Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Fiji’s coalition government are “detached from the values that Fijians hold dear”, says the NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR).
The rights coalition has expressed deep concern over Rabuka’s ongoing engagements with Indonesia.
“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment. We must not stay silent when Pacific people are being occupied and killed,” said NGOCHR chair Shamima Ali.
“Is Fiji’s continuing silence on West Papua yet another example of being muzzled by purse strings?”
“As members of the Melanesian and Pacific family, bound by shared ancestry and identity, the acceptance of financial and any other benefit from Indonesia—while remaining silent on the plight of West Papua—is a betrayal of our family member and of regional solidarity.”
“True leadership must be rooted in solidarity, justice, and accountability,” Ali said.
“It is imperative that Pacific leaders not only advocate for peace and cooperation in the region but also continue to hold Indonesia to account on ongoing human rights violations in West Papua.”
At this year’s May graduation ceremony, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University’s Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban, was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition for her contribution to education.
Although she has now stepped down from the role, Luamanuvao served as the university’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Pasifika, for 14 years. In that time has worked tirelessly to raise Pasifika students’ achievement.
“It’s really important that they [Pasifika students] make the most of the opportunities that education has to offer,” she said.
“Secondly, education teaches you how to write, to research, to critique, but more importantly, become an informed voice and considering what’s happening in society now with AI and also technology and social media, it’s really important that we can tell our stories and share our values, and we counter that by receiving a good education and applying ourselves to do well.”
When asked about the importance of service, Luamanuvao explained “there’s a saying in Samoan, ‘o le ala i le pule o le tautua’ so the road to authority and leadership is through service”.
“And we’ve always been taught how important it is not to indulge in our own individual success, but to always become a voice and support our brothers and sisters, and our families and in our communities who are especially struggling.”
Juliana Faataualofa Lafaialii, Samoa’s Deputy Head of Mission/Counsellor to NZ (from left); Philippa Toleafoa; Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban; Afamasaga Faamatalaupu Toleafoa, Samoa’s High Commissioner to NZ; and Labour MP Pesetatamalelagi Barbara Edmonds . Image: Pesetatamalelagi Barbara Edmonds/RNZ Pacific
As she accepted her honorary doctorate, she spoke about the importance of women taking on leadership roles.
‘Our powerful women’
“Yes, many Pacific people will know how powerful our women are, especially our mothers, our grandmothers, and great grandmothers. We actually come from cultures of very powerful and very strong women . . . it’s not centered in the individual women. It’s centered on the well-being of our families, and our communities. And that’s what women leadership is all about in the Pacific.”
She did not expect the honourary doctorate from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University because “I’ve always been aspirational for others. And we Pacific people have been brought up that we are the people of the ‘we’ and not the me.”
The number of Pasifika students enrolled at the University, during Luamanuvao’s time as Assistant Vice-Chancellor, increased from 4.70 percent in 2010 to 6.64 pecent in 2024. She said she “would have loved to have doubled that number” so that it was more in line with the number of Pasifika people living in New Zealand.
Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban and supporters during an International Women’s day event in Wellington. Image: RNZ Pacific
Two of the initiatives she started, during her time at the University, was the Pasifika Roadshow taking information about university life out to the wider community and the Improving Pasifika Legal Education Project.
Helping Pasifika Law students succeed was very important to her. While Pasifika make up make up only 3 percent of Lawyers, they are overrepresented in the legal system, comprising 12 percent of the prison population.
Another passion of hers was encouraging Pasifika to enter academia. “I think we’ve had an increase in Pacific academics in some areas. For example, with the Faculty of Law, we’ve got two senior Pacific women in lecturer positions . . . We’ve also got four associate professors, and now I’ve finished, there’s also a vacancy for another.”
Prior to her work in education Luamanuvao was the first Pasifika woman to enter New Zealand politics, in 1999.
First Pacific woman MP
“I was fortunate that when I ran for Parliament, I ran first as a list MP, and as you know, within the parties, they have selection process that are quite robust, and so I became the first Pacific woman MP.”
“What motivated me was the car parts factory that closed in Wainuiomata, and most of the workers were men, but they were also Pacific, Māori and palagi, who basically arrived at work one morning and were told the factory was closing.”
“But what really hit me, and hurt me, that these were not the values of Aotearoa. They’re not the values of our Pacific region. These are human beings, and for many men, particularly, to have a job, it’s about providing for your family. It’s about status.
“So, if factories were going to close down, where was the planning to upskill them so they could continue in employment? None of them wanted to go for the unemployment benefit.
“They wanted to continue in paid work. So it’s those milestones that I make it worthwhile. It’s just a pity, because election cycles are three years, and as you know, people will vote how they want to vote, and if there’s a change, all the hard work you’ve put in gets reversed and but fundamentally, I believe that New Zealand and Pacific people have wonderful values that all of us try to live by, and that will continue to feed the light and ensure that people have a choice.”
Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban PhD and her husband Dr Peter Swain. Image: Trudy Logologo/RNZ Pacific
Although she first entered Parliament as a list MP, she subsequently won the Mana electorate seat. She retained the seat ,for the Labour party, from 2002 until she stepped away from politics in 2010.
During that time she was Minister of Pacific Peoples, 2007-2008, and even though Labour was defeated in the 2008 election, she continued to hold the Mana seat by a comfortable margin.
Mentoring many MPs
Although she has left political life, Luamanuvao has also been involved in mentoring many Pasifika Members of Parliament, and helping them cope with the challenges and opportunities that go with the role.
One of the primary motivators in her life has been the struggles of her parents, who left Samoa in 1954 to build a better future for their children, in New Zealand. She acknowledged that all of her successes can be attributed to her parents and the sacrifices they made.
“Yes, well, I think everybody can look at a genealogy of history of families leaving their homeland to come to Aotearoa, why, to build a better life and opportunities, including education for their children.
“And I often remind our generation of young people now that your parents left their home, for you. And I’ve often reflected because my parents have passed away on the pain of leaving their parents, but there was always this loving generosity in that both my parents were the eldest of huge families.
“They left everything for them, and actually arrived in New Zealand with very little. But there was this determination to succeed.
“Secondly, they are a minority in a country where they’re not the majority, or they are the indigenous people of their country. So also, overcoming those barriers, their hard work, their dreams, but more importantly, the huge love for our communities and fairness and justice was installed in Ken and I my brother, from a very young age, about serving and about giving and about reciprocity.”
Although she has left her role in tertiary education Luamanuvao vows to continue working to support the next generation of Pasifika leaders, in New Zealand and around the Pacific region.
Sadly, this highlights RNZ’s failure to report the genocide from the perspective of the very real victims — more journalists killed in Gaza than the whole of World War Two, aid workers murdered and buried, 17,000 children, including babies, who will never ever grow.
I respect so many RNZ journalists and have always supported this important national broadcaster but it is time for it to pull up its pants, ditch the propaganda and report from the field of truth.
I carry my Jewish ancestors in standing against genocide and calling for reports that show the truth of the travesty.
For reporting on protests I have been pepper sprayed by thugged-up police donning US-style gloves and glasses (illegally carrying pepper spray and tasers).
I was banned from my own town hall when I tried — with my E Tu press card — to attend the deputy leader Winston Peters’ media conference.
This government does not want the truth reported, it seems.
I have reported from the fields of invasion and conflict. I’ve taught journalism and communications. Good journalists remember journalism ethics. Reports from the point of view of the oppressor support the oppressor.
Humanitarianism means not reporting from the perspective of a mercenary army — an army that has been enforcing apartheid for decades, and which is invoking a policy of extermination for expansion.
Please read this media review and think of how you would feel if someone demanded that you leave your home. Palestinians have faced oppression and apartheid and “unhoming” for decades.
Think of the intolerable weight of grief you would carry if a sniper put a bullet between the eyes of a child you love and know.
Report on the victims. And stop subscribing to propaganda.
Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). She is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This was first published as a social media post.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
West Papuans in Merauke claim the Indonesian government is stealing land to build its global “food barn” and feed its population of 280 million.
Indonesia denies this and says all transactions are lawful.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration wants Indonesia to be able to feed its population without imports as early as 2028, with the greater goal of exporting food.
To get there, Indonesia plans to convert millions of hectares into farmland.
Wensi Fatubun, from Merauke in Indonesian-occupied Papua close to Papua New Guinea’s border, said forests where he grew up were being cleared.
“[The] Indonesian government took the land for the [food] security project, it was not consulted with or consented to by Indigenous Papuans,” Fatubun said.
Prabowo’s goal is a continuation of his predecessors.
National food estate project
In 2020, President Joko Widodo announced the establishment of a national food estate project which aimed at opening up new areas of farmland outside the Java main island,
It is similar to the failed Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate, spearheaded by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2010.
About 1.3 million hectares were set aside in Merauke for it — half for food crops, 30 percent sugar cane, and 20 percent for palm.
A report from the US Department of Agriculture said it encountered resistance from locals and legal challenges.
“Approximately 90 percent of the targeted areas were forest, which provided a source of livelihood for many locals. Accordingly, the development plans became a flashpoint for local activists concerned about environmental and biodiversity impacts,” the report said.
Probowo’s government has a more ambitious goal of opening up 3 million ha of agricultural land in Merauke — two million for rice and one million for sugarcane.
Human Rights Watch Indonesia researcher Andreas Harsono said President Prabowo had elevated the “so-called food security issue”.
“[The President] wants Merauke in West Papua to be the so-called national food barn. This deforestation land grabbing is much more deeper in Merauke than in the past.”
Conflict has escalated
Harsono said conflict had escalated in West Papua and was now on par with some of the most violent periods in the past 60 years, but he was not sure if it was connected to the President’s focus on food security.
BenarNews reported that about 2000 troops had been deployed late last year in Merauke to provide security at a 2 million ha food plantation.
Rosa Moiwend, from Merauke, said the soldiers worked alongside farmers.
“They are expected to teach local farmers how to use mechanical agriculture equipment,” Moiwend said.
“But as West Papuan people, the presence of the military in the middle of the community, watching communities activities, people’s movement when they travel from one place to another, actually creates fear among the people in Merauke.”
Like Harsono and Fatubun, Moiwend said “land grabs” were happening.
However, she said it still involved a land broker, which created a facade of a fair procedure.
‘We do not sell land’
“Indigenous Merauke, indigenous Marind people like myself and my people, we do not sell land because land belongs to the community. It is communal land.”
However, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s Embassy in Wellington said all processes and steps involving land sales had been lawful, “always respecting the inclinations of local tribes”.
“Its development always involving local authorities, especially chief tribes for the consent of their ulayat (traditional land),” they said.
“There is no land grab without consent, and the government also working on the biodiversity conservation and forestry production to create space harmonisation model with Conservation International, Medco Group, and couple of other independent organisations.”
Former Green Party MP now West Papuan campaigner Catherine Delahunty . . . New Zealand and Australia are failing the citizens of West Papua. Image: Johnny Blades/VNP
‘They are stripping communities’ – campaigner West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty, formerly a Green Party MP, said the region was part of the lungs of the Pacific, which was now being destroyed.
“The plan has been around for a long time but it seems to have escalated under Prabowo,” Delahunty said.
“They are stripping those lands and stripping those communities who live there from their traditional foods such as the sago palm to turn the whole of Merauke into sugar cane, rice and palm plantations.
“The effects have been massive and they’re just getting worse.”
She said New Zealand and Australia — the two “most powerful” governments in the South Pacific — were failing in their obligations to the citizens of West Papua.
“You could almost justify, because it’s a long way away from other parts of the world, that Europe and the northern hemisphere don’t really understand West Papua but there’s no excuse for us.
“These people are in our region but they’re not white people. I think there’s a huge element of racism towards Papuans and towards Pacific nations who aren’t perceived as important in the Western worldview.”
She said there was willingness to trade with Indonesia as a regional powerhouse, and New Zealand did not want to rock the boat.
That coupled with a media blackout made it easy for Indonesia to act with impunity, Delahunty said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Media Council of Papua New Guinea (MCPNG) has called on Prime Minister James Marape to stop Telikom PNG silencing and suppressing media personnel.
Telikom PNG, which is 100 percent government-owned, has two key outlets: FM100 radio and EMTV.
Recently, it sacked FM100 talkback host Culligan Tanda after he featured opposition East Sepik Governor Allan Bird on his show, following the most recent vote of no confidence.
Local media report that Tanda was initially suspended for three weeks without pay on April 22, and subsequently terminated.
MCPNG president Neville Choi said this was just the latest example of media suppression by Telikom PNG going back to 2018.
He said that he himself was sacked in 2019 after EMTV had run a story quoting the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying she would not be riding in one of the PNG government’s luxury Maseratis during an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in Port Moresby.
Choi said the story, though correct, was perceived as painting the government of the day in a “negative light”.
‘Free, robust media essential’
He said a “free, robust, and independent media is an essential pillar of democracy”.
“It is the cornerstone of allowing freedom of speech, and freedom of expression.
“Being in a position of power and authority gives no one, especially brown-nosing public servants wanting to score brownie points with the sitting government administration, the right to suppress media workers who are only doing their jobs, and doing it well,” he said.
The council also reminded the management’s of state-owned media organisations, that the Organic Law on the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) defined corrupt conduct by public officials and the dishonest exercising and abuse of official functions.
According to a PNG Haus Bung report, Marape has directed his chief of staff to get to the bottom of the issue.
Nakba Day today marks 15 May 1948 — the day after the declaration of the State of Israel — when the Palestinian society and homeland was destroyed and more than 750,000 people forced to leave and become refugees. The day is known as the “Palestinian Catastrophe”.
By Soumaya Ghannoushi
US President Donald Trump’s tour of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha is not diplomacy. It is theatre — staged in gold, fuelled by greed, and underwritten by betrayal.
A US president openly arming a genocide is welcomed with red carpets, handshakes and blank cheques. Trillions are pledged; personal gifts are exchanged. And Gaza continues to burn.
Gulf regimes have power and wealth. They have Trump’s ear. Yet they use none of it — not to halt the slaughter, ease the siege or demand dignity.
In return for their riches and deference, Trump grants Israel bombs and sets it loose upon the region.
This is the real story. At the heart of Trump’s return lies a project he initiated during his first presidency: the erasure of Palestine, the elevation of autocracy, and the redrawing of the Middle East in Israel’s image.
“See this pen? This wonderful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the top of the pen — that’s Israel. That’s not good,” he once told reporters, lamenting Israel’s size compared to its neighbours.
To Trump, the Middle East is not a region of history or humanity. It is a marketplace, a weapons depot, a geopolitical ATM.
His worldview is forged in evangelical zeal and transactional instinct. In his rhetoric, Arabs are chaos incarnate: irrational, violent, in need of control. Israel alone is framed as civilised, democratic, divinely chosen. That binary is not accidental. It is ideology.
Obedience for survival Trump calls the region “a rough neighbourhood” — code for endless militarism that casts the people of the Middle East not as lives to protect, but as threats to contain.
His $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in 2017 was marketed as peace through prosperity. Now, he wants trillions more in Gulf capital. As reported by The New York Times, Trump is demanding that Saudi Arabia invest its entire annual GDP — $1 trillion — into the US economy.
Riyadh has already offered $600 billion. Trump wants it all. Economists call it absurd; Trump calls it a deal.
This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace
Across the Gulf, a race is underway — not to end the genocide in Gaza, but to outspend one another for Trump’s favour, showering him with wealth in return for nothing.
The Gulf is no longer treated as a region. It is a vault. Sovereign wealth funds are the new ballot boxes. Sovereignty — just another asset to be traded.
Trump’s offer is blunt: obedience for survival. For regimes still haunted by the Arab Spring, Western blessing is their last shield. And they will pay any price: wealth, independence, even dignity.
To them, the true threat is not Israel, nor even Iran. It is their own people, restless, yearning, ungovernable.
Democracy is danger; self-determination, the ticking bomb. So they make a pact with the devil.
Doctrine of immunity That devil brings flags, frameworks, photo ops and deals. The new order demands normalisation with Israel, submission to its supremacy, and silence on Palestine.
Once-defiant slogans are replaced by fintech expos and staged smiles beside Israeli ministers.
In return, Trump offers impunity: political cover and arms. It is a doctrine of immunity, bought with gold and soaked in Arab blood.
They bend. They hand him deals, honours, trillions. They believe submission buys respect. But Trump respects only power — and he makes that clear.
He praises Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Is Putin smart? Yes . . . that’s a hell of a way to negotiate.” He calls Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a guy I like [and] respect”. Like them or not, they defend their nations. And Trump, ever the transactional mind, respects power.
Arab rulers offer no such strength. They offer deference, not defiance. They don’t push; they pay.
And Trump mocks them openly. King Salman “might not be there for two weeks without us”, he brags. They give him billions; he demands trillions.
It is not just the US Treasury profiting. Gulf billions do not merely fuel policy; they enrich a family empire. Since returning to office, Trump and his sons have chased deals across the Gulf, cashing in on the loyalty they have cultivated.
The message was clear: access to the Trumps has a price, and Gulf rulers are eager to pay.
Now, Trump is receiving a private jet from Qatar’s ruling family — a palace in the sky worth $400 million.
This is not diplomacy. It is plunder.
And how does Trump respond? With insult: “It was a great gesture,” he said of the jet, before adding: “We keep them safe. If it wasn’t for us, they probably wouldn’t exist right now.”
That was his thank you to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar; lavish gifts answered with debasement.
And what are they rewarding him for? For genocide. For 100,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Gaza. For backing ethnic cleansing in plain sight. For empowering far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as they call for Gaza’s depopulation.
For presiding over the most fanatically Zionist, most unapologetically Islamophobic administration in US history.
Still, they ask nothing, while offering everything. They could have used their leverage. They did not.
The Yemen precedent proves they can act. Trump halted the bombing under Saudi pressure, to Netanyahu’s visible dismay. When they wanted a deal, they struck one with the Houthis.
And when they sought to bring Syria in from the cold, Trump complied. He agreed to meet former rebel leader turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa — a last-minute addition to his Riyadh schedule — and even spoke of lifting sanctions, once again at Saudi Arabia’s request, to “give them a chance of greatness”.
No US president is beyond pressure. But for Gaza? Silence.
Price of silence While Trump was being feted in Riyadh, Israel rained American-made bombs on two hospitals in Gaza. In Khan Younis, the European Hospital was reportedly struck by nine bunker-busting bombs, killing more than two dozen people and injuring scores more.
Earlier that day, an air strike on Nasser Hospital killed journalist Hassan Islih as he lay wounded in treatment.
As Trump basked in applause, Israel massacred children in Jabalia, where around 50 Palestinians were killed in just a few hours.
This is the bloody price of Arab silence, buried beneath the roar of applause and the glitter of tributes.
This week marks the anniversary of the Nakba — and here it is again, replayed not through tanks alone, but through Arab complicity.
With every cheque signed, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame
The bombs fall. The Gaza Strip turns to dust. Two million people endure starvation. UN food is gone.
Hospitals overflow with skeletal infants. Mothers collapse from hunger. Tens of thousands of children are severely malnourished, with more than 3500 on the edge of death.
