When the Supreme Court’s decision undoing Roe v. Wade came down in June, anti-abortion groups were jubilant – but far from satisfied. Many in the movement have a new target: hormonal birth control. It seems contradictory; doesn’t preventing unwanted pregnancies also prevent abortions? But anti-abortion groups don’t see it that way. They claim that hormonal contraceptives like IUDs and the pill can actually cause abortions.
One prominent group making this claim is Students for Life of America, whose president has said she wants contraceptives like IUDs and birth control pills to be illegal. The fast-growing group has built a social media campaign spreading the false idea that hormonal birth control is an abortifacient. Reveal’s Amy Mostafa teams up with UC Berkeley journalism and law students to dig into the world of young anti-abortion influencers and how medical misinformation gains traction on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, with far-reaching consequences.
Tens of millions of Americans use hormonal contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and regulate their health. And many have well-founded complaints about side effects, from nausea to depression – not to mention well-justified anger about how the medical establishment often pooh-poohs those concerns. Anti-abortion and religious activists have jumped into the fray, urging people to reject hormonal birth control as “toxic” and promoting non-hormonal “fertility awareness” methods – a movement they’re trying to rebrand as “green sex.” Mother Jones Senior Editor Kiera Butler explains how secular wellness influencers such as Jolene Brighten, who sells a $300 birth control “hormone reset,” are having their messages adopted by anti-abortion influencers, many of them with deep ties to Catholic institutions.
The end of Roe triggered a Missouri law that immediately banned almost all abortions. Many were shocked when a major health care provider in the state announced it would also no longer offer emergency contraception pills – Plan B – because of a false belief that it could cause an abortion. While the health system soon reversed its policy, it wasn’t the first time Missouri policymakers have been roiled by the myth that emergency contraception can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and cause an abortion. Reveal senior reporter and producer Katharine Mieszkowski tracks how lawmakers in the state have been confronting this misinformation campaign and looks to the future of how conservatives are aiming to use birth control as their new wedge issue.
In the mid-1990s I started working with New Zealand investigative writer Nicky Hager. I have had the most singular of all my authorial relationships with Nicky, the result of the potent, usually red-hot subject matter that is his stock-in-trade.
I knew Nicky from our early days in forest conservation — he had been a fellow campaigner — but he also had a long interest in security issues. In 1996 he came to us with a nearly completed book that, for the first time, revealed the existence of the highly secret ECHELON surveillance programme run between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, now commonly known as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
This alliance effectively means that New Zealand does the bidding of its more powerful allies. It raises myriad moral and sovereignty issues about who we are spying on, and why.
We published what became Secret Power, with a great deal of trepidation — a prominent QC and expert on media law had expressly warned us off the project, making chillingly clear the potential for jail time if we published state secrets, which we obviously intended to do.
But in an early demonstration of Nicky’s strategic nous, no one came knocking. In this, and in all future publishing decisions with him, it became a careful weighing up of whether the subject of the book — in this case the government and its intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau — would want the scrutiny and public exposure of a court case, even if they were likely to win it.
The other issue that applied to Secret Power and, again, with all Nicky’s subsequent books, was both ethical and practical — is the exposure of secret or private information justified? It is, only if it is clearly in the public interest, which is also the primary legal defence should that be necessary.
In the process of publishing Secret Power we developed our own organic publishing model, used a number of times over the next 20 years to get Nicky’s risky books successfully into readers’ hands and to minimise the danger of being stifled by a High Court injunction, the most likely tool the subject of a book would use to prevent publication. This involved producing the books at breakneck speed to reduce the chance of being discovered.
Printed in absolute secrecy
After the book had been written, Nicky would work intensively alongside an editor over a week or two; I would lay out and proofread the book in two or three days, and then print in absolute secrecy.
When printed, we would drop them via overnight courier into bookshops nationwide without any prior warning, explaining to booksellers why we were doing this and offering to take back at our expense any they didn’t want. It meant that the book was already available to readers just as Nicky started to create a media firestorm thereby significantly reducing the window for legal action to be successfully launched: by the time an injunction could be drawn up and submitted to the court, widespread availability meant it would be pointless and therefore unlikely to be granted.
Secret Power proved to be an internationally significant book — it led to an enquiry in the European Parliament at which Nicky testified, and could be regarded as the forerunner to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the workings of the US National Security Agency in 2013 and the subsequent global debates about mass surveillance and information privacy.
Three years later Nicky came to me again with Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-environmental PR Campaign, which he co-authored with the Australian environmentalist Bob Burton. Based on a leak from a concerned whistleblower, the book exposed how the government-owned Timberlands was secretly using taxpayer money to run an undercover public relations campaign to justify its logging of native forest on the West Coast.
This greenwashing broke a fundamental public service rule — government departments and state-owned enterprises cannot secretly run campaigns to help further their own agendas — and the story blew up exactly as the authors and I hoped.
By complete coincidence, we happened to publish on the same day as the launch of the National Party’s 1999 election campaign. It completely destroyed their media splash, and they were furious — I know this because [co-publisher] Craig Potton happened to meet a National Cabinet minister, with close ties to our area, in Wellington airport the next morning. He lost it, and had to be physically restrained by his aides after he shoved Craig in the chest.
Then, when Helen Clark and her Labour government came to power later in the year, the logging of native forest on the West Coast was stopped. Timberlands had badly overreached.
Things didn’t go well
Nicky’s next book, Seeds of Distrust, published in 2002, which detailed how the then Labour government had covered up the illegal planting of GE corn in New Zealand after intense lobbying from big business; the controversy known as Corngate. Seeds of Distrust was essentially about accountability and transparent government, but while the book was accurate, things did not go well for us.
TV3’s John Campbell ambushed Prime Minister Helen Clark about the issue in a television interview, and she responded by calling Campbell a “sanctimonious little creep”. It was a lesson in the perils of crossing a furious Clark, and her government managed very effectively to cloud the issue with technical arguments.
The book was a distressing and sobering experience as we lost the PR battle, with the media uncertain about the veracity of Nicky’s work.
I went on to publish a number of other important books with Nicky, all of them focused on speaking truth to power. The Hollow Men, in 2006, was an inside look at then leader of the opposition, Don Brash, and the questionable tactics he and others in the National Party employed as they sought to gain power. Brash had heard rumours that someone was leaking his personal emails, so he successfully sought an over-arching injunction preventing publication of this material.
He had no idea, however, that only a few kilometres away in Kaiwharawhara, we were just finishing printing 5000 copies of The Hollow Men, based in large part on these leaked emails.
The injunction was a disaster for us, as it meant that we could not sell the books and would potentially have to pulp them, so with nothing to lose we decided to try to pressure Brash to lift the injunction. Nicky called a press conference, and he and I fronted the Wellington media.
With a small pile of printed copies of The Hollow Men on display, we explained that people were not able to read this book even if it was in the public interest that they should. The tactic worked spectacularly — the frenzied response by the media, and the pressure bought to bear on Brash, forced him not only to resign as leader of the National Party but also to lift the injunction.
We were then able to release the book, an instant bestseller, which revealed, among many other things, that Brash had misled the public about his relationship with the Exclusive Brethren, who had secretly given the National Party a substantial donation.
Exposing john Key’s ‘dark tactics’
Nicky’s next book, the equally explosive Dirty Politics, was published in the middle of the election campaign in 2014, and exposed the dark tactics of John Key’s National government. An anonymous hacker, Rawshark, had been so enraged by the behaviour of Cameron Slater, the right-wing blogger behind the Whale Oil blog, that he managed to hack into his Facebook account and extract a large tranche of Slater’s communications.
After a long process of winning Rawshark’s trust, Nicky was given this information, and it became the foundation of the book. Dirty Politics laid out in startling detail how unscrupulous Key and his operators were in feeding Slater with inside information and using him to attack their political enemies. It remains a shameful stain on the Key government.
It also led to another grubby incident when, in the wake of the book’s publication, the police, perhaps in an attempt to please their political masters, raided Nicky’s house and illegally obtained his personal financial records, all in a fruitless attempt to discover Rawshark’s identity. Nicky took action in the High Court, winning an apology and substantial damages from the police.
We have published two others of Nicky’s books on security issues: Other People’s Wars in 2011, a large, supremely well researched book on New Zealand’s unseen role in the so-called war on terror; and, with Jon Stephenson, Hit & Run in 2017, detailing a Defence Force cover-up of a New Zealand SAS operation that killed civilians in Afghanistan.
For me, this strand of publishing has frequently been terrifying, given the potential for legal action lurking behind every book that could destroy the company. It has always been ameliorated, however, by the privilege of being able to publish Nicky’s remarkable books. Having the freedom to take them on feels like the ultimate gift of being an independent publisher.
It says everything about Nicky’s extraordinary dedication and research skills, quite apart from his courage, that despite the endless vitriol from his detractors, we have never ended up in court over one of his books — the passage of time has always revealed the accuracy of his work. Consequently, my trust in him is absolute.
His most powerful weapon, and one that lies behind everything he does, is his integrity. His sole motivation is to make the world a better place, and money and power simply do not matter to him. In my view he is a national treasure.
An extract with permission from the newly published Bushline: A Memoir, by Robbie Burton (Potton & Burton, $39.99).
Anything concerning the Catholic Church is extremely sensitive in Timor-Leste, as Raimundos Oki, the editor of The Oekusi Post website can confirm, reports the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
“The story that Raimundos Oki covered is so sensitive that the justice system cannot suddenly accuse him of violating judicial confidentiality without taking account of broader public interest concerns,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “It is perfectly healthy in a mature democracy for a journalist to question how a judicial investigation is conducted. We therefore ask justice minister Tiago Amaral Sarmento to order the withdrawal of the charges against Raimundos Oki.”
The article that Oki published in The Oekusi Post in June 2021 revealed that 30 girls under the age of 18 had been detained on a prosecutor’s orders a year earlier in Oecusse, a western exclave of Timor-Leste, and had been subjected to forced vaginal examinations.
One of the girls subsequently died from a vaginal infection.
Sensitive case against priest The examinations were ordered with the aim of getting more evidence against Richard Daschbach, an American missionary priest who was finally convicted in December 2021 of raping at least four girls.
This now defrocked priest, who had run Topu Honis orphanage since its creation in 1991, was a long-standing supporter of Timor’s independence and had many high-level connections in both political and Catholic Church circles — connections that made the paedophilia case against him even more sensitive.
Oki’s story revealed that some of the girls were detained by the prosecutor and police and subjected to forced genital examinations although they had denied having been sexually assaulted by Daschbach.
Oki, who is himself from Oecusse, told RSF he had wanted to draw attention to the lasting and irreversible trauma that had been inflicted on the girls he interviewed.
“No journalist had talked to the victims of these virginity tests,” he said.
“If the priest is found guilty, let him go to prison. But it is my duty as a journalist to publish this public interest story.
“I refuse to allow these young girls, who have been the victims of sexual abuse, real human rights violations, to be forgotten.”
Two years ago, RSF criticised a proposed law in Timor-Leste under which anyone “offending the honour and prestige” of a representative of the state or church would face up to three years in prison.
Timor-Leste was ranked 17th out of 180 countries in the 2022 RSF World Press Freedom Index, and is now higher than any Pacific Island nation.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and press freedom champion Maria Ressa wasn’t intending to make breaking news when she planned her keynote address at the East-West Center’s 2022 International Media Conference in Honolulu this week.
But late the night before she got disturbing word from her lawyers that the Philippines government’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had issued an order for her online news organisation Rappler to shut down.
“You are the first to hear this,” Ressa said, as she told the combined in-person and online audiences of around 450 international journalists and media professionals gathered for the conference about the commission’s order.
Under now-former President Rodrigo Duterte, Ressa and Rappler have faced multiple charges, widely believed to be retaliation for her critical reporting on Duterte’s deadly drug war and abuses of power.
Ressa vowed to continue fighting the commission’s order, even as new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — son of the late Philippines dictator who was forced to flee the country in 1986 — prepared to be sworn into office yesterday.
In the meantime, she said, “It is business as usual for Rappler. We will adapt, adjust, survive, and thrive. As usual, we will hold power to account. We will tell the truth.”
Safeguarding freedom of expression
Ressa’s struggle to thwart the government’s efforts to shut down her groundbreaking news outlet and imprison her for cyber-libel led to Ressa becoming the first Filipino recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace,” as the Nobel Committee put it.
In her address to the media conference, Ressa bemoaned the fact that the global environment for quality journalism has deteriorated so quickly, in part because at least initially there was a reluctance to accept just how much damage the online world can do to the real one.
“Online violence is real-world violence,” she said. “They’re not separate. Digital impunity is real-world impunity.
“There is only one world that we live in, and for the platforms and legislators to think that these are two systems has weakened the rule of law in the real world.”
After being brutally attacked online by Duterte backers, Ressa has campaigned tirelessly against what she called a “tyranny of trends.” Through their algorithms, social media platforms have created a new information ecosystem that prioritises “lies laced with anger and hate” over “boring” facts, she said.
“These platforms are determining the future of news, and yet their driver is profit, right? The platform’s profit — not the public’s, not journalism’s.”
That system has made it more difficult for humans to listen to their better angels, Ressa said, because “social media gave the devil a megaphone. And this is why we are seeing the worst of human nature.”
The problem, she said, is that the forces of manipulation do not need to convince the public of anything. They only need to sow doubt and uncertainty in order to create distrust of the facts.
Maria Ressa talks to journalists … Rappler was built on a foundation of three pillars to rebuild trust in the news media: technology, journalism and community. Image: East-West Center
Pillars of trust
Ressa said Rappler was built on a foundation of three pillars to rebuild trust in the news media: technology, journalism and community.
“Tech has to be first because this was the spark that ignited the world, and not for good,” she explained.
“Journalism, because we must continue independent journalism despite what it costs us, and we must let our societies know that. And finally community, because journalists can’t do this alone.”
The importance of maintaining independent journalism outlets is intensified by the fact that this year there are more than 30 elections globally, according to Ressa: “I said this in the Nobel lecture: If you don’t have integrity of facts, how can you have integrity of elections? You can’t, and that’s the problem.”
The consequences can be catastrophic, she said. “When real people who are insidiously manipulated online then democratically elect an illiberal leader and the balance of power of the world shifts, how much more time do we have before we move into a fascist world?”
Banding together against disinformation
Ressa counsels independent journalists around the world to build their courage, commitment and, most importantly, community, saying the only way to stand up to the forces of disinformation is to join hands.
Before the recent elections in the Philippines, for example, 16 news organisations agreed to collaborate on fact-checking campaign statements.
“We shared each with other,” Ressa said. “We made the content agnostic. We’re not competing against each other; we’re competing against evil and lies.”
That experience helped inform Ressa’s vision of a world in which trust in facts and institutions can be rebuilt on four levels. The first and most basic is independent journalism as exemplified by news organisations like hers.
The second she calls “the mesh”, elements of civil society that can take the facts news outlets and share them with emotion and inspiration.
The third level is academic research designed to help better understand the societal challenges, which continue to evolve. The final level is a proactive legal approach in which lawyers engage in both tactical and strategic litigation, rather than simply waiting to defend against the latest attacks.
Still, Ressa admitted that she is extremely worried about the future of objective journalism and the societies that rely on it.
The world does have the resources to fight back, she but not as individuals: “We really must work together,” she concluded. “And a global coalition is the best way to do this.”
