radiofree.asia

Category: Indigenous

  • Palestine Action – terrorists or the real heroes of our time?

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Nobody has a bad word to say about the French Resistance in the Second World War, right?  Who would criticise a group confronting fascism, right?

    Yet this month the UK group Palestine Action has been proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation by their government for their non-violent direct action against UK-based industries supplying technology to fuel Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people.

    Are they terrorists or the very best of us in the West?

    Stéphane Hessel, a leading member of the French Resistance, survived time in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. After the war he was one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a pillar of international law to this day.

    The Declaration affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. In later years Hessel (d. 2013), who was Jewish, saw the treatment of the Palestinians as an affront to this and repeatedly called Israel out for crimes against humanity.

    Hessel argued people needed to be outraged just as he and his fellow fighters had been during the war.

    In 2010, he said: “Today, my strongest feeling of indignation is over Palestine, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The starting point of my outrage was the appeal launched by courageous Israelis to the Diaspora: you, our older siblings, come and see where our leaders are taking this country and how they are forgetting the fundamental human values of Judaism.”

    In his book Indignez-vous (Time for Outrage!) he called for a “peaceful insurrection” and pointed to some of the non-violent forms of protests Palestinians had used over the years.

    Supporting Palestine Action
    In Kendal, UK, this fellow wasn’t arrested. In Cardiff, this woman was. Perhaps the “terrorism” isn’t saying you support Palestine Action – it’s saying you oppose genocide?! Image: Private Eye/X/@DefendourJuries

    “The Israeli authorities have described these marches as ‘nonviolent terrorism’. Not bad . . .  One would have to be Israeli to describe nonviolence as terrorism.”

    How wrong Stéphane Hessel was on this point. The British Parliament has just proscribed Palestine Action as “terrorists” despite them having never attacked anyone, never used weapons, but only undertaken destruction of property linked to the arms industry.

    Does Palestine Action really bear resemblance to Al Qaeda or ISIS, or Israel’s Stern Gang or the IDF? Or, like the French Resistance, will they eventually be recognised as heroes of our time? Will Hollywood romanticise them in their usual tardy way in 50 years time?

    In respect to the Palestinians, Hessel was clear that resistance could take many forms: “We must recognise that when a country is occupied by infinitely superior military means, the popular reaction cannot be only nonviolent,” he said.

    In his time, he lived by those words.

    Resistance – a precious band of brothers and sisters
    Here’s a statistic that should make you think.  In the Second World War less than 2 percent of French people played any active role in the Resistance.  Most people just sat back and got on with their lives whether they liked the Germans or didn’t.

    The Jews and others were dealt to, stamped on and shipped out, while most of the French could trundle on unharassed.  The heavy lifting of resistance was done by a small band of brothers and sisters who took it to the enemy.

    History salutes them, as we now salute the Suffragettes, the anti-Apartheid activists, the American civil rights groups and Irish liberation fighters. We’re living through something similar now — and our governments are the bad guys.

    I first learned that shocking fact about the composition of the Resistance from my history teacher at l’Université de Franche-Comté, in France in the 1980s.  He was the distinguished historian Antoine Casanova, a specialist on Napoleon, Corsica and the Resistance.

    Perhaps the low level of resistance is not surprising.  Most of the people who put their bodies on the line in Occupied France during the Second World War were either communists or Jews.  Good on them. Jewish people made up as much as 20 percent of the French Resistance despite numbering only about 1 percent of the population. This massive over-representation can, understandably, be explained as recognition of the existential threat they faced — but many were also passionate communists or socialists, the ideological enemies of the racist, fascist ideology of their occupiers.

    Looking at the Israeli State today, many of those same Jewish Resistance fighters would instantly recognise the racism and fascism that they opposed in the 1940s.  We should remember our leaders tell us we share values with Israel.

    For anyone not in the United Kingdom (where it is illegal to show any support for Palestine Action) I highly recommend the recently released documentary To Kill A War Machine which gives an absolutely riveting account of both the direct action the group has undertaken and the moral and ideological underpinnings of their actions.

    Having seen the documentary I can see why the British Labour government is doing everything in its power to silence and censor them.  They really do expose who the true terrorists are.  Stéphane Hessel would be proud of Palestine Action.

    This week a former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made clear what is going on in Gaza.

    The “humanitarian city” Israel is planning to build on the ruins of Rafah would be, in his words, a concentration camp. Others have described it as a Warsaw-ghetto or a “death camp”.  Olmert says Israel is clearly committing war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank and that the concentration camp for the Gazan population would mark a further escalation.

    It would go beyond ethnic cleansing and take the Jewish State of Israel shoulder-to-shoulder with other regimes that built such camps.  Israel, we should never forget, is our close ally.

    Millions of people have hit the streets in Western countries.  A majority clearly repudiate what the US and Israel are doing.  But the political leadership of the big Western countries continues to enable the racist, fascist genocidal state of Israel to do its evil work. Lesser powers of the white-dominated broederbond, like Australia and New Zealand, also provide valuable support.

    Until our populations in the West mobilise in sufficient numbers to force change on our increasingly criminal ruling elites, the heavy-lifting done by groups like Palestine Action will remain powerful forms of the resistance.

    I grew up in the Catholic faith.  One of the lines indelibly printed on my consciousness was: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  Palestine Action is doing that.  Francesca Albanese is doing that.  Justice for Palestine and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa are doing this.

    The real question, the burning question each of us must answer is — given there is no middle ground, there is no fence to sit on when it comes to genocide — whose side are you on? And what are you going to do about it?  Vive la Resistance! Vive the defenders of the Palestinian cause!

    Rest in Peace Stéphane Hessel. Le temps passe, le souvenir reste.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Flying the flags for Palestine – NZ protesters take message to Devonport

    The Devonport Flagstaff

    About 200 people marched in Devonport last Saturday in support of Palestine.

    Pro-Palestine flags and placards were draped on the band rotunda at Windsor Reserve as speakers, including Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick and the people power manager of Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand Margaret Taylor, a Devonport local, encouraged the crowd to continue to fight for peace in the Middle East.

    The Devonport Out For Gaza rally progressed up Victoria Rd to the Victoria Theatre, crossed the road, came down to the ferry terminal, then marched along the waterfront to the New Zealand Navy base.

    Swarbrick said the New Zealand government and New Zealanders could not turn a blind eye to what was happening in Palestine.

    The rally, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), marked the 92nd consecutive week that a march has been held in Auckland in support of Palestine.

    Republished with permission from The Devonport Flagstaff.

    Call to action . . . Devonport peace activist Ruth Coombes (left) and Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick at the microphone (right). Image: The Devonport Flagstaff
    Call to action . . . Devonport peace activist Ruth Coombes (left) and Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick at the microphone (right). Image: The Devonport Flagstaff

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Police protection for New Caledonian politicians following death threats

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    New Caledonian politicians who inked their commitment to a deal with France last weekend will be offered special police protection following threats, especially made on social media networks.

    The group includes almost 20 members of New Caledonia’s parties — both pro-France and pro-independence — who took part in deal-breaking negotiations with the French State that ended on 12 July 2025, and a joint commitment regarding New Caledonia’s political future.

    The endorsed document envisages a roadmap in the coming months to turn New Caledonia into a “state” within the French realm.

    It is what some legal experts have sometimes referred to as “a state within the state”, while others say this was tantamount to pushing the French Constitution to its very limits.

    The document is a commitment by all signatories that they will stick to their respective positions from now on.

    The tense but conclusive negotiations took place behind closed doors in a hotel in the small city of Bougival, near Paris, under talks driven by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls and a team of high-level French government representatives and advisers.

    It followed Valls’ several unsuccessful attempts earlier this year to reach a consensus between parties who want New Caledonia to remain part of France and others representing the pro-independence movement.

    Concessions from both sides
    But to reach a compromise agreement, both sides have had to make concessions.

    The pro-French parties, for instance, have had to endorse the notion of a State of New Caledonia or that of a double French-New Caledonian nationality.

    Pro-independence parties have had to accept the plan to modify the rules of eligibility to vote at local elections so as to allow more non-native French nationals to join the local electoral roll.

    They also had to postpone or even give up on the hard-line full sovereignty demand for now.

    Over the past five years and after a series of three referendums (held between 2018 and 2021) on self-determination, both camps have increasingly radicalised.

    This resulted in destructive and deadly riots that broke out in May 2024, resulting in 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) in damage, thousands of jobless and the destruction of hundreds of businesses.

    Over one year later, the atmosphere in New Caledonia remains marked by a sense of tension, fear and uncertainty on both sides of the political chessboard.

    Since the deal was signed and made public, on July 12, and even before flying back to New Caledonia, all parties have been targeted by a wide range of reactions from their militant bases, especially on social media.

    Some of the reactions have included thinly-veiled death threats in response to a perception that, on one side or another, the deal was not up to the militants’ expectations and that the parties’ negotiators are now regarded as “traitors”.

    Since signing the Paris agreement, all parties have also recognised the need to “sell” and “explain” the new agreement to their respective militants.

    Most of the political parties represented during the talks have already announced they will hold meetings in the coming days, in what is described as “an exercise in pedagogy”.

    “In a certain number of countries, when you sign compromises after hundreds of hours of discussions and when it’s not accepted [by your militants], you lose your reputation. In our country . . . you can risk your life,” said moderate pro-France Calédonie Ensemble leader Philippe Gomès told public broadcaster NC La Première on Wednesday.

    Pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou was the first to face negative repercussions back in New Caledonia.

    Tjibaou’s fateful precedent
    “To choose this difficult and new path also means we’ll be subject to criticism. We’re going to get insulted, threatened, precisely because we have chosen a different path,” he told a debriefing meeting hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.

    In 1988, Tjibaou’s father, pro-independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, also signed a historic deal (known as the Matignon-Oudinot accords) with pro-France’s Jacques Lafleur, under the auspices of then Prime Minister Michel Rocard.

    The deal largely contributed to restoring peace in New Caledonia, after a quasi-civil war during the second half of the 1980s.

    The following year, he and his deputy, Yeiwéné Yeiwéné, were both shot dead by Djubelly Wéa, a hard-line member of the pro-independence movement, who believed the signing of the 1988 deal had been a “betrayal” of the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for sovereignty and independence.

    ‘Nobody has betrayed anybody’
    “Nobody has betrayed anybody, whichever party he belongs to. All of us, on both sides, have defended and remained faithful to their beliefs. We had to work and together find a common ground for the years to come, for Caledonians. Now that’s what we need to explain,” said pro-France Rassemblement-LR leader Virginie Ruffenach.

    In an interview earlier this week, Valls said he was very aware of the local tensions.

    “I’m aware there are risks, even serious ones. And not only political. There are threats on elections, on politicians, on the delegations. What I’m calling for is debate, confrontation of ideas and calm.

    “I’m aware that there are extremists out there, who may want to provoke a civil war . . . a tragedy is always possible.

    “The risk is always there. Since the accord was signed, there have been direct threats on New Caledonian leaders, pro-independence or anti-independence.

    “We’re going to act to prevent this. There cannot be death threats on social networks against pro-independence or anti-independence leaders,” Valls said.

    Over the past few days, special protection French police officers have already been deployed to New Caledonia to take care of politicians who took part in the Bougival talks and wish to be placed under special scrutiny.

    “They will be more protected than (French cabinet) ministers,” French national public broadcaster France Inter reported on Tuesday.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • 12 countries agree to confront Israel collectively over Gaza after Bogotá summit

    ANALYSIS: By Mick Hall

    Collective measures to confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people have been agreed by 12 nations after an emergency summit of the Hague Group in Bogotá, Colombia.

    A joint statement today announced the six measures, which it said were geared to holding Israel to account for its crimes in Palestine and would operate within the states’ domestic legal and legislative frameworks.

    Nearly two dozen other nations in attendance at the summit are now pondering whether to sign up to the measures before a September deadline set by the Hague Group.

    New Zealand and Australia stayed away from the summit.

    The measures include preventing the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, military fuel and dual-use items to Israel and preventing the transit, docking or servicing of vessels if there is a risk of vessels carrying such items. No vessel under the flag of the countries would be allowed to carry this equipment.

    The countries would also “commence an urgent review of all public contracts, in order to prevent public institutions and public funds, where applicable, from supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territory which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory, to ensure that our nationals, and companies and entities under our jurisdiction, as well as our authorities, do not act in any way that would entail recognition or provide aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.

    The countries will prosecute “the most serious crimes under international law through robust, impartial and independent investigations and prosecutions at national or international levels, in compliance with our obligation to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes”.

    They agreed to support universal jurisdiction mandates, “as and where applicable in our legal constitutional frameworks and judiciaries, to ensure justice for all victims and the prevention of future crimes in the Occupied Palestine Territory”.

    This will mean IDF soldiers and others accused of war crimes in Palestine would face arrest and could go through domestic judicial processes in these countries, or referrals to the ICC.

    The statement said the measures constituted a collective commitment to defend the foundational principles of international law.

    It also called on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to commission an immediate investigation of the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis, and report on these matters before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

    Following repeated total blockades of Gaza since October 7, 2023, Gazans have been dying of starvation as they continue to be bombed and repeatedly displaced and their means of life destroyed.

    The official death toll stands at nearly 59,000, mostly women and children, although some estimates put that number at over 200,000.

    The joint statement recognised Israel as a threat to regional peace and the system of international law and called on all United Nations member states to enforce their obligations under the UN charter.

    It condemned “unilateral attacks and threats against United Nations mandate holders, as well as key institutions of the human rights architecture and international justice” and committed to build “on the legacy of global solidarity movements that have dismantled apartheid and other oppressive systems, setting a model for future co-ordinated responses to international law violations”.

    Countries face wrath of US
    Ministers, high-ranking officials and envoys from 30 nations attended the two-day event, from July 15-16, called to come up with the measures. It is now hoped some of those attendees will sign up to the statement by September.

    For countries like Ireland, which sent a delegation, signing up would have profound implications. The Irish government has been heavily criticised by its own citizens for continuing to allow Shannon Airport as a transit point for military equipment from the United States to be sent to Israel.

    It would also face the prospect of severe reprisals by the US, as would others thinking of adding their names to the collective statement. The US is now expected to consult with nations that attended and warn them of the consequences of signing up.

    The summit had been billed by the UN Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, as “the most significant political development of the last 20 months”.

    Albanese had told attendees that “for too long, international law has been treated as optional — applied selectively to those perceived as weak, ignored by those acting as the powerful”.