Meanwhile, Smotrich speaks of “third countries” for Gaza’s people. Netanyahu promises their removal.
And Trump — the man enabling the annihilation? He is not condemned, but celebrated by Arab rulers. They eagerly kiss the hand that sends the bombs, grovel before the architect of their undoing, and drape him in splendour and finery.
While much of the world stands firm — China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, even Greenland – refusing to bow to Trump’s bullying, Arab rulers kneel. They open wallets, bend spines, empty hands — still mistaking humiliation for diplomacy.
They still believe that if they bow low enough, Trump might toss them a bone. Instead, he tosses them a bill.
This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace.
With every cheque signed, every jet offered, every photo op beside the butcher of a people, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame.
Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.
That date in 1987 is also the date of the first military coup in Fiji.
More than 60,000 men, women and children were brought to Fiji under an oppressive system of bonded labour between 1879 and 1916.
Today, Indo-Fijians make up 33 percent of the population.
While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under “Indian” and “Asian” on the Stats NZ website.
Lasting impact on Fiji
The Fiji Centre’s Nik Naidu, who is also a co-founder of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, said that he understood Fiji was the only country in the Pacific where the British implemented the indentured system.
“It is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery,” he said.
“The positive was that the Fiji Indian community made a lasting impact on Fiji.
“They continue to be around 30 percent of the population in Fiji, and I think significantly in Aotearoa, through the migration, the numbers are, according to the community, over 100,000 in New Zealand.”
Fiji Centre co-founder Nikhil Naidu . . . Girmit Day “is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“His basic argument was, well, ethnographically, Fijian Indians do not fit the profile of Pacific Islanders,” he said.
Then-minister Aupito William Sio said in 2021 that, while he understood the group’s concerns, the classification for Fijian Indians was in line with an ethnographic profile which included people with a common language, customs and traditions.
Aupito said that profile was different from indigenous Pacific peoples.
StatsNZ and ethnicity
“StatsNZ recognises ethnicity as the ethnic group or groups a person self-identifies with or has a sense of belonging to,” Aupito said in a letter at the time.
It is not the same as race, ancestry, nationality, citizenship or even place of birth, he said.
“They have identified themselves now that the system of government has not acknowledged them.
“Those conversations have to be ongoing to figure out how do we capture the data of who they are as Fijian Indians or to develop policies around that to support their aspirations.”
Girmitiyas – Indentured labourers – in Fiji . . . shedding light on the harsh colonial past in Fiji. Image: RNZ Pacific/Fiji Girmit Foundation
Naidu believes the ethnographic argument was a misunderstanding of the request.
“The request is not to say, like Chinese in Samoa, they are not indigenous to Samoa, but they are Samoans, and they are Pacific Chinese.
“So there is the same thing with Fijian Indians. They are not wanting to be indigenous.
Different from mainland Indians
“They do want to be recognised as separate Indians in the Pacific because they are very different from the mainland Indians.
“In fact, most probably 99 percent of Fijian Indians have never been to India and have no affiliations to India because during the Girmit they lost all connections with their families.”
However, Naidu told Pacific Waves the community was not giving up.
“There was a human rights complaint made — again that did not progress in the favour of the Fijian Indians.
“Currently from . . . Fiji Centre’s perspective, we are still pursuing that.
“We have also had a discussion with Stats NZ about the numbers and trying to ascertain just why they have not managed to put a separate category, so that we can look at the number of Fijian Indians and also relative to Pacific Islanders.”
Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told RNZ Pacific that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.
In a statement, his office said: “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is undertaking ongoing policy work to better understand this issue.”
Meanwhile, the University of Fiji’s vice-chancellor is asking the Australian and British governments to consider paying reparation for the exploitation of the indentured labourers more than a century ago.
Professor Shaista Shameem told the ABC that they endured harsh conditions, with long hours, social restrictions and low wages.
She said the Australian government and the Colonial Sugar Refinery of Australia benefitted the most financially and it was time the descendants were compensated.
While some community leaders have been calling for reparation, Naidu said there were other issues that needed attention.
He said it had been an ongoing discussion for many decades.
“It is a very challenging one, because where do you draw the line? And it is a global problem, the indenture system. It is not just unique to Fiji.
“Personally, yes, I think that is a great idea. Practically, I am not sure if it is feasible and possible.”
Focus on what unites, says Rabuka Fiji is on a path for reconciliation, with leaders from across the political spectrum signing a Forward Fiji Declaration in 2023, hoping to usher in a new era of understanding between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.
Rabuka announced a public holiday to commemorate Girmit Day in 2023.
In his Girmit Day message this year, Rabuka said his government was dedicated to bringing unity and reconciliation between all races living in Fiji.
“We all know that Fiji has had a troubled past, as it was natural that conflicts would arise when a new group of people would come into another’s space,” he said.
“This is precisely what transpired when the Indians began to live or decided to live as permanent citizens.
“There was distrust as the two groups were not used to living together during the colonial days. Indigenous Fijians did not have a say in why, and how many should come and how they should be settled here. Fiji was not given a time to transit.
“The policy of indenture labour system was dumped on us. Naturally this led to tensions and misunderstandings, reasons that fuelled conflicts that followed after Fiji gained independence.”
He said 146 years later, Fijians should focus on what unites rather than what divides them.
“We have together long enough to know that unity and peace will lead us to a good future.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This year’s theme is, ‘Åf’ạkia ma rak’ạkia ‘os fäega ma ag fak Rotuma – tēfakhanisit Gagaja nā se ‘äe ma’, which translates to, ‘Treasure & teach our Rotuman language and culture — A gift given to you and I by God’.
With fewer than 1000 residents identifying as Rotuman, it is the younger generation stepping up to preserve their endangered language.
Two young people, who migrated to New Zealand from Rotuma Island, are using dance to stay connected with their culture from the tiny island almost 500km northwest of Fiji’s capital, Suva, which they proudly call home.
Kapieri Samisoni and Tristan Petueli, both born in Fiji and raised on Rotuma, now reside in Auckland.
Cultural guardians
They are leading a new wave of cultural guardians who use dance, music, and storytelling to stay rooted in their heritage and to pass it on to future generations.
“A lot of people get confused that they think Rotuma is in Fiji but Rotuma is just outside of Fiji,” Samisoni told RNZ Pacific Waves.
Rotuman Language Week. Video: RNZ Pacific
“We have our own culture, our own tradition, our own language.”
“When I moved to New Zealand, I would always say I am Fijian because that was easier for people to understand. But nowadays, I say I am Rotuman.
“A lot of people are starting to understand and realise . . . they know what Rotuma is and where Rotuma is, so it is nice saying that I am Rotuman,” he said.
Samisoni moved to New Zealand in 2007 when he was 11 years old with his parents and siblings.
He said dancing has become a powerful way to express his identity and honour the traditions of his homeland.
Learning more
“Moving away from Fiji and being so far away from the language, I think I took it for granted. But now that I am here in New Zealand, I want to learn more about my culture.
“With dance and music, that is the way of for me to keep the culture alive. It is also a good way to learn the language as well.”
For Petueli, the connection runs deep through performance and rhythm after having moved here in 2019, just before the covid-19 pandemic.
“It is quite difficult living in Aotearoa, where I cannot use the language as much in my day to day life,” Petueli said.
“The only time I get to do that is when I am on the phone with my parents back home, or when I am reading the Rotuman Bible and that kind of keeps me connected to my culture,” he said.
He added he definitely felt connected whenever he was dancing.
“Growing up, I learnt our traditional dances at a very young age.
Blessed and grateful
“My parents were always involved in the culture. They were also purotu, which is the choreographers and composers for our traditional dances. So, I was blessed and grateful to have that with me growing up, and I still have that with me today,” he said.
Celebrations of Rotuman Language Week first began as grassroots efforts in 2018, led by groups like the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group Inc before receiving official support from the Ministry for Pacific Peoples in 2020.
Interview with Fesaitu Solomone. Video: RNZ Pacific
The Centre for Pacific Languages chief executive Fesaitu Solomone said young people played a critical role in this movement — but they don’t have to do it alone.
“Be not afraid to speak the language even if you make mistakes,” she said.
“Get together [and] look for people who can support you in terms of the language. We have our knowledge holders, your community, your church, your family.
“Reach out to anyone you know who can support you and create a safe environment for you to learn our Pasifika languages.”
Loved music and dance
She said one of the things that young people loved was music and dance and the centre wanted to make sure that they continued to learn language through that avenue.
“It is great pathway and we recognise that a lot of our people may not want to learn language in a classroom setting or in a face to face environment,” she said.
Fesaitu said for these young leaders, the bridge was already being crossed — one dance, one chant, and one proud declaration at a time.
“And that is the work that we try and do here, is to look at ways that our young people can engage, but also be able to empower them, and give them an opportunity to be part of it.”
Petueli hopes other countries follow the example being set in Aotearoa to preserve and celebrate Pacific languages.
“I do not think any other country, even in Fiji, is doing anything like this, like the Pacific languages [weeks], and pushing for it.
“I think we are doing a great job here, and I hope that we will everywhere else can see and follow through with it.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group seminar on “decolonisation” organised last night on Rotuman Day as part of the fellowship’s Rotuman Language Week programme at the Whānau Community Centre . . . facilitated by Ara Simmons (right) with speakers Cherie Nepia (from left), Rachael Mario and Joanna Bourke. Image: APR
Israel’s military has admitted attacking the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing Palestinian journalist Hassan Eslaih and another person while claiming it was a “targeted attack”.
Gaza’s Government Media Office confirmed the killing of Eslaih yesterday and described it as an “assassination”.
The Gaza Health Ministry condemned the “heinous” attack on Nasser hospital.
Esaih who receiving treatment at the hospital’s burn unit for severe injuries sustained during an April 7 Israeli strike on a media tent located next to the hospital.
He had survived that attack, but suffered severe injuries, including burns, and lost two fingers.
Esaih was the director of the Alam24 News Agency and a freelancer who contributed to international news organisations, including photos of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, reports Al Jazeera.
Israel claims Eslaih was a Hamas fighter who participated in the October 7 attack, an allegation he vehemently denied.
‘False claims’ about journalists
At the time, he told Mondoweiss, a US-based news outlet, that Israel was “trying to obliterate the image of Palestinian journalists with these false claims that they belong to Hamas and other factions”.
He added that he did not belong to any party in Gaza.
Latest Israeli killing takes death toll among Gaza journalists to 215
The Government Media Office in Gaza said the killing of Eslaih took the death toll of Gaza journalists to 2015. It condemned “in the strongest terms the systematic targeting, killing and assassination of Palestinian journalists” by Israeli forces.
It said that Eslaih was “assassinated” while receiving treatment at the Nasser Medical Complex.
“We hold the Israeli occupation, the US administration, and the countries participating in the crime of genocide — such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France — fully responsible for committing this heinous, brutal crime,” it added.
According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began. Media freedom watchdogs in Europe and the US have often under counted the journalist death toll.
Israel’s military claimed in a post on Telegram that the strike targeted a Hamas “command and control complex” at the hospital — the largest in southern Gaza — without providing further evidence.
Repeated targeting of hospitals
The Health Ministry said the Israeli attack targeted the surgical building at Nasser Medical complex, killing at least two people and wounding patients and medical staff.
“The repeated targeting of hospitals and the pursuit and killing of wounded patients inside treatment rooms confirms the occupation forces’ deliberate intent to inflict greater damage to the health care system and threaten the treatment of the wounded and sick, even on hospital beds,” it added.
According to officials in Gaza, Israel has bombed and burned at least 35 hospitals across the Strip.
This is despite the fact that attacks on health facilities, medical personnel and patients are considered a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention.
Here are some of the worst attacks:
Al-Ahli Hospital: Hundreds of people sheltering in the car park of al-Ahli Hospital were killed in an explosion in October 2023. In the days leading up to the incident, the hospital director reportedly received warnings from Israel.
Al-Awda Hospital: An Israeli air raid in November 2023 killed Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr Ahmad al-Sahar of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and another doctor, Ziad al-Tatari. Israeli forces raided the hospital the following month and detained Dr Adnan Al Bursh, who died in Israeli custody later.
Al-Shifa Medical Complex: Israeli forces raided the hospital in November 2023, killing at least 25 Palestinians, including three medical workers, and leaving it non-functional. They stormed the hospital a second time in March of last year, killing at least 22 people. After they withdrew, three mass graves were found and at least 80 corpses were retrieved.
Kamal Adwan Hospital: The Israeli military arrested Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, in December of last year after he refused to follow orders to abandon one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza. His arrest came a day after the military killed approximately 20 Palestinians and detained about 240 in a raid inside the hospital, which was one of the “largest operations” conducted in the territory until that time.
Israeli claim rejected
Hamas has rejected the Israeli prime minister’s claim that military pressure helped secure the release of a captured US-Israeli soldier, 21-year-old Edan Alexander, from Gaza.
“The return of Edan Alexander is the result of serious communications with the US administration and the efforts of mediators, not a consequence of Israeli aggression or the illusion of military pressure,” Hamas said in a statement.
The group added that Netanyahu was “misleading his people”, Al Jazeera reports. Hamas said earlier it was a goodwill gesture to US President Donald Trump on the eve of his Middle East visit.
Officers call for war’s end
Meanwhile, a group of former Israeli military commanders have urged Trump to end Israel’s war on Gaza.
The group representing more than 550 former senior officers in the Israeli military and intelligence agencies has written to Trump, asking him to use his visit to the Middle East, which began today, to “bring all our hostages back” and “end the war” in Gaza.
The Commanders for Israel Security also urged the US leader to “end the death and suffering of innocents, launch a Hamas-free ‘morning after’ for the Strip, and pave the way for a regional security coalition that includes Israel”.
By all accounts, “our approach to you represents the view of the vast majority of Israelis”, the group wrote.
The letter also said the war in Gaza “no longer serves Israel’s national objectives”, and that to most Israelis, Israel’s “justified objectives” to “end Hamas brutality” after October 7 “have long been achieved”.
The letter added, “If continued, the war, as well as the aggressive annexation policy on the West Bank, challenges regional stability. Most important, as you have correctly noted, it risks the lives of our hostages.”
Stuck in a state of disbelief for months, journalist Coralie Cochin was one of many media personnel who inadvertently put their lives on the line as New Caledonia burned.
“It was very shocking. I don’t know the word in English, you can’t believe what you’re seeing,” Cochin, who works for public broadcaster NC la 1ère, said on the anniversary of the violent and deadly riots today.
She recounted her experience covering the civil unrest that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and more than NZ$4.2 billion (2.2 billion euros) in damages.
“It was like the country was [at] war. Every[thing] was burning,” Cochin told RNZ Pacific.
The next day, on May 14, Cochin said the environment was hectic. She was being pulled in many directions as she tried to decide which story to tell next.
“We didn’t know where to go [or] what to tell because there were things happening everywhere.”
She drove home trying to dodge burning debris, not knowing that later that evening the situation would get worse.
“The day after, it was completely crazy. There was fire everywhere, and it was like the country was [at] war suddenly. It was very, very shocking.”
Over the weeks that followed, both Cochin and her husband — also a journalist — juggled two children and reporting from the sidelines of violent demonstrations.
“The most shocking period was when we knew that three young people were killed, and then a police officer was killed too.”
She said verifying the deaths was a big task, amid fears far more people had died than had been reported.
Piled up . . . burnt out cars block a road near Nouméa after last year’s riots in New Caledonia. Image NC 1ère TV screenshot APR
‘We were targets’ After days of running on adrenaline and simply getting the job done, Cochin’s colleagues were attacked on the street.
“At the beginning, we were so focused on doing our job that we forgot to be very careful,” she said.
But then,”we were targets, so we had to be very more careful.”
News chiefs decided to send reporters out in unmarked cars with security guards.
They did not have much protective equipment, something that has changed since then.
“We didn’t feel secure [at all] one year ago,” she said.
But after lobbying for better protection as a union representative, her team is more prepared.
She believes local journalists need to be supported with protective equipment, such as helmets and bulletproof vests, for personal protection.
“We really need more to be prepared to that kind of riots because I think those riots will be more and more frequent in the future.”
Protesters at Molodoï, Strasbourg, demanding the release of Kanak indigenous political prisoners being detained in France pending trial for their alleged role in the pro-independence riots in May 2024. Image: @67Kanaky/X
Social media She also pointed out that, while journalists are “here to inform people”, social media can make their jobs difficult.
“It is more difficult now with social media because there was so [much] misinformation on social media [at the time of the rioting] that we had to check everything all the time, during the day, during the night . . . ”
She recalled that when she was out on the burning streets speaking with rioters from both sides, they would say to her, “you don’t say the truth” and “why do you not report that?” she would have to explain to then that she would report it, but only once it had been fact-checked.
“And it was sometimes [it was] very difficult, because even with the official authorities didn’t have the answers.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
France preaches one thing and practices another.
France declared a state of emergency in its colony of New Caledonia after an anti-colonial uprising broke out there
New Caledonia has long sought independence, hoping to support itself through mining. The French sent in the… pic.twitter.com/g7RKXKaXNM
An Australian solidarity group for West Papuan self-determination has called on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to raise the human rights crisis in the Melanesian region with the Indonesian president this week.
Albanese is visiting Indonesia for two days from tomorrow.
AWPA has written a letter to Albanese making the appeal for him to raise the issue with President Prabowo Subianto.
“The Australian people care about human rights and, in light of the ongoing abuses in West Papua, we are urging Prime Minister Albanese to raise the human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian President during his visit to Jakarta,” said Joe Collins of AWPA.
He said the solidarity group was urging Albanese to support the West Papuan people by encouraging the Indonesian government to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua to investigate the human rights situation in the territory.
The West Papuan people have been calling for such a visit for years.
Concerned over military ties
“We are also concerned about the close ties between the ADF [Australian Defence Force] and the Indonesian military,” Collins said.
“We believe that the ADF should be distancing itself from the Indonesian military while there are ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua, not increasing ties with the Indonesian security forces as is the case at present.”
Collins said that the group understood that it was in the interest of the Australian government to have good relations with Indonesia, “but good relations should not be at the expense of the West Papuan people”.
“The West Papuan people are not going to give up their struggle for self-determination. It’s an issue that is not going away,” Collins added.
New Caledonia has imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone in a rare and sweeping move that places the French Pacific territory among the most restricted exploration areas on the planet’s waters.
The law blocks commercial exploration, prospecting and mining of mineral resources that sits within Kanaky New Caledonia’s exclusive economic zone.
Nauru and the Cook Islands have already publicly expressed support for seabed exploration.
Sovereign island states discussed the issue earlier this year during last year’s Pacific Islands Forum, but no joint position has yet been agreed on.
Only non-invasive, scientific research will be permitted across New Caledonia’s surrounding maritime zone that covers 1.3 million sq km.
Lawmakers in the New Caledonian territorial Congress adopted a moratorium following broad support mostly from Kanak-aligned political parties.
“Rather than giving in to the logic of immediate profit, New Caledonia can choose to be pioneers in ocean protection,” Jérémie Katidjo Monnier, the local government member responsible for the issue, told Congress.
