Promises of “accountability and transparency” in deep-sea mining has seen a tsunami-size vote by nations on Friday for a Brazilian scientist to replace the incumbent British lawyer as head of an obscure UN organisation that regulates the world’s seabed.
Mounting international opposition to prospects of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) approving exploitation of the deep ocean’s vast mineral bounty by corporations before its environmental regulations were finalised fuelled the mood for change.
A rare vote by member nations saw Brazil’s candidate, former oceanographer Leticia Carvalho, defeat two-term head Michael Lodge, who has been criticised for being aligned to seabed mining companies.
Lodge was not present when the result was announced.
“The winning margin reflects the appetite for change,” Carvalho told BenarNews. “I see that transparency and accountability, broader participation, more focus on additional science, bridging knowledge gaps are the priority areas.”
Lodge had support from only 34 nations compared with 79 for Carvahlo, who also campaigned on restoring neutrality to the secretary-general position. She is currently a senior official at the UN Environment Programme and a former oil industry regulator in Brazil.
The change of leadership at the Kingston-based ISA is a possible setback to efforts to quickly finalise regulations for seabed mining, which would pave the way for exploitation to begin in the areas under its jurisdiction.
Some countries, meanwhile, are exploring the possibility of nodule mining in their territorial waters, which are outside of ISA oversight.
The new head of the UN deep-sea mining regulator vows to restore neutrality . . . International Seabed Authority secretary-general elect Leticia Carvalho (centre) of Brazil is congratulated by an ISA delegate following her election this week. Image: Stephen Wright/BenarNews
Mining of the golf ball-sized metallic nodules that litter swathes of the sea bed is touted as a source of rare earths and minerals needed for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, as the world reduces reliance on fossil fuels.
Sceptics say such minerals are already abundant on land and warn that mining the sea bed could cause irreparable damage to an environment that is still poorly understood by science.
Lodge was nominated for a third term by Kiribati, which is one of three Pacific island nations working with Nasdaq-listed The Metals Company on plans to exploit seabed minerals. More than 30 nations were disqualified from voting in the secret ballot as their financial contributions to the ISA are in arrears.
The hundreds of delegates and other attendees at the ISA assembly lined up to hug Carvalho following her election, including Gerard Barron, chief executive of The Metals Company.
International Seabed Authority secretary-general elect Leticia Carvalho of Brazil pictured with The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron following her election this week. Image: Stephen Wright/BenarNews
After the vote the company tweeted, “we appreciate her proactive engagement with us and share her belief that adopting regulations, not a moratorium, is the best way to fulfil the ISA’s mandate,” adding they still hope to become “the first commercial operator in this promising industry.”
Greenpeace International campaigner Louisa Casson said she hoped Carvalho would work with governments “to change the ISA’s course to serve the public interest, as it has been driven by the narrow corporate interests of the deep sea mining industry for far too long.”
This week’s annual assembly of the ISA also witnessed more nations joining a call for a moratorium on mining until there was greater scientific and environmental understanding of its likely consequences.
Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu speaking at the annual meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly in Kingston, Jamaica, this week. Image: IISD-ENB
Tuvalu is one of the latest to join those calling for a moratorium, taking to 10 the members of the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum, now opposed to any imminent start to deep-sea mining.
Nations such as Vanuatu and Chile also succeeded in forcing a general debate on establishing an environmental policy at the ISA.
Pelenatita Petelo Kara, a Tongan activist who campaigns against deep-sea mining, said she was hopeful new leadership would mean “more time for science to confirm new developments” such as alternative minerals for green technologies as well as a more thorough dialogue on the proposed mining rules.
Deep-sea mineral extraction has been particularly contentious in the Pacific, where some economically lagging island nations see it as a possible financial windfall, but many other island states are strongly opposed.
Members of the International Seabed Authority assembly at their week-long annual meeting at the headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, this week. Image: IISD-ENB
The island nation of Nauru in June 2021 notified the seabed authority of its intention to begin mining, which triggered the clock for the first time on a two-year period for the authority’s member nations to finalise regulations.
Its president David Adeang told the assembly earlier this week that its mining application currently being prepared in conjunction with The Metals Company would allow the ISA to make “an informed decision based on real scientific data and not emotion and conjecture.”
Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian political leader and a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee, says Israel’s “gangster style assassination and extrajudicial executions” are designed to “inflame the whole region”, reports Al Jazeera.
The killings of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, were carried out to “sabotage any chances” of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and regional de-escalation, Ashrawi said.
Haniyeh was a chief Hamas negotiator for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war and had built up formidable diplomatic credentials across the region.
“These are attacks not just on the capitals of sovereign states but also on significant leaders to ensure total provocation [and] destabilisation,” Ashrawi wrote on social media.
“Israel is a rogue state that represents a real [and] present danger globally,” she said.
‘Maddening and shameful’
Marking the 300th day of Israel’s war on Gaza yesterday, Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat said it was “maddening and shameful” that the world had not been able to stop one of the “grossest, most blatant colonial genocides”.
In a post on social media, Erakat said Israel’s genocide in Gaza had featured the use of advanced weapons as well as the spread of disease, “poisoning of the earth” as well as sexual assault and torture, reports Al Jazeera.
Israel’s genocide must be remembered for what it is, Erakat said, adding “we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative”.
“A blight on all humanity, to ascribe shame to all who let it happen [and] glory to those who fought so that the future indeed ensures: never again,” she said.
Day 300. Its maddening and shameful we have not been able to end one of the grossest, most blatant colonial #genocides feat disease, poisoning of the earth, sexual assualt, torture, & advanced weapons. This will end & we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative (1/2)
According to an analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Israel is responsible for 17,081 incidents of air/drone raids, shelling/missile attacks, remote explosives and property destruction in eight countries since October 7, including the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Iran and Iraq.
A majority of these attacks were on the Palestinian territory, specifically the Gaza Strip, with 10,389 incidents accounting for more than 60 percent of the total offensives.
There were at least 6,544 incidents of Israeli attacks on Lebanon (38 percent), followed by Syria with 144 such incidents recorded.
Haniyeh funeral final ceremonies in Qatar. Video: Al Jazeera
Released 15 Palestinian prisoners tortured
Israeli forces have released 15 Palestinian prisoners into Gaza. They were dropped off at a military checkpoint near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Many spoke of abuse and torture while detained.
Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians during the war in Gaza and stands accused of numerous cases of torture, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says in a new report.
The 23-page report, released on Wednesday, noted allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners being held incommunicado in arbitrary, prolonged detention.
It was published during a tense standoff in Israel as far-right politicians and demonstrators opposed an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.
The death toll in the genocidal war at the 300 day mark has topped 40,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children.
Day 300 . . . and the death toll in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has topped 40,000, including more than 16,000 children. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Coommons
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has told supporters that the “Break the Siege” aid project for besieged Gaza from Turkey has been put on hold — indefinitely — due to rising tensions in the wake of the assassinations of key resistance leaders in the capitals of Lebanon and Iran.
“We will continue to work tirelessly to attempt to sail but, in the meantime, we need to let everyone know that for the moment, the sailing of Break the Siege must be put on hold, indefinitely,” said flotilla reporter Tan Safi in a video to supporters.
“Our other campaign vessel, Handala, will continue its journey towards Gaza.
An update from the Freedom Flotilla. Video: Gaza Freedom Flotilla
“Our respective national campaigns remain active and engaged: please watch for updates about our actions and other Palestine solidarity actions near you.
“Keep an eye on the crew and participants of Handala and continue demanding their safe passage according to international law.
“Together we must and will continue to demand sanctions, an end to the genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation, and justice for all the babies, children, mothers, fathers, and grandparents — human beings who have been murdered by the genocidal machine that is Israel.
Two New Zealand volunteers, Youssef Sammour and Rana Hamida, are crew on the Handala and feature in the the video.
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed in the early hours of Wednesday at his war veterans’ guest house in Tehran in an assassination blamed on Israel by Iran.
His assassination came hours after top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. According to Lebanon’s health ministry, five civilians – three women and two children – also died in the attack.
President Biden — if you feel like pretending Biden is still serving as President and still making the decisions in the White House — has pledged to support Israel against any retaliations for its recent assassination spree in Iran and Lebanon which killed high-profile officials from Hamas and Hezbollah.
A White House statement asserts that Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis,” and “discussed efforts to support Israel’s defence against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments.”
Hilariously, the statement also claims that “the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region.”
Yep, nothing emphasises the importance of de-escalating broader tensions in the region like pledging unconditional military support for the region’s single most belligerent actor no matter how reckless and insane its aggressions become.
This statement from the White House echoes comments from Secretary of “Defence” Lloyd Austin a day earlier, who said “We certainly will help defend Israel” should a wider war break out as a result of Israel’s assassination strikes.
Biden promises Netanyahu the U.S. will defend Israel from any reprisal attacks pic.twitter.com/9meq2hTBmq
All this babbling about “defending” the state of Israel is intended to convey the false impression that Israel has just been sitting there minding its own business, and is about to suffer unprovoked attacks from hostile aggressors for some unfathomable reason.
As though detonating military explosives in the capital cities of two nations to conduct political assassinations would not be seen as an extreme act of war in need of a violent response by literally all governments on this planet.
Helping Israeli attacks
In reality, the US isn’t vowing to defend the state of Israel, the US is vowing to help Israel attack other countries.
If you’re pledging unconditional support to an extremely belligerent aggressor while it commits the most demented acts of aggression imaginable, all you’re doing is condoning those acts of aggression and making sure it will suffer no consequences when it conducts more of them.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has reiterated its calls for Israeli forces “to minimize the impact of military operations on civilians in Gaza and to end the killing of journalists.”
Washington’s position is made even more absurd after all the hysterical shrieking and garment-rending from the Washington establishment following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Israel murdered the leader of the Hamas political bureau, not a military commander, and he was the primary negotiator in the mediated ceasefire talks with Israel.
This was a political assassination just like a successful attempt on Trump’s life would have been, but probably a lot more consequential. And yet the only response from Washington has been to announce that it will help Israel continue its incendiary brinkmanship throughout the Middle East.
Washington swamp monsters talk all the time about their desire to promote “peace and stability in the Middle East”, while simultaneously pledging loyalty and support for a Middle Eastern nation whose actions pose a greater obstacle to peace and stability in the region than any other.
These contradictions are becoming more and more glaring and apparent before the entire world.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:By Aubrey Belford of the OCCRP
High in the forested mountains of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island lies an abandoned, kilometer-wide crater cut deep into the earth.
Formerly one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, the open pit now serves as an unsightly monument to the environmental and social chaos that underground riches can create.
Run for years by a subsidiary of Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine earned millions for Papua New Guinea (PNG) and helped bankroll its newfound independence. But it also poured waste into local waterways and fuelled anger among locals who felt robbed of the profits.
When an armed uprising ultimately shuttered the mine in 1989, the impoverished island was left reeling.
Nearly three decades later, in late 2022, human rights activists, the local government, and the mine’s former operators joined forces to produce a definitive assessment of the mine’s toxic legacy.
Their report, due to be released later this month, will become the basis for negotiations aimed at getting the mining companies to finally clean up the mess and compensate affected communities.
But its supporters now worry their efforts will be undermined by a class-action lawsuit launched in May against the mine’s erstwhile operators. The legal effort is being championed by former rebel leaders — and backed by anonymous offshore investors who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if it succeeds.
Worldwide litigation boom
The lawsuit is part of a worldwide boom in litigation financing that seeks to take multinational companies to task for ecological or social damage while potentially reaping a fortune for lawyers and funders.
Critics in Bougainville worry the lawsuit will reopen old wounds at a time when the island is making a push to break free of Papua New Guinea and become the world’s newest sovereign nation. Many Bougainvilleans are hoping to reopen the mine, using its wealth to fund their own independence this time around.
The region’s government and many local leaders believe the class action could put the mine’s revival at risk. There are also concerns the lawsuit would leave many Bougainvilleans empty handed, while the anonymous foreign investors would walk away with a significant share of the payout.
Unlike the official assessment, which seeks to identify everyone who needs to be compensated, the class action will only share its winnings — which could potentially be in the billions of dollars — with the locals who have signed on. Others will get nothing.
“There’s already fragmentation in the community and families are already divided,” said Theonila Roka Matbob, who represents the area around Panguna in the local Parliament and has helped lead the government-backed assessment process as a minister in the Autonomous Bougainville government.
She speaks from personal experience. The chief litigant in the class-action lawsuit, Martin Miriori, is her uncle. The two are no longer on speaking terms.
A losing deal Gouged from Bougainville’s lush volcanic heart, the Panguna mine in its heyday supplied as much as 45 percent of PNG’s export revenue, providing it with the financial means to achieve independence from Australia in 1975.
The windfall, however, did not extend to Bougainvilleans themselves. Ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of PNG’s population, they saw Panguna as a symbol of external domination.
The mine delivered only a miserly 2-percent share of its profits to their island — along with years of environmental havoc.
Locals walk by buildings left abandoned by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto at the Panguna mine site. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
During the 17 years of Panguna’s operation — from 1972 to 1989 — over a billion metric tons of toxic mine waste and electric blue copper runoff flooded rivers that flowed downstream towards communities of subsistence farmers. The result was poisoned drinking water, infertile land, and children who were drowned or injured trying to cross engorged waterways.
In 1989, enraged Bougainville locals launched an armed rebellion against the PNG government. The mine was shut down, closing off a vital source of revenue for the national government in Port Moresby.
A brutal civil war raged on for nearly a decade, leaving more than 15,000 people dead, while a naval blockade by PNG’s military obliterated the island’s economy.
A peace deal in 2000 granted Bougainville substantial autonomy. But nearly a quarter-century later, the legacy of Panguna and the war it provoked is still deeply felt.
Few paved roads, bridges
There are few paved roads and bridges in the island’s interior. Residents earn a modest living through cocoa and coconut farming, or by unregulated artisanal mining in and around the abandoned Panguna crater.
Rivers polluted by years of runoff are still an otherworldly shade of milky blue.
At least 300,000 people are estimated to live on Bougainville, including as many as 15,000 who live downstream of the mine. Of those, some 4500 have joined Miriori — Roka’s estranged uncle and a tribal leader whose brother, Joseph Kabui, served as the first president of autonomous Bougainville — in seeking restitution through the class-action suit.
“We’ve got to make people happy,” Miriori said. “They’ve lost their land forever, environment forever. Their hunting grounds. Their spiritual, sacred grounds.”
Martin Miriori, the primary litigant in the class action lawsuit. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
‘Alert to opportunities’ Miriori took many by surprise when he became the public face of the suit filed in PNG’s National Court in May against Rio Tinto and its former local subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Limited.
While the tribal leader and former rebel is a well-known figure in Bougainville, the funders of the lawsuit are not. They have managed to keep their identities secret in part because the company behind the suit, Panguna Mine Action LLC, is registered on Nevis, a small Caribbean island that does not require companies to publicly disclose their shareholders and directors.
Miriori declined to comment on who was behind the company, saying, “I will not tell you where the funding is based … you can source that from our people down there [in Australia].”
James Sing, an Australian based in New York, is Panguna Mine Action’s chief public representative. He initially agreed to an interview, but later referred reporters back to a London-based public relations agency, Sans Frontières Associates.
The agency declined to reveal Panguna Mine Action’s investors.
Litigation funding documents obtained by OCCRP, however, shed some light on the history of the case. The documents show that Panguna Mine Action began to investigate the possibility of a class-action suit as early as July 2021.
The Bougainvillean claimants, led by Miriori, were formally brought into an agreement with the company and its Australian and PNG lawyers in November 2022. The suit was publicly announced this May.
Handsome profit
The lawsuit’s investors stand to profit handsomely from any eventual settlement: Panguna Mine Action is poised to receive a cut of 20 to 40 percent of any payout resulting from the suit, with the percentage increasing the longer the process takes, the funding documents show.
In interviews and statements, both Miriori and Panguna Mine Action have put the potential value of any award in the billions of dollars.
The lawsuit’s financiers defend their substantial share of the potential benefits as standard practice.
“The costs of launching and running the class action against a global miner are significant, and almost certainly could not be met from within Bougainville without funding from an external party,” the company said in its statement.
Panguna Mine Action added it would bear sole responsibility for costs if the lawsuit is unsuccessful.
According to Michael Russell, a Sydney-based class action defence lawyer, such funding arrangements are typical in the burgeoning world of litigation finance, where investors seek out cases that promote virtuous social causes while offering huge potential payoffs.
A similar case is unfolding in Latin America, where more than 720,000 Brazilians are seeking $46.5 billion as part of a gargantuan class action against mining giant BHP and its local subsidiary for their role in a 2015 dam collapse.
In such cases, funders can justify walking away with significant cuts of any winnings because of the substantial risk they face of losing their investment if a case fails, Russell said.
Such cases were rarely initiated at the grassroots level by the victims themselves, he added.
“Most of the time, either the plaintiff firms or the funders will be the catalyst for a claim,” he said. “They are very alert to opportunities.”
Rival restitution plans
Government officials including Miriori’s niece, Roka, say the class-action case, which is due to hold opening arguments in October, threatens to derail the ongoing impact assessment aimed at calculating the full cost of the mine’s environmental impact and developing recommendations for addressing the damage.
The assessment, which counts community members among its stakeholders and bills itself as an independent review, is supported by Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre, which has hailed the project as “an important step” towards rectifying the mine’s devastating impact on thousands of Bougainvilleans.
However, while Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper are both funding the project, they have not yet committed to paying for any compensation or cleanup. Roka said she was concerned the lawsuit could reduce the company’s willingness to engage with the process, since it could view the assessment as a tool that could be used against them in the courtroom.
Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama backs the impact assessment and has lambasted the class action suit as the work of “faceless investors . . . taking advantage of vulnerable groups.” (His office did not respond to an interview request.)
He also expressed concern that the court proceedings threaten to “disrupt” his government’s efforts to reopen the mine, which still holds an estimated $60 billion in untapped deposits.
Bougainville’s leaders see the mine as key to securing the island’s economic future as it sets out to form an independent state — a dream that drew overwhelming public support in a 2019 referendum.
Exploration licence
Earlier this year Toroama’s government granted Bougainville Copper a five-year exploration licence for the Panguna site.
The lack of media and polling in Bougainville make it hard to measure public opinion on plans to reactivate the mine, but many locals appear to support reopening it under local control as an essential tool for achieving independence.
Bougainville Copper’s brand is still toxically associated with Rio Tinto and its past abuses, despite the fact that the international mining giant gave away its majority stake for no money in 2016.
The publicly traded company is now majority co-owned by the governments of PNG and Bougainville, and Port Moresby has pledged to hand over all its shares to the autonomous region in the near future.
Panguna Mine Action acknowledges that its effort could stand in the way of the mine’s reopening — but the company says that is a good thing.
“It is our understanding that the people of Bougainville do not wish mining to be recommenced under any circumstances or, alternatively, unless Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper acknowledge the past, pay compensation and remediate the rivers and surrounding valley,” the company said in a statement.
Rio Tinto declined to comment. Mel Togolo, the chairman of Bougainville Copper, told OCCRP that the lawsuit was the work of “a foreign funder who no doubt is seeking a return on an investment.”
View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Photo: OCCRP / Aubrey Belford
‘Only those who have signed will benefit’ The fight over Panguna adds even more uncertainty to long-running anxiety over Bougainville’s future.
With global copper prices soaring on high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, the Panguna mine would be an attractive prize for both Western mining companies and firms from China, which is dramatically expanding its influence in the South Pacific.
Since a future Bougainvillean state would be economically dependent on the mine’s revenue, some have raised concerns that control of the mine could become a proxy battle for geopolitical influence in the broader region.
For his part, Miriori expressed little concern that a multibillion-dollar payout might stir resentment by reaching only a fraction of the people affected by the mine’s environmental destruction.
“Only those who signed will benefit,” he said, adding that the opportunity was made “very clear to people” through awareness campaigns.
“Those who have not signed, it’s their freedom of choice.”
An aerial view of the abandoned Panguna mine pit. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
Among those who did not sign is Wendy Bowara, 48, who lives in Dapera, a bleak settlement built on a hill of mine waste. Bowara said she is looking to the government-backed assessment, not the lawsuit, to deliver compensation and clean up Panguna’s toxic legacy.
“We are living on top of chemicals,” she said. “Copper concentration is high. I don’t know if the food is good to eat or if it’s healthy to drink the water.”
But while it may seem odd given her grim surroundings, Borawa says she strongly supports reopening the mine.
“It funded the independence of Papua New Guinea,” Bowara said. “Why can’t we use it to fund our own independence?”
Allan Gioni contributed reporting.
Aubrey Belford is the Pacific editor for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Stephen Wright in Kingston, Jamaica
The obscure UN organisation attempting to set rules for the exploitation of deep-sea metals is facing a potential shake-up as more nations call for a mining moratorium and a new candidate for its leadership vows to address perceptions of corporate bias.
The number of countries against the imminent start of mining for metallic nodules on the seafloor has jumped to 32 during the International Seabed Authority’s annual assembly this week in Kingston, Jamaica after Austria, Guatemala, Honduras, Malta and Tuvalu joined their ranks.
“We are running ahead of ourselves trying to go and extract minerals when we don’t know what’s down there, what impact it is going to have,” said Surangel Whipps, president of the Pacific island nation of Palau.
As governments become more aware of the risks, “hopefully we get them motivated to say let’s have a pause, let’s have a moratorium until we understand what we are doing,” he told BenarNews.
Tuvalu delegates Monise Laafai and Demi Afasene declared their country’s support for a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining, pictured on July 30, 2024. [IISD-ENB]
Ten members of the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), including the territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia whose foreign policies are set by France, are now opposed to any imminent start to deep-sea mining.
Mining of the golf ball-sized nodules that litter swathes of the sea bed is touted as a source of metals and rare earths needed for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, as the world reduces reliance on fossil fuels.
Irreparable damage
Sceptics say such minerals are already abundant on land and warn that mining the sea bed could cause irreparable damage to an environment that is still poorly understood by science.
Palau President Surangel Whipps . . . making a point during an interview with BenarNews in Kingston, Jamaica. Image: Stephen Wright/BenarNews
Brazil has nominated its former oil and gas regulator Leticia Carvalho, as its candidate for ISA secretary-general, challenging the two-term incumbent Michael Lodge. He has been criticized for his closeness to The Metals Company, which is leading the charge to hoover up the metallic nodules from the seabed.
Carvalho, a former oceanographer and currently a senior official at the UN Environment Program, said a third consecutive term for Lodge would be inconsistent with “best practices” at the UN
Leticia Carvalho, Brazil’s candidate for secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority. . . pictured at the 14th Ramsar Convention on Wetlands agreement. Image: IISD-ENB/BenarNews
“I would be guided by integrity as a value,” she told BenarNews. “Secondly the secretary-general function, it’s a neutral function. You are a civil servant, you are there to set the table for the decision makers, which are the state parties.”
“I have learned in my life as a regulator that you try to find by consensus, balances – what you agree collectively to protect and what you agree to sacrifice,” Carvalho said.
Lodge has been nominated by Kiribati, one of three Pacific Island nations that The Metals Company is working with to harvest vast quantities of nodules from their areas in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
The 4.5 million square kilometer [1.7 square million mile] area in the central Pacific is regulated by the ISA and contains trillions of polymetallic nodules at depths of up to 5.5 kilometers. All up, the ISA regulates more than half of the world’s seafloor.
Dropped out
Carvalho said she was present at a meeting at the UN in New York last month, first reported by The New York Times, when Kiribati’s ambassador to the UN. Teburoro Tito, proposed to Brazil’s ambassador that Carvalho drop out of contention for secretary-general in exchange for another senior role at the ISA.
Lodge has said he was not involved in that proposal and also denied the concerns of some ISA delegates that his travel this year to nations including China, Cameroon, Japan, Egypt, Italy and Antigua and Barbuda was a re-election campaign using ISA resources.
A campaign pamphlet of incumbent ISA secretary-general Michael Lodge who is standing for a third term with the support of Kiribati. Image: IISD-ENB/BenarNews
“Mr Lodge has no comment on any questions concerning hearsay,” the ISA said in a statement. “Mr Lodge was not privy to the discussions referenced and is not party to the alleged [Kiribati] proposal.”
Deep-sea mineral extraction has been particularly contentious in the Pacific, where some economically lagging island nations see it as a possible financial windfall, but many other island states are strongly opposed.
Nauru President David Adeang told the assembly that its mining application currently being prepared in conjunction with The Metals Company would allow the ISA to make “an informed decision based on real scientific data and not emotion and conjecture”.
Nauru in June 2021 notified the seabed authority of its intention to begin mining, which triggered the clock for the first time on a two-year period for the authority’s member nations to finalise regulations.
Through deep-sea mining, Nauru, home to some 10,000 people and just 21 square kilometers in area, would contribute critical metals and help combat global warming, Adeang said.
The International Seabed Authority assembly . . . pictured in session last month in Kingston, Jamaica. Image: Diego Noguera/IISD-ENB/BenarNews
‘Necessity’ for our survival “The responsible development of deep sea minerals is not just an opportunity for Nauru and other small island developing states,” he said. “It is a necessity for our survival in a rapidly changing world.”
Still, a sign of how little is understood about deep sea environments came earlier this month when scientists published research that showed the metallic nodules generate oxygen, likely through electrolysis.
It was an own-goal for The Metals Company, which partly funded the research in Nauru’s area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. It quickly attacked the results as based on flawed methodology.
“Firstly it’s great that through our funding this research was possible. However we do see some concerns with the early conclusion and will be preparing a rebuttal that will be out soon,” chief executive Gerard Barron told BenarNews.
Among the other 32 nations at the 169-member ISA supporting a stay on deep-sea mining are Brazil, Canada, Chile, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, Palau, Samoa, United Kingdom, and Vanuatu.
Tuvalu has added its voice to the growing tide in the Pacific against deep sea mining, highlighting the momentum against this destructive industry, says Greenpeace.
The Tuvalu government’s call for a precautionary pause on deep sea mining took place at the 29th session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) in Kingston, Jamaica.
Greenpeace head of Pacific Shiva Gounden congratulated the government of Tuvalu over its “commitment to protecting our oceans”.
“Tuvalu joins a growing chorus of Pacific nations calling for a ban on deep sea mining to safeguard our Moana, which gives and sustains life for millions of people across the Pacific and around the world,” he said in a statement.
“This announcement is courageous and historic, as the proud island nation of Tuvalu again shows global leadership on ocean protection just like they have on climate protection, something we Pacific people see as deeply interconnected.
“The momentum growing against the destructive deep sea mining industry is undeniable.
“For too long, profit-hungry corporations have plundered and exploited the ocean and high seas at the expense of the communities who depend on them, and whose lives and cultures are intrinsically linked with our oceans.”
Pacific says ‘no more’
Gounden said the message was loud and clear — “Pacific Island nations say, no more”.
Tuvalu’s announcement follows statements from the Pacific nations of Vanuatu and Palau at the ISA, with both governments supporting a pause on deep sea mining to protect the oceans for generations to come.
A total of 31 countries, including the UK and Germany, have committed to a moratorium.
Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Juressa Lee (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Rarotonga) welcomed the decisions by Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Palau.
“Pacific peoples are standing up and saying no to deep sea mining. Deep sea mining will do nothing to benefit the people of the Moana but will instead exacerbate the climate and biodiversity crises,” she said.
“Extractivism is just continued colonisation of our heritage lands and waters, livelihoods and ways we see the world, and deep sea mining is no different.
“The intrinsic links to the Moana that Pacific Peoples speak about is valuable matauranga.
“There is so much in Pacific knowledge and culture that can teach us how to live connected to the ocean while also taking care of it.
“After hundreds of years of extraction causing climate disaster and biodiversity loss, governments are now resisting and turning toward Indigenous leadership and today we’ve seen some in the Pacific leading the way.”
Ismail Haniyeh, a prominent Palestinian political leader and the head of Hamas’ political bureau, has been assassinated today in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.
Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Both Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirmed his death and announced ongoing investigations into the incident.
Commentators have said this assassination and the “reckless Israeli behaviour” of continuously targeting civilians in Gaza would lead to the region slipping into chaos and undermine the chances of peace.
A Palestinian refugee Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh was born on 23 January 1962 in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
His family originated from the village of Al-Jura, near the city of Asqalan, which was mostly destroyed and completely ethnically cleansed during the Nakba in 1948.
Haniyeh completed his early education in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and graduated from Al-Azhar Institute before earning a BA in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987.
During his university years, he was active in the Student Union Council and later held various positions at the Islamic University, eventually becoming its dean in 1992.
Following his release from an Israeli prison in 1997, Haniyeh became the head of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s office.
Political life Haniyeh’s political experience included multiple arrests by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada, with charges related to his involvement with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas.
He was exiled to southern Lebanon in 1992 but returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accords.
Haniyeh led the “Change and Reform List”, which won the majority in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, leading to his appointment as the head of the Palestinian government in February 2006.
Despite being dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas military wing took control of Gaza, Haniyeh continued to lead the government in Gaza.
He later played a role in national reconciliation efforts, which led to the formation of a unity government in June 2014.
Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in May 2017.
A warning from Iran over the assassination of Hamas politIcal leader Ismael Haniyeh while staying in Tehran as a “guest” of the newly inaugurated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Al-Aqsa flood On 7 October 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades, led by Mohammed Deif, launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel.
In the genocidal Israel war that has followed in the past nine months, Haniyeh suffered personal losses, including the killings of several family members due to Israeli airstrikes.
Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.
Ismail Haniyeh, a prominent Palestinian political leader and the head of Hamas’ political bureau, has been assassinated today in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.
Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Both Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirmed his death and announced ongoing investigations into the incident.
Commentators have said this assassination and the “reckless Israeli behaviour” of continuously targeting civilians in Gaza would lead to the region slipping into chaos and undermine the chances of peace.
A Palestinian refugee Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh was born on 23 January 1962 in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
His family originated from the village of Al-Jura, near the city of Asqalan, which was mostly destroyed and completely ethnically cleansed during the Nakba in 1948.
Haniyeh completed his early education in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and graduated from Al-Azhar Institute before earning a BA in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987.
During his university years, he was active in the Student Union Council and later held various positions at the Islamic University, eventually becoming its dean in 1992.
Following his release from an Israeli prison in 1997, Haniyeh became the head of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s office.
Political life Haniyeh’s political experience included multiple arrests by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada, with charges related to his involvement with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas.
He was exiled to southern Lebanon in 1992 but returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accords.
Haniyeh led the “Change and Reform List”, which won the majority in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, leading to his appointment as the head of the Palestinian government in February 2006.
Despite being dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas military wing took control of Gaza, Haniyeh continued to lead the government in Gaza.
He later played a role in national reconciliation efforts, which led to the formation of a unity government in June 2014.
Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in May 2017.
A warning from Iran over the assassination of Hamas politIcal leader Ismael Haniyeh while staying in Tehran as a “guest” of the newly inaugurated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Al-Aqsa flood On 7 October 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades, led by Mohammed Deif, launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel.
In the genocidal Israel war that has followed in the past nine months, Haniyeh suffered personal losses, including the killings of several family members due to Israeli airstrikes.
Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.
Forget a 10-month genocide in Gaza. Only when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians living under its military occupation are we supposed to start worrying about the ‘consequences’, writes Jonathan Cook.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights last Saturday has been intentionally misleading.
The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.
I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell — and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).
It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.
The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.
Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”
Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.
Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.
Panic as Israeli strike hits near Gaza school playground. Video: The Guardian
Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football 0- especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.
So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?
Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.
Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.
(Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)
It’s not just ‘unlikely’ that a Palestinian rocket destroyed the Gaza hospital. It’s impossible. The media know this, they just don’t dare say it. My latest:
The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months — that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”
So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.
A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.
Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.
Update – ‘Tightening the noose’: Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article — and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).
Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to this Substack page.
As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.
Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly — either through email or via Substack’s app — bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.
If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This article was first published on Substack and is republished with the permission of the author.
By Paige Schouw, Queensland University of Technology
Kara Ravulo was halfway through her university studies when her father became sick, ultimately leading her to defer school to help support her family. After he died, Ravulo’s mother’s wise words encouraged her to go back and complete her studies.
But it was Ravulo’s perseverance and dedication that led her to where she is now.
With the rise of female athletes across Fiji, it has opened a door for not only women athletes to be in the media but also for women journalists reporting on sports media.
Almost every media outlet in Fiji boasts a woman sports journalist.
As the media and content officer at the Fijian Drua, Kara Ravulo is a trailblazer in the Fijian sports and communication sector. When she began her role, Fiji had never had a woman media officer for a male sporting team.
Ravulo, who has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of the South Pacific, found herself longing for something more, when she saw an advertisement for a position available at the Fiji Sun newspaper.
Ravulo expressed a gracious thanks to God after she was offered a position at the Fiji Sun, where she covered the news and business sectors before the sports editor approached her about becoming a sports journalist.
‘This is what I want’
“They tested me out. The sports editor was like, ‘Do you want to write sports stories?’ and I was like ‘I can try’.”
“Then they put me on sports and when I started doing it and started doing interviews I was like, ‘I think this is what I want to be’.”
After three years as the sports journalist at the Sun, Ravulo saw a new opportunity to level up her skills and applied for a position at the public broadcaster Fijian Broadcasting Corporation (FBC).
She covered the sports news at FBC, but it was here that she learnt new forms of journalism.
Ravulo thanks FBC for introducing her to social media, which she explained is something that all journalists need to be well versed and multi-talented in that area of media.
Drua media officer Kara Ravulo . . . turning to the law as a way to help sportspeople. Image: Kara Ravulo/QUT
After the introduction of the Fijian Drua Super Rugby side in 2022, the search for the organisation’s first media and content officer began. Having been at FBC for nearly three years, Ravulo decided to take another leap of faith and apply for the role.
Taking a position within a male-dominated industry is no easy feat, and no one can prepare you for situations such as being the only woman who travels with the Fijian Drua team for the whole season.
Privileged opportunity
Ravulo expressed her gratitude for the organisation and the team for having faith in her to be their media officer, as she believes it is such a privilege.
Being treated as one of their own is great, but it means that she does still have to carry the heavy stuff, Ravulo said while laughing.
“It was challenging at first trying to earn the teams trust but something that we women need to know is that you need to take out that mentality that women cannot do what men can do,” she said.
“When standing at games with other super rugby clubs’ male content officers, I just think to myself, I am the same as all of you.
“And you should have that mentality that I can do what you can do.”
It is not only the team at the Drua organisation that Ravulo has won over, according to former Fiji Times finance editor Monika Singh, now teaching assistant at USP.
“She has the ability to win people over with her infectious smile and friendly demeanour,” Singh said.
“I have known her for some time now and I have never heard anyone complain about her work or her work ethic,” said Singh when reflecting on Ravulo’s character.
Writing wins respect
Ravulo strongly believes that some of the challenges junior journalists are faced with can be overcome through your writing.
“You write the way that people can actually respect you and see that you’re here to mean business, it changes the perspective of how people look at you.”
Working with the Drua has broadened Ravulo’s horizons not only in relation to the social media and content creation, but also in understanding sponsorships, marketing, and public relations.
As a result, she has opted to go back to university and study a Bachelor of Law to venture into sports law because player welfare, lack of agents and contract negotiations is a gap she has noticed within the Fijian market.
Ruvulo would encourage all women to work within the sports media industry across Fiji.
“Women need to be more out there.”
Paige Schouw is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. Published in partnership with QUT.
Former New Zealand attorney-general David Parker spoke on day 295 of Israel’ genocidal war on Gaza in Auckland today, condemning the National-led government’s inaction over the ongoing crisis.
Responding to the recent International Court of Justice’s landmark advisory ruling that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem — Occupied Palestine — was illegal and must end as soon as possible, Parker said he was disappointed in New Zealand’s “equivocal” response.
He also called on the government to recognise the state of Palestine, along with some 145 countries around the world that have already done so.
A large banner at the rally illustrated the massive global support for Palestine statehood, with a map showing the main countries that have not supported recognition to be the white English-speaking settler colonial nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States.
The map banner at today’s Auckland rally showing NZ among a minority of US-led countries that have failed so far to recognise Palestinian statehood. At least 145 countries – an overwhelming majority of United Nations members – have already recognised Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
Among the speakers were two Palestinian teenagers, Lujain Al-Badry, who spoke of the litany of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza — but she also highlighted the “forgotten” atrocities by illegal settlers and the military in the West Bank — and the other a poet who spoke passionately of the constant evictions of Palestinians from their own homes and land.
More than 700 Israelis have illegally settled on Palestinian land since the territory was occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in defiance of repeated UN resolutions declaring the settlements unlawful.
Lujain Al-Badry, 14, spoke of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza and of the “forgotten” atrocities by illegal settlers in the West Bank at today’s rally. Image: David Robie/APR
Irish activist and trade unionist Joe Carolan, just back from a visit to Ireland, spoke of the political drift to the right in France and other European Union countries and reminded the crowd that support for the Palestinian cause and against colonialism was “liberation for all”.
The crowd marched around the block to protest outside the US consulate in Auckland, calling on Washington to end its support and funding for the Israeli genocide.
At least 39,324 Palestinians have been killed and 90,830 others wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Protesters at today’s Auckland rally calling for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s nine-month war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
The Surafend massacre
Meanwhile, an RNZ podcast released at the weekend has revealed new insights into what has been described as the worst New Zealand military atrocity — the Surafend massacre during the First World War in Palestine in 1918.
According to the new season RNZ’s Black Sheep podcast, New Zealand and Australian soldiers “murdered upwards of 40 Arab civilians in a Palestinian village” in December 2018.
“But,” continued the podcast report, “more than 100 years later, we still don’t know exactly who did it, or why.
“We investigate what one military historian describes as ‘by far the worst war crime ever committed by New Zealand military personnel’ — The Surafend massacre — and other allegations of war crimes against Anzacs in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report.
Watermelon protest placards at today’s pro-Palestinian rally in downtown Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
Palestine’s Permament Observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, has slammed the UN Security Council for failing to secure a ceasefire and bring an end to Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip reports Al Jazeera.
“We have collectively failed. This council has failed,” the Palestinian envoy said during a special council session on the humanitarian response in Gaza.
“We can continue counting aid trucks and speaking of routes and imagining alternatives, but the only true measure of our success is our ability to alleviate human suffering — and the suffering of Palestinians is Israel’s goal and desire,” Mansour said.
“Whatever solutions you come up with, [Israel] will continue ensuring they fail until it is forced to change course.
“And the first, indispensable step is an immediate ceasefire.”
Palestine’s Ambassador Riyad Mansour at the UN . . . “The first, indispensable step is an immediate ceasefire..” Image: AJ screenshot APR
Meanwhile, in Paris yesterday at the opening of the Olympic Games 2024, the Palestinian Palestine’s Olympic team made its entry into the Paris Games on a boat in the River Seine.
Much support was shared for Palestine during the Asian Cup in Qatar earlier this year and a similar response during Paris 2024 is expected.
Call for ban on Israel
Pro-Palestine activists have been calling for Israel to be banned from the Olympics, accusing the Games’ bosses of double standards by allowing Israel to participate while barring Russia.
Olympic double standards over Israeli. Video:Al Jazeera
In Washington, a briefing by UNRWA is under way at the UN Security Council.
Members of the council wanted to highlight the humanitarian situation in Gaza and it is perhaps no coincidence that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu is in the US at this time.
Russia, China and Algeria — with Russia holding the presidency at present — called for this meeting after Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress this week.
Several UNRWA representatives outlined the latest updates on the dire situation for the people of Gaza, including people’s inability to satisfy their basic needs due to the continued displacement, insecurity and lawlessness.
Pacific leaders have been called on to innovative and be bold to create gender equality and respond to gaps which exist in their efforts to bridge differences.
Marshall Islands President Dr Hilda Heine said gender could not be addressed in isolation.
“We must think also of how it intersects with our other challenges and opportunities and develop our policies and approaches with gender equality in mind,” Heine said at the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women in Majuro this week.
“Our gender equality journey calls on Pacific leadership to be intentional, innovative and bold in our responses to the gaps that we see in our efforts.
“We must take risks, create new partnerships, and be unwavering in our commitment to bring about substantive gender equality for the region.”
The triennial is the latest in a series which was first proposed in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1974. Representatives from governments throughout the region are represented at the event which is followed by a meeting of Pacific ministers for women.
“We have come a long way in terms of advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women in the Pacific,” Heine said.
Forces that shape women
“Almost 50 years ago in 1975, 80 women from across the Pacific convened in Suva to talk about forces that shape women in society. ”
The initial meeting of 80 women identified family, culture and traditions, religion, education, media, law and politics as thematic areas which deserved attention and discussion.
Heine challenged Pacific women to extend their role as mothers who nurture and weave society towards nation building.
“A mother helps to nurture and weaves the society, therefore building a nation. That is our role. That is what we do. It is in our DNA,” Heine said.
“Current women leaders stand on the shoulders of those women who came before us, many had no clue about the PPA or what feminism is all about; yet their roles called for them to be involved and to push the boundaries; similarly, it is the responsibility of current women leaders to nurture and to mentor the next generation of women leaders, the leaders of tomorrow.”
Engage men and boys A study across 31 countries has found that 60 percent of males aged 16-24 years believe that women’s equality discriminates against men.
“This finding is troubling and while the study did not include countries in the Pacific, it is important we take note of it and continue to look at ways to better engage men and boys in gender equality efforts in our part of the world,” Pacific Community’s Miles Young said.
Young said men and boys must be involved on a journey of understanding that gender equality benefited everyone.
“Noting the continuing relatively low representation of women across our national parliaments and at the highest levels of decision-making in the private sector, there may be an opportunity this week to discuss revitalising the conversation around affirmative action — or what some term temporary special measures,” he said.
He noted the presence of Tuvalu Prime Minister, Feleti Teo, Marshallese Women’s Minister, Jess Gasper, and United Nations Women Senior Adviser, Asger Rhyl, and “the many other men who are committed to gender equality”.
“There may be an opportunity for discussions around how to more effectively engage men and boys in progressing gender equality,” Young said.
Women make up 8.8 percent of parliamentarians (54 MPs) in the Pacific, up from 4.7 per cent (26 MPs) in 2013.
Young said the Pacific Community stood ready to collaborate with women representatives and development partners to support decisions and the outcomes of the meeting.
“This commitment reflects the highest priority which SPC attaches to supporting gender equality in the region.”
Netani Rikais an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s security detail has cut a media briefing short over protesters in Auckland.
He was holding a press conference yesterday after a walkabout with police to discuss concerns with businesses in the CBD.
Luxon was talking with media when one of his security officers could be seen coming into the business, actively looking around, before placing a hand on the Prime Minister’s shoulder and informing him they had to leave now.
Police beat teams He was also joined by Police Minister Mark Mitchell, and Associate Police Minister Casey Costello and Retail Crime Ministerial Advisory Group head Sunny Kaushal after police added another 21 officers to their CBD beat teams this month, bringing the team to 51.
It is part of a drive to expand the number of police visible on city streets, with the Auckland team expected to increase to 63, another 17 officers joining the Wellington team, and 18 more in Christchurch.
Luxon said the expanded teams was a “great start, and more than a great start … it’s a collaborative effort and what you’re seeing here is that there’s really good join-up.”
He said with cruise ships coming back to New Zealand, it was important to do better and it was important for people to feel safe.
Patrolling Auckland was a collaborative effort, which was seen yesterday with numerous council and Heart of the City security staff also on the beat.
“Police are obviously at the heart of the whole issue, but they are working really constructively with the security officers from the different retail complexes, with the city council . . . ”
Prime Minister Luxon’s press conference cut short. Video: RNZ News
Beat policing makes difference
Some business people Luxon had spoken to told him they had seen a difference when it came to on the beat policing.
Mitchell said it was also about having all the govenrment and community agencies working together. He said the briefing he had seen from police showed crime was starting to trend down.
“It’s only early signs, it’s green shoots . . . I don’t have the numbers that I can give to you today but it’s numbers that police have been working on.”
Coster said it was a long-term thing that needed to be seen having a continued effect.
He said the deployment in the CBD was significant.
“Not just our beat staff, but also our public safety units, our community policing staff, and we have a tactical crime unit focused on the central city as well.”
“That’s a very big deployment, on a regular basis.”
Luxon walked through town, stopping to chat with security officers.
“It’s been really good, an announcement and then quick implementation, and you guys joined up together and you’ve been acting more as a tighter eco-system, is even better,” he said to one Britomart security officer.
He also greeted pedestrians as he made his way up Queen Street, some shouting expletive expressions of shock at seeing him.
Murray from Queen’s Arcade on Queen Street said the situation had improved.
“It’s nice to see the police around the lower city CBD,” he said.
“We’re all working together, it’s going to be difficult. We kind of expect the council to do their part in this too with some of the projects, perhaps, homeless people that cause us a little bit of grief, and are a nuisance to themselves and the public,” he said.
He said rough sleepers were still an issue, and that pedestrians felt intimidated by them.
‘We expect churches to face up’
Earlier, speaking to reporters, the prime minister said churches behind the faith-based care institutions needed to be “fully responsible and accountable”, and destruction of records “doesn’t sound right”.
Yesterday’s standup followed the release of the Royal Commission’s report into abuse in care this week, a massive 16-volume report still being digested by the survivors and the public.
“We expect the churches to face up to their responsibility,” Luxon said.
Frazer Barton told RNZ Morning Report yesterday he had advised Gillian Bremner to “destroy them at an appropriate time — that’s not ‘go ahead and destroy them now’”. The files were destroyed in 2017 and 2018.
Luxon said he had not been briefed on that but the government wanted to ensure records were available – including being available to survivors.
“I haven’t seen what he’s particularly briefed or asked,” Luxon said. “All I’m focused on is actually responding to the recommendations, working with the survivors, making sure that churches are held responsible for the abuse that they’ve caused as well.”
Asked to comment on his reaction to hearing that records had been destroyed, he said “it doesn’t sound good, it doesn’t sound right, it doesn’t sound what we’re asking churches to do.”
He said the churches should front up and be held accountable.
“We’re asking for them to be fully responsible and accountable.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon.
Christina Assi of Agence France-Presse was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling last October 13 while reporting on an exchange of fire along the border between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants, reports The New Arab.
The same attack killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah.
Assi was severely wounded and had part of her right leg amputated.
AFP videographer Dylan Collins, also wounded in the Israeli attack, pushed Assi’s wheelchair as she carried the torch across the suburb of Vincennes last Sunday. Their colleagues from the press agency and hundreds of spectators cheered them on.
AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera have all accused Israel of targeting their journalists who maintained they were positioned far from where the clashes were raging, and with vehicles clearly marked as “press”.
International human rights organisations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said the October 13 attack was deliberate and should be investigated as a war crime.
The Israeli military at the time said that the incident was “under review”, claiming that it did not target journalists.
While Assi does not believe there will be retribution for the events of that fateful October day, she hopes her participation in the Olympic torch relay this week can bring attention to the importance of protecting journalists.
The torch relay, which started in May, is part of celebrations in which thousands of people from various walks of life are chosen to carry the flame across France before the Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony later today (5.30am Saturday NZST).
A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon.
Christina Assi of Agence France-Presse was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling last October 13 while reporting on an exchange of fire along the border between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants, reports The New Arab.
The same attack killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah.
Assi was severely wounded and had part of her right leg amputated.
AFP videographer Dylan Collins, also wounded in the Israeli attack, pushed Assi’s wheelchair as she carried the torch across the suburb of Vincennes last Sunday. Their colleagues from the press agency and hundreds of spectators cheered them on.
AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera have all accused Israel of targeting their journalists who maintained they were positioned far from where the clashes were raging, and with vehicles clearly marked as “press”.
International human rights organisations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said the October 13 attack was deliberate and should be investigated as a war crime.
The Israeli military at the time said that the incident was “under review”, claiming that it did not target journalists.
While Assi does not believe there will be retribution for the events of that fateful October day, she hopes her participation in the Olympic torch relay this week can bring attention to the importance of protecting journalists.
The torch relay, which started in May, is part of celebrations in which thousands of people from various walks of life are chosen to carry the flame across France before the Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony later today (5.30am Saturday NZST).
Violent attacks on three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north have reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 children, while several people were forced to flee after attackers set fire to their homes, the United Nations said.
“I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
The death toll could rise to more than 50 as PNG authorities search for missing people, Turk said.
Provincial Police Commander in East Sepik James Baugen said: “It was a very terrible thing, when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 men.”
He told the ABC that all the houses in the village were burned, and the remaining villagers were sheltering at a police station, too scared to name the perpetrators.
“Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed, there were heads chopped off,” he said.
“The men are in hiding, police have been deployed but there have been no arrests yet.”
Turk called on PNG authorities “to conduct prompt, impartial and transparent investigations and to ensure those responsible are held to account”.
Impunity for criminals Governor Allan Bird of East Sepik, where the murders occurred, said the violence in the country had been getting worse during the past 10 years.
“The lack of justice in PNG is a problem, and it is getting worse,” he told the ABC.
A front page report in PNG’s The National . . . the picture shows the devastation left from an attack at Angoram’s Tambari village, East Sepik. Image: The National
“Over the last 10 years or so, if a crime is committed, investigations hardly result in arrest. Even if they are arrested, it’s difficult to go to court and go to jail. That is giving law-breakers more courage to do the wrong thing,” he said.
Advocating for stronger police enforcement and stronger prosecution mechanisms, he said there would be a reduction in crime when people started going to jail.
He told the ABC that the police force had had a long-standing problem with command and control.
“The head of police here, for some reason, is constantly changing. It’s a three-year contract, but they keep changing every six months, 12 months,” he said.
“They removed our provincial police commander in January and there’s no replacement even today.”
Tribal warfare exacerbated Home to hundreds of tribes and languages, Papua New Guinea has a long history of tribal warfare.
But an influx of mercenaries and automatic weapons has inflamed the cycle of violence.
During the past decade, villagers swapped bows and arrows for military rifles and elections have deepened existing tribal divides.
At the same time, the country’s population has more than doubled since 1980, placing increasing strain on land and resources, and stoking deepening tribal rivalries.
Eight people were killed and 30 homes torched in fighting in the Enga province in May, while at least 26 men were killed in an ambush in the same region in February.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and permission from ABC.
Since 7 October 2023, across every profession and social realm in Australia — teachers, students, doctors, nurses, academics, public servants, lawyers, journalists, artists, food and hospitality workers, protesters and politicians — speaking out against Israel’sgenocide and the Zionist political project has been met with blatant anti-Palestinian racism.
This has manifested in repressive silencing campaigns, disciplinary processes and lawfare.
As coercive repression of anti-Zionist voices escalates at a frenzied pace in Western society, what is at stake extends beyond individuals’ livelihoods and mental health, for these ultimately constitute collateral damage.
The real target and objective of anti-Palestinian racism is discursive disarmament, specifically, disarming the Palestinian movement of its capacity to critique and resist Zionism and hold Israel to account.
This disarmament campaign — the immobilising of our discursive and explanatory frameworks, our analysis and commentary, our slogans, protest language and chants — is emboldened and empowered by the collusion and complicity of institutions, media outlets and employers.
The past fortnight alone has seen a frenzy of Zionist McCarthyism. Both I and Special Broadcasting Service veteran journalist, Mary Kostakidis, were defamed as “7 October deniers” and rape apologists, and as being on a par with Holocaust deniers.
Complaint lodged
A week later, the Zionist Federation of Australia announced it had lodged a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) against Kostakidis, alleging racial vilification for her social media posts on Gaza.
On July 11, Australian-Palestinian activist and businessman Hash Tayeh was notified of arrest for allegedly inciting hatred of Jewish people over protest chants including “all Zionists are terrorists” and other statements equating Zionism with terrorism.
The same day, right-wing shock jock radio host Ray Hadley interrogated the AHRC about Australian-Palestinian Sara Saleh, employed as legal and research adviser to the AHRC’s president.
In violation of Saleh’s privacy, the AHRC went on the defensive and revealed that Saleh had resigned. Saleh had been subjected to months of anti-Palestinian racism and marginalisation at the commission.
On July 15, documents released under a freedom of information request revealed that the State Library of Victoria was actively surveilling the social media activity of four writers and poets — Arab and Muslim poet Omar Sakr, Jinghua Qian, Alison Evans and Ariel Slamet Ries, specifically around Palestine.
The documents provided more evidence that the writers’ pro-Palestine social media posts were the likely reason for the State Library cancelling a series of online creative writing workshops for teens which the writers had been contracted to host — corroborating what library staff whistleblowers had revealed earlier this year.
Political ideology It is impossible to overstate how the repression we are witnessing is occurring because governments, media, institutions and employers are legitimating disingenuous complaints and blatant hit-jobs by acquiescing to the egregious and false equivalence between Zionism and Judaism.
Despite pro-Palestine voices explicitly critiquing and targeting Zionist ideology and practice in clear distinction to Judaism and Jewish identity, and despite standing alongside anti-Zionist Jews, we are accused of antisemitism.
Zionism is a political ideology that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century. It explicitly argued for settler colonialism to replace the majority indigenous population of Palestine.
Zionism is not a religious, racial, ethnic or cultural identity. It is a political doctrine that a member of any culture, religion, race or ethnic category can subscribe to.
Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. Jews and Judaism existed for thousands of years before Zionism. These are not controversial contentions. They are borne out by almost a century of academic scholarship and have been adopted by anti-Zionist Jewish scholars, lawyers, human rights organisations and clerics.
They are supported by facts. Consider, for example, that the largest pro-Israel organisation in the United States is Christians United for Israel.
A Zionist can be an adherent of any religion and come from any ethnic or racial background. US President Joe Biden is an Irish-American Catholic and a Zionist.
Australia’s former prime minister, Scott Morrison, is an evangelical Christian and a Zionist. Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong is an Australian-Malay Christian and a Zionist.
Inherently racist
Zionist ideology is recognised as inherently racist because it denies the inalienable right of indigenous Palestinian people to self-determination, and the right to live free of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism and domination.
Palestinian subjugation is an existential necessity for the supremacist goal of Israel’s political project. This is not even contested.
Israel’s 2018 nation-state law explicitly states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people” and established “Jewish settlement as a national value”, mandating that the state “will labour to encourage and promote its establishment and development”.
Anti-Zionism is directed at a state-building project and a political regime. Rather than protect people’s right to subject Zionism to normative interrogation, as is the case with all political ideologies, institutions panic at complaints and uncritically legitimate the false claim that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.
Protected cultural identity Indulging vexatious claims and dishonest conflations is why we are seeing extraordinary coercive repression and anti-Palestinian racism across institutions.
To posit Zionism as a religious or ethnic identity is like saying white supremacy, Marxism, socialism or settler colonialism are all categories of identity. The perverse logic we are being asked to indulge is essentially this: Zionism equals Judaism therefore a white Christian Zionist is a protected cultural identity category.
Indulging the notion that the ideology of Zionism is a protected cultural identity sets a precedent that would be absurd if it were not so dangerous.
By this logic, communists can claim the status of a protected category of identity on the basis that there are Chinese communists who feel threatened by critiques of communism.
Adherents of doctrines and ideologies including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, socialism, liberalism and communism could claim to be protected identities.
Adherents of doctrines and ideologies including white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, socialism, liberalism and communism could claim to be protected identities
Further, if Zionism is a protected cultural identity, what does this mean for anti-Zionist Jews? And what is Zionism from the standpoint of its victims, as Edward Said famously said?
Genocide in name of Zionism
What does it mean for Palestinians whose lives are marked by dispossession, exile, refugee camps, land theft and now, as I write, genocide explicitly enacted in the name of Zionism?
In the context of a genocide that has so far, on a recent conservative by The Lancet, one of the world’s highest-impact academic journals, caused an estimated 186,000 deaths and counting, governments, institutions and mainstream media are prepared to effectively destroy any vestige of democratic principles, fundamental rights and intellectual rigour in order to exceptionalise Zionism and Israel and shield a political ideology and a state from critique.
While institutions stand with Israel, the vast majority of the public, witnessing the massacres, are daring to question Israel’s actions. This includes questioning the Zionist ideology that underpins that state.
Institutions and employers may choose to discipline and sack those calling out Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in this moment, but will be held to account for their complicity in the political suppression of our collective protest against crimes against humanity.
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is a Future Fellow at Macquarie University. Her research areas cover Islamophobia, race, Palestine, the war on terror, youth identities and social movement activism. She is also a lawyer and the multi-award-winning author of 12 books for children and young adults. This article was republished from Middle East Eye.
By Brooke Tindall, Queensland University of Technology
With more than 50 Fijian villages earmarked for potential relocation in the next five to 10 years due to the climate crisis, Fijian journalists are committing themselves to amplifying the voices of those who face the challenges of climate change in their everyday lives.
Vunidogoloa village on the island of Vanua Levu was home to 32 families who lived in 26 homes. As early as 2006, floods and erosion caused by both sea-level rise and increased rains started to reach homes and destroy crops that fed the community.
The situation worsened in the following years, with water progressively taking over the village. The mangroves that used to cover the coast where they lived were absorbed by the sea completely.
The Fijian government began the mission to relocate Vunidogoloa in 2014. Not only did people in the community walk away from their homes, they left the place where their traditions and stories were passed down. Since Vunidogoloa was relocated, five other Fijian villages have faced the same fate.
Several projects have been established in response to such pressing threats, with an aim to increase the amount of climate journalism in Fijian media.
University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh has previously expressed concern about the lack of specialisation in climate reporting in the Pacific and says the articles produced can often come from “privileged elite viewpoints”.
Dr Singh continues to harbour such concerns in 2024. He notes that Pacific news media organisations have small profit margins, so rather than face the expense of sending out teams to talk to everyday people, their stories tend to focus on presentations and speeches that are cheaper to cover.
“This refers to the plethora of meetings, conferences, and workshops where the experts do all the talking and presenting,” he says.
“Ordinary people in the face of climate change are suffering impacts and do not get as much coverage.”
Training journalists to specialise in climate reporting will give them an in-depth understanding of both talking to experts and ordinary people experiencing the effects of climate change, Dr Singh says.
Blessen Tom’s climate change ‘ghost’ village report on Vunidogoloa for Bearing Witness in 2016. Video: Pacific Media Centre
“It brings focus, consistency and knowledge if done on a regular basis. Science has its place, but let’s not forget that people dealing and living with the effects of climate change are experts in their own right.”
Up-and-coming journalists, USP students Brittany Nawaqatabu and Viliame Tawanakoro say they see it as a good journalists’ responsibility to prioritise climate stories.
“Journalism provides people with the opportunity to be the vessel of message to the world. We are the captain of the ship that delivers the message,” Viliame says.
Brittany criticises Western media that considers climate change as a “debatable” topic.
“You have to put yourself in the shoes of a Pacific Islander to know what it’s really like. You can’t be debating it because you’re not the one going through it,” she says.
It’s important for Fijian media to continue to put the climate crisis on the front page and not let the stories become lost in other news, she says.
“If we are not going to become strong advocates as Pacific islanders for climate change and what our island homes are going through, then it’s only going to go downhill.”
Brooke Tindall is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This is published as the first of a series under our Asia Pacific Journalism partnership with QUT Journalism.
By Stefan Armbruster, Harlyne Joku and Tria Dianti
No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.
Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.
Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape chat during their meeting in Bogor, West Java, earlier this month. Image: Muchlis Jr/Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.
“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.
“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”
Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.
The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians,” Rabuka said at the time. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific“We continue establishing a constructive engagement with the UN on the progress of human rights improvement in Indonesia,” Siti Ruhaini, senior advisor to the Indonesian Office of the President told BenarNews, including in “cases of the gross violation of human rights in the past that earned the appreciation from UN Human Rights Council”.
Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.
The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.
In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.
In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.
Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”
After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.
A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.
PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.
“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.
He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.
During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.
Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”
Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.
Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.
“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.
“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”
Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.
Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.
Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.
While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.
An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.
Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.
Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.
Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.
“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.
“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”
The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.
President Jokoki Widodo (center) in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape (left) and Prime Minister of Fiji Sitiveni Rabuka in San Francisco in November 2023. Image: Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.
“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.
By Stefan Armbruster, Harlyne Joku and Tria Dianti
No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.
Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.
Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape chat during their meeting in Bogor, West Java, earlier this month. Image: Muchlis Jr/Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.
“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.
“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”
Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.
The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians,” Rabuka said at the time. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific“We continue establishing a constructive engagement with the UN on the progress of human rights improvement in Indonesia,” Siti Ruhaini, senior advisor to the Indonesian Office of the President told BenarNews, including in “cases of the gross violation of human rights in the past that earned the appreciation from UN Human Rights Council”.
Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.
The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.
In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.
In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.
Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”
After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.
A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.
PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.
“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.
He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.
During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.
Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”
Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.
Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.
“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.
“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”
Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.
Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.
Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.
While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.
An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.
Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.
Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.
Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.
“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.
“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”
The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.
President Jokoki Widodo (center) in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape (left) and Prime Minister of Fiji Sitiveni Rabuka in San Francisco in November 2023. Image: Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.
“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.
New Zealand should join others in calling New Caledonia’s third independence referendum invalid, one of the founders of the Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Network says.
In December 2021, the Kanak population boycotted the referendum to mourn their dead during the covid-19 pandemic, after their calls for the referendum to be delayed was ignored.
As a result, Peters said the referendum saw voter turnout collapse and almost 97 percent of voters who cast a ballot voted “No” to independence.
“Delegitimising the result, in the eyes of pro-independence forces and some neutral observers at least, was the low turnout of only 44 percent.”
Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity group’s David Small said Peters should have aligned with the Melanesian Spearhead Group which has called for a UN mission to New Caledonia.
‘Referendum delegitimised’
“He said that the third referendum was delegitimised in the eyes of some, and did not include New Zealand in that,” Small said.
“It would have been better if he had because that third referendum was indefensible.”
The group said Peters had mentioned the need for dialogue but failed to provide a clear pathway or goal.
“The Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Group is deeply disappointed by Peters’ insufficient support for the Kanak people’s struggle.
“His statement at PALM10 represents a missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples.”
Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . “missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples,” says Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity. Image: RNZ/Nick Monro
‘Fed by disinformation’, claims envoy However, the top French diplomat in the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, said she had reassured Pacific Islands Forum Leaders (PIF) that attended PALM10 that France’s actions during the third and final independence referendum were fair.
Roger-Lacan spoke to RNZ Pacific from Tokyo following talks with the leaders of Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
She said there was “so much disinformation” surrounding issues in New Caledonia and that Pacific leaders had only heard one side of the story.
“For example, Mark Brown sent a letter to President [Louis] Mapou but he did not try and contact France, kind of ignoring that New Caledonia until further notice is France,” she said.
“We tried to call them, but Mark Brown would not be there to pick up the phone.
“But luckily, the Prime Minister of Tonga, the incoming chair of the PIF and everyone else was there, so that everyone was very happy to hear the information that we were providing.
“We are going to provide full information in writing because it seems that everybody ignores . . . the substance of the matter, and everybody is totally fed by disinformation and propaganda” surrounding issues in New Caledonia.
Delegation to New Caledonia ‘decision has been made’ According to PIF’s outgoing chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister, Mark Brown, work is already in progress to send a high-level Pacific delegation to investigate the ongoing political crisis, which has resulted in 10 deaths and the economic costs totalling 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion).
“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said at a news conference at the PALM10 meeting in Tokyo.
A spokesperson for the New Caledonia President’s office, Charles Wea, has told RNZ Pacific that the high-level group was expected to be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
“The decision that has been made by the leaders during the meeting in Japan to send a mission to New Caledonia before the annual meeting over the of PIF around the second or third week of August,” he said.
“The objectives of the mission will be to come and listen and discuss with all parties in New Caledonia in order to [prepare] a report [for] the leaders meeting in Tonga.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
When Melbourne-born Helen Hill, an outstanding social activist, scholar and academic, died on 7 May 2024 at the age of 79, the Timorese government sent its Education Minister, Dulce de Jesus Soares, to deliver a moving eulogy at the funeral service at Church of All Nations in Carlton.
Helen will be remembered for many things, but above all for her 50 years of dedication to friendship with the people of Timor-Leste and solidarity in their struggle for independence.
At the funeral, Steve Bracks, chancellor of Victoria University and former premier of Victoria, also paid tribute to Helen’s lifetime commitment to social justice and to the independence and flourishing of Timor-Leste in particular.
Further testimonies were presented by Jean McLean (formerly a member of the Victorian Legislative Council), the Australia-East Timor Association, representatives of local Timorese groups and Helen’s family. Helen’s long-time friend, the Reverend Barbara Gayler, preached on the theme of solidarity.
Helen was born on 22 February 1945, the eldest of four children of Robert Hill and Jessie Scovell. Her sister Alison predeceased her, and she is survived by her sister Margaret and her brother Ian and their children and grandchildren.
Her father fought with the Australian army in New Guinea before working for the Commonwealth Bank and becoming a branch manager. Her mother was a social worker at the repatriation hospital.
The family were members of the Presbyterian Church in Blackburn, which fostered an attitude of caring for others.
Studied political science
Helen’s secondary schooling was at Presbyterian Ladies College, where she enjoyed communal activities such as choir. She began a science course at the University of Melbourne but transferred to Monash University to study sociology and political science, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1970.
At Monash, Helen was an enthusiastic member of the Labor Club and the Student Christian Movement (SCM), where issues of social justice were regularly debated.
Opposition to the war in Vietnam was the main focus of concern during her time at Monash. In 1970, Helen was a member of the organising committee for the first moratorium demonstration in Melbourne and also a member of the executive committee of the Australian SCM (ASCM, the national body) which was based in Melbourne.
She edited Political Concern, an alternative information service, for ASCM. In 1971, Helen was a founding member of International Development Action. Helen was a great networker, always ready to see what she could learn from others.
Perhaps the most formative moment in Helen’s career was her appointment as a frontier intern, to work on the Southern Africa section of the Europe/Africa Project of the World Student Christian Federation, based in London (1971-1973). This project aimed to document how colonial powers had exploited the resources of their colonies, as well as the impact of apartheid in South Africa.
In those years, she also studied at the Institute d’Action Culturelle in Geneva, which was established by Paulo Freire, arguably her most significant teacher. The insights and contacts from this time of engagement with global issues of justice and education provided a strong foundation for Helen’s subsequent career.
In 1974, Helen embarked on a Master of Arts course supervised by the late Professor Herb Feith. Helen had met student leaders from the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola in the Europe/Africa project, who asked her about East Timor (“so close to Australia”).
East Timor thesis topic
Recognising that she, along with most Australians, knew very little about East Timor, Helen proposed East Timor as the focus of her master’s thesis. She began to learn Portuguese for this purpose.
Following the overthrow of the authoritarian regime in Portugal in April 1974 and the consequent opportunities for independence in the Portuguese colonies, she visited East Timor for three months in early 1975, where she was impressed by the programme and leadership of Fretilin, the main independence party.
Her plans were thwarted by the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975, and she was unable to revisit East Timor until after the achievement of independence in 2000. Her 1978 Master of Arts thesis included an account of the Fretilin plans rather than the Fretilin achievements.
Her 1976 book, The Timor Story, was a significant document of the desire of East Timorese people for independence and influenced the keeping of East Timor on the UN decolonisation list. She was a co-founder of the Australia-East Timor Association, which was founded in the initial days of the Indonesian invasion.
Helen was a founding member of the organisation Campaign Against Racial Exploitation in 1975. She was prolific in writing and speaking for these causes, not simply as an advocate, but also as a capable analyst of many situations of decolonisation. She was published regularly in Nation Review and also appeared in many other publications concerned with international affairs and development.
Helen was awarded a rare diploma of education (tertiary education method) from the University of Melbourne in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, she was a full-time doctoral student at Australian National University, culminating in a thesis about non-formal education and development in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (the islands of the north Pacific).
Helen participated in significant international conferences on education and development in these years and was involved in occasional teaching in the nations and territories of her thesis.
Teaching development studies
In 1991, she was appointed lecturer at Victoria University to teach development studies, which, among other things, attracted a steady stream of students from Timor-Leste. In 2000, she was able to return to Timor-Leste as part of her work for Victoria University.
An immediate fruit of her work in 2001 was a memorandum of understanding between Victoria University and the Dili Institute of Technology, followed in 2005 with another between Victoria University and the National University of Timor-Leste.
One outcome of this latter relationship has been biennial conferences on development, held in Dili. Also in 2005, she was a co-founder of the Timor-Leste Studies Association.
Helen stood for quality education and for high academic standards that can empower all students. In 2014, Helen was honoured by the government of Timor-Leste with the award of the Order of Timor-Leste (OT-L).
Retiring from Victoria University in 2014, Helen chose to live in Timor-Leste, while returning to Melbourne regularly. She continued to teach in Dili and was employed by the Timor-Leste Ministry of Education in 2014 and from 2018 until her death.
Helen came to Melbourne in late 2023, planning to return to Timor-Leste early in 2024, where further work awaited her.
A routine medical check-up unexpectedly found significant but symptom-free cancer, which developed rapidly, though it did not prevent her from attending public events days before her death on May 7. Friends and family are fulsome in their praise of Helen’s brother Ian, who took time off work to give her daily care during her last weeks.
Helen had a distinguished academic career, with significant teaching and research focusing on the links between development and education, particularly in the Pacific context, though with a fully global perspective.
Helen had an ever-expanding network of contacts and friends around the world, on whom she relied for critical enlightenment on issues of concern.
From Blackburn to Dili, inspired by sharp intelligence, compassion, Christian faith and a careful reading of the signs of the times, Helen lived by a vision of the common good and strove mightily to build a world of peace and justice.
Sandy Yule was general secretary of the Australian Student Christian Movement from 1970-75, where he first met Helen Hill, and is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. He wrote this tribute with help from Helen Hill’s family and friends. It was first published by The Age newspaper and is republished from the DevPolicy Blog at Australian National University.
An interview with former University of the South Pacific (USP) development studies professor Dr Vijay Naidu, a founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), has produced fresh insights into the legacy of Pacific nuclear-free and anti-colonialism activism.
The community storytelling group Talanoa TV, an affiliate of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub and linked to the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), has embarked on producing a series of short educational videos as oral histories of people involved in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) Movement to document and preserve this activist mahi and history.
The series, dubbed “Legends of NFIP”, are being timed for screening in 2025 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 and also with the 40th anniversary of the Rarotonga Treaty for a Nuclear-Free Pacific.
Legends of NFIP – Professor Vijay Naidu. Video: Talanoa TV
These videos are planned to “bring alive” the experiences and commitment of people involved in a Pacific-wide movement and will be suitable for schools as video podcasts and could be stored on open access platforms.
“This project is also expected to become an extremely useful resource for students and researchers,” says project convenor Nikhil Naidu, himself a former FANG and Coalition for Democracy (CDF) activist.
In this 14-minute interview, Professor Naidu talks about the origins of the NFIP Movement.
“At this time [1970s], there were the French nuclear tests that were actually atmospheric nuclear tests and people like Suliana Siwatibau and Graeme Bain started the ATOM movement (Against Nuclear Tests on Moruroa) in Tahiti in the 1970s at USP,” he says.
“And we began to understand the issues around nuclear testing and how it affected people — you know, the radiation. And drop-outs and pollution from it.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show in The Hague, where the International Court of Justice ruled last Friday that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, should come to an end — “as rapidly as possible”.
Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian Territories began in 1967, has since forcefully expanded, killing and displacing thousands of Palestinians. ICJ Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam read the nonbinding legal opinion, deeming Israel’s presence in the territories illegal.
JUDGE NAWAF SALAM: [translated] “Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity. Israel also has an obligation to repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the territory.
“Israel is also under an obligation to provide full reparations for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned.”
AMY GOODMAN: The court also said other nations are obligated not to legally recognise Israel’s decades-long occupation of the territories and, “not to render aid or assistance,” to the occupation.
The 15-judge panel said Israel had no right to sovereignty of the territories and pointed to a number of Israeli actions, such as the construction and violent expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across West Bank and East Jerusalem, the forced permanent control over Palestinian lands, and discriminatory policies against Palestinians — all violations of international law.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, praised Friday’s ruling.
RIYAD AL-MALIKI: “All states and the UN are now under obligation not to recognise the legality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to do nothing to assist Israel in maintaining this illegal situation.
“They are directed by the court to bring Israel’s illegal occupation to an end.
“This means all states and the UN must immediately review their bilateral relations with Israel to ensure their policies do not aid in Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinian people, whether directly or indirectly. … “[translated] All states must now fulfill their clear obligations: no aid, no collusion, no money, no weapons, no trade, nothing with Israel.”
Democracy Now! on the ICJ Palestine ruling. Video: Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: In 2022, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution tasking the International Court of Justice with determining whether the Israeli occupation amounted to annexation. This all comes as the ICJ is also overseeing a [separate and] ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and as the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Despite mounting outcry over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed some 39,000 Palestinians — more than 16,000 of them children — Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, DC, to address a joint session of Congress this Wednesday.
For more, we go to Brussels, Belgium, where we’re joined by Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Thank you so much for being with us. Diana, first respond to this court ruling. Since it is non-binding, what is the significance of it?
DIANA BUTTU: Even though it’s nonbinding, Amy, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any weight. It simply means that Israel is going to ignore it. But what it does, is it sets out the legal precedent for other countries, and those other countries [that] do have to respect the opinion of the highest court, the highest international court.
And so, what we see with this decision is that it’s a very important and a very necessary one, because we see the court makes it clear not only that Israel’s occupation is illegal, but it also says that all countries around the world have an obligation to make sure that Israel doesn’t get away with it, that they have an obligation to make sure that this occupation comes to an end.
This is very important, because over the years, and in particular over the past 30 years, we’ve seen a shift in international diplomacy to try to push Palestinians to somehow give up their rights. And here we have the highest international court saying that that isn’t the case and that, in fact, it’s up to Israel to end its military occupation, and it’s up to the international community to make sure that Israel does that.
AMY GOODMAN: And exactly what is the extended decision when it comes to how other countries should deal with Israel at this point?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, there are some very interesting elements to this case. The first is that the court comes out very clearly and not just says that the occupation is illegal, but they also say that the settlements have to go and the settlers have to go.
They also say that Palestinians have a right to return. Now, we’re talking about over 300,000 Palestinians who were expelled in 1967, and now there are probably about 200,000 Palestinians who have never been able to return back — we’re just talking about the West Bank and Gaza Strip — because of Israel’s discriminatory measures.
The other thing that the court says is that it’s not just the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are occupied, but also Gaza, as well. And this is a very important ruling, because for so many years Israel has tried to blur the lines and make it seem as though they’re not in occupation of Gaza, which they are.
And so, what this requires is that the international community not only not recognise the occupation, but that they take into account measures or they take measures to make sure that Israel stops its occupation.
That means everything from arms embargo to sanctions on Israel — anything that is necessary that can be done to make sure that Israel’s occupation finally comes to an end. And this is where we now see that instead of the world telling Palestinians that they just have to negotiate a resolution with their occupier, with their abuser, that the ball is now in their court.
It’s up to the international community now to put sanctions on Israel to end this military occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what’s happening right now in Gaza. You’ve got the deaths at — it’s expected to be well over 39,000. But you also have this new report by Oxfam that finds Israel has used water as a weapon of war, with Gaza’s water supplies plummeting 94 percent since October 7 and the nonstop Israeli bombardment.
Even before, their access was extremely limited. And then you have this catastrophic situation where you have, because of the destruction of Gaza’s water treatment plants, forcing people to resort to sewage-contaminated water containing pathogens that lead to diarrhoea, especially deadly for kids, diseases like cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has started to vaccinate the Israeli soldiers after Palestinian health authorities said a high concentration of the poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza. It’s taking place, the vaccination programme of soldiers, across Israel in the coming weeks. The significance of this, Diana?
DIANA BUTTU: This is precisely what we’ve been talking about, which is that Israel is carrying out genocide, they know that they’re carrying out genocide, and we don’t see that anybody is stopping Israel in carrying out this genocide.
So, here now we have yet another International Court of Justice ruling. This one — the previous ones are actually binding, saying that Israel has to take all measures to stop this genocide. And yet we just simply don’t see that the world has put into place measures to sanction Israel, to isolate Israel, to punish Israel.
Instead, it gets to do whatever it wants.
But there is something very important, as well, which is that Israel somehow believes that it’s going to be immune, that somehow this polio or all of these diseases aren’t going to boomerang back into Israeli society. They will.
And the issue here now is whether we are going to see some very robust action on the part of the international community, now that we have a number of decisions from the ICJ saying to Israel that it’s got to stop and that this genocide must come to end. Israel must pay a price for continuing this genocide.
Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/2id5cpOa58
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I wanted to end by asking you about Benjamin Netanyahu coming here to the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights tweeted, “Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered.”
If you can talk about the significance of Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress?
Also, it’s expected that the person who President Joe Biden has said he is supporting, as he steps aside, to run for president, Vice-President Kamala Harris, is expected to be meeting with Netanyahu. And what you would like to see happen here?
DIANA BUTTU: You know, it’s repugnant to me to be hearing that a war criminal, a person who has flattened Gaza, who said that he was going to flatten Gaza, who has issued orders to kill more than 40,000, upwards of 190,000 Palestinians — we still don’t know the numbers — who has made life in Gaza unlivable, who’s using Palestinians as human pinballs, telling them to move from one area to the next, who’s presiding over a genocide, and unabashedly so — it’s going to be shocking to see the number of applause and rounds of applause and the standing ovations that this man is going to be receiving.
It very much signals exactly where the United States is, which is complicit in this genocide.
And Palestinians know this. If anything, he should have not had received an invitation. He should simply be getting a warrant for his arrest, not be receiving applause and accolades in Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, joining us from Brussels, Belgium.
In the West Bank, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.
SPECIAL REPORT: Samidoun
On Friday, July 5, France announced the continued provisional detention on mainland France of 5 Kanak defendants, out of seven pro-independence “leaders” who had been deported from Kanaky New Caledonia on June 23.
The subsequent announcements of the arrest of 11 pro-independence activists, including 9 provisional detentions (including Joël Tjibaou and Gilles Jorédié, incarcerated in Camp Est) and 7 incarcerations in mainland France (Christian Tein, Frédérique Muliava, Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, Dimitri Tein Qenegei, Guillaume Vama, Steve Unë and Yewa Waethane), more than 17,000 kilometres from their homeland, revived the mobilisations that had begun a month earlier as part of the fight against the plan to “unfreeze” the Kanaky electoral body.
Suspended after President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, this project actually aims to reverse the achievements of the Nouméa Accords signed in 1998.
It is part of the strategy of strengthening French colonialism in Kanaky by extending the ability to vote on local matters, including independence referandums, to an even greater number of settlers, making the indigenous Kanaks a de facto minority at the ballot box.
On July 11, 10 Centaur armoured vehicles, 15 fire trucks, a dozen all-terrain military armoured vehicles and numerous army trucks were landed by ship in Kanaky, where the population remains under curfew.
This entire sequence bears witness to the manner in which France, through its colonial administration, deploys a repressive security arsenal that on the one hand protects the settlers on the land and their reactionary militias, and on the other, attempts to destroy the country’s Kanak independence movement.
Imprisonment and incarceration are a weapon of choice in this overall colonial strategy.
Imprisonment is one of the key weapons of choice in colonial strategies to try to stifle independence and national liberation struggles, from the Zionist regime in Palestine to allied imperialist countries and colonial empires such as France.
While the figures are incomparable due to differences between the populations and conditions, in the West Bank, according to Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.
Camp Est Prison in Nouville, on the outskirts of Nouméa. Image: Samidoun
Nicknamed “the island of oblivion” by the prisoners, the Camp Est prison locks up many young Kanaks excluded from the economic, educational and health systems, and symbolises the French colonial continuum, especially as the building partly occupies the space of the former French penal colony imposed there.
Silence of sociologists
Few studies exist of this over-incarceration of the Kanak population, and as Hamid Mokadem reminds us:
“The silence of sociologists and demographers on ethno-cultural inequalities is inversely proportional to the chatter of anthropologists on Kanak customs and culture.”
The incarceration rate is significantly higher than in mainland France, so much so that a new prison has been built.
The Koné detention center, and a project to replace Camp Est was announced in February 2024 by the Minister of Justice. He promised a 600-bed facility (compared to the 230 cells available at Camp Est) that would emerge after a construction project estimated at 500 million euros (NZ$908 million).
This is the largest investment by the French state on Kanak soil, a deadly promise that at the same time reaffirms France’s imperialist project in the Pacific, driven by its financial and geopolitical interests to retain its colonial properties there.
While waiting for this large-scale prison project, new cells have been fitted out in containers on which a double mesh roof has been installed, many without windows, and where the conditions of incarceration are even harsher than in the other sections of the prison, including those for men, women and minors, pre-trial detainees and those who have been convicted and sentenced.
The over-representation of the Kanak population has only increased, since incarceration has been one of the mechanisms through which the French government attempts to stem the movement against the plan to “unfreeze” and expand the electoral body, with 1139 arrests since mid-May.
The penalty of deportation
Local detention was supplemented by another penalty directly inherited from the Code de l’Indigénat: the penalty of deportation.
On June 23, after the announcement of the arrest of 7 Kanak independence activists in metropolitan France, the population learned that they were going to be deported 17,000 km from their homes.
A plane was waiting to transfer them to metropolitan France during their pretrial detention, all seven of them dispersed across the prisons of Dijon, Mulhouse, Bourges, Blois, Nevers, Villefranche and Riom.
This deportation of activists in the context of pre-trial detention directly recalls the events of 1988, and more broadly the way in which prison and removal were used in a colonial context.
From the 19th century and the deportation of Toussaint Louverture of Haiti to France, thousands of Algerians arrested during the uprisings against the French colonisation of Algeria at the same time as the detention of the prisoners of the Paris Commune in 1871, the Vietnamese of Hanoi in 1913, were deported to Kanaky or other colonies such as Guyana.
More recently, the Algerian revolutionaries, were massively incarcerated in metropolitan colonial prisons. From a principle inherited from the indigénat, and although today we have moved from an administrative decision to a judicial decision, the practice of deportation remains the same.
Particularly used in the context of anti-colonial resistance movements, the deportation of Kanak prisoners to metropolitan colonial prisons has been used on this scale since 1988 in Kanaky.
Ouvéa cave massacre
After the massacre of 19 Kanak independence fighters who had taken police officers prisoner in the Ouvéa cave, activists still alive were imprisoned, then deported, then released as part of the Matignon-Oudinot Accords.
Twenty six Kanak prisoners came to populate the prisons of the Paris region while they were still in preventive detention — while awaiting their trials and therefore presumed innocent, as is the case today for the CCAT activists currently incarcerated.
In the 1980s, French prisons were shaken by major revolts, particularly against the racism of the guards, who were mostly affiliated with the then-nascent Front National (FN), and more broadly against the penal policy of the Mitterrand left and the massively expanding length of sentences imposed at the time.
In 1988, as former prisoners wrote afterwards, some made a point of showing their solidarity with the Kanaks by sharing their clothes and food with them.
Because many of the activists were transferred in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, in trying conditions, with their hands cuffed during the 24-hour journey, underhand repression techniques of the Prison Administration that are still in force.
Similar deportation conditions were described by Christian Téin, spokesperson for the CCAT incarcerated in the isolation wing of the Mulhouse-Lutterbach Penitentiary Center. The shock of incarceration is all the more violent.
CCAT leader Christian Téin, organiser of a series of marches and protests, mainly peaceful . . . he was deported and transferred to prison in Mulhouse, north-eastern France, to await trial. Image: NZ La 1ère TV screenshot APR
Added to this is the pain of the forced separation of parents and children, which is found not only in the current situation in metropolitan France but also in Palestine. Also there is great difficulty in finding loved ones, in attempting to find out which prisons they are in, or even if they are currently detained, continually encountering administrative violence, with the absence of information and the cruelty of official figures.
Orchestrated psychological impact
All this is orchestrated so that the psychological impact, in the long term, aims to induce the prisoners and also their families to stop fighting.
At the time of the events in Ouvéa, the uprooting of independence activists from their lands to lock them up in mainland France was commonplace, and the Kanak detainees joined those from the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance such as Luc Reinette and Georges Faisans, incarcerated in Île-de-France during the 1980s alongside Corsican and Basque prisoners.
Since then, this had only happened once, in the context of the uprisings in Guadeloup in 2021, where several local figures, mostly community activists, had been deported and then incarcerated in mainland France and Martinique in an attempt to stifle the revolts in which a large number of Guadeloupean youth were mobilised.
Here again, we could draw a parallel with Palestine. As Assia Zaino points out, since the 2000s, the incarceration of Palestinians has systematically been synonymous with being torn away from their families and loved ones.
Zionist prisons, located within the Palestinian territories colonised in 1948, “are integrated into the civil prison system [. . . ] and entry bans on Israeli soil are frequently imposed on the families of detainees for security reasons,” which in fact aims to attack the relatives of detainees and destabilise the national liberation struggle.
Ahmad Saadat, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh and their comrades in detention – date and location unknown. Image: Samidoun
From prison, the struggle continues This mass incarceration is confronted by the powerful presence of prisoners as symbols of courage and resistance.
We know that in Palestine, as during the Algerian war of national liberation, incarceration is an opportunity to learn from one’s people, to forge national revolutionary consciousness but also to continue the struggle, very concretely, by mobilising against incarceration.
Because the Palestinian prisoners’ movement has transformed the colonial prison into a school of revolution: each political party has a prison branch whose political bureau or leadership is made up of imprisoned leaders.
These branches have real weight in the decisions taken outside the walls, and they are the ones responsible for leading the struggle in the colonial prisons, in particular by declaring collective hunger strikes and developing alliances of struggle that can mobilise several thousand prisoners, but also for organising the daily life of revolutionaries in prison.
It was this movement of prisoners that played a major role in driving the Palestinian resistance groups to unite under a unified command with the total liberation of historic Palestine as their compass, and to overcome internal contradictions.
Historically, the prisoners also constituted a significant part the most radical elements of the Palestinian revolution, notably by massively refusing any negotiation with the Zionist state at the time when the disastrous Oslo Accords were being prepared.
Resistance in colonial prisons can also take cultural forms, as illustrated by the very rich Palestinian prison literature, composed of literary works written in secret and smuggled out by prisoners to bear witness to the outside world of the vitality of their ideals, their struggle and the conditions of detention.
Courage of the children
An example is Walid Daqqah, a renowned writer and one of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners, who was martyred on 7 April 2024 during his 38th year of detention in colonial prisons.
In short, from the children and adolescents who wear courageous smiles as they leave their trials surrounded by soldiers, to the women of Damon prison who heroically stand up to their jailers, to the resistance of the prisoners who fight by putting their lives and health at risk while having a central role in the Resistance outside, it is the daily struggle of the prisoners’ movement that makes detention a place where resistance to the colonial regime is organised, continuing even inside detention.
As Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, said:
“Despite the intention to use political imprisonment to suppress Palestinian resistance and derail the Palestinian liberation movement, Palestinian prisoners have remained political leaders and symbols of steadfastness for the struggle as a whole.”
In Kanaky, it was the announcement of the incarceration of CCAT activists on June 23 that relaunched the movement, who became the driving forces behind this new round of mobilisation.
On May 13, while the population was setting up roadblocks on the main roads of Nouméa, a mutiny broke out in the Camp Est prison in reaction to the plan to unfreeze the electoral body.
The prison was therefore directly part of the mobilisation, and three guards were taken hostage on this first day of struggle. They were quickly released after the RAID (French national police tactical unit) intervened.
But during the night of May 14-15, another revolt took place in the prison, rendering no fewer than 80 cells unusable.
It is therefore in this context of uprising and intifada throughout Kanaky, both in prisons and outside, that the announcement of the deportation of the 7 Kanak leaders took place.
In addition to these highly publicised deportations, there were also dozens of similar cases of transfers from Camp Est.
Completely ignored by the government, these took place both before May 23 and during the month of July, including participants in the prison uprisings as well as long-term prisoners transferred to relieve congestion in the Kanak prison.
Silence which masks the scale of these colonial deportations only intends to make the task of the families and political supporters of the Kanaks even more difficult in their attempt to show solidarity with the prisoners.
Furthermore, upon their arrival in mainland France, the CCAT activists were separated into 7 different prisons, directly recalling the policy of dispersion already at work in Spain at the end of the 1980s against ETA prisoners, in reaction to the effectiveness of their prison organising.
Today as yesterday, the colonial power dispatches prisoners throughout the mainland to prevent a collective counter-offensive. The prisoners’ connections with one another, but also with the outside, are consequently largely hampered.
This isolation directly aims to break the movement by tearing off its “head” and preventing any form of common struggle against this confinement. We therefore know that the momentum of struggle outside seems to respond to a hardening of detention conditions inside prisons, as evidenced by the isolation in which the CCAT activists are kept.
Likewise in Palestine, where since last October 7, mass arrests have escalated to the development of military concentration camps characterised by inhumane conditions of incarceration where severe torture is a daily, routine occurrence.
Currently, both for the more than 9300 Palestinian prisoners detained in the 19 Zionist colonial prisons, and for the thousands of prisoners from Gaza arrested during the genocidal offensive of the occupying forces on the Strip incarcerated in military camps, the conditions of detention have deteriorated significantly.
If in the colonial prisons Palestinian prisoners suffer hunger, collective isolation, overcrowding, violence and physical and psychological torture, conditions which have led to the martyrdom of at least 18 prisoners since October 7, in the military detention camps the situation is even more extreme.
The thousands of prisoners from Gaza held there are handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day, forced to kneel on the ground, motionless for most of the day, raped and sexually assaulted and tortured daily, which leaves the released prisoners with enormous trauma.
Sick prisoners are crammed in naked, equipped with diapers, on beds without mattresses or blankets, in military airplane hangars and warehouses and without any medical care.
In all cases, isolation reigns, in prisons as in military detention centers, and the Zionist regime aims to cut off the Palestinian prisoners — and their collective movement — from the outside world.
A “Freedom Brigade” Palestinian prison escape poster. Image: Samidoun
Stories of prison escapes Beyond the heroic prison uprisings, many stories of escapes from colonial prisons also fuel resistance and demonstrate the resilience of prisoners.
In Palestine, to cite a recent example, we recall the “Freedom Tunnel” operation, where six Palestinian prisoners freed themselves from the Zionist-occupied Gilboa high-security prison by digging a tunnel using a spoon.
The six Palestinians — Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yaqoub Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubaidi — became Palestinian, Arab and international symbols of Palestinian resistance and the will for freedom.
While they were all rearrested, their escape exposed the weaknesses under the colonial myth of “impenetrable Israeli security”, plunging the occupation’s prison system into an internal crisis.
In France, the CRAs (Administrative Detention Centres) represent an ultra-violent manifestation of racism and the management of exiles. People are locked up in terrible and therefore deadly conditions.
Thus, faced with colonial management of populations, particularly from former French colonies, resistance is being organised.
For example, on the night of Friday, June 21 to Saturday, June 22, 14 people held at the CRA in Vincennes managed to escape (only one person has been re-arrested since).
This follows the escape of 11 detainees in December from this same place of confinement. However, these detention centres are often recent and very well equipped.
From Palestine to the Hegaxone and the colonial prisons in Kanaky, the resistance fighters fight day by day within the prison system itself, and the escapes and uprisings in the prisons are events that weaken the colonial propaganda and its myth of invincibility and total superiority.
A “Freedom for the Kanaky CCAT comrades” banner. Image: Image: Samidoun
Resistance continues
Despite the tightening of detention conditions and the security arsenal that is deployed against liberation movements, it is clear that the resistance is not stopping and that, on the contrary, organizing is becoming even more vigorous.
In Kanaky, new blockades in solidarity with the prisoners have spread well beyond Nouméa since June 23, demanding their immediate release and repatriation to Kanaky, since “touching one of them is touching everyone”.
In mainland France, numerous gatherings have also taken place since Monday at the call of the MKF (Kanak Movement in France), and among others led by the Collectif Solidarité Kanaky in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, and also in front of the prisons where the activists are still incarcerated.
Their prison numbers have been made public so that it is possible to write to them and so that broad and massive support can be communicated to them in order to provide them with the strength necessary for this fight from metropolitan France.
From now on, tributes to the Kanak martyrs who fell under the bullets of the colonial militias and the French State are joined by banners for the freedom of the prisoners.
Marah Bakir, a representative of Palestinian women prisoners, arrested at the age of 15 by the colonial army and imprisoned for 8 years, made these comments during her first interview given upon her release on 24 November 2023:
“It is very difficult to feel freedom and to be liberated in exchange for the blood of the martyrs of Gaza and the great sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip.”
The Kanaky ‘martyrs’:
Stéphanie Nassaie Doouka, 17, and Chrétien Neregote, 36, shot in the head on May 20 by a business manager.
Djibril Saïko Salo, 19, shot in the back on May 15 by loyalist settlers at a roadblock.
Dany Tidjite, 48, killed by an off-duty police officer who tried to impose a roadblock.
Joseph Poulawa, 34, killed on May 28 by two bullets in the chest and shoulder by the GIGN (the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France)
Lionel Païta, 26, killed on June 3 by a bullet to the head by a police officer at a roadblock.
Victorin Rock Wamytan, known as “Banane”, 38 years old, father of two children, killed on July 10 by a shot in the chest by the GIGN on customary lands
In Kanaky, the names of these martyrs, just like the 19 of the Ouvéa cave, will remain forever in the memory of the activists and people, and as one could read on another banner in Noumea: “The fight must not cease for lack of a leader or fighters, this direction remains forever. Kanaky”
This article, by Samidoun Paris Banlieue, was published first in French at: https://samidoun.net/fr/2024/07/la-question-carcerale-dans-la-colonisation-de-la-kanaky-a-la-palestine/. During the protests in Kanaky in May and ongoing, French military forces targeted demonstrators, imposed a countrywide ban on TikTok, and have seized multiple political prisoners from the Kanak independence movement. This article is republished from Samidoun.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has “hung . . . out to dry” Fiji’s suspended New Zealand Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who wrote to him seeking assistance, a former Fiji government advisor-cum-critic says.
“The sudden cessation of my salary at the eleventh hour whilst I am in the middle of instructing legal counsel in Fiji to defend myself against charges brought by the Fijian government is a denial of natural justice that has left me with little choice but to seek your assistance,” Pryde said in a five-page letter to the minister.
A spokesperson from Peters’ office told RNZ Pacific today: “This is a matter between Mr Pryde and the government of Fiji. It is not a matter for the minister to comment on.”
However, according to the Fiji Sun, Peters — in an exclusive interview with the newspaper — said that “he was not happy” with the New Zealander’s “approach to seek assistance from him”.
“He (Pryde) wrote to everybody and sent me a copy,” he was quoted as saying in a frontpage news story with the headline ‘Winston slams Pryde’s email action for help’.
“He sent me a copy? He wrote me a letter and sent it to everyone else at the same time!. What do you think about somebody that wrote to you — asking for help and then sent it to everyone else at the same time? What would you think?,” the newspaper reported.
‘Bereft of principle’
The Deputy Prime Minsiter’s comments reported in the Fijian daily have been labelled by a former Fiji government communications advisor and Grubsheet blog publisher, Graham Davis, as “highhanded and bereft of principle”.
“Winston Peters has clearly hung Christopher Pryde out to dry,” Davis said.
“His dismissive attitude to suspended DPP Pryde now being unable to defend himself against a false charge of misbehaviour because his salary has been severed is . . . highhanded and bereft of principle.
“And it sends an ominous message to every New Zealander working in the Pacific or contemplating doing so that if they fall foul of their host governments, Winston [Peters] will cut them loose. They are on their own.”
NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . told the Fiji Sun he was “not happy” with Pryde’s letter to him appealing for NZ help. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told local media that Pryde was entitled to receive all salaries until he was removed from office.
The Kiwi lawyer was suspended 15 months ago after he allegedly “spent about 30 to 45 minutes conversing alone” with former Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at a public event hosted by the Japanese Embassy in the capital Suva.
In April last year, Rabuka said people in high office needed to be “very aware of who is watching what we do”.
‘Fraternising’ with person under investigation
“For the DPP [Pryde] to be seen to be fraternising with high profile person under investigation would not be the right thing for the DPP to [have] done.”
Pryde, who has held the top prosecutor’s role since 2011, warned other New Zealand citizens who have taken up positions in Fiji’s criminal justice system “may potentially be adversely impacted if the Fijian government is permitted to ignore due process and the rule of law”.
“The NZ government provides substantial aid to Fiji in support of the rule of law which is being undermined,” he wrote to Peters.
The Fiji Law Society and the New Zealand Law Society (NZLS) have expressed concerns on the issue.
NZLS president Frazer Barton has encouraged “respect for and compliance . .. of the rule of law”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Family members keep silent on the issue of violence in Fiji and individuals continue to be the victims, according to Jonathan Veitch, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative to the South Pacific.
While raising his concern on the issue at Nasinu Gospel Primary School on Friday, he said 83 percent of children in Fiji had reported some level of violence, either in their family or in school over the past six months.
“This 83 percent rate is far too high, and it’s not acceptable,” he said.
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”
Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victim to deal with the trauma.
Speaking during a student-led press conference at Nasinu Gospel Primary School, Veitch expressed his concern about the alarming rate of violence against women and children in Fiji, whether physical or sexual.
“You (Fiji) do have high rates of violence against children,” Veitch said.
“This (83 percent rate) is far too high, and it’s not acceptable.
‘Curtain of silence’
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”
He said it was common in Fiji for family members to keep silent on the issue of violence while individuals continued to be victimised.
“If that particular person has to be stopped, we have to deal with it in our village.
“So, it’s not just UNICEF and the Government; it’s also the village itself.”
Veitch said significant pillars of communities must be involved in key conversations.
“We really need to talk about it in our churches on Sundays; we have to have an honest conversation about it.
“These kids shouldn’t be hurt; they shouldn’t be punished physically.”
Multifaceted approach
He said the issue should be dealt with through a multifaceted approach.
Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell expressed similar concerns and called for a change in norms.
“It requires government leadership and good laws,” she said.
“It requires the government to come together and say that this is a priority where violence against children is unacceptable.”
She said conversations regarding the matter needed to focus on changing the norms of what was acceptable and unacceptable in a community.
“A lot of times this issue is kept in the dark and not talked about, and I think it’s very important to have those conversations.”
She said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victims to deal with the trauma.
She added that society played a role in condemning violence against women and ensuring they were safe in their homes and in their communities.
Russell said while most cases were directed at men, there was a need to train the mindset of young boys to change their perspective of using violence as a solving mechanism.
Sainimili Magimagiis a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
The Pacific Islands Forum hopes to send a high-level delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia to investigate the current political crisis in the French territory before the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga in August.
According to Pacnews, Forum Chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown confirmed this during an interview with journalists in Tokyo after the conclusion of the PALM10 meeting.
He said while it was a work in progress, there had been a request from the territorial government of New Caledonia for a high-level Pacific delegation.
Brown said the next step was to write a letter which would then need support from France.
“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the Government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said.
“We do have similar concerns. The third referendum was boycotted by the Kanak population because of the impacts of covid-19 and the respect for the mourning period. Therefore, the outcome of that referendum is not valuable,” he said.
The adviser to New Caledonia’s President Charles Wea, who is in Japan for talks on the sidelines of the PALM10 meeting, told RNZ Pacific the high level group would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
New Caledonia government adviser Charles Wea . . . mission to New Caledonia would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Fiji’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka announced he would lead the Forum’s fact-finding mission in New Caledonia.
“I have also been asked by many Pacific leaders to lead a group to conduct a fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing,” he said during a talanoa session with the Fijian diaspora in Tokyo.
Fiji Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . leading a “fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing”. Image: RNZ/Giles Dexter
“Additionally, I will accompany Prime Minister James Marape to visit the President of Indonesia to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua.”
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