French Polynesia’s president has announced his administration will establish one of the world’s largest networks of highly protected marine areas (MPAs).
The highly protected areas will safeguard 220,000 sq km of remote waters near the Society Islands and 680,000 sq km near the Gambier Islands.
Speaking at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, President Moetai Brotherson pledged to protect nearly 23 percent of French Polynesia’s waters.
“In French Polynesia, the ocean is much more than a territory — it’s the source of life, culture, and identity,” he said.
“By strengthening the protection of Tainui Atea (the existing marine managed area that encompasses all French Polynesian waters) and laying the foundations for future marine protected areas . . . we are asserting our ecological sovereignty while creating biodiversity sanctuaries for our people and future generations.”
Once implemented, this would be one of the world’s single-largest designations of highly protected ocean space in history.
Access will be limited, and all forms of extraction, such as fishing and mining, will be banned.
Highly protected
The government is also aiming to create a highly protected artisanal fishing zone that extends about 28 km from the Austral, Marquesas, and Gambier islands and 55.5 km around the Society Islands.
Fishing in that zone will be limited to traditional single pole-and-line catch from boats less than 12m long.
Together, the zones encompass an area about twice the size of continental France.
President Brotherson also promised to create additional artisanal fishing zones and two more large, highly protected MPAs within the next year near the Austral and Marquesas islands.
He also committed to bolster conservation measures within the rest of French Polynesia’s waters.
Donatien Tanret, who leads Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy’s work in French Polynesia, said local communities had made it clear that they wanted to see stronger protections that reflected both scientific guidance and their ancestral culture for future generations.
“These protections and commitments to future designations are a powerful example of how local leadership and traditional measures such as rāhui can address modern challenges.”
Samoa announces MPAs Before the conference, Samoa adopted a legally binding Marine Spatial Plan — a step to fully protect 30 percent and ensure sustainable management of 100 percent of its ocean.
The plan includes the establishment of nine new fully protected MPAs, covering 36,000 sq km of ocean.
Toeolesulsulu Cedric Schuster, Samoa’s Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, said Samoa was a large ocean state and its way of life was under increased threat from issues including climate change and overfishing.
“This Marine Spatial Plan marks a historic step towards ensuring that our ocean remains prosperous and healthy to support all future generations of Samoans — just as it did for us and our ancestors.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
French Polynesia’s president has announced his administration will establish one of the world’s largest networks of highly protected marine areas (MPAs).
The highly protected areas will safeguard 220,000 sq km of remote waters near the Society Islands and 680,000 sq km near the Gambier Islands.
Speaking at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, President Moetai Brotherson pledged to protect nearly 23 percent of French Polynesia’s waters.
“In French Polynesia, the ocean is much more than a territory — it’s the source of life, culture, and identity,” he said.
“By strengthening the protection of Tainui Atea (the existing marine managed area that encompasses all French Polynesian waters) and laying the foundations for future marine protected areas . . . we are asserting our ecological sovereignty while creating biodiversity sanctuaries for our people and future generations.”
Once implemented, this would be one of the world’s single-largest designations of highly protected ocean space in history.
Access will be limited, and all forms of extraction, such as fishing and mining, will be banned.
Highly protected
The government is also aiming to create a highly protected artisanal fishing zone that extends about 28 km from the Austral, Marquesas, and Gambier islands and 55.5 km around the Society Islands.
Fishing in that zone will be limited to traditional single pole-and-line catch from boats less than 12m long.
Together, the zones encompass an area about twice the size of continental France.
President Brotherson also promised to create additional artisanal fishing zones and two more large, highly protected MPAs within the next year near the Austral and Marquesas islands.
He also committed to bolster conservation measures within the rest of French Polynesia’s waters.
Donatien Tanret, who leads Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy’s work in French Polynesia, said local communities had made it clear that they wanted to see stronger protections that reflected both scientific guidance and their ancestral culture for future generations.
“These protections and commitments to future designations are a powerful example of how local leadership and traditional measures such as rāhui can address modern challenges.”
Samoa announces MPAs Before the conference, Samoa adopted a legally binding Marine Spatial Plan — a step to fully protect 30 percent and ensure sustainable management of 100 percent of its ocean.
The plan includes the establishment of nine new fully protected MPAs, covering 36,000 sq km of ocean.
Toeolesulsulu Cedric Schuster, Samoa’s Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, said Samoa was a large ocean state and its way of life was under increased threat from issues including climate change and overfishing.
“This Marine Spatial Plan marks a historic step towards ensuring that our ocean remains prosperous and healthy to support all future generations of Samoans — just as it did for us and our ancestors.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s Te Pāti Māori has condemned the Israeli navy’s armed interception of the Madleen, a civilian aid vessel attempting to carry food, medical supplies, and international activists to Gaza, including Sweden’s climate activist Greta Thunberg.
In a statement after the Madleen’s communications were cut, the indigenous political party said it was not known if the crew were safe and unharmed.
However, Israel has begun deportations of the activists and has confiscated the yacht and its aid supplies for Gaza.
“This is the latest act in a horrific string of violence against civilians trying to access meagre aid,” said Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
“Since May 27, more than 130 civilians have murdered been while lining up for food at aid sites.
“This is not an arrest [of the Madleen crew], it as an abduction. We have grave concerns for the safety of the crew.
“Israel [has] proven time again they aren’t above committing violence against civilians.
“Blocking baby formula and prosthetics while a people are deliberately starved is not border patrol, it is genocide.”
Te Pāti Māori said it called on the New Zealand government to:
Demand safe release of all crew;
Demand safe passage of Aid to Gaza;
Name this blockade and starvation campaign for what it is — genocide; and
Pacific advocacy movements and civil society organisations have challenged French credentials in hosting a global ocean conference, saying that unless France is accountable for its actions in the Pacific, it is merely “rebranding”.
The call for accountability marked the French-sponsored UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice this week, during which President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting a France-Pacific Summit.
French officials have described the UNOC event as a coming together “in the true spirit of Talanoa” and one that would be inconceivable without the Pacific.
While acknowledging the importance of leveraging global partnerships for urgent climate action and ocean protection through the UNOC process, Pacific civil society groups have issued a joint statement saying that their political leaders must hold France accountable for its past actions and not allow it to “launder its dirty linen in ‘Blue Pacific’ and ‘critical transition’ narratives”.
‘Responsible steward’ image undermined
France’s claims of being a “responsible steward” of the ocean were undermined by its historical actions in the Pacific, said the statement. This included:
● A brutal colonial legacy dating back to the mid-1800s, with the annexation of island nations now known as Kanaky-New Caledonia and Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia;
● A refusal to complete the decolonisation process, and in fact the perpetuation of the colonial condition, particularly for the those “territories” on the UN decolonisation list. In Kanaky-New Caledonia, for instance, France and its agents continue to renege on longstanding decolonisation commitments, while weaponising democratic ideals and processes such as “universal” voting rights to deny the fundamental rights of the indigenous population to self-determination;
● 30 years of nuclear violence in Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia with 193 test detonations — 46 in the atmosphere and close to 150 under the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, irradiating both land and sea, and people. Approximately 90 percent of the local population was exposed to radioactive fallout, resulting in long-term health impacts, including elevated rates of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses;
● Active efforts to obscure the true extent of its nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui-French Polynesia, diverting resources to discredit independent research and obstructing transparency around health and environmental impacts. These actions reveal a persistent pattern of denial and narrative control that continues to undermine compensation efforts and delay justice for victims and communities;
● French claims to approximately one-third of the Pacific’s combined EEZ, and to being the world’s second largest ocean state, accruing largely from its so-called Pacific dependencies; and
● The supply of French military equipment, and the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior by French secret service agents — a state-sponsored terrorist attack with the 40th anniversary this year.
A poster highlighting the issue of political prisoners depicting the Kanak flag after the pro-independence unrest and riots in New Caledonia last year. Image: Collectif Solidarité Kanaky
Seeking diplomatic support
“Since the late 1980s, France has worked to build on diplomatic, development and defence fronts to garner support from Pacific governments.
This includes development assistance through the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Asian Development Fund, language and cultural exchanges, scientific collaboration and humanitarian assistance.
A strong diplomatic presence in Pacific capitals as well as a full schedule of high-level exchanges, including a triennial France-Oceania leaders’ Summit commencing in 2003, together function to enhance proximity with and inclination towards Paris sentiments and priorities.
The Pacific civil society statement said that French leadership at this UNOC process was once again central to its ongoing efforts to rebrand itself as a global leader on climate action, a champion of ocean protection, and a promoter of sovereignty.
“Nothing can be further from the truth,” the groups said.
“The reality is that France is rather more interested in strengthening its position as a middle power in an Indo-Pacific rather than a Pacific framework, and as a balancing power within the context of big-power rivalry between the US and China, all of which undermines rather than enhances Pacific sovereignty.”
New global image
The statement said that leaders must not allow France to build this new global image on the “foundations of its atrocities against Pacific peoples” and the ocean continent.
Pacific civil society called on France:
● For immediate and irreversible commitments and practical steps to bring its colonial presence in the Pacific to an end before the conclusion, in 2030, of the 4th International Decade on the Eradication of Colonialism; and
● To acknowledge and take responsibility for the oceanic and human harms caused by 30 years of nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui–French Polynesia, and to commit to full and just reparations, including support for affected communities, environmental remediation of test sites, and full public disclosure of all health and contamination data.
The statement also called on Pacific leaders to:
● Keep France accountable for its multiple and longstanding debt to Pacific people; and
● Ensure that Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia and Kanaky-New Caledonia remain on the UN list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised (UN decolonisation list).
“Pacific leaders must ensure that France does not succeed in laundering its soiled linen — soiled by the blood of thousands of Pacific Islanders who resisted colonial occupation and/or who were used as test subjects for its industrial-military machinery — in the UNOC process,” said the statement.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Many people have been closely following the journey this week of the Madleen, a small humanitarian yacht seeking to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza with a crew of 12 on board, including humanitarian activists and journalists.
This morning we woke to the harrowing, yet not unexpected, news that the vessel had been illegally hijacked by Israeli forces, who boarded and took the crew captive into Israeli territories, in contravention of international law.
Yet another on the long list of war crimes Israel has committed over the last 20 months of genocide, and decades of illegal occupation.
Communication with the crew was lost after the final moments of tense onboard footage as they donned lifejackets, threw phones and other sensitive data overboard, and raised their arms in preparation for whatever might come next.
Israel has a detailed history of attacking all previous freedom flotillas — including the 2010 mission aboard the Mavi Marmara in which 10 crew were killed and dozens more injured when Israeli forces hijacked the humanitarian vessel.
Another mission earlier this year was cut short when it was targeted by an airstrike in international waters, injuring crew.
The next updates were scenes filmed by Israeli forces which appear to show them calmly handing bread rolls and water to the detained crew, painting a picture which immediately recalled my own experience last year being unlawfully arrested in the southern West Bank.
Detained while documenting
I was detained while documenting armed settler violence, taken illegally to a military base where myself and three other internationals were given a bathroom stop, bread and water.
While we ate, they filmed us, saying “You are unharmed, yes? We are looking after you well?”
We were then loaded into a police van where a Palestinian farmer sat blindfolded, in silence, with his hands zip-tied behind him.
Eleven of the 12 crew members on board the humanitarian yacht Madleen before being arrested by Israeli forces today. Image: FFC screenshot APR
Israel loves to put on a show of their “humane treatment” when internationals are present and cameras are rolling, but it’s a shallow and sinister facade for their abusive racism and cruelty towards Palestinians.
It appears their response to the Madleen’s crew over the next few days will be exactly that. Don’t buy into it; this is no more than deeply sinister propaganda to cover state-backed racism, supremacy, and cruelty.
Families in Gaza are still facing indiscriminate airstrikes, continuous displacement, forced starvation, and the phony Israel/US “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” which has led to more than 100 civilians being shot while desperately seeking food.
Thousands of trucks still wait at the border to Gaza, barred entry by Israeli forces, while Palestinians face severe malnutrition and a man-made famine.
The New Zealand government has still not placed a single sanction on the Israeli state.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Many people have been closely following the journey this week of the Madleen, a small humanitarian yacht seeking to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza with a crew of 12 on board, including humanitarian activists and journalists.
This morning we woke to the harrowing, yet not unexpected, news that the vessel had been illegally hijacked by Israeli forces, who boarded and took the crew captive into Israeli territories, in contravention of international law.
Yet another on the long list of war crimes Israel has committed over the last 20 months of genocide, and decades of illegal occupation.
Communication with the crew was lost after the final moments of tense onboard footage as they donned lifejackets, threw phones and other sensitive data overboard, and raised their arms in preparation for whatever might come next.
Israel has a detailed history of attacking all previous freedom flotillas — including the 2010 mission aboard the Mavi Marmara in which 10 crew were killed and dozens more injured when Israeli forces hijacked the humanitarian vessel.
Another mission earlier this year was cut short when it was targeted by an airstrike in international waters, injuring crew.
The next updates were scenes filmed by Israeli forces which appear to show them calmly handing bread rolls and water to the detained crew, painting a picture which immediately recalled my own experience last year being unlawfully arrested in the southern West Bank.