A ‘strategic lever’
“It is a strategic lever to assert our environmental sovereignty in the face of the multinationals and a strong signal of commitment to future generations.”
New Caledonia’s location has been a global hotspot for marine biodiversity.
Its waters are home to nearly one-third of the world’s remaining pristine coral reefs that account for 1.5 percent of reefs worldwide.
Environmental supporters of the new law argue that deep-sea mining could cause a serious and irreversible harm to its fragile marine ecosystems.
But the pro-French, anti-independence parties, including Caledonian Republicans, Caledonian People’s Movement, Générations NC, Renaissance and the Caledonian Republican Movement all planned to abstain from the vote the politically conservative bloc knew they could not win.
The Loyalists coalition argued that the decision clashed with the territory’s “broader economic goals” and the measure was “too rigid”, describing its legal basis as “largely disproportionate”.
“All our political action on the nickel question is directed toward more exploitation and here we are presenting ourselves as defenders of the environment for deep-sea beds we’ve never even seen,” Renaissance MP Nicolas Metzdorf said.
Ambassador’s support
But France’s Ambassador for Maritime Affairs, Olivier Poivre d’Arvor, had already asserted “the deep sea is not for sale” and that the high seas “belong to no one”, appearing to back the policy led by pro-independence Kanak alliances.
The vote in New Caledonia also coincided with US President Donald Trump signing a decree a week earlier authorising deep-sea mining in international waters.
“No state has the right to unilaterally exploit the mineral resources of the area outside the legal framework established by UNCLOS,” said the head of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), Leticia Carvalho, in a statement referring back to the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea.
A group of New Zealand academics at Otago University have drawn up a “Declaration on Palestine” against genocide, apartheid and scholasticide of Palestinians by Israel that has illegally occupied their indigenous lands for more than seven decades.
The document, which had already drawn more than 300 signatures from staff, students and alumni by the weekend, will be formally adopted at a congress of the Otago Staff for Justice in Palestine (OSJP) group on Thursday.
“At a time when our universities, our public institutions and our political leaders are silent in the face of the daily horrors we are shown from illegally-occupied Palestine, this declaration is an act of solidarity with our Palestinian whānau,” declared Professor Richard Jackson from Te Ao O Rongomaraeroa — The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.
“It expresses the brutal truth of what is currently taking place in Palestine, as well as our commitment to international law and human rights, and our social responsibilities as academics.
“We hope the declaration will be an inspiration to others and a call to action at a moment when the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is accelerating at an alarming rate.”
Scholars and students at the university had expressed concern that they did not want to be teaching or learning about the Palestinian genocide in future courses on the history of the Palestinian people, Professor Jackson said.
Nor did they want to feel ashamed when they were asked what they did while the genocide was taking place.
‘Collective moral courage’
“Signing up to the declaration represents an act of individual and collective moral courage, and a public commitment to working to end the genocide.”
The declaration commits its signatories to an academic boycott as part of the wider Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign “until such time as Palestinians enjoy freedom from genocide, apartheid and scholasticide”, they had national self-determination and full and complete enjoyment of human rights, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The declaration says that given the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled there is a “plausible” case that Israel has been committing genocide, and that all states that are signatory to the Genocide Convention must take all necessary measures to prevent acts of genocide, the signatories commit themselves to an academic boycott.
BDS is a campaign, begun in 2005, to promote economic, social and cultural boycotts of the Israeli government, Israeli companies and companies that support Israel, in an effort to end the occupation of Palestinian territories and win equal rights for Palestinian citizens within Israel.
It draws inspiration from South African anti-apartheid campaigns and the United States civil rights movement.
The full text of the declaration:
The Otago Declaration on the Situation in Palestine
We, the staff, students and graduates, being members of the University of Otago, make the following declaration.
We fully and completely recognise that: – The Palestinian people have a right under international law to national self-determination; – The Palestinians have the right to security and the full enjoyment of all human and social rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
And furthermore that: – Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian nation, according to experts, official bodies, international lawyers and human rights organisations; – Israel operates a system of apartheid in the territories it controls, and denies the full expression and enjoyment of human rights to Palestinians, according to international courts, human rights organisations, legal and academic experts; – Israel is committing scholasticide, thereby denying Palestinians their right to education;
We recognise that: – Given the International Court of Justice has ruled that there is a plausible case that Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, that all states that are signatory to the Genocide Convention, which includes Aotearoa New Zealand, have a responsibility to take all necessary measures to prevent acts of genocide;
We also acknowledge that as members of a public institution with educational responsibilities: – We hold a legal and ethical responsibility to act as critic and conscience of society, both individually as members of the University and collectively as a social institution; – We have a responsibility to follow international law and norms and to act in an ethical manner in our personal and professional endeavours; – We hold an ethical responsibility to act in solidarity with oppressed and disadvantaged people, including those who struggle against settler colonial regimes or discriminatory apartheid systems and the harmful long-term effects of colonisation; – We owe a responsibility to fellow educators who are victimised by apartheid and scholasticide;
Therefore, we, the under-signed, do solemnly commit ourselves to: – Uphold the practices, standards and ethics of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in terms of investment and procurement as called for by Palestinian civil society and international legal bodies; until such time as Palestinians enjoy freedom from genocide, apartheid and scholasticide, national self-determination and full and complete enjoyment of human rights, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. – Adopt as part of the BDS campaign an Academic Boycott, as called for by Palestinian civil society and international legal bodies; until such time as Palestinians enjoy freedom from genocide, apartheid and scholasticide, national self-determination and full and complete enjoyment of human rights, as codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Otago Declaration congress meeting will be held on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 12 noon at the Museum Lawn, Dunedin.
On October 20, 2022, Jeffery Nang, chief of the Rumah Jeffrey people in Malaysia, went to a community meeting and was handed a letter by a government official in Sarawak, a state on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. The letter was an eviction notice for Nang and the 60-some members of Rumah Jeffrey, who are members of the broader Indigenous Iban people of Borneo.
Leave their forest within 30 days, the official notice said, or risk charges against anyone who remained.
The letter was dated six days earlier. The clock had already started ticking.
The notice contended the Rumah Jeffrey people were violating the law by living within a “protected forest.” They had less than a month to demolish all their crops, tear down their longhouse and remove all of their belongings, and get out.
But although the eviction notice cited the land as a “protected” area, Nang knew there was more to the story. Five months earlier, Nang had received a visit from an official from a company called Zedtee Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of a logging company called Shin Yang Group. According to Nang, a company official told him they needed some of their forest for timber. Sarawak wood is often imported into countries like the United States, Japan and South Korea where it is sold as furniture, flooring, and wood pellets that are burned for fuel.
Nang said he never reached an agreement with Zedtee regarding the forest or any potential relocation or payment. Instead, for nearly three years, his people have been at a standoff with authorities, as they resist the eviction levied without their consent or compensation.
That’s according to a new investigation published last week by Human Rights Watch that concludes the Rumah Jeffrey community is being wrongly evicted, in violation of Malaysia’s laws, as well as in violation of their international rights as Indigenous peoples to consent to extractive projects on their land.
Various studies have shown that deforestation is a leading contributor to climate change, leading to less rainfall, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and warmer temperatures. Research also indicates that protecting Indigenous land rights helps both save forests and protect biodiversity. But despite global pledges to stop deforestation, the problem continues to worsen.
Luciana Téllez Chávez, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the Rumah Jeffrey’s experience reflects a broader problem of Indigenous rights being disregarded in the region. There are relatively few legal protections for Indigenous peoples in Sarawak compared with other state governments, but her investigation found that even the few legal protections, such as requirements for companies to get certified, are not being met.
“There is a sense that a lot of the deforestation that happens in Sarawak is legal just because the law is so permissive of this type of activity,” she said. “What we’re trying to show is that even the modest protections that exist for Indigenous lands are not respected and this is one example of that.”
Indigenous peoples who want to stay on their land must prove their presence through a specific colonial-era aerial land survey, Chávez said. But the survey itself is classified.
“That’s just absurd,” she said. “It’s just incredibly difficult for communities to advocate for their rights because all this critical environmental information is secret.”
Chávez said Human Rights Watch worked with university researchers to access the survey data and prove that even by that arbitrary criterion, the Rumah Jeffrey have valid land claims.
Neither Zedtee nor the Shin Yang Group responded to messages seeking comment. The Sarawak Forest Department did not respond either to inquiries, but said in a letter to Human Rights Watch that it is committed to best practices in forest management.
“The Sarawak Government remains committed to Sustainable Forest Management through its forest management certification policy and best forest management practices,” the agency said. “This commitment applies to both natural and planted forests, ensuring adherence to strict standards and best practices.”
Despite not receiving consent from the Rumah Jeffrey people, Zedtee proceeded with removing trees from the forest, Human Rights Watch found. A study by researchers at the University of Maryland and the organization Global Forest Watch estimated that the subsequent logging removed nearly eight hectares of forest, or the size of nearly 20 American football fields.
Nicholas Mujah is the general secretary of the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association, a community group representing Indigenous Iban communities like the Rumah Jeffrey in Sarawak. Mujah said there are hundreds of court cases dealing with land disputes in Sarawak because evictions to make way for deforestation are growing more common.
“This type of modus operandi is very, very rampant in Sarawak,” he said.
So far, the Rumah Jeffrey community is resisting eviction. The village of about 60 people relies on the forest and nearby river for fishing, hunting, gathering, and growing food. Moving away would force them to leave two cemeteries where their ancestors and loved ones are buried, as well as a waterfall that they consider sacred.
“The land is very, very significant to the livelihood of the Iban people in Sarawak,” said Mujah.
Human Rights Watch investigators found that the Rumah Jeffrey people did not have an opportunity to provide input in the eviction process, nor do they have an avenue to overturn it.
Mujah hopes the international community helps provide some hope. At the end of this year, the European Union is putting into effect new regulations that will allow companies to be fined for deforestation on their product supply lines that occurred after 2020, whether or not it was technically legal. The law, Chávez says, is a “game-changer,” and could put pressure on the state of Sarawak and the Malaysian government more broadly to better respect Indigenous rights in order to protect a lucrative export industry.
Ideally, Chávez wants the Sarawak government to revoke its eviction notice. Human Rights Watch also called upon countries like the U.S. and Japan to enforce existing laws against importing wood that was felled through illegal deforestation or human rights violations. Finally, Chávez hopes Sarawak adopts stricter legal standards to protect communities like the Rumah Jeffrey.
“The Sarawak legal system is incredibly discriminatory against Indigenous peoples,” she said.”The local laws are not on par with the international standards with the rights of Indigenous peoples and they truly facilitate the appropriation of Indigenous land.”
Fresh, stringent security measures have been imposed in New Caledonia following aborted political talks last week and ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in damages.
On Sunday, the French High Commission in Nouméa announced that from Monday, May 12, to Friday, May 15, all public marches and demonstrations will be banned in the Greater Nouméa Area.
Restrictions have also been imposed on the sale of firearms, ammunition, and takeaway alcoholic drinks.
In the wake of the May 2024 civil unrest, a state of emergency and a curfew had been imposed and had since been gradually lifted.
The decision also comes as “confrontations” between law enforcement agencies and violent groups took place mid-last week, especially in the township of Dumbéa — on the outskirts of Nouméa — where there were attempts to erect fresh roadblocks, High Commissioner Jacques Billant said.
The clashes, including incidents of arson, stone-throwing and vehicles being set on fire, are reported to have involved a group of about 50 individuals and occurred near Médipôle, New Caledonia’s main hospital, and a shopping mall.
Clashes also occurred in other parts of New Caledonia, including outside the capital Nouméa.
It adds another reason for the measures is the “anniversary date of the beginning of the 2024 riots”.
Wrecked and burnt-out cars gathered after the May 2024 riots and dumped at Koutio-Koueta on Ducos island in Nouméa. Image: NC 1ère TV
Law and order stepped up
French authorities have also announced that in view of the first anniversary of the start of the riots tomorrow, law and order reinforcements have been significantly increased in New Caledonia until further notice.
This includes a total of 2600 officers from the Gendarmerie, police, as well as reinforcements from special elite SWAT squads and units equipped with 16 Centaur armoured vehicles.
Drones are also included.
The aim is to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy against “urban violence” through a permanent deployment “night and day”, with a priority to stop any attempt to blockade roads, especially in Greater Nouméa, to preserve freedom of movement.
One particularly sensitive focus would be placed on the township of Saint-Louis in Mont-Dore often described as a pro-independence stronghold which was a hot spot and the scene of violent and deadly clashes at the height of the 2024 riots.
“We’ll be present wherever and whenever required. We are much stronger than we were in 2024,” High Commissioner Billant told local media during a joint inspection with French gendarmes commander General Nicolas Matthéos and Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas.
Dupas said that over the past few months the bulk of criminal acts was regarded as “delinquency” — nothing that could be likened to a coordinated preparation for fresh public unrest similar to last year’s.
Billant said that, depending on how the situation evolves in the next few days, he could also rely on additional “potential reinforcements” from mainland France if needed.
French High Commissioner Jacques Billant, Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas and the Gendarmerie commander, General Nicolas Matthéos, confer last Wednesday . . . “We are much stronger than we were in 2024.” Image: Haut-Commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
New Zealand ANZAC war memorial set alight A New Zealand ANZAC war memorial in the small rural town of Boulouparis (west coast of the main island of Grande Terre) was found vandalised last Friday evening.
The monument, inaugurated just one year ago at last year’s ANZAC Day to commemorate the sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers during world wars in the 20th century, was set alight by unidentified people, police said.
Tyres were used to keep the fire burning.
An investigation into the circumstances of the incident is underway, the Nouméa Public Prosecutor’s office said, invoking charges of wilful damage.
Australia, New Zealand travel warnings In the neighbouring Pacific, two of New Caledonia’s main tourism source markets, Australia and New Zealand, are maintaining a high level or increased caution advisory.
The main identified cause is an “ongoing risk of civil unrest”.
In its latest travel advisory, the Australian brief says “demonstrations and protests may increase in the days leading up to and on days of national or commemorative significance, including the anniversary of the start of civil unrest on May 13.
“Avoid demonstrations and public gatherings. Demonstrations and protests may turn violent at short notice.”
Pro-France political leaders at a post-conclave media conference in Nouméa last Thursday . . . objected to the proposed “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France. Image: RRB/RNZ Pacific
Inconclusive talks Last Thursday, May 8, French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who had managed to gather all political parties around the same table for negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, finally left the French Pacific territory. He admitted no agreement could be found at this stage.
In the final stage of the talks, the “conclave” on May 5-7, he had put on the table a project for New Caledonia’s accession to a “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France.
This option was not opposed by pro-independence groups, including the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front).
French Overseas Territories Minister Manuel Valls . . . returned to Paris last week without a deal on New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Caledonia TV screenshot APR
But the pro-France movement, in support of New Caledonia remaining a part of France, said it could not approve this.
The main pillar of their argument remained that after three self-determination referendums held between 2018 and 2021, a majority of voters had rejected independence (even though the last referendum, in December 2021, was massively boycotted by the pro-independence camp because of the covid-19 pandemic).
The anti-independence block had repeatedly stated that they would not accept any suggestion that New Caledonia could endorse a status bringing it closer to independence.
New Caledonia’s pro-France MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, told local media at this stage, his camp was de facto in opposition to Valls, “but not with the pro-independence camp”.
Metzdorf said a number of issues could very well be settled by talking to the pro-independence camp.
Electoral roll issue sensitive
This included the very sensitive issue of New Caledonia’s electoral roll, and conditions of eligibility at the next provincial elections.
Mesures administratives
À l’approche de la date d’anniversaire du début des émeutes de 2024, le Haut-commissaire, en lien avec les élus et responsables du monde économique, annonce les mesures suivante du 12 au 15 mai 2025 :
— Haut-commissariat en Nouvelle-Calédonie (@HC98800) May 10, 2025
Direct contacts with Macron Both Metzdorf and Backès also said during interviews with local media that in the midst of their “conclave” negotiations, they had had contacts as high as French President Emmanuel Macron, asking him whether he was aware of the “sovereignty with France” plan and if he endorsed it.
Another pro-France leader, Virginie Ruffenach (Le Rassemblement-Les Républicains), also confirmed she had similar exchanges, through her party Les Républicains, with French Minister of Home Affairs Bruno Retailleau, from the same right-wing party.
As Minister of Home Affairs, Retailleau would have to be involved later in the New Caledonian issue.
Divided reactions Since minister Valls’s departure, reactions were still flowing at the weekend from across New Caledonia’s political chessboard.
“We have to admit frankly that no agreement was struck”, Valls said last week during a media conference.
“Maybe the minds were not mature yet.”
But he said France would now appoint a “follow up committee” to keep working on the “positive points” already identified between all parties.
During numerous press conferences and interviews, anti-independence leaders have consistently maintained that the draft compromise put to them by Minister Valls during the latest round of negotiations last week, was not acceptable.
They said this was because it contained several elements of “independence-association”, including the transfer of key powers from Paris to Nouméa, a project of “dual citizenship” and possibly a seat at the United Nations.
“In proposing this solution, minister [Valls] was biased and blocked the negotiations. So he has prevented the advent of an agreement”, pro-France Les Loyalistes and Southern Province President leader Sonia Backès told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on Sunday.
“For us, an independence association was out of the question because the majority of [New] Caledonians voted three time against independence,” she said.
More provincial power plan
Instead, the Le Rassemblement-LR and Les Loyalistes bloc were advocating a project that would provide more powers to each of the three provinces, including in terms of tax revenue collection.
The project, often described as a de facto partition, however, was not retained in the latest phases of the negotiations, because it contravened France’s constitutional principle of a united and indivisible nation.
“But no agreement does not mean chaos”, Backès said.
On the contrary, she believes that by not agreeing to the French minister’s deal plan, her camp had “averted disaster for New Caledonia”.
“Tomorrow, there will be another minister . . . and another project”, she said, implicitly betting on Valls’s departure.
On the pro-independence front, a moderate “UNI” (National Union For Independence) said a in a statement even though negotiations did not eventuate into a comprehensive agreement, the French State’s commitment and method had allowed to offer “clear and transparent terms of negotiations on New Caledonia’s institutional and political future”.
The main FLNKS group, mainly consisting of pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC) party, also said that even though no agreement could be found as a result of the latest round of talks, the whole project could be regarded as “advances” and “one more step . . . not a failure” in New Caledonia’s decolonisation, as specified in the 1998 Nouméa Accord, FLNKS chief negotiator and UC party president Emmanuel Tjibaou said.
Deplored the empty outcome
Other parties involved in the talks, including Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble, have deplored the empty outcome of talks last week.
They called it a “collective failure” and stressed that above all, reaching a consensual solution was the only way forward, and that the forthcoming elections and the preceding campaign could bear the risk of further radicalisation and potential violence.
In the economic and business sector, the conclave’s inconclusive outcome has brought more anxiety and uncertainty.
“What businesses need, now, is political stability, confidence. But without a political agreement that many of us were hoping for, the confidence and visibility is not there, there’s no investment”, New Caledonia’s MEDEF-NC (Business Leaders Union) vice-president Bertrand Courte told NC La Première.
