A Hamilton couple convicted of exploiting Pacific migrants have had their convictions quashed after the New Zealand’s Court of Appeal ruled there had been a miscarriage of justice.
Anthony Swarbrick and Christina Kewa-Swarbrick were found guilty on nine representative charges of aiding and abetting, completion of a visa application known to be false or misleading and provision of false or misleading information, at a trial in the Hamilton District Court in February 2023.
A month later, Kewa-Swarbrick, who originally came from Papua New Guinea, was sentenced to 10 months home detention. She completed nine months of that sentence.
Swarbrick served his full eight months of home detention.
In February this year the Court of Appeal found that in Swarbrick’s case, the trial judge’s summing up of the case was “not fair and balanced” leading to a “miscarriage of justice”.
It found the trial judge “undermined the defence” and “the summing up took a key issue away from the jury.”
“Viewed overall, the Judge forcefully suggested what the jury would, and impliedly should, find by way of the elements of the offence. The Judge made the ultimate assessment that was for the jury to make. The trial was unfair to Mr Swarbrick for that reason. We conclude that this resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” the decision states.
It ordered Swarbrick’s convictions be quashed and a retrial.
Christina Kewa-Swarbrick . . . “Compensation . . . will help us rebuild our lives.” Image: RNZ
Charges withdrawn
It came to the same conclusions for Kewa-Swarbrick in April, but the retrial was abandoned after the Crown withdrew the charges in May, leading to the Hamilton District Court ordering the charges against the couple be dismissed.
Immigration NZ said it withdrew the charges after deciding it was no longer in the public interest to hold a re-trial.
The couple, who have since separated, are now investigating redress options from the government for the miscarriage of justice.
“We lost everything. Our marriage, our house. I lost a huge paying job offshore that I couldn’t go back to because we were on bail,” Swarbrick told RNZ.
“It’s had a huge effect, emotionally, financially. We had to take our children out of private school.”
Swarbrick had since been unable to return to his job and now had health issues as a result of the legal battles.
Kewa-Swarbrick said the court case had “destroyed” her life.
“It’s affected my home, my marriage, my children.”
Not able to return to PNG
She had not been able to return to Papua New Guinea since the case because she had received death threats.
“My health has deteriorated.”
The couple estimated they had spent at least $90,000 on legal fees, but their reputation had been severely affected by the case and media reports, preventing them from getting new jobs.
The couple’s ventures came to the attention of Immigration NZ in 2016 and charges were laid in 2018. The trial was delayed until 2023 because of the covid-19 pandemic.
Immigration NZ alleged the couple had arranged for groups of seasonal workers from Papua New Guinea to work illegally in New Zealand for very low wages between 2013 and 2016.
The trial heard the workers were led to believe they would be travelling to New Zealand to work under the RSE scheme in full time employment, receiving an hourly rate of $15 per hour, but ended up being paid well below the minimum wage.
However, Kewa-Swarbrick and Swarbrick argued they always intended to bring the PNG nationals to New Zealand for a cultural exchange and work experience.
“They fundraised $1000 each for living costs. We funded everything else. And when they got here they just completely shut us down,” said Kewa-Swarbrick.
She said it was “a relief” to finally be exonerated.
“The compensation part is going to be the last part because it will help us rebuild our lives.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
It’s been four years since Hurricane Laura slammed into southwest Louisiana just shy of Category 5 status. It was the fiercest storm the state had seen in a century, driving more than 10 feet of storm surge onto land. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta, a Category 2, carved a near-identical gash through the Bayou State, seeming to sense the path of least resistance Laura left behind. That winter, a deadly freeze gripped the ravaged region. Pipes burst and pavement froze into deadly ice slicks as temperatures dropped into the teens. A few months later, spring floods dropped a foot and a half of rain on Lake Charles, the city that had already endured, at that point, three epochal disasters. One journalist dubbed it the “most unfortunate city in the United States.”
At a meeting this July, the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury, the administrative and legislative body that oversees Lake Charles and the rest of Louisiana’s Calcasieu Parish (pronounced cal-kuh-shoo), seemed eager to shake that reputation. Hundreds of millions of federal disaster aid dollars have poured into the parish, much of them aimed at Lake Charles. The number of tarps covering rooftops — the blue dots that came to define the region after the back-to-back storms — has dwindled. The parish’s income is now exceeding expenses thanks in part to an uptick in sales tax revenue — a sign of economic recovery.
The sentiment was codified in an assessment, presented at the July meeting, called the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. It noted that “there is excitement among our leaders to make great strides in areas that do not involve hurricane recovery.” Minutes later, the jurors approved the use of the parish courthouse grounds for a food and music festival that its organizer promised would be the “go-to festival for the month of November for the state and the region.” The jurors were buoyant. Calcasieu Parish, and Lake Charles, was finally on the up-and-up.
An aerial view shows damage to a neighborhood by Hurricane Laura outside of Lake Charles, Louisiana in 2020. AFP via Getty Images
But while Lake Charles makes progress recovering from the storms’ physical and economic damages, the city is still grappling with another legacy the storms left behind — one that’s quietly undermining its long-term recovery.
Officials estimate that Lake Charles permanently lost close to 7 percent of its population, more than 5,000 people, in the wake of the storms, though city planners note that the real number is likely even higher. Between 2019 and 2020, the Lake Charles area lost a higher share of its population than any other city in the U.S., a pattern of out-migration sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and severely exacerbated by Laura and Delta.
People left for bigger urban areas like Houston and New Orleans, where housing could be found. Some had been relative newcomers to Lake Charles who had rented apartments and houses; roughly half of the city’s affordable housing stock was damaged. Others were from families who had called Lake Charles home for generations. Those who remained did so for one of two reasons: They could afford to stay, or they couldn’t afford to leave.
But Louisiana doesn’t have a uniform or an effective way of tracking and compensating for that movement — no state in the country does. And that has long-lasting political implications for both the people who leave and those who stay. When a city loses people, it doesn’t just lose some of the social fabric that imbues a place with feeling. Where people end up dictates district lines, congressional representation, and how state and federal resources are distributed.
Lake Charles is now gaining back some of the population it lost, but the influx isn’t following historical patterns: Many of the people who have moved in or returned home are settling into wealthier and, overall, whiter parts of Lake Charles — areas that recovered more quickly from the devastation. Meanwhile, in some of the city’s majority-Black neighborhoods in northern Lake Charles, the recovery process has been painfully slow.
A few of the many abandoned and condemned homes in Lake Charles. Zoya Teirstein / Grist
The U.S. relies on the decennial census to take stock of exactly how many people live where. Come hell or high water, its once-in-a-decade population assessment dictates how district lines are drawn. But in Lake Charles, the timing of the first two storms, which hit as the census was closing down its field offices, immediately invalidated information painstakingly gathered by census officers. Census officials were still trying to track down people displaced by Laura when Delta hit. The city now stands as an example of what happens when the census fails to capture the population-level impacts of natural disasters. How can cities account for storms that hollow out a generation of working-class families?
Lake Charles is one of many cities across the country being forced to confront these questions. Up until now, however, the invisible population trend lines being etched into the city have been a lot easier to ignore than scarred rooftops and abandoned buildings.
Edward Gallien Jr., 67, lives with his pit bull, Red, on Pear Street in northern Lake Charles. His house is less than 4 miles away from the county government office where the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury meets, but Gallien hasn’t experienced the recovery the jurors are keen to celebrate. His roof is caving in, frayed scraps of a blue plastic tarp barely covering the sagging asphalt shingles. Smashed windows let in putrid-hot summer air and mosquitos breed in the fast-food containers idling in the sink.
Other houses on his street bear a tell-tale red tag, meaning they’ve been abandoned and marked for demolition by the city. Gallien, who inherited his property from his parents, is still holding out hope that help will come so he can rebuild. He informally inherited his house, a practice permitted under Louisiana state law that can make it exceedingly difficult for property owners to claim federal relief dollars after a disaster hits.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “I ain’t got nowhere else to go.”
Edward Gallien Jr. stands in front of his house holding his dog, Red, on a leash.
Zoya Teirstein / Grist
Gallien’s house, severely damaged by Hurricane Laura, is one of the most visible reminders of the legacy of hurricane recovery in Lake Charles. Pictures of homes like his were in every post-hurricane story written about the city. The fact that dilapidated houses still exist haunts city and parish officials, but they’re quickly explained away as relics of a bleaker time. The federal hurricane relief money dried up, parish officials note; the city is moving as fast as it can, Lake Charles city councilmembers say. There’s plenty of blame to go around, too: The city says the parish government should be footing the bill; the parish thinks the opposite.
“It’s not quite recovered to where we need to be,” a parish spokesperson told Grist, a sentiment echoed by many other local representatives. “But it’s a lot closer than it was.”
