A West Papuan liberation advocacy group has condemned the arrest of 12 activists by Indonesian police and demanded their immediate release.
The West Papuan activists from the West Papua People’s Liberation Movement (GR-PWP) were arrested for handing out pamphlets supporting the new “Boycott Indonesia” campaign.
The GR-PWP activists were arrested in Sentani and taken to Jayapura police station yesterday.
In a statement by the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), interim president Benny Wenda, said the activists were still “in the custody of the brutal Indonesian police”.
The arrested activists were named as:
Ones M. Kobak, GR-PWP leader, Sentani District
Elinatan Basini, deputy secretary, GR-PWP Central
Dasalves Suhun, GR-PWP member
Matikel Mirin, GR-PWP member
Apikus Lepitalen, GR-PWP member
Mane Kogoya, GR-PWP member
Obet Dogopia, GR-PWP member
Eloy Weya, GR-PWP member
Herry Mimin, GR-PWP member
Sem. R Kulka, GR-PWP member
Maikel Tabo, GR-PWP member
Koti Moses Uropmabin, GR-PWP member
“I demand that the Head of Police release the Sentani 12 from custody immediately,” Wenda said.
“This was an entirely peaceful action mobilising support for a peaceful campaign.
“The boycott campaign has won support from more than 90 tribes, political organisations, religious and customary groups — people from every part of West Papua are demanding a boycott of products complicit in the genocidal Indonesian occupation.”
Wenda said the arrest demonstrated the importance of the Boycott for West Papua campaign.
We express deep concern over the recent arrests of individuals in Sentani, West Papua for
distributing pamphlets advocating a boycott of Indonesian products from West Papua and
raising awareness of ongoing political issues in the region. The detention of these individuals
likely… pic.twitter.com/4e4hJ7FxUJ
Papua New Guinea being declared a Christian nation may offer the impression that the country will improve, but it is only “an illusion”, according to a Catholic priest in the country.
Last week, the PNG Parliament amended the nation’s constitution, introducing a declaration in its preamble: “(We) acknowledge and declare God, the Father; Jesus Christ, the Son; and Holy Spirit, as our Creator and Sustainer of the entire universe and the source of our powers and authorities, delegated to the people and all persons within the geographical jurisdiction of Papua New Guinea.”
In addition, Christianity will now be reflected in the Fifth Goal of the Constitution, and the Bible will be recognised as a national symbol.
Father Giorgio Licini of Caritas PNG said that the Catholic Church would have preferred no constitutional change.
“To create, nowadays, in the 21st century a Christian confessional state seems a little bit anachronistic,” Father Licini said.
He believes it is a “cosmetic” change that “will not have a real impact” on the lives of the people.
“PNG society will remain basically what it is,” he said.
An ‘illusion that things will improve’
“This manoeuvre may offer the impression or the illusion that things will improve for the country, that the way of behaving, the economic situation, the culture may become more solid. But that is an illusion.”
He said the preamble of the 1975 Constitution already acknowledged the Christian heritage.
Father Licini said secular cultures and values were scaring many in PNG, including the recognition and increasing acceptance of the rainbow community.
“They see themselves as next to Indonesia, which is Muslim, they see themselves next to Australia and New Zealand, which are increasingly secular countries, the Pacific heritage is fading, so the question is, who are we?” he said.
“It looks like a Christian heritage and tradition and values and the churches, they offer an opportunity to ground on them a cultural identity.”
Village market near a Christian church building in Papua New Guinea . . . secular cultures and values scaring many in PNG. Image: 123rf
Prime Minister James Marape, a vocal advocate for the amendment, is happy about the outcome.
He said it “reflects, in the highest form” the role Christian churches had played in the development of the country.
Not an operational law
RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said that Marape had maintained it was not an operational law.
“It is something that is rather symbolic and something that will hopefully unite Papua New Guinea under a common goal of sorts. That’s been the narrative that’s come out from the Prime Minister’s Office,” Waide said.
He said the vast majority of people in the country had identified as Christian, but it was not written into the constitution.
Waide said the founding fathers were aware of the negative implications of declaring the nation a Christian state during the decolonisation period.
“I think in their wisdom they chose to very carefully state that Papua New Guineans are spiritual people but stopped short of actually declaring Papua New Guinea a Christian country.”
He said that, unlike Fiji, which has had a 200-year experience with different religions, the first mosque in PNG opened in the 1980s.
“It is not as diverse as you would see in other countries. Personally, I have seen instances of religious violence largely based on ignorance.
“Not because they are politically driven, but because people are not educated enough to understand the differences in religions and the need to coexist.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A national Palestinian advocacy group has called on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel for its resumption today of “genocidal attacks” on the almost 2 million Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza enclave.
Media reports said that more than 350 people had been killed — many of them children — in a wave of predawn attacks by Israel to break the fragile ceasefire that had been holding since mid-January.
The renewed war on Gaza comes amid a worsening humanitarian crisis that has persisted for 16 days since March 1.
This followed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to block the entry of all aid and goods, cut water and electricity, and shut down the Strip’s border crossings at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
“Immediate condemnation of Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza must come from the New Zealand government”, said co-national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) in a statement.
“Israel has breached the January ceasefire agreement multiple times and is today relaunching its genocidal attacks against the Palestinian people of Gaza.”
Israeli violations
He said that in the last few weeks Israel had:
refused to negotiate the second stage of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas which would see a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza;
Issued a complete ban on food, water, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza — “a war crime of epic proportions”; and
Cut off the electricity supply desperately needed to, for example, operate desalination plants for water supplies.
“The government is out of touch with New Zealanders but in touch with US/Israel.
“Foreign Minister Winston Peters seems to be explaining his silence as ‘keeping his nerve’.
Minto said that for the past 17 months, minister Peters had condemned every act of Palestinian resistance against 77 years of brutal colonisation and apartheid policies.
“But he has refused to condemn any of the countless war crimes committed by Israel during this time — including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.
“Speaking out to condemn Israel now is our opportunity to force it to reconsider and begin negotiations on stage two of the ceasefire agreement Israel is trying to walk away from.
“Palestinians and New Zealanders deserve no less.”
A Netanyahu “Wanted” sign at last Saturday’s pro-Palestinian rally in “Palestinian Corner”, Auckland . . . in reference to the International Criminal Court arrest warrants issued last November against the Israeli Prime Minister and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Image: APR
‘Devastating sounds’
Al Jazeera reporter Maram Humaid said from Gaza: “We woke up to the devastating sounds of multiple explosions as a series of air attacks targeted various areas across the Gaza Strip, from north to south, including Jabalia, Gaza City, Nuseirat, Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis.”
“The strikes hit homes, residential buildings, schools sheltering displaced people and tents, resulting in a significant number of casualties, including women and children, especially since the attacks occurred during sleeping hours.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said at least 232 people had been killed in today’s Israeli raids.
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas called on people of Arab and Islamic nations — and the “free people of the world” — to take to the streets in protest over the devastating attack.
Hamas urged people across the world to “raise their voice in rejection of the resumption of the Zionist war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip”.
New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state
In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.
The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.
During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.
Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.
Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).
Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement
Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.
New Zealand and the Gaza conflict Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.
New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.
While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.
New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza
In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.
He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.
In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.
While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.
In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.
At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.
Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.
New Zealand’s low-key policy On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.
Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.
But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza
Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Freedom of the press — a bedrock principle of American democracy — is under threat in the United States.
Here at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all.
After Homeland Security seized and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of Public and International Affairs, without charging him with any crime, many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus.
They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security.
President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many.
These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favour with the current administration.
We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists.
There are 13 million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the United States. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.
There are more than one million international students in the United States. They, too, may worry that they are no longer free to speak their mind. Punishing even one person for their speech is meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.
One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press.
The President has sued CBS for an interview with Kamala Harris which Trump found too favourable. He has sued the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding prizes to stories critical of him.
He has even sued the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead at that point in the state.
Large corporations like Disney and Meta settled lawsuits most lawyers thought they could win because they did not want to risk the wrath of the Trump administration and jeopardize business they have with the federal government.
Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided that the paper’s editorial pages would limit themselves to pieces celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
The Columbia Journalism School stands in defence of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardise these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism.
A Fijian academic believes Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s failed attempt to garner enough parliamentary support to change the country’s 2013 Constitution “is only the beginning”.
Last week, Rabuka fell short in his efforts to secure the support of three-quarters of the members of Parliament to amend sections 159 and 160 of the constitution.
The prime minister’s proposed amendments also sought to remove the need for a national referendum altogether. While the bill passed its first reading with support from several opposition MPs, it failed narrowly at the second reading.
Jope Tarai, an indigenous Fijian PhD scholar and researcher at the Australian National University, told RNZ Pacific Waves that “it is quite obvious that it is not going to be the end” of Rabuka’s plans to amend the constitution.
However, he said that it was “something that might take a while” with less than a year before the 2026 elections.
“So, the repositioning towards the people’s priorities will be more important than constitutional review,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia is caught in a jam, between an assertive American ally and a bold Chinese trading partner. America is accelerating its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, building up its fighting forces and expanding its military bases.
As Australia tries to navigate a pathway between America’s and Australia’s national interests, sometimes Australia’s national interest seems to submerge out of view.
Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Australia’s Defence Force, is steering this ship as China flexes its muscle sending a small warship flotilla south to circumnavigate the continent.
He has admitted that the first the Defence Force heard of a live-fire exercise by the three Chinese Navy ships sailing in the South Pacific east of Australia on February 21, was a phone call from the civilian Airservices Australia.
“The absence of any advance notice to Australian authorities was a concern, notably, that the limited notice provided by the PLA could have unnecessarily increased the risk to aircraft and vessels in the area,” Johnston told Senate Estimates .
Johnston was pressed to clarify how Defence first came to know of the live-fire drill: “Is it the case that Defence was only notified, via Virgin and Airservices Australia, 28 minutes [sic] after the firing window commenced?”
To this, Admiral Johnston replied: “Yes.”
If it happened as stated by the Admiral — that a live-fire exercise by the Chinese ships was undertaken and a warning notice was transmitted from the Chinese ships, all without being detected by Australian defence and surveillance assets — this is a defence failure of considerable significance.
Sources with knowledge of Defence spoken to by Declassified Australia say that this is either a failure of surveillance, or a failure of communication, or even more far-reaching, a failure of US alliance cooperation.
And from the very start the official facts became slippery.
Our latest investigation –
AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE: NAVIGATING US-CHINA TENSIONS
We investigate a significant intelligence failure to detect live-firing by Chinese warships near Australia, has exposed Defence weaknesses, and the fact that when it counts, we are all alone.
— Declassified Australia (@DeclassifiedAus) March 7, 2025
What did they know and when did they know it The first information passed on to Defence by Airservices Australia came from the pilot of a Virgin passenger jet passing overhead the flotilla in the Tasman Sea that had picked up the Chinese Navy VHF radio notification of an impending live-fire exercise.
The radio transmission had advised the window for the live-fire drill commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 3pm.
We know this from testimony given to Senate Estimates by the head of Airservices Australia. He said Airservices was notified at 9.58am by an aviation control tower informed by the Virgin pilot. Two minutes later Airservices issued a “hazard alert” to commercial airlines in the area.
The Headquarters of the Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command (HJOC), at Bungendore 30km east of Canberra, was then notified about the drill by Airservices at 10.08am, 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
When questioned a few days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to try to cover for Defence’s apparent failure to detect the live-fire drill or the advisory transmission.
“At around the same time, there were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing . .. the [Chinese] vessels in the area by both sea and air,” Albanese stated. “So that occurred and at the same time through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, Airservices got notified as well.”
But the New Zealand Defence Force had not notified Defence “at the same time”. In fact it was not until 11.01am that an alert was received by Defence from the New Zealand Defence Force — 53 minutes after Defence HQ was told by Airservices and an hour and a half after the drill window had begun.
The Chinese Navy’s stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, sailing south in the Coral Sea on February 15, 2025, in a photograph taken from a RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane. Image: Royal Australian Air Force/Declassified Australia
Defence Minister Richard Marles later in a round-about way admitted on ABC Radio that it wasn’t the New Zealanders who informed Australia first: “Well, to be clear, we weren’t notified by China. I mean, we became aware of this during the course of the day.
“What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing. By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”
Later the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told ABC that two live-fire training drills were carried out at sea on February 21 and 22, in accordance with international law and “after repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance”.
Eyes and ears on ‘every move’ It was expected the Chinese-navy flotilla would end its three week voyage around Australia on March 7, after a circumnavigation of the continent. That is not before finally passing at some distance the newly acquired US-UK nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the powerful US communications and surveillance base at North West Cape.
Just as Australia spies on China to develop intelligence and targeting for a potential US war, China responds in kind, collecting data on US military and intelligence bases and facilities in Australia, as future targets should hostilities commence.
The presence of the Chinese Navy ships that headed into the northern and eastern seas around Australia attracted the attention of the Defence Department ever since they first set off south through the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines and through the Indonesian archipelago from the South China Sea on February 3.
“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles stated in the week before the live-fire incident.
“Just as they have a right to be in international waters . . . we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”
Around 3500 km to the north, a week into the Chinese ships’ voyage, a spy flight by an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane on February 11, in a disputed area of the South China Sea south of China’s Hainan Island, was warned off by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Australian protests claiming the Australian aircraft “deliberately intruded” into China’s claimed territorial airspace around the Paracel Islands without China’s permission, thereby “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.
