Indonesia officially joined the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa — consortium last week marking a significant milestone in its foreign relations.
In a statement released a day later on January 7, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that this membership reflected Indonesia’s dedication to strengthening multilateral cooperation and its growing influence in global politics.
The ministry highlighted that joining BRICS aligned with Indonesia’s independent and proactive foreign policy, which seeks to maintain balanced relations with major powers while prioritising national interests.
This pivotal move showcases Jakarta’s efforts to enhance its international presence as an emerging power within a select group of global influencers.
Traditionally, Indonesia has embraced a non-aligned stance while bolstering its military and economic strength through collaborations with both Western and Eastern nations, including the United States, China, and Russia.
By joining BRICS, Indonesia clearly signals a shift from its non-aligned status, aligning itself with a coalition of emerging powers poised to challenge and redefine the existing global geopolitical landscape dominated by a Western neoliberal order led by the United States.
Indonesia joining boosts BRICS membership to 10 countres — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — but there are also partnerships.
Supporters of a multipolar world, championed by China, Russia, and their allies, may view Indonesia’s entry into BRICS as a significant victory.
In contrast, advocates of the US-led unipolar world, often referred to as the “rules-based international order” are likely to see Indonesia’s decision as a regrettable shift that could trigger retaliatory actions from the United States.
The future will determine how Indonesia balances its relations with these two superpowers. However, there is considerable concern about the potential fallout for Indonesia from its long-standing US allies.
The future will determine how Indonesia balances its relations with these two superpowers, China and the US. However, there is considerable concern about the potential fallout for Indonesia from its long-standing US allies. Image: NHK TV News screenshot APR
The smaller Pacific Island nations, which Indonesia has been endeavouring to win over in a bid to thwart support for West Papuan independence, may also become entangled in the crosshairs of geostrategic rivalries, and their response to Indonesia’s membership in the BRICS alliance will prove critical for the fate of West Papua.
Critical questions The crucial questions facing the Pacific Islanders are perhaps related to their loyalties: are they aligning themselves with Beijing or Washington, and in what ways could their decisions influence the delicate balance of power in the ongoing competition between great powers, ultimately altering the Melanesian destiny of the Papuan people?
For the Papuans, Indonesia’s membership in BRICS or any other global or regional forums is irrelevant as long as the illegal occupation of their land continues driving them toward “extinction”.
For the Papuans, Indonesia’s membership in BRICS or any other global or regional forums is irrelevant as long as the illegal occupation of their land continues driving them toward “extinction”. Image: NHK News screenshot APR
The pressing question for Papuans is which force will ultimately dismantle Indonesia’s unlawful hold on their sovereignty.
Will Indonesia’s BRICS alliance open new paths for Papuan liberation fighters to re-engage with the West in ways not seen since the Cold War? Or does this membership indicate a deeper entrenchment of Papuans’ fate within China’s influence — making it almost impossible for any dream of Papuans’ independence?
While forecasting future with certainty is difficult on these questions, these critical critical questions need to be considered in this new complex geopolitical landscape, as the ultimate fate of West Papua is what is truly at stake here.
Strengthening Indonesia’s claims over West Papuan sovereignty Indonesia’s membership in BRICS may signify a great victory for those advocating for a multipolar world, challenging the hegemony of Western powers led by the United States.
This membership could augment Indonesia’s capacity to frame the West Papuan issue as an internal matter among BRICS members within the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs.
Such backing could provide Jakarta with a cushion of diplomatic protection against international censure, particularly from Western nations regarding its policies in West Papua.
The growing BRICS world . . . can Papuans and their global solidarity networks reinvent themselves while nurturing the fragile hope of restoring West Papua’s sovereignty? Map: Russia Pivots to Asia
However, it is also crucial to note that for more than six decades, despite the Western world priding itself on being a champion of freedom and human rights, no nation has been permitted to voice concern or hold Indonesia accountable for the atrocities committed against Indigenous Papuans.
The pressing question to consider is what or who silences the 193 member states of the UN from intervening to save the Papuans from potential eradication at the hands of Indonesia.
Is it the United States and its allies, or is it China, Russia, and their allies — or the United Nations itself?
Indonesia’s double standard and hypocrisy Indonesia’s support for Palestine bolsters its image as a defender of international law and human rights in global platforms like the UN and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
This commitment was notably highlighted at the BRICS Summit in October 2024, where Indonesia reaffirmed its dedication to Palestinian self-determination and called for global action to address the ongoing conflict in line with international law and UN resolutions, reflecting its constitutional duty to oppose colonialism.
Nonetheless, Indonesia’s self-image as a “saviour for the Palestinians” presents a rather ignoble facade being promoted in the international diplomatic arena, as the Indonesian government engages in precisely the same behaviours it condemns Israel over in Palestine.
Military engagement and regional diplomacy Moreover, Indonesia’s interaction with Pacific nations serves to perpetuate a façade of double standards — on one hand, it endeavours to portray itself as a burgeoning power and a champion of moral causes concerning security issues, human rights, climate change, and development; while on the other, it distracts the communities and nations of Oceania — particularly Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, which have long supported the West Papua independence movement — from holding Indonesia accountable for its transgressions against their fellow Pacific Islanders in West Papua.
On October 10, 2024, Brigadier-General Mohamad Nafis of the Indonesian Defence Ministry unveiled a strategic initiative intended to assert sovereignty claims over West Papua. This plan aims to foster stability across the Pacific through enhanced defence cooperation and safeguarding of territorial integrity.
The efforts to expand influence are characterised by joint military exercises, defence partnerships, and assistance programmes, all crafted to address common challenges such as terrorism, piracy, and natural disasters.
However, most critically, Indonesia’s engagement with Pacific Island nations aims to undermine the regional solidarity surrounding West Papua’s right to self-determination.
This involvement encapsulates infrastructure initiatives, defence training, and financial diplomacy, nurturing goodwill while aligning the interests of Pacific nations with Indonesia’s geopolitical aspirations.
Indonesia has formally joined the BRICS group, a bloc of emerging economies featuring Russia, China and others that is viewed as a counterweight to the West https://t.co/WArU5O2PfTpic.twitter.com/IQKmPOJqlS
Military occupation in West Papua As Indonesia strives to galvanise international support for its territorial integrity, the military presence in West Papua has intensified significantly, instilling widespread fear among local Papuan communities due to heightened deployments, surveillance, and restrictions.
Indonesian forces have been mobilised to secure economically strategic regions, including the Grasberg mine, which holds some of the world’s largest gold and copper reserves.
These operations have resulted in the displacement of Indigenous communities and substantial environmental degradation.
As of December 2024, approximately 83,295 individuals had been internally displaced in West Papua due to armed conflicts between Indonesian security forces and the West Papua Liberation Army (TPNPB).
Recent reports detail new instances of displacement in the Tambrauw and Pegunungan Bintang regencies following clashes between the TPNPB and security forces. Villagers have evacuated their homes in fear of further military incursions and confrontations, leaving many in psychological distress.
The significant increase in Indonesia’s military presence in West Papua has coincided with demographic shifts that jeopardise the survival of Indigenous Papuans.
Government transmigration policies and large-scale agricultural initiatives, such as the food estate project in Merauke, have marginalised Indigenous communities.
These programmes, aimed at ensuring national food security, result in land expropriation and cultural erosion, threatening traditional Papuan lifestyles and identities.
For more than 63 years, Indonesia has occupied West Papua, subjecting Indigenous communities to systemic marginalisation and brink of extinction. Traditional languages, oral histories, and cultural values face obliteration under Indonesia’s colonial occupation.
A glimmer of hope for West Papua Despite these formidable challenges, solidarity movements within the Pacific and global communities persist in their advocacy for West Papua’s self-determination.
These groups, united by a shared sense of humanity and justice, work tirelessly to maintain hope for West Papua’s liberation. Even so, Indonesia’s diplomatic engagement with Pacific nations, characterised by eloquent rhetoric and military alliances, represents a calculated endeavour to extinguish this fragile hope for Papuan liberation.
Indonesia’s membership in BRICS will either amplify this tiny hope of salvation within the grand vision of a new world re-engineered by Beijing’s BRICS and its allies or will it conceal West Papua’s independence dream on a path that is even harder and more impossible to achieve than the one they have been on for 60 years under the US-led unipolar world system.
Most significantly, it might present a new opportunity for Papuan liberation fighters to reengage with the new re-ordering global superpowers– a chance that has eluded them for more than 60 years.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, the tumult of the First and Second World Wars, coupled with the ensuing cries for decolonisation from nations subjugated by Western powers and Cold War tensions, forged the very existence of the nation known as “Indonesia.”
It seems that this turbulent world of uncertainty is upon us, reshaping a new global landscape replete with new alliances and adversaries, harbouring conflicting visions of a new world. Indonesia’s decision to join BRICS in 2025 is a clear testament to this.
The pressing question remains whether this membership will ultimately precipitate Indonesia’s disintegration as the US-led unipolar world intervenes in its domestic affairs or catalyse its growth and strength.
Regardless of the consequences, the fundamental existential question for the Papuans is whether they, along with their global solidarity networks, can reinvent themselves while nurturing the fragile hope of restoring West Papua’s sovereignty in a world rife with change and uncertainty?
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He lives in Australia and contributes articles to Asia Pacific Report.
The Pentagon has been recruiting with MrBeast. It begins with the fact nobody’s signing up anymore. Are we going to give people a trophy for showing up and enlisting? But Zoomers and Generation Z have no interest in anything having to do with the U.S. military. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription […]
For 30 years, Filipino journalist Manny “Bok” Mogato covered the police and defence rounds, and everything from politics to foreign relations, sports, and entertainment, eventually bagging one of journalism’s top prizes — the Pulitzer in 2018, for his reporting on Duterte’s drug war along with two other Reuters correspondents, Andrew Marshall and Clare Baldwin.
For Mogato it was time for him to “write it all down,” and so he did, launching the autobiography It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism in October 2024.
Mogato told Rappler, he wanted to “write it all down before I forget and impart my knowledge to the youth, young journalists, so they won’t make the same mistakes that I did”.
His career has spanned many organisations, including the Journal group, The Manila Chronicle, The Manila Times, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, and Rappler. Outside of journalism, he also serves as a consultant for Cignal TV.
Recently, we sat down with Mogato to talk about his career — a preview of what you might be able to read in his book — and pick out a few lessons for today’s journalists, as well as his views on the country today.
You’ve covered so many beats. Which beat did you enjoy covering most?
Manny Mogato: The military. Technically, I was assigned to the military defence beat for only a few years, from 1987 to 1992. In early 1990, FVR (Fidel V. Ramos) was running for president, and I was made to cover his campaign.
When he won, I was assigned to cover the military, and I went back to the defence beat because I had so many friends there.
‘We faced several coups’
I really enjoyed it and still enjoy it because you go to places, to military camps. And then I also covered the defence beat at the most crucial and turbulent period in our history — when we faced several coups.
Rappler: You have mellowed through the years as a reporter. You chronicled in your book that when you were younger, you were learning the first two years about the police beat and then transferred to another publication.
How did your reporting style mellow, or did it grow? Did you become more curious or did you become less curious? Over the years as a reporter, did you become more or less interested in what was happening around you?
MM: Curiosity is the word I would use. So, from the start until now, I am still curious about things happening around me. Exciting things, interesting things.
But if you read the book, you’ll see I’ve mellowed a lot because I was very reckless during my younger days.
I would go on assignments without asking permission from my office. For instance, there was this hostage-taking incident in Zamboanga, where a policeman held hostages of several officers, including a general and a colonel.
So when I learned that, I volunteered to go without asking permission from my office. I only had 100 pesos (NZ$3) in my pocket. And so what I did, I saw the soldiers loading bullets into the boxes and I picked up one box and carried it.
Hostage crisis with one tee
So when the aircraft was already airborne, they found out I was there, and so I just sat somewhere, and I covered the hostage crisis for three to four days with only one T-shirt.
Reporters in Zamboanga were kind enough to lend me T-shirts. They also bought me underpants. I slept in the headquarters crisis. And then later, restaurants. Alavar is a very popular seafood restaurant in Zamboanga. I slept there. So when the crisis was over, I came back. At that time, the Chronicle and ABS-CBN were sister companies.
When I returned to Manila, my editor gave me a commendation — but looking back . . . I just had to get a story.
Rappler: So that is what drives you?
MM: Yes, I have to get the story. I will do this on my own. I have to be ahead of the others. In 1987, when a PAL flight to Baguio City crashed, killing all 50 people on board, including the crew and the passengers, I was sent by my office to Baguio to cover the incident.
But the crash site was in Benguet, in the mountains. So I went there to the mountains. And then the Igorots were in that area, living in that area.
I was with other reporters and mountaineering clubs. We decided to go back because we were surrounded by the Igorots [who made it difficult for us to do our jobs]. Luckily, the Lopezes had a helicopter and [we] were the first to take photos.
‘I saw the bad side of police’
Rappler: Why are military and defense your favourite beats to cover?
MM: I started my career in 1983/1984, as a police reporter. So I know my way around the police. And I have many good friends in the police. I saw the bad side of the police, the dark side, corruption, and everything.
I also saw the military in the most turbulent period of our history when I was assigned to the military. So I saw good guys, I saw terrible guys. I saw everything in the military, and I made friends with them. It’s exciting to cover the military, the insurgency, the NPAs (New People’s Army rebels), and the secessionist movement.
You have to gain the trust of the soldiers of your sources. And if you don’t have trust, writing a story is impossible; it becomes a motherhood statement. But if you go deeper, dig deeper, you make friends, they trust you, you get more stories, you get the inside story, you get the background story, you get the top secret stories.
Because I made good friends with senior officers during my time, they can show me confidential memorandums and confidential reports, and I write about them.
I have made friends with so many of these police and military men. It started when they were lieutenants, then majors, and then generals. We’d go out together, have dinner or some drinks somewhere, and discuss everything, and they will tell you some secrets.
Before, you’d get paid 50 pesos (NZ$1.50) as a journalist every week by the police. Eventually, I had to say no and avoid groups of people engaging in this corruption. Reuters wouldn’t have hired me if I’d continued.
Rappler: With everything that you have seen in your career, what do you think is the actual state of humanity? Because you’ve seen hideous things, I’m sure. And very corrupt things. What do you think of people?
‘The Filipinos are selfish’
MM: Well, I can speak of the Filipino people. The Filipinos are selfish. They are only after their own welfare. There is no humanity in the Filipino mentality. They’re pulling each other down all the time.
I went on a trip with my family to Japan in 2018. My son left his sling bag on the Shinkansen. So we returned to the train station and said my son had left his bag there. The people at the train station told us that we could get the bag in Tokyo.
So we went to Tokyo and recovered the bag. Everything was intact, including my money, the password, everything.
So, there are crises, disasters, and ayuda (aid) in other places. And the people only get what they need, no? In the Philippines, that isn’t the case. So that’s humanity [here]. It isn’t very pleasant for us Filipinos.