    “This double standard has eroded the very foundations of the legal order. That era must end,” she said.

    Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the Hague group was established by nine nations in late January at The Hague in the Netherlands to hold Israel to account for its crimes and push for Palestinian self-determination.

    Colombia last year ended diplomatic relations with Israel, while South Africa in late December 2023 filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, which was joined by nearly two dozen countries.

    The ICJ has determined a plausible genocide is taking place and issued orders for Israel to protect Palestinians and take measures to stop genocide taking place, a call ignored by the Zionist state.

    Representatives from the countries arrived in Bogota this week in defiance of the United States, which last week sanctioned Albanese for attempts to have US and Israeli political officials and business leaders prosecuted by the ICC over Gaza.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it an illegitimate “campaign of political and economic warfare”.

    It followed the sanctioning of four ICC judges after arrest warrants were issued in November last year for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    Ahead of the Bogota meeting, the US State Department accused The Hague Group of multilateral attempts to “weaponise international law as a tool to advance radical anti-Western agendas” and warned the US would “aggressively defend” its interests.

    Signs of division in the West
    Most of those attending came from nations in the Global South, but not all.

    Founding Hague Group members Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa attended the Summit. Joining them were Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

    However, in a sign of increasing division in the West, NATO members Spain, Portugal, Norway, Slovenia and Turkey also attended.

    Inside the summit, former US State Department official Annelle Sheline, who resigned in March over Gaza, defended the right of those attending “to uphold their obligations under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.

    “This is not the weaponisation of international law. This is the application of international law,” she told delegates.

    The US and Israel deny accusations that genocide is taking place in Gaza, while Western media have collectively refused to adjudicate the claims or frame stories around Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the strip, despite ample evidence by the UN and genocide experts.

    Since 7 October 2023, US allies have offered diplomatic cover for Israel by repeating it had “a right to defend itself” and was engaged in a legitimate defensive “war against Hamas”.

    Israel now plans to corral starving Gazans into a concentration camp in the south of the strip, with many analysts expecting the IDF to exterminate anyone found outside its boundaries, while preparing to push those inside across the border into Egypt.

    Asia Pacific and EU allies shun Bogota summit
    Addressing attendees at the summit yesterday, Albanese criticised the EU for its neo-colonialism and support for Israel, criticisms that can be extended to US allies in the Asia Pacific region.

    Independent journalist Abby Martin reported Albanese as saying: “Europe and its institutions are guided more by colonial mindset than principle, acting as vessels to US Empire even as it drags us from war to war, misery to misery.

    “The Hague Group is a new moral centre in world politics. Millions are hoping for leadership that can birth a new global order, rooted in justice, humanity and collective liberation. It’s not just about Palestine. This is about all of us.”

    The Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was asked why Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not take up an invite to attend the Hague Group meeting. In a statement to Mick Hall in Context, a spokesperson said she had been unable to attend, but did not explain why.

    She said Australia was a “resolute defender of international law” and added: “Australia has consistently been part of international calls that all parties must abide by international humanitarian law. Not enough has been done to protect civilians and aid workers.

    “We have called on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    “We have also called on Israel to comply with the binding orders of the ICJ, including to enable the unhindered provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale.”

    When asked why New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters had failed to take up the invitation or send any of his officials, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson simply refused to comment.

    She said MFAT media advisors would only engage with “recognised news media outlets”.

    Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as well as a number of his ministers, have been referred to the ICC by domestic legal teams, accused of complicity in the genocide.

    Evidence against Albanese was accepted into the ICC’s wider investigation of crimes in Gaza in October last year, while Luxon’s referral earlier this month is being assessed by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

    Delegates told humanity at stake
    Delegates heard several impassioned addresses from speakers on what was at stake during the two-day event in Bogota.

    Palestinian-American trauma surgeon, Dr Thaer Ahmad, told the gathering that Palestinians seeking food were being met with bullets, describing aid distribution facilities set up by the US contractor-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) as “slaughterhouses”. More than 800 starving Gazans have been killed at the GHF aid points so far.

    “People know they could die but cannot sit idly by and watch their families starve,” he said.

    “The bullets fired by GHF mercenaries are just one part of the weaponisation of aid, where Palestinians are ghettoised into areas where somebody in military fatigues decides if you are worthy of food or not.”

    Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour had urged the summit attendees to take decisive action to not only save the Palestinian people, but redeem humanity.

    “Instead of outrage at the crimes we know are taking place, we find those who defend, normalise, and even celebrate them,” he said.

    “The core values we believed humanity agreed were universal are shattered, blown to pieces like the tens of thousands of starved, murdered and injured civilians in Palestine.

    “The mind and heart cannot fathom or process the immense pain and horror that has taken hold of the lives of an entire people. We must not fail — not just for Palestine’s sake — but for humanity’s sake.”

    At the beginning of the summit, Colombian Deputy Foreign Minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir told summit delegates the Palestinian genocide threatened the entire international system.

    Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote in The Guardian last week: “We can either stand firm in defence of the legal principles that seek to prevent war and conflict, or watch helplessly as the international system collapses under the weight of unchecked power politics.”

    Meanwhile, EU foreign ministers, as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, met in Brussels at the same time as the Bogota summit, to discuss Middle East co-operation, but also possible options for action against Israel.

    At the EU–Southern Neighbourhood Ministerial Meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas put forward potential actions after Israel was found to have breached the EU economic cooperation deal with the bloc on human rights grounds. As expected, no sanctions, restricted trade or suspension of the co-operation deal were agreed.

    The EU has been one of Israel’s most strident backers in its campaign against Gaza, with EU members Germany and France in particular supplying weapons, as well as political support.

    The UK government has continued to supply arms and operate spy planes over Gaza over the past 21 months, launched from bases in Cyprus, while its military has issued D-Notices to censor media reports that its special forces have been operating inside the occupied territories.

    Mick Hall is an independent Irish-New Zealand journalist, formerly of RNZ and AAP, based in New Zealand since 2009. He writes primarily on politics, corporate power and international affairs. This article is republished from his substack Mick Hall in Context with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Susi Newborn among activists featured in Pacific ‘nuclear free heroes’ video

    Pacific Media Watch

    Greenpeace pioneer and activist Susi Newborn is among the “nuclear free heroes” featured in a video tribute premiered this week in an exhibition dedicated to a nuclear-free Pacific.

    The week-long exhibition at Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s Ellen Melville Centre, titled “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995,” closes tomorrow afternoon.

    A segment dedicated to the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement features Newborn making a passionate speech about the legend of the “Warriors of the Rainbow” on the steps of the Auckland Museum in July 2023 just weeks before she died.

    Newborn was an Aotearoa New Zealand author, documentary film-maker, environmental activist and a founding director of Greenpeace UK and co-founder of Greenpeace International.

    She was an executive director of the New Zealand non-for-profit group Women in Film and Television.

    Newborn was also one of the original crew members on the first Rainbow Warrior which was bombed in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 2025.

    The ship’s successor, Rainbow Warrior III, a state-of-the-art environmental campaign ship, has been docked at Halsey Wharf this month for a memorial ceremony to honour the 40th anniversary of the loss of photographer Fernando Pereira and the ship, sabotaged by French secret agents.

    Effective activists
    In a tribute after her death, Greenpeace stalwart Rex Weyler wrote: “Susi Newborn [was] one of the most skilled and effective activists in Greenpeace’s 52-year history.”

    “In 1977, when Susi arrived in Canada for her first Greenpeace action to protect infant harp seal pups in Newfoundland, she was already something of a legend,” Weyler wrote.

    “Journalistic tradition would have me refer to her as ‘Newborn’, a name that rang with significance, but I can only think of her as Susi, the tough, smart activist from London.”

    The half hour video collage, produced and directed by the Whānau Community Centre’s Nik Naidu, is titled Legends of a Nuclear-Free & Independent Pacific (NFIP).


    Legends of a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific.     Video: Talanoa TV

    Among other activists featured in the video are NFIP academic Dr Marco de Jong; Presbyterian minister Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua; Professor Vijay Naidu, founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG); Polynesian Panthers founder Will ‘Ilolahia; NFIP advocate Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Ngāti Hauā, Te Rarawe); community educator and activist Del Abcede; retired media professor, journalist and advocate Dr David Robie; Anglican priest who founded the Peace Squadron, Reverend George Armstrong; and United Liberation Movement for West Papua vice-president Octo Mote, interviewed at the home of peace author and advocate Maire Leadbeater.

    The video sound track is from Herbs’ famous French Letter about nuclear testing in the Pacific.

    “It is so important to record our stories and history — especially for our children and future generations,” said video creator Nik Naidu.

    Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific . . . an early poster.
    Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific . . . an early poster.

    “They need to hear the truth from our “legends” and “leaders”. Those who stood for justice and peace.

    “The freedoms and benefits we all enjoy today are a direct result of the sacrifice and activism of these legends.”

    The video has been one of the highlights of the “Legends” exhibition, created by Heather Devere, Del Abcede and David Robie of the Asia Pacific Media Network; Nik Naidu of the APMN as well as co-founder of the Whānau Community Hub; Antony Phillips and Tharron Bloomfield of the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga; and Rachel Mario of the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group and Whānau Hub.

    Support has also come from the Ellen Melville Centre (venue and promotion), Padet (for the video series), Pax Christi, Women’s International League for Peace Freedom (WILPF) Aotearoa, and the Quaker Peace Fund.

    The exhibition was opened by Labour MP for Te Atatu and disarmament spokesperson Phil Twyford last Saturday.

    The video collage and the individual video items can be seen on the Talanoa TV channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talanoatv

    Professor Vijay Naidu of the University of the South Pacific
    Professor Vijay Naidu of the University of the South Pacific . . . founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), one of the core groups in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement. Image: APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • David Robie: New Zealand must do more for Pacific and confront nuclear powers

    By Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific Waves presenter/producer, and Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/bulletin editor

    The New Zealand government needs to do more for its Pacific Island neighbours and stand up to nuclear powers, a distinguished journalist, media educator and author says.

    Professor David Robie, a recipient of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), released the latest edition of his book Eyes of Fire: The last voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior (Little Island Press), which highlights the nuclear legacies of the United States and France.

    Dr Robie, who has worked in Pacific journalism and academia for more than 50 years, recounts the crew’s experiences aboard the Greenpeace flagship the Rainbow Warrior in 1985, before it was bombed in Auckland Harbour.

    At the time, New Zealand stood up to nuclear powers, he said.

    “It was pretty callous [of] the US and French authorities to think they could just carry on nuclear tests in the Pacific, far away from the metropolitan countries, out of the range of most media, and just do what they like,” Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific. “It is shocking, really.”

    The bombed Rainbow Warrior next morning
    The bombed Rainbow Warrior next morning . . . as photographed by protest photojournalist John Miller. Image: Frontispiece in Eyes of Fire © John Miller

    Speaking to Pacific Waves, Dr Robie said that Aotearoa had “forgotten” how to stand up for the region.

    “The real issue in the Pacific is about climate crisis and climate justice. And we’re being pushed this way and that by the US [and] by the French. The French want to make a stake in their Indo-Pacific policies as well,” he said.

    ‘We need to stand up’
    “We need to stand up for smaller Pacific countries.”

    Dr Robie believes that New Zealand is failing with its diplomacy in the region.

    Rongelap Islanders on board the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior travelling to their new home on Mejatto Island in 1985
    Rongelap Islanders on board the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior travelling to their new home on Mejatto Island in 1985 — less than two months before the bombing. Image: ©1985 David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    He accused the coalition government of being “too timid” and “afraid of offending President Donald Trump” to make a stand on the nuclear issue.

    However, a spokesperson for New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Pacific that New Zealand’s “overarching priority . . . is to work with Pacific partners to achieve a secure, stable, and prosperous region that preserves Pacific sovereignty and agency”.

    The spokesperson said that through its foreign policy “reset”, New Zealand was committed to “comprehensive relationships” with Pacific Island countries.

    “New Zealand’s identity, prosperity and security are intertwined with the Pacific through deep cultural, people, historical, security, and economic linkages.”

    The New Zealand government commits almost 60 percent of its development funding to the region.

    Pacific ‘increasingly contested’
    The spokesperson said that the Pacific was becoming increasingly contested and complex.

    “New Zealand has been clear with all of our partners that it is important that engagement in the Pacific takes place in a manner which advances Pacific priorities, is consistent with established regional practices, and supportive of Pacific regional institutions.”

    They added that New Zealand’s main focus remained on the Pacific, “where we will be working with partners including the United States, Australia, Japan and in Europe to more intensively leverage greater support for the region.

    “We will maintain the high tempo of political engagement across the Pacific to ensure alignment between our programme and New Zealand and partner priorities. And we will work more strategically with Pacific Governments to strengthen their systems, so they can better deliver the services their people need,” the spokesperson said.

    The cover of the latest edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
    The cover of the latest edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Little Island Press

    However, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, writing in the prologue of Dr Robie’s book, said: “New Zealand needs to re-emphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.”

    Dr Robie added that looking back 40 years to the 1980s, there was a strong sense of pride in being from Aotearoa, the small country which set an example around the world.

    “We took on . . . the nuclear powers,” Dr Robie said.

    “And the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was symbolic of that struggle, in a way, but it was a struggle that most New Zealanders felt a part of, and we were very proud of that [anti-nuclear] role that we took.

    “Over the years, it has sort of been forgotten”.

    ‘Look at history’
    France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.

    Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were “clean” and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

    From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands by the US.

    The 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded by the United States, left a legacy of fallout and radiation contamination that continues to this day.
    The 1 March 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, the largest nuclear weapon ever exploded by the United States, left a legacy of fallout and radiation contamination that continues to this day. Image: Marshall Islands Journal

    In 2024, then-US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell, while responding to a question from RNZ Pacific about America’s nuclear legacy, said: “Washington has attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”

    However, Dr Robie said that was not good enough and labelled the destruction left behind by the US, and France, as “outrageous”.

    “It is political speak; politicians trying to cover their backs and so on. If you look at history, [the response] is nowhere near good enough, both by the US and the French.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • First-hand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’

    Occupied West Bank-based New Zealand journalist Cole Martin asks who are the peacemakers?

    BEARING WITNESS: By Cole Martin

    As a Kiwi journalist living in the occupied West Bank, I can list endless reasons why there is no peace in the “Holy Land”.