Australia criticised the Chinese manoeuvre, defending the Australian flight saying it was “exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace”.
Two days after the incident, the three Chinese ships on their way to Australian waters were taking different routes in beginning their own “right to freedom of navigation” in international waters off the Australian coast. The three ships formed up their mini flotilla in the Coral Sea as they turned south paralleling the Australian eastern coastline outside of territorial waters, and sometimes within Australia’s 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.
“Defence always monitors foreign military activity in proximity to Australia. This includes the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Task Group.” Admiral Johnston told Senate Estimates.
“We have been monitoring the movement of the Task Group through its transit through Southeast Asia and we have observed the Task Group as it has come south through that region.”
The Task Group was made up of a modern stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, the frigate Hengyang, and the Weishanhu, a 20,500 tonne supply ship carrying fuel, fresh water, cargo and ammunition. The Hengyang moved eastwards through the Torres Strait, while the Zunyi and Weishanhu passed south near Bougainville and Solomon Islands, meeting in the Coral Sea.
This map indicates the routes taken by the three Chinese Navy ships on their “right to freedom of navigation” voyage in international waters circumnavigating Australia, with dates of way points indicated — from 3 February till 6 March 2025. Distances and locations are approximate. Image: Weibo/Declassified Australia
As the Chinese ships moved near northern Australia and through the Coral Sea heading further south, the Defence Department deployed Navy and Air Force assets to watch over the ships. These included various RAN warships including the frigate HMAS Arunta and a RAAF P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane.
With unconfirmed reports a Chinese nuclear submarine may also be accompanying the surface ships, the monitoring may have also included one of the RAN’s Collins-class submarines, with their active range of sonar, radar and radio monitoring – however it is uncertain whether one was able to be made available from the fleet.
“From the point of time the first of the vessels entered into our more immediate region, we have been conducting active surveillance of their activities,” the Defence chief confirmed.
As the Chinese ships moved into the southern Tasman Sea, New Zealand navy ships joined in the monitoring alongside Australia’s Navy and Air Force.
The range of signals intelligence (SIGINT) that theoretically can be intercepted emanating from a naval ship at sea includes encrypted data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, aerial drone data and communications, as well as data of radar, gunnery, and weapon launches.
There are a number of surveillance facilities in Australia that would have been able to be directed at the Chinese ships.
Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Shoal Bay Receiving Station outside of Darwin, picks up transmissions and data emanating from radio signals and satellite communications from Australia’s near north region. ASD’s Cocos Islands receiving station in the mid-Indian ocean would have been available too.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) over-the-horizon radar network, spread across northern Australia, is an early warning system that monitors aircraft and ship movements across Australia’s north-western, northern, and north-eastern ocean areas — but its range off the eastern coast is not thought to presently reach further south than the sea off Mackay on the Queensland coast.
Of land-based surveillance facilities, it is the American Pine Gap base that is believed to have the best capability of intercepting the ship’s radio communications in the Tasman Sea.
Enter, Pine Gap and the Americans The US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a US and Australian jointly-run satellite ground station. It is regarded as the most important such American satellite base outside of the USA.
The spy base – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG) – showing the north-eastern corner of the huge base with some 18 of the base’s now 45 satellite dishes and covered radomes visible. Image: Felicity Ruby/Declassified Australia
The role of ASD in supporting the extensive US surveillance mission against China is increasingly valued by Australia’s large Five Eyes alliance partner.
A Top Secret ‘Information Paper’, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia”, leaked from the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden and published by ABC’s Background Briefing, spells out the “close collaboration” between the NSA and ASD, in particular on China:
“Increased emphasis on China will not only help ensure the security of Australia, but also synergize with the U.S. in its renewed emphasis on Asia and the Pacific . . . Australia’s overall intelligence effort on China, as a target, is already significant and will increase.”
The Pine Gap base, as further revealed in 2023 by Declassified Australia, is being used to collect signals intelligence and other data from the Israeli battlefield of Gaza, and also Ukraine and other global hotspots within view of the US spy satellites.
It’s recently had a significant expansion (reported by this author in The Saturday Paper) which has seen its total of satellite dishes and radomes rapidly increase in just a few years from 35 to 45 to accommodate new heightened-capability surveillance satellites.
Pine Gap base collects an enormous range and quantity of intelligence and data from thermal imaging satellites, photographic reconnaissance satellites, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, as expert researchers Des Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute have detailed.
These SIGINT satellites intercept electronic communications and signals from ground-based sources, such as radio communications, telemetry, radar signals, satellite communications, microwave emissions, mobile phone signals, and geolocation data.
Alliance priorities The US’s SIGINT satellites have a capability to detect and receive signals from VHF radio transmissions on or near the earth’s surface, but they need to be tasked to do so and appropriately targeted on the source of the transmission.
For the Pine Gap base to intercept VHF radio signals from the Chinese Navy ships, the base would have needed to specifically realign one of those SIGINT satellites to provide coverage of the VHF signals in the Tasman Sea at the time of the Chinese ships’ passage. It is not known publicly if they did this, but they certainly have that capability.
However, it is not only the VHF radio transmission that would have carried information about the live-firing exercise.
Pine Gap would be able to monitor a range of other SIGINT transmissions from the Chinese ships. Details of the planning and preparations for the live-firing exercise would almost certainly have been transmitted over data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, and even in the data of radar and gunnery operations.
But it is here that there is another possibility for the failure.
The Pine Gap base was built and exists to serve the national interests of the United States. The tasking of the surveillance satellites in range of Pine Gap base is generally not set by Australia, but is directed by United States’ agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) together with the US Defense Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Australia has learnt over time that US priorities may not be the same as Australia’s.
Australian defence and intelligence services can request surveillance tasks to be added to the schedule, and would have been expected to have done so in order to target the southern leg of the Chinese Navy ships’ voyage, when the ships were out of the range of the JORN network.
The military demands for satellite time can be excessive in times of heightened global conflict, as is the case now.
Whether the Pine Gap base was devoting sufficient surveillance resources to monitoring the Chinese Navy ships, due to United States’ priorities in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, North Korea, and to our north in the South China Sea, is a relevant question.
It can only be answered now by a formal government inquiry into what went on — preferably held in public by a parliamentary committee or separately commissioned inquiry. The sovereign defence of Australia failed in this incident and lessons need to be learned.
Who knew and when did they know If the Pine Gap base had been monitoring the VHF radio band and heard the Chinese Navy live-fire alert, or had been monitoring other SIGINT transmissions to discover the live-fire drill, the normal procedure would be for the active surveillance team to inform a number of levels of senior officers, a former Defence official familiar with the process told Declassified Australia.
Inside an operations room at the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra. Image: ADF/Declassified Australia
Expected to be included in the information chain are the Australian Deputy-Chief of Facility at the US base, NSA liaison staff at the base, the Australian Signals Directorate head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra, the Defence Force’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, in Bungendore, and the Chief of the Defence Force. From there the Defence Minister’s office would need to have been informed.
As has been reported in media interviews and in testimony to the Senate Estimates hearings, it has been stated that Defence was not informed of the Chinese ships’ live-firing alert until a full 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
The former Defence official told Declassified Australia it is vital the reason for the failure to detect the live-firing in a timely fashion is ascertained.
Either the Australian Defence Force and US Pine Gap base were not effectively actively monitoring the Chinese flotilla at this time — and the reasons for that need to be examined — or they were, but the information gathered was somewhere stalled and not passed on to correct channels.
If the evidence so far tendered by the Defence chief and the Minister is true, and it was not informed of the drill by any of its intelligence or surveillance assets before that phone call from Airservices Australia, the implications need to be seriously addressed.
A final word In just a couple of weeks the whole Defence environment for Australia has changed, for the worse.
The US military announces a drawdown in Europe and a new pivot to the Indo-Pacific. China shows Australia it can do tit-for-tat “navigational freedom” voyages close to the Australian coast. US intelligence support is withdrawn from Ukraine during the war. Australia discovers the AUKUS submarines’ arrival looks even more remote. The prime minister confuses the limited cover provided by the ANZUS treaty.
Meanwhile, the US militarisation of Australia’s north continues at pace. At the same time a senior Pentagon official pressures Australia to massively increase defence spending. And now, the country’s defence intelligence system has experienced an unexplained major failure.
Australia, it seems, is adrift in a sea of unpredictable global events and changing alliance priorities.
Peter Cronau is an award-winning, investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentary, The Base: Pine Gap’s Role in US Warfighting, was broadcast on Australian ABC Radio National and featured on ABC News. He produced and directed the documentary film Drawing the Line, revealing details of Australian spying in East Timor, on ABC TV’s premier investigative programme Four Corners. He won the Gold Walkley Award in 2007 for a report he produced on an outbreak of political violence in East Timor. This article was first published by Declassified Australia and is republished here with the author’s permission.
A former US diplomat, Nabeel Khoury, says President Donald Trump’s decision to launch attacks against the Houthis is misguided, and this will not subdue them.
“For our president who came in wanting to avoid war and wanting to be a man of peace, he’s going about it the wrong way,” he said.
“There are many paths that can be used before you resort to war.” Khoury told Al Jazeera.
The danger to shipping in the Red Sea was “a justifiable reason for concern”, Khoury told Al Jazeera in an interview, but added that it was a problem that could be resolved through diplomacy.
Ansar Allah (Houthi) media sources said that at least four areas had been razed by the US warplanes that targeted, in particular, a residential area north of the capital, Sanaa, killing 31 people.
The Houthis, who had been “bombed severely all over their territory” in the past, were not likely to be subdued through “a few weeks of bombing”, Khoury said.
“If you think that Hamas, living and fighting on a very small piece of land, totally surrounded by land, air and sea, and yet, 17 months of bombardment by the Israelis did not get rid of them.
‘More rugged space’
“The Houthis live in a much more rugged space, mountainous regions — it would be virtually impossible to eradicate them,” Khoury said.
“So there is no military logic to what’s happening, and there is no political logic either.”
Providing background, Patty Culhane reported from Washington that there were several factual errors in the justification President Trump had given for his order.
“It’s important to point out that the Houthi attacks have stopped since the ceasefire in Gaza [on January 19], although the Houthis were threatening to strike again,” she said.
“His other justification is saying that no US-flagged vessel has transited the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden safely in more than a year.
“And then he says another reason is because Houthis attacked a US military warship.
“That happened when Trump was not president.”
Down to 10,000 ships
She said the White House was now putting out more of a communique, “saying that before the attacks, there were 25,000 ships that transited the Red Sea annually. Now it’s down to 10,000 so, obviously, sort of shooting down the president’s concept that nobody is actually transiting the region.
“And it did list the number of attacks. The US commercial ships have been attacked 145 times since 2023 in their list.”
Meanwhile, at least nine people, including three journalists, have been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli drone attack on relief aid workers at Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, according to Palestinian media.
The attack reportedly targeted a relief team that was accompanied by journalists and photographers. At least three local journalists were among the dead.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Protection Centre said in a statement that Israel had killed “three journalists in an airstrike on a media team documenting relief efforts in northern Gaza”, reports
“The journalists were documenting humanitarian relief efforts for those affected by Israel’s genocidal war,” the statement added, according to Anadolu.
In a statement, the Israeli military claimed it struck “two terrorists . . . operating a drone that posed a threat” to Israeli soldiers in the area of Beit Lahiya.
“Later, a number of additional terrorists collected the drone operating equipment and entered a vehicle. The [Israeli military] struck the terrorists,” it added, without providing any evidence about its claims.
‘Liberation’ poetry
In Auckland on Saturday, protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — by reciting peace and justice poetry and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone white terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.
Two of the pro-Palestine protesters hold West Papuan and Palestinian flags – symbolising indigenous liberation – at Saturday’s rally in Auckland. Image: APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified with its legislature due to vote on a non-binding resolution to become a US state amid mounting Pacific geostrategic tensions and expansionist declarations by the Trump administration.
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.
Local Senator William A. Parkinson introduced the resolution to the legislature last Wednesday and called for Guam to be fully integrated into the American union, possibly as the 51st state.
“We are standing in a moment of history where two great empires are standing face-to-face with each other, about to go to war,” Parkinson said at a press conference on Thursday.
“We have to be real about what’s going on in this part of the world. We are a tiny island but we are too strategically important to be left alone. Stay with America or do we let ourselves be absorbed by China?”
His resolution states the decision “must be built upon the informed consent of the people of Guam through a referendum”.
Trump’s expansionist policies
Parkinson’s resolution comes as US President Donald Trump advocates territorially expansionist policies, particularly towards the strategically located Danish-ruled autonomous territory of Greenland and America’s northern neighbour, Canada.
“This one moment in time, this one moment in history, the stars are aligning so that the geopolitics of the United States favour statehood for Guam,” Parkinson said. “This is an opportunity we cannot pass up.”
Guam Legislature Senator William A. Parkinson holds a press conference after introducing his resolution. BenarNews screenshot APR
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 on the floor.
The US acquired Guam, along with Puerto Rico, in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and both remain unincorporated territories to this day.
Independence advocates and representatives from the Guam Commission on Decolonisation regularly testify at the UN’s Decolonisation Committee, where the island has been listed as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1946.
Commission on Decolonisation executive director Melvin Won Pat-Borja said he was not opposed to statehood but is concerned if any decision on Guam’s status was left to the US.
“Decolonisation is the right of the colonised,” he said while attending Parkinson’s press conference, the Pacific Daily News reported.
