The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned Aotearoa New Zealand to urgently close the “alarming” gaps in measles immunisation, particularly among Māori and Pacific communities.
A WHO review last year found measles vaccination rates were at their lowest since 2012, and said the country was at risk of another large outbreak if those gaps were not filled.
Aotearoa eliminated measles in 2017, but saw a major outbreak in 2019 that infected more than 2000 people and hospitalised 700, many of them young children.
There are now 10 confirmed cases across Manawatū, Nelson, Northland, Taranaki, Wellington and Auckland, raising fears of wider community spread.
Only 72 percent of Māori under five years old are vaccinated, compared with 82 percent across the general population. To stop outbreaks, at least 95 percent coverage is needed.
Public Health Director Dr Corina Grey said the Ministry of Health shared WHO’s concerns.
“We know Māori and Pacific children are still missing out — that’s something we have to fix,” she said.
Serious risk
Pacific health researcher Chris Puliuvea said there is serious risk, specifically for Pacific communities.
“There is a 95 percent level where we need to be [with immunisation]. I believe we may even be behind the general population. For example, in the Bay of Plenty, vaccination rates are well behind other ethnic groups in that region,” Dr Puliueva said.
Dr Puli’uvea warned that measles can be easily spread.
“There is a serious concern at the moment. One infected person could affect up to 18 other people. The virus lingers in the air for several hours, which encourages spread. It’s far more infectious than COVID-19, and that’s a concern for our Māori and Pacific communities,” Puli’uvea said.
“I think what makes it also difficult is that you can be infected with the virus at very early stages and not show symptoms until four days later, so you could be infectious and you could be spreading it.
“Obviously it will take time to report that incident. So I think there is a serious concern at the moment, and the reason why I have this concern is why the vaccination rates are not where [they’re] meant to be,” he added.
Dr Puli’uvea said the lower vaccination rates among Māori and Pacific communities was a complex issue, although there are several reasons.
Key covid lessons
“It’s a difficult question . . . key lessons from covid-19 showed us the importance of engaging with communities, particularly the faith community, and addressing misinformation and disinformation.
“That’s one of the inequalities.
“Other inequities are just excess people not being able to find time to go and get vaccinated over because they’re at work, or just lots of other things, finding the time to go and get vaccinated is one of them.
“The other thing that I’ve found is some people are not sure if they are immunised, particularly for those born in the 1990s onward,” he said.
Dr Puli’uvea encouraged families to vaccinate even if they were unsure about their vaccination status.
“With MMR, I simply encourage people to go and get vaccinated. There’s no harm in getting the full course again. It protects not only the individual but also prevents spreading the virus,” Dr Puli’uvea said.
The Ministry of Health has expanded vaccination access through pharmacies, GPs, and health centres, and offered incentives for on-time childhood immunisations.
“Every child vaccinated helps protect the whole community,” Dr Grey said.
They also explained that people can check records and get free MMR vaccinations from their GP, pharmacy, or local clinic.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
You can wake up one morning in Fiji and feel like you’re living in a totally different country.
Overnight we have lost two of our three Deputy Prime Ministers — by many accounts these were the two who were perhaps among the most influential and pivotal in the running of this government.|
For days news of Biman’s impending arrest was being posted about in advance — clearly leaked by people inside Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC). So it did not come as a total surprise.
But reading the reactions on social media — what has surprised, unnerved and confused many — especially government supporters, is how and why does a government charge their own when many in the previous government they wanted to be held accountable continue to walk free?
Why did charges against the two DPM’s take priority?
Is that a sign of how divided they are — or how upright and full of integrity they are?
Charges seem small
The charges brought against the two DPM’s seem small when compared to the significant impact of their removal from cabinet. PM Sitiveni Rabuka, when he was SODELPA leader in 2018, was charged with more or less the similar offence DPM Biman is being charged with — inaccurate declaration of assets and liabilities under the Political Parties Act.
Rabuka was acquitted on the eve of the 2018 election.
Many thought then the whole charge was nothing more than the former Bainimarama government trying to take out its main competitor ahead of the 2018 elections. There was a strong anti-FICAC sentiment then by those now in power.
The main gripe of the coalition parties coming in was that FICAC was being used by those in power for their political agenda — and needed to be disbanded and come under the Police Force.
Rabuka said as much to me in a 2022 interview.
Inevitably, many are now openly wondering if the same thing FijiFirst was accused of doing is happening here, and if this is a machiavellian political strategy for power. To take out a potential internal challenger and clear out a coalition partner so PAP can fight the next elections on its own and focus on winning it outright.
With the support of some former FijiFirst MP’s — PAP has more than enough numbers — and not as reliant on NFP and SODELPA any more.
Coalition has been great
The coalition has been great — but it has been a headache keeping everyone together and managing everyone’s competing interests.
However, the PM has grounds to argue that he is just following the process and maintaining the integrity of FICAC’s fight against corruption — that was severely compromised with the appointment of Barbara Malimali as per the Commission of Inquiry report.
That all he is practising are the principles of transparency, accountability and good governance. Nothing more, nothing less.
That matter is being heard in court with the ruling to be delivered by 23 January 2026 — three months away.
Rabuka has stated that “no one is above the law” and seems confident of weathering any political storm.
But the dark political clouds are forming. Expect more thunder and lightning strikes as more influential people in key positions are expected to be arrested, putting the political and judicial landscape in turmoil.
Forecast is uncertain.
Many storms before
Rabuka has been through many storms like this before. He says he continues to have the support of everyone on his side, including the two DPM’s recently charged.
For now he remains firmly in charge.
But what was once just whispers of internal dissent and division that many of us once dismissed as rumours is starting to grow, as politicians weigh their options.
Whether it turns into a split or full on rebellion, or everyone realise they have no choice but to fall in line, we shall wait and see.
Could we see a repeat of 1994 when Rabuka’s government was brought down from within but he managed to win enough in the elections and form a coalition with the GVP to remain in power?
As of now many in politics are trying to work out which way the wind will blow.
Stanley Simpson is director of Mai TV, general secretary of the Fiji Media Association (FMA) and a media commentator. This is an independent commentary first published on his Facebook page and republished with permission.
Middle East political analyst Zeidon Alkinani says Israel’s military is continuing “business as usual” to the east of the yellow line in Gaza in spite of the ceasefire deal.
The military withdrew behind the yellow line as part of the ceasefire deal, while the government works to ensure “absolute gains” in the enclave and the continuation of its “political, economic and military occupation”, Alkinani told Al Jazeera.
While “the attacks are much more minimised” compared with before the ceasefire, Israel’s political establishment was still trying to exert leverage over Gaza’s future — including the makeup of an international security force.
Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Al Jazeera is banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank, said that the Israelis had been putting a lot of pressure on mediators, specifically the United States.
“They’re saying they’re not ready for any talks on phase two or what’s next of this deal until the remaining 13 bodies of captives are brought back from Gaza,” she said.
“Hamas has said they don’t know where those bodies are, and they need assistance on the ground in the form of specialised teams and heavy machinery.”
Israel had been reluctant at first to allow this to happen.
Turkish team barred
“In fact, there was a Turkish team of about 80 people who were on the other side of the border just last week, whom Israel denied entry to,” Salhut said.
“But now they have allowed in an Egyptian team, alongside the Red Cross. Hamas too are now searching in areas that are technically under Israeli control, outside that yellow line perimeter where Israeli forces withdrew from.”
Meanwhile, an emergency doctor at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital says her team is treating a growing number of Palestinians who have been injured by unexploded ordnance when they return to their homes following their displacement by the war.
“As people come back to the north after the heavy bombardment . . . they’re moving into their old homes, they’re setting up tents in the rubble, and there are so many unexploded missiles,” said the doctor, who gave her name as Harriet.
She said children were among those being injured by the ordnance left scattered across the territory, adding her team had recently treated siblings aged five and seven who had sustained blast and shrapnel injuries from a bomb.
About 66,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance remain lying around Gaza, and at least 53 people have been killed by the bombs so far.
UNRWA international staff and humanitarian aid continue to be denied entry into #Gaza.
Food, hygiene kits, tents, and other supplies are desperately needed.
Still, about 12,000 of its local staff are pushing ahead with the delivery of “healthcare, psychosocial support, and education to the people, often under unimaginable conditions”, the agency said in a post on X.
Israel had banned UNRWA from operating in territory it controls last year, claiming a number of its employees were members of Hamas.
The International Court of Justice ruled last week that Israel, as an occupying power, must support relief efforts provided by the UN and its entities, including UNRWA. It also found that Israel had not substantiated its claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees were Hamas members.
In its post, UNRWA said “a ceasefire alone is not enough.
“Food, hygiene kits, tents, and other supplies are desperately needed,” it added.
On October 17, I received a brief email from a former Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) vice-president: “Can’t wait for your blog covering the reception of Simeon Brown at conference yesterday!!”
The context was the aggressive address of Minister of Health Simeon Brown to the ASMS annual conference.
As reported by Radio New Zealand’s Ruth Hill (October 16), Brown accused senior doctors of crossing an “ethical line” by taking strike action involving non-acute care.
Health Minister Simeon Brown . . . his ‘unethical’ accusation against doctors. Image: RNZ screenshot APR
His accusation was made in the lead up to the “mega strike” of around 100,000 senior doctors, nurses, teachers and public servants on October 23.
It included misleadingly Brown claiming that patients were paying the price for the strike action and that ASMS had walked “away from negotiations”.
Further, he added, “Patients should never be collateral damage in disputes between management and unions.” He urged ASMS to call off the strike action and return to negotiations (conveniently ignoring that it never left them).
Clicking my heels – but how? As the ASMS executive director until 31 December 2019, what could I do but click my heels and obey the former vice-president. But this left me with a problem of what to focus on in a short blog.
The Health Minister had raised several options.
Attack dog Judith Collins published a strident and inaccurate open letter. Image: otaihangasecondopinion.wordpress.com
One was the fact that his address, reinforced by Public Services Minister Judith Collins’ stridently inaccurate “attack dog open letter” attack on the health and education unions (October 19) is the most aggressive and hardline government approach towards health unions, at least, since I first became involved with the newly formed ASMS in 1989.
Another was the deliberate use of misleading claims such as Brown accusing ASMS of not being prepared to negotiate while, at the same time, Health New Zealand was refusing to meet ASMS to discuss negotiations. Also deliberately misleading was his false claim about senior doctors’ average salaries.
Eventually I landed on the accusation that triggered much of the media interest and most of the criticisms from ASMS conference delegates — Brown’s claim that senior doctors were crossing an ethical line.
Understanding medical ethics As Ruth Hill reported there were “audible cries of disbelief” from the delegates. Also see Stuff journalist Bridie Witton’s coverage (October 16).
Let’s get back to basics. Ethics is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.
Following on, medical ethics is the disciplined study of morality in medicine and concerns the obligations of doctors and healthcare organisations to patients as well as the obligations of patients.
Hippocrates developed the oath that formed the original basis of medical ethics. Image: otaihangasecondopinion
Medical ethics starts with the Hippocratic Oath beginning with its first principle of ‘first do no harm’.
As part of an earlier post on the ancient Oath and this principle (5 February 2022) I argued that not only were they still relevant today, but that they should be applied to the whole of our health system, including its leadership.
Who really crossed the ethical line?
Dr Elizabeth Fenton is a lecturer in bioethics at Otago University. On October 22 she had an article published in The Conversation that shone a penetrating analytical light on Simeon Brown’s ethical line crossing claim.
Her observations included:
Bioethics lecturer Dr Elizabeth Fenton gets to the core of whether striking senior doctors are crossing an ethical line. Image: otaihangasecondopinion
“Striking is an option of last resort. In healthcare, it causes disruption and inconvenience for patients, whānau and the health system – but it is ethically justified.
“Arguably, it is ethically required when poor working conditions associated with staff shortages, inadequate infrastructure and underfunding threaten the wellbeing of patients and the long-term sustainability of public health services.
” . . . The real ethical issue is successive governments’ failure to address these conditions and their impact on patient care.”
In response to the health minister’s implication that striking doctors are failing to meet their ethical obligations to provide healthcare, she noted that:
“These are the same doctors who, alongside nurses, carers and allied health professionals, kept New Zealand’s health system functioning during the COVID pandemic in the face of heightened personal risk, often inadequate protections and substantial additional burdens.
“While the duty of care is of primary ethical importance, codes of ethics also recognise doctors’ duties to all patients, and responsibilities to advocate for adequate resourcing in the health system. These duties may justify compromising care to individual patients under the circumstances in which industrial action is considered.”
Further, doctors:
“. . . are striking because their ability to meet these obligations [to provide high quality care] is routinely compromised by working conditions that contribute to burnout and moral injury – the impact of having to work under circumstances that violate core moral values.
“A key goal of the industrial action is to demand better conditions for clinical care, such as safe staffing levels, that will benefit patients and staff and improve the health system for everyone.”
The penultimate final word In the context of Dr Fenton’s incisive analysis, as reported by Ruth Hill in her above-mentioned RNZ item it is appropriate to leave the penultimate final word to the response of senior doctors at the ASMS annual conference to Simeon Brown’s ethical line crossing accusation. These comments were made in among their boos and groans.
Dr Katie Ben . . . operating lists routinely being cancelled. Image: The Press
ASMS president and Nelson Hospital anaesthetist Dr Katie Ben said:
“We have now taken to putting the number of times the patient has been cancelled on the operating list to ensure the patient doesn’t get cancelled for the fourth, fifth or sixth time. Non-clinical managers were cancelling planned care because they could not fill rosters.”
Waikato Hospital rheumatologist Dr Alan Doube said many people (with crippling chronic conditions) did not even get a first specialist appointment (FSA).
“In Waikato, we decline regularly 50 percent of our FSA so we can provide some kind of sensible ongoing care.”
Emergency medicine specialist Dr Tom Morton at Nelson Hospital added:
“Our ED waiting time have blown out with more than doubling of patients leaving without being seen, which I think is a significant marker of unmet need that’s not being recorded or reported on officially.”
