warrior was confronted with a load which seemed double that taken on the first trip. Altogether, about 100 tonnes of building materials and other supplies were shipped to Mejatto. The crew packed as much as they could on deck and left for Mejatto, this time with 114 people on board. It was a rough voyage with almost everybody being seasick.
The journalists were roped in to clean up the ship before returning to Rongelap on the third journey.
‘Our people see no light, only darkness’ Researcher Dr Glenn Alcalay (now an adjunct professor of anthropology at William Paterson University), who spoke Marshallese, was a great help to me interviewing some of the islanders.
“It’s a hard time for us now because we don’t have a lot of food here on Mejatto — like breadfruit, taro and pandanus,” said Rose Keju, who wasn’t actually at Rongelap during the fallout.
“Our people feel extremely depressed. They see no light, only darkness. They’ve been crying a lot.
“We’ve moved because of the poison and the health problems we face. If we have honest scientists to check Rongelap we’ll know whether we can ever return, or we’ll have to stay on Mejatto.”
Kiosang Kios, 46, was 15 years old at the time of Castle Bravo when she was evacuated to “Kwaj”.
“My hair fell out — about half the people’s hair fell out,” she said. “My feet ached and burned. I lost my appetite, had diarrhoea and vomited.”
In 1957, she had her first baby and it was born without bones – “Like this paper, it was flimsy.” A so-called ‘jellyfish baby’, it lived half a day. After that, Kios had several more miscarriages and stillbirths. In 1959, she had a daughter who had problems with her legs and feet and thyroid trouble.
Out on the reef with the bum bums, the islanders had a welcome addition — an unusual hardwood dugout canoe being used for fishing and transport. It travelled 13,000 kilometres on board the Rainbow Warrior and bore the Sandinista legend FSLN on its black-and-red hull. A gift from Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Haazen, it had been bought for $30 from a Nicaraguan fisherman while they were crewing on the Fri. (Bunny and Henk are on board Rainbow Warrior III for the research mission).
“It has come from a small people struggling for their sovereignty against the United States and it has gone to another small people doing the same,” said Haazen.
Animals left behind Before the 10-day evacuation ended, Haazen was given an outrigger canoe by the islanders. Winched on to the deck of the Warrior, it didn’t quite make a sail-in protest at Moruroa, as Haazen planned, but it has since become a familiar sight on Auckland Harbour.
With the third load of 87 people shipped to Mejatto and one more to go, another problem emerged. What should be done about the scores of pigs and chickens on Rongelap? Pens could be built on the main deck to transport them to Mejatto but was there any fodder left for them?
The islanders decided they weren’t going to run a risk, no matter how slight, of having contaminated animals with them. They were abandoned on Rongelap — along with three of the five outriggers.
“When you get to New Zealand you’ll be asked have you been on a farm,” warned French journalist Phillipe Chatenay, who had gone there a few weeks before to prepare a Le Point article about the “Land of the Long White Cloud and Nuclear-Free Nuts”.
“Yes, and you’ll be asked to remove your shoes. And if you don’t have shoes, you’ll be asked to remove your feet,” added first mate Martini Gotjé, who was usually barefooted.
The last voyage on May 28 was the most fun. A smaller group of about 40 islanders was transported and there was plenty of time to get to know each other.
Four young men questioned cook Nathalie Mestre: where did she live? Where was Switzerland? Out came an atlas. Then Mestre produced a scrapbook of Fernando Pereira’s photographs of the voyage. The questions were endless.
They asked for a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote in English:
“We, the people of Rongelap, love our homeland. But how can our people live in a place which is dangerous and poisonous. I mean, why didn’t those American people test Bravo in a state capital? Why? Rainbow Warrior, thank you for being so nice to us. Keep up your good work.”
Each one wrote down their name: Balleain Anjain, Ralet Anitak, Kiash Tima and Issac Edmond. They handed the paper to Mestre and she added her name. Anitak grabbed it and wrote as well: “Nathalie Anitak”. They laughed.
Fernando Pereira’s birthday Thursday, May 30, was Fernando Pereira’s 35th birthday. The evacuation was over and a one-day holiday was declared as we lay anchored off Mejato.
Pereira was on the Pacific voyage almost by chance. Project coordinator Steve Sawyer had been seeking a wire machine for transmitting pictures of the campaign. He phoned Fiona Davies, then heading the Greenpeace photo office in Paris. But he wanted a machine and photographer separately.
“No, no … I’ll get you a wire machine,” replied Davies. ‘But you’ll have to take my photographer with it.” Agreed. The deal would make a saving for the campaign budget.
Sawyer wondered who this guy was, although Gotjé and some of the others knew him. Pereira had fled Portugal about 15 years before while he was serving as a pilot in the armed forces at a time when the country was fighting to retain colonies in Angola and Mozambique. He settled in The Netherlands, the only country which would grant him citizenship.
After first working as a photographer for Anefo press agency, he became concerned with environmental and social issues. Eventually he joined the Amsterdam communist daily De Waarheid and was assigned to cover the activities of Greenpeace. Later he joined Greenpeace.
Although he adopted Dutch ways, his charming Latin temperament and looks betrayed his Portuguese origins. He liked tight Italian-style clothes and fast sports cars. Pereira was always wide-eyed, happy and smiling.
In Hawai`i, he and Sawyer hiked up to the crater at the top of Diamond Head one day. Sawyer took a snapshot of Pereira laughing — a photo later used on the front page of the New Zealand Times after his death with the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents.
While most of the crew were taking things quietly and the “press gang” caught up on stories, Sawyer led a mini-expedition in a Zodiac to one of the shipwrecks, the Palauan Trader. With him were Davey Edward, Henk Haazen, Paul Brown and Bunny McDiarmid.
Clambering on board the hulk, Sawyer grabbed hold of a rust-caked railing which collapsed. He plunged 10 metres into a hold. While he lay in pain with a dislocated shoulder and severely lacerated abdomen, his crewmates smashed a hole through the side of the ship. They dragged him through pounding surf into the Zodiac and headed back to the Warrior, three kilometres away.
“Doc” Andy Biedermann, assisted by “nurse” Chatenay, who had received basic medical training during national service in France, treated Sawyer. He took almost two weeks to recover.
But the accident failed to completely dampen celebrations for Pereira, who was presented with a hand-painted t-shirt labelled “Rainbow Warrior Removals Inc”.
Pereira’s birthday was the first of three which strangely coincided with events casting a tragic shadow over the Rainbow Warrior’s last voyage.
Dr David Robie is an environmental and political journalist and author, and editor of Asia Pacific Report. He travelled on board the Rainbow Warrior for almost 11 weeks. This article is adapted from his 1986 book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior. A new edition is being published in July to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing.
The first of a two-part series on the historic Rongelap evacuation of 300 Marshall islanders from their irradiated atoll with the help of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior crew and the return of Rainbow Warrior III 40 years later on a nuclear justice research mission.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Shiva Gounden in Majuro
Family isn’t just about blood—it’s about standing together through the toughest of times.
This is the relationship between Greenpeace and the Marshall Islands — a vast ocean nation, stretching across nearly two million square kilometers of the Pacific. Beneath the waves, coral reefs are bustling with life, while coconut trees stand tall.
For centuries, the Marshallese people have thrived here, mastering the waves, reading the winds, and navigating the open sea with their canoe-building knowledge passed down through generations. Life here is shaped by the rhythm of the tides, the taste of fresh coconut and roasted breadfruit, and an unbreakable bond between people and the sea.
From the bustling heart of its capital, Majuro to the quiet, far-reaching atolls, their islands are not just land; they are home, history, and identity.
Still, Marshallese communities were forced into one of the most devastating chapters of modern history — turned into a nuclear testing ground by the United States without consent, and their lives and lands poisoned by radiation.
Operation Exodus: A legacy of solidarity Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands — its total yield roughly equal to one Hiroshima-sized bomb every day for 12 years.
During this Cold War period, the US government planned to conduct its largest nuclear test ever. On the island of Bikini, United States Commodore Ben H. Wyatt manipulated the 167 Marshallese people who called Bikini home asking them to leave so that the US could carry out atomic bomb testing, stating that it was for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars”.
Exploiting their deep faith, he misled Bikinians into believing they were acting in God’s will, and trusting this, they agreed to move—never knowing the true cost of their decision
On March 1, 1954, the Castle Bravo test was launched — its yield 1000 times stronger than Hiroshima. Radioactive fallout spread across Rongelap Island about 150 kilometers away, due to what the US government claimed was a “shift in wind direction”.
In reality, the US ignored weather reports that indicated the wind would carry the fallout eastward towards Rongelap and Utirik Atolls, exposing the islands to radioactive contamination. Children played in what they thought was snow, and almost immediately the impacts of radiation began — skin burning, hair fallout, vomiting.
The Rongelap people were immediately relocated, and just three years later were told by the US government their island was deemed safe and asked to return.
For the next 28 years, the Rongelap people lived through a period of intense “gaslighting” by the US government. *
Forced to live on contaminated land, with women enduring miscarriages and cancer rates increasing, in 1985, the people of Rongelap made the difficult decision to leave their homeland. Despite repeated requests to the US government to help evacuate, an SOS was sent, and Greenpeace responded: the Rainbow Warrior arrived in Rongelap, helping to move communities to Mejatto Island.
This was the last journey of the first Rainbow Warrior. The powerful images of their evacuation were captured by photographer Fernando Pereira, who, just months later, was killed in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior as it sailed to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific.
From nuclear to climate: The injustice repeats The fight for justice did not end with the nuclear tests—the same forces that perpetuated nuclear colonialism continue to endanger the Marshall Islands today with new threats: climate change and deep-sea mining.
The Marshall Islands, a nation of over 1,000 islands, is particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. Entire communities could disappear within a generation due to rising sea levels. Additionally, greedy international corporations are pushing to mine the deep sea of the Pacific Ocean for profit. Deep sea mining threatens fragile marine ecosystems and could destroy Pacific ways of life, livelihoods and fish populations. The ocean connects us all, and a threat anywhere in the Pacific is a threat to the world.
But if there could be one symbol to encapsulate past nuclear injustices and current climate harms it would be the Runit Dome. This concrete structure was built by the US to contain radioactive waste from years of nuclear tests, but climate change now poses a direct threat.
Science, storytelling, and resistance: The Rainbow Warrior’s epic mission and 40 year celebration
At the invitation of the Marshallese community and government, the Rainbow Warrior is in the Pacific nation to celebrate 40 years since 1985’s Operation Exodus, and stand in support of their ongoing fight for nuclear justice, climate action, and self-determination.
This journey brings together science, storytelling, and activism to support the Marshallese movement for justice and recognition. Independent radiation experts and Greenpeace scientists will conduct crucial research across the atolls, providing much-needed data on remaining nuclear contamination.
For decades, research on radiation levels has been controlled by the same government that conducted the nuclear tests, leaving many unanswered questions. This independent study will help support the Marshallese people in their ongoing legal battles for recognition, reparations, and justice.
The path of the ship tour: A journey led by the Marshallese From March to April, the Rainbow Warrior is sailing across the Marshall Islands, stopping in Majuro, Mejatto, Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap, and Wotje. Like visiting old family, each of these locations carries a story — of nuclear fallout, forced displacement, resistance, and hope for a just future.