Rappler: Is there anything good?
MM: Everyone was sharing during the EDSA Revolution, sharing stories, and sharing everything. They forgot themselves. And they acted as a community known against Marcos in 1986. That is very telling and redeeming. But after that… [I can’t think of anything else that is good.]
Rappler: What is the one story you are particularly fond of that you did or something you like or are proud of?
War on drugs, and typhoon Yolanda
MM: On drugs, my contribution to the Reuters series, and my police stories. Also, typhoon Yolanda in 2013. We left Manila on November 9, a day after the typhoon. We brought much equipment — generator sets, big cameras, food supply, everything.
But the thing is, you have to travel light. There are relief goods for the victims and other needs. When we arrived at the airport, we were shocked. Everything was destroyed. So we had to stay in the airport for the night and sleep.
We slept under the rain the entire time for the next three days. Upon arrival at the airport, we interviewed the police regional commander. Our report, I think, moved the international community to respond to the extended damage and casualties. My report that 10,000 people had died was nominated for the Society Publishers in Asia in Hong Kong.
Every day, we had to walk from the airport eight to 10 kilometers away, and along the way, we saw the people who were living outside their homes. And there was looting all over.
Rappler: There is a part in your book where you mentioned the corruption of journalists, right? And reporters. What do you mean by corruption?
MM: Simple tokens are okay to accept. When I was with Reuters, its gift policy was that you could only accept gifts as much as $50. Anything more than $50 is already a bribe. There are things that you can buy on your own, things you can afford. Other publications, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Associated Press [nes agency], have a $0 gift policy. We have this gift-giving culture in our culture. It’s Oriental.
If you can pay your own way, you should do it.
Rappler: Tell us more about winning the Pulitzer Prize.
Most winners are American, American issues
MM: I did not expect to win this American-centric award. Most of the winners are Americans and American stories, American issues. But it so happened this was international reporting. There were so many other stories that were worth the win.
The story is about the Philippines and the drug war. And we didn’t expect a lot of interest in that kind of story. So perhaps we were just lucky that we were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In the Society of Publishers in Asia, in Hong Kong, the same stories were also nominated for investigative journalism. So we were not expecting that Pulitzer would pay attention.
The idea of the drug war was not the work of only three people: Andrew Marshal, Clare Baldwin and me. No, it was a team effort.
Rappler: What was your specific contribution?
MM: Andrew and Clare were immersed in different communities in Manila, Tondo, and Navotas City, interviewing victims and families and everybody, everyone else. On the other hand, my role was on the police.
I got the police comments and official police comments and also talked to police sources who would give us the inside story — the inside story of the drug war. So I have a good friend, a retired police general who was from the intelligence service, and he knew all about this drug war — mechanics, plan, reward system, and everything that they were doing. So, he reported about the drug war.
The actual drug war was what the late General Rodolfo Mendoza said was a ruse because Duterte was protecting his own drug cartel.
Bishops wanted to find out
He had a report made for Catholic bishops. There was a plenary in January 2017, and the bishops wanted to find out. So he made the report. His report was based on 17 active police officers who are still in active service. So when he gave me this report, I showed it to my editors.
My editor said: “Oh, this is good. This is a good guide for our story.” He got this information from the police sources — subordinates, those who were formerly working for him, gave him the information.
So it was hearsay, you know. So my editor said: “Why can’t you convince him to introduce us to the real people involved in the drug war?”
So, the general and I had several interviews. Usually, our interviews lasted until early morning. Father [Romeo] Intengan facilitated the interview. He was there to help us. At the same time, he was the one serving us coffee and biscuits all throughout the night.
So finally, after, I think, two or three meetings, he agreed that he would introduce us to police officers. So we interviewed the police captain who was really involved in the killings, and in the operation, and in the drug war.
So we got a lot of information from him. The info went not only to one story but several other stories.
He was saying it was also the police who were doing it.
Rappler: Wrapping up — what do you think of the Philippines?
‘Duterte was the worst’
MM: The Philippines under former President Duterte was the worst I’ve seen. Worse than under former President Ferdinand Marcos. People were saying Marcos was the worst president because of martial law. He closed down the media, abolished Congress, and ruled by decree.
I think more than 3000 people died, and 10,000 were tortured and jailed.
But in three to six years under Duterte, more than 30,000 people died. No, he didn’t impose martial law, but there was a de facto martial law. The anti-terrorism law was very harsh, and he closed down ABS-CBN television.
It had a chilling effect on all media organisations. So, the effect was the same as what Marcos did in 1972.
We thought that Marcos Jr would become another Duterte because they were allies. And we felt that he would follow the policies of President Duterte, but it turned out he’s much better.
Well, everything after Duterte is good. Because he set the bar so low.
Everything is rosy — even if Marcos is not doing enough because the economy is terrible. Inflation is high, unemployment is high, foreign direct investments are down, and the peso is almost 60 to a dollar.
Praised over West Philippine Sea
However, the people still praise Marcos for his actions in the West Philippine Sea. I think the people love him for that. And the number of killings in the drug war has gone down.
There are still killings, but the number has really gone so low, I would say about 300 in the first two years.
Rappler: Why did you write your book, It’s Me, Bok! Journeys in Journalism?
MM: I have been writing snippets of my experiences on Facebook. Many friends were saying, ‘Why don’t you write a book?’ including Secretary [of National Defense] Gilberto Teodoro, who was fond of reading my snippets.
In my early days, I was reckless as a reporter. I don’t want the younger reporters to do that. And no story is worth writing if you are risking your life.
I want to leave behind a legacy, and I know that my memory will fail me sooner rather than later. It took me only three months to write the book.
It’s very raw. There will be a second printing. I want to polish the book and expand some of the events.
PELELIU, Palau — Palauan Sharla Paules surveys the contaminated ground of her lush tropical home island of Peleliu, still littered with WWII munitions 80 years after its liberation from the Japanese.
She recalls as a child her grandmother warning the land was poisoned by unexploded bombs, disrupting almost every aspect of traditional life on the island.
“They said after the war the soil was so contaminated they couldn’t even plant food,” said Paules, 49, who is part of a team clearing the island for the mine action group Norwegian People’s Aid.
“They couldn’t plant bananas, taro, tapioca or soursop. You still can’t plant tapioca and eat it here, it’s really bad.”
Roger Hess, a member of the mine action group Norwegian People’s Aid, holds a Type 91 grenade used by the Japanese military during WWII on the island of Peleliu, Palau, Nov. 26, 2024.(Harry Pearl/BenarNews)
The United States fired more than 2,800 tons of munitions from the air and naval vessels on the Japanese-occupied island before making an amphibious assault in 1944.
Nearly 2,000 Americans, 10,000 Japanese and an unknown number of Palauans died in the ensuing battle.
Today, much of Peleliu’s southern edge is still littered with unexploded munitions, rusting tanks and soldiers’ skeletal remains. It’s a stark reminder of a Pacific-wide problem: the lingering legacy of unexploded and abandoned ordnance, also known as UXO/AXO.
Paules’ colleague Roger Hess picks up a rusting Japanese grenade from the floor of the jungle while taking BenarNews on a tour of clearance work on the island.
“We’ll come back and recover it. It’s technically still live,” said the 65-year-old American army veteran, brushing off the dirt and marking it with white spray paint for later removal.
Roger Hess, right, and a member of the Norwegian People’s Aid clearance team inspect an abandoned WWII munition on Umurbrogal Mountain in Peleliu, Palau, Nov. 26, 2024.(Harry Pearl/BenarNews)
Hess is the Palau operations manager for Norwegian People’s Aid and is preparing a clearance operation in the upper reaches of Umurbrogal Mountain, a series of jagged, jungle-covered coral ridges that was one of the main battlegrounds on Peleliu.
The Type 91 grenade held by Hess is not an unusual find in Palau.
“The fuse may not function, but if you put it in a fire it will blow,” he said.
The Micronesian nation is one of nine Pacific island countries contaminated by an unknown quantity of explosive weapons left behind by Japanese and Allied forces after WWII.
Although international awareness about the issue in the Pacific is lower than in landmine and cluster munitions hotspots like Cambodia or Africa’s Sahel region, experts say potentially lethal munitions are scattered across the region’s lagoons, beaches and jungles.
A Norwegian People’s Aid makeshift storage depot for unexploded ordnance is made up of sandbags, rotting wooden pallets and barbed wire in Peleliu, Palau, Nov. 26, 2024. (Harry Pearl/BenarNews)
These explosive remnants of war threaten not just human life, but can pollute water sources, hinder infrastructure development and leave land too dangerous to farm.
“Palau has not had an accident in decades, but that doesn’t mean there is no potential for it,” said Hess.
“Just look at the amount of munitions we’re pulling out; any of those mishandled can kill people.”
A deadly menace
Palau may not have seen a casualty for some time, but other parts of the Pacific have not been so lucky.
In the Solomon Islands, which witnessed heavy combat between Japanese and Allied forces on the main island of Guadalcanal, two young men died in 2021 when an American 105 mm shell exploded in a residential area of the capital Honiara.
U.S. Marines move up to the front lines over terrain denuded by the bombardment of Peleliu to mop-up Japanese forces, Oct. 12, 1944.(AP)
At the time of their deaths, Raziv Hilly and Charles Noda were part of a group cooking over a backyard fire pit without realising the WWII-era projectile was buried beneath the ground.
While media reports occasionally highlight the deadly threat, there are no formal systems in place to track accidents or gather comprehensive data on the extent of contamination in Pacific island nations, according to nongovernmental organizations.
In 2012, the Pacific Island Forum, PIF, endorsed a regional UXO strategy that aimed to mobilize and coordinate efforts to tackle the problem.
But according to people familiar with the plan, after an initial burst of energy, including two regional conferences in Palau and the Australian city of Brisbane, little progress has been made in recent years.
The PIF did not immediately respond to BenarNews requests for an update on the strategy.
Remnants of World War II in Palau.(AFP)
Experts say that poor data collection and coordination is preventing Pacific island governments from combating the deadly menace, including accessing international assistance.
“There’s a lack of knowledge that this is important information that can help get funding to deal with the problem long term,” said Mette Eliseussen, national coordinator at Australian nonprofit SafeGround, which has done extensive surveys and clearance across the Pacific.
Historically, Pacific states have also been disadvantaged because international funding for ERW action is driven by two international treaties that cover landmines and cluster munitions, neither of which were used widely in the Pacific in WWII.
“Because they have UXO, [donors] have sort of said, ‘Oh, you don’t have a landmine problem, so we will discriminate against you.’ That’s been the attitude until just recently,” Eliseussen told BenarNews.
Palauan Sharla Paules is part of NPA’s survey and clearance team in Peleliu, pictured on Nov. 26, 2024. (Harry Pearl/BenarNews)
In 2023, the Pacific region saw an increase in funding for clearance of ERW. The U.S., Australia and Japan raised financial support for Solomon Islands and Palau, and made new investments in Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, according to the 2024 report produced by the Landmine and Cluster Munitions Monitor.
Eliseussen said geopolitical “tension with China” partly explained the renewed attention and additional resources for the problem in the Pacific.
Last year on Peleliu, U.S. Marines completed a $400 million rehabilitation of a WWII-era Japanese airfield, including removing UXOs at the site. It will allow fixed-wing aircraft to operate to enhance the U.S. military’s strategic capabilities in response to China’s ambitions in the South China Sea and Pacific region.
Between 2021 and 23, the U.S. Department of State provided Solomon Islands with $4.5 million for clearance, $1.5 million for Palau and smaller amounts for Marshall Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
John Rodsted, a researcher at SafeGround, said international donors like the U.S., Australia and Japan needed to step up assistance to rid the Pacific of UXOs and take a long-term approach to funding.
He added that the Japanese in particular “should put their hands in their pockets and actually help clear this stuff up.”
Contaminated soil
Since NPA began survey and clearance in Palau in 2016, it has found 10,844 ERW scattered across the country, according to its records.
Hess could not say if Peleliu – with a population of about 500 people – would ever be free of ERW, but based on the ferocity of fighting there were “probably still around 100 suspected hazardous areas.”
A member of the clearance team from the mine action group Norwegian People’s Aid peers into an American tank abandoned after WWII in Peleliu, Palau, Nov. 26, 2024. (Harry Pearl/BenarNews)
On a recent survey of Umurbrogal Mountain, the detritus of war was obvious to see – mortars, rockets and shells dotted the ground.
Weeks earlier, NPA staff found the remnants of a suspected landmine outside a cave while accompanying Japanese personnel searching for soldiers’ remains, Hess said.
“The biggest threat to public safety are white phosphorus munitions that were fired from 81 mm mortars,” he said, referring to the incendiary weapons that ignite on contact with oxygen.
Not everything discovered is hazardous, but such items are marked with yellow-tipped stakes and white spray paint and their GPS coordinates recorded for retrieval later that day.
After the munitions are collected, they are moved to a makeshift storage facility near the Peleliu’s trash heap, then transported to a disposal site on the nearby state of Koror, where they are cut open and burned out.
The work is slow going – and decades late – but according to locals like Paules, it’s starting to make a difference.
“When I was little, we saw a lot of [munitions] on the side of the street. Nowadays we don’t see so much,” she said.
BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Harry Pearl for BenarNews.
France’s naval flagship, the 261m aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, is to be deployed to the Pacific later this year, as part of an exercise codenamed “Clémenceau 25”.
French Naval Command Etat-Major’s Commodore Jacques Mallard told a French media briefing that the main objective of the planned exercise, labelled a “high-level strategic posture”, was to boost aero naval “interoperability”, as well as information and intelligence sharing.
The exact date of the 2025 deployment has not yet been disclosed, even though Commodore Mallard said last November it would be “very soon”.
Clémenceau 25, spanning over “almost four months”, would fall under an international 20-year Strategic Interoperability Framework signed between French and US naval forces in 2021.
Apart from the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, the Royal Australian Navy and Japan’s Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force are also part of the deployment.
France’s main naval bases in the Pacific are located in French Polynesia — Pacific naval command, ALPACI — and New Caledonia.
As part of its Indo-Pacific strategy, France also intends to show it has the capacity to deploy significant means — including the 42,000-tonne aircraft carrier — in the most distant regions, including the Pacific.
“To deploy a significant naval force in an area which, during the next 10 years, will be the transit point for more than 40 percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, shows France’s interest in this area,” Mallard told French media.
“The roadmap, with our regional partners, is to foster a free, open and stable Indo-Pacific space within the framework of international law, and to contribute to the protection of our populations and our interests.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Like old soldiers around the country, a group of former service members gathered in Crest Hill, Illinois to remember fallen comrades on Memorial Day, 2024. Several months later, The Veteran, a newspaper published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, ran a photo of the event they attended. It shows a multi-generational group of men — white, Black and Latino — lined up proudly between two flags.
The Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB) of Venezuela launched a special security deployment to guarantee peace and security during the inauguration of President Nicolás Maduro, scheduled for the coming Friday, January 10.
This was reported by the head of the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM), Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Granko Arteaga, who detailed that more than 1,200 military personnel are participating in this deployment. “We are going to guarantee peace, to give security to the people, we are going to guarantee that on January 10, President Maduro is sworn in, and we will be sworn in with him.”
United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) provisional government interim president Benny Wenda has warned that since Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto took office in October, he has been proven right in having remarked, after the politician’s last February election, that his coming marks the return of “the ghost of Suharto” — the brutal dictator who ruled over the nation for three decades.
Wenda, an exiled West Papuan leader, outlined in a December 16 statement that at that moment the Indonesian forces were carrying out ethnic cleansing in multiple regencies, as thousands of West Papuans were being forced out of their villages and into the bush by soldiers.
Prabowo coming to top office has a particular foreboding for the West Papuans, who have been occupied by Indonesia since 1963, as over his military career — which spanned from 1970 to 1998 and saw rise him to the position of general, as well as mainly serve in Kopassus (special forces) — the current president perpetrated multiple alleged atrocities across East Timor and West Papua.
According to Wenda, the incumbent Indonesian president can “never clean the blood from his hands for his crimes as a general in West Papua and East Timor”. He further makes clear that Prabowo’s acts since taking office reveal that he is set on “creating a new regime of brutality” in the country of his birth.
Enhancing the occupation “Foreign governments should not be fooled by Prabowo’s PR campaign,” Wenda made certain in mid-December.
“He is desperately seeking international legitimacy through his international tour, empty environmental pledges and the amnesty offered to various prisoners, including 18 West Papuans and the remaining imprisoned members of the Bali Nine.”
Former Indonesian President Suharto ruled over the Southeast Asian nation with an iron fist from 1967 until 1998.
In the years prior to his officially taking office, General Suharto oversaw the mass murder of up to 1 million local Communists, he further rigged the 1969 referendum on self-determination for West Papua, so that it failed and he invaded East Timor in 1975.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto (left) and West Papuan exiled leader Benny Wenda . . . “Foreign governments should not be fooled by Prabowo’s PR campaign.” Image: SCL montage
Wenda maintains that the proof Prabowo is something of an apparition of Suharto is that he has set about forging “mass displacement, increased militarisation” and “increased deforestation” in the Melanesian region of West Papua.
And he has further restarted the transmigration programme of the Suharto days, which involves Indonesians being moved to West Papua to populate the region.
Wenda considers the “occupation was entering a new phase”, when former Indonesian president Joko Widodo split the region of West Papua into five provinces in mid-2022.
Oksop displaced villagers seeking refuge in West Papua. Image: ULMWP
And the West Papuan leader advises that Prabowo is set to establish separate military commands in each province, which will provide “a new, more thorough and far-reaching system of occupation”.
West Papua was previously split into two regions, which the West Papuan people did not recognise, as these and the current five provinces are actually Indonesian administrative zones.
“By establishing new administrative divisions, Indonesia creates the pretext for new military posts and checkpoints,” Wenda underscores.
“The result is the deployment of thousands more soldiers, curfews, arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses. West Papua is under martial law.”
Ecocide on a formidable scale Prabowo paid his first official visit to West Papua as President in November, visiting the Merauke district in South Papua province, which is the site of the world’s largest deforestation project, with clearing beginning in mid-2024, and it will eventually comprise of 2 million deforested hectares turned into giant sugarcane plantations, via the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands.
Five consortiums, including Indonesian and foreign companies, are involved in the project, with the first seedlings having been planted in July. And despite promises that the megaproject would not harm existing forests, these areas are being torn down regardless.
And part of this deforestation includes the razing of forest that had previously been declared protected by the government.
A similar programme was established in Merauke district in 2011, by Widodo’s predecessor President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who established rice and sugarcane plantations in the region, aiming to turn it into a “future breadbasket for Indonesia”.
However, the plan was a failure, and the project was rather used as a cover to establish hazardous palm oil and pulpwood plantations.
“It is not a coincidence Prabowo has announced a new transmigration programme at the same time as their ecocidal deforestation regime intensifies,” Wenda said in a November 2024 statement. “These twin agendas represent the two sides of Indonesian colonialism in West Papua: exploitation and settlement.”
Wenda added that Jakarta is only interested in West Papuan land and resources, and in exchange, Indonesia has killed at least half a million West Papuans since 1963.
And while the occupying nation is funding other projects via the profits it has been making on West Papuan palm oil, gold and natural gas, the West Papuan provinces are the poorest in the Southeast Asian nation.
Indonesian military forces on patrol in the Oksop regency of the West Papua region. Image: ULMWP
And part of the agreement was that West Papuans undertake the Act of Free Choice, or a 1969 referendum on self-determination.
So, if the West Papuans did not vote to become an autonomous nation, then Indonesian administration would continue.
However, the UN brokered referendum is now referred to as the Act of “No Choice”, as it only involved 1026 West Papuans, handpicked by Indonesia. And under threat of violence, all of these men voted to stick with their colonial oppressors.
Wenda presented The People’s Petition to the UN Human Rights High Commissioner in January 2019, which calls for a new internationally supervised vote on self-determination for the people of West Papua, and it included the signatures of 1.8 million West Papuans, or 70 percent of the Indigenous population.
The exiled West Papuan leader further announced the formation of the West Papua provisional government on 1 December 2020, which involved the establishment of entire departments of government with heads of staff appointed on the ground in the Melanesian province, and Wenda was also named the president of the body.
But with the coming of Prabowo and the recent developments in West Papua, it appears the West Papuan struggle is about to intensify at the same time as the movement for independence becomes increasingly more prominent on the global stage.
“Every element of West Papua is being systematically destroyed: our land, our people, our Melanesian culture identity,” Wenda said in November, in response to the recommencement of Indonesia’s transmigration programme and the massive environment devastation in Merauke.
“This is why it is not enough to speak about the Act of No Choice in 1969: the violation of our self-determination is continuous, renewed with every new settlement programme, police crackdown, or ecocidal development.”
The fate of Palestinian Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who was “arrested” by Israeli forces last month after defiantly staying with his patients when his hospital was being attacked, featured strongly at yesterday’s medical professionals solidarity rally in Auckland.
The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the life of Dr Abu Safiya’s life amid alarming indications of torture and ill-treatment since his detention.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has received information that Dr Abu Safiya’s health has deteriorated due to the torture he endured during his detention, particularly while being held at the Sde Teyman military base in southern Israel.
Euro-Med Monitor warns of the grave risk to his life, following patterns of deliberate killings and deaths under torture previously suffered by other doctors and medical staff arrested from Gaza since October 2023.
Euro-Med Monitor has documented testimonies confirming that Israeli soldiers physically assaulted Dr Abu Safiya immediately after he left the hospital on Friday, 27 December 2024. He was then directly targeted with sound bombs while attempting to evacuate the hospital in compliance with orders from the Israeli army.
According to testimonies gathered by Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army subsequently transferred Dr Abu Safiya to a field interrogation site in the Al-Fakhura area of Jabalia Refugee Camp.
There, he was forced to strip off his clothes and was subjected to severe beatings, including being whipped with a thick wire commonly used for street electrical wiring. Soldiers deliberately humiliated him in front of other detainees, including fellow medical staff.
Transferred to Sde Teyman military camp
He was later taken to an undisclosed location before being transferred to the Sde Teyman military camp under Israeli army control.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has also received information from recently released detainees at the Sde Teyman military camp, confirming that Dr Abu Safiya was subjected to severe torture, leading to a significant deterioration in his health.
Protester Jason holds a placard calling for Kamal Adwan Hospital medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya to be set free at yesterday’s Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
This occurred despite him already being wounded by Israeli air strikes on the hospital, where he worked tirelessly until the facility was stormed and set ablaze by Israeli forces.
The Israeli army has attempted to mislead the public regarding Dr Abu Safiya’s detention and torture.
Pro-Israeli media outlets circulated a misleading promotional video portraying his treatment as humane, even though he was tortured and humiliated immediately after filming.
Euro-Med Monitor warns of the severe implications of Israel’s denial of Dr Abu Safiya’s detention, describing this as a deeply troubling indicator of his fate and detention conditions. This denial also reflects a blatant disregard for binding legal standards.
Physicians for Human Rights — Israel (PHRI) submitted a request on behalf of Dr Abu Safiya’s family to obtain information and facilitate a lawyer’s visit on 2 January 2024. However, the Israeli authorities claimed to have no record of his detention, stating they had no indication of his arrest.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya . . . subjected to severe torture, leading to a significant deterioration in his health. Image: Euro-Med Monitor
Deep concern over execution risk
Euro-Med Monitor expresses deep concern that Dr Abu Safiya may face execution during his detention, similar to the fate of Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, head of the orthopaedics department at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, who was killed under torture at Ofer Detention Centre on 19 April 2024.
Dr Al-Bursh had been detained along with colleagues from Al-Awda Hospital in December 2023.
Likewise, Dr Iyad Al-Rantisi, head of the obstetrics department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, was killed due to torture at an Israeli Shin Bet interrogation centre in Ashkelon, one week after his detention in November 2023. Israeli authorities concealed his death for more than seven months.
Dozens of doctors and medical staff remain subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance in Israeli prisons and detention centres, where they face severe torture and solitary confinement, according to testimonies from former detainees.
The last photograph of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, before he was arrested and abducted by Israeli forces. Image: @jeremycorbyn screenshot APR
The detention of Dr Abu Safiya must be understood within the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has persisted for nearly 15 months. His arrest, torture, and potential execution form part of a broader strategy aimed at destroying the Palestinian people in Gaza — both physically and psychologically — and breaking their will.
This strategy includes not only the deliberate destruction of the health sector and the disruption of medical staff operations, particularly in northern Gaza, but also an attack on the symbolic and humanitarian role represented by Dr Abu Safiya.
Despite the grave crimes committed against Kamal Adwan Hospital, its staff, and patients, especially in the past two months, Dr Abu Safiya remained unwavering in his dedication to providing essential medical care and fulfilling his medical duties.
Call on states, UN to take immediate steps
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor calls on all concerned states, international entities, and UN bodies to take immediate and effective measures to secure the unconditional release of Dr Abu Safiya. His fundamental rights to life, physical safety, and dignity must be protected, shielding him from torture or any cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
Euro-Med Monitor also urges international and local human rights organisations to be granted full access to visit Dr Abu Safiya, monitor his health condition, provide necessary medical treatment, and ensure he is free from human rights violations until his release.
Furthermore, Euro-Med Monitor reiterates its call for the United Nations to deploy an international investigative mission to examine the grave crimes and violations faced by Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.
It calls for the immediate release of those detained arbitrarily, for international and local organisations to be granted visitation rights, and for detainees to have access to legal representation.
Euro-Med Monitor expresses regret over the continued inaction of Alice Jill Edwards, the Special Rapporteur on Torture, who has failed to address these atrocities. It condemns her bias and deliberate negligence in fulfilling her mandate and calls for her dismissal.
A new Special Rapporteur who is neutral and committed to universal human rights principles must be appointed.
Additionally, Euro-Med Monitor urges the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to conduct immediate and thorough investigations into crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Call for prosecution of Israeli crimes
It calls for direct engagement with victims and families, as well as for reports to be submitted to pave the way for investigative committees, fact-finding missions, and international courts to prosecute Israeli crimes, hold perpetrators accountable, and compensate victims in line with international law.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renews its call for relevant states and entities to fulfil their legal obligations to halt the genocide in Gaza.
This includes imposing a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, holding it accountable for its crimes, and taking effective measures to protect Palestinian civilians. Immediate steps must also be taken to prevent forced displacement, ensure the return of residents, release arbitrarily detained Palestinians, and facilitate the urgent entry of life-saving humanitarian aid into Gaza without obstacles.
Finally, Euro-Med Monitor demands the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the entire Gaza Strip.
The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, has called on “medical professionals worldwide” to suspend ties with Israel in an act of solidarity with the more than “1000 colleagues of yours” killed in Gaza over the past 14 months.
“Out of dismay [and] solidarity you should revolt, and urge suspension of ties with Israel until it stops the genocide [and] accounts for it. What are you waiting for,” she said.
Her appeal came as about 100 New Zealand protesters held a “silent vigil” outside the country’s largest medical institution, Auckland Hospital, declaring health workers were “not a target”.
Earlier on Friday, Albanese and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Physical and Mental Health, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, issued a joint statement denouncing the “blatant disregard” for the right to health in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s attack on the Kamal Adwan Hospital and the detention of its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia.
“For well over a year into the genocide, Israel’s blatant assault on the right to health in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory is plumbing new depths of impunity,” the UN experts said.
Medical professionals worldwide: my colleague @drtlaleng and I have a message you should read.
Israel has killed over 1000 colleagues of yours in Gaza in 14 months. Countless were arrested, tortured, disappeared. Their “heroic actions … teach us what it means to have taken… https://t.co/aubGgZ7jsQ
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 3, 2025
The Auckland protesters spread in a long line outside Auckland hospital with banners declaring “healthcare workers in Aotearoa call for a ceasefire” and “stop the genocide”, and placards with slogans such as “healthcare workers and hospitals are not a target”, “Free Dr Hussam Abu Saffiya” and “hands off Kamal Adwan [a northern Gaza hospital destroyed by Israeli forces last week].
New Zealand protesters against the genocide and attacks on the healthcare workers and hospitals in Gaza outside Auckland City Hospital today. Image: David Robie/APR
Palestinian Prisoners Society warn over ‘danger’ to Dr Hussam
The Palestinian Prisoners Society has warned of “a danger” to Dr Hussam Abu Safiyya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, following the Israeli military’s denial of any records proving his arrest, reports Anadolu Ajensi.
Munir al-Bursh, the Director-General of Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the ministry submitted a request through the Physicians for Human Rights organisation to inquire about Abu Safiyya’s fate, but the Israeli occupation responded by saying that it had no detainee by that name.
Al-Bursh told the Al Jazeera news channel that there was concern that the Israeli occupation may execute Dr Abu Safia after his arrest about a week ago.
In a statement, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said that Dr Abu Safiyya “is one of thousands of detainees from Gaza facing the crime of enforced disappearance”.
The group said that “despite clear evidence of Dr Abu Safia’s arrest on December 27, 2024, the occupation is denying what it had previously stated and is also dismissing the evidence, including photos and videos it published as well as testimonies from some detainees who were released.”
It held the Israeli authorities fully responsible for his fate.
It also reiterated its call for the “international human rights system to save what remains of its role amid the ongoing genocide, after its function has eroded due to a frightening state of impotence.”
Last Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced the arrest of Dr Abu Safiyya by the Israeli military in northern Gaza.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) have been informed that the Israeli military has no record of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyyah, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was reportedly arrested by the occupation forces on December 27, 2024.