‘Hands of our coloniser’
“It’s counterintuitive to say that, ‘we’re seeking a path forward, a path out of this inequity,’ and then turn around and put it right back in the hands of our coloniser.
“No matter what status any of us prefer, ultimately that is not for any one of us to decide, but it is up to a collective decision that we have to come to, and the only way to do it is via referendum,” he said, reports Kuam News.
With the geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific, Guam has 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.
The two US bases have seen Guam’s economy become heavily reliant on military investments and tourism.
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 there from Japan’s Okinawa islands.
Governor Lou Leon Guerrero delivers her “State of the Island” address in Guam on Tuesday . . . “Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter . . .” Image: Office of the Governor of Guam/Benar News
Military presence leveraged
The island has in recent years leveraged the increased military presence to demand federal assistance and the territory’s treasury relies on at least US$0.5 billion in annual funding.
“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.
Parkinson’s proposed legislative resolution calls for an end to 125-plus years of US colonial uncertainty.
“The people of Guam, as the rightful stewards of their homeland, must assert their inalienable right to self-determination,” states the resolution, including that there be a “full examination of statehood or enhanced autonomous status for Guam.”
“Granting Guam equal political status would signal unequivocally that Guam is an integral part of the United States, deterring adversaries who might otherwise perceive Guam as a mere expendable outpost.”
If adopted by the Guam legislature, the non-binding resolution would be transmitted to the White House.
A local statute enacted in 2000 for a political status plebiscite on statehood, independence or free association has become bogged down in US courts.
‘Reject colonial status quo’
Neil Weare, a former Guam resident and co-director of Right to Democracy, said the self-determination process must be centred on what the people of Guam want, “not just what’s best for US national security”.
“Right to Democracy does not take a position on political status, other than to reject the undemocratic and colonial status quo,” Weare said on behalf of the nonprofit organisation that advocates for rights and self-determination in US territories.
“People can have different views on what is the best solution to this problem, but we should all be in agreement that the continued undemocratic rule of millions of people in US territories is wrong and needs to end.”
He said the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence next year can open a new venue for a conversation about key concepts — such as the “consent of the governed” — involving Guam and other US territories.
Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recalled that 20 journalists were killed during the six-year Philippines presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a regime marked by fierce repression of the press.
Former president Duterte was arrested earlier this week as part of an International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity linked to his merciless war on drugs. He is now in The Hague awaiting trial.
The watchdog has called on the administration of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom and combat impunity for the crimes against media committed by Duterte’s regime.
“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Rodrigo Duterte said in his inauguration speech on 30 June 2016, which set the tone for the rest of his mandate — unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom, said RSF in a statement.
During the Duterte regime’s rule, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working.
Among them was Jesus Yutrago Malabanan, shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war for Reuters.
Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists.
Maria Ressa troll target
The most prominent victim was Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news site Rappler, who faced an orchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.
“The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is good news for the Filipino journalism community, who were the direct targets of his campaign of terror,” said RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani.
RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani . . . “the Filipino journalism community were the direct targets of [former president Rodrigo Duterte]’s campaign of terror.” Image: RSF“President Marcos and his administration must immediately investigate Duterte’s past crimes and take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom.”
The repression carried out during Duterte’s tenure continues to impact on Filipino journalism: investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been languishing in prison since her arrest in 2020, still awaiting a verdict in her trial for “financing terrorism” and “illegal possession of firearms” — trumped-up charges that could see her sentenced to 40 years in prison.
With 147 journalists murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for media workers.
Protesters at the Aotearoa New Zealand’s weekly “free Palestine” rallies today gave a tribute to poet Mahmoud Darwish — the “liberation voice of Palestine” — and marked the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre when a lone terrorist gunned down 51 people at Friday prayers.
Organisers thanked the crowd for attending the rally in what has become known as “Palestine Corner” in the downtown Komititanga Square in the heart of Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau in the 75th week of protests.
This was one of more than 20 Palestinian solidarity events happening across the motu this weekend.
Palestinian poet, writer and activist Mahmoud Darwish . . . forged a Palestinian consciousness. Image: The Palestine Project
The organisers, of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), said the rallies would continue until there was a “permanent ceasefire through Palestine” — Gaza, East Jerusalem and occupied West Bank and for a just political outcome for a sovereign Palestinian state.
The poet, writer and activist Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was born on 15 March 1941 in the small Palestinian Arab and Christian village of al-Birwa, east of Acre, in what is now western Galilee in the state of Israel after the attacks by Israeli militia during the Nakba.
He published his first book of poetry, Asafir Bila Ajniha (“Birds Without Wings”), at the age of 19. Over his writing career, he published more than 30 volumes of poetry and eight books of prose.
By 1981, at the age of 40, he was editor of Al-Jadid, Al Fajir, Shu’un Filisiniyya and Al-Karmel.
He won many awards and his work about the “loss of Palestine” has been translated and published in 20 languages.
Darwish is credited with helping forge a “Palestinian consciousness” and resistance to Israeli military rule after the 1967 Six-Day War.
Several speakers read poetry by Darwish or their own poems dedicated to Palestine, including Kaaka Tarau (“Identity Card”), Chris Sullivan (“To My Mother”), Jax Taylor (own poem), Besma (own poem), Audrey (“I am There”), Achmat Esau (“I Love You More”), and Veih Taylor (“Rita and the Rifle”).
MC Kerry Sorenson-Tyrer . . . thanked rally supporters for their mahi for a Free Palestine movement.
Journalist David Robie provided a short introduction to Darwish’s life and works, and he also spoke about the arrest of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte this week who is now in a cell in The Hague awaiting trial on International Criminal Court (ICC) charges of crimes against humanity over the extrajudicial killings of Filipinos during the so-called “war against drugs”.
A poster at the rally . . . a “wanted” sign for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in reference to the ICC warrants for their arrest. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“This arrest is really significant as it gives us hope,” he said.
“Although the wheels of justice might seem to move slowly, the arrest of Duterte gives us hope that one day the ICC arrest warrants issued last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant will eventually be served, and they will be detained and face trials in The Hague.”
South African-born teacher and activist Achmat Esau reminded the crowd of the significance of the date — March 15, the sixth anniversary of the Christchurch massacre when a lone Australian terrorist shocked the nation by killing 51 people at Friday prayers in two mosques with scores injured, or wounded by gunfire.
Leann Wahanui-Peters and Achmat Esau . . . a poem dedicated to the memory of the 2019 Christchurch martyrs. Image: Asia Pacific Report
The gunman pleaded guilty at his trial and is serving a life sentence without parole — the first such sentence imposed in New Zealand.
Esau shared a poem that he had written to honour those killed and wounded:
Memory, by Achmat Esau 51 … the victims 49 … the injured 15 … the day 1 … the terror 2 … the masjids 5 million … the impact Hate … the reason Murder … the aim Love … the response Hope … the result Justice … the call 51 … the Martyrs!
The MC, Kerry Sorensen-Tyrer, praised the “creative people” and called on them to “keep creating and processing their feelings into something beautiful and external to honour the people of Palestine”.
Organisers were Kathy Ross and Del Abcede.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
When it comes to antisemitism, politicians in Australia are often quick to jump on the claim without waiting for evidence.
With notable and laudable exceptions like the Greens and independents such as Tasmanian federal MP Andrew Wilkie, it seems any allegation will do when it comes to the opportunity to imply Arab Australians, the Muslim community and Palestinian supporters are trying to destroy the lives of the Jewish community.
A case in point. The discovery in January this year of a caravan found in Dural, New South Wales, filled with explosives and a note that referenced the Great Synagogue in Sydney led to a frenzy of clearly uninformed and dangerous rhetoric from politicians and the media about an imminent terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community.
It was nothing of the sort as we now know with the revelation by police that this was a “fabricated terrorist plot”.
As the ABC reported on March 10: “Police have said an explosives-laden caravan discovered in January at Dural in Sydney’s north-west was a ‘fake terrorism plot’ with ties to organised crime”, and that “the Australian Federal Police said they were confident this was a ‘fabricated terrorist plot’,” adding the belief was held “very early on after the caravan was located”.
One would have thought the political and media class would know that it is critical in a society supposedly underpinned by the rule of law that police be allowed to get on with the job of investigating allegations without comment.
Particularly so in the hot-house atmosphere that exists in this nation today.
Opportunistic Dutton
But not the ever opportunistic and divisive federal opposition leader Peter Dutton.
After the Daily Telegraph reported the Dural caravan story on January 29, Dutton was quick to say that this “was potentially the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history”. To his credit, Prime Anthony Albanese said in response he does not “talk about operational matters for an ongoing investigation”.
Dutton’s language was clearly designed to whip up fear and hysteria among the Jewish community and to demonise Palestinian supporters.
He was not Robinson Crusoe sadly. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns told the media on January 29 that the Dural caravan discovery had the potential to have led to a “mass casualty event”.
The Zionist Federation of Australia, an organisation that is an unwavering supporter of Israel despite the horror that nation has inflicted on Gaza, was even more overblown in its claims.
It issued a statement that claimed: “This is undoubtedly the most severe threat to the Jewish community in Australia to date. The plot, if executed, would likely have resulted in the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil.”
Note the word “undoubtedly”.
Uncritical Israeli claims
Then there was another uncritical Israel barracker, Sky News’ Sharri Markson, who claimed; “To think perpetrators would have potentially targeted a museum commemorating the Holocaust — a time when six million Jews were killed — is truly horrifying.”
And naturally, Jilian Segal, the highly partisan so-called “Antisemitism Envoy” said the discovery of the caravan was a “chilling reminder that the same hatred that led to the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust still exists today”.
In short, the response to the Dural caravan incident was simply an exercise in jumping on the antisemitism issue without any regard to the consequences for our community, including the fear it spread among Jewish Australians and the further demonising of the Arab Australian community.
No circumspection. No leadership. No insistence that the matter had not been investigated fully.
As the only Jewish organisation that represents humanity, the Jewish Council of Australia, said in a statement from its director Sarah Schwartz on March 10 the “statement from the AFP [Australian Federal Police] should prompt reflection from every politician, journalist and community leader who has sought to manipulate and weaponise fears within the Jewish community.
‘Irresponsible and dangerous’
“The attempt to link these events to the support of Palestinians — whether at protests, universities, conferences or writers’ festivals — has been irresponsible and dangerous.” Truth in spades.
And ask yourself this question. Let’s say the Dural caravan contained notes about mosques and Arab Australian community centres. Would the media, politicians and others have whipped up the same level of hysteria and divisive rhetoric?
The answer is no.
One assumes Dutton, Segal, the Zionist Federation and others who frothed at the mouth in January will now offer a collective mea culpa. Sadly, they won’t because there will be no demands to do so.
The damage to our legal system has been done because political opportunism and milking antisemitism for political ends comes first for those who should know better.
Greg Barns SC is national criminal justice spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published by Pearls and Irritations social policy journal and is republished with permission.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and RNZ Pacific correspondent in Majuro
The late Member of Parliament Jeton Anjain and the people of the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll changed the course of the history of the Marshall Islands by using Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship to evacuate their radioactive home islands 40 years ago.
They did this by taking control of their own destiny after decades of being at the mercy of the United States nuclear testing programme and its aftermath.
In 1954, the US tested the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, spewing high-level radioactive fallout on unsuspecting Rongelap Islanders nearby.
For years after the Bravo test, decisions by US government doctors and scientists caused Rongelap Islanders to be continuously exposed to additional radiation.
Marshall Islands traditional and government leaders joined Greenpeace representatives in showing off tapa banners with the words “Justice for Marshall Islands” during the dockside welcome ceremony earlier this week in Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific
The 40th anniversary of the dramatic evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior — a few weeks before French secret agents bombed the ship in Auckland harbour — was spotlighted this week in Majuro with the arrival of Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior III to a warm welcome combining top national government leaders, the Rongelap Atoll Local Government and the Rongelap community.
“We were displaced, our lives were disrupted, and our voices ignored,” said MP Hilton Kendall, who represents Rongelap in the Marshall Islands Parliament, at the welcome ceremony in Majuro earlier in the week.
“In our darkest time, Greenpeace stood with us.”
‘Evacuated people to safety’
He said the Rainbow Warrior “evacuated the people to safety” in 1985.
Greenpeace would “forever be remembered by the people of Rongelap,” he added.
In 1984, Jeton Anjain — like most Rongelap people who were living on the nuclear test-affected atoll — knew that Rongelap was unsafe for continued habitation.
The Able US nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on 1 July 1946. Image: US National Archives
There was not a single scientist or medical doctor among their community although Jeton was a trained dentist, and they mainly depended on US Department of Energy-provided doctors and scientists for health care and environmental advice.
They were always told not to worry and that everything was fine.
But it wasn’t, as the countless thyroid tumors, cancers, miscarriages and surgeries confirmed.
Crew of the Rainbow Warrior and other Greenpeace officials — including two crew members from the original Rainbow Warrior, Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Hazen, from Aotearoa New Zealand – were welcomed to the Marshall Islands during a dockside ceremony in Majuro to mark the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific
As the desire of Rongelap people to evacuate their homeland intensified in 1984, unbeknown to them Greenpeace was hatching a plan to dispatch the Rainbow Warrior on a Pacific voyage the following year to turn a spotlight on the nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands and the ongoing French nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.
A Rainbow Warrior question
As I had friends in the Greenpeace organisation, I was contacted early on in its planning process with the question: How could a visit by the Rainbow Warrior be of use to the Marshall Islands?