Detained while documenting
I was detained while documenting armed settler violence, taken illegally to a military base where myself and three other internationals were given a bathroom stop, bread and water.
While we ate, they filmed us, saying “You are unharmed, yes? We are looking after you well?”
We were then loaded into a police van where a Palestinian farmer sat blindfolded, in silence, with his hands zip-tied behind him.
Eleven of the 12 crew members on board the humanitarian yacht Madleen before being arrested by Israeli forces today. Image: FFC screenshot APR
Israel loves to put on a show of their “humane treatment” when internationals are present and cameras are rolling, but it’s a shallow and sinister facade for their abusive racism and cruelty towards Palestinians.
It appears their response to the Madleen’s crew over the next few days will be exactly that. Don’t buy into it; this is no more than deeply sinister propaganda to cover state-backed racism, supremacy, and cruelty.
Families in Gaza are still facing indiscriminate airstrikes, continuous displacement, forced starvation, and the phony Israel/US “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” which has led to more than 100 civilians being shot while desperately seeking food.
Thousands of trucks still wait at the border to Gaza, barred entry by Israeli forces, while Palestinians face severe malnutrition and a man-made famine.
The New Zealand government has still not placed a single sanction on the Israeli state.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Israel’s military attack and boarding of the humanitarian boat Madleen attempting to deliver food and medical aid to the besieged people of Gaza has been condemned by New Zealand Palestinian advocacy groups as a “staggering act of state piracy”.
The vessel was in international waters, carrying aid workers, doctors, journalists, and supplies desperately needed by the 2 million population that Israel has systematically bombed, starved, and displaced.
“This was not a military confrontation. It was the assault of an unarmed civilian aid ship by a state acting with total impunity,” said the group Thyme4Action.
“This is piracy, it is state terror, and it is a genocidal act of war.
Half of the 12 crew and passengers on board are French citizens and the volunteer group includes French-Palestinian European parliamentarian Rima Hassan and Swedish climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg and two journalists.
They all made pre-recorded messages calling for international pressure on their governments against the Israeli state. The messages were posted on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition X page.
The group Thyme4Action said in a media release that a regime engaged in genocide would send sends drones and armed commandos to detain civilians in international waters.
Israel’s ‘total moral collapse’
“We are witnessing the total moral collapse of a state, supported for years by Western governments to act with utter impunity, violate our global legal system, morality and principles.
“No amount of spin or military propaganda can hide the cruelty of deliberately starving a population, targeting children, bombing hospitals and bakeries, and then violently stopping others from bringing aid.”
Thyme4Action said the attack on the Madleen was not a separate incident — “it is part of the same campaign to eliminate Palestinian life, hope, and survival. It is why the International Court of Justice has already ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.”
“This is not complicated,” said the statement.
French journalist Yanis Mhandi on board the Madleen . . . “I’ve been detained by Israeli forces while doing my job as a journalist.” Image: FFC screenshot APR
“Israel has no legal authority in international waters. Under the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Israel’s boarding of a civilian aid ship beyond its territorial waters is an act of piracy, unlawful kidnapping, forcible abduction and armed
aggression.
Under international humanitarian law, deliberately blocking aid to a population facing
starvation is a war crime.
Under the Genocide Convention, when a state intentionally denies food, water, and
medicine to a population it is bombing and displacing, this constitutes part of a genocidal
campaign.”
NZ silence condemned
The advocacy group condemned the silence of the New Zealand government as being “no longer neutral”.
The moment that the Freedom Flotilla Coalition lost communications with the Madleen as Israeli forces attacked the vessel. Image: FFC
It demonstrated a shocking lack of respect for international law, for human rights, and for the safety of global humanitarian workers.
“It reflects a broader decay in foreign policy — where selective outrage and Israeli
exceptionalism undermine the credibility of everything New Zealand claims to stand for.”
Thyme4Action called on the New Zealand government to:
• Publicly condemn Israel’s illegal assault on the Madleen and its passengers;
• Demand the immediate release of all aid workers, journalists, and civilians
abducted by Israeli forces;
• Suspend all diplomatic, military, and trade cooperation with Israel until it complies
with international law; and
• Support international accountability mechanisms, including referring Israel’s crimes
to the International Criminal Court and backing enforcement of the ICJ’s provisional
measures on genocide.
“This has to stop. This is not just a crisis in Gaza,” said the statement.
‘Crisis of global morality’
“It is a crisis of global morality, of international law, and of our basic shared humanity.
“We stand with the people of Gaza. We stand with the brave souls aboard the Madleen, and
we demand an end to this madness before the world forgets what it means to be human.
“We need a government that stands for all that is right, not all that is wrong.
“Aid is not terrorism. International waters are not Israel’s territory. And silence in the face of evil is complicity.”
SOS! the volunteers on ‘Madleen’ have been kidnapped by Israeli forces.
Rima Hassan is a French citizen.
Pressure the foreign ministries and help us keep them safe!
Palau’s president says the US order to fast-track deep sea mining is not a good idea.
Deep sea mining frontrunner The Metals Company (TMC) has since confirmed it will not apply for a mining licence through the International Seabed Authority (ISA), instead opting to apply through US regulations.
Surangel Whipps Jr. said the high seas belongs to the entire world so everyone must exercise caution.
“We should be responsible, and what we’ve asked for is a moratorium, or a temporary pause . . . until you have the right information to make the most important informed decision,” Whipps told RNZ Pacific.
Whipps said it’s important for those with concerns to have an opportunity to speak to US President Donald Trump.
“Because it’s about partnership. And I think a lot of times it’s the lack of information and lack of sharing information.
“It’s our job now as the Pacific to stand up and say, this direction could be detrimental to all of us that depend on the Pacific ocean and the ocean and we ask that you act responsibly for humankind and for the Pacific.”
US seabed policy
Trump’s executive order states: “It is the policy of the US to advance United States leadership in seabed mineral development.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was directed to, within 60 days, “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act”.
Pacific Islands Forum Leader’s retreat 2024 in Vava’u, Tonga. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
It directs the US Science and Environmental Agency to expedite permits for companies to mine the ocean floor in the US and international waters.
The Metals Company has praised the US deep sea mining licensing pathway.
In a press release, its chief executive Gerard Barron made direct reference to Trump’s order, titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources”.
He said he was heartened by its call “for a joint assessment of a seabed benefit-sharing mechanism” and was certain that “big ocean states” like Nauru would continue to play a leading role in the deep sea mining industry.
There are divergent views on deep sea exploration and mining in the Pacific, with many nations, civil society groups, and even some governments advocating for a moratorium or outright ban.
Exploration contracts
However, Tonga, Nauru, Kiribati and the Cook Islands have exploration contracts with mining representatives.
Vanuatu’s Climate Minister Ralph Regenvanu told RNZ Pacific in 2023 that Vanuatu’s position is for no deep sea mining at any point.
“We have a lot to think about in the Pacific. We are the region that is spearheading for seabed minerals,” he said.
The Cook Islands has sought China’s expertise in seabed mining through “high-level” discussions on Prime Minister Mark Brown’s February 2025 trip to China.
Nauru President David Adeang (left) with Cook Islands PM Mark Brown at the opening of the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, in August 2024. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Whipps said “you have to give [The Metals Company] credit” that they have been able to get in there and convince Donald Trump that this is a good direction to go.
But as the president of a nation with close ties to the US and Taiwan, and the host of the PIF Ocean’s Commissioner, he has concerns.
“We don’t know the impacts to the rest of what we have in the Pacific — which is for us in the Pacific, it’s tuna [which] is our biggest resource,” Whipps said.
“How is that going to impact on the food chain and all of that?
“Because we’re talking about bringing, first of all, impacting the largest carbon sink that we have, which is the oceans, right? So we say our islands are sinking, but now we want to go and do something that helps our islands sink.
“That’s not a good idea.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
It is difficult to understand what sits behind the New Zealand government’s unwillingness to sanction, or threaten to sanction, the Israeli government for its genocide against the Palestinian people.
The United Nations, human rights groups, legal experts and now genocide experts have all agreed it really is “genocide” which is being committed by the state of Israel against the civilian population of Gaza.
It is hard to argue with the conclusion genocide is happening, given the tragic images being portrayed across social and increasingly mainstream media.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has presented Israel’s assault on Gaza war as pitting “the sons of light” against “the sons of darkness”. And promised the victory of Judeo-Christian civilisation against barbarism.
A real encouragement to his military there should be no-holds barred in exercising indiscriminate destruction over the people of Gaza.
Given this background, one wonders what the nature of the advice being provided by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the minister entails?
Does the ministry fail to see the destruction and brutal killing of a huge proportion of the civilian people of Gaza? And if they see it, are they saying as much to the minister?
Cloak of ‘diplomatic language’
Or is the advice so nuanced in the cloak of “diplomatic language” it effectively says nothing and is crafted in a way which gives the minister ultimate freedom to make his own political choices.
The advice of the officials becomes a reflection of what the minister is looking for — namely, a foreign policy approach that gives him enough freedom to support the Israeli government and at the same time be in step with its closest ally, the United States.
The problem is there is no transparency around the decision-making process, so it is impossible to tell how decisions are being made.
I placed an Official Information Act request with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 2024 seeking advice received by the minister on New Zealand’s obligations under the Genocide Convention.
The request was refused because while the advice did exist, it fell outside the timeline indicated by my request.
It was emphasised if I were to put in a further request for the advice, it was unlikely to be released.
They then advised releasing the information would be likely to prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand and the international relations of the government of New Zealand, and withholding it was necessary to maintain legal professional privilege.
Public interest vital
It is hard to imagine how the release of such information might prejudice the security or defence of New Zealand or that the legal issues could override the public interest.
It could not be more important for New Zealanders to understand the basis for New Zealand’s foreign policy choices.
New Zealand is a contracting party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Under the convention, “genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they [the contracting parties] undertake to prevent and punish”.
Furthermore: The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide. (Article 5).
Accordingly, New Zealand must play an active part in its prevention and put in place effective penalties. Chlöe Swarbrick’s private member’s Bill to impose sanctions is one mechanism to do this.
In response to its two-month blockade of food, water and medical supplies to Gaza, and international pressure, Israel has agreed to allow a trickle of food to enter Gaza.
However, this is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to avert famine. Understandably, Israel’s response has been criticised by most of the international community, including New Zealand.
Carefully worded statement
In a carefully worded statement, signed by a collective of European countries, together with New Zealand and Australia, it is requested that Israel allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza, an immediate return to ceasefire and a return of the hostages.
Radio New Zealand interviewed the Foreign Minister Winston Peters to better understand the New Zealand position.
Peters reiterated his previous statements, expressing Israel’s actions of withholding food as “intolerable” but when asked about putting in place concrete sanctions he stated any such action was a “long, long way off”, without explaining why.
New Zealand must be clear about its foreign policy position, not hide behind diplomatic and insincere rhetoric and exercise courage by sanctioning Israel as it has done with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
As a minimum, it must honour its responsibilities under the Convention on Genocide and, not least, to offer hope and support for the utterly powerless and vulnerable Palestinian people before it is too late.
John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.
More than 150 press freedom advocacy groups and international newsrooms have joined Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in issuing a public appeal demanding that Israel grant foreign journalists immediate, independent and unrestricted access to the Gaza Strip.
The organisations are also calling for the full protection of Palestinian journalists, nearly 200 — the Gaza Media Office says more than 230 — of whom have been killed by the Israeli military over the past 20 months.
For more than 20 months, Israeli authorities have barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, says RSF in a media release.
During the same period, the Israeli army killed nearly 200 Palestinian journalists in the blockaded territory, including at least 45 slain for their work.
Palestinian journalists who continue reporting — the only witnesses on the ground — are facing unbearable conditions, including forced displacement, famine, and constant threats to their lives.
This collective appeal, launched by RSF and CPJ, brings together prominent news outlets from every continent demanding the right to send correspondents into Gaza to report alongside Palestinian journalists.
“The media blockade imposed on Gaza, combined with the massacre of nearly 200 journalists by the Israeli army, is enabling the total destruction and erasure of the blockaded territory,” said RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin.
“Israeli authorities are banning foreign journalists from entering and ruthlessly asserting their control over information.
“This is a methodical attempt to silence the facts, suppress the truth, and isolate the Palestinian press and population.
Asia Pacific Report . . . one of the signatories to the Gaza plea. Image: APR
“We call on governments, international institutions and heads of state to end their complicit silence, enforce the immediate opening of Gaza to foreign media, and uphold a principle that is frequently trampled — under international humanitarian law, killing a journalist is a war crime.
“This principle has been violated far too often and must now be enforced.”
RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin speaking at the reception celebrating seven years of Taipei’s Asia Pacific office in October 2024. Image: Pacific Media Watch
The media blockade on Gaza persists despite repeated calls from RSF to guarantee foreign journalists independent access to the Strip, and legal actions such as the Foreign Press Association’s (FPA) petition to the Israeli Supreme Court.
Palestinian journalists, meanwhile, are trapped, displaced, starved, defamed and targeted due to their work.
Those who have survived this unprecedented massacre of journalists now find themselves without shelter, equipment, medical care or even food, according to a CPJ report. They face the risk of being killed at any moment.
To end the enduring impunity that allows these crimes to continue, RSF has repeatedly referred cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC), urging it to investigate alleged war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza by the Israeli army.