    I live in a refugee camp, alongside families who were expelled from their homes by Israel’s violent establishment in 1948 — never allowed to return and repeatedly targeted by Israeli military incursions.

    Daily I witness suffocating checkpoints, settler attacks against rural towns, arbitrary imprisonment with no charge or trial, a crippled economy, expansion of illegal settlements, demolition of entire communities, genocidal rhetoric, and continued expulsion.

    No form of peace can exist within an active system of domination. To talk about peace without liberation and dignity is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.

    I often find myself alongside a variety of peacemakers, putting themselves on the line to end these horrific systems — let me outline the key groups:

    Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, co-ordinating demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience. Google “Iqrit village”, “The Great March of Return”, “Tent of Nations farm”. These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines.

    Protective Presence activists are a mix of about 150 Israeli and international civilians who volunteer their days and nights physically accompanying Palestinian communities. They aim to prevent Israeli settler violence, state-sanctioned home demolitions, and military/police incursions. They document the injustice and often face violence and arrest themselves. Foreigners face deportation and blacklisting — as a journalist I was arrested and barred from the West Bank short-term and my passport was withheld for more than a month.

    Reconciliation organisations have been working for decades to bridge the disconnect between political narratives and human realities. The effective groups don’t seek “co-existence” but “co-resistance” because they recognise there can be no peace within an active system of apartheid. They reiterate that dialogue alone achieves nothing while the Israeli regime continues to murder, displace and steal. Yes there are “opposing narratives”, but they do not have equal legitimacy when tested against the reality on the ground.

    Journalists continue to document and report key developments, chilling statistics and the human cost. They ensure people are seen. Over 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza. High-profile Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed by Israeli forces in 2022. They continue reporting despite the risk, and without their courage world leaders wouldn’t know which undeniable facts to brazenly ignore.

    Humanitarians serve and protect the most vulnerable, treating and rescuing people selflessly. More than 400 aid workers and 1000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza. All 38 hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, with just a small number left partially functioning. NGOs have been crippled by USAID cuts and targeted Israeli policies, marked by a mass exodus of expats who have spent years committed to this region — severing a critical lifeline for Palestinian communities.

    All these groups emphasise change will not come from within. Protective Presence barely stems the flow.

    Reconciliation means nothing while the system continues to displace, imprison and slaughter Palestinians en masse. Journalism, non-violence and humanitarian efforts are only as effective as the willingness of states to uphold international law.

    Those on the frontlines of peacebuilding express the urgent need for global accountability across all sectors; economic, cultural and political sanctions. Systems of apartheid do not stem from corrupt leadership or several extremists, but from widespread attitudes of supremacy and nationalism across civil society.

    Boycotts increase the economic cost of maintaining such systems. Divestment sends a strong financial message that business as usual is unacceptable.

    Many other groups across the world are picketing weapons manufacturers, writing to elected leaders, educating friends and family, challenging harmful narratives, fundraising aid to keep people alive.

    Where are the peacemakers? They’re out on the streets. They’re people just like you and me.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the occupied West Bank and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with permission.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN expert advocates peacekeeper path to break Israel’s siege on Gaza

    COMMENTARY: By Bruce King

    Almost two months ago, a UN special rapporteur, Dr Michael Fakhri, penned an opinion article in The Guardian newspaper warning that “if aid doesn’t enter Gaza now, 14,000 babies may die.”

    “UN peacekeepers must step in,” he added.

    Dr Fakhri is the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food and an associate professor of international law at the University of Oregon.

    His article came 15 days after a long list of UN experts — including Dr Fakhri and beginning with the outspoken Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese — published an extraordinary joint statement declaring: “End unfolding genocide or watch it end life in Gaza: UN experts say States face defining choice.”

    The joint statement said humanity was descending into “a moral abyss”, and Dr Fakhri decried the response so far of nations as “slow and ghastly”.

    On the other hand, he praised the individuals who “mobilise and enforce international law through their own hands”, particularly the Gaza Freedom Flotillas and the land marchers attempting to reach the Rafah crossing from Egypt to Gaza.

    Dr Fakhri appears to consider the deployment by the UN General Assembly of UN Peacekeepers as the only feasible option that is practical and also fast enough and vigorous enough to properly address the gravity of the situation in Gaza.

    Many others have expressed similar sentiments. For instance, just days after The Guardian article, Ireland’s Labour Party asked the Irish government “to use every lever at its disposal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza through a UN-mandated peacekeeping force”.


    Dr Fakhri makes his case for UN peacekeepers action.       Video: Badil Resource Centre

    As another example, DAWN, a group promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa has long advocated for UN Peacekeepers for Gaza and has just started a petition.

    Dr Michael Fakhri
    Dr Michael Fakhri . . . deployment by the UN General Assembly of peacekeepers is the only feasible option that is practical and fast enough for saving Gaza. Image: UN

    DAWN’s petition may have been timed to influence the “emergency summit”
    on the crisis being held today and tomorrow in Bogota, Colombia. It is co-hosted by Colombia and South Africa and will be attended by representatives from more than 30 nations and prominent actors such as Albanese.

    A crucial point is that Dr Fakhri and others have explained how the UN General Assembly can rapidly deploy a UN Peacekeeping Force for this purpose. This is important because of the widespread, but erroneous, belief that only the UN Security Council — the UN’s other main legislative organ — can authorise UN peacekeeping missions.

    Arab League calls for UN peacekeepers . . . but officials wrongly say it is up to UNSC to make the call
    Arab League calls for UN peacekeepers . . . but the subheading in this report wrongly says it is up to UNSC to make the call. Image: NYT screenshot

    An example of this falsehood being spread by the corporate news media is shown by this New York Times claim.

    Whereas all UN member states are equally represented in the General Assembly, the Security Council is dominated by its five permanent members — the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France — with each having the power to veto all proposals.

    But the US is actively supporting Israel’s activities in occupied Palestine, and it would surely block any such peacekeeping initiative if submitted to the Security Council. This leaves it up to the UN General Assembly to organise any UN Peacekeeping Force for Gaza.

    As indicated by Dr Fakri, the founding UN Charter of 1945 provides for the General Assembly to step in to restore peace where the Security Council has failed in its primary responsibility to act.

    Relevant sections of the UN Charter.
    Relevant sections of the UN Charter.

    As shown above, primary responsibility was given to the Security Council under the UN Charter for practical reasons only, “to ensure prompt and effective action”.

    Formal protocols for the General Assembly to take over from the Security Council were added in 1950, in what is widely referred to as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution. It explicitly provides the option of setting up an armed force, as shown below.

    The Uniting for Peace resolution.
    The Uniting for Peace resolution, 1950.

    As also shown, Uniting for Peace resolutions are addressed in Emergency Special Sessions of the UN General Assembly. These can be called within 24 hours and from a request by any member state. To be passed, a resolution requires a two-thirds majority of the states that voted either for, or against, the resolution.

    Historically, the very first UN Peacekeeping force was set up in this way in response to the Suez Crisis of 1956-7 — see below. Those UN Peacekeepers oversaw the prompt retreat from Egypt of Israel and of the Security Council permanent members, Britain and France. Eventually, in 1957 they were present for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza itself, then a protectorate of Egypt.

    UN General Assembly resolutions setting up the first UN Peacekeeping Force in 1956.
    UN General Assembly resolutions setting up the first UN Peacekeeping Force in 1956.

    Returning to the current circumstances, Dr Fakhri says that if a UN peacekeeping force is formed then Israel’s permission is not required for its deployment in Gaza.

    The actual main impediment to the success of the plan may come from covert bullying of UN member nations by the US and Israel. As explained by prominent law professor Francis Boyle: “The US government will bribe, threaten, intimidate and blackmail all members of the UN General Assembly not to [act against] Israel.”

    Dr King is a physicist researching topics in renewable energy, with an interest in humanitarian issues.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Australian bid to criminalise Palestine support creates ‘hierarchy of racism’, says PSNA

    Pacific Media Watch

    The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has called on the New Zealand government to not follow Australia’s policy moves which would effectively criminalise the Palestine solidarity movement.

    The Australian government has announced plans to implement recommendations from its anti-semitism envoy which PSNA says creates a “hierarchy of racism” with anti-semitism at the top, while Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism hardly feature.

    At least some of the appalling anti-semitic attacks in Sydney have been bogus, said the PSNA in a statement.

    Co-chair John Minto said PSNA had no tolerance for anti-semitism in Aotearoa New Zealand, or anywhere else.

    “But equally there should be no place for any other kind of racism, such as Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Our government must speak out against all forms of discrimination and support all communities when racism rears its ugly head,” he said.

    “Let’s not forget the murderous attacks on the Christchurch mosques.”

    Minto said the Australian measures would “inevitably” be used to criminalise the Palestinian solidarity movement across the country.

    Trump ‘demonising’ support
    “We see it happening in the US, to attack and demonise support for Palestinian human rights by the Trump administration.  We see it orchestrated in the UK to shut down any speech which Prime Minister Starmer and the Israeli government don’t like.”

    The PSNA statement said that it agreed with the Jewish Council of Australia which has warned the Australian government adopting these measures could result in

    “undermining Australia’s democratic freedoms, inflaming community divisions, and entrenching selective approaches to racism that serve political agendas.”

    Minto said the free speech restrictions in the US, UK and Australia had nothing to do with what people usually understand as anti-semitism.

    “The drive comes from the Israeli government.  They see making anti-semitism charges as the most effective means of preventing anyone publicly pointing to the genocide its armed forces are perpetrating in Gaza,” he said.

    “The definition of anti-semitism, usually inserted into codes of ethics or legislation, is from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.  The IHRA definition includes 11 examples.  Seven of the examples are about criticising Israel.”

    “It’s quite clear the Israeli campaign is to distract the community from Israel’s horrendous war crimes, such as the round-the-clock mass killing and mass starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, and deflect calls for sanctions against Israel.

    “Already we can see in both the UK and US, that people have been arrested for saying things about Israel which would not have been declared illegal if they’d said it about other countries, including their own.”

    Worrying signs
    Minto said there were already worrying signs that the New Zealand government, media and police were “falling into the trap”.

    “Just over the past few weeks, there has been an unusually wide-ranging mainstream media focus on anti-semitism,” Minto said citing:

    However, New Zealand politicians and media had been silent about:

    • An attack which knocked a young Palestinian woman to the ground when she was using a microphone to speak during an Auckland march
    • An attack where a Palestine supporter was kicked and knocked to the pavement outside the Israeli embassy in Wellington.  The accused was wearing an Israeli flag.  He was not held in custody and the Post newspaper has reported neither the arrest nor the resulting charge (this case is due in court July 15)
    • An attack on a Palestine solidarity marshal in Christchurch who was punched in the face, in front of police, but no action taken.
    • An attack in Christchurch when a Destiny Church member kicked a solidarity marshal in the chest (no action taken by police)
    • Anti-Palestinian racist attacks on the home of a Palestine solidarity activist in New Plymouth.  One supporter has had their front fence spraypainted twice with pro-Israel graffiti and their car tyres slashed twice (4 tyres in total) and had vile defamatory material circulated in their neighbourhood. (Police say they cannot help)
    • The frequent condemnation of anti-semitism by the previous Chief Human Rights Commissioner, but his refusal to condemn the deep-seated anti-Palestinian racism of the New Zealand Jewish Council and Israel Institute of New Zealand.
    • The refusal of the Human Rights Commission to publicly correct false statements it published in The Post newspaper which claimed anti-semitism was increasing, when in fact the evidence it was using was that the rate of incidents had declined.

    ‘Silence on mass killings’
    Minto said that in each of the cases above there would have been far more attention from politicians, the police and the media had the victims been Israeli supporters.

    “Meanwhile, both our government and the New Zealand Jewish Council have refused to condemn Israel’s blatant war crimes.  There is silence on the mass killing, mass starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza,” he said.

    “The Jewish Council and our government stand together and refuse to hold Israel’s racist apartheid regime to account in just about any way.

    “This refusal to condemn what genocide scholars, including several Israeli genocide academics, have labelled as a ‘text-book case of genocide’, brings shame on both the New Zealand Jewish Council and the New Zealand government.”

    “Adding to the clear perception of appalling bias on the part of our government, both the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs have met with New Zealand Jewish Council spokespeople over the war in Gaza.

    “But both have refused to meet with representatives of Palestinian New Zealanders, or the huge number of Jewish supporters of the Palestine solidarity movement.”

    Minto said New Zealand must “stand up and be counted against genocide” wherever it appeared and no matter who the victims were.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israeli settlers shoot, beat to death 2 Palestinians in latest lynchings

    BEARING WITNESS: By Cole Martin in occupied West Bank

    Two young Palestinians were shot and beaten to death on their land, and 30 injured, by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank on Saturday.

    A large group of settlers attacked the rural Palestinian village of Sinjil, in the Ramallah governorate, beating Sayfollah “Saif” Mussalet, 20, who died from his wounds after the mob blocked medical access for several hours.

    The body of Muhammad Shalabi, 23, was recovered that evening — having reportedly bled to death while ambulances and rescuers were blocked by Israeli military as settlers roamed the Palestinian farmland for hours.

    Both young men are from the neighbouring Mazra’a Sharqiya billate, and Saif was an American citizen visiting loved ones and friends over summer. His family released a statement calling his death an “unimaginable nightmare and an injustice that no family should ever have to face”.

    They said he was a “beloved member of his community . . . a brother and a son [and] a kind, hard-working, and deeply-respected young man.”

    Saif built a widely-loved business in Tampa, Florida, and was known for his generosity, ambition, and connection to his Palestinian heritage.

    Following news of his death an overwhelming number of locals gathered at his store to share their grief and anger.

    Frequent atrocities
    Such lynchings have become a frequent atrocity across the West Bank, as settler gangs are repeatedly emboldened by the Israeli government, police, and military who protect and often facilitate violence against Palestinian communities.

    Two settlers were reportedly detained following the attacks, but released again within hours.

    Between 2005-2020, 91 percent of Palestinian cases filed with police were closed without indictment, according to the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem, and settlers undergo trial with full legal rights and higher lenience in Israeli civil courts.

    By contrast, Palestinians are tried in Israeli military courts, established in violation of the fourth Geneva Convention and largely considered corrupt for maintaining a 95 percent conviction rate (Military Court Watch).

    Additionally, more than 3600 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli captivity without charge or trial, with all detainees facing an increase in documented physical, psychological, and sexual abuse — including children.