As a result of the May 2024 riots, more than 600 businesses, mainly in Nouméa, were destroyed, causing the loss of more than 10,000 jobs.
Over the past 12 months, New Caledonia GDP (gross domestic product) has shrunk by an estimated 10 to 15 percent, according to the latest figures produced by New Caledonia statistical institute ISEE.
What next? Crucial provincial elections As no agreement was found, the next course of action for New Caledonia was to hold provincial elections no later than 30 November 2025, under the existing system, which still restricts the list of persons eligible to vote at those local elections.
The makeup of the electoral roll for local polls was the very issue that triggered the May 2024 riots, as the French Parliament, at the time, had endorsed a Constitutional amendment to push through opening the list.
At the time, the pro-independence camp argued the changes to eligibility conditions would eventually “dilute” their votes and make indigenous Kanaks a minority in their own country.
The Constitutional bill was abandoned after the May 2024 rots.
The sensitive issue remains part of the comprehensive pact that Valls had been working on for the past four months.
The provincial elections are crucial in that they also determine the proportional makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress and its government and president.
The provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, and later in December 2024, and finally no later than 30 November 2025, were already postponed twice.
Even if the provincial elections are held later this year (under the current “frozen” rules), the anti-independence camp has already announced it would contest its result.
According to the anti-independence camp, the current restrictions on New Caledonia’s electoral roll contradict democratic principles and have to be “unfrozen” and opened up to any citizen residing for more than 10 uninterrupted years.
The present electoral roll is “frozen”, which means it only allows citizens who have have been livingin New Caledonia before November 1998 to cast their vote at local elections.
The case could be brought to the French Constitutional Council, or even higher, to a European or international level, said pro-France politicians.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A decision by the Broadcasting Standards Authority to uphold a complaint against a 1News broadcast last November is a warning to news media, says the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.
1News described violence in the streets of Amsterdam on November 7 and 8 following a soccer match as “disturbing” and ‘antisemitic’ and stated the graphic video of beatings were Maccabi Tel Aviv fans under attack just for being Jewish.
Videographers who took the footage which 1News had used, complained to their news agencies that this description was wrong. The violence had been perpetrated by the Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv fans against those they suspected of being Arab or supporters of Palestine.
The visiting Israelis were the attackers — not the victims, said the PSNA statement, as widely reported by global media correcting initial reports.
Before the match these same Maccabi fans had gathered in large groups to chant “Death to Arabs” — a racist genocidal chant which if used with the races reversed (“Arabs” replaced by Jews”) “would have been rightly condemned in purple prose by Western news media such as TVNZ”, said PSNA co-chair John Minto in the statement.
“But no such sympathy for Palestinians or Arabs,” he added.
Requested broadcast correction
PSNA said in its statement that it had immediately requested that TVNZ broadcast a correction. TVNZ refused, though admitting they had got the story wrong.
PSNA then referred a complaint to the BSA which upheld the complaint as failing to meet the accuracy standard.
Minto said in the statement that the BSA decision should be seen as a warning to news media to be aware that Israel was using “fabricated charges of antisemitism, to justify and divert attention from its genocide in Gaza and silence its critics”.
“Just because [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and the then US President Joe Biden made statements turning Amsterdam attackers into victims, doesn’t mean TVNZ news should automatically parrot them,” Minto said.
“That’s effectively what the BSA concluded.”
Framing violence: How Israel shaped the narrative and the impact on Dutch politics Video: Al Jazeera
Minto also pointed to what he called a recent fabricated hysteria about antisemitism in Sydney, which the New South Wales police found to be completely based on hoaxes by a criminal gang.
“In the US, Trump is using the same charge as an excuse to close down university courses and expel anyone who protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” Minto said.
“Of course, we strongly condemn the real antisemitism of anti-Jewish, Nazi-type Islamophobic groups,” Minto says.
Call for media ‘self education’
“It should be easy for professional reporters and editors to tell the difference between criticism of Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and violence on one hand, and on the other hand Nazis and their fellow travellers who condemn Jews because they are Jews.
“The BSA is, in effect, demanding the news media educate themselves.”
In a half-hour report on 16 November 2024 headlined “Media bias, inaccuracy and the violence in Amsterdam”, Al Jazeera’s global mediawatch programme The Listening Post said “one night of violence revealed … Western media’s failings on Israel and Palestine”.
“In the wake of an ugly eruption of violence on the streets of Amsterdam, the media coverage of the story [was] put under the microscope with editors scrambling to revise headlines, rework narratives, and reframe video content.”
In an investigative documentary, The Full Report, on 22 January 2025, Al Jazeera’s Dutch correspondent Step Vaessen reported how Israel had framed the violence, shaped the narrative, manipulated the global media, and impacted on Dutch politics.
The escalation of violence in West Papua is on par with some of the most intense times of conflict over the past six decades, a human rights researcher says.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) claims that Indonesia killed at least one civilian and severely injured another last Tuesday in Puncak Regency.
In a statement, ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda said Deris Kogoya, 18, was killed by a rocket attack from a helicopter while riding his motorbike near Kelanungin Village.
Jemi Waker, meanwhile, sustained severe violent injuries, including to both his legs.
The statement said Waker had refused to go to hospital, fearing he would be killed if he went.
Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono said that over the past month he had received an unusually high number of messages accompanied by gruesome photos showing either Indonesian soldiers or civilians being killed.
“The fighting is much more frequent now,” Harsono said.
More Indonesian soldiers
“There are more and more Indonesian soldiers sent to West Papua under President Pradowo.
“At the same time, indigenous Papuans are also gaining more and more men, unfortunately also boys, to join the fight in the jungle.”
He said the escalation could match similarly intense periods of conflict in 1977, 1984, and 2004.
A spokesperson for Indonesia’s Embassy in Wellington said they could not confirm if there had been a military attack in Puncak Regency on Tuesday.
However, they said all actions conducted by Indonesia’s military were in line with international law.
They said there were attacks in March and April of this year, instigated by an “armed criminal group” targeting Indonesian workers and civilians.
Harsono said if the attack was on civilians, it would be a clear breach of human rights.
Confirmation difficult
However, he said it was difficult to confirm due to the remoteness of the area. He said it was common for civilians to wear army camouflage because of surplus Indonesian uniforms.
A new Auckland-based kava business has found itself at the heart of a cultural debate, with critics raising concerns about appropriation, authenticity, and the future of kava as a deeply rooted Pacific tradition.
Vibes Kava, co-founded by Charles Byram and Derek Hillen, operates out of New Leaf Kombucha taproom in Grey Lynn.
The pair launched the business earlier this year, promoting it as a space for connection and community.
Byram, a Kiwi-American of Samoan descent, returned to Aotearoa after growing up in the United States. Hillen, originally from Canada, moved to New Zealand 10 years ago.
Both say they discovered kava during the covid-19 pandemic and credit it with helping them shift away from alcohol.
“We wanted to create something that brings people together in a healthier way,” the pair said.
However, their vision has been met with growing criticism, with people saying the business lacks cultural depth, misrepresents tradition, and risks commodifying a sacred practice.
Context and different perspectives Tensions escalated after Vibes Kava posted a promotional video on Instagram, describing their offering as “a modern take on a 3000-year-old tradition” and “a lifestyle shift, one shell at a time”.
On their website, Hillen is referred to as a “kava evangelist,” while videos feature Byram hosting casual kava circles and promoting fortnightly “kava socials.”
The kava they sell is bottled, with tag names referencing the effects of each different kava bottle — for example, “buzzy kava” and “chill kava”.
Their promotional content was later reposted on TikTok by a prominent Pacific influencer, prompting an influx of online input about the legitimacy of their business and the diversity of their kava circles.
The reposted video has since received more than 95,000 views, 1600 shares, and 11,000 interactions.
In the TikTok caption, the influencer questioned the ethical foundations of the business.
“I would like to know what type of ethics was put into the creation of this . . . who was consulted, and said it was okay to make a brand out of a tradition?”
Criticised the brand’s aesthetic
Speaking to RNZ Pacific anonymously, the influencer criticised the brand’s aesthetic and messaging, describing it as “exploitative”.
“Their website and Instagram portray trendy, wellness-style branding rather than a proud celebration of authentic Pacific customs or values,” they said.
“I feel like co-owner Charles appears to use his Samoan heritage as a buffer against the backlash he’s received.
“Not to discredit his identity in any way; he is Samoan, and seems like a proud Samoan too.
“However, that should be reflected consistently in their branding. What’s currently shown on their website and Instagram is a mix of Fijian kava practice served in a Samoan tanoa. That to me is confusing and dilutes cultural authenticity.”
Fiji academic Dr Apo Aporosa said much of the misunderstanding stems from a narrow perception of kava as simply being a beverage.
“Most people who think they are using kava are not,” Aporosa said.
‘Detached from culture’
“What they’re consuming may contain Piper methysticum, but it’s detached from the cultural framework that defines what kava actually is.”
Aporosa said it is important to recognise kava as both a substance and a practice — one that involves ceremony, structure, and values.
“It is used to nurture vā, the relational space between people, and is traditionally accompanied by specific customs: woven mats, the tanoa bowl, coconut shell cups (bilo or ipu), and a shared sense of respect and order.”
He said that the commodification of kava, through flavoured drink extracts and Western “wellness” branding, is concerning, and that it distorts the plant’s original purpose.
“When people repackage kava without understanding or respecting the culture it comes from, it becomes cultural appropriation,” he said.
He added that it is not about restricting access to kava — it is about protecting its cultural integrity and honouring the knowledge Pacific communities have preserved for upwards of 2000 years.
Fijian students at the Victoria University of Wellington conduct a sevusevu (kava ceremony) to start off Fiji Language Week. Image: RNZ Pacific/Koroi Hawkins
‘We can’t just gatekeep — we need to guide’ Dr Edmond Fehoko, is a renowned Tongan academic and senior lecturer at Otago University, garnered international attention for his research on the experiences and perceptions of New Zealand-born Tongan men who participate in faikava.
He said these situations are layered.
“I see the cultural appreciation side of things, and I see the cultural appropriation side of things,” Fehoko said.
“It is one of the few practices we hold dearly to our heart, and that is somewhat indigenous to our Pacific people — it can’t be found anywhere else.
“Hence, it holds a sacred place in our society. But, we as a peoples, have actually not done a good enough job to raise awareness of the practice to other societies, and now it’s a race issue, that only Pacific people have the rights to this — and I don’t think that is the case anymore.”
He explained that it is part of a broader dynamic around kava’s globalisation — and that for many people, both Pacific and non-Pacific, kava is an “interesting and exciting space, where all types of people, and all genders, come in and feel safe”.
“Yes, that is moving away from the cultural, customary way of things. But, we need to find new ways, and create new opportunities, to further disseminate our knowledge.
‘Not the same today’
“Our kava practice is not the same today as it was 10, 20 years ago. Kava practices have evolved significantly across generations.
“There are over 200 kava bars in the United States . . . kava is one of the few traditions that is uniquely Pacific. But our understanding of it has to evolve too. We can’t just gatekeep — we need to guide,” he said.
Dr Edmond Fehoko . . . “Kava practices have evolved significantly across generations.” Image: RNZ Pacific/ Sara Vui-Talitu
He added that the issue of kava being commercialised by non-Pacific people cannot necessarily be criticised.
“It’s two-fold, and quite contradictory,” he said, adding that the criticism against these ventures often overlooks the parallel ways in which Pacific communities are also reshaping and profiting from the tradition.
“We argue that non-Pacific people are profiting off our culture, but the truth is, many of us are too,” he said.
“A minority have extensive knowledge of kava . . . and if others want to appreciate our culture, let them take it further with us, instead of the backlash.
“If these lads are enjoying a good time and have the same vibe . . . the only difference is the colour of their skin, and the language they are using, which has become the norm in our kava practices as well.
“But here, we have an opportunity to educate people on the importance of our practice. Let’s raise awareness. Kava is a practice we can use as a vehicle, or medium, to navigate these spaces.”
Vibes Kava co-founder Charles Byram . . . It’s tough to be this person and then get hurt online, without having a conversation with me. Nobody took the time to ask those questions.” Image: Brady Dyer/BradyDyer.com/RNZ Pacific
‘Getting judged for the colour of my skin’ “I completely understand the points that have been brought up,” Byram said in response to the criticism.
Tearing up, he said that was one of the most difficult things to swallow was backlash fixated on his cultural identity.
“I felt like I was getting judged for the colour of my skin, and for not understanding who I was or what I was trying to accomplish. If my skin was a bit darker, I might have been given some more grace.
“I was raised in a Samoan household. My grandfather is Samoan . . . my mum is Samoan. It’s tough to be this person and then get hurt online, without having a conversation with me. Nobody took the time to ask those questions,” he said.
The pair also pushed back on claims they are focused on profit.
“We went there to learn, to dive into the culture. We went to a lot of kava bars, interviewed farmers, just to understand the origin of kava, how it works within a community, and then how best to engage with, and showcase it,” Byram said.
“People have criticised that we are profiting — we’re making no money at this point. All the money we make from this kava has gone back to the farmers in Vanuatu.”
Representing a minority
Hillen thinks those criticising them represent a minority.
“We have a lot of Pasifika customers that come here [and] they support us.
“They are ecstatic their culture is being promoted this way, and love what we are doing. The negative response from a minority part of the population was surprising to us.”
Critics had argued that the business showcased confusing blends of different cultural approaches.
Byram and Hillen said that it is up to other people to investigate and learn about the cultures, and that they are simply trying to acknowledge all of them.
Byram, however, added that the critics brought up some good points — and that this will be a catalyst for change within their business.
“Yesterday, we joined the Pacific Business Hub. We are [taking] steps to integrate more about the culture, community, and what we are trying to accomplish here.”
They also addressed their initial silence and comment moderation.
‘Cycle so self-perpetuating’
“I think the cycle was so self-perpetuating, so I was like . . . I need to make sure I respond with candor, concern, and active communication.
“So I deleted comments and put a pause on things, so we could have some space before the comments get out of hand.
“At the end of the day . . . this is about my connection with my culture and people more than anything, and I’m excited to grow from it. I’m learning, and I’m utilising this as a growth point. We’re just doing our best,” Byram said.
Hillen added: “You have to understand, this business is super new, so we’re still figuring out how best to do things, how to market and grow along with not only the community.
“What we really want to represent as people who care about, and believe in this.”
Byram said they want to acknowledge as many peoples as possible.
“We don’t want to create ceremony or steal anything from the culture. We really just want to celebrate it, and so again, we acknowledge the concern,” he added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Israel is in a weak position and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremism knows no bounds. The only other way around an eventual regional war is the ousting of the Israeli prime minister.
US President Donald Trump has closed his line of communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to various reports citing officials.
This comes amid alleged growing pressure on Israel regarding Gaza and the abrupt halt to American operations against Ansarallah in Yemen. So, is this all an act or is the US finally pressuring Israel?
On May 1, news broke that President Donald Trump had suddenly ousted his national security advisor Mike Waltz. According to a Washington Post article on the issue, the ouster was in part a response to Waltz’s undermining of the President, for having engaged in intense coordination with Israeli PM Netanyahu regarding the issue of attacking Iran prior to the Israeli Premier’s visit to the Oval Office.
Some analysts, considering that Waltz has been pushing for a war on Iran, argued that his ouster was a signal that the Trump administration’s pro-diplomacy voices were pushing back against the hawks.
This shift also came at a time when Iran-US talks had stalled, largely thanks to a pressure campaign from the Israel Lobby, leading US think tanks and Israeli officials like Ron Dermer.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump publicly announced the end to a campaign designed to destroy/degrade Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government in Sana’a on May 6.
Israeli leadership shocked
According to Israeli media, citing government sources, the leadership in Tel Aviv was shocked by the move to end operations against Yemen, essentially leaving the Israelis to deal with Ansarallah alone.
After this, more information began to leak, originating from the Israeli Hebrew-language media, claiming that the Trump administration was demanding Israel reach an agreement for aid to be delivered to Gaza, in addition to signing a ceasefire agreement.
The other major claim is that President Trump has grown so frustrated with Netanyahu that he has cut communication with him directly.
Although neither side has officially clarified details on the reported rift between the two sides, a few days ago the Israeli prime minister released a social media video claiming that he would act alone to defend Israel.
On Friday morning, another update came in that American Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would be cancelling his planned visit to Tel Aviv.
Can Trump and Netanyahu remake the Middle East? Video: Palestine Chronicle
Is the US finally standing up to Israel? In order to assess this issue correctly, we have to place all of the above-mentioned developments into their proper context.
The issue must also be prefaced on the fact that every member of the Trump government is pro-Israeli to the hilt and has received significant backing from the Israel Lobby.
Mike Waltz was indeed fired and according to leaked AIPAC audio revealed by The Grayzone, he was somewhat groomed for a role in government by the pro-Israel Lobby for a long time.
Another revelation regarding Waltz, aside from him allegedly coordinating with Netanyahu behind Trump’s back and adding journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat, was that he was storing his chats on an Israeli-owned app.
Yet, Waltz was not booted out of the government like John Bolton was during Trump’s first term in office, he has instead been designated as UN ambassador to the United Nations.
The UN ambassador position was supposed to be handed to Elise Stefanik, a radically vocal supporter of Israel who helped lead the charge in cracking down on pro-Palestine free speech on university campuses. Stefanik’s nomination was withdrawn in order to maintain the Republican majority in the Congress.
If Trump was truly seeking to push back against the Israel Lobby’s push to collapse negotiations with Iran, then why did Trump signal around a week ago that new sanctions packages were on the way?
He announced on Friday that a third independent Chinese refiner would be hit with secondary sanctions for receiving Iranian oil.
Israeli demands in Trump’s rhetoric
The sanctions, on top of the fact that his negotiating team have continuously attempted to add conditions the the talks, viewed in Tehran as non-starters, indicates that precisely what pro-Israel think tanks like WINEP and FDD have been demanding is working its way into not only the negotiating team, but coming out in Trump’s own rhetoric.
There is certainly an argument to make here, that there is a significant split within the pro-Israel Lobby in the US, which is now working its way into the Trump administration, yet it is important to note that the Trump campaign itself was bankrolled by Zionist billionaires and tech moguls.
Miriam Adelson, Israel’s richest billionaire, was his largest donor. Adelson also happens to own Israel Hayom, the most widely distributed newspaper in Israel that has historically been pro-Netanyahu, it is now also reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu split and feeding into the speculations.
As for the US operations against Yemen, the US has used the attack on Ansarallah as the perfect excuse to move a large number of military assets to the region.
This has included air defence systems to the Gulf States and most importantly to Israel.
After claiming back in March to have already “decimated” Ansarallah, the Trump administration spent way in excess of US$1 billion dollars (more accurately over US$2 billion) and understood that the only way forward was a ground operation.
Meanwhile, the US has also moved military assets to the Mediterranean and is directly involved in intensive reconnaissance over Lebanese airspace, attempting to collect information on Hezbollah.
An Iran attack imminent? While it is almost impossible to know whether the media theatrics regarding the reported Trump-Netanyahu split are entirely true, or if it is simply a good-cop bad-cop strategy, it appears that some kind of assault on Iran could be imminent.
Whether Benjamin Netanyahu is going to order an attack on Iran out of desperation or as part of a carefully choreographed plan, the US will certainly involve itself in any such assault on one level or another.
The Israeli prime minister has painted himself into a corner. In order to save his political coalition, he collapsed the Gaza ceasefire during March and managed to bring back his Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to his coalition.
This enabled him to successfully take on his own Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, in an ongoing purge of his opposition.
However, due to a lack of manpower and inability to launch any major ground operation against Gaza, without severely undermining Israeli security on other fronts, Netanyahu decided to adopt a strategy of starving the people of Gaza instead.
He now threatens a major ground offensive, yet it is hard to see what impact it would have beyond an accelerated mass murder of civilians.
The Israeli prime minister’s mistake was choosing the blocking of all aid into Gaza as the rightwing hill to die on, which has been deeply internalised by his extreme Religious Zionism coalition partners, who now threaten his government’s stability if any aid enters the besieged territory.
Netanyahu in a difficult position
This has put Netanyahu in a very difficult position, as the European Union, UK and US are all fearing the backlash that mass famine will bring and are now pushing Tel Aviv to allow in some aid.
Amidst this, Netanyahu made another commitment to the Druze community that he would intervene on their behalf in Syria.
While Syria’s leadership are signaling their intent to normalise ties and according to a recent report by Yedioth Ahronoth, participated in “direct” negotiations with Israel regarding “security issues”, there is no current threat from Damascus.
However, if tensions escalate in Syria with the Druze minority in the south, failure to fulfill pledges could cause major issues with Israeli Druze, who perform crucial roles in the Israeli military.
Internally, Israel is deeply divided, economically under great pressure and the overall instability could quickly translate to a larger range of issues.
Then we have the Lebanon front, where Hezbollah sits poised to pounce on an opportunity to land a blow in order to expel Israel from their country and avenge the killing of its Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Trigger a ‘doomsday option’?
Meanwhile in Gaza, if Israel is going to try and starve everyone to death, this could easily trigger what can only be called the “doomsday option” from Hamas and other groups there. Nobody is about to sit around and watch their people starve to death.
As for Yemen’s Ansarallah, it is clear that there was no way without a massive ground offensive that the movement was going to stop firing missiles and drones at Israel.
What we have here is a situation in which Israel finds itself incapable of defeating any of its enemies, as all of them have now been radicalised due to the mass murder inflicted upon their populations.
In other words, Israel is not capable of victory on any front and needs a way out.
The leader of the opposition to Israel in the region is perceived to be Iran, as it is the most powerful, which is why a conflict with it is so desired. Yet, Tehran is incredibly powerful and the US is incapable of defeating it with conventional weapons, therefore, a full-scale war is the equivalent to committing regional suicide.
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.
On April 24, 2025, Indonesia made a masterful geopolitical move. Jakarta granted Fiji US$6 million in financial aid and offered to cooperate with them on military training — a seemingly benign act of diplomacy that conceals a darker purpose.
“There’s no need to be burdened by debt,” declared Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka during the bilateral meeting at Jakarta’s Merdeka Palace (Rabuka, 2025).
More significantly, he pledged Fiji’s respect for Indonesian sovereignty — diplomatic code for abandoning West Papua’s struggle for self-determination.
This aligns perfectly with Indonesia’s Law No. 2 of 2023, which established frameworks for defence cooperation, including joint research, technology transfer, and military education, between the two nations.
This is not merely a partnership — it is ideological assimilation.
Indonesia’s financial generosity comes with unwritten expectations. By integrating Fijian forces into Indonesian military training programmes, Jakarta aims to export its “anti-separatist” doctrine, which frames Papuan resistance as a “criminal insurgency” rather than legitimate political expression.
The US $6 million is not aid — it’s a strategic investment in regional complicity.
Geopolitical chess in a fractured world
Indonesia’s manoeuvres must be understood in the context of escalating global tensions.
The rivalry between the US and China has transformed the Indo-Pacific into a strategic battleground, leaving Pacific Island nations caught between competing spheres of influence.
Although Jakarta is officially “non-aligned,” it is playing both sides to secure its territorial ambitions.
Its aid to Fiji is one move in a comprehensive regional strategy to diplomatically isolate West Papua.
Flashback to West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) meeting Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . At the time, Rabuka declared: “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians.” Image: Fiji govtBy strengthening economic and military ties with strategically positioned nations, Indonesia is systematically undermining Papuan representation in important forums such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), and the United Nations.
While the world focuses on superpower competition, Indonesia is quietly strengthening its position on what it considers an internal matter — effectively removing West Papua from international discourse.
The Russian connection: Shadow alliances
Another significant yet less examined relationship is Indonesia’s growing partnership with Russia, particularly in defence technology, intelligence sharing, and energy cooperation
This relationship provides Jakarta with advanced military capabilities and reduces its dependence on Western powers and China.
Russia’s unwavering support for territorial integrity, as evidenced by its position on Crimea and Ukraine, makes it an ideal partner for Indonesia’s West Papua policy.
Moscow’s diplomatic support strengthens Jakarta’s argument that “separatist” movements are internal security issues rather than legitimate independence struggles.
This strategic triangulation — balancing relations with Washington, Beijing, and Moscow– allows Indonesia to pursue regional dominance with minimal international backlash. Each superpower, focused on countering the others’ influence, overlooks Indonesia’s systematic suppression of Papuan self-determination.
Institutionalising silence: Beyond diplomacy
The practical consequence of Indonesia’s multidimensional strategy is the diplomatic isolation of West Papua. Historically positioned to advocate for Melanesian solidarity, Fiji now faces economic incentives to remain silent on Indonesian human rights abuses.
A similar pattern emerges across the Pacific as Jakarta extends these types of arrangements to other regional players.
It is not just about temporary diplomatic alignment; it is about the structural transformation of regional politics.
When Pacific nations integrate their security apparatuses with Indonesia’s, they inevitably adopt Jakarta’s security narratives. Resistance movements are labelled “terrorist threats,” independence advocates are branded “destabilising elements,” and human rights concerns are dismissed as “foreign interference”.
Most alarmingly, military cooperation provides Indonesia with channels to export its counterinsurgency techniques, which are frequently criticised by human rights organisations for their brutality.
Security forces in the Pacific trained in these approaches may eventually use them against their own Papuan advocacy groups.
The price of strategic loyalty
For just US$6 million — a fraction of Indonesia’s defence budget — Jakarta purchases Fiji’s diplomatic loyalty, military alignment, and ideological compliance. This transaction exemplifies how economic incentives increasingly override moral considerations such as human rights, indigenous sovereignty, and decolonisation principles that once defined Pacific regionalism.
Indonesia’s approach represents a sophisticated evolution in its foreign policy. No longer defensive about West Papua, Jakarta is now aggressively consolidating regional support, methodically closing avenues for international intervention, and systematically delegitimising Papuan voices on the global stage.
Will the Pacific remember its soul?
The path ahead for West Papua is becoming increasingly treacherous. Beyond domestic repression, the movement now faces waning international support as economic pragmatism supplants moral principle throughout the Pacific region.
Unless Pacific nations reconnect with their anti-colonial heritage and the values that secured their independence, West Papua’s struggle risks fading into obscurity, overwhelmed by geopolitical calculations and economic incentives.
The question facing the Pacific region is not simply about West Papua, but about regional identity itself. Will Pacific nations remain true to their foundational values of indigenous solidarity and decolonisation? Or will they sacrifice these principles on the altar of transactional diplomacy?
The date April 24, 2025, may one day be remembered not only as the day Indonesia gave Fiji US$6 million but also as the day the Pacific began trading its moral authority for economic expediency, abandoning West Papua to perpetual colonisation in exchange for short-term gains.
The Pacific is at a crossroads — it can either reclaim its voice or resign itself to becoming a theatre where greater powers dictate the fate of indigenous peoples. For West Papua, everything depends on which path is chosen.
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands that share a border with the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He graduated with a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
The Aotearoa Philippines Solidarity national assembly has condemned the National Party-led Coalition government in New Zealand over signing a “deplorable” visiting forces agreement with the Philippine government
“Given the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ appalling human rights record and continuing attacks on activists in the Philippines, it is deplorable for the New Zealand government to even consider forging such an agreement,” the APS said in a statement today.
Activists from Filipino communities and concerned New Zealanders gathered in Auckland yesterday to discuss the current human rights crisis in the Philippines and resolved to organise solidarity actions in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The visiting forces agreement (VFA), signed in Manila last month, allows closer military relations between the two countries, including granting allowing each other’s militaries to enter the country to participate in joint exercises.
“By entering into a VFA with the Philippines, the coalition government is being complicit in crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the AFP and the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against the Filipino people,” the statement said.
Having such an agreement in place with the Philippine military tarnished New Zealand’s global reputation of respecting human rights and having an independent foreign policy.
“The APS reiterates its call to the New Zealand government to junk the VFA with the Philippines and to end all ties with the Philippine military,” the statement said.
Mid-term general election tomorrow
“Assembly participants also discussed the mid-term general election campaign in the Philippines “and the violence borne out of it”.
“Elections are typically a bloody affair in the country, but the vote set to occur on Monday [May 12] is especially volatile given the high stakes,” the statement said.
“The country’s two dominant political factions, the Marcos and Duterte camps, are vying for control of the country’s political arena and there is no telling how far they would go to obtain power.”
The statement said there were reports of campaigners going missing, being extrajudicially killed and also being detained without due process.
“We expect electoral fraud and violence will again be committed by the biggest political dynasties especially against the progressive candidates representing the most marginalised sectors.
“The Philippine government must do everything it can to avoid further bloodshed and violent skirmishes that aim to preserve power for the competing political dynasties.”
The statement said that the APS called for the immediate and unconditional freedom for Bayan Muna campaigner Pauline Joy Panjawan.
“Her abduction, torture and continuing detention on trumped up charges speak volumes about the reality of the ongoing human rights crisis in the Philippines.
With yesterday’sassembly, the APS renewed its commitment to raise awareness over the human rights crisis in the Philippines and to do everything it could to raise solidarity with the Filipino people struggling to “achieve a truly just and democratic society”.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:We begin today’s show looking at Israel’s ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists. A recent report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University described the war in Gaza as the “worst ever conflict for reporters” in history.
By one count, Israel has killed 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 18 months, including two journalists killed on Wednesday — Yahya Subaih and Nour El-Din Abdo. Yahya Subaih died just hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.
Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier three years ago on 11 May 2022.
She was killed while covering an Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Shireen and another reporter were against a stone wall, wearing blue helmets and blue flak jackets clearly emblazoned with the word “Press”.
Shireen was shot in the head. She was known throughout the Arab world for her decades of tireless reporting on Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel initially claimed she had been shot by Palestinian militants, but later acknowledged she was most likely shot by an Israeli soldier. But Israel has never identified the soldier who fired the fatal shot, or allowed the soldier to be questioned by US investigators.
But a new documentary just released by Zeteo has identified and named the Israeli soldier for the first time. This is the trailer to the documentary Who Killed Shireen?
DION NISSENBAUM: That soldier looked down his scope and could see the blue vest and that it said “press.”
ISRAELI SOLDIER: That’s what I think, yes.
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: US personnel have never had access to those who are believed to have committed those shootings.
DION NISSENBAUM: No one has been held to account. Justice has not been served.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: She is the first American Palestinian journalist who has been killed by Israeli forces.
DION NISSENBAUM: I want to know: Who killed Shireen?
CONOR POWELL: Are we going to find the shooter?
DION NISSENBAUM: He’s got a phone call set up with this Israeli soldier that was there that day.
CONOR POWELL: We just have to go over to Israel.
DION NISSENBAUM: Did you ever talk to the guy who fired those shots?
ISRAELI SOLDIER: Of course. I know him personally. The US should have actually come forward and actually pressed the fact that an American citizen was killed intentionally by IDF.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: The drones are still ongoing, the explosions going off.
CONOR POWELL: Holy [bleep]! We’ve got a name.
DION NISSENBAUM: But here’s the twist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:The trailer for the new Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? The film identifies the Israeli soldier who allegedly killed Shireen Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio, who would later be killed during an Israeli military operation last June in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was fatally shot.
AMY GOODMAN:We’re joined right now by four guests, including two members of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family: her brother Anton, or Tony, and her niece Lina. They’re both in North Bergen, New Jersey. We’re also joined by Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, and by Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen?, the correspondent on the documentary, longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and other cities, a former foreign correspondent. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Dion, we’re going to begin with you. This is the third anniversary, May 11th exactly, of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Talk about your revelation, what you exposed in this documentary.
DION NISSENBAUM: Well, there were two things that were very important for the documentary. The first thing was we wanted to find the soldier who killed Shireen. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. US officials said that if they wanted to determine if there was a crime here, if there was a human rights violation, they needed to talk to this soldier to find out what he was thinking when he shot her.
And we set out to find him. And we did. We did what the US government never did. And it turned out he had been killed, so we were never able to answer that question — what he was thinking.
But the other revelation that I think is as significant in this documentary is that the initial US assessment of her shooting was that that soldier intentionally shot her and that he could tell that she was wearing a blue flak jacket with “Press” across it.
That assessment was essentially overruled by the Biden administration, which came out and said exactly the opposite. That’s a fairly startling revelation, that the Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to a clip from the documentary Who Killed Shireen?, in which Dion Nissenbaum, our guest, speaks with former State Department official Andrew Miller. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
ANDREW MILLER: It’s nearly 100 percent certain that an Israeli soldier, likely a sniper, fired the shot that killed or the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Based on all the information we have, it is not credible to suggest that there were targets either in front of or behind Shireen Abu Akleh.
The fact that the official Israeli position remains that this was a case of crossfire, the entire episode was a mistake, as opposed to potentially a mistaken identification or the deliberate targeting of this individual, points to, I think, a broader policy of seeking to manage the narrative.
DION NISSENBAUM: And did the Israelis ever make the soldier available to the US to talk about it?
ANDREW MILLER: No. And the Israelis were not willing to present the person for even informal questioning.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was State Department official — former State Department official Andrew Miller, speaking in the Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
I want to go to Shireen’s family, whom we have as guests, Anton Abu Akleh and Lina, who are joining us from New Jersey. You both watched the film for the first time last night when it premiered here in New York City. Lina, if you could begin by responding to the revelations in the film?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Hi, Amy. Hi. Thank you for having us.
Honestly, we always welcome and we appreciate journalists who try to uncover the killing of Shireen, but also who shed light on her legacy. And the documentary that was released by Zeteo and by Dion, it really revealed findings that we didn’t know before, but we’ve always known that it was an Israeli soldier who killed Shireen. And we know how the US administration failed our family, failed a US citizen and failed a journalist, really.
And that should be a scandal in and of itself.
But most importantly, for us as a family, it’s not just about one soldier. It’s about the entire chain of command. It’s not just the person who pulled the trigger, but who ordered the killing, and the military commanders, the elected officials.
So, really, it’s the entire chain of command that needs to be held to account for the killing of a journalist who was in a clear press vest, press gear, marked as a journalist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Anton, if you could respond? Shireen, of course, was your younger sister. What was your response watching the documentary last night?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: It’s very painful to look at all these scenes again, but I really extend my appreciation to Zeteo and all those who supported and worked on this documentary, which was very revealing, many things we didn’t know. The cover-up by the Biden administration, this thing was new to us.
He promised. First statements came out from the White House and from the State Department stressed on the importance of holding those responsible accountable. And apparently, in one of the interviews heard in this documentary, he never raised — President Biden never raised this issue with Bennett, at that time the prime minister.
So, that’s shocking to us to know it was a total cover-up, contradictory to what they promised us. And that’s — like Lina just said, it’s a betrayal, not only to the family, not only to Shireen, but the whole American nation.
AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, you’ve backed this documentary. It’s the first big documentary Zeteo is putting out. It’s also the first anniversary of the founding of Zeteo. Can you talk about the proof that you feel is here in the documentary that Alon Scagio, this — and explain who he is and the unit he was a part of? Dion, it’s quite something when you go to his grave. But how you can absolutely be sure this is the man?
MEHDI HASAN:So, Amy, Nermeen, thanks for having us here. I’ve been on this show many times. I just want to say, great to be here on set with both of you. Thank you for what you do.
This is actually our second documentary, but it is our biggest so far, because the revelations in this film that Dion and the team put out are huge in many ways — identifying the soldier, as you mentioned, Alon Scagio, identifying the Biden cover-up, which we just heard Tony Abu Akleh point out. People didn’t realise just how big that cover-up was.
Remember, Joe Biden was the man who said, “If you harm an American, we will respond.” And what is very clear in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen who spent a lot of her life in New Jersey, they did not respond.
In terms of the soldier itself, when Dion came to me and said, “We want to make this film. It’ll be almost like a true crime documentary. We’re going to go out and find out who did it” — because we all — everyone followed the story. You guys covered it in 2022. It was a huge story in the world.
But three years later, to not even know the name of the shooter — and I was, “Well, will we be able to find this out? It’s one of Israel’s most closely guarded secrets.” And yet, Dion and his team were able to do the reporting that got inside of Duvdevan, this elite special forces unit in Israel.
It literally means “the cherry on top.” That’s how proud they are of their eliteness. And yet, no matter how elite you are, Israel’s way of fighting wars means you kill innocent people.
And what comes out in the film from interviews, not just with a soldier, an Israeli soldier, who speaks in the film and talks about how, “Hey, if you see a camera, you take the shot,” but also speaking to Chris Van Hollen, United States Senator from Maryland, who’s been one of the few Democratic voices critical of Biden in the Senate, who says there’s been no change in Israel’s rules of engagement over the years.
And therefore, it was so important on multiple levels to do this film, to identify the shooter, because, of course, as you pointed out in your news headlines, Amy, they just killed a hundred Palestinians yesterday.
So this is not some old story from history where this happened in 2022 and we’re going back. Everything that happened since, you could argue, flows from that — the Americans who have been killed, the journalists who have been killed in Gaza, Palestinians, the sense of impunity that Israel has and Israel’s soldiers have.
There are reports that Israeli soldiers are saying to Palestinians, “Hey, Trump has our back. Hey, the US government has our back.” And it wasn’t just Trump. It was Joe Biden, too.
And that was why it was so important to make this film, to identify the shooter, to call out Israel’s practices when it comes to journalists, and to call out the US role.
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to go to Dion, for people who aren’t familiar with the progression of what the Biden administration said, the serious cover-up not only by Israel, but of its main military weapons supplier and supporter of its war on Gaza, and that is Joe Biden, from the beginning.
First Israel said it was a Palestinian militant. At that point, what did President Biden say?
DION NISSENBAUM: So, at the very beginning, they said that they wanted the shooter to be prosecuted. They used that word at the State Department and said, “This person who killed an American journalist should be prosecuted.” But when it started to become clear that it was probably an Israeli soldier, their tone shifted, and it became talking about vague calls for accountability or changes to the rules of engagement, which never actually happened.
So, you got to a point where the Israeli government admitted it was likely them, the US government called for them to change the rules of engagement, and the Israeli government said no. And we have this interview in the film with Senator Chris Van Hollen, who says that, essentially, Israel was giving the middle finger to the US government on this.
And we have seen, since that time, more Americans being killed in the West Bank, dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists being killed, with no accountability. And we would like to see that change.
This is a trajectory that you’re seeing. You know, the blue vest no longer provides any protection for journalists in Israel. The Israeli military itself has said that wearing a blue vest with “Press” on it does not necessarily mean that you are a journalist.
They are saying that terrorists wear blue vests, too. So, if you are a journalist operating in the West Bank now, you have to assume that the Israeli military could target you.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to another clip from the film Who Killed Shireen?, which features Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured. In the clip, he speaks to the journalist Fatima AbdulKarim.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: We are set up here now, even though we were supposed to meet at the location where you got injured and Shireen got killed.
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] We are five minutes from the location in Maidan al-Awdah. But you could lose your soul in the five minutes it would take us to reach it. You could be hit by army bullets. They could arrest you.
So it is essentially impossible to get there. I believe the big disaster which prevented the occupation from being punished and repeating these crimes is the neglect and indifference by many of the institutions, especially American ones, which continue to defend the occupation.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: [translated] We’re now approaching the third anniversary of Shireen’s death. How did that affect you?
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] During that period, the occupation was making preparations for a dangerous scenario in the Jenin refugee camp. And for this reason, they didn’t want witnesses.
They opened fire on us in order to terroriSe us enough that we wouldn’t go back to the camp. And in that sense, they partially succeeded.
Since then, we have been overcome by fear. From the moment Shireen was killed, I said and continue to say and will continue to say that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and exposure of the occupation’s crimes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured.
We should note, Ali Samoudi was just detained by Israeli forces in late April. The Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti recently wrote, “Ali Samoudi was beaten so bad by Israeli soldiers he was immediately hospitalised. This man has been one of the few journalists that continues reporting on Israeli military abuses north of the West Bank despite the continued risk on his life,” Mariam Barghouti wrote.
The Committee to Protect Journalists spoke to the journalist’s son, Mohammed Al Samoudi, who told CPJ, quote, “My father suffers from several illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and a stomach ulcer . . . He needs a diabetes injection every two days and a specific diet. It appears he was subjected to assault and medical neglect at the interrogation center . . .
“Our lawyer told us he was transferred to an Israeli hospital after a major setback in his health. We don’t know where he is being held, interrogated, or even the hospital to which he was taken. My father has been forcibly disappeared,” he said.
So, Dion Nissenbaum, if you could give us the latest? You spoke to Ali Samoudi for the documentary, and now he’s been detained.
DION NISSENBAUM: Yeah. His words were prophetic, right? He talks about this was an attempt to silence journalists. And my colleague Fatima says the same thing, that these are ongoing, progressive efforts to silence Palestinian journalists.
And we don’t know where Ali is. He has not actually been charged with anything yet. He is one of the most respected journalists in the West Bank. And we are just seeing this progression going on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the latest we know is he was supposed to have a hearing, and that hearing has now been delayed to May 13th, Ali Samoudi?
DION NISSENBAUM: That’s right. And he has yet to be charged, so . . .
AMY GOODMAN:I want to go back to Lina Abu Akleh, who’s in New Jersey, where Shireen grew up. Lina, you were listed on Time magazine’s 100 emerging leaders for publicly demanding scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the horror.
And again, our condolences on the death of your aunt, on the killing of your aunt, and also to Anton, Shireen’s brother. Lina, you’ve also, of course, spoken to Ali Samoudi. This continues now. He’s in detention — his son says, “just disappeared”.
What are you demanding right now? We have a new administration. We’ve moved from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. And are you in touch with them? Are they speaking to you?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Well, our demands haven’t changed. From day one, we’re calling for the US administration to complete its investigation, or for the FBI to continue its investigation, and to finally release — to finally hold someone to account.
And we have enough evidence that could have been — that the administration could have used to expedite this case. But, unfortunately, this new administration, as well, no one has spoken to us. We haven’t been in touch with anyone, and it’s just been radio silence since.
For us, as I said, our demands have never changed. It’s been always to hold the entire system to account, the entire chain of command, the military, for the killing of an American citizen, a journalist, a Palestinian, Palestinian American journalist.
As we’ve been talking, targeting journalists isn’t happening just by shooting at them or killing them. There’s so many different forms of targeting journalists, especially in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem.
So, for us, it’s really important as a family that we don’t see other families experience what we are going through, for this — for impunity, for Israel’s impunity, to end, because, at the end of the day, accountability is the only way to put an end to this impunity.
AMY GOODMAN: I am horrified to ask this question to Shireen’s family members, to Lina, to Tony, Shireen’s brother, but the revelation in the film — we were all there last night at its premiere in New York — that the Israeli soldiers are using a photograph of Shireen’s face for target practice. Tony Abu Akleh, if you could respond?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: You know, there is no words to describe our sorrow and pain hearing this. But, you know, I would just want to know why. Why would they do this thing? What did Shireen do to them for them to use her as a target practice? You know, this is absolutely barbaric act, unjustified. Unjustified.
And we really hope that this US administration will be able to put an end to all this impunity they are enjoying. If they didn’t enjoy all this impunity, they wouldn’t have been doing this. Practising on a journalist? Why? You know, you can practice on anything, but on a journalist?
This shows that this targeting of more journalists, whether in Gaza, in Palestine, it’s systematic. It’s been planned for. And they’ve been targeting and shutting off those voices, those reports, from reaching anywhere in the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:And, Anton, if you could say — you know, you mentioned last night, as well, Shireen was, in fact, extremely cautious as a journalist. If you could elaborate on that? What precisely —
ANTON ABU AKLEH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Shireen was very careful. Every time she’s in the field, she would take her time to put on the gear, the required helmet, the vest with “press” written on it, before going there. She also tried to identify herself as a journalist, whether to the Israelis or to the Palestinians, so she’s not attacked.
And she always went by the book, followed the rules, how to act, how to be careful, how to speak to those people involved, so she can protect herself. But, unfortunately, he was — this soldier, as stated in the documentary, targeted Shireen just because she’s Shireen and she’s a journalist. That’s it. There is no other explanation.
Sixteen bullets were fired on Shireen. Not even her helmet, nor the vest she was wearing, were able to protect her, unfortunately.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mehdi Hasan, you wanted to respond.
MEHDI HASAN: So, Tony asks, “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you target not just a journalist in the field, but then use her face for target practice?” — as Dion and his team reveal in the film. And there is, unfortunately, a very simple answer to that question, which is that the Israeli military — and not just the Israeli military, but many people in our world today — have dehumanised Palestinians.
There is the removal of humanity from the people you are oppressing, occupying, subjugating and killing. It doesn’t matter if you’re an American citizen. It doesn’t matter if you have a press jacket on. It only matters that you are Palestinian in the sniper’s sights.
And that is how they have managed to pull of the killing of so many journalists, so many children. The first documentary we commissioned last year was called Israel’s Real Extremism, and it was about the Israeli soldiers who go into Gaza and make TikTok videos wearing Palestinian women’s underwear, playing with Palestinian children’s toys. It is the ultimate form of dehumanisation, the idea that these people don’t count, their lives have no value.
And what’s so tragic and shocking — and the film exposes this — is that Joe Biden — forget the Israeli military — Joe Biden also joined in that dehumanisation. Do you remember at the start of this conflict when he comes out and he says, “Well, I’m not sure I believe the Palestinian death toll numbers,” when he puts out a statement at the hundred days after October 7th and doesn’t mention Palestinian casualties.
And that has been the fundamental problem. This was the great comforter-in-chief. Joe Biden was supposed to be the empath. And yet, as Tony points out, what was so shocking in the film is he didn’t even raise Shireen’s case with Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel at the time.
Again, would he have done that if it was an American journalist in Moscow? We know that’s not the case. We know when American journalists, especially white American journalists, are taken elsewhere in the world, the government gives a damn. And yet, in the case of Shireen, the only explanation is because she was a Palestinian American journalist.
AMY GOODMAN:You know, in the United States, the US government is responsible for American citizens, which Biden pointed out at the beginning, when he thought it was a Palestinian militant who had killed her. But, Lina, you yourself are a journalist. And I’m thinking I want to hear your response to using her face, because, of course, that is not just the face of Shireen, but I think it’s the face of journalism.
And it’s not just American journalism, of course. I mean, in fact, she’s known to hundreds of millions of people around world as the face and voice of Al Jazeera Arabic. She spoke in Arabic. She was known as that to the rest of the world. But to see that and that revealed in this documentary?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yeah, it was horrifying, actually. And it just goes on to show how the Israeli military is built. It’s barbarism. It’s the character of revenge, of hate. And that is part of the entire system. And as Mehdi and as my father just mentioned, this is all about dehumanizing Palestinians, regardless if they’re journalists, if they’re doctors, they’re officials. For them, they simply don’t care about Palestinian lives.
And for us, Shireen will always be the voice of Palestine. And she continues to be remembered for the legacy that she left behind. And she continues to live through so many, so many journalists, who have picked up the microphone, who have picked up the camera, just because of Shireen.
So, regardless of how the Israeli military continues to dehumanise journalists and how the US fails to protect Palestinian American journalists, we will continue to push forward to continue to highlight the life and the legacy that Shireen left behind.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:Well, let’s turn to Shireen Abu Akleh in her own words. This is an excerpt from the Al Jazeera English documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.
SHIREEN ABU AKLEH: [translated] Sometimes the Israeli army doesn’t want you there, so they target you, even if they later say it was an accident. They might say, “We saw some young men around you.” So they target you on purpose, as a way of scaring you off because they don’t want you there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was Shireen in her own words in an Al Jazeera documentary. So, Lina, I know you have to go soon, but if you could just tell us: What do you want people to know about Shireen, as an aunt, a sister and a journalist?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yes, so, we know Shireen as the journalist, but behind the camera, she was one of the most empathetic people. She was very sincere. And something not a lot of people know, but she was a very funny person. She had a very unique sense of humor, that she lit up every room she entered. She cared about everyone and anyone. She enjoyed life.
Shireen, at the end of the day, loved life. She had plans. She had dreams that she still wanted to achieve. But her life was cut short by that small bullet, which would change our lives entirely.
But at the end of the day, Shireen was a professional journalist who always advocated for truth, for justice. And at the end of the day, all she wanted to do was humanise Palestinians and talk about the struggles of living under occupation. But at the same time, she wanted to celebrate their achievements.
She shed light on all the happy moments, all the accomplishments of the Palestinian people. And this is something that really touched millions of Palestinians, of Arabs around the world. She was able to enter the hearts of the people through the small camera lens. And until this day, she continues to be remembered for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, we’re going to keep you on, Mehdi, to talk about other issues during the Trump administration, but how can people access Who Killed Shireen?
MEHDI HASAN: So, it’s available online at WhoKilledShireen.com, is where you can go to watch it. We are releasing the film right now only to paid subscribers. We hope to change that in the forthcoming days.
People often say to me, “How can you put it behind a paywall?” Journalism — a free press isn’t free, sadly. We have to fund films like this. Dion came to us because a lot of other people didn’t want to fund a topic like this, didn’t want to fund an investigation like this.
So, we’re proud to be able to fund such documentaries, but we also need support from our contributors, our subscribers and the viewers. But it’s an important film, and I hope as many people will watch it as possible, WhoKilledShireen.com.
AMY GOODMAN:We want to thank Lina, the niece of Shireen Abu Akleh, and Anton, Tony, the older brother of Shireen Abu Akleh, for joining us from New Jersey. Together, we saw the documentary last night, Who Killed Shireen? And we want to thank Dion Nissenbaum, who is the filmmaker, the correspondent on this film, formerly a correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. The founder of Zeteo, on this first anniversary of Zeteo, is Mehdi Hasan.
He became a cardinal only in 2023 and has become the first-ever US pope.
PCC general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan said he was not a Vatican insider, but there had been talk of cardinals feeling that the new pope should be a “middle-of-the-road person”.
Reverend Bhagwan said there had been prayers for God’s wisdom to guide the decisions made at the Conclave.
“I think if we look at where the decisions perhaps were made or based on, there had been a lot of talk that the cardinals going into Conclave had felt that a new pope would need to be someone who could take forward the legacy of Pope Francis, reaching out to those in the margins, but also be a sort of a middle-of-the-road person,” he said.
Hopes for climate response
Reverend Bhagwan said the Pacific hoped that Pope Leo carried on the late Pope Francis’s connection to the climate change response.
He said Pope Francis released his “laudate deum” exhortation on the climate shortly before the United Nations climate summit in Dubai last year.
“The focus on care for creation, the focus for ending fossil fuels and climate justice, the focus on people from the margins — I think that’s important for the Pacific people at this time.
“I know that the Catholic Church in the Pacific has been focused on on its synodal process, and so he spoke about synodality as well.
“I know that there were hopes for an Oceania synod, just as Pope Francis held a synod of the Amazon. And I think that is still something that’s in the hearts of many of our Catholic leaders and Catholic members.
“We hope that this will be an opportunity to still bring that focus to the Pacific.”
He said they were confident Pope Leo would pick up many of the issues Francis was well known for, like speaking up for climate change, human trafficking and the plight of refugees; and within the church, a different way of meeting and talking with one another — known as synodality — which is an ongoing process.
“I think any pope needs to be able to challenge things that are happening around the world, especially if it is affecting the lives of people, where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.”
Pope Leo appeared to be a very calm person, he added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
IMO, this sounds like an expression of sorrow and regret about the conflict, and about the evils it is feeding and fostering. Regardless, the institute has described that comment by Davis as antisemitic.
“‘You cannot claim to champion social cohesion while minimising or rationalising antisemitic hate,’ the institute said. ‘Social trust depends on moral consistency, especially from those in leadership. Peter Davis’s actions erode that trust.’”
For the record, Davis wasn’t rationalising or minimising antisemitic hate. His comments look far more like a legitimate observation that the longer the need for a political-diplomatic solution is violently resisted, the worse things will be for everyone — including Jewish citizens, via the stoking of antisemitism.
The basic point at issue here is that criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government do not equate to a racist hostility to the Jewish people. (Similarly, the criticisms of Donald Trump’s actions cannot be minimised or rationalised as due to anti-Americanism.)
Appalled by Netanyahu actions
Many Jewish people in fact, also feel appalled by the actions of the Netanyahu government, which repeatedly violate international law.
In the light of the extreme acts of violence being inflicted daily by the IDF on the people of Gaza, the upsurge in hateful graffiti by neo-Nazi opportunists while still being vile, is hardly surprising.
Around the world, the security of innocent Israeli citizens is being recklessly endangered by the ultra-violent actions of their own government.
If you want to protect your citizens from an existing fire, it’s best not to toss gasoline on the flames.
To repeat: the vast majority of the current criticisms of the Israeli state have nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. At a time when Israel is killing scores of innocent Palestinians on a nightly basis with systematic air strikes and the shelling of civilian neighbourhoods, when it is weaponising access to humanitarian aid as an apparent tool of ethnic cleansing, when it is executing medical staff and assassinating journalists, when it is killing thousands of children and starving the survivors . . . antisemitism is not the reason why most people oppose these evils. Common humanity demands it.
Ironically, the press release by the NZ Israel Institute concludes with these words: “There must be zero tolerance for hate in any form.” Too bad the institute seems to have such a limited capacity for self-reflection.
Footnote One: For the best part of 80 years, the world has felt sympathy to Jews in recognition of the Holocaust. The genocide now being committed in Gaza by the Netanyahu government cannot help but reduce public support for Israel.
It also cannot help but erode the status of the Holocaust as a unique expression of human evil.
One would have hoped the NZ Israel Institute might acknowledge the self-defeating nature of the Netanyahu government policies — if only because, on a daily basis, the state of Israel is abetting its enemies, and alienating its friends.
Footnote Two: As yet, the so-called Free Speech Union has not come out to support the free speech rights of Peter Davis, and to rebuke the NZ Israel Institute for trying to muzzle them.
This is a section of Gordon Campbell’s Scoop column published yesterday under the subheading “Pot Calls Out Kettle”; the main portion of the column about the new Pope is here. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
We’ve visited Ground Zero. Not once, but three times. But for generations, before these locations were designated as such, they were the ancestral home to the people of the Marshall Islands.
As part of a team of Greenpeace scientists and specialists from the Radiation Protection Advisers team, we have embarked on a six-week tour on board the Rainbow Warrior, sailing through one of the most disturbing chapters in human history: between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs across the Marshall Islands — equivalent to 7200 Hiroshima explosions.
During this period, testing nuclear weapons at the expense of wonderful ocean nations like the Marshall Islands was considered an acceptable practice, or as the US put it, “for the good of mankind”.
Instead, the radioactive fallout left a deep and complex legacy — one that is both scientific and profoundly human, with communities displaced for generations.
Between March and April, we travelled on the Greenpeace flagship vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, throughout the Marshall Islands, including to three northern atolls that bear the most severe scars of Cold War nuclear weapons testing:
Enewetak atoll, where, on Runit Island, stands a massive leaking concrete dome beneath which lies plutonium-contaminated waste, a result of a partial “clean-up” of some of the islands after the nuclear tests;
Bikini atoll, a place so beautiful, yet rendered uninhabitable by some of the most powerful nuclear detonations ever conducted; and
Rongelap atoll, where residents were exposed to radiation fallout and later convinced to return to contaminated land, part of what is now known as Project 4.1, a US medical experiment to test humans’ exposure to radiation.
This isn’t fiction, nor the distant past. It’s a chapter of history still alive through the environment, the health of communities, and the data we’re collecting today.
Each location we visit, each sample we take, adds to a clearer picture of some of the long-term impacts of nuclear testing—and highlights the importance of continuing to document, investigate, and attempt to understand and share these findings.
These are our field notes from a journey through places that hold important lessons for science, justice, and global accountability.
Our mission: why are we here? With the permission and support of the Marshallese government, a group of Greenpeace science and radiation experts, together with independent scientists, are in the island nation to assess, investigate, and document the long-term environmental and radiological consequences of nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands.
Our mission is grounded in science. We’re conducting field sampling and radiological surveys to gather data on what radioactivity remains in the environment — isotopes such as caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239/240. These substances are released during nuclear explosions and can linger in the environment for decades, posing serious health risks, such as increased risk of cancers in organs and bones.
But this work is not only about radiation measurements, it is also about bearing witness.
We are here in solidarity with Marshallese communities who continue to live with the consequences of decisions made decades ago, without their consent and far from the public eye.
Stop 1: Enewetak Atoll — the dome that shouldn’t exist
At the far western edge of the Marshall Islands is Enewetak. The name might not ring a bell for many, but this atoll was the site of 43 US nuclear detonations. Today, it houses what may be one of the most radioactive places in the world — the Runit Dome.
Once a tropical paradise thick with coconut palms, Runit Island is capped by a massive concrete structure the size of a football field. Under this dome — cracked, weather-worn, and only 46 centimetres thick in some places — lies 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste. These substances are not only confined to the crater — they are also found across the island’s soil, rendering Runit Island uninhabitable for all time.
The contrast between what it once was and what it has become is staggering. We took samples near the dome’s base, where rising sea levels now routinely flood the area.
