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Category: Media

  • Taliban orders shutdown of broadcaster Tamadon TV

    New York, June 7, 2024 — The Taliban must reverse its order to shut down private broadcaster Tamadon TV and end its ongoing, unprecedented suppression of Afghan media, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

    On Thursday, the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice announced the closure of Tamadon TV, alleging that the broadcaster was affiliated with the Harakat-e-Islami political party, after the Taliban banned all such affiliations, and operating on “seized land,” according to Qari Baraktullah Rasuli, the spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Justice who posted the statement on X, formerly Twitter, and media reports. Tamadon TV denies the claims.

    In a breaking news announcement earlier that day, Tamadon TV stated that a Taliban delegation was inside its station to shut down operations. However, later the TV station confirmed that the suspension of its operations was postponed until Saturday. The Taliban has not announced an exact date that it plans to close the station. 

    “The Taliban must immediately and unconditionally reverse its decision to ban Tamadon TV and allow the channel to continue broadcasting,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “The Taliban is expanding its relentless crackdown on Afghan media and suppressing any independent voices. This must end.”

    On June 6, Mohammad Jawad Mohseni, director of Tamadon TV, rejected the Taliban’s claims about the broadcaster’s political affiliations, according to broadcaster Afghanistan International. Mohseni noted that the late founder of the TV station, Ayatullah Asif Mohseni, had resigned as the leader of Harakat-e-Islami in 2005, years before establishing Tamadon TV.

    Mohseni said that “the land for Tamadon TV was purchased from a private owner and has a legitimate and legal title deed, and it is not and has never been government property.”

    On February 18, 2023, about 10 armed Taliban members raided the headquarters of Tamadon TV in Kabul, beat several staff members, and held them for 30 minutes.

    Tamadon TV is predominantly owned and operated by members of the Hazara-Shia ethnic minority and covers political and current affairs as well as Shiite religious programming. Hazara people have faced persecution and escalated violence since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021.

    The closure order of Tamadon TV follows a series of other restrictions imposed on Afghan media in recent months. In May, the Taliban’s Media Complaints and Rights Violations Commission banned journalists, analysts, and experts from participating in discussions or cooperating with London-based Afghanistan International’s television and radio stations. The Commission called on citizens to boycott Afghanistan International and banned anyone from providing facilities for broadcasting the channel in public places.

    Earlier, in April, the Taliban shut down Noor and Barya TV broadcasters, which were affiliated with other Islamist political parties, citing violations of “national and Islamic values.”

    The Taliban has shut down other broadcasters since it took over the country in 2021,  including Radio Nasim. in central Daikundi Province, Hamisha Bahar Radio and TV in eastern Nangarhar province, and Radio Sada e Banowan in northeastern Badakhshan province. In 2022, the group also banned international broadcasters such as the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Voice of America.

    CPJ’s requests for comment sent to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not receive a response.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Understanding the Fate of the Palestinians

    Since day one of their entrance, the Zionists seized opportunities to enhance their strength and further their agenda, extending a single settlement in Ottoman Palestine to complete control of Palestine. Ten pioneers from Russia acquired 835 acres of land southeast of present day Tel Aviv and established Rishon Le-Zion (“First in Zion”). Founded in 1882, the settlement has grown to a city of approximately 260,000.

    The “First in Zion” symbolizes the Zionist thrust — pretend innocence, harden hearts, brutalize innocent inhabitants, and turn oppression of others into security needs for yourself. After the Zionists gained overwhelming power, they used power for severe oppression, to steal more lands, manufacture huge bombs to overcome fists and rocks, and to terrorize a population. Those who contended the oppression were called terrorists. The smiles on Zionists’ faces come from convincing a complacent, unknowing, and confused world to accept ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide as daily happenings that only Zionists are permitted to perpetrate.

    The questions often asked and never answered are, “How did the Zionist Jews get away with this open air and available for all to see genocide, and why has there been no valid response to stop it? Millions of valiant people struggle each day to change the situation and bring peace and justice to the Middle East, and these efforts have not succeeded in halting the onslaught, not even reducing it by one Band-Aid.

    Shocking is the cowardice of prominent and respected persons, such as Barack Obama, who do not speak out forcibly about the genocide in Gaza. Puzzling is that the United States entered World War II to defeat a state claiming ethnic superiority, exhibiting ultra-nationalism, engaging in irredentism, practicing militarism, and perpetrating genocide. For decades the United States has supported another state that claims ethnic superiority, exhibits ultra-nationalism, engages in irredentism, practices militarism, and perpetrates genocide. The US has seen its World War II battle that defeated Nazi Germany give rise to an extremist Zionism, with innocent European Jews and now innocent Palestinians the victims of the battle. Defeat of a despised international opponent has resurrected a lookalike and despised international opponent.

    Building an effective strategy against an opponent requires understanding the opponent’s strategy. The Zionist Jews have major strategies — never compromise, continually pursue the agenda, pay no attention to those who cannot or will not militarily intercede (how many armed divisions does the Vatican have?), turn arguments against them into arguments against the accuser (using debts as collateral), and use to advantage the conditioning of minds that the Holocaust and false charges of anti-Semitism have provided. These strategies are apparent in the war on the Gazans and the reactions to the genocide.

    PM Netanyahu stated that Israel did not start this war and did not want this war. Although the genocide of the Palestinians started in 1948, when Zionist militias were already cleansing the land and telling the world they were being attacked, Netanyahu made it seem that a past did not exist and a new war had started. PM Netanyahu tells us that a relatively small contingent of lightly armed Hamas militias want to kill all Jews, conquer all Israel, and expel all Jewish inhabitants. This invisible army is prepared to overcome a heavily armed and formidable army that, without much resistance, does to the Palestinians what Netanyahu claims little Hamas wants to do to the Jews —  daily massacres,  seizing lands, ethnic cleansing, and constant oppression. Israel took advantage of the October 7 attack to hasten the genocide of the Palestinians and disguise the massacre as a legitimate defense.

    The Zionist strategy demonstrated its effectiveness when the international Zionist organization persuaded the US Congress to inform the world that the campus protests against US assistance to the genocide of the Palestinians were anti-Semitic conspiracies. Periodic television ads that attempt to validate the anti-Semitic conspiracy and plead not to make Jews victims of the protests followed the diabolical plot. The TV ads indirectly tell us not to give overwhelming importance to the genocide of the Palestinians; more important is that the protests make Jews feel uncomfortable because a few protestors accuse Jews, who support a state that calls itself the “Jewish state,” of complicity in genocide that a “Jewish state” they support is committing. The Zionist strategy works well in a dumbed American republic ─ converts action to stop the genocide into sympathy for those approving the genocide

    Focus on the genocide seems a sufficient exercise but lack of success in halting it indicates other severe problems must be addressed. Witnessing the genocide, which is as apparent as the sun rising every 24 hours, having leading and recognized authorities on human rights vigorously exclaim, “This is a genocide,” noting the number of nations voicing their horror and taking action to stop the genocide, regarding the worldwide protests against the genocide, and observing government officials leaving government in protest to the US government’s bizarre assistance in hastening the genocide, and then hearing President Joe Biden say, “What’s happening is not genocide, we reject that,” raises doubts of the sanity of US government officials and operation of a pluralistic democracy where the public’s loud voice is not heard. These genocide deniers can start learning by consulting the Law for Palestine Releases Database, especially the legislative database.

    Rhetoric has not clarified that the moral corruption in allowing Zionist Jews to commit genocide has turned religion, democracy, justice, truth, and human rights into meaningless words. Life has lost reality and values have no substance. The mainstream public remains unaware of the seriousness of the damaging relationship the US has with Israel and the genocide and that these affect all aspects of their lives —political, moral, social, cultural, and economic. A strategic objective is to let them know.

    Throw it at them.
    Huge protests in front of the embassies and media headquarters that support Israel.
    Huge protests that align the main roads and city streets and bring the protests into neighborhoods.
    Full-page ads in the New York Times and Washington Post calling out the genocide.
    Turning anti-Semitism into a vile expression so that its use is uncomfortable. Signs that say “The truth becomes a shit charge of anti-Semitism, and “If truth is anti-Semitism, we are we are all anti-Semites now.”

    Assist Jewish organizations that have joined the battle

    Jewish organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and If not Now (IFN) have courageously championed Palestinian rights. They deserve praise for their efforts and funding to expand their efforts. These efforts serve a dual purpose — liberate the Palestinians from Israeli oppression and liberate the Jewish people from Zionist oppression.

    The biblical “Exodus” story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote constant victimhood, while distracting them from roles they may play in the injustices done to others. JVP and IFN are awakening other Jews to the destructive impulses generated from Israel that prevent worldwide Jewry from recognizing the roots of modern Judaism and revert them to atavistic and reactionary relics of an ancient Hebrew and fictitious past.

    Israel is not a true democracy, and evidence certifies it is a militarist, nationalist, racist, nation that practices apartheid, engages in severe human rights violations, and spies on its citizens. By blindly accepting Zionist behavior, the Jewish people lost the initiative to change Israel’s policies, misdirected the path to a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis, exacerbated the crisis, and harmed the security of Jews throughout the world. The exemplary work by JVP and IFN members is the best rescue plan for a subdued Jewish community. The best Hanukah gift is a check to both these organizations.

    Lawsuits

    Pernicious lawsuits that had no legal value and demonstrated bias of US courts in favor of the Zionists have pulverized the Palestine Authority and organizations supporting Palestinian liberation. Time to have the lawsuits work the other way.

    Lawsuits against false charges of anti-Semitism by the ADL and other organizations can be made. The ADL has lost several cases against its illegal expressions.

    Lawsuits by Jewish groups against those who signify Israel as a Jewish state, a slander to Jewish people that unfairly binds them to the genocide of the Palestinian people..

    Lawsuit to finally have AIPAC declared a lobby for a foreign state. New evidence and a new approach will be needed.

    Lawsuits to close Holocaust Memorial museums as improper use of the deaths of the Holocaust victims. The US government and people are guilty of genocide of the Native Americans, enslaving Blacks from Africa, and extreme violence against peoples throughout the world — Latin America, the Caribbean, Vietnam, the Philippines, Iraq, Libya, and others. The Holocaust occurred in a foreign nation and neither the US government nor its people had responsibility for the tragedy. The Holocaust Memorial museums indicate otherwise, are unfair to the American people, have not halted other genocides, have been divisive, and have been accused of promoting hatred. These museums distract Americans from their responsibility for the violence they have committed against other cultures. The Native Americans and African Americans did not use the destruction of their peoples to create museums in which they play victim; they took a positive approach and used them to encourage respect for their cultures. Their inviting museums ridicule the lugubrious Holocaust museums and reveal the latter museums as an insult to the European Jews who died in the Holocaust. Included in the lawsuit can be those who suffered during the Holocaust or had close relatives who died during the Holocaust. Having had aunts, uncles, and cousins from Paris, France, and Warsaw, Poland, some who died in the Holocaust and others who struggled for survival during World War II, I identify with the latter. When writing my book on the struggles for survival of my European family during the 2nd World War, Not Until They Were Gone, I made sure it was not written as a Holocaust story and appeared as a book of heroism and survival.

    Illegal activities by Israelis residing in the United States

    A previous article detailed how Israel sends its citizens to other nations, has them integrate, and steer the country to favor Israel. Exposing, combatting, and bringing law to halt this maneuver and manipulation of American hospitality is a high priority.

    Defeating pro-Israel legislators

    Highest priority is to do in reverse what AIPAC does. Defeating two or three congress politicos who have had marginal victories is possible. If pro-Israelis suffer more defeats, other politicians will rapidly question their allegiances. An organization for accomplishing this vital task requires the highest skill —  demographers who know voting patterns, public relations who understand the constituency and how to approach it, statisticians who can translate voting patterns into probability of victory, fundraisers who can target donors, psychologists who interpret behavior, sociologists who recognize social patterns, political consultants who recognize strengths and faults of candidates, and luck.