But just like old family, there’s something new to learn. At every stop, local leaders, activists, and a younger generation are shaping the narrative.
Their testimonies are the foundation of this journey, ensuring the world cannot turn away. Their stories of displacement, resilience, and hope will be shared far beyond the Pacific, calling for justice on a global scale.
A defining moment for climate justice The Marshallese are not just survivors of past injustices; they are champions of a just future. Their leadership reminds us that those most affected by climate change are not only calling for action — they are showing the way forward. They are leaders of finding solutions to avert these crises.
They are not only protecting their lands but are also at the forefront of the global fight for climate justice, pushing for reparations, recognition, and climate action.
This voyage is a message: the world must listen, and it must act. The Marshallese people are standing their ground, and we stand in solidarity with them — just like family.
Learn their story. Support their call for justice. Amplify their voices. Because when those on the frontlines lead, justice is within reach.
Shiva Gounden is the head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific. This article series is republished with the permission of Greenpeace.
* This refers to the period from 1957 — when the US Atomic Energy Commission declared Rongelap Atoll safe for habitation despite known contamination — to 1985, when Greenpeace assisted the Rongelap community in relocating due to ongoing radiation concerns. The Compact of Free Association, signed in 1986, finally started acknowledging damages caused by nuclear testing to the populations of Rongelap.
Global press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza this week, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.
And protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand dedicated their week 77 rally and march in the heart of Auckland to their memory, declaring “Journalism is not a crime”.
Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya, media reports said.
Video, reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.
Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today television was killed earlier on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an Israeli airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.
One Palestinian woman read out a message from Shabat’s family: “He dreamed of becoming a journalist and to tell the world the truth.
“But war doesn’t wait for dreams. He was only 23, and when the war began he left classes to give a voice to those who had none.”
Global media condemnation
In the hours after the deaths, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s programme director.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour.
“Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”
Honouring the life of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat – killed by Israeli forces at 23 and shattering his dreams. Image: Del Abcede/APR
In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted and killed Shabat and Mansour and labelled them as “terrorists” — without any evidence to back their claim.
The IDF also said that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance fighters in Khan Younis, where Mohammed Mansour was killed.
In October 2024, the IDF had accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant arm of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Al Jazeera and Shabat denied Israel’s claims, with Shabat stating in an interview with the CPJ that “we are civilians … Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”
In its statement condemning the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, the CPJ again called on Israel to “stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press”.
The CPJ estimates that more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began gathering data in 1992.
However, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says it believes the number is higher and, with the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, 208 journalists and other members of the press have been killed over the course of the conflict.
Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.
Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in its genocide in the blockaded enclave since October 7, 2023.
The Israeli carnage has reduced most of the Gaza to ruins and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, while causing a massive shortage of basic necessities.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.
New Zealand protesters wearing mock “Press” vests in solidarity with Gazan journalists documenting the Israeli genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has reaffirmed the Trump administration’s defence commitments to America’s Pacific territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands and that any attack on them would be an attack on the mainland.
Hegseth touched down in Guam from Hawai’i on Thursday as part of an Indo-Pacific tour, his first as Defence Secretary, in which he is seeking to shore up traditional alliances to counter China.
Geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific has seen Guam and neighboring CNMI become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
Any attack on Guam and the Commonwealth Northern Marianas Islands would be met with “appropriate response,” Hegseth said during his brief visit, emphasising both territories were central to the US defence posture focused on containing China.
“We’re defending our homeland,” Hegseth said. “Guam and CNMI are vital parts of America, and I want to be very clear — to everyone in this room, to the cameras — any attack against these islands is an attack against the US.”
“We’re going to continue to stay committed to our presence here,” Hegseth said. “It’s important to emphasise: we are not seeking war with Communist China. But it is our job to ensure that we are ready.”
Key US strategic asset
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers, and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.
The pledge from Hegseth comes as debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified, with competing calls by some residents for full statehood and UN-mandated decolonisation, led by the Indigenous Chamorro people.
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth (left) meets with Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero (far center) and CNMI Governor Arnold Palacios (far right) on his visit to the US Pacific territory on Thursday. Image: US Secretary of Defence
Defending Guam and CNMI, Hegseth said, aligns with President Donald Trump’s “goal to achieve peace through strength by putting America first”.
He delivered remarks at Andersen Air Force Base and took an aerial tour of the island before meeting with Lou Leon Guerrero and Arnold Palacios, governors of Guam and Northern Marianas, respectively.
Guerrero appealed to Hegseth about the “great impact” the US military buildup on Guam had had on the island’s residents.
“We welcome you, and we welcome the position and the posture that President Trump has,” Guerrero told Hegseth, during opening statements before their closed-door meeting.
“We are the centre of gravity here. We are the second island chain of defence,” she said. “We want to be a partner in the readiness effort but national security cannot happen without human health security.”
Funding for hospital
Guerrero sought funding for a new hospital, estimated to cost US$600 million.
“Our island needs a regional hospital capable of handling mass casualties — whether from conflict or natural disasters,” she told Hegseth.
“We are working very closely in partnership with the military, and one of our asks is to be a partner in the financing of that hospital.”
Afterwards Guerrero told reporters she did not have time to discuss the housing crisis caused by the US military buildup.
Earlier this month, Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address of US neglect of Guam’s 160,000 residents, where one-in-five are estimated to live below the poverty line.
“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.
At the end of his visit to Guam, Hegseth announced in a statement he had also reached an “understanding” with President Wesley Simina of the Federated States of Micronesia to begin planning and construction of US$400 million in military infrastructure projects in the State of Yap.
Territorial background
Simina’s office would not confirm to BenarNews he had met with Hegseth in Guam, saying only he was “off island.”
As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power.
The US acquired Guam in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and CNMI from Japan in 1945 after its defeat in the Second World War. Both remain unincorporated territories to this day.
The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate from Japan’s Okinawa islands.
On Tuesday, Hegseth was in Hawai’i meeting officials of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Speaking with the media in Honolulu, he said his Asia-Pacific visit was to show strength to allies and “reestablish deterrence.”
Hegseth’s week-long tour comes against a backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness. Its coast guard vessels have recently encroached into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea and around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
His visit will be closely watched in the Pacific for signs of the Trump administration’s commitment to traditional allies following a rift between Washington and Europe that has tested the transatlantic alliance.
The trip also threatens to be overshadowed by the fallout from revelations that he and other national security officials discussed attack plans against Yemen’s Houthis on the messaging app Signal with a journalist present.
Flagrant violation
Critics are calling it a flagrant violation of information security protocols.
During his first term, Trump revived Washington’s engagements in the Pacific island region after long years of neglect paved the way for China’s initiatives.
He hosted leaders of the US freely associated states of Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia at the White House in 2019.
The Biden administration followed through, doubling the engagement with an increased presence and complementing the military buildup with economic assistance that sought to outdo China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The new Trump administration, however, cut the cord, dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and along with it, the millions of dollars pledged to Pacific island nations.
The abolition of about 80 percent of USAID programmes sent mixed signals to the island nations and security experts have warned that China would fill the void it has created.
From Guam, Hegseth has travelled to Philippines and Japan, where he will participate in a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and will later meet with Japanese leaders and US military forces.
Republished from BenarNews with permission. Stefan Armbruster in Brisbane contributed to this story.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Asia Pacific.
Dozens of Filipinos and supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand came together in a Black Friday vigil and Rally for Justice in the heart of two cities tonight — Auckland and Christchurch.
They celebrated the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month to face trial for alleged crimes against humanity over a wave of extrajudicial killings during his six-year presidency in a so-called “war on drugs”.
Estimates of the killings have ranged between 6250 (official police figure) and up to 30,000 (human rights groups) — including 32 in a single day — during his 2016-2022 term and critics have described the bloodbath as a war against the poor.
But speakers warned tonight this was only the first step to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines.
Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, and his adminstration were also condemned by the protesters.
Introducing the rally with the theme “Convict Duterte! End Impunity!” in Freyberg Square in the heart of downtown Auckland, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Eugene Velasco said: “We demand justice for the thousands killed in the bloody and fraudulent war on drugs under the US-Duterte regime.”
She said they sought to:
expose the human rights violations against the Filipino people;
call for Duterte’s accountability; and
to hold Marcos responsible for continuing this reign of terror against the masses.
Flown to The Hague
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte on March 11. He was immediately arrested on an aircraft at Manila International Airport and flown by charter aircraft to The Hague where he is now detained awaiting trial.
“We welcome this development because his arrest is the result of tireless resistance — not only from human rights defenders but, most importantly, from the families of those who fell victim to Duterte’s extrajudicial killings,” Velasco said.
Filipina activist Eugene Velasco . . . families of victims fought for justice “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”. Image: APR
“These families fought for justice despite the complete lack of support from the Marcos administration.”
Velasco said their their courage and resilience had pushed this case forward — “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”.
“‘Shoot them dead!’—this was Duterte’s direct order to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). His death squads carried out these brutal killings with impunity,” Velasco said.
Mock corpses in the Philippines rally in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR
But Duterte was not the only one who must be held accountable, she added.
“We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those who orchestrated and enabled the state-sponsored executions, led by figures like Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Lieutenant-Colonel Jovie Espenido, that led to over 30,000 deaths, the militarisation of 47,587 schools, churches, and public institutions — especially in rural areas — the abductions and killings of human rights defenders, and the continued existence of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.”
A masked young speaker tells of many victims of extrajudicial killings at tonight’s Duterte rally in Freyberg Square. Image: APR
Fake news, red-tagging
Velasco accused this agency of having “used the Filipino people’s taxes to fuel human rights abuses” through the spread of fake news and red-tagging against activists, peasants, trade unionists, and people’s lawyers.
“The fight does not end here,” she said.
“The Filipino people, together with all justice and peace-loving people of Aotearoa New Zealand, will not stop until justice is fully served — not just for the victims, but for all who continue to suffer under the Duterte-Marcos regime, which remains under the grip of US imperialist interests.
“As Filipinos overseas, we must unite in demanding justice, stand in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings, and continue the struggle for accountability.”
Several speakers gave harrowing testimony about the fate of named victims as their photographs and histories were remembered.
Speakers from local political groups, including Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez, and retired prominent trade unionist and activist Robert Reid, also participated.
Reid referenced the ICC arrest issued last November against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Gaza genocide, saying he hoped that he too would end up in The Hague.
Mock corpses surrounded by candles displayed signs — which had been a hallmark of the drug war killings — declaring “Jail Duterte”, “Justice for all victims of human rights” and “Convict Sara Duterte now!” Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte is currently Vice-President and is facing impeachment proceedings.
The “convict Duterte” rally and vigil in Freyberg Square tonight. Image: APR
The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) troika leaders have reviewed a list of “eminent persons” with extensive knowledge on Pacific regionalism to lead discussions on regional reforms, the Cook Islands government said yesterday.
The PIF troika is a high-level regional political consultative mechanism made up of the Forum’s immediate past, present, and future chairs.
Solomon Islands is the current chair of PIF, having taken over from Tonga last year. Palau will be the next chair.
The Cook Islands Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that Prime Minister Mark Brown had joined the troika leaders on Monday to address pressing regional matters and advance discussions for strengthened regionalism as envisioned in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
It said the leaders reviewed the 2024 troika mission report on New Caledonia and reaffirmed the PIF’s commitment to providing constructive support for the self-determination process in New Caledonia.