RSF also provides aid to Palestinian journalists on the ground — particularly in Gaza — through partnerships with local organisations such as ARIJ (Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism).
This partnership provides Palestinian journalists with psychological and professional support, ensuring the continued publication of high-quality reporting despite the blockade and the risks.
Through this cooperation, RSF reaffirms its commitment to defending independent, rigorous journalism — even under the most extreme conditions.
Bougainville, an autonomous archipelago currently part of Papua New Guinea, is determined to become the world’s newest country.
To support this process, it’s offering foreign investors access to a long-shuttered copper and gold mine. Formerly owned by the Australian company Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine caused displacement and severe environmental damage when it operated between 1972 and 1989.
Australia views Bougainville as strategically important to its “inner security arc”. The main island is about 1500 km from Queensland’s Port Douglas.
Given this, the possibility of China’s increasing presence in Bougainville raises concerns about shifting allegiances and the potential for Beijing to exert greater influence over the region.
Australia’s tangled history in Bougainville Bougainville is a small island group in the South Pacific with a population of about 300,000. It consists of two main islands: Buka in the north and Bougainville Island in the south.
Bougainville has a long history of unwanted interference from outsiders, including missionaries, plantation owners and colonial administrations (German, British, Japanese and Australian).
Two weeks before Papua New Guinea received its independence from Australia in 1975, Bougainvilleans sought to split away, unilaterally declaring their own independence. This declaration was ignored in both Canberra and Port Moresby, but Bougainville was given a certain degree of autonomy to remain within the new nation of PNG.
The opening of the Panguna mine in the 1970s further fractured relations between Australia and Bougainville.
Landowners opposed the environmental degradation and limited revenues they received from the mine. The influx of foreign workers from Australia, PNG and China also led to resentment. Violent resistance grew, eventually halting mining operations and expelling almost all foreigners.
Under the leadership of Francis Ona, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) fought a long civil war to restore Bougainville to Me’ekamui, or the “Holy Land” it once was.
After the war ended, Australia helped broker the Bougainville Peace Agreement led by New Zealand in 2001. Although aid programmes have since begun to heal the rift between Australia and Bougainville, many Bougainvilleans feel Canberra continues to favour PNG’s territorial integrity.
In 2019, Bougainvilleans voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum. Australia’s response, however, was ambiguous.
As Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama, a former BRA commander, told me in 2024:
“We are moving forward. And it’s the people’s vision: independence. I’m saying, no earlier than 2025, no later than 2027.
“My benchmark is 2026, the first of September. I will declare. No matter what happens. I will declare independence on our republican constitution.”
Major issues to overcome
Bougainville leaders see the reopening of Panguna mine as key to financing independence. Bougainville Copper Limited, the Rio Tinto subsidiary that once operated the mine, backs this assessment.
But reopening the mine would also require addressing the ongoing environmental and social issues it has caused. These include polluted rivers and water sources, landslides, flooding, chemical waste hazards, the loss of food security, displacement, and damage to sacred sites.
Many of these issues have been exacerbated by years of small-scale alluvial mining by Bougainvilleans themselves, eroding the main road into Panguna.
Some also worry reopening the mine could reignite conflict, as landowners are divided about the project. Mismanagement of royalties could also stoke social tensions.
Violence related to competition over alluvial mining has already been increasing at the mine.
The Bougainville government cannot deal with these complex issues on its own. Nor can it finance the infrastructure and development needed to reopen the mine. This is why it’s seeking foreign investors.
Panguna, Bougainville’s “mine of tears”, when it was still operating . . . Industry players believe 5.3 million tonnes of copper and 547 tonnes of gold remain at the site, which is attracting foreign interest, including from China. Image: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report
Open for business
Historically, China has a strong interest in the region. According to Pacific researcher Dr Anna Powles, Chinese efforts to build relationships with Bougainville’s political elite have increased over the years.
Chinese investors have offered development packages contingent on long-term mining revenues and Bougainville’s independence. Bougainville is showing interest.
Patrick Nisira, the Minister for commerce, Trade, Industry and Economic Development, said last year the proposed Chinese infrastructure investment was “aligning perfectly with Bougainville’s nationhood aspirations”.
The government has also reportedly made overtures to the United States, offering a military base in Bougainville in return for support for reopening the mine.
Given American demand for minerals, Bougainville could very well end up in the middle of a struggle between China and the US over influence in the new nation, and thus in our region.
Which path will Bougainville and Australia take? There is support in Bougainville for a future without large-scale mining. One minister, Geraldine Paul, has been promoting the islands’ booming cocoa industry and fisheries to support an independent Bougainville.
The new nation will also need new laws to hold the government accountable and protect the people and culture of Bougainville. As Paul told me in 2024:
“[…]the most important thing is we need to make sure that we invest in our foundation and that’s building our family and culture. Everything starts from there.”
What happens in Bougainville affects Australia and the broader security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. With September 1, 2026, just around the corner, it is time for Australia to intensify its diplomatic and economic relationships with Bougainville to maintain regional stability.
One of the 12 activists on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla aid vessel Madleen has posted an update on their progress, saying the mission would not be deterred by Israel’s threats to block them.
In a video posted to X, Thiago Ávila said the crew, which includes high-profile Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, was not intimidated by a message they had received from Israel on Thursday, reports Al Jazeera.
He said Israeli authorities had said that the Madleen, which is carrying food and medical supplies, would be blocked from entering Gaza — and that if they attempted to deliver them, they would come under attack.
“It’s important that we understand that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and any other repressive regime throughout history, they actually fear the people, we do not fear them,” he said.
“We know that this is part of a global uprising much larger than this humble mission of 12 people on a small boat. It will not be through force that they will make a way to defeat us.”
With no other vessel able to respond, the Madleen diverted to the distressed vessel, where it found 30 to 40 people trapped in a rapidly deflating dinghy.
While the crew of the Madleen were attempting a rescue of their own, they were approached at speed by a unit of the Libyan Coast Guard, specifically one belonging to the Tareq Bin Zayed brigade, which Al Jazeera has previously reported upon.
On realising that the approaching vessel belonged to the Libyan Coast Guard, four dinghy passengers jumped into the water and swam to the Madleen, where they were rescued.
The remainder were taken on board the Libyan Coast Guard’s vessel and presumably returned to Libya.
It’s the 6th day of our journey onboard the Madleen to #breakthesiege of Gaza and create a people’s humanitarian sea corridor! The Freedom Flotilla Coalition will never stop due to the Zionists threats. We know we have billions of people along with the 12 of us on this boat! pic.twitter.com/FfIDDtVbX7
A new report on the United States nuclear weapons testing legacy in the Marshall Islands highlights the lack of studies into important health concerns voiced by Marshallese for decades that make it impossible to have a clear understanding of the impacts of the 67 nuclear weapons tests.
The report was funded by Greenpeace Germany and is an outgrowth of the organisation’s flagship vessel, Rainbow Warrior III, visiting the Marshall Islands from March to April to recognise the 40th anniversary of the resettlement of the nuclear test-affected population of Rongelap Atoll.
Dr Mahkijani said that among the “many troubling aspects” of the legacy is that the United States had concluded, in 1948, after three tests, that the Marshall Islands was not “a suitable site for atomic experiments” because it did not meet the required meteorological criteria.
Dr Makhijani highlights the point that, despite early documentation in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test and numerous anecdotal reports from Marshallese women about miscarriages and still births, US government medical officials in charge of managing the nuclear test-related medical programme in the Marshall Islands never systematically studied birth anomalies.
Committed billions of dollars
The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration, Kurt Cambell, said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damages and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.
“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he told reporters at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Nuku’alofa last year.
“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”
Among points outlined in the new report:
Gamma radiation levels at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, officially considered a “very low exposure” atoll, were tens of times, and up to 300 times, more than background in the immediate aftermaths of the thermonuclear tests in the Castle series at Bikini Atoll in 1954.
Thyroid doses in the so-called “low exposure atolls” averaged 270 milligray (mGy), 60 percent more than the 50,000 people of Pripyat near Chernobyl who were evacuated (170 mGy) after the 1986 accident there, and roughly double the average thyroid exposures in the most exposed counties in the United States due to testing at the Nevada Test Site.
Women from the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll greeted the Rainbow Warrior and its crew with songs and dances as part of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Rainbow Warrior. Image: RNZ Pacific/Giff Johnson
Despite this, “only a small fraction of the population has been officially recognised as exposed enough for screening and medical attention; even that came with its own downsides, including people being treated as experimental subjects,” the report said.
Women reported adverse outcomes
“In interviews and one 1980s country-wide survey, women have reported many adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said the report.
“They include stillbirths, a baby with part of the skull missing and ‘the brain and the spinal cord fully exposed,’ and a two-headed baby. Many of the babies with major birth defects died shortly after birth.
“Some who lived suffered very difficult lives, as did their families. Despite extensive personal testimony, no systematic country-wide scientific study of a possible relationship of adverse pregnancy outcomes to nuclear testing has been done.
“It is to be noted that awareness among US scientists of the potential for major birth defects due to radioactive fallout goes back to the 1950s. Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivor data has also provided evidence for this problem.
“The occurrence of stillbirths and major birth defects due to nuclear testing fallout in the Marshall Islands is scientifically plausible but no definitive statement is possible at the present time,” the report concluded.
“The nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands created a vast amount of fission products, including radioactive isotopes that cross the placenta, such as iodine-131 and tritium.
“Radiation exposure in the first trimester can cause early failed pregnancies, severe neurological damage, and other major birth defects.
No definitive statement possible
“This makes it plausible that radiation exposure may have caused the kinds of adverse pregnancy outcomes that were experienced and reported.
“However, no definitive statement is possible in the absence of a detailed scientific assessment.”
Scientists who traveled with the Rainbow Warrior III on its two-month visit to the Marshall Islands earlier this year collected samples from Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap and other atolls for scientific study and evaluation.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
As I sit down to write this article, I’m reading another update on the Israeli army killing 27 more starving Palestinian civilians waiting to receive food at a “humanitarian hub”. The death toll at these hubs over the last eight days is now 102.
We’re at the point now that Israel doesn’t even bother putting out the usual statements claiming how Hamas militants were using the civilians as human shields.
They just put out brazen denials that these events even happened, or report that the gunfire was “in response to the threat perceived by IDF troops.” You don’t get much flimsier justifications for massacring civilians than that.
It’s important to remember that these events have only happened because Israel has imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip since March, blocking all food, fuel and medicine from entering the territory to starve the civilian population.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has made clear that the only way to end the war is for the civilian population of Gaza to be moved to third countries.
The UN has effectively been banned from operating in Gaza, so the only way Palestinians in Gaza can get food is to go to these “humanitarian hubs” run by the Israeli army, who might just shoot them dead.
Ordinarily, one might expect serious consequences for a state which openly declares that it is attempting ethnic cleansing, massacres civilians seeking food, and then lies about it.
No fundamental change
If we do live in a world governed by “international law” and “human rights”, then that would be natural. But I’m sure everyone reading this article understands that it’s unlikely that anything is going to fundamentally change because of this latest crime.
This gets to the heart of the issue, the real reason why Palestine is so important and takes up so much international attention.
It’s not just that it’s in a strategically important area of the world, or that there are religious holy sites at stake; as important as those things are to know. The real crux of the matter is that Palestine is the central contradiction from which the existing international order unravels.
In 1974, John Pilger produced the film Palestine Is Still The Issue, which educated many Western audiences for the first time that a great injustice inflicted upon an entire nation had been left unresolved for decades.
The post-Second World War order created institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), rendered colonialism an illegal holdover from a previous era and established the principle that it was illegal to acquire territory by war. The film asked the question, how can anyone, especially Western liberals, really say they believe in this new order while also supporting the state of Israel, a polity which appears to reject these ideals in favour of a brute “might equals right” ideal.
By 2025, we’re now approaching the end game of the post-Second World War international order, and a big reason for that is Western liberal leaders increasingly having to choose between maintaining it and maintaining their support for Israel, and going for the latter.
To give a recent example, when Israel invaded Syria in December with zero provocation, the UK government’s response was simply to state that Israel “is making sure its position in the Golan is secure”.
Bear in mind that the Golan is also Syrian territory; the UK government is explicitly endorsing an act of aggression to protect illegally occupied land. It makes little sense unless you think international law doesn’t apply to Israel.
A blind eye to Israel’s war crimes But the problem with that kind of thinking is that international law doesn’t work unless there’s a collective agreement to respect it. There isn’t a world police force that can enforce these laws, they’re just a mutually agreed set of rules that everyone agrees to work within, as history has taught us that it ends badly for everyone if we don’t.
To make a rough analogy, the system is like the early days of the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) when there were very few enforced rules, but in reality, fighters had handshake agreements not to, e.g. pull each other’s hair out, because nobody wants that happening.
If Fighter A were to start pulling the opponent’s hair out, can he act outraged when other fighters start doing it as well?
Likewise, if the Western powers decide to support Israel in illegally occupying other countries’ territories for decades, can they really act outraged when Russia decides it’s going to occupy part of Ukraine?
By allowing Israel to acquire territory by war, what they’ve essentially done is change the international system from one where acquiring territory by war is simply illegal, to one where acquiring territory by war is ok so long as you say it’s in your national security interests.