We collected coconut from the island, which will be processed and prepared in the Rainbow Warrior’s onboard laboratory. Crops such as coconut are a known vector for radioactive isotope transfer, and tracking levels in food sources is essential for understanding long-term environmental and health risks.
The local consequences of this simple fact are deeply unjust. While some atolls in the Marshall Islands can harvest and sell coconut products, the people of Enewetak are prohibited from doing so because of radioactive contamination.
They have lost not only their land and safety but also their ability to sustain themselves economically. The radioactive legacy has robbed them of income and opportunity.
One of the most alarming details about this dome is that there is no lining beneath the structure — it is in direct contact with the environment, while containing some of the most hazardous long-lived substances ever to exist on planet Earth. It was never built to withstand flooding, sea level rise, and climate change.
The scientific questions are urgent: how much of this material is already leaking into the lagoon? What are the exposure risks to marine ecosystems and local communities?
We are here to help answer questions with new, independent data, but still, being in the craters and walking on this ground where nuclear Armageddon was unleashed is an emotional and surreal journey.
Stop 2: Bikini — a nuclear catastrophe, labelled ‘for the good of mankind’
Unlike Chernobyl or Fukushima, where communities were devastated by catastrophic accidents, Bikini tells a different story. This was not an accident.
The nuclear destruction of Bikini was deliberate, calculated, and executed with full knowledge that entire ways of life were going to be destroyed.
Bikini Atoll is incredibly beautiful and would look idyllic on any postcard. But we know what lies beneath: the site of 23 nuclear detonations, including Castle Bravo, the largest ever nuclear weapons test conducted by the United States.
Castle Bravo alone released more than 1000 times the explosive yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The radioactive fallout massively contaminated nearby islands and their populations, together with thousands of US military personnel.
Bikini’s former residents were forcibly relocated in 1946 before nuclear testing began, with promises of a safe return. But the atoll is still uninhabited, and most of the new generations of Bikinians have never seen their home island.
As we stood deep in the forest next to a massive concrete blast bunker, reality hit hard — behind its narrow lead-glass viewing window, US military personnel once watched the evaporation of Bikini lagoon.
On our visit, we noticed there’s a spectral quality to Bikini. The homes of the Bikini islanders are long gone. In its place now stand a scattering of buildings left by the US Department of Energy: rusting canteens, rotting offices, sleeping quarters with peeling walls, and traces of the scientific experiments conducted here after the bombs fell.
On dusty desks, we found radiation reports, notes detailing crop trials, and a notebook meticulously tracking the application of potassium to test plots of corn, alfalfa, lime, and native foods like coconut, pandanus, and banana. The potassium was intended to block the uptake of caesium-137, a radioactive isotope, by plant roots.
The logic was simple: if these crops could be decontaminated, perhaps one day Bikini could be repopulated.
We collected samples of coconuts and soil — key indicators of internal exposure risk if humans were to return. Bikini raises a stark question: What does “safe” mean, and who gets to decide?
The US declared parts of Bikini habitable in 1970, only to evacuate people again eight years later after resettled families suffered from radiation exposure. The science is not abstract here. It is personal. It is human. It has real consequences.
The Rainbow Warrior arrived at the eastern side of Rongelap atoll, anchoring one mile from the centre of Rongelap Island, the church spire and roofs of “new” buildings reflecting the bright sun.
n 1954, fallout from the Castle Bravo nuclear detonation on Bikini blanketed this atoll in radioactive ash — fine, white powder that children played in, thinking it was snow. The US government waited three days to evacuate residents, despite knowing the risks. The US government declared it safe to return to Rongelap in 1957 — but it was a severely contaminated environment. The very significant radiation exposure to the Rongelap population caused severe health impacts: thyroid cancers, birth defects such as “jellyfish babies”, miscarriages, and much more.
In 1985, after a request to the US government to evacuate was dismissed, the Rongelap community asked Greenpeace to help relocate them from their ancestral lands. Using the first Rainbow Warrior, and over a period of 10 days and four trips, 350 residents collectively dismantled their homes, bringing everything with them — including livestock, and 100 metric tons of building material — where they resettled on the islands of Mejatto and Ebeye on Kwajalein atoll.
It is a part of history that lives on in the minds of the Marshallese people we meet in this ship voyage — in the gratitude they still express, the pride in keeping the fight for justice, and in the pain of still not having a permanent, safe home.
Now, once again, we are standing on their island of Rongelap, walking past abandoned buildings and rusting equipment, some of it dating from the 1980s and 1990s — a period when the US Department of Energy launched a push to encourage resettlement declaring that the island was safe — a declaration that this time, the population welcomed with mistrust, not having access to independent scientific data and remembering the deceitful relocation of some decades before.
Here, once again, we sample soil and fruits that could become food if people came back. It is essential to understand ongoing risks — especially for communities considering whether and how to return.
Our scientific mission is to take measurements, collect samples, and document contamination. But that’s not all we’re bringing back.
We carry with us the voices of the Marshallese who survived these tests and are still living with their consequences. We carry images of graves swallowed by tides near Runit Dome, stories of entire cultures displaced from their homelands, and measurements of radiation showing contamination still persists after many decades.
There are 9700 nuclear warheads still held by military powers around the world – mostly in the United States and Russian arsenals. The Marshall Islands was one of the first nations to suffer the consequences of nuclear weapons — and the legacy persists today.
We didn’t come to speak for the Marshallese. We came to listen, to bear witness, and to support their demand for justice. We plan to return next year, to follow up on our research and to make results available to the people of the Marshall Islands.
And we will keep telling these stories — until justice is more than just a word.
Kommol Tata (“thank you” in the beautiful Marshallese language) for following our journey.
Shaun Burnie is a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine and was part of the Rainbow Warrior team in the Marshall Islands. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa and is republished with permission.
This article was initially set out to focus onThe Encampments, Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman’s impassioned documentary that chronicles the Columbia University student movement that shook the United States and captured imaginations the world over.
But then it came to my attention that a sparring film has been released around the same time, offering a staunchly pro-Israeli counter-narrative that vehemently attempts to discredit the account offered by The Encampments.
October 8 charts the alleged rise of antisemitism in the US in the wake of the October 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian fighters.
A balanced record though, it is not. Wendy Sachs’s solo debut feature, which has the subhead, “The Fight for the Soul of America”, is essentially an unabashed defence of the silencing of pro-Palestinian voices.
Its omissions are predictable; its moral logic is fascinatingly disturbing; its manipulative arguments are the stuff of Steven Bannon.
It’s easily the most abhorrent piece of mainstream Israeli propaganda this writer has come across .
Ignoring October 8 would be injudicious, however. Selected only by a number of Jewish film festivals in the US, the film was released in mid-March by indie distribution outfit Briarcliff Entertainment in more than 125 theatres.
The film has amassed more than $1.3 million so far at the US box office, making it the second-highest grossing documentary of the year, ironically behind the self-distributed and Oscar-winning No Other Land about Palestine at $2.4 million.
October 8 has sold more than 90,000 tickets, an impressive achievement given the fact that at least 73 percent of the 7.5 million Jewish Americans still hold a favourable view of Israel.
“It would be great if we were getting a lot of crossover, but I don’t know that we are,” Sachs admitted to the Hollywood Reporter.
Zionist films have been largely absent from most local and international film festivals — curation, after all, is an ethical occupation — while Palestinian stories, by contrast, have seen an enormous rise in popularity since October 7.
The phenomenon culminated with the Oscar win for No Other Land.
October 8 . . . “easily the most abhorrent piece of mainstream Israeli propaganda this writer has come across.” Image: Briarcliff Entertainment
But the release of October 8 and the selection of several Israeli hostage dramas in February’s Berlin Film Festival indicates that the war has officially reached the big screen.
With the aforementioned hostage dramas due to be shown stateside later this year, and no less than four major Palestinian pictures set for theatrical release over the next 12 months, this Israeli-Palestinian film feud is just getting started.
Working for change The Encampments, which raked in a highly impressive $423,000 in 50 theatres after a month of release, has been garnering more headlines, not only due to the fact that the recently detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil happens to be one of its protagonists, but because it is clearly the better film.
Pritsker and Workman, who were on the ground with the students for most of the six-week duration of the set-in, provide a keenly observed, intimate view of the action, capturing the inspiring highs and dispiriting lows of the passionate demonstrations and wayward negotiations with Columbia’s administrations.
The narrative is anchored from the point of views of four students: Grant Miner, a Jewish PhD student who was expelled in March for his involvement in the protests; Sueda Polat, a protest negotiator and spokesperson for the encampments; Naye Idriss, a Palestinian organiser and Columbia alumni; and the soft-spoken Khalil, the Palestinian student elected to lead the negotiations.
A desire for justice, for holding Israel accountable for its crimes in Gaza, permeated the group’s calling for divesting Columbia’s $13.6 billion endowment funds from weapons manufacturers and tech companies with business links to the Netanyahu’s administration.
Each of the four shares similar background stories, but Miner and Khalil stand out. As a Jew, Miner is an example of a young Jewish American generation that regard their Jewishness as a moral imperative for defending the Palestinian cause.
Khalil, meanwhile, carries the familiar burden of being a child of the camps: a descendant of a family that was forcibly displaced from their Tiberias home in 1948.
The personal histories provide ample opportunities for reflections around questions of identity, trauma, and the youthful desire for tangible change.
Each protester stresses that the encampment was a last and only resort after the Columbia hierarchy casually brushed aside their concerns.
These concerns transformed into demands when it became clear that only more strident action like sit-ins could push the Columbia administration to engage with them.
In an age when most people are content to sit idly behind their computers waiting for something to happen, these students took it upon themselves to actively work for change in a country where change, especially in the face of powerful lobbies, is arduous.
Only through protests, the viewers begin to realise, can these four lucidly deal with the senseless, numbing bloodshed and brutality in Gaza.
Crackdown on free speech Through skilled placement of archival footage, Pritsker and Workman aptly link the encampments with other student movements in Columbia, including the earlier occupation of Hamilton Hall in 1968 that demonstrated the university’s historic ties with bodies that supported America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Both anti-war movements were countered by an identical measure: the university’s summoning of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to violently dismantle the protests.
Neither the Columbia administration, represented by the disgraced ex-president Minouche Shafik, nor the NYPD are portrayed in a flattering fashion.
Shafik comes off as a wishy-washy figure, too protective of her position to take a concrete stance for or against the pro-Palestinian protesters.
The NYPD were a regular fixture outside universities in New York during the encampments during 2024 Image: MEE/Azad Essa
The NYPD’s employment of violence against the peaceful protests that they declared to have “devolved into antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric” is an admission that violence against words can be justified, undermining the First Amendment of the US constitution, which protects free speech.
The Encampments is not without flaws. By strictly adhering to the testimonials of its subjects, Pritsker and Workman leave out several imperative details.
These include the identity of the companies behind endowment allocations, the fact that several Congress senators who most prominently criticised the encampments “received over $100,000 more on average from pro-Israel donors during their last election” according to a Guardianfinding, and the revelations that US police forces have received analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict directly from the Israeli army and Israeli think tanks.
The suggested link between the 1968 protests and the present situation is not entirely accurate either.
The endowments industry was nowhere as big as it is now, and there’s an argument to be made about the deprioritisation of education by universities vis-a-vis their endowments.
A bias towards Israel or a determination to assert the management’s authority is not the real motive behind their position — it’s the money.
Lastly, avoiding October 7 and the moral and political issues ingrained within the attack, while refraining from confronting the pro-Israel voices that accused the protesters of aggression and antisemitism, is a major blind spot that allows conservatives and pro-Israel pundits to accuse the filmmakers of bias.
One could be asking too much from a film directed by first-time filmmakers that was rushed into theatres to enhance awareness about Mahmoud Khalil’s political persecution, but The Encampments, which was co-produced by rapper Macklemore, remains an important, urgent, and honest document of an event that has been repeatedly tarnished by the media and self-serving politicians.
The politics of victimhood The imperfections of The Encampments are partially derived from lack of experience on its creators’ part.
Any accusations of malice are unfounded, especially since the directors do not waste time in arguing against Zionism or paint its subjects as victims. The same cannot be said of October 8.
Executive produced by actress Debra Messing of Will & Grace fame, who also appears in the film, October 8 adopts a shabby, scattershot structure vastly comprised of interviews with nearly every high-profile pro-Israel person in America.
The talking heads are interjected with dubious graphs and craftily edited footage culled from social media of alleged pro-Palestinian protesters in college campuses verbally attacking Jewish students and allegedly advocating the ideology of Hamas.
Needless to say, no context is given to these videos whose dates and locations are never identified.
The chief aim of October 8 is to retrieve the victimisation card by using the same language that informed the pro-Palestine discourse
Every imaginable falsification and shaky allegation regarding the righteousness of Zionism is paraded: anti-Zionism is the new form of antisemitism; pro-Palestinian protesters harassed pro-Israel Jewish students; the media is flooded with pro-Palestinian bias.
Other tropes include the claim that Hamas is conspiring to destabilise American democracy and unleash hell on the Western world.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas co-founder who defected to Israel in 1997, stresses that “my definition of Intifada is chaos”.
There is also the suggestion that the protests, if not contained, could spiral into Nazi era-like fascism.
Sachs goes as far as showing historical footage of the Third Reich to demonstrate her point.
The chief aim of October 8 is to retrieve Israel’s victimhood by using the same language that informs pro-Palestine discourse. “Gaza hijacked all underdog stories in the world,” one interviewee laments.
At one point, the attacks of October 7 are described as a “genocide”, while Zionism is referred to as a “civil rights movement”.
One interviewee explains that the framing of the Gaza war as David and Goliath is erroneous when considering that Hamas is backed by almighty Iran and that Israel is surrounded by numerous hostile countries, such as Lebanon and Syria.
In the most fanciful segment of the film, the interviewees claim that the Students for Justice in Palestine is affiliated and under the command of Hamas, while haphazardly linking random terrorist attacks, such as 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting to Hamas and by extension the Palestinian cause.
A simmering racist charge delineate the film’s pro-Israel discourse in its instance on pigeonholing all Palestinians as radical Muslim Hamas supporters.
There isn’t a single mention of the occupied West Bank or Palestinian religious minorities or even anti-Hamas sentiment in Gaza.
Depicting all Palestinians as a rigid monolith profoundly contrasts Pritsker and Workman’s nuanced treatment of their Jewish subjects.
The best means to counter films like October 8 is facts and good journalism
There’s a difference between subtraction and omission: the former affects logical form, while the latter affects logical content.
October 8 is built on a series of deliberate omissions and fear mongering, an unscrupulous if familiar tactic that betrays the subjects’ indignation and their weak conviction.
It is thus not surprising that there is no mention of the Nakba or the fact that the so-called “civil rights movement” is linked to a state founded on looted lands or the grand open prison Israel has turned Gaza into, or the endless humiliation of Palestinians in the West Bank.
There is also no mention of the racist and inciting statements by far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Nor is there mention of the Palestinians who have been abducted and tortured and raped in Israeli prisons.
And definitely not of the more than 52,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza to date.
Sachs’ subjects naturally are too enveloped in their own conspiracies, in the tightly knotted narrative they concocted for themselves, to be aware of their privilege.
The problem is, these subjects want to have their cake and eat it. Throughout, they constantly complain of being silenced; that most institutions, be it the media or college hierarchies or human rights organisations, have not recognised the colossal loss of 7 October 7 and have focused instead on Palestinian suffering.
They theorise that the refusal of the authorities in taking firm and direct action against pro-Palestinian voices has fostered antisemitism.
At the same time, they have no qualms in flaunting their contribution to New York Times op-eds or the testimonies they were invited to present at the Congress.
All the while, Khalil and other Palestinian activists are arrested, deported and stripped of their residencies.
The value of good journalism October 8, which portrays the IDF as a brave, truth-seeking institution, is not merely a pro-Israel propaganda, it’s a far-right propaganda.
The subjects adopt Trump rhetoric in similarly blaming the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies for the rise of antisemitism, while dismissing intersectionality and anti-colonialism for giving legitimacy to the Palestinian cause.
As repugnant as October 8 is, it is crucial to engage with work of its ilk and confront its hyperboles.
Last month, the Hollywood Reporter set up an unanticipated discussion between Pritsker, who is in fact Jewish, and pro-Israel influencer Hen Mazzig.
The heated exchange that followed demonstrated the difficulty of communication with the pro-Israeli lobby, yet nonetheless underlines the necessity of communication, at least in film.
Mazzig spends the larger part of the discussion spewing unfounded accusations that he provides no validations for: “Mahmoud Khalil has links to Hamas,” he says at one point.
When asked about the Palestinian prisoners, he confidently attests that “the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners” — hostages, as Pritsker calls them — they have committed crimes and are held in Israeli prisons, right?
“In fact, in the latest hostage release eight Palestinian prisoners refused to go back to Gaza because they’ve enjoyed their treatment in these prisons.”
Mazzig dismisses pro-Palestinian groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and the pro-Palestinian Jewish students who participated in the encampments.
“No one would make this argument but here we are able to tokenise a minority, a fringe community, and weaponise it against us,” he says.
“It’s not because they care about Jews and want Jews to be represented. It’s that they hate us so much that they’re doing this and gaslighting us.”
At this stage, attempting for the umpteenth time to stress that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not one and the same — a reality that the far-right rejects — is frankly pointless.
Attempting, like Khalil, to continually emphasise our unequivocal rejection of antisemitism, to underscore that our Jewish colleagues and friends are partners in our struggle for equality and justice, is frankly demeaning.
For Mazzig and Messing and the October 8 subjects, every Arab, every pro-Palestinian, is automatically an antisemite until proven otherwise.
The best means to counter films like October 8 is facts and good journalism.
Emotionality has no place in this increasingly hostile landscape. The reason why The Bibi Files and Louis Theroux’s The Settlers work so well is due to their flawless journalism.
People may believe what they want to believe, but for the undecided and the uninformed, factuality and journalistic integrity — values that go over Sachs’ head — could prove to be the most potent weapon of all.
Joseph Fahim is an Egyptian film critic and programmer. He is the Arab delegate of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, a former member of Berlin Critics’ Week and the ex director of programming of the Cairo International Film Festival. This article was first published by Middle East Eye.
Auckland film maker Paula Whetu Jones has spent nearly two decades working pro bono on a feature film about the Auckland cardiac surgeon Alan Kerr, which is finally now in cinemas.
She is best known for co-writing and directing Whina, the feature film about Dame Whina Cooper.
She filmed Dr Kerr and his wife Hazel in 2007, when he led a Kiwi team to Gaza and the West Bank to operate on children with heart disease.
What started as a two-week visit became a 20 year commitment, involving 40 medical missions to Gaza and the West Bank and hundreds of operations.
Paula Whetu Jones self-funded six trips to document the work and the result is the feature film The Doctor’s Wife, now being screened free in communities around the country.
I met Alan and Hazel Kerr in 2006 and became inspired by their selflessness and dedication. I wanted to learn more about them and shine a light on their achievements.