Jeton and I were good friends by 1984, and had worked together on advocacy for Rongelap since the late 1970s. I informed him that Greenpeace was planning a visit and without hesitation he asked me if the ship could facilitate the evacuation of Rongelap.
At this time, Jeton had already initiated discussions with Kwajalein traditional leaders to locate an island that they could settle in that atoll.
I conveyed Jeton’s interest in the visit to Greenpeace, and a Greenpeace International board member, the late Steve Sawyer, who coordinated the Pacific voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, arranged a meeting for the three of us in Seattle to discuss ideas.
Jeton and I flew to Seattle and met Steve. After the usual preliminaries, Jeton asked Steve if the Rainbow Warrior could assist Rongelap to evacuate their community to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, a distance of about 250 km.
Steve responded in classic Greenpeace campaign thinking, which is what Greenpeace has proved effective in doing over many decades. He said words to the effect that the Rainbow Warrior could aid a “symbolic evacuation” by taking a small group of islanders from Rongelap to Majuro or Ebeye and holding a media conference publicising their plight with ongoing radiation exposure.
“No,” said Jeton firmly. He wasn’t talking about a “symbolic” evacuation. He told Steve: “We want to evacuate Rongelap, the entire community and the housing, too.”
Steve Sawyer taken aback
Steve was taken aback by what Jeton wanted. Steve simply hadn’t considered the idea of evacuating the entire community.
But we could see him mulling over this new idea and within minutes, as his mind clicked through the significant logistics hurdles for evacuation of the community — including that it would take three-to-four trips by the Rainbow Warrior between Rongelap and Mejatto to accomplish it — Steve said it was possible.
And from that meeting, planning for the 1985 Marshall Islands visit began in earnest.
I offer this background because when the evacuation began in early May 1985, various officials from the United States government sharply criticised Rongelap people for evacuating their atoll, saying there was no radiological hazard to justify the move and that they were being manipulated by Greenpeace for its own anti-nuclear agenda.
Women from the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll greeted the Rainbow Warrior and its crew with songs and dances this week as part of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific
This condescending American government response suggested Rongelap people did not have the brain power to make important decisions for themselves.
But it also showed the US government’s lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation in which Rongelap Islanders lived day in and day out in a highly radioactive environment.
The Bravo hydrogen bomb test blasted Rongelap and nearby islands with snow-like radioactive fallout on 1 March 1954. The 82 Rongelap people were first evacuated to the US Navy base at Kwajalein for emergency medical treatment and the start of long-term studies by US government doctors.
No radiological cleanup
A few months later, they were resettled on Ejit Island in Majuro, the capital atoll, until 1957 when, with no radiological cleanup conducted, the US government said it was safe to return to Rongelap and moved the people back.
“Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world,” said a Brookhaven National Laboratory report commenting on the return of Rongelap Islanders to their contaminated islands in 1957.
It then stated plainly why the people were moved back: “The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.”
And for 28 years, Rongelap people lived in one of the world’s most radioactive environments, consuming radioactivity through the food chain and by living an island life.
Proving the US narrative of safety to be false, the 1985 evacuation forced the US Congress to respond by funding new radiological studies of Rongelap.
Thanks to the determination of the soft-spoken but persistent leadership of Jeton, he ensured that a scientist chosen by Rongelap would be included in the study. And the new study did indeed identify health hazards, particularly for children, of living on Rongelap.
The US Congress responded by appropriating US$45 million to a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.
Subsistence atoll life
All of this was important — it both showed that islanders with a PhD in subsistence atoll life understood more about their situation than the US government’s university educated PhDs and medical doctors who showed up from time-to-time to study them, provide medical treatment, and tell them everything was fine on their atoll, and it produced a $45 million fund from the US government.
However, this is only a fraction of the story about why the Rongelap evacuation in 1985 forever changed the US narrative and control of its nuclear test legacy in this country.
The crew of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior III vessel were serenaded by the Rongelap community to mark the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Islanders from their nuclear test-affected islands this week in Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific
Rongelap is the most affected population from the US hydrogen bomb testing programme in the 1950s.
By living on Rongelap, the community confirmed the US government’s narrative that all was good and the nuclear test legacy was largely a relic of the past.
The 1985 evacuation was a demonstration of the Rongelap community exerting control over their life after 31 years of dictates by US government doctors, scientists and officials.
It was difficult building a new community on Mejatto Island, which was uninhabited and barren in 1985. Make no mistake, Rongelap people living on Mejatto suffered hardship and privation, especially in the first years after the 1985 resettlement.
Nuclear legacy history
Their perseverance, however, defined the larger ramification of the move to Mejatto: It changed the course of nuclear legacy history by people taking control of their future that forced a response from the US government to the benefit of the Rongelap community.
Forty years later, the displacement of Rongelap Islanders on Mejatto and in other locations, unable to return to nuclear test contaminated Rongelap Atoll demonstrates clearly that the US nuclear testing legacy remains unresolved — unfinished business that is in need of a long-term, fair and just response from the US government.
The Rainbow Warrior will be in Majuro until next week when it will depart for Mejatto Island to mark the 40th anniversary of the resettlement, and then voyage to other nuclear test-affected atolls around the Marshall Islands.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Māori contributions to the Aotearoa New Zealand economy have far surpassed the projected goal of “$100 billion by 2030”, a new report has revealed.
The report conducted by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) and Te Puni Kōkiri, Te Ōhanga Māori 2023, shows Māori entities have grown from contributing $17 billion to New Zealand’s GDP in 2018 to $32 billion in 2023, turning a 6.5 percent contribution to GDP into 8.9 percent.
The Māori asset base has grown from $69 billion in 2018 to $126 billion in 2023 — an increase of 83 percent.
Of that sum, there is $66 billion in assets for Māori businesses and employers, $19 billion in assets for self-employed Māori and $41 billion in assets for Māori trusts, incorporations, and other Māori collectives including post settlement entities.
In 2018, $4.2 billion of New Zealand’s economy came from agriculture, forestry, and fishing which made it the main contributor.
Now, administrative, support, and professional services have taken the lead contributing $5.1 billion in 2023.
However, Māori collectives own around half of all of New Zealand’s agriculture, forestry, and fishing assets and remain the highest asset-rich sector.
Focused on need
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira manages political and public interests on behalf of Ngāti Toa, including political interests, treaty claims, fisheries, health and social services, and environmental kaitiakitanga.
Tumu Whakarae chief executive Helmut Modlik said they were not focused on making money, but on “those who need it most”.
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira tumu whakarae chief executive Helmut Karewa Modlik . . . “We focus on long-term benefits rather than short-term gains.” Image: Alicia Scott/RNZ
Ngāti Toa invested in water infrastructure and environmental projects, with a drive to replenish the whenua and improve community health. Like many iwi, they also invest in enterprises that deliver essential services such as health, housing and education.
“We focus on long-term benefits rather than short-term gains, ensuring that our investments contribute to the sustainable development of our community,” Modlik said.
Between the covid-19 lockdown and 2023, the iwi grew their assets from $220 million to $850 million and increased their staff from 120 to over 600.
Pou Ōhanga (chief economic development and investment officer) Boyd Scirkovich said they took a “people first” approach to decision making.
“We focused on building local capacity and ensuring that our people had the resources and support they needed to navigate the challenges of the pandemic.”
The kinds of jobs Māori are working are also changing.
Māori workers now hold more high-skilled jobs than low-skilled jobs with 46 percent in high-skilled jobs, 14 percent in skilled jobs, and 40 percent in low-skilled jobs.
That is compared to 2018 when 37 percent of Māori were in high-skilled jobs and 51 percent in low-skilled jobs.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand-based Canadian billionaire James Grenon owes the people of this country an immediate explanation of his intentions regarding media conglomerate NZME. This cannot wait until a shareholders’ meeting at the end of April.
Is his investment in the owner of The New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB nothing more than a money-making venture to realise the value of its real estate marketing subsidiary? Has he no more interest than putting his share of the proceeds from spinning off OneRoof into a concealed safe in his $15 million Takapuna mansion?
Or does he intent to leverage his 9.6 percent holding and the support of other investors to take over the board (if not the company) in order to dictate the editorial direction of the country’s largest newspaper and its number one commercial radio station?
Grenon has said little beyond the barest of announcements that have been released by the New Zealand Stock Exchange. While he must exercise care to avoid triggering statutory takeover obligations, he cannot simply treat NZME as another of the private equity projects that have made him very wealthy. He is dealing with an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance.
While I do not presume for one moment that he reads this column each week, let me suspend disbelief for a moment and speak directly to him.
Come clean and tell the people of New Zealand what you are doing and, more importantly, why.
Over the past week there has been considerable speculation over the answers to those questions. Much of it has drawn on what little we know of James Grenon. And it is precious little beyond two facts.
Backed right-wing Centrist
The first is that he put money behind the launch of a right-wing New Zealand news aggregation website, The Centrist, although he apparently no longer has a financial interest in it.
The second fact is that he provided financial support for conservative activists taking legal action against New Zealand media.
When I contacted a well-connected friend in Canada to ask about Grenon the response was short: “Never heard of him . . . and there aren’t that many Canadian billionaires.”
In short, the man who potentially may hold sway over the board of one of our biggest media companies has a very low profile indeed. That is a luxury to which he can no longer lay claim.
It may be that his interest is, after all, a financial one based on his undoubted investment skills. He may see a lucrative opportunity in OneRoof. After all, Fairfax’s public listing and subsequent sale of its Australian equivalent, Domain, provided not only a useful cash boost for shareholders but the creation of a stand-alone entity that now has a market cap of about $A2.8 billion.
Perhaps he wants a board cleanout to guarantee a OneRoof float.
If so, say so.
Similar transactions
Although spinning off OneRoof could have dire consequences for the viability of what would be left of NZME, that is a decision no different to similar transactions made by many companies in the financial interests of shareholders.
There is a world of difference, however, between seizing an investment opportunity and seeking to secure influence by dictating the editorial direction of a significant portion of our news media.
If the speculation is correct — and the billionaire is seeking to steer NZME on an editorial course to the right — New Zealand has a problem.
Communications minister Paul Goldsmith gave a lamely neoliberal response reported by Stuff last week: He was “happy to take some advice” on the development, but NZME was a “private company” and ultimately it was up to its shareholders to determine how it operated.
Let me repeat my earlier point: NZME is an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance (and the outworn concept that the market can rule). Its stewardship of the vehicles at the forefront of news dissemination and opinion formation means it must meet higher obligation than what we expect of an ordinary “private company”.
The most fundamental of those obligations is the independence of editorial decision-making and direction.
I became editor of The New Zealand Herald shortly after Wilson & Horton was sold to Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly. On my appointment the then chief executive of O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media, Liam Healy, said the board had only one editorial requirement of me: That I would not advocate the use of violence as a legitimate means to a political end.
Only direction echoed Mandela
Coming from a man who had witnessed the effects of such violence in Northern Ireland, I had no difficulty in acceding to his request. And throughout my entire editorship, the only “request” made of me by O’Reilly himself was that I would support the distribution of generic Aids drugs in Africa. It followed a meeting he had had with Nelson Mandela. I had no other direction from the board.
Yes, I had to bat away requests by management personnel (who should have known better) to “do this” or “not do that” but, without exception, the attempts were commercially driven — they did not want to upset advertisers. There was never a political or ideological motive behind them. Nor were such requests limited to me.
I doubt there is an editor in the country who has not had a manager asking for something to please an advertiser. Disappointment hasn’t deterred their trying.
In this column last week, I wrote of the dangers of a rich owner (in that case Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos) dictating editorial policy. The dangers if James Grenon has similar intentions would be even greater, given NZME’s share of the news market.
The journalists’ union, E tu, has already concluded that the Canadian’s intention is to gain right-wing influence. Its director, Michael Wood, issued a statement in which he said: “The idea that a shadowy cabal, backed by extreme wealth, is planning to take over such an important institution in our democratic fabric should be of concern to all New Zealanders.”
He called on the current NZME board to re-affirm a commitment to editorial independence.
Michael Wood reflects the fears that are rightly held by NZME’s journalists. They, too, will doubtless be looking for assurances of editorial independence.
‘Cast-iron’ guarantees?
Such assurances are vital, but those journalists should look back to some “cast-iron” guarantees given by other rich new owners if they are to avoid history repeating itself.
I investigated such guarantees in a book I wrote titled Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media Moguls and White Knights. In it I noted that 20 years before Rupert Murdoch purchased The Times of London, there was a warning that the newspaper’s editor “far from having his independence guaranteed, is on paper entirely in the hands of the Chief Proprietors who are specifically empowered by the Articles of Association to control editorial policy”, although there was provision for a “committee of notables” to veto the transfer of shares into undesirable hands.
To satisfy the British government, Murdoch gave guarantees of editorial independence and a “court of appeal” role for independent directors. Neither proved worth the paper they were written on.
In contrast, the constitution of the company that owns The Economist does not permit any individual or organisation to gain a majority shareholding. The editor exercises independent editorial control and is appointed by trustees, who are independent of commercial, political and proprietorial influences.
There are no such protections in the constitution, board charter, or code of conduct and ethics governing NZME. And it is doubtful that any cast-iron guarantees could be inserted in advance of the company’s annual general meeting.
If James Grenon does, in fact, have designs on the editorial direction of NZME, it is difficult to see how he might be prevented from achieving his aim.
Statutory guarantees would be unprecedented and, in any case, sit well outside the mindset of a coalition government that has shown no inclination to intervene in a deteriorating media market. Nonetheless, Minister Goldsmith would be well advised to address the issue with a good deal more urgency.