It is common practice for journalists to share contact details and locations in hostile environments such as war zones. Something is very wrong when news organisations in New Zealand share those details about their staff covering a story in downtown Wellington.
Stuff’s head of news Mark Stevens disclosed last Friday that “competing media have shared contacts of journalists in the field to provide a safety network if things get dangerous”.
It followed incidents during the “Convoy 2022” protest in the grounds of Parliament when journalists were abused, spat on, and assaulted. A Stuff reporter was pushed and shoved and a protester abused a Newshub news crew member and threatened to destroy his video camera.
Protesters told reporters to “watch your backs on the street tonight” and that they would be “executed” for their reporting. Placards read “Media is the Virus”, “Fake News”, and accused journalists of treason.
One placard parodied a covid-19 health message: “UNITE AGAINST MEDIA 22”.
Anti-media sentiment is nothing new. The 2020 Acumen-Edelman Trust Barometer showed New Zealanders scored media poorly — and below the global average — in terms of competence and ethics and only 28 percent thought they served the interests of everyone equally and fairly.
Those results did make me wonder what news media Kiwis were actually seeing and hearing but, in such things, perception is everything.
Journalists reasonably thick-skinned
But journalists are reasonably thick-skinned: They can take criticism and even insults. I doubt there is a reporter in the country who hasn’t been on the receiving end. Even death threats are something that goes with the territory.
I’ve received a few in my career. Most were of the “Drop Dead” or “You don’t deserve to be here” variety and only one was a credible threat. That one could have endangered others and was not specifically directed at me (it was reported to the police).
However, something has changed.
A reporter I hold in high regard told me last week that he had received more death threats in the last three months of 2021 than in the previous three decades. I’m not going to name him because to do so will simply increase the likelihood of further attempts at intimidation.
He told me reporters had become the focus of a great deal of anger and resentment:
“A few recent events I’ve covered have seen members of the anti-crowd deliberately moving to within a foot of me, maskless, and breathing or coughing at me, or trying to physically rub against me. That’s not an uncommon experience for those out in the field. And there’s the odd occasion, too, where the threat of physical violence is such that I’ve needed to back-peddle quickly.”
We are seeing a migration of behaviour. The US Press Freedom Tracker recorded 439 physical attacks on journalists in that country in 2020 (election year) and a further 142 in 2021. That compared with 41 in 2018 and 2019.
Tightened security
Last June the BBC tightened security around its staff after an escalation in the frequency and severity of abuse from anti-vaxxers. During Sydney anti-mandate protests last September, 7News reporter Paul Dowsley was sprayed with urine and hit in the head by a thrown drink can.
Then, in November, it came here. A 1News camera operator on the West Coast graphically recorded a foul-mouthed middle-aged man carrying an anti-vaxx placard who shoved him backwards and tried to dislodge his camera: “Do you want this [expletive] camera smashed in your face, you [expletive]?”
The current anti-vaxx movement in Canada has generated similar behaviour. Brent Jolly of the Canadian Association of Journalists said several reporters covering the trucker convoy in Ottawa have said they have been harassed on the scene and online and feel like they have a “target on their backs”.
Evan Solomon, a reporter for CTV, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he had a full can of beer thrown at his head. It missed but exploded inside a camera case. All CTV crews now have a security person with them when filming outside, no longer use lights or tripods, and in one province have removed CTV identification from vehicles.
In Ottawa people have asked reporters to remove their names from stories because they are getting death threats. Broadcasting journalists have been targeted – probably because their presence is more obvious – although one print reporter told the CPJ that she does not wear a mask during protests because it draws attention to her (she is triple vaccinated), does not go into protest crowds at night, and liaises with other reporters to advise current locations and risks.
None of this should suggest a coherent and organised anti-media campaign is sweeping the globe. We are seeing something that is a good deal more orchestrated than organised, in which the anti-vaccination movement is no more than a rallying point, and the media are a target because they are messengers for inconvenient truth.
The proof of that became apparent while I was watching the live feed of the protest in the grounds of Parliament.
‘End the Mandate’ signs
A string of images spelled out how incoherent it was. There were printed “End the Mandate” signs, “My body, my choice” t-shirts, a loony sign saying natural immunity was 99.6 per cent effective, Canadian flags, a figure in Black Power regalia wearing a full-face plastic mask, someone wearing a paramilitary “uniform”, and a man waving the ultimate conspiracy theory sign: “Epstein didn’t kill himself”.
Then there were the actions of the protesters. A few were gesticulating to police and the media, uttering things I could not (and arguable did not want) to hear. Many more were gyrating to rhythms playing over loudspeakers, beaten out on the plastic barriers on the forecourt, or generated in their own heads. It was a sort of group euphoria.
And in a perverse sort of way I think that is what is behind the attitude toward media. 1News reporter Kristin Hall had been reporting the protest and wrote a commentary on the broadcaster’s website. In it she said that despite their varying opinions and causes, the protesters were “united in their distaste for the press”. Then she gave an example of just how incoherent this united front can be:
“‘You’re all liars,’ a man told me today. When I asked if he could be more specific, he said he doesn’t consume mainstream media. People have asked me why I’m not covering the protests while I’m in the middle of interviewing them.”
Unfortunately, it is this lack of logic that makes abuse of media so hard to counter. Media cannot make peace with leaders of a movement because it is a moving feast and the orchestrators are hidden from sight. It cannot be remedied simply by stating facts because these people accept only what supports and ennobles their own disinformation-fuelled world view, a view fed by inflammatory social media that conflates then amplifies discontent on a global scale.
Nor can media offer immediate solutions to pent-up anger aggravated by two years of pandemic.
What media can — and must — do is prevent contagion. They need an inoculation campaign to ensure that the malaise infecting a small group of people does not spread.
Duty of care a priority
Mark Stevens alluded to cooperation between media to keep staff safe and that duty of care is a priority. However, media organisations need to go further. They must, on the one hand, earn the trust of a population that does not generally hold them in high regard. It is best done by demonstrating that journalists are following best professional practice and that means quality reporting and presentation.
On the other hand, they must ensure that the community understands that journalists have a right (indeed, a duty) to report on events in its midst — irrespective of whether or not its members agree with what they are being told.
The United States has an excellent track record in openly discussing professional standards and the role of media in society. We should take some leaves from their book and bring the community more into the conversation.
That is challenging, because the problem does not lie solely with the media but with the system of democracy of which it is a vital part.
“We have really struggled, though, to conceive, plan and execute deep systemic change, let alone get as many people as possible involved in that and benefiting from it. But that’s the only way we’ll tackle our deeply rooted economic, social and environmental failures.”
That democratic reform must include the media rethinking how it engages with the public. They must introduce open industry-wide governance to replace anachronistic and sometimes self-serving structures. They must demonstrate their commitment to accuracy, fairness and balance. They must find new ways to be inclusive and pluralistic. They must secure recognition as trusted independent sources of verified facts.
Calling out manipulation
That will take time. Meanwhile the problem of media abuse will continue. The short-term solutions will include calling out those who seek to manipulate a minority to destabilise our society. Here are two good examples:
The short term also requires media organisations to continue to meet that duty of care toward their staff. The Committee to Protect Journalists has developed a four-part “Safety Kit” to provide journalists and newsrooms with basic safety information on physical, digital and psychological safety. It’s a good starting point for any journalist.
Of course, journalists also need to keep matters in perspective. The threats represented by a group of disorganised protesters remains relatively small and, with the right training, journalists can judge the level of risk they face in most situations.
When it came to death threats, for example, I soon learned that I could bin the ones that were written in crayon.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications – covering both editorial and management roles – that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a blog called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
Following the publication of the book Toxic some 9 months ago and President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to French Polynesia last July, the response from the French administration has been to send French nuclear experts to Tahiti.
Their mission was to give clear and transparent answers about the state of former nuclear test sites among other topics. It was a way to counter the book’s anti-official version of the CEA’s (Centre d’Experimentation Atomique) claim of “clean and non-contaminating radioactivity” on both atolls.
The Commission of information created for those former sites of nuclear tests of the Pacific, was made up of 3 French civil servants involved in the controversial Paris roundtable — also called Reko Tika — organised by President Macron last July.
French nuclear experts … “proving” their case of an independent and transparent study. Image: Tahiti Infos
In a media conference, they talked about radiological and geo-mechanical surveillance of the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. They came with more scientific expertise and data that seemed to dispel the original idea of “clear and transparent answers”.
As far as the environment was concerned around those former nuclear sites, the conclusion was that the sites were much safer now after the presence of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope of caesium formed as one of the more common products of nuclear fission) was noticed to be less year by year in all parts of the environment.
To “prove” their case of an independent and transparent study, they took samples of beef meat, whole milk or coconut juice from both atolls and are readily available to the population and analysed those samples.
Their results showed that the levels of radioactive concentration were far less than the “maximum levels admissible” — or whatever that means for the Ma’ohi who are not versed in the scientific jargon.
Artificial radioactive fallout level ‘low’
As for the health of the population, they reassured the people from the atolls that the level of toxicity of artificial radioactive fallout measured from 2019 to 2020 was extremely low, according to the data collected by the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRNS).
They established that the overall efficient dose (external exposition, internal exposition by ingestion and inhalation) of radioactivity was evaluated at 1,4 mSv (the measure of radiation exposure) in Mā’ohi Nui — which is two times lower than in France.
An even stronger reassurance was offered to the media when the question of a possible collapse of the northern part of the atoll of Moruroa was mentioned. The French experts replied that such a disastrous scenario was extremely unlikely, because the geo-mechanical system Telsite 2 put in place in 2000, would detect signs of unusual activities weeks beforehand.
Notwithstanding their initial answer, they added that even in the worst-case scenario, preventative measures would be taken to evacuate the population of Moruroa, and Tureia would not be hit by this improbable landslide.
A reassurance that clearly leaves doubt on whether Moruroa is at all safe.
When asked by one of the local journalists, Vaite Pambrun, why the atolls were not “retroceded” (ceded back) to their people now that it is “safe”, the delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault was at pains to explain that it was not possible because plutonium was not buried deep enough under the coral layer, and for safety reasons the French state still needed to monitor the atolls.
A somehow contradictory response that does not surprise the people who are used to the rhetoric used by the French state for the last 50 years.
France seems to offer very reassuring measures and answers, but the populations have learnt in the past that the word of the French state must be taken with a lot of mistrust and scepticism especially when it comes to nuclear matters.
France trying to wipe out nuclear traces from Polynesian memory
Mayor of Fa’aa Oscar Temaru … criticised the conclusions reached by the French nuclear experts. Image: Tahiti Infos
Independence leader Oscar Temaru, and former president of Tahiti, was quick to organise a press conference where he criticised the conclusions reached by the nuclear experts who seemed to contradict their findings about the safety of the atolls that still needed more monitoring, hence the refusal to retrocede.
After the last Paris roundtable, Temaru accused the French state and the local government — which he calls the local “collabos” (alluding to the French who collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War) to try “to wipe out the last evidence and vestiges that constitute the history of nuclear colonisation by the army and the money”.
According to Temaru, there is a trust crisis against the local government of territorial President Eduard Fritch and the French state that is going to last for a long time.
Those strong words also came after the decision was taken to completely destroy the last nuclear concrete shelter on the atoll of Tureia, wiping out for ever any traces of nuclear presence.
This decision is reminiscent of the one taken by the same French state to raze to the ground the two nuclear shelters used by the army on Mangareva.
By the same occasion, the hangar with the flimsy protection of corrugated iron used for the local population during the nuclear tests was also demolished. All those structures were pulled down in the early 2000s.
Father Auguste Ube Carlson, president of the anti-nuclear lobby Association 193, has also denounced the rhetoric used by the French state which “pretends’ to bring some new answers that have a “sound of deja-vu and that do not fool any of the populations who have suffered through the nuclear era”.
According to one of the Association 193 spokespeople, France is telling local populations that all is well in the best of worlds and there is nothing to worry about.
A more mitigated reaction
Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault … dedicated to writing the history of the nuclear era. Image: Tahiti Infos
Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault conceded that it has been a struggle to get the French state to give access to files that at one point were declassified and then re-classified to now be reopened to the public which he considers a victory.
He does not share the same stance taken by Oscar Temaru regarding the wiping out of the last atomic shelter in Tureia. According to the historian, the shelter is a hazard to the population of Tureia as it contains asbestos and therefore needs to be destroyed.
Regnault positions himself as a researcher who, like any other member of the public, will be able to write the history of the nuclear era thanks to all those thousands of documents now available to be consulted, unless classified as state secrets.
He sees the history of a nation not in terms of buildings but in terms of what can be written and taught to the younger generations. The destruction of the building does not equal the wiping-out of a nation’s memory.
He finds it remarkable that teachers will have the material to teach the history of the atomic tests in Mā’ohi Nui, which was one the tenants of the Tavini party when they were at the helm of the country in 2004.
It is up to the women and men of Ma’ohi Nui to realise their dreams of writing the history of their islands by consulting those archives, especially the military ones and not be forced to only hear one narrative, that of the French state.
There is a movement toward more transparency, according to Regnault.
What about the conclusions drawn by the book Toxic?
The Delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault, has been particularly dismissive of the book Toxic. He says that it is clear that the calculations based on the simulations are wrong and he rejected the deductions made by the book that the French state have played down the impacts of nuclear tests fallout on the Polynesians.
However, he admitted that 6 nuclear tests did not have favourable weather forecasts and generated radioactive fallout that led to doses “below the limit accepted by those working on the nuclear sites” but “higher than the doses accepted by the public”.
This is the reason why it is absolutely legitimate for people who have been contaminated to seek compensation.
He tells the press that the calculations and the investigation by Disclose wrongly contradict those made by the CEA in 2006 where the data and the mode of calculations were extremely technical and scientific and 450 pages long.
He suggested that those who were involved in the research and the publishing of Toxic were not versed enough in the technical jargon of the final document released by the CEA.
It is not enough to tell the truth but it must be accessible to the public, according to Bugault.
The book Toxic fails to explain in a clear and simple way how its calculations were carried out and achieved. He promised that in April 2022 the anti-Toxic book will be published by the CEA on Tahiti.
Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Dr Robie opened the conference with his topic “Journalism education ‘truth ’ challenges in an age of growing hate, intolerance and disinformation” while Gloria spoke about the difficulties of doing investigative journalism amid this covid-19 pandemic.
Founding director of the Pacific Media Centre, Dr Robie began with a tribute “to two extraordinary and inspirational journalists, who have shed light on dark places and given the rest of us hope”.
The first of these was to Maria Ressa, chief executive of the Filipino investigative website Rappler, who, along with Russian editor Dimitry Muratov, was named a Nobel Peace prize laureate last month for safeguarding “freedom of expression”.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee described them as “representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions”.
Julie Posetti, global director of research at the International Centre for Journalists (ICJ), said the choice had been very timely and she pointed to the fact that it had been 85 years since the first working journalist had won the Nobel prize.
German investigative editor Carl von Ossietsky won the Nobel prize for his “burning love for freedom and expression”’
Award in jail
Ossietsky, was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp at the time he won the award and later died in jail.
As Gloria told the conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology, the Nobel prize put a “global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today”.
“You and I are no stranger to threats to media freedom – from repressive laws to libel suits to imprisonment to death threats,” she said.
Rappler chief executive and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa … safeguarding “freedom of expression”. Image: NurPhoto/Rappler/IFEX
“To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.
