According to a military think tank, the rise in dementia cases for people with top security clearances is posing a clear threat to our country’s national security. As leadership gets older, the number of cases of mentally-declining people with access to top secret information continues to increase. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated […]
The annual Han Kuang military exercise is underway across Taiwan but parts of the drills have had to be scaled back because what could be the most powerful typhoon to hit the island in years is due to make landfall.
Han Kuang, in its 40th iteration this year, is Taiwan’s largest annual military exercise. It covers key strategic locations including Greater Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung.
The military said 29,000 troops had been put on stand-by for disaster relief after the weather office warned that Typhoon Gaemi is expected to unleash winds of up to 184 kph, with gusts of up to 227 kph, and to dump torrential rain.
The storm, which is due to reach the coast on Wednesday evening, is forecast to be the strongest to hit Taiwan in eight years and could cause severe landslides and flooding. Yilan and Hualien counties in the east of the island are expected to be the worst hit.
An air drill with fighter jets taking off, landing and refueling quickly from Hualien Air Base has been canceled.
Hundreds of commercial flights were also canceled or delayed, and Taiwan Railways said all of its services had been suspended for 12 hours from Wednesday afternoon.
Streets in the capital Taipei are empty as offices and schools are shut.
The ministry of defense said most of the drills, scheduled for July 22-26, are to go ahead despite the weather.
The Taiwanese army’s First Theatre of Operation conducted a joint anti-landing exercise on Penghu island in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday morning. For the first time, the exercise was live streamed on Facebook, the ministry said.
However, only ground troops were taking part in the drills as naval and air support was canceled due to the weather. The drills are aimed at preparing forces to respond to any landing attempt by the Chinese military.
Troops from the 5th Theater of Operation during an exercise at an unspecified location in central Taiwan, July 23, 2024. ( Taiwan Ministry of National Defense.)
Responding to the news about the exercise, a Chinese spokesperson said Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, had “exaggerated the so-called mainland threat.”
Chinese Taiwan Affairs Office’s Zhu Fenglian said the DPP’s reliance on foreign countries and use of force to seek independence has “led to tension and turmoil in the Taiwan Strait and seriously threatened the security and well-being of Taiwan compatriots.”
Beijing considers democratic Taiwan a Chinese province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Blockades and landings are deemed the most likely scenarios if China were to choose that option. The Chinese military holds regular exercises near the island.
Besides Han Kuang, the annual Wanan air raid defense exercise is being held this week from Monday to Thursday across Taiwan.
There are five theaters of operation in Taiwan, plus two defense headquarters on the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu near China’s mainland.
Edited by Taejun Kang
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
The annual Han Kuang military exercise is underway across Taiwan but parts of the drills have had to be scaled back because what could be the most powerful typhoon to hit the island in years is due to make landfall.
Han Kuang, in its 40th iteration this year, is Taiwan’s largest annual military exercise. It covers key strategic locations including Greater Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung.
The military said 29,000 troops had been put on stand-by for disaster relief after the weather office warned that Typhoon Gaemi is expected to unleash winds of up to 184 kph, with gusts of up to 227 kph, and to dump torrential rain.
The storm, which is due to reach the coast on Wednesday evening, is forecast to be the strongest to hit Taiwan in eight years and could cause severe landslides and flooding. Yilan and Hualien counties in the east of the island are expected to be the worst hit.
An air drill with fighter jets taking off, landing and refueling quickly from Hualien Air Base has been canceled.
Hundreds of commercial flights were also canceled or delayed, and Taiwan Railways said all of its services had been suspended for 12 hours from Wednesday afternoon.
Streets in the capital Taipei are empty as offices and schools are shut.
The ministry of defense said most of the drills, scheduled for July 22-26, are to go ahead despite the weather.
The Taiwanese army’s First Theatre of Operation conducted a joint anti-landing exercise on Penghu island in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday morning. For the first time, the exercise was live streamed on Facebook, the ministry said.
However, only ground troops were taking part in the drills as naval and air support was canceled due to the weather. The drills are aimed at preparing forces to respond to any landing attempt by the Chinese military.
Troops from the 5th Theater of Operation during an exercise at an unspecified location in central Taiwan, July 23, 2024. ( Taiwan Ministry of National Defense.)
Responding to the news about the exercise, a Chinese spokesperson said Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, had “exaggerated the so-called mainland threat.”
Chinese Taiwan Affairs Office’s Zhu Fenglian said the DPP’s reliance on foreign countries and use of force to seek independence has “led to tension and turmoil in the Taiwan Strait and seriously threatened the security and well-being of Taiwan compatriots.”
Beijing considers democratic Taiwan a Chinese province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Blockades and landings are deemed the most likely scenarios if China were to choose that option. The Chinese military holds regular exercises near the island.
Besides Han Kuang, the annual Wanan air raid defense exercise is being held this week from Monday to Thursday across Taiwan.
There are five theaters of operation in Taiwan, plus two defense headquarters on the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu near China’s mainland.
Edited by Taejun Kang
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.
Australia and New Zealand’s populations must now wake up to the fact that our countries have been drawn into what ForeignPolicy.com called the knitting together of “the United States’ patchwork of different regional security systems into a global security architecture of networked alliances and partnerships”.
Hit pause right there.
Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn’t “NATO” moving into our region – it’s actually far bigger than that. America is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm).
It explains why, in the midst of committing genocide in Palestine, Israel still managed to send defence personnel to participate in RIMPAC 2024 naval exercises: they’re part of our team. It is taking the Military Industrial Complex to a global level. Where do you think it will lead us to?
New Zealand is about to sacrifice what it cannot afford to lose for something it doesn’t need: gambling we can keep the strength and security of our trading relationship with China while leaping into the US anti-China military alliance.
The Chinese have noticed. Writing in the South China Morning Post last week, Alex Lo gave an unvarnished Chinese perspective on this. In a piece titled “NATO barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gates of Asia,” he says: “Most regional countries want none of it, but four Trojan horses – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – are ready to let them in”.
“Has it crossed Blinken’s mind that most of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, don’t want NATO militarism to infect their parts of the world like the plague?”
Good luck with that if we join a hostile alliance. And since when has New Zealand declared that China was a strategic competitor? That’s an American position, surely not ours?
New Zealand could “add value” to its security relationships and be a “force multiplier for Australia and the US and other partners”, Luxon said while being hosted in Washington. New Zealand was also “very open” to participating in the second pillar of AUKUS.
“China not only poses no military threat to New Zealand, but it is also by a very substantial margin our biggest export market – more than twice as important as an export market for New Zealand as the US is.
“New Zealand has a huge stake in maintaining a cordial relationship with China. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain such a relationship if the Government continues to align its positioning with that of the United States.”
Prudent players, like most of the ASEAN countries, continue to play a more canny game. Former President of the United Nations Security Council, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore statesman with immense experience, offers a study in contrast to Luxon. He says the Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance.
“In the 30 years since the end of the Cold War, NATO has dropped several thousand bombs on many countries. By contrast, in the same period, no bombs have been dropped anywhere in East Asia.
“The biggest danger we face in NATO expanding its tentacles from the Atlantic to the Pacific: It could end up exporting its disastrous militaristic culture to the relatively peaceful environment we have developed in East Asia,” Mahbubani says.
Clark and Brash are right to sound the alarm: “These statements orient New Zealand towards being a full-fledged military ally of the United States, with the implication that New Zealand will increasingly be dragged into US-China competition, including militarily in the South China Sea.“
The National-led government is also ignoring calls by Pacific leaders to keep the Pacific peaceful. The danger is that a small group of officials in New Zealand’s increasingly militaristic and Americanised foreign affairs establishment are, along with a few politicians, sending the country into dangerous waters.
Glove puppet for Americans
Luxon’s comments are really so close to Pentagon positions and talking points that he is reducing himself to little more than a glove puppet for the Americans.
New Zealand needs to be a beacon of diplomacy, moderation, cooperation and de-escalation or one day we may find out what it’s like to lose both our security and our biggest trading partner.
Kiwis, like the Australians last year, may suddenly discover our paternalistic leaders have put us into AUKUS or some American Anglosophere-plus military alliance designed to maintain US global hegemony.
Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.
By Stefan Armbruster, Harlyne Joku and Tria Dianti
No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.
Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.
Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape chat during their meeting in Bogor, West Java, earlier this month. Image: Muchlis Jr/Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.
“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.
“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”
Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.
The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians,” Rabuka said at the time. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific“We continue establishing a constructive engagement with the UN on the progress of human rights improvement in Indonesia,” Siti Ruhaini, senior advisor to the Indonesian Office of the President told BenarNews, including in “cases of the gross violation of human rights in the past that earned the appreciation from UN Human Rights Council”.
Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.
The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.
In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.
In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.
Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”
After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.
A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.
PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.
“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.
He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.
During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.
Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”
Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.
Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.
“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.
“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”
Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.
Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.
Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.
While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.
An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.
Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.
Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.
Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.
“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.
“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”
The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.
President Jokoki Widodo (center) in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape (left) and Prime Minister of Fiji Sitiveni Rabuka in San Francisco in November 2023. Image: Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.
“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.
By Stefan Armbruster, Harlyne Joku and Tria Dianti
No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.
Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.
Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape chat during their meeting in Bogor, West Java, earlier this month. Image: Muchlis Jr/Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.
“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.
“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”
Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.
The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians,” Rabuka said at the time. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific“We continue establishing a constructive engagement with the UN on the progress of human rights improvement in Indonesia,” Siti Ruhaini, senior advisor to the Indonesian Office of the President told BenarNews, including in “cases of the gross violation of human rights in the past that earned the appreciation from UN Human Rights Council”.
Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.
The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.
In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.
In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.
Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”
After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.
A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.
PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.
“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.
He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.
During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.
Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”
Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.
Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.
“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.
“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”
Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.
Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.
Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.
While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.
An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.
Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.
Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.
Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.
“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.
“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”
The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.
President Jokoki Widodo (center) in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape (left) and Prime Minister of Fiji Sitiveni Rabuka in San Francisco in November 2023. Image: Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.
“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.
New Zealand should join others in calling New Caledonia’s third independence referendum invalid, one of the founders of the Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Network says.
In December 2021, the Kanak population boycotted the referendum to mourn their dead during the covid-19 pandemic, after their calls for the referendum to be delayed was ignored.