The Auckland City Hospital silent vigil protest today over the genocide in Gaza. Image: David Robie/APR
‘Proud’ of 15 months of NZ protest
Meanwhile, the national chair of New Zealand’s Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) issued a statement today critical of the government’s inaction in the face of the ongoing genocide and the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system as protests continued across the country.
“While the stench of decaying morality hangs over [New Zealand’s] coalition government and its MPs after 15 months of complicity with genocide, nationwide protests against Israel’s genocide continue in 2025,” said national chair John Minto.
“Over 15 months of weekly nationwide protests is unprecedented in New Zealand history on any issue at any time.
“We are enormously proud of New Zealanders who stand with the vast mass of humanity against Israel’s systematic, indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
“This week’s protests are the first of New Year and they will continue while our government cowers under the bedclothes and refuses to sanction Israel for genocide.”
The Gaza death toll stands at more than 45,000 — the majority killed being women and children.
“Today’s death toll of innocents killed is a repeating nightmare” for Palestine, he said while Western media highlighted “Israeli propaganda to justify the endless massacres while ignoring Palestinian voices”.
With the door now shut on 2024, many will heave a sigh of relief and hope for better things this year.
Decolonisation issues involving the future of Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua – and also in the Middle East with controversial United Nations votes by some Pacific nations in the middle of a livestreamed genocide — figured high on the agenda in the past year along with the global climate crisis and inadequate funding rescue packages.
Asia Pacific Report looks at some of the issues and developments during the year that were regarded by critics as betrayals:
The assembly passed a resolution on December 11 demanding an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, which was adopted with 158 votes in favour from the 193-member assembly and nine votes against with 13 abstentions.
Of the nine countries voting against, the three Pacific nations that sided with Israel and its relentless backer United States were Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
The other countries that voted against were Argentina, Czech Republic, Hungary and Paraguay.
Thirteen abstentions included Fiji, which had previously controversially voted with Israel, Micronesia, and Palau. Supporters of the resolution in the Pacific region included Australia, New Zealand, and Timor-Leste.
Ironically, it was announced a day before the UNGA vote that the United States will spend more than US$864 million (3.5 billion kina) on infrastructure and military training in Papua New Guinea over 10 years under a defence deal signed between the two nations in 2023, according to PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko.
Any connection? Your guess is as good as mine. Certainly it is very revealing how realpolitik is playing out in the region with an “Indo-Pacific buffer” against China.
However, the deal actually originated almost two years earlier, in May 2023, with the size of the package reflecting a growing US security engagement with Pacific island nations as it seeks to counter China’s inroads in the vast ocean region.
Noted BenarNews, a US soft power news service in the region, the planned investment is part of a defence cooperation agreement granting the US military “unimpeded access” to develop and deploy forces from six ports and airports, including Lombrum Naval Base.
Two months before PNG’s vote, the UNGA overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that the Israeli government end its occupation of Palestinian territories within 12 months — but half of the 14 countries that voted against were from the Pacific.
Affirming an International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinion requested by the UN that deemed the decades-long occupation unlawful, the opposition from seven Pacific nations further marginalised the island region from world opinion against Israel.
Several UN experts and officials warned against Israel becoming a global “pariah” state over its 15 month genocidal war on Gaza.
The final vote tally was 124 member states in favour and 14 against, with 43 nations abstaining. The Pacific countries that voted with Israel and its main ally and arms-supplier United States against the Palestinian resolution were Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Tonga and Tuvalu.
Flags of decolonisation in Suva, Fiji . . . the Morning Star flag of West Papua (colonised by Indonesia) and the flag of Palestine (militarily occupied illegally and under attack from Israel). Image: APR
In February, Fiji faced widespread condemnation after it joined the US as one of the only two countries — branded as the “outliers” — to support Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory in an UNGA vote over an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion over Israel’s policies in the occupied territories.
Fiji’s envoy at the UN, retired Colonel Filipo Tarakinikini, defended the country’s stance, saying the court “fails to take account of the complexity of this dispute, and misrepresents the legal, historical, and political context”.
However, Fiji NGOs condemned the Fiji vote as supporting “settler colonialism” and long-standing Fijian diplomats such as Kaliopate Tavola and Robin Nair said Fiji had crossed the line by breaking with its established foreign policy of “friends-to-all-and-enemies-to-none”.
Indonesian military forces on patrol in the Oksop regency of the West Papua region.
2. West Papuan self-determination left in limbo For the past decade, Pacific Island Forum countries have been trying to get a fact-finding human mission deployed to West Papua. But they have encountered zero progress with continuous roadblocks being placed by Jakarta.
Pacific leaders have asked for the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military continues its battles with West Papuan independence fighters.
A highly critical UN Human Right Committee report on Indonesia released in May highlighted “systematic reports about the use of torture” and “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Indigenous Papuan people”.
But the situation is worse now since President Prabowo Subianto, the former general who has a cloud of human rights violations hanging over his head, took office in October.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group in 2023 as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president.
Prabowo taking up the top job in Jakarta has filled West Papuan advocates and activists with dread as this is seen as marking a return of “the ghost of Suharto” because of his history of alleged atrocities in West Papua, and also in Timor-Leste before independence.
Already Prabowo’s acts since becoming president with restoring the controversial transmigration policies, reinforcing and intensifying the military occupation, fuelling an aggressive “anti-environment” development strategy, have heralded a new “regime of brutality”.
And Marape and Rabuka, who pledged to exiled indigenous leader Benny Wenda in Suva in February 2023 that he would support the Papuans “because they are Melanesians”, have been accused of failing the West Papuan cause.
Protesters at Molodoï, Strasbourg, demanding the release of Kanak indigenous political prisoners being detained in France pending trial for their alleged role in the pro-independence riots in May 2024. Image: @67Kanaky /X
3. France rolls back almost four decades of decolonisation progress
When pro-independence protests erupted into violent rioting in Kanaky New Caledonia on May 13, creating havoc and destruction in the capital of Nouméa and across the French Pacific territory with 14 people dead, intransigent French policies were blamed for having betrayed Kanak aspirations for independence.
While acknowledging the goodwill and progress that had been made since the 1988 Matignon accords and the Nouméa pact a decade later following the bloody 1980s insurrection, the French government lost the self-determination trajectory after two narrowly defeated independence referendums and a third vote boycotted by Kanaks because of the covid pandemic.
This third vote with less than half the electorate taking part had no credibility, but Paris insisted on bulldozing constitutional electoral changes that would have severely disenfranchised the indigenous vote. More than 36 years of constructive progress had been wiped out.
“It’s really three decades of hard work by a lot of people to build, sort of like a future for Kanaky New Caledonia, which is part of the Pacific rather than part of France,” I was quoted as saying.
France had had three prime ministers since 2020 and none of them seemed to have any “real affinity” for indigenous issues, particularly in the South Pacific, in contrast to some previous leaders.
In the wake of a snap general election in mainland France, when President Emmanuel Macron lost his centrist mandate and is now squeezed between the polarised far right National Rally and the left coalition New Popular Front, the controversial electoral reform was quietly scrapped.
New French Overseas Minister Manual Valls has heralded a new era of negotiation over self-determination. In November, he criticised Macron’s “stubbornness’ in an interview with the French national daily Le Parisien, blaming him for “ruining 36 years of dialogue, of progress”.
But New Caledonia is not the only headache for France while pushing for its own version of an “Indo-Pacific” strategy. Pro-independence French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson and civil society leaders have called on the UN to bring Paris to negotiations over a timetable for decolonisation.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians.” Rabuka also had a Pacific role with New Caledonia. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific4. Pacific Islands Forum also fails Kanak aspirations
Kanaks and the Pacific’s pro-decolonisation activists had hoped that an intervention by the Pacific Islands Forum in support of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) would enhance their self-determination stocks.
However, they were disappointed. And their own internal political divisions have not made things any easier.
On the eve of the three-day fact-finding delegation to the territory in October, Fiji’s Rabuka was already warning the local government (led by pro-independence Louis Mapou to “be reasonable” in its demands from Paris.
Rabuka and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown and then Tongan counterpart Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni visited the French territory not to “interfere” but to “lower the temperature”.
But an Australian proposal for a peacekeeping force under the Australian-backed Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI) fell flat, and the mission was generally considered a failure for Kanak indigenous aspirations.
Taking the planet’s biggest problem to the world’s highest court for global climate justice. Image: X/@ciel_tweets
5. Climate crisis — the real issue and geopolitics
In spite of the geopolitical pressures from countries, such as the US, Australia and France, in the region in the face of growing Chinese influence, the real issue for the Pacific remains climate crisis and what to do about it.
Controversy marked an A$140 million aid pact signed between Australia and Nauru last month in what was being touted as a key example of the geopolitical tightrope being forced on vulnerable Pacific countries.
This agreement offers Nauru direct budgetary support, banking services and assistance with policing and security. The strings attached? Australia has been granted the right to veto any agreement with a third country such as China.
Critics have compared this power of veto to another agreement signed between Australia and Tuvalu in 2023 which provided Australian residency opportunities and support for climate mitigation. However, in return Australia was handed guarantees over security.
The previous month, November, was another disappointment for the Pacific when it was “once again ignored” at the UN COP29 climate summit in the capital Baku of oil and natural gas-rich Azerbaijan.
The Suva-based Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) condemned the outcomes as another betrayal, saying that the “richest nations turned their backs on their legal and moral obligations” at what had been billed as the “finance COP”.
The new climate finance pledge of a US$300 billion annual target by 2035 for the global fight against climate change was well short of the requested US$1 trillion in aid.
Climate campaigners and activist groups branded it as a “shameful failure of leadership” that forced Pacific nations to accept the “token pledge” to prevent the negotiations from collapsing.
Much depends on a climate justice breakthrough with Vanuatu’s landmark case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) arguing that those harming the climate are breaking international law.
The case seeks an advisory opinion from the court on the legal responsibilities of countries over the climate crisis, and many nations in support of Vanuatu made oral submissions last month and are now awaiting adjudication.
Given the primacy of climate crisis and vital need for funding for adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage faced by vulnerable Pacific countries, former Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Meg Taylor delivered a warning:
“Pacific leaders are being side-lined in major geopolitical decisions affecting their region and they need to start raising their voices for the sake of their citizens.”
As 2024 came to a close and we have stepped into a new year overshadowed by ongoing atrocities, have you stopped to consider how these events are reshaping your world?
Did you notice how your future — and that of generations to come — is being profoundly and irreversibly altered?
The ongoing tragedy in Palestine is not an isolated event. It is a crisis that reverberates far beyond borders, threatening your safety, the well-being of your children and family.
Palestinian advocate Katrina Mitchell-Kouttab . . . a powerful address in Auckland last weekend about how people in New Zealand can help in the face of Israel’s genocide. Image: APR
Even fragile ecosystems and creatures have been obliterated and affected by the fallout from Israel’s chemicals and pollution from its weapons.
The deliberate targeting of civilians, rampant violations of international law, and the obliteration of the rights of children are not distant horrors. They are ominous warnings of a world unravelling — consequences that are slowly seeping into the comfort of your home, threatening the very foundations of the life you thought was secure.
But here’s the hard truth: these outcomes don’t just happen in a a vacuum. They persist because of the silence, indifference, or complicity of those who choose not to act.
The question is, will you stand up for a better future, or will you look away? And how could Palestine possibly affect you and your family? Read on.
Israel acting with impunity for decades
Israel has been acting with impunity for decades, flouting the norms of our legal agreements, defying the United Nations and its rulings and requests to act within the agreed global rules set after the Holocaust and the Nazis disregard for humanity.
The Germans, under Nazi rule, pursued a racist ideology to restructure the world according to race, committing crimes against humanity and war crimes that resulted in a devastating world war and the deaths of millions of people, including millions of Jews. A set of rules were formed from the ashes of these victims to ensure this horror would never happen again. It’s called international law.
However, after the Nazis defeat, it took less than a few years before atrocities began again, perpetrated by the very people who had just been brutally massacred and targeted.
European Jews, including holocaust survivors, armed by Czechoslovakia, funded by the Nazis (Havaara agreement), aided militarily by Britain, the US, Italy and France among others, arrived on foreign shores to a land that did not belong to them.
Once there, they began to disregard the very rules established to protect not only them, but the rest of humanity — rules designed to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust, safeguard against the resurgence of ideologies like Nazism, and ensure impunity for such actions would never occur again.
These rules were a shared commitment by countries to conduct themselves with agreed norms and regulations designed to respect the right of all to live in safety and security, including children, women and civilians in general. Rules that were designed to end war and promote peace, justice, and a better life for all humankind.
Rules written to ensure the sacred understanding, implementation and respect of equal rights for all people, including you, were followed to prevent us from never returning to the lawlessness and terror of World War Two.
But the creation of Israel less than 80 years ago flouted and violated these expectations. The mass murder of children, women and men in Palestine in 1948, which included burning alive Palestinians tied to trees and running them over as they lay unable to move in the middle of town squares, was only the beginning of this disrespectful dehumanisation.
Terrorised by Jewish militia
Jewish militia terrorised Palestinians, lobbing grenades into Palestinian homes where families sheltered in fear, raping women and girls, and forcing every man and boy from whole villages to dig their own trenches before being shot in the back so they fell neatly into their graves.
Pregnant Palestinian women had their bellies sliced open, homes were stolen along with everything in it — including my families — and many family members were murdered.
This included my great grandmother who was shot, execution style, in front of my mother as she carried a small mattress from our home for her grandchildren when they were forcibly displaced. I still don’t know what happened to her body or where she is buried. I do know where our house is still situated in Jerusalem, although currently occupied.
These atrocities enabled Israel’s birth, shameful atrocities behind its creation. There is not one Israeli town or village that is not built on top of a Palestinian village, or town, on the blood and bones of murdered Palestinians, a practice Israel has continued.
As I write, plans to build more illegal settlements on the buried bodies of Palestinians in Gaza have already been drawn up and areas of land pre-sold.
These horrific crimes have continued over decades, becoming worse as Israel perfected and industrialised its ability to exterminate human souls, hearts and lives. Israel’s birth from its inception was only possible through terrorist actions of Jewish militia. These militia Britain designated as terrorist organisations, a designation that still stands today.
Jewish militia such as (Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) formed into what is now known as the Israeli Defence Force, although they aren’t defending anything; Palestine was not theirs to take in the first place.
There was never a war of independence for Israel because the state of Israel did not exist to liberate itself from anyone. Instead, Britain illegally handed over land that already belonged to the Palestinians, a peaceful existing people of three pillars of faith — Palestinian Christians Muslims and Jews. If there were any legitimate war of independence, it would be that of the Palestinian people.
Free pass to act above the law
Israel continues to rely on the Holocaust’s memory to give it a free pass to act above the law, threatening world peace and our shared humanity, by using the memory of the horrors of 1945 and the threat of antisemitism to deter people from criticising and speaking out against the state’s unlawful and inhumane actions.