Those are the new rules.
Last year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
International consensus
Specifically, to answer allegations that they committed “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare”. After the Nazi atrocities in the Second World War such as the Siege of Leningrad (not strictly “illegal” at the time), there emerged an international consensus that such inhumane actions must never happen again.
Well, on March 2, Israel announced that it was banning the entry of all goods and aid into Gaza, a blatant war crime. Meanwhile, Western governments such as Germany openly state that they intend to find “ways and means” to avoid having to arrest Netanyahu if he were to enter their territory.
The UK, in particular, continues to provide direct military assistance to Israel in the form of surveillance flights over Gaza. Declassified UK has documented at least 518 RAF surveillance flights around Gaza since December 2023, carried out from the Akrotiri airbase in Cyprus.
The UK government is, of course, aware that it’s assisting a government whose leaders are wanted by the ICC for war crimes. This would explain why when Keir Starmer visited the airbase in December, he gave a strange speech saying, “I recognise it’s been a really important, busy, busy year . . .
“I’m also aware that some or quite a bit of what goes on here can’t necessarily be talked about . . . Although we’re really proud of what you’re doing, we can’t necessarily tell the world what you’re doing here.”
The UK is legally obligated under the Geneva Conventions to ensure its military intelligence is not used to facilitate war crimes. In fact, the UK government has stated itself that Israel is “not committed” to following international law, but says it must continue providing military assistance to Israel as to stop doing so “would undermine US confidence in the UK and NATO at a critical juncture in our collective history and set back relations”.
If the post-Secind World War international order had any ideology affixed to it, it’s the belief in concepts such as individual freedoms, human rights, international humanitarian law and the legitimacy of institutions established to enforce them.
Every order needs some kind of organising principle; it might not strictly be “true”, but the real purpose is that the population needs to believe in it.
Many young adults in countries like the USA and UK were brought up with the ideals that waging war for cold national interests/enforcing racial supremacy were barbaric practices that were no longer permitted.
Palestine is the final frontier For Palestine, though, there is no longer any window dressing that can be done. Netanyahu is now making it explicit that even if Hamas were to “lay down its weapons” and its leaders leave, Israel will then ethnically cleanse the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza.
This is a war of ethnic cleansing and genocide rationalised by a militaristic, racist ideology — the fundamental reason, after all, why the Palestinians of Gaza are being ethnically cleansed is that they are not Jewish.
Israel’s supporters in the West have abandoned trying to convince anyone of the morality of their positions and are just resorting to repression of dissent. In the United States, for example, we’ve seen unprecedented crackdowns on solidarity groups.
For example, international students are being deported simply for attending Palestine solidarity demonstrations. These people aren’t even being accused of committing crimes, but of undefined offences such as “un-American activity.” If unconditional Western support for Israel is to continue, more repression at universities is going to be necessary.
The UK government was correct in saying we’re at “a critical juncture in our collective history” and that Israel is at the heart of it. The international order is unravelling, and whatever new order we move into is largely dependent on what happens in Palestine.
If Israel succeeds in its long-term goal of genocide against the Palestinians and establishes a lawless militarised ethnostate that grants/strips citizenship on racial grounds and invades and occupies other countries at will, that will be the model the rest of the world will follow. Even if you don’t particularly care about Palestine personally, you will not escape the consequences of this new might equals right world.
Anyone who doesn’t wish to live in such a world must recognise that Palestine solidarity is the central issue which cannot be abandoned.
Israel and its supporters certainly recognise this, or else they wouldn’t be so willing to forsake any other purported principle when Israel is at stake.
Although the levels of repression at the moment can be dismaying, we should also take heart in the fact that if Israel’s supporters were feeling secure in their ultimate victory, they wouldn’t be behaving so aggressively.
We’re witnessing the destructive rampage of a fragile project, whose designers fear could collapse at any moment should opposition manage to organise themselves effectively.
Daniel Lindley is a writer, socialist and trade union activist in the UK. This article was first published by The New Arab and is republished under Creative Commons.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi will be suspended for 21 days, and MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke suspended for seven days, taking effect immediately.
Opposition parties tried to reject the recommendation, but did not have the numbers to vote it down.
Te Pati Maori MPs speak after being suspended. Video: RNZ/Mark Papalii
The heated debate to consider the proposed punishment came to an end just before Parliament was due to rise.
Waititi moved to close the debate and no party disagreed, ending the possibility of it carrying on in the next sitting week.
Leader of the House Chris Bishop — the only National MP who spoke — kicked off the debate earlier in the afternoon saying it was “regrettable” some MPs did not vote on the Budget two weeks ago.
Bishop had called a vote ahead of Budget Day to suspend the privileges report debate to ensure the Te Pāti Māori MPs could take part in the Budget, but not all of them turned up.
Robust, rowdy debate
The debate was robust and rowdy with both the deputy speaker Barbara Kuriger and temporary speaker Tangi Utikare repeatedly having to ask MPs to quieten down.
Flashback: Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipa-Clarke led a haka in Parliament and tore up a copy of the Treaty Principles Bill at the first reading on 14 November 2024 . . . . a haka is traditionally used as an indigenous show of challenge, support or sorrow. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone/APR screenshot
Tākuta Ferris spoke first for Te Pāti Māori, saying the haka was a “signal of humanity” and a “raw human connection”.
He said Māori had faced acts of violence for too long and would not be silenced by “ignorance or bigotry”.
“Is this really us in 2025, Aotearoa New Zealand?” he asked the House.
“Everyone can see the racism.”
He said the Privileges Committee’s recommendations were not without precedent, noting the fact Labour MP Peeni Henare, who also participated in the haka, did not face suspension.
MP Tākuta Ferris spoke for Te Pāti Māori. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Henare attended the committee and apologised, which contributed to his lesser sanction.
‘Finger gun’ gesture
MP Parmjeet Parmar — a member of the Committee — was first to speak on behalf of ACT, and referenced the hand gesture — or “finger gun” — that Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer made in the direction of ACT MPs during the haka.
Parmar told the House debate could be used to disagree on ideas and issues, and there was not a place for intimidating physical gestures.
Greens co-leader Marama Davidson said New Zealand’s Parliament could lead the world in terms of involving the indigenous people.
She said the Green Party strongly rejected the committee’s recommendations and proposed their amendment of removing suspensions, and asked the Te Pāti Māori MPs be censured instead.
Davidson said the House had evolved in the past — such as the inclusion of sign language and breast-feeding in the House.
She said the Greens were challenging the rules, and did not need an apology from Te Pāti Māori.
Foreign Minister and NZ First party leader Winston Peters called Te Pāti Māori “a bunch of extremists”. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
NZ First leader Winston Peters said Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party speeches so far showed “no sincerity, saying countless haka had taken place in Parliament but only after first consulting the Speaker.
“They told the media they were going to do it, but they didn’t tell the Speaker did they?
‘Bunch of extremists’
“The Māori party are a bunch of extremists,” Peters said, “New Zealand has had enough of them”.
Peters was made to apologise after taking aim at Waititi, calling him “the one in the cowboy hat” with “scribbles on his face” [in reference to his traditional indigenous moko — tatoo]. He continued afterward, describing Waititi as possessing “anti-Western values”.
Labour’s Willie Jackson congratulated Te Pāti Māori for the “greatest exhibition of our culture in the House in my lifetime”.
Jackson said the Treaty bill was a great threat, and was met by a great haka performance. He was glad the ACT Party was intimidated, saying that was the whole point of doing the haka.
He also called for a bit of compromise from Te Pāti Māori — encouraging them to say sorry — but reiterated Labour’s view the sanctions were out of proportion with past indiscretions in the House.
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the prime minister was personally responsible if the proposed sanctions went ahead. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the debate “would be a joke if it wasn’t so serious”.
“Get an absolute grip,” she said to the House, arguing the prime minister “is personally responsible” if the House proceeds with the committee’s proposed sanctions.
Eye of the beholder
She accused National’s James Meager of “pointing a finger gun” at her — the same gesture coalition MPs had criticised Ngarewa-Packer for during her haka. The Speaker accepted he had not intended to; Swarbrick said it was an example where the interpretation could be in the eye of the beholder.
She said if the government could “pick a punishment out of thin air” that was “not a democracy”, putting New Zealand in very dangerous territory.
An emotional Maipi-Clarke said she had been silent on the issue for a long time, the party’s voices in haka having sent shockwaves around the world. She questioned whether that was why the MPs were being punished.
“Since when did being proud of your culture make you racist?”
“We will never be silenced, and we will never be lost,” she said, calling the Treaty Principles bill a “dishonourable vote”.
She had apologised to the Speaker and accepted the consequence laid down on the day, but refused to apologise. She listed other incidents in Parliament that resulted in no punishment.
Maipi-Clarke called for the Treaty of Waitangi to be recognised in the Constitution Act, and for MPs to be required to honour it by law.
‘Clear pathway forward’
“The pathway forward has never been so clear,” she said.
ACT’s Nicole McKee said there were excuses being made for “bad behaviour”, that the House was for making laws and having discussions, and “this is not about the haka, this is about process”.
She told the House she had heard no good ideas from the Te Pāti Māori, who she said resorted to intimidation when they did not get their way, but the MPs needed to “grow up” and learn to debate issues. She hoped 21 days would give them plenty of time to think about their behaviour.
Labour MP and former Speaker Adrian Rurawhe started by saying there were “no winners in this debate”, and it was clear to him it was the government, not the Parliament, handing out the punishments.
He said the proposed sanctions set a precedent for future penalties, and governments might use it as a way to punish opposition, imploring National to think twice.
He also said an apology from Te Pāti Māori would “go a long way”, saying they had a “huge opportunity” to have a legacy in the House, but it was their choice — and while many would agree with the party there were rules and “you can’t have it both ways”.
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi speaking to the media after the Privileges Committee debate. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi said there had been many instances of misinterpretations of the haka in the House and said it was unclear why they were being punished, “is it about the haka . . . is about the gun gestures?”
“Not one committee member has explained to us where 21 days came from,” he said.
Hat and ‘scribbles’ response
Waititi took aim at Peters over his comments targeting his hat and “scribbles” on his face.
He said the haka was an elevation of indigenous voice and the proposed punishment was a “warning shot from the colonial state that cannot stomach” defiance.
Waititi said that throughout history when Māori did not play ball, the “coloniser government” reached for extreme sanctions, ending with a plea to voters: “Make this a one-term government, enrol, vote”.
He brought out a noose to represent Māori wrongfully put to death in the past, saying “interpretation is a feeling, it is not a fact . . . you’ve traded a noose for legislation”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, has highlighted the growing isolation of the United States at the United Nations over its defiant stance over Gaza.
He emphasised the contrast between Washington’s support for Israel and mounting global criticism, with 14 members of the UNSC voting for a resolution calling for an immediate permanent and unconditional ceasefire.
Even close allies like the UK voted for the resolution 14-1 and condemned the American position, suggesting that the US has acted as a dam blocking ceasefire resolutions five times since October 23.
But, Bishara said, that barrier was beginning to crack — the US was “utterly isolated”, Al Jazeera reports.
With rising international and domestic pressure, he sees a swelling current of opposition that may soon challenge US policy at the UNSC.
The acting US Ambassador, Dorothy Shea, blamed the crisis on the Palestine resistance movement Hamas and said Israel was “defending Gaza from Iran”, a stance ridiculed by Bishara.
The US vetoed the UNSC resolution calling for a permanent and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, the release of captives and the unhindered entry of aid.
It was the fifth time since October 2023 that the US has blocked a council resolution on the besieged Strip.
‘No surprise’
In remarks before the start of the voting, Acting Ambassador Shea made the US opposition to the resolution, put forward by 10 countries on the 15-member council, painfully clear, which she said “should come as no surprise”.
“The United States has taken the very clear position since this conflict began that Israel has the right to defend itself, which includes defeating Hamas and ensuring they are never again in a position to threaten Israel,” she told the council.
Washington was the only country to vote against the measure, while the 14 other members of the council voted in favour.
A Hamas statement said: “This arrogant stance reflects [the US] disregard for international law and its complete rejection of any international effort to stop the Palestinian bloodshed.”
US isolated in UN Security Council. Video: Al Jazeera
‘Human abattoir’
Meanwhile, former UN Palestine relief agency UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness slammed the Israeli-US aid operation as turning Gaza into a “human abattoir”, or slaughterhouse.
He was condemning the four distribution sites operated by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
“Hundreds of civilians are herded like animals into fenced-off pens and are slaughtered like cattle in the process,” Gunness told Al Jazeera.
The GHF announced two full day’s closure on Wednesday, saying that operations would resume after the completion of maintenance and repair work on its distribution sites.
This come after Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians seeking aid, killing at least 27 people and injuring about 90, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
The former UN official cast doubt on the reason for the suspension, saying its work had been halted “because it has rightly sparked international outrage and condemnation”.
America’s retreat from foreign aid is being felt deeply in Pacific media, where pivotal outlets are being shuttered and journalists work unpaid.
The result is fewer investigations into dubiously motivated politicians, glimpses into conflicts otherwise unseen and a less diverse media in a region which desperately needs it.