They “also considered a shortlist of eminent persons with deep expertise in Pacific regionalism to spearhead consultations with leaders, relevant ministers and senior officials in a talanoa setting on regional governance reforms.
“Upon further deliberation, troika leaders will appoint one representative from each Pacific sub-region to form a gender-balanced High-Level Persons Group that will compile their findings from the consultations into a report for further consideration and endorsement by Forum members.”
Regional governance
The statement said the eminent persons initiative will contribute to the ongoing work for the Review of the Regional Architecture (RRA), which aims to ensure regional governance mechanisms are fit-for-purpose, effective, and responsive to the evolving needs of Pacific Island countries.
“Effective regional governance requires strong collective political leadership, and the troika mechanism is central to ensuring the Pacific Islands Forum remains cohesive, forward-looking, and responsive to the region’s evolving needs,” Cook Islands Foreign Secretary Tepaeru Herrmann said.
He said that as an active member of the troika, the Cook Islands remained committed to providing strategic direction that strengthened Pacific unity and reinforced our shared commitment to regional collective action.
“Through close collaboration, we are shaping regional approaches and initiatives that reflect regional priorities, uphold Pacific-led solutions, and foster deeper cooperation across the Blue Pacific,” he added.
In addition, the PIF troika leaders reaffirmed their commitment to sustaining the momentum, with a follow-up meeting scheduled for next month, as they move toward the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Honiara later this year.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A West Papuan doctoral candidate has warned that indigenous noken-weaving practices back in her homeland are under threat with the world’s biggest deforestation project.
About 60 people turned up for the opening of her “Noken/Men: String Bags of the Muyu Tribe of Southern West Papua” exhibition by Veronika T Kanem at Auckland University today and were treated to traditional songs and dances by a group of West Papuan students from Auckland and Hamilton.
The three-month exhibition focuses on the noken — known as “men” — of the Muyu tribe from southern West Papua and their weaving cultural practices.
It is based on Kanem’s research, which explores the socio-cultural significance of the noken/men among the Muyu people, her father’s tribe.
“Indigenous communities in southern Papua are facing the world’s biggest deforestation project underway in West Papua as Indonesia looks to establish 2 million hectares of sugarcane and palm oil plantations in the Papua region,” she said.
West Papua has the third-largest intact rainforest on earth and indigenous communities are being forced off their land by this project and by military.
The ancient traditions of noken-weaving are under threat.
Natural fibres, tree bark
Noken — called bilum in neighbouring Papua New Guinea — are finely woven or knotted string bags made from various natural fibres of plants and tree bark.
“Noken contains social and cultural significance for West Papuans because this string bag is often used in cultural ceremonies, bride wealth payments, child initiation into adulthood, and gifts,” Kanem said.
West Papua student dancers performed traditional songs and dances at the noken exhibition. Image: APR
“This string bag has different names depending on the region, language and dialect of local tribes. For the Muyu — my father’s tribe — in Southern West Papua, they call it ‘men’.
In West Papua, noken symbolises a woman’s womb or a source of life because this string bag is often used to load tubers, garden harvests, piglets, and babies.
Noken string bag as a fashion item. Image: APR
“My research examines the Muyu people’s connection to their land, forest, and noken weaving,” said Kanem.
“Muyu women harvest the genemo (Gnetum gnemon) tree’s inner fibres to make noken, and gift-giving noken is a way to establish and maintain relationships from the Muyu to their family members, relatives and outsiders.
“Drawing on the Melanesian and Indigenous research approaches, this research formed noken weaving as a methodology, a research method, and a metaphor based on the Muyu tribe’s knowledge and ways of doing things.”
Hosting pride
Welcoming the guests, Associate Professor Gordon Nanau, head of Pacific Studies, congratulated Kanem on the exhibition and said the university was proud to be hosting such excellent Melanesian research.
Part of the scores of noken on display at the exhibition. Image: APR
Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem, Kanem’s primary supervisor, was also among the many speakers, including Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai of Lagi Maama, and Daren Kamali of Creative New
The exhibition provides insights into the refined artistry, craft and making of noken/men string bags, personal stories, and their functions.
An 11 minute documentary on the weaving process and examples of noken from Waropko, Upkim, Merauke, Asmat, Wamena, Nabire and Paniai was also screened, and a booklet is expected to be launched soon.
The prime ministers of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea have signed a new statement of partnership marking 50 years of bilateral relations between the two countries.
The document — which focuses on education, trade, security, agriculture and fisheries — was signed by Christopher Luxon and James Marape at the Beehive in Wellington last night.
It will govern the relationship between the two countries through until 2029 and replaces the last agreement signed by Marape in 2021 with then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Marking the signing, Luxon announced $1 million would be allocated in response to Papua New Guinea’s aspirations to strengthen public sector institutions.
“That funding will be able to support initiatives like strengthen cooperation between disaster preparedness institutions and also exchanging expertise in the governance of state owned enterprises in particular,” Luxon said.
In his response Marape acknowledged the long enduring relationship between the government and peoples of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.
He said the new statement of partnership was an important blueprint on how the two countries would progress their relationship into the future.
“Papua New Guinea brings to the table, as far as our relationship is concerned, our close proximity to Asia. We straddle the Pacific and Southeast Asia, we have an affinity to as much as our own affinity with our relations in the Pacific,” Marape said.
“Our dual presence at APEC continues to ring [sic] home the fact that we belong to a family of nations and we work back to back on many fronts.”
Meeting Peters
Today, Marape will meet with Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and leader of the opposition Chris Hipkins.
Later in the week, Marape is scheduled to travel to Hamilton where he will meet with the NZ Papua New Guinea Business Council and with Papua New Guinea scholarship recipients at Waikato University.
James Marape is accompanied by his spouse Rachael Marape and a ministerial delegation including Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko, Trade Minister Richard Maru, Minister for Livestock Seki Agisa and Higher Education Minister Kinoka Feo.
This is Marape’s first official visit to New Zealand following his re-election as prime minister in the last national elections in 2022.
According to the PNG government, the visit signals a growing relationship between the two countries, especially in trade and investment, cultural exchange, and the newly-added Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme that New Zealand has extended to Papua New Guineans to work in Aotearoa.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Critics have long accused the agency — and its affiliated outlets such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia — of being a propaganda arm of US foreign policy.
But to the current president, the USAGM has become a promoter of “anti-American ideas” and agendas — including allegedly suppressing stories critical of Iran, sympathetically covering the issue of “white privilege” and bowing to pressure from China.
Propaganda is clearly in the eye of the beholder. The Moscow Times reported Russian officials were elated by the demise of the “purely propagandistic” outlets, while China’s Global Times celebrated the closure of a “lie factory”.
Meanwhile, the European Commission hailed USAGM outlets as a “beacon of truth, democracy and hope”. All of which might have left the average person understandably confused: Voice of America? Wasn’t that the US propaganda outlet from World War II?
Well, yes. But the reality of USAGM and similar state-sponsored global media outlets is more complex — as are the implications of the US agency’s demise.
For the better part of a century, Voice of America has broadcast into countries whose governments censored free information. The Trump administration has dismantled VOA’s parent organization, put all of its employees on leave and ended funding for independent media agencies.… pic.twitter.com/TzagYQwNIx
Public service or state propaganda? The USAGM is one of several international public service media outlets based in Western democracies. Others include Australia’s ABC International, the BBC World Service, CBC/Radio-Canada, France Médias Monde, NHK-World Japan, Deutsche Welle in Germany and SRG SSR in Switzerland.
Part of the Public Media Alliance, they are similar to national public service media, largely funded by taxpayers to uphold democratic ideals of universal access to news and information.
Unlike national public media, however, they might not be consumed — or even known — by domestic audiences. Rather, they typically provide news to countries without reliable independent media due to censorship or state-run media monopolies.
On the other hand, the independence of USAGM outlets has been questioned often, particularly as they are required to share government-mandated editorials.
Leaving a void Ultimately, these global media outlets wouldn’t exist if there weren’t benefits for the governments that fund them. Sharing stories and perspectives that support or promote certain values and policies is an effective form of “public diplomacy”.
Yet these international media outlets differ from state-controlled media models because of editorial systems that protect them from government interference.
The Voice of America’s “firewall”, for instance, “prohibits interference by any US government official in the objective, independent reporting of news”. Such protections allow journalists to report on their own governments more objectively.
In contrast, outlets such as China Media Group (CMG), RT from Russia, and PressTV from Iran also reach a global audience in a range of languages. But they do this through direct government involvement.
Though RT states it is an autonomous media outlet, research has found the Russian government oversees hiring editors, imposing narrative angles, and rejecting stories.
A Voice of America staffer protests outside the Washington DC offices on March 17, 2025, after employees were placed on administrative leave. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
Other voices get louder The biggest concern for Western democracies is that these other state-run media outlets will fill the void the USAGM leaves behind — including in the Pacific.
Worryingly, the differences between outlets such as Voice of America and more overtly state-run outlets aren’t immediately clear to audiences, as government ownership isn’t advertised.
An Australian senator even had to apologise recently after speaking with PressTV, saying she didn’t know the news outlet was affiliated with the Iranian government, or that it had been sanctioned in Australia.
Switched off Trump’s move to dismantle the USAGM doesn’t come as a complete surprise, however. As the authors of Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America described, the first Trump administration failed in its attempts to remove the firewall and install loyalists.
This perhaps explains why Trump has resorted to more drastic measures this time. And, as with many of the current administration’s legally dubious actions, there has been resistance.
But for many of the agency’s journalists, contractors, broadcasting partners and audiences, it may be too late. Last week, The New York Times reported some Voice of America broadcasts had already been replaced by music.
Critics have long accused the agency — and its affiliated outlets such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia — of being a propaganda arm of US foreign policy.
But to the current president, the USAGM has become a promoter of “anti-American ideas” and agendas — including allegedly suppressing stories critical of Iran, sympathetically covering the issue of “white privilege” and bowing to pressure from China.
Propaganda is clearly in the eye of the beholder. The Moscow Times reported Russian officials were elated by the demise of the “purely propagandistic” outlets, while China’s Global Times celebrated the closure of a “lie factory”.
Meanwhile, the European Commission hailed USAGM outlets as a “beacon of truth, democracy and hope”. All of which might have left the average person understandably confused: Voice of America? Wasn’t that the US propaganda outlet from World War II?
Well, yes. But the reality of USAGM and similar state-sponsored global media outlets is more complex — as are the implications of the US agency’s demise.
For the better part of a century, Voice of America has broadcast into countries whose governments censored free information. The Trump administration has dismantled VOA’s parent organization, put all of its employees on leave and ended funding for independent media agencies.… pic.twitter.com/TzagYQwNIx
Public service or state propaganda? The USAGM is one of several international public service media outlets based in Western democracies. Others include Australia’s ABC International, the BBC World Service, CBC/Radio-Canada, France Médias Monde, NHK-World Japan, Deutsche Welle in Germany and SRG SSR in Switzerland.
Part of the Public Media Alliance, they are similar to national public service media, largely funded by taxpayers to uphold democratic ideals of universal access to news and information.
Unlike national public media, however, they might not be consumed — or even known — by domestic audiences. Rather, they typically provide news to countries without reliable independent media due to censorship or state-run media monopolies.
On the other hand, the independence of USAGM outlets has been questioned often, particularly as they are required to share government-mandated editorials.
Leaving a void Ultimately, these global media outlets wouldn’t exist if there weren’t benefits for the governments that fund them. Sharing stories and perspectives that support or promote certain values and policies is an effective form of “public diplomacy”.
Yet these international media outlets differ from state-controlled media models because of editorial systems that protect them from government interference.
The Voice of America’s “firewall”, for instance, “prohibits interference by any US government official in the objective, independent reporting of news”. Such protections allow journalists to report on their own governments more objectively.
In contrast, outlets such as China Media Group (CMG), RT from Russia, and PressTV from Iran also reach a global audience in a range of languages. But they do this through direct government involvement.
Though RT states it is an autonomous media outlet, research has found the Russian government oversees hiring editors, imposing narrative angles, and rejecting stories.
A Voice of America staffer protests outside the Washington DC offices on March 17, 2025, after employees were placed on administrative leave. Image: Getty Images/The Conversation
Other voices get louder The biggest concern for Western democracies is that these other state-run media outlets will fill the void the USAGM leaves behind — including in the Pacific.
Worryingly, the differences between outlets such as Voice of America and more overtly state-run outlets aren’t immediately clear to audiences, as government ownership isn’t advertised.
An Australian senator even had to apologise recently after speaking with PressTV, saying she didn’t know the news outlet was affiliated with the Iranian government, or that it had been sanctioned in Australia.
Switched off Trump’s move to dismantle the USAGM doesn’t come as a complete surprise, however. As the authors of Capturing News, Capturing Democracy: Trump and the Voice of America described, the first Trump administration failed in its attempts to remove the firewall and install loyalists.
This perhaps explains why Trump has resorted to more drastic measures this time. And, as with many of the current administration’s legally dubious actions, there has been resistance.
But for many of the agency’s journalists, contractors, broadcasting partners and audiences, it may be too late. Last week, The New York Times reported some Voice of America broadcasts had already been replaced by music.
Global media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli occupation forces for assassinating two more Palestinian journalists covering the Gaza genocide, taking the media death toll in the besieged enclave to at least 208 since the war started.
Journalist and contributor to the Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, Hossam Shabat, is the latest to have been killed.
Witnesses said Hossam’s vehicle was hit in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya. Several pedestrians were also wounded, reports Al Jazeera.
in a statement, Al Jazeera condemned the killings, saying Hossam had joined the network’s journalists and correspondents killed during the ongoing war on Gaza, including Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Ahmed Al-Louh.
Al Jazeera affirmed its commitment to pursue all legal measures to “prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists”.
The network also said it stood in “unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza and reaffirms its commitment to achieving justice” by prosecuting the killers of more than 200 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.
The network extended its condolences to Hossam’s family, and called on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists.
Hossam was the second journalist killed in Gaza yesterday.
House targeted
Earlier, the Israeli military killed Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for the Beirut-based Palestine Today television, in an attack targeting a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
Al Jazeera condemns Israel’s killing of journalist Hossam Shabat in Gaza https://t.co/iJ6lscVahm
“Stand up and speak, tell the world, you are the one who tells the truth, for the image alone is not enough,” the father said through tears.
Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), condemned the killings, describing them as war crimes.
The CPJ called for an independent international investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.
The two latest journalists killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza . . . Al Jazeera’s Hossam Shabat (left) and Mohammad Mansour of Palestine Today. Image: AJ screenshot APR
‘Nightmare has to end’
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, whose killings may have been targeted.”
Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.
Al Jazeera reports that the world ignores calls “to stop this madness” as Israel kills dozens in Gaza. Image: AJ screenshot APR
A UN official, Olga Cherevko, said Israel’s unhindered attacks on Gaza were a “bloody stain on our collective consciousness”, noting “our calls for this madness to stop have gone unheeded” by the world.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 792 people had been killed and 1663 injured in the week since Israel resumed its war on the Strip.
The total death toll since the war started on October 7, 2023, has risen to 50,144, while 113,704 people have been injured, it said.
West Bank ‘news desert’
Meanwhile, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the repression of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had intensified in recent months despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza before it collapsed.
In the eastern Palestinian territories, Israeli armed forces have shot at journalists, arrested them and restricted their movement.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has detained Al Jazeera journalists.
RSF warned of a growing crackdown, which was transforming the region into a “news desert”.
He was in an ambulance receiving treatment when the doors were opened and he was abducted by the Israeli military. Colleagues say he has “disappeared”.
A number of American activists were also attacked, and video on social media showed them fleeing the settler violence.
The Papua New Guinea government has admitted to using a technology that it says was “successfully tested” to block social media platforms, particularly Facebook, for much of the day yesterday.
Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr said the “test” was done under the framework of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2024, and sought to address the growing concerns over hate speech, misinformation, and other harmful content online.
Tsiamalili did not specify what kind of tech was used, but said it was carried out in collaboration with the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC), the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA), and various internet service providers.
“We are not attempting to suppress free speech or restrict our citizens from expressing their viewpoints,” Tsiamalili said.
“However, the unchecked proliferation of fake news, hate speech, pornography, child exploitation, and incitement to violence on platforms such as Facebook is unacceptable.
“These challenges increasingly threaten the safety, dignity, and well-being of our populace.”
However, government agencies responsible for communications and ICT, including NICTA, said they were not aware.
‘Confidence relies on transparency’
“Public confidence in our digital governance relies on transparency and consistency in how we approach online regulation,” NICTA chief executive Kilakupa Gulo-Vui said.
“It is essential that all key stakeholders, including NICTA, law enforcement, telecommunications providers, and government agencies, collaborate closely to ensure that any actions taken are well-understood and properly executed.”
He said that while maintaining national security was a priority, the balance between safety and digital freedom must be carefully managed.
Gulo-Vui said NICTA would be addressing this matter with the Minister for ICT to ensure NICTA’s role continued to align with the government’s broader policy objectives, while fostering a cohesive and united approach to digital regulation.
The Department of Information Communication and Technology (DICT) Secretary, Steven Matainaho, also stated his department was not aware of the test but added that the police have powers under the new domestic terrorism laws.
Papua New Guinea’s recently introduced anti-terror laws are aimed at curbing both internal and external security threats.
Critics warn of dictatorial control
However, critics of the move say the test borders on dictatorial control.
An observer of Monday’s events, Lucas Kiap, said the goal of combating hate speech and exploitation was commendable, but the approach risks paving way for authoritarian overreach.
“Where is PNG headed? If the government continues down this path, it risks trading democracy for control,” he said.
Many social media users, however, appeared to outdo the government, with many downloading and sharing Virtual Area Network (VPN) apps and continuing to post on Facebook.
“Hello from Poland,” one user said.
East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said today that the country’s anti-terrorism law could target anyone because “the definition of a terrorist is left to the Police Minister to decide”.
‘Designed to take away our freedoms’
“During the debate on the anti-terrorism bill in Parliament, I pointed out that the law was too broad and it could be used against innocent people,” he wrote on Facebook.
He said government MPs laughed at him and used their numbers to pass the bill.
“Yesterday, the Police Minister used the Anti-terrorism Act to shut down Facebook. That was just a test, that was step one,” Governor Bird said.
“There is no limit to the powers the Minister of Police can exercise under this new law. It is draconian law designed to take away our freedoms.
“We are now heading into dangerous territory and everyone is powerless to stop this tyranny,” he added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Israel has begun the final stage of its genocide. The Palestinians will be forced to choose between death or deportation. There are no other options, writes Chris Hedges
ANALYSIS:By Chris Hedges
This is the last chapter of the genocide. It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza. No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.
Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.
The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.
The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.
The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”
The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.
Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed. It has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza where desperate Palestinians are camped out amid the rubble of their homes. What comes now is massstarvation — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on March 21 it has six days of flour supplies left — deaths from diseases caused by contaminated water and food, scores of killed and wounded each day under the relentless assault of bombs, missiles, shells and bullets.
Nothing will function, bakeries, water treatment and sewage plants, hospitals — Israel blew up the damaged Turkish-Palestinian hospital on March 21 — schools, aid distribution centers or clinics. Less than half of the 53 emergency vehicles operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society are functional due to fuel shortages. Soon there will be none.
Israel’s message is unequivocal: Gaza will be uninhabitable. Leave or die.
Since last Tuesday, when Israel broke the ceasefire with heavy bombing, over 700 Palestinians have been killed, including 200 children. In one 24 hour period 400 Palestinians were killed.
This is only the start. No Western power, including the United States, which provides the weapons for the genocide, intends to stop it. The images from Gaza during the nearly 16 months of incessant attacks were awful.
But what is coming now will be worse. It will rival the most atrocious war crimes of the 20th century, including the mass starvation, wholesale slaughter and leveling of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 by the Nazis.
October 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalisation and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine. What we are witnessing is the historical equivalent of the moment triggered by the annihilation of some 200 soldiers led by George Armstrong Custer in June 1876 at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
After that humiliating defeat, Native Americans were slated to be killed with the remnants forced into prisoner of war camps, later named reservations, where thousands died of disease, lived under the merciless gaze of their armed occupiers and fell into a life of immiseration and despair.
Expect the same for the Palestinians in Gaza, dumped, I suspect, in one of the world’s hellholes and forgotten.
“Gaza residents, this is your final warning,” Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz threatened:
“The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza and the second Sinwar will completely destroy it. The Air Force strikes against Hamas terrorists were just the first step. It will become much more difficult and you will pay the full price. The evacuation of the population from the combat zones will soon begin again…Return the hostages and remove Hamas and other options will open for you, including leaving for other places in the world for those who want to. The alternative is absolute destruction.”
The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was designed to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, would see an end to hostilities. Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023 — including women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses — in exchange for upwards of 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children imprisoned by Israel (around 1,900 Palestinian captives have been released by Israel as of March 18).
Hamas has released a total of 147 hostages, of whom eight were dead. Israel says there are 59 Israelis still being held by Hamas, 35 of whom Israel believes are deceased.
The Israeli army would pull back from populated areas of Gaza on the first day of the ceasefire. On the seventh day, displaced Palestinians would be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel would allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.
The second phase, which was expected to be negotiated on the 16th day of the ceasefire, would see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel would complete its withdrawal from Gaza maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the 13 km border between Gaza and Egypt.
It would surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The third phase would see negotiations for a permanent end of the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israel habitually signs agreements, including the Camp David Accords and the Oslo Peace Agreement, with timetables and phases. It gets what it wants — in this case the release of the hostages — in the first phase and then violates subsequent phases. This pattern has never been broken.
Israel refused to honour the second phase of the deal. It blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza two weeks ago, violating the agreement. It also killed at least 137 Palestinians during the first phase of the ceasefire, including nine people, — three of them journalists — when Israeli drones attacked a relief team on March 15 in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza
Israel’s heavy bombing and shelling of Gaza resumed March 18 while most Palestinians were asleep or preparing their suhoor, the meal eaten before dawn during the holy month of Ramadan. Israel will not stop its attacks now, even if the remaining hostages are freed — Israel’s supposed reason for the resumption of the bombing and siege of Gaza.
The Trump White House is cheering on the slaughter. They attack critics of the genocide as “antisemites” who should be silenced, criminalised or deported while funneling billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.
Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is the inevitable denouement of its settler colonial project and apartheid state. The seizure of all of historic Palestine — with the West Bank soon, I expect, to be annexed by Israel — and displacement of all Palestinians has always been the Zionist goal.
Israel’s worst excesses occurred during the wars of 1948 and 1967 when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized, thousands of Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands were ethnically cleansed. Between these wars, the slow-motion theft of land, murderous assaults and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continued.
That calibrated dance is over. This is the end. What we are witnessing dwarfs all the historical assaults on Palestinians. Israel’s demented genocidal dream — a Palestinian nightmare — is about to be achieved.
It will forever shatter the myth that we, or any Western nation, respect the rule of law or are the protectors of human rights, democracy and the so-called “virtues” of Western civilisation. Israel’s barbarity is our own. We may not understand this, but the rest of the globe does.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.
A Fiji-based Pacific solidarity group supporting the indigenous Palestine struggle for survival against the Israeli settler colonial state has today issued a statement condemning Fiji backing for Israel.
In an open letter to the “people of Fiji”, the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (F4P) has warned “your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians”.
“It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”
The group said the struggle resonated with all who believed in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.
Fijians for Palestine has condemned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government plans to open a Fijian embassy in Jerusalem with Israeli backing and has launched a “No embassy on occupied land” campaign.
The group likened the Palestine liberation struggle to Pacific self-determination campaigns in Bougainville, “French” Polynesia, Kanaky and West Papua.
“Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect.
“We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.
“We join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.
“The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.
“The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.
“As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.
“We call on you to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people this Thursday with us, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.
“There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation. The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.
“To the Fijian people, please know that your government openly supports Israel despite its genocidal campaign against Palestinians. It is directly complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and history will not forgive their inaction.”
A human rights group in Aotearoa New Zealand has welcomed support from several Pacific island nations for West Papua, which has been under Indonesian military occupation since the 1960s.
West Papua is a region (with five provinces) in the far east of Indonesia, centred on the island of New Guinea. Half of the eastern side of New Guinea is Papua New Guinea.
West Papua Action Aotearoa claims the Indonesian occupation of West Papua has resulted in serious human rights violations, including a lack of press freedom.
Catherine Delahunty, the group’s spokesperson, says many West Papuans have been displaced as a result of Indonesia’s military activity.
In an interview with William Terite on PMN’s Pacific Mornings, the environmentalist and former Green Party MP said most people did not know much about West Papua “because there’s virtually a media blackout around this country”.
“It’s an hour away from Darwin [Australia], and yet, most people don’t know what has been going on there since the 1960s. It’s a very serious and tragic situation, which is the responsibility of all of us as neighbours,” she said.
“They [West Papuans] regard themselves fully as members of the Pacific community but are treated by Indonesia as an extension of their empire because they have all these natural resources, which Indonesia is rapidly extracting, using violence to maintain the state.”
Delahunty said the situation was “very disturbing”, adding there was a “need for support and change alongside the West Papuan people”.
UN support
In a recent joint statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the leaders of Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Sāmoa and Vanuatu called on the global community to support the displaced people of West Papua.
A Free West Papua rally. Image: Nichollas Harrison/PMN News
Delahunty said the Pacific island nations urged the UN Council to advocate for human rights in West Papua.
She also said West Papua Action Aotearoa wanted Indonesia to allow a visit from a UN human rights commissioner, a request that Indonesia has consistently denied.
She said Sāmoa was the latest country to support West Papua, contrasting this with the “lack of action from larger neighbours like New Zealand and Australia”.
Delahunty said that while smaller island nations and some African groups supported West Papua, more powerful states provide little assistance.
“It’s great that these island nations are keeping the issue alive at the United Nations, but we particularly want to shout out to Sāmoa because it’s a new thing,” she told Terite.
“They’ve never, as a government, made public statements. There are many Sāmoan people who support West Papua, and I work with them. But it’s great to see their government step up and make the statement.”
Benny Wenda (right), a West Papuan independence leader, with Eni Faleomavaega, the late American Sāmoan congressman, a supporter of the Free West Papua campaign. Image: Office of Benny Wenda/PMN News
Historically, the only public statements supporting West Papua have come from American Sāmoan congressman Eni Faleomavaega, who strongly advocated for it until he died in 2017.
Praise for Sāmoa
Delahunty praised Sāmoa’s support for the joint statement but voiced her disappointment at New Zealand and Australia.
“What’s not encouraging is the failure of Australia and New Zealand to actually support this kind of joint statement and to vigorously stand up for West Papua because they have a lot of power in the region,” she said.
“They’re the big states, and yet it’s the leadership of the smaller nations that we see today.”
In September 2024, Phillip Mehrtens, a pilot from New Zealand, was released by West Papua rebels after being held captive for 19 months.
Mehrtens, 39, was kidnapped by West Papua National Liberation Army fighters in February 2023 and was released after lengthy negotiations and “critical’ diplomatic efforts by authorities in Wellington and Jakarta.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters welcomed his release.
New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens was kidnapped by militants in West Papua on 7 March 2023. He was released 19 months later. Image: TPNPB/PMN News
Why is there conflict in West Papua? Once a Dutch colony, the region is divided into five provinces, the two largest being Papua and West Papua. It is separate from PNG, which gained independence from Australia in 1975.
Papuan rebels seeking independence from Indonesia have issued threats and attacked aircraft they believe are carrying personnel and delivering supplies for Jakarta.
The resource-rich region has sought independence since 1969, when it came under Indonesia’s control following a disputed UN-supervised vote.
Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian authorities have been common with pro-independence fighters increasing their attacks since 2018.
The Free Papua Movement has conducted a low-intensity guerrilla war against Indonesia, targeting military and police personnel, along with ordinary Indonesian civilians.
Human rights groups estimate that Indonesian security forces have killed more than 300,000 West Papuans since the conflict started.
But the Indonesian government denies any wrongdoing, claiming that West Papua is part of Indonesia and was integrated after the controversial “Act of Free Choice” in 1969.
Manipulated process
The Act of Free Choice has been widely criticised as a manipulated process, with international observers and journalists raising concerns about the fairness and legitimacy of the plebiscite.
Despite the criticism, the United States and its allies in the region, New Zealand and Australia, have supported Indonesia’s efforts to gain acceptance in the UN for the pro-integration vote.
Human rights groups, such as Delahunty’s West Papua Action Aotearoa, have raised “serious concerns” about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua.
They cite alarming abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture, and mass displacement.
Delahunty believes the hope for change lies with the nations of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa. She said it also came from the younger people in Indonesia today.
“This is a colonisation issue, and it’s a bit like Aotearoa, in the sense that when the people who have been part of the colonising start addressing the issue, you get change. But it’s far too slow. So we are so disappointed.”
Southern Cross, a French-hosted regional military exercise, is moving to Wallis and Futuna Islands this year.
The exercise, which includes participating regional armed and law enforcement forces from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga every two years, is scheduled to take place April 22-May 3.
Since its inception in 2002, the war games have traditionally been hosted in New Caledonia.
However, New Caledonia was the scene last year of serious riots, causing 14 deaths, hundreds injured, and an estimated cost of 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion)
Southern Cross focuses on the notion of “interoperability” between regional forces, with a joint multinational command following a predefined but realistic scenario, usually in a fictitious island state affected by a natural disaster and/or political unrest.
This is the first time the regional French exercise will be hosted on Wallis Island, in the French Pacific territory of Wallis and Futuna, near Fiji and Samoa.
Earlier this month (March 3-5), the Nouméa-based French Armed Forces in New Caledonia (FANC) hosted a “Final Coordination Conference” (FCC) with its regional counterparts after a series of on-site reconnaissance visits to Wallis and Futuna Islands ahead of the Southern Cross 2025 manoeuvres.
Humanitarian, disaster relief
FANC also confirmed this year, again in Wallis-and-Futuna, the exercise scenario would mainly focus on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) and that it would involve, apart from the French forces, the deployment of some 19 other participating countries, with an estimated 2000 personnel, including 600 regional.
A French Carrier Strike Group exercise Clémenceau25 deployment map of operations. Image: ALPACI-Forces armées en Asie-Pacifique et en Polynésie française
Last week, still in preparation mode, a group of FANC officers travelled again to Wallis for three days to finalise preparations ahead of the exercise.
In an interview with public broadcaster Wallis and Futuna la 1ère, FANC inter-army chief-of-staff Colonel Frédéric Puchois said the group of officers met local chiefly and royal authorities, as well as the Speaker of the local territorial assembly.
In 2023, the previous Southern Cross exercise held in New Caledonia involved the participation of about 18 regional countries.
“It’s all about activating and practising quick and efficient scenarios to respond mainly to a large-scale natural disaster,” Colonel Puchois said.
“Southern Cross until now took place in New Caledonia, but it was decided for 2025 to choose Wallis and Futuna to work specifically on long-distance projection.
“So, the Americans will position some of their forces in Pago-Pago in American Samoa to test their capacity to project forces from a rear base located 2000 kms away [from Wallis].
“And for the French part, the rear base will be New Caledonia,” he added.
Port Vila earthquake
He said one of the latest real-life illustrations of this kind of deployment was the recent relief operation from Nouméa following Port Vila’s devastating earthquake in mid-December 2024.
“We brought essential relief supplies, in coordination with NGOs like the Red Cross. And during Southern Cross 2025, we will again work with them and other NGOs”.
However, Colonel Puchois said not all personnel would be deployed at the same time.
“We will project small groups at a time. There will be several phases,” he said.
“First to secure the airport to ensure it is fit for landing of large aircraft. This could involve parachute personnel and supplies.
“Then assistance to the population, involving other components such as civil security, fire brigades, gendarmes. It would conclude with evacuating people in need of further assistance.
“So we won’t project all of the 2000 participants at the same time, but groups of 250 to 300 personnel”.
Cooperation with Vanuatu Mobile Force FANC Commander General Yann Latil was in Vanuatu two weeks ago, where he held meetings with Vanuatu Mobile Forces (VMF) Commander Colonel Ben Nicholson and Vanuatu Internal Affairs minister Andrew Napuat to discuss cooperation, as well as handling and maintenance of the French-supplied FAMAS rifles.
For two weeks, two FANC instructors were in Port Vila to train a group of about 15 VMF on handling and maintenance of the FAMAS used by the island state’s paramilitary force.
The VMF were also handed over more ammunition for the standard issue FAMAS (the French equivalent of the US-issued M-16).
French Armed Forces Commander in New Caledonia (FANC) General Yann Latil visits Vanuatu Mobile Forces (VMF) training in French FAMAS rifles maintenance. Image: FANC Forces Armées en Nouvelle-Calédonie
During his visit, General Latil also held talks with Vanuatu Internal Affairs Minister Andrew Napuat, who is in charge of the VMF and police.
FANC and Vanuatu security forces are “working on a regular basis”, Vanuatu-based French Ambassador Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer said.
The three-star general (equivalent of a lieutenant-general) flew back to Nouméa about 500 km away on March 8.
French vessel on fishing policing mission At the same time, still in Vanuatu, Nouméa-based overseas support and assistance vessel (BSAOM) the D’Entrecasteaux and its crew were on a courtesy call in Luganville (Espiritu Santo island, North Vanuatu) for three days.