Driving around Lake Charles, for-rent and for-sale signs dot hundreds of front yards, subtle evidence that the storms’ impacts linger on. Stalled-out apartment complexes, funded by hurricane relief aid and federal infrastructure funds, sit half built. “Coming soon!” signs adorn new buildings that locals say have been “coming soon” for the better part of a year. The tallest skyscraper in Lake Charles, the Capital One Tower on Lakeshore Drive, badly damaged by the hurricanes, is set to be demolished this week.
A for-sale sign in front of two properties in north Lake Charles, price negotiable.Zoya Teirstein / Grist
A “coming soon” sign on a food hall in south Lake Charles.Zoya Teirstein / Grist
Tasha Guidry, a community organizer and life coach who grew up in Lake Charles and currently lives in the central part of the city, pointed out a new apartment complex on a recent drive from the northern end of the city to its southernmost tip. A handful of cars sat in their respective parking spots in the complex; the rest were empty. “I don’t know how they figure people are coming back here,” she said. “There’s nothing to come back to.”
The United States Census collects demographic, economic, and geographic data about U.S. residents every 10 years, and conducts a community survey update every five years. The census conducted its latest survey in 2020, and was still collecting data when Laura and Delta hit Calcasieu Parish. The survey had already been marred both by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and statements made by former president Donald Trump about the aim of the census, which experts believe further dampened collection efforts.
Every state in the country uses census data to assess the distribution and racial and economic equity of its populations. Once the latest numbers are published, states have a certain amount of time to rejigger their districts in order to remain compliant with federal voting rights regulations — meaning the census plays an integral role in determining how communities are represented in government. The data and redistricting determines how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives, how political districts are drawn, and where trillions of dollars for federal programs are distributed.
In the wake of the hurricanes, the 2020 census triggered a massive redistricting effort in Lake Charles — the school board, the city council, and Calcasieu Parish itself. “We’ve been redistricted to hell,” Guidry said, noting the sheer volume of redistricting processes triggered by the census within Lake Charles and the parish.
Tasha Guidry stands in front of what used to be a family-owned supermarket in north Lake Charles.
Zoya Teirstein / Grist
The flow of people out of Lake Charles to other cities in Louisiana or Texas further deepened long-standing racial and economic divides, both at the parish and city levels. “The majority of homeowners were able to come back and rebuild,” said Mike Smith, a member of the Calcaiseu Parish Police Jury who represents District 2, encompassing north Lake Charles. But many renters didn’t come back — at least not immediately. And when they did, they couldn’t find places to live in their old neighborhoods. “Our biggest concern now is housing,” Smith said. Roughly half of the city’s residents lived in rented houses before the storm.
The census didn’t capture these trends, and, in many cases, neither do the new district maps.
On the city council, Craig Marks, a Democrat who represents District F in the southern portion of Lake Charles, says he has observed a mini, hyper-localized migration taking place: Hundreds of renters have left the worst-damaged neighborhoods and moved into new areas of Lake Charles, including into his own.
Marks’ District F went from being 51 percent people of color to roughly 66 percent after the latest census round. The shift is significant because for more than a decade, there have been three majority white districts in Lake Charles and three minority ones, with Marks’ district comprising the seventh, a swing seat. “You would pretty much always have a white person in the fourth seat, so the majority would always be 4-3 white,” said Marks, “and that affects how the city is run.” Minority populations, Black people specifically, have been severely underrepresented, often by design, in the Louisiana state Legislature — Louisiana’s parishes and city councils, also prone to gerrymandering, mirror this inequity.
But what looks like progress in Marks’ district might not end up being as good as it seems. Marks estimates that roughly a third of his constituents are relatively new renters, and some portion of them either don’t vote or haven’t updated their addresses, voting instead in the districts they lived in before Laura and Delta. “The numbers can be deceptive,” he said. Marks is up for reelection next year, and he doesn’t yet know what the long-term impact of population displacement in his district will be. “It makes it harder now, because you’re trying to get people on your team who really don’t have a vested interest in your district,” he said. “When they get straight, they’re going to be in other districts where their homes originally were.”
What Marks is contending with in Lake Charles is a microcosm of larger disaster-driven trends unfolding across the rest of the U.S., particularly in regions prone to large-scale disruptions like hurricanes and wildfires that displace thousands of people in one fell swoop. Each disaster creates ripples of movement in and out. When multiple cataclysmic disasters strike one region in quick succession, climate change-driven phenomena called “compounding events,” they create overlapping ripples of displacement, making the movement that much harder to track. If it was tracked in real time, local officials would see disturbing trends.
The city finally started rebuilding Epps Memorial Library, north Lake Charles’ only library, this July. It’s the only library in the city that’s still not fixed after Hurricane Laura. Zoya Teirstein / Grist
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, for example, New Orleans knocked down much of its affordable housing, damaged during the hurricane, deeming it a safety hazard. The new buildings that went up were more expensive, and the new construction very quickly gentrified neighborhoods, forcing even more people out in a second, extended wave of displacement. “New Orleans absolutely became a city that was whiter and wealthier than it was beforehand,” said Daniel Aldrich, a professor of political science at Northeastern University. But it was difficult to capture those changes as they were happening, Aldrich said, because the initial population shifts occurred so quickly and because many of the people who left the city were renters.
“There’s no way the census, every 10 years, will be able to manage keeping up with the rapid population shifts that are already happening,” Aldrich, who switched his research focus to disasters and resilience when his own home was destroyed by Katrina, said.
After big hurricanes, cities have every incentive to apply for federal relief money and spend it on fixing what’s visibly broken. But calculating population loss, and adjusting district lines to compensate for it, is far less common. States, districts, and cities can conduct their own analyses to determine whether their population makeup has changed, but such analyses are expensive and time-consuming. Following a disaster, local officials have to decide how to allocate whatever limited resources they have, and conducting door-knocking campaigns or tracking mail-forwarding notices to follow displaced people is low on the list of priorities.
In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau started incorporating disaster displacement into its weekly “household pulse” surveys — the agency’s smaller, near-real-time assessments of major issues facing the population. There is no law requiring cities and states to use this data to assess population loss. “We collect these data for governments to use in a way that best serves their needs,” a Census spokesperson told Grist.
There’s a financial and political incentive for districts not to update their population numbers following a major disaster, especially if officials in those districts suspect they may have lost many of their residents. The more population you have, the more money you get from your state and the federal government. “If you’re a local administrator and you know the next census is going to record a drop in population, meaning you’re going to lose resources, that’s the last thing you want to accelerate,” said Aldrich. “You want to leave that number hanging until the last possible moment to hold on to whatever federal and state funds that are coming because of the old numbers.”
In six months, Lake Charles will hold its first mayoral and city council elections since Laura hit in 2020. Marks isn’t sure how he will fare. He doesn’t even know how many people he has in his district. What he does know, however, is that more change is coming. When Laura hit and floodwater inundated Lake Charles, it demonstrated exactly which parts of the city were built on high and low ground. North Lake Charles, despite trailing the rest of the city in recovery, sits on some of the highest real estate around, while the southern edge of the city, a former swamp, dealt with more flooding during Laura, Delta, and the extreme rains the following spring. “Ironically, the poor part of the city is the higher part of the city,” Marks said. He forecasts another intercity migration soon. “I would predict that in the next 20 years, you’re going to see a drastic change in the makeup of Lake Charles.”
This brave journalist and young women like her are bearing the brunt of the failed democratisation project: ‘Hope is fading’
In the final days of the Afghan republic – in defiance of a looming takeover by the Taliban – the Hazara journalist Mani sang revolutionary poems in public in Kabul about women, freedom and justice. Now she is on the run, waiting for the Australian government to grant her a humanitarian visa.
It’s three years since Australia pulled its final troops out of Afghanistan. Their presence over two decades saw the country emerge from the ashes of civil war, embrace a relative peace and a fragile democracy before falling back into the darkness of fundamentalism under the Taliban.
By the time Mtangulizi Sanyika got to Houston in September 2005, he and his wife were tired of moving. Sanyika, a lifelong resident of New Orleans and a professor at a historically Black college in the city, had spent weeks jumping from town to town after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Simultaneously, he waited for information about his mother and sister, who had been stranded in New Orleans’s Charity Hospital with no power and little food. Eight people died at the hospital while waiting to be evacuated, but Sanyika’s mother and sister made it out, and the family reunited in Houston, where some of their cousins lived.
Within a few months, Sanyika and his wife had set up in an apartment provided almost for free by the administration of Houston mayor Bill White, a Democrat, and funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. The Texas city staged an unprecedented resettlement effort after more than 200,000 displaced people arrived post-Katrina, many of them crowded into the Astrodome sports stadium. White’s evacuee rehousing program earned Houston nationwide praise, and it was so successful that tens of thousands of displaced storm victims chose to stay in the city for good.