    A funeral was held for the young men on Sunday in Mazra’a Sharqiya village, with thousands in attendance. The killings continue a systemic pattern which alongside military incursions, has seen 153 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of 2025 (OCHA).

    UN resolution
    A UN resolution last September reaffirmed the illegality of Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, demanding a total and unconditional withdrawal within a year.

    Ten months on, settler attacks have escalated in frequency and severity, settlement expansion has rapidly increased, and numerous Palestinian villages have been forcibly displaced after months of sustained violence.

    Communities across the West Bank are facing erasure, and as the death toll climbs pressure continues to grow for the New Zealand government to enforce stronger political sanctions, including the entire opposition uniting behind the Green Party’s Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill.

    Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    Mourners pay their respects to the two young Palestinians killed by illegal settlers
    Mourners pay their respects to the two young Palestinians killed by illegal settlers. Image: Cole Martin


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New Caledonia’s political parties commit to ‘historic’ statehood deal

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    New Caledonia’s pro-and-anti-independence parties have committed to an “historic” deal over the future political status of the French Pacific territory, which is set to become — for the first time — a “state” within the French realm.

    The 13-page agreement yesterday, officially entitled “Agreement Project of the Future of New Caledonia”, is the result of a solid 10 days of difficult negotiations between both pro and anti-independence parties.

    They have stayed under closed doors at a hotel in the small city of Bougival, in the outskirts of Paris.

    French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls (centre) shows signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new agreement
    French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls (centre) shows signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new agreement. Image: RNZ Pacific/FB

    The talks were convened by French President Emmanuel Macron after an earlier series of talks held between February and May 2025 failed to yield an agreement.

    After opening the talks on July 2, Macron handed over them to his Minister for Overseas, Manuel Valls, to oversee. Valls managed to bring together all parties around the same table earlier this year.

    In his opening speech earlier this month, Macron insisted on the need to restore New Caledonia’s economy, which was brought to its knees following destructive and deadly riots that erupted in May 2024.

    He said France was ready to study any solution, including an “associated state” for New Caledonia.

    During the following days, all political players exchanged views under the seal of strict confidentiality.

    While the pro-independence movement, and its Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), remained adamant they would settle for no less than “full sovereignty”, the pro-France parties were mostly arguing that three referendums — held between 2018 and 2021 — had already concluded that most New Caledonians wanted New Caledonia to remain part of France.

    Those results, they said, dictated that the democratic result of the three consultations be respected.

    Group photo of participants at the end of negotiations
    Group photo of participants at the end of negotiations. Image: Philippe Gomes

    With this confrontational context, which resulted in an increasingly radicalised background in New Caledonia, that eventually led to the 2024 riots, the Bougival summit was dubbed the “last chance summit”.

    In the early hours of Saturday, just before 7 am (Paris time, 5 pm NZ time), after a sleepless night, the secrecy surrounding the Bougival talks finally ended with an announcement from Valls.

    He wrote in a release that all partners taking part in the talks had signed and “committed to present and defend the agreement’s text on New Caledonia’s future.”

    Valls said this was a “major commitment resulting from a long work of negotiations during which New Caledonia’s partners made the choice of courage and responsibility”.

    The released document, signed by almost 20 politicians, details what the deal would imply for New Caledonia’s future.

    In its preamble, the fresh deal underlines that New Caledonia was “once again betting on trust, dialogue and peace”, through “a new political organisation, a more widely shared sovereignty and an economic and social refoundation” for a “reinvented common destiny.”

    New Caledonia’s population will be called to approve the agreement in February 2026.

    If approved, the text would be the centrepiece of a “special organic law” voted by the local Congress.

    It would later have to be endorsed by the French Parliament and enshrined in an article of the French Constitution.

    What does the agreement contain?
    One of the most notable developments in terms of future status for New Caledonia is the notion of a “State of New Caledonia”, under a regime that would maintain it as part of France, but with a dual citizenship — France/New Caledonia.

    Another formulation used for the change of status is the often-used “sui generis”, which in legal Latin, describes a unique evolution, comparable to no other.

    This would be formalised through a fundamental law to be endorsed by New Caledonia’s Congress by a required majority of three-fifths.

    The number of MPs in the Congress would be 56.

    The text also envisages a gradual transfer of key powers currently held by France (such as international relations), but would not include portfolios such as defence, currency or justice.

    In diplomacy, New Caledonia would be empowered to conduct its own affairs, but “in respect of France’s international commitments and vital interests”.

    On defence matters, even though this would remain under France’s powers, it is envisaged that New Caledonia would be “strongly” associated, consulted and kept informed, regarding strategy, goals and actions led by France in the Pacific region.

    On police and public order matters, New Caledonia would be entitled to create its own provincial and traditional security forces, in addition to national French law enforcement agencies.

    New Caledonia’s sensitive electoral roll
    The sensitive issue of New Caledonia’s electoral roll and conditions of eligibility to vote at local elections (including for the three Provincial Assemblies) is also mentioned in the agreement.

    It was this very issue that was perceived as the main trigger for the May 2024 riots, the pro-independence movement feared at the time that changing the conditions to vote would gradually place the indigenous Kanak community in a position of minority.

    It is now agreed that the electoral roll would be partly opened to those people of New Caledonia who were born after 1998.

    The roll was frozen in 2007 and restricted to people born before 1998, which is the date the previous major autonomy agreement of Nouméa was signed.

    Under the new proposed conditions to access New Caledonia’s “citizenship”, those entitled would include people who already can vote at local elections, but also their children or any person who has resided in New Caledonia for an uninterrupted ten years or who has been married or lived in a civil de facto partnership with a qualified citizen for at least five years.

    Provincial elections once again postponed
    One of the first deadlines on the electoral calendar, the provincial elections, was to take place no later than 30 November 2025.

    It will be moved once again — for the third time — to May-June 2026.

    A significant part of the political deal is also dedicated to New Caledonia’s economic “refoundation”, with a high priority for the young generations, who have felt left out of the system and disenfranchised for too long.

    One of the main goals was to bring New Caledonia’s public debts to a level of sustainability.

    In 2024, following the riots, France granted, in the form of loans, over 1 billion euros (NZ $1.9 billion) for New Caledonia’s key institutions to remain afloat.

    But some components of the political chessboard criticised the measure, saying this was placing the French territory in a state of excessive and long-term debt.

    Group photo of participants at the end of negotiations with the signed agreement
    Group photo of participants at the end of negotiations with the signed agreement. Image: Philippe_Gomes/RNZ Pacific

    Strategic nickel
    A major topic, on the macro-economic side, concerns New Caledonia’s nickel mining industry, after years of decline that has left it (even before 2024) in a state of near-collapse.

    Nickel is regarded as the backbone of New Caledonia’s economy.

    A nickel “strategic plan” would aim at re-starting New Caledonia nickel’s processing plants, especially in the Northern province, but at the same time facilitating the export of raw nickel.

    There was also a will to ensure that all mining sites (many of which have been blocked and its installations damaged since the May 2024 riots) became accessible again.

    Meanwhile, France would push the European Union to include New Caledonia’s nickel in its list of strategic resources.

    New Caledonia’s nickel industry’s woes are also caused by its lack of competitiveness on the world market — especially compared to Indonesia’s recent rise in prominence in nickel production — because of the high cost of energy.

    Swift reactions, mostly positive

    Left to right – Sonia Backès, Nicolas Metzdorf, Gil Brial and Victor Tutugoro
    New Caledonian politicians Sonia Backès (left to right), Nicolas Metzdorf, Gil Brial and Victor Tutugoro. Image: Nicolas Metzdorf/RNZ Pacific

    The announcement yesterday was followed by quick reactions from all sides of New Caledonia’s political spectrum and also from mainland France’s political leaders.

    French Prime Minister François Bayrou expressed “pride” to see an agreement “on par with history”, emerge.

    “Bravo also to the work and patience of Manuel Valls” and “the decisive implication of Emmanuel Macron,” he wrote on X-Twitter.

    From the ranks of New Caledonia’s political players, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf said he perceived as one of the deal’s main benefits the fact that “we will at last be able to project ourselves in the future, in economic, social and societal reconstruction without any deadline.”

    Metzdorf admitted that reaching an agreement required concessions and compromise from both sides.

    “But the fact that we are no longer faced with referendums and to reinforce the powers of our provinces, this was our mandate”, he told public broadcaster NC La 1ère.

    “We’ve had to accept this change from New Caledonia citizenship to New Caledonian nationality, which remains to be defined by New Caledonia’s Congress. We have also created a completely new status as part of the French Republic, a sui generis State”, he noted.

    He said the innovative status kept New Caledonia within France, without going as far as an “associated state” mooted earlier.

    “At least, what we have arrived at is that New Caledonians remain French”, pro-France Le Rassemblement-LR prominent leader Virginie Ruffenach commented.

    “And those who want to contribute to New Caledonia’s development will be able to do so through a minimum stay of residence, the right to vote and to become citizens and later New Caledonia nationals”

    “I’m aware that some could be wary of the concessions we made, but let’s face it: New Caledonia nationality does not make New Caledonia an independent State . . . It does not take away anything from us, neither of us belonging to the French Republic nor our French nationality,” Southern Province pro-France President Sonia Backès wrote on social media.

    In a joint release, the two main pro-France parties, Les Loyalistes and Rassemblement-LR, said the deal was no less than “historic” and “perennial” for New Caledonia as a whole, to “offer New Caledonia a future of peace, stability and prosperity” while at the same time considering France’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

    From the pro-independence side, one of the negotiators, Victor Tutugoro of UNI-UPM (Progressist Union in Melanesia) said what mattered was that “all of us have placed our bets on intelligence, beyond our respective beliefs, our positions, our postures”.

    “We put all of these aside for the good of the country.”

    “Of course, by definition, a compromise cannot satisfy anyone 100 percent. But it’s a balanced compromise for everyone,” he said.

    “And it allows us to look ahead, to build New Caledonia together, a citizenship and this common destiny everyone’s been talking about for many years.”

    Before politicians fly back to New Caledonia to present the deal to their respective bases, President Macron received all delegation members last evening to congratulate them on their achievements.

    During the Presidential meeting at the Elysée Palace, FLNKS chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou (whose father Jean-Marie Tjibaou also struck a historic agreement and shook hands with pro-France leader Jacques Lafleur, in 1988), stressed the agreement was one step along the path and it allows to envisage new perspectives for the Kanak people.

    A sign of the changing times, but in a striking parallel — 37 years after his father’s historic handshake with Lafleur, Emmanuel Tjibaou (whose father was shot dead in 1989 by a radical pro-independence partisan who felt the independence cause had been betrayed — did not shake hands, but instead fist pumped with pro-France’s Metzdorf.

    In a brief message on social networks, the French Head of State hailed the conclusive talks, which he labelled “A State of New Caledonia within the (French) Republic,” a win for a “bet on trust.”

    “Now is the time for respect, for stability and for the sum of good wills to build a shared future.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Signatures on the last page of New Caledonia's new agreement
    Signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new agreement. Image: Philippe Dunoyer/RNZ Pacific

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Twyford praises NFIP lead, calls for inspired peace and regionalism

    Asia Pacific Report

    An opposition Labour Party MP today paid tribute to the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, saying it should inspire Aotearoa New Zealand to maintain its own independence, embrace a strong regionalism, and be a “voice for peace and demilitarisation”.

    But Phil Twyford, MP for Te Atatu and spokesperson on disarmament, warned that the current National-led coalition government was “rapidly going in the other direction”.

    “It mimics the language of the security hawks in Washington and Canberra that China is a threat to our national interests,” he said.

    READ MORE

    “That is then the springboard for a foreign policy ‘reset’ under the current government to a closer strategic alignment with the United States and with what are often more broadly referred to as the ‘traditional partners’.

    “For that read the Five Eyes members, but particularly the United States.”

    Speaking at the opening of the week-long “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995” exhibition at the Ellen Melville Centre, Twyford referred to the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents on 10 July 2025.

    “Much has been made in the years since of what a turning point this was, and how it crystallised in New Zealanders a commitment to the anti-nuclear cause,” he said.

    However, he said he wanted to talk about the “bigger regional phenomenon” that shaped activism, public attitudes and official policies across the region, and what it could “teach us today about New Zealand’s place in the world”.

    “I am talking about the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement.

    The Te Vaerua O Te Rangi dance group performing at the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition opening
    The Te Vaerua O Te Rangi dance group performing at the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition opening in Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    “Activists and leaders from across the Pacific built a movement that challenged neocolonialism and colonialism, put the voices of the peoples of the Pacific front and centre, and held the nuclear powers to account for the devastating legacy of nuclear testing.”

    The NFIP movement led to the creation of the Treaty of Rarotonga, the Pacific’s nuclear weapons free zone, Twyford said. It influenced governments and shaped the thinking of a generation.

    However, he stressed the “storm clouds” that were gathering as indicated by former prime minister Helen Clark in her prologue to journalist and author David Robie’s new book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior just published this week.

    Twyford said that with increasing great power rivalry, the rise of authoritarian leaders, and the breakdown of the multilateral system “the spectre of nuclear war has returned”.

    Labour's Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford admiring part of the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition after opening it in Auckland
    Labour’s Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford admiring part of the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition after opening it in Auckland today. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    New Zealand faced some stark choices about how it made its way in the world, kept their people and the region safe, and remained “true to the values we’ve always held dear”.

    The public debate about the policy “reset” reset had focused on whether New Zealand would be part of AUKUS Pillar Two, “the arrangement to share high end war fighting technology that would sit alongside the first pillar designed to deliver Australia its nuclear submarines”.

    Part of the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition honouring Fernando Pereira, the Greenpeace photographer killed by French state saboteurs
    Part of the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition honouring Fernando Pereira, the Greenpeace photographer killed by French state saboteurs when they bombed the Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985. Image: APR

    While the New Zealand government had had little to say on AUKUS Pillar Two since the US elections, the defence engagement with the US had “escalated”.

    It now included participation in groupings around supply chains, warfighting in space, interconnected naval warfare, and projects on artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities.

    China’s growing assertiveness as a great power was not the main threat to New Zealand.

    “The biggest threat to our security and prosperity is the possibility of war in Asia between the United States and China,” he said.