As a result, Peters said the referendum saw voter turnout collapse and almost 97 percent of voters who cast a ballot voted “No” to independence.
“Delegitimising the result, in the eyes of pro-independence forces and some neutral observers at least, was the low turnout of only 44 percent.”
Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity group’s David Small said Peters should have aligned with the Melanesian Spearhead Group which has called for a UN mission to New Caledonia.
‘Referendum delegitimised’
“He said that the third referendum was delegitimised in the eyes of some, and did not include New Zealand in that,” Small said.
“It would have been better if he had because that third referendum was indefensible.”
The group said Peters had mentioned the need for dialogue but failed to provide a clear pathway or goal.
“The Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Group is deeply disappointed by Peters’ insufficient support for the Kanak people’s struggle.
“His statement at PALM10 represents a missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples.”
Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . “missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples,” says Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity. Image: RNZ/Nick Monro
‘Fed by disinformation’, claims envoy However, the top French diplomat in the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, said she had reassured Pacific Islands Forum Leaders (PIF) that attended PALM10 that France’s actions during the third and final independence referendum were fair.
Roger-Lacan spoke to RNZ Pacific from Tokyo following talks with the leaders of Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
She said there was “so much disinformation” surrounding issues in New Caledonia and that Pacific leaders had only heard one side of the story.
“For example, Mark Brown sent a letter to President [Louis] Mapou but he did not try and contact France, kind of ignoring that New Caledonia until further notice is France,” she said.
“We tried to call them, but Mark Brown would not be there to pick up the phone.
“But luckily, the Prime Minister of Tonga, the incoming chair of the PIF and everyone else was there, so that everyone was very happy to hear the information that we were providing.
“We are going to provide full information in writing because it seems that everybody ignores . . . the substance of the matter, and everybody is totally fed by disinformation and propaganda” surrounding issues in New Caledonia.
Delegation to New Caledonia ‘decision has been made’ According to PIF’s outgoing chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister, Mark Brown, work is already in progress to send a high-level Pacific delegation to investigate the ongoing political crisis, which has resulted in 10 deaths and the economic costs totalling 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion).
“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said at a news conference at the PALM10 meeting in Tokyo.
A spokesperson for the New Caledonia President’s office, Charles Wea, has told RNZ Pacific that the high-level group was expected to be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
“The decision that has been made by the leaders during the meeting in Japan to send a mission to New Caledonia before the annual meeting over the of PIF around the second or third week of August,” he said.
“The objectives of the mission will be to come and listen and discuss with all parties in New Caledonia in order to [prepare] a report [for] the leaders meeting in Tonga.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
When Melbourne-born Helen Hill, an outstanding social activist, scholar and academic, died on 7 May 2024 at the age of 79, the Timorese government sent its Education Minister, Dulce de Jesus Soares, to deliver a moving eulogy at the funeral service at Church of All Nations in Carlton.
Helen will be remembered for many things, but above all for her 50 years of dedication to friendship with the people of Timor-Leste and solidarity in their struggle for independence.
At the funeral, Steve Bracks, chancellor of Victoria University and former premier of Victoria, also paid tribute to Helen’s lifetime commitment to social justice and to the independence and flourishing of Timor-Leste in particular.
Further testimonies were presented by Jean McLean (formerly a member of the Victorian Legislative Council), the Australia-East Timor Association, representatives of local Timorese groups and Helen’s family. Helen’s long-time friend, the Reverend Barbara Gayler, preached on the theme of solidarity.
Helen was born on 22 February 1945, the eldest of four children of Robert Hill and Jessie Scovell. Her sister Alison predeceased her, and she is survived by her sister Margaret and her brother Ian and their children and grandchildren.
Her father fought with the Australian army in New Guinea before working for the Commonwealth Bank and becoming a branch manager. Her mother was a social worker at the repatriation hospital.
The family were members of the Presbyterian Church in Blackburn, which fostered an attitude of caring for others.
Studied political science
Helen’s secondary schooling was at Presbyterian Ladies College, where she enjoyed communal activities such as choir. She began a science course at the University of Melbourne but transferred to Monash University to study sociology and political science, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1970.
At Monash, Helen was an enthusiastic member of the Labor Club and the Student Christian Movement (SCM), where issues of social justice were regularly debated.
Opposition to the war in Vietnam was the main focus of concern during her time at Monash. In 1970, Helen was a member of the organising committee for the first moratorium demonstration in Melbourne and also a member of the executive committee of the Australian SCM (ASCM, the national body) which was based in Melbourne.
She edited Political Concern, an alternative information service, for ASCM. In 1971, Helen was a founding member of International Development Action. Helen was a great networker, always ready to see what she could learn from others.
Perhaps the most formative moment in Helen’s career was her appointment as a frontier intern, to work on the Southern Africa section of the Europe/Africa Project of the World Student Christian Federation, based in London (1971-1973). This project aimed to document how colonial powers had exploited the resources of their colonies, as well as the impact of apartheid in South Africa.
In those years, she also studied at the Institute d’Action Culturelle in Geneva, which was established by Paulo Freire, arguably her most significant teacher. The insights and contacts from this time of engagement with global issues of justice and education provided a strong foundation for Helen’s subsequent career.
In 1974, Helen embarked on a Master of Arts course supervised by the late Professor Herb Feith. Helen had met student leaders from the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola in the Europe/Africa project, who asked her about East Timor (“so close to Australia”).
East Timor thesis topic
Recognising that she, along with most Australians, knew very little about East Timor, Helen proposed East Timor as the focus of her master’s thesis. She began to learn Portuguese for this purpose.
Following the overthrow of the authoritarian regime in Portugal in April 1974 and the consequent opportunities for independence in the Portuguese colonies, she visited East Timor for three months in early 1975, where she was impressed by the programme and leadership of Fretilin, the main independence party.
Her plans were thwarted by the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975, and she was unable to revisit East Timor until after the achievement of independence in 2000. Her 1978 Master of Arts thesis included an account of the Fretilin plans rather than the Fretilin achievements.
Her 1976 book, The Timor Story, was a significant document of the desire of East Timorese people for independence and influenced the keeping of East Timor on the UN decolonisation list. She was a co-founder of the Australia-East Timor Association, which was founded in the initial days of the Indonesian invasion.
Helen was a founding member of the organisation Campaign Against Racial Exploitation in 1975. She was prolific in writing and speaking for these causes, not simply as an advocate, but also as a capable analyst of many situations of decolonisation. She was published regularly in Nation Review and also appeared in many other publications concerned with international affairs and development.
Helen was awarded a rare diploma of education (tertiary education method) from the University of Melbourne in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, she was a full-time doctoral student at Australian National University, culminating in a thesis about non-formal education and development in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (the islands of the north Pacific).
Helen participated in significant international conferences on education and development in these years and was involved in occasional teaching in the nations and territories of her thesis.
Teaching development studies
In 1991, she was appointed lecturer at Victoria University to teach development studies, which, among other things, attracted a steady stream of students from Timor-Leste. In 2000, she was able to return to Timor-Leste as part of her work for Victoria University.
An immediate fruit of her work in 2001 was a memorandum of understanding between Victoria University and the Dili Institute of Technology, followed in 2005 with another between Victoria University and the National University of Timor-Leste.
One outcome of this latter relationship has been biennial conferences on development, held in Dili. Also in 2005, she was a co-founder of the Timor-Leste Studies Association.
Helen stood for quality education and for high academic standards that can empower all students. In 2014, Helen was honoured by the government of Timor-Leste with the award of the Order of Timor-Leste (OT-L).
Retiring from Victoria University in 2014, Helen chose to live in Timor-Leste, while returning to Melbourne regularly. She continued to teach in Dili and was employed by the Timor-Leste Ministry of Education in 2014 and from 2018 until her death.
Helen came to Melbourne in late 2023, planning to return to Timor-Leste early in 2024, where further work awaited her.
A routine medical check-up unexpectedly found significant but symptom-free cancer, which developed rapidly, though it did not prevent her from attending public events days before her death on May 7. Friends and family are fulsome in their praise of Helen’s brother Ian, who took time off work to give her daily care during her last weeks.
Helen had a distinguished academic career, with significant teaching and research focusing on the links between development and education, particularly in the Pacific context, though with a fully global perspective.
Helen had an ever-expanding network of contacts and friends around the world, on whom she relied for critical enlightenment on issues of concern.
From Blackburn to Dili, inspired by sharp intelligence, compassion, Christian faith and a careful reading of the signs of the times, Helen lived by a vision of the common good and strove mightily to build a world of peace and justice.
Sandy Yule was general secretary of the Australian Student Christian Movement from 1970-75, where he first met Helen Hill, and is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. He wrote this tribute with help from Helen Hill’s family and friends. It was first published by The Age newspaper and is republished from the DevPolicy Blog at Australian National University.
An interview with former University of the South Pacific (USP) development studies professor Dr Vijay Naidu, a founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), has produced fresh insights into the legacy of Pacific nuclear-free and anti-colonialism activism.
The community storytelling group Talanoa TV, an affiliate of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub and linked to the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), has embarked on producing a series of short educational videos as oral histories of people involved in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) Movement to document and preserve this activist mahi and history.
The series, dubbed “Legends of NFIP”, are being timed for screening in 2025 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 and also with the 40th anniversary of the Rarotonga Treaty for a Nuclear-Free Pacific.
Legends of NFIP – Professor Vijay Naidu. Video: Talanoa TV
These videos are planned to “bring alive” the experiences and commitment of people involved in a Pacific-wide movement and will be suitable for schools as video podcasts and could be stored on open access platforms.
“This project is also expected to become an extremely useful resource for students and researchers,” says project convenor Nikhil Naidu, himself a former FANG and Coalition for Democracy (CDF) activist.
In this 14-minute interview, Professor Naidu talks about the origins of the NFIP Movement.
“At this time [1970s], there were the French nuclear tests that were actually atmospheric nuclear tests and people like Suliana Siwatibau and Graeme Bain started the ATOM movement (Against Nuclear Tests on Moruroa) in Tahiti in the 1970s at USP,” he says.
“And we began to understand the issues around nuclear testing and how it affected people — you know, the radiation. And drop-outs and pollution from it.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show in The Hague, where the International Court of Justice ruled last Friday that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, should come to an end — “as rapidly as possible”.
Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian Territories began in 1967, has since forcefully expanded, killing and displacing thousands of Palestinians. ICJ Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam read the nonbinding legal opinion, deeming Israel’s presence in the territories illegal.
JUDGE NAWAF SALAM: [translated] “Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity. Israel also has an obligation to repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the territory.
“Israel is also under an obligation to provide full reparations for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned.”
AMY GOODMAN: The court also said other nations are obligated not to legally recognise Israel’s decades-long occupation of the territories and, “not to render aid or assistance,” to the occupation.
The 15-judge panel said Israel had no right to sovereignty of the territories and pointed to a number of Israeli actions, such as the construction and violent expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across West Bank and East Jerusalem, the forced permanent control over Palestinian lands, and discriminatory policies against Palestinians — all violations of international law.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, praised Friday’s ruling.
RIYAD AL-MALIKI: “All states and the UN are now under obligation not to recognise the legality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to do nothing to assist Israel in maintaining this illegal situation.
“They are directed by the court to bring Israel’s illegal occupation to an end.
“This means all states and the UN must immediately review their bilateral relations with Israel to ensure their policies do not aid in Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinian people, whether directly or indirectly. … “[translated] All states must now fulfill their clear obligations: no aid, no collusion, no money, no weapons, no trade, nothing with Israel.”
Democracy Now! on the ICJ Palestine ruling. Video: Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: In 2022, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution tasking the International Court of Justice with determining whether the Israeli occupation amounted to annexation. This all comes as the ICJ is also overseeing a [separate and] ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and as the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Despite mounting outcry over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed some 39,000 Palestinians — more than 16,000 of them children — Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, DC, to address a joint session of Congress this Wednesday.
For more, we go to Brussels, Belgium, where we’re joined by Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Thank you so much for being with us. Diana, first respond to this court ruling. Since it is non-binding, what is the significance of it?
DIANA BUTTU: Even though it’s nonbinding, Amy, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any weight. It simply means that Israel is going to ignore it. But what it does, is it sets out the legal precedent for other countries, and those other countries [that] do have to respect the opinion of the highest court, the highest international court.
And so, what we see with this decision is that it’s a very important and a very necessary one, because we see the court makes it clear not only that Israel’s occupation is illegal, but it also says that all countries around the world have an obligation to make sure that Israel doesn’t get away with it, that they have an obligation to make sure that this occupation comes to an end.
This is very important, because over the years, and in particular over the past 30 years, we’ve seen a shift in international diplomacy to try to push Palestinians to somehow give up their rights. And here we have the highest international court saying that that isn’t the case and that, in fact, it’s up to Israel to end its military occupation, and it’s up to the international community to make sure that Israel does that.
AMY GOODMAN: And exactly what is the extended decision when it comes to how other countries should deal with Israel at this point?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, there are some very interesting elements to this case. The first is that the court comes out very clearly and not just says that the occupation is illegal, but they also say that the settlements have to go and the settlers have to go.
They also say that Palestinians have a right to return. Now, we’re talking about over 300,000 Palestinians who were expelled in 1967, and now there are probably about 200,000 Palestinians who have never been able to return back — we’re just talking about the West Bank and Gaza Strip — because of Israel’s discriminatory measures.
The other thing that the court says is that it’s not just the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are occupied, but also Gaza, as well. And this is a very important ruling, because for so many years Israel has tried to blur the lines and make it seem as though they’re not in occupation of Gaza, which they are.
And so, what this requires is that the international community not only not recognise the occupation, but that they take into account measures or they take measures to make sure that Israel stops its occupation.
That means everything from arms embargo to sanctions on Israel — anything that is necessary that can be done to make sure that Israel’s occupation finally comes to an end. And this is where we now see that instead of the world telling Palestinians that they just have to negotiate a resolution with their occupier, with their abuser, that the ball is now in their court.
It’s up to the international community now to put sanctions on Israel to end this military occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what’s happening right now in Gaza. You’ve got the deaths at — it’s expected to be well over 39,000. But you also have this new report by Oxfam that finds Israel has used water as a weapon of war, with Gaza’s water supplies plummeting 94 percent since October 7 and the nonstop Israeli bombardment.
Even before, their access was extremely limited. And then you have this catastrophic situation where you have, because of the destruction of Gaza’s water treatment plants, forcing people to resort to sewage-contaminated water containing pathogens that lead to diarrhoea, especially deadly for kids, diseases like cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has started to vaccinate the Israeli soldiers after Palestinian health authorities said a high concentration of the poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza. It’s taking place, the vaccination programme of soldiers, across Israel in the coming weeks. The significance of this, Diana?
DIANA BUTTU: This is precisely what we’ve been talking about, which is that Israel is carrying out genocide, they know that they’re carrying out genocide, and we don’t see that anybody is stopping Israel in carrying out this genocide.
So, here now we have yet another International Court of Justice ruling. This one — the previous ones are actually binding, saying that Israel has to take all measures to stop this genocide. And yet we just simply don’t see that the world has put into place measures to sanction Israel, to isolate Israel, to punish Israel.
Instead, it gets to do whatever it wants.
But there is something very important, as well, which is that Israel somehow believes that it’s going to be immune, that somehow this polio or all of these diseases aren’t going to boomerang back into Israeli society. They will.
And the issue here now is whether we are going to see some very robust action on the part of the international community, now that we have a number of decisions from the ICJ saying to Israel that it’s got to stop and that this genocide must come to end. Israel must pay a price for continuing this genocide.
Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/2id5cpOa58
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I wanted to end by asking you about Benjamin Netanyahu coming here to the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights tweeted, “Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered.”
If you can talk about the significance of Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress?
Also, it’s expected that the person who President Joe Biden has said he is supporting, as he steps aside, to run for president, Vice-President Kamala Harris, is expected to be meeting with Netanyahu. And what you would like to see happen here?
DIANA BUTTU: You know, it’s repugnant to me to be hearing that a war criminal, a person who has flattened Gaza, who said that he was going to flatten Gaza, who has issued orders to kill more than 40,000, upwards of 190,000 Palestinians — we still don’t know the numbers — who has made life in Gaza unlivable, who’s using Palestinians as human pinballs, telling them to move from one area to the next, who’s presiding over a genocide, and unabashedly so — it’s going to be shocking to see the number of applause and rounds of applause and the standing ovations that this man is going to be receiving.
It very much signals exactly where the United States is, which is complicit in this genocide.
And Palestinians know this. If anything, he should have not had received an invitation. He should simply be getting a warrant for his arrest, not be receiving applause and accolades in Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, joining us from Brussels, Belgium.
In the West Bank, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.
SPECIAL REPORT: Samidoun
On Friday, July 5, France announced the continued provisional detention on mainland France of 5 Kanak defendants, out of seven pro-independence “leaders” who had been deported from Kanaky New Caledonia on June 23.
The subsequent announcements of the arrest of 11 pro-independence activists, including 9 provisional detentions (including Joël Tjibaou and Gilles Jorédié, incarcerated in Camp Est) and 7 incarcerations in mainland France (Christian Tein, Frédérique Muliava, Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, Dimitri Tein Qenegei, Guillaume Vama, Steve Unë and Yewa Waethane), more than 17,000 kilometres from their homeland, revived the mobilisations that had begun a month earlier as part of the fight against the plan to “unfreeze” the Kanaky electoral body.
Suspended after President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, this project actually aims to reverse the achievements of the Nouméa Accords signed in 1998.
It is part of the strategy of strengthening French colonialism in Kanaky by extending the ability to vote on local matters, including independence referandums, to an even greater number of settlers, making the indigenous Kanaks a de facto minority at the ballot box.
On July 11, 10 Centaur armoured vehicles, 15 fire trucks, a dozen all-terrain military armoured vehicles and numerous army trucks were landed by ship in Kanaky, where the population remains under curfew.
This entire sequence bears witness to the manner in which France, through its colonial administration, deploys a repressive security arsenal that on the one hand protects the settlers on the land and their reactionary militias, and on the other, attempts to destroy the country’s Kanak independence movement.
Imprisonment and incarceration are a weapon of choice in this overall colonial strategy.
Imprisonment is one of the key weapons of choice in colonial strategies to try to stifle independence and national liberation struggles, from the Zionist regime in Palestine to allied imperialist countries and colonial empires such as France.
While the figures are incomparable due to differences between the populations and conditions, in the West Bank, according to Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.
Camp Est Prison in Nouville, on the outskirts of Nouméa. Image: Samidoun
Nicknamed “the island of oblivion” by the prisoners, the Camp Est prison locks up many young Kanaks excluded from the economic, educational and health systems, and symbolises the French colonial continuum, especially as the building partly occupies the space of the former French penal colony imposed there.
Silence of sociologists
Few studies exist of this over-incarceration of the Kanak population, and as Hamid Mokadem reminds us:
“The silence of sociologists and demographers on ethno-cultural inequalities is inversely proportional to the chatter of anthropologists on Kanak customs and culture.”
The incarceration rate is significantly higher than in mainland France, so much so that a new prison has been built.
The Koné detention center, and a project to replace Camp Est was announced in February 2024 by the Minister of Justice. He promised a 600-bed facility (compared to the 230 cells available at Camp Est) that would emerge after a construction project estimated at 500 million euros (NZ$908 million).
This is the largest investment by the French state on Kanak soil, a deadly promise that at the same time reaffirms France’s imperialist project in the Pacific, driven by its financial and geopolitical interests to retain its colonial properties there.
While waiting for this large-scale prison project, new cells have been fitted out in containers on which a double mesh roof has been installed, many without windows, and where the conditions of incarceration are even harsher than in the other sections of the prison, including those for men, women and minors, pre-trial detainees and those who have been convicted and sentenced.
The over-representation of the Kanak population has only increased, since incarceration has been one of the mechanisms through which the French government attempts to stem the movement against the plan to “unfreeze” and expand the electoral body, with 1139 arrests since mid-May.
The penalty of deportation
Local detention was supplemented by another penalty directly inherited from the Code de l’Indigénat: the penalty of deportation.
On June 23, after the announcement of the arrest of 7 Kanak independence activists in metropolitan France, the population learned that they were going to be deported 17,000 km from their homes.
A plane was waiting to transfer them to metropolitan France during their pretrial detention, all seven of them dispersed across the prisons of Dijon, Mulhouse, Bourges, Blois, Nevers, Villefranche and Riom.