After hosting local officials and school students for visits, the patrol boat embarked on a surveillance policing mission in high seas off the archipelago.
One ni-Vanuatu officer also joined the French crew inspecting foreign fishing vessels and checking if they comply with current regulations under the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA).
On a regular basis, similar monitoring operations are also carried out by navies from other regional countries such as Australia and New Zealand in order to assist neighbouring Pacific States in protecting their respective Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) from what is usually termed Illegal Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing from foreign vessels.
Last month, the D’Entrecasteaux was engaged in a series of naval exercises off Papua New Guinea.
Further north in the Pacific, French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and its strike group wrapped up an unprecedented two-month deployment in a series of multinational exercises with Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam), where “one third of the world’s maritime trade transits every day”.
This included its own Exercises Clémenceau25 and La Pérouse (with eight neighbouring forces), but also interoperability-focused manoeuvres with the US and Japan (Pacific Steller).
“The deployment of this military capacity underlines France’s attachment to maritime and aerial freedom of action and movement on all seas and oceans of the world”, the Tahiti-based Pacific Maritime Command (ALPACI) said this week in a release.
US Navy in Western Pacific activity Also in western Pacific waters, the US Navy’s activity has been intense over the past few weeks, and continues.
The Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Vermont (SSN 792) returned on 18 March to Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam, following a seven-month deployment, the submarine’s first deployment to the Western Pacific, the US Third Fleet command stated.
On Friday, the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) Carrier Strike Group (NIMCSG) left Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Washington, for a regularly scheduled deployment to the Western Pacific.
The US Third Fleet command said the strike group’s deployment will focus on “demonstrating the US Navy’s unwavering commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific in which all nations are secure in their sovereignty and free from coercion”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Like a relentless ocean, wave after wave of pro-Palestinian pro-human rights protesters disrupted New Zealand deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ state of the nation speech at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday.
A clarion call to Trumpism and Australia’s One Nation Party, the speech was accompanied by the background music of about 250 protesters outside the Town Hall, chanting: “Complicity in genocide is a crime.”
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto described Peters’ attitude to Palestinians as “sickening”.
Inside the James Hay Theatre, protester after protester stood and spoke loudly and clearly against the deputy Prime Minister’s failure to support those still dying in Gaza, and his failure to denounce the ongoing genocide.
Ben Vorderegger was the first of nine protesters who appealed on behalf of people who have lost their voices in the dust of blood and bones, bombs and sniper guns.
Before he and others were hauled out, they spoke for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza — women, men, doctors, aid workers, journalists, and children.
Gazan health authorities have reported that the official death toll is now more than 50,000 — but that is the confirmed deaths with thousands more buried under the rubble.
Real death toll
The real death toll from the genocide in Gaza has been estimated by a reputed medical journal, The Lancet, at more than 63,000. A third of those are children. Each day more children are killed.
One by one the protesters who challenged Peters were manhandled by security guards to a frenzied crowd screaming “out, out”.
The deputy Prime Minister’s response was to deride and mock the conscientious objectors. He did not stop there. He lambasted the media.
At this point, several members of his audience turned on me as a journalist and demanded my removal.
Pro=Palestine protesters at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday to picket Foreign Minister Winston Peters at his state of the nation speech.Image: Saige England/APR
This means that not only is the right to free speech at stake, the right or freedom to report is also being eroded. (I was later trespassed by security guards and police from the Town Hall although no reason was supplied for the ban).
Inside the Christchurch Town Hall the call by Peters, who is also Foreign Minister, to “Make New Zealand Great Again” continued in the vein of a speech written by a MAGA leader.
He whitewashed human rights, failed to address climate change, and demonstrated loathing for a media that has rarely challenged him.
Ben Vorderegger in keffiyeh was the first of nine protesters who appealed on behalf of Palestinans before being thrown out of the Christchurch Town Hall meeting. Image: Saige England/APR
Condemned movement
Slamming the PSNA as “Marxist fascists” for calling out genocide, he condemned the movement for failing to talk with those who have a record of kowtowing to violent colonisation.
This tactic is Colonial Invasion 101. It sees the invader rewarding and only dealing with those who sell out. This strategy demands that the colonised people should bow to the oppressor — an oppressor who threatens them with losing everything if they do not accept the scraps.
Peters showed no support for the Treaty of Waitangi but rather, endorsed the government’s challenge to the founding document of the nation – Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In his dismissal of the founding and legally binding partnership, he repeated the “One Nation” catch-cry. Ad nauseum.
Besides slamming Palestinians, the Scots (he managed to squeeze in a racist joke against Scottish people), and the woke, Peters’ speech promoted continued mining, showing some amnesia over the Pike River disaster. He did not reference the environment or climate change.
After the speech, outside the Town Hall police donned black gloves — a sign they were prepared to use pepper-spray.
PSNA co-chair John Minto described Peters’ failure to stand against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians as “bloody disgraceful”.
The police arrested one protester, claiming he put his hand on a car transporting NZ First officials. A witness said this was not the case.
PSNA co-chair John Minto (in hat behind fellow protester) . . . the failure of Foreign Minister Winston Peters to stand against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians is “bloody disgraceful”. Image; Saige England/APR
Protester released The protester was later released without any charges being laid.
A defiant New Zealand First MP Shane Jones marched out of the Town Hall after the event. He raised his arms defensively at protesters crying, “what if it was your grandchildren being slaughtered?”
I was trespassed from the Christchurch Town Hall for re-entering the Town Hall for Winston Peters’ media conference. No reason was supplied by police or the Town Hall security personnel for that trespass order..
“The words Winston is terrified to say . . . ” poster at the Christchurch pro-Palestinian protest. Image: Saige England/APR
It is well known that Peters loathes the media — he said so enough times during his state of the nation speech.
He referenced former US President Bill Clinton during his speech, an interesting reference given that Clinton did not receive the protection from the media that Peters has received.
From the over zealous security personnel who manhandled and dragged out hecklers, to the banning of a journalist, to the arrest of someone for “touching a car” when witnesses report otherwise, the state of the nation speech held some uncomfortable echoes — the actions of a fascist dictatorship.
Populist threats
The atmosphere was reminiscent of a Jorg Haider press conference I attended many years ago in Vienna. That “rechtspopulist” Austrian politician had threatened journalists with defamation suits if they called him out on his support for Nazis.
Yet he was on record for doing so.
I was reminded of this yesterday when the audience called ‘out out’ at hecklers, and demanded the removal of this journalist. These New Zealand First supporters demand adoration for their leader or a media black-out.
Perhaps they cannot be blamed given that the state of the nation speech could well have been written by US President Donald Trump or one of his minions.
The protesters were courageous and conscientious in contrast to Peters, said PSNA’s John Minto.
He likened Peters to Neville Chamberlain — Britain’s Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. His name is synonymous with the policy of “appeasement” because he conceded territorial concessions to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, fruitlessly hoping to avoid war.
“He has refused to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians, including the total humanitarian aid blockade of Gaza.”
Refusal ‘unprecedented’
“It’s unprecedented in New Zealand history that a government would refuse to condemn Israel breaking its ceasefire agreement and resuming industrial-scale slaughter of civilians,” Minto said.
“That is what Israel is doing today in Gaza, with full backing from the White House.
“Chamberlain went to meet Hitler in Munich in 1938 to whitewash Nazi Germany’s takeovers of its neighbours’ lands.
“Peters has been in Washington to agree to US approval of the occupation of southern Syria, more attacks on Lebanon, resumption of the land grab genocide in Gaza and get a heads-up on US plans to ‘give’ the Occupied West Bank to Israel later this year.
“If Peters disagrees with any of this, he’s had plenty of chances to say so.
“New Zealanders are calling for sanctions on Israel but Mr Peters and the National-led government are looking the other way.”
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones marched out of the Town Hall after the event, dismissing protesters crying, “what if it was your grandchildren being slaughtered?” Image: Saige England/APR
Only staged questions
The conscientious objectors who rise against the oppression of human rights are people Winston Peters regards as his enemies. He will only answer questions in a press conference staged for him.
He warms to journalists who warm to him.
The state of the nation speech in the Town Hall was familiar.
Seeking to erase conscientiousness will not make New Zealand great, it will render this country very small, almost miniscule, like the people who are being destroyed for daring to demand their right to their own land.
Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
Part of the crowd at the state of the nation speech by Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday. Image: Saige England/APR
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick called on New Zealand government MPs today to support her Member’s Bill to sanction Israel over its “crazy slaughter” of Palestinians in Gaza.
Speaking at a large pro-Palestinian solidarity rally in the heart of New Zealand’s largest city Auckland, she said Aotearoa New Zealand could no longer “remain a bystander to the slaughter of innocent people in Gaza”.
In the fifth day since Israel broke the two-month-old ceasefire and refused to begin negotiations on phase two of the truce — which was supposed to lead to a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the besieged enclave and an exchange of hostages — health officials reported that the death toll had risen above 630, mostly children and women.
Five children were killed in a major overnight air attack on Gaza City and at least eight members of the family remained trapped under the rubble as Israeli attacks continued in the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Confirmed casualty figures in Gaza since October 7, 2023, now stand at 49,747 with 113,213 wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
For more than two weeks, Israel has sealed off border crossings and barred food, water and electricity and today it blew up the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only medical institution in Gaza able to provide cancer treatment.
“The research has said it from libraries, libraries and libraries. And what is it doing in Gaza?” said Swarbrick.
‘Ethnic cleansing . . . on livestream’
“It is ethnic cleansing. It is apartheid. It is genocide. And we have that delivered to us by livestream to each one of us every single day on our cellphones,” she said.
“That is crazy. It is crazy to wake up every single day to that.”
Swarbrick said Aotearoa New Zealand must act now to sanction Israel for its crimes — “just like we did with Russia for its illegal action in Ukraine.”
She said that with the Green Party, Te Pāti Māori and Labour’s committed support, they now needed just six of the 68 government MPs to “pass my Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill into law”.
“There’s no more time for talk. If we stand for human rights and peace and justice, our Parliament must act,” she said.
“Action for Gaza Now” banner heads a march protesting against Israel’s resumed attacks on the besieged Strip in Auckland today. Image: APR
In September, Aotearoa had joined 123 UN member states to support a resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in relation to settler violence”.
“Our government has since done nothing to fulfil that commitment. Our Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill starts that very basic process.
“No party leader or whip can stop a Member of Parliament exercising their democratic right to vote how they know they need to on this Bill,” she said to resounding cheers.
‘No hiding behind party lines’
“There is no more hiding behind party lines. All 123 Members of Parliament are each individually, personally responsible.”
Several Palestinian women spoke of the terror with the new wave of Israeli bombings and of their families’ personal connections with the suffering in Gaza, saying it was vitally important to “hear our stories”. Some spoke of the New Zealand government’s “cowardice” for not speaking out in opposition like many other countries.
About 1000 people took part in the protest in a part of Britomart’s Te Komititanga Square in a section now popularly known as “Palestine Corner”.
Amid a sea of banners and Palestinian flags there were placards declaring “Stop the genocide”, “Jews for tangata whenua from Aotearoa to Palestine”, “Hands off West Bank End the occupation” , “The people united will never be defeated”, “Decolonise your mind, stand with Palestine,” “Genocide — made in USA”, and “Toitū Te Tiriti Free Palestine”.
“Genocide – Made in USA” poster at today’s Palestinian solidarity rally. Image: APR
The ceasefire-breaking Israeli attacks on Gaza have shocked the world and led to three UN General Assembly debates this week on the Middle East.
France, Germany and Britain are among the latest countries to condemn Israel for breaching the ceasefire — describing it as a “dramatic step backwards”, and France has told the UN that it is opposed to any form of annexation by Israel of any Palestinian territory.
Meanwhile, Sultan Barakat, a professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera in an interview that the more atrocities Israel committed in Gaza, the more young Palestinian men and women would join Hamas.
“So it’s not going to disappear any time soon,” he said.
With Israel killing more than 630 people in five days and cutting off all aid to the Strip for weeks, there was no trust on the part of Hamas to restart the ceasefire, Professor Barakat said.
“Jews for tangata whenua from Aotearoa to Palestine” . . . a decolonisation placard at today’s Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
By Leah Lowonbu, Stefan Armbruster and Harlyne Joku of BenarNews
The Pacific’s peak diplomatic bodies have signalled they are ready to engage with Papua New Guinea’s Autonomous Government of Bougainville as mediation begins on the delayed ratification of its successful 2019 independence referendum.
PNG and Bougainville’s leaders met in the capital Port Moresby this week with a moderator to start negotiations on the implementation of the UN-supervised Bougainville Peace Agreement and referendum.
Ahead of the talks, ABG’s President Ishmael Toroama moved to sideline a key sticking point over PNG parliamentary ratification of the vote, with the announcement last week that Bougainville would unilaterally declare independence on September 1, 2027.
The region’s two leading intergovernmental organisations — Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — have traditionally deferred to member state PNG on discussion of Bougainville independence as an internal matter.
But as a declaration of nationhood becomes increasingly likely and near, there has been a subtle shift.
“It’s their [PNG’s] prerogative but if this matter were raised formally, even by Bougainville themselves, we can start discussion on that,” PIF Secretary-General Baron Waqa told a press briefing at its headquarters in Fiji on Monday.
“Whatever happens, I think the issue would have to be decided by our leaders later this year,” he said of the annual PIF meeting to be held in Solomon Islands in September.
Marked peace deal
The last time the Pacific’s leaders included discussion of Bougainville in their official communique was in 2004 to mark the disarmament of the island under the peace deal.
Waqa said Bougainville had made no formal approach to PIF — a grouping of 18 Pacific states and territories — but it was closely monitoring developments on what could eventually lead to the creation of a new member state.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape (second from left) and Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama (right) during mediation in the capital Port Moresby this week. Image: Autonomous Government of Bougainville/BenarNews
In 2024, Toroama told BenarNews he would be seeking observer status at the subregional MSG — grouping PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia’s FLNKS — as Bougainville’s first diplomatic foray.
No application has been made yet but MSG acting Director-General Ilan Kiloe told BenarNews they were also keeping a close watch.
“Our rules and regulations require that we engage through PNG and we will take our cue from them,” Kiloe said, adding while the MSG respects the sovereignty of its members, “if requested, we will provide assistance” to Bougainville.
“The purpose and reason the MSG was established initially was to advance the collective interests of the Melanesian countries, in particular, to assist those yet to attain independence,” he said. “And to provide support towards their aim of becoming independent countries.”
Map showing Papua New Guinea, its neighboring countries and the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Map: BenarNews
The 2001 peace agreement ended more than a decade of bloody conflict known as the Bougainville crisis, that resulted in the deaths of up to 15,000 people, and laid out a roadmap for disarmament and the referendum in 2019.
‘We need support’
Under the agreement, PNG retains responsibility for foreign affairs but allows for the ABG to engage externally for trade and with “regional organisations.”
“We need countries to support us, we need to talk to those countries [ahead of independence],” Toroama told BenarNews last September.
The referendum on independence was supported by 97.7 percent of Bougainvillians and the outcome was due to be ratified by PNG’s Parliament in 2020, but was deferred because of the covid-19 pandemic.
Discussions by the two parties since on whether a simple or two-thirds majority vote by parliamentarians was required has further delayed the process.
Toroama stood firm on the issue of ratification on the first day of discussions moderated by New Zealand’s Sir Jerry Mataparae, saying his people voted for independence and the talks were to define the “new relationship” between two independent states.
Last week, the 15 members of the Bougainville Leaders Independence Consultation Forum issued a statement declaring PNG had no authority to veto the referendum result and recommended September 1, 2027 as the declaration date.
Bougainville Leaders Consultation Forum declaration setting September 1, 2027, as the date for their independence declaration. Image: AGB/BenarNews
“As far as I am concerned, the process of negotiating independence was concluded with the referendum,” Toroama said.
Implementation moderation
“My understanding is that this moderation is about reaching agreement on implementing the referendum result of independence.”
He told Marape “to take ownership and endorse independence in this 11th Parliament.”
PNG’s prime minister responded by praising the 25 years of peace “without a single bullet fired” but warned Bougainville was not ready for independence.
“Economic independence must precede political independence,” Marape said. “The long-term sustainability of Bougainville must be factored into these discussions.”
“About 95 percent of Bougainville’s budget is currently reliant on external support, including funding from the PNG government and international donors.”
Front page of the Post-Courier newspaper after the first day of mediation on Bougainville’s independence this week. Image: Post-Courier/BenarNews
Marape also suggested people may be secretly harbouring weapons in breach of the peace agreement and called on the UN to clarify the outcome of the disarmament process it supervised.
“Headlines have come out that guns remain in Bougainville. United Nations, how come guns remain in Bougainville?” Marape asked on Monday.
“You need to tell me. This is something you know. I thought all guns were removed from Bougainville.”
PNG relies on aid
By comparison, PNG has heavily relied on foreign financial assistance since independence, currently receiving at about US$320 million (1.3 billion kina) a year in budgetary support from Australia, and suffers regular tribal violence and massacres involving firearms including assault rifles.
Bougainville Vice-President Patrick Nisira rejected Marape’s concerns about weapons, the Post-Courier newspaper reported.
“The usage of those guns, there is no evidence of that and if you look at the data on Bougainville where [there are] incidents of guns, it is actually very low,” he said.
Further talks are planned and are due to produce a report for the national Parliament by mid-2025, ahead of elections in Bougainville and PNG’s 50th anniversary celebrations in September.
Israel’s most revered jurist, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, says that he fears the Netanyahu government’s latest actions, including moves to fire the Shin Bet secret service chief and attorney-general, are steering the country toward civil war.
Speaking to the Ynet news site shortly before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened the cabinet that voted unanimously to fire Bar, Barak said that “the main problem in Israeli society is . . . the severe rift between Israelis”.
“This rift is getting worse and in the end, I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges into a chasm, causing a civil war,” he said.
In another interview, with Channel 12, when asked why he thought Israel was close to civil conflict, Barak said it was “because the rift in the people is immense, and no effort is being made to heal it.
“Everyone is trying to make it worse.
“Today there are demonstrations, then a car drives through them and runs over someone,” he said, referring to an incident at an anti-Netanyahu protest in Jerusalem on Wednesday when a driver rammed into a protester, injuring him.
“But tomorrow there will be shootings, and the day after that there will be bloodshed,” Barak continued.
Overturned sacking
Barak also told Channel 12 he would have overturned a government decision to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar if he were serving on the bench today.
The former chief justice explained he believed the ousting of Bar from the role in the middle of his term was illegitimate because the position of Shin Bet chief was not a “role of confidence” with the political echelon.
Instead, the person in the job was meant to carry out the role as it was explicitly written in legislation.
“There is authority to dismiss, but no grounds for dismissal,” he elaborated, saying he would also strike down the firing of Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, another top official whom the government is seeking to oust.
When asked about the prime minister’s tweet on Wednesday night alleging the existence of a “leftist deep state” in Israel that was working to thwart Netanyahu’s government, Barak replied: “I don’t know what a deep state is.”
“We’re not the United States, we don’t have a deep state here. We have loyal public servants here, and they do things according to the law,” he added.
Barak also appealed directly to Netanyahu, urging him to halt the process of firing Bar and Baharav-Miara, and other policies the former justice considers destructive, and said he thinks Netanyahu should be offered and should take a plea deal in his criminal trial.
‘Israel feels like it is on the brink of civil war.’ Video: France 24
‘Right for his legacy’
“I think that it is right for Netanyahu. It is right for his legacy. And it is right for the State of Israel. And I think it is possible,” he said.
“Otherwise, the trial will continue. The rift between [those] for Bibi and against Bibi will continue,” he added, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
Asked by the interviewer what he would say to Netanyahu if he could talk to him, Barak answered: “This is your policy, I am completely against it. I ask you, don’t implement it beyond what you have done today. Stop. Stop.”
“Don’t take the rift beyond where it already is,” he concluded.
Responding to Barak, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar issued a terse statement on X, simply posting: “There will be no civil war.”
Education Minister Yoav Kisch, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said in a post on X that Barak was “threatening a civil war” with his warning, and promised that “these threats will not deter” the government from implementing its policies.
MK Almog Cohen of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party said that Barak is “a reckless and irresponsible man,” who was “sent to issue a Sicilian mafia-style threat of blood in the streets and civil war.”
Retired Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak . . . “We’re not the United States, we don’t have a deep state here.” Image: ICJ
Well-respected internationally
Barak served as a Supreme Court justice from 1978 to 1995. He was then elected as the court’s president. He retired from the bench in 2006.
Despite Barak being a vocal critic of Netanyahu and his policies, the premier chose him to represent Israel as an ad-hoc judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the genocide case that was brought against Israel by South Africa amid the war in Gaza.
Barak removed himself from the court last June for personal reasons.
Barak, a Holocaust survivor, is well-respected internationally and is seen as Israel’s preeminent jurist.
Within Israel, he long has been seen by Netanyahu and other right-wing leaders as a leftist “activist,” who is to blame for many of the issues with Israel’s judicial system that the government’s controversial judicial overhaul plans aim to rectify.
A joint operation between the Fiji Police Force, Republic of Fiji Military Force (RFMF), Territorial Force Brigade, Fiji Navy and National Fire Authority was staged this week to “modernise” responses to emergencies.
Called “Exercise Genesis”, the joint operation is believed to be the first of its kind in Fiji to “test combat readiness” and preparedness for facing civil unrest, counterinsurgency and humanitarian assistance scenarios.
It took place over three days and was modelled on challenges faced by a “fictitious island grappling with rising unemployment, poverty and crime”.
The exercise was described as based on three models, operated on successive days.
The block 1 scenario tackled internal security, addressing civil unrest, law enforcement challenges and crowd control operations.
Block 2 involved humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and coordinating emergency response efforts with government agencies.
Block 3 on the last day dealt with a “mid-level counterinsurgency”, engaging in stabilising the crisis, and “neutralising” a threat.
Flash flood scenario
On the second day, a “composite” company with the assistance of the Fiji Navy successfully evacuated victims from a scenario-based flash flood at Doroko village (Waila) to Nausori Town.
“The flood victims were given first aid at the village before being evacuated to an evacuation centre in Syria Park,” said the Territorial Brigade’s Facebook page.
“The flood victims were further examined by the medical team at Syria Park.”
Fiji police confront protesters during the Operation Genesis exercise in Fiji this week. Image: RFMF screenshot APR
On the final day, Thursday, Exercise Genesis culminated in a pre-dawn attack by the troops on a “rebel hideout”.
According to the Facebook page, the “hideout” had been discovered following the deployment of a joint tracker team and the K9 unit from the Fiji Corrections Service.
“Through rigorous training and realistic scenarios, the [RFMF Territorial Brigade] continues to refine its combat proficiency, adaptability, and mission effectiveness,” said a brigade statement.
Mock protesters in the Operation Genesis security services exercise in Fiji this week. Image: RFMF screenshot APR
It said that the exercise was “ensuring that [the brigade] remains a versatile and responsive force, capable of safeguarding national security and contributing to regional stability.”
However, a critic said: “Anyone who is serious about reducing crime would offer a real alternative to austerity, poverty and alienation. Invest in young people and communities.”
The Trump administration might let hundreds of millions of dollars in aid pledged to Pacific island nations during former President Joe Biden’s time in office stand, says New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
The Biden administration pledged about $1 billion in aid to the Pacific to help counter China’s influence in the strategic region.
However, Trump last month froze all disbursements of aid by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for 90 days pending a “review” of all aid spending under his “America First” policy.
Peters told reporters on Monday after meetings with Trump’s USAID acting head, Peter Marocco, and his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, “more confident” about the prospects of the aid being left alone than he was before.
Peters said he had a “very frank and open discussion” with American officials about how important the aid was for the Pacific, and insisted that they “get our point of view in terms of how essential it is”.
NZ Foreign Minister Winson Peters . . . . “We are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived.” Image: TVNZ 1News screenshot RNZ
“In our business, it’s wise to find out the results before you open your mouth, but we are looking ahead with more confidence than when we arrived,” Peters said, pushing back against claims that the Trump administration would be “pulling back” from the Pacific region.
“We don’t know that yet. Let’s find out in April, when that full review is done on USAID,” he said. “But we came away more confident than some of the alarmists might have been before we arrived.”
Frenzied diplomatic battle The Biden administration sought to rapidly expand US engagement with the small island nations of the Pacific after the Solomon Islands signed a controversial security pact with China three years ago.
The deal by the Solomon Islands sparked a frenzied diplomatic battle between Washington and Beijing for influence in the strategic region.
Biden subsequently hosted Pacific island leaders at back-to-back summits in Washington in September 2022 and 2023, the first two of their kind. He pledged hundreds of millions of dollars at both meets, appearing to tilt the region back toward Washington.
The first summit included announcements of some $800 billion in aid for the Pacific, while the second added about $200 billion.
But the region has since been rocked by the Trump administration’s decision to freeze all aid pending its ongoing review. The concerns have not been helped by a claim from Elon Musk, who Trump tasked with cutting government waste, that USAID would be shut down.
“You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down,” Musk said in a February 3 livestreamed video.
However, the New Zealand foreign minister, who also met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, said he held out hope that Washington would not turn back on its fight for influence in the Pacific.
“The first Trump administration turned more powerfully towards the Pacific . . . than any previous administration,” he said, “and now they’ve got Trump back again, and we hope for the same into the future.”
Radio Free Asia is an online news service affiliated with BenarNews. Republished from BenarNews with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The parties involved in talks aimed at resolving an impasse over Bougainville’s push for independence are planning to meet several more times before a deadline in June.
The leaders of Papua New Guinea and Bougainville have been meeting all week in Port Moresby, with former New Zealand Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae serving as moderator.
The question before them hinges on the conditions for tabling the results of the 2019 Bougainville referendum in the PNG Parliament, in which there was overwhelming support for independence.
Sources at the talks say that, with the parties having now stated their positions, several more meetings are planned where decisions will be reached on the way forward.
Burnham key to civil war end One of those meetings is expected to take place at Burnham, New Zealand.
It was preliminary talks at Burnham in 1997 that led to the end of the bloody 10-year-long civil war in Bougainville.
Sir Jerry Mataparae . . . serving as moderator in the Bougainville future talks. Image: RNZ Pacific
Bougainville is holding elections in September, and the writs are being issued in June, hence the desire that the process to determine its political future is in place by then.
Last week, Bougainville leaders declared they wanted independence in place by 1 September 2027.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths of Plains FM96.9 radio talk to Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, about heightened global fears of nuclear war as tensions have mounted since US President Donald Trump has returned to power.
Dr Robie reminds us that New Zealanders once actively opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific.
That spirit, that active opposition to nuclear testing, and to nuclear war must be revived.
This is very timely as the Rainbow Warrior 3 is currently visiting the Marshall Islands this month to mark 40 years since the original RW took part in the relocation of Rongelap Islanders who suffered from US nuclear tests in the 1950s.
After that humanitarian mission, the Rainbow Warrior was subsequently bombed by French secret agents in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985 shortly before it was due to sail to Moruroa Atoll to protest against nuclear testing.
Lois opens up by saying: “I fear that we live in disturbing times. I fear the possibility of nuclear war, I always have.
“I remember the Cuban missiles crisis, a scary time. I remember campaigns for nuclear disarmament. Hopes that the United Nations could lead to a world of peace and justice.
“Yet today one hears from our media, for world leaders . . . ‘No, no no. There will always be tyrants who want to destroy us and our democratic allies . . . more and bigger, deadlier weapons are needed to protect us . . .”
Listen to the programme . . .
Nuclear free Pacific . . . back to the future. Video/audio: Plains FM96.9
Interviewee: Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and a semiretired professor of Pacific journalism. He founded the Pacific Media Centre.
Interviewers: Lois and Martin Griffiths, Earthwise programme
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says the need for Aotearoa New Zealand to impose sanctions against Israel has grown more urgent after airstrikes on Gaza resumed, killing more than 400 people.
Swarbrick lodged a member’s bill in December and said that with all opposition parties backing it, the support of just six backbench government MPs would mean it could skip the “biscuit tin” and be brought to Parliament for a first reading.
“I feel as though every other day there is something else which adds urgency, but yes — I think as a result of the most recent round of atrocities and particularly the public focus, attention, energy and effort that is being that has been put on them, that, yes, parliamentarians desperately need to act.
Swarbrick claimed there were government MPs who were keen to support her bill, saying it was why her party was publicly pushing the numbers needed to get it across the line.
“We have the most whipped Parliament in the Western world,” she said. “We would hope that parliamentarians would live up to all of those statements that they make about their values and principles when they do their bright-eyed and bushy-tailed maiden speeches.
“The time is now, people cannot hide behind party lines anymore.
“I know for a fact that there are government MPs that are keen to support this kaupapa.”
Standing order allowance
Standing Order 288 allows MPs who are not ministers or undersecretaries to indicate their support for a member’s bill.
If at least 61 MPs get behind it, the legislation skips the “biscuit tin” ballot.
If answered, Swarbrick’s call would be the first time this process is followed.
Labour confirmed its support for the bill last week.
A coalition spokesperson said the government’s policy position on the matter remained unchanged, including in response to Swarbrick’s bill.
New Zealand has consistently advocated for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
Swarbrick pointed to New Zealand’s support — alongside 123 other countries — of a UN resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in relation to settler violence.
Conditional support
The government’s support for the resolution was conditional and included several caveats — including that the 12-month timeframe for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories was “unrealistic”, and noted the resolution went beyond what was initially proposed.
None of the other 123 countries which supported the resolution have yet brought sanctions against Israel.
“Unfortunately, in the several months following that resolution in September of last year, our government has done nothing to fulfil that commitment,” Swarbrick said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ permanent representative to the UN Carolyn Schwalger in September noted that the Resolution imposed no obligations on New Zealand beyond what already existed under international law, but “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council”.
NZ ambassador to the UN Carolyn Schwalger speaking at the UN General Assembly . . . “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council.” Image: Screenshot/UN General Assembly livestream/RNZ
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in December said the government had a long-standing position of travel bans on extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, and wanted to see a two-state solution developed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said its military pressure against Hamas was to secure the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack, and “this is just the beginning”.
Israel continues to deny accusations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
South African genocide case against Israel
However, South Africa has taken a case of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the trial remains ongoing with 14 countries having confirmed that they are intervening in support of South Africa.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a tweet he was “outraged” by the Israeli airstrikes.
“I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be re-established and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally,” he said.
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I am outraged by the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be reestablished and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally.
In 2023, the City made me an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian for service across a number of fronts (water infrastructure, conservation, coastal resilience, community organising) but nothing I have done compares with the importance of standing up for the victims of US-Israeli violence.
What more can we do? And then it crossed my mind: “Declare Wellington Genocide Free”. And if Wellington could, why not other cities?
Wellington started nuclear-free drive The nuclear-free campaign, led by Wellington back in the 1980s, is a template worth reviving.
Wellington became the first city in New Zealand — and the first capital in the world — to declare itself nuclear free in 1982. It followed the excellent example of Missoula, Montana, USA, the first city in the world to do so, in 1978.
These were tumultuous times. I vividly remember heading into Wellington harbour on a small yacht, part of a peace flotilla made up of kayakers, yachties and wind surfers that tried to stop the USS Texas from berthing. It won that battle that day but we won the war.
This was the decade which saw the French government’s terrorist bomb attack on a Greenpeace ship in Auckland harbour to intimidate the anti-nuclear movement.
Also, 2025 is the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the death of Fernando Pereira. Little Island Press will be reissuing a new edition of my friend David Robie’s book Eyes of Firelater this year. It tells the incredible story of the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
Standing up to bullies Labour under David Lange successfully campaigned and won the 1984 elections on a nuclear-free platform which promised to ban nuclear ships from our waters.
This was a time when we had a government that had the backbone to act independently of the US. Yes, we had a grumpy relationship with the Yanks for a while and we were booted out of ANZUS — surely a cause for celebration in contrast to today when our government is little more than a finger puppet for Team Genocide.
In response to bullying from Australia and the US, David Lange said at the time: “It is the price we are prepared to pay.”
With Wellington in the lead, nuclear-free had moved over the course of a decade from a fringe peace movement to the mainstream and eventually to become government policy.
The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987 was passed and remains a cornerstone of our foreign policy.
New Zealand took a stand that showed strong opposition to out-of-control militarism, the risks of nuclear war, and strong support for the international movement to step back from nuclear weapons.
It was a powerful statement of our independence as a nation and a rejection of foreign dominance. It also reduced the risk of contamination in case of a nuclear accident aboard a vessel (remember this was the same decade as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine).
The nuclear-free campaign and Palestine Each of those points have similarities with the Palestinian cause today and should act as inspiration for cities to mobilise and build national solidarity with the Palestinians.
To my knowledge, no city has ever successfully expelled an Israeli Embassy but Wellington could take a powerful first step by doing this, and declare the capital genocide-free. We need to wake our country — and the Western world — out of the moral torpor it finds itself in; yawning its way through the monstrous crimes being perpetrated by our “friends and allies”.
Shun Israel until it stops genocide No city should suffer the moral stain of hosting an embassy representing the racist, genocidal state of Israel.
Wellington should lead the country to support South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), end all trade with Israel, and end all intelligence and military cooperation with Israel for the duration of its genocidal onslaught. Other cities should follow suit.
Declare your city Nuclear and Genocide Free.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz and is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