    Defeat media co-opting

    This includes responding to social media. Failure to change media co-opting by the Zionists makes other tasks more difficult. Establishing an alternative media has been tried and never permanently succeeded. Why? One insulting obvious reason is that the American public prefers simplicity, excitement, and trash, regardless of the truth. Insulting, but true. It is difficult for moral, dedicated, and honest people to operate at the low level of the Fox network and use the Zionist duplicity that infiltrates and inserts fallacies into conventional media networks. Even if the Fox News types are defeated, their audience will find another Fox News type. Intense brainstorming by smart people who do smart things and understand the devious mind can devise a strategy that limits Zionist influence. Subtlety, invisible conditioning, and making people feel cheated by subscribing to cheaters are my recommendations to the brainstorming operation.

    Getting Things Straight

    It’s troublesome to hear those who struggle to prevent the genocide exhibit lapses in knowledge that affect the solution. As an example, I have heard many people refer to UN Proclamation 188, the Partition Plan, as the UN awarding the Jews a state. Two corrections: (1) The UN General Assembly cannot award. It can only recommend; it is not an enforcing agency. The Palestinians had every right to refuse the plan. (2) I have written several times that the partition plan did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and a Palestinian state called Jewish for differentiation. In the document that recognized the ‘new state,’ President Truman crossed out the words ‘Jewish state’ and inserted the words ‘state of Israel.’ This state was composed of about 67 percent Palestinians who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a smaller contingent of 200,000 foreign Jews that had been born or came as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine, and another larger contingent of 400,000 foreign Jews who arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate. They should not have been counted in the census. From that perspective, David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill-equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleanse the area of Palestinians and establish Israel. Disconcerting that significant information is not properly distributed, which leads to the recommendation that an organization be formed to provide accurate material, answer questions, and correct inaccuracies.

    Conclusion

    Requests for obtaining viable recommendations that will prevent the genocide of the Palestinians have not been forthcoming. Demonstrations have highlighted the massacres and brought those who recognize the genocide to work together, but have not succeeded in changing government policy. Gathering signatures for petitions to congressional representatives has slightly moved some Democratic politicos to change their pro-Israel position but has not prevented committees from assisting Israel and has not prevented legislation that favors Israel.

    Masses of dedicated and well-meaning people are involved in the push to prevent genocide; unfortunately, the present efforts do not appear they will achieve the wanted results. Much more is needed and the lack of inquiries, recommendations, discussions, and feedback to suggestions indicate that the urgent message has fallen on deaf ears.

    When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge of dark evil
    onto the good green land ‘they’ gloated.
    The western skies
    reverberated with joyous accounts:
    “The Tree has fallen !
    The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!”
    Had the Tree really fallen?
    Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever, not while the wine of our thorn limbs fed the thirsty roots,
    Arab roots alive, tunneling deep, deep, into the land!
    When the Tree rises up, the branches
    shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
    the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
    beneath the sun
    and birds shall return
    Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
    The birds shall return.

    Fadwa Touqan, “The Deluge and the Tree”

    The post Understanding the Fate of the Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Media Watch: ‘Little Pinks’ use AI in Tiananmen Square massacre debate

    Disclaimer: Due to the graphic nature of the key image in this fact check, we have digitally blurred certain parts of the photos in the main text to avoid discomfort for some readers. These altered photos are labeled accordingly in their captions. The original, unedited versions of all photos are included at the end of the article for readers to view at their discretion.

    Wu Renhua didn’t expect a nearly 35-year-old photo to become his most viewed post on X within 24 hours of uploading. 

    A black and white photo showing the bodies of three young adults lie sprawled on makeshift cots, each with visible head wounds. That’s what Wu posted.

    Wu claimed that the photo was taken following the Chinese government crackdown on student protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4, 1989. 

    In light of the 35th anniversary of the bloody crackdown this week, Wu said he had decided, for the first time, to publish the photo, which he said was taken near his university around noon that day. 

    His post got more than 2.4 million views as of Thursday. 

    ChatGPT as evidence?

    It didn’t take long for doubting voices to chime in. Swarms of jingoistic Chinese nationalist online users – known as “Little Pinks” – accused Wu of misrepresenting Vietnam War photos, citing responses from the latest model of the AI tool ChatGPT as evidence of their claims. 

    Some even created a fake web page that placed Wu’s photo alongside a genuine image from the Vietnam War to cast doubt on his claim. 

    China’s Communist Party has done its utmost to stymie any form of public discussion of the incident 35 years ago, ignoring domestic and international calls for justice.

    Authorities have also worked tirelessly to scrub the affair from history books, online discussion and the media. 

    2024-06-06_15h39_41.png
    Netizens cited responses provided by ChatGPT (left) to claim that Wu Renhua’s photos of Tiananmen were fake. (Screenshots/X. Parts of these images have been digitally blurred due to their graphic nature.)

    But Li Wei-Ping, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s School of Journalism, said GhatGPT is not a reliable source since it is primarily driven by user conversation. 

    Li said the fact that ChatGPT produces different answers to identical questions shows that there has been an update to its database with user input. 

    “Especially considering that the vast majority of information in Simplified Chinese databases is heavily influenced by China’s censorship,” Li told AFCL. “Never use ChatGPT as your sole fact checking tool. Determining authenticity is not one of its uses.” 

    GhatGPT also warns on its website: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”

    AFCL has previously released reports showing ChatGPT’s unreliability on controversial questions.

    2024-06-06_15h41_06.png
    Hints at the bottom of the webpage warn that ChatGPT may make mistakes. (Screenshot/ChatGPT)

    Different language, different answer

    AFCL asked ChatGPT in different languages about the photo and it showed different results. 

    In traditional Chinese, which is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, ChatGPT said that it didn’t know the answer and needed more information. 

    In simplified Chinese, which is used in mainland China, it answered that the photo was taken from days of protests and strikes that erupted across Paris in May 1968. 

    In English, it replied that the scene was taken from the My Lai Massacre committed by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.

    Hsu Chih-Chung, an associate professor at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University, who specializes in image processing and machine learning, explained that this inconsistency is due to differences in content found in the open-source information used by ChatGPT’s different language services, which were not always consistent.

    2024-06-06_15h41_56.png
    ChatGPT responded inconsistently when asked the same question in different languages. (Screenshot/ChatGPT. Part of the image on the left has been digitally blurred due to its graphic nature.)

    Different time, different answer

    ChatGPT’s responses varied even when asked the same question at different times in the same language.

    On the morning of June 3, when asked in English where the picture came from, ChatGPT gave no response.

    When directly asked if the image was taken during the 1989 student protests, the AI responded that it was.

    Later that afternoon, when asked the same question in English, ChatGPT instead said the picture was from the 1976 Thammasat University massacre in Thailand.

    When then asked if the image might have been taken at Tiananmen Square, ChatGPT confidently rejected the claim.

    2024-06-06_15h42_47.png
    ChatGPT also gave different answers when asked the same question at different times. (Screenshots/ChatGPT)

    Different image search methods 

    National Cheng Kung University’s Hsu said the reason for ChatGPT’s differing responses is that its methods for checking images is still quite distinct from well-known search engines such as Google, which uses algorithms to compare a given image with many other images in its database. 

    Hsu noted that while ChatGPT can indeed search for pictures sent by users through comparison with other images on the internet, when doing so it still uses text as its basis of recognition. 

    In other words, it analyzes a digital image and then attempts to search for similar content based on what it thinks it sees in the image, instead of directly comparing the image with other pictures in the database, he said. 

    This has led some commentators to fear that private institutions or governmental organizations could “mis-educate” ChatGPT by creating large numbers of fake web pages used to export false or one-sided information.

    Hsu agreed that the ability of a single user to arbitrarily train, influence and tailor responses from ChatGPT is dangerous, but added that such action cannot affect the machine’s general database. 

    From Tiananmen? Not certain, but likely. 

    A reverse image search on Google shows that there is no previous record of the image in Google’s databases, which supports Wu’s assertion that this is the first time the image has been published. 

    A test using the AI detection tool Hive also estimated that the photo had only a 0.8% likelihood of having been produced by AI. 

    2024-06-06_15h43_36.png
    An AI detection tool concluded that the photo is unlikely to be synthesized. (Screenshot/Hive)

    Apart from that, AFCL found, the scene captured in Wu’s photo shares a high degree of similarity with a scene at the two-hour and 48-minute mark of The Gate of Heavenly Peace, a documentary about the Tiananmen protests directed by Carma Hinton. 

    While the documentary does not specify where the image was taken, several key details in both frames match. These include the general positioning of the bodies, tears on the edges of the cots where the bodies lie, and a likely fire hydrant opening in the wall behind the deceased people.

    Below is a screenshot comparison between the image posted by Wu (left) and the scene from The Gate of Heavenly Peace (right).

    2024-06-06_15h44_19.png
    A screenshot comparison between the image posted by Wu (left) and the scene from The Gate of Heavenly Peace (right). Parts of these images have been digitally blurred due to their graphic nature.

    However, there are key differences between the two images. In the documentary, all three bodies have red bandanas tied around their heads, and the body in the center has a license plate laid across its upper shoulder. These details are not present in Wu’s image.

    Wu told AFCL that the two photos were taken at the same location. 

    He noted that many witnesses of the scene were still alive, several of whom had left comments under his post affirming they had personally seen the images captured in the photos on the day of the crackdown. 

    When asked about some of the internal discrepancies between his photo and the shot from the documentary, Wu reponded that it was likely caused by the difference in time between when the two photos were taken. 

    He explained that the license plate was taken from a military vehicle and was likely placed atop the body as evidence. 

    Wu then stated that both the license plate and the red bandanas may have been carried away by sympathetic onlookers who wished to salvage objects from the scene before government forces could carry away evidence of the crackdown. 

    The Gate of Heavenly Peace’s director Hinton has not responded to requests for comment as of press time.

    AFCL failed to independently verify the photo. 

    Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Shen Ke and Taejun Kang.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

    The below unedited images are graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.

    2024-06-06_15h45_19.png

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    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Rita Cheng and Dong Zhe for Asia Fact Check Lab.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • John Minto: The first casualty of war is truth – the rest are mostly civilians

    COMMENTARY: By John Minto

    Good slogans have people nodding their heads in agreement because they recognise an underlying truth in the words.  

    I have a worn-out t-shirt which carries the slogan, “The first casualty of war is truth — the rest are mostly civilians”.

    If you find yourself nodding in agreement it’s possibly because you have found it deeply shocking to find this slogan validated repeatedly in almost eight months of Israel’s war on Gaza.

    The mainstream news sources which bring us the “truth” are strongly Eurocentric. Virtually all the reporting in our mainstream media comes via three American or European news agencies — AP, Reuters and the BBC — or from major US or UK based newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Washington Post or The New York Times. 

    This reporting centres on Israeli narratives, Israeli reasoning, Israeli explanations and Israeli justifications for what they are doing to Palestinians. Israeli spokespeople are front and centre and quoted extensively and directly.

    Palestinian voices, when they are covered, are usually at the margins. On television in particular Palestinians are most often portrayed as the incoherent victims of overwhelming grief.

    In the mainstream media Israel’s perverted lies dominate. 

    Riddled with examples
    The last seven months is riddled with examples. Just two days after the October 7 attack on Israel, pro-Palestinian protesters were accused of chanting “Gas the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House.

    The story was carried around the world through mainstream media as a nasty anti-semitic slur on Palestinians and their supporters. Four months later, after an intensive investigation New South Wales police concluded it never happened. The words were never chanted.

    However the Radio New Zealand website today still carries a Reuters report saying “A rally outside the Sydney Opera House two days after the Hamas attack had ignited heated debate after a small group were filmed chanting “Gas the Jews”.

    Even if RNZ did the right thing and removed the report now the old adage is true: “A lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its trousers on”. Four months later and the police report is not news but the damage has been done as the pro-Israel lobby intended.

    The same tactic has been used at protests on US university campuses. A couple of weeks ago at Northeastern University a pro-Israel counter protester was caught on video shouting “Kill the Jews” in an apparent attempt to provoke police into breaking up the pro-Palestine protest.

    The university ordered the protest to be closed down saying “the action was taken after some protesters resorted to virulent antisemitic slurs, including ‘Kill the Jews’”. The nastiest of lies told for the nastiest of reasons — protecting a state committing genocide.

    Similarly, unverified claims of “beheaded babies” raced around the world after the October 7 attack on Israel and were even repeated by US President Joe Biden. They were false.