    NFIP activist Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Ngāti Haua featured in one of the storytelling videos at the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition
    NFIP activist Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Ngāti Haua featured in one of the storytelling videos at the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition. Image: APR

    “Rising tensions could conceivably affect trade, and that would be disastrous for us. All-out war, especially if it went nuclear, would be catastrophic for the region and probably for the planet.”

    Labour’s view was that security for New Zealand and the Pacific could be pursued through active engagement with the country’s partners across the Tasman and in the Pacific, and Asia — and be a voice for peace and demilitarisation.

    Twyford acknowledged Dr Robie’s “seminal book” Eyes of Fire, thanking him for “a lifetime’s work of reporting important stories, exposing injustice and holding the powerful to account”.

    Dr Robie spoke briefly about the book as a publishing challenge following his earlier speech at the launch on Thursday.

    Other speakers at the opening of the nuclear-free Pacific exhibition included veteran activist such as Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua; Bharat Jamnadas, an organiser of the original Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) conference in Suva, Fiji, in 1975; businessman and community advocate Nikhil Naidu, previously an activist for the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG); and Dr Heather Devere, peace researcher and chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

    The Te Vaerua O Te Rangi dance group also performed Cook Islands items.

    The exhibition has been coordinated by the APMN in partnership with Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, with curator Tharron Bloomfield and Antony Phillips; Ellen Melville Centre; and the Whānau Communty Centre and Hub.

    It is also supported by Pax Christi, Quaker Peace and Service Fund, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

    The exhibition recalls New Zealand’s peace squadrons, a display of activist tee-shirt “flags”, nuclear-free buttons and badges, posters, and other memorabilia. A video storytelling series about NFIP “legends” such as Hilda Halyard-Harawira and Dr Vijay Naidu is also included.

    The Legends of the Pacific nuclear-free exhibition poster.
    The Legends of the Pacific nuclear-free exhibition poster.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NFIP activists, advocates to open nuclear-free Pacific exhibition

    Asia Pacific Report

    Nuclear-free and independent Pacific advocates are treating Aucklanders to a lively week-long exhibition dedicated to the struggle for nuclear justice in the region.

    It will be opened today by the opposition Labour Party’s spokesperson on disarmament and MP for Te Atatu, Phil Twyford, and will include a range of speakers on Aotearoa New Zealand’s record as a champion of a nuclear-free Pacific and an independent foreign policy.

    Speaking at a conference last month, Twyford said the country could act as a force for peace and demilitarisation, working with partners across the Pacific and Asia and basing its defence capabilities on a realistic assessment of threats.

    The biggest threat to the security of New Zealanders was not China’s rise as a great power but the possibility of war in Asia, Twyford said.

    Although there have been previous displays about the New Zealand nuclear-free narrative, this one has a strong focus on the Pacific.

    it is called the “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-free Moana 1975-1995” and will run from tomorrow, July 13 until Friday, July 18.

    Veteran nuclear-free Pacific spokespeople who are expected to speak at the conference include Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua; Bharat Jamnadas, an organiser of the original Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) conference in Suva, Fiji, in 1975; businessman and community advocate Nikhil Naidu, previously an activist for the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) and Dr Heather Devere, peace researcher and chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).

    A group of Cook Islands young dancers will also take part.

    Knowledge to children
    One of the organisers, Nik Naidu, told Asia Pacific Report, it was vital to restore the enthusiasm and passion around the NFIP movement as in the 1980s.

    “It’s so important to pass on our knowledge to our children and future generations,” he said.

    “And to tell the stories of our on-going journey and yearning for true independence in a world free of wars and weapons of mass destruction. This is what a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific is.”

    One of the many nuclear-free posters at the exhibition
    One of the many nuclear-free posters at the exhibition. Image: APR

    The exhibition is is coordinated by the APMN in partnership with the Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, with curator Tharron Bloomfield and coordinator Antony Phillips; Ellen Melville Centre; and the Whānau Communty Centre and Hub.

    It is also supported by Pax Christi, Quaker Peace and Service Fund, and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).

    It recalls New Zealand’s peace squadrons, a display of activist tee-shirt “flags”, nuclear-free buttons and badges, posters, and other memorabilia.

    Timely exhibition
    Author Dr David Robie, deputy chair of the APMN, who wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior just published on Thursday, and dedicated to the NFIP movement, said the the exhibition was timely.

    “It is a sort of back to the future situation where the world is waking up again to a nuclear spectre not really seen since the Cold War years,” he said.

    “With the horrendous Israeli genocide on Gaza — it is obscene to call it a war, when it is continuous massacres of civilians; the attacks by two nuclear nations on a nuclear weapons-free country, as is the case with Iran; and threats against another nuclear state, China, are all extremely concerning developments.”

    "Heroes" and "Villains" of the Pacific . . . part of the exnhibition
    “Heroes” and “Villains” of the Pacific . . . part of the exhibition. Image: APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Author condemns ‘callous’ health legacy of French, US nuclear bomb tests in Pacific

    Asia Pacific Report

    A journalist who was on the Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap last night condemned France for its “callous” attack of an environmental ship, saying “we haven’t forgotten, or forgiven this outrage”.

    David Robie, the author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, said at the launch that the consequences of almost 300 US and French nuclear tests – many of them “dirty bombs” — were still impacting on indigenous Pacific peoples 40 years after the bombing of the ship.

    French saboteurs had killed “our shipmate Fernando Pereira” on 10 July 1985 in what the New Zealand prime minister at the time, David Lange, called a “sordid act of international state-backed terrorism”.

    Although relations with France had perhaps mellowed over time, four decades ago there was a lot of hostility towards the country, Dr Robie said.

    “And that act of mindless sabotage still rankles very deeply in our psyche,” he said at the launch in Auckland Central’s Ellen Melville Centre on the anniversary of July 10.

    About 100 people gathered in the centre’s Pioneer Women’s Hall for the book launch as Dr Robie reflected on the case of state terrorism after Greenpeace earlier in the day held a memorial ceremony on board Rainbow Warrior III.

    “One of the celebrated French newspapers, Le Monde, played a critical role in the investigation into the Rainbow Warrior affair — what I brand as ‘Blundergate’, in view of all the follies of the bumbling DGSE spy team,” he said.

    Plantu cartoon
    “And one of the cartoons in that newspaper, by Plantu, who is a sort of French equivalent to Michael Leunig, caught my eye.

    “You will notice it in the background slide show behind me. It shows François Mitterrand, the president of the French republic at the time, dressed in a frogman’s wetsuit lecturing to school children during a history lesson.

    “President Mitterrand says, in French, ‘At that time, only presidents had the right to carry out terrorism!’

    Tahitian advocate Ena Manurevia
    Tahitian advocate Ena Manurevia . . . the background Plantu cartoon is the one mentioned by the author. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    He noticed that in the Mitterrand cartoon there was a “classmate” sitting in the back of the room with a moustache. This was none other than Edwy Plenel, the police reporter for Le Monde at the time, who scooped the world with hard evidence of Mitterrand and the French government’s role at the highest level in the Rainbow Warrior sabotage.

    Dr Robie said that Plenel now published the investigative website Mediapart, which had played a key role in 2015 revealing the identity of the bomber that night, “the man who had planted the limpet mines on the Rainbow Warrior — sinking a peace and environmental ship, and killing Fernando Pereira.”

    Jean-Luc Kister, a retired French colonel and DGSE secret agent, had confessed to his role and “apologised”, claiming the sabotage operation was “disproportionate and a mistake”.

    “Was he sincere? Was it a genuine attempt to come to terms with his conscience. Who knows?” Dr Robie said, adding that he was unconvinced.

    Hilari Anderson (right), one of the speakers
    Hilari Anderson (right on stage), one of the speakers, with Del Abcede and MC Antony Phillips (obscured) . . . the background image shows Helen Clark meeting Fernando Pereira’s daughter Marelle in 2005. Image: Greenpeace

    French perspective
    Dr Robie said he had asked Plenel for his reflections from a French perspective 40 years on. Plenel cited three main take ways.

    “First, the vital necessity of independent journalism. Independent of all powers, whether state, economic or ideological. Journalism that serves the public interest, the right to know, and factual truths.

    “Impactful journalism whose revelations restore confidence in democracy, in the possibility of improving it, and in the usefulness of counterbalancing powers, particularly journalism.”

    Secondly, this attack had been carried out by France in an “allied country”, New Zealand, against a civil society organisation. This demonstrated that “the thirst for power is a downfall that leads nations astray when they succumb to it.

    “Nuclear weapons epitomise this madness, this catastrophe of power.”

    Finally, Plenel expressed the “infinite sadness” for a French citizen that after his revelations in Le Monde — which led to the resignations of the defence minister and the head of the secret services — nothing else happened.

    “Nothing at all. No parliamentary inquiry, no questioning of François Mitterrand about his responsibility, no institutional reform of the absolute power of the president in a French republic that is, in reality, an elective monarchy.”

    ‘Elective monarchy’ trend
    Dr Robie compared the French outcome with the rapid trend in US today, “a president who thinks he is a monarch, a king – another elective monarchy.”

    He also bemoaned that “catastrophe of power” that “reigns everywhere today – from the horrendous Israeli genocide in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from Trump to Putin to Netanyahu, and so many others.”

    The continuous Gaza massacres were a shameful indictment of the West that had allowed it to happen for more than 21 months.

    Dr Robie thanked many collaborators for their help and support, including drama teacher Hilari Anderson, an original crew member of the Rainbow Warrior, and photographer John Miller, “who have been with me all the way on this waka journey”.

    He thanked his wife, Del, and family members for their unstinting “patience and support”, and also publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . published 10 July 2025. Image: David Robie/Little Island Press

    Launching the book, Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn said one thing that had stood out for her was how the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior had continued despite the attempt by the French government to shut it down 40 years ago.

    “We said then that ‘you can’t sink a rainbow’, and we went on to prove it.

    “When the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour, it was getting ready to set sail to Moruroa Atoll, to enter the test exclusion zone and confront French nuclear testing head-on.”

    So threatened
    The French government had felt so threatened by that action that it had engaged in a state-sanctioned terror attack to prevent the mission from going ahead.

    “But we rebuilt, and the Rainbow Warrior II carried on with that mission, travelling to Moruroa three times before the French finally stopped nuclear testing in the Pacific.

    “That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her,” she said.

    “It was the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap before the bombing that is the focus of David Robie’s book, and in many ways, it was an incredibly unique experience for Greenpeace — not just here in Aotearoa, but internationally.

    “And of course David was a key part in that.”

    O’Flynn said that as someone who had not even been born yet when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, “I am so grateful that the generation of nuclear-free activists took the time to pass on their knowledge and to build our organisation into what it is today.

    “Just as David has by writing down his story and leaving us with such a rich legacy.”

    Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn . . . “That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her.” Image: APR

    Other speakers
    Among other speakers at the book launch were teacher Hilari Anderson, publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press, Ena Manuireva, a Mangarevian scholar and cultural adviser, and MC Antony Phillips of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

    Anderson spoke of the Warrior’s early campaigns and acknowledged the crews of 1978 and 1985.

    “I have been reflecting what these first and last crews of the original Rainbow Warrior had in common, realising that both gave their collective, mostly youthful energy — to transformation.

    “This has involved the bonding of crews by working hands-on together. Touching surfaces, by hammer and paint, created a physical connection to this beloved boat.”

    She paid special tribute to two powerful women, Denise Bell, who tracked down the marine research vessel in Aberdeen that became the Rainbow Warrior, and the indomitable Susi Newborn, who “contributed to naming the ship and mustering a crew”.

    Manuireva spoke about his nuclear colonial experience and that of his family as natives of Mangareva atoll, about 400 km from Muroroa atoll, where France conducted most of its 30 years of tests ending in 1995.

    He also spoke of Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru’s pioneering role in the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, and played haunting Tahitian songs on his guitar.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Storm clouds are gathering’: 40 years on from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior

    From the prologue of the 40th anniversary edition of David Robie’s seminal book on the Rainbow Warrior’s last voyage, former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark (1999-2008) writes about what the bombing on 10 July 1985 means today.

    By Helen Clark

    The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985 and the death of a voyager on board, Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, was both a tragic and a seminal moment in the long campaign for a nuclear-free Pacific.

    It was so startling that many of us still remember where we were when the news came through. I was in Zimbabwe on my way to join the New Zealand delegation to the United Nations World Conference on Women in Nairobi. In Harare I met for the first time New Zealand Anglican priest Father Michael Lapsley who, in that same city in 1990, was severely disabled by a parcel bomb delivered by the intelligence service of the apartheid regime in South Africa. These two bombings, of the Rainbow Warrior and of Michael, have been sad reminders to me of the price so many have paid for their commitment to peace and justice.

    It was also very poignant for me to meet Fernando’s daughter, Marelle, in Auckland in 2005. Her family suffered a loss which no family should have to bear. In August 1985, I was at the meeting of the Labour Party caucus when it was made known that the police had identified a woman in their custody as a French intelligence officer. Then in September, French prime minister Laurent Fabius confirmed that French secret agents had indeed sunk the Rainbow Warrior. The following year, a UN-mediated agreement saw the convicted agents leave New Zealand and a formal apology, a small amount of compensation, and undertakings on trade given by France — the latter after New Zealand perishable goods had been damaged in port in France.

    Both 1985 and 1986 were momentous years for New Zealand’s assertion of its nuclear-free positioning which was seen as provocative by its nuclear-armed allies. On 4 February 1985, the United States was advised that its naval vessel, the Buchanan, could not enter a New Zealand port because it was nuclear weapons-capable and the US “neither confirm nor deny” policy meant that New Zealand could not establish whether it was nuclear weapons-armed or not.

    In Manila in July 1986, a meeting between prime minister David Lange and US Secretary of State George Schultz confirmed that neither New Zealand nor the US were prepared to change their positions and that New Zealand’s engagement in ANZUS was at an end. Secretary Schultz famously said that “We part company as friends, but we part company as far as the alliance is concerned”.

    New Zealand passed its Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act in 1987. Since that time, until now, the country has on a largely bipartisan basis maintained its nuclear-free policy as a fundamental tenet of its independent foreign policy. But storm clouds are gathering.

    Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States is one of those. There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry. This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.

    Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for deescalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development of more lethal weaponry.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior
    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication 10 July 2025. Image: David Robie/Little Island Press

    Nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present. The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now sits at 89 seconds to midnight. It references the Ukraine theatre where the use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia. The arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals. The Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons. North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity. An outright military conflict between China and the United States would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, South-East Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.