He might, at the very least, press the Canadian billionaire on his intentions.
And if the coalition thinks a swing to the right in our news media would be no bad thing, it should be very careful what it wishes for.
If the Canadian’s intentions are as Michael Wood suspects, perhaps the only hope will lie with those shareholders who see that it will be in their own financial interests to ensure that, in aggregate, NZME’s news assets continue to steer a (relatively) middle course. For proof, they need look only at the declining subscriber base of The Washington Post.
Postscipt On Wednesday, The New Zealand Herald stated James Grenon had provided further detail, of his intentions. It is clear that he does, in fact, intend to play a role in the editorial side of NZME.
Just how hands-on he would be remains to be seen. However, he told the Herald that, if successful in making it on to the NZME board, he expected an editorial board would be established “with representation from both sides of the spectrum”.
On the surface that looks reassuring but editorial boards elsewhere have also been used to serve the ends of a proprietor while giving the appearance of independence.
And just what role would an editorial board play? Would it determine the editorial direction that an editor would have to slavishly follow? Or would it be a shield protecting the editor’s independence?
Only time will tell.
Devil in the detail Media Insider columnist Shayne Currie, writing in the Weekend Herald, stated that “the Herald’s dominance has come through once again in quarterly Nielsen readership results . . . ” That is perfectly true: The newspaper’s average issue readership is more than four times that of its closest competitor.
What the Insider did not say was that the Herald’s readership had declined by 32,000 over the past year — from 531,000 to 499,000 — and by 14,000 since the last quarterly survey.
The Waikato Times, The Post and the Otago Daily Times were relatively stable while The Press was down 11,000 year-on-year but only 1000 since the last survey.
In the weekend market, the Sunday Star Times was down 1000 readers year-on-year to stand at 180,000 and up slightly on the last survey. The Herald on Sunday was down 6000 year-on-year to sit at 302,000.
There was a little good news in the weekly magazine market. The New Zealand Listener has gained 5000 readers year-on-year and now has a readership of 207,000. In the monthly market, Mindfood increased its readership by 15,000 over the same period and now sits at 222,000.
The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly continues to dominate the women’s magazine market. It was slightly up on the last survey but well down year-on-year, dropping from 458,000 to 408,000. Woman’s Day had an even greater annual decline, falling from 380,000 to 317,000.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. This article was published first on his Knightly Views website on 11 March 2025 and is republished with permission.
Ongoing wars and conflict around the world expose how international law and norms can be co-opted. With the US pulling out again from the Paris Climate Agreement, and other international commitments, this volatility is magnified.
And with the intensifying US-China rivalry in the Pacific posing the real risk of a new “arms race”, the picture becomes unmistakable: the international global order is rapidly shifting and eroding, and the stability of the multilateral system is increasingly at risk.
In this turbulent landscape, the Pacific must move beyond mere narratives such as the “Blue Pacific” and take bold steps toward establishing a set of rules that govern and protect the Blue Pacific Continent against outside forces.
If not, the region risks being submerged by rising geopolitical tides, the existential threat of climate change and external power projections.
For years, the US and its allies have framed the Pacific within the “Indo-Pacific” strategic construct — primarily aimed at maintaining US primacy and containing a rising and more ambitious China. This frame shapes how nations in alignment with the US have chosen to interpret and apply the rules-based order.
On the other side, while China has touted its support for a “rules-based international order”, it has sought to reshape that system to reflect its own interests and its aspirations for a multipolar world, as seen in recent years through international organisations and institutions.
In addition, the Taiwan issue has framed how China sets its rules of engagement with Pacific nations — a diplomatic redline that has created tension among Pacific nations, contradicting their long-held “friends to all, enemies to none” foreign policy preference, as evidenced by recent diplomatic controversies at regional meetings.
Confusing and divisive
For Pacific nations these framings are confusing and divisive — they all sound the same but underneath the surface are contradictory values and foreign policy positions.
For centuries, external powers have framed the Pacific in ways that advance their strategic interests. Today, the Pacific faces similar challenges, as superpowers compete for influence — securitising and militarising the region according to their ambitions through a host of bilateral agreements. This frame does not always prioritise Pacific concerns.
Rather it portrays the Pacific as a theatre for the “great game” — a theatre which subsequently determines how the Pacific is ordered, through particular value-sets, processes, institutions and agreements that are put in place by the key actors in this so-called game.
But the Pacific has its own story to tell, rooted in its “lived realities” and its historical, cultural and oceanic identity. This is reflected in the Blue Pacific narrative — a vision that unites Pacific nations through shared values and long-term goals, encapsulated in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.
The Pacific has a proud history of crafting rules to protect its interests — whether through the Rarotonga Treaty for a nuclear-free zone, leading the charge for the Paris Climate Agreement or advocating for SDG 14 on oceans. Today, the Pacific continues to pursue “rules-based” climate initiatives (such as the Pacific Resilience Facility), maritime boundaries delimitation, support for the 2021 and 2023 Forum Leaders’ Declarations on the Permanency of Maritime Boundaries and the Continuation of Statehood in the face of sea level rise, climate litigation through the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and a host of other rules-based regional environmental, economic and social initiatives.
However, these efforts often exist in isolation, lacking a cohesive framework to bring them all together, and to maximise their strategic impact and leverage. Now must be the time to build on these successes and create an integrated, long-term, visionary, Pacific-centric “rules-based order”.
This could start by looking to consolidate existing Pacific rules: exploring opportunities to take forward the rules through concepts like the Ocean of Peace currently being developed by the Pacific Islands Forum, and expanding subsequently to include something like a “code of conduct” for how Pacific nations should interact with one another and with outside powers.
Responding as united bloc
This would enable them to respond more effectively and operate as a united bloc, in contrast to the bilateral approach preferred by many partners.
Over time this rules-based approach could be expanded to include other areas — such as the ongoing protection and preservation of the ocean, inclusive of deep-sea mining; the maintenance of regional peace and security, including in relation to the peaceful resolution of conflict and demilitarisation; and movement towards greater economic, labour and trade integration.
Such an order would not only provide stability within the Pacific but also contribute to shaping global norms. It would serve as a counterbalance to external strategic frames that look to define the rules that ought to be applied in the Pacific, while asserting the position of the Pacific nations in global conversations.
This is not about diminishing Pacific sovereignty but about enhancing it — ensuring that the region’s interests are safeguarded amid the geopolitical manoeuvring of external powers, and the growing wariness in and of US foreign policy.
The Pacific’s geopolitical challenges are mounting, driven by climate change, shifting global power dynamics and rising tensions between superpowers. But a collective, rules-based approach offers a pathway forward.
Cohesive set of standards
By building on existing frameworks and creating a cohesive set of standards, the Pacific can assert its autonomy, protect its environment and ensure a stable future in an increasingly uncertain world.
The time to act is now, as Pacific nations are increasingly being courted, and before it is too late. This implies though that Pacific nations have honest discussions with each other, and with Australia and New Zealand, about their differences and about the existing challenges to Pacific regionalism and how it can be strengthened.
By integrating regional arrangements and agreements into a more comprehensive framework, Pacific nations can strengthen their collective bargaining power on the global stage — while in the long-term putting in place rules that would over time become a critical part of customary international law.
Importantly, this rules-based approach must be guided by Pacific values, ensuring that the region’s unique cultural, environmental and strategic interests are preserved for future generations.
Sione Tekiteki is a senior lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology. He previously served at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat in three positions over nine years, most recently as director, governance and engagement. Joel Nilon is currently senior Pacific fellow at the Pacific Security College at the Australian National University. He previously served at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat for nine years as policy adviser. The article was written in close consultation with Professor Transform Aqorau, vice-chancellor of Solomon Islands National University. Republished from DevBlog with permission.
Pacific delegates have been left “shocked” by the omission of sexual and reproductive health rights from the key declaration of the 69th UN Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York.
This year CSW69 will review and assess the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Declaration, the UN’s blueprint for gender equality and rights for women and girls.
The meeting’s political declaration adopted on Tuesday reaffirmed the UN member states’ commitment to the rights, equality and empowerment of all women and girls.
It was the product of a month of closed-door negotiations during which a small number of countries, reportedly including the U.S. and Russia, were accused of diluting the declaration’s final text.
The Beijing Declaration three decades ago mentioned reproductive rights 50 times, unlike this year’s eight-page political declaration.
“It is shocking. Thirty years after Beijing, not one mention of sexual and reproductive health and rights,” Pacific delegate and women’s advocate Noelene Nabulivou from Fiji told BenarNews.
“The core of gender justice and human rights lies in the ability to make substantive decisions over one’s body, health and sexual decision making.
“We knew that in 1995, we know it now, we will not let anyone take SRHR away, we are not going back.”
Common sentiment
It is a common sentiment among the about 100 Pacific participants at the largest annual gathering on women’s rights that attracts thousands of delegates from around the world.
“This is a major omission, especially given the current conditions in several (Pacific) states and the wider pushback and regression on women’s human rights,” Fiji-based DIVA for Equality representative Viva Tatawaqa told BenarNews from New YorK.
Tatawaqa said that SRHR was included in the second version of the political declaration but was later removed due to “lack of consensus” and “trade-offs in language.”
“We will not let everyone ignore this omission, whatever reason was given for the trade-off,” she said.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the CSW69 town hall meeting with civil society on Tuesday. Image: Evan Schneider/UN Photo/BenarNews
The Pacific Community’s latest survey of SRHR in the region reported progress had been made but significant challenges remain.
It highlighted an urgent need to address extreme rates of gender-based violence, low contraceptive use (below 50% in the region), lack of confidentiality in health services and hyperendemic levels of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which all fall under the SRHR banner.
Anti-abortion alliance
Opposition to SRHR has come from 39 countries through their membership of the anti-abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration, an alliance founded in 2020. Their ranks include this year’s CSW69 chair Saudi Arabia, Russia, Hungary, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia and the U.S. under both Trump administrations, along with predominantly African and Middle East countries.
“During negotiations, certain states including the USA and Argentina, attempted to challenge even the most basic and accepted terms around gender and gender equality,” Amnesty said in a statement after the declaration.
“The text comes amid mounting threats to sexual and reproductive rights, including increased efforts, led by conservative groups, to roll back on access to contraception, abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and gender-affirming care across the world,” adding the termination of USAID had compounded the situation.
Since coming to office, President Donald Trump has also reinstated the Global Gag Rule, prohibiting foreign recipients of U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortions.
Meeting between civil society groups and the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in the general assembly hall at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York on Tuesday. Image: Evan Schneider/UN Photo/BenarNews
In his opening address to the CSW69, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued a dire warning on progress on gender equality across the world.
‘Poison of patriachy’
“The poison of patriarchy is back, and it is back with a vengeance, slamming the brakes on action, tearing up progress, and mutating into new and dangerous forms,” he said, without singling out any countries or individuals.
“The masters of misogyny are gaining strength,” Guterres said, denouncing the “bile” women faced online.
He warned at the current rate it would take 137 years to lift all women out of poverty, calling on all nations to commit to the “promise of Beijing”.
The CSW was established days after the inaugural UN meetings in 1946, with a focus on prioritising women’s political, economic and social rights.
CSW was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Beijing Declaration.
One of the declaration’s stated goals is to “enhance women’s sexual and reproductive health and education”, the absence of which would have “a profound impact on women and men.”
The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action identified 12 key areas needing urgent attention — including poverty, education, health, violence — and laid out pathways to achieve change, while noting it would take substantial resources and financing.
This year’s political declaration came just days after International Women’s Day, when UN Pacific released a joint statement singled out rises in adolescent birth rates and child marriage, exacerbating challenges related to health, education, and long-term well-being of women in the region.
Gender-based violence
It also identified the region has among the highest levels of gender-based violence and lowest rates of women’s political representation in the world.
A comparison of CSW59 in 2015 and the CSW69 political declaration reveal that many of the same challenges, language, and concerns persist.
Guterres in his address offered “antidote is action” to address the immense gaps.
Pacific Women Mediators Network coordinator Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls told BenarNews much of that action in the Pacific had been led by women.
“The inclusion of climate justice and the women, peace, and security agenda in the Beijing+30 Action Plan is a reminder of the intersectional and intergenerational work that has continued,” she said.
“This work has been forged through women-led networks and coalitions like the Pacific Women Mediators Network and the Pacific Island Feminist Alliance for Climate Justice, which align with the Blue Pacific Strategy and the Revitalised Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration.”
The future of Māori radio in Aotearoa New Zealand requires increased investment in both online platforms and traditional airwaves, says a senior manager.
Matthew Tukaki, station manager at Waatea Digital, spoke with Te Ao Māori News about the future of Māori radio.
He said there was an urgent need for changes to ensure a sustainable presence on both AM/FM airwaves and digital platforms.
“One of the big challenges will always be funding. Many of our iwi stations operate with very limited resources, as their focus is more on manaakitanga (hospitality) and aroha (compassion),” Tukaki said.
He said that Waatea Digital had been exploring various new digital strategies to enhance viewership and engagement across the media landscape.
“We need assistance and support to transition to these new platforms,” Tukaki said.
He also highlighted the continued importance of traditional AM frequencies, particularly during emergencies like Cyclone Gabrielle, where these stations served as vital emergency broadcasters.
While Rodrigo Duterte may still command support from his core base in the Philippines, something has clearly shifted. Yet the power he did wield haunts the nation as it awaits his trial at the International Criminal Court and it renews speculation about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who also has an ICC arrest warrant out for him.