    No baby beheaded
    Even the Israeli military confirmed no baby was beheaded and yet despite this bare-faced disinformation the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand was able to repeat the lie, along with several others, in a recent TVNZ interview on Q&A without being challenged.

    War propaganda such as this is deliberate and designed to ramp up anger and soften us up to accept war and the most savage brutality and blatant war crimes against the Palestinian people.

    Recall for a moment the lurid claims from 1990 that Iraqi soldiers had removed babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and left them to die on the floor. It was false but helped the US convince the public that war against Iraq was justified.

    Twelve years later the US and UK were peddling false claims about Iraq having “weapons of mass destruction” to successfully pressure other countries to join their war on Iraq.

    Perhaps the most cynical misinformation to come out of the war on Gaza so far appeared in the hours following the finding of the International Court of Justice that South Africa had presented a plausible case that Israel was committing genocide.

    Israel smartly released a short report claiming 12 employees of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) had taken part in the October 7 attack on Gaza. The distraction was spectacularly successful.

    Western media fell over themselves to highlight the report and bury the ICJ findings with most Western countries, New Zealand included, stopping or suspending funding for the UN agency.

    Independent probe
    eedless to say an independent investigation out a couple of weeks ago shows Israel has failed to support its claims about UNRWA staff involved in the October 7 attacks. It doesn’t need forensic analysis to tell us Israel released this fact-free report to divert attention from their war crimes which have now killed over 36,000 Palestinians — the majority being women and children.

    The problem goes deeper than manufactured stories. For many Western journalists the problem starts not with what they see and hear but with what their news editors allow them to say.

    A leaked memo to New York Times journalists covering the war tells them they are to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to avoid using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land.

    They have even been instructed not to use the word Palestine “except in very rare cases” or the term “refugee camps” to describe areas of Gaza settled by Palestinian refugees driven off their land by Israeli armed militias in the Nakba of 1947–49.

    These reporting restrictions are a blatant denial of Palestinian history and cut across accurate descriptions under international law which recognises Palestinians as refugees and the occupied Palestinian territories as precisely what they are — under military occupation by Israel.

    People reading articles on Gaza from The New York Times have no idea the story has been “shaped” for us with a pro-Israel bias.

    These restrictions on journalists also typically cover how Palestinians are portrayed in Western media. Every Palestinian teenager who throws a stone at Israeli soldiers is called a “militant” or worse and Palestinians who take up arms to fight the Israeli occupation of their land, as is their right under international law, are described as “terrorists” when they should be described as resistance fighters.

    The heavy pro-Israel bias in Western media reporting is an important reason Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, and the ongoing violence which results from it, has continued for so long.

    The answer to all of this is people power — join the weekly global protests in your centre against Israel’s settler colonial project with its apartheid policies against Palestinians.

    And give the mainstream media a wide berth on this issue.

    John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pro-government newspaper publisher attacks journalist Vuk Cvijić over investigative report

    Berlin, June 5, 2024—Serbian authorities should conduct a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation into the recent physical attack against journalist Vuk Cvijić, hold those responsible to account, and ensure the journalist’s safety, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

    Vuk Cvijić, a reporter for the weekly newspaper Radar, was walking by a cafe around 1 p.m. on May 29 in the capital, Belgrade, when publisher Milan Lađević began shouting insults and expletives, asking how he dared to write an article connecting him to Slobodan Malešić, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ, and news reports. Malešić is the former head of police in Novi Sad, a city in northwestern Serbia, and is currently being tried on organized crime charges.

    Lađević is co-owner of Media Network, which publishes pro-government newspaper Telegraf, and was sitting with his deputy, Boris Vukovic. 

    Cvijić said he tried to move away from the pair when Lađević stood up, approached the journalist, and punched him on the right side of his chin, causing Cvijić to fall on the sidewalk and break his phone screen. He was treated at a hospital for a contusion and given medication.

    Cvijić told CPJ that Lađević was referencing an article printed by the weekly magazine NIN — where the journalist worked in 2023 — in which the journalist described Lađević as a close ally of Malešić, according to CPJ’s review of the 2023 November article.

    Lađević denied attacking the journalist in a statement to the newspaper Republika, which serves as the online edition of Telegraf, and claimed Cvijić was the one who provoked, insulted, attacked them, and then staged the incident. CPJ emailed questions to Lađević but received no reply.

    The Belgrade prosecutor’s office started an investigation and took statements from Lađević, Vukovic, and Cvijić, but had not issued any further updates as of Wednesday, according to Cvijić. CPJ’s emailed questions to the prosecutor’s office did not receive a response.

    “It is a welcome development that Serbian authorities have started an investigation following the recent attack against journalist Vuk Cvijić. They must ensure that the investigation is swift, thorough, and transparent, hold those responsible to account, and ensure the journalist’s safety,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Independent journalists in Serbia work in an increasingly hostile atmosphere, and authorities must demonstrate a zero-tolerance policy for such attacks.”

    Veran Matić, a 1993 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award and member of Serbia’s Working Group for the Security and Protection of Journalists, told N1 TV that police and prosecutors gave high priority to the investigation. Matić said it was important that the case was resolved as the attack was against an investigative journalist in an increasingly toxic climate in Serbia, and Lađević is the head of a media company that “often targets journalists like Vuk Cvijić, with untruths [and] fake news.”

    Radar condemned the attack in a May 29 statement and demanded Serbian authorities properly investigate the case, adding that independent media and the Serbian society as a whole face “a dangerous spiral of violence — unfortunately, encouraged by the authorities and media close to them.”

    Press freedom groups SafeJournalists network, Media Freedom Rapid Response partners and Coalition for Media Freedom condemned the attack in a May 30 statement as the most recent incident in ongoing attacks against journalists in Serbia.  

    CPJ has documented how independent journalists in Serbia face an increasingly hostile atmosphere in 2024 with a growing number of physical and online attacks due to the anti-press rhetoric from President Aleksandar Vučić’s supporters, government officials, and pro-government media.

    Journalists working for NIN quit the newspaper in January 2024 and launched Radar in March, citing a need to protect professional integrity amid criticism that NIN’s new owner is curtailing editorial independence.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • 2024 Polls Have Just Become Clickbait Creations For Corporate Media

    Presidential polling is all over the place right now, making it hard to know who is actually in the lead. But is this because Americans are evenly split, or is the media just getting worse at polling? Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any […]

    The post 2024 Polls Have Just Become Clickbait Creations For Corporate Media appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Veteran PNG editor promotes Tok Pisin writing, trains journalists

    Inside PNG

    Anna Solomon, a Papua New Guinean journalist and editor with 40 years experience, is now providing training for journalists at the Wantok Niuspepa.

    Wantok is a weekly newspaper and the only Tok Pisin language newspaper in PNG.

    Solomon, who spoke during last month’s public inquiry on Media in Papua New Guinea, asked if the Parliamentary Committee could work with the media industry to set up a Complaints Tribunal that could address issues affecting media in PNG.


    Anna Solomon talks about the media role to “educate people” at the public media inquiry.  Video: Inside PNG

    She also called for better Tok Pisin writers as it was one of two main languages that leaders, especially Parliamentarians, used in PNG to communicate with their voters.

    At the start of the 3-day public inquiry (21-24 May 2024), media houses also called for parliamentarians and the public to understand how the industry functions.

    The public inquiry focused on the “Role and Impact of Media in Papua New Guinea” and was led by the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication with an aim to improve the standard of journalism within the country.

    Republished from Inside PNG with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Political Polling In 2024 Is Useless

    America’s Lawyer E100: Universities across the country have joined forces with Big Pharma to make sure that you can’t afford your prescription drugs – we’ll explain how that’s happening. A new study has found that the chemicals in vaping liquid are causing an enormous amount of health problems that could result in permanent damage to […]

    The post Political Polling In 2024 Is Useless appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Generation Z Fears Losing Their Political Voice With Biden’s TikTok Ban

    Young Americans are becoming more politically active than ever, but President Biden is ready to silence their voices by signing the ban on TikTok a few weeks ago. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: Young Americans are becoming more politically active […]

    The post Generation Z Fears Losing Their Political Voice With Biden’s TikTok Ban appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • King’s Birthday Honours: NZ journalist reflects on work in the Pacific

    By Alakihihifo Vailala of PMN News

    Flipped “back in time” is how New Zealand author, journalist and media educator Dr David Robie describes the crisis in New Caledonia.

    Robie has covered the Asia-Pacific region for international media and educated Pacific journalists for more than four decades.

    He reported on the indigenous Kanak pro-independence uprising in the 1980s and says it is happening again in the French-colonised territory.

    Recognised for their services to the Pacific community in the King's Birthday Honours
    Recognised for their services to the Pacific community in the King’s Birthday Honours . . . Reverend Taimoanaifakaofo Kaio (from top left, clockwise:, Frances Mary Latu Oakes (JP), Maituteau Karora, Anapela Polataivao, Dr David Telfer Robie, Leitualaalemalietoa Lynn Lolokini Pavihi, Tupuna Mataki Kaiaruna, Mailigi Hetutū and Bridget Piu Kauraka. Montage: PMN News


    Dr David Robie talks to Ma’a Brian Sagala of PMN News in 2021.     Video: PMN/Café Pacific

    Robie’s comments follow the rioting and looting in New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa on May 13 that followed protesters against France President Emmanuel Macron’s plan for electoral reform.

    At least seven people have died and hundreds injured with damage estimated in the millions of dollars.

    “The tragic thing is that we’ve gone back in time,” he told PMN News.

    “Things were progressing really well towards independence and then it’s all gone haywire.

    “But back in the 1980s, it was a very terrible time. At the end of the 1980s with the accords [Matignon and Nouméa accords], there was so much hope for the Kanak people.”

    Robie, who has travelled to Noumēa multiple times, has long advocated for liberation for Kanaky/New Caledonia and was even arrested at gunpoint by French police in January 1987.

    He reflected on his work throughout the Pacific, which includes his involvement in the Rainbow Warrior bombing — the subject of his book Eyes of Fire; covering the Sandline crisis with student journalists in Papua New Guinea; and helping his students report the George Speight-led coup of 2000 in Fiji.


    Dr David Robie talks to Ma’a Brian Sagala of PMN News in August 2018.  Video: PMN/PMC

    “Because I was a freelance journalist, I could actually go and travel to many countries and spend a lot of time there.”

    “I guess that’s been my commitment really, helping to tell stories at a grassroots level and also trying to empower other journalists.”

    Robie’s commitment has been recognised in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours and he has been named a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

    He headed the journalism programmes at the University of Papua New Guinea and University of the South Pacific for 10 years, and also founded the Pacific Media Centre at AUT University.

    What Robie calls “an incredible surprise”, he says the award also serves as recognition for those who have worked alongside him.

    “Right now, we need journalists more than ever. We’re living in a world of absolute chaos of disinformation,” he said.

    Robie said trust in the media had declined due to there being “too much opinionated and personality” journalism.

    “We’re moving more towards niche journalism, if I might say, mainstream journalism is losing its way and Pacific media actually fit into the niche journalism mode,” he said.

    “So I think there will be a growing support and need for Pacific journalism whereas mainstream media’s got a lot more of a battle on its hands.”

    Republished from PMN News with permission.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Newshub closures: creating waves of change across the Pacific

    By Alana Musselle of Te Waha Nui

    Cook Islands News, the national newspaper for the Cook Islands, is one of many Pacific news media agencies expecting change in the face of New Zealand’s Newshub closure next month.

    The organisation has content-sharing agreements with traditional NZ media organisations including Stuff, New Zealand Herald, RNZ and TVNZ, and is dependent on them for some news relevant to their readers.

    Cook Islands News editor Rashneel Kumar said that Newshub, New Zealand’s second major television news and website which CIN did not have an agreement with, was still an excellent source of extra context or additional angles for the paper’s international pages, and its absence would be felt.

    Cook Islands News editor Rashneel Kumar
    Cook Islands News editor Rashneel Kumar . . . “Newshub has been a really good alternative in terms of robust and independent journalism.” Image: APR screenshot FB

    “You can understand the decisions that were taken by the owners but at the same time it is really sad for journalism in general,” Kumar said.

    “What it does is provide fewer options for quality journalism.

    “Media like Newshub has been a really good alternative in terms of robust and independent journalism.”