The ultimate final word: nailing who crossed an ethical line In a subsequent RNZ item (October 17), the Health Minister threatened a law change to remove senior doctors’ right to strike: Right to strike threatened.
Patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland . . . nailing who crossed an ethical line. Image: otaihangasecondopinion
The reported response of leading patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland nailed who was crossing the ethical line. Describing Simeon Brown’s threat as “pathetic”, he added:
“I think the reason why our doctors and our nurses are striking is because there’s just simply not enough staff. I don’t know how many times they have to tell him until they are blue in the face.
“You know, all this talk about crossing an ethical line, I would say, ‘take a look in the mirror, minister’.”
Indeed Health Minister — look in the mirror! It is the striking doctors who are acting in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath and adhering to the principle of “first do no harm”. It is the Health Minister who is not.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
Successive New Zealand governments have dodged the issue of how the news media should be held to account, leaving us with outdated and fragmented systems for standards and complaints.
But the issue erupted recently when the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) advised The Platform it could consider public complaints about its online output.
Talley’s . . . sued TVNZ over six 1News reports in 2021 and 2022. Image: Screenshot
Those who reckon we don’t need an official broadcasting watchdog point out we already have laws protecting privacy, copyright and other things — and criminalising harassment and bullying.
And if someone on air — or online — lowers your reputation in the minds of right-thinking New Zealanders without good reason, you can sue them for defamation if you think you can prove it.
News organisations don’t often end up in court for that, but when they do it’s big news. Reputations are at stake — and possibly lots of money too in damages.
Thirty years ago the country’s largest-ever payment followed scurrilous claims in Metro magazine’s gossip column — all about a journalist at a rival publication.
Ten years ago, foreign affairs reporter Jon Stephenson sued the chief of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) for statements that wrongly cast doubt on his reporting about New Zealand soldiers in Afghanistan. After a full jury trial, a second was about to begin when the NZDF settled for an undisclosed sum and a statement of “regret”.
Last week, another defamation case concluded, but this time the plaintiff was not a person — and was not seeking damages.
The result may not be known for months, but it could change the way controversial claims about big companies are handled by newsrooms, and — depending on the outcome — how defamation law is deployed by those on the end of investigative reporting.
‘See you in court’ Over five weeks, lawyers for food giant Talley’s went toe-to-toe in the High Court with TVNZ and its lawyers, led by Davey Salmon KC, who also acted for Stephenson 10 years ago.
Talley’s sued TVNZ over six 1News reports in 2021 and 2022 — and also, unusually, sued Christchurch-based reporter Thomas Mead individually as well.
The series alleged problems with hygiene, health and safety at two Talley’s plants.
“To the public, the company presents a spotless image of staff producing frozen vegetables with a smile on their face, but 1News can now pull back the curtain of a different side to its Ashburton factory,” Mead told viewers in July 2021.
Whistleblowers — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — told 1News about problems at two plants and shared photos of dirty equipment and apparent hazards.
TVNZ also reported a leaked email telling Talley’s staff not to talk about an incident where emergency services were called to free a worker’s hand trapped in a machine.
Mead also told viewers an invitation to tour one factory was withdrawn at the last minute. Instead, senior Talley’s staff urged TVNZ not to air the allegations and the images.
Anonymity and privacy Before the trial, Talley’s went to court to try — unsuccessfully — to force TVNZ to reveal the identity of some of its sources and further details of their allegations. It said this would have allowed it to assess whether the sources had sufficient understanding of the safety issues that concerned them.
“I made them a promise, and I have kept it,” Thomas Mead told the court, insisting TVNZ protected their identities because they feared retaliation from Talley’s.
In court, Talley’s lawyer Brian Dickey KC said TVNZ could not produce any evidence that any workers had faced any actual retaliation. He alleged the anonymous sources were wrong and one had tried to extort the company.
Dickey even called one report by Mead “a hit piece”, and said TVNZ’s presentation was overly emotional and its reports displayed “animus” against the company.
TVNZ insisted the reports were accurate, verified and — crucially — in the public interest, and losing the case would set a dangerous precedent for journalism.
Talley’s told the court it did not want damages, just an acknowledgement that it had been defamed and had suffered losses because of the reports.
In this case, the lawyers were not seeking to sway members of a jury — only Judge Pheroze Jagose. He said his decision may not be released until Easter next year.
“It was probably best that it was just a judge-alone (trial) because it’s mind-numbingly complex when you get into the depth of detail and the layers of what’s being argued,” Tim Murphy, Newsroom co-editor, told Mediawatch.
Pecuniary loss
To win the case, Talley’s must show it suffered pecuniary loss.
“This adds a level because they have to show their business has been affected in a way that has cost them money,” said Murphy, who watched the trial from the press bench.
“They need to show that not only has there been loss immediately after or in the time frame of these pieces in 2021 and 2022 — but also that the particular statements in each story that they’re suing about — called ‘imputations’ in defamation law — then led to the loss.
“They said it couldn’t be specified to a dollar figure — but in their view it was obvious and inarguable that the TVNZ coverage had cost them financially.”
Talley’s said contracts with Countdown (now Woolworths) and Hello Fresh were affected.
“They also had the cost of an independent inquiry by former Police Commissioner Mike Bush, and the cost of a PR firm to handle all of this — and then costs of their management time diverted from their factories and so on,” Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy told Mediawatch.
“They also said they had opprobrium for their staff in the community, and they said that was a cost because it can affect morale and productivity.”
What are the stakes? “From past defamation cases that went a long way — even if they didn’t get to trial — both parties will have spent millions in legal costs to this point,” Murphy told Mediawatch.
“Talley’s have also gone for ‘indemnity costs’ so there could still be a substantial amount [to pay] for TVNZ should it lose.”
“Both parties (in court) painted this case as having a very big impact should it go the other way.”
“TVNZ’s view was that if . . . a company can succeed with that level of loss, then it will open it up to all sorts of companies. Davey Salmon, their KC, said that it would be inviting Defamation Act cases from corporations who have effectively suffered no loss.
“Talley’s were of the view that if TVNZ won this, then it was open season on companies and corporations… and that no company would be able to withstand reporting that is in error or biased.”
Murphy’s predecessor as New Zealand Herald editor, Dr Gavin Ellis, appeared as an expert witness for TVNZ. Dr Ellis told the court TVNZ appeared to have verified sources and cross-checked key claims and sought independent views. He also believed Talley’s was given a reasonable amount of time to respond to allegations.
He also backed TVNZ’s decision not to surrender notes — or even redacted versions of transcripts from interviews with anonymous sources to protect their confidentiality.
“There were pretty good levels of both cross-referencing and validating. There are other aspects of the case with vulnerabilities and some of those were from at least one of the anonymous sources,” Murphy told Mediawatch.
“The need to be able to offer and guarantee anonymity and protection of identity in all respects is vital for that public interest function that journalists have.”
TVNZ argued that in the Court of Appeal, and won the right to continue that protection of those sources.
The planning, decision-making and personal communications at TVNZ was scrutinised closely in court, as well as the reporting seen by the public.
One 1News broadcast in 2021 kicked off with host Simon Dallow saying: “a whistleblower tells 1News” Talley’s Ashburton plant was an “accident waiting to happen”.
In court it emerged that the anonymous source in question had not used those precise words, though Mead himself had put those words to the source during a conversation.
“[TVNZ] made claims that — when they were examined in microscopic detail — didn’t match what the story itself said. This is what lawyers do if they get this chance. They examine to that level and nuance,” Murphy said.
“Often in journalism if you get a clear affirmative to a question like that, then it’s fair to paraphrase it and say the person agreed it was ‘an accident waiting to happen’. But in this case the answer . . . was very discursive.”
Talley’s also said some of TVNZ’s presentation was inappropriately emotive and Brian Dickey KC seized on individual words and phrases to allege TVNZ and Mead had taken against Talley’s.
Murphy noted Talley’s objected to reports that would “present anonymous source allegations, give Talley’s response and then end with a ‘but’. The company questioned why his summaries never raised a qualification like ‘but’ about the claims made by a source.”
“It alleged the technique undercut what Talley’s had said – and that there was a sort of default over-weighting of the critical view of them,” Murphy said.
Salmon claimed Talley’s was over-analysing the reports’ wording and amplifying their importance.
“News does not need to be presented in the austere form of a court judgment to be responsible. If it was, it would not be read or watched and it would not inform,” he told the court.
Will this change the way big stories are done? Summarising complex things to make them easily understood in a three-minute TV news bulletin — or shorter — is a challenge.
Could this case prompt a move away from paraphrasing to make stories more engaging and comprehensible — and towards a drier, longer and a little less simplified style on television?
“In the quiet moments, all of those involved at TVNZ will see that there needs to be a tighter, clearer, more precise and weighted use of language and words — and images as well — in the bringing-together and presentation of these kinds of stories,” Murphy told Mediawatch.
“It’s no bad thing in a way for all the media to be given a sharp reminder that precision extends to every element of an investigative story and its presentation. The captions, the summary, the pull-quotes, the scripts, the promos of stories are all subject to this sort of scrutiny.”
Chilling effect? Bryce Edwards of the pro-transparency Integrity Institute said this was an example of “the rich and powerful [using] these laws as legal weapons to silence critics, discourage investigative journalism, and shield themselves from scrutiny”.
“It put the very right of the media to hold power to account in the dock,” Edwards said.
Murphy said: “I think it was quite clear through the whole case that there was sort of a power play.
“The power of a big corporation with rich-lister family backers drawing a line in the sand and saying: ‘We’ve had power of the media thrown at us unfairly — so we’re going to exert some power back other way.’”
And while the media do not end up in court often defending defamation claims, we do not often know if media might be swayed by threats of defamation action from those with financial and legal clout. Or if they are deterred from publishing stories that could result in the kind of lengthy and potentially costly court case TVNZ has just faced.
“While there are many times where lawyers’ letters — or even perhaps injunctions to delay material being aired or published — occur, there are also many times where media companies have ploughed,” Murphy said.
“I don’t think the balance in the defamation setup we have is as yet favouring organisations or companies or the wealthy as much as elsewhere. We do have a defence of responsible publication in the public interest. But the key word there is ‘responsible’.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A Palestinian horror film inspired by folklore is moving forward, with journalist and author Plestia Alaqad joining the cast alongside American-born Kuwaiti-Palestinian journalist and media personality Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Titled The Visitor, the feature is written and directed by Palestinian-American filmmaker Rolla Selbak and produced by Black Poppy Productions.
The story follows a young Palestinian man in Jerusalem who must protect his family after a “Ghouleh” — a female demon from local folktales — emerges in his town.
Production is scheduled for a 25-day shoot in Jordan in 2026, with US-based Watermelon Pictures joining as executive producer and financier. The company, which supported From Ground Zero, Palestine’s first Oscars submission, will collaborate with Jordan’s Imaginarium on the production.
Watermelon Pictures’ head of production, Munir Atalla, told The Hollywood Reporter that Selbak’s vision “marks a bold new foray into genre films for Palestinian cinema“.
Alaqad, a Palestinian author, journalist, and poet, gained international attention for her daily social media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Her memoir, The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience, was published earlier this year by Pan Macmillan and was released in the United States in September.
Human rights, Arab identity
Shihab-Eldin, an Emmy-nominated journalist and actor of Palestinian descent, is best known for his work on Al Jazeera’s The Stream and various independent media projects focusing on human rights and Arab identity.
Selbak told The Hollywood Reporter that The Visitor “is about erasure, and the deep human need to be seen”, adding that “living under occupation can be scarier than the monsters in our folktales”.
Atalla told The New Arab in June that Watermelon Pictures was founded in response to censorship and the lack of representation facing Palestinian storytellers in global cinema.
“The [Gaza] genocide put into stark relief the extent to which the existing systems we have will never serve us,” he said. “We have to build our own cultural power and financial power to compete and fight in this ideological battle that we’re in.”
He added that the company’s new streaming platform, Watermelon+, was designed as “a living archive of Palestinian cinema”, protecting films from being erased or deplatformed.
Alaqad also told The New Arab earlier this year that her work had sought to preserve Palestinian life and memory beyond the violence.
“The media only shows Gaza when it’s being bombed,” she said. “We’re seeing how Palestinians are getting killed, but we don’t see how Palestinians lived.
Pulitzer Prize–winning US journalist Chris Hedges joins Antoinette Lattouf on We Used To Be Journos to unpack his time in Australia, including some fraught interactions with sections of the Australian media.
The pair also discuss what he flew all this way to talk about — how Western journalists are betraying their colleagues in Gaza.
Hedges also offers some honest advice for young people who still want to tell stories and speak truth to power.
New Zealand’s Space Minister Judith Collins was warned just two months into Israel’s war on Gaza that new BlackSky satellites being launched from NZ could be used by that country’s military, reports Television New Zealand’s 1News.
According to a network news item on Friday, government documents showed officials had recommended the launches go ahead in spite of risks, saying there were no restrictions on trade with Israel.
Minister Collins gave the green light and RocketLab began launching the the Gen-3 BlackSky satellites from Mahia Peninsula earlier this year.
In the documents, obtained by 1News political reporter Benedict Collins under the Official Information Act, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials said while there were risks, the positives outweighed the negatives.
The officials’ advice on the satellite launches stated: “While it poses risks, there is a net good associated with commercially available remote sensing due to the wide range of applications,” 1News said.
One risk they identified related to Israel, but they said there were mitigating factors.
“There are no United Nations Security Council sanctions on Israel, and New Zealand does not implement autonomous sanctions outside the context of the conflict in Ukraine,” they advised the minister.
“There are also no policy restrictions on New Zealand’s trading relationship with Israel.”
World court warnings
However, over the two years of war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, several nonbinding legal opinions by the world’s highest court and UN agencies have warned Israel about its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and also warned countries and companies about complicity with the pariah Zionist state.
In the latest ruling this week, the International Court of Justice said Israel was obliged to ease the passage of aid into Gaza, stressing it had to provide Palestinians with “basic needs” essential to survival.
The wide-ranging ICJ ruling came as aid groups were scrambling to scale up much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza, seizing upon a fragile ceasefire agreed earlier this month.