Yet Israel echoes the horrors of Nazi Germany and its destruction with its behaviour, the difference being the industrialisation of mass killing, modern warfare and weapons, the use of AI as a killing machine, the creation of chemical weapons and huge concentration and death camps which far surpass Germany’s capabilities.
Jews around the world have been deeply divided by Israel’s assertion that it represents all Jewish people. Not all Jews religiously and politically support Israel, many do not feel a connection to or support Israel, viewing its actions and policies as separate from their Jewish identity. For them, Israel’s claims do not define what it means to be Jewish, nor do they see its conduct as aligned with Jewish values.
This is not a “Jewish question” but a political one and conflating the two undermines the diverse perspectives within Jewish communities globally and is harmful to Jewish people. It is important to maintain a clear distinction between Judaism and the political actions of Israel.
How does a genocide across the world affect you? The perpetration of genocide and gross violations of human rights, facilitated or supported by Western powers, erodes the very foundations of the global legal framework that protects us all. This assault weakens democracy, undermines international law, and destabilises the structures you rely on for a secure future.
“The perpetration of genocide and gross violations of human rights, facilitated or supported by Western powers, erodes the very foundations of the global legal framework that protects us all.” Image: Al Jazeera headline APR
It leaves your defences crumbling, your safety compromised, and your vulnerabilities exposed to the chaos that follows such lawlessness as a global citizen of this world under the same protections and with the same equality as the Palestinians.
Palestinian children are no less deserving of safety and rights than any other children. When their rights are ignored and violated, it undermines protections for children worldwide, creating a precedent of vulnerability and injustice. If violations are deemed acceptable for some, they risk becoming acceptable for all.
Sitting safely in Aotearoa does not guarantee protection. The actions of Israel and the US, Western countries — massacring and flattening entire neighbourhoods — send a dangerous message that such horrors are only for “others”, for “brown people” who speak a different language.
But Western countries are the global minority. Many nations now view the West with growing disdain, especially in light of Israel and America’s actions, coupled with the glaring double standards and inaction of the West, including New Zealand, as they stand by and witness a genocide in progress.
When children become a legitimate target, the safety of all children is compromised. Your kids are at risk too. Just because you live on the other side of the world does not mean you are immune or beyond the reach of those who see such actions as justification for retaliation.
If such disregard for human life is deemed acceptable for one people, it will inevitably become acceptable for others. Justice and equality must extend to all children, regardless of nationality, to ensure a safer world for everyone.
But why should you care? Because Israel and the US are undermining the framework that protects you. Israel’s violations of International and humanitarian law including laws on occupation, war crimes and bombing protected institutions such as hospitals, schools, UN facilities, civilian homes and areas of safety, undermines these and sets a dangerous precedent for others to follow. Israel does not respect global peace, civilians, human rights nor has respect for life outside of its own. This lawlessness and lack of accountability is already giving other states the green light to erode the norms that protect human rights, including the decimation of the rights of the child.
The West’s support for Israel, namely the US, the UK, Canada, much of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, despite its clear violations of international law, exposes a fundamental hypocrisy. This weakens the credibility of democratic nations that claim to champion human rights and justice.
The failure of institutions like the UN to hold Israel accountable erodes trust in these bodies, fostering widespread disillusionment and scepticism about their ability to address other global conflicts. This has already fuelled an “us versus them” mentality, deepening the divide between the Global South and the Global North.
This division is marked by growing disrespect for Western governments and their citizens, who demand moral authority and adherence to the rule of law from nations in the East and South yet allow one of their “own” to brazenly violate these principles.
This hypocrisy undermines the hope for a new, respectful world order envisioned after the Holocaust, leaving it damaged and discredited.
Israel, despite its claims, has no authentic ties to the Middle East. What was once Palestinian land deeply rooted in Middle Eastern culture, has been overtaken and reshaped into to an artificial state imposed by mixed European heritage. It now stands as a Western outpost in stark contrast and isolated from surrounding Eastern cultures.
The failure of the West and the international community to stop the Palestinian genocide has begun a new period of genocide normalisation, where it becomes acceptable to watch children being blown up, women and men being murdered, shot and starved to death.
This acceptance then becomes a part of a country’s statecraft. Palestinian genocide, while it might be a little “uncomfortable” for many, has still been tolerable. If genocide is tolerable for one, then its tolerable for another.
Bias and prejudice
If you can comfortably go about your day, knowing the horror other innocent human beings are facing then perhaps it might be time to reflect on and confront any underlying biases or prejudices you hold.
An interesting thought experiment is to transform and transfer what is happening in Palestine to New Zealand.
Imagine Nelson being completely flattened, and all the inhabitants of Auckland, plus some, being starved to death.
Imagine all New Zealand hospitals being destroyed, Wellington hospital with its patients still inside is blown up. All the babies in the neonatal unit are left to die and rot in their incubators, patients in the ICU units and those immobile or too sick to move are also left to die, this includes all children unable to walk in the Starship hospital.
Electricity for the whole country is turned off and all patients and healthcare workers are forced to leave at gunpoint. New Zealand doctors and nurses are stripped down to their underwear and tortured, this includes rape, and some male doctors are left to die bleeding in the street after being raped to death with metal poles and electrodes.
Water is then shut down and unavailable to all of you. You cannot feed your family, your grandchildren, your parents, your siblings, your best friends.
Imagine New Zealanders burying bodies of their children and loved ones in makeshift mass graves, while living in tents and then being subjected to chemical weapon strikes, quad copters or small drones’ attacks that drop bombs and exterminate, shooting people as they try to find food, but targeting mostly women and children.
Imagine every single human being in Upper Hutt completely wiped out. Imagine 305 New Zealand school buses full of dead children line the streets, that’s more than 11,000 killed so far. Each day more than 10 New Zealand kids lose a limb, including your children.
This number starts to increase with the hope to finally ethnically cleanse Aotearoa to make way for a new state defined by one religion and one ethnicity that isn’t yours, by a new group of people from the other side of the world.
These people, called settlers, are given weapons to hurt and kill New Zealanders as they rampage through towns evicting residents and moving into your homes taking everything that belongs to you and leaving you on the street. All your belongings, all your memories, your pets, your future, your family are stolen or destroyed.
Starting from January 2025, up to 15 New Zealanders will die of starvation or related diseases EVERY DAY until the rest of the world decides if it will come to your aid with this lawlessness. Or maybe you will die in desperation while others watch you on their TV screens or scroll through their social media seeing you as the “terrorist” and the invaders as the “victims”.
If this thought horrifies you, if it makes you feel shocked or upset, then so too should others having to endure such illegal horrors. None of what is happening is acceptable, as a fellow human being you should be fighting for the right of all of us. Perhaps you might think of our own tangata whenua and Aotearoa’s own history.
What could this mean for New Zealand?
We are not creating a bright future for a country like New Zealand, whose remote location, dependence on trade, and its aging infrastructure, leaves it vulnerable to changing global dynamics. This is especially concerning with our energy dependence on imported oil, our dependence on global supply chains for essential goods including medicine (Israel’s pager attack against Hezbollah has compromised supply chains in a dangerous and horrific violation that New Zealand ignored), our economic marginalisation, and our security challenges.
All of this while surrounded by rising tensions between superpowers like the US and China which will affect New Zealand’s security and economic partnerships. Balancing economic and political ties is complicated by this government’s focus on strengthening strategic alliances with Western nations, mainly the US, whose complicity in genocide, war crimes, and disrespect for the rule of law is weakening its standing and threatens its very future.
Targeting marginalised groups
The precedent set in Palestine will embolden oppressive regimes elsewhere to target minority groups, knowing that the world will turn a blind eye. Israel is a violent, oppressive apartheid state, operating outside of international law and norms and has been compared to, but is much worse than the former apartheid South Africa.
This will have a huge impact felt all over the world with the continued refugee crisis. Multicultural nations such as New Zealand will struggle to cope with the support needed for the families of our citizens in need.
An increase of the far right reminiscent of Nazi ideology and extremism
Israel is a pariah state fuelled by radicalisation and extremism with an intolerance to different races, colour and ethnicity and indigenous populations. This has created a fertile ground for extremist ideologies, destabilising regions far beyond the Middle East as we have seen in Europe with the rejuvenation of the far-right movement.
Israel’s genocidal onslaughts will continue to be the cause for ongoing instability in the region, affecting global energy supplies, trade routes, and security. The Palestinian crisis will not be answered with violence, oppression and war. We aren’t going anywhere, and neither should we.
Weaponising aid and healthcare
Israel’s deliberate restriction of food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza weaponises humanitarian aid, violating basic principles of humanity. A new weapon in the arsenal of pariah states and radical violent countries and a new Israeli tactic to be copied and used elsewhere. Targeting hospitals, healthcare workers, distribution centres, ambulances, the UN, and collectively punishing whole populations has never been and will never be acceptable.
If it is not acceptable that this happens to you in Aotearoa, then nor is it acceptable for Palestinians in Palestine. It is intolerable for other “terror regimes” to commit such acts, so why is it deemed acceptable when carried out by Israel and the US?
Undermining the rights to free speech, peaceful protest and freedoms
During the covid pandemic, many New Zealanders were concerned with government-imposed restrictions that could be used disproportionately or as pretexts for authoritarian control. This included limitations on freedom of movement, speech, assembly, and privacy.
And yet Palestinians endure military checkpoints, curfews, restricted movement within and between their own territories, and the suppression of their right to protest or voice opposition to occupation — all due to Israel’s oppressive and illegal control. This is further enabled by the political cover and tacit support provided by this government’s failure to speak out and strongly condemn Israel’s actions.
Through its failure to take meaningful action or fulfil its third-party state obligations, this government continues to maintain normal relations with Israel across diplomatic, cultural, economic, and social spheres, as well as through trade. Moreover, it wrongly asserts on its official foreign affairs websites and policies that an occupying power has the right to self-defence against a defenceless population it has systematically abused and terrorised for decades.
The silencing of pro-Palestinian activists and criminalisation of humanitarian aid also create a chilling effect, discouraging global solidarity movements and undermining the moral fabric of societies. The use of victimhood to shroud the aggressor and blame the victim is a low point in our harrowed history. As is the vilification of moral activism and those that dare to stand against the illegal and sickening mass killing of civilians.
The attempt to persecute brave students standing up to Zionist and Israeli-run organisations and those supporting Israel (including academic and cultural institutions), by both trigger-happy billionaire Jewish investors and elite families and company investors whose answer to peaceful resistance is violence, demonstrates how far we have fallen from democracy and the rights of the citizen.
I find it completely bizarre that standing up against a genocide of helpless, unarmed civilians is demonised in order to protect the thugs, criminals and psychopaths that make up the Israeli state and its criminal actors, and the elite families and corporations profiting from this war.
Even here in Aotearoa, protesters have been vilified for drawing attention to Israel’s war crimes and double standards at the ASB Classic tennis tournament. Letting into New Zealand an IDF soldier who is associated with an institution directly implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity should be questioned.
These protesters were falsely labelled as “pro-Hamas” by Israeli and Western media. They were portrayed negatively, seen as a nuisance. Their messages about supporting human rights and stopping a horrific genocide from continuing were not mentioned.
The focus was the effect their chants had on the tennis match and the Israeli tennis player, who was upset. Exercising their legal rights to demonstrate, the protesters were not a security issue. Yet Lina Glushko, the Israeli tennis player, claimed she needed extra security to combat a dozen protesters, many over the age of 60, who were never in any proximity of the controversial player nor were ever a threat.
No mention that Lina Glushko lives in an illegal settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, or that she was in service from 2018-2020 during the Great March of Return. Or that this tennis player has made public statements mocking the suffering of Palestinians, inconsistent with Aotearoa’s commitment to combating hate speech and promoting inclusivity and respect.
Her presence erodes the integrity of international sports and sends a dangerous message that war crimes and human rights violations carry no meaningful consequences despite international law and the recent UNGA (UN General Assembly) and ICJ (International Court of Justice) resolutions and advisory opinions.
Allowing IDF soldiers entry into New Zealand disregards the pain and suffering of Palestinians and the New Zealand Palestinian community, dehumanising their plight. It sends a message of complicity to the broader international community, one that was ignored by most Western media.
Similarly, Israel’s attempts to not just control the Western media but to shut down and kill journalists, is not only a war crime, but is terrifying. Journalists’ protection is enshrined in international law due to the essential nature of their work in fostering accountability, transparency, and justice. They expose corruption, war crimes, and human rights abuses. Real journalism is vital for democracy, ensuring citizens are informed about government actions and global events.
Israel’s targeting of journalists undermines the rule of law and emboldens it and other perpetrators to commit further atrocities without fear of scrutiny or consequences.
The suffering of Palestinians is a human rights issue that transcends borders. Allowing genocide and oppression to continue undermines the shared humanity that binds us all.
Israel’s actions reflect the dehumanisation of an entire population and our failure to enforce accountability for these crimes weakens international systems designed to protect your family and you.
Israel’s influence is far reaching, and New Zealand is not immune. Any undue influence by foreign states, including Israel, threatens New Zealand’s sovereignty and ability to make independent decisions in its national interest. Lobbying efforts by organisations like the Zionist Federation or the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the Jewish Council and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand push policies that do not align with New Zealand’s broader public interest.
Aligning with a state that is violating rights and in a court of law on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, leaves citizens wide open to the same controls and concerns we are now seeing Americans and Europeans face at the mercy of AIPAC and Israeli influence.
Palestine is a test of the international community’s commitment to justice, human rights, and the rule of law. If Israel is allowed to continue acting with impunity, the global system that protects us all will be irreparably weakened, paving the way for more injustice, oppression, and chaos. It is a fight for the moral and legal foundations of the world we live in and ignoring it will have far-reaching consequences for everyone.
So, as you usher in 2025, don’t sit there and clink your glasses, hoping for a better year while continuing to ignore the suffering around you. Act to make 2025 better than the horrific few years the world has been subjected to, if not for humanity, then for yourself and your family’s future. Start with the biggest threat to world peace and stability — Israel and US hegemony.
What you can do
You can make a difference in the fight against Israel’s illegal occupation and violations of human rights, including the deliberate targeting of children by taking simple yet impactful steps. Here’s how you can start today:
Boycott products supporting oppression:
Remove at least five products from your weekly supermarket shopping list that are linked to companies supporting Israel’s occupation or that are made in Israel. Use tools like the “No Thanks” app to identify these items or visit the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) website for detailed advice and information.
Hold the government accountable:
Write letters to your government representatives demanding action to uphold democracy and human rights. Remind them of New Zealand’s obligations under international law to stand against human rights abuses and violations of global norms. Demand fair and equitable foreign policies designed to protect us all.
Educate yourself:
Learn about the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict, especially the events of 1948, to better understand the roots of the ongoing crisis. Knowledge is a powerful tool for advocacy and change.
Seek alternative news sources:
Expand your perspective by accessing a wide range of news sources including from platforms such as Al Jazeera, Double Down News, and Middle East Eye.
Be a citizen, not a bystander:
Passive spectatorship allows injustice to thrive. Take a stand. Whether by boycotting, writing letters, educating yourself, or raising awareness, your actions can contribute to a global movement for justice for us all.
Together, we can challenge systems of oppression and demand accountability for crimes against humanity. Let 2025 not just be another year of witnessing suffering but one where we collectively take action to restore justice, uphold humanity, and demand accountability.
The time to act is now.
Four children in Guayaquil, Ecuador, disappeared after they were arrested by state forces on December 8. The news of their parents desperately searching for their underage children has dominated the news in Ecuador for the last several weeks even amid the festive season. On December 8, Ismael and Josué Arroyo (15 and 14 years old), Saúl Arboleda (15 years old), and Steven Medina (11 years old) were detained by a military contingent patrolling the area where the boys were playing football. The four young Afro-Ecuadorian boys have not been seen since then.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed that close to 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s ongoing assault, but Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah estimates the true number is closer to 300,000.
“This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project,” says Dr Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza for more than a month treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals.
Israel continues to attack what remains of the besieged territory’s medical infrastructure.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, and Faris Odeh, a 15-year-old boy from Gaza, are iconic figures of Palestine, both photographed standing unarmed before Israeli tanks with nothing but their resolve.
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital, and set the facility on fire.
Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather.
The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. [Editor: He is reportedly being held in the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev desert, a place notorious for the torture and deaths of detainees].
“It’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable,” says Abu-Sittah.
“On October 7, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross.”
‘A genocidal project’. Video: Democracy Now!
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where a sixth baby has died from severe cold as the death toll tops 45,500 and Israel’s assault on medical infrastructure continues in the besieged territory.
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others.
On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital.
The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, [and he is reportedly being held in the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev desert, a place notorious for the torture and deaths of detainees].
Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. This is nurse Waleed al-Boudi describing Dr Hussam Abu Safiya’s arrest.
WALEED AL-BOUDI: [translated] Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was arrested from Al-Fakhoura School after he had stayed with us and refused to leave. Even though they told him to and that he was free to go, he told them that he won’t leave his medical staff.
He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night. But they yelled at him and arrested him, a man of great humanity.
We appeal to the entire world, all of the world, all the human rights organiSations to stand by Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the great man, the man who planted, within us and within our hearts, patience so we can persevere in our steadfast north.
I swear we wouldn’t have left, but by force. We cried blood on the doors of Kamal Adwan Hospital when we were forced out by the occupation army.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A person who was with Dr Hussam Abu Safiya shared testimony that, quote, “The Israeli forces whipped Dr Hussam using an electrical wire found in the street after forcing him and others from the medical staff to remove their clothes”.
This is Dr Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his final interviews before being detained, produced by Sotouries.
DR HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] I always say the situation requires one to stand by our people’s side and not run away from it.
Gaza is our homeland, our mother, our beloved and everything to us. Gaza deserves all of this steadfastness and deserves all of the sacrifices.
It is not just about Gaza, but we deserve to be a people that deserves freedom just like every other people on Earth.
I think the occupation wants us to get out and for us to ask them to get us out, so they can publicly say that the healthcare system is the one asking to leave and that it wasn’t them who asked us to, but we are aware of that.
But we will not leave, God willing, from this place, as I said, for as long as there are humanitarian services to be provided to our people in the northern Gaza Strip.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Dr Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his last interviews before Israeli forces arrested him on Friday in a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital along with at least 240 others in a raid which left the hospital nonoperational.
Israel’s military alleged that Hamas militants were using Kamal Adwan Hospital [But have never provided evidence for their claims].
The World Health Organisation is calling on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza hospitals. Earlier today, the World Health Organization’s chief, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said: “People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!”
Last week, World Health Organisation spokesperson Dr Margaret Harris was asked on Channel 4 News whether there was any evidence of the Israeli claim that the hospital is a Hamas stronghold.
DR MARGARET HARRIS: So, whenever we send a mission, we go and we look at the health situation.
Now, I’ve not had at any point our healthcare teams come back and say that they’ve got any concerns beyond the healthcare, but I should say that what we do is look at what the health situation is and what needs to be done.
But all we’ve ever seen going on in that hospital is healthcare.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we go to Cairo, Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN: Nermeen, thanks so much. I am here with a man who knew Dr Abu Safiya well and is in constant contact with people on the ground in Gaza, particularly the medical professionals.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah is with us here, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked last year in Gaza for almost — for over a month with Médecins Sans Frontières — that’s Doctors Without Borders (MSF) — in two hospitals. He worked at Al-Shifa, the main hospital in Gaza, as well as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Welcome to Democracy Now! You’ve been in touch with family of Dr Abu Safiya. If you can talk about where he is right now, believed to have been arrested by the Israeli military, and then the crisis just right now on the ground with the closing of Kamal Adwan and more?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, unfortunately, the family is afraid that he has been moved to the infamous Sde Teiman torture camp, an internment camp where, before him, Dr Adnan al-Bursh was tortured, and tortured to death, Dr Iyad Rantisi was tortured to death, where there is documented evidence of not just Israeli guards taking part in torture, but even Israeli doctors taking part in the torture of Palestinians.
And so, that is the fear that not just the family has, but all of us have.
And what we’ve seen in this process, in this destruction, systematic destruction of the health system, with the total destruction of all of the hospitals in the north, so not just Kamal Adwan, before that, the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital, and, immediately after, the targeting of al-Wafa Hospital and then the targeting again of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which was the first hospital the Israelis targeted on the October 17.
The targeting of al-Wafa Hospital was intended to kill medical students from Gaza’s Islamic University who were sitting in exam in that hospital. And luckily for them, the Israelis got the wrong floor. And then the targeting of Al-Ahli Hospital, which is now the last hospital functioning in that whole arbitrarily created northern part of Gaza, is a sign that the Israelis will now move towards the Ahli Hospital for destruction.
I just want to highlight there is research that is about to be published that shows that the chances of being killed as a nurse or a doctor in Gaza during this genocidal war is three-and-a-half times that of the general population.
So it’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, you, of course, as we mentioned, as Amy mentioned in the introduction, you have worked in two Gaza hospitals. You’ve just talked a little bit about what’s recently — the recent Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in Gaza, but if you could explain, just to give a sense of what’s happened overall since October 7, 2023.
If you could say the scale of the destruction of medical infrastructure, as well as the systematic attacks on medical personnel, as you said, this new research that’s coming out that shows that they’re three to four times more likely to be killed than the general population?
So, if you could just say, begin from October 2023 to now?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, what happened on October 12th is that the Israeli army started to call by phone medical directors of all of the hospitals, telling them that unless they evacuated the hospitals, the blood of the patients would be on their hands.
And I remember that day I was with Dr Ahmed Muhanna from Al-Awda Hospital, who’s still been arrested now for over a year, an anesthetist and a medical director, and he received a phone call from the Israeli army to tell him to evacuate Al-Awda Hospital.
Of course, we realised at that point that the destruction of the health system was going to be a prerequisite for the kind of ethnic cleansing that the Israelis wanted in Gaza.
I was in Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on the day of the October 17, when the Israelis bombed that hospital, killing over 480 patients. And then we had the whole narrative about Shifa Hospital, the siege of Shifa Hospital, the destruction of three pediatric hospitals in the north, and then the first attack on Shifa Hospital.
And then, after that, 36 hospitals in Gaza have now been reduced to the three partially working hospitals in the south and only a remnant of Al-Ahli Hospital in the north. We have had over a thousand health workers — doctors, nurses, health professionals — killed, over 400 imprisoned, and then the destruction of the health infrastructure, the destruction of water and sewage, the use of water as a tool of collective punishment in order to create the public health catastrophe that exists in Gaza in terms of infectious diseases, and the intentional famine.
And so, at the moment, we have in Gaza what the doctors are referring to as the triad of death: hypothermia because of the winter, wounding because of the injuries, and malnutrition.
And with the three, what happens is that people die of at higher temperatures, people die of lesser injuries, because the coexistence of these three conditions means that the body is depleted of any physiological reserve.
And so, that’s why we’re watching over seven kids in the last week die of hypothermia, an adult nurse die of hypothermia, not because the temperatures are subzero — the temperatures are just hovering above zero — but because they’re so malnourished and they’re injured and a lot of them have infectious diseases, and so they’re dying at the same time.
Israel has created a genocidal machine that takes Palestinian lives beyond the injury, beyond the bombs, beyond the shrapnel.
And so people are dying of infectious diseases. People are dying because of the health system has collapsed, and so their chronic diseases become medical emergencies. And people are dying from the famine and the malnutrition.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in light of that, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, if you could comment on the fact that so many people now, an increasing number of people, are questioning this death toll of 45,500, over that number who have been killed in Gaza since or who have died in Gaza since October 2023?
People are saying that is a vast undercount. From what you’re saying, that seems almost certain. If you could comment as a medical professional? You know, what do you think might be a more accurate figure?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, 45,000 are people whose bodies were taken to a Ministry of Health hospital, and they were taken by people who witnessed or who recognised them, and a death certificate was issued.
This 45,000 excludes the tens of thousands who are still under the rubble, more so in the north, where the emergency services were targeted by the Israelis and so are now completely unable to function.
And so, we see pictures of dogs eating bodies of those killed in the streets. Not only people under the rubble, people who have been killed and not reported, or their bodies have not been retrieved.
When you drop 2000-pound bombs, there’s very little of the human body that is left. And so there are people who literally pulverized by these bombs.
Then you have those whose chronic illnesses, once untreated, became deadly, so the kidney dialysis patients, the heart disease patients, the diabetics, who were no longer able to get treatment.
It doesn’t take into account the women who are dying from maternal care, from obstetric injuries during delivery, because they’re delivering in makeshift hospitals, they’re delivering in the tents, and they’re malnourished when they give birth, and so them and their babies have a higher rate of maternal mortality, of infant mortality.
And then you have those who are dying of infectious diseases, of the thousands who have hepatitis at the moment, of the polio, and those who are dying not immediately from their injuries but from the wounds that do not have access to healthcare to stop the infection setting in, and then, eventually, the infection becoming sepsis and killing them.
The number is closer to 300,000. This is around 10 to 12 percent of Gaza’s population.
France, at the end of the Second World War, 4 percent of its population were killed. This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project.
This is not a political term. This is a literal and mathematical term, where you want to eliminate the population and to ensure that whoever is left is incapable of becoming part of a society, because they’re tending to their wounds or they’ve been so severely debilitated by the injuries and the neglected injuries.
We at @amnesty are extremely concerned over the fate & wellbeing of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital who was detained by Israeli forces along with others during a raid on the hospital on 27 December. He must be released immediately and unconditionally.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr Abu-Sittah, you have asked, “How can a live-streamed genocide continue unhindered?” What is your response to that question right now?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Right now with the arrest of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, where is the British Medical Association? Where is the American Medical Association? Where are the royal colleges? Where is the French Medical Association?
Western medical institutions, their moral bankruptcy has become so astounding during this genocide. For them to become part of a genocidal enablement apparatus, for their silence and, in a lot of times, their collusion to silence those who speak out against the genocide.
For me, as a health professional, you’re shocked at how completely empty of any moral value these medical associations have become, when they have become complicit in a televised genocide which targets doctors.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, I’m speaking to you here in Cairo. In May, Germany did not allow you in to speak. You are a British Palestinian doctor.
Since you were in Gaza last year, you’ve been speaking out about what’s happening. Explain exactly what happened. I mean, Human Rights Watch and other groups were demanding that this ban be lifted. They banned you from where?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, I was invited to speak at a conference in Germany. I was stopped at Berlin Airport and was told that I’m banned from going into Germany for a month, and I was deported at the end of that day back to the UK.
A few months later, I had an invitation from the French Senate. When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I discovered that the Germans, a few days after they deported me, had put in a ban for the whole of the Schengen — and Schengen is the EU plus Norway, plus Sweden, plus Switzerland — using an administrative law so that they wouldn’t have to put it in front of the judge. We then were able to challenge that and have it overturned.
But at the same time, pro-Israel groups, like UK Lawyers for Israel, submitted multiple complaints against me with the General Medical Council to have my medical licence removed, submitted complaints against me with the Charity Commission in the UK to have me banned for life from ever holding office in a UK registered charity.
This is what — this is why this genocide has continued unhindered and unchallenged for over 14 months. There are apparatus of genocide enablement that exists in the West, either through collusion or by actively targeting.
Over 60 doctors in the UK have had complaints against them with the General Medical Council to have their medical licences removed as a result of their support of the Palestinians during the genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr Abu-Sittah, Jimmy Carter died yesterday at the age of 100. He wrote the book in the 2000s, which is quite amazing, but after he was president, Palestine: Peace [Not] Apartheid. I’m going to rejoin Nermeen for the end of the show, an interview I did with him on that issue. But your thoughts on President Carter?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: The logic of the relationship between the Zionist colonialist movement and the Palestinian indigenous population has always been that of elimination.
At a certain point — and that’s unfortunately now behind us since the 7th of October — apartheid separation was the chosen method of elimination of the Palestinians. On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross.
And once the genocidal Rubicon is crossed, the elimination of the indigenous population by the settler-colonial project then purely becomes genocidal.
Israel, even at the end of this genocidal war in Gaza, will not be able to deal with the Palestinians in a nongenocidal way. Once the settler-colonial project becomes genocidal, it cannot undo itself.
We’ve seen that in North America with the killing of the children in Canada. We’ve seen that in Australia. We’ve seen that everywhere.
AMY GOODMAN: And Carter, again, as we just have 30 seconds, writing the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Well, Carter had a historic opportunity to change the course of this struggle, had he insisted that part of the Camp David Accords was the creation of a Palestinian state. And no amount of recantation will ever change that missed opportunity.
He could have forced on the Israeli government, and the first right-wing Israeli government at that point, under Begin — he could have forced the creation of a Palestinian state, but he failed to do that.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we just have 30 seconds. You just said that a genocidal settler-colonial project cannot undo itself. How do you see this ending, then?
DR GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: You see, the world has a choice, because surplus populations like the Palestinians, like refugees crossing the Mediterranean, like the poor people in the favelas and in the inner-city slums, these will either be dealt with through a genocidal project, as Israel has dealt with the Palestinians in Gaza — and this kind of response or this kind of template will become part of the military doctrine that is taught to armies across the world in dealing with these surplus populations.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, thank you so much for joining us, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza as a volunteer with Doctors without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
Amy will rejoin us for our last segment talking about her interview with former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100.
A Palestine solidarity group has protested over the participation of Israeli tennis player Lina Glushko in New Zealand’s ASB Tennis Classic in Auckland this week, saying such competition raises serious concerns about the normalisation of systemic oppression and apartheid.
The Palestine Forum of New Zealand said in a statement that by taking part in the event Glushko, a former Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldier, was sending a “troubling message that undermines the values of justice, equality, and human rights”.
In the past 15 months, Israel’s military has killed almost 45,500 people in the besieged enclave of Gaza, mostly women and children.
Since the court ruling in July, Israel has intensified attacks on the civilian population in Gaza and their natural resources and infrastructure, including hospitals and health clinics.
“Welcoming Israeli athletes to Aotearoa is not a neutral act. It normalises the systemic injustices perpetrated by the Israeli state against Palestinians,” said Maher Nazzal of the Palestine Forum.
“Just as the international sports community united to oppose South Africa’s apartheid in the 20th century, we must now stand firm against Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and human rights.”
Implements apartheid policies
He said former soldier Glushko symbolised a regime that:
Implements apartheid policies: As documented by leading organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch;
Operates under leadership accused of war crimes: With an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant issued against Israeli officials; and
Continues its illegal occupation of Palestine: In direct violation of international law and countless United Nations resolutions.
The statement said: “While sports often aim to transcend politics, they cannot be isolated from the realities of injustice and oppression.
“By welcoming athletes representing an apartheid regime, we risk ignoring the voices of the oppressed and allowing sports to be used as a tool for whitewashing human rights abuses.
“We urge the international and local sports community to remain consistent in their principles by refusing to host representatives of regimes that perpetuate apartheid.
“The global boycott of South African athletes during apartheid proved that sports can be a powerful force for change. The same principle must apply today.”
New Overseas Minister Manuel Valls, who was appointed yesterday as part of the new French government of Prime Minister François Bayrou, intends to tackle New Caledonia’s numerous issues in the spirit of dialogue of former Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard.
Rocard is credited as the main French negotiator in talks between pro-France and pro-independence leaders that led in 1988 to the “Matignon-Oudinot” agreements that put an end to half a decade of quasi-civil war.
At the time 26 years old, Valls was a young adviser in Rocard’s team.
Valls said Rocard’s dialogue-based approach remained his “political DNA”.
36 years later, now 62, he told French national broadcasters France Inter and Outre-mer la Première that the two priorities were economic recovery (after destructive riots and damage in May 2024, estimated at some 2.2 billion Euros), as well as resuming political dialogue between local antagonistic parties concerning New Caledonia’s political future.
On the economic side, short-lived former Prime Minister Michel Barnier had committed up to one billion Euros in loans for New Caledonia’s recovery.
But France’s Parliament has not yet endorsed its 2025 budget, “which poses a number of problems regarding commitments made by (Barnier).
On the political talks that were expected to start a lead to a comprehensive and inclusive agreement between France, the pro-independence and pro-France camps, Valls said his approach was “dialogue” with the view of “going forward.”
“We don’t have much time (…) We have to find a common path”, he said, adding future political solutions should be “innovative” for the French Pacific archipelago.
Initial schedules for those talks to take place foresaw an agreement to arrive some time at the end of March 2025.
But no talks have started yet.
The Union Calédonienne (UC), one of the main components of the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), said nothing could happen until it holds its annual congress, sometime during the “second half of January 2025”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, bishop of Kalookan, has condemned the state of Israel on Christmas Eve for its relentless attacks on Gaza that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
“I can’t think of any other people in the world who live in darkness and are always in the shadow of death than them,” Caridinal David said in Filipino during the last Simbang Gabi Mass on Tuesday, December 24.
Cardinal David, 65, connected this to the Christmas message by leading churchgoers to reimagine Jesus’ birth.
A biblical scholar educated at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, David has often emphasised “the role of imagination” in interpreting the Bible.
Cardinal David, known for his defence of human rights, especially during Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, said Catholics should not “romanticise” the manger at Bethlehem.
“I think that if the Holy Family were to look for an inn today, they would not stay in Bethlehem but in the Gaza Strip and find a collapsed house in which to give birth to the Son of God,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal David said he understood that many Filipinos showed great sympathy toward Israel because the Philippines was a Christian-majority country.
Endorsed Pope’s ‘cruelty’ criticism
In addition, many Filipinos work in Israel under Jewish employers. “So it is but natural that many Filipinos would feel greater affinity with the Israelis,” he said.
Cardinal David said, however, that Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza should not be condoned. He echoed Pope Francis who recently said that Israel’s bombing of Palestinians, including children, “is cruelty.” and who also criticised Israel in his Christmas message.
The Israel in the Bible was a far cry from the state of Israel, Cardinal David added.
The biblical Israel is not the same Israel now at war with Hamas, as the following Rappler video explainer shows. The Israel in the Bible, called Judea, was destroyed by the Roman Empire in the second century, and the current state of Israel was established in 1948.
Israel’s war on Gaza as viewed by Cardinal David. Video: Rappler
“It is no longer an Israel that is disadvantaged and defenseless and oppressed by the powerful, but an Israel that is aggressive, at an advantage in war, and supported by world powers,” Cardinal David said.
Israel, he explained, should learn from the biblical experience of David, who mistakenly thought he only needed to build God a temple to attain elusive peace.
It is the other way around, he said, and God is the one who will build a temple for David.
“That will not happen as long as we treat each other as enemies,” said Cardinal David.
‘A God of love’
“No matter our religion, culture, or race, we all come from the same God — a God of love, a God who humbles, a God who does not call for revenge or exacts punishment but a God who forgives,” the cardinal added.
As a cardinal, David is one of 253 clergymen chosen as advisers to the leader of the 1.4-billion-strong Catholic Church. He is also one of 140 cardinals below the age of 80, who are eligible to join the next papal election.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1139 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed more than 45,200 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has revealed how arms and ammunition used to conduct the 1987 military coup were secretly brought into Fiji on board a naval survey ship.
Speaking at the commissioning of a new research vessel for the Lands and Mineral Resources Ministry on Friday, Rabuka described the strategic measures taken to ensure the weapons reached Fiji undetected.
“I realised that we didn’t have enough weapons and ammunition in Fiji to do what I wanted to do. So I sent a very quick message to the captain who was there to pick up the ship and surprised him by asking that, get that ship commissioned in Singapore before you sail back to Fiji.”
Rabuka explained the decision, saying the commissioning had allowed the ship to fly a naval flag, ensuring it would avoid inspection at international ports.
He said the ship’s captain was instructed to load arms and ammunition en route which were successfully brought back to Fiji.
The Prime Minister said the measures were necessary at the time to achieve what needed to be done.
Rare glimpse of tactics
His remarks offered a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes tactics of 1987, highlighting the extent of planning and resourcefulness involved.
Rabuka’s comments were made during the launch of a state-of-the-art research vessel which will serve as a floating laboratory for marine geological studies and coastal surveys.
The vessel is equipped with advanced tools to map the ocean floor, study tectonic activity and support communities affected by climate change.
The Prime Minister said the new vessel marked a significant step in understanding Fiji’s marine ecosystem.
He also spoke about the importance of integrating scientific research with traditional knowledge to address critical issues such as climate change and sustainable resource management.
The PM said there was a need for informed planning to prevent disasters, referencing the recent earthquake in Vanuatu.
Rabuka said early geological surveys could have guided city planners and engineers in designing structures that mitigate damage from such events.
The new vessel is expected to provide critical insights into the ocean’s mysteries while contributing to Fiji’s resilience against climate-related challenges.
The celebration was led by the Commander of the Fiji Navy, Humphrey Tawake, with senior officers. It was marked by a march by officers and the RFMF band. adding a ceremonial and heartfelt touch to the happy occasion.
On behalf of the commander of the RFMF who is away on official leave, Commander Tawake extended birthday wishes to the Head of State.
President Lalabalavu praised the dedication of the RFMF in upholding law and order.
“The strength of our nation lies in our collective efforts, and since assuming office, I have witnessed the vital role you play in ensuring peace and stability,” he said.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
People living near low lying areas or rivers have also been told to move, should water levels rise.
The heavy rain may also cause flash flooding.
USAR team leader Ken Cooper said last Tuesday’s 7.3 earthquake caused significant landslides.
“With the weather system that’s coming in, there is a high likelihood that the landslides continue and we need to ensure that there’s no life risks if those landslides should move further,” Cooper said.
Death toll now 12
Aftershocks have continued, and early this morning, the US Geological Survey recorded a magnitude 6.1 quake, at a depth of 40km west of Port Vila.
New Zealand and Vanuatu engineers were assessing prioritised areas in the capital, and a decision would then be made as to whether a community needed to be evacuated, Cooper said.
Since the team had been in Vanuatu, it had taken damage assessments of buildings and infrastructure, with the Vanuatu government, allowing them to prioritise the biggest risks and to assist the community in recovering more quickly, he said.
The official death toll from Vanuatu’s 7.3 magnitude quake is now 12 according to the Vanuatu Disaster Management office.
This has been confirmed by the Vila Central Hospital.
The deployment lead for New Zealand in Vanuatu praised the resilience of the ni-Vanuatu people following the 7.3 earthquake. Image: MFAT/RNZ Pacific
The team had completed almost 1000 assessments, alongside the Australia USAR team, which was a significant task, Cooper said.
Both teams shared common tools and practices, which had allowed them to work simultaneously and helped the teams to quickly carry out the assessments, he said.
“When we undertake the assessments that really gives us a clear picture of what should be prioritised and we work with the [Vanuatu] government and their infrastructure cluster, and some of the priorities we have looked at are bridges, [the] airport, the port, and also landslides,” he said.
Resilience shown by locals The deployment lead for New Zealand in Vanuatu praised the resilience of the Ni-Vanuatu people following the 7.3 earthquake.
Thousands of people had been affected by the disaster but the response effort was being hampered by damage to core infrastructure including the country’s telecommunications network.
Emma Dunlop-Bennett said the New Zealand teams on the ground were working in partnership with the Vanuatu government.
She said she was in awe of the strength of locals after the disaster.
“As we go out into communities, working . . . with the government, people are out there, getting up and doing what they can to get themselves into business as usual, life as usual. I am really in awe and humbled.
The purpose of the New Zealand team being in Vanuatu was three-fold: To provide urgent and critical humanitarian assistance, a response for consular need to New Zealanders, and to support a smooth transition from relief, response to recovery, Dunlop-Bennett said.
Then to business as usual, working along side the priority need identified by the Vanuatu government, she added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Twenty New Caledonian children who suffered the shock of Port Vila’s 7.3 magnitude earthquake have been repatriated from Vanuatu on board a French military CASA aircraft.
The special operation was conducted on Thursday, as part of relief operations conducted by the Nouméa-based French Armed Forces in New Caledonia in response to the destructive quake that shook the Vanuatu capital, where several buildings have collapsed.
The group of children, from northern New Caledonia (Népoui, Koné, Pouembout, and Poia), are aged between 8 and 14.
They were visiting Vanuatu as part of a holiday camp organised by their sports association.
They were supervised by four adults.
One of them, Melissa Rangassamy, told local Radio Rythme Bleu upon arrival in Nouméa that the group was having a picnic on a Port Vila beach when the ground started to shake violently.
“Children were falling to the ground, everyone was falling all around, it was panic. We told the children not to move. At the time, they were in shock.
“We gathered them all, put them on the buses, and went straight up to a higher place,” she said.
“It’s so good to come back home.”
More evacuation flights
The French High Commission in New Caledonia said a special psychological assistance unit was available to anyone who should need help.
More flights to evacuate French nationals would be carried out of Port Vila to New Caledonia, French Ambassador to Vanuatu Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer said.
Vanuatu hosts a significant French community, estimated at more than 3300 French citizens, including from New Caledonia.
New Caledonia is also home to a strong ni-Vanuatu community of about 5000.
French forces deliver hygiene kits at the Port Vila airport after last week’s massive earthquake in Vanuatu. Image: French Embassy in Vanuatu/RNZ Pacific
One French national confirmed among fatalities A Vanuatu-born French citizen has been confirmed dead.
He was found under the rubble of one of the hardest-hit buildings in central Port Vila.
He has been identified as Vincent Goiset, who belongs to a long-established, affluent Vanuatu family of Vietnamese origin.
The total death toll from the December 17 earthquake stood at 15 on Friday, but was still likely to rise.
France, Australia and New Zealand: 100 percent ‘FRANZ’ Both Australia and New Zealand, through their armed forces, have deployed relief — including urban search and rescue teams — in a bid to find survivors under the collapsed buildings.
The two countries are part of a tripartite set-up called “FRANZ” (France, Australia, New Zealand).
Signed in 1992, the agreement enforces a policy of systematic coordination between the three armed forces when they operate to bring assistance to Pacific island countries affected by a natural disaster.
As part of the FRANZ set-up, the French contribution included an initial reconnaissance flight from its Nouméa-based Falcon-200 jet (known as the Gardian) at daybreak on Wednesday, mostly to assess the Bauerfield airport.
Port Vila is only 500km away from Nouméa.
Later that day, a French PUMA helicopter transported emergency relief and personnel (including experts in buildings structural assessment, telecom and essential supplies such as water and electricity) to Port Vila to further assess the situation.
The small military CASA aircraft also operated a number of rotations between Nouméa and Port Vila, bringing more relief supplies (including food rations, water, and IT equipment) and returning with evacuees.
The French High Commission also said if needed, a Nouméa-based surveillance frigate Vendémiaire and the overseas assistance vessel d’Entrecasteaux were placed on stand-by mode “ready to set sail from Nouméa to Vanuatu within 72 and 96 hours, respectively”.
Embassies ‘flattened’ Following the Tuesday quake, four embassies in Port Vila (New Zealand, United Kingdom, the United States and France), all under the same roof, had been temporarily relocated to their respective chiefs of mission.
Their offices, once located in a three-storey building, collapsed and were “flattened”, the French ambassador said.
Vanuatu’s caretaker Prime Minister Charlot Salwaï has announced a state of emergency at least until Christmas and the Vanuatu snap election has been postponed from January 14 to 16.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
“It looks like Hiroshima. It looks like Germany at the end of World War Two,” says an Israeli-American historian and professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University about the horrifying reality of Gaza.
Professor Omer Bartov, has described Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza as an “act of annihilation” of the Palestinian people, reports Middle East Eye.
Dr Bartov said that not only had Israeli forces been moving displaced Palestinians around the Gaza Strip but they had also been strategically bombing mosques, museums, hospitals, and anything that served the health or culture of a people — in an attempt to cleanse the entire area of Palestinians.
Al Jazeera reports that an Israeli drone attack on the Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza targeted a group of people gathered at a phone charging and internet distribution point, killing three people.
According to a witness, this was the only point in the refugee camp where people trapped in the area charge their phones and connect to the internet to be in touch with family members who are displaced in the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip.
This was not the first time that the Israeli military has carried out deliberate attacks on such connectivity points.
Houthis ballistic missile wounds 14
Meanwhile, a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis from Yemen has broken through Israeli defences above and below the Earth’s atmosphere before slamming into Tel Aviv, reports Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.
It said interceptors from the Arrow missile defence system were launched into the upper atmosphere after detecting the missile, but missed the target and failed to stop it before it entered Israeli territory.
As captured in numerous videos, two more interceptors were then fired in the lower atmosphere, also failing to shoot down the missile.
At least 14 people were wounded after a failed interception of the ballistic missile.
This was the third incident of its kind just this week. The Israeli army says it was now investigating why it was not intercepted and why this was such a significant failure.
Since the start of the war, the Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles, and more than 170 drones in support of the Palestinians in Gaza. The Houthis have said they would continue the attacks until Israel ends its war in the besieged enclave.
In July, there was a drone that evaded all Israeli air defences, no siren sounded, and it was able to detonate in the middle of Tel Aviv and kill one person.
This time, it was just one minute from the time the sirens rang until the moment of impact.
The Ukrainian military is dropping Korean-language leaflets urging North Korean troops fighting on Russia’s side of the war to “Surrender today and join South Korea tomorrow,” Radio Free Asia has learned.
The leaflets appear in a video shared on the Telegram social media website by InformNapalm, an organization that has been reporting on the situation in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian website evocation.info also published on Telegram evidence that North Korean soldiers are provided with Russian ID, likely to hide their nationality in the event they are killed.
A Ukrainian NGO group published video on Telegram that shows drones carrying leaflets urging North Korean troops fighting for Russia to surrender.
InformNapalm’s leaflet video shows a drone with a camera flying the leaflets over a wooded area. A caption in Ukrainian says, “Leaflets are dropped into the woods where North Korean soldiers are hiding.”
RFA previously reported that a similar type of drone engaged North Korean troops in a battle in the Kursk region, killing 50 of them.
But this time it was just leaflets. In addition to the “surrender” leaflet, there’s another that says “You’ve been sold!”
A video posted on Dec. 19, 2024, of leaflets to be dropped, by the Ukrainian military on North Korea soldiers, which say “You’ve been sold.”(InformNaplam via Telegram)
South Korean intelligence reported that Russia is paying every North Korean soldier about US$2,000 per month, but observers believe that just like North Korea’s dispatched workers, most of the money is likely sent to the cash-strapped North Korean government.
RFA has not independently verified the authenticity of the video.
According to InformNapalm, once North Korean soldiers surrender or are captured, their identities are protected and they are provided with support to go to South Korea to start a new life, but it acknowledged that it is still too early to tell how effective the leaflet campaign will be.
This fourth one appears as an HTML with a “Be careful!” message –
Meanwhile, a Russian military ID with a bullet hole and blood stains on it was found on a dead North Korean soldier in the Kursk region, the photo published by evocation.io purports to show.
The ID card is legible in the photo. It says the deceased soldier is Kim Kan-Bolat Albertovich, a native of Russia’s Tuva Republic, in southern Siberia, born on April 13, 1997.
The ID card of a North Korean soldier disguised as a Tubain.(Invocation Info via Telegram)
RFA cannot independently verify the authenticity of the photo.
According to the ID, Pvt. Kim was allegedly born in the village of Bayan-Tala, graduated secondary school in 2016, worked as a roofer, and then entered military service in the Tuvan 55th Mountain Infantry Brigade.
But a person with that name and birthdate does not exist in Russian records, the evocation.io reported. The soldier’s Korean signature also appears on the first page, suggesting his real name is Ri Dae Hyok.
The document has more inconsistencies. It lacks photos, order numbers and official seals. Additionally, “Kim” has allegedly been a soldier since 2016, but he first received a weapon on Oct. 10, 2024, and a personal tag (AB-175311) a day later.
If legitimate, this photo would confirm what South Korean intelligence revealed in October, that North Korean troops sent to Russia were issued fake Russian identification cards that said they were residents of southern Siberia, which is home to a people who are racially similar to East Asians.
It is difficult to tell if the photo is legitimate or if it is propaganda, David Maxwell, vice president at the U.S.-based Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told RFA.
“If Russia or North Korea is attempting to hide their soldiers’ identities, it makes no sense. They’ll inevitably be exposed,” Maxwell said. “It’s another foolish move by the Russians and North Koreans because when these soldiers are captured or killed, their identities will be revealed.”
He said it is already well known that North Korea is supporting Russia, so efforts to pass North Koreans off as a different Russian ethnic group was pointless.
“Maybe it makes them feel better, but I don’t find this very important or credible.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee and Jay Park. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Lee Sangmin and Cho Jin Woo for RFA Korean.
Palestinian history is “deliberately ignored” and is being effectively “erased” as part of Western news media narratives, while establishment forces work to shut down anyone speaking out against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, academics have told a university conference of legal and Middle East experts.
Also, the murder of Palestinians and resistance by them had been routinely mischaracterised as “loss and failure” on their part as though it was their own fault.
Although the conference took place over one and-a-half days in July and brought together Arab, Muslim, Jewish and Indigenous speakers from Palestine, Australia, Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, details have only just been released.
The release of the conference proceedings comes more than one year on from the start of the Israeli War on Gaza, now extended into Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, with arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and an Amnesty International investigation concluding Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The western media has ranged from selective reporting of facts… and publishing outright lies that justify the murder of Palestinians.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at least 45,097 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including over 17,492 children, with more than 107,244 people injured and in excess of 10,000 people missing under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
By comparison 63 journalists were killed in 20 years of the Vietnam War.
Posed war crime questions
The conference posed major questions regarding the erasing of Palestinian history, how it enables present-day war crimes and how defiance has resonated and inspired ongoing resistance by:
Palestinians fighting to defend their lives and their land, or as seen around the world, in civic protests;
the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement;
human rights advocacy;
alternative social media production; and
legal challenges in the highest of our international institutions, the ICC and the International Court of Justice.
The conference was officially opened with the Welcome to Country, from Uncle Greg Simms, Gadigal elder of the Dharug Nation.
Uncle Greg spoke about the importance of land and country to the survival of Australia’s Indigenous people, the role of ancestral ties and connections, the importance of history and allies in the face of genocide, and the need to empathise with the people of Palestine at this time.
Dr Janine Hourani’s address. Video: UTS
Janine Hourani from the University of Exeter and Palestinian Youth Movement, in her keynote speech detailed the history of Palestinian resistance to Zionist occupation, addressing how the recording of history, privileged by a select few, served to stifle narratives, as well as erase key figures and moments in time, “reproducing a particular version of Palestinian history that focuses on defeat and loss, rather than resistance and rebellion”.
“The Western media has ranged from selective reporting of facts, reporting Palestinians as ‘died’ and Israeli settlers as ‘murdered’ and publishing outright lies that justify the murder of Palestinians,” said Hourani.
“Since October we’ve heard multiple political interventions being made about the Western media’s complicity in the current genocide in Palestine.”
Souheir Edalbi, a law lecturer at Western Sydney University, convened the session that followed, featuring four speakers.
Anti-Palestinian racism
Randa Abdelfattah, an author, lawyer and academic, addressed anti-Palestinian racism which serves to disarm criticism of Israel and Zionism.
Udi Raz, an academic and activist based in Germany, presented a case study of Mizrahi or Arab Jews in Germany, interrogating the definition of semitism and otherness in that context, the culturally pervasive racism towards Arabs, and German anxieties about what constitutes a non-European identity.
Annie Pfingst, an author and academic, listed 11 different types of “erasure” by Israel, from the confiscation, possession and renaming of Palestinian villages through to the holding of Palestinian bodies killed by the Israeli forces, not returned to their families, or buried in the “cemetery of numbers”.
She described a “necrological regime” that turns dead bodies into prisoners of the state, penalising and torturing the community, serving “to further evict the native in line with the structure of the settler colonial imperative of elimination”.
We have seen many instances of pro-Palestinian voices who have been sacked from their work places.
Jessica Holland, a researcher, curator and archivist, discussed how the history of archiving of Palestinian material is “deeply embedded within a legacy of coloniality”, and the importance of Palestinian social history and archiving projects, in redressing and countering hegemonic understandings and organisation of materials.
“Journalists, teachers, doctors, health care workers, public servants, lawyers, artists, food hospitality workers. Across every profession and industry [showing] solidarity with Palestine has been met with a repertoire of repressive tactics, disciplinary employment processes, cancelled contracts, lawfare, police brutality, parliamentary scrutiny, coordinated complaints and harassment campaigns, media coverage, doxxing, harassment, attempts at law reform and policy amendments,” said Abdelfattah.
“We have seen in the past few days the treatment of [Senator] Fatima Payman and the intimidation, bullying and silencing she has endured.
“We have also seen many instances of pro-Palestinian voices who have been sacked from their work places.”
On day two of the conference Aunty Glendra Stubbs gave the Acknowledgement of Country, which was followed by the keynote speaker Jeff Halper, anthropologist, author, lecturer, political activist and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
Normalising violence
Halper addressed how Israel as a Zionist settler colonial state normalises violence, erasure and apartheid against Palestinians, where physical and cultural genocide are built in, necessitating indigenous resistance.
A second panel, “Social Movements, in Defiance”, convened by Alison Harwood, a social change practitioner, included speakers Nasser Mashni from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), Sarah Schwartz from the Jewish Council of Australia, and Latoya Rule from UTS Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research.
Speakers shared insights on how social movements mobilise from within their diverse communities, to reach and potentially impact the Australian and international social and political stage.
Interdisciplinary storyteller and media producer Daz Chandler presented a series of pre-recorded interviews and a live discussion with participants involved in University campus encampments from around the world including activists from Birzeit University in the Occupied West Bank, Mexico, Trinity College in Dublin, UCLA, the University of Melbourne, University of Tokyo, University of Sydney and Monash University.
Two further sessions focused on responses “From the Field”, with a third panel convened by Paula Abboud, a cultural worker, educator, writer and creative producer, featuring The Age journalist Maher Moghrabi, author and human rights lawyer Sara Saleh, Lena Mozayani from NSW Teachers for Palestine, and Dr Sana Pathan from ANZ Doctors for Palestine.
Each reflected on their work and the challenges they encountered in their respective professional fields. Obstructions they faced ranged from hindering and silencing the expression of ideas, through to the prevention of carrying out critical on-the-ground work to save lives.
Hometown of Nablus
The final panel of the conference was moderated by Derek Halawa, a Palestinian living in the diaspora, who shared his experience of travelling to his hometown of Nablus.
He followed virtual footsteps from his cousin’s video, through the alley ways, to reach the home of his great grandfather, a journey which culminated in reaching the steps of Al Aqsa Mosque, with both spaces symbolising belonging and hope.
Cathy Peters, media worker and co-founder of BDS Australia described a diverse range of disruption movements calling for the end of ties with Israeli companies, since the war on Gaza.
This was followed by RIta Jabri Markwell, solicitor and adviser to the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, addressing specific points of Australian law dealing with terrorism, freedom of speech, and racial discrimination.
The conference, which was was co-convened by Barbara Bloch, Wafa Chafic, James Goodman, Derek Halawa and Christina Ho, concluded with UTS Sociology Professor James Goodman giving an overview of the proceedings and potential actions post-conference.
One post-conference outcome is an additional series of interviews produced by Daz Chandler exploring the power of creative practices utilised within the Palestinian resistance movement.
It features renowned Palestinian contemporary artist Khaled Hourani, Ben Rivers: co-founder of the Palestinian Freedom Bus, Yazan al-Saadi: co-founder of Cartoonists for Palestine, Taouba Yacoubi: Sew 4 Palestine, Birkbeck University of London; and artist and activist from Naarm Melbourne, Margaret Mayhew.
Myanmar’s ruling military battled to defend a major northern town on Wednesday as its forces also came under pressure in the west and the east and its most important ally China worked to stop the onslaught by insurgents determined to end the generals’ rule.
Forces of the junta that seized power in a February 2021 coup have been pushed back in different places across the country by ethnic minority insurgents and allied pro-democracy militias over the past year.
Ethnic Kachin insurgents have been attacking the northern city of Bhamo on the Irrawaddy River for two weeks and have advanced towards the military’s headquarters there.
Junta forces have responded with heavy airstrikes, residents said.
“Last night at around 8 p.m., the planes were dropping bombs. There must have been about 100 strikes,” said one Bhamo resident, who declined to be identified in fear of reprisals.
“On the side of the headquarters, fighting is continuing and we hear gunfire. We can also see houses near there burning.”
An aid organization in the area said 30 civilians had been killed and nearly 150 wounded in Bhamo since Dec. 4. Among the dead were 10 children and five nuns, said a spokesperson from the group who declined to be identified.
“It’s an approximation from people on the ground and those who fled,” said the spokesperson. “The dead were killed by airstrikes and heavy weapons, and some by shooting when they fled.”
RFA tried to telephone Kachin state’s junta spokesperson, Moe Min Thein, to ask about the situation in Bhamo but he did not answer.
China, the junta’s main foreign ally, has been trying to end the violence in its neighbour, where it has extensive economic interests including rare earth mines in Kachin state energy pipelines from the Indian Ocean, and has been pressing insurgents to strike ceasefires with the junta.
The chairman of the Kachin Independence Organization, or KIO, General N’Ban La, met senior Chinese official Wu Ken in the Chinese city of Kunming on Dec. 12 for talks on a truce with the Myanmar military and trade along Kachin state’s border with China, said Kachin military information officer Naw Bu.
“They discussed a ceasefire and opening gates along the border, then after fighting stops, they talked about having peace talks with the junta,” he said. “Neither side has made any formal decision or agreement.”
He declined to say if China was putting pressure on the KIA but China has in recent days pressed two insurgent groups in Shan state, to the southeast of Kachin state, to agree to ceasefires after cutting off border trade.
In Myanmar’s western-most Rakhine state, ethnic minority Arakan Army, or AA, insurgents have surrounded the army Western Command base in the town of Ann, one of the military’s last major headquarters in the state.
The AA released drone video footage of the base on Wednesday, showing burning buildings in ruins, with smoke rising. Radio Free Asia could not verify the date the video was taken but it was clearly of the Western Command headquarters.
The AA also released video of scores of captured men, hands tied, marching in a line with white flags of surrender.
In the east, Myanmar’s oldest insurgent group, the Karen National Union, or KNU, re-captured their headquarters at Manerplaw, which they lost in 1995 to the army following a split in their ranks.
“We are taking back the headquarters that we lost for 30 years,” said the group’s spokesman, Saw Taw Nee.
Manerplaw, on a river along the border with Thailand, is of great symbolic importance.
The Karen headquarters was the hub of opposition efforts by an alliance of ethnic minority groups and student fighters from the majority Burman community after the military crushed a pro-democracy uprising in 1988.
Those same groups are again striving for unity as they seek to end military rule and usher in what they say will be a democratic, federal Myanmar.
Translated by Kiana Dunan. Edited by RFA Staff.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.