    Cook Islands News is in the process of signing a new share agreement with Pacific Media News (PMN), which is hiring a former Newshub reporter of Cook Islands descent.

    “This will boost our coverage because the experience he brings from Newshub will be translated into a platform that we have access to stories with,” Kumar said.

    ‘One positive effect’
    “So that is one positive effect of the closures.

    “We see the changing landscape, and we must adapt to the changes we are seeing.”

    Pacific Island countries consist of small and micro media systems due to the relatively small size of their populations and economies, resulting in limited advertising revenue and marginal returns on investment.

    Associate professor in Pacific journalism and head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific Dr Shailendra Singh said what was happening in New Zealand could also happen in the Pacific.

    “This advertising-based model is outdated in the digital media environment, and Pacific media companies, like their counterparts worldwide, need to change and innovate to survive,” he said.

    CEO of Cook Islands Television Jeanne Matenga said that the only formal relationship they had with overseas agencies was with Pasifika TV, but that Newshub’s closure meant they would no longer get any of their programmes.

    “As long as we can get one of the news programmes, then that should suffice for us in terms of New Zealand and international news,” she said.

    All major Pacific Island media organisations are already active on social media platforms, and are still determining how to harness, leverage, and monetise their social media followings.

    Newshub is due to close on July 5.

    Republished from the Te Waha Nui student journalist website at Auckland University of Technology. TWN used to be a contributing publication to Asia Pacific Report.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CPJ calls on Lesotho not to treat reporting on banned music groups as criminal offense

    Lusaka, May 31, 2024—Lesotho authorities should withdraw statements equating media interviews with outlawed music groups to criminal offenses and provide guarantees that journalists will not face arrest for doing their jobs, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.  

    During a May 21 press briefing, deputy police commissioner and then-acting head of the police force Mahlape Morai said it was a criminal offense for journalists to publish interviews with Famo music groups, according to a recording of the press briefing reviewed by CPJ, news reports and a statement by the Lesotho chapter of regional press freedom group Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).

    The announcement was in response to the Minister of Local Government, Chieftainship, Home Affairs, and Police, Lebona Fabian Lephema, declaring 12 Famo music groups “unlawful” and banning them on May 10, according to media reports and a copy of the government notice reviewed by CPJ.  

    Famo music groups are known for their popular accordion-based style of music, but the groups have also been accused of acting like rival gangs and engaging in criminal activities, including murder.

    Morai clarified during the May 21 press briefing that media outlets may interview members of the group, but “sharing that interview with the nation” would be promoting “something illegal” and “committing a crime.”

    Speaking to CPJ via messaging app, Morai denied saying the media should not cover the Famo groups, and said she only spoke out against promoting them. “In my own words, I said whatever you do, make sure you do not encourage or promote the illegal activities that are done by the Famo,” Morai told CPJ.

    “Giving voice to diverse viewpoints is essential to the media’s professional duty, and Lesotho police have no business dictating who journalists may or may not interview,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo, in Nairobi. “Lesotho authorities must retract statements equating interviewing the outlawed Famo music groups to a crime and desist from any attempts to censor the press.”

    CPJ was unable to confirm which section of the law Morai would enforce. Under Lesotho’s 1984 Internal Security Act — which empowers the home affairs minister to outlaw groups accused of subversive activity and outline penalties for supporting such groups — those convicted of soliciting financial or other support for these groups could face between five and 20 years imprisonment and fines up to 100,000 maloti (US$5,340).

    Police Commissioner Borotho Matsoso, who was appointed on May 23, told CPJ on May 28 that he was not in a position to give an interview and requested that he be reached the following week. Lephema did not respond to CPJ’s repeated calls and messages with questions about the case.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression

    By Robin Andersen, Nolan Higdon, and Steve Macek According to a 2022 report by Article 19, an international organization that documents and champions freedom of expression, 80 percent of the world’s population lives with less freedom of expression today than did ten years ago. The eradication of basic freedoms and…

    The post A Global Crackdown on Freedom of Expression appeared first on Project Censored.


    This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • When Nicaragua Took Germany to Court, Media Put Nicaragua in the Dock

     

    New York Times: For Nicaragua, International Case Against Germany Is Déjà Vu

    The New York Times (4/8/24) cited “experts” who called Nicaragua charging Germany with facilitating genocide “a cynical move by a totalitarian government to bolster its profile and distract attention from its own worsening record of repression.”

    When Nicaragua accused Germany of aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month, readers of corporate media might have seriously wondered whether Nicaragua’s case had any legitimacy.

    The case targeted Germany as the second biggest supplier of arms to Israel, because the US, Israel’s biggest supplier, does not accept the court’s jurisdiction on this issue. The object (as Nicaragua’s lawyer explained) was to create a precedent with wider application: that countries must take responsibility for the consequences of their arms sales to avoid them being used in breach of international law.

    Many in corporate media took a more jaundiced view. The Financial Times (4/8/24) led by telling readers, “The authoritarian government of Nicaragua accused Germany of ‘facilitating genocide’ in Gaza at the opening of a politically charged case.” The second paragraph in a New York Times article (4/8/24) cited “experts” who saw it “as a cynical move by a totalitarian government to bolster its profile and distract attention from its own worsening record of repression.” The Guardian (4/9/24) qualified its comment piece by remarking that “Nicaragua is hardly a poster child when it comes to respect for human rights.”

    Double standards are evident here. If the US government were to do what it has failed to do so far, and condemn Israel’s genocidal violence, Western corporate media would not remind readers of US crimes against humanity, such as the Abu Ghraib tortures, extraordinary renditions, or the hundreds imprisoned without trial at Guantánamo. It’s hard to imagine Washington would be accused of “hypocrisy” (Guardian, 4/9/24) for calling out Israel’s crimes. Any condemnation of Israel by the US or one of its Western allies would be taken at face value—in clear contrast to the media’s treatment of such action by an official enemy country like Nicaragua.

    Germany ‘as its finest’

    El Pais: The worst version of Nicaragua against the best version of Germany

    For El País (4/11/24), facilitating mass slaughter in Gaza is “Germany…at its finest,” because it it is “driven by its sense of responsibility stemming from a tragic history.”

    Of establishment media, Spain’s El País (4/11/24) was perhaps the most vitriolic in its portrayal of Nicaragua. Its piece on the court case was headlined “The Worst Version of Nicaragua Against the Best Version of Germany.”

    “The third international court case on the Gaza war pits a regime accused of crimes against humanity against a strong and legitimate democracy,” the piece explained. “It may be a noble cause, but its champion couldn’t be worse.”

    The article, which relayed none of the evidence offered by either side, commented rather oddly that Germany was “at its finest” arguing the case, and that its “defense against Nicaragua’s charges is solid and its legitimacy as a democratic state is unassailable”—a comment presumably intended to contrast its legitimacy with “the Nicaraguan dictatorship.”

    In addition to its article cited above, the New York Times (4/8/24) had a report more focused on the case itself. However, it was CNN (4/9/24) and Al Jazeera (4/8/24) that stood out as covering the case on its own merits rather than being distracted by animosity toward Nicaragua.

    The negative presentation in much of the media was repeated when, later in April, they headlined that Nicaragua’s request had been “rejected” by the ICJ (e.g., AP, 4/30/24; NPR, 4/30/24), with the New York Times (4/30/24) again remembering to insert a derogatory comment about Nicaragua’s action being “hypocritical.” These followup reports largely overlooked the impact the case had on Germany’s ability to further arm Israel during its continued assault on Gaza.

    Nicaraguan ‘Nazis’

    NYT: Nicaragua’s ‘Nazis’: Stunned Investigators Cite Hitler’s Germany

    The New York Times (3/2/23) ran a headline equating the Nicaraguan Sandinistas with the German Nazi Party, based on the claim that “the weaponizing of the justice system against political opponents in the way that is done in Nicaragua is exactly what the Nazi regime did.”

    Corporate media had been gifted their criticisms of Nicaragua by a report published at the end of February by the UN Human Rights Council. A “group of human rights experts on Nicaragua” (the “GHREN”) had produced its second report on the country. Its first, last year, had accused Nicaragua’s government of crimes against humanity, leading to this eyebrow-raising New York Times headline (3/2/23): “Nicaragua’s ‘Nazis’: Stunned Investigators Cite Hitler’s Germany.”

    The GHREN’s leader, German lawyer Jan-Michael Simon, had indeed likened the current Sandinista government to the Nazis. Times reporter Frances Robles quoted Simon:

    “The weaponizing of the justice system against political opponents in the way that is done in Nicaragua is exactly what the Nazi regime did,” Jan-Michael Simon, who led the team of UN-appointed criminal justice experts, said in an interview.

    “People massively stripped of their nationality and being expelled out of the country: This is exactly what the Nazis did too,” he added.

    It’s quite an accusation, given that the Nazis established over 44,000 incarceration camps of various types and killed some 17 million people. Robles gave few numbers regarding the crimes Nicaragua is accused of, but did mention 40 extrajudicial killings in 2018 attributed to state and allied actors, and noted that the Ortega government had in 2023 “stripped the citizenship from 300 Nicaraguans who a judge called ‘traitors to the homeland.’”

    Robles also quoted Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a member of the Nicaraguan oligarchic family who are among the Sandinista government’s fiercest opponents; Chamorro claimed there was evidence of “more than 350 people who were assassinated.” Even if true, this would seem to be a serious stretch from “exactly what the Nazis did.”

    Like most Western reporters, Robles—who also wrote the recent ICJ piece for the Times—gave no attention to the criticisms of the GHREN’s work by human rights specialists, who argued that the GHREN did not examine all the evidence made available to it and interviewed only opposition sources. For example, former UN independent expert Alfred de Zayas castigated its first report in his book The Human Rights Industry, calling it a “political pamphlet” intended to destabilize Nicaragua’s government.

    Even if one takes the GHREN account at face value, the Gaza genocide is at least 100 times worse in terms of numbers of fatalities, quite apart from other horrendous elements, such as deliberate starvation, indiscriminate bombing, destruction of hospitals and much more. It’s unclear why the accusations against Nicaragua should delegitimize the case against Germany.

    Hague history

    New York Times: WORLD COURT SUPPORTS NICARAGUA AFTER U.S. REJECTED JUDGES' ROLE

    In 1986, the New York Times (6/28/86) reported that the ICJ found the US guilty of ”training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces,” and of “direct attacks on Nicaraguan oil installations, ports and shipping.”

    Many media reports did mention Nicaragua’s long history of support for Palestine—which undermines the accusation of cynicism underlying the case—but few noted the Latin American country’s history of success at the Hague. As Carlos Argüello, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the Netherlands who took the lead at the ICJ, pointed out, Nicaragua has more experience at the Hague than most countries, including Germany. This began with its pioneer case against the US in 1984, when it won compensation of £17 billion (that was never paid) for the damage done to Nicaragua by the US-funded Contra war and the mining of its ports.

    One notable exception to that historical erasure came from Robles at the Times (4/8/24), who did refer to the 1984 case. But the point was clearly not to remind readers of US crimes, or to demonstrate that Nicaragua is an actor to be taken seriously in the realm of international law. The two academics she quoted both served to portray the current case as merely “cynical.”

    The first, Mateo Jarquín, Robles quoted as saying that the Sandinista government has “a long track record…of using global bodies like the ICJ to carve out space for itself internationally—to build legitimacy and resist diplomatic isolation.” Robles didn’t disclose Jarquín’s second surname, Chamorro. Like her source in the earlier article, he is a member of the family that includes several government opponents.

    Robles also quoted Manuel Orozco, a former Nicaraguan working at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, whose major funders include the US Agency for International Development and the International Republican Institute, notorious for their role in promoting regime change, including in Nicaragua. Orozco told Robles that “Nicaragua lacks the moral and political authority to speak or advocate for human rights, much less on matters of genocide.”

    ‘Effectively siding with Germany’

    AP: The top UN court rejects Nicaragua’s request for Germany to halt aid to Israel

    AP (4/30/24) missed the significance of the ICJ holding that, “at present, the circumstances are not such as to require” an order forbidding Germany to ship weapons to Israel—namely, that Germany maintained that it already halted shipments of such weapons (Verfassungblog, 5/2/24).

    On April 30, the ICJ declined to grant Nicaragua its requested provisional measures against Germany, including requiring the cessation of arms deliveries to Israel. Headlining this outcome, the Associated Press (4/30/24) said the court was “effectively siding with Germany.” The outlet did, however, continue by explaining that the court had “declined to throw out the case altogether, as Germany had requested,” and will hear arguments from both sides, with a resolution not likely to come for years.

    That was better than NPR‘s report (4/30/24), which only mentioned that the court was proceeding with the case in its final paragraph.

    But German lawyer and professor Stefan Talmon (Verfassungblog, 5/2/24), clarified that the court’s ruling “severely limits Germany’s ability to transfer arms to Israel.”

    “The court’s order was widely interpreted as a victory for Germany,” Talmon commented. “A closer examination of the order, however, points to the opposite.” He concluded that although the ICJ did not generally ban the provision of arms to Israel, it did impose significant restrictions on it by emphasizing Germany’s obligation to “avoid the risk that such arms might be used to violate the [Genocide and Geneva] Conventions.”

    And Talmon pointed out that the court appeared to make its decision that an order to halt war weapons shipments was unnecessary based on Germany’s claim that it had already stopped doing so.

    “By expressly emphasizing that, ‘at present’, circumstances did not require the indication of provisional measures, the Court made it clear that it could indicate such measures in the future,” Talmon wrote.

    Establishment media, seemingly distracted by the “hypocrisy” of Nicaragua challenging a country whose “legitimacy as a democratic state is unassailable,” mostly failed to notice that its legal efforts were therefore at least partially successful: It forced Germany to back down from its unstinting support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and alerted German politicians to the fact that they are at risk of being held accountable under international law if they transfer any further war weapons.


    This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by John Perry.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Footage of French forces officer kicking Kanak man in head surfaces online

    By Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital lead, and Margot Staunton, RNZ journalist

    Police brutality will further escalate tensions between pro-independence activists and French security forces in New Caledonia, a senior church leader in Nouméa says.

    On Tuesday night, video footage which shows a French security officer, who appears to have apprehended a Kanaky activist, then pushed the handcuffed man to the ground, before kicking him in the head and knocking him out.

    The clip — shared on a Nouméa neighbourhood watch Facebook group — is being widely circulated online and has been shared almost 400 times (as on Wednesday 3pm NZT).

    According to sources, the incident occurred at the Six Kilometre district in Nouméa.

    They are concerned it is due to actions like this that Paris has banned TikTok in New Caledonia so human rights abuses by the French security are not exposed.

    RNZ Pacific has contacted the French High Commissioner’s office and the French Ambassador to the Pacific for comment, seeking their response to this footage.

    Reverend Billy Wetewea from the Protestant Church of Kanaky New Caledonia told RNZ Pacific the police action was “not helping to bring calmness to the people on the ground”.

    “Like this kind of action from the police is not helping in our people to not go into violence against [sic],” he said.

    Reverend Watewea said the Kanak people on the ground had been advised to record all the movements of the security forces.

    “Especially when police forces are starting to attack [indigenous pro-independence Kanaks].”

    He said the footage that surfaced on Tuesday night was “not the first” such incident.

    “Some other situations in videos has been recorded as well. The people in responsibility will take those issues to the court because that’s not acceptable coming from police to have this kind of behaviour.”

    The death toll during two weeks of violent and destructive riots in New Caledonia has risen to seven.

    The French Ambassador to the Pacific, Veronique Roger-Lacan, said 134 police officers had been injured and nearly 500 people had been arrested.

    The state of emergency in the territory was lifted on Tuesday.

    Roger-Lachan said that while the state of emergency had been lifted, the ban on gatherings, the sale and transport of guns and alcohol, as well as the curfew, remained in place.

    French mobile police patrol the turbulent streets of Nouméa
    French mobile police patrol the turbulent streets of Nouméa in the wake of the riots earlier this month. Image: French govt screenshot/APR

    Resistance will continue
    A Kanak pro-independence activist Jimmy Naouna predicts police brutality and riots will continue as long as New Caledonia is highly militarised.

    A security force of 3000 remains in Nouméa with a further 484 on the way.

    The economic cost as a result of the unrest is estimated to be almost 1 billion euros (US$1.8 billion).

    Pro-independence alliance FLNKS member Naouna told RNZ Pacific the territory needed a political solution, not a military one.

    “They keep sending in more troops but that won’t solve the issue,” he said.

    “This is a political issue and it needs a political solution. The more you have the military and the police on the ground, the more violence there will be on both sides,” he said.

    ‘People want to be heard’
    Wetewea told RNZ Pacific while the presence of the French army on the streets has eased tensions, the decisions made at the political level in Paris are not helping to calm the people on the ground.

    He said the French President Emmanuel Macron is not listening to the indigenous people’s voices and the indigenous people have “had enough”.

    “For the people on the ground, they have had enough,” he said.

    “They want change. People want to be heard, people on the ground, people who are suffering in their houses. And we are facing now a situation that will be hard to recover from.”

    Naouna said Macron’s visit to the territory was merely a “political manoeuvre”.

    He said the pro-independence groups were expecting the French President to abate tensions by suspending and withdrawing the electoral reform bill.

    “[Macron] is losing support in his own political groups. In France, coming up in June. He is losing support for the European elections.

    “So, it is mainly for his own political gains that he has had to come to New Caledonia.”

    Wetewea said there was a realisation in New Caledonia that the events were led by indigenous young people in the city who have been denied opportunities and discriminated against.

    “That is the the part of the population that France was not taking care of for a long time, the part of the population that faced discrimination every day in schools, in seeking employment.

    He said the young people expressed all of these frustration towards a system that did not acknowledge them.

    “But looking more largely against the system that does not really incorporate or acknowledge our the Kanak people and their culture.”

    ‘Stifling free speech’
    Asia Pacific Report editor and Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) deputy chair Dr David Robie deplored what he called the “the French tactics of reverting back to the brutality of the crackdowns during the 1980s”.

    “It’s no wonder the French authorities were quick to ban TikTok, trying unsuccessfully to stifle free debate and hide the brutality,” he said in response to the disturbing footage.

    He said there was a need for dialogue and a genuine attempt to hear Kanak aspirations, and public goodwill, in a bid to reach a consensus for the future.

    “If there had been more listening than talking by Paris and its ministers over the past three years, this crisis could have been avoided. But repression now will only backfire.

    “The 1980s ended in the terrible Ouvéa massacre. Surely some lessons have been learnt from history? Independence is inevitable in the long run.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestine solidarity group condemns ‘colonial violence’ in Rafah, Kanaky

    Asia Pacific Report

    A New Zealand solidarity group for Palestine with a focus on settler colonialism has condemned the latest atrocities by the Israeli military in its attack on Rafah — in defiance of the International Court of Justice order last Friday to halt the assault — and also French brutality in Kanaky New Caledonia.

    In its statement, Justice for Palestine (J4Pal) said that Monday had been “a day of unconscionable and unforgivable violence” against the people of Rafah.

    As global condemnation over the attack on displaced Palestinians in a tent camp and the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the ground invasion, a new atrocity was reported yesterday.

    Israeli forces shelled a tent camp in a designated “safe zone” west of Rafah and killed at least 21 people, including 13 women and girls, in the latest mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

    “Gaza deserves better. Kanaky deserves better. Aotearoa deserves better. All our babies deserve better,” said the group.

    “It is not our role to articulate what indigenous Kanak people are fighting for. Kanak people are the experts in their own lives and struggle, and they must be listened to on their own terms at this critical moment,” the statement said.

    “Our work for Palestinian rights is, however, part of a larger struggle against settler-colonialism. It is our duty, honour and joy to make connections in this common struggle.

    ‘Dangerous ideologies’
    “These connections begin right here in Aotearoa, where Māori never ceded sovereignty. As New Zealand’s current government, France and Israel all demonstrate, the dangerous ideologies of colonialism are not yet the footnotes in history we strive to make them.

    “We recognise common injustices:

    • The failure of media to place the current uprising in the context of 150 years of history of French violence in Kanak,
    • The characterisation of Kanak activists as ‘terrorists’ all while a militarised foreign force represses them on their own land,
    • The deliberate transfer of a settler population to disenfranchise indigenous people and their control over their own territory,
    • A refusal to engage with the righteous aspirations of the Kanak people, and
    •The lack of support from Western governments around these aspirations.”

    Justice for Palestine said in its statement that it was its sincere belief that a world without colonialism was not only necessary, it was near.

    “With thanks to the steadfastness of not only Kanak, Māori and Palestinian people, and indigenous people everywhere.

    “The struggle of the Kanak people is an inspiration and reminder that while we may face the brute power of empire, we are many, and we are not going anywhere.”

    Justice for Palestine is a human rights organisation working in Aotearoa to promote justice, peace and freedom for the Palestinian people.

    It added: “Now is the hour for Te Tiriti justice, and liberation for both the Kanak and Palestinian people.”


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • It’s time for the Australian Human Rights Commission to stand up for the women of commercial TV | Josh Bornstein

    Complaints abound of a toxic culture rife with sexual harassment and unlawful discrimination. Women shouldn’t have to fight this battle on their own

    It’s now almost seven years since the US actor Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” The New York activist Tarana Burke had coined the “me too” phrase in 2006 but Milano’s tweet popularised the movement and triggered a volcanic reaction, as women across the world shared their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.

    #Metoo had a profound impact. Businesses made worthy announcements of new policies and initiatives. Politicians clamoured to establish inquiries then introduce policies and laws that would render women safer at work. Major changes were made to workplace laws in response to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Respect at Work report. A movement to ban non disclosure agreements emerged.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Don’t talk to media, Tiananmen massacre families warned ahead of June 4 anniversary

    Chinese authorities have ordered relatives of those who died in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre not to give media interviews, while veteran activists who took part in the pro-democracy movement that year are slapped with restrictions as part of a nationwide “stability maintenance” operation ahead of the 35th anniversary of the bloodshed, Radio Free Asia has learned.

    A security guard has been posted outside the home of Zhang Xianling, a founding member of the Tiananmen Mothers victims group whose 19-year-old son died in the military assault on Beijing, group spokesperson You Weijie told RFA Mandarin.

    “Most of the victims’ families haven’t been placed under guard for the 35th anniversary this year,” You said. “Only Zhang [Xianling] has — there are guards outside her door.”

    “We have all been told not to give interviews to journalists in our homes because the anniversary of June 4 is nearly here,” she said. 

    The move is part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s “stability maintenance” system that aims to control the words and movements of anyone they think might cause some kind of trouble for the authorities on politically sensitive dates.

    Public mourning for victims or discussion of the events of spring and summer 1989 are banned in China, and references to June 4, 1989, are blocked, filtered or deleted by the Great Firewall of government internet censorship.

    Hunger strike

    Xu Guang, a former student leader of the 1989 protest movement at Hangzhou University stood trial in the eastern province of Zhejiang in April 2023 for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the Communist Party, after he refused food and drink in detention to commemorate the Tiananmen massacre.

    You said the group plans to lay offerings to their lost loved ones at the cemetery privately, as they have on past anniversaries, under the watchful eye of state security police.

    She said Zhang and group founder Ding Zilin are elderly, with age-related health issues, but “aren’t doing too badly.”

    ENG_CHN_STABILITY MAINTENANCE_05282024.2.jpg
    Tiananmen Mothers spokesperson You Weijie. (You Weijie)

    Meanwhile, former 1989 student hunger-striker and rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang has been taken out of Beijing on an enforced “vacation” by state security police ahead of the anniversary, a person familiar with the situation told RFA.

    Dissident journalist Gao Yu could soon follow suit, the person said.

    A Beijing-based rights activist who gave the pseudonym Mr. Qin for fear of reprisals said it’s hard for anyone with ties to human rights activism or the pro-democracy movement to go anywhere at this time of year.

    “The atmosphere in Beijing is very tense right now,” he said. “It’s hard to get together for a meal with friends if you’re on the list of so-called sensitive figures.”

    “They will stop people from getting together to cook and eat together in their homes, even if they’re not on the list,” Qin said. “Naturally, it’s more sensitive here in Beijing, because that’s where [the massacre] happened.”

    “I think a lot of people in Beijing will be taken on ‘vacations’ this year,” he said.

    Taken out of town

    Ji Feng, an independent commentator who led student protests in the southwestern province of Guizhou in 1989, said he is also being taken out of town ahead of the anniversary, despite no longer living in Beijing.