    August 2025 marks the eightieth anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A survivors’ group, Nihon Hidankyo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. They bear tragic witness to the horror of the use of nuclear weapons. The world must heed their voice now and at all times.

    In the current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament. New Zealanders were clear — we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.

    The multilateral system is now in crisis — across all its dimensions. The UN Security Council is paralysed by great power tensions. The United States is unlikely to pay its dues to the UN under the Trump presidency, and others are unlikely to fill the substantial gap which that leaves. Its humanitarian, development, health, human rights, political and peacekeeping, scientific and cultural arms all face fiscal crises.

    This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.

    Movement back towards an out-of-date alliance, from which New Zealand disengaged four decades ago, and its current tentacles, offers no safe harbour — on the contrary, these destabilise the region within which we live and the wide trading relationships we have. May this new edition of David Robie’s Eyes of Fire remind us of our nuclear-free journey and its relevance as a lode star in these current challenging times.

    • The 40th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior by David Robie ($50, Little Island Press) can be purchased from Little Island Press. 

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents remembered 40 years on

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News

    Forty years ago today, French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace campaign flagship  Rainbow Warrior in an attempt to stop the environmental organisation’s protest against nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in Mā’ohi Nui.

    People gathered on board Rainbow Warrior III to remember photographer Fernando Pereira, who was killed in the attack, and to honour the legacy of those who stood up to nuclear testing in the Pacific.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before the bombing was Operation Exodus, a humanitarian mission to the Marshall Islands. There, Greenpeace helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing.

    The dawn ceremony was hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and attended by more than 150 people. Speeches were followed by the laying of a wreath and a moment of silence.

    Fernando Pereira
    Photographer Fernando Pereira and a woman from Rongelap on the day the Rainbow Warrior arrived in Rongelap Atoll in May 1985. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    Tui Warmenhoven (Ngāti Porou), the chair of the Greenpeace Aotearoa board, said it was a day to remember for the harm caused by the French state against the people of Mā’ohi Nui.

    Warmenhoven worked for 20 years in iwi research and is a grassroots, Ruatoria-based community leader who works to integrate mātauranga Māori with science to address climate change in Te Tai Rāwhiti.

    She encouraged Māori to stand united with Greenpeace.

    “Ko te mea nui ki a mātou, a Greenpeace Aotearoa, ko te whawhai i ngā mahi tūkino a rātou, te kāwanatanga, ngā rangatōpū, me ngā tāngata whai rawa, e patu ana i a mātou, te iwi Māori, ngā iwi o te ao, me ō mātou mātua, a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku,” e ai ki a Warmenhoven.

    Tui Warmenhoven and Dr Russel Norman
    Tui Warmenhoven and Dr Russel Norman in front of Rainbow Warrior III on 10 July 2025. Image:Te Ao Māori News

    A defining moment in Aotearoa’s nuclear-free stand
    “The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was a defining moment for Greenpeace in its willingness to fight for a nuclear-free world,” said Dr Russel Norman, the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa.

    He noted it was also a defining moment for Aotearoa in the country’s stand against the United States and France, who conducted nuclear tests in the region.

    Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman
    Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman speaking at the ceremony on board Rainbow Warrior III today. Image: Te Ao Māpri News

    In 1987, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act officially declared the country a nuclear-free zone.

    This move angered the United States, especially due to the ban on nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships entering New Zealand ports.

    Because the US followed a policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons, it saw the ban as breaching the ANZUS Treaty and suspended its security commitments to New Zealand.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before it was bombed was Operation Exodus, during which the crew helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958.

    The evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejatto in 1985
    The evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejatto by the Rainbow Warrior crew in May 1985. Image: Greenpeace/Fernando Pereira

    The legacy of Operation Exodus
    Between 1946 and 1958, the United States carried out 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

    For decades, it denied the long-term health impacts, even as cancer rates rose and children were born with severe deformities.

    Despite repeated pleas from the people of Rongelap to be evacuated, the US government failed to act until Greenpeace stepped in to help.

    “The United States government effectively used them as guinea pigs for nuclear testing and radiation to see what would happen to people, which is obviously outrageous and disgusting,” Dr Norman said.

    He said it was important not to see Pacific peoples as victims, as they were powerful campaigners who played a leading role in ending nuclear testing in the region.

    Marshallese women greet the Rainbow Warrior in April 2025.
    Marshallese women greet the Rainbow Warrior as it arrived in the capital Majuro in March 2025. Image: Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    Between March and April this year, Rainbow Warrior III returned to the Marshall Islands to conduct independent research into the radiation levels across the islands to see whether it’s safe for the people of Rongelap to return.

    What advice do you give to this generation about nuclear issues?
    “Kia kotahi ai koutou ki te whai i ngā mahi uaua i mua i a mātou ki te whawhai i a rātou mā, e mahi tūkino ana ki tō mātou ao, ki tō mātou kōkā a Papatūānuku, ki tō mātou taiao,” hei tā Tui Warmenhoven.

    A reminder to stay united in the difficult world ahead in the fight against threats to the environment.

    Warmenhoven also encouraged Māori to support Greenpeace Aotearoa.

    Tui Warmenhoven and the captain of the Rainbow Warrior, Ali Schmidt
    Tui Warmenhoven and the captain of the Rainbow Warrior, Ali Schmidt, placed a wreath in the water at the stern of the ship in memory of Fernando Pereira. Image: Greenpeace

    Dr Norman believed the younger generations should be inspired to activism by the bravery of those from the Pacific and Greenpeace who campaigned for a nuclear-free world 40 years ago.

    “They were willing to take very significant risks, they sailed their boats into the nuclear test zone to stop those nuclear tests, they were arrested by the French, beaten up by French commandos,” he said.

    Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior is a timely reminder

    By Aui’a Vaimaila Leatinu’u of PMN News

    I didn’t know much about the surrounding context of the infamous Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years ago on Thursday. All I knew was that we, as a country, have not forgotten.

    I was born in 1996, and although I didn’t know much about the vessel’s bombing, which galvanised anti-nuclear sentiment across Aotearoa further, the basics were common knowledge growing up.

    So, when I got the opportunity to read the Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior (40th Anniversary edition) by veteran journalist David Robie, who was on board the ship during its mission to the Marshall Islands, I dove in.

    On 10 July 1985, French secret agents destroyed the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, killing Portuguese-born Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and sparking global outrage.

    The Rainbow Warrior protested nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, specifically targeting French atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.

    Their efforts drew international attention to the environmental devastation and human suffering caused by decades of radioactive fallout.

    There’s plenty to learn from this book in terms of the facts, but what I took away from it most is its continued relevance since its original publication in 1986.

    The opening prologue is former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark’s reflection on the Warrior’s bombing, Pereira’s death and the current socio-political climate of today in relation to back then.

    Clark makes remarks on AUKUS, nuclear weapons and geopolitical pressures, describing it all as “storm clouds gathering again”.

    The Nuclear Free Pacific banner on the Rainbow Warrior. Image: David Robie
    The Nuclear Free Pacific banner on the Rainbow Warrior. Image: David Robie

    Nuclear fallout
    It has been a tumultuous period for the Pacific region in the political realm, between being at the mercy of a tug-of-war between global superpowers and the impending finality of climate change to the livelihoods of many.

    With EOF’s 40th Anniversary edition, it is yet another documentation of these turbulent times for the Pacific, which have never really stopped since colonial powers first made contact.

    Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 atmospheric and underwater tests in the Marshall Islands. Then, in 1966, the French launched 46 atmospheric tests between 1966 and 1974, followed by 147 underground bombs from 1975 to 1996 after widespread international protest and scrutiny.

    Specifically, the US 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test, the largest atmospheric hydrogen bomb test, resulted in the fallout’s ash coating Rongelap Atoll. Though the US evacuated residents days later, they returned them in 1957, leaving them to suffer from health effects like miscarriages, cancer, and birth deformities.

    Eventually, the Rainbow Warrior helped evacuate the Rongelap people in 1985 over several trips, where the locals packed down their homes and brought them onboard.

    Throughout history to today, there’s a theme of constant disregard and dehumanisation of my people by the West.

    PMN News interview with Dr David Robie on 20 May 2025
    PMN News interview with Dr David Robie on 20 May 2025.

    When does it stop?
    A decade prior to the Rongelap evacuation, the infamous Dawn Raids occurred, where it wasn’t until 1986 that a Race Relations investigation found Pacific people comprised roughly a third of overstayers yet represented 86 per cent of all prosecutions.

    The 506-day Bastion Point protest also occurred between 1977 and 1978, where Ngāti Whātua, led by Joe Hawke, pushed back against a proposed Crown sale of that land.

    In the end, around 500 NZ police and army forcefully evicted the peaceful protestors.

    So, while this was all happening, the Pacific, specifically the Marshall Islands and French Polynesia region, were reeling from the decades of nuclear testing and consequential sickness, pain and death.

    Today, the Pacific is stuck between geopolitical egos, the fear of being used as a resource stepping stone, internal struggles, economic destabilisation and pleas for climate change to be made a priority not to save sinking islands but the world.

    Amid this “political football”, it constantly feels like Pacific and Māori end up being the ball.

    Robie’s book tells heartfelt moments with its facts, which helps connect to its story at a deeper level beyond sharing genealogy with the people involved.

    Voices within it don’t hold back their urgency or outrage towards what happened, especially how that past negligence by bodies of power continues today.

    When I read books like EOF 40th, whether it’s about my tangata Māori or Tagata Moana, I often close them and wonder: When do we get a break? When does it stop?

    I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. At least we will always have answers on what happened to the Rainbow Warrior and why.

    No matter what, it is indisputable that an informed generation will navigate the future better than their predecessors, and with EOF 40th, they’ll be well-equipped.

    Republished from PMN News with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Dawn service held 40 years on from Rainbow Warrior bombing

    TVNZ 1News

    The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has sailed into Auckland to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

    Greenpeace’s vessel, which had been protesting nuclear testing in the Pacific, sank after French government agents planted explosives on its hull, killing Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

    Today, 40 years on from the events on July 10 1985, a dawn ceremony was held in Auckland.

    Author Margaret Mills was a cook on board the ship at the time, and has written about her experience in a book entitled Anecdotage.

    Author Margaret Mills tells TVNZ Breakfast about the night of the Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years ago
    Author Margaret Mills tells TVNZ Breakfast about the night of the Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years ago. Image: TVNZ

    The 95-year-old told TVNZ Breakfast the experience on board “changed her life”.

    “I was sound asleep, and I heard this sort of bang and turned the light on, but it wouldn’t go on.

    She said when she left her cabin, a crew member told her “we’ve been bombed”.

    ‘I laughed at him’
    “I laughed at him, I said ‘we don’t get bombs in New Zealand, that’s ridiculous’.”

    She said they were taken to the police station after a “big boom when the second bomb came through”.

    “I realised immediately, I was part of a historical event,” she said.

    TVNZ reporter Corazon Miller talks to Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman and journalist David Robie after the Rainbow Warrior memorial dawn service today
    TVNZ reporter Corazon Miller talks to Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman (centre) and journalist David Robie after the Rainbow Warrior memorial dawn service today. Image: TVNZ

    Journalist David Robie. who travelled on the Rainbow Warrior and wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior published today, told Breakfast it was a “really shocking, shocking night”.

    “We were so overwhelmed by the grief and absolute shock of what had happened. But for me, there was no doubt it was France behind this.”

    “But we were absolutely flabbergasted that a country could do this.”

    He said it was a “very emotional moment” and was hard to believe it had been 40 years since that time.

    ‘Momentous occasion’
    “It stands out in my life as being the most momentous occasion as a journalist covering that whole event.”

    Executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa Russel Norman said the legacy of the ship was about “people who really stood up for something important”.

    “I mean, ending nuclear testing in the Pacific, imagine if they were still exploding bombs in the Pacific. We would have to live with that.

    “And those people back then they stood up and beat the French government to end nuclear testing.

    “It’s pretty inspirational.”

    He said the group were still campaigning on some key environmental issues today.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Sand Mining Is a Booming Industry — This Mexican Community Is Paying the Price

    Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, a Mazatec Indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico, has been defending its river from gravel and sand dredgers for over a decade. As a well-organized and determined force, the community has endured unprecedented repression, including criminalization, torture, displacement, imprisonment, and violence. Now, the community faces a new attack — 200 trumped-up charges against…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Author David Robie tells of outrage over sinking of the Rainbow Warrior 40 years ago

    RNZ News Nights

    Tomorrow marks 40 years since the bombing and sinking of the Rainbow Warrior — a moment that changed the course of New Zealand’s history and reshaped how we saw ourselves on the world stage.

    Two French agents planted two explosives on the ship, then just before midnight, explosions ripped through the hull killing photographer, Fernando Pereira and sinking the 47m ex-fishing trawler.

    The attack sparked outrage across the country and the world, straining diplomatic ties between New Zealand and France and cementing the country’s anti-nuclear stance.

    Few people are more closely linked to the ship than author and journalist Dr David Robie, who spent eleven weeks on board during its final voyage through the Pacific, and wrote the book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, which is being published tomorrow. He joins Emile Donovan.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Academic slams NZ government over ‘compromised’ foreign policy

    Asia Pacific Report

    A prominent academic has criticised the New Zealand coalition government for compromising the country’s traditional commitment to upholding an international rules-based order due to a “desire not to offend” the Trump administration.

    Professor Robert Patman, an inaugural sesquicentennial distinguished chair and a specialist in international relations at the University of Otago, has argued in a contributed article to The Spinoff that while distant in geographic terms, “brutal violence in Gaza, the West Bank and Iran marks the latest stage in the unravelling of an international rules-based order on which New Zealand depends for its prosperity and security”.

    Dr Patman wrote that New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation at home, and, after 1945, helped inspire a New Zealand worldview enshrined in institutions such as the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism.

    Professor Robert Patman
    Professor Robert Patman . . . “Even more striking was the government’s silence on President Trump’s proposal to own Gaza with a view to evicting two million Palestinian residents.” Image: University of Otago

    “In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, the National-led coalition government has in principle emphasised its support for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza and the need for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank,” he wrote.

    However, Dr Patman said, in practice this New Zealand stance had not translated into firm diplomatic opposition to the Netanyahu government’s quest to control Gaza and annex the West Bank.

    “Nor has it been a condemnation of the Trump administration for prioritising its support for Israel’s security goals over international law,” he said.