Sanyika and his wife were two of those people. They had a deep connection to New Orleans, but had no idea how long they would have to wait for their hometown to recover. When they started looking for apartments in Houston, however, Sanyika encountered a surprising stigma: When he told potential landlords that he was living in an apartment paid for with Katrina recovery money, they shied away from renting to him. Only once he and his wife stopped mentioning the recovery money did they manage to secure an apartment in a new development on the southwest side of the city, later purchasing a house just down the road.
Mtangulizi Sanyika, a retired professor from Texas Southern University, at his home in New Orleans in 2015. Sanyika established a group for Katrina evacuees who settled in Houston.
Marie D. De Jesus / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
“A lot of property owners had basically an aversion to that,” said Sanyika. “Once we dropped FEMA aid, then the market opened up in a different kind of way.”
By then, Sanyika had founded an organization, the New Orleans Association of Houston, to keep tabs on all the storm survivors in the city, and he was hearing similar stories of discrimination. Job applicants couldn’t get calls back if they had a 504 area code, and Sanyika said students faced harassment at school from teachers and peers who believed they were criminals and gang members. Local papers fanned this sentiment with thousands of lines of text about evacuees committing crimes, blaming them for a spike in the city’s murder rate.
Faced with this publicity crisis and a looming re-election campaign, the welcoming Houston government changed course and stepped up policing in the areas where evacuees were living, arresting numerous evacuees and pushing more back to New Orleans. The tenor of this response was always racial: New Orleans’s population was more than two-thirds black when Katrina hit, compared to less than a quarter in Houston, and many Houstonians projectedracialprejudices onto the arriving evacuees.
“The dynamics of race and ethnicity and apprehension toward immigrants drove largely antagonistic beliefs about the mostly poor, mostly black new arrivals,” wrote the authors of a study that analyzed Houston’s response to Katrina.
Local ire about the Katrina evacuees faded as time went on and they merged into the city’s social fabric. Sanyika said he rarely heard about outright discrimination in later years, at least among the members of his organization. But the difficulties of the Katrina diaspora in Houston represent a profound warning for the future of climate displacement: Despite the city’s excellent resettlement process, and despite the fact that the evacuees didn’t make life harder for most native Houstonians, the city’s longtime residents still soured on them, confronting them with the same attitudes that international migrants often face upon arriving in the United States.
It also demonstrated that climate disasters can be a political liability for communities that receive disaster victims, just as much as for the communities that suffer the disasters themselves.
Bill White was less than two years into his first term as Houston’s mayor when Katrina broke the levees in New Orleans as a Category 3 storm. He later said he supersized Houston’s hurricane response out of compassion for the storm victims, reflecting that “you should treat your neighbors the way you’d want to be treated.” As the city’s Astrodome filled with evacuees, who arrived by the busload after New Orleans vacated its own infamous stadium, FEMA offered to help White secure thousands of temporary trailers and hotel rooms for them. But he and his administration declined, instead asking them to reimburse the city for long-term housing in apartments.
“We knew it was going to be a while before they could go back,” White told Grist. “The Red Cross-style shelters that [FEMA was] set up to do, that obviously wouldn’t work for an event of this magnitude.”
Hilda Crain, of New Orleans, stands in her new apartment at the Primrose Casa Bella Senior Apartments September 5, 2005 in Houston, Texas. Crain evacuated from New Orleans to the Astrodome after Hurricane Katrina.
Dave Einsel / Getty Images
Wary of federal bureaucracy, White set up a bespoke housing voucher program with aid from the private sector, cajoling hundreds of apartment landlords across the city to donate units to the cause. Nonprofits and faith organizations such as the Catholic Charities volunteered to help evacuees with case work as they applied for disaster assistance or sought temporary jobs. White had no guarantee from FEMA that the agency would reimburse him, but he promised the landlords that he would convince the feds to pony up, and in time he did. This tremendous act earned the city national praise. Even the local newspaper in its cross-state rival, Dallas, named Houston the “Texan of the Year” in 2005.
But despite White’s efforts, the city’s goodwill was not unlimited. Because large landlords could choose which apartment complexes to house evacuees in, most ended up clustered in older buildings, many of them in worse-off parts of the city, said Sanyika. The majority didn’t yet have jobs or cars, let alone any familiarity with Houston geography. As city politicians tell it, these conditions led to flare-ups of the old gang conflicts that had divided New Orleans’s largest public housing complexes.
“As it relates to murders, there’s a definite Katrina effect,” Captain Dale Brown, a high-ranking officer in the Houston Police Department, told the Houston Chronicle in 2006. The police would later claim that they tied 60 murders that took place in 2006 to Katrina evacuees.
Bill White, who served as mayor of Houston after Hurricane Katrina, at his home in 2010. White helped resettle thousands of storm evacuees from New Orleans.
Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle
But studies have since cast doubt on the idea that evacuees were to blame for the short-lived crime spike in Houston. The city saw almost 400 murders in 2006, a 13 percent rise from the previous year, but violent crime in the city had already been rising for years, and many types of crime, such as assault and burglary, never rose even after the evacuees arrived. Moreover, other cities like San Antonio that took in evacuees didn’t see similar trends.
A 2010 study in the Journal of Criminal Justice, led by the law enforcement expert Sean Varano, found that the displacement of Louisianans into nearby major cities — including Houston, San Antonio, and Phoenix — caused “only modest effects” on crime. Varano and his colleagues theorized that the city’s police department might have played up the impact of Katrina to direct attention away from the fact that the department had been dealing with staffing shortages caused by a wave of officer retirements.
Tanya Settles, a political science expert and government communications consultant who has studied Houston’s response to Katrina evacuees, said that the city’s concern over crime was a classic moral panic, with a response far out of proportion to the facts.
“There was a political interest in trying to make sure that [the evacuees] left,” she said.
These details didn’t seem to matter at the time. The very popular White administration started to take flak for the perceived crime wave, with reporters crowding press conferences and residents showing up at meetings to yell at council members. The complaints about crime also amplified other concerns about whether the city could handle the influx of evacuees: The Houston school district had to enroll 4,700 new students and hire almost 200 new teachers after Katrina. One study found that the arrival of evacuees reduced local wages by around 2 percent as evacuees and locals competed for jobs. According to an annual public opinion survey conducted by the Kinder Institute at Rice University, the percentage of Houstonians who thought accepting Katrina evacuees was a bad thing rose from 47 percent to 70 percent between 2005 and 2008.
“The evacuees had a large footprint, but they were assimilated into a very, very large metropolitan area, so for most people there wasn’t a sense of being overwhelmed by strangers,” said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociologist who ran the study. “But the crime thing was kind of a surrogate for all these anxieties, about, ‘why are these people coming here?’”
A message board for Hurricane Katrina evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. The arena hosted More than 16,000 storm victims arrived at the arena in September 2005, having evacuated New Orleans. Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images
Michael Moore, who served as White’s chief of staff, says that a deluge of media coverage distorted residents’ views about the effect evacuees were having on Houston, which he maintains was minimal.
“There were probably 10 bad stories to every good story,” said Moore. “There were a lot of tough press conferences and community meetings where we said we were getting a handle on it, but there’s nothing you can do that really can alleviate people’s fears until that number goes down.”
Even so, White changed tack — at the time, Houston mayors served two-year terms, so he was up for reelection in 2007. He instructed his police chief to crack down on crime among evacuees. Cops stepped up enforcement of low-level offenses like drug possession and conducted random traffic stops around apartment complexes housing Katrina victims.
“I said repeatedly at the time that we had a special housing program for law-abiding citizens, which was the vouchers,” White recalled. “We also had a program for those who violated our criminal laws. And it was called the jail.” (The Houston Police Department has said it never tracked how many Katrina evacuees it arrested.) Later on, when the federal government tried to extend housing aid for Katrina survivors in Houston, White pushed back, saying it was time for evacuees to either support themselves or leave the city.
By the four-year anniversary of the hurricane, the supposed crime spike had faded and murder rates had declined. It’s almost impossible to be certain about the causal relationship: Maybe the evacuees who were committing the crimes moved back to New Orleans, Maybe many of them ended up in jail, or crime rates ticked back down the way they often do. Or maybe residents ceased to worry about evacuees after the news media moved past the issue. Most Houstonians had never directly encountered the evacuees anyway, so it didn’t take long for them to forget about the problems the displaced community had supposedly caused. When White ran for re-election in 2007, he won handily.