Another court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
According to 1News, the NZ documents also show that when MBIE officials recommended the application be approved they were aware experts at the UN were warning a possible genocide could unfold in Gaza and that schools and hospitals were being bombed.
‘Appalling’ decision
The officials’ advice came in December 2023, two months after the Hamas attacks on Israel which left 1200 people dead. Israel in response launched a retaliatory offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 68,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Minister Collins said this week the decision had been the right one.
“We don’t have sanctions on Israel, we’re not at war with Israel, Israel is not our enemy,” she said.
But Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was an “appalling” decision that could fuel human rights abuses, reports 1News.
Officials at New Zealand’s space agency declined to be interviewed by 1News about Blacksky and RocketLab did not respond to a request for an interview with its founder Sir Peter Beck.
United States top diplomat Marco Rubio says the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) “is not going to play any role” in aid delivery in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.
He also rejected the possibility of Hamas being involved in any future governance of the besieged enclave.
Speaking during a news conference while on a visit to Israel yesterday, the US Secretary of State claimed UNRWA had become “a subsidiary of Hamas”, echoing an Israeli government line that has been discredited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In response, UNRWA insisted that its presence “remains vital to meeting urgent humanitarian needs” across the bombarded and starved enclave, where a deadly Israeli offensive has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians in two years.
In a statement posted on X, the agency also highlighted that the ICJ had recognised that “no organisation can replace the UNRWA’s role in supporting the people of Gaza”.
Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, also dismissed Rubio’s characterisation.
“You’ve already heard us talk about how UNRWA is not linked to Hamas,” he told reporters at the UN. “UNRWA is the backbone of our humanitarian operations in Gaza.”
Israel banned the agency from operating after accusing some of its staff of taking part in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack without providing evidence.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the proclamation by Rubio that UNRWA was a Hamas “subsidiary” was “quite shocking” and “devastating” for UNRWA and all who were involved in Gaza.
UNRWA exonerated by ICJ
UNRWA was not only exonerated by the ICJ and two separate commissions of inquiry, but also had the largest, most extensive aid mechanism in Gaza, Odeh said.
“It has thousands of employees, it has the data to distribute aid to Palestinians with dignity and in an orderly fashion,” she said.
“Nobody has that kind of infrastructure and history in Gaza.”
PRESS RELEASE: The #ICJ delivers its Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory https://t.co/uMXJBTcJq6pic.twitter.com/YuTGwDzPwP
Despite a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect earlier this month, Israel has continued launching attacks across Gaza. At least two people were killed in shelling east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza yesterday, a source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic.
Israel has also kept the Rafah crossing near Egypt sealed, blocking large-scale aid deliveries that were stipulated in the truce agreement.
In his remarks on Friday, Rubio voiced hope of soon putting together an international security force to police the ceasefire in Gaza and said Israel, which opposes including Turkiye, could veto participants.
In Suva, The Fiji Times reports that Israel says Fiji’s “neutral and highly skilled military” could play a valuable role in future peacekeeping efforts once negotiations on Gaza’s next phase were complete.
The indication came as Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel said discussions between Israel, the United States and Arab nations would determine the structure and participants of any peacekeeping arrangement.
“I have to say that we do trust the Fijian forces,” Haskel said during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka before she left for her controversial visit to New Zealand.
Fiji opening an embassy in Jerusalem last month in defiance of United Nations resolutions on Occupied Palestine and hosting a visit by a senior Israeli minister from the paraiah state this week has revived condemnation by Pacific human rights groups and Palestinian advocates.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel visited the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Fiji — where she welcomed a possible “peacekeeping” role — in a week-long Pacific friendship mission.
Both Fiji and Papua New Guinea have opened controversial embassies in Jerusalem, recognised as the capital of Palestine when statehood is granted.
The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji has condemned Fiji’s coalition government for “callously ignoring the unfolding famine and mass starvation in Gaza”, saying it was being “deliberately orchestrated” by Israel in a statement.
The statement was issued before the opening of the embassy and the declaration of a Gaza ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump and three mediating Middle East countries.
Embassy entourage
The NGOCHR statement by chair Shamima Ali, dated September 9, criticised widespread reports in Fiji media that Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka would take “an entourage of 17 government officials and spouses” to officially establish the residential Fijian embassy.
“The coalition government appears to be callously ignoring the unfolding famine and mass starvation in Gaza that is being deliberately orchestrated by the state of Israel,” she said.
“This very same Fiji government previously defended the destruction, killing, and maiming of scores of thousands of innocent civilians — 70 percent of them women and children — by Israel at the International Court of Justice [in an earlier and ongoing case on genocide].”
Shamima Ali highlighted the visit in August by two World Elders — Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) and Helen Clark (former Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand and former Head of UNDP) — to the Rafah crossing into Gaza from Egypt.
They had witnessed how Israel was preventing the flow of food, water, and medicine to the suffering people of Gaza, and declared it as an “unfolding genocide” — “this is not the chaos of war, nor the result of an environmental disaster. It is intentional.”
Ali said Prime Minster Rabuka, and ministers Lynda Tabuya and Pio Tikoduadua had made “rather unconvincing arguments” about opening of the Fijian embassy in Jerusalem on September 18 amid the unfolding genocide in Gaza.
“Whether they like it or not, in the eyes of the world, Fiji will be seen as a country that supports the apartheid and pariah state of Israel, and its genocide in Gaza,” the statement said.
‘Not in our name’
Ali said the NGOCHR reiterated its “Not in our name” opposition to Fiji’s defence of Israel at the ICJ in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide.
It also declared its strongest “Not in our name” opposition to the establishment of the Fiji Embassy in Jerusalem.
“Neither action reflects the wishes of all citizens of Fiji. It does not reflect well on Fiji for the present coalition government to be effectively supporting Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”
Members of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights are Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Program, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji.
Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News
Māori and Pasifika leaders are leading climate adaptation, guided by ancestral knowledge and Indigenous principles to build resilience and shape global solutions.
Last week, they played a key role in launching a new Indigenous climate adaptation network at a wānanga ahead of Adaptation Futures 2025, held on October 13-16 in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
The network aims to build a global movement grounded in Indigenous knowledge, centred on decolonising systems and financial mechanisms, and ensuring Indigenous peoples have direct access to climate finance, the funding that supports actions to address and adapt to climate change.
Kaiwhakahaere Lisa Tumahai . . . Ngāi Tahu are in the midst of “the challenge of our lifetime” — climate change. Image: Te Ao Māori News
The wānanga was led by Lisa Tumahai (Ngāi Tahu), New Zealand patron for Adaptation Futures 2025 and deputy chair of the NZ Climate Commission, and Tagaloa Cooper (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Niue), director of the Climate Change Resilience Programme at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in Apia, Samoa.
“The Indigenous Forum came from what we learnt at the previous two adaptation conferences. The recommendations from Indigenous peoples were to step it up a bit at this conference and create an intentional day and space for Indigenous voices,” says Tumahai.
“For the first time, people are really seeing the commonalities we share with other Indigenous populations, whether they’re from Canada, Africa, or the Amazon.”
Tagaloa Cooper . . . encouraging Pacific rangatahi to take charge of their stories and lead discussions on what loss and damage mean for their communities. Image: Women in Climate Change Network
Kotahitanga across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa Cooper said many of the Pasifika in attendance felt “at home” in Aotearoa and welcomed the opportunity to have a major conference hosted in the region, as international events are often inaccessible due to high costs.
“I’d like to have more of these types of conversations with our cousins in New Zealand where we can exchange knowledge, learn from each other, and also be innovative about how we do adapt,” she says.
She added that, in speaking with Pacific participants, there was a strong call for deeper engagement with iwi across Aotearoa, particularly in rural communities facing similar challenges to small island nations, to create more opportunities for sharing and exchanging traditional knowledge.
Cynthia Houniuhi from the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change presented at the United Nations Adaptation Futures Conference. Image: Te Ao Māori News
The value of Indigenous knowledge Cooper emphasised that Indigenous peoples hold a vast body of knowledge that has long been marginalised.
“Science now is telling us what we’ve always known as Indigenous people,” Cooper says.
“We must remember our ancestors navigated the vast oceans to get here and then grew nations in very difficult places. There is a lot to learn from our people because we have adapted to live in new lands and we’re still here.”
As Indigenous observer for the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, lawyer Taumata Toki (Ngāti Rehua) says this is a growing area that deserves attention, given the value Indigenous peoples bring and how their knowledge can strengthen climate adaptation projects.
Taumata Toki at the UN headquarters for the 24th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Image: LinkedIn/Te Ao Māori News
He says he is continually inspired by Indigenous leaders around the world who are not only experts in Western knowledge systems but also grounded in Indigenous principles that are transforming how climate change is addressed.
Toki says the guiding aim of tikanga is balance, a core concept that aligns with many other Indigenous worldviews and shapes how they approach climate change and sustainability.
Barriers to climate finance Indigenous peoples globally have often had limited access to UN climate change negotiation spaces.
Tumahai said barriers include accreditation requirements or registered body status to access climate finance.
Cooper added that smaller nations and small administrations often lack the capacity, time, and personnel to develop complex project proposals, causing delays and frustration in the flow of funds.
The devastation from Cyclone Gabrielle has prompted iwi to focus on preparing for future weather events, as climate change is expected to increase their frequency and intensity. Image: Hawkes Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle/Te Ao Māori News
When asked whether Māori face additional barriers to accessing climate adaptation funding as Indigenous peoples within a developed nation, Toki says that, on a global scale, Māori are at the forefront of sovereignty over what development looks like.
However, he acknowledges that when this is set against the wider context of what is happening in Aotearoa, “it doesn’t look the best,” pointing to the ongoing challenges Māori face at home despite their strong global standing.
Māori-led adaptation and succession planning “When it comes to Māori-led adaptation, it needs to start in our court,” he says. “We need to have our own really thought-out discussion in terms of how we develop these projects to be both tikanga-aligned, but also wider Indigenous peoples’ principles aligned.”
When asked about an iwi adaptation conference in Aotearoa, Tumahai say it is a great idea and could be driven forward by national iwi. Image: Phil Walter/Getty Images/Te Ao Māori News
Once internal cohesion across iwi is established, state support will play an important role.
Despite the challenges, Toki says the potential ahead is immense, both economically and environmentally, and Aotearoa has the opportunity to be world-leading in this space.
Tumahai agrees that the work has to start at home, and her passion, which she has long championed, is succession planning to bring rangatahi into the work.
“And with that succession planning, it’s not to be dismissive of the pakeke or kaumatua who are really that korowai and the knowledge holders,” she says.
“We have our own systems that ensure the conversations are held and led where the knowledge is sitting.”
Te Aniwaniwa is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News and contributes to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by Te Ao Māori News and is republished with permission.
A leading Palestine solidarity and advocacy group in New Zealand has accused an Israeli cabinet minister of “sneaking” into the country this weekend while on a Pacific tour as
Israel resumed its genocidal attacks.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskell visited the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Fiji — where she welcomed a possible “peacekeeping” role — in a week-long Pacific friendship mission.
Both Fiji and Papua New Guinea have opened controversial embassies in Jerusalem, recognised as the capital of Palestine when statehood is granted.
“It seems clear from media reports that Haskell is visiting Auckland this weekend as part of a trip to strengthen ties with New Zealand and other Pacific countries,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa co-chair Maher Nazal.
He said in a statement that he would expect New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters to “have had, or will be having, a secret meeting” with Haskell.
“Haskell wouldn’t come to New Zealand unless she was having a meeting with
Peters. Otherwise, it would be a diplomatic snub,” Nazzal said.
“Haskell wouldn’t tolerate that, and Peters is most unlikely to snub Israel.
“But if he’s turned her down, we’d love to hear about it.”
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal . . . “Why would we put out the welcome mat for a representative of such a monstrous regime?”. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Nazzal said: “The trip is a ‘thank you’ visit for New Zealand refusing to recognise Palestine [statehood]. Haskell had appointments with the governments of Fiji and Papua New Guinea earlier this week.
“They are the only two countries in the world, other than the United States, which both voted in the United Nations last year against requiring Israel to leave the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and they also have an embassy in Jerusalem.
“They are the greatest fans of Israel outside the United States.”
“I have to say that we do trust the Fijian forces,” she said during the joint press conference with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.
‘Skilled, neutral military’
“We know that you have very skilled military forces that are neutral, which is something especially important for peacekeeping.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel (left) with Ambassador to Fiji and the Pacific Roi Rosenblit at the MOU signing with Fiji this week. Image: Eliki Nukutabu/The Fiji Times
“We know this is a force you can trust, with skills, with morals and we’ve had close collaboration throughout history in many posts around the Middle East and surrounding our borders as well.”
She was referring to Fiji’s long UN history as a Middle East peacekeeping force, but admitted that the Gaza role would not be through the United Nations.
“Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians and withholding New Zealand aid from the people of Gaza,” Nazzal said.
“Why would we put out the welcome mat for a representative of such a monstrous regime?”
Haskell was recently interviewed by “genocide-denier Sean Plunket” on his radio show The Platform saying she would like to visit to “thank the New Zealand government for its support over the last two years”.
“That says it all. New Zealand has stood resolutely with a racist, apartheid regime as it continues to commit genocide against the Palestinian people – two years and counting,” Nazzal said.
Seven embassies in Jerusalem
Last month, Fiji inaugurated its embassy in Jerusalem — becoming the seventh nation to have its diplomatic mission in the city in defiance of the United Nations policy.
Deputy Foreign Minister Haskel with PNG Prime Minister James Marape at Melanesian House, Waigani during a courtesy visit this week. Image: PNG Bulletin
The other countries are: Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea and the United States.
Other nations that maintain ties with Israel have their embassies in Tel Aviv.
Papua New Guinea inaugurated its embassy in Jerusalem last year.
French national politics have once again cast a shadow on New Caledonia’s issues even though the French Pacific territory is facing a pressing schedule.
Debates in the French National Assembly on a New Caledonia-related Bill were once again heated and rocky yesterday, resulting in further delays.
