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 […]
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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 […]
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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.
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.
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.
“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.
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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.
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…
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This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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, 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.
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.
Alex Bainbridge talks to David Robie on Kanaky and settler colonialism. Video: Green Left
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New Caledonia police kill Kanak protester https://t.co/7fnNPlx5W8
A day after president Macron’s visit..— Jimmy Naouna (@JNaouna) May 24, 2024
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:
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.
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’
“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.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
I 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A fireworks store in North Korea was featured in the country’s state media for its unique products, including fireworks shaped like intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.
Experts told Radio Free Asia that the fireworks, shaped like North Korea’s Hwasong-17 ICBM, unveiled in 2020 and first test fired in 2022, are meant to instill national pride among children, and the parents who would buy them.
“Our store carries fireworks that everyone loves, and that teenagers and students enjoy,” a worker at the Changgwang Fireworks Store said on the May 19 Korea Central Television broadcast.
The report showed an entire section of the store with missile-themed fireworks, including a launcher in the shape of a transporter erector launcher vehicle, or TEL.
The store’s military-themed products are clearly aimed at children, as its interior includes colorful pictures of animals on the walls, and a small fenced-off play area for toddlers, flanked by two very large Hwasong-17 models and a mural depicting the missile being launched into a sky full of cartoon stars and bursting fireworks.
Military themed-toys are very common in North Korea, but the country seems to want the people to be on board with dedicating resources and labor to missile and rocket development.
In February 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s wife, Ri Sol Ju, was spotted wearing an ICBM-shaped necklace at a banquet commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Founding of the Korean People’s Army.
In February 2024, the country forced residents to buy laminated photos of a reconnaissance satellite rocket launch to display in their homes as a constant reminder of the country’s military achievements.
Instilling pride
The missile-themed displays are an attempt to foster national pride among the people, both through children and their parents, Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former analyst at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, told RFA Korean.
“It reinforces the message that North Korea needs nuclear weapons and missiles because of the U.S. threat,” he said. “And it is a way of explaining away the dire economic conditions that North Korean people suffer from because it’s being blamed on the United States.”
David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, said the displays are an effort by the authorities to try to “ reinforce the legitimacy of North Korea as a military power to show off its nuclear and missile capabilities.”
“It’s an example of the prioritization of resources that the Kim family regime does,” said Maxwell. “It prioritizes enhancing the reputation of the regime over the welfare of the people, while the people suffer the worst lives of really any population in the world today.”
Such militaristic children’s toys were unheard of decades ago, said Kim Su-kyung, who escaped North Korea in 1998 and resettled in the United States.
“When I was young, there were no goods like this,” she said. “We used to play a military game called ‘Kill the Yankee’ during field day at school, but it seems like that has now been upgraded and made into these types of toys.”
She said the public would not be receptive to these toys and would not appreciate the government’s attempts to manipulate public opinion with “useless toys.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jamin Anderson for RFA Korean.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
COMMENTARY: By Gordon Campbell
The split opening up in Israel’s “War Cabinet” is not just between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his long-term rival Benny Gantz. It is actually a three-way split, set in motion by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
It was Gallant’s open criticism of Netanyahu that finally flushed Gantz out into the open.
What Gallant wanted from Netanyahu was a plan for how Gaza is to be governed once the fighting ends and an assurance that the Israel Defence Force will not end up being Gaza’s de facto civil administrator.
To that end, Gallant wanted to know what Palestinian entity (presumably the Palestinian Authority) would be part of that future governing arrangement, and on what terms.
To Gallant, that is essential information to ensure that the IDF (for which he is ultimately responsible) will not be bogged down in Gaza for the duration of a forever war. By voicing his concerns out loud, Gallant pushed Gantz into stating publicly what his position is on the same issues.
What Gantz came up with was a set of six strategic “goals” on which Netanyahu has to provide sufficient signs of progress by June 8, or else Gantz will resign from the war Cabinet.
Maybe, perhaps. Gantz could still find wiggle room for himself to stay on, depending on the state of the political/military climate in three weeks time.