Even so, there is some evidence that the experience may have left scars on Houston’s psyche. The last time researchers at the Kinder Institute asked a question about evacuees in their Houston survey, in 2009, 57 percent of respondents said the evacuees had been a bad thing for the city, down from an earlier peak, but still much higher than just after the storm. Even more concerning, the share of residents who said that ethnic diversity made the city stronger dropped from 69 percent to 60 percent. Even 10 years later, many Katrina evacuees reported having trouble getting jobs when they called potential employers with a New Orleans area code. One study concluded that native Houstonians perceived the evacuees the same way they did immigrants from other countries, treating them as unauthorized interlopers, and indeed some angry residents at the time referred to evacuees as “Katrina illegal immigrants.”
The arc of events in Houston raise concerns for future displacement crises, which are being made more frequent by climate change and intensifying extreme weather. The ambition and execution of the city’s humanitarian effort after Katrina won national praise, but it also led to local criticism, stoked in part by the media, which later resulted in an aggressive police crackdown on a largely Black community, followed by years of marginalization and social pressure.
“It seems like the perception of the city’s efforts to rehouse the evacuees was colored by people’s perception of the people themselves,” said Settles.
It seems unlikely that Houston would be as generous to evacuees if another Katrina happened tomorrow. Even though the city still has a liberal mayor, White’s rehousing response relied to a great extent on help from the state government, which has veered even farther to the right since the storm. Settles points out that Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who as a first-term attorney general during Katrina tried to stoke panic about sex offenders being among the New Orleans evacuees, has now garnered national attention for bussing immigrants to liberal cities like New York and Chicago.
For another thing, Houston itself has been battered by several climate disasters in the years since Katrina. Hurricane Rita hit Houston later the same year; Hurricane Ike three years after that. After back-to-back years with disastrous floods, Hurricane Harvey dropped 50 inches of rain on the city in 2017, displacing former Mayor White and thousands of other residents. Then the city lost power for days in 2022 when its electricity grid froze during Winter Storm Uri. It lost it again this year when Hurricane Beryl downed hundreds of electricity poles.
Flooded homes in Houston, Texas are seen from above following Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Robert Stein, a political scientist at Rice University who also studied crime among the city’s Katrina evacuee population, says he doubts Houston would welcome evacuees again, in part because keeping Houstonians safe from climate change has become hard enough.
“If that happened again, I’m not certain that the city and the county would be reaching out,” he said. “It’s because of the experience of helping Katrina evacuees, but also the context of, we’re suffering too, and we’re having trouble providing basic services ourselves.”
Indeed, many places once considered resilient to climate disasters, from Vermont to Colorado to the Pacific Northwest, have suffered devastating impacts from floods, fires, and extreme heat, and have languished for years while waiting for federal funding to rebuild.
For Sanyika’s part, the last decade of climate disasters in Houston hasn’t made him want to leave. His home is relatively new, and built well out of a flood zone, away from major rivers and bayous. Plus, he looks around the country and sees disasters everywhere. At 81, he doubts that he could get any safer by moving inland or farther north.
“You have to ask the question, is there some place where you will not be at risk, and there’s just no place you can go,” he said, “so we didn’t have any problem with just staying here. But we didn’t expect the weather events to be as bad as they were.”
I recently retired and finally said goodbye to the classroom.
As a teacher of ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages), I had the great privilege of working with around 75 different national and cultural groups.
Many of my students were refugees from overseas.
And whilst I was supporting my students with their English – including everything from beginners English to proficiency levels – I am sure that I learned more than I taught.
It’s a career that started out quite unexpectedly, but which has since shaped my life.
Wind back many years, Auntie Anita, my first husband’s aunt, was nagging me to visit her at work.
She was a secretary at a public Northern California adult educational centre about ten miles from where we lived. And she though it’d be just my thing.
I’d taught four years of high school by that time and given it up to raise a toddler. Now, I was thinking of part time work.
“But I don’t have the right credential to teach adults,” I protested.
It didn’t work. She persisted.
“I can get you a temporary credential” she continued. “And you’ll have a year to get the permanent one. You’re right for the job.”
And so, she did. My first class was at night in downtown Oakland, California.
A cosmopolitan city if ever there was one! I had students from at least a dozen countries that first night.
I was given very broad curriculum guidelines, and I did a lot of creative “ad lobbing” as it was my first class. It went great!
The evening flew by, and by the end of the class everyone was smiling. I knew this was the right setting for me.
So, I continued part time, had a second baby, and changed to a school closer to home.
I was still teaching at night with a class full of adults who worked during the day, and though tired, came to night school, optimistic and cheery about getting ahead in American society.
I knew then that I’d not go back to teaching high school. I proceeded to get my credential in adult education.
We also welcomed people from dozens of other countries, from Argentina to Mongolia.
I spent the next years in urban areas teaching English as a Second Language, cultural diversity awareness in the business sector, and basic reading skills to recently released prisoners.
I did so for a total of 40 years.
That, coupled with early years working in Alaska, gave me a complete window on the world.
Thanks to social media, I’m still in touch with dozens of former students, and have accepted invitations to visit them in half a dozen countries where they live.
I consider myself very lucky indeed!
Auntie Anita, one of the most persistent people I’ve met, harangued and dispensed lots of unwanted advice.
But, she was on target. I was right for the job.
Watching my students develop their English language skills was an absolute joy.
As was, learning from them.
Lessons learned: around the world in a classroom
I may have been the teacher, but I really do feel that this incredible experience taught me much more.
Here’s what I learnt!
1. Don’t stereotype people
Just because a person comes from a certain culture, it does not make them a spokesperson for the whole culture.
Each person is an individual with their own experiences, views and lived experiences.
Plus, what I also discovered is that cultural communities are very diverse.
Not all people from the same place are alike!
Whether from a minority of majority community, each culture is rich in language, history, culture and beliefs.
Get to know the individual on their terms – you’ll learn a lot more.
2. Be aware of inter-communal biases
It goes without saying that we should welcome migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to their new home.
And that includes: ensuring that we’re not fostering any space for racism, discrimination and exclusion.
Negative stereotypes, scapegoating of communities and cultural biases are everywhere (no thanks to the media!).
So, as in point #1, firstly: check yourself for conscious and unconscious biases.
Secondly: we need to also understand, recognise and mitigate for inter-community biases and conflicts.
No community is immune from negative biases. There are internal biases and racism with many cultures – not just our own.
So, whatever the history (e.g. religious, ethnic, “caste-based”, gender and socio-economic difference/conflict), be ready to recognise biases and work against them.
3. Seeking refuge is a right not a choice
People leave their home countries for a variety of reasons – and causes.
Displaced by the effects of climate change, poverty, conflict, persecution (relating to one’s faith, gender or sexuality) – there are countless reasons.
But one common denominator is this: life. To live in freedom, safety and security.
I can safely say that after my experiences, many people who change countries usually do so out ofnecessity – not because they want to do so.
Moving country is challenging in any context – some more complex and challenging than we could ever imagine.
4. Language is fundamental
Learning the language of anywhere you’re living is critical. It opens so many doors – economic and social, cultural.
From accessing medical services, going to work and making new (and varied) friends – language is crucial. It really is key to integration.
Of course, people come with vastly varied experiences and levels of education.
Some may by fluent in the national language, others a little rusty. Some may be starting from scratch.
Everyone has different histories and needs. And how fast people learn a new language often depends on whether they plan to stay in the new country.
Again: each context is different.
Language is key to integration – but it’s not the only element.
As a society, our strength lies in our respect for diversity and ensuring equity across the board.
5. Trauma travels with you
The resilience of people can be astounding – including the coping skills people bring with them.
Yet, whilst, you’re looking to the future – but the past can travel with you.
People who come to a new country may have suffered immense hardship/trauma – and therefore struggle with conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression and/or anxiety.
For refugees and asylum seekers in particular, the affects of trauma from conflict/violence (personal loss/grief and displacement) and persecution/torture (physical, sexual, phycological abuse), require empathy, care and potentially professional support.
When counselling someone, empathy and compassionate listening are critical.
I however personally always try to give suggestions for concrete actions – whilst of course ensuring that my advice is informed and useful.
Signposting may be the best advice you give.
6. Experiences vary greatly across generations
First generation immigrants face many challenges and hardships, including potential language gaps, financial struggles, cultural shocks and emotional trauma (see point #5).
These challenges are usually different to that of their second-generation children (and subsequent generations).
Children who are born in the new country or arrived at an early age generally find it easier to carve out their own sense of identity, embracing both their own native and the national culture of their parents’ adopted country.
Parents may be determined to re-create a sense of the home culture in a new place but can become frustrated when their children will not or cannot accept that.
As a result, their children may struggle to manage both the expectations of senior members of their family, alongside their own experiences and wants/beliefs as a second/third generation migrant/refugee.
Of course however, every family, individual and context is different.
7. We share more in common
Whilst the world is so wonderfully diverse, we’re all human. And we’re actually more alike than people may think.
Yes, we’ve got far more in common than any differences among us!
Of course, our experiences and our upbringing all shape us, our beliefs and our view on the world.
But, when it comes down to it, we all share the same foundations, feelings and wants of being human.
What’s more, each of us keeps on learning and changing throughout our lives.
Cross-cultural learning can bring not just a great sense of discovery, but also solidarity and teamwork to the classroom.
8. A smile goes a long way
You may speak different languages, you may have been born in different countries – or even continents – and you may be at different stages in your life…
But I can guarantee one thing: you all welcome a friendly face!
In June 2021, Kamala Harris was on her first foreign trip as vice president, to Mexico and Guatemala. During a press conference with then-Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, she issued a warning to Guatemalans and others who were considering trying to enter the United States without proper documentation: “Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and…
This blog is based on a translation of a letter written by myself in Italian. The original text (in Italian) can be read and/or downloaded here.
Questo blog e’ una traduzione in inglese dal testo originale (scritto in italiano). Si puo’ leggere e scaricare il testo originale (quello italiano)qui.
Thursday 8th August 2024
Ciao nonna,
It’s me, Liz. Elisabetta. Your granddaughter…
I’m not sure if you can read, or even see this. I don’t know if you’ve been looking over me since you’ve been “up there”. If you’ve been keeping up-to-date with my life… I’d like to think so.
I’d love for you to be able to see everything that I’m getting up to – everything I do, say and feel. At least some of it. That way you’ll get a taste of where I go, what I doing and who with. It’d be so beautiful… Well, only you and God know the reality…
I’m writing from my home in England. I came back from Italy just a few days ago.
I spent almost two weeks there – ten days with my cousins and a few days in Naples doing the tourist thing in your region Campania.
It was so lovely to spend time with my family in your country. An absolutely beautiful experience.
Left: in Naples – Right: along the Adriatic coast in the region of Molise (Italy) (summer 2024). Images: Elizabeth Arif-Fear (c).
Maybe you already knew that I’d been. Who knows… Maybe you know everything about me. I hope so… I really do!
Sometimes, it feels like you’re here with me – and mum too – leaving me little signs telling me: “I’m here. Mum too. All of us. Don’t worry, we’re fine! And you’re gonna be fine too. Chin up!” Or as mum would say: “Don’t let the b****rs get you down!”.
I hope you’re here. I really do…
I’ve wanted to speak to you for so long. And, in Italian (your language!). I’ve thought of it for years. Many, many years.
As a little girl, I’d never have imagined I’d be able (or even want) to write you a letter like this – from afar, in your native language.
It’s now been more than twenty years since I first started learning Italian. Learning the language has taken me back to my heritage – and it’s great! But it’s also a reminder of how I had to learn Italian as a foreign language.
As you already know, mum never taught me Italian. She didn’t talk to me in Italian. At first, she didn’t even want me to learn it. She didn’t speak it. Ever. My aunt did, but she didn’t teach it me either.
For many years I couldn’t understand why. Why didn’t my mum want to speak her native language? Why didn’t she embrace the culture of her homeland? Why did she try so hard to simply seem “English” – or in her words: “to just be herself”?
I couldn’t understand it. For years, I just didn’t get it. Now, I do.
Now I understand. Because I understand how difficult it was for her, for you, for Aunty N and for Grandad Joe. I get it (although I still don’t have much information to go by).
And you know what? It makes me angry. Not at you, or her or Grandad Joe.
No, I’m angry with all of those people who decided what a “migrant” should look and sound like. Who dictated or “advised” what or how an Italian should be. Or an English person. Even a woman. I’m angry at all of them – on both sides.
Little Liz with both sets of grandparents (Italian and British (Welsh/English) – Irish).
I didn’t even know your real name nonna. After coming to England, Genoveffa become “Jenny”. And nonno Silvio… well, he wasn’t even called “Silvio”. He’d become “Joe”. Yep, my grandparents were “Jenny and Joe”. But it doesn’t make any sense.
Who exactly are Jenny and Joe supposed to be? “Grandad Joe” is the only name I recognised – even if we didn’t talk much together. No one ever really referred to “nonno Silvio” in daily life.
And that was just for starters. I couldn’t even communicate with you nonna – not with Jenny or Genoveffa.
You didn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Italian. What a shame. Utter madness.
Our history, origins, our everything was just pushed aside.
Forgive me nonna. I’m not blaming you. Any of you. I just want you to know how it breaks my heart.
Honestly. It’s hurt me. It’s had a big impact on my life – and still does.
Every time I talk about this with someone – about how you didn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Italian – basically, how we couldn’t even talk to one another, I realise how strange this must sound. How hard it is to understand.
But it’s true. We didn’t share a language. Not one. Ever. But I knew you loved me. Always.
And that makes me so happy. But I can’t ever be happy with everything else.
I can never believe in assimilation – whether self-imposed or enforced by other people.
Multiculturalism has always been so important to me. It’s at the heart of my core beliefs, my experiences and my way of life.
I hope that my life is (and always will be) a living example of why intercultural and interreligious dialogue are so important. Of why it’s so important to create inclusive safe spaces that embrace diversity and the fluidity of identity, where everyone is free to express themselves, to just be themselves.
I also hope to exemplify just how much we need to be honest with ourselves. To never forget where we’re from. Our culture, our language, our faith.
We must ever never forget where we’re from and our story – both as individuals and communities. Each and every one of us. You, me and everyone everywhere.
The right to simply be ourself – to express ourselves – is paramount. But to be able to be free to live our true authentic selves, society has to be on the same page.
Only in a society where everyone is happy, free and able to follow their own true path – both as individuals and single and wider communities – is this possible.
And of course, we need freedom, wisdom and the desire – the will – to make it happen.
Left: Mum and dad on their wedding day with my Italian maternal grandparents – Right: mum and I (during my late teens/early 20s).
I’m not blaming you. I understand – as much as I can without having walked a mile in your shoes and not having all the details (of which no one ever really spoke).
I’m not writing this letter to blame you. Absolutely not.
I’m writing to you to tell you how much I love you, how much I hope you’re proud of me and just how much I wish I could speak to you now that you’re “up there” in the sky. I want you to know that despite all the obstacles along the way, I’ve learnt Italian.
I want to tell you about my studies. And to tell you that I’m so proud of my culture, my history, my family and my language. I want to tell you all about the trips I’ve made to Italy – to study, to visit my cousins and to discover my heritage, my roots and my identity.
And… I also want to tell you just how difficult (and beautiful) it’s been to make this personal journey.
A journey full of doubts, secrets, discoveries. A journey to a place where I still don’t feel like I’m “good enough”, “real enough” or “authentic enough” to truly say: “Yes, I’m Italian too – half!”
Oh nonna, I want to tell you so many things. To show you so many things…
And above all, I want to tell you that I’m proud of you. All of you. Proud of our culture, language and homeland.
I’ve never been ashamed to be Italian. And I hope you’re happy for that. But, I have felt ashamed.
The shame I feel still runs through my soul, my blood and my heart. It’s a monster that tells me that I’m not “really Italian” or “not Italian enough”.
I’d love to be able to drive it out. To push away the shame, the fear and this sense of “not being Italian enough”.
I’d love to instead feel worthy of saying: “Yes, I’m half Italian too”. Yes, I’m also Italian.
Mum – and probably you too – felt you had to (and were even advised to) hide your true identity. And now, I’m full of doubts. I make mistakes when speaking Italian. And, I’m lacking in confidence in embracing my Italian heritage – one that was always slightly lost or hidden.
Today, I don’t feel that sense of self – of who I am and who you were. But you’re part of me, nonna. And I’m proud of that.
I don’t ever want to deny my heritage. Honestly. I want to embrace it. My history, my heritage.
Left: in Venice during Carnivale – Right: in Florence (during my ERASMUS year in Italy, 2008/2009). Images: Elizabeth Arif-Fear (c).
I’ve spent years wondering why this part of our history was hidden. And, I’ve since also spent many years learning Italian as a foreign language – trying to grab embrace my second culture with all my heart and soul. This lost, forgotten, rejected culture.
It’s not easy having spent most of your life with half of your identity lost, hidden way, rejected.
Yes, I’m seemingly very “English” – no doubt about it. But it’s still not easy.
Because there’s more to me than the “English Liz”. There are values, relatives, habits – ones that are very Italian.
Yes, we may not have spent every night eating typical Italian food – perfectly authentic in every way.
And no, we didn’t speak Italian at home. Nor did we go to Italy – well, not until after you and Grandad Joe died. But. this doesn’t mean that you weren’t a part of me. That you weren’t Italian. That half of my family was and is Italian.