“It is a huge disappointment … a senseless waste,” Benar News’ Australian former head of Pacific news Stefan Armbruster said after seeing his outlet go under.
Benar News, In-depth Solomons and Inside PNG are three digital outlets which enjoyed US support but have been hit by President Donald Trump’s about-face on aid.
Benar closed its doors in April after an executive order disestablishing Voice of America, which the United States created during World War II to combat Nazi propaganda.
An offshoot of Radio Free Asia (RFA) focused on Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Benar kept a close eye on abuses in West Papua, massacres and gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea and more.
The Pacific arm quickly became indispensable to many, with a team of reporters and freelancers working in 15 countries on a budget under A$A million.
Coverage of decolonisation
“Our coverage of decolonisation in the Pacific received huge interest, as did our coverage of the lack of women’s representation in parliaments, human rights, media freedom, deep sea mining and more,” Armbruster said.
In-depth Solomons, a Honiara-based digital outlet, is another facing an existential threat despite a proud record of investigative and award-winning reporting.
Last week, it was honoured with a peer-nominated award from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan for a year-long probe into former prime minister Manasseh Sogavare’s property holdings.
“We’re just holding on,” editor and co-founder Ofani Eremae said.
A US-centred think tank continues to pay the wage of one journalist, while others have not drawn a salary since January.
“It has had an impact on our operations. We used to travel out to do stories across the provinces. That has not been done since early this year,” Eremae said.
A private donor came forward after learning of the cuts with a one-off grant that was used for rent to secure the office, he said.
USAID budget axed
Its funding shortfall — like Port Moresby-based outlet Inside PNG — is linked to USAID, the world’s biggest single funder of development assistance, until Trump axed its multi-billion dollar budget.
Much of USAID’s funding was spent on humanitarian causes — such as vaccines, clean water supplies and food security — but some was also earmarked for media in developing nations, with the aim of bolstering fragile democracies.
Inside PNG used its support to build an audience of tens of thousands with incisive reports on PNG politics: not just Port Moresby, but in the regions including independence-seeking province Bougainville that has a long history of conflict.
“The current lack of funding has unfortunately had a dual impact, affecting both our dedicated staff, whom we’re currently unable to pay, and our day-to-day operations,” Inside PNG managing director Kila Wani said.
“We’ve had to let off 80 percent of staff from payroll which is a big hit because we’re not a very big team.
“Logistically, it’s become challenging to carry out our work as we normally would.”
Other media entities in the region have suffered hits, but declined to share their stories.
The latest PFF report listed a string of challenges, notably weak legal protections for free speech, political interference on editorial independence, and a lack of funding underpinning high-quality media, in the region.
The burning question for these outlets — and their audiences — is do other sources of funding exist to fill the gap?
Inside PNG is refocusing energy on attracting new donors, as is In-depth Solomons, which has also turned to crowdfunding.
The Australian and New Zealand governments have also provided targeted support for the media sector across the region, including ABC International Development (ABCID), which has enjoyed a budget increase from Anthony Albanese’s government.
Inside PNG and In-depth Solomons both receive training and content-focused grants from ABCID, which helps, but this does not fund the underpinning costs for a media business or keep on the lights.
Both Eremae, who edited two major newspapers before founding the investigative outlet, and Armbruster, a long-time SBS correspondent, expressed their dismay at the US pivot away from the Pacific.
‘Huge mistake’ by US
“It’s a huge mistake on the part of the US … the world’s leading democracy. The media is one of the pillars of democracy,” Eremae said.
“It is, I believe, in the interests of the US and other democratic countries to give funding to media in countries like the Solomon Islands where we cannot survive due to lack of advertising (budgets).
As a veteran of Pacific reporting, Armbruster said he had witnessed US disinterest in the region contribute to the wider geopolitical struggle for influence.
“The US government was trying to re-establish its presence after vacating the space decades ago. It had promised to re-engage, dedicating funding largely driven by its efforts to counter China, only to now betray those expectations,” he said.
“The US government has senselessly destroyed a highly valued news service in the Pacific. An own goal.”
Ben McKay is an AAP journalist. Republished from National Indigenous Times in Australia.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary reflected on her years in Fiji as a television journalist and media educator at a Fiji Centre function in Auckland celebrating Fourth Estate values and independence at the weekend.
It was a reunion with former journalism professor David Robie — they had worked together as a team at the University of the South Pacific amid media and political controversy leading up to the George Speight coup in May 2000.
Leary, a former British Council director and lawyer, was the guest speaker at a gathering of human rights activists, development advocates, academics and journalists hosted at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, the umbrella base for the Fiji Centre and Asia Pacific Media Network.
She said she was delighted to meet “special people in David’s life” and to be speaking to a diverse group sharing “similar values of courage, freedom of expression, truth and tino rangatiratanga”.
“I want to start this talanoa on Friday, 19 May 2000 — 13 years almost to the day of the first recognised military coup in Fiji in 1987 — when failed businessman George Speight tore off his balaclava to reveal his identity.
She pointed out that there had actually been another “coup” 100 years earlier by Ratu Cakobau.
“Speight had seized Parliament holding the elected government at gunpoint, including the politician mother, Lavinia Padarath, of one of my best friends — Anna Padarath.
Hostage-taking report
“Within minutes, the news of the hostage-taking was flashed on Radio Fiji’s 10 am bulletin by a student journalist on secondment there — Tamani Nair. He was a student of David Robie’s.”
Nair had been dispatched to Parliament to find out what was happening and reported from a cassava patch.
“Fiji TV was trashed . . . and transmission pulled for 48 hours.
“The university shut down — including the student radio facilities, and journalism programme website — to avoid a similar fate, but the journalism school was able to keep broadcasting and publishing via a parallel website set up at the University of Technology Sydney.
“The pictures were harrowing, showing street protests turning violent and the barbaric behaviour of Speight’s henchmen towards dissenters.
“Thus began three months of heroic journalism by David’s student team — including through a period of martial law that began 10 days later and saw some of the most restrictive levels of censorship ever experienced in the South Pacific.”
Leary paid tribute to some some of the “brave satire” produced by senior Fiji Times reporters filling the newspaper with “non-news” (such as about haircuts, drinking kava) as an act of defiance.
“My friend Anna Padarath returned from doing her masters in law in Australia on a scholarship to be closer to her Mum, whose hostage days within Parliament Grounds stretched into weeks and then months.
Whanau Community Centre and Hub co-founder Nik Naidu speaking at the Asia Pacific Media Network event at the weekend. Image: Khairiah A. Rahman/APMN
Invisible consequences
“Anna would never return to her studies — one of the many invisible consequences of this profoundly destructive era in Fiji’s complex history.
“Happily, she did go on to carve an incredible career as a women’s rights advocate.”
“Meanwhile David’s so-called ‘barefoot student journalists’ — who snuck into Parliament the back way by bushtrack — were having their stories read and broadcast globally.
“And those too shaken to even put their hands to keyboards on Day 1 emerged as journalism leaders who would go on to win prizes for their coverage.”
Speight was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned in 2024.
Taeri MP Ingrid Leary speaking at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub. Image: Nik Naidu/APMN
Leary said that was just one chapter in the remarkable career of David Robie who had been an editor, news director, foreign news editor and freelance writer with a number of different agencies and news organisations — including Agence France-Presse, Rand Daily Mail, The Auckland Star, Insight Magazine, and New Outlook Magazine — “a family member to some, friend to many, mentor to most”.
Reflecting on working with Dr Robie at USP, which she joined as television lecturer from Fiji Television, she said:
“At the time, being a younger person, I thought he was a little bit crazy, because he was communicating with people all around the world when digital media was in its infancy in Fiji, always on email, always getting up on online platforms, and I didn’t appreciate the power of online media at the time.
“And it was incredible to watch.”
Ahead of his time
She said he was an innovator and ahead of his time.
Dr Robie viewed journalism as a tool for empowerment, aiming to provide communities with the information they needed to make informed decisions.
“We all know that David has been a champion of social justice and for decolonisation, and for the values of an independent Fourth Estate.”
She said she appreciated the freedom to develop independent media as an educator, adding that one of her highlights was producing the groundbreaking documentary Maire about Maire Bopp Du Pont, who was a student journalist at USP and advocate for the Pacific community living with HIV/AIDs.
She later became a nuclear-free Pacific parliamentarian in Pape’ete.
Leary presented Dr Robie with a “speaking stick” carved from an apricot tree branch by the husband of a Labour stalwart based in Cromwell — the event doubled as his 80th birthday.
In response, Dr Robie said the occasion was a “golden opportunity” to thank many people who had encouraged and supported him over many years.
Massive upheaval
“We must have done something right,” he said about USP, “because in 2000, the year of George Speight’s coup, our students covered the massive upheaval which made headlines around the world when Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour-led coalition government was held at gunpoint for 56 days.
“The students courageously covered the coup with their website Pacific Journalism Online and their newspaper Wansolwara — “One Ocean”. They won six Ossie Awards – unprecedented for a single university — in Australia that year and a standing ovation.”
He said there was a video on YouTube of their exploits called Frontline Reporters and one of the students, Christine Gounder, wrote an article for a Commonwealth Press Union magazine entitled, “From trainees to professionals. And all it took was a coup”.
Dr Robie said this Fiji experience was still one of the most standout experiences he had had as a journalist and educator.
Along with similar coverage of the 1997 Sandline mercenary crisis by his students at the University of Papua New Guinea.
He made some comments about the 1985 Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap in the Marshall islands and the subsequent bombing by French secret agents in Auckland.
But he added “you can read all about this adventure in my new book” being published in a few weeks.
Taieri MP Ingrid Leary (right) with Dr David Robie and his wife Del Abcede at the Fiji Centre function. Image: Camille Nakhid
Biggest 21st century crisis
Dr Robie said the profession of journalism, truth telling and holding power to account, was vitally important to a healthy democracy.
Although media did not succeed in telling people what to think, it did play a vital role in what to think about. However, the media world was undergoing massive change and fragmentation.
“And public trust is declining in the face of fake news and disinformation,” he said
“I think we are at a crossroads in society, both locally and globally. Both journalism and democracy are under an unprecedented threat in my lifetime.
“When more than 230 journalists can be killed in 19 months in Gaza and there is barely a bleep from the global community, there is something savagely wrong.
“The Gazan journalists won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize collectively last year with the judges saying, “As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”
“The carnage and genocide in Gaza is deeply disturbing, especially the failure of the world to act decisively to stop it. The fact that Israel can kill with impunity at least 54,000 people, mostly women and children, destroy hospitals and starve people to death and crush a people’s right to live is deeply shocking.
“This is the biggest crisis of the 21st century. We see this relentless slaughter go on livestreamed day after day and yet our media and politicians behave as if this is just ‘normal’. It is shameful, horrendous. Have we lost our humanity?
“Gaza has been our test. And we have failed.”
Other speakers included Whānau Hub co-founder Nik Naidu, one of the anti-coup Coalition for Democracy in Fiji (CDF) stalwarts; the Heritage New Zealand’s Antony Phillips; and Multimedia Investments and Evening Report director Selwyn Manning.
A Papua New Guinea minister has raised concerns about “serious issues” at the PNG-Indonesia border due to a lack of proper security checkpoints.
Culture and Tourism Minister Belden Namah, who is also the member for the border electorate Vanimo-Green, voiced these concerns while supporting a new Biosecurity for Plants and Animals Bill presented in Parliament by Agriculture Minister John Boito.
He said Papua New Guinea was the only country in the Pacific Islands region that shared a land border with another nation.
According to Namah, the absence of proper quarantine and National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (NAQIA) checks at the border allowed people bringing food and plants from Indonesia to introduce diseases affecting PNG’s commodities.
Minister Namah, whose electorate shares a border with Indonesia, noted that while the PNG Defence Force and police were present, they were primarily focused on checking vehicles coming from Indonesia instead of actively patrolling the borders.
He clarified the roles, saying, “It’s NAQIA’s job to search vehicles and passengers, and the PNGDF’s role is to guard and patrol our borders.”
Namah expressed concern that while bills were passed, enforcement on the ground was lacking.
Minister Namah supported the PNG Biosecurity Authority Bill and called for consistency, increased border security, and stricter control checks.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
An escalation in fighting between Indonesian security forces and Papuan pro-independence fighters in West Papua has seriously threatened the security of the largely indigenous population, says Human Rights Watch in a new report.
The human rights watchdog warned that all parties to the conflict are obligated to abide by international humanitarian law, also called the laws of war.
The security forces’ military operations in the densely forested Central Highlands areas are accused of killing and wounding dozens of civilians with drone strikes and the indiscriminate use of explosive munitions, and displaced thousands of indigenous Papuans, said the report.
The National Liberation Army of West Papua, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, has claimed responsibility in the killing of 17 alleged miners between April 6 and April 9.
“The Indonesian military has a long history of abuses in West Papua that poses a particular risk to the Indigenous communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
“Concerned governments need to press the Prabowo [Subianto] administration and Papuan separatist armed groups to abide by the laws of war.”
Operation Habema
The Indonesian military escalated its ongoing operations, called Operation Habema, in West Papua’s six provinces, especially in the Central Highlands, where Papuan militant groups have been active for more than four decades.