The Gantz list
For what they’re worth, Gantz’s six points are:
Almost instantly, this list drew a harsh response from Netanyahu’s’ office:
“The conditions set by Benny Gantz are laundered words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandonment of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas-rule intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Our soldiers did not fall in vain and certainly not for the sake of replacing Hamastan with Fatahstan,” the PM’s Office added.
In reality, Netanyahu has little or no interest in what a post-war governing arrangement in Gaza might look like. His grip on power — and his immunity from criminal prosecution — depends on a forever war, in which any surviving Palestinians will have no option but to submit to Gaza being re-settled by Israeli extremists. (Editor: ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has today filed an application for arrest warrants for crimes against humanity by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders for war crimes.)
Statement of #ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of #Palestine
https://t.co/WqDZecXFZq
— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) May 20, 2024
Gantz, no respite
Palestinians have no reason to hope a Gantz-led government would offer them any respite. Gantz was the IDF chief of staff during two previous military assaults on Gaza in 2012 and 2014 that triggered accusations of war crimes.
While Gantz may be open to some minor role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in helping to run Gaza in future, this would require the PA to be willing to duplicate in Gaza the same abjectly compliant security role it currently performs on behalf of Israel on the West Bank.
So far, the PA has shown no enthusiasm for helping to run Gaza, given that any collaborators would be sitting ducks for Palestinian retribution.
In sum, Gantz is a centrist only when compared to the wingnut extremists (e.g. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich) with whom Netanyahu currently consorts. In any normal democracy, such public dissent by two senior Cabinet Ministers crucial to government stability would have led directly to new elections being called.
Not so in Israel, at least not yet.
Counting the cost in Nouméa
A few days ago, the Chamber of commerce in Noumea estimated the economic cost of the ongoing unrest in New Caledonia — both directly and to rebuild the country’s trashed infrastructure — will be in excess of 200 million euros (NZ$356 million).
Fixing the physical infrastructure though, may be the least of it.
The rioting was triggered by the French authorities preparing to sign off on an expansion of the eligibility criteria for taking part in decisive votes on the territory’s future. Among other things, this measure would have diluted the Kanak vote, by extending the franchise to French citizens who had been resident in New Caledonia for ten years.
This thorny issue of voter eligibility has been central to disputes in the territory for at least three decades.
This time around, the voting roll change being mooted came hard on the heels of a third independence referendum in 2021 that had been boycotted by Kanaks, who objected to it being held while the country was still recovering from the covid pandemic.
With good reason, the Kanak parties linked the boycotted 2021 referendum — which delivered a 96 percent vote against independence — to the proposed voting changes. Both are being taken as evidence of a hard rightwards shift by local authorities and their political patrons in France.
An inelegant inégalité
On paper, New Caledonia looks like a relatively wealthy country, with an annual per capita income of US$33,000 __ $34,000 estimated for 2024. That’s not all that far behind New Zealand’s $US42,329 figure, and well in excess of neighbours in Oceania like Fiji ($6,143) Vanuatu $3,187) and even French Polynesia ($21,615).
In fact, the GDP per capita figures serve to mask the extremes of inequality wrought since 1853 by French colonialism. The country’s apparent prosperity has been reliant on the mining of nickel, and on transfer payments from mainland France, and both these sources of wealth are largely sealed off from the indigenous population;
The New Caledonian economy suffers from a lack of productivity gains, insufficient competitiveness and strong income inequalities… Since 2011, economic growth has slowed down due to the fall in nickel prices… The extractive sector developed relatively autonomously with regard to the rest of the economy, absorbing most of the technical capabilities. Apart from nickel, few export activities managed to develop, particularly because of high costs..[associated with] the narrowness of the local market, and with [the territory’s] geographic remoteness.
No doubt, tourism will be hammered by the latest unrest. Yet even before the riots, annual tourism visits to New Caledonia had always lagged well behind the likes of Fiji, and French Polynesia.
Over the past 50 years, the country’s steeply unequal economic base has been directly manipulated by successive French governments, who have been more intent on maintaining the status quo than on establishing a sustainable re-balance of power.
History repeats
The violent unrest that broke out between 1976-1989 culminated in the killing by French military forces of several Kanak leaders (including the prominent activist Eloï Machoro) while a hostage-taking incident on Ouvea in 1988 directly resulted in the deaths of 19 Kanaks and two French soldiers.