I’ve been trying to highlight social issues through documentary film making for 25 years. I have always struggled to obtain funding and this project was no different. We provided most of the funding but it wouldn’t have been possible to complete it without the generosity of a small number of donors.
Others gave of their time and expertise.
Film maker Paula Whetu Jones . . . “Our documentary shows the humanity of everyday Palestinians, pre 2022, as told through the eyes of a retired NZ heart surgeon, his wife and two committed female film makers.” Image: NZ On Film
Our initial intention was to follow Dr Alan in his work in the West Bank and Gaza but we also developed a very special relationship with Hazel.
While Dr Alan was operating, Hazel took herself all over the West Bank and Gaza, volunteering to help in refugee camps, schools and community centres. We tagged along and realised that Dr Alan and his work was the heart of the film but Hazel was the soul. Hence, the title became The Doctor’s Wife.
I was due to return to Palestine in 2010 when on the eve of my departure I was struck down by a rare auto immune condition which left me paralysed. It wasn’t until 2012 that I was able to return to Palestine.
Wheelchair made things hard
However, being in a wheelchair made everything near on impossible, not to mention my mental state which was not conducive to being creative. In 2013, tragedy struck again when my 22-year-old son died, and I shut down for a year.
Again, the project seemed so far away, destined for the shelf. Which is where it sat for the next few years while I tried to figure out how to live in a wheelchair and support myself and my daughter.
The project was re-energised when I made two arts documentaries in Palestine, making sure we filmed Alan while we were there and connecting with a NZ trauma nurse who was also filming.
By 2022, we knew we needed to complete the doco. We started sorting through many years of footage in different formats, getting the interviews transcribed and edited. The last big push was in 2023. We raised funds and got a few people to help with the logistics.
I spent six months with three editors and then we used the rough cut to do one last fundraiser that helped us over the line, finally finishing it in March of 2025.
Our documentary shows the humanity of everyday Palestinians, pre-2022, as told through the eyes of a retired NZ heart surgeon, his wife and two committed female film makers who were told in 2006 that no one cares about old people, sick Palestinian children or Palestine.
They were wrong. We cared and maybe you do, too.
What is happening in 2025 means it’s even more important now for people to see the ordinary people of Palestine
Dr Alan and his wife, Hazel are now 90 and 85 years old respectively. They are the most wonderfully humble humans. Their work over 20 years is nothing short of inspiring.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Now, as greetings resound across the Pacific and globally, attention turns to what vision the first US pope will bring.
Change is hard to bring about in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Francis often gestured toward change without actually changing church doctrines. He permitted discussion of ordaining married men in remote regions where populations were greatly underserved due to a lack of priests, but he did not actually allow it.
On his own initiative, he set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but he did not follow it through.
However, he did allow priests to offer the Eucharist, the most important Catholic sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without being granted an annulment.
Likewise, Francis did not change the official teaching that a sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman, but he did allow for the blessing of gay couples, in a manner that did appear to be a sanctioning of gay marriage.
To what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis? As a scholar who has studied the writings and actions of the popes since the time of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held to modernize the church from 1962 to 1965, I am aware that every pope comes with his own vision and his own agenda for leading the church.
Still, the popes who immediately preceded them set practical limits on what changes could be made. There were limitations on Francis as well; however, the new pope, I argue, will have more leeway because of the signals Francis sent.
The process of synodality Francis initiated a process called “synodality,” a term that combines the Greek words for “journey” and “together.” Synodality involves gathering Catholics of various ranks and points of view to share their faith and pray with each other as they address challenges faced by the church today.
One of Francis’ favourite themes was inclusion. He carried forward the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Holy Spirit — that is, the Spirit of God who inspired the prophets and is believed to be sent by Christ among Christians in a special way — is at work throughout the whole church; it includes not only the hierarchy but all of the church members.
This belief constituted the core principle underlying synodality.
Pope Francis with the participants of the Synod of Bishops’ 16th General Assembly in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican in October 2023. Image: The Conversation/AP/Gregorio Borgia
Francis launched a two-year global consultation process in October 2022, culminating in a synod in Rome in October 2024. Catholics all over the world offered their insights and opinions during this process.
The synod discussed many issues, some of which were controversial, such as clerical sexual abuse, the need for oversight of bishops, the role of women in general and the ordination of women as deacons.
The final synod document did not offer conclusions concerning these topics but rather aimed more at promoting the transformation of the entire Catholic Church into a synodal church in which Catholics tackle together the many challenges of the modern world.
Francis refrained from issuing his own document in response, in order that the synod’s statement could stand on its own.
The process of synodality in one sense places limits on bishops and the pope by emphasising their need to listen closely to all church members before making decisions. In another sense, though, in the long run the process opens up the possibility for needed developments to take place when and if lay Catholics overwhelmingly testify that they believe the church should move in a certain direction.
Change is hard in the church A pope, however, cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors had been emphasising. Practically speaking, there needs to be a papacy, or two, during which a pope will either remain silent on matters that call for change or at least limit himself to hints and signals on such issues.
In 1864, Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.”
It wasn’t until 1965 – some 100 years later – that the Second Vatican Council, in The Declaration on Religious Freedom, would affirm that “a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion. …”
A second major reason why popes may refrain from making top-down changes is that they may not want to operate like a dictator issuing executive orders in an authoritarian manner.
Francis was accused by his critics of acting in this way with his positions on Eucharist for those remarried without a prior annulment and on blessings for gay couples. The major thrust of his papacy, however, with his emphasis on synodality, was actually in the opposite direction.
Notably, when the Amazon Synod — held in Rome in October 2019 — voted 128-41 to allow for married priests in the Brazilian Amazon region, Francis rejected it as not being the appropriate time for such a significant change.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, expresses joy and gratitude following the election of Pope Leo XIV.https://t.co/r2GClc7hyM
Past doctrines The belief that the pope should express the faith of the people and not simply his own personal opinions is not a new insight from Francis.
The doctrine of papal infallibility, declared at the First Vatican Council in 1870, held that the pope, under certain conditions, could express the faith of the church without error.
be speaking not personally but in his official capacity as the head of the church;
he must not be in heresy;
he must be free of coercion and of sound mind;
he must be addressing a matter of faith and morals; and
he must consult relevant documents and other Catholics so that what he teaches represents not simply his own opinions but the faith of the church.
The Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption offer examples of the importance of consultation. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, is the teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself preserved from original sin, a stain inherited from Adam that Catholics believe all other human beings are born with, from the moment of her conception.
The documents in which these doctrines were proclaimed stressed that the bishops of the church had been consulted and that the faith of the lay people was being affirmed.
Unity, above all One of the main duties of the pope is to protect the unity of the Catholic Church. On one hand, making many changes quickly can lead to schism, an actual split in the community.
The Catholic Church faces similar challenges but so far has been able to avoid schisms by limiting the actual changes being made.
On the other hand, not making reasonable changes that acknowledge positive developments in the culture regarding issues such as the full inclusion of women or the dignity of gays and lesbians can result in the large-scale exit of members.
Pope Leo XIV, I argue, needs to be a spiritual leader, a person of vision, who can build upon the legacy of his immediate predecessors in such a way as to meet the challenges of the present moment.
He already stated that he wants a synodal church that is “close to the people who suffer,” signaling a great deal about the direction he will take.
If the new pope is able to update church teachings on some hot-button issues, it will be precisely because Francis set the stage for him.
World Press Freedom Day is not just a celebration of the vital role journalism plays — it is also a moment to reflect on the pressures facing the profession and Pacific governments’ responsibility to protect it.
This was one of the key messages delivered by two guest speakers at The University of the South Pacific (USP) Journalism’s 2025 World Press Freedom Day celebrations this week, the UN Human Rights Adviser for the Pacific, Heike Alefsen, and Fiji Media Association’s general secretary, Stanley Simpson.
In her address to journalism students and other attendees on Monday, chief guest Alefsen emphasised that press freedom is a fundamental pillar of democracy, a human right, and essential for sustainable development and the rule of law.
“Media freedom is a prerequisite for inclusive, rights-respecting societies,” Alefsen said, warning of rising threats such as censorship, harassment, and surveillance of journalists — especially with the spread of AI tools used to manipulate information and monitor media workers.
UN Human Rights Adviser for the Pacific Heike Alefsen (from left), USP Journalism programme head Dr Shailendra Singh, and Fiji Media Association’s general secretary Stanley Simpson . . . reflecting on pressures facing the profession of journalism. Image: Mele Tu’uakitau
AI and human rights She stressed that AI must serve human rights — not undermine them — and that it must be used transparently, accountably, and in accordance with international human rights law.
“Some political actors exploit AI to spread disinformation and manipulate narratives for personal or political gain,” she said.
She added that these risks were compounded by the fact that a handful of powerful corporations and individuals now controlled much of the AI infrastructure and influenced the global media environment — able to amplify preferred messages or suppress dissenting voices.
“Innovation cannot come at the expense of press freedom, privacy, or journalist safety,” she said.
Regarding Fiji, Alefsen praised the 2023 repeal of the Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) as a “critical turning point,” noting its positive impact on Fiji’s ranking in the RSF World Press Freedom Index.
World Press Freedom Day at The University of the South Pacific on Monday. Image: USP — the country rose four places to 40th in the 2025 survey.
However, she emphasised that legal reforms must continue, especially regarding sedition laws, and she highlighted ongoing challenges across the Pacific, including financial precarity, political pressure, and threats to women journalists.
According to Alefsen, the media landscape in the Pacific was evolving for the better in some countries but concerns remained. She highlighted the working conditions of most journalists in the region, where financial insecurity, political interference, and lack of institutional support were prevalent.
“Independent journalism ensures transparency, combats disinformation, amplifies marginalised voices, and enables people to make informed decisions about their lives and governance. In too many countries around the world, journalists face censorship, detention, and in some cases, death — simply for doing their jobs,” she said.
Strengthening media independence and sustainability Keynote speaker Stanley Simpson, echoed these concerns, adding that “the era where the Fiji media could survive out of sheer will and guts is over.”
“Now, it’s about technology, sustainability, and mental health support,” he said.
Speaking on the theme, Strengthening Media Independence and Sustainability, Simpson emphasised the need for the media to remain independent, noting that journalists are often expected to make greater sacrifices than professionals in other industries.
“Independence — while difficult and challenging — is a must in the media industry for it to maintain credibility. We must be able to think, speak, write, and report freely on any matter or anyone,” Simpson said.
According to Simpson, there was a misconception in Fiji that being independent meant avoiding relationships or contacts.
“There is a need to build your networks — to access and get information from a wide variety of sources. In fact, strengthening media independence means being able to talk to everyone and hear all sides. Gather all views and present them in a fair, balanced and accurate manner.”
He argued that media could only be sustainable if it was independent — and that independence was only possible if sustainability was achieved. Simpson recalled the events of the 2006 political upheaval, which he said contributed to the decline of media freedom and the collapse of some media organisations in Fiji.
“Today, as we mark World Press Freedom Day, we gather at this great institution to reflect on a simple yet profound truth: media can only be truly sustainable if it is genuinely free.
“We need democratic, political, and governance structures in place, along with a culture of responsible free speech — believed in and practised by our leaders and the people of Fiji,” he said.
USP students and guests at the 2025 World Press Freedom Day event. Picture: Mele Tu’uakitau
The new media landscape Simpson also spoke about the evolving media landscape, noting the rise of social media influencers and AI generated content. He urged journalists to verify sources and ensure fairness, balance and accuracy — something most social media platforms were not bound by.
While some influencers have been accused of being clickbait-driven, Simpson acknowledged their role. “I think they are important new voices in our democracy and changing landscape,” he said.
He criticised AI-generated news platforms that republished content without editorial oversight, warning that they further eroded public trust in the media.
“Sites are popping up overnight claiming to be news platforms, but their content is just AI-regurgitated media releases,” he said. “This puts the entire credibility of journalism at risk.”
Fiji media challenges Simpson outlined several challenges facing the Fiji media, including financial constraints, journalist mental health, lack of investment in equipment, low salaries, and staff retention. He emphasised the importance of building strong democratic and governance structures and fostering a culture that respects and values free speech.
“Many fail to appreciate the full scale of the damage to the media industry landscape from the last 16 years. If there had not been a change in government, I believe there would have been no Mai TV, Fiji TV, or a few other local media organisations today. We would not have survived another four years,” he said.
According to Simpson, some media organisations in Fiji were only one or two months away from shutting down.
“We barely survived the last 16 years, while many media organisations in places like New Zealand — TV3’s NewsHub — have already closed down. The era where the Fiji media would survive out of sheer will and guts is over. We need to be more adaptive and respond quickly to changing realities — digital, social media, and artificial intelligence,” he said.
Dr Singh (left) moderates the student panel discussion with Riya Bhagwan, Maniesse Ikuinen-Perman and Vahefonua Tupola. Image: Mele Tu’uakitau
Young journalists respond During a panel discussion, second-year USP journalism student Vahefonua Tupola of Tonga highlighted the connection between the media and ethical journalism, sharing a personal experience to illustrate his point.
He said that while journalists should enjoy media freedom, they must also apply professional ethics, especially in challenging situations.
Tupola noted that the insights shared by the speakers and fellow students had a profound impact on his perspective.
Another panelist, third-year student and Journalism Students Association president Riya Bhagwan, addressed the intersection of artificial intelligence and journalism.
She said that in this era of rapid technological advancement, responsibility was more critical than ever — with the rise of AI, social media, and a constant stream of information.
“It’s no longer just professional journalists reporting the news — we also have citizen journalism, where members of the public create and share content that can significantly influence public opinion.
“With this shift, responsible journalism becomes essential. Journalists must uphold professional standards, especially in terms of accuracy and credibility,” she said.
The third panelist, second-year student Maniesse Ikuinen-Perman from the Federated States of Micronesia, acknowledged the challenges facing media organisations and journalists in the Pacific.
She shared that young and aspiring journalists like herself were only now beginning to understand the scope of difficulties journalists face in Fiji and across the region.
Maniesse emphasised the importance of not just studying journalism but also putting it into practice after graduation, particularly when returning to work in media organisations in their home countries.
The panel discussion, featuring journalism students responding to keynote addresses, was moderated by USP Journalism head of programme Dr Shailendra Singh.
Dr Singh concluded by noting that while Fiji had made significant progress with the repeal of the Media Industry Development Act (MIDA), global experience demonstrated that media freedom must never be taken for granted.
He stressed that maintaining media freedom was an ongoing struggle and always a work in progress.
“As far as media organisations are concerned, there is always a new challenge on the horizon,” he said, pointing to the complications brought about by digital disruption and, more recently, artificial intelligence.
Fiji rose four places to 40th (out of 180 nations) in the RSF 2025 World Press Freedom Index to make the country the Oceania media freedom leader outside of Australia (29) and New Zealand (16).
Niko Ratumaimuri is a second-year journalism student at The University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus. This article was first published by the student online news site Wansolwara and is republished in collaboration with Asia Pacific Report.
USP Journalism students, staff and guests at the 2025 World Press Freedom Day celebrations at Laucala campus on Monday. Image: Mele Tu’uakitau
Barely hours after being guest speaker at the University of the South Pacific‘s annual World Press Freedom Day event this week, Fiji media industry stalwart Stanley Simpson was forced to fend off local trolls whom he described as “hypocrites”.
“Attacked by both the Fiji Labour Party and ex-FijiFirst MPs in just one day,” chuckled Simpson in a quirky response on social media.
“Plus, it seems, by their very few supporters using myriads of fake accounts.
Simpson, secretary of the Fiji Media Association (FMA), media innovator, a founder and driving force of Mai TV, and a gold medallist back in his university student journalist days, was not taking any nonsense from his cyberspace critics, including Rajendra, the son of Labour Party leader and former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry.
“I stand by my statements. And I love the attention now put on media freedom by those who went missing or turned a blind eye when it was under threat [under Voreqe Bainimarama’s regime post-2006 coup]. Time for them to own up and come clean.”
Briefly, this is the salvo that Simpson fired back after Rajendra Chaudhry’s comment “This Stanley Simpson fella . . . Did he organise any marches [against the Bainimarama takeover], did he organise any international attention, did he rally the people against the Bainimarama regime?” and other snipes from the trolls.
1. FLP [Fiji Labour Party]
At a period 2006-2007 when journalists were being bashed and beaten and media suppressed — the Fiji Labour Party and Chaudhry went silent as they lay in bed with the military regime.
“They try to gloss over it by saying the 1997 constitution was still intact. It was intact but useless because you ignored the gross human rights abuses against the media and political opponents.
“Where was FLP when Imraz, Laisa, Pita and Virisila were beaten? Where were they when Netani Rika, Kenneth Zinck, Momo, Makeli Radua were attacked and abused, when our Fiji Living Office was trashed and burnt down, and Pita and Dionisia put in jail cells like common criminals?
“It was when Chaudhry took on Fiji Water and it backfired and left the regime that they started to speak out. When Aiyaz [Sayed-Khaiyum, former Attorney-General] replaced him as No. 2. By then too late.
“Yes FLP — some of us who survived that period are still around and we still remember so you can’t rewrite what happened in 2006-2007 and change the narrative. You failed!”
“2. Alvick Maharaj [opposition MP for the FijiFirst Party]
“The funny thing about this statement is that I already knew last night this statement was coming out and who was writing it etc. I even shared with fellow editors and colleagues that the attacks were coming — and how useless and a waste of time it would be as it was being done by people who were silent and made hundreds of thousands of dollars while media were being suppressed [under the draconian Fiji Media Industry Development Act 2010 (MIDA) and other news crackdowns].
Troll-style swipes. Image: APR screenshot
“Ex-Fiji First MPs protecting their former PR colleagues for their platform which has been used to attack their political opponents. We can see through it all because we were not born yesterday and have experience in this industry. We can see what you are doing from a mile away. Its a joke.
“And your attacks on the [recent State Department] editors’ US trip is pathetic. Plus [about] the visit to Fiji Water.
“However, the positive I take from this — is that you now both say you believe in media freedom.
“Ok now practice it. Not only when it suits your agenda and because you are now in Opposition.
“You failed in the past when you governed — but we in the media will continue to endeavor to treat you fairly.
“Sometimes that also means calling you out.”
USP guest speech As guest speaker at USP, Simpson had this to say among making other points during his media freedom speech:
The USP World Press Freedom Day seminar on Monday. Image: USP/APR
“Journalists today work under the mega spotlight of social media and get attacked, ridiculed and pressured daily — but need to stay true to their journalism principles despite the challenges and pressures they are under.
“Today, we stand at a crossroads. To students here at USP — future journalists, leaders, and citizens — remember the previous chapter [under FijiFirst]. Understand the price paid for media freedom. Protect it fiercely. Speak out when it’s threatened, even if it’s unpopular or uncomfortable.
“To our nation’s leaders and influencers: defend a free media, even when it challenges you. A healthy democracy requires tolerance of criticism and commitment to transparency.”
Fiji rose four places to 40th (out of 180 nations) in the RSF 2025 World Press Freedom Index to make the country the Oceania media freedom leader outside of Australia (29) and New Zealand (16).
Mesures administratives 
Interdiction de vente d’alcool à emporter… 
(@HC98800) 