    “Every anniversary ending in 5 or 0 is a bigger one, and there will be quite an uproar overseas this year, for the 35th anniversary,” Ji told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

    “This year, we’re not allowed to mention the anniversary or June 4, and we’re not allowed to go far,” Ji said. “In the past, they would take me anywhere, even around Beijing.”

    “Now, we have to stay in the vicinity of Zunyi city,” he said, adding that the local authorities seem less willing to spend money on “stability maintenance” measures this year.

    “Maybe finances are tight, and they have no money,” Ji speculated, in a reference to recent reports of cash-strapped local governments.

    In Shanghai, rights activist Shen Yanqiu said she has been called in to “drink tea” with state security police almost daily in the run-up to the anniversary, and warned off going anywhere or meeting anyone.

    “Rights defenders and dissidents alike are under tight surveillance around June 4,” Shen said. “We can’t arrange anything because they’re afraid we’ll contact foreign media organizations or hold citizen gatherings.”

    “It’s basically because the authorities are afraid,” she said.

    Shen said she had postponed plans to try to visit pandemic citizen journalist Zhang Zhan following her May 13 release from Shanghai Women’s Prison, because she expects Zhang to be under particularly tight surveillance.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Corporate Media Is Thriving By Selling Division In America

    The American public is hugely divided on every issue – according to the media. But the truth is that the public actually agrees on MOST issues. The media sells you division to juice their ratings and make more money. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please […]

    The post Corporate Media Is Thriving By Selling Division In America appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • The Daily Blog hacked – NZ’s most important left media outlet silenced for a day

    Pacific Media Watch

    The Daily Blog, New Zealand’s most important leftwing website of news, views and analyses at the heart of the country’s most conservative mediascape in years, has been hacked.

    It was silenced yesterday for several hours but is back up and running today.

    The Daily Blog editor and founder Martyn Bradbury launched the website in 2013 with the primary objective of “widening political debate” in the lead up to the 2014 New Zealand election.

    Since then, the website has united more than “42 of the country’s leading leftwing commentators and progressive opinion shapers to provide the other side of the story on today’s news, media and political agendas”.

    It has 400,000 pageviews a month.

    “These moments are always a mix of infuriation and terror”, admitted Bradbury in an editorial today about the revived website and he raised several suspected nations for “cyber attack trends” such as “China, Israel and Russia”.

    Bradbury, nicknamed “Bomber” by a former Craccum editor at Victoria University of Wellington, was once branded by the NZ Listener magazine as the “most opinionated man in New Zealand”

    The website includes columns by such outspoken writers and critics as law professor Jane Kelsey, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, Palestinian human rights advocate and quality education critic John Minto, political scientist Dr Wayne Hope, social justice academic and former leftwing politician Sue Bradford, and political analyst Morgan Godfery.

    It also hosts the popular live podcasts by The Working Group, which tonight features pre-budget “Economists of the Apocalypse Special” by Bradbury, with Matthew Hooton, Damien Grant and Brad Olson at 7.30pm on its revived website.

    ‘Sophisticated and tricky’
    Explaining why The Daily Blog was displaying a “maintenance page” for most of the day, Bradbury said in his editorial:

    The hack was very sophisticated and very tricky.

    Thank you to everyone who reached out, these moments are always a mix of infuriation and terror.

    We can’t point the finger at who did it, but we can see trends.

    Whenever we criticise China, we get cyber attacks.

    Every time we criticise Israel, we get cyber attacks.

    Every time we criticise Russia, we get cyber attacks.

    Every time we post out how racist NZ is, we get stupid cyber attacks.

    Every time we have a go at New Zealand First’s weird Qanon antivaxx culture war bullshit we get really dumb cyber attacks.

    Every time we criticise woke overreach we get cancelled.

    This hack on us yesterday was a lot more sophisticated and I would be surprised if it didn’t originate offshore.

    We have a new page design up and running in the interim, there will be updates made to it for the rest of week as we iron out all the damage caused and tweak it for TDB readers.

    You never know how important critical media voices are until you lose them!

    Bradbury added that “obviously this all costs an arm and a leg being offline” and appealed to community donors to deposit into The Daily Blog’s bank account 12-3065-0133561-56.

    The Daily Blog can be contacted here.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Online Predator Group Coerces Kids Into Self Mutilation & Government Tries To Escape PFAS Liability

    An online group of thugs calling themselves 7-6-4 has been blackmailing children and teenagers into committing acts of self harm and then forcing them to post the videos online. Also, the federal government is trying to escape liability for contaminating entire neighborhoods with dangerous chemicals for decades. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated […]

    The post Online Predator Group Coerces Kids Into Self Mutilation & Government Tries To Escape PFAS Liability appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • French repressive policies in New Caledonia have ‘betrayed’ Kanak hopes

    Alex Bainbridge talks to David Robie on Kanaky and settler colonialism.   Video: Green Left

    Green Left Show

    Indigenous Kanaks in Kanaky (New Caledonia) have sprung into revolt in the last two weeks in response to moves by the colonial power France to undermine moves towards independence in the Pacific territory.

    Journalist David Robie from Aotearoa New Zealand spoke to the Green Left Show today about the issues involved.

    We acknowledge that this video was produced on stolen Aboriginal land. We express solidarity with ongoing struggles for justice for First Nations people and pay our respects to Elders past and present.

    Interviewer: Alex Bainbridge of Green Left
    Journalist: Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report
    Programme: 28min


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • West Papua independence group slams French ‘modern-day colonialism’

    Asia Pacific Report

    A West Papuan independence group has condemned French “modern-day colonialism in action” in Kanaky New Caledonia and urged indigenous leaders to “fight on”.

    In a statement to the Kanak pro-independence leadership, exiled United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda said the proposed electoral changes being debated in the French Parliament would “fatally damage Kanaky’s right to self-determination”.

    He said the ULMWP was following events closely and sent its deepest sympathy and support to the Kanak struggle.

    “Never give up. Never surrender. Fight until you are free,” he said.

    “Though the journey is long, one day our flags will be raised alongside one another on liberated Melanesian soil, and the people of West Papua and Kanaky will celebrate their independence together.”

    Speaking on behalf of the people of West Papua, Wenda said he sent condolences to the families of those whose lives have been lost since the current crisis began — seven people have been killed so far, four of them Kanak.

    “This crisis is one chapter in a long occupation and self-determination struggle going back hundreds of years,” Wenda said in his statement.

    ‘We are standing with you’
    “You are not alone — the people of West Papua, Melanesia and the wider Pacific are standing with you.”

    “I have always maintained that the Kanak struggle is the West Papuan struggle, and the West Papuan struggle is the Kanak struggle.

    “Our bond is special because we share an experience that most colonised nations have already overcome. Colonialism may have ended in Africa and the Caribbean, but in the Pacific it still exists.”

    Wenda said he was proud to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front] in 2022.

    “We are one Melanesian family, and I hope all Melanesian leaders will make clear statements of support for the FLNKS’ current struggle against France.

    “I also hope that our brothers and sisters across the Pacific — Micronesia and Polynesia included — stand up and show solidarity for Kanaky in their time of need.

    “The world is watching. Will the Pacific speak out with one unified voice against modern-day colonialism being inflicted on their neighbours?”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Fiji Times: Public outcry over Fijians’ MPs pay rise

    EDITORIAL: By Fred Wesley, editor-in-chief of The Fiji Times

    So 40 Fiji members of Parliament voted in favour of the Special Committee on Emoluments Report on the review of MPs’ salaries, allowances and benefits in Parliament on Friday.

    Now that’s not going down well with the masses, with many venting their frustrations on social media. From the outset, it appears there are many people frustrated by the turn of events in the august house.

    Many also sent in letters to the editor expressing their disappointment. There was the odd one out though, reflecting on the need for a pay rise for parliamentarians. So in effect, we have both ends of the spectrum covered.

    The Fiji Times
    THE FIJI TIMES

    That’s democracy for you. People will have differing opinions on what constitutes the right action to take at this moment in our history.

    Seven voted against the motion and five abstained.

    There are differing opinions as well in the House.

    The National Federation Party voted against the motion, pointing out their position was in accordance with the directive of the party.

    Opposition leader Inia Seruiratu insisted government must be seen as an equal opportunity provider and an employer of choice.

    In saying that, we reflect on a number of factors. They are intertwined with this change in financial status of our MPs.

    There will be the line taken about the importance of the work and salary comparisons initially, the duration of their stint in Parliament, status and expectations from voters, and the argument about attracting and retaining professionals, against the impact this will have on our coffers, pinning down taxpayer dollars.

    We have a scenario that isn’t a pleasant one at all. We have a competitive salary against timing, and expectations of a nation that isn’t well off at all.

    We have a delicate situation. Sceptics will wonder about what is fair compensation against the financial strain this places on taxpayers.

    Let’s face it. There are economic challenges, and this increase will no doubt be seen as an insensitive one.

    For what it is worth, what we have now is a situation that raises the importance of transparency and public trust in government decisions.

    There will be issues raised about the independence of the process, and references will no doubt be made back to earlier emolument committees, and the processes they followed.

    There will be questions asked about the need for people independent of Parliament.

    In saying that, we are reminded about the taxpayer having every right to hold our MPs up to scrutiny!

    We again raise that delicate balance between effective governance and the concerns of the people!

    Fred Wesley is editor-in-chief of The Fiji Times. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Open letter from Kanaky: Things are really bad, we need to speed up decolonisation

    Asia Pacific Report

    By a Kanak from Aotearoa New Zealand in Kanaky New Caledonia

    I’ve been trying to feel cool and nice on this beautiful sunny day in Kanaky. But it has already been spoiled by President Emmanuel Macron’s flashy day-long visit on Thursday.

    Currently special French military forces are trying to take full control of the territory. Very ambitously.

    They’re clearing all the existing barricades around the capital Nouméa, both the northern and southern highways, and towards the northern province.

    Today, May 25, after 171 years of French occupation, we are seeing the “Lebanonisation” of our country which, after only 10 days of revolt, saw many young Kanaks killed by bullets. Example: 15 bodies reportedly found in the sea, including four girls.

    [Editor: There have been persistent unconfirmed rumours of a higher death rate than has been reported, but the official death toll is currently seven — four of them Kanak, including a 17-year-old girl, and two gendarmes, one by accident. Lebanonisation is a negative political term referring to how a prosperous, developed, and politically stable country descends into a civil war or becomes a failed state — as happened with Lebanon during the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.]

    One of the bodies was even dragged by a car. Several were caught, beaten, burned, and tortured by the police, the BAC and the militia, one of whose leaders was none other than a loyalist elected official.

    With the destruction and looting of many businesses, supermarkets, ATMs, neighbourhood grocery stores, bakeries . . . we see that the CCAT has been infiltrated by a criminal organisation which chooses very specific economic targets to burn.

    Leaders trying to discredit our youth
    At the same time, the leaders organise the looting, supply alcohol and drugs (amphetamines) in order to “criminalise” and discredit our youth.

    A dividing line has been created between the northern and southern districts of Greater Nouméa in order to starve our populations. As a result, we have a rise in prices by the colonial counters in these dormitory towns where an impoverished Kanak population lives.

    President Macron came with a dialogue mission team made up of ministers from the “young leaders” group, whose representative in the management of high risks in the Pacific is none other than a former CIA officer.

    The presence of DGSE agents [the secret service involved in the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985] and their mercenaries also gives us an idea of ​​what we are going to endure again and again for a month.

    The state has already chosen its interlocutors who have been much the same for 40 years. The same ones that led us into the current situation.

    Therefore, we firmly reaffirm our call for the intervention of the BRICS, the Pacific Islands Forum members, and the Melanesian Spearhead group (MSG) to put an end to the violence perpetrated against the children of the indigenous clans because the Kanak people are one of the oldest elder peoples that this land has had.

    There are only 160,000 individuals left today in a country full of wealth.

    Food and medical aid needed
    Each death represents a big loss and it means a lot to the person’s clan. More than ever, we need to initiate the decolonisation process and hold serious discussions so that we can achieve our sovereignty very quickly.

    Today we are asking for the intervention of international aid for:

    • The protection of our population;
    • food aid; and
    • medical support, because we no longer trust the medical staff of Médipôle (Nouméa hospital) and the liberals who make sarcastic judgments towards our injured and our people.

    This open letter was written by a long-standing Kanak resident of New Zealand who has been visiting New Caledonia and wanted to share his dismay at the current crisis with friends back here and with Asia Pacific Report. His name is being withheld for his security.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestine protesters call for Gaza press ‘solidarity’ at NZ media awards

    Pacific Media Watch

    Pro-Palestinian protesters dressed in blue “press” vests tonight staged a vigil calling on New Zealand journalists to show solidarity with the media of Gaza who have suffered the highest death toll in any war.

    They staged the vigil at the Viaduct venue of NZ’s annual Voyager Media Awards.

    Organised by Palestinian Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and People for Palestine (P4P), supporters were making a stand for the journalists of Gaza, who were awarded the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize earlier this month.

    Fathi Hassneiah of PYA condemned the systematic killing, targeting and silencing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) throughout the war on Gaza that is now in its eighth month.

    Global media freedom watchdog groups have had differing figures for the death toll of Gazan journalists, but the Al Jazeera network says 142 have been killed.

    Often the families of journalists have been martyred alongside them, Hassneiah said.

    A media spokesperson, Leondra Roberts, said PYA and P4P were calling on “all journalists in Aotearoa to stand in solidarity with the courageous journalists of the Gaza Strip who continue to report on what the International Court of Justice has called a plausible genocide”.

    Maori journalists commended
    She commended Kawea Te Rongo (Māori Journalists Association) for their support for their Palestinian colleagues in November 2023 with co-chair Mani Dunlop saying: “Journalists and the media are integral to ensuring the world and its leaders are accurately informed during this conflict …

    “Daily we are seeing stories of journalists who face extreme brutality . . .  including the unconscionable worry of their families’ safety while they themselves risk their lives.

    “It is a deadly trade-off, every day they put on their press vest and helmet to do their job selflessly for their people and the rest of the world.”

    PYA spokesperson and musician Rose Freeborn appealed to journalists reporting from Aotearoa to critically examine Israel’s treatment of their peers in Gaza and called on “storytellers of all mediums to engage with Palestinian voices”.

    “We unequivocally condemn the mass murder of 105 journalists in Gaza by the IDF since October 7, as well as Israel’s longstanding history of targeting journalists across the region — from Shireen Abu Akleh to Issam Abdallah — in an attempt to smother the truth and dictate history,” she said.

    She criticised the “substandard conduct” of some journalists in New Zealand.

    Media industry ‘failed’

    Broadcaster, singer and journalist Moana Maniapoto . . . speaking to the Palestinian protesters tonight
    Broadcaster, singer and journalist Moana Maniapoto . . . speaking to the Palestinian protesters tonight. Image: PYA/P4P

    “At times, the media industry in this country has failed not only the Palestinian community but New Zealand society at large by reporting factual inaccuracies and displaying a clear bias for the Israeli narrative.

    “This has led to people no longer trusting mainstream media outlets to give them the full story, so they have turned to each other and the journalists on the ground in Gaza via social media.

    “The storytellers of Gaza, with their resilience and extraordinary courage, have provided a blueprint for journalists across the globe to stand in defence of truth, accuracy and objectivity.”

    A Palestinian New Zealander and P4P spokesperson, Yasmine Serhan, said: “While it is my people being subjected to mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, it is the peers of New Zealand journalists who are being systematically targeted and murdered by Israel in an attempt to stop the truth being reported.”

    RNZ News reports that RNZ won two major honours tonight at the annual Voyager Media Awards, which recognise New Zealand’s best journalism, with categories for reporting, photography, digital and video.

    RNZ was awarded the Best Innovation in Digital Storytelling for their series The Interview and longform journalist te ao Māori Ella Stewart took out the prize for Best Up and Coming Journalist.

    Le Mana Pacific award went to Indira Stewart of 1News, and Mihingarangi Forbes (Aotearoa Media Collective) and Moana Maniapoto (Whakaata Māori) were joint winners of the Te Tohu Kairangi Award.

    Some of the Palestine protesters taking part in the vigil in support of Gazan journalists
    Some of the Palestine protesters taking part in the vigil in support of Gazan journalists at NZ’s Voyager Media Awards tonight. Image: ER

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Media fuss over stranded tourists, but Kanaks face existential struggle

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    “Only the struggle counts . . .  death is nothing.”  Éloi Machoro — “the Che Guevara of the Pacific” — said this shortly before he was gunned down by a French sniper on 12  January 1985.

    Machoro, one of the leaders of the newly-formed FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — today the main umbrella movement for New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people — slowly bled to death as the gendarmes moved in.

    The assassination is an apt metaphor for what France is doing to the Kanak people of New Caledonia and has been doing to them for 150 years.

    As the New Zealand and Australian media fussed and bothered over tourists stranded in New Caledonia over the past week, the Kanaks have been gripped in an existential struggle with a heavyweight European power determined to keep the archipelago firmly under the control of Paris.  We need better, deeper reporting from our media — one that provides history and context.

    According to René Guiart, a pro-independence writer, moments before the sniper’s bullets struck, Machoro had emerged from the farmhouse where he and his comrades were surrounded.  I translate:

    “I want to speak to the Sous-Prefet! [French administrator],” Machoro shouted. “You don’t have the right to arrest us.  Do you hear? Call the Sous-Prefet!”

    The answer came in two bullets. Once dead, Machoro’s comrades inside the house emerged to receive a beating from the gendarmes.  Standing over Machoro’s body, a member of the elite mobile tactical unit said:  “He wanted war, he got it!”

    Weeks earlier, New Zealand journalist David Robie had photographed Machoro shortly before he smashed open a ballot box with an axe and burned the ballots inside. “It was,” says Robie, “symbolic of the contempt Kanaks had for what they saw as the French’s manipulated voting system.”

    Former schoolteacher turned FLNKS "security minister" Éloi Machoro
    Former schoolteacher turned FLNKS “security minister” Éloi Machoro . . . people gather at his grave every year to pay homage. Image: © 1984 David Robie

    Every year on January 12, the anniversary of Machoro’s killing, people gather at his grave. Engraved in stone are the words: “On tue le révolutionnaire mais on ne tue pas ses idées.” You can kill the revolutionary but you can’t kill his ideas.  Why don’t most Australians and New Zealanders even know his name?

    Decades after his death and 17,000 km away, the French are at it again. Their National Assembly has shattered the peace this month with a unilateral move to change voting rights to enfranchise tens of thousands of more recent French settlers and put an end to both consensus building and the indigenous Kanak people’s struggle for self-determination and independence.

    Thanks to French immigration policies, Kanaks now number about 40 percent of the registered voters. New Zealand and Australia look the other way — New Caledonia is France’s “zone of interest”.

    But what’s not to like about extending voting rights?  Shouldn’t all people who live in the territory enjoy voting rights?

    “They have voting rights,” says David Robie, now editor of Asia Pacific Report, “back in France.”  And France, not the Kanaks, control who can enter and stay in the territory.

    Back in 1972, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer argued in a since-leaked memo that if France wanted to maintain control, flooding the territory with white settlers was the only long-term solution to the independence issue.

    Robie says the French machinations in Paris — changing the boundaries of citizenship and voting rights – and the ensuing violent reaction, is effectively a return to the 1980s — or worse.

    The violence of the 1980s, which included massacres, led to the Matignon Accords of 1988 and the Nouméa Accords of 1998 which restricted the voting to only those who had lived in Kanaky prior to 1998 and their descendents. Pro-independence supporters include many young whites who see their future in the Pacific, not as a white settler colonial outpost of France.

    Most whites, however, fear and oppose independence and the loss of privileges it would bring.

    After decades of calm and progress, albeit modest, things started to change from 2020 onwards. It was clear to Robie and others that French calculations now saw New Caledonia as too important to lose; it is a kind of giant aircraft carrier in the Pacific from which to project French power. It is also home to the world’s third-largest nickel reserves.

    How have the Kanaks benefitted from being a French colony? Kanaks were given citizenship in their own country only after WWII, a century after Paris imposed French rule.   According to historian David Chappell:

    “In practice, French colonisation was one of the most extreme cases of native denigration, incarceration and dispossession in Oceania. A frontier of cattle ranches, convict camps, mines and coffee farms moved across the main island of Grande Terre, conquering indigenous resisters and confining them to reserves that amounted to less than 10 percent of the land.”

    It was a pattern of behaviour similar to France’s colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.  Little wonder the people of Niger have recently become the latest to expel them.

    Deprived of education — the first Kanak to qualify for university entrance was in the 1960s — socially and economically marginalised, subjected to what historians describe as among the most brutal colonial overlordships in the Pacific, the Kanaks have fought to maintain their languages, their cultures and their identities whilst the whites enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world.

    David Robie, author of Blood on Their Banner – Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, and a sequel, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, has been warning for years that France is pushing New Caledonia down a slippery slope that could see the country plunge back into chaos.

    “There was no consultation — except with the anti-independence groups. Any new constitutional arrangement needs to be based around consensus.  France has now polarised the situation so much that it will be virtually impossible to get consensus.”

    Author Dr David Robie
    Author Dr David Robie . . . warned for years that France is pushing New Caledonia down a slippery slope. Image: Alyson Young/PMC

    Macron also pushed ahead with a 2021 referendum on independence versus remaining a French territory. This was in the face of pleas from the Kanak community to hold off until the covid pandemic that had killed thousands of Kanaks had passed and the traditional mourning period was over.

    Macron ignored the request; the Kanak population boycotted the referendum. Despite this, Macron crowed about the anti-independence vote that inevitably followed: “Tonight, France is more beautiful because New Caledonia has decided to stay part of it.”

    Having created the problem with actions like the disputed referendum and the current law changes, Macron now condemns today’s violence in New Caledonia.  Éloi Machoro rebukes him from the grave: “Where is the violence, with us or with them?” he asked weeks before his killing. “The aim of the [law changes] is to destroy the Kanak people in their own country.”  That was 1985; as the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same thing.

    Kanaky and Palestine
    Kanaky and Palestine . . . “the same struggle” against settler colonialism. Image: Solidarity/APR

    Young people are at the forefront of opposing Paris’s latest machinations.  Hundreds have been arrested. Several killed. The White City, as Nouméa is called by the marginalised Melanesians, is lit by arson fires each night.  Thousands of French security forces have been rushed in.

    Leaders who have had nothing to do with the violence have been arrested; an old colonial manoeuvre.

    “What happened was clearly avoidable,” Robie says “ The thing that really stands out for me is: what happens now? It is going to be really extremely difficult to rebuild trust — and trust is needed to move forward. There has to be a consensus otherwise the only option is civil war.”

    Nadia Abu-Shanab, an activist and member of the Wellington Palestinian community, sees familiar behaviour and extends her solidarity to the people of Kanaky.

    “We Palestinians know what it is for people to choose to ignore the context that leads to our struggle. Indigenous and native people have always been right to challenge colonisation. We are fighting for a world free from the racism and the theft of resources and land that have hurt and harmed too many indigenous peoples and our planet.”

    Eugene Doyle is a Wellington-based writer and community activist who publishes the Solidarity website. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at Solidarity under the title “The French are at it again: New Caledonia is kicking off”. For more about Éloi Machoro, read Dr David Robie’s 1985 piece “Éloi Machoro knew his days were numbered”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New Film ‘I Could Never Go Vegan’ Unpacks All the Reasons Why, Actually, You Probably Can

    If you’ve ever heard someone say, “I could never go vegan,” raise your hand. Whether you already follow a vegan lifestyle, are considering trying a plant-based diet, or have simply discussed the topic of plant-based living, you’ve likely encountered this statement. Heck, maybe you’ve even said it yourself. If you didn’t figuratively raise your hand, you’re probably in the minority.

    Like most of us, filmmaker Thomas Pickering has heard the phrase “I could never go vegan” multiple times in his life. “It’s not uncommon for me to have daily conversations with friends, colleagues, or strangers, and for them to utter these words to me,” he said in a recent statement. But unlike many people, he was brought up not eating meat, so he finds the phrase particularly curious. In a bid to find out more about why people feel they can’t go vegan, he set about combining his love of filmmaking and his passion for veganism to create a new documentary, aptly titled I Could Never Go Vegan.

    I Could Never Go Vegan Poster

    With the help of experts and advocates for the vegan lifestyle, in  I Could Never Go Vegan Pickering carefully unpacks each of the common arguments that back up the phrase “I could never go vegan” (B12 deficiency, protein worries, and so on) to peel back the truth. Spoiler alert, but maybe, actually, most of us can go vegan if we want to.

    “The idea for the film, and the title, in particular, stemmed from a conversation I had one day with my brother James [who also produced the film],” Pickering told VegNews. “I wanted to make something that actually had meaning, and had the potential to positively impact those who watched it.” And it seems he has achieved that goal. I Could Never Go Vegan is streaming in select cinemas across the UK now and has received rave reviews so far for its unique approach to the vegan conversation (The Guardian, for example, awarded it four stars and labeled it “cheerfully persuasive”).

    To find out more about I Could Never Go Vegan, check out our chat with Pickering below where we find out more about the making of the documentary, including the parts of filming that will stay with him forever.

    Tom Pickering with Pig

     

    I Could Never Go Vegan

    VegNews: Let’s start with the title of the film! Can you tell us more about what inspired you to approach the documentary from this angle?

    Thomas Pickering: One day, I asked my brother if he had any idea why we were raised meat-free because this genuinely seemed to be something that shocked people. This is why I actually ask my Mum the same question at the beginning of the film. We then go down the route of exploring why we so frequently hear this phrase: “I could never go vegan.” It was James who had the idea to call the film I Could Never Go Vegan. It gave us a great way to explore all the arguments against the movement.

    VN: During the making of the film, was there anything that really surprised you about why some people feel they could never go vegan?

    TP: There were a few surprising findings we uncovered, ranging from comical to absurd. Some members of the public believe cows have to be milked or they’ll explode, we actually heard that while making the film! But another big one was the ranking system in the Animal Protection Index. The index ranks countries on farm animal welfare, and not a single country scored higher than a D, with the US scoring an E, yet in countries like the UK we boast about our so-called “high welfare standards.” I go undercover to a “high-welfare” farm in the film to explore this further, and what we uncover is truly horrific. 

    “Some moments within the environment section blew my mind – I felt like I already knew a lot of this before going into it, and yet I still found I was shocked by some of the stats we uncovered. A big one is that we could free up 76 percent of farmland if we shift to a plant-based farming system.”

    VN: Animal welfare is a key issue with farming, of course. But the film boasts a wide range of experts, who help to debunk many of the misconceptions surrounding veganism and plant-based diets. Why was it so important to you to include such a range of insights? 

    TP: We didn’t want it to be a film where I was just giving viewers my opinion. We wanted to ensure we had the best possible people included in the film, and we’re extremely proud of the science and studies we reference. Whether we’re looking into the health impacts of a vegan diet and speaking with people like Dr. Shireen Kassam, Dr. Gemma Newman, and Dr. Alan Desmond, or debunking the myths that surround the climate crisis by talking with the incredible George Monbiot, there’s something for everyone. That’s really just scratching the surface with regard to the amount of wonderful experts who feature.

    VN: You also feature several athletes in the film, which is so important for showing what a plant-based diet can do for many people’s bodies. 

    TP: The athletes featured are phenomenal. Sophia Ellis, a British, European, and Commonwealth powerlifting champion, can deadlift over 240 kilograms! Mike Coppock is a humble teacher who breaks ultra-running world records on the side of his day job. I even do a 50-kilometer ultra marathon with Paul Youd, an 84-year-old vegan who wants to complete 100 ultras before he’s 100 years old! 

    Tom and PaulI Could Never Go Vegan

    VN: You’re hoping to change people’s minds with this film, but did anything you discovered during the making of I Could Never Go Vegan change your perspective in any way? 

    TP: Making this film reaffirmed everything I already believed in, and massively reenergised me in terms of my motivation and work as an activist. We cover so many aspects of veganism in this film and so many of the arguments we commonly hear, and I honestly can’t think of a single reason why someone shouldn’t go vegan.

    VN: Which parts have had the biggest impact on you as a filmmaker?

    TP: One of the things that really stuck with me on a personal level was the undercover footage. I still have nightmares to this day about the things I’ve seen. But it’s worth noting that for those who struggle to watch distressing welfare footage, myself included, most of the film is put together in a light-hearted and fun way. 

    “The narrative is engaging, fun, and comical in parts, but also serious where it needs to be. It’s a really nice mix, which hopefully gives the film a broader appeal.”

    VN: On that note, how have you ensured that I Could Never Go Vegan appeals to all kinds of viewers?

    TP: We have tried to blend styles to ensure we reach as big an audience as possible. The last thing we want is for people to turn the TV off because they find it hard to watch. We’re really proud of the finished film and can’t wait for people to see it. Hopefully, we can make a real difference.

    I Could Never Go Vegan is streaming in select cinemas across the UK now. To view the trailer, and to find out more about how to watch the full documentary, click here. 

    This post was originally published on VegNews.com.

  • Rob Campbell: Unrest in New Caledonia – as seen through moana or colonialist eyes?

    COMMENTARY: By Rob Campbell

    Is it just me or is it not more than a little odd that coverage of current events in New Caledonia/Kanaky is dominated by the inconvenience of tourists and rescue flights out of the Pacific paradise.

    That the events are described as “disruption” or “riots” without any real reference to the cause of the actions causing inconvenience. The reason is the armed enforcement of “order” is flown into this Oceanic place from Europe.

    I guess when you live in a place called “New Zealand” in preference to “Aotearoa” you see these things through fellow colonialist eyes. Especially if you are part of the dominant colonial class.

    How different it looks if you are part of an indigenous people in Oceania — part of that “Indigenous Ocean” as Damon Salesa’s recent award-winning book describes it. The Kanaks are the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia.

    The indigenous movement in Kanaky is engaged in a fight against the political structures imposed on them by France.

    Obviously there are those indigenous people who benefit from colonial rule, and those who feel powerless to change it. But increasingly there are those who choose to resist.

    Are they disrupters or are they resisting the massive disruption which France has imposed on them?

    People who have a lot of resources or power or freedom to express their culture and belonging tend not to “riot”. They don’t need to.

    Not simply holiday destinations
    The countries of Oceania are not simply holiday destinations, they are not just sources of people or resource exploitation until the natural resources or labour they have are exhausted or no longer needed.

    They are not “empty” places to trial bombs. They are not “strategic” assets in a global military chess game.

    Each place, and the ocean of which they are part have their own integrity, authenticity, and rights, tangata, whenua and moana. That is only hard to understand if you insist on retaining as your only lens that of the telescope of a 17th or 18th century European sea captain.

    The natural alliance and concern we have from these islands, is hardly with the colonial power of France, notwithstanding the apparent keenness of successive recent governments to cuddle up to Nato.

    A clue — we are not part of the “North Atlantic”.

    We have our own colonial history, far from pristine or admirable in many respects. But we are at the same time fortunate to have a framework in Te Tiriti which provides a base for working together from that history towards a better future.

    Those who would debunk that framework or seek to amend it to more clearly favour the colonial classes might think about where that option leads.

    And when we see or are inconvenienced by independence or other indigenous rights activism in Oceania we might do well to neither sit on the fence nor join the side which likes to pretend such places are rightfully controlled by France (or the United States, or Australia or New Zealand).

    Rob Campbell is chancellor of Auckland University of Technology (AUT), chair of Ara Ake, chair of NZ Rural Land and former chair of Te Whatu Ora. This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Journalists challenge PNG government over ‘media control’ policy

    By Stephen Wright of BenarNews

    The Papua New Guinea government’s push for news organisations to become its cheer-leading squad is under further scrutiny this week as Parliament hears testimony from journalists and top officials.

    The effort to wield influence over the news, first announced last year as a “media development policy”, has been watered down in the face of strong opposition.

    Despite the changes, the policy still contains avenues for politicians and officials to undermine the watchdog role of the Pacific island country’s media.

    “When we say media development we are saying media should be a tool for development because we are a developing nation,” said Steven Matainaho, Secretary of the Department of Information Communication Technology, which devised the media regulation plans.

    “In a more advanced and mature economy it could be used as a Fourth Estate for balance and check, but in a developing economy every stakeholder should work together to develop the country — that includes the media,” he told the Committee on Communications’ hearing at Parliament House.

    Papua New Guinea’s global ranking in the annual Reporters Without Borders press freedom index deteriorated to 91st place this year from 59th last year. In 2019 it was placed 38th out of the 180 nations assessed.

    “We’re calling it the ‘media control policy’, not the ‘media development policy’,” Scott Waide, a senior Papua New Guinea journalist, told BenarNews.

    “We didn’t agree with it because it was trying to make the media an extension of the government public relations mechanism,” he said.

    Amid the criticism, the parliamentary committee on Wednesday asked the Media Council of Papua New Guinea to amend its submission to include a proposal that it takes the leading role in drafting any media policy.

    Ricky Morris, Marsh Narewec; and Sam Basil Jr .
    Papua New Guinea’s parliamentary Committee on Communications members (from left) Ricky Morris, chairman Marsh Narewec; and deputy chairman Sam Basil Jr listen to evidence on 22 May 2024 in Port Moresby. Image: Harlyne Joku/BenarNews

    Marape threatened media
    Prime Minister James Marape has threatened to hold journalists accountable for news reports he objected to and has frequently criticised coverage of his government’s failings and Papua New Guinea’s social problems.

    The government has an at times tenuous hold over the country, which in the past few months has suffered economically ruinous riots in the capital, spasms of deadly tribal violence in the highlands and a succession of natural disasters.

    The fifth and latest draft of the policy argues that a government framework is needed for the growth of a successful media industry, which currently suffers from low salaries, insufficient training, competition for readers with social media and, according to a government survey, a high level of public distrust.

    The media policy is also needed to justify providing funds from the government budget to bolster journalism training at universities, according to Matainaho.

    It envisages a National Media Commission that would report to Parliament and oversee the media industry, including accreditation of journalists and media organisations. A Government Media Advisory Committee would sit inside the commission.

    A separate National Media Content Committee would “oversee national content” and a National Information Centre would “facilitate the dissemination of accurate government information” by overseeing a news website, newspaper and 24-hour news channel.

    It also aims to make existing state-owned media a more effective conduit for government news.

    Government role ‘too much’
    Neville Choi, president of the Media Council of PNG representing the major mainstream broadcasters and publishers, said the plans still give far too much of a role to the government.

    Neville Choi
    Neville Choi, president of the Media Council of Papua New Guinea, speaking to a parliamentary committee in Port Moresby on government plans to regulate the media on May 21, 2024. Image: Harlyne Joku/BenarNews

    He said the council is concerned about the long-term risk to democracy and standards of governance if the state became the authority for accreditation of journalists, determining codes of practice, enforcing compliance with those codes and adjudicating complaints against media.

    “One must consider how future actors might interpret or administer the policy with political intent,” he said in the council’s submission to the committee.

    “The proposed model would allocate too much centralised power to government,” he said.

    Waide said the main focus of a media development policy should be on training and providing adequate funding to university journalism programmes.

    Media, he said, “is a tool for development in one respect, in that we need to promote as much as possible the values of Papua New Guinean society.

    “But there has to be a healthy mix within the media ecosystem,” he said. “Where opinions are expressed, opinions are not suppressed and not everyone is for the government.”

    Call to develop ‘pathways’
    Although the policy mentions the importance of press freedom in a democracy and freedom of expression enshrined in the country’s constitution, other comments point to different priorities.

    “It is necessary to review, update and upgrade how we do business in the media space in PNG. This must be with the mindset of harnessing and enhancing the way we handle media information and news for development,” Minister of Communications and Information Technology Timothy Masiu said in the document.

    It is timely to develop “pathways” for developing the industry and “holding media in general responsible and accountable,” he said.

    And according to Matainaho: “The constitution protects the rights of the citizens, we must not take that away from the citizens, but at the same time we need to find a balance where we still hold the media accountable.”

    His department had studied Malaysia — which ranks lower than Papua New Guinea in the press freedom index and has draconian laws used to threaten journalists — when it was developing the media policy, Matainaho said.

    Media’s rights under the constitution are not absolute rights, he said.

    Harlyne Joku contributed to this report from Port Moresby. Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.