    Foreign minister Winston Peters had described the situation in Gaza as “simply intolerable” but the National-led coalition had little specific to say as the Netanyahu government “resumed its cruel blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza in March and restarted military operations there”.

    Silence on Trump’s ‘Gaza ownership’
    “Even more striking was the government’s silence on President Trump’s proposal to own Gaza with a view to evicting two million Palestinian residents from the territory and the US-Israeli venture to start the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in late May in a move which sidelined the UN in aid distribution and has led to the killing of more than 600 Palestinians while seeking food aid,” Dr Patman said.

    While New Zealand, along with the UK, Australia, Canada and Norway, had imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar ben Gvir, in June for “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians — a move that was criticised by the Trump administration — it was arguably a case of very little very late.

    “The Hamas terror attacks on October 7 killed around 1200 Israelis, but the Netanyahu government’s retaliation by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) against Hamas has resulted in the deaths of more than 56,000 Palestinians — nearly 70 percent of whom were women or children — in Gaza.

    Over the same period, more than 1000 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank as Israel accelerated its programme of illegal settlements there.

    ‘Strangely ambivalent’
    In addition, the responses of the New Zealand government to “pre-emptive attacks” by Israel (13-25 June) and Trump’s United States (June 22) against Iran to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities were strangely ambivalent.

    Despite indications from US intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran had not produced nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Peters had said New Zealand was not prepared to take a position on that issue.

    Confronted with Trump’s “might is right” approach, the National-led coalition faced stark choices, Dr Patman said.

    The New Zealand government could continue to fudge fundamental moral and legal issues in the Middle East and risk complicity in the further weakening of an international rules-based order it purportedly supports, “or it can get off the fence, stand up for the country’s values, and insist that respect for international law must be observed in the region and elsewhere without exception”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZDF not considering recruiting personnel from Pacific nations

    By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is not considering recruiting personnel from across the Pacific as talk continues of Australia doing so for its Defence Force (ADF).

    In response to a question from The Australian at the National Press Club in Canberra about Australia’s plans to potentially recruit from the Pacific Islands into the ADF, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he “would like to see it happen”.

    “Whether Australia does it or not depends on your own policies. We will not push it.”

    RNZ Pacific asked the NZDF under the Official Information Act (OIA) for all correspondence sent and received regarding any discussion on recruiting from the Pacific, along with other related questions.

    The OIA request was declined as the information did not exist.

    “Defence Recruiting has not and is not considering deliberate recruiting action from across the Pacific,” the response from the NZDF said.

    Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James said citizenship needed to be a prerequisite to Pacific recruitment.

    Australian citizen
    “Even a New Zealander serving in the Australian military has to become an Australian citizen,” James said.

    “They can start off being an Australian resident, but they’ve got to be on the path to citizenship.

    ”They’ve got to be capable of getting permanent residency in Australia and citizenship.

    “And then you’ve got to tackle the moral problem — it’s pretty hard to ask foreigners to fight for your country when your own people won’t do it.”

    James said he thought people might be “jumping at hairs” at Rabuka’s comments.

    Unlike Samoa’s acting prime minister, who has voiced concern over a brain drain, both Papua New Guinea and Fiji have made it clear they have people to spare.

    Ross Thompson, a managing director at People In, the largest approved employer in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme, said if the recruitment drive does go ahead, PNG nationals would return home with a wider skill set.

    ‘Brain gain, not drain’
    “This would be a brain gain, rather than be a drain on PNG.”

    He’s spoken with people in PNG who welcome the proposal.

    ”PNG, its population is over 10 million . . . We’re proposing from PNG around 1000 could be recruited every year.”

    Minister Rabuka joked Fiji could plug Australia’s personnel hole on its own.

    “If it’s open [to recruiting Fijians] . . . [we will offer] the whole lot . . . 5000,” he said, while noting that Fiji was able to easily fill its quota under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.

    “The villages are emptying out into the cities. What we would like to do is to reduce those who are ending up in settlements in the cities and not working, giving way to crime and becoming first victims to the sale of drugs and AIDS and HIV from frequently used or commonly used needles.”

    Thompson was also a captain in the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers of the British Army and said he was proud to have served alongside Fijians.

    Honour serving
    “I had the honour to serve with a number of Fijians while deployed overseas; they’re fantastic soldiers.

    “This is something that’s been going on since the Second World War and it’s a big part of the British Army.”

    From a recruitment perspective, he said PNG and Fiji would be a good starting point before extending to any other Pacific nations.

    ”PNG has a strong history with the Australian Defence Force. There’s a number of programmes that are currently ongoing, on shared military exercises, there’s PNG officers that are serving in the ADF now, or on secondment to the ADF.

    “So I think those two countries are definitely good to look up from a pilot perspective.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Rainbow Warrior saga. Part 2: Nuclear refugees in the Pacific – the evacuation of Rongelap

    COMMENTARY:  By Eugene Doyle

    On the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior prior to its sinking by French secret agents in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 the ship had evacuated the entire population of 320 from Rongelap in the Marshall Islands.

    After conducting dozens of above-ground nuclear explosions, the US government had left the population in conditions that suggested the islanders were being used as guinea pigs to gain knowledge of the effects of radiation.

    Cancers, birth defects, and genetic damage ripped through the population; their former fisheries and land are contaminated to this day.

    Denied adequate support from the US – they turned to Greenpeace with an SOS: help us leave our ancestral homeland; it is killing our people. The Rainbow Warrior answered the call.

    Human lab rats or our brothers and sisters?
    Dr Merrill Eisenbud, a physicist in the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) famously said in 1956 of the Marshall Islanders:  “While it is true that these people do not live, I might say, the way Westerners do, civilised people, it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

    Dr Eisenbud also opined that exposure “would provide valuable information on the effects of radiation on human beings.”  That research continues to this day.

    A half century of testing nuclear bombs
    Within a year of dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US moved part of its test programme to the central Pacific.  Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was used for atmospheric explosions from 1946 with scant regard for the indigenous population.

    In 1954, the Castle Bravo test exploded a 15-megaton bomb —  one thousand times more deadly than the one dropped on Hiroshima.  As a result, the population of Rongelap were exposed to 200 roentgens of radiation, considered life-threatening without medical intervention. And it was.

    Part of the Marshall Islands, with Bikini Atoll and Rongelap in the top left
    Part of the Marshall Islands, with Bikini Atoll and Rongelap in the top left. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

    Total US tests equaled more than 7000 Hiroshimas.  The Clinton administration released the aptly-named Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), report in January 1994 in which it acknowledged:

    “What followed was a program by the US government — initially the Navy and then the AEC and its successor agencies — to provide medical care for the exposed population, while at the same time trying to learn as much as possible about the long-term biological effects of radiation exposure. The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment’.

    This impression was reinforced by the fact that the islanders were deliberately left in place and then evacuated, having been heavily radiated. Three years later they were told it was “safe to return” despite the lead scientist calling Rongelap “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

    Significant compensation paid by the US to the Marshall Islands has proven inadequate given the scale of the contamination.  To some degree, the US has also used money to achieve capture of elite interest groups and secure ongoing control of the islands.

    Entrusted to the US, the Marshall Islanders were treated like the civilians of Nagasaki
    The US took the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944.  The only “right” it has to be there was granted by the United Nations which in 1947 established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, to be administered by the United States.

    What followed was an abuse of trust worse than rapists at a state care facility.  Using the very powers entrusted to it to protect the Marshallese, the US instead used the islands as a nuclear laboratory — violating both the letter and spirit of international law.

    Fellow white-dominated countries like Australia and New Zealand couldn’t have cared less and let the indigenous people be irradiated for decades.

    The betrayal of trust by the US was comprehensive and remains so to this day:

    Under Article 76 of the UN Charter, all trusteeship agreements carried obligations. The administering power was required to:

    • Promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the people
    • Protect the rights and well-being of the inhabitants
    • Help them advance toward self-government or independence.

    Under Article VI, the United States solemnly pledged to “Protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.”  Very similar to sentiments in New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi.  Within a few years the Americans were exploding the biggest nuclear bombs in history over the islands.

    Within a year of the US assuming trusteeship of the islands, another pillar of international law came into effect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) — which affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. Exposing colonised peoples to extreme radiation for weapons testing is a racist affront to this.

    America has a long history of making treaties and fine speeches and then exploiting indigenous peoples.  Last year, I had the sobering experience of reading American military historian Peter Cozzens’ The Earth is Weeping, a history of the “Indian wars” for the American West.

    The past is not dead: the Marshall Islands are a hive of bases, laboratories and missile testing; Americans are also incredibly busy attacking the population in Gaza today.

    Eyes of Fire – the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
    Had the French not sunk the Rainbow Warrior after it reached Auckland from the Rongelap evacuation, it would have led a flotilla to protest nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.  So the bookends of this article are the abuse of defenceless people in the charge of one nuclear power — the US —  and the abuse of New Zealand and the peoples of French Polynesia by another nuclear power — France.

    Senator Jeton Anjain (left) of Rongelap and Greenpeace campaign coordinator Steve Sawyer on board the Rainbow Warrior
    Senator Jeton Anjain (left) of Rongelap and Greenpeace campaign coordinator Steve Sawyer on board the Rainbow Warrior . . . challenging the abuse of defenceless people under the charge of one nuclear power. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    This incredible story, and much more, is the subject of David Robie’s outstanding book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, published by Little Island Press, which has been relaunched to mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Between them, France and the US have exploded more than 300 nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Few people are told this; few people know this.

    Today, a matrix of issues combine — the ongoing effects of nuclear contamination, sea rise imperilling Pacific nations, colonialism still posing immense challenges to people in the Marshall Islands, Kanaky New Caledonia and in many parts of our region.

    Unsung heroes
    Our media never ceases to share the pronouncements of European leaders and news from the US and Europe but the leaders and issues of the Pacific are seldom heard. The heroes of the antinuclear movement should be household names in Australia and New Zealand.

    Vanuatu’s great leader Father Walter Lini; Oscar Temaru, Mayor, later President of French Polynesia; Senator Jeton Anjain, Darlene Keju-Johnson and so many others.

    Do we know them?  Have we heard their voices?

    Jobod Silk, climate activist, said in a speech welcoming the Rainbow Warrior III to Majuro earlier this year:  “Our crusade for nuclear justice intertwines with our fight against the tides.”

    Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific . . . the Rainbow Warrior
    Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific . . . the Rainbow Warrior taking on board Rongelap islanders ready for their first of four relocation voyages to Mejatto island. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    Former Tuvalu PM Enele Sapoaga castigated Australia for the AUKUS submarine deal which he said “was crafted in secret by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison with no public discussion.”

    He challenged the bigger regional powers, particularly Australia and New Zealand, to remember that the existential threat faced by Pacific nations comes first from climate change, and reminded New Zealanders of the commitment to keeping the South Pacific nuclear-free.

    Hinamoeura Cross, a Tahitian anti-nuclear activist and politician, said in a 2019 UN speech: “Today, the damage is done. My people are sick. For 30 years we were the mice in France’s laboratory.”

    Until we learn their stories and know their names as well as we know those of Marco Rubio or Keir Starmer, we will remain strangers in our own lands.

    The Pacific owes them, along with the people of Greenpeace, a huge debt.  They put their bodies on the line to stop the aggressors. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, killed by the French in 1985, was just one of many victims, one of many heroes.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira
    Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira being welcomed to Rongelap Atoll by a villager in May 1985 barely two months before he was killed by French secret agents during the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Legends of a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific – Octo Mote

    Pacific Media Watch

    West Papuan independence advocate Octovianus Mote was in Aotearoa New Zealand late last year seeking support for independence for West Papua, which has been ruled by Indonesia for more than six decades.

    Mote is vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and was hosted in New Zealand by the Green Party, which Mote said had always been a “hero” for West Papua.

    He spoke at a West Papua seminar at the Māngere Mountain Education Centre and in this Talanoa TV segment he offers prayers for the West Papuan solidarity movement.

    In a “blessing for peace and justice”, Octo Mote spoke of his hopes for the West Papuan struggle for independence at lunch at the Mount Albert home of New Zealand activist Maire Leadbeater in September 2024.

    He gave a tribute to Leadbeater and the Whānau Community Centre and Hub’s Nik Naidu, saying:

    “We remember those who cannot eat like us, especially those who oppressed . . . The 80,000 people in Papua who have had to flee their homes because of the Indonesian military operations.”

    Video: Nik Naidu, Talanoa TV


    Blessings by Octo Mote.               Video: Talanoa TV

    On Saturday, 12 July 2025 Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford will open the week-long Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) exhibition at the Ellen Melville Centre Women’s Pioneer Hall at 3pm.

    https://www.facebook.com/events/1856900961820487/

    Poster for the Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995 exhibition
    Poster for the Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995 exhibition, July 13-18.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Greenpeace chief recalls New Zealand’s nuclear free exploits, seeks ‘peace’ voice for Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman today recalled New Zealand’s heyday as a Pacific nuclear free champion in the 1980s, and challenged the country to again become a leading voice for “peace and justice”, this time for the Palestinian people.

    He told the weekly Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland’s central Te Komititanga Square that it was time for New Zealand to take action and recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel over its Gaza atrocities.

    “From 1946 to 1996, over 300 nuclear weapons were exploded across the Pacific and consistently the New Zealand government spoke out against it,” he said.

    “It took cases to the International Court of Justice, supported by Australia and Fiji, against the nuclear testing across the Pacific.

    “Aotearoa New Zealand was a voice for peace, it was a voice for justice, and when the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior here and killed Fernando Pereira, it spoke out and took action against France.”

    He said New Zealand could return to that global leadership as a small and peaceful country.

    New Zealand will this week be commemorating the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 and the killing of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

    Dawn vigil on Greenpeace III
    Greenpeace plans a dawn vigil on board their current flagship Rainbow Warrior III at Halsey Wharf.

    He spoke about the Gaza war crimes, saying it was time for New Zealand to take serious action to help end this 20 months of settler colonial genocide.

    “There are millions of people [around the world] who are trying to end this colonial occupation of Palestinian land,” Norman said.

    “And millions of people who are trying to stop people simply standing to get food who are hungry who are being shelled and killed by the Israeli military simply for the ‘crime’ of being born in the land that Israel wants to occupy.”

    Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests
    Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests this week against the Gaza genocide. Image: David Robie/APR

    Norman’s message echoed an open letter that he wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier this week criticising the government for its “ongoing failure … to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel”.