On May 14, the military said that it had killed 18 resistance fighters in Intan Jaya regency, and that it had recovered weapons including rifles, bows and arrows, communications equipment, and Morning Star flags — the symbol of Papuan resistance.
Further military operations have allegedly resulted in burning down villages and attacks on churches. Papuan activists and pastors told Human Rights Watch that government forces treated all Papuan forest dwellers who owned and routinely used bows and arrows for hunting as “combatants”.
Information about abuses has been difficult to corroborate because the hostilities are occurring in remote areas in Intan Jaya, Yahukimo, Nduga, and Pegunungan Bintang regencies.
Pastors, church workers, and local journalists interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that Indonesian forces had been using drones and helicopter gunships to drop bombs.
“Civilians from the Korowai tribe community, known for their tall treehouse dwellings, have been harmed in these attacks, and have desperately fled the fighting,” said the Human Rights Watch report.
“Displaced villagers, mostly from Intan Jaya, have sought shelter and refuge in churches in Sugapa, the capital of the regency.”
Resistance allegations
The armed resistance group has made allegations, which Human Rights Watch could not corroborate, that the Indonesian military attacks harmed civilians.
It reported that a mortar or rocket attack outside a church in Ilaga, Puncak regency, hit two young men on May 6, killing one of them, Deris Kogoya, an 18-year-old student.
The group said that the Indonesian military attack on May 14, in which the military claimed all 18 people killed were pro-independence combatants, mostly killed civilians.
Ronald Rischardt Tapilatu, pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church of the Land of Papua, said that at least 3 civilians were among the 18 bodies. Human Rights Watch has a list of the 18 killed, which includes 1 known child.
The daughter of Hetina Mirip said her mother was found dead on May 17 near her house in Sugapa, while Indonesian soldiers surrounded their village. She wrote that the soldiers tried to cremate and bury her mother’s body.
One evident impact of the renewed fighting is that thousands of indigenous Papuans have been forced to flee their ancestral lands.
Seven villages attacked
The Vanuatu-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) reported that the military had attacked seven villages in Ilaga with drones and airstrikes, forcing many women and children to flee their homes. Media reports said that it was in Gome, Puncak regency.
International humanitarian law obligates all warring parties to distinguish at all times between combatants and civilians. Civilians may never be the target of attack.
Warring parties are required to take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians and civilian objects, such as homes, shops, and schools. Attacks may target only combatants and military objectives.
Attacks that target civilians or fail to discriminate between combatants and civilians, or that would cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population compared to the anticipated military gain, are prohibited.
Parties must treat everyone in their custody humanely, not take hostages, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The Free Papua Movement has long sought self-determination and independence in West Papua, on the grounds that the Indonesian government-controlled “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 was illegitimate and did not involve indigenous Papuans.
It advocates holding a new, fair, and transparent referendum, and backs armed resistance.
Vast conflict area
Human Rights Watch reports that the conflict areas, including Intan Jaya, are on the northern side of Mt Grasberg, spanning a vast area from Sugapa to Oksibil in the Pegunungan Bintang regency, approximately 425 km long.
Sugapa is also known as the site of Wabu Block, which holds approximately 2.3 million kilos of gold, making it one of Indonesia’s five largest known gold reserves.
Wabu Block is currently under the licensing process of the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.
“Papuans have endured decades of systemic racism, heightening concerns of further atrocities,” HRW’s Asia director Ganguly said.
“Both the Indonesian military and Papuan armed groups need to comply with international standards that protect civilians.”
A New Zealand-born Niuean educator says being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list reflects the importance of connecting young tagata Niue in Aotearoa to their roots.
Mele Ikiua, who hails from the village of Hakupu Atua in Niue, has been named a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to vagahau Niue language and education.
She told RNZ Pacific the most significant achievement in her career to date had been the promotion of vagahau Niue in the NCEA system.
The change in 2023 enabled vagahau Niue learners to earn literacy credits in the subject, and receive recognition beyond “achieved” in the NCEA system. That, Ikiua said, was about continuing to increase learning opportunities for young Niue people in Aotearoa.
“Because if you look at it, the work that we do — and I say ‘we’ because there’s a lot of people other than myself — we’re here to try and maintain, and try and hold onto, our language because they say our language is very, very endangered.
“The bigger picture for young Niue learners who haven’t connected, or haven’t been able to learn about their vagahau or where they come from [is that] it’s a safe place for them to come and learn . . . There’s no judgement, and they learn the basic foundations before they can delve deeper.”
Her work and advocacy for Niuean culture and vagahau Niue has also extended beyond the formal education system.
Niue stage at Polyfest
Since 2014, Ikiua had been the co-ordinator of the Niue stage at Polyfest, a role she took up after being involved in the festival as a tutor. She also established Three Star Nation, a network which provides leadership, educational and cultural programmes for young people.
Last year, Ikiua also set up the Tokiofa Arts Academy, the world’s first Niue Performing Arts Academy. And in February this year, Three Star Nation held Hologa Niue — the first ever Niuean arts and culture festival in Auckland.
Niuean community members in Auckland . . . Mele Ikiua with Derrick Manuela Jackson (left) and her brother Ron Viviani. Image: RNZ Pacific
She said being recognised in the King’s Birthday honours list was a shared achievement.
“This award is not only mine. It belongs to the family. It belongs to the village. And my colleagues have been amazing too. It’s for us all.”
She is one of several Pasifika honoured in this weekend’s list.
Cook Islander, Berry Rangi has been awarded a King’s Service Medal for services to the community, particularly Pacific peoples.
Berry Rangi has been awarded a King’s Service Medal for services to the community, particularly Pacific peoples. Image: Berry Rangi/RNZ Pacific
Lifted breast screening rates
She has been instrumental in lifting the coverage rates of breast and cervical screening for Pacific women in Hawke’s Bay.
“When you grow up in the islands, you’re not for yourself – you’re for everybody,” she said.
“You’re for the village, for your island.”
She said when she moved to Napier there were very few Pasifika in the city — there were more in Hastings, the nearby city to the south.
“I did things because I knew there was a need for our people, and I’d just go out and do it without having to be asked.”
Berry Rangi also co-founded Tiare Ahuriri, the Napier branch of the national Pacific women’s organisation, PACIFICA.
She has been a Meals on Wheels volunteer with the Red Cross in Napier since 1990 and has been recognised for her 34 years of service in this role.
Maintaining a heritage craft
She also contributes to maintaining the heritage craft of tivaevae (quilting) by delivering workshops to people of all ages and communities across Hawke’s Bay.
Another honours recipient is Uili Galo, who has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the Tokelau community.
Galo, of the Tokelau Aotearoa Leaders Council, said it is very gratifying to see his community’s efforts acknolwedged at the highest level.
“I’ve got a lot of people behind me, my elders that I need to acknowledge and thank . . . my kainga,” he said.
“While the award has been given against my name, it’s them that have been doing all the hard work.”
He said his community came to Aotearoa in the 1970s.
“Right through they’ve been trying to capture their culture and who they are as a people. But obviously as new generations are born here, they assimilate into the pa’alangi world, and somehow lose a sense of who they are.
“A lot of our youth are not quite sure who they are. They know obviously the pa’alangi world they live in, but the challenge of them is to know their identity, that’s really important.”
Pasifika sports duo say recognition is for everyone Two sporting recipients named as Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King’s Birthday Honours say the honour is for all those who have worked with them.
Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten with Eroni Clarke of the Pasifika Rugby Advisory group. Image: RNZ Pacific
Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten, who is of Tongan heritage, has been involved with rugby at different levels over the years, and is currently a co-chair of New Zealand Rugby’s Pacific Advisory Group.
Annie Burma Teina Tangata Esita Scoon, of Cook Islands heritage, has been involved with softball since she played the sport in school years ago.
While they have been “committed” to their sports loves, their contribution to the different Pasifika communities they serve is being recognised.
Luyten told RNZ Pacific she was humbled and shocked that people took the time to actually put a nomination through.
“You know, all the work we do, it’s in service of all of our communities and our families, and you don’t really look for recognition,” she said.
“The family, the community, everyone who have worked with me and encouraged me they all deserve this recognition.”
Luyten, who has links in Ha’apai, Tonga, said she has loved being involved in rugby, starting off as a junior player and went through the school competition.
Community and provincial rugby
After moving down to Timaru, she was involved with community and provincial rugby, before she got pulled into New Zealand Rugby Pacific Advisory Group.
Luyten made New Zealand rugby history as the first woman of Pacific Island descent to be appointed to a provincial union board in 2019.
She was a board member of the South Canterbury Rugby Football Union and played fullback at Timaru Girls’ High School back in 1997, when rugby competition was first introduced .
Her mother Ailine was one of the first Tongan women to take up residence in Timaru. That was back in the early 1970s.
As well as a law degree at Otago University Luyten completed a Bachelor of Science in 2005 and then went on to complete post-graduate studies in sports medicine in 2009.
Pauline-Jean Henrietta Luyten with Sina Latu of the Tonga Society in South Canterbury. Image: RNZ Pacific
She is also a founding member of the Tongan Society South Canterbury which was established in 2016.
Opportunities for Pasifika families
On her rugby involvement, she said the game provides opportunities for Pasifika families and she is happy to be contributing as an administrator.
“Where I know I can contribute has been in that non-playing space and sort of understanding the rugby system, because it’s so big, so complex and kind of challenging.”
Fighting the stereotypes that “Pasifika can’t be directors” has been a major one.
“Some people think there’s not enough of us out there. But for me, I’m like, nah we’ve got people,” she stated.
“We’ve got heaps of people all over the show that can actually step into these roles.
“They may be experienced in different sectors, like the health sector, social sector, financial, but maybe haven’t quite crossed hard enough into the rugby space. So I feel it’s my duty to to do everything I can to create those spaces for our kids, for the future.”
Call for two rugby votes
Earlier this month the group registered the New Zealand Pasifika Rugby Council, which moved a motion, with the support of some local unions, that Pasifika be given two votes within New Zealand Rugby.
“So this was an opportunity too for us to actually be fully embedded into the New Zealand Rugby system.
“But unfortunately, the magic number was 61.3 [percent] and we literally got 61, so it was 0.3 percent less voting, and that was disappointing.”
Luyten said she and the Pacific advisory team will keep working and fighting to get what they have set their mind on.
For Scoon, the acknowledgement was recognition of everyone else who are behind the scenes, doing the work.
Annie Scoon, of Cook Islands heritage, has been involved with softball since she played the sport in school years ago. Image: RNZ Pacific
She said the award was for the Pasifika people in her community in the Palmerston North area.
Voice is for ‘them’
“To me what stands out is that our Pasifika people will be recognized that they’ve had a voice out there,” she said.
“So, it’s for them really; it’s not me, it’s them. They get the recognition that’s due to them. I love my Pacific people down here.”
Scoon is a name well known among the Palmerston North Pasifika and softball communities.
The 78-year-old has played, officiated, coached and now administers the game of softball.
She was born in the Cook Islands and moved with her family to New Zealand in 1948. Her first involvement with softball was in school, as a nine-year-old in Auckland.
Then she helped her children as a coach.
“And then that sort of lead on to learning how to score the game, then coaching the game, yes, and then to just being an administrator of the game,” she said.
Passion for the game
“I’ve gone through softball – I’ve been the chief scorer at national tournaments, I’ve selected at tournaments, and it’s been good because I’d like to think that what I taught my children is a passion for the game, because a lot of them are still involved.”
A car accident years ago has left her wheelchair-bound.
She has also competed as at the Paraplegic Games where she said she proved that “although disabled, there were things that we could do if you just manipulate your body a wee bit and try and think it may not pan out as much as possible, but it does work”.
“All you need to do is just try get out there, but also encourage other people to come out.”
She has kept passing on her softball knowledge to school children.
In her community work, Scoon said she just keeps encouraging people to keep working on what they want to achieve and not to shy away from speaking their mind.
Setting a goal
“I told everybody that they set a goal and work on achieving that goal,” she said.
“And also encouraged alot of them to not be shy and don’t back off if you want something.”
She said one of the challenging experiences, in working with the Pasifika community, is the belief by some that they may not be good enough.
Her advice to many is to learn what they can and try to improve, so that they can get better in life.
“I wasn’t born like this,” she said, referring to her disability.
“You pick out what suits you but because our island people — we’re very shy people and we’re proud. We’re very proud people. Rather than make a fuss, we’d rather step back.
“They shouldn’t and they need to stand up and they want to be recognised.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Papua New Guinea has five months remaining to fix its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) systems or face the severe repercussions of being placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list”.
The FATF has imposed an October 2025 deadline, and the government is scrambling to prove its commitment to global partners.
Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister James Marape said Treasury Minister, Ian Ling-Stuckey had been given the responsibility to lead a taskforce to fix PNG’s issues associated with money laundering and terrorist financing.
“I summoned all agency heads to a critical meeting last week giving them clear direction, in no uncertain terms, that they work day and night to avert the possibility of us getting grey listed,” Marape said.
“This review comes around every five years.
“We have only three or four areas that are outstanding that we must dispatch forthwith.”
PNG is no stranger to the FATF grey list, having been placed under increased monitoring in 2014 before successfully being removed in 2016.
Deficiencies highlighted
However, a recent assessment by the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) highlighted ongoing deficiencies, particularly in the effectiveness of PNG’s AML/CTF regime.
While the country has made strides in establishing the necessary laws and regulations (technical compliance), the real challenge lies in PNG’s implementation and enforcement.
The core of the problem, according to analysts, is a lack of effective prosecution and punishment for money laundering and terrorism financing.
High-risk sectors such as corruption, fraud against government programmes, illegal logging, illicit fishing, and tax evasion, remain largely unchecked by successful legal actions.
Capacity gaps within key agencies like the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary and the Office of the Public Prosecutor have been cited as significant hurdles.
Recent drug hauls have also highlighted existing flaws in detection in the country’s financial systems.
The implications of greylisting are far-reaching and potentially devastating for a developing nation like PNG, which is heavily reliant on foreign investment and international financial flows.
Impact on economy
Deputy Opposition leader James Nomane warned in Parliament that greylisting “will severely affect the economy, investor confidence, and make things worse for Papua New Guinea with respect to inflationary pressures, the cost of imports, and a whole host of issues”.
If PNG is greylisted, the immediate economic fallout could be substantial. It would signal to global financial institutions that PNG carries a heightened risk for financial crimes, potentially leading to a sharp decline in foreign direct investment.
Critical resource projects, including Papua LNG, P’nyang LNG, Wafi-Golpu, and Frieda River Mines, could face delays or even be halted as investors become wary of the increased financial and reputational risks.
Beyond investment, the cost of doing business in PNG could also rise. International correspondent banks, vital conduits for cross-border transactions, may de-risk by cutting ties or scaling back operations with PNG financial institutions.
This “de-risking” could make it more expensive and complex for businesses and individuals alike to conduct international transactions, leading to higher fees and increased scrutiny.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Papua New Guinea has five months remaining to fix its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) systems or face the severe repercussions of being placed on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “grey list”.
The FATF has imposed an October 2025 deadline, and the government is scrambling to prove its commitment to global partners.
Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister James Marape said Treasury Minister, Ian Ling-Stuckey had been given the responsibility to lead a taskforce to fix PNG’s issues associated with money laundering and terrorist financing.
“I summoned all agency heads to a critical meeting last week giving them clear direction, in no uncertain terms, that they work day and night to avert the possibility of us getting grey listed,” Marape said.
“This review comes around every five years.
“We have only three or four areas that are outstanding that we must dispatch forthwith.”
PNG is no stranger to the FATF grey list, having been placed under increased monitoring in 2014 before successfully being removed in 2016.
Deficiencies highlighted
However, a recent assessment by the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) highlighted ongoing deficiencies, particularly in the effectiveness of PNG’s AML/CTF regime.
While the country has made strides in establishing the necessary laws and regulations (technical compliance), the real challenge lies in PNG’s implementation and enforcement.
The core of the problem, according to analysts, is a lack of effective prosecution and punishment for money laundering and terrorism financing.
High-risk sectors such as corruption, fraud against government programmes, illegal logging, illicit fishing, and tax evasion, remain largely unchecked by successful legal actions.
Capacity gaps within key agencies like the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary and the Office of the Public Prosecutor have been cited as significant hurdles.
Recent drug hauls have also highlighted existing flaws in detection in the country’s financial systems.
The implications of greylisting are far-reaching and potentially devastating for a developing nation like PNG, which is heavily reliant on foreign investment and international financial flows.
Impact on economy
Deputy Opposition leader James Nomane warned in Parliament that greylisting “will severely affect the economy, investor confidence, and make things worse for Papua New Guinea with respect to inflationary pressures, the cost of imports, and a whole host of issues”.
If PNG is greylisted, the immediate economic fallout could be substantial. It would signal to global financial institutions that PNG carries a heightened risk for financial crimes, potentially leading to a sharp decline in foreign direct investment.
Critical resource projects, including Papua LNG, P’nyang LNG, Wafi-Golpu, and Frieda River Mines, could face delays or even be halted as investors become wary of the increased financial and reputational risks.
Beyond investment, the cost of doing business in PNG could also rise. International correspondent banks, vital conduits for cross-border transactions, may de-risk by cutting ties or scaling back operations with PNG financial institutions.
This “de-risking” could make it more expensive and complex for businesses and individuals alike to conduct international transactions, leading to higher fees and increased scrutiny.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”
This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.
Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.
Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.
This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.
Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.
Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.
Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.
Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Making life unbearable
The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.
This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.
Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.
While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.
People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.
World must force Israel to stop
Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.
The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.
New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.
Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.
These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.
New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.
These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.
Show our preparedness to uphold values
In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.
We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.
Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.
An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.
He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.
Protest is not enough. We need to act.
Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”
This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.
Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.
Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.
This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.
Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.
Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.
Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.
Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Making life unbearable
The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.
This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.
Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.
While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.
People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.
World must force Israel to stop
Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.
The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.
New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.
Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.
These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.
New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.
These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.
Show our preparedness to uphold values
In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.
We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.
Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.
An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.
He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.
Protest is not enough. We need to act.
Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.
Since the onset of its genocide, Israel has persistently pushed a narrative that the famine devastating Gaza is not of its own making, but the result of “Hamas looting aid”.
This claim, repeated across mainstream media and parroted by officials, has been used to deflect responsibility for what many human rights experts have called a deliberate starvation campaign.
But that narrative has now been discredited by Israel’s internal reporting. Last week, the Israeli military admitted internally that out of 110 looting incidents they documented, none were carried out by Hamas.
Instead, the looting was done by “armed gangs, organised clans” and, to a lesser extent, starved civilians.
Those very gangs and clans are backed by Israel; they enjoy full Israeli army protection and operate in areas Israel deems “extermination zones”, where any Palestinian trying to enter would be killed or kidnapped on the spot.
The gangs had vanished during the two-month ceasefire but conveniently re-emerged as soon as Israel was pressured into allowing a limited trickle of aid to enter. The timing is no coincidence; Israeli policy has deliberately weaponised anarchy to preserve the conditions for starvation.
This pushed even the UAE to strongly condemn Israel after the army forced an Emirati aid convoy to drive through a “red zone” where Israel-backed gangs looted 23 out of 24 trucks.
So why does Israel continue to cling to a demonstrably false narrative while openly engineering a looting crisis through its proxies? Because the myth of “Hamas looting” serves a critical strategic purpose: to whitewash and legitimise a new plan that institutionalises starvation for blackmail, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and mass internment through a shell Israeli organisation.
This is coupled with another alarming tactic of recruiting warlords, drug dealers, and criminals to create a puppet “anti-terror” force.
Israel’s looting myth The “looting” talking point is devoid of any logic, as Hamas would be able to do very little with thousands of tons of looted aid.
Israel and US Ambassador Mike Huckabee both claim Hamas uses the looted aid to buy new weaponry. But where would they buy such weapons from when Gaza is fully sealed off by Israel, and Rafah — the city of smuggling tunnels — is under full Israeli control?
Israel claims Hamas sells looted aid on the black market. But, again, what would they do with the money? Virtually nothing is allowed into Gaza except a trickle of food.
Israel also claims Hamas uses looted aid to recruit new militants, but Hamas doesn’t operate this way. The group depends on utmost secrecy and discipline in its operations.
Each new member passes through a long process of vetting, training, and tests to minimise the risk of infiltration. It would compromise Hamas to recruit people openly, whose only attachment to the group is bread rather than ideological commitment.
Perhaps most damning is that Israel has never captured a single instance of Hamas looting aid, despite subjecting Gaza to the most meticulous surveillance on earth. Israeli predator drones cover every inch of the enclave every minute of the day, yet there is nothing to show for Israel’s claims.
Hamas is also aware that hijacking and looting aid trucks could lead to Israel bombing the vehicles and diverting them from their predetermined route.
The Israeli army has done this on countless occasions when it fired at or bombed humanitarian convoys under the pretext that Hamas policemen came near the trucks. Ironically, those law enforcement officials were actually trying to prevent looting when they were targeted.
Israel’s allies reject the narrative Israel’s strongest supporters have refuted the “Hamas looting” claim. President Joe Biden’s humanitarian envoy, David Satterfield, admitted in February of last year that “no Israeli official has . . . come to the administration with specific evidence of diversion or theft of assistance delivered by the UN”.
Satterfield reiterated last Tuesday that Israel has never privately alleged or offered evidence of Hamas stealing aid from the UN and INGO channels. Israel’s ambassador to the EU, Haim Regev, said in mid-October 2023 that “there’s no evidence EU aid went to Hamas”.
Cindy McCain, World Food Programme’s chief and widow of one of the most pro-Israeli GOP senators, forcefully rejected Israel’s narrative on Sunday, saying that looting “doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas . . . it has simply to do with the fact these people are starving to death”.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported last week that “Israel has never presented evidence publicly or privately to humanitarian organisations or Western government officials to back up claims that Hamas had systematically stolen aid brought into Gaza”.
An internal memo jointly drafted by UN agencies and 20 INGOs in April, and viewed by The New Arab, stated that “there is no evidence of large-scale aid diversion”.
Gangs and scarcity are responsible for looting While Israel failed to show any evidence of Hamas stealing aid, the only documented organised systematic looting happening in Gaza right now is by Israeli-backed criminal gangs who enjoy full protection from the Israeli army, according to the Washington Post, Financial Times, Ha’aretz, and the UN.
A UN memo said these gangs established a “military complex” in the heart of Rafah after Israel fully depopulated the city. Humanitarian officials say the looting often happens right in front of Israeli troops and tanks, less than 100m away, who take no action until the local police arrive, with Israeli troops then opening fire at them.
Israel not only provides protection and backing to these criminal gangs but has created the perfect conditions for looting to thrive through scarcity and a collapsing state of law and order.
Currently, a single bag of wheat flour sells for about 1,500 NIS ($425), which makes it profitable for gangs to loot and sell on the market. These astronomical prices are driven by scarcity after Israel banned all food from entering Gaza for nearly 80 days, then allowed less than 20 percent of what Gaza needs on a normal day for basic survival after intense international pressure.
During the ceasefire, however, when Israel was allowing 600 trucks to enter per day, prices went back to normal and looting disappeared because it was no longer profitable due to the abundance of food, and because the police were able to resume their work.
Manufactured crisis to advance genocide The engineered looting crisis has long served as a convenient excuse to cover up the deliberate weaponisation of starvation against Gaza’s entire population, allowing Israel to distract from its restrictions on the entry of aid and the spread of famine by saying Hamas is to blame for stealing aid.
But now, this manufactured crisis is serving a second objective: to justify a dystopian ‘aid plan’ Israel is implementing in Gaza that has been condemned and boycotted by every UN agency and humanitarian organisation working in the enclave, as well as donor countries.
A joint UN-INGO memo warned that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation would facilitate the use of aid for forcible expulsion, by telling Gazans the only way they can receive food is by moving south to Rafah on Egypt’s border.
GHF, which Israeli opposition leaders said was an Israeli shell funded by Mossad, began its operations last Tuesday after being rocked by two scandals in one day.
GHF’s CEO had resigned on Sunday in protest of the organisation violating the principles of humanitarianism, while the organisation shut down its registered headquarters in Switzerland as soon as Swiss authorities launched an investigation.
Images coming out of the GHF’s militarised aid distribution site were immediately likened to concentration camps, where hundreds of emaciated Gazans were crowded into metal cages like cattle under the boiling sun, surrounded by armed US mercenaries, Israeli troops, and sand dunes.
Alarmingly, people who received aid noted the presence of Arabic speakers in addition to American mercenaries. Last week, the Israel-backed Islamic State-linked gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab emerged in Rafah again after a long disappearance.
Abu Shabab, a drug dealer and wanted criminal previously arrested multiple times by the local police, was the primary suspect in the systematic looting of aid under Israeli protection. This time, however, he emerged in a brand new uniform and military gear and started a Facebook page promoting himself in English and Arabic to mark a new “anti-terror” force operating in Israel-controlled Rafah.
Additional pictures viewed by The New Arab showed multiple armed men dressed in the same uniform as Abu Shabab armed with M-16s standing in front of a humanitarian convoy.
The unravelling of Israel’s “Hamas looting” narrative lays bare a chilling truth: starvation in Gaza is not collateral damage — it is a calculated weapon in a broader campaign of collective punishment and displacement.
By cultivating chaos, empowering criminal gangs, and then manipulating the humanitarian crisis they manufactured, Israel seeks to maintain extreme restrictions on aid, while externalising blame and avoiding accountability.
It is the machinery of genocide disguised in bureaucratic language and carried out under the watchful eyes of the world.
Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the European Union affairs manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The article was first published by The New Arab. On X at: @muhammadshehad2
Rohingya rights groups on Thursday decried “regional inaction and global neglect” over the plight of the Muslim minority from Myanmar after more than 400 refugees were feared drowned when two boats sank this month after setting sail from Bangladesh.
Last week, the U.N. refugee agency said that while details remained unclear, it had collected reports from family members and others about two separate boat tragedies on May 9 and May 10 in which 427 people may have died. It said both boats left from Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where about 1 million Rohingya shelter in camps.
Twenty-six Rohingya diaspora groups, including the U.K.-based Burmese Rohingya Organization, co-signed Thursday’s statement that said just 87 people had survived the two incidents. It added authorities had intercepted a third vessel with 188 people aboard as it attempted to leave Myanmar on May 18.
“These back-to-back disasters are the worst loss of Rohingya lives at sea this year, and they expose the deadly consequences of regional inaction and global neglect,” the statement said, adding that most of those on board were Rohingya who had already been displaced from their homes in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State.
“They were fleeing a growing campaign of widespread violence by the Arakan Army, amounting to a continuation of the ethnic cleansing first started by the Burmese military,” the statement said, referring to a rebel group that has seized control of most of Rakhine state from the Myanmar military.
“Those confined to displacement camps in Burmese military-controlled zones are starving, children are suffering from acute malnutrition, and many families are completely without food,” the statement said.
Most Rohingya are from Rakhine state and most are stateless, regarded as migrants from South Asia and not one of the ethnic groups classified as indigenous in Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s constitution.
In this March 21, 2024, photo Rohingya refugees wait to be rescued from their capsized boat off west Aceh.(Zahlul Akbar/AFP)
About 750,000 Rohingya fled a violent Myanmar military clearance campaign in Rakhine in 2017 and crossed into Bangladesh. The U.S. government determined the killings and rapes by the military amounted to genocide.
Now each year, thousands of Rohingya attempt to leave Bangladesh and Myanmar aboard rickety vessels for other destinations in Southeast Asia. Reports of boats sinking and mass fatalities are common.
The Arakan Army, consisting Buddhist ethnic Rakhine people, has also been implicated in serious rights abuses against Rohingya, human rights groups say, although the AA denies it.
In recent years, the AA’s position on the persecuted Muslim minority has vacillated. After the 2021 coup in Myanmar when the military seized power from a civilian government, the AA evinced a moderate and inclusive position on the Rohingya. But it has since been accused of mass killings after a campaign by the Myanmar junta to recruit Rohingya men, sometimes forcibly, into militias to fight the AA.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
Journalists have been targeted, detained and tortured by the Israeli military in Gaza — and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has now taken a new approach towards bringing justice these crimes.
The Paris-based global media freedom NGO has submitted multiple formal requests to the International Criminal Court (ICC) asking that Palestinian journalists who are victims of Israeli war crimes in Gaza be allowed to participate as such in international judicial proceedings.
If granted this status, these journalists would be able to present the ICC with the direct and personal harm they have suffered at the hands of Israeli forces, reports RSF.
RSF has filed four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza and recently joined director Sepideh Farsi at the Cannes Film Festival to pay tribute to Fatma Hassoun, a photojournalist killed by the Israeli army after it was revealed she was featured in the documentary film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.
After filing the four complaints with the ICC concerning war crimes committed against journalists in Gaza since October 2023, RSF is resolutely continuing its efforts to bring the issue before international justice.
The NGO has submitted several victim participation forms to the ICC so that Gazan journalists can participate in the legal process as recognised victims, not just as witnesses.
Being officially recognised as victims is a first step toward justice, truth, and reparations — and it is an essential step toward protecting press freedom and journalistic integrity in conflict zones.
Nearly 200 journalists killed
Since October 2023, Israeli armed forces have killed nearly 200 journalists in Gaza — the Gaza Media Office says more than 215 journalists have been killed — at least 44 of whom were targeted because of their work, according to RSF data.
Not only are foreign journalists barred from entering the blockaded Palestinian territory, but local reporters have watched their homes and newsrooms be destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and have been constantly displaced amid a devastating humanitarian crisis.
“The right of victims to participate in the ICC investigation is a crucial mechanism that will finally allow for the recognition of the immense harm suffered by Palestinian journalists working in Gaza, who are the target of an unprecedented and systematic crackdown,” said Clémence Witt, a lawyer at the Paris and Barcelona Bars, and Jeanne Sulzer, a lawyer at the Paris Bar and member of the ICC’s list of counsel.
Jonathan Dagher, head of the RSF Middle East desk, said: “It is time for justice for Gaza’s journalists to be served. The Israeli army’s ongoing crimes against them must end.
“RSF will tirelessly continue demanding justice and reparations. This new process in the ICC investigation is an integral part of this combat, and allowing journalists to participate as victims is essential to moving forward.
“They should be able to testify to the extreme violence targeting Gaza’s press. This is a new step toward holding the Israeli military and its leaders accountable for the crimes committed with impunity on Palestinian territory.”
When I despairingly contemplate the horrors and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to, I sometimes try to put this in the context of where I live.
I live on the Kāpiti Coast in the lower North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Geographically it is around the same size as Gaza. Both have coastlines running their full lengths. But, whereas the population of Gaza is a cramped two million, Kāpiti’s is a mere 56,000.
The Gaza Strip . . . 2 million people living in a cramped outdoor prison about the same size as Kāpiti. Map: politicalbytes.blog
I find it incomprehensible to visualise what it would be like if what is presently happening in Gaza occurred here.
The only similarities between them are coastlines and land mass. One is an outdoor prison while the other’s outdoors is peaceful.
New Zealand and Palestine state recognition Currently Palestine has observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In May last year, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestine being granted full membership of the United Nations.
To its credit, New Zealand was among 143 countries that supported the resolution. Nine, including the United States as the strongest backer of Israeli genocide outside Israel, voted against.
However, despite this massive majority, such is the undemocratic structure of the UN that it only requires US opposition in the Security Council to veto the democratic vote.
Notwithstanding New Zealand’s support for Palestine broadening its role in the General Assembly and its support for the two-state solution, the government does not officially recognise Palestine.
While its position on recognition is consistent with that of the genocide-supporting United States, it is inconsistent with the over 75 percent of UN member states who, in March 2025, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state (by 147 of the 193 member states).
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . his government should “correct this obscenity” of not recognising Palestinians’ right to have a sovereign nation. Image: RNZ/politicalbytes.blog/
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government does have the opportunity to correct this obscenity as Palestine recognition will soon be voted on again by the General Assembly.
In this context it is helpful to put the Hamas-led attack on Israel in its full historical perspective and to consider the reasons justifying the Israeli genocide that followed.
7 October 2023 and genocide justification The origin of the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the associated increased persecution, including killings, of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank (of the River Jordan) was not the attack by Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups on 7 October 2023.
This attack was on a small Israeli town less than 2 km north of the border. An estimated 1,195 Israelis and visitors were killed.
The genocidal response of the Israeli government that followed this attack can only be justified by three factors:
The Judaism or ancient Jewishness of Palestine in Biblical times overrides the much larger Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine prior to formation of Israel in 1948;
The right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination; and
The value of Israeli lives overrides the value Palestinian lives.
The first factor is the key. The second and third factors are consequential. In order to better appreciate their context, it is first necessary to understand the Nakba.
Understanding the Nakba Rather than the October 2023 attack, the origin of the subsequent genocide goes back more than 70 years to the collective trauma of Palestinians caused by what they call the Nakba (the Disaster).
The foundation year of the Nakba was in 1948, but this was a central feature of the ethnic cleansing that was kicked off between 1947 and 1949.
During this period Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.
The Nakba – the Palestinian collective trauma in 1948 that started ethnic cleansing by Zionist paramilitary forces. Image: David Robie/APR
During the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or forced to flee. Initially this was through Zionist paramilitaries.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in May this repression was picked up by its military. Massacres, biological warfare (by poisoning village wells) and either complete destruction or depopulation of Palestinian-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods (which were then given Hebrew names) followed
By the end of the Nakba, 78 percent of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.
Genocide to speed up ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing was unsuccessfully pursued, with the support of the United Kingdom and France, in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. More successful was the Six Day War of 1967, which included the military and political occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Throughout this period ethnic cleansing was not characterised by genocide. That is, it was not the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying them.
Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began in May 1948 and has accelerated to genocide in 2023. Image: politicalbytes.blog
In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) under the ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 put a temporary constraint on the expansion of ethnic cleansing.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel, along with South Africa the same year (until 1994), has been an apartheid state. I discussed this in an earlier Political Bytes post (15 March 2025), When apartheid met Zionism.
However, while sharing the racism, discrimination, brutal violence, repression and massacres inherent in apartheid, it was not characterised by genocide in South Africa; nor was it in Israel for most of its existence until the current escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Following 7 October 2023, genocide has become the dominant tool in the ethnic cleansing tool kit. More recently this has included accelerating starvation and the bombing of tents of Gaza Palestinians.
The magnitude of this genocide is discussed further below.
The Biblical claim Zionism is a movement that sought to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine. It was established as a political organisation as late as 1897. It was only some time after this that Zionism became the most influential ideology among Jews generally.
Despite its prevalence, however, there are many Jews who oppose Zionism and play leading roles in the international protests against the genocide in Gaza.
Zionist ideology is based on a view of Palestine in the time of Jesus Christ. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Based on Zionist ideology, the justification for replacing Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel rests on a Biblical argument for the right of Jews to retake their “homeland”. This justification goes back to the time of that charismatic carpenter and prophet Jesus Christ.
The population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was about 500,000 to 600,000 (a little bigger than both greater Wellington and similar to that of Jerusalem today). About 18,000 of these residents were clergy, priests and Levites (a distinct male group within Jewish communities).
Jerusalem itself in biblical times, with a population of 55,000, was a diverse city and pilgrimage centre. It was also home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities.
In fact, during the 7th century BC at least eight nations were settled within Palestine. In addition to Judaeans, they included Arameans, Samaritans, Phoenicians and Philistines.
A breakdown based on religious faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) provides a useful insight into how Palestine has evolved since the time of Jesus. Jews were the majority until the 4th century AD.
By the fifth century they had been supplanted by Christians and then from the 12th century to 1947 Muslims were the largest group. As earlier as the 12th century Arabic had become the dominant language. It should be noted that many Christians were Arabs.
Adding to this evolving diversity of ethnicity is the fact that during this time Palestine had been ruled by four empires — Roman, Persian, Ottoman and British.
Prior to 1948 the population of the region known as Mandate Palestine approximately corresponded to the combined Israel and Palestine today. Throughout its history it has varied in both size and ethnic composition.
The Ottoman census of 1878 provides an indicative demographic profile of its three districts that approximated what became Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War 1.
Group
Population
Percentage
Muslim citizens
403,795
86–87%
Christian citizens
43,659
9%
Jewish citizens
15,011
3%
Jewish (foreign-born)
Est. 5–10,000
1–2%
Total
Up to 472,465
100.0%
In 1882, the Ottoman Empire revealed that the estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine represented just 0.3 percent of the world’s Jewish population.
The self-determination claim Based on religion the estimated population of Palestine in 1922 was 78 percent Muslim, 11 percent Jewish, and 10 percent Christian.
By 1945 this composition had changed to 58 percent Muslim, 33 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian. The reason for this shift was the success of the Zionist campaigning for Jews to migrate to Palestine which was accelerated by the Jewish holocaust.
By 15 May 1948, the total population of the state of Israel was 805,900, of which 649,600 (80.6 percent) were Jews with Palestinians being 156,000 (19.4 percent). This turnaround was primarily due to the devastating impact of the Nakba.
Today Israel’s population is over 9.5 million of which over 77 percent are Jewish and more than 20 percent are Palestinian. The latter’s absolute growth is attributable to Israel’s subsequent geographic expansion, particularly in 1967, and a higher birth rate.
Palestine today (parts of West Bank under Israeli occupation). Map: politicalbytes.blog
The current population of the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, is more than 5.5 million. Compare this with the following brief sample of much smaller self-determination countries — Slovenia (2.2 million), Timor-Leste (1.4 million), and Tonga (104,000).
The population size of the Palestinian Territories is more than half that of Israel. Closer to home it is a little higher than New Zealand.
The only reason why Palestinians continue to be denied the right to self-determination is the Zionist ideological claim linked to the biblical time of Jesus Christ and its consequential strategy of ethnic cleansing.
If it was not for the opposition of the United States, then this right would not have been denied. It has been this opposition that has enabled Israel’s strategy.
Comparative value of Palestinian lives The use of genocide as the latest means of achieving ethnic cleansing highlights how Palestinian lives are valued compared with Israeli lives.
While not of the same magnitude appropriated comparisons have been made with the horrific ethnic cleansing of Jews through the means of the holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Per capita the scale of the magnitude gap is reduced considerably.
Since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (and confirmed by the World Health Organisation) more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of those killed over 16,500 were children. Compare this with less than 2000 Israelis killed.
Further, at least 310 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) team members have been killed along with over 200 journalists and media workers. Add to this around 1400 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses.
What also can’t be forgotten is the increasing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the occupied West Bank. Around 950 Palestinians, including around 200 children, have also been killed during this same period.
Time for New Zealand to recognise Palestine The above discussion is in the context of the three justifications for supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians strategy that goes back to 1948 and which, since October 2023, is being accelerated by genocide.
First, it requires the conviction that the theology of Judaism in Palestine in the biblical times following the birth of Jesus Christ trumps both the significantly changing demography from the 5th century at least to the mid-20th century and the numerical predominance of Arabs in Mandate Palestine;
Second, and consequentially, it requires the conviction that while Israelis are entitled to self-determination, Palestinians are not; and
Finally, it requires that Israeli lives are much more valuable than Palestinian lives. In fact, the latter have no value at all.
Unless the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, shares these convictions (especially the “here and now” second and third) then it should do the right thing first by unequivocally saying so, and then by recognising the right of Palestine to be an independent state.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