COMMENTARY:By Pia Ranada of Rappler
I witnessed former President Rodrigo Duterte when he was at the height of power. I witnessed how he would walk into an event five hours late and still be applauded.
I remember how he was allowed to say he was protecting the rights of children, in the same breath as giving his blessing for a drug raid that killed children.
Award-winning Rappler journalist Ranada . . . “His allies turned a blind eye or made excuses whenever Duterte chipped at the integrity of our democratic institutions.” Image: Rappler
I remember how he was able to address the United Nations General Assembly after years of threatening to slap and kill its rapporteurs.
His allies turned a blind eye or made excuses whenever Duterte chipped at the integrity of our democratic institutions — his threats and curses against the Commission on Audit and Commission on Human Rights, the Vice President, the Supreme Court, the media.
The brute force of his power
On a personal level, I experienced being at the end of the brute force of his power.
Rendered voiceless in a press conference where he ranted about a Rappler story on a military project (he silenced the microphone so my responses would not be heard). Told several times I was “not a Filipino” for being so critical in my reporting about his administration.
Many Filipinos took his words as gospel truth and, no matter what I did, could not convince them otherwise.
What made it terrifying was not the violent language he used but the knowledge that he had the entire power of the state to back him up. That power was given to him by Filipinos who voted him into the presidency.
He wielded a terrible power. Opposition was a shout in the dark. Most people could only watch in horror as Duterte did the unthinkable every day and was applauded for it. The excuse of his allies was his popularity, his approval ratings.
For others, the reason was fear.
Duterte playing the ‘victim’
Today, Duterte finds himself playing a role he never expected to play: a victim.
A president so secretive of his health and hospital visits now puts his personal physician front and center and allows himself to appear weak and ailing. Government doctors declared him healthy during a check-up right after he landed from Hong Kong.
Beside him, in the room where he waited, is lawyer Salvador Medialdea, arguing and appealing to the prosecutor general. Only years ago, Medialdea was executive secretary, his words and signature able to mobilise entire government bodies to do Duterte’s bidding.
The man on Duterte’s left is identified by today’s news articles as his lawyer. But not long ago, Martin Delgra was the powerful chief of the Land Transportation Office.
These two men bewailed the various deprivations Duterte has supposedly had to suffer. But when they held power, they did not lift a finger against the blatant violations of rule of law perpetrated against teenage boys, fathers, mothers, daughters, tricycle drivers, vendors, opposition leaders, journalists, and more.
The reversal of fate is the most stunning aspect of this arrest.
The choices a nation makes
I, too, was in Hong Kong at the same time as Duterte, though I did not know it at the time. I was there for a layover of my flight from a work trip.
I took a Cathay Pacific flight back to Manila, eager to return to my family, knowing there was a lot of work at the newsroom waiting for me.
Duterte, too, would take a Cathay Pacific flight to the same airport terminal I landed in. But he would be returning as the subject of an ICC arrest warrant, the first former Asian head of state to be summoned to answer for crimes against humanity.
But the true horror of Duterte’s violations is not that he committed them but that most Filipinos allowed them to happen. Even now, Duterte is rallying his support base around the idea that he waged his drug war for the preservation of the country.
It took a process in an international court to arrest Duterte. Investigations in the House and Senate came late in the day and only after the crumbling of a political alliance that for quite some time protected Duterte.
As we await Duterte’s ICC trial, Filipinos have to come to terms with the Duterte presidency enabled by our choices and what choices have to be made to ensure those offences never happen again.
A leader, no matter how charismatic, must never be allowed to exploit our differences, tap into our fears and insecurities as a nation, benefit from forgiving natures in order to dismantle our democratic processes, and commit the mass murder of our citizens.
It’s a trial of our consciences that must also begin now.
Pia Ranada is Rappler’s community lead, in charge of linking the news website’s journalism with communities for impact. Previously, she was an investigative and senior reporter for Rappler. She is best known for her coverage of the Rodrigo Duterte administration when she was Rappler’s Malacañang reporter.
An open letter signed by 100 Christian leaders, calling for the granting of humanitarian visas to Aotearoa New Zealand for families of Palestinians trapped in Gaza has been handed over on the steps of Parliament.
The letter was presented yesterday on Ash Wednesday to opposition Labour Party MP Phil Twyford, who was joined by six other members of Parliament.
Minister for Immigration Erica Stanford and Associate Minister for Immigration Chris Penk were invited to receive the letter, but both declined the invitation.
The open letter was signed by leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Quaker, non-denominational and Methodist movements, and leaders from organisations and groups such as Caritas, Student Christian Movements and Te Mīhana Māori.
Granting immediate emergency humanitarian visas to Palestinians in Gaza who have family in New Zealand;
Providing sustained diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to allow visa-holders to safely evacuate from Gaza and humanitarian aid to freely enter; and
Providing robust resettlement assistance once these families arrive in New Zealand.
Hoped for troops withdrawal
The letter comes after the end of the first phase of the Gaza Ceasefire agreement — which was due to see Israel withdraw its military forces from the border between Gaza and Egypt.
Christians United for Refuge spokesperson Esmé Hulbert-Putt said: “When we first prepared this letter, we hoped and prayed that we would see the withdrawal of military forces from the border.”
She added that this opening, alongside strong diplomacy and visa pathways, would allow for the family reunification that Palestinians in Aotearoa had been asking for for more than a year.
Following this handover, a separate group, organised by Aotearoa Christians for Peace in Palestine completed a 10km pilgrimage in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, symbolising the distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and the many military checkpoints along the way.
These pilgrimages each involved praying at the arrivals terminals of the respective international airports — in prayerful hope that one day these doors would open to families of Palestinians in Gaza.
Christian pilgrims have staged airport protests around New Zealand calling for humanitarian visas for Palestinians from Gaza. Image: Christians United for Refuge Aotearoa Campaign
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
A New Zealand-based Filipino solidarity network has welcomed the arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte by Interpol on charges of crimes against humanity on a warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“We congratulate the human rights activists — both from the Philippines and around the world — who held the line and relentlessly pursued justice for Filipino victims of the former Duterte regime,” said the Aotearoa-Philippines Solidarity (APS) in a statement.
“This arrest is a long time coming, with Duterte having been complicit in the extrajudicial killings of activists, trade unionists, indigenous peoples’ advocates, peasants and human rights lawyers since he was president back in 2016.
“His brutal and merciless so-called ‘war on drugs’ also led to the deaths of thousands of Filipinos — many of which were not involved in the drug trade at all or were merely drug addicts and low-level drug peddlers.
“Their only ‘crime’ was that they were poor, as documented by many human rights watchdogs that Duterte’s fake ‘drug war’ disproportionately targeted poor Filipinos.”
The APS statement said that Duterte had admitted to these crimes when he faced an inquiry before the Philippines’ House of Representatives in October last year.
“In that hearing, the former president admitted the existence of ‘death squads’ composed of ‘gang members’ and Philippine police personnel who would ‘neutralise’ drug suspects – both when he was president and as mayor of Davao City.
Police ordered to ‘goad suspects’
“He also [revealed] that he [had] instructed members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to goad suspects to fight back or attempt to escape so they would have a reason to kill them.”
The APS noted that all these actions constituted crimes against humanity, the very charge laid against him by the ICC. Since the initial charges were laid against Duterte in 2017 by human rights activists, many had anticipated the day he would finally face justice.
“This arrest is a historic step towards justice and a reminder to all that no one is above the law. The APS extends our best wishes to the bereaved families of those killed during Duterte’s unjust ‘war on drugs’ and also its survivors,” the statement said.
The APS said challenge now was to ensure that justice was meted out by the ICC and Duterte was punished for his crimes.
“Let us not allow this monumental victory slip from our hands and ensure that all evidence against Duterte is brought to light and he faces consequences for the human rights violations he committed against the Filipino people.”
The statement said that Duterte’s arrest also served as a “warning to the US-Marcos regime” that any abuse of their powers and attacks on human rights would not go unpunished.
The continuation of indiscriminate military operations which violated international humanitarian law would also lead to the downfall of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — who is the son of the 1970s dictator who declared martial law.
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has launched an open letter calling on the Aotearoa New Zealand government to take action on the future of the besieged enclave of Gaza.
The network is asking Foreign Minister Winston Peters to speak up for the people of New Zealand to at least condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.
It also wants the government to call for international humanitarian and human rights law to be applied.
Israel says this is because it wants to extend the first phase of the ceasefire agreement rather than negotiate phase two which would see the agreed withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The renewed blockade on food, water, fuel and medical supplies has been widely condemned as a breach of the ceasefire agreement and the use of “starvation as a weapon of war” by Palestinian groups, international aid organisations and many governments.
The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has called for “humanitarian aid to flow back into Gaza immediately”. Israel has refused this request.
Compounding the crisis is US President Donald Trump’s recently declared intention to permanently remove all the Palestinian people of Gaza and send them to other countries such as Egypt and Jordan so Gaza can be rebuilt as a US territory in the Middle East — in his words “the riviera of the Middle East”.
Israel has accepted this US proposal but Palestinians and the vast majority of governments and civil society groups around the world are appalled at the scheme.
To this point our government has not commented on either Israel’s new blockade of humanitarian supplies into Gaza or the US President’s plan for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territory.
Back in December 2023, when the government was commenting, the Prime Minister stated “…Israel must respect international humanitarian law. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected…Safe and unimpeded humanitarian access must be increased and sustained.”
None of this has happened in the more than 14 months since.
We are asking our government to speak out once more on behalf of the people of New Zealand to, at the very least, condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war and to call for international humanitarian and human rights law to be applied.
We believe the way forward for peace and security for everyone who calls the Middle East home is for all parties to follow international law and United Nations resolutions so that a lasting peace can be established based on justice and equal rights for everyone in the region.
New Zealand has an internationally respected voice which can make a strong contribution to this end. We are asking the government to use this voice.
Labour supports sanctions against Israel Meanwhile, the opposition Labour Party said it would support Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick’s member’s bill calling for sanctions against Israel for its illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) declared the decades-long occupation illegal and called for Israel’s withdrawal, and for countries like New Zealand to take action,” Labour associate foreign affairs spokesperson Phil Twyford said in a statement.
“The New Zealand government recently voted at the UN General Assembly for a resolution calling for sanctions against Israel on this issue.
“Labour has been calling for stronger action from the government on Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including intervening in South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, creation of a special visa for family members of New Zealanders fleeing Gaza, and ending government procurement from companies operating illegally in the Occupied Territories.”
Twyford said New Zealand had long recognised Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem as illegal.
In 2016, the then National government co-sponsored a successful Security Council resolution that Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories were illegal.
Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has arrived back in the Marshall Islands yesterday for a six-week mission around the Pacific nation to support independent scientific research into the impact of decades-long nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
Forty years ago in May 1985, its namesake, the original Rainbow Warrior, took part in a humanitarian mission to evacuate Rongelap islanders from their atoll after toxic nuclear fallout in the 1950s.
The Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 before it was able to continue its planned protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia.
Escorted by traditional canoes, and welcomed by Marshallese singing and dancing, the arrival of the Rainbow Warrior 3 marked a significant moment in the shared history of Greenpeace and the Marshall Islands.
The ship was given a blessing by the Council of Iroij, the traditional chiefs of the islands with speeches from Senator Hilton Kendall (Rongelap atoll); Boaz Lamdik on behalf of the Mayor of Majuro; Farrend Zackious, vice-chairman Council of Iroij; and a keynote address from Minister Bremity Lakjohn, Minister Assistant to the President.
Also on board for the ceremony was New Zealander Bunny McDiarmid and partner Henk Haazen, who were both crew members on the Rainbow Warrior during the 1985 voyage to the Marshall Islands.
Bearing witness “We’re extremely grateful and humbled to be welcomed back by the Marshallese government and community with such kindness and generosity of spirit,” said Greenpeace Pacific spokesperson Shiva Gounden.
“Over the coming weeks, we’ll travel around this beautiful country, bearing witness to the impacts of nuclear weapons testing and the climate crisis, and listening to the lived experiences of Marshallese communities fighting for justice.”
Gounden said that for decades Marshallese communities had been sacrificing their lands, health, and cultures for “the greed of those seeking profits and power”.
However, the Marshallese people had been some of the loudest voices calling for justice, accountability, and ambitious solutions to some of the major issues facing the world.
“Greenpeace is proud to stand alongside the Marshallese people in their demands for nuclear justice and reparations, and the fight against colonial exploitation which continues to this day. Justice – Jimwe im Maron.“
During the six-week mission, the Rainbow Warrior will travel to Mejatto, Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap, and Wotje atolls, undertaking much-needed independent radiation research for the Marshallese people now also facing further harm and displacement from the climate crisis, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining in the Pacific.
“Marshallese culture has endured many hardships over the generations,” said Jobod Silk, a climate activist from Jo-Jikum, a youth organisation responding to climate change.
‘Colonial powers left mark’
“Colonial powers have each left their mark on our livelihoods — introducing foreign diseases, influencing our language with unfamiliar syllables, and inducing mass displacement ‘for the good of mankind’.
“Yet, our people continue to show resilience. Liok tut bok: as the roots of the Pandanus bury deep into the soil, so must we be firm in our love for our culture.
“Today’s generation now battles a new threat. Once our provider, the ocean now knocks at our doors, and once again, displacement is imminent.