    He cited the recent UN Human Rights Office report that said the killing of hundreds of Palestinians by the Israeli military while trying to fetch food from the controversial new “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid hubs was a ‘likely war crime”.

    “Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid to Gaza has placed over 2 million people on the precipice of famine. Malnutrition and starvation are rife,” he said.

    Israel ‘weaponising aid’
    “Israel is weaponising aid, using starvation as a tool of genocide and is now shooting at civilians trying to access the scraps of aid that are available.”

    He said this was “catastrophic”, quoting Luxon’s own words, and the human suffering was “unacceptable”.

    Labour MP for Te Atatu and disarmament spokesperson Phil Twyford also spoke at the rally and march today, saying the Labour Party was calling for sanctions and accountability.

    He condemned the failure to hold “the people who have been enabling the genocide in Gaza”.

    “It’s been going on for too long. Not just the last [20 months], but actually the last 77 years.

    “And it is time the Western world snapped out of the spell that the Zionists have had on the Western imagination — at least on the political classes, government MPs, the policy makers in Western countries, who for so long have enabled, have stayed quiet in the face of the US who have armed and funded the genocide”

    For the Palestinian solidarity movement in New Zealand it has been a big week with four politicians — including Prime Minister Luxon — and two business leaders, the chief executives of Rocket Lab and Rakon, who have been referred by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation over allegations of complicity with the Israeli war crimes.

    This unprecedented legal development has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

    On Friday, protesters picketed a Rocket Lab manufacturing site in Warkworth, the head office in Mount Wellington and the Māhia peninsula where satellites are launched.

    Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, leading international scholars and the UN Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices have all condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Palestinian solidarity protesters in Auckland's Queen Street march today
    Palestinian solidarity protesters in Auckland’s Queen Street march today. Image: David Robie/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestine protesters target NZ businesses ‘complicit’ with Israel’s Gaza genocide

    Asia Pacific Report

    Protesters against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and occupied West Bank targeted three business sites accused of being “complicit” in Aotearoa New Zealand today.

    The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa’s “End Rocket Lab Genocide Complicity” themed protest picketed Rocket Lab’s New Zealand head office in Mt Wellington.

    Simultaneously, protesters also picketed a site in Warkworth where Rocket Lab equipment is built and Mahia peninsula where satellites are launched.

    In a statement on the PSNA website, it was revealed this week that the advocacy group’s lawyers have prepared a 103-page “indictment” against two business leaders, including the head of Rocket Lab, along with four politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

    They have been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for investigation on an accusation of complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    Rocket Lab chief executive Sir Peter Beck is one of the six people named in the legal brief.

    “Rocket Lab has recently launched geospatial intelligence satellites for BlackSky Technology,” said PSNA co-chair John Minto in a statement.

    High resolution images
    “These satellites provide high resolution images to Israel which are very likely used to assist with striking civilians in Gaza. Sir Peter has proceeded with these launches in full knowledge of these circumstances”

    A "Genocide Lab" protest against Rocket Lab in Mt Wellington
    A “Genocide Lab” protest against Rocket Lab in Mt Wellington today. Image: PSNA

    “When governments and business leaders can’t even condemn a genocide then civil society groups must act.”

    The other business leader named is Rakon Limited chief executive officer Dr Sinan Altug.

    “Despite vast weapons transfers from the United States to Israel since the beginning of its war on Gaza, Rakon has continued with its longstanding supply of crystal oscillators to US arms manufacturers for use in guided missiles which are then available to Israel for the bombing of Gaza, as well as Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran with consequential massive loss of life,” Minto said.

    “Rakon’s claims that it has no responsibility over how these ‘dual-use’ technologies are used are not credible.”

    Rocket Lab and Rakon have in the past rejected claims over their responsibility.

    Speakers at Mount Wellington included the Green Party spokesperson for foreign affairs Teanau Tuiono; Dr Arama Rata, a researcher and lecturer from Victoria University; and Sam Vincent, the legal team leader for the ICC referral.

    Law academic Professor Jane Kelsey spoke at the Warkworth picket.

    Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, leading international scholars and the UN Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices have all condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Protesters against Rocket Lab's alleged complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza
    Protesters against Rocket Lab’s alleged complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza today. Image: Del Abcede/APR


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Eyewitness account of Rainbow Warrior voyage – new Eyes of Fire edition

    By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal

    Author David Robie and Little Island Press are about to publish next week a 40th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, a first-hand account of the relocation of the Rongelap people by Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

    Dr Robie joined what turned out to be the ill-fated voyage of the Rainbow Warrior from Hawai’i across the Pacific, with its first stop in the Marshall Islands and the momentous evacuation of Rongelap Atoll.

    After completing the evacuation of the 320 people of Rongelap from their unsafe nuclear test-affected home islands to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, the Rainbow Warrior headed south via Kiribati and Vanuatu.

    After a stop in New Zealand, it was scheduled to head to the French nuclear testing zone at Moruroa in French Polynesia to protest the then-ongoing atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by France for decades.

    But French secret agents attached bombs to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior while it was tied up at a pier in Auckland. The bombs mortally damaged the Warrior and killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Peirera, preventing the vessel from continuing its Pacific voyage.

    The new edition of Eyes of Fire will be launched on July 10 in New Zealand.

    “This edition has a small change of title, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and has an extra 30 pages, with a new prologue by former Prime Minister Helen Clark,” Dr Robie said in an email to the Journal.

    “The core of the book is similar to earlier editions, but bookended by a lot of new material: Helen’s Prologue, Bunny McDiarmid’s updated Preface and a long Postscript 2025 by me with a lot more photographs, some in colour.”

    Dr Robie added: “I hope this edition is doing justice to our humanitarian mission and the Rongelap people that we helped.”

    He said the new edition is published by a small publisher that specialises in Pacific Island books, often in Pacific languages, Little Island Press.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UN expert calls on world to end trade with Israel’s ‘economy of genocide’

    Asia Pacific Report

    Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, has called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel — including a full arms embargo — and withdraw international support for what she termed an “economy of genocide”, reports Al Jazeera.

    Albanese made the comments in a speech to the Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday as she presented her latest report, which named dozens of companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli repression and violence towards Palestinians.

    “The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic,” she said. “Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history.”

    Nearly 57,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the war — now in its 22nd month — began, hundreds of thousands have been displaced multiple times, cities and towns have been razed, hospitals and schools targeted, and 85 percent of the besieged and bombarded enclave is now under Israeli military control, according to the UN.

    Al Jazeera’s Federica Marsi reports that Albanese’s latest document names 48 corporate actors, including United States tech giants Microsoft, Alphabet Inc. — Google’s parent company — and Amazon.

    “[Israel’s] forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech — providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability — while investors and private and public institutions profit freely,” the report said.

    “Companies are no longer merely implicated in occupation — they may be embedded in an economy of genocide,” it said, in a reference to Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

    In an expert opinion last year, Albanese said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel was committing genocide in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

    The report stated that its findings illustrate “why Israel’s genocide continues”.

    “Because it is lucrative for many,” it said.


    Francesca Albanese v Israel’s lobby.     Video: Al Jazeera

    Military procurements
    Israel’s procurement of F-35 fighter jets is part of the world’s largest arms procurement programme, relying on at least 1600 companies across eight nations. It is led by US-based Lockheed Martin, but F-35 components are constructed globally.

    Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A is listed as a main contributor in the military sector, while Japan’s FANUC Corporation provides robotic machinery for weapons production lines.

    The tech sector, meanwhile, has enabled the collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, “supporting Israel’s discriminatory permit regime”, the report said.

    Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon grant Israel “virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies”, enhancing its data processing and surveillance capacities.

    The US tech company IBM has also been responsible for training military and intelligence personnel, as well as managing the central database of Israel’s Population, Immigration and Borders Authority (PIBA) that stores the biometric data of Palestinians, the report said.

    It found US software platform Palantir Technologies expanded its support to the Israeli military since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023.

    The report said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the company provided automatic predictive policing technology used for automated decision-making in the battlefield, to process data and generate lists of targets including through artificial intelligence systems like “Lavender”, “Gospel” and “Where’s Daddy?”

    [AL Jazeera]
    Companies supporting Israel. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Commons
    Other companies identified in the report
    The report also lists several companies developing civilian technologies that serve as “dual-use tools” for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.These include Caterpillar, Leonardo-owned Rada Electronic Industries, South Korea’s HD Hyundai and Sweden’s Volvo Group, which provide heavy machinery for home demolitions and the development of illegal settlements in the West Bank.Rental platforms Booking and Airbnb also aid illegal settlements by listing properties and hotel rooms in Israeli-occupied territory.

    The report named the US’s Drummond Company and Switzerland’s Glencore as the primary suppliers of coal for electricity to Israel, originating primarily from Colombia.

    In the agriculture sector, Chinese Bright Dairy & Food is a majority owner of Tnuva, Israel’s largest food conglomerate, which benefits from land seized from Palestinians in Israel’s illegal outposts.

    Netafim, a company providing drip irrigation technology that is 80-percent owned by Mexico’s Orbia Advance Corporation, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank.

    Treasury bonds have also played a critical role in funding the ongoing war on Gaza, according to the report, with some of the world’s largest banks, including France’s BNP Paribas and the UK’s Barclays, listed as having stepped in to allow Israel to contain the interest rate premium despite a credit downgrade.

    Which are the main investors behind these companies?
    The report identified US multinational investment companies BlackRock and Vanguard as the main investors behind several listed companies.

    BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is listed as the second largest institutional investor in Palantir (8.6 percent), Microsoft (7.8 percent), Amazon (6.6 percent), Alphabet (6.6 percent) and IBM (8.6 per cent), and the third largest in Lockheed Martin (7.2 percent) and Caterpillar (7.5 percent).

    Vanguard, the world’s second-largest asset manager, is the largest institutional investor in Caterpillar (9.8 percent), Chevron (8.9 percent) and Palantir (9.1 percent), and the second largest in Lockheed Martin (9.2 percent) and Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems (2 percent).

    New Zealand referrals to the International Criminal Court
    Meanwhile, the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa yesterday released a report saying that it was referring two New Zealand businessmen along with four politicians, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, to the International Criminal Court for investigation over alleged policies relating to Gaza.

    The PSNA accused the six individuals of complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by “assisting Israel’s mass killing and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza”.

    In a statement, PSNA co-chairs John Minto and Maher Nazzal said the referral “carefully outlines a case that these six individuals should be investigated” by the Office of the Prosecutor for their knowing contribution to Israel’s crimes in Gaza.

    “The 103-page referral document was prepared by a legal team which has been working on the case for many months,” said Minto and Nazzal.

    “It is legally robust and will provide the prosecutor of the ICC more than sufficient documentation to begin their investigation.”

    Which NZ politicians and business leaders have been referred by the PSNA to the ICC?
    Which NZ politicians and business leaders have been referred by the PSNA to the ICC? Image: NZH screenshot APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.

    Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

    To mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack Little Island Press has published a revised and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, first released in 1986.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.

    Heroes of our age
    The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.

    This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.

    Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service

    Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.

    Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.

    Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.

    Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.

    Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.

    Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.

    With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies?
    We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.

    By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

    David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.

    The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.

    It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication next week. Image: ©  David Robie/Eyes Of Fire/Little Island Press

    The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’
    I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.

    At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.

    With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.

    The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”

    Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.

    Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).

    What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . .  it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.

    Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”

    It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!

    Rainbow Warrior III at Majuro
    Rainbow Warrior III . . . the current successor to the bombed ship. Photographed at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands in April 2025. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    We the people of the Pacific
    We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.

    The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:

    “This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Catholic Church warns against PNG declaring itself a ‘Christian country’

    By Reinhard Minong in Port Moresby

    The Catholic Church has strongly warned against Papua New Guinea’s political rhetoric and push to declare the nation a Christian country, saying such a move threatens constitutional freedoms and risks dangerous implications for the country’s future.

    Speaking before the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication on Tuesday at Rapopo during the ongoing Regional Parliamentary Inquiry into the Standard and Integrity of Journalism in Papua New Guinea, Archbishop Rochus Tatamai of the Rabaul Archdiocese delivered a firm but thoughtful reflection on the issue, voicing the Catholic Church’s opposition to the notion of a legally enshrined Christian nation.

    “When talking about freedom of media and PNG, a Christian country, we must be clear,” said Archbishop Tatamai. “The claim that PNG is a Christian country is not supported by law.

    “The Catholic Church disagrees with this. It conflicts with our Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.”

    The archbishop’s remarks were part of a broader presentation on the influence of evolving technology on church authority, but he took the opportunity to confront what he called one of the major topics in PNG today.

    He raised concerns about the legal, social, and theological implications of attempting to legislate Christianity into state law, stating that politicians were not theologians and risked entering spiritual territory without the understanding to handle it responsibly.

    “If we declare PNG a Christian nation,” he asked, “whose version of Christianity are we referring to? We’re not all the same.”

    Legal obligation
    He warned of a future where attending church could become a legal obligation, not a matter of faith.

    “If PNG is supposedly a Christian nation, police could walk into your village and tell you: it’s not just a sin to skip church on Sunday, it’s illegal and get you arrested.’ That’s how dangerous this path could be.”

    Archbishop Tatamai also referenced the Chief Justice, who had recently stated that if PNG were truly a Christian nation, then principles like honesty would become enforceable laws: “You should not steal. And if you do, you’re not only sinning you’re breaking the law.”

    But the archbishop warned that such a conflation of morality and legality opens up deep conflicts.

    “History has shown us the dangers of blurring the line between church and state. Blood has been spilled over this in other parts of the world. Are we ready for that?”

    He stressed that the founding fathers of PNG had been wise to embed freedom of religion and conscience into the Constitution, ensuring that the state remained neutral in matters of faith.

    “Now, we risk undoing their vision by imposing a national religion,” he said.

    Challenged Parliament
    The archbishop also challenged Parliament and national leaders to think beyond symbolism.

    “Yes, Parliament can pass declarations. Yes, politicians can make the numbers. But have they truly thought through the implications and applications of these decisions?”

    He concluded his presentation with a sharp warning against hypocrisy and selective morality under a Christian state:

    “You cannot use Christianity as a legal framework and continue with corruption. You cannot justify wrongdoing and expect forgiveness simply because now, in a confessional state, sin becomes crime and crime must have consequences.”

    Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.