“And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism. At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.
“Not only are journalists under attack. Truth is under attack,” Gloria said.
Optimism for Rappler
She gave three reasons for the Filipino publication Rappler to be optimistic in spite of dealing with 11 lawsuits aimed at silencing the website.
“Every crisis is an opportunity. In the last two years, we at Rappler managed to bounce back and continue holding power to account and exposing wrongdoing,” she said.
“Part of the reason is how our ownership structure was set up. Rappler is the only journalist-owned and journalist-led media company in the Philippines. We make decisions for the public interest even if it’s bad for business.
“Second reason to be hopeful is — for journalism to matter, the community must be a part of it. In our crisis years, our community stayed with us.
“We realised that we had a core base of audience that, while not massive, shared the same value that we believe in, which is the public’s need for transparency and accountability on the part of those who lead and government them.
“At Rappler, we learned that when the going gets tough, hold the line, stick to your core, and have faith in your community of readers.
“The third reason to be hopeful is that crisis challenges our mindsets. The attacks on Rappler scared away advertisers but also compelled us to diversify our revenue stream so that today, our revenues come not just from advertising but business research, grants, membership, programmatic ads, and special projects.
Postive net income
“We have not paywalled our site but we have content and activities exclusive to paying subscribers. Thankfully, we are now entering our third year of positive net income,” Gloria said.
Conference moderator Dino Cantal with Pacific Media Centre founding professor David Robie … fielding questions about covid-19 and the “disinfodemic”. Image: ACMC
Dr Robie’s second tribute was to Max Stahl whom he described as a “courageous journalist and filmmaker who sadly died at the age of 66 from cancer”.
From Timor-Leste, he made the controversial film footage of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in the capital Dili which eventually led to Timorese independence.
Filmmaker Max Stahl speaking to the 20th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review in Auckland in 2014. Image: Del Abcede/APR
British-born Stahl returned to East Timor in 1999 and made the documentary In Cold Blood: Massacre of East Timor, for which he was decorated with the Order of Timor-Leste, the country’s highest honour and he was awarded Timor-Leste citizenship in 2019.
“The common thread linking all four of these media communicators – Maria Ressa, Dimitry Muratov, Carl von Ossietsky and Max Stahl – has been their courageous, determined relentless pursuit of ‘truth and justice’,” Dr Robie told the virtual conference.
“ ‘The truth’ – this supreme goal of journalists in holding power to account is hugely under threat by politicians, demagogues and charlatans peddling fake news and disinformation,” he said.
Dr Robie spoke about covid-19 and the “disinfodemic” – described by UNESCO as “falsehoods fuelling the pandemic”, leading to civil disobedience and attacks on medical staff the world over, including in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Violence pervaded South Pacific
The violence had pervaded the South Pacific and was noticeable in Fiji and Papua New Guinea despite the high number of people being infected.
Dr Robie highlighted PNG where health authorities were forced to cancel vaccinations for fear of attacks, hence the rate is incredibly low this month, sitting at 2.5 percent,
He also addressed the infodemic and the rise of “disinformation” and the challenges it brought to the media.
Dr Robie spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.
A key component of the disinfodemic was the lack of fact-checking and as veteran Pacific journalist and consultant Bob Howarth had asked, why had the basics of fact-checking not “become part of journalism training in our universities and colleges?”.
Dr Robie also spoke about climate change “and the disproportionate impact this is having on our Asia-Pacific region”.
Climate ‘catastrophe’
He outlined the challenges of climate change, preferring to call it climate “catastrophe”.
“I am stressing the word catastrophe rather than merely change, That is because for the microstates of the Pacific it is already viewed as an impending catastrophe,” he told the conference.
Dr Robie said he had developed several theories and models of journalism such as “talanoa journalism”, a concept developed through a Pacific approach.
“My emphasis has been on ‘project journalism’, creating high quality coverage of issues and challenging assignments on university platforms with high standards of journalistic integrity and to foster multi-university collaboration across national boundaries.”
A Filipina journalist who cut her teeth as a young reporter in the Marcos dictatorship years and now heads an investigative digital media outlet and a New Zealand journalist who was on board the bombed Rainbow Warrior environmental campaign ship are keynote speakers at an Asia-Pacific conference opening in Auckland today.
Glenda Gloria … co-founder and executive editor of Rappler. Image: Rappler
Her colleague, Maria Ressa, recently jointly won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, for championing a free press and she has been the target of multiple lawsuits in an attempt by the Duterte administration to silence the media.
Gloria will talk about current challenges facing the media in the Philippines and across the Asia Pacific region.
David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and recently retired professor of Pacific journalism, is speaking about the media and covid-19 “disinformation and hate speech”.
Dr Robie sailed on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior that was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland in 1985 and he has reported on environmental issues, climate issues and independence struggles.
He has been the head of three Pacific university journalism programmes and the author of several media and politics books, including Eyes of Fire and Blood on their Banner.
‘International sharing’
Senior communications lecturer at AUT Khairiah A Rahman, principal organiser of the event, said there was much to be achieved from the conference.
Dr David Robie … retired professor of Pacific journalism and now editor of Asia Pacific Report. Image: AUT
“We will be looking at international sharing, networking, future collaborative projects, and research publications in journals and books,” Rahman said.
The ACMC received more than 60 paper submissions and approved 44 peer-reviewed abstracts for the biannual conference which was established in the Philippines and began in 2008.
Six international ACMC conferences have been hosted by universities in Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong; Philippines; Taiwan; and now at AUT in Auckland.
“We had several pre-conference talks which yielded as many as 94 participants. In real — not virtual — ACMC conferences, we welcome 130 to 160 attendees from 22 countries,” Rahman said.
The ACMC2021 conference at AUT.
The opening addresses will be made by Professor Felix Tan, associate dean research and acting dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and professor Azman Azwan Azmawa of Malaysia, president of the ACMC.
Among papers to be presented are topics such Media, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Pandemic Times; Lockdown Love: Computer-mediated Romantic Intimacies among Select Gay Filipino Couples; The Articulation of Papuan Women Ethnic Identity on Facebook; AUT’s Cindy Wang on Anyone can be a Vlogger: Sri Lankan Moviegoers in Covid-19 Pandemic Era.
Critical thinking
AUT’s Rahman and associate professor Petra Theuissen will jointly present a paper titled Concept Maps as Foundations for Critical Thinking in Public Relations Study.
Other papers to be presented include The Weibo Discussion about Taiwanese Legislation of Same-Sex Marriage presented by Massey University’s Fei Xiao.
Also, Rahman will present a timely paper after the New Zealand’s 2019 mosque massacre titled Shifting Dynamics in Popular Culture on Islamophobia Media Narratives.
Among the conference moderators is Jim Marbrook, a filmmaker and an AUT senior lecturer in screen production who in 2020 was co-producer of the documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears that won the 2021 FIFO grand jury prize in Tahiti. He will moderate a “media in quarantine” session.
Other moderators include associate professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre which has been in hiatus for a year, Dr Theuissen and Deepti Bhargava, who will moderate a “crisis in communication challenges” session.
The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and more than 60 environmental journalists of 34 different nationalities have appealed for respect for the right to cover environmental issues.
These journalists — who are from every part of the world and every kind of media, and who have all kinds of backgrounds and political views — have joined RSF in signing an unprecedented appeal coinciding with COP26 entitled “Climate emergency, journalism emergency”.
Men and women, some of them environmental experts and some of them more general reporters, some with a long history of covering “green” issues and some covering the environment more recently as it has become an increasingly alarming news story, they have denounced the obstacles that limit the right to provide information about these issues.
The petitioners are asking governments to officially recognise that the right to information about these issues is inherent in the right to a healthy environment and the right to health.
The first journalists signing the appeal include Gaëlle Borgia, a 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner based in Madagascar, France’s Morgan Large, a food industry specialist, Russia’s Grigory Pasko, an RSF Press Freedom laureate who was awarded the Sakharov Prize in 2002, India’s Soulik Dutta, an expert in energy and land issues, South Africa’s Khadija Sharife, who investigates environmental crimes, and Lucien Kosha, a freelancer covering mining in the DRC.
Most of them have signed on an individual basis but the staff at some news organisations have wanted to sign collectively.
Environmental teams
This was the case with Afaq Environmental Magazine, a Palestinian media outlet, and Reporterre, a French news site covering environmental issues.
Crucially, the appeal points out that, although the right to cover environmental issues was established as a principle as early as the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, this right is still not being respected.
The signatories report that, in many countries, it is still very difficult to obtain information and scientific data about the environment, although such information is of paramount public interest. Their coverage can help change behaviour and help combat the unprecedented threat posed by global warming.
“Nearly 30 years after the right to cover environmental issues was proclaimed in the United Nations Earth Summit declaration in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, this right must finally become a reality, it must finally be applied and respected without exception, as something that is self-evident,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
“At the hour of the climate emergency, this is a journalistic emergency. Environmental coverage is now vital.”
The dangers linked to covering environmental issues in some parts of the world has led to the killing of at least 21 journalists in the past 20 years for investigating these sensitive issues.
RSF and the journalists signing the appeal have also called for concrete implementation of international law on the protection of journalists.
The dilemma facing whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances — the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.
This week, on October 27-28, Julian Assange appeared before a United Kingdom court defending himself against an appeal that, if successful, would see him extradited to the United States to face a raft of indictments that ultimately could see him spend the rest of his life in prison.
The US lawyers argued largely that human rights reasons that caused the UK courts to reject extradition to the US could be mitigated. That Julian Assange’s case could be heard in Australia and if found guilty serve out jail time in his home country rather than the US.
Assange’s defence lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC argued: “In short there is a large and cogent body of extraordinary and unprecedented evidence… that the CIA has declared Mr Assange as a ‘hostile’ ‘enemy’ of the USA, one which poses ‘very real threats to our country’, and seeks to ‘revenge’ him with significant harm.” The lawyers said the United States assurances were “meaningless”.
“It is perfectly reasonable to find it oppressive to extradite a mentally disordered person because his extradition is likely to result in his death.” Fitzgerald QC added that a court must have the power to “protect people from extradition to a foreign state where we have no control over what will be done to them”.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde, said: “You’ve given us much to think about and we will take our time to make our decision.”
The judges then reserved their decision. It is expected Assange’s fate will be revealed within weeks.
In this Special Report, we examine why the US wants this man. And we detail the space between whistleblowers, journalists and publishers who risk it all to help the world’s people to become more informed. Julian Assange finds himself crushed between these two counterbalances: the asserted right of powerful nations to operate in secret, and the right of the press to reveal what goes on in the public’s name.
Should Julian Assange be extradited from the UK to face indictments in the United States? Or should he be set free and offered a safe haven in a country such as Russia or even New Zealand?
It was always going to come down to this: Is Julian Assange captured by the assumptions people have of him, or a blurred line between a public’s right and a state’s wrong.
‘Manhunt Timeline’ The United States effort to capture or kill Assange goes back to 2010. But his inclusion in what’s called the “Manhunt Timeline” soon lost its sting when, under US President Barack Obama, it was believed if charges against Assange were brought before the US courts for his publishing activity, then he would be found not guilty due to the US First Amendment “freedom of the press” constitutional protections.
But everything changed with a new president, and a massive leak to Wikileaks of CIA secret information on 7 March 2017.
That leak of what was called Vault 7 information “detailed hacking tools the US government employs to break into users’ computers, mobile phones and even smart TVs.”
CBS News reported at the time: “The documents describe clandestine methods for bypassing or defeating encryption, antivirus tools and other protective security features intended to keep the private information of citizens and corporations safe from prying eyes.” (CBS News)
The Vault 7 leak (and earlier leaks going back to 2010) also revealed information that the US security apparatus argued compromised the safety of its personnel around the world. This aspect is vital to the US Justice Department’s case against Julian Assange.
Among a complex web of indictments and superseding indictments, the US alleges Wikileaks and Assange conspired with whistleblowers (significant among them Chelsea Manning) in what it argues was a conspiracy against the US interest. It also argues that Wikileaks and Julian Assange failed to satisfactorily redact leaked documents before dissemination or publication of the same — including details that put US personnel and agents at risk.
Prominent New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager had knowledge of Wikileaks’ processes, and, going back to 2010, spent time working with Wikileaks on redacting documents.
Hager testified at The Old Bailey in London in September 2020 before a hearing of the Assange case and, according to The Australian, said: “My main memory was people working hour after hour in total silence, very concentrated on their work and I was very impressed with efforts that they were taking (to redact names).” Hager added that he himself had redacted “a few hundred” Australian and New Zealand names.
On cross examination, The Australian reported: “Hager referred in his testimony to the global impact of the publication of the collateral murder video, which shows civilians being gunned down in Iraq from an Apache helicopter, which led to changes in US military policies. He claimed it had a ‘similar galvanising impact as the video of the death of George Floyd’.” (The Australian)
But it was the Vault 7 leak that triggered the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo to act. After that leak, Pompeo set out to destroy Wikileaks and its publisher Julian Assange.
Pompeo vs Assange
Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Image: ER
Mike Pompeo was appointed as CIA director in January 2017. The Vault 7 leak occurred on his watch. It was personal, and in April 2017 he defined Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service”.
That definition triggered a shift of approach. The US intelligence apparatus and its Justice Department counterpart then re-asserted that Wikileaks and its publisher and editor-in-chief Julian Assange were enemies of the United States.
Pompeo’s definition paved the way for a more targeted operation against Assange. But, for the time being, the US public modus operandi was to ensure extradition proceedings, through numerous hearings and appeals, were dragged out while stacking an increasing number of complex indictments on the charge-sheet.
The definitions ensured the UK’s corrections system regarded Assange as a high risk and dangerous prisoner hostile to the UK’s special-relationship partner, the USA.
The tactic is well used by governments and states around the world. But in this case it appears beyond cold and calculated. As the US applied a figurative legal-ligature around the neck of Julian Assange it knew his circumstances — that he was imprisoned, isolated, in solitary confinement, on a suicide watch, handled by prison guards under a repetitive high security risk protocol. It knew the psychological impact was compounding, causing legal observers, his lawyers, his supporters — even the judge overseeing the extradition proceedings — to fear that the wall before Assange of ongoing litigation, compounded with the potential for extradition and possible life imprisonment, would overwhelm him.
Let’s detail reality here. In real terms, being on suicide-watch as a high security risk prisoner, meant every time Assange left his cell for any reason (including when meeting his lawyers), on return he would be stripped, cavity searched (which includes being forced to squat while his rectum is digitally searched, and a mouth and throat search).
This was a similar security search protocol that was used against Ahmed Zaoui while he was held at New Zealand’s Paremoremo maximum security prison. At that time Zaoui was regarded as a security risk to New Zealand. He was of course later found to be a man of peace and given his liberty. Sometimes things are not what they initially seem.
In the UK, for Assange the monotonous grind of total solitude and indignity ticked on. In the US in March 2018, Mike Pompeo was set to be promoted. He received the then US President Donald Trump’s nomination to replace Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State. The US Senate confirmed Pompeo’s nomination and he was sworn in on 26 April 2018.
Pompeo quickly became one of Trump’s most trusted and powerful White House insiders. As Secretary of State, Pompeo toured the globe’s foreign affairs circuit asserting the Trump Administration’s position on governments throughout the world. As such, Pompeo was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful men.
Looking back, Pompeo wasn’t the first high ranking US official to regard Assange as an enemy of the state. The Edward Snowden leaks of 2014 revealed that the US government had in 2010 added Assange to its “Manhunting Timeline” — which is an annual list of individuals with a “capture or kill” designation.
This designation came during the early stages of the Obama Administration years. However, US investigations into Wikileaks then suggested Assange had not acted in a way that excluded him from being defined as a journalist and therefore it was likely Assange, if tried under US law, would be provided protections under the First Amendment constitutional clauses.
But when Pompeo advanced toward prominence, Obama was gone. And under Donald Trump, the US appeared to ignore such constitutional rocks in the road. Trump had his own beef with the US Fourth Estate, and the conditions for respecting First Amendment privilege had deteriorated.
Did Trump stop the CIA kidnap or kill plan?
Former US President Donald Trump speaking to NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Image: ER
Perhaps we understand the Trump Administration’s mindset more now in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection where supporters of Trump stormed the US House of Representatives seeking to overturn the election result and reinstate Trump as President. Throughout much of that destructive day, Trump reportedly remained at the White House while the mob erected a gallows and sought out Vice-President Mike Pence. The mob’s reason? Because Pence had begun the process of certifying electoral college writs, an essential step toward swearing in as President the newly elected Joe Biden.
It may reasonably be argued that Trump and some members of his Administration displayed a disregard for elements of the US Constitution. But, it must also be said, that Trump had at times displayed an empathy for Julian Assange’s situation.
This week The Hill reported on Trump’s view of Assange through an interview with the former president’s national security advisor, Keith Kellogg (who is also a retired US Army Lieutenant General.
Kellogg told The Hill: “He (Trump) looked at him (Assange) as someone who had been treated unfairly. And he kind of related him to himself … He said there’s an unfairness there and I want to address that.”
Kellogg added that Trump saw similarities between Assange and himself in that Trump would not back down in the face of media attacks: “I think he kind of saw that with Julian in the same way, like ‘ok, this guy’s not backing down’.” (The Hill)
Kellogg’s account seems incongruous to what we now know. On 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.
But more on the detail of that below. First, let’s look at a confusing picture of how former President Trump’s words do not meet his Administration’s actions.
We know that “someone” in the Trump Administration put a halt to the CIA’s kill or capture plan. We just do not know whether Trump commanded its cessation, or whether Pompeo or Trump’s attorney-general/s operated outside the former president’s orbit. But we do know the US Justice Department pursued Assange through an intensifying relentless application of indictments of increasing severity and complexity. If it is an MO, then it is reasonable to suggest the legal wall of indictments and the CIA’s plan to kill or capture were potentially one of the same.
Which segues back to the details of the US case against Assange.
The US Justice Department vs Assange In March 2019, The Washington Post reported that US Whistleblower Chelsea Manning had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the investigation of Julian Assange. The Post correctly suggested that the US Justice Department appeared interested in pursuing Wikileaks before a statute of limitations ran out.
Washington Post reported: “Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the Justice Department likely indicted Assange last year to stay within the 10-year statute of limitations on unlawful possession or publication of national defense information, and is now working to add charges.” (Washington Post)
Then, On April 11 2019, after high-level bilateral meetings between the US and Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Government revoked Assange’s asylum. The UK’s Metropolitan Police were invited into Ecuador’s London embassy and Assange was arrested.
Once Assange was in custody (pending the outcome of a court ruling of what eventually became a 50 week sentence for breaching bail) the United States made its move. On 11 April 2019 (the same day Ecuador evicted him) US prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange referring back to information that Wikileaks had released in stages from 18 February 2010 onwards. (US Justice Department)
Collateral Murder, the video that Wikileaks published that turned public opinion against the US-led occupation of Iraq.
This video, known as the collateral murder video, was among the Wikileaks release. The video is of US military personnel killing what they initially thought were Iraqi insurgents. It also displays an apparent indifference by US personnel when, shortly after, it was revealed by ground troops that there were civilians killed, including women and children (and also what were later found to be journalists). The leaked video exposed the United States to potential allegations of war crimes.
The video, and the accompanying dossier of US classified documents, shocked the world and revealed what had been covered up by US secrecy. The information that was leaked by then US Military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, and published by Wikileaks and provided to a select group of the world’s most prominent media, was arguably a tipping point for public sentiment regarding the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was, in the <2010 decade, on a par with revelations of abuses of detainees by US personnel at Abu Ghraib prison.
In a release to the US press, the Justice Department’s office of international affairs stated: “According to court documents unsealed today, the charge relates to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
It connected to how Wikileaks had acquired documents from US whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The leak contained 750,000 documents defined as “classified, or unclassified but sensitive” military and diplomatic documents. The documents included video. The sum of the leaks detailed what were regarded generally as atrocities committed by American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The leaked material was also published by The New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian. In May 2010, Manning was identified then charged with espionage and sentenced to 35 years in a US military prison. Later, in January 2017, just three days before leaving office, US President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.
On 23 May 2019, the US Justice Department issued a statement confirming Assange had been further charged in an 18-count superseding indictment that alleged violation of the Espionage Act 1917. It specifically alleged (among other charges) that Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning in late 2009 and that: “… Assange and WikiLeaks actively solicited United States classified information, including by publishing a list of ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ that sought, among other things, classified documents. Manning responded to Assange’s solicitations by using access granted to her as an intelligence analyst to search for United States classified documents, and provided to Assange and WikiLeaks databases containing approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, 400,000 Iraq war-related significant activities reports, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, and 250,000 US Department of State cables.” (US Justice Department)
The superseding indictment added: “Many of these documents were classified at the Secret level.”
It’s also important to note, a superseding indictment, in this context carries heavy weight. It isn’t merely a charge lodged by an investigative wing of government, but issued by a US grand jury.
The Washington Post, The New York Times, and media freedom organisations criticised the US government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act. Image: ER screenshot
The May 2019 superseding indictments ignited a stern rebuttal from powerful media institutions.
The Washington Postand The New York Times, as well as press freedom organisations, criticised the government’s decision to charge Assange under the Espionage Act, characterising it as an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of the press. On 4 January 2021, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled against the US request to extradite him and stated that doing so would be “oppressive” given his mental health. On 6 January 2021, Assange was denied bail, pending an appeal by the United States. (Wikipedia.org)
In normal times an assault on the US First Amendment through a clever legal move would destroy a presidency. But these were not normal times.
Ultimately, the powerful US Fourth Estate fraternity failed to ward off the Trump Administration’s men. Trump himself was by this time already hurling attacks on the credibility and purpose of the United States media. And, he tapped in to a constituency that distrusted what it heard from journalists.
Then on 24 June 2020, the US Justice Department delivered more charges against Assange, this time with an additional superseding indictment that included allegations he conspired with “Anonymous” affiliated hackers: “In 2010, Assange gained unauthorised access to a government computer system of a NATO country. In 2012, Assange communicated directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who by then was cooperating with the FBI), and provided a list of targets for LulzSec to hack.” (US Justice Department)
As the Trump presidency ran out of steam, and arguably created its own attacks on the US national interest, Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden won the election and became the 46th President of the United States.
Why Assange was imprisoned in the UK
Julian Assange on the first day of extradition proceedings in 2020. Image: Indymedia Ireland.
Julian Assange was tried before the UK courts and convicted for breaching the Bail Act. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison. He was expected to have been released after five to six months, but due to the US extradition proceedings and appeal he was held indefinitely.
The initial bail conditions (of which Assange was found to have breached) were set resulting from an alleged sexual violence allegation made in Sweden in 2010. Assange had denied the allegations, and feared the case was designed to relocate him to Sweden and then onto the US via a legal extradition manoeuvre — hence this is why he sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange was never actually charged by Swedish authorities nor their UK counterparts, but rather the initial bail breach related to a move to extradite him to Sweden.
Also, as a side-note: in November 2019, Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation into allegations of sexual violence crime. The BBC reported that Swedish authorities dropped the case as it had: “Weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.”
Meanwhile, Assange was imprisoned at London’s Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he was incarcerated indefinitely pending the outcome of US extradition proceedings.
There is an irony that in January 2021, the week Assange was denied bail pending the outcome of the US-lodged appeal, back in the US a mob loyal to Trump attempted a coup d’etat against the US constitution.
Out with Trump, in with Biden On 20 January 2021, Joe Biden was sworn in as US President. Around the world a palpable mood of change was anticipated. It’s fair to say those involved or observing the Assange case were hopeful the United States under Joe Biden’s presidency would withdraw the initial charges and superseding indictments.
But, that was not to be.
Then on 26 September 2021, a Yahoo News media investigation delivered a bombshell. It revealed how the CIA had planned to kidnap or kill Assange.
The investigation’s timeline revealed a plan was developed in 2017 during Pompeo’s tenure at the CIA and considered numerous scenarios where Assange could be liquidated while he resided at the Ecuadorian Embassy. The investigation was backed by “more than 30 US official sources”. (Yahoo News)
The media investigation stated: “… the CIA was enraged by WikiLeaks’ publication in 2017 of thousands of documents detailing the agency’s hacking and covert surveillance techniques, known as the Vault 7 leak.”
It added that Pompeo: “was determined to take revenge on Assange after the (Vault 7) leak.”
Apparently, the CIA believed Russian agents were planning to remove Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy and “smuggle” him to Russia: “Among the possible scenarios to prevent a getaway were engaging in a gun battle with Russian agents on the streets of London and ramming the car that Assange would be smuggled in.”
It appears a wise-head in the Trump Administration ordered a halt to the CIA plan due to legal concerns. Officials cited in the investigation suggested there were: “Concerns that a kidnapping would derail US attempts to prosecute Assange.”
It would also be reasonable to suggest that a prosecution would be difficult should Assange be dead.
As the US extradition appeal loomed, Julian Assange’s US-based lawyer Barry Pollack reportedly said: “My hope and expectation is that the UK courts will consider this information (the CIA plot) and it will further bolster its decision not to extradite to the US.”
Assange’s partner Stella Morris, on the eve of the US extradition appeal proceedings also said reports of the CIA’s plan “was a game-changer” in his fight against extradition from Britain to the United States. (Reuters)
Greg Barnes, special council and Australian human rights lawyer and advocate spoke this week to a New Zealand panel (A4A via the internet): “Now we know that the CIA intended effectively to murder Assange. For an Australian citizen to be put in that position by Australia’s number one ally is intolerable. And I think in the minds of most Australians the view is that the Australian Government ought to intervene in this particular case and ensure the safety of one of its citizens.”
Barnes added that the Assange case is now a human rights case: “I can tell you that the rigours of the Anglo-American prison complex which we have here in Australia and in which Julian is facing at Belmarsh (prison in London) are such that very few people survive that system without having severe mental and physical pain and suffering for the rest of their lives.
“This should not be happening to an Australian citizen, whose only crime, and I put quotes around the word crime, has been to reveal the war crimes of the United States and its allies.” (A4A YouTube)
The respected journalist advocacy organisation Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF), this week called for the US case against Assange to be closed and for Assange to be “immediately released”. (Reporters Without Borders)
RSF added: “During the two-day hearing, the US government will argue against the 4 January decision issued by District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, ruling against Assange’s extradition to the US on mental health grounds. The US will be permitted to argue on five specific grounds, following the High Court’s decision to widen the scope of the appeal during the 11 August preliminary hearing. An immediate decision is not expected at the conclusion of the 27-28 October hearing, but will likely follow in writing several weeks later.”
RSF concluded: “If Assange is extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in prison on the 18 counts outlined in the superseding indictment… (If convicted) Assange would be the first publisher pursued under the US Espionage Act, which lacks a public interest defence.”
RSF recently joined a coalition of 25 press freedom, civil liberties and international human rights organisations in calling again on the US Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange.
Beyond Belmarsh Prison – human rights and asylum options
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg speaking to an online panel organised by New Zealand’s A4A group. Image: ER
There remains a logical and considered question as to what will become of Julian Assange should his legal team successfully defend moves of extradition to the United States.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden has found relative safety living inside the Russian Federation. But beyond Russia there are few safe-haven options available to Julian Assange.
This week a group called A4A (Aotearoa for Assange) coordinated an online panel of human rights advocates and whistleblowers to consider whether New Zealand should become involved.
It was a serious move. The panel included the United States’ highly respected Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. (Pentagon Papers, Wikipedia)
Daniel Ellsberg told the panel: “A trial under (the Espionage Act) cannot be a fair trial as there is ‘no appeal to motives, impact or purposes’.”
“A trial under the Espionage Act could not permit that person to tell the jury why they did what they did,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “It is shameful that President Biden has gone in the footsteps of President Trump. It is shameful for President Biden to have continued that appeal.
“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call the National Defence or National Security…”
It’s a valid point for those that work within the sphere of Fourth Estate public interest journalism. While in New Zealand, there are rudimentary whistleblower protections, they fail to protect or ensure anonymity. For journalists, if a judge orders a journalist to reveal her or his source(s), then the journalist must consider breaching the code of ethics required from the profession, or acting in contempt of court.
In the latter case, a judge can, in New Zealand, order the journalist to be held in custody for contempt, and it should be pointed out there is no time limit of incarceration. Defamation law is equally as draconian. In New Zealand (unlike the United States) a journalist accused of defamation shoulders the burden of proof — to prove a defamation was not committed.
The chill factor (a reference to pressures that cause journalists to abandon deep and meaningful reportage) is real.
Daniel Ellsberg knows what this means. And he fears, that if the US wins its appeal against Assange, it will erode the Fourth Estate from reporting on what goes on behind the scenes with governments: “… there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression… A great deal rides (on this case) on the possibility of freedom.”
Former NZ Prime Minister and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme Helen Clark. Image: ER
His comments connect remarkably with those of former New Zealand prime minister, and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark.
In a previous online discussion, Clark was asked what she thought of Julian Assange’s case. In a considered reply she said: “You do wonder when the hatchet can be buried with Assange, and not buried in his head by the way.
“I do think that information that’s been disclosed by whistleblowers down the ages has been very important in broader publics getting to know what is really going on behind the scenes.
“And, should people pay this kind of price for that? I don’t think so. I felt that Chelsea Manning for example was really unduly repressed.
“The real issue is: the activities they were exposing and not the actions of their exposure,” Helen Clark said.
The US appeals case this week is not litigating the merits of its indictments. But rather it has attempted to mitigate the reasons Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied extradition in January 2021. The US legal team has suggested to the UK court that Assange’s human rights issues could be minimised should he face trial in his native Australia, that if found guilty that he could serve out his sentence there. It gave, however, no assurances that this would occur.
On the eve of the appeal, and appearing before the A4A online panel was Dr Deepa Govindarajan Driver.
Dr Driver is an academic with the University of Reading (UK) and a legal observer very familiar with the Assange case. The degree of human rights abuses against Assange disturb her.
Dr Driver detailed what she had observed: “Julian Assange was served the second superseding indictment on the first day of trial. When he took his papers with him, back to the prison, his privileged papers were taken from him. He was handcuffed, cavity searched, stripped naked on a daily basis. [This is] a highly intelligent human being who we already know is on the Autism Spectrum. To be put through the indignities and arbitrariness of the process which is consistently working in a way that doesn’t stand with normal process…
“For somebody who has gone through all of this for a number of years, it has its psychological impact. But it is not just psychological, the physical effects of torture are pretty severe including the internal damage that he has.”
She added: “We expect the high court will recognise the kind of serious gross breaches of Julian’s basic rights and the inability for him to have a fair trial in the UK or in the US and that this case will be dismissed immediately.”
On the merits of whistleblowers, Dr Driver said: “You can see through the Vault 7 leaks how much the state knows about what is going on in your daily lives… As an observer in court I see how he (Julian Assange) is being tortured on a day to day basis. His privileged conversations with his lawyers were spied on.”
Dr Driver said the Swedish allegations were never backed up with charges. In fact the allegations were dropped due to time and insufficient evidence.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, concluded after his investigation of the Swedish allegations that Assange was never given the opportunity to put his side of the case.
Dr Driver said: “In any situation where there is violence against women, and I say this as a survivor myself, people are meant to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And, this new trend which is accusation-equal-to-guilt is a bad trend because it undermines the cause of women, and it prevents women from getting justice — just as it happened in Sweden because indeed nobody will ever know what happened between Julian and those women other than the two parties there.”
A crime left undefended or a case of weaponising violence against women? Dr Deepa Driver said: “If cases like this are not brought to court, then neither the women nor those accused like Julian get justice. And it is Lisa Longstaff at Women Against Rape who has said time and again, ‘this is the state weaponising women in order to achieve its own ends and hide its own war crimes’. And this is what Britain and America have done in weaponising the case in Sweden, because Sweden was always about extraditing Julian (Assange) to America.”
She suggested Assange’s situation was a human rights case where he was the victim. The view has validity.
United Nations Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer. Image: ER
The United Nations’ special rapporteur Nils Melzer issued a statement on 5 January 2021 welcoming the UK judge’s ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States (a ruling that this week was under appeal).
Melzer went on: “This ruling confirms my own assessment that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to conditions of detention, which are widely recognised to amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Melzer said the judgement set an “alarming precedent effectively denying investigative journalists the protection of press freedom and paving the way for their prosecution under charges of espionage”.
“I am gravely concerned that the judgement confirms the entire, very dangerous rationale underlying the US indictment, which effectively amounts to criminalizing national security journalism,” Melzer said.
In summary Melzer said: “The judgement fails to recognise that Mr Assange’s deplorable state of health is the direct consequence of a decade of deliberate and systematic violation of his most fundamental human rights by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ecuador.”
He added: “The failure of the judgment to denounce and redress the persecution and torture of Mr Assange, leaves fully intact the intended intimidating effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide who may be tempted to publish secret evidence for war crimes, corruption and other government misconduct”. (UNCHR)
A call for New Zealand to provide asylum This week, US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg applauded New Zealand’s independent global identity. And, he called for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to provide an asylum solution should Julian Assange be released.
Dr Ellsberg’s call was supported by Matt Robson, a former cabinet minister in Helen Clark’s Labour-Alliance government and whom currently practices immigration law in Auckland.
Matt Robson said: “We can support this brave publisher and journalist who has committed the same crime, in inverted commas, as Daniel Ellsberg — to tell the truth as a good honest journalist should do. Our letter to our (New Zealand) government is a plea to do the right thing. To say directly on the line that is available, to (US) President Biden, to free Julian Assange.”
Australian-based lawyer Greg Barnes said: “New Zealand plays a prominent and important role in the Asia-Pacific region and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the New Zealand government could offer Julian Assange what Australia appears incapable of doing, and that is safety for himself and his family.”
So why New Zealand?
Daniel Ellsberg said: “There are many countries that would have been supportive of Assange, none of whom wanted to get into trouble with the United States of America. Of all the countries in the world I think you can pick out New Zealand that has dared to do that in the past. I remember the issue over whether they would allow American warships into New Zealand harbours.
“Julian Assange should not be on trial,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “And given he is indicted, he should not be extradited. It is extremely important, especially to journalists.
“To allow this to go ahead is to put a target, a bull’s eye, on the back of every journalist in the world who might consider doing real investigative journalism of what we call national security. It’s to assure every journalist that he or she as well as your sources can be put in prison, kidnapped if necessary to the US.
“That is going to chill (journalists) to a degree that there will be more Vietnams, more Iraqs, more acts of aggression such as we have just seen. The world cannot afford that. A great deal rides on the policy matters on the possibility of freedom,” so said Daniel Ellsberg — the US whistleblower who blew the lid off atrocities that were committed in Vietnam.
Conclusion Of course there are always complications, such as executive government leaders involving themselves in judicial matters. But sometimes a leader does the right thing, simply because it is the right thing to do — as Helen Clark did early on in her prime ministership when she extended an olive branch to people fleeing tyranny onboard a ship called the Tampa, which was under-threat of sinking off the coast of Australia. Helen Clark brought the Tampa refugees home to a new place called Aotearoa New Zealand, and we have been better off as a nation because of it.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
How strange that an Australian should have emerged as the face of Samoa in the Pandora Papers leak.
Accountant Graeme Briggs’ role in establishing Samoa’s reputation as an international tax haven – a sunny place for shady people – is without parallel.
His Asiaciti group advised rich people worldwide about how to minimise their tax burdens and he put Samoa on the map for these clients, in favour of traditional places such as the Canary and British Virgin Islands.
Samoa had a lot going for it, clients were told, including secret trusts and an effective tax rate for offshore companies of zero.
For his services to raising Samoa’s offshore profile, the government made Briggs Honorary Consul to Singapore for 25 years.
But the latest release of data from the International Consortium of International Journalists (ICIJ) includes thousands of files from Asiaciti and shows just how he managed to help already wealthy bank executives and businessmen pay nothing to their governments.
He denies any legal wrongdoing – and he is most likely right.
Tax minimisation is not illegal, nor is doing business internationally.
Many of the names you are reading in connection to the investigation – the King of Jordan, Vldimir Putin, former British PM Tony Blair – will face no consequences. Their accountants and lawyers will have made perfectly sure of that.
The complexity of tax codes in wealthy countries make complex maneouvres such as blind and investment trusts, shell companies and other tax evasion moves possible.
Why haven’t more Samoans been exposed on this list?
It’s a good question with some simple answers. Living in a tax haven only requires an overseas business partner to acquire the benefits of offshore banking. But more practically, as Samoa is officially listed as a tax haven by bodies like the European Union every business in the country, down to innocent non-profits are flagged in the ICIJ’s system; Australians who do their banking in Samoa, by contrast, stick out like sore thumbs.
That places a huge burden on Samoan journalists in identifying the financial maneouvres of those in the top one percent.
This raises questions about the government’s goose that laid the golden egg: the Samoan International Finance Authority (SIFA) – an agency which assures us it is cleaning its act up.
Ads currently on the internet offer users the ability to establish an offshore company in Samoa virtually instantly for prices as low as US$900.
Last fiscal year the authority recorded a profit of $23 million. Ten years ago the authority was bringing in close to $20 million a year. It is not a soaring growth industry.
At what cost do we price our reputation and dignity?
We doubtlessly have a tax code that has in-built favourability for tax evasion, precisely because it appears to have been designed, at least in part by Briggs himself.
Two leaked emails reported on by Australia’s public broadcaster tell the story of Briggs’ pivotal role in tax policy. One came from a senior public servant in Samoa, who described Briggs as the “grandfather” of Samoa’s offshore Industry.
In another, an Asiaciti employee brags that Briggs was involved in “setting up the structure and legislation of the Samoa offshore finance centre”.
That second email may have been a bit of hyperbole but it is hardly stretching the imagination to think that his influence was substantial, if not total.
Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa’s call for a review of the entire tax code is highly welcome.
But before we get too harsh on ourselves, we must ask who are the biggest tax minimisers and money launderers in the world and from which countries do they operate?
The most significant corporate tax crimes take place in countries such as America and aided by big banks and the world’s “big four” accountancy firms registered in England and Holland.
They have helped clients avoid tax for years. Banks and accountants are safe in the knowledge that a slap on the wrist awaits them if caught.
Nobody’s hands are clean. But other countries’ rule-breaking far outweighs our island nation’s because of its volume and sheer disregard for the law.
In the last year alone, many of Credit Suisse’s executives were criminally charged for accepting proceedings of drug dealing while the Spanish Banco Santander was fined €5.6 billion for failing to investigate the source of clients’ wealth.
Perhaps the most infamous case involved American firm Goldman Sachs agreeing to wholesale defraud the people of Malaysia by creating a secret fraudulent future fund.
Goldman helped the government steal US$1.2 billion which was spent on private planes, dozens of crocodile skin Hermes handbags, apartments in New York, London and Paris and even financing the film The Wolf of Wall Street before it was exposed.
These scams are nothing compared to the money brought in by SIFA. Like climate change the problem is global but Samoa has contributed to only a tiny fraction of it and has received undue attention for doing so.
Nonetheless we believe that we should cease our reputation as a go-to country for tax evasion as soon as possible because it is the right thing to do.
But we should also diplomatically remind our development partners that they are saying one thing and doing another on tax evasion.
It would take a comparatively tiny contribution of less than US$10 million to replace SIFA’s profits and go toward funding a programme to develop technical expertise that would create a new, legitimate financial services industry long into the future.
The Samoa Observer editorial on 8 October 2021. Republished with permission.
Rappler chief executive Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 in an unprecedented recognition of journalism’s role in today’s world.
They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”, reports Rappler.
Ressa has been the target of attacks for her media organisation’s critical coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration and a key leader in the global fight against disinformation.
Ressa is the first Filipino to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the past, two Filipinos were part of international teams that won the Nobel as a group.
Franz Ontal was one of the officers of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that won the prize in 2013, while former Ateneo de Manila University president Father Jett Villarin was part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won in 2007 together with former US Vice-President Al Gore.
The award-giving body also acknowledged Muratov, one of the founders and the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaja Gazeta, for his decades of defending “freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions”.
Combating ‘troll factories’
Announcing the award today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said the newspaper was “the most independent newspaper in Russia,” publishing critical articles on “corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud and ‘troll factories,’ to the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia”.
Rappler’s Maria Ressa and Russia’s Dmitry Muratov … they have won the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression”. Montage: Rappler
He is the first Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize since Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev – who himself helped set up Novaya Gazeta with the money he received from winning the award in 1990.
“Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda,” the committee said in a press release.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee is convinced that freedom of expression and freedom of information help to ensure an informed public. These rights are crucial prerequisites for democracy and protect against war and conflict.
“The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is intended to underscore the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights.”
Ressa and Muratov are the latest journalists to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the world’s most prestigious political accolade.
In February, Norwegian labour leader and parliamentary representative Jonas Gahr Støre nominated Ressa, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists for the 2021 Prize.
Symbol for thousands of journalists
“She is thus both a symbol and a representative of thousands of journalists around the world. The nomination fulfills key aspects of what is emphasized as peace-promoting in Alfred Nobel’s will.
“A free and independent press can inform about and help to limit and stop a development that leads to armed conflict and war,” Støre said in his nomination.
Skei Grande, former leader of Norway’s Liberal Party, also nominated the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Rappler is one of the two verified signatories of IFCN’s Code of Principles in the Philippines – the other being Vera Files.
Here is Rappler’s statement on Friday’s announcement:
“Rappler is honoured – and astounded – by the Nobel Peace Prize Award given to our CEO Maria Ressa. It could not have come at a better time – a time when journalists and the truth are being attacked and undermined.
“We thank the Nobel for recognising all journalists both in the Philippines and in the world who continue to shine the light even in the darkest and toughest hours.
“Thank you to everyone who has been part of the daily struggle to uphold the truth and who continues to hold the line with us. Congratulations, Maria!”
Under attack The attacks against Ressa and Rappler have reached the world stage. When Duterte assumed office in 2016 and launched his signature bloody drug war, Rappler cast a harsh light on the extrajudicial killings the President himself encouraged.
In June 2020, Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. were convicted of cyber libel – a judgment Rappler regards as a failure of justice and democracy.
Ressa and Santos are out on bail, and have filed their appeal with the Court of Appeals.
This is one of at least seven active cases pending in court against Rappler as of August 10, 2021.
An award-winning documentary A Thousand Cuts, released in 2020 by Filipino-American filmmaker Ramona Diaz, outlines Rappler’s journey and the fight for press freedom in the country.
Before founding Rappler, she focused on investigating terrorism in Southeast Asia as she reported for CNN’s Manila and Jakarta bureaus.
A Rappler report with news agency coverage. Republished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Senior EMTV journalist and bureau chief Scott Waide in Papua New Guinea’s second city Lae this week called time on his inspirational 25-year relationship with the television channel. He is taking on other challenges, like Lekmak, and this was his social media message of thanks to supporters.
I didn’t quite realise how many people I touched positively through this work. It has been an emotional week talking to and encouraging, especially younger staff in Lae, Port Moresby, and the outer bureaus.
This transition has been harder on them. Personal messages have been overwhelming. They’ve come both from people I know and total strangers.
It has been a 25-year association with EMTV. Even with short absences, the relationship has always been there.
However, after two and a half decades and a third stint lasting almost 10 years, my contract has ended and I have decided to move on.
There have been a lot of questions and suggestions that I will or should contest in 2022.
The answer is NO. I have no interest in politics.
One of my primary goals was to give young people the opportunity to excel and to guide them as much as possible so that a new generation of journalists take on the challenges.
Creating opportunities
I spent a lot of time between Unitech and Divine Word University (DWU) talking to as many students as possible and creating opportunities – opportunities many of us didn’t have back then.
We live in two worlds – one, urban and convenient and the other rural and difficult where men women and children die every day.
There’s still a lot of work to be done. My hope is to see younger people go out to rural PNG and tell our people’s stories. Because if we don’t, they will only see government presence during election time and continue to suffer.
We must celebrate the good in our country. We must celebrate our people, culture and our way of life. We must appreciate our knowledge keepers, our elders and our children.
Papua New Guinea is a great country with huge opportunities.
For EMTV, it is a Papua New Guinean institution. It is a custodian of nearly 40 years of history. It is not just a cash cow for shareholders.
My appeal to the government is to care for this institution by choosing good people for the board and good organisational heads that understand this country and care about it.
Good leadership vital
Without good leadership, staff will suffer, good people will leave and the institution will be destroyed.
I want to thank my wife — Annette — and my children. They sacrificed and suffered a lot because I was absent when I was needed most.
While the job, from the outside, looked glamorous. It wasn’t. It takes an incredibly strong woman to live through the challenges.
I owe an enormous amount of gratitude to my brothers and sisters and my parents for their understanding.
Thank you to John Eggins, Sincha Dimara, Titi Gabi, Father Zdzislaw Mlak, Father Jan Czuba, Tukaha Mua and Bhanu Sud who gave me the opportunities. If it weren’t for these seven people, a lot of us would not have come this far.
More than 900 individuals and companies linked to the Philippines have figured in millions of files on offshore accounts leaked from finance providers, and which a broad group of journalists from 117 countries recently investigated.
An extremely small number of these accounts are tied to big businesses with legitimate sources, and whose reasons for moving and keeping their wealth overseas may be indicative of how the Philippine financial system has been slow on reforms.
The rest of the Philippine-linked accounts are mysterious at the very least.
Some individuals, who are either previously unheard of in elite circles or never found in legitimate databases, turned out to be the beneficiaries of multiple accounts. The purpose of many accounts could not be ascertained.
On a global scale, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – leading 140 media outlets in 117 countries in this latest investigation – found that fugitives, con artists, murderers, and world leaders used offshore accounts to hide wealth and buy properties.
Details were scant to be able to identify the purpose of 259 offshore companies, while at least 282 names from the list could not be linked to registered or active companies.
While Rappler and the PCIJ do not necessarily imply that illegal transactions were done through these companies of unknown individuals, we raise questions on the purposes of keeping these offshore.
Why go offshore? It is legal for Filipinos to set up offshore accounts. These companies, however, operate in various shades of gray areas that are worthy of scrutiny from regulators.
A seasoned corporate lawyer who has wealthy clients acknowledged in an interview with Rappler and PCIJ that companies in so-called tax havens attracted both high-net worth individuals and criminals. He asked not to be named.
For one, the British Virgin Islands is an established favourable taxing jurisdiction. While the Philippines has recent laws which reduced estate and income taxes, the British Virgin Islands still has significantly lower rates.
“We have this client, she’s a matriarch, she owns shares of high value. Now, her concern is that she does not want to burden her children and grandchildren with taxes related to inheritance,” the lawyer explained.
“I think the tax could reach P30 million (NZ$900,000). What if you’re rich but not liquid? Where will you get that money just to inherit the shares?
“So I advised her to establish a trust, because, when those shares go into the trust, the trust will hold the shares for the benefit of your children…and effectively cut what could have been perpetual taxes once it goes down to the grandchildren and their children. That saves a lot of money.”
For another, the territory is very lenient when it comes to disclosure of ownership of companies.
‘Layering’ wealth
BVI companies can help in “layering” one’s wealth so as not to attract “too much” attention.
The lawyer, however, admitted that these functions operate within gray areas that corrupt individuals could abuse.
“It’s not wrong per se, but, like all other things, it can be used for bad purposes. For example, you’re a politician who got kick-backs, then you have lodged your funds here in the Philippines, it’s quite possible that the bank secrecy can be lifted during a litigation.
“But if you lodge it abroad, it would mean that the court may have to ask for cooperation from that country, that company or bank – that’s a lot of steps,” the lawyer said.
We reached out to the business executives we were able to identify on the list. They said that their offshore companies were either created for business deals or for cost and tax efficiency. Some remained dormant and were not used at all.
Moreover, corporate lawyers we spoke to pointed out that the rich have every reason to move their money out, as the Philippines’ laws “unnecessarily” taxed wealth several times over.
“While there have been reforms, the tax laws need to be improved further,” a corporate lawyer said.
Most importantly, moving assets abroad also provided some security for their legally-acquired wealth.
What’s fishy, what’s not
With the mix of the good and the bad operating within the BVI system, how does one tell which account holds dirty money?
“There really is no clear way,” said another corporate lawyer, who also wanted to remain anonymous so as not to “alarm” his high-profile clients.
“I have a client whose child was almost kidnapped because of their perceived wealth. Setting up an offshore account hides their money in a legitimate way from people who have bad intentions, while also keeping it accessible whenever they need the liquidity,” the second lawyer said.
Former Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares shared this view, saying that prominent names on the list may “not be an issue,” as these individuals could easily justify their wealth.
“But if a name does not come up on Google, but has lots of offshore accounts,” the second lawyer said, “I simply ask: What are you doing there?”
Moreover, the secrecy of the offshore system makes it impossible to distinguish which are tied to legitimate sources and which come from criminal activities.
ICIJ also pointed out that even legal transactions have to also be put into question. For instance, profits of businesses from high-tax countries are transferred to companies that only exist on paper in tax havens.
Does this put the host country like the Philippines at a disadvantage? Or are there gaps needed to be plugged in such countries and territories?
Unclear purposes
After careful investigation, Rappler and PCIJ found that the purpose of the majority of the offshore companies linked to Filipinos on the Pandora Papers are unclear.
The Philippines is not a unique case. According to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at least $13.3 trillion is held offshore.
Who’s who on the list?
The tree map here shows that most of the individuals on the list linked to the Philippines are unknown or have scant publicly available records.
The chart was made by carefully checking each name on search engines and databases and matching them with a company. These companies are then categorised per industry.
While the majority of the companies can’t be traced to prominent Filipino personalities or firms, we were able to identify 36 offshore companies linked to conglomerates and mall operators, some of which have responded to our queries.
The names of the Sy siblings of SM Investments Corporation, for instance, showed up on the Commence list and are linked to 10 offshore companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Their companies were created sometime between 2002 and 2015.
The Gaisano family, which owns malls and retail outlets mostly in the Visayas and Mindanao, are linked to 12 companies.
The Commence list also indicated the Gatchalian family of the Wellex Group owning 10 BVI companies.
The documents were able to identify 156 Filipinos, 21 Chinese, and 9 Britons.
But the nationalities of 160 other names on the list cannot be ascertained. Almost all of these names, however, are Filipino and Chinese-sounding.
The Philippines has a long way to go.
While leaks via the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers of 2017 have prompted legislators to follow the rest of the world in lifting the bank secrecy law, the Philippines continues to keep the lid on.
CONTRIBUTORS TO THE ‘PANDORA PAPERS’ PROJECT: Carmela Fonbuena, Miriam Grace A. Go, Karol Ilagan, Elyssa Lopez, Pauline Macaraeg, Ralf Rivas, Felipe Salvosa
Reported in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Republished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
An Auckland property developer is involved in a company linked to carrying out deforestation in Indonesian-controlled Papua, where virgin rainforest is being bulldozed to grow palm oil plantations. Newsroom Investigates.
From above, the satellite image shows two insignificant dark-coloured shapes, like a couple of missing puzzle pieces in a flat sea of green. But on the ground, they represent devastation.
This innocuous picture illustrates the beginning of what is earmarked to become the world’s largest palm oil plantation, replacing one of the last remaining rainforests on earth.
Two years ago, the Tanah Merah megaproject began clearing just 230 hectares in Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of New Guinea (the other half of the island is Papua New Guinea).
That relatively small land area was just a warning of what is predicted to come: 270,000 hectares have been allocated to the project, an area 10 times the size of Auckland’s Waitakere Ranges.
After halting work due to alleged non-payment of staff salaries, in March this year the bulldozers arrived again and forest clearing resumed. This can be seen using near-real time satellite imagery on Nusantara-Atlas.org – the newly felled sections of rainforest are in pink.
The project is divided into seven concessions — parcels of land — of around 40,000 hectares each in Boven Digoel, a regency in Papua’s southeast.
Documents obtained by Newsroom show three of those seven concessions are controlled by a company called Digoel Agri Group, whose majority shareholder is listed as a New Zealander. (Read the full response from Digoel Agri Group here.)
Environmental experts say the Tanah Merah project is a sign of things to come and if this entire forest is razed it will be catastrophic — hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon will be released, contributing to the world’s failure to stay under two degrees Celsius of warming.
So why, when we face a climate emergency of biblical proportions, is an Auckland property developer involved in the felling of some of the world’s most diverse, intact, old-growth forest?
‘Charming’ and ‘brazen’ Neville Mahon is 61 with a soft face and a swatch of sandy hair that was once red. (See David Williams’ story looking at Mahon’s business history here)
He has an affable demeanour, and enjoys a weekly standing appointment with a group of associates at a popular Chinese restaurant in Auckland.
Neville Mahon during his meeting with Newsroom Investigates’ Melanie Reid and Bonnie Sumner. Image: Newsroom
He cuts a controversial figure in New Zealand — he doesn’t do social media, and the only online accounts of his existence are a bunch of articles that detail court cases over failed property developments and a Wikifrauds page dedicated to his involvement in the Fiji Beach Resort & Spa, which says dozens of mum and dad investors were left out of pocket in 2010.
(Mahon’s name is registered against more than 120 New Zealand companies, the bulk of which are now defunct.)
Newsroom has spoken with a number of people on the condition of anonymity who have had dealings with him. They variously describe him as “charming”, “brazen” and someone who “worries about looking like a bad guy”.
Sometime around 2015, after he had extricated himself from the Fiji Beach Resort & Spa debacle, Mahon jumped on a plane to Jakarta for business meetings with some Indonesian movers and shakers.
It was to be the beginning of a new chapter in Mahon’s life, a move away from property and into what he described to Newsroom as the “resource sector”.
Three years later, his name popped up as a majority shareholder alongside that of Indonesian political operator Ventje Rumangkang on a companies registration document under the business name Digoel Agri Group.
Rumangkang was the patriarch of a well-connected family and one of the founders of the Democratic Party in Indonesia. He died suddenly last year and his son, Jones, took his place as Digoel Agri’s managing director.
Permits to log rainforest and create palm oil plantations cannot be bought and sold, they can only be issued by local government officials. So instead they are allocated to companies.
In the case of Digoel Agri, three subsidiary companies were set up to manage three concessions as part of the Tanah Merah megaproject.
Forest clearance and palm oil plantation development by Megakarya Jaya Raya, one of the concession holders in the Tanah Merah project in Papua’s Boven Digoel Regency. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
The investigation also exposed Neville Mahon’s involvement in the project, describing him as the Rumangkang’s chief investment partner and the majority shareholder — claims he would come to dispute in a face-to-face meeting with Newsroom.
Another name that also appears on the documents is Australian man Selva Nithan Thirunavukarasu, known as Nithan Thiru.
He was a director of Gleneagles Securities, an Australian financial services firm — the very same company believed to have looked after Mahon’s money from the Fiji Resort & Spa development.
Thiru’s name also appears on the New Zealand companies documents from another property development involving Mahon, a worker accommodation complex in Queenstown that never eventuated.
The Digul River in Papua’s Boven Digoel Regency. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
The Kiwi tree defender Tanah Merah is just one of a number projects on the island involving dozens of players from around the world, including the Middle East, Korea and Malaysia, who are already turning the varied flora into monocrop forests of palm oil trees.
But a network of individuals and organisations is attempting to shine a spotlight on what’s going on in Papua to prevent what they say is an environmental and human rights calamity.
One of those is Grant Rosoman. Tall, lean and 60 years old, he looks more university professor than tree-hugger, despite dedicating his life to protecting tropical forests and their inhabitants.
Greenpeace International adviser Grant Rosoman … people had no idea their decking was coming from the destruction of people’s lives and forests. Image: Newsroom
In the late 1980s and early 1990s he worked to halt the importation of kwila coming from Indigenous communities in Malaysia, at one point chaining himself to a log at a Christchurch timber yard. His campaigning succeeded.
“We managed to drop imports down to a fifth of what they were and to raise awareness of the issue. Because people had no idea their decking was coming from the destruction of people’s lives and forests. And it’s a bit the same with Papua.”
As a senior adviser to Greenpeace International, he tells Newsroom he is shocked a fellow New Zealander is involved in this – and warns the impact of losing a forest this size during a climate crisis will be catastrophic.
The Rainbow Warrior III sailing on the Boven Digul River in Papua. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
“If we lose this forest then we don’t survive climate change. That’s how important it is for everyone.”
He says all New Zealanders should be concerned about what’s going on over there.
“This is the first time I have come across a New Zealander investing in tropical rainforest destruction.”
But, isn’t it a bit rich for someone from Aotearoa New Zealand — a country that has systematically wiped out two thirds of its native forest in favour of naked rolling landscape covered in cows and a tidal wave of urban housing — to pass judgment when another country seeks to make money from its primary resources?
“We in Aotearoa made the mistake of clearing most of our lowland forest and now there are massive very costly national and local programmes to restore the forest that has been lost. We don’t want Papua to make the same mistake, especially for the local customary communities that are so reliant on and spiritually tied to their forests. The local communities are telling us this,” says Rosoman, who adds that they instead support local enterprises that protect the forest but also generate an income, such as sago, medicinal plants and spices, and ecotourism.
“Destroying the forests of Papua for the benefit a few wealthy Indonesian elites or foreign investors like Neville Mahon is not development.”
Destruction of virgin peatland rainforest by the Tanah Merah logging and palm oil project in Papua. The photos show new road networks leading into vast areas of untouched, virgin rainforest, indicating where operations are likely to expand. Image: Greenpeace
Atlas of destruction New Guinea’s landscape is extraordinary. Mangroves and peat swamps sit alongside tropical alpine grasslands and lush forests: a recently released study in Nature journal proclaims it as “the most floristically diverse island in the world”, home to more than 13,000 species of plants.
It is the world’s largest tropical island, with 83 percent of Indonesian New Guinea supporting old-growth forest, and the third largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo.
But Indonesia, the fourth largest emitter of carbon, carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions and by far the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, is running out of arable land to grow the fruit.
Members of the Indigenous Auyu community in their ancestral forest in Boven Digoel, Papua. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
The thing about palm forests is they have a shelf life — after 25 to 30 years these vast monocrops begin to fail because the soil no longer holds up.
In the last few decades around 21 million hectares of Indonesian land has been relinquished to plantation companies. To put that in perspective, Aotearoa New Zealand’s landmass totals 26.8 million hectares.
Used in everything from biscuits and shampoo to biofuel and supplementary feed for Kiwi cows, palm oil made the Southeast Asian country $23 billion last year — and Papua is Indonesia’s final frontier for this moneymaker.
After laying waste to millions of hectares of primary forest in Borneo and Sumatra, this island is the last remaining opportunity to exploit the primary forest for timber and to grow colossal tracts of palm oil monocrops to feed the demand for the ubiquitous product.
Deforestation accounts for the bulk of Indonesia’s CO2 emissions, and this month Indonesia cancelled an agreement it had with Norway to halt deforestation in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental protection incentives.
A meeting with Mahon Mahon told Newsroom he couldn’t speak on behalf of the company, but did eventually meet us at a Newmarket café so he could address some of the allegations reported about him in overseas media.
He orders tea and agrees to let us take notes.
Mahon disputes the four main accusations: that he has a majority shareholding in Digoel Agri Group, that the company has an interest in timber, that the concession area is rainforest at all, and that the land is being used to grow oil palms.
He says the claims are all “bullshit”, and can’t figure out why anyone in New Zealand would be curious about the topic: “What the hell….it’s in Indonesia, it’s in the back end of nowhere, what is the interest here?”
When asked why he hadn’t attempted to rectify the inaccuracies before, he says: “These people are so nasty that even if you tried to correct it, you’d just get yourself into a worse mess.”
By “these people” he means reporters and organisations like Greenpeace International.
“There are people that are out there that are paid to cause that sort of trouble. I mean that’s the reality, they’ll seize on anything.”
Throughout our conversation Mahon repeatedly denies that the area the Digoel Agri concessions cover is rainforest.
“There’s no virgin rainforest in there whatsoever. That’s actually just complete and utter bullshit. That area was cleared out by Malaysians 35 years ago. I mean, it’s just a stupid allegation to start with. If it was a rainforest, I can assure you my partner and my children wouldn’t even want to walk out the door.”
A road running between rainforest and new palm oil plantations as part of the Tanah Merah project in Papua. Image: Greenpeace
We put this to Grant Rosoman, the forest protector from Greenpeace. He tells Newsroom this is “patently incorrect”, and points to satellite images, aerial photos, field visits and an assessment of timber that all show the concession area is predominantly primary forest.
French environmental scientist Dr David Gaveau, who lived in Indonesia for 15 years and has also been to the area in question, backs this up. He set up Nusantara-Atlas.org for exactly this reason.
“In April I saw that the clearing [in Boven Digoel] had continued since I first looked at it two months before. That’s the whole point of the system, to be able to demonstrate a conservation outcome. Consumers don’t want the food they eat to be causing deforestation.
“The companies have understood this and they’ve signed on these no deforestation pledges. So what we’re doing is developing a system that can verify these pledges on a near real-time basis.”
Environmental scientist Dr David Gaveau over primary forest in Boven Digoel. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
The platform works as an alert system so officials, NGOs or anyone with a computer and an internet connection can see what’s happening.
“These forests are becoming a very rare resource. And we all know they are an important part of the world’s ecosystems for earth to thrive and for humans to thrive. And so why is it still happening? Why is New Zealand even involved in this?”
‘Majority’ shareholder But just how involved really is Neville Mahon? In international reports, he is listed as a majority shareholder in Digoel Agri Group, something he strenuously denies at our meeting.
He tells Newsroom he and his family own just “seven to eight percent” of the company.
“It would be quite nice if we did own it,” he says with a laugh. “The reality is we don’t, but my family have a small shareholding,”
Instead, he says he temporarily “fronted” the company when it was first set up.
“What happened was about five or six years ago when the opportunity came up from an Indonesian family I basically sorted a deal out and then I had to pass most of it on. I just didn’t have the money to fund it. But the problem is it was my name there on day one. And so everybody seized on my name.”
Newsroom sought companies records for Digoel Agri Group from the Indonesian government via four separate sources. All documents have been vetted as legitimate and all four — one from 2018, another from 2019 and two from this year — show Mahon as a majority shareholder.
Whatever his exact beneficial shareholding, or exactly how it is configured, what our investigation can confirm is that he was forecast to receive profits from rainforest timber production into the millions this year.
Another contentious issue is the intended land use. Mahon takes a sip of his tea and leans over the table. The company’s shareholders are only interested in bare land and agriculture, not timber, he tells us.
By agriculture, does he mean palm oil plantations?
“What the Indonesian government is motivated towards is food. They’re importing something like 70 percent of their food. So our interest is to put rice, soya beans, sorghum, cattle, you know, whatever we can on it because you’re on the back door of 240 million people.”
But documents from the Indonesian government obtained by Newsroom and translated into English are clear: the concessions attached to the Digoel Agri Group subsidiary companies are expressly for logging and palm oil.
For food crops to be planted, they would need new permits to be issued.
Another palm oil concession within the Tanah Merah project. Image: Ulet Ifansasti/Greenpeace
Finally, we wanted to know about the trees. Reports indicate the timber involved in the Tanah Merah project is estimated to be worth US$6 billion, and a sawmill owned by Malaysian logging giant Shin Yang has reportedly been set up on the island.
Mahon says he has “no interest” in the wood: “We have nothing to do with the forestry at all, nothing to do with it. This is just regrowth, which hasn’t even got a lot of value because it’s not, for example, mahogany. What you’ve got to remember is I, or my shareholders, have got no interest in that side of it at all.”
Yet in a judgment issued by the High Court at Auckland in June in a bankruptcy proceedings case against Mahon, Justice Sussock writes of Mahon referring in his evidence to the possibility of security being provided at some future date “from a debt that is due to [him] from a joint venture forestry operation” and that Mahon says “there are monies due to [him] in terms of loans as well as an equity interest in the forestry operation”.
(Greenpeace and NGO Pusaka, which advocates for Indigenous communities in Indonesia, are currently investigating where the logs from the Digoel Agri Group concessions are going.)
When pressed on these issues, Mahon said the best thing we could do is to email him a list of questions and he would send them to the company’s managing director in Indonesia for a response.
So we did.
A spokesperson from Digoel Agri Group, Jones Rumangkang, wrote to Newsroom that the company has business permits to develop “less than 78,630 hectares” — two of their three concessions. (It is unknown what they plan to do with the third concession.)
He writes that they pay attention to, “the principles of sustainability through the NDPE approach in accordance with our sustainability policy.” NDPE is a palm oil industry led initiative which stands for No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation.
Rumangkang also backed up Mahon’s claim that he is a minority investor, and said the company is committed to following all relevant environmental and consent regulations, including agreement from the local Indigenous communities.
“We have obtained approval from the indigenous peoples who control the land we are working on. We also do not develop areas that are sacred and have local cultural values as well as hunting areas and areas that are a source of staple food such as sago forests.”
‘What will be the fate of our grandchildren?’ New Guinea is not just environmentally diverse, it’s also culturally diverse – a sixth of the world’s languages are found here.
According to an in-depth report released by Greenpeace International in May this year, Indonesian law states that Indigenous land can only be surrendered to a plantation company through musyawarah (a consensus decision-making process), but that this did not occur in the case of the Tanah Merah project.
A member of the Indigenous Auyu community in his ancestral forest in Boven Digoel, Papua. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
Instead, police and representatives turned up to the villages handing out envelopes full of cash. There was no clarity around what these were for, but the project to clearfell their land has divided once close Indigenous clans.
The effects can be seen in a film, The Secret Deal to Destroy Paradise, in which locals talk of not being able to carry out their traditional way of life and practices such as hunting, fishing, gathering and processing sago.
“It feels like the clouds have fallen. All destroyed in an instant. What will be the fate of our grandchildren?” asks the chief of the Auyu clan, Bonevasius Hamnagi.
United Arab Emirates-owned companies with concessions in the same Tanah Merah project have already displaced some traditional hunting grounds.
“It used to be customary indigenous forest,” says Mikael Felix Mamon of Anggai village, as he stands before a seemingly endless array of uniform oil palm saplings sitting atop the bare ochre earth, waiting to be planted.
“It used to be a place for hunting. We searched for pigs or other animals. Fishing. And a source of drinking water. We could find these things quite freely. Now the indigenous people looking for food to fulfill our basic needs must go a long way. Further inland. Because our forest around here is gone.”
And agreements to create health, education, facilities, clean water, housing and electricity have not been fulfilled.
Members of the Indigenous Auyu community in Boven Digoel, Papua. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
Grant Rosoman says this is a common occurrence in Papua and that companies can make up to US$2000 per hectare per year while paying locals less than US$10 per hectare in a one-off payment for taking their land.
“The impact on the community — we are hearing from them and from the local NGOs that are supporting the community — is huge. And if we look at the concessions that have already been developed in that area, their loss of livelihood, their rights not being respected, their sacred sites being desecrated and destroyed, and their food and water sources being destroyed as well.”
And many locals are pushing back against the corporations, people like longtime environmental activist Bustar Maitar, who leads campaigns in Papua to protect the ecosystems through the EcoNusa Foundation, and clan leaders who have been coming together to put pressure on the government to stop the deforestation.
A political situation There have also been long running debates about whether the Tanah Merah permits to log and plant palm oil have been obtained legally.
According to the NGO Pusaka, permits have not been issued for Digoel Agri to clear the land and is calling on the Indonesian government to take steps to halt the destruction.
They claim that because the original permits were not issued in accordance with the correct process, including the consent of local indigenous people, this would mean the forest clearing happening under Digoel Agri is illegal.
Franky Samperante, director of Indigenous rights NGO Pusaka. Image: Nanang Sujana for The Gecko Project/Earthsight
When Newsroom contacted Pusaka director Franky Samperante, he was firm in his request to international players like Neville Mahon.
“I found that the companies are carrying out eviction of the forests and important places of indigenous peoples without the consent of many communities, they are threatened with losing their sources of food and livelihoods.
“We ask the government and companies to be consistent with regulations and commitments to sustainable development, by not doing deforestation, violating human rights and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples.”
Indonesia is no stranger to human rights controversy. According to Amnesty International reports, at least 100,000 West Papuans have been reported killed by the Indonesian authorities since the takeover in the 1960s.
Everyone Newsroom spoke to was reluctant to answer questions about the Indonesian government’s involvement in deforestation.
But without government approval, these individual companies would never be allowed to bring in the bulldozers, so isn’t this, in fact, a political situation?
“Papua as a sensitive place for the Indonesian government,” says Greenpeace’s Grant Rosoman. “And there are rights abuses that are going on. They’re being documented by some of the media that’s coming out and it’s a very unsafe place. So there is a lot of fear about speaking out about Papua and what’s going on there.”
“We focus on the deforestation and we can monitor that from satellites so we can see what’s going on and we don’t believe it’s a good thing for a New Zealander like Neville Mahon to be there destroying the forest and basically staining the reputation of all New Zealanders in the process of doing it.”
Since our café meeting with Mahon, we have contacted him several times in an attempt to reconcile his statements to us with what’s on the official documents.
We again received a reply from the company saying he has a small beneficial shareholding.
In the meantime, the bulldozers continue their work while activists and people like Rosoman try to keep them at bay.
“It’s not acceptable to be clearing rainforest in this day and age. We’re in 2021, we’re in a climate emergency. There’s plenty of other land where you can develop businesses. We do not need to clear rainforest for business anymore. It shouldn’t be done.”
Produced by Newsroom with the support of NZ on Air. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of Newsroom and investigations editor Melanie Reid.
Papua New Guinea’s Communications Minister, Timothy Masiu, recently told a news conference to mark World Press Freedom Day that the state of journalism and broadcasting in the country has seen a general decline.
He was critical of the quality and the content of the media in general. The former NBC journalist and broadcaster had reported on Bougainville during the decade-long crisis. He had served with former NBC head and senior journalist Joseph Ealedona.
I agreed with him. But I couldn’t let the statement go without challenge. While many have been critical of the state of “investigative” journalism in the country and the apparent lack of impact the media has had on the corruption and abuse, there has been very little investment in Papua New Guinea’s journalism schools over 25 years.
Back then, the university produced journalists who were a force to be reckoned with. They shaped the politics, rubbed shoulders with the political and business heavies and were were unafraid to be openly critical of the government abuses.
At Divine Word University, the people focused approach to journalism and development shaped how rural communities were given a voice.
Their former students provided a vital link between the people and their government.
Quality training
That generation reported on the various constitutional impasses, Bougainville, the Sandline crisis and the inquiries that followed all of the above. The quality of training prepared them to be active participants in a growing country.
Both schools are now struggling. The lack of investment from government is evident. Both universities have tried their best, with the little resources they have, to produce the best they can.
So I issued a challenge to the Communications Minister: If you are going to be critical of the training, I want you, through the Communications Ministry, to invest in training in our universities.
He was kind enough to listen. We began a discussion immediately after the conference which I sincerely hope will lead to some progress.
The same challenge goes to every other politician who is critical of the quality of journalism training. Students have to be taught well. Schools have to be given the ability to improve, build, innovate and grow. That means spending money to help achieve this.
The same challenge goes to the government for investment in our teachers’ colleges and our biggest engineering university, UNITECH. If our foundations are flawed, the outcome will be disastrous.
Asia Pacific Report republishes articles from Lae-based Papua New Guinean television journalist Scott Waide’s blog, My Land, My Country, with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Sometime this week Newsroom co-editor Mark Jennings is due to be interviewed under caution by the New Zealand police because he kicked the hornet’s nest.
The particular hornet’s nest he disturbed was Oranga Tamariki, a state agency, and the reason it was given a boot was a now-discredited policy called reverse uplifts.
In a story on the Newsroom website last week, co-editor Tim Murphy revealed the police investigation that named Jennings and the demand that he attend the under-caution interview. “Under caution” means that anything he says could be used in a criminal prosecution against him.
The story noted that the case highlighted in the video led directly to Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis seeking a “please explain” from the agency and then directing Oranga Tamariki to stop the new policy of “reverse uplifts’” under which Māori children around the country who had been put in permanent care were being summarily removed and taken, in the case investigated, to unknown and distant whānau.
A Māori advisory panel was appointed from outside the ministry and the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki (OT), Grainne Moss, later resigned.
However, OT did not take the Newsroom investigation on the chin. In fact, it came out fighting and enlisted Crown Law. That intervention led to a High Court order to remove a video from the Newsroom website and the media organisation being hit with a $13,000 costs order it can ill-afford.
Finding may be challenged
The judge in the case did not accept that the matter was of such public interest that it over-rode the (strongly contested) matter of potential identification. While I accept that the identity of vulnerable persons must be protected under both the Family Court Act and the Oranga Tamariki Act, it remains to be seen whether that finding against Newsroom will be challenged. My own – strictly layman’s – view is that it could be.
Now one of Newsroom’s most senior executives is being threatened with criminal prosecution under the Family Court Act. Jennings could face up to three months in prison or a maximum fine of $2000 under that legislation. Arguably, he might even face a charge of contempt of court which can carry up to six months imprisonment or a $25,000 fine.
My question is a simple one: Why?
Why was Crown Law asked to intercede on Oranga Tamariki’s behalf? Why was an injunction sought in spite of Newsroom’s willingness to take steps to avoid identification of children? Why, after the initial aim of removing the video had succeeded, was an order for costs pursued against a fledgling news organisation struggling to maintain financial viability? Why have the police now been involved to pursue a criminal investigation against one of its co-founders? And why has this whole matter been pursued with such vigour?
My own view is that Newsroom’s investigation was very much in the public interest and that the video was a critical element in bringing about a policy change. I thought the possibility of identifying the children was remote.
Collectively, my questions have a simple answer: To send a message that, if you kick a state agency’s hornet’s nest, expect to get stung.
In legal and media circles it has a name: The Chilling Effect. It’s a concept that has been around for a long time.
Sedition laws as punishment
One of America’s founding fathers, James Madison, had real concern during the framing of the Constitution of the United States over the use of sedition laws to punish those who criticised government. Madison rightly concluded that it would lead to an author thinking twice before publishing and create a form of self-censorship.
And so it does.
In 2015 I swore an affidavit in support of Nicky Hager’s action against the Police when they executed a search warrant on his home following publication of Dirty Politics. It was one of three affidavits on the nature of the chilling effect that searches for the identity of confidential sources would have on investigative journalism.
Justice Clifford acknowledged the possibility of a chilling effect and noted that the three statements on its nature and consequence went unchallenged by the Attorney-General’s counsel. Of course, Hager won that challenge, and one might have thought Police would have become more than a little reticent about actions against journalists and their lawful pursuits.
It is doubtful that Crown Law acted against Newsroom of its own volition. It is far more likely that Oranga Tamariki arrived on its doorstep complaining that poor children were being identified and “something has to be done”. OT had genuine concerns for these tamariki and children in general, but there is no doubt its reputation had been damaged by the Newsroom investigations.
The lengths that it has been prepared to go in pursuing Newsroom – in the complete absence of any complaint to the news organisation by any member of the public over possible identification of the children or their whanau –is nonetheless puzzling.
Put simply, there is no evidence that children or whanua have been publicly identified and, in any event, Newsroom has had the publication of that particular part of its investigation banned. It has also incurred a very substantial financial penalty with the awarding of full costs.
A clear warning
Assuming the police action stems from a complaint emanating from OT, I am left with a nasty feeling that the result is a clear warning about delving too deeply into the agency’s activities. In other words: Don’t kick the hornet’s nest!
It has a chilling effect that extends beyond OT. What is to stop other state agencies from threatening criminal charges if they can find a convenient piece of law?
Convenient laws can be found in unlikely places. Twenty years ago, the British government tried to use the Treason Felony Act of 1848 to hammer The Guardian. The Act contained a clause making it unlawful to call for an end to the monarchy.
Editor Alan Rusbridger was on a republican campaign when he got hit from behind. The House of Lords ruled the particular clause in the Treason Felony Act had (unsurprisingly) been superseded but the action remains an object lesson on the lengths governments might go to send a message.
And some of those messages can be quite chilling.
Dr Gavin Ellis is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications – covering both editorial and management roles – that spans more than half a century. This article is republished with permission.
Less than 24 hours after New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s latest extraordinary story of how oil companies have been spying on children and it has disappeared without trace elsewhere.
School children from the group School Strike 4 Climate joined a peaceful protest against the oil-exploration company OMV in New Plymouth a year ago, only weeks after unprecedented numbers joined their 27 September school strike marches around New Zealand.
Public concern about climate change had never been so great. These were peaceful, democratic protests.
But a two-year investigation found that they and other climate change groups were targets of the private investigation firm Thompson and Clark, paid by clients from the oil and gas industry.
The investigation revealed that a major focus of Thompson and Clark in 2019 and 2020 – years of storms, floods, forest fires and marching school children – was monitoring and helping to counter citizen groups concerned about climate change.
Thompson and Clark’s clients included a range of large greenhouse gas emitting industries, including many of the oil and gas exploration and drilling companies in New Zealand and the industry lobby group, the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ).
It has targeted climate change campaigners belonging to School Strike 4 Climate, Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion and local Oil Free groups.
Company insiders Information about Thompson and Clark’s clients and anti-environmental activities was provided confidentially by company insiders who say they disapprove of the private investigation company.
Operations against these groups were run by Thompson and Clark’s collection manager, a former long-term New Zealand Security Intelligence Service officer, as revealed by Radio New Zealand.
The officer, known only as Gerry, moved to Thompson and Clark 10 years ago, after 30 years with the NZSIS.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager speaks to RNZ Morning Report about the probe findings. Video: RNZ
When oil companies are spying on school children protesting against global warming something has gone horribly, horribly wrong in society.
When just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of global emissions, and when oil corporations knew about and hid climate change as far back as the 1990s we must acknowledge that those who have created and fostered the economic model that has allowed for this damage must be the first to pay for the adaptation funding.
Oil companies must be sued for the damage they have caused the way tobacco companies were sued over cancer.
That money needs to help fund the adaption.
Watching the oil industry respond by hiring corporate spies who are using former SIS officers to spy on school children protesting against climate change is all the proof you ever needed to know how truly spiteful and evil these oil companies truly are, so if you are having some internal dialogue about their rights, don’t!
Martyn Bradbury is editor of The Daily Blog. This article is republished with permission.
Less than 24 hours after New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager’s latest extraordinary story of how oil companies have been spying on children and it has disappeared without trace elsewhere.
School children from the group School Strike 4 Climate joined a peaceful protest against the oil-exploration company OMV in New Plymouth a year ago, only weeks after unprecedented numbers joined their 27 September school strike marches around New Zealand.
Public concern about climate change had never been so great. These were peaceful, democratic protests.
But a two-year investigation found that they and other climate change groups were targets of the private investigation firm Thompson and Clark, paid by clients from the oil and gas industry.
The investigation revealed that a major focus of Thompson and Clark in 2019 and 2020 – years of storms, floods, forest fires and marching school children – was monitoring and helping to counter citizen groups concerned about climate change.
Thompson and Clark’s clients included a range of large greenhouse gas emitting industries, including many of the oil and gas exploration and drilling companies in New Zealand and the industry lobby group, the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ).
It has targeted climate change campaigners belonging to School Strike 4 Climate, Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion and local Oil Free groups.
Company insiders Information about Thompson and Clark’s clients and anti-environmental activities was provided confidentially by company insiders who say they disapprove of the private investigation company.
Operations against these groups were run by Thompson and Clark’s collection manager, a former long-term New Zealand Security Intelligence Service officer, as revealed by Radio New Zealand.
The officer, known only as Gerry, moved to Thompson and Clark 10 years ago, after 30 years with the NZSIS.
Investigative journalist Nicky Hager speaks to RNZ Morning Report about the probe findings. Video: RNZ
When oil companies are spying on school children protesting against global warming something has gone horribly, horribly wrong in society.
When just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of global emissions, and when oil corporations knew about and hid climate change as far back as the 1990s we must acknowledge that those who have created and fostered the economic model that has allowed for this damage must be the first to pay for the adaptation funding.
Oil companies must be sued for the damage they have caused the way tobacco companies were sued over cancer.
That money needs to help fund the adaption.
Watching the oil industry respond by hiring corporate spies who are using former SIS officers to spy on school children protesting against climate change is all the proof you ever needed to know how truly spiteful and evil these oil companies truly are, so if you are having some internal dialogue about their rights, don’t!
Martyn Bradbury is editor of The Daily Blog. This article is republished with permission.
A Tahitian academic living in Auckland whose family and home island of Mangareva were impacted on by three decades of French nuclear weapons tests says Paris must pay for the full extent of health and other damage caused.
Ena Manuireva is a doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology.
He responds to RNZ’s Koroi Hawkins about the recent revelations by the Moruroa Files investigation and a new book, Toxique, that the impact of the the 193 nuclear tests in Polynesia was far worse than previously admitted by French authorities.
Ena Manuireva … doctoral research on the nuclear testing impact on the Gambiers.
Transcript
On a more personal level a Tahitian whose family and home island was impacted by French nuclear weapons tests says Paris must pay for the full extent of the fallout.
Maururu Ena, thanks for joining us on the show. So you were born in Mangareva in 1967 just one year after the French started testing nuclear weapons in French Polynesia?
[More later]
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Part of Moruroa atoll four years after the French nuclear testing was halted in 1996. Almost all the installations that sheltered up to 3000 people for 30 years have been dismantled , giving the natural vegetation a chance to grow again. Image: Eric Feferberg/AFP/RNZ
Auckland University of Technology has denied claims that the Pacific Media Centre is being dumped or sidelined.
The centre’s recently retired director Professor David Robie has raised concern about the way AUT is handling the PMC’s leadership succession, as well as the removal of its physical office without a clear relocation.
But a little over a month after Dr David Robie retired as its director in December, he was sent photos of the PMC’s office stripped of its theses, books, monographs, research journals, media outputs, indigenous taonga and other history.
“I was hugely disappointed when I heard about the removal of the office and we were sent photographs,” Dr Robie said.
“Hugely disappointing because basically it’s trashing 13 years of building up the centre. And this was done without any consultation with any of the stakeholders or the PMC people themselves.”
Professor Robie, who said no clear relocation plan had been presented to the PMC and there was no inventory of the removed materials, also criticised AUT for not taking up his succession plan.
But the head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies, Dr Rosser Johnson, said the faculty had opted for a call for expressions of interest in the leadership role, rather than directly appointing someone.
Former head of school Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, then PMC director Professor David Robie and Victoria University’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) Luamanuvao Winnie Laban at the 10th anniversary anniversary event of the Pacific Media Centre. Image: Mata Lauano/Spasifik
He said they were looking to make the Pacific Media Centre more visible and more integrated with the life of the faculty.
“We’re moving a few people around. One of the groups of people who are moving around is the PMC,” Dr Johnson explained.
“But it’s moving to space that’s got double the office space and at least double the space for people to work in.”
However, people within the School of Communication Studies who spoke to RNZ Pacific were uncertain about where the PMC office would be, and whether it may simply be a small part of a larger, open space shared with other divisions.
The former office of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology was abruptly emptied of its contents in early 2021. Image: Cafe Pacific
A lack of communication and consultation over the move has drawn condemnation from many regional journalists and researchers.
With almost three months having elapsed since Dr Robie retired, there has been growing suspicion that AUT management will look to change the Asia-Pacific focus of the centre.
Ena Manuireva, a Tahitian doctoral candidate, said that given the recent Davenport review of the university’s culture which found bullying was rife, the handling of the PMC was “shameful”.
“It’s good for AUT to have some critical thinking in that department in their university. I’m trying to see what is the gain that they’re trying to have, what will be the outcome [of the changes],” Manuireva said.
“The outcome would be that AUT would be looked at as a university that’s not open to everyone, especially to the Pacific.”
Furthermore, the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI) has called for action to save PMC, warning that its closure would come “at a time when Pacific journalism is under existential threat and Pacific journalism programmes suffer from underfunding”.
But Dr Johnson denied that the School of Commuications was looking to change the centre’s focus. His characterisation of the matter suggests that the PMC will grow its presence.
“There’s only so much one or two or three people can do. So having more people involved opens up more opportunities for people to link into their communities,” he said.
“There’s absolutely no intention at all to limit the Pacific Media Centre.”
The former office of the Pacific Media Centre in early February 2021. Image: Cafe Pacific
Professor Robie said he would wait and see what transpires, but in his view there was a gap between what was being said by AUT and the reality.
“The thing is that as a centre, [the PMC] had this unique combination of media output as well as the research,” Dr Robie explained.
“I guess what I fear is that there will be a stepping back from the actual media outputs and especially that very broad coverage that we had [through student projects such as Bearing Witness and Pacific Media Watch].”
Dr Johnson said a call for expressions of interest in the Pacific Media Centre leadership role would go out this week.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Cutting edge nuclear science, a trove of declassified documents, and investigative journalism have exposed the human and environmental impacts of French nuclear testing in the Pacific in a new book and web microsite/database.
Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons tests in Polynesia in the southern Pacific Ocean.
These nuclear explosions profoundly affected the environment and health of local indigenous Maohi people and of French veterans involved in the testing programme.
Using an archive of 2000 pages of declassified French government documents, hundreds of hours of computer simulations of the nuclear tests and fallout predictions, dozens of interviews in France and Polynesia, the book Toxique presents the results of a two-year long study on the consequences of French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the continued struggle of local communities and veterans to seek justice and compensation.
It sheds unprecedented light on the radiological and environmental contamination of the people of the Pacific through scientific research, journalism, and storytelling.
It challenges existing official narratives of the consequences of the test, and reveals that more could have been done to protect the public and that justice is owed.
Unprecedented collaboration
“This work is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between a Princeton University nuclear expert, INTERPRT, a collective of architects specialising in the forensic analysis of environmental crimes, and investigative journalists from the media Disclose.
Classified until 2013, the archives were finally made public as a result of a long legal battle between the French state and the victims of the nuclear tests.
Toxique … the book of the investigation. Image: APR screenshot
Until now, the documents have never been studied in their totality. The research team reorganised them by date and subject matter and have now filed them into a database that can be accessed by victims of the tests, researchers and the wider public.
Along with the study of the documents, the team carried out interviews with more than 50 people, including 18 inhabitants of Polynesian atolls, 16 former military personnel, as well as with magistrates, scientists and organisations from civil society in both French Polynesia and mainland France.
Using 3D modelling tools and the visualisation of data, we have reproduced, for the first time ever, the events that followed the most contaminating of France’s atmospheric nuclear explosions carried out between 1966 and 1974.
The team also re-evaluated the extent of the radioactive contaminations these caused, and in which the civilian populations were the principal victims.
Carmela Fonbuena … recently launched a book on the Marawi siege on Mindanao Island, in the Philippines which she covered on the ground in 2017. Image: Rappler
“We are very pleased that Carmela has decided to be at the helm of PCIJ at a time when journalism in the Philippines and elsewhere is facing challenges on multiple fronts,” the PCIJ said in a statement.
The transition comes at a time when freedom of the press is under siege in the Philippines by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, whose allies have sought to bring down independent news outlets critical of his administration.
Fonbuena succeeds Malou Mangahas, who led the PCIJ for 11 years, visited New Zealand as guest speaker of the Pacific Media Centre during its 10th anniversary celebration, and retired in early 2020.
Floreen Simon, who stood in as acting executive director during the transition, will become the deputy executive director while still heading PCIJ’s training desk.
Fonbuena’s work Fonbuena has been a journalist for 17 years, and has co-written four books on Philippine elections and government contracting.
Fonbuena was a senior reporter for Rappler from 2011 to 2018 and was the head researcher of GMA’s Bawal ang Pasaway public affairs programme. Prior, she worked as a researcher for the investigative news magazine, Newsbreak.
Recently, she has been contributing in-depth pieces for the British news website, The Guardian.
She earned an MA in political communication at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom as a Chevening scholar, and is a graduate of journalism from the University of the Philippines in Diliman.
Asia Pacific Report republishes Rappler articles with permission.
This episode originally was broadcast July 28, 2018.
In December 1944, Frank Hartzell was a young soldier pressed into fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. He was there battling Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne, and he was there afterward when dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war were gunned down in a field.
Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway pieces together what led up to that event, who was responsible and why no Americans were held accountable for this war crime.
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Stuff has introduced a new company charter with Te Tiriti o Waitangi at its core, after a major internal investigation uncovered evidence of racism and marginalisation against Māori.
The media organisation issued an historic public apology today following the Our Truth, Tā Mātou Pono investigation which saw around 20 Stuff journalists scrutinise the company’s portrayal and representation of Māori from its early editions to now.
The findings unearthed numerous examples of journalism practices denying Māori an equitable voice in Aotearoa.
Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher said it was imperative the company reckoned with its past, but denied the investigation was an exercise in political correctness or being “woke”.
“I don’t buy into that at all. If you think the job of the news media, in our company and others, is to hold the powerful to account, well, we are the powerful.
“We really have had an enormous impact in shaping public thought in New Zealand and societal norms, not just reflecting them, and I think it is only fitting that a progressive company can pause and have a look at itself,” Boucher said.
She acknowledged the presence of racism and unconscious bias in the digital and print products over the company’s 163-year history, and too often a monocultural approach had been taken that prioritise Pākehā worldviews.
Boucher was adamant Stuff could not hold others to account without facing up to its own past as a first step towards repairing the harm the company’s history has caused its relationship with Māori.
“When the project started, we didn’t know what we were going to find. They didn’t start off with a particular agenda … we just thought it was really critical that if we were going to embed the Treaty principles into our charter, that we need to do that examination and be up for whatever difficult finding might come out of it.
“After doing a deep examination … the finding was that over time, there had been many instances of where you could say that the work that our papers produced could have perpetuated negative stereotypes or misconceptions against Māori.
Stuff’s owner and chief executive Sinead Boucher … “If you think the job of the news media, in our company and others, is to hold the powerful to account, well, we are the powerful.” Image: Ross Giblin/Stuff
Boucher said she “struggled to think of a more important piece of work that our newsroom has produced”.
The new charter lays out Stuff’s commitment to “redressing wrongs and to doing better in future ways that will help foster trust in our work, deeper relationships with Māori and better representation of contemporary Aotearoa.”
Boucher also acknowledged Māori were under-represented in Stuff newsrooms, something the company “definitely [had] to address and redress”.
In May, Boucher took control of Stuff from its previous Australian owners, Nine – the shift into New Zealand ownership provides the company with the opportunity to reset and reposition the business, and its value system, she said.
“Our people advocated for the Treaty principles of partnership, participation and protection to be embedded in our new strategy.
“The Stuff Charter sets down a pou tiaki (guard post) to ensure we guard against this kind of inequity in our reporting and business practices in the future.
”Our wish is to be a trusted partner for tangata whenua for generations to come,” Boucher said.
This article was first published by Stuff here. It has been republished with permission.
Reveal has had a busy year – our team has chased stories from Oklahoma to Bermuda. We exposed a rehab program that provides labor at a chicken processing plant that’s been called a slave camp and followed the money trail of the Paradise Papers, leaked documents that revealed international tax shelters for some of America’s biggest companies. We reported on the rise of hate crimes and investigated hate groups.
In this episode, we look at some of our best reporting from 2017 and how Reveal has made an impact in our world.