This deportation of activists in the context of pre-trial detention directly recalls the events of 1988, and more broadly the way in which prison and removal were used in a colonial context.
From the 19th century and the deportation of Toussaint Louverture of Haiti to France, thousands of Algerians arrested during the uprisings against the French colonisation of Algeria at the same time as the detention of the prisoners of the Paris Commune in 1871, the Vietnamese of Hanoi in 1913, were deported to Kanaky or other colonies such as Guyana.
More recently, the Algerian revolutionaries, were massively incarcerated in metropolitan colonial prisons. From a principle inherited from the indigénat, and although today we have moved from an administrative decision to a judicial decision, the practice of deportation remains the same.
Particularly used in the context of anti-colonial resistance movements, the deportation of Kanak prisoners to metropolitan colonial prisons has been used on this scale since 1988 in Kanaky.
Ouvéa cave massacre
After the massacre of 19 Kanak independence fighters who had taken police officers prisoner in the Ouvéa cave, activists still alive were imprisoned, then deported, then released as part of the Matignon-Oudinot Accords.
Twenty six Kanak prisoners came to populate the prisons of the Paris region while they were still in preventive detention — while awaiting their trials and therefore presumed innocent, as is the case today for the CCAT activists currently incarcerated.
In the 1980s, French prisons were shaken by major revolts, particularly against the racism of the guards, who were mostly affiliated with the then-nascent Front National (FN), and more broadly against the penal policy of the Mitterrand left and the massively expanding length of sentences imposed at the time.
In 1988, as former prisoners wrote afterwards, some made a point of showing their solidarity with the Kanaks by sharing their clothes and food with them.
Because many of the activists were transferred in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, in trying conditions, with their hands cuffed during the 24-hour journey, underhand repression techniques of the Prison Administration that are still in force.
Similar deportation conditions were described by Christian Téin, spokesperson for the CCAT incarcerated in the isolation wing of the Mulhouse-Lutterbach Penitentiary Center. The shock of incarceration is all the more violent.
CCAT leader Christian Téin, organiser of a series of marches and protests, mainly peaceful . . . he was deported and transferred to prison in Mulhouse, north-eastern France, to await trial. Image: NZ La 1ère TV screenshot APR
Added to this is the pain of the forced separation of parents and children, which is found not only in the current situation in metropolitan France but also in Palestine. Also there is great difficulty in finding loved ones, in attempting to find out which prisons they are in, or even if they are currently detained, continually encountering administrative violence, with the absence of information and the cruelty of official figures.
Orchestrated psychological impact
All this is orchestrated so that the psychological impact, in the long term, aims to induce the prisoners and also their families to stop fighting.
At the time of the events in Ouvéa, the uprooting of independence activists from their lands to lock them up in mainland France was commonplace, and the Kanak detainees joined those from the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance such as Luc Reinette and Georges Faisans, incarcerated in Île-de-France during the 1980s alongside Corsican and Basque prisoners.
Since then, this had only happened once, in the context of the uprisings in Guadeloup in 2021, where several local figures, mostly community activists, had been deported and then incarcerated in mainland France and Martinique in an attempt to stifle the revolts in which a large number of Guadeloupean youth were mobilised.
Here again, we could draw a parallel with Palestine. As Assia Zaino points out, since the 2000s, the incarceration of Palestinians has systematically been synonymous with being torn away from their families and loved ones.
Zionist prisons, located within the Palestinian territories colonised in 1948, “are integrated into the civil prison system [. . . ] and entry bans on Israeli soil are frequently imposed on the families of detainees for security reasons,” which in fact aims to attack the relatives of detainees and destabilise the national liberation struggle.
Ahmad Saadat, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh and their comrades in detention – date and location unknown. Image: Samidoun
From prison, the struggle continues This mass incarceration is confronted by the powerful presence of prisoners as symbols of courage and resistance.
We know that in Palestine, as during the Algerian war of national liberation, incarceration is an opportunity to learn from one’s people, to forge national revolutionary consciousness but also to continue the struggle, very concretely, by mobilising against incarceration.
Because the Palestinian prisoners’ movement has transformed the colonial prison into a school of revolution: each political party has a prison branch whose political bureau or leadership is made up of imprisoned leaders.
These branches have real weight in the decisions taken outside the walls, and they are the ones responsible for leading the struggle in the colonial prisons, in particular by declaring collective hunger strikes and developing alliances of struggle that can mobilise several thousand prisoners, but also for organising the daily life of revolutionaries in prison.
It was this movement of prisoners that played a major role in driving the Palestinian resistance groups to unite under a unified command with the total liberation of historic Palestine as their compass, and to overcome internal contradictions.
Historically, the prisoners also constituted a significant part the most radical elements of the Palestinian revolution, notably by massively refusing any negotiation with the Zionist state at the time when the disastrous Oslo Accords were being prepared.
Resistance in colonial prisons can also take cultural forms, as illustrated by the very rich Palestinian prison literature, composed of literary works written in secret and smuggled out by prisoners to bear witness to the outside world of the vitality of their ideals, their struggle and the conditions of detention.
Courage of the children
An example is Walid Daqqah, a renowned writer and one of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners, who was martyred on 7 April 2024 during his 38th year of detention in colonial prisons.
In short, from the children and adolescents who wear courageous smiles as they leave their trials surrounded by soldiers, to the women of Damon prison who heroically stand up to their jailers, to the resistance of the prisoners who fight by putting their lives and health at risk while having a central role in the Resistance outside, it is the daily struggle of the prisoners’ movement that makes detention a place where resistance to the colonial regime is organised, continuing even inside detention.
As Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, said:
“Despite the intention to use political imprisonment to suppress Palestinian resistance and derail the Palestinian liberation movement, Palestinian prisoners have remained political leaders and symbols of steadfastness for the struggle as a whole.”
In Kanaky, it was the announcement of the incarceration of CCAT activists on June 23 that relaunched the movement, who became the driving forces behind this new round of mobilisation.
On May 13, while the population was setting up roadblocks on the main roads of Nouméa, a mutiny broke out in the Camp Est prison in reaction to the plan to unfreeze the electoral body.
The prison was therefore directly part of the mobilisation, and three guards were taken hostage on this first day of struggle. They were quickly released after the RAID (French national police tactical unit) intervened.
But during the night of May 14-15, another revolt took place in the prison, rendering no fewer than 80 cells unusable.
It is therefore in this context of uprising and intifada throughout Kanaky, both in prisons and outside, that the announcement of the deportation of the 7 Kanak leaders took place.
In addition to these highly publicised deportations, there were also dozens of similar cases of transfers from Camp Est.
Completely ignored by the government, these took place both before May 23 and during the month of July, including participants in the prison uprisings as well as long-term prisoners transferred to relieve congestion in the Kanak prison.
Silence which masks the scale of these colonial deportations only intends to make the task of the families and political supporters of the Kanaks even more difficult in their attempt to show solidarity with the prisoners.
Furthermore, upon their arrival in mainland France, the CCAT activists were separated into 7 different prisons, directly recalling the policy of dispersion already at work in Spain at the end of the 1980s against ETA prisoners, in reaction to the effectiveness of their prison organising.
Today as yesterday, the colonial power dispatches prisoners throughout the mainland to prevent a collective counter-offensive. The prisoners’ connections with one another, but also with the outside, are consequently largely hampered.
This isolation directly aims to break the movement by tearing off its “head” and preventing any form of common struggle against this confinement. We therefore know that the momentum of struggle outside seems to respond to a hardening of detention conditions inside prisons, as evidenced by the isolation in which the CCAT activists are kept.
Likewise in Palestine, where since last October 7, mass arrests have escalated to the development of military concentration camps characterised by inhumane conditions of incarceration where severe torture is a daily, routine occurrence.
Currently, both for the more than 9300 Palestinian prisoners detained in the 19 Zionist colonial prisons, and for the thousands of prisoners from Gaza arrested during the genocidal offensive of the occupying forces on the Strip incarcerated in military camps, the conditions of detention have deteriorated significantly.
If in the colonial prisons Palestinian prisoners suffer hunger, collective isolation, overcrowding, violence and physical and psychological torture, conditions which have led to the martyrdom of at least 18 prisoners since October 7, in the military detention camps the situation is even more extreme.
The thousands of prisoners from Gaza held there are handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day, forced to kneel on the ground, motionless for most of the day, raped and sexually assaulted and tortured daily, which leaves the released prisoners with enormous trauma.
Sick prisoners are crammed in naked, equipped with diapers, on beds without mattresses or blankets, in military airplane hangars and warehouses and without any medical care.
In all cases, isolation reigns, in prisons as in military detention centers, and the Zionist regime aims to cut off the Palestinian prisoners — and their collective movement — from the outside world.
A “Freedom Brigade” Palestinian prison escape poster. Image: Samidoun
Stories of prison escapes Beyond the heroic prison uprisings, many stories of escapes from colonial prisons also fuel resistance and demonstrate the resilience of prisoners.
In Palestine, to cite a recent example, we recall the “Freedom Tunnel” operation, where six Palestinian prisoners freed themselves from the Zionist-occupied Gilboa high-security prison by digging a tunnel using a spoon.
The six Palestinians — Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yaqoub Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubaidi — became Palestinian, Arab and international symbols of Palestinian resistance and the will for freedom.
While they were all rearrested, their escape exposed the weaknesses under the colonial myth of “impenetrable Israeli security”, plunging the occupation’s prison system into an internal crisis.
In France, the CRAs (Administrative Detention Centres) represent an ultra-violent manifestation of racism and the management of exiles. People are locked up in terrible and therefore deadly conditions.
Thus, faced with colonial management of populations, particularly from former French colonies, resistance is being organised.
For example, on the night of Friday, June 21 to Saturday, June 22, 14 people held at the CRA in Vincennes managed to escape (only one person has been re-arrested since).
This follows the escape of 11 detainees in December from this same place of confinement. However, these detention centres are often recent and very well equipped.
From Palestine to the Hegaxone and the colonial prisons in Kanaky, the resistance fighters fight day by day within the prison system itself, and the escapes and uprisings in the prisons are events that weaken the colonial propaganda and its myth of invincibility and total superiority.
A “Freedom for the Kanaky CCAT comrades” banner. Image: Image: Samidoun
Resistance continues
Despite the tightening of detention conditions and the security arsenal that is deployed against liberation movements, it is clear that the resistance is not stopping and that, on the contrary, organizing is becoming even more vigorous.