“Our crusade for nuclear justice intertwines with our fight against the tides. We were forced to be refugees, and we refuse to be labeled as such again.
“As the sea rises, so do the youth. The return of the Rainbow Warrior instills hope for the youth in their quest to secure a safe future.”
Supporting legal proceedings
Dr Rianne Teule, senior radiation protection adviser at Greenpeace International, said: “It is an honour and a privilege to be able to support the Marshallese government and people in conducting independent scientific research to investigate, measure, and document the long term effects of US nuclear testing across the country.
“As a result of the US government’s actions, the Marshallese people have suffered the direct and ongoing effects of nuclear fallout, including on their health, cultures, and lands. We hope that our research will support legal proceedings currently underway and the Marshall Islands government’s ongoing calls for reparations.”
The Rainbow Warrior’s arrival in the Marshall Islands also marks the 14th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.
While some residents have returned to the disaster area, there are many places that remain too contaminated for people to safely live.
With the sudden departure of New Zealand’s Reserve Bank Governor, one has to ask whether there is a pattern here — of a succession of public sector leaders leaving their posts in uncertain circumstances and a series of decisions being made without much regard for due process.
It brings to mind the current spectacle of federal government politics playing out in the United States. Four years ago, we observed a concerted attempt by a raucous and determined crowd to storm the Capitol.
Now a smaller, more disciplined and just as determined band is entering federal offices in Washington almost unhindered, to close agencies and programmes and to evict and terminate the employment of thousands of staff.
This could never happen here. Or could it? Or has it and is it happening here? After all, we had an occupation of parliament, we had a rapid unravelling of a previous government’s legislative programme, and we have experienced the removal of CEOs and downgrading of key public agencies such as Kāinga Ora on slender pretexts, and the rapid and marked downsizing of the core public service establishment.
Similarly, while the incoming Trump administration is targeting any federal diversity agenda, in New Zealand the incoming government has sought to curb the advancement of Māori interests, even to the extent of questioning elements of our basic constitutional framework.
In other words, there are parallels, but also differences. This has mostly been conducted in a typical New Zealand low-key fashion, with more regard for legal niceties and less of the histrionics we see in Washington — yet it still bears comparison and probably reflects similar political dynamics.
Nevertheless, the departure in quick succession of three health sector leaders and the targeting of Pharmac’s CEO suggest the agenda may be getting out of hand. In my experience of close contact with the DHB system the management and leadership teams at the top echelon were nothing short of outstanding.
The Auckland District Health Board, as it then was, is the largest single organisation in Auckland — and the top management had to be up to the task. And they were.
Value for money
As for Pharmac, it is a standout agency for achieving value for money in the public sector. So why target it? The organisation has made cumulative savings of at least a billion dollars, equivalent to 5 percent of the annual health budget. Those monies have been reinvested elsewhere in the health sector. Furthermore, by distancing politicians from sometimes controversial funding decisions on a limited budget it shields them from public blowback.
Unfortunately, Pharmac is the victim of its own success: the reinvestment of funds in the wider health sector has gone unheralded, and the shielding of politicians is rarely acknowledged.
The job as CEO at Pharmac has got much harder with a limited budget, more expensive drugs targeting smaller groups, more vociferous patient groups — sometimes funded in part by drug companies — easy media stories (individuals being denied “lifesaving” treatments), and, more recently, less sympathetic political masters.
Perhaps it was time for a changing of the guard, but the ungracious manner of it follows a similar pattern of other departures.
The arrival of Sir Brian Roche as the new Public Service Commissioner may herald a more considered approach to public sector reform, rather than the slightly “wild west” New Zealand style with the unexplained abolition of the Productivity Commission, the premature ending of an expensive pumped hydro study, disbandment of sector industry groups, and the alleged cancellation of a large ferry contract by text, among other examples of a rather casual approach to due process.
The danger we run is that the current cleaning out of public sector leaders is more than an expected turnover with a change of government, and rather a curbing of independent advice and thought. Will our public media agencies — TVNZ and RNZ — be next in line for the current thrust of popular and political attention?
Major redundancies
Taken together with the abolition of the Productivity Commission, major redundancies in the public sector, the removal of research funding for the humanities and the social sciences, a campaign by the Free Speech Union against university autonomy, the growing reliance on business lobbyists and lobby groups to determine decision-making, and the recent re-orientation of The New Zealand Herald towards a more populist stance, we could well be witnessing a concerted rebalancing of the ecosystem of advice and thought.
In half a century of observing policy and politics from the relative safety of the university, I have never witnessed such a concerted campaign as we are experiencing. Not even in the turmoil of the 1990s.
We need to change the national conversation before it is too late and we lose more of the key elements of the independence of advice and thought that we have established in the state and allied and quasi-autonomous agencies, as well as in the universities and the creative industries, and that lie at the heart of liberal democracy.
Dr Peter Davis is emeritus professor of population health and social science at Auckland University, and a former elected member of the Auckland District Health Board. This article was first published by The Post and is republished with the author’s permission
Paolo* was just 15 years old when he witnessed the Philippine National Police (PNP) mercilessly kill his father in 2016.
Nearly nine years later, the scales are shifting as Rodrigo Duterte, the man who unleashed death upon his family and thousands of others, now faces the weight of justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“Finally, naaresto din, [pero] dapat isama si [Senator Ronald dela Rosa], dapat silang panagutin sa dami ng pamilyang inulila nila. (Finally, he’s arrested but Dela Rosa should’ve been with him, they should be held accountable for how many families they left in mourning),” he said.
Paolo, then a minor, was also accosted and tortured by Caloocan police — from the same city police who would kill 17-year-old Kian delos Santos less than a year later.
He was threatened not to do anything else or else end up like his father. Paolo carried the threats and the fear over the years, even as he hoped for justice.
This hanging on for hope in the face of devastation was not for nothing.
The ICC has been investigating the killings under Duterte’s flagship campaign, which led to at least 6252 deaths in police operations alone by May 2022. The number reached between 27,000 to 30,000, including those killed vigilante-style.
Duterte was presented by the Philippine government’s Prosecutor-General with the ICC notification of an arrest over crimes against humanity upon his arrival from Hong Kong on this morning.
Slow but sure step to justice Paolo is not the only one rejoicing over Duterte’s arrest. Many families, including those from drug war hot spot Caloocan City, see this as the long-awaited step toward the justice they have been denied for years.
When the news broke, Ana* was overcome with joy and thanked God for giving families the strength and unwavering faith to keep fighting for justice. She knew the weight of loss all too well.
In 2017, police stormed into their home in Caloocan City and brutally killed her husband and father-in-law in a single night.
Ana, who was five months pregnant at that time, was caught in the violence and was hit by a stray bullet. She and other victims have since been supported by the In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity Movement.
“Sa wakas, unti-unti nang nakakamit ang hustisya para sa lahat ng biktima (At last, justice is slowly being achieved for all the victims),” she recalled thinking when she read that Duterte had been arrested.
But Ana is wishing for more than just imprisonment for Duterte, even as she welcomed the long-awaited accountability from the former president and his allies.
“Sana din ay aminin niya lahat ng kamalian at humingi siya ng kapatawaran sa lahat ng tao na biktima para matahimik din ang mga kaluluwa ng mga namatay (I hope he also admits to all his wrongdoings and asks for forgiveness from every victim, so that the souls of those who were killed may finally find peace),” she said.
Brutality they endured
For the families, the ICC’s move and the government’s action are an acknowledgment of the brutality they endured. The latest development is also a validation of their grief and provides a glimmer of hope that accountability is finally within reach. After years of being silenced and dismissed, they see this moment as the start of a reckoning they feared would never come.
Celina, whose husband was shot dead in a drug war operation, feels overwhelming joy but is wary that the arrest is just part of a long process at the ICC.
“Ang sabi nga po, mahaba-habang laban ito kaya hindi po sa pag-aresto natatapos ito, bagkus ito ay simula pa lamang ng aming mga laban [at] naniniwala kami at aasa sa kakayahan at suporta na ibinibigay sa amin ng ICC [na] sa huli, mananagot ang dapat managot, maparusahan ang may mga sala,” she said.
(As they say, this is a long battle, so it does not end with the arrest. Rather, this is only the beginning of our fight. We believe in and will rely on the ICC’s capability and support, knowing that in the end, those who must be held accountable will face justice, and the guilty will be punished.)
‘Duterte should feel our pain’ The wounds left behind by the drug war killings remain deep. The families’ losses are irreversible, yes, but they see this arrest as a long-awaited step toward the justice they have fought for years to achieve.
It is a stark contrast to the reality they have lived following the deaths of their loved ones. They were constantly under threat from the police who pulled the trigger. Many families had to flee to faraway places, leaving behind their own communities and source of livelihood.
“Nakakaiyak ako, hindi ko alam ang dapat kong maramdaman na sa ilang taon naming ipinaglalaban ay nakamit din namin ang hustisyang aming minimithi (I’m in tears — I don’t know what to feel. After years of fighting, we have finally achieved the justice we have long been yearning for),“ said Betty, whose 44-year-old son and 22-year-old grandson were killed under Duterte’s drug war.
For Jane Lee, the arrest only underscores the glaring disparity between the powerful and the powerless.
“Mabuti pa siya, inaresto ng mga kapulisan. Ang aming mga kaanak, pinatay agad,” she said. “Napakalaki ng pagkakaiba sa pagitan ng makapangyarihan at ordinaryong taong tulad namin.”
(At least he was arrested by the police. Our loved ones were killed on the spot. The difference between the powerful and ordinary people like us is enormous.)
Lee’s husband, Michael, was gunned down by unidentified men in May 2017, leaving her to raise their three children alone. Since then, she has volunteered for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, a group composed mostly of widows and mothers who remain steadfast in demanding justice for drug war victims.
Collective rage
Families from Rise Up in Cebu also voiced their collective rage against Duterte who ordered killings from the presidential pulpit for six years. They hope that Duterte will feel the same pain they felt when their loved ones were forcibly taken away from them.
This afternoon, Duterte condemned the alleged violation of due process following his arrest. His allies are also echoing this messaging, calling the arrest unlawful.
His longtime aide, Senator Bong Go, Go, tried to access Duterte in Villamor Air Base, asking the guards to let him deliver pizza since they hadn’t eaten yet.
“Katiting lang iyan sa ginawa mo sa amin na sinira mo ang aming buhay at hanapbuhay dahil sa iyong pekeng war on drugs,” the families of drug war victims in Cebu said. “Wala kang karapatan na kumuha ng buhay ng iba [kasi] Diyos lang may karapatan kaya sa ginawa mo, maniningil ang taumbayan lalo na kaming mga pamilya ng mga naging biktima.”
(That is nothing compared to what you did to us. You destroyed our lives and livelihood because of your fake war on drugs. You have no right to take another person’s life; only God has that right. Because of what you have done, the people will demand justice, especially we, the families of the victims.)
There is still no clear information on what comes next, whether Duterte will be immediately transferred to the International Criminal Court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, or if legal battles will delay the process.
But Mila*, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed by police in Quezon City in 2018, hopes for one thing if the former president finds himself in a detention cell soon: “Sana huwag na siya lumaya (I hope he is never set free).”
Vanuatu’s media community was in mourning today following the death on Monday of Marc Neil-Jones, founder of the Trading Post Vanuatu, which later became the Vanuatu Daily Post, and also radio 96BuzzFM. He was 67.
His fearless pursuit of press freedom and dedication to truth have left an indelible mark on the country’s media landscape.
Neil-Jones’s journey began in 1989 when he arrived in Vanuatu from the United Kingdom with just $8000, an early Macintosh computer, and an Apple laser printer.
It was only four years after Cyclone Uma had ravaged the country, and he was determined to create something that would stand the test of time — a voice for independent journalism.
In 1993, Neil-Jones succeeded in convincing then Prime Minister Maxime Carlot Korman to grant permission to launch the Trading Post, the country’s first independent newspaper. Prior to this, the media was under tight government control, and there had been no platform for critical or independent reporting.
The Trading Post was a bold step toward change. Neil-Jones’s decision to start the newspaper, with its unapologetically independent voice, was driven by his desire to provide the people of Vanuatu with the truth, no matter how difficult or controversial.
This was a turning point for the country’s media, and his dedication to fairness and transparency quickly made his newspaper a staple in the community.
Blend of passion, wit and commitment
Marc Neil-Jones’s blend of passion, wit, and unyielding commitment to press freedom became the foundation upon which the Vanuatu Trading Post evolved. The paper grew, expanded, and ultimately rebranded as the Vanuatu Daily Post, but Marc’s vision remained constant — to provide a platform for honest journalism and to hold power to account.
His ability to navigate the challenges that came with being an independent voice in a country where media freedom was still in its infancy is a testament to his resilience and determination.
Marc Neil-Jones faced numerous hurdles throughout his career — imprisonment, deportation, threats, and physical attacks — but he never wavered. Image: Del Abcede/Asia Pacific Report
Neil-Jones faced numerous hurdles throughout his career — imprisonment, deportation, threats, and physical attacks — but he never wavered. His sense of fairness and his commitment to truth were unwavering, even when the challenges seemed insurmountable.
His personal integrity and passion for his work left a lasting impact on the development of independent journalism in Vanuatu, ensuring that the country’s media continued to evolve and grow despite the odds.
Marc Neil-Jones’ legacy is immeasurable. He not only created a platform for independent news in Vanuatu, but he also became a symbol of resilience and a staunch defender of press freedom.
Marc Neil-Jones explaining how he used his radio journalism as a “guide” in the Secret Garden in 2016. Video: David Robie
His work has influenced generations of journalists, and his fight for the truth has shaped the media landscape in the Pacific.
As we remember Marc Neil-Jones, we also remember the Trading Post — the paper that started it all and grew into an institution that continues to uphold the values of fairness, integrity, and transparency.
Marc Neil-Jones’s work has changed the course of Vanuatu’s media history, and his contributions will continue to inspire those who fight for the freedom of the press in the Pacific and beyond.
Rest in peace, Marc Neil-Jones. Your legacy will live on in every headline, every report, and every story told with truth and integrity.
Photojournalist Ben Bohane’s tribute
Vale Marc Neil-Jones, media pioneer and kava enthusiast who passed away last night. He fought for and normalised media freedom in Vanuatu through his Daily Post newspaper with business partner Gene Wong and a great bunch of local journalists.
Reporting the Pacific can sometimes be a body contact sport and Marc had the lumps to prove it. It was Marc who brought me to Vanuatu to work as founding editor for the regional Pacific Weekly Review in 2002 and I never left.
The newspaper didn’t last but our friendship did.
He was a humane and eccentric character who loved journalism and the botanical garden he ran with long time partner Jenny.
Rest easy mate, there will be many shells of kava raised in your honour today.
A series of violent incidents and confrontations over the weekend in New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa and its surroundings, causing clashes with law enforcement agencies and several injuries.
On Saturday night, in a bar and night-club in downtown Nouméa, a “Ladies Night” event dedicated to International Women’s Day degenerated into an all-out brawl, involving mostly young customers.
The event was scheduled to end at 2am, but bar owners decided to close at 1am, prompting violent reactions from the young patrons, who started to throw glasses at the DJ, then ransacked the bar.
The incident was recorded and later broadcast on social networks.
“We should have closed at 2am, but shortly after midnight, we felt the pressure was mounting and most of the people were already quite inebriated”, the 1881 establishment owner told local media.
“So we decided to close earlier to avoid people getting more drunk. We stopped the music, that’s when they started to throw glasses to the bar”.
The brawl involved 300-400 youths in a bar and night-club in downtown Nouméa on Saturday night. Image: RNZ Pacific/FB
Public brawl outside Outside, in a parking lot, an estimated “300 to 400 hundred” customers began a public brawl.
Law enforcement units were called and later described themselves as finding “a dangerous situation” — confronted with “hostile” individuals, and having to resort to teargas and stun-balls.
The French High Commission reported during a press conference yesterday that seven people had been injured, including one gendarme and a police officer, in the face of people throwing “bottles, stones and even concrete blocks”.
The situation came back under control at around 2:30 am, officials said.
The High Commission said that at this stage no one had been arrested, but an investigation was underway that could lead to the bar and night club being closed down.
“This is a serious incident . . . but we are not back to the insurrection situation last year”, the French High Commission’s chief-of-staff, Anaïs Aït Mansour, told reporters.
She said a meeting had been called with all of Nouméa’s bar and nightclub owners and managers.
After months of prohibition on the sale of alcoholic beverages, following the violent unrest that started in May 2024, the restrictions were finally lifted only a few weeks ago.
A re-introduction of the restrictive measure was now “under consideration”, Aït Mansour said.
The incident has also prompted political reactions as parties were preparing for the return of French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls in less than two weeks to try to bring political talks to another level on New Caledonia’s political future.
Politicians warned not to amalgamate The incidents, widely condemned by the pro-France political groups, were also labelled as “unacceptable” by the major pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC)-FLNKS party.
In a media statement, UC said these “acts of vandalism and violence committed by inebriated youths” had “nothing to do with the political claims from 13 May 2024, or with the Kanak people’s struggle”.
However, the pro-independence party warned against any attempt to “turn these youths into scapegoats for all of our society’s harms”.
UC said this behaviour could be explained by “a profound ill-being” among “a certain part” of the young Kanak population who felt disenfranchised.
Violent clashes on highway The weekend was also marred by another violent confrontation with law enforcement services on the territorial road RT1 between the capital Nouméa and the La Tontouta International Airport where motorists were targeted by people throwing stones at them.
The incidents took place early Sunday morning near the Saint-Laurent village, in an area usually referred to as Col de La Pirogue, close to the small town of Païta.
The Gendarmerie Commander, General Nicolas Matthéos, said those actions were from a group of up to 30 individuals under the influence of alcohol.
He said his services were now attempting to talk to traditional chiefs in the area so they could persuade those responsible for these “very aggressive” acts to surrender and be “brought to justice”.
He said four gendarmes had been slightly injured after being hit by stones.
“We had to use stun grenades and during those operations we had to stop all traffic on the RT1″,” he said.
Traffic was interrupted for almost one hour and a squadron of gendarmes remained in place to secure the area.
A judicial inquiry is also underway.
Sandalwood oil factory goes up in flames Also at the weekend, a sandalwood oil factory went up in flames late on Sunday evening on the island of Maré in the Loyalty Islands group.
Local firemen could not stop the destruction of the small factory’ production and refinery unit.
Another investigation is now underway from Nouméa-based gendarmerie investigators to determine the cause of the fire and whether it was accidental or criminal.
The locally-managed unit was created in 2010.
It is believed to be the world’s third largest producer of high-quality sandalwood essential oil, with international perfume and cosmetics clients such as Dior, Guerlain and Chanel.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The Aotearoa New Zealand government is being accused of sacrificing peoples’ lives for ideology by delaying bowel cancer screening for Māori and Pacific people from 50 to 58.
Pacific doctors say Health Minister Simeon Brown’s decision to make bowel screening free at the universal age of 58 for all New Zealanders goes against research data and evidence.
Sir Collin Tukuitonga, co-director of the Centre for Pacific and Global Health at Auckland University, said the policy change for the bowel cancer screening age was unsophisticated and deeply flawed.
Bowel screening age for Māori and Pacific people at the age of 50 was based on need, he said.
“Here is one time where we actually have good data to show that Māori and Pasifika people are at risk of bowel cancer at an earlier age,” Sir Collin said.
“In other words a clear demonstration of need and yet they’ve gone and dismantled a perfectly data-driven evidence-based policy. It’s a vote grab I think. It’s deeply flawed.”
When changing the bowel screening age to 58, the Health Minister said the incidence rate of bowel cancer was similar across all population groups in New Zealand, but Sir Collin said it occurred more among Māori and Pacific people.
Rate of Pacific occurrence higher
“For the bowel cancer incidence rate to be the same across ethnic groups, it tells me that for the minority groups the incidence is higher. In other words the rate of occurrence in Māori and Pacific adults is higher.
“That’s why you end up with the comparable occurrence. So clearly as I say this is a policy that is deeply flawed, relatively unsophisticated, driven by ideology not facts or evidence.”
Otago University research fellow and lecturer Dr Viliami Puloka said the government was putting business ahead of thousands of people’s lives by removing the earlier bowel screen age of 50 for Māori and Pacific people.
Early detection was the marker by which the bowel screening programme’s strength was measured, he said.
“Eight years — as they’re proposing for us to wait — by then we may not be able to do anything. We’ll just tell them to ‘Prepare your funeral because you’re already been developing the cancer for the five, eight years before we find out.’
“By the time it’s been diagnosed it’s too late for any intervention of any importance to be able to address that and that’s really the issue here.”
Dr Puloka predicted the new policy would see thousands of New Zealanders not receiving bowel screening, and most would be Māori and Pacific people.
“It is a matter of fact genetics is important. Social environment is important,” he said.
‘Ethnicity definitely major factor’
“There are a lot of social determinants of health and what might cause one to develop a disease even though they are living in the same country or even if they’re born of the same ethnicity, but ethnicity definitely is a major factor.”
Bowel Cancer New Zealand board member Rachel Afeaki knows the impact of bowel cancer screening.
Her mother died of bowel cancer and five years later her father was diagnosed with bowel cancer after a colonoscopy. He survived.
Afeaki called the government dropping the overall age of screening to 58 a “token move”.
“In 2023 the Census shows that there’s just over 38,000 Pasifika between the ages of 50 to 59 that were set to benefit from the age extension, and around 30,000 of these people will no longer be eligible as a result of these changes.
“And Pasifika people face a 63 percent higher mortality rate from bowel cancer than non-Māori non-Pacific people and it’s really important that this government recognises that a one size fits all screening age doesn’t work for a quarter of New Zealanders with Māori and Pacific peoples having been failed by this approach,” Afeaki said.
Bowel Cancer New Zealand would like to work with the health minister to try and meet the prime minister’s promise to screen from age 45, and screen 10 years earlier for Māori and Pasifika peoples, Afeaki said.
Timely, quality healthcare
In his response, Simeon Brown said that as Minister of Health, his priority was ensuring all New Zealanders had access to timely, quality healthcare.
“That means ensuring we can do the greatest number of treatments and preventions with the resources we have.”
Bowel cancer risk is similar across all population groups at the same age, he said.
“Advice from the Ministry of Health shows that by lowering the age of eligibility from 60 to 58 for all New Zealanders, we will be able do an extra 8479 tests and save an additional 176 lives over the next 25 years than would be the case if we only lowered eligibility for Māori and Pasifika from 60 to 50.
“Our government has also made a significant investment of $19 million over four years to make sure that we are targeting those population groups who have lower rates of screening, like Māori and Pasifika.
“This is a game changer and will save lives,” Brown said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Hamas has accused Israel of “cheap and unacceptable blackmail” over its decision to halt the electricity supply to war-ravaged Palestinian enclave of Gaza to pressure the group into releasing the captives.
“We strongly condemn the occupation’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine, and water,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.
He said it was “a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics”.
“Cutting off electricity, closing the crossings, stopping aid, relief and fuel, and starving our people, constitutes collective punishment and a full-fledged war crime,” al-Risheq said.
He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attempting “to impose a new roadmap” that prioritised his personal interests.
Israel has been widely condemned for violating the terms of the three-phased ceasefire agreement signed on January 19. It has been trying force “renegotiation” of the terms on Hamas by cutting off food supplies and now electricity.
Albanese slams ‘clean water’ cut off
Francesa Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, said Israel’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza meant “no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water”.
She added that countries that were yet to impose sanctions or an arms embargo on Israel were “AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history”.
According to Human Rights Watch, Israel had already intentionally cut off most ways that Palestinians in Gaza could access water, including by blocking pipelines to Gaza and destroying solar panels used to try to keep some water pumps and desalination and waste management plants running during power outages.
GENOCIDE ALERT!Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water.
STILL NO SANCTION/NO ARMS EMBARGO against Israel means, among others, AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the… https://t.co/x2cX4MuP0K
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 9, 2025
In a December report, the organisation noted that Palestinians in many areas of Gaza had access to 2 to 9 litres (0.5 to 2 gallons) of water for drinking and washing per day, per person, far below the 15-litre (3.3 gallons) per person threshold for survival.
“At this point in the war, I do not believe that Israel, Hamas and America are far apart. I want to see our people home. All of them, not just the Americans,” he added.
Boehler praises Qatar’s role
US President Donald Trump’s envoy on captives, Adam Boehler, said face-to-face talks with Hamas representatives — the first such discussions between the US and the organisation in 28 years — had been “very useful”.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13, the envoy dismissed a question by the channel’s reporter, who asked if the US had been “tricked” by Qatar into holding talks with Hamas.
“I don’t think it was a trick by the Qataris at all. It was something we asked for,” he said, reports Al Jazeera.
“They facilitated it. I think the Qataris have been great in this, quite frankly, in a number of different regards. They’ve done a very good job.
“Sometimes, it’s very very hard when you’re talking through intermediaries to understand what people actually want.”
Boehler added that his first question to Hamas was what the movement wanted.
“To me, they said they wanted it [the war] to end. They wanted to give all the prisoners back. They wanted prisoners on the other side. Eventually, we will rebuild Gaza,” he said.
Hamas also knew they would not be in charge of Gaza when the war ended, the US envoy said.
“At this point in the war, I do not believe that Israel, Hamas and America are far apart. I want to see our people home. All of them, not just the Americans,” he added.
More than 2000 people — mostly women and union members — marked International Women’s Day two days early last week on March 6 with a lively rally and march in Melbourne, capital of the Australian state of Victoria.
Chants of “Women united will never be defeated”, “Tell me what a feminist looks like? This is what a feminist looks like” and “When women’s rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!” rang through the streets.
Speakers addressed the inequality women still faced at work and in society, the leading roles women play in many struggles for justice, including for First Nations rights, against the junta in Myanmar, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza/Palestine, and against oppressive regimes like that in Iran.
When Michelle O’Neill, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) spoke, some women chanted “CFMEU” to demonstrate their displeasure at the ACTU’s complicity in attacks against that union.
The rally also marched to Victoria’s Parliament House.
Republished from Green Left.
in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, activists marked International Women’s Day on Saturday and the start of Ramadan this week with solidarity rallies across the country, calling for justice and peace for Palestinian women and the territories occupied illegally by Israel.
The theme this year for IWD was “For all women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment” and this was the 74th week of Palestinian solidarity protests.
The IWD protesters at the Victorian Parliament. Image: Jordan AK/Green Left
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![The Able U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, pictured July 1, 1946. [U.S. National Archives]](https://media.rnztools.nz/rnz/image/upload/s--qg602gCG--/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050/v1728597147/4KIHF8M_marshalls_un_1_jpeg?_a=BACCd2AD)
GENOCIDE ALERT!