Tragically in 1989, internal rifts within the Kanak leadership cost the lives of the pre-eminent pro-independence politician Jean-Marie Tjibaou and his deputy.
Eventually, the Matignon Accords that Tjibaou had signed a year before his death ushered in a decade of relative stability. Subsequently, the Noumea Accords a decade later created a blueprint for a 20-year transition to a more equitable outcome for the country’s various racial and political factions.
Of the 270,000 people who comprise the country’s population, some 41 percent belong to the Kanak community.
About 24 percent identify as European. This category includes (a) relatively recent arrivals from mainland France employed in the public service or on private sector contracts, and (b) the politically conservative “caldoches” whose forebears have kept arriving as settlers since the 19th century, including an influx of settlers from Algeria after France lost that colony in 1962, after a war of independence.
A further 7.5 percent identify as “Caledonian” but again, these people are largely of European origin. Some 11.3% of the population are of mixed race. Under the census rules, people can self-identify with multiple ethnic groups.
In sum, the fracture lines of race, culture, economic wealth and deprivation crisscross the country, with the Kanak community being those most in need, and with Kanak youth in particular suffering from limited access to jobs and opportunity.
Restoring whose ‘order’?
The riots have been the product of the recent economic downturn, ethnic tensions and widely-held Kanak opposition to French rule. French troops have now been sent into the territory in force, initially to re-open the international airport.
It is still a volatile situation. As Le Monde noted in its coverage of the recent rioting, New Caledonia is known for its very high number of firearms in relation to the size of the population.
If illegal weapons are counted, some 100,000 weapons are said to be circulating in a territory of 270,000 inhabitants.
Even allowing for some people having multiple weapons, New Caledonia has, on average, a gun for every three or four people. France by contrast (according to Franceinfo in 2021) had only 5.4 million weapons within a population of more than 67 million, or one gun for every 12 people.
The restoration of “order” in New Caledonia has the potential for extensive armed violence. After the dust settles, the divisive issue of who should be allowed to vote in New Caledonia, and under what conditions, will remain.
Forging on with the voting reforms regardless, is now surely no longer an option.
Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s column in partnership with Scoop.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
A Māori supporter of Pacific independence movements claims the French government has “constructed the crisis” in New Caledonia by pushing the indigenous Kanak population to the edge, reports Atereano Mateariki of Waatea News.
A NZ Defence Force Hercules is today evacuating about 50 New Zealanders stranded in the French Pacific island territory by riots that broke out last week over a plan to give mainland settlers voting rights after 10 years’ residence.
Sina Brown-Davis from Kia Mau Aotearoa said Kanak leaders had worked patiently towards independence since the last major flare-up in the 1980s, but the increased militarisation of the Pacific seemed to have hardened the resolve of France to hang on to its colonial territory.
“Those rights to self-determination, those rights to independence of the Kanak people as an inalienable right are the road block to the continued militarisation of our region and of those islands,” she said.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
The Committee to Protect Journalists and nine other organizations representing news media titles, journalists, and campaign groups, urged U.K. authorities on Tuesday to urgently repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which could force publishers to pay the costs of people who sue them — even if the outlet wins.
Section 40, which has never been brought into force, was drawn up following the Leveson Inquiry into British media ethics in 2012 after journalists were found to have hacked the phones of celebrities and a murdered schoolgirl.
CPJ and others called on the U.K. to repeal Section 40, as promised in 2023 via provisions in the Media Bill, as it risks forcing news publishers to sign up to state-backed regulation.
Read the full statement below:
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A New Zealand author, journalist and media educator who has covered the Asia-Pacific region since the 1970s says liberation “must come” for Kanaky/New Caledonia.
Professor David Robie sailed on board Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior until it was bombed by French secret agents in New Zealand in July 1985 and wrote the book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
He has also been arrested at gun point in New Caledonia while on a mission reporting on the indigenous Kanak uprising in the 1980s and wrote the book Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific.
The Asia Pacific Report editor told RNZ Pacific’s Lydia Lewis France was “torpedoing” any hopes of Kanaky independence.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.