The fresh clashes resulted from a game of alliances, mostly French national left-wing parties siding with the pro-independence FLNKS of New Caledonia (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front and the other side of the Lower House (mostly centre-right) siding with pro-France New Caledonian parties.
It is further evidence that French national partisan politics is now fully engaged on remote New Caledonia’s issues.
On the agenda in Paris was a Bill to postpone New Caledonia’s local provincial elections from the current schedule of not later than 30 November 2025 to the end of June 2026.
The purpose of the Bill (which was earlier approved in principle by New Caledonia’s local parliament, the Congress) was to allow more time for new negotiations to take place on a so-called Bougival agreement project, signed on July 12.
The Bougival process aims at turning New Caledonia into a “State” within the French State, as well as creating a New Caledonian “nationality”, also within the French realm.
It also envisaged transferring some French powers (such as foreign affairs) to New Caledonian authorities.
FLNKS rejected deal
But even though some 19 parties had originally signed the Bougival deal was signed, one of the main pro-independence parties — the FLNKS — has decided to reject the deal.
The FLNKS says their negotiators’ signatures was not valid because the text was a “lure of independence” and did not reflect the FLNKS’s conception of full sovereignty and short-term schedule.
The FLNKS is also clearly opposed to any postponement of New Caledonia’s provincial elections and wants the current schedule (not later than November 30) maintained.
The rest of New Caledonia’s parties, both pro-independence (such as moderate PALIKA -Kanak Liberation Party- and UPM -Progressist Union in Melanesia-) and those who want New Caledonia to remain part of France (such as Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement, Calédonie Ensemble), stuck to their signatures.
They have since held meetings and rallies to explain and defend the deal and its associated implementation process and steps to turn it into relevant pieces of legislation and constitutional amendments.
One of those pieces of legislation includes passing an organic bill to postpone the date of local elections.
The Upper House, the Senate, passed the Bill last week in relatively comfortable conditions.
But in a largely fragmented National Assembly (the Lower House), divided into far left (dominated by La France Insoumise -LFI-, centre left Socialists, centre-right — and influential far-right Rassemblement National, there is no majority.
A ‘barrage’ of amendments Hours before the sitting began on Wednesday afternoon (Paris time), National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet had to issue a statement deploring LFI’s tactics, amounting to “pure obstruction”.
This was because in a matter of a few hours, LFI, in support of FLNKS, had filed more than 1600 amendments to New Caledonia’s Bill (even though the text itself only contained three articles).
The barrage of amendments was clearly presented as a way of delaying debates since the sum of all of these amendments, if properly discussed, would have taken days, if not weeks, to examine.
In response, the government camp (a coalition of pro-President Macron MPs) resorted to a rarely-used technicality: it called for a vote to “kill” their own Bill and re-divert it to another route: a bipartisan committee.
This is made up of a panel of seven National Assembly MPs and seven Senators who will be tasked, next week, to come up with a consensual version and bring it back before the Lower House on October 27 for a possible vote and on October 29 before the Senate.
If both Houses of Parliament endorse the text, then it will have to be validated by the French Constitutional Council for conformity and eventually be promulgated before 2 November.
But if the Senate and the National Assembly produce different votes and fail to agree, then the French government can, as a last resort, ask the Lower House only to vote on the same text, with a required absolute majority.
If those most urgent deadlines are not met, then New Caledonia’s provincial elections will be held as scheduled, before November 30 and under the existing “frozen” electoral roll.
This is another very sensitive topic related to this Bill as it touches on the conditions of eligibility for New Caledonia’s local elections.
Under the current system, the 1998 Nouméa Accord, the list of eligible voters is restricted to people living and residing in New Caledonia before 1998. Whereas under the new arrangements, it would be “unfrozen” to include at least 12,000 more, to reflect, among others, New Caledonia’s demographic changes.
But pro-independence parties such as the FLNKS object to “unfreezing” the rules, saying this would further “dilute” the indigenous vote and gradually make them a minority in their own land.
‘Political response to political obstruction’ Pro-France MP Nicolas Metzdorf and Bill Law Commission Rapporteur Philippe Gosselin both said the tactical move was “a political response to (LFI’s) political obstruction”.
“LFI is barking up the wrong tree (…) Especially since the pro-independence movement is clearly divided on the matter (for or against the Bougival process),” Gosselin pleaded.
“It was necessary to file this rejection motion of our own text, because now it will go to the bipartisan committee to be examined once again. So we’re moving forward, step by step. I would like to remind you once again that (the Bill) is coherent with about eighty percent of our political groups represented at New Caledonia’s Congress”.
The “Prior rejection motion” was voted by a large majority of 257 votes (and the support of Rassemblement National, but without the Socialists) and the sitting was adjourned without further debates.
When debates resume, no amendment will be allowed.
Moutchou ‘open to discussion’ In spite of this, during debates on Wednesday, newly-appointed French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou assured she remained open to discussion with the FLNKS so that it can re-join talks.
She admitted “nothing can be done without the FLNKS” and announced that she would travel to New Caledonia “very soon”.
During question time, she told the Lower House her mantra was to “build” on the Bougival text, to “listen” with “respect” to “give dialogue a chance” and “build New Caledonia’s future”.
“The signature of the Bougival deal has revived hope in New Caledonia’s population. It’s true not everyone is now around the table. (My government) wishes to bring back FLNKS. Like I said before, I don’t want to do (things) without the FLNKS, as long as FLNKS doesn’t want to do things without the other parties”, she said.
FLNKS chief negotiator at Bougival, Emmanuel Tjibaou and pro-France Metzdorf also had a brief, sometimes emotional exchange on the floor, Wednesday.
They both referred to their own respective interpretations of what took place in July 2025 in Bougival, a small city west of Paris.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two journalists, one imprisoned in Belarus and the other in Georgia, have won the European Union’s top human rights honor, the Sakharov Prize, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced on Wednesday 22 October 2025.
Andrzej Poczobut is a correspondent for the influential Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. He was convicted of “harming Belarus’ national security” and sentenced to eight years, which he is serving in the Novopolotsk penal colony.
Mzia Amaghlobeli, a prominent journalist who founded two of Georgia’s independent media outlets, was in August convicted of slapping a police chief during an anti-government protest. She was sentenced to two years in prison in a case that was condemned by rights groups as an attempt to curb media freedom.
“Both are journalists currently in prison on trumped up charges simply for doing their work and for speaking out against injustice. Their courage has made them symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy,” Metsola said at the parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Returning to Aotearoa after half a year in the occupied West Bank, Cole Martin says a peace deal that fails to address the root causes — and ignores the brutal reality of life for Palestinians — is no peace deal at all.
COMMENTARY:By Cole Martin
A ceasefire in Gaza last week brought scenes reminiscent of January’s brief pause — tears, relief, exhaustion and devastation as families reunited after months, years and even decades in captivity.
Others were exiled or discovered their entire family had been killed; thousands returned to their homes in northern Gaza, others to rubble – but just like last time, it didn’t last.
An Israeli checkpoint near Al-Khalil, Hebron . . . Palestinians stand in a crowded, fenced corridor with metal bars, waiting to pass through a turnstile gate. Image: Cole Martin
The prevention of food, water, aid and critical infrastructure continues; the borders remain closed; and across the rest of Palestine, Israel’s brutal system of domination, apartheid and displacement continues.
It’s impossible to ignore two critical elements that this deal omitted: a failure to address the root causes and a jarring lack of international accountability.
I returned to Aotearoa this week after six months documenting and reporting from the occupied West Bank, where Israel continues its campaign of violent displacement and colonial expansion. Almost everyone I know has tasted the terror of Israeli domination.
Broke into bedroom
My Arabic tutor described how soldiers broke into her bedroom at night to interrogate her family about a man they didn’t even know. My climbing partner warned you can be shot for climbing in the wrong place, with most of their crags now inaccessible.
I visited Jerusalem with a friend who scored a one-day permit. He lives in Bethlehem, just a half-hour away, but they’re barred from visiting and must return by midnight; a process involving biometric scanners and intrusive searches.
And I was based in Aida refugee camp, one of dozens across the land where thousands of families have lived since their violent displacement in 1948 — the ethnic cleansing which saw 750,000 expelled, 15,000 killed and 530 villages destroyed.
Refused the right to return, their homes are now dormant ruins in “nature reserves” or inhabited by Israeli families. Israel was built on the land, farms, businesses and stolen wealth of these families — and countless more who remain as “present absentees” within the state of Israel.
Left: Palestinian climbers enjoy one of their last accessible crags, the others too dangerous to access because of settler violence. Right: Yacoub Odeh, 84, walks the ruins of his childhood village Lifta, denied his right to return to live, despite living just 10 minutes away. Images: Cole Martin
I visited the Ofer military courts and witnessed a corrupt system designed to funnel Palestinians to prison based on extortion, plea bargains and “secret evidence” which the detainee and lawyer aren’t allowed to see. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers receive full legal rights in Israeli civil courts; two vastly different legal systems based on race — if the settler is arrested at all.
Almost everyone I met has experienced detention firsthand or through a close family member — involving beatings, humiliation, starvation and threats. A nurse my age humorously asked why I wasn’t married yet; when I asked the same, he explained he’d only recently left years of Israeli captivity.
His killer was free within five days, back harassing the family, and has established an illegal settlement in the middle of their village — destroying homes, olive groves, water and electrical infrastructure with no repercussions.
Tariq Hathaleen stares at the bloodstained courtyard where his cousin and best friend Awdah was shot. Tariq was detained for several days following Awdah’s death. Image: Cole Martin
I visited countless communities across the West Bank who face daily harassment, violence and incursions from Israeli settlers, police and military. Settlements continue to expand, preventing Palestinians from reaching their land.
All of this continues, none of it is halted by the “ceasefire”; and most of it will escalate as soldiers leave Gaza and look to exert their dominance elsewhere.
I’m truly fearful for my friends in the West Bank, particularly as Israel openly threatens annexation. A peace deal that ignores these realities is no peace deal.
Resilience and courage
But I also witnessed resilience and courageous persistence. Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience.
These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines, but their success depends on the international community to provide accountability. Without global support, Palestinians have been refused their right to self-defence, resistance and self-determination.
If we really care about peace, we need to support justice. To talk about peace without liberation is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.
This is not the time to turn away, this is the time to ensure that international law is upheld, that Palestinians are given their dignity, self-determination, right to return and reparations for the horror they’ve faced.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist who has been based in the occupied West Bank for six months and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the The Spinoff and is republished with the author’s permission.
Thousands have marched through major city streets and rallied in small towns across Aotearoa New Zealand as part of today’s “mega strike” of public workers.
More than 100,000 workers from several sectors walked off the job in increasingly bitter disputes over pay and conditions.
It was billed as possibly the country’s biggest labour action in four decades.
Strike action in Auckland’s Aotea Square. Video: RNZ
Among those on strike were doctors, dentists, nurses, social workers and primary and secondary school teachers.
Several rallies were cancelled by severe weather in the South Island and lower North Island.
Auckland One of the day’s main rallies got underway shortly after midday with thousands of protesters gathering in Aotea Square for speeches, before marching down Queen Street.
Many carried signs and chanted, cheered and danced as they made their way down.
“Mega strike” protesters in Auckland today. Image: Nick Monro/RNZ
“Of course this is political. Politics is about power and it’s about resources and it’s about who gets to make decisions that saturate and shape our daily lives,” she said.
There was a smaller, earlier rally in the morning in Henderson.
Tupe Tai from Western Springs College, who has been teaching for several decades, said the situation had become untenable.
“We’ve got really underpaid and overworked teachers, they need that support.”
She also said teachers needed an environment where they could work on the curriculum, have time to do it, but also have a life.
Protesters in the “mega strike” in Hamilton today. Image: Libby Kirkby-McLeod/RNZ
Hamilton The crowd swelled to an estimated 10,000 in Hamilton’s rally.
Kimberly Jackson and her daughter were at the rally on behalf of her husband, a senior doctor who had to be at the hospital working as part of lifesaving measures.
“For us it is personal, but it’s also about this country that I love, that I’ve grown up in, and I can see terrible things happening in this country and I feel really passionate about public health care,” she said.
Jackson said she had seen the system deteriorate over her lifetime.
Many carried signs and chanted, cheered and danced as they made their way down Auckland’s Queen Street today. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
Chloe Wilshaw-Sparkes, regional chair of the Waikato PPTA said teachers were on strike because the offers from the government were not good enough.
“They’ve been saying ‘get round the table, have a conversation,’ but a conversation goes two ways and I think they need to be reminded of that,” she said.
Principal of Hamilton East School, Pippa Wright, was at the rally with some of the school’s teachers.
She said she believed in the NZEI’s principles, and she wanted changes which would ensure schools had really good teachers in front of students.
Wright also said pay rates needed to rise.
“So they’re not treated like graduates, and we need better conditions for teachers, and nurses, and all the public sector,” she said.
“Mega strike” protesters in Whangārei today. Image: Peter de Graaf/RNZ
Northland In Whangārei, the weather was sweltering and a stark contrast from conditions further south.
About 1200 people marched through several city blocks, after leaving Laurie Hall Park.
As well as teachers, nurses and other union members there were students and patients showing support.
Sydney Heremaia of Whangārei had heart surgery a few weeks ago but said he was marching to show his concern about staffing levels and creeping privatisation.
Deserei Davis, a teacher at Whangārei Primary School, feared there would be no new teachers soon if pay and conditions were not improved.
“We’ve voted to strike because we feel that the government hasn’t been addressing our issues, and especially at bargaining,” she told RNZ.
“The government scrapped pay equity claims. And that was a shocking blow to women in general, but an absolute shock and a blow for us women in education. And it’s completely scrapped it.
“More importantly, we are standing up for our tamariki, who are really poorly resourced in schools, in terms of support and the requirements coming down on teachers on a daily basis, on a monthly basis.
“It’s burning out our teachers. We’re fighting for our support staff, our teacher aides, the most vulnerable of all our staff who don’t have job security.”
She said the ministry’s offer was “absolutely atrocious”.
“$1 extra an hour over a period of three years. Like let that sink in. 60 cents one year, maybe 25 cents the following and 15 cents the following year. How does that keep up with the rate of inflation?”
Northland emergency doctor Gary Payinda told RNZ it was “pretty important to support our essential public services”.
“We don’t like what’s been going on. Then the understaffing, the refusal to acknowledge the severity of the understaffing and then, of course, pay offers that are below the cost of living, which means . . . pay cut. None of those things seem fair to the group of public workers that are working harder than ever under huge demand.”
Striking staff called in after power outage A union organiser said striking staff returned to Nelson Hospital to care for patients after its backup generator failed in a power outage.
The top of the South Island lost power on Thursday as wild weather hit the country. It began to be restored from 9.30am.
PSA organiser Toby Beesley said the generators at the hospital started, but it’s understood they blew out an electrical board, which led to a 45-minute total power outage.
“The senior leadership at Nelson Hospital reached out to us under our pre-agreed crisis management protocol that we’ve been working on with them for the last three weeks for an event of this nature, and they asked for additional PSA member support, which we immediately agreed to to protect the community.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Thousands have marched through major city streets and rallied in small towns across Aotearoa New Zealand as part of today’s “mega strike” of public workers.
More than 100,000 workers from several sectors walked off the job in increasingly bitter disputes over pay and conditions.
It was billed as possibly the country’s biggest labour action in four decades.
Strike action in Auckland’s Aotea Square. Video: RNZ
Among those on strike were doctors, dentists, nurses, social workers and primary and secondary school teachers.
Several rallies were cancelled by severe weather in the South Island and lower North Island.
Auckland One of the day’s main rallies got underway shortly after midday with thousands of protesters gathering in Aotea Square for speeches, before marching down Queen Street.
Many carried signs and chanted, cheered and danced as they made their way down.
“Mega strike” protesters in Auckland today. Image: Nick Monro/RNZ
“Of course this is political. Politics is about power and it’s about resources and it’s about who gets to make decisions that saturate and shape our daily lives,” she said.
There was a smaller, earlier rally in the morning in Henderson.
Tupe Tai from Western Springs College, who has been teaching for several decades, said the situation had become untenable.
“We’ve got really underpaid and overworked teachers, they need that support.”
She also said teachers needed an environment where they could work on the curriculum, have time to do it, but also have a life.
Protesters in the “mega strike” in Hamilton today. Image: Libby Kirkby-McLeod/RNZ
Hamilton The crowd swelled to an estimated 10,000 in Hamilton’s rally.
Kimberly Jackson and her daughter were at the rally on behalf of her husband, a senior doctor who had to be at the hospital working as part of lifesaving measures.
“For us it is personal, but it’s also about this country that I love, that I’ve grown up in, and I can see terrible things happening in this country and I feel really passionate about public health care,” she said.
Jackson said she had seen the system deteriorate over her lifetime.
Many carried signs and chanted, cheered and danced as they made their way down Auckland’s Queen Street today. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
Chloe Wilshaw-Sparkes, regional chair of the Waikato PPTA said teachers were on strike because the offers from the government were not good enough.
“They’ve been saying ‘get round the table, have a conversation,’ but a conversation goes two ways and I think they need to be reminded of that,” she said.
Principal of Hamilton East School, Pippa Wright, was at the rally with some of the school’s teachers.
She said she believed in the NZEI’s principles, and she wanted changes which would ensure schools had really good teachers in front of students.
Wright also said pay rates needed to rise.
“So they’re not treated like graduates, and we need better conditions for teachers, and nurses, and all the public sector,” she said.
“Mega strike” protesters in Whangārei today. Image: Peter de Graaf/RNZ
Northland In Whangārei, the weather was sweltering and a stark contrast from conditions further south.
About 1200 people marched through several city blocks, after leaving Laurie Hall Park.
As well as teachers, nurses and other union members there were students and patients showing support.
Sydney Heremaia of Whangārei had heart surgery a few weeks ago but said he was marching to show his concern about staffing levels and creeping privatisation.
Deserei Davis, a teacher at Whangārei Primary School, feared there would be no new teachers soon if pay and conditions were not improved.
“We’ve voted to strike because we feel that the government hasn’t been addressing our issues, and especially at bargaining,” she told RNZ.
“The government scrapped pay equity claims. And that was a shocking blow to women in general, but an absolute shock and a blow for us women in education. And it’s completely scrapped it.
“More importantly, we are standing up for our tamariki, who are really poorly resourced in schools, in terms of support and the requirements coming down on teachers on a daily basis, on a monthly basis.
“It’s burning out our teachers. We’re fighting for our support staff, our teacher aides, the most vulnerable of all our staff who don’t have job security.”
She said the ministry’s offer was “absolutely atrocious”.
“$1 extra an hour over a period of three years. Like let that sink in. 60 cents one year, maybe 25 cents the following and 15 cents the following year. How does that keep up with the rate of inflation?”
Northland emergency doctor Gary Payinda told RNZ it was “pretty important to support our essential public services”.
“We don’t like what’s been going on. Then the understaffing, the refusal to acknowledge the severity of the understaffing and then, of course, pay offers that are below the cost of living, which means . . . pay cut. None of those things seem fair to the group of public workers that are working harder than ever under huge demand.”
Striking staff called in after power outage A union organiser said striking staff returned to Nelson Hospital to care for patients after its backup generator failed in a power outage.
The top of the South Island lost power on Thursday as wild weather hit the country. It began to be restored from 9.30am.
PSA organiser Toby Beesley said the generators at the hospital started, but it’s understood they blew out an electrical board, which led to a 45-minute total power outage.
“The senior leadership at Nelson Hospital reached out to us under our pre-agreed crisis management protocol that we’ve been working on with them for the last three weeks for an event of this nature, and they asked for additional PSA member support, which we immediately agreed to to protect the community.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) claims more than a dozen civilians have been killed in the Papuan highlands, including three men who were allegedly tortured and a woman who was allegedly raped.
However, the Indonesian government claims the accusations “baseless”.
ULMWP president Benny Wenda said 15 civilians had been killed, and the women who was allegedly raped fled from soldiers and drowned in the Hiabu River.
A spokesperson for the Indonesian embassy in Wellington said the actual number was 14, and all those killed were members of an “armed criminal group”.
The spokesperson described the alleged torture and rape as “false and baseless”.
“What Benny Wenda does not mention is their usual ploy to try to intimidate and terrorise local communities, to pressure communities to support his lost cause,” the spokesperson said.
‘Covert military posts’
According to the Indonesian embassy spokesperson, those killed were involved in burning down schools and health facilities, while falsely claiming they were being used as “covert military posts” by Indonesia.
“Their accusations were not based on any proof or arguments, other than the intention to create chaos and intimidate local communities.”
The spokesperson added the Indonesian National Police and Armed Forces had conducted “measured action” in Kiwirok.
West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said Indonesia’s military had become more active since President Prabowo Subianto came to power in October last year.
“The last year or so, it’s depressing to say, but things have actually got a whole lot worse under this president and a whole lot more violent,” Delahunty said.
“That’s his only strategy, the reign of terror, and certainly his history and the alleged war crimes he’s associated with, makes it very, very difficult to see how else it was going to go.”
Delahunty said the kidnapping of New Zealand helicopter pilot Phillip Mehrtens in 2023 also triggered increased military activity.
Schoolchildren tear gassed
Meanwhile, a video taken from a primary school in Jayapura on October 15 shows children and staff distressed and crying after being tear gassed.
The Indonesian embassy spokesperson said authorities were trying to disperse a riot that started as a peaceful protest until some people started to burn police vehicles.
They said tear gas was used near a primary school, where some rioters took shelter.
“The authorities pledge to improve their code and procedure, taking extra precautions before turning to extreme measures while always being mindful of their surroundings.”
Jakarta-based Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono said the level of care using tear gas would have been much higher if the students were not indigenous Papuan.
“If it is a school with predominantly settler children, the police will be very, very careful. They will have utmost care,” he said.
“The mistreatment of indigenous children dominated schools in West Papua is not an isolated case, there are many, many reports.”
‘Ignored by world’
Despite the increased violence in the region, Wenda said the focus of Pacific neighbours like New Zealand and Australia remained on the Middle East and Ukraine.
“What has happened in West Papua is almost a 60-year war. If the world ignores us, our people will disappear,” he said.
Delahunty said there had been a weak response from the international community as Indonesia used drones to bomb villages.
“The reign of terror that is taking place by the Indonesian military, they’re getting away with it because nobody else seems to care.
“If you look at the recent Pacific Islands Forums, it’s very disappointing, it came up with a very standard statement, like ‘it would be good if Indonesia would invite the human rights people from the UN in’.
“We close our eyes, Palestine rightly gets our support and attention for the genocide that’s being visited upon the people of Palestine, but in our own region, we’re not interested in what is happening to our neighbours.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence by the Fiji High Court in Suva, local news media reports say.
Bainimarama, 71, was found guilty of “making an unwarranted demand with menace” on October 2. The court found he used his position as Prime Minister in 2021 to pressure the country’s then-Acting Police Commissioner Rusiate Tudravu into sacking two officers.
He is the first person in Fiji to be convicted under this specific offence.
The former military commander and coup leader had pleaded not guilty. However, High Court Judge Thushara Rajasinghe found him guilty of making an unwarranted demand to a public official under Fiji’s Crimes Act.
The maximum penalty for this charge is 12 years’ imprisonment. Bainimarama was sentenced to 12 months in prison and suspended for three years — meaning he will not go to jail unless he recommits the offence within that period.
In a separate case, he was jailed in May last year for perverting the course of justice in a case related to him blocking a police investigation involving the University of the South Pacific in 2021.
He was released from prison in November 2024 — six months into his one-year sentence — following a comprehensive review by the Fiji Corrections Service.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This lecture“Requiem for Gaza” was delivered to a sold out audience at the University of South Australia in Adelaide after journalist Chris Hedges’ appearance was cancelled by the Australian National Press Club.
EDWARD SAID MEMORIAL LECTURE:By Chris Hedges
The Gaza, the one that existed on the morning of October 7 is gone, decimated by months of saturation bombing, shelling, bulldozing and controlled demolitions. All that was familiar when I worked in Gaza has vanished, transformed into an apocalyptic landscape of shattered concrete and rubble.
My New York Times office in the center of Gaza City. The Marna boarding house on Ahmed Abd el-Aziz Street, where after a day’s work I would drink tea with Margaret Nassar, the elderly woman who owned it, a refugee from Safad in northern Galilee. On my last visit to Marna House, I forgot to return the room key. Number 12. It was attached to a large plastic oval with the words “Marna House Gaza” on it. The key sits on my desk.
Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have disappeared, no doubt buried under mountains of debris.
The daily rituals of life in Gaza are no longer possible. I used to leave my shoes on a rack by the front door of the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, in the Daraj Quarter of the Old City. The white stone walls had pointed arches and a tall octagonal minaret encircled by a carved wooden balcony that was crowned with a crescent. The mosque was built on the foundations of ancient temples to Philistine and Roman deities as well as a Byzantine church.
I washed my hands, face and feet at the common water taps, carrying out the ritual purification before prayer, known as wudhu. Inside the hushed interior with its blue-carpeted floor, the cacophony, noise, dust, fumes and frenetic pace of Gaza melted away.
The mosque was destroyed on December 8, 2023, by an Israeli airstrike.
The razing of Gaza is not only a crime against the Palestinian people. It is a crime against our cultural and historical heritage — an assault on memory. We cannot understand the present, especially when reporting on Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not understand the past.
There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.
It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.
The Edward Said Memorial Lecture. The Chris Hedges Report
Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate.
Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.
Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.
Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement, which Israel did almost immediately by refusing to open the border crossing at Rafah, killing a half dozen Palestinians and cutting in half the agreed upon aid trucks to 300 a day because the bodies of the remaining hostages have yet to be returned.
And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”
Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”
Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?
How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?
How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?
Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?
By what authority can the U.S. establish “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?
Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a thinly veiled term for foreign occupation?
How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?
How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?
Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?
What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?
And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?
Rabbi Ronen Shaulov, Israel’s version of the Reverend Samuel Marsden, bellowed:
“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death. I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”
Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.
Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognise Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force.
Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed.
Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish colonists seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees.
As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favour of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians”.
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to 700,000.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo:
“A sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people, including children, as they slept.
The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.
This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.
The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.
History is a mortal threat to the Zionist project. It exposes the violent imposition of a European colony in the Arab world. It reveals the ruthless campaign to de-Arabise an Arab country. It underscores the inherent racism towards Arabs, their culture and their traditions.
It challenges the myth that, as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said, Zionists created, “a villa in the middle of a jungle.” It mocks the lie that Palestine is exclusively a Jewish homeland. It recalls centuries of Palestinian presence. And it highlights the alien culture of Zionism, implanted on stolen land.
When I covered the genocide in Bosnia, the Serbs blew up mosques, carted away the remains and forbade anyone to speak of the structures they had razed. The goal in Gaza is the same, to wipe out the past and replace it with myth, to mask Israeli crimes, including genocide.
The campaign of erasure allows Israelis to pretend the inherent violence that lies at the heart of the Zionist project, going back to the dispossession of Palestinian land in the 1920s and the larger campaigns of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, does not exist.
This denial of historical truth and historical identity also permits Israelis to wallow in eternal victimhood. It sustains a morally blind nostalgia for an invented past. If Israelis confront these lies it threatens an existential crisis. It forces them to rethink who they are. Most prefer the comfort of illusion. The desire to believe is more powerful than the desire to see.
As long as truth is hidden, as long as those who seek truth are silenced, it is impossible for a society to regenerate and reform itself. It becomes calcified. Its lies and dissimulation must be constantly renewed. Truth is dangerous. Once it is established it is indestructible. The Trump administration is in lock step with Israel. It too seeks to prioritize myth over reality. It too silences those who challenge the lies of the past and the lies of the present.
The genocide in Gaza is the culmination of an historical process. It is not an isolated act. The genocide is the predictable denouement of Israel’s settler colonial project. It is coded within the DNA of the Israeli apartheid state. It is where Israel had to end up. Every horrifying act of Israel’s genocide has been telegraphed in advance. It has been for decades. The dispossession of Palestinians of their land is the beating heart of Israel’s settler colonialism.
This dispossession has had dramatic historical moments — 1948 and 1967 — when huge parts of historic Palestine were seized and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. Dispossession has also occurred in increments — the slow-motion theft of land and steady ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
In scale we have not seen an assault on the Palestinians of this magnitude, but all these measures — the killing of civilians, the ethnic cleansing, arbitrary detention, torture, disappearances, closures imposed on Palestinians towns and villages, house demolitions, revoking residence permits, deportation, destruction of the infrastructure that maintains civil society, military occupation, dehumanizing language, theft of natural resources, especially aquifers — have long defined Israel’s campaign to eradicate Palestinians.
The incursion on October 7 into Israel by Hamas and other resistance groups, which left 1,154 Israelis, tourists and migrant workers dead and saw about 240 people taken hostage, gave Israel the pretext for what it has long craved — the cover to implement its own version of the final solution. October 7 marked the dividing line between an Israeli policy that advocated the brutalization and subjugation of the Palestinians and a policy that calls for their extermination and removal from historic Palestine.
Israel’s weaponisation of starvation is how genocides always end. I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of General Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs blocked food and aid to Srebrenica and Gorazde.
Starvation was weaponised by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in World War II.
German soldiers used food as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps. “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in The Ghetto Fights. “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.”
And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.
This tactic is as old as warfare itself.
Israel methodically set out from the beginning of the genocide to destroy sources of food, bombing bakeries and blocking food shipments into Gaza, something it has accelerated since March, when it severed nearly all food supplies.
It targeted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — on which most Palestinians depended on for food — for destruction, accusing its employees, without providing evidence, of being involved in the attacks of October 7. This accusation was used to give funders such as the United States, which provided $422 million to the agency in 2023, the excuse to halt financial support. Israel then banned UNRWA.
The near total blockade of food and humanitarian aid, imposed on Gaza since March 2, reduced Palestinians to abject dependence. To eat, they were forced to crawl towards their killers and beg. Humiliated, terrified, desperate for a few scraps of food, they were stripped of dignity, autonomy and agency. This was by intent.
The nightmarish journey to one of four aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was not designed to meet the needs of the Palestinians, who once relied on 400 UNRWA aid distribution sites, but to lure them from northern Gaza to the south. Palestinians were herded like livestock into narrow metal chutes at distribution points overseen by heavily armed mercenaries. They received, if they are one of the fortunate few, a small box of food. Most received nothing. And when the crowds became unruly in the chaotic scramble for food the Israelis and the mercenaries gunned them down, killing 1700 and injuring thousands more.
The genocide marks a break from the past. It marks the exposure of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas. The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians, dressed in Israeli army uniforms and with their hands bound, to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations buildings or mass casualties. The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out sexual assaults of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists”. The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of ceasefire agreements.
Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed.
The expansion of “Greater Israel” — which includes the seizing of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, southern Lebanon, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where some 40,000 Palestinians have been driven from their homes and which I expect will soon be annexed by Israel — is being cemented into place.
But the genocide in Gaza is only the start. The world is breaking down under the onslaught of the climate crisis, which is triggering mass migrations, failed states and catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes, storms, flooding and droughts. As global stability unravels, industrial violence, which is decimating the Palestinians, will become ubiquitous.
Israel’s annihilation of Gaza marks the death of a global order guided by internationally agreed upon laws and rules, one often violated by the US in its imperial wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but one that was at least acknowledged as a utopian vision. The US and its Western allies not only supply the weaponry to sustain the genocide, but obstruct the demand by most nations for an adherence to humanitarian law. They have carried out attacks against the only nation — Yemen — which has tried to halt the genocide.
The message this sends is clear: We have everything. If you try and take it away from us we will kill you.
The militarised drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watch towers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheid existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance are as familiar to the desperate migrants along the Mexican border or attempting to enter Europe as they are to the Palestinians.
Israel, which as Ronen Bergman notes his book Rise and Kill First in has “assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world,” cynically employs the Nazi Holocaust to sanctify its hereditary victimhood and justify its settler-colonial state, apartheid, campaigns of mass slaughter and Zionist version of Lebensraum.
Primo Levi, who survived Auschwitz, saw the Shoah, for this reason, as “an inexhaustible source of evil” which “is perpetrated as hatred in the survivors, and springs up in a thousand ways, against the very will of all, as a thirst for revenge, as moral breakdown, as negation, as weariness, as resignation”.
Genocide and mass extermination are not the exclusive domain of fascist Germany or Israel.
Aimé Césaire, in Discourse on Colonialism, writes that Hitler seemed exceptionally cruel only because he presided over “the humiliation of the white man,” applying to Europe the “colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India and the nègres d’Afrique.”
The near-annihilation of Tasmania’s Aboriginal population, the German slaughter of the Herero and Namaqua, the Armenian genocide, the Bengal famine of 1943 — then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill airily dismissed the deaths of three million Hindus in the famine by calling them “a beastly people with a beastly religion” — along with the dropping of nuclear bombs on the civilian targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, illustrate something fundamental about “Western civilization”.”
The moral philosophers who make up the Western canon — Immanuel Kant, Voltaire, David Hume, John Stuart Mill and John Locke — excluded enslaved and exploited people, indigenous peoples, colonised people, women of all races and the criminalised from their moral calculus. In their eyes European whiteness alone imparted modernity, moral virtue, judgment and freedom. This racist definition of personhood played a central role in justifying colonialism, slavery, the genocide of Native Americans and First Nations people in Australia, our imperial projects and our fetish for white supremacy.
So, when you hear that the Western canon is an imperative, ask yourself for whom?
“In America,” the poet Langston Hughes said, “Negros do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.”
The Nazis, when they formulated the Nuremberg laws, modeled them on American Jim Crow-era segregation and discrimination laws. America’s refusal to grant citizenship to Native Americans and Filipinos, although they lived in the U.S. and U.S. territories, was copied by the German fascists to strip citizenship from Jews. American anti-miscegenation laws, which criminalized interracial marriage, was the impetus to outlaw marriages between German Jews and Aryans.
American jurisprudence classified anyone with one percent of Black ancestry, the so called “one drop rule,” as Black. The Nazis, ironically showing more flexibility, classified anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents as Jewish.
The millions of victims of colonial projects in countries such as Mexico, China, India, Australia, the Congo and Vietnam, for this reason, are deaf to the fatuous claims by Jews that their victimhood is unique. They also suffered holocausts, but these holocausts remain minimized or unacknowledged by their Western perpetrators.
The fact is that genocide is coded in the DNA of Western imperialism. Palestine has made this clear. The genocide in Gaza is the next stage in what the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers”.
Israel embodies the ethnonationalist state the far-right dreams of creating for themselves, one that rejects political and cultural pluralism, as well as legal, diplomatic and ethical norms. Israel is admired by these proto-fascists because it has turned its back on humanitarian law to use indiscriminate lethal force to “cleanse” its society of those condemned as human contaminants. Israel is not an outlier. It expresses our darkest impulses and I fear our future.
I covered the birth of Jewish fascism in Israel. I reported on the extremist Meir Kahane, who was barred from running for office and whose Kach Party was outlawed in 1994 and declared a terrorist organisation by Israel and the United States. I attended political rallies held by Benjamin Netanyahu, who received lavish funding from rightwing Americans, when he ran against Yitzhak Rabin, who was negotiating a peace settlement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s supporters chanted “Death to Rabin.” They burned an effigy of Rabin dressed in a Nazi uniform. Netanyahu marched in front of a mock funeral for Rabin.
Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995 by a Jewish fanatic. Rabin’s widow, Lehea, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters for her husband’s murder.
Netanyahu, who first became prime minister in 1996, has spent his political career nurturing Jewish extremists, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Avigdor Lieberman, Gideon Sa’ar and Naftali Bennett. His father, Benzion — who worked as an assistant to the Zionist pioneer Vladimir Jabotinsky, who Benito Mussolini referred to as “a good fascist” — was a leader in the Herut Party that called on the Jewish state to seize all the land of historic Palestine.
Many of those who formed the Herut Party carried out terrorist attacks during the 1948 war that established the state of Israel. Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and other Jewish intellectuals, described the Herut Party in a statement published in The New York Times as a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to Nazi and Fascist parties.”
There has always been a strain of Jewish fascism within the Zionist project, mirroring the strain of fascism in American society. Unfortunately, for us, the Israelis and the Palestinians these fascistic strains are ascendant.
Zeev Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor and Israel’s foremost authority on fascism, warned in 2018:
“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. [W]e see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”
The decision to obliterate Gaza has long been the dream of far-right Zionists, heirs of Kahane’s movement. Jewish identity and Jewish nationalism are the Zionist versions of the Nazi’s blood and soil. Jewish supremacy is sanctified by God, as is the slaughter of the Palestinians, who Netanyahu compares to the Biblical Amalekites, massacred by the Israelites.
Euro-American settlers in the American colonies used the same Biblical passage to justify the genocide against Native Americans. Enemies — usually Muslims — slated for extinction are subhuman who embody evil. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those outside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism understand.
Messianic redemption will take place once the Palestinians are expelled. Jewish extremists call for the Al-Aqsa mosque — the third holiest shrine for Muslims, built on the ruins of the Jewish Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman army — to be demolished. The mosque is to be replaced by a “Third” Jewish temple, a move that would set the Muslim world alight. The West Bank, which the zealots call “Judea and Samaria,” will be formally annexed by Israel. Israel, governed by the religious laws imposed by the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, will become a Jewish version of Iran.
There are over 65 laws which discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the occupied territories. The campaign of indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, many by rogue Jewish militias who have been armed with 10,000 automatic weapons, along with house and school demolitions and the seizure of remaining Palestinian land is exploding.
Israel, at the same time, is turning on “Jewish traitors” – within Israel and abroad — who refuse to embrace the demented vision of the ruling Jewish fascists and who denounce the genocide. The familiar enemies of fascism — journalists, human rights advocates, intellectuals, artists, feminists, liberals, the left, homosexuals and pacifists — are targeted. The judiciary, according to plans put forward by Netanyahu, will be neutered. Public debate will wither. Civil society and the rule of law will cease to exist. Those branded as “disloyal” will be deported.
Israel could have exchanged the hostages held by Hamas for the thousands of Palestinian hostages held in Israeli prisons, which is why the Israeli hostages were seized, on October 8th. And there is evidence that in the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel, the Israeli military decided to target not only Hamas fighters, but the Israeli captives with them, killing perhaps hundreds of their own soldiers and civilians.
Israel and its western allies, James Baldwin saw, is headed towards the “terrible probability” that the dominant nations “struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror, will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen.”
The funding and arming of Israel by the United States and European nations as it carries out genocide has imploded the post-World War II international legal order. It no longer has credibility. The West cannot lecture anyone now about democracy, human rights or the supposed virtues of Western civilisation.
Pankaj Mishra writes:
“At the same time that Gaza induces vertigo, a feeling of chaos and emptiness, it becomes for countless powerless people the essential condition of political and ethical consciousness in the twenty-first century — just as the First World War was for a generation in the West.”
We must name and face our own darkness. We must repent. Our willful blindness and historical amnesia, our refusal to be accountable to the rule of law, our belief that we have a right to use industrial violence to exert our will marks, I fear, the start, not the end, of campaigns of mass slaughter by industrialised nations against the world’s growing legions of the poor and the vulnerable.
It is the curse of Cain. And it is curse we must remove before the genocide in Gaza becomes not an anomaly but the norm.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This Edward Said Memorial Lecture was hosted by the Australian Friends of Palestine and delivered at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, on 18 October 2025.
Fifteen years ago today a contingent of six New Zealanders drove three aid-packed ambulances into Gaza as part of the epic international Viva Palestina 5 solidarity convoy of 145 vehicles — to a rock-star reception from locals.
The featured PressTV report includes a short interview with Kia Ora Gaza team volunteer Hone Fowler.
Kia Ora Gaza was established from a series of public meetings to organise Kiwi participation in international efforts to end the siege of Gaza and promote practical solidarity for Palestine.
This followed the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara-led peace flotilla in international waters in 2010 which resulted in the deaths of 10 civilian peace activists.
Since then Kia Ora Gaza has organised or supported many projects.
Many more reports, photos and videos of this historic siege-busting convoy can be seen by by scrolling back to October 2010 on the Kia Ora Gaza website.
New Zealand’s opposition parties have promised to repeal the coalition government’s changes to the Marine and Coastal Area Act (MACA) if re-elected in the face of criticism over “mindsets of colonisation”.
It has been contested in the courts, with a key Court of Appeal ruling making it easier for groups to win customary title in 2023.
The Supreme Court went on to overturn that decision last year, though the government considered it and said the test remained too broad.
National had agreed to tighten up the legislative test, making it harder for Māori to secure titles, in its coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
It has been contested in the courts, with a key Court of Appeal ruling making it easier for groups to win customary title in 2023.
The Supreme Court went on to overturn that decision last year, though the government considered it and said the test remained too broad.
The coalition has pitched changes to the Marine and Coastal Area Act as restoring the legislation to its original intent, while critics argue they diminish Māori rights. Image: RNZ/Nick Monro
National had agreed to tighten up the legislative test, making it harder for Māori to secure titles, in its coalition agreement with New Zealand First.
‘This is not something that we’ve done lightly’ – Justice Minister Speaking in the third reading last night, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said the courts had interpreted the test in a way that “materially reduced” its intended effect.
“The bill clarifies the wording of the current test and provides additional guidance to decision makers in interpreting and applying the test,” he said.
Justice Minister Dr Paul Goldsmith . . . “more tightly defining what exclusive use and occupation means.” Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii
“Key elements include more tightly defining what exclusive use and occupation means, requiring decision makers to base any inferences on a firm basis of physical evidence, not just cultural associations in that second part of the test, and thirdly placing the burden of proof more squarely on applicants to demonstrate that they meet both legs of the test.”
Goldsmith said the legislation was retrospective, overriding court decisions made after 24 July 2024, and the government had provided $15 million to support Māori groups to cover the costs of going back to court.
“I recognise that this will be very disappointing to groups who have been through the process. This is not something that we’ve done lightly but there is a long way to go and much of our coastline still to be considered and we believe as a government that it’s important to get that right.”
New Zealand First’s Casey Costello . . . “This is not removing the rights for Māori.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
New Zealand First’s Casey Costello said her leader Winston Peters had been a “champion of equal citizenship and protecting the legitimate interests of all New Zealanders and the marine and coastal area of New Zealand”.
“This is not removing the rights for Māori. Māori, like any New Zealander, have the opportunity to enjoy their coastline and enjoy their benefits.”
The ACT party’s Todd Stephenson said the bill restored the exacting test to establish customary marine title that had been undermined by a number of court decisions.
“We will be supporting this because it does restore what Parliament intended.”
ACT’s Todd Stephenson . . . restored the exacting test to establish customary marine title. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Labour says bill ‘treating Māori as second class citizens’ Labour’s Peeni Henare said the bill’s third reading continued a “long legacy” of Parliament “treating Māori as second class citizens”.
“For whatever reason, this government continues to say co-governance, co-management, or working alongside Māori is not the thing to do and would rather score political points instead of underscoring the good frameworks that are already in place that allow management of places like the marine and takutai moana.”
The Green Party’s Steve Abel said New Zealand had no decent future if Parliament kept doing “shitty legislation like this”.
“No good can come from a bill of this character. It is a bill that explicitly leads in to those worst mindsets of colonisation; that at every turn Māori are cut against and undermined and undone and for all the efforts of this chamber and this house to make amends for those cruel histories of colonisations, this bill forces the Crown back into a position of dishonorability.”
The Green Party’s Steve Abel . . . “this bill forces the Crown back into a position of dishonorability.” Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Te Pāti Māori’s Tākuta Ferris said Māori would mobilise, given no government in history had ever had the right or authority to extinguish the Tiriti-based rights of Māori.
“What this government is doing now guarantees that the fight for Te Tiriti justice only deepens from this point on and continues on into the next generations.
“They’ve set the playing field for generations to come, condemning our children, our tamariki to needless, endless, perpetual fighting, costly court cases, societal disharmony and time, energy and money-wasting on a staggering scale.”
Te Pāti Māori MP Tākuta Ferris . . . “the fight for Te Tiriti justice only deepens from this point on.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Cook Islanders holding a banner reading “Don’t Mine the Moana” have confronted an exploration vessel as it returned to Rarotonga port today, protesting the emerging threat of seabed mining.
Four activists in kayaks paddled alongside the Nautilus, which has spent the last three weeks on a US-funded research expedition surveying mineral nodule fields around the Cook Islands in partnership with the Cook Islands government.
The Nautilus expedition comes just six months after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to expedite deep sea mining, tasking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to fast track the licensing process.
The research conducted on the Nautilus expedition was funded by NOAA’s Ocean Exploration Cooperation Institute.
Campaigners against seabed mining are calling the expedition one of the first steps in the Cook Island-US partnership on their critical minerals deal which was announced in August, and say it demonstrates the political motive behind the expedition is to advance seabed mining.
Louisa Castledine, Cook Island activist and spokesperson for the Ocean Ancestors collective, said the Pacific movement against seabed mining was strong and mining enablers were not welcome.
“Right now global superpowers like the US are vying for control of deep sea minerals throughout the Pacific, in an attempt to assert their military might,” she said.
Traditional life ‘at risk’
“Seabed mining will lead to the destruction of our home environments and put our Indigenous rights, cultural ways of living, and wellbeing at risk. Any government or corporate looking to exploit us in this way is no true partner of ours.”
Castledine said Cook Islanders needed to open their eyes to the threats imposed by the seabed mining industry and stop the corporate takeover of our ocean.
“We have long endured environmental and political injustices, brought about by colonialism, that forcefully displace and compromise our way of living and survival.
“We are taking a stand against the exploitation of our people and resources. As Indigenous peoples and custodians of the ocean we say NO to seabed mining.”
In August, the US and Cook Islands governments announced their official partnership on developing seabed mineral resources. A senior official at the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority described this research vessel expedition as “a first step in our collaboration”.
Two of the three deep sea mining exploration licences in the Cook Islands’ EEZ waters are held by US companies.
Seabed mining is an emerging destructive industry that has not started anywhere at commercial scale. If it goes ahead, seabed mining within Cook Islands waters could pave the way for mining throughout the Pacific.
Pacific ‘blue line’
Greenpeace Aotearoa is also campaigning to stop seabed mining before it starts.
Campaigner Juressa Lee said:”We’re here today, standing alongside our allies in the Cook Islands, who like many across the region want a Pacific blue line drawn against this destructive industry.
“Just like Greenpeace stood with Pacific peoples in the fight against nuclear testing, we will continue to ally with them against this reckless industry that is gambling with our future.
“The Nautilus, which was confronted today, is doing exploration for the US. Pacific people will not be sidelined by corporations and powerful countries that try to impose this new form of extractive colonialism on the region.”
Further south in the Pacific in Aotearoa, Trans-Tasman Resources is seeking consent to mine the seabed off Taranaki, despite fierce opposition from local iwi, community groups, NGOs and more than 50,000 New Zealanders.
“People here in the Cook Islands face the same fight we’re up against in Aotearoa. In both cases, Indigenous peoples are leading the resistance against seabed miners, to protect ancestral territories and waters for future generations. Together we will resist them every step of the way,” Lee said.
More than 940 leading marine science and policy experts from over 70 countries have raised concerns about deep sea mining, and are calling for a precautionary pause on the start of deep sea mining to allow time to gather more scientific information on deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystems.
Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica has stepped down from his position on the eve of his court appearance for corruption-related charges.
Kamikamica has been charged by the country’s anti-corruption office with perjury and providing false information in his capacity as a public servant.
Kamikamica, who also serves as the Minister for Trade and Communications, informed Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka yesterday that he would focus on clearing his name in relation to the charges laid against him by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC).
He is one of three deputy prime ministers in Rabuka’s coalition government.
“I have accepted his decision to step down, and he has assured me of his unwavering commitment to the government and the people of Fiji,” Rabuka said in a statement.
“I will be overseeing his portfolio responsibilities for the foreseeable future.”
The deputy prime minister was overseas on official duties and was returning to the country.
His case is scheduled to appear at the Suva Magistrates Court today.
FICAC has not publicly commented on the specifics of the case.
The charges were filed following investigations related to the Commission of Inquiry report into the appointment of Barbara Malimali as FICAC chief, according to the state broadcaster FBC.
FBC reported that FICAC officers had seized Kamikamica’s mobile phone in July during the execution of a search warrant.
Kamikamica is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
FBC reports that Kamikamica’s legal representative, Wylie Clarke, appeared before the court today and raised serious concerns about the validity of the charges.
Clarke told the court that the case was fundamentally flawed, both in its legal foundation and in the evidence supporting it.
Israel and the West pretend they want a real peace in Israel-Palestine yet the Israelis have beaten unconscious the man most likely to help realise a sustainable end to the conflict: Marwan Barghouti.
The ethnocentrism of Western culture is such that 20 Israeli hostages received vastly more coverage than thousands of Palestinian hostages, nearly 2000 of whom were released as part of the recent exchange.
These prisoners, physically emaciated, most emotionally shattered, many children, most having never been charged, some held for decades, emerged from the Dantesque Inferno of the Israeli prison system. Most had some kind of disease, commonly scabies, due to the infested and infected conditions of the gulag.
Five Palestinian detainees released and exiled to Egypt brought with them terrible news: the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti — the person most likely to lead a free Palestine — had recently been beaten unconscious by his captors.
According to the Times of Israel, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who oversees the Israeli Prison System says he is “proud that Barghouti’s conditions have changed drastically”.
What Nelson Mandela would say about the beating of Marwan Marwan Barghouti — Palestine’s most loved and revered leader, a living symbol of the resistance — was beaten unconscious by 8 Israeli guards, according to the testimony of fellow prisoners on arrival in Cairo. The attack left the 66-year-old with broken ribs and head injuries.
When called on to demand his protection, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Western leaders yawned and looked the other way. That response defined the depths that the Western world has reached in its permissiveness of violence towards Palestinian prisoners.
Marwan Barghouti is commonly referred to as the Palestinian Mandela, a man who has the attributes to not only unite the many Palestinian factions but also negotiate a lasting peace, if given the opportunity.
Mandela couldn’t have been “Mandela” without him surviving and being released — which is a tribute to the ANC and other fighters for freedom, as well as to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns that finally convinced the regime to negotiate.
The same was true of the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland which saw the release of prisoners that one side considered terrorists. The British also came to accept that negotiation with leaders like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of the IRA was essential precisely because they had the street credibility to deliver peace.
It is worth pointing out that Mandela said he was not personally beaten during his 27 years of captivity by the racist South African apartheid regime.
Barghouti, who has spent the last 23 years in prisons has had at least four beatings by the Israelis in the past three years alone. The Israelis have shown nothing but contempt for the Geneva Conventions, the laws of war, Red Cross requests, or any benchmark of human decency.
They are our “friends and allies” with whom we share values.
‘He has been in a struggle for 50 years’. Video: TRT News
Rules on prisoner treatment
After leaving Robben Island to eventually become South Africa’s first black President, the convicted terrorist and revolutionary Prisoner 46664 helped author the Nelson Mandela Rules on prisoner treatment, adopted by the United Nations in 2015. He had seen the mistreatment of many of his comrades by racist white South Africa, a close ally of most of our governments.
The scale of what is being done by Israel in its mass torture centres would be beyond anything Mandela could have imagined. Unlike morally repellent leaders like New Zealand’s Luxon, UK’s Starmer, France’s Macron or Germany’s Merz, he would never have failed to act.
A central tenet of the Mandela Rules is that people behind bars are not beyond human rights. Countries — and, yes, that includes Israel — must adhere to minimum standards such as, “No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification.”
Recently released Palestinians, most in shocking physical condition, talked of having to drink toilet water, beatings, being denied medical treatment, constant humiliations, including sexual violence, committed by the Israelis.
This kind of behaviour has long been documented by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — and largely ignored by the mainstream media.
The Israelis, never forget, are our close friends, with whom we share “values”.
I have written a number of articles about Marwan and, to avoid repetition, I recommend those unfamiliar with his astonishing story to read them. My last article, Saving Marwan Barghouti is our duty, in August, was part of a global push to prevent Marwan facing further mistreatment. I was shocked at the time to see the video that Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir posted to show the power he personally had over Marwan whose physical condition had obviously deteriorated to a terrible extent. Now he has been beaten, for the fourth time.
“It is a clear declaration that they are threatening my father’s life,” his son Arab Barghouti said this week.
Prisons are ‘Israeli sadism in a nutshell’ One person who watched the release of the prisoners last week was veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass, correspondent on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz.
“It was a kind of parade of skeletons,” Hass said. “These last two years, it’s like the Israeli prisons have become Israeli sadism in a nutshell,” she told Democracy Now!.
“The way that prisoners were treated during these two years is unprecedented in Israel. They didn’t only come out emaciated; they came out ill, sick. Some of them have lost limbs. It’s indescribable.”
Hass’s own parents were Holocaust survivors, her mother surviving nine months in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Now, along with all of us, she is witness to genocide.
She makes the fine observation that people aren’t born cruel; they become so. I would add: we in the West helped the Israelis become so depraved by ignoring their abuses for so long. Former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer is a case in point.
“Can I ask the Prime Minister what recent representation his government has made in the last few days to secure the immediate release of Mr Barghouti, given his widespread popularity as a unifying voice for Palestinian rights, dignity and freedom, and therefore his potential crucial role in securing a meaningful and lasting peace in the region?”
Starmer is an avatar for the West: complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Starmer is an avatar for the West . . . complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Starmer, who has less human decency in his entire being than Nelson Mandela had in one nostril hair, refused to even mention Barghouti by name. His lawyerly reply:
“Thank you for raising the individual case. We offer to provide such further information as we can, as soon as we can, in relation to that particular case.”
Western leaders, including in my own country, have refused to even reply to requests that petitions/insistences be made to the Israelis to save the great Palestinian leader. They have shown more empathy for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages crushed under the rubble of buildings bombed by the Israelis, hypocritically blaming Hamas for not releasing the remains fast enough!
Such is the moral calibre of our leaders.
None of them, it should be pointed out, had anything to say when footage appeared of Israeli soldiers committing gang rape at Sde Temein Prison last year. Not only were the men not punished but by week’s end they had been blessed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s spiritual mentor Rabbi Meir Mazuz who assured one of the rapists that he had done “no wrong” and “In another country they would have given him an award”.
Never forget, the Israelis are our close friends and allies with whom, our leaders tell us, we share values.
‘Israel doesn’t want peace – they want ethnic cleansing’ Such is Marwan Barghouti’s standing that he is respected by all Palestinian factions and acknowledged as a unifying figure, a peacemaker and someone who should be leading Palestine not getting his head punched by Israeli thugs.
“That’s why they see him as a danger,” says his son, Arab Barghouti. “Because he wants to bring stability, he wants to end the cycle of violence.
“He wants a unifying Palestinian vision that is accepted by everyone, and the international community as well. But they’re [Israelis] not interested in any political settlement; they’re only interested in ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people.”
True words, those — and they demolish the fake narrative peddled by Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders that there was “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side.
The Israelis have killed so many Palestinian negotiators, so many Palestinians leaders that the opposite is now clear: the Israelis and the West are the true enemies of peace.
I’ll give the last word to another Palestinian. I dedicate it to Keir Starmer, Christopher Luxon, Anthony Albanese and all those other leaders who stand deaf, dumb and blind to Marwan Barghouti and the thousands of Palestinian souls still suffering in Israeli captivity:
“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
– Matthew 25, King James Bible
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
“Sir, let me emphasise that this is not an attempt to militarise our nation, but the other a long term nation-building effort aimed at enhancing Solomon Islands, resilience, sovereignty and self-reliance,” Jimson Tanagada said in Parliament last week.
He said the government was taking a prudent approach but also told Parliament the country must not ignore escalating geopolitical tension in the region.
“There’s no fixed time frame but the urgency is there given the evolving security challenges,” Tanagada said.
The country’s police force used to have a paramilitary unit but after a civil conflict at the turn of the century, during which guns from the police armoury were used on civilians, there was a complete ban on firearms.
Helpem Fren – Rebuilding a Pacific Nation.Video produced in 2013.
Leader of Opposition Matthew Wale respects the process so far, but says the government should heed lessons from the past.
“We must learn from our own civil conflict,” Wale said.
“And you know, in Fiji, of course, there’s been a number of coups where the military was directly involved in.
“And in [Papua] New Guinea when they did not pay them [soldiers] their allowance they took their guns and went to the Parliament.
“So all these things, the police must address. How do we make sure this would never happen?”
Wale said one way to ensure control of the military was for parliamentarians from across the political divide to be involved
“This issue is so critical that us as representatives must help to together, inform it, influence it, mould it, shape it. Right from the word go,” he said.
Melanesia focused
Former Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said the formation of a Solomon Islands military must be Melanesia focused.
“I heard Papua New Guinea is brokering, of course, the peace [sic] treaty with America already.
“And the treaty is so wide, Mr Speaker, that it’s allowing military assets of America to land at anytime without any permission,” Manasseh Sogavare said.
“And those are serious matters that we need to discuss about the security of the region,” he said.
Police Response Team . . . government control of any armed force is “of the utmost importance”, says former PM Manasseh Sogavare. Image: RNZ
It was Sogavare who first suggested the country form a defence force after a trip to China in 2023 while prime minister.
He agreed government control of any armed force was of the utmost importance.
“We can understand the cautious approach that we take on that matter before we go seriously into establishing a defence force that the sovereign government wont have control over it,” Sogavare said.
Control issue important
“I think the control issue will be very important here. That the government must have control over the military force.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele said a Solomon Islands military could also assist in subregional crises.
He also says it would be beneficial if a Melanesian Military Force was ever created — a concept still being discussed among members of the sub-regional bloc.
“Papua, New Guinea and Fiji, of course, they have defence forces.
“Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu does not (sic) So that is also the gap in terms of the discussions,” Manele said.
Any resources for a military must not take away from the needs of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force which is currently in charge of national defence and security, says Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele. Image: RNZ/Koroi Hawkins
But cost is a major prohibitor and Manele said any resources for a military must not take away from the needs of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force which is currently in charge of national defence and security.
“I think that cautious approach is important. It’s not only about the numbers but also the cost in terms of sustaining these arrangements,” Manele said.
Overall, MPs supporting the establishment of a Solomon Islands military said it would benefit the country and wider region.
However, it remains to be seen whether their constituents agree.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed “deep gratitude” for Papua New Guinea’s support to his country over many years and during the Middle East conflict.
Prime Minister James Marape was given the message directly yesterday by Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel during a courtesy call at Melanesian House, Waigani.
The support by PNG, Fiji and a handful of other Pacific nations is controversial in the face of Israel’s growing global pariah status over its two-year genocidal war on the besieged enclave of Gaza that has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians.
A fragile ceasefire is in place between Israel and the liberation movement Hamas with the last 20 living Israeli captives being released last week in exchange for almost 2000 Palestinian prisoners, most of them held without charge.
Ten countries voted against, half of them from the Pacific — Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, PNG, and Tonga — while the only other countries supporting Israel and its backer United States, were Argentina, Hungary and Paraguay. Twelve countries abstained.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Haskel highlighted Prime Minister Marape’s earlier decision to open the PNG embassy in Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv — the first Asia Pacific country to do so — and for supporting Israel at the UN, report the Post-Courierand the PNG Bulletin.
“My visit here was specifically addressed by the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] to see how we can strengthen our friendship further, and to say ‘thank you’ for standing beside us especially in the last two years,” she said.
‘Darkest hours’
“These have been some of our darkest hours since 7 October 2023 . . .
“And you have been one of the most outstanding friends we have standing together on the international front, on bilateral relationship, and in international forums.
She said the people of Israel were “extremely grateful” for the opening of the PNG embassy in Jerusalem.
“This is acknowledgement of our history, our tradition, and of us — the Jewish people — who are the indigenous people of the land of Israel; that we are able to return to revive our religion, culture and language in our ancestral homeland,” Haskel claimed.
She said Netanyahu had requested that the visit to PNG and the Pacific should proceed without delay.
Prime Minister Marape reaffirmed Papua New Guinea’s commitment to the bilateral relationship, highlighting that PNG recognised Israel’s “rights to the land of Israel through its Judeo-Christian worldview”, and continued to recognise Jerusalem as the “eternal” capital of Israel through the PNG embassy.
He added that the embassy opening had encouraged other Pacific countries — such as Fiji — to also establish their diplomatic missions in Jerusalem.
Only four other countries have done so.
Haskel reconfirmed Israel’s commitment to continue assisting PNG in the fields of science and technology, agriculture, health, small business development, and women’s empowerment.
During her two-day visit to PNG, Haskel and her delegation are meeting with ministers in respective fields.
A Paris appeal court has confirmed that Kanak pro-independence leader Christian Téin is now cleared to return to New Caledonia.
In September, a panel of judges had pronounced they were in favour of Téin’s return to New Caledonia, but the Public Prosecution then appealed, suspending his return.
However, in a ruling delivered on Thursday, the Paris Appeal Court confirmed the Kanak leader is now free to travel back to the French Pacific territory.
In June 2024, at the height of violent riots, Téin and other pro-independence leaders were arrested in Nouméa and swiftly flown to mainland France aboard a specially-chartered plane.
They were suspected of playing a key role in the riots that broke out mid-May 2024 and were later indicted with criminal charges.
The charges for which Téin remains under judicial supervision include theft and destruction of property involving the use of weapons.
His pre-trial conditions had been eased in June 2025, when he was released from the Mulhouse jail in eastern France, but he was not allowed to return to New Caledonia at the time.
Téin’s lawyers react to the decision Téin’s lawyers said they were “satisfied and relieved”.
“This time, Téin is allowed to go back to his land after 18 months of being deprived [of freedom],” one of Téin’s counsels, Florian Medico, told French national media.
One main argument from the Public Prosecution was that under “fragile” post-riot circumstances, Téin’s return to New Caledonia was not safe.
Public Prosecutor Christine Forey also invoked the fact that an investigation in this case was still ongoing for a trial at a yet undetermined date.
Previous restrictions imposed on Téin (such as not interfering with other persons related to the same case) were also lifted.
The ruling also concerns four other defendants, all pro-independence leaders.
Case not closed yet “It’s now up to the investigating judges, in a few months’ time, to decide whether to rule on a lack of evidence, or to bring the indicted persons before a court to be judged . . . But this won’t happen before early 2026,” lawyer François Roux told reporters.
Téin is the leader of a CCAT “field action co-ordinating cell” set-up by one of the main pro-independence parties in New Caledonia — the Union Calédonienne (UC).
Although jailed at the time in mainland France to serve a pre-trial term, he was designated, in absentia, president of the main pro-independence umbrella, the FLNKS, during a congress in August 2024.
However, during the same congress, two other pillars of the FLNKS, the moderate pro-independence UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) and PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party), distanced themselves and de facto split from the UC-dominated FLNKS.
The two parties have since kept away from FLNKS political bureau meetings.
Meanwhile, in January 2025, the case was transferred from a panel of judges in Nouméa to another group of magistrates based in Paris.
They ruled on June 12 that, while Téin and five other pro-independent militants should be released from custody, they were not allowed to return to New Caledonia or interfere with other people associated with the same case.
Now allowed
But in a ruling delivered in Paris on September 23, the new panel of judges ruled Téin was now allowed to return to New Caledonia.
The ruling was based on the fact that since he was no longer kept in custody and even though he had expressed himself publicly and politically, Téin had not incited or called for violent actions.
He still faces charges related to organised crime for events that took place during the New Caledonia riots starting from 13 May 2024, following a series of demonstrations and marches that later degenerated, resulting in 14 dead and over 2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in damage.
The 2024 marches were to protest against a plan from the French government of the time to modify the French Constitution and “unfreeze” restrictions on the list of eligible voters at local provincial elections.
The Indigenous pro-independence movement says these changes would effectively “dilute” the Kanak Indigenous vote and bring it closer to a minority.
Back in New Caledonia, the prospect of Téin’s return has sparked reactions.
Outrage on the pro-France side On the pro-France side, most parties who oppose independence and support the notion that New Caledonia should remain part of France have reacted indignantly to the prospect of Téin’s return.
The uproar included reactions from outspoken leaders Nicolas Metzdorf and Sonia Backès, who insist that Téin’s return to New Caledonia could cause more unrest.
Le Rassemblement-LR leader Virginie Ruffenach also reacted saying she wondered whether “the judges realise the gravity of their ruling”.
“We’re opposed to this . . . it’s like bringing back a pyromaniac to New Caledonia’s field of ashes while we’re trying to rebuild,” she told local media.
Meanwhile, a “non-political” petition has been published online to express “firm opposition” to Téin’s return to New Caledonia “in the current circumstances” because of the “risks involved” in terms of civil peace in a “fragile” social and economic context after the May 2024 riots.
Since 30 September 2025, the online petition has collected more than 10,000 signatures from people who describe themselves as a “Citizens Collective Against the Return of Christian Téin”.
“Immense relief”: FLNKS Reacting on Friday on social networks, the FLNKS hailed the appeal ruling, saying this was “an immense relief for their families, loved ones and the whole pro-independence movement”.
“The struggle doesn’t stop, it goes on, even stronger”, the FLNKS said, referring to the current parliamentary battle in Paris to implement the “Bougival” agreement signed in July 2025, which FLNKS rejects.
Within the pro-independence movement, a rift within FLNKS has become increasingly apparent during recent negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, held in Bougival, west of Paris, which led to the signature, on 12 July 2025, of a text that posed a roadmap for the French territory’s future status.
It mentions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, a short-term transfer of powers from Paris, including in foreign affairs matters and the dual French-New Caledonian nationality.
But while UPM and PALIKA delegates signed the text with all the other political tendencies, the UC-dominated FLNKS said a few days after the signing that the Bougival deal was rejected “in block” because it did not meet the party’s expectations in terms of full sovereignty.
Their negotiators’ signatures were then deemed as invalid because, the party said, they did not have the mandate to sign.
In a letter to French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, and copied to French President Emmanuel Macron and Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, in early October 2025, the FLNKS reiterated that they had “formally withdrawn” their signatures from the Bougival deal and that therefore these signatures should not be “used abusively”.
Bougival deal continues
However, despite a spate of instability that saw a succession of two French governments formed over the past two weeks, the implementation of the Bougival deal continues.
In the latest cabinet meeting this week, the French Minister for Overseas, Manuel Valls, was replaced by Naïma Moutchou.
France’s newly-appointed Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou . . . there “to listen” and “to act”. Image: Assemblée Nationale
Last Wednesday, the French Senate endorsed the postponement of New Caledonia’s provincial elections to June 2026.
The same piece of legislation will be tabled before the Lower house, the French National Assembly, on October 22.
In a media conference on Wednesday, Union Calédonienne (UC), the main component of FLNKS, warned against the risks associated with yet another “passage en force”.
“This is a message of alert, an appeal to good sense, not a threat”, UC secretary-general Dominique Fochi added.
“If this passage en force happens, we really don’t know what is going to happen,” Fochi said.
“The Bougival agreement allows a path to reconciliation. It must be transcribed into the Constitution,” Lecornu told the National Assembly.
Also speaking in Parliament for the first time since she was appointed Minister for Overseas, Naïma Moutchou assured that in her new capacity, she would be there “to listen” and “to act”.
This, she said, included trying to re-engage FLNKS into fresh talks, with the possibility of bringing some amendments to the much-contested Bougival text.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand’s major Palestine advocacy and protest group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has condemned Defence Minister Judith Collins for “dog-whistling to her small choir” over Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza enclave.
Claiming that Collins’ open letter attacking teachers at the weekend was an attempt to “drown out Palestine” in discussions with the government, PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal said that it demonstrated more about her own prejudices than teacher priorities.
Teachers, who had devoted their lives to educating children in Aotearoa, would be “appalled at the wholesale slaughter” of Palestinian school children in Gaza, he said in a statement today.
Israel has killed at least 97 Palestinians and wounded 230 since the start of the ceasefire, and violated the truce agreement 80 times, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
“Teachers who are committed to the education and development of the next generation of our country would feel a special affinity with the children of another nation, who are being killed by Israeli bombing in their tens of thousands, seeing all their schools destroyed, and who will suffer the consequences of two years of malnutrition for the rest of their lives,” Nazzal said.
He added that just two months ago, Collins had featured on television standing next to a damaged residential building in Kiev while condemning Russia for attacks which had killed Ukrainian children.
“But not a critical word of Israel from her, or her cabinet colleagues, despite Israel just now resuming its mass bombing in Gaza,” Nazzal said.
Children ‘deserve protection’
“Ukrainian, Palestinian and New Zealand school children all deserve protection and we should expect our government to speak up loudly in their defence, without having to have a teachers’ union raise government inaction on Gaza with them.
“But even after 24 months of genocide, Collins won’t find the words to express New Zealand’s horror at the indiscriminate killing of school children in Gaza.
PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal . . . “not a critical word of Israel from her . . . despite Israel just now resuming its mass bombing in Gaza.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“But she’s in her element dog-whistling to her small choir in the pro-Israel lobby.
“Collins has already been referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, for complicity in Israel’s genocide by facilitating the supply of military technology for Israeli use.
“It’s more than time for Luxon to pull back his Israeli fanatic colleagues and uphold an ethical rule-based policy, and not default to blind prejudices.”
A critique of the Collins open letter published in The Standard . . . “she makes a number of disturbing claims, as valued workers (doctors, mental health nurses, scientists, midwives, teachers, principals, social workers, oncologists, surgeons, dentists etc) ramp up to one of the biggest strikes in history”. Image: The Standard