From the outside we initially looked pretty stereotypically English (or so I thought). But, we can’t deny our heritage. And well, I discovered later in life that it really was there all along…
After many years, I’m older and wiser. And I know what I want my future to look like.
I’m discovering more and more that our family did embrace Italian values – and still do (even if you, grandad and mum aren’t here anymore).
It’s these values that I’ve recognised – above all when it comes to family and just how important it is.
Oh nonna, I’d love to be able to talk to you. To see you again. To hug you. To kiss you on the cheeks and tell you:
“Nonna, ciao! Come stai? How are you? Mi sei mancata! I missed you!”
Here I am. Hoping that you can hear me, understand me – and that you’re waiting for me…
France is “checking” whether a high-level mission to New Caledonia will be possible prior to or after the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Summit in Tonga at the end of the month.
Forum leaders have written to French President Emmanuel Macron requesting to send a Forum Ministerial Committee to Nouméa to gather information from all sides involved in the ongoing crisis.
The French Ambassador to the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, will be in Suva on Friday for the Forum Foreign Ministers Meeting to “continue the dialogue . . . and explain the facts”.
She told RNZ Pacific that sending a mission to New Caledonia was a request and it was up to the PIF to decide if “anything is realistic”.
“Paris is checking whether it can be before the summit or after. We still need information,” she said.
Asked if France was open to the idea of such a visit by Pacific leaders, Roger-Lacan said: “Paris is always open for dialogue.”
On Monday, the incoming PIF chair and Tonga’s Prime Minister, Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni, confirmed he was still waiting to “receive any notification from Paris”.
“It’s very important for the Pacific Islands Forum to visit New Caledonia before the leaders meeting,” he said.
But Roger-Lacan said it is up to Paris to decide.
“New Caledonia is French territory and it is the State which decides on who enters the French territory and when and how.”
French President Emmanuel Macron . . . security forces are still working on removing roadblocks, mainly in the capital Nouméa and its outskirts. Image: Pool/Ludovic Marin/AFP/RNZ Pacific
It has been almost three months now since violent unrest broke out in Nouméa after an amendment to the French constitution that would voter eligibility in New Caledonia’s local elections, which the pro-independence groups said would marginalise the indigenous Kanaks.
French security forces are still working on removing roadblocks, mainly in the capital Nouméa and its outskirts.
The death toll stands at 10 — eight civilians and two gendarmes. Senior pro-independence leaders who were charged for instigating the civil unrest are in jail in mainland France awaiting trial.
It is estimated over 800 buildings and businesses have been looted and burnt down by rioters.
‘Hear all the points of view’ But Roger-Lacan dismissed such claims, saying those who were leaving were “mostly expatriates” and that “migration is a basis of humanity”.
“There are lots of industries that have closed because of the burning and of the riots, and maybe those people are not sure that anything will reopen.
“When there is a place which is not worth investing anymore people change places. It’s normal life.”
She slammed the Pacific media for “not being very balanced” with their reports on the New Caledonia situation.
“Apparently, there have been people in the Pacific briefed by one side, not by all the sides, and they have to hear all the points of view.”
Saint-Louis still not under control She said security was now “almost back”.
“There is one last pocket of of instability, which is the Saint-Louis community and there are 16,000 New Caledonian people who still cannot move freely within that area because there is so many unrest.
“But otherwise, security has been brought back,” she added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fundamental rights body warns of flawed approach to credible accounts of ill-treatment and loss of life
Authorities in EU member states are not doing enough to investigate credible reports of violations of human rights, including deaths, on their borders, an EU human rights body has said.
The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) said human rights agencies and NGOs were reporting “serious, recurrent and widespread rights violations against migrants and refugees during border management” but despite “credible” reports many were not investigated.
Two widows and their children were among other Papua New Guinean squatters who had to dismantle their homes as the eviction exercise started at portion 2157 at Nine-Mile’s Bush Wara this week.
Agnes Kamak, 52, from Jiwaka’s South Waghi, and Jen Emeke, from Enga’s Wapenamanda, said they had lived and raised their children in the area for the past 10 years since the death of their husbands.
Kamak, who was employed as a cleaner with the Health Department, said she did not know where her family would go to seek refuge and rebuild their lives after they were evicted on Thursday.
“My two sons, daughter and I slept in the open last night [Wednesday] after we dismantled our home because we did not want the earthmoving machines to destroy our housing materials today [Thursday],” she said.
Kamak said she saved the money while working as a cleaner in various companies and bought a piece of land for K10,000 (NZ$4200) in 2013 from a man claiming to be from Koiari and a customary landowner.
“My late husband and I bought this piece of land with the little savings I earned as a cleaner,” she said.
“My second son is currently doing Grade 12 at Gerehu Secondary School and I do not want this situation to disrupt his studies.”
12 years in Bush Wara
She said she could not bring her family back home to Jiwaka as she had lived and built her life in Bush Wara for almost 12 years.
Emeke, who also worked as a cleaner, said she bought the piece of land for K10,000 and has lived with her two children in the area since 2016.
“After my husband passed away, my two children and I moved here and build our home,” Emeke said.
On March 12, the National Court granted leave to Nambawan Super Limited (NSL) to issue writs of possession to all illegal settlers residing within portions 2156, 2157 and 2159 at 9-Mile’s Bush Wara.
At the same time, it granted a 120-day grace period for the settlers to voluntarily vacate the land portions.
Most squatters had moved out during the 120-day grace period granted by the National Court for the settlers to voluntarily vacate the land.
The National witnessed the remaining squatters voluntarily pulling down the remaining structures of their homes and properties as earthmoving machines started clearing the area yesterday.
5400 squatters
It is understood that a survey conducted two years ago revealed that the total population squatting on the NSL land was about 5400 with 900 houses.
Acting commander of NCD and Central Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Peter Guinness said he was pleased with both the police and squatters who worked together to see that the first day of eviction went smoothly.
He said there was no confrontation and the first day of eviction was carried out peacefully.
Assistant Commissioner Guinness said settlers who were still removing their properties were given time to do so while the machines moved to other locations.
“I want to thank my police officers and also the sheriff officers for a well-coordinated awareness programme that led to a peaceful first day of eviction.
“The public must understand that police presence on-site during the awareness and actual eviction was to execute the court order now in place.
“We have families there, too, but we have no choice but to execute our mandated duties.
“The 120-day grace period was enough time for everyone to move out as per the court order,” Guinness said.
Awareness for the eviction exercise started three years ago.
Kelvin Joe and Gynnie Keroare reporters for PNG’s The National. Republished with permission.
Fresh violence has erupted in several parts of New Caledonia over the past three days, with more burning and destruction and at least one death connected to unrest.
The amendment, which is now suspended, purported to change voter eligibility in New Caledonia’s local elections by opening the vote to French citizens having resided there for an uninterrupted ten years.
French security forces vehicle burnt down in the south of Dumbéa, New Caledonia, yesterday. Image: NC la 1ère/RNZ
The pro-independence movement strongly opposed this change, saying it would marginalise the indigenous Kanak vote.
Because of the dissolution of the French National Assembly (Lower House) in view of a snap general election (due to be held on June 30 and 7 July 7), the Constitutional Bill however did not conclude its legislative path due to the inability of the French Congress (a joint sitting of both Upper and Lower Houses) to convene for a final vote on the controversial text.
At the weekend, of the 11 CCAT officials who were heard by investigating judges after their arrest on June 19, seven — including CCAT leader Christian Téin– were indicted and later transferred to several prisons to serve their pre-trial period in mainland France.
Since then, roadblocks and clashes with security forces have regained intensity in the capital Nouméa and its surroundings, as well as New Caledonia’s outer islands of Îles des Pins, Lifou and Maré, forcing domestic flights to be severely disrupted.
In Maré, a group of rioters attempted to storm the building housing the local gendarmerie.
In Dumbéa, a small town north of Nouméa, the municipal police headquarters and a primary school were burnt down.
Other clashes between French security forces and pro-independence rioters took place in Bourail, on the west coast of the main island.
Several other fires have been extinguished by local firefighters, especially in the Nouméa neighbourhoods of Magenta and the industrial zone of Ducos, French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc told the media on Monday.
Fire-fighters and their vehicles were targeted by rioters yesterday. Image: Union des Pompiers Calédoniens/FB/RNZ
But on many occasions firefighters and their vehicles were targeted by rioters.
Many schools that were preparing to reopen on Monday after six weeks of unrest have also remained closed.
More roadblocks were erected by rioters on the main highway linking Nouméa to its international airport of La Tontouta, hampering international air traffic and forcing the reactivation of air transfers from domestic Nouméa-Magenta airport.
In the face of the upsurge in violence, a dusk-to-dawn curfew has been maintained and the possession, sale and transportation of firearms, ammunition and alcohol, remain banned until further notice.
The fresh unrest has also caused at least one death in the past two days: a 23-year-old man died of “respiratory distress” in Nouméa’s Kaméré neighbourhood because emergency services arrived too late, due to roadblocks.
Another fatality was reported on Monday in Dumbéa, where a motorist died after attempting to use the express road on the wrong side and hit an oncoming vehicle coming from the opposite direction.
Le Franc said just for yesterday, June 24, a total of 38 people had been arrested by police and gendarmes.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
An exhibition from Tara Arts International has been brought to The University of the South Pacific as part of the Pacific International Media Conference next week.
In the first exhibition of its kind, Connecting Diaspora: Pacific Prana provides an alternative narrative to the dominant story of the Indian diaspora to the Pacific.
The epic altar “Pacific Prana” has been assembled in the gallery of USP’s Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies by installation artist Tiffany Singh in collaboration with journalistic film artist Mandrika Rupa and dancer and film artist Mandi Rupa Reid.
A colourful exhibit of Indian classical dance costumes are on display in a deconstructed arrangement, to illustrate the evolution of Bharatanatyam for connecting the diaspora.
Presented as a gift to the global diaspora, this is a collaborative, artistic, immersive, installation experience, of altar, flora, ritual, mineral, scent and sound.
It combines documentary film journalism providing political and social commentary, also expressed through ancient dance mudra performance.
The 120-year history of the people of the diaspora is explored, beginning in India and crossing the waters to the South Pacific by way of Fiji, then on to Aotearoa New Zealand and other islands of the Pacific.
This is also the history of the ancestors of the three artists of Tara International who immigrated from India to the Pacific, and identifies their links to Fiji.
expressed through ancient dance mudra performance.
The 120-year history of the people of the diaspora is explored, beginning in India and crossing the waters to the South Pacific by way of Fiji, then on to Aotearoa New Zealand and other islands of the Pacific.
Tiffany Singh (from left), Mandrika Rupa and Mandi Rupa-Reid . . . offering their collective voice and novel perspective of the diasporic journey of their ancestors through the epic installation and films. Image: Tara Arts International
Support partners are Asia Pacific Media Network and The University of the South Pacific.
The exhibition poster . . . opening at USP’s Arts Centre on July 2. Image: Tara Arts International
A journal article on documentary making in the Indian diaspora by Mandrika Rupa is also being published in the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review to be launched at the Pacific Media Conference dinner on July 4.
Exhibition space for Tara Arts International has been provided at the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies at USP.
The exhibition opening is next Tuesday, and will open to the public the next day and remain open until Wednesday, August 28.
The gallery will be open from 10am to 4pm and is free.
Published in collaboration with the USP Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies.
A former National Party Member of Parliament says his late party looked “like dickheads” not supporting the first reading of a bill that would restore New Zealand citizenship to a group of Samoans and is hoping they will change tune.
Anae Arthur Anae told RNZ Pacific it “was outright racism” that National did not back Green Party Member of Parliament Teanau Tuiono’s Restoring Citizenship Removed by Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 Bill.
National was the only party to not support it, citing “legal complexity” as the issue.
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti declined an interview with RNZ Pacific.
In 1982, the Privy Council ruled that because those born in Western Samoa were treated by New Zealand law as “natural-born British subjects”, they were entitled to New Zealand citizenship when it was first created in 1948.
Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono speaks during the First Reading of his Member’s Bill, the Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 Bill. Image: Johnny Blades/RNZ
However, the National Party-led government under Robert Muldoon took that away with the Western Samoa Citizenship Act 1982, effectively overturning the Privy Council ruling.
Tuiono’s bill aims to restore the right of citizenship to those who had it removed.
25,000 submissions
Public submissions have closed and the Governance and Administration Committee received almost 25,000 submissions.
NZ First leader Winston Peters has told Pacific Media Network he intended to continue to back it, if he does, it will likely become law.
Anae said if National continued to “slag it” during the process they would keep making themselves look stupid.
“Not only in New Zealand but internationally and on the human rights issues. They have put themselves in a serious situation here and they really have to get this right.
“I’m hoping and praying that they will see the light and say, ‘look, enough is enough, we’ve got to sort this thing out now’.”
Anae said the world had grown out of the racism he knew as a child and it was time for New Zealand to follow suit.
“Who would have ever imagined the day when the key positions in the UK of Prime Minister, Mayor of London, all senior positions across the Great Britain, would be held by the children of migrants.
“Time has changed, we’ve got to wake up to it.”
Hearings to begin
Hearings will be held in-person and on Zoom in Wellington on Monday, Wednesday and July 9.
There will also be hearings held in South Auckland on July 1.
Anae said about 10,000 of the submissions came from Samoa and there was a request for a hearing to be held there also.
“Everybody in Parliament right now is under huge pressure with the budget discussions that have been going on, so I do have my sympathies understanding the situation.
“But at the same time this thing is one of the most important thing in the lives of Samoan people and we want it to be treated that way.”
He said almost all the public submissions would be in support of the bill. He said in Samoa, where he was three weeks ago, the support was unanimous.
But he said Samoa’s government was being diplomatic.
‘Sitting on fence’
“They do not want to upset New Zealand in any way by seeing to be siding with this and they’re sitting on the fence.”
Tuiono said it was great to see the commitment from NZ First but because it was politics, he was reluctant to feel too confident his bill would be eventually turned into law.
“There’s always things that will need to be ironed out so the role for us as members participating in the select committee is to find all of those bits and pieces and work across the Parliament with different political parties.”
Tuiono said most of the discussion on the bill was around whether citizenship was extended to the descendants of the group and how many people would be entitled to it.
“That seems to be where most of the questions seem to be coming from but this is what we should be doing as part of the select committee process, get some certainty on that from the officials.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
“He will be greatly missed by his partner Michele, his family, friends and colleagues. He kept up his interest and support for the causes he was passionate about to the last.
“He was a man of integrity, courage and kindness who lived his values in every part of his life. He touched many lives in the course of his work in politics and activism.”
The son of activists Elsie and Jack Locke of Christchurch, Keith was politically aware from an early age, and was involved in the first anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid marches of the 1960s.
After a Masters degree at the University of Alberta in Canada, he returned to New Zealand and left academia to edit a fortnightly newspaper for the Socialist Action League, a union he had joined as a meatworker then railway workshop employee.
He joined NewLabour in 1989, which later became part of the Alliance party, and split off into the Greens when they broke apart from the Alliance in 1997, entering Parliament as their foreign affairs spokesperson in the subsequent election two years later.
Notable critic of NZ in Afghanistan
While in Parliament, he was a notable critic of New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and advocated for refugee rights including in the case of Ahmed Zaoui.
He also long advocated for New Zealand to become a republic, putting forward a member’s bill which would have led to a referendum on the matter.
Commentators dubbed him variously the ‘Backbencher of the Year’ in 2002 — an award he reprised from a different outlet in 2010 — as well as the ‘Politician of the Year’ in 2003, and ‘Conscience of the Year’ in 2004.
He was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to human rights advocacy in 2021, received NZ Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender award in 2012, and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand’s Harmony Award in 2013.
In a statement today, Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick said Locke was a dear friend and leading figure in the party’s history, who never wavered in holding government and those in positions of authority to account.
“As a colleague and friend, Keith will be keenly missed by the Greens. He has been a shining light for the rights of people and planet. Keith Locke leaves a legacy that his family and all who knew him can be proud of. Moe mai ra e te rangatira,” they said.
“From 1999 to 2011, he served our party with distinction and worked extremely hard to advance causes central to our kaupapa,” they said.
Highlighting ‘human rights crises’
“Not only did Keith work to defend civil liberties at home, but he was vigilant in highlighting human rights crises in other countries, including the Philippines, East Timor, West Papua and in Latin America.
“We particularly acknowledge his strong and clear opposition to the Iraq War, and his commitment to an independent and principled foreign policy for Aotearoa.”
They said his mahi as a fearless defender of civil liberties was exemplified in his efforts to challenge government overreach into citizens’ privacy.
“Keith worked very hard to introduce reforms of our country’s security intelligence services. While there is much more to be done, the improvements in transparency that have occurred over the past two decades are in large part due to his advocacy and work. We will honour him by ensuring we carry on such work.”
Former minister Peter Dunne said on social media he was “very saddened” to learn of Locke’s death.
“Although we were on different ideological planets, we always got on and worked well together on a number of issues. Keith had my enduring respect for his integrity and honesty. Rest in peace, friend.”
‘Profoundly saddened’
Auckland councillor Christine Fletcher said she was also sad to hear of the death of her “Mt Eden neighbour”.
“We worked together on several political campaigns in the 1990s. Keith was a thoughtful, sincere and truly decent person. My condolences to Keith’s partner Michele, sister Maire Leadbeater and partner Graeme East.”
Peace Action Wellington said Locke was a tireless activist for peace and justice — and the organisation was “profoundly saddened” by his death.
“His voice and presence will be missed,” the organisation wrote on social media.
“He was fearless. He spoke with the passion of someone who knows all too well the vast and dangerous reach of the state into people’s lives as someone who was under state surveillance from the time he was a child.
“We acknowledge Keith’s amazing whānau who have a long whakapapa of peace and justice activism. He was a good soul who will be missed.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Vale #KeithLocke, tireless and fearless campaigner for peace, justice and a sustainable future for a green planet … I’ll also remember him for friendship and commitment to independent truth publishing and OneWorld progressive bookshop. – @DavidRobie, editor, #AsiaPacificReportpic.twitter.com/SC0obJzfOA
Public submissions have closed on a bill which would offer a pathway to New Zealand citizenship to a group of Samoans born between 1924 and 1949.
Public hearings on the Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship Act Bill start on Monday.
In 1982, the Privy Council ruled that because those born in Western Samoa were treated by New Zealand law as “natural-born British subjects”, they were entitled to New Zealand citizenship when it was first created in 1948 — but the government at the time overturned this ruling.
Samoan Christian Fellowship secretary Reverend Aneterea Sa’u said the bill is about “trust and fairness” and encouraged the Samoan community to reach out to their local MPs to back the bill as it moves through the process.
NZ First leader Winston Peters has said his party would support the bill all the way.
The Governance and Administration Committee received about 24,500 submissions on the bill.
Hearings will be held in-person and on Zoom in Wellington on June 24 and 26, and on July 9, and there will also be hearings held in South Auckland on July 1.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
With much of the southwest baking under record temperatures, immigrants’ rights advocates worry President Joe Biden’s decision to effectively close the border to asylum seekers for the foreseeable future will endanger lives and further marginalize climate-displaced people seeking refuge in the U.S.
Their concerns come as a heat dome lingering over Mexico and the southwestern United States has obliterated temperature records from Phoenix to Sacramento, California. The searing conditions had health officials urging people to limit their time outdoors and take other steps to protect themselves from a climate-charged high pressure system that has killed dozens of people across several states in Mexico. The promise of a hotter-than-average summer has raised fears that Biden’s directive, which allows the government to suspend border crossings when they surpass 2,500 daily, will lead to a surge in heat-related illnesses and possibly deaths.
“This executive order being issued at this time is an additional cruelty that will force more people into dangerous conditions where they’re exposed to a really severe climate impact,” said Ahmed Gaya, director of the Climate Justice Collaborative at the National Partnership for New Americans.
Biden’s decision to drastically regulate a legal pathway into the country for the bulk of migrants at the southern border, with limited exceptions such as unaccompanied minors, is “clearly a political stunt,” Gaya said. “Given the fact that many of the people at the border have climate driving the root cause of their migration and need to seek safety, they are now at the border being forced to wait in limbo indefinitely, while their asylum is shut down under this order, and being exposed to severe climate impacts that risk their lives,” he said.
“This policy’s implementation collides with the hottest, most dangerous months on record as the climate crisis continues to accelerate,” said Kim Nolte, CEO of Migrant Clinicians Network. “We fear that this policy will result in more deaths as desperate people are pushed further and further into remote and lethally hot areas to cross the border.”
Past research on the risks of climate migration faced by people around the world suggest this could very well be the case. “As temperatures increase, we will absolutely see higher mortality, illness, death and injury for these asylum seekers that are coming to the U.S., seeking safety,” said Anne Junod, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute who studies climate migration.
The Biden administration’s directive is “actually more extreme” than similar policies the Trump administration enacted, and just as unlikely to hold up in court, said Sarah Rich, senior supervising attorney and interim senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center. (The American Civil Liberties Union has announced its intention to sue the Biden administration over the order.)
Border Patrol agents have already begun turning back migrants at the international border to prevent them from reaching U.S. soil — a revival of a controversial Trump-era policy of physically blocking asylum seekers from entering the country, which is required to claim asylum.
Beyond barring entry, Biden’s proclamation denies asylum to all who enter between ports, increases the legal standards required to receive asylum, and gives those seeking it only four hours to prepare for their initial interview, including attempts to contact and consult with legal counsel, according to Rich. It also means that the only way to be granted asylum in the U.S. is to make an appointment via the CBP One app, which can take months and is “essentially a lottery system,” she said.
The immigrant rights community in the U.S., is, according to Rich, collectively opposed to the Biden administration’s latest executive action. “We are upset. We are disappointed. Many people are enraged by this. It feels like a real betrayal,” she said.
One of the Biden administration’s first actions coming into office was making climate-related migration a priority, noted Gaya, but the administration has since moved in the opposite direction. “This further goes down the wrong road, in the wrong direction, by cutting off more avenues for folks who are seeking asylum, often on grounds that include climate impacts, from doing so,” he said. “This executive order is both a deep disappointment on President Biden’s immigration promises, as well as on his hopes to be a climate leader.”
Group who crossed from Belarus included sister of one of the accused in case highlighting Latvia’s harsh migration laws
Two Dutch people are facing prison sentences of up to eight years in Latvia over what they say was an act of compassion to help a group of refugees reach safety, including the sister of one of the pair.
The case has put Latvia’s harsh laws on migration under the spotlight and comes as a local rights activist also faces jail time, for helping refugees who crossed into Latvia via the country’s border with neighbouring Belarus.
Migrants seek redress for ‘immense distress’ from deportations now thrown into chaos by election announcement
Asylum seekers detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election.
The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector.
Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape visited Wabag, the capital of Enga province, to meet authorities before flying to the site of last week’s landslide disaster to inspect the damage up close.
Tribal violence between two clans in Tambitanis is still active, reportedly leading to 12 deaths since Saturday last week, reports said.
Provincial Administrator Sandis Tsaka said that after 14 days the affected area would be quarantined with restricted access to prevent the spread of infection, and those who remained undiscovered would be officially declared missing persons.
According to the UN International Organisation for Migration, 217 people with minor injuries had received treatment, while 17 individuals who had major and minor injuries were treated at the Wabag General Hospital (as of 30 May).
The IOM said some patients with major injuries remained in the hospital
Earlier, PNG police chief inspector Martin Kelei told RNZ Pacific people on the ground want the bodies of their loved ones to be retrieved as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, a geotechnical expert from New Zealand, who arrived on Thursday, is conducting a ground assessment as the landslip is still moving.
ABC News reports that uncertainty surrounds the final death toll from the landslide with a local official saying he believed 162 people had been killed in the natural disaster — far fewer than estimated by the United Nations or the country’s government.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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.”
“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.”
“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?”
A new visa scheme targeting entrepreneurs, investors and global researchers working in areas of national importance will be introduced by the Albanese government before the end of this year as part of its ongoing reforms to Australia’s migration system. Revealed in the federal Budget on Tuesday, the National Innovation visa will replace the Global Talent…
Rishi Sunak says Belfast judgment will not affect his plans and the Good Friday agreement should not be used to obstruct Westminster policy
Sunak starts with global security threats.
The dangers that threaten our country are real.
There’s an increasing number of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China working together to undermine us and our values.
People are abusing our liberal democratic values of freedom of speech, the right to protest, to intimidate, threaten and assault others, to sing antisemitic chants on our streets and our university campuses, and to weaponize the evils of antisemitism or anti-Muslim hatred, in a divisive ideological attempt to set Britain against Britain.
And from gender activists hijacking children’s sex education, to cancel culture, vocal and aggressive fringe groups are trying to impose their views on the rest of us.
Protests and hunger strikes among asylum seekers held in detention centres in preparation for deportation to Rwanda are increasing, the Guardian has learned.
Approximately 55 detainees, including Afghans, Iranians and Kurds, are believed to have staged a 10-hour peaceful protest in the exercise yard at Brook House immigration removal centre, near Gatwick airport from 6pm Tuesday until 4am Wednesday.
We speak with Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, about high-level U.S.-Cuban migration talks held last week in Washington. He says U.S. policies that expedite permanent residency for Cubans in the United States play a major role in the movement of people between the two countries, but adds that the main driver of migration is the decadeslong U.S. embargo. “The economic conditions of the people of Cuba push them to migrate, and an important fact in provoking those conditions are U.S. deliberate policies of destroying the Cuban economy and make it unworkable.” Fernández de Cossío also discusses the 2024 election and policy overlap between the Trump and Biden administrations, Cuba’s position on the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza, recent protests inside Cuba over living conditions and more.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