In Kanaky, new blockades in solidarity with the prisoners have spread well beyond Nouméa since June 23, demanding their immediate release and repatriation to Kanaky, since “touching one of them is touching everyone”.
In mainland France, numerous gatherings have also taken place since Monday at the call of the MKF (Kanak Movement in France), and among others led by the Collectif Solidarité Kanaky in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, and also in front of the prisons where the activists are still incarcerated.
Their prison numbers have been made public so that it is possible to write to them and so that broad and massive support can be communicated to them in order to provide them with the strength necessary for this fight from metropolitan France.
From now on, tributes to the Kanak martyrs who fell under the bullets of the colonial militias and the French State are joined by banners for the freedom of the prisoners.
Marah Bakir, a representative of Palestinian women prisoners, arrested at the age of 15 by the colonial army and imprisoned for 8 years, made these comments during her first interview given upon her release on 24 November 2023:
“It is very difficult to feel freedom and to be liberated in exchange for the blood of the martyrs of Gaza and the great sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip.”
The Kanaky ‘martyrs’:
Stéphanie Nassaie Doouka, 17, and Chrétien Neregote, 36, shot in the head on May 20 by a business manager.
Djibril Saïko Salo, 19, shot in the back on May 15 by loyalist settlers at a roadblock.
Dany Tidjite, 48, killed by an off-duty police officer who tried to impose a roadblock.
Joseph Poulawa, 34, killed on May 28 by two bullets in the chest and shoulder by the GIGN (the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France)
Lionel Païta, 26, killed on June 3 by a bullet to the head by a police officer at a roadblock.
Victorin Rock Wamytan, known as “Banane”, 38 years old, father of two children, killed on July 10 by a shot in the chest by the GIGN on customary lands
In Kanaky, the names of these martyrs, just like the 19 of the Ouvéa cave, will remain forever in the memory of the activists and people, and as one could read on another banner in Noumea: “The fight must not cease for lack of a leader or fighters, this direction remains forever. Kanaky”
This article, by Samidoun Paris Banlieue, was published first in French at: https://samidoun.net/fr/2024/07/la-question-carcerale-dans-la-colonisation-de-la-kanaky-a-la-palestine/. During the protests in Kanaky in May and ongoing, French military forces targeted demonstrators, imposed a countrywide ban on TikTok, and have seized multiple political prisoners from the Kanak independence movement. This article is republished from Samidoun.
French Polynesia’s veteran politician, 93-year-old Gaston Flosse, announced last week he is stepping down from his position as president of his Amuitahiraa o te Nunaa Maohi party.
Flosse, known locally as “the old lion”, has been President of French Polynesia on several occasions over a span of more than 30 years.
Once known as the strongman of the French Pacific territory, he was also a member of the French government with the portfolio of Minister of State in charge of overseas territories, during the second half of the 1980s under then Prime Minister Jacques Chirac.
He was also the President of French Polynesia when, once elected President, Chirac resumed nuclear testing at the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa (until 1996).
The resumption triggered riots at the time in the capital Pape’ete.
With his party, then known as the Tahuiraa Huiraatia, he was a strong advocate of French Polynesia remaining a part of France, under an “autonomy” status, but over the past few years became in favour of France obtaining a new status in “association” with France.
Flosse said he was stepping down for health reasons, but he still believes he is fit to keep contributing to his party.
“Now health is the priority. The doctor had already told me to stop at least 4 days a week, now he tells me I must stop completely,” he told journalists.
“But apart from that, I feel very good, physically and intellectually.”
The date of September 28 has been earmarked for the election of a new party president. One of the candidates is his wife, Pascale Haiti-Flosse.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A brutal killing of three Papuan civilians in Puncak Jaya reveals that occupied West Papua is a ticking time bomb under Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto, claims the leader of an advocacy group.
And United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) Benny Wenda says the Melanesian region risks becoming “another East Timor”.
The victims have been named as Tonda Wanimbo, 33; Dominus Enumbi, and Murib Government.
Their killings were followed by riots in Puncak Jaya as angry indigenous residents protested in front of the local police station and set fire to police cars, said Wenda in a statement.
“This incident is merely the most recent example of Indonesia’s military and business strategy in West Papua,” he said.
“Indonesia deliberately creates escalations to justify deploying more troops, particularly in mineral-rich areas, causing our people to scatter and allowing international corporations to exploit the empty land – starting the cycle of bloodshed all over again.”
According to the ULMWP, 4500 Indonesian troops have recently been deployed to Paniai, one of the centres of West Papuan resistance.
An estimated 100,000 West Papuans have been displaced since 2018, while recent figures show more than 76,000 Papuans remain internally displaced — “living as refugees in the bush”.
Indonesia ‘wants our land’
“Indonesia wants our land and our resources, not our people,” Wenda said.
The Indonesian military claimed that the three men were members of the resistance movement TPNPB (West Papua National Liberation Army), but this has been denied.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Candra Kurniawan claimed one of the men had been sought by security forces for six years for alleged shootings of civilians and security personnel.
“This is the same lie they told about Enius Tabuni and the five Papuan teenagers murdered in Yahukimo in September 2023,” Wenda said.
“The military line was quickly refuted by a community leader in Puncak Jaya, who clarified that the three men were all civilians.”
Concern over Warinussy
Wenda said he was also “profoundly concerned” over the shooting of lawyer and human rights defender Christian Warinussy.
Warinussy has spent his career defending indigenous Papuans who have expelled from their ancestral land to make way for oil palm plantations and industrial mines.
“Although we don’t know who shot him, his shooting acts as a clear warning to any Papuans who stand up for their customary land rights or investigates Indonesia’s crimes,” Wenda said.
Indonesia’s latest violence is taking place “in the shadow of Prabowo Subianto”, who is due to take office as President on October 20.
By Shailendra Bahadur Singh and Amit Sarwal in Suva
Given the intensifying situation, journalists, academics and experts joined to state the need for the Pacific, including its media, to re-assert itself and chart its own path, rooted in its unique cultural, economic and environmental context.
The tone for the discussions was set by Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Information and Communications Technology Timothy Masiu, chief guest at the official dinner of the Suva conference.
The conference heard that the Pacific media sector is small and under-resourced, so its abilities to carry out its public interest role is limited, even in a free media environment.
Masiu asked how Pacific media was being developed and used as a tool to protect and preserve Pacific identities in the light of “outside influences on our media in the region”. He said the Pacific was “increasingly being used as the backyard” for geopolitics, with regional media “targeted by the more developed nations as a tool to drive their geopolitical agenda”.
Masiu is the latest to draw attention to the widespread impacts of the global contest on the Pacific, with his focus on the media sector, and potential implications for editorial independence.
In some ways, Pacific media have benefitted from the geopolitical contest with the increased injection of foreign funds into the sector, prompting some at the Suva conference to ponder whether “too much of a good thing could turn out to be bad”.
Experts echoed Masiu’s concerns about island nations’ increased wariness of being mere pawns in a larger game.
Fiji a compelling example
Fiji offers a compelling example of a nation navigating this complex landscape with a balanced approach. Fiji has sought to diversify its diplomatic relations, strengthening ties with China and India, without a wholesale pivot away from traditional partners Australia and New Zealand.
Some Pacific Island leaders espouse the “friends to all, enemies to none” doctrine in the face of concerns about getting caught in the crossfire of any military conflict.
A media crush at the recent Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji. Image: Asia Pacific Media Network
This is manifest in Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s incessant calls for a “zone of peace” during both the Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ meeting in Port Vila in August, and the United Nations General Assembly debate in New York in September.
Rabuka expressed fears about growing geopolitical rivalry contributing to escalating tensions, stating that “we must consider the Pacific a zone of peace”.
Papua New Guinea, rich in natural resources, has similarly navigated its relationships with major powers. While Chinese investments in infrastructure and mining have surged, PNG has also actively engaged with Australia, its closest neighbour and long-time partner.
“Don’t get me wrong – we welcome and appreciate the support of our development partners – but we must be free to navigate our own destiny,” Masiu told the Suva conference.
Masiu’s proposed media policy for PNG was also discussed at the Suva conference, with former PNG newspaper editor Alex Rheeney stating that the media fraternity saw it as a threat, although the minister spoke positively about it in his address.
Criticism and praise
In 2019, Solomon Islands shifted diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, a move that was met with both criticism and praise. While this opened the door to increased Chinese investment in infrastructure, it also highlighted an effort to balance existing ties to Australia and other Western partners.
Samoa and Tonga too have taken significant strides in using environmental diplomacy as a cornerstone of their international engagement.
One of the outcomes of the debates at the Suva conference was that media freedom in the Pacific is a critical factor in shaping an independent and pragmatic global outlook.
Fiji has seen fluctuations in media freedom following political upheavals, with periods of restrictive press laws. However, with the repeal of the draconian media act last year, there is a growing recognition that a free and vibrant media landscape is essential for transparent governance and informed decision-making.
But the conference also heard that the Pacific media sector is small and under-resourced, so its ability to carry out its public interest role is limited, even in a free media environment.
Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific. Image: Kula Press
Vulnerability worsened
The Pacific media sector’s vulnerability had worsened due to the financial damage from the digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic. It underscored the need to address the financial side of the equation if media organisations are to remain viable.
For the Pacific, the path forward lies in pragmatism and self-reliance, as argued in the book of collected essays Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, edited by Shailendra Bahadur Singh, Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad and Amit Sarwal, launched at the Suva conference by Masiu.
No doubt, as was commonly expressed at the Suva media conference, the world is watching as the Pacific charts its own course.
As the renowned Pacific writer Epeli Hau’ofa once envisioned, the Pacific Islands are not small and isolated, but a “sea of islands” with deep connections and vast potential to contribute in the global order.
As they continue to engage with the world, the Pacific nations will need to carve out a path that reflects their unique traditional wisdom, values and aspirations.
Dr Shailendra Bahadur Singh is head of journalism at The University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva, Fiji, and chair of the recent Pacific International Media Conference. Dr Amit Sarwal is an Indian-origin academic, translator, and journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. He is formerly a senior lecturer and deputy head of school (research) at the USP. This article was first published by The Interpreter and is republished with permission.
The ICJ in the Hague found in a landmark but non-binding advisory ruling on Friday that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”.
The court said that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states had an obligation not to recognise the occupation as legal and not to give aid or support toward Israel in maintaining it.
The ICJ ruling confirmed what the UN Security Council found in passing resolution 2334 in 2016.
This resolution was co-sponsored by New Zealand, which had a place on the Security Council at the time under a National-led government.
The United Nations Security Council stated that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”.
It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.
ICJ-Israel Occupied territories resolution. Video: Al Jazeera
The ICJ ruling reinforced the UN resolution and the need for government action, the PSNA statement said.
“New Zealand, which co-sponsored the UN resolution in 2016 should lead the way on this,” said PSNA national chair John Minto.
“We need to put our money where our mouth is — especially since the current far-right Israeli government has said its ‘top priority’ is to push ahead with more illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land”.
New Zealanders have been holding national rallies in protest over Israel’s war on Gaza for nine months and protesters were expected to be out in their thousands this weekend to demand government action.
The Pacific Island Forum could serve as a “constructive force” to find a “path forward” in Kanaky New Caledonia, New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says.
“The situation has reached an impasse, and one not easily navigated given the violence that broke out — the democratic injuries that have reopened old wounds and created new ones.”
Peters is in Japan representing New Zealand at the 10th Japan-Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM10) hosted by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.
He delivered a speech titled “Pacific Futures”, pointing to increasing challenges in the Indo-Pacific as context.
The speech was an opportunity to outline New Zealand’s foreign policy shift, and the minister made renewed calls for “more diplomacy, more engagement, more compromise”, particularly in New Caledonia.
Peters also raised questions around the legitimacy of the 2021 referendum on independence due to a “vastly reduced, and therefore different, sample of voters” and the “obvious democratic injury”.
Among the reasons
“Those two decisions were among the reasons, alongside growing inequalities and lack of prospects for the indigenous Kanak population, especially their youth, that led to the precarious situation that exploded into unrest in May.”
Though, he also understood the 25,000 potential voters may also feel “democratic injury” due to disenfranchisement.
NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ full speech. Video: NZ Embassy, Tokyo
“We raise this crisis here because the situation in New Caledonia is a test of the effectiveness of our regional architecture in dealing with crisis response,” he said.
“It also creates a chance for the Pacific Islands Forum to serve as a constructive force, helping to bring the parties together for an essential democratic dialogue and the path forward.
“In this role, the Pacific Islands Forum needs to find an appropriate mechanism and the best person or people to help facilitate dialogue, engagement or mediation as a path forward between the different actors in New Caledonia.”
He pointed to recent discussions between President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on New Caledonia on what role the Forum might play.
“Pacific Islands Forum countries by virtue of our locations and histories understand the large indigenous minority population’s desire for self-determination.
‘Deeply respect France’s role’
“We also deeply respect and appreciate France’s role in the region and understand France’s desire to walk together with New Caledonians towards a prosperous and secure future.”
The discussions come at a time where wider geopolitical implications are affecting the Pacific.
He said “Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine”, the “utter catastrophe still unfolding in Gaza”, and the risk of greater escalation in the Middle East were creating a more destabilised global security situation.
Peters said decision-makers should have their “eyes-wide open” to their country’s challenges, but also be “alert to opportunities that materially advance the prosperity and security of our citizens”.
“The call for renewed and vigorous diplomatic engagement provides the context for New Zealand’s foreign policy reset. The security environment has deteriorated sharply during the three years since last being foreign minister, accentuating an even longer-term deterioration of the rules-based order.”
Peters said New Zealand’s foreign policy reset is a response to “three big shifts underpinning the multi-faceted and complex challenges facing the international order” which he outlines:
From rules to power, a shift towards a multipolar world that is characterised by more contested rules and where relative power between states assumes a greater role in shaping international affairs;
From economics to security, a shift in which economic relationships are reassessed in light of increased military competition in a more securitised and less stable world; and
From efficiency to resilience, a shift in the drivers of economic behaviour, and where building greater resilience and addressing pressing social and sustainability issues become more prominent.
New Zealand foreign minister calls for ‘more compromise’ on New Caledonia https://t.co/uwLAXokXAd
Southeast Asian focus
In response, Peters said the New Zealand government was “significantly increasing our focus and resources” to Southeast and North Asia, including Japan.
The government is also renewing engagement with “traditional like-minded partnerships” and supporting new groupings that “advance and defend our interests and capabilities”.
He mentions the IP4 and NATO as examples.
“We also knew we needed to give more energy, more urgency, and a sharper focus to three inter-connected lines of diplomatic effort: investing in our relationships, growing our prosperity, and strengthening our security.”
Peters will return to New Zealand on Saturday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has discussed the “importance and necessity” of military cooperation with Russia’s vice defense minister to “defend mutual security interests,” the North’s state media reported on Friday.
Kim met a Russian military delegation, led by the vice minister, Aleksey Krivoruchko, in Pyongyang on Thursday, according to the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA.
“The talk shared recognition of the importance and necessity of the military cooperation between the two countries to defend mutual security interests,” the KCNA said.
Kim reiterated his firm support and solidarity for Russia’s war with Ukraine and stressed the need for the militaries of the two countries to “get united more firmly” to develop bilateral relations, the news agency added.
Krivoruchko is the first known ranking Russian military official to visit North Korea since a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim.
The two met in Pyongyang for talks aimed at bolstering their economic and security relations and underscoring their shared defiance of Western sanctions. Under a new partnership treaty announced at their summit they agreed to offer each other military assistance “without delay” if either were attacked. Russia has been cozying up to North Korea since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The United States has accused North Korea of sending Russia weapons for use in its Ukraine war but both North Korea and Russia deny that.
The military in U.S. ally South Korea resumed propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts toward North Korea in response to the North’s latest launch of trash-carrying balloons into the South.
The broadcasts took place from Thursday evening to early Friday in areas near where the balloons were launched, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS, said on Friday.
Since late May, North Korea has sent more than 2,000 trash-carrying balloons into the South in retaliation for the launch by anti-North Korea activists of balloons carrying propaganda leaflets towards the North.
“The military’s response going forward will fully depend on North Korea’s actions,” the JCS said, without providing further details.
On Thursday, the JCS said the latest North Korean balloons appeared to be traveling toward the northern part of Gyeonggi Province that surrounds Seoul, advising the public to not touch any fallen balloon and to report them to the military or police.
South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts last month as it fully suspended a 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement in response to the North’s launch of waves of trash-carrying balloons.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.
America’s Lawyer E106: Donald Trump managed to walk away from a failed assassination attempt this past weekend, just days before the start of the Republican convention. This event has changed the political landscape going forward, and we’ll explain what this means for the presidential race. Corporations aren’t just hoarding your data to send you targeted […]
The first round of soldiers recruited under Myanmar’s controversial military draft law have completed their training and are being deployed to the frontlines of the junta’s war against rebels in the country’s remote border areas, their family members said Tuesday.
The deployment marked the latest chapter in the junta’s bid to shore up its forces amid heavy losses against various ethnic armies and rebel militias since its 2021 coup d’etat, prompting the junta to enact the People’s Military Service Law in February.
Under the law, men between the ages of 18 and 35 and women between 18 and 27 can be drafted to serve in the armed forces for two years.
The announcement triggered a wave of assassinations of administrators enforcing the law and drove thousands of draft-dodgers into rebel-controlled territory and abroad.
The military carried out two rounds of conscriptions in April and May, training about 9,000 new recruits in total. A third round of conscription began in late May, with draftees sent to their respective training depots by June 22.
The first batch of recruits completed their three-month training on June 28, and family members told RFA Burmese on Tuesday that the new soldiers were sent to conflict zones in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Kayin states, and Sagaing region, beginning in early July.
While the junta has never said how many recruits were trained in the first group, a mid-April report by the Burmese Affairs and Conflict Study, a group monitoring junta war crimes, indicated that it was nearly 5,000 young people from across the country.
“My husband told me that orders from [the junta capital] Naypyidaw directed the deployment of new recruits from training batch No. 1 to conflict-affected areas, including Rakhine state,” said Nwe Nyein, the wife of a new recruit from Ayeyarwady region.
“They [the junta] had previously said that new recruits under the People’s Military Service Law would not be deployed to the frontlines,” she said. “However, I am worried because my husband was sent to the remote border areas.”
Nwe Nyein said that the second batch of recruits are expected to complete their military training on Aug. 2 and reports suggest that they will also be sent to the frontlines.
Used as ‘human shields’
A resident of Myanmar’s largest city Yangon, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said that some people close to him had been injured in battles in northern Shan state and have since returned home.
“A young man from our town was shot in the arm, but he never underwent an operation to remove the bullet,” the resident said. “He also said that almost all the new recruits sent to the frontlines had been killed, and their families didn’t even receive their salaries.”
Recruits from the first batch of training under Myanmar junta’s people’s military service law seen on July 16, 2024. (Pyi Thu Sitt via Telegram)
In southern Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region, residents told RFA that the junta is deploying new recruits to battle.
Min Lwin Oo, a leading committee member of the Democracy Movement Strike Committee-Dawei, condemned the deployment of new recruits with only short-term military training, suggesting that they are being used as “human shields.”
Flagging morale
Former Captain Kaung Thu Win, who is now a member of the nationwide Civilian Disobedience Movement of former civil servants that left their jobs in protest of the military’s power grab, told RFA that the junta urgently needs more soldiers, and he expects that nearly all new recruits will be sent to the frontlines.
“About 90% of these new forces will be dispatched to the battlegrounds, regardless of whether they engage in combat [with rebel groups] or target people [civilians],” he said. “Their [the junta’s] main objective is to ensure they have more soldiers equipped with guns.”
Kaung Thu Win also said that the junta faces many challenges in its propaganda efforts to persuade new recruits to fight, but is also increasingly unable to trust its veteran soldiers as losses mount.
Recruits from the first batch of training under Myanmar junta’s people’s military service law seen on July 16, 2024. (Pyi Thu Sitt via Telegram)
Than Soe Naing, a political commentator, slammed the junta over the reported deployment and echoed the former captain’s assessment of the military’s low morale.
“Young people are being sent to die after … [mere] months of military training,” he said. “Even veteran soldiers in their 60s who have been sent to the battlefield have lost their motivation.”
5 years of service?
The junta has yet to release any information about the deployment of new recruits to the frontlines.
Meanwhile, although the People’s Military Service Law states that new recruits must serve for a total of two years, reports have emerged that the junta is telling soldiers that they will have to fight for five.
Junta officials have publicly denied the reports.
Attempts by RFA to contact the office of the chairman of the Central Body for Summoning People’s Military Servants in Naypyidaw for further clarification went unanswered Tuesday.
Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
A Kanak political commentator in Aotearoa New Zealand says calls to separate New Caledonia into pro- and anti-independence provinces would worsen racial inequality in the Pacific territory.
Unrest continues in the capital Nouméa, with the nephew of New Caledonia Congress pro-independence president shot and killed at Saint Louis, and more armoured vehicles arriving from France.
Calls to divide the territory’s provinces are being pushed by loyalist and the French territory’s Southern Province President Sonia Backes.
Speaking at the weekend, Backes said the project of a New Caledonia institutionally united and based on living together with each other was “over”.
AFP news agency reported Backes had said that when two opposing forces were convinced they were legitimately defending their values, they were faced with a choice of fighting each other to the death or separating so they could live.
Political uncertainty in Paris is delaying the possibility of any kind of resolution in the troubled territory, which is also fraught with internal divisions among both the pro- and anti-independence camps.
Pockets of inequality
Auckland lawyer Joseph Xulue told RNZ Pacific “separatist ideology” would create pockets of inequality.
“The support in the region, particularly, support in respect of economic resources, administrative resources would almost certainly be pumped into the Southern Province if this were to eventuate because France would understand that those are the people who are loyal to them,” he said.
Xulue said Backes’ ideas went against the spirit of the Nouméa Accord.
Joseph Xulue is the first person of Kanak heritage to graduate from Harvard Law School . . . a loyalist “separatist” proposal is against the spirit of the Nouméa Accord. Image: Joseph Xulue/RNZ Pacific
“It was agreed to and formed on the basis that we would not have this kind of separatist ideology. It helps to assent the actual Accord’s document . . . [there’s a] stipulation that this would not happen.
“If Kanaky New Caledonia is going to advance beyond the actual Accord’s process.”
He added that Backes’ ideas would only worsen racial inequality in the archipelago.
‘Political reverberations’ Islands Business correspondent Nic Maclellan, who has been covering the French territory for decades, told RNZ Pacific the area where the latest death had been recorded had a long colonial history.
Maclellan said that in 1878 there was a revolt in the north and centre of the country, then in the 19th century, as the French military moved in attacking villages, many people fled to the outskirts of the capital.
He said nowadays Saint Louis was one of the areas where survivors from past conflicts had fled too.
“It has always been a hotspot, there has always been a level of criminal activity around people of St Louis. It is a strong community, largely Kanak,” he said.
“Police reports which is still under investigations suggest that a group of Kanaks were firing at a police drone. There was a exchange of gunfire between the Kanak activist and the members of the GIGN paramilitary unit and in that case a GIGN police officer shot and killed Rock [Victorin] Wamytan.”
Maclellan said the name of the dead man was symbolic in New Caledonia.
“[He] is nephew of Rock Wamytan, the current President of the Congress of New Caledonia who is a high chief of Saint Louis. So, beyond the allegations of criminal activity by this, this group of activists, it has also got political reverberations.”
French snap elections unhelpful He said the French snap elections results both in mainland France and New Caledonia would continue to reverberate in months to come.
While the polls were predicting that the extreme right led by Marine Le Pen would win the largest bloc, and possibly a majority in the government, those polls turned out to be wrong.
Instead, a left alliance, known as the New Popular Front — an alliance of parties including the Greens, the Socialists, the Communist Party, and a large group led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France Unbowed, (LFI), have got the largest bloc.
However, Maclellan said no one had the absolute majority required to have the ruling numbers in the 577-seat French legislature in Paris.
“All in all, it is very complex, a fast-moving situation in Paris. We will see what happens.
“But the real problem for the Pacific is this level of uncertainty creates ongoing political, cultural, economic chaos that cannot be helpful at a time when New Caledonia’s economy has been very badly damaged by weeks of rioting and clashes between police and protesters,” he added.
New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has said the Pacific as a whole should be concerned about ongoing unrest in New Caledonia.
Peters said he hoped a plan was in place ahead of the Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Nuku’alofa next month.
“The long term Pacific future is all of our business. We have to hope that before we get to Tonga that there has been some sort of guideline of how we might go forward,” he said.
“Our view is that we have to ensure that there is a solution where we can help — help to rebuild if we can.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The voters in the second round of France’s national elections last weekend staved off an expected shift to the far-right. But the result in the Pacific territory Kanaky New Caledonia was also in many ways historic.
Of the two assembly representatives decided, a position fell on either side of the deep polarisation evident in the territory — one for loyalists, one for supporters of independence. But it is the independence side that will take the most from the result.
Turnout in the vote was remarkable, not only because of the violence in New Caledonia over recent months, which has curbed movement and public transport across the territory, but also because national elections have been seen particularly by independence parties as less relevant locally.
Voting was generally peaceful, although a blockade prevented voting in one Kanak commune during the first round.
After winning the first round, a hardline loyalist and independence candidate faced off in each constituency. The second round therefore presented a binary choice, effectively becoming a barometer of views around independence.
Sobering results for loyalists
While clearly not a referendum, it was the first chance to measure sentiment in this manner since the boycotted referendum in 2021, which had followed two independence votes narrowly favouring staying with France.
The resulting impasse about the future of the territory had erupted into violent protests in May this year, when President Emmanuel Macron sought unilaterally to broaden voter eligibility to the detriment of indigenous representation. Only Macron then called snap national elections.
These are sobering results for loyalists.
So the contest, as it unfolded in New Caledonia, represented high stakes for both sides.
In the event, loyalist Nicolas Metzdorf won 52.4 percent in the first constituency (Noumea and islands) over the independence candidate’s 47.6 percent. Independence candidate Emmanuel Tjibaou won 57.4 percent to the loyalist’s 42.6 percent in the second (Northern Province and outer suburbs of Noumea).
The results, a surprise even to independence leaders, were significant.
It is notable that in these national elections, all citizens are eligible to vote. Only local assembly elections apply the controversial voter eligibility provisions which provoked the current violence, provisions that advantage longstanding residents and thus indigenous independence supporters.
Even in the constituency won by the loyalist, the independence candidate, daughter-in-law of early independence fighter Nidoïsh Naisseline, won 47 percent of the vote.
These are sobering results for loyalists.
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, founding father of the independence movement in Kanaky New Caledonia, 1985. Image: David Robie/Café Pacific
Independence party candidate Emmanuel Tjibaou, 48, carried particular symbolism. The son of the assassinated founding father of the independence movement Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Emmanuel had eschewed politics to this point, instead taking on cultural roles including as head of the Kanak cultural development agency.
He is a galvanising figure for independence supporters.
Emmanuel Tjibaou is now the first independence assembly representative in 38 years. He won notwithstanding France redesigning the two constituencies in 1988 specifically to prevent an independence representative win by including part of mainly loyalist Noumea in each.
A loyalist stronghold has been broken.
Further strain on both sides While both a loyalist and independence parliamentarian will now sit in Paris and represent their different perspectives, the result will further strain the two sides.
Pro-independence supporters will be energised by the strong performance and this will increase expectations, especially among the young. The responsibility on elders is heavy. Tjibaou described the vote as “a call for help, a cry of hope”. He has urged a return to the path of dialogue.
At the same time, loyalists will be concerned by independence party success. Insecurity and fear, already sharpened by recent violence, may intensify. While he referred to the need for dialogue, Nicolas Metzdorf is known for his tough uncompromising line.
Paradoxically the ongoing violence means an increased reliance on France for the reconstruction that will be a vital underpinning for talks. Estimates for rebuilding have exceeded 2 billion euros (NZ$3.6 billion), with more than 800 businesses, countless schools and houses attacked, many destroyed.
Yet France itself is reeling after the snap elections returned no clear winner. Three blocs are vying for power, and are divided within their own ranks over how government should be formed. While French presidents have had to “cohabit” with an assembly majority of the opposite persuasion three times before, never has a president faced no clear majority.
It will take time, perhaps months, for a workable solution to emerge, during which New Caledonia is hardly likely to take precedence.
As New Caledonia’s neighbours prepare to meet for the annual Pacific Islands Forum summit next month, all will be hoping that the main parties can soon overcome their deep differences and find a peaceful local way forward.
Denise Fisher is a visiting fellow at ANU’s Centre for European Studies. She was an Australian diplomat for 30 years, serving in Australian diplomatic missions as a political and economic policy analyst in many capitals. The Australian Consul-General in Noumea, New Caledonia (2001-2004), she is the author of France in the South Pacific: Power and Politics (2013).
The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights and other protesters took to the streets of Fiji’s capital Suva yesterday in a rare demonstration demanding freedom, decolonisation and human rights in Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua.
The peaceful “pre-Bastille Day” protest came after recent events in Kanaky New Caledonia led to 10 deaths and a heavy build-up of French police and paramilitary forces.
It also followed ongoing human rights abuses and violations by Indonesia in West Papua.
“As France commemorates Bastille Day on July 14 and celebrates their own principles of ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’, its own action in the Pacific contradicts the national day,” said West Papuan activist Rosa Moiwend of the Pacific Network on Globalisation.
PANG’s Rosa Moiwend of West Papua and Asia Pacific Media Network’s Del Abcede of New Zealand in Suva . . . French actions in Pacific “contradict Bastille Day” principles of liberty. Image: APMN
“French colonisation of Pacific territories and its continued acts of suppression in Māohi Niu and Kanaky New Caledonia are quite the opposite of what the French revolution achieved.
“Today, they are symbolic of the Bastille and the monarchy oppressing and abusing the people and denying their right to self-determination in their own lands,” she said.
The May riots and unrest in Kanaky New Caledonia has led to 3500 security personnel being deployed from France.
“At best, this is based on the severely misguided notion that the challenges of the decolonisation process can be resolved by force,” Moiwend said.
France’s true objectives ‘disguised’
“However, it is becoming clearer that the restoration of order and peace is just a disguise for France’s true objectives — a deliberate retrenchment and extension of colonial control.”
Liberation for Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua. Image: FWCC
Almost two months after the outbreak of violence, tensions remain high and there is serious concern about the continuing restrictions on Kanaks.
Widespread reports of atrocities and police brutality against Kanaky youth have angered protest groups across the Pacific.
French authorities have extradited seven indigenous Kanak activists to prisons in France while awaiting trial on “conspiracy” charges over the rioting.
“French President Emmanuel Macron must be responsible for the current state of Kanaky New Caledonia,” said PANG in a statement.
“Blaming Kanak leaders and having them arrested and detained in France is a coverup and tactic to assert power. We call on President Macron to release the Kanak leaders and allow them legal representation.”
Olivia Baro from the Pacific Conference of Churches added that the issue of West Papua and the ongoing human rights abuse must not be forgotten, and Indonesia must be held responsible.
West Papuan voices ‘silenced’
Indonesia’s ongoing influence on the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) and the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum has continued to silence the voices of West Papuans.
As Pacific peoples, we will continue to stand in solidarity with West Papua and their right to self-determination.
“As we commemorate the Biak massacre this month and remember the many lives lost in West Papua, the continuous suppression of West Papua by Indonesia is a similar struggle to Kanaky New Caledonia, Palestine and many human rights struggles globally,” said Baro.
Despite restrictions set by authorities to prevent Palestine flags and banners at the march, the coalition stands in solidarity with our brothers, sisters and families in Palestine.
The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji and their allies have been hosting vigils at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre compound for Palestine, West Papua and Kanaky every Thursday over the last eight months.
The call on the Fiji government and Pacific leaders to support the ceasefire in Gaza, and protect the rights of Palestinians, West Papuans and Kanaks.
“The struggles of Palestinians are no different to West Papua, Kanaky New Caledonia,” FWCC Coordinator and NGOCHR Chair Shamima Ali.
“These are struggles of self-determination, and their human rights must be upheld.”
Fiji police at Parliament yesterday on watch for the Pacific human rights protest. Image: Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre
As an economy, Fiji has paid a “very high price for being unable to protect freedom” but people can speak and criticise the government freely now, says Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad.
Prasad, a former University of the South Pacific (USP) economics professor, said that he, in a deeply personal way, knew how the economy had been affected when he saw the debt numbers and what the government had inherited.
Professor Prasad says the government had reintroduced media self-regulation and “we can actually feel the freedom everywhere, including in Parliament”.
USP head of journalism associate professor Shailendra Singh and former USP lecturer and co-founder of The Australia Today Dr Amrit Sarwal also co-edited the book with Professor Prasad.
While also speaking during the launch, PNG Minister for Information and Communications Technology Timothy Masiu expressed support for the Fiji government repealing the media laws that curbed freedom in Fiji in the recent past.
He said his Department of ICT had set up a social media management desk to monitor the ever-increasing threats on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other online platforms.
Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad speaking at the book launch. Video: Fijivillage News
The new book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific. Image: Kula Press
promote media self-regulation;
improve government media capacity;
roll out media infrastructure for all; and
diversify content and quota usage for national interest.
He said that to elevate media professionalism in PNG, the policy called for developing media self-regulation in the country without direct government intervention.
Strike a balance
Masiu said the draft policy also intended to strike a balance between the media’s ongoing role in transparency and accountability on the one hand, and the dissemination of developmental information, on the other hand.
He said it was not an attempt by the government to restrict the media in PNG and the media in PNG enjoyed “unprecedented freedom” and an ability to report as they deemed appropriate.
The PNG Minister said their leaders were constantly being put in the spotlight.
While they did not necessarily agree with many of the daily news media reports, the governmenr would not “suddenly move to restrict the media” in PNG in any form.
The 30th anniversary edition of the research journal Pacific Journalism Review, founded by former USP Journalism Programme head Professor David Robie at the University of Papua New Guinea, was also launched at the event.
The PJR has published more than 1100 research articles over the past 30 years and is the largest media research archive in the region.
Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.
The United States Senate’s committee report for the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which provides funding for the U.S. Military, was uploaded onto the Senate Armed Services Committee website Monday night. In it, two anti-transgender “riders” were included through an amendment process with the support of independent Senator Joe Manchin, who caucuses with Democrats, while a third was…
Riots in Kanaky New Caledonia claimed their 10th victim yesterday.
The death took place as a result of an exchange of fire between a group of rioters in the village of Saint Louis (near the capital Nouméa) and French gendarmes, local news media reported.
Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas yesterday confirmed the incident and the fatality, saying the victim had opened fire on the French gendarmes, who then returned fire.
Gunfire exchanges had also been reported on the previous day, since French security forces had arrived on site.
A group of armed snipers were reported to have entered the Church of Saint Louis, including the victim who was reported to have opened fire, aiming at the gendarmes from that location.
The victim is described as the nephew of prominent pro-independence politician and local territorial Congress president Roch Wamytan.
Wamytan is also the Great Chief of Saint Louis and a prominent figure of the hard-line pro-independence party Union Calédonienne (UC).
On Sunday, during an election night live broadcast, he told public television NC la 1ère that “as the High Chief of Saint Louis and as President of the Congress, I find what is going on in Saint Louis really regrettable”.
“We will try to address the situation in the coming days,” he said.
On Sunday night, French gendarmes had to evacuate two resident religious sisters from the Saint Louis Marist Mission after armed rioters threatened them at gunpoint and ordered them to leave.
French security forces had launched an operation in Saint Louis on Tuesday in a bid to restore law and order and dismantle several roadblocks and barricades erected by rioters in this area, known to be a pro-independence stronghold.
Car jacking Several other incidents of car jacking had also been reported near the Saint Louis mission over the past few days on this portion of the strategic road leading to the capital Nouméa.
The incidents have been described by victims as the stealing of vehicles, threats at gunpoint, humiliation of drivers and passengers, and — in some cases — burning the vehicles.
Some of the victims later declared they had been ordered to take off their clothes.
A maritime ferry was set ablaze in Nouméa’s Port Moselle on Tuesday. Image: FB/RNZ
Nearby Mont-Dore Mayor Eddie Lecourieux strongly condemned the actions as “unspeakable” and “unjustifiable”.
On Tuesday evening, another incident involved the burning of one of the maritime ferries – used by many as an alternate means to reach Nouméa.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
North Korea has sent a military delegation to Russia, state media reported, a move which South Korea said would be a violation of sanctions if any cooperation with Moscow leads to an increase in Pyongyang’s military power.
The delegation’s departure on Monday was revealed in a single sentence report published Tuesday on the website of the state-run Korea Central News Agency.
It is the first example of military cooperation between the two countries since they signed their “Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” during last month’s summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The treaty stipulates cooperation similar to that of a military alliance.
According to KCNA, the delegation is made up of “military educationists” led by Kim Kum Chol, the president of Kim Il Sung Military University, the country’s top military school. Kim Jong Un attended the institution after returning to North Korea from boarding school in Switzerland.
The report did not mention the purpose of the trip, where the delegation would be headed, or how long they will be in Russia.
Portraits of Russian President Vladimir Putin are seen near national flags of North Korea and Russia in Pyongyang on June 20, 2024, displayed for Putin’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un where he won a pledge of “full support” on Ukraine and signed a mutual defense pact. (Kim Won Jin/AFP)
The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that any cooperation that “directly or indirectly helps North Korea increase its military power is a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and is subject to monitoring and sanctions by the international community.”
The sanctions ban North Korea and Russia from arms trade and military cooperation, Lim Soo-suk, a spokesperson for the ministry told a press briefing on Tuesday.
“Our government, together with the international community, including allies and partners, will respond sternly and resolutely to any actions that threaten our security,” he said.
Closer cooperation likely
Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, said at a press briefing that Washington has made “quite clear our great concern about increased collaboration” between North Korea and Russia.
Korea experts in the United States said that the development signals confirmation that Russia and North Korea will cooperate more openly after last month’s summit.
“North Korea does not care about any sanctions, nor does Russia,” David Maxwell, vice president at the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told RFA Korean. “They are not an obstacle for this type of military exchange.”
Modernizing its military
Maxwell said it would be impossible to know what kind of information was being exchanged unless North Korea or Russia announces it, but he speculated that it could be general tactical training or higher level military operations.
“North Korea desires to modernize its military and will likely seek any training and education that they can use to advance their military capabilities,” he said.
People look at the Rodong Sinmun newspaper showing the news on the visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the Kaeson Station of the Pyongyang Metro in Pyongyang, June 20, 2024. (Kim Won Jin/AFP)
North Korea has long been making the point that the United Nations does not have authority over it, Bruce Bennett, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based RAND Corporation, told RFA.
“I think Kim has been making that clear for a long period of time and I think in particular he probably enjoys being able to violate the sanctions and get away with it,” he said. “I’m sure North Korea, which has a culture of special forces, would love to get some of the weapons systems that Russian special forces use.”
These could include body armor, gunsights, jammers, or methods of intelligence collection and communications, he said.
Meanwhile, NK News, a South Korea-based outlet that specializes in news of the North, reported Tuesday that a Russian military aircraft landed in Pyongyang. Data from the flight tracking website Flight Radar 24 confirmed this, but North Korean media has yet to report it.
Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Cho Jinwoo for RFA Korean.
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Calls for justice are growing over the death of a Black man killed by security guards outside a Milwaukee hotel, whose death has drawn comparisons to George Floyd’s.
Pacific Journalism Review has challenged journalists to take a courageous and humanitarian stand over Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in its latest edition with several articles about the state of news media credibility and the shocking death toll of Palestinian reporters.
It has also taken a stand in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who was set free in a US federal court in Saipan and returned to Australia the day before copies of the journal arrived back from the printers.
In the editorial provocatively entitled “Will journalism survive?”, founding editor Dr David Robie wrote: “Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists — do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of a people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes?
“The answer is simple surely.”
Launching the 30th anniversary edition, adjunct USP professor Vijay Naidu paid tribute to the long-term “commitment of PJR to justice and human rights” and noted USP’s contribution through hosting the journal for five years and also continued support from conference convenor associate professor Shailendra Singh.
Papua New Guinea’s Communication Minister Timothy Masiu also launched at the PJR event a new book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, edited by Professor Biman Prasad (who is also Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji), Dr Singh and Dr Amit Sarwal.
The PJR editors, Dr Philip Cass and Dr Robie, said the profession of journalism had since the covid pandemic been under grave threat and the journal outlined challenges facing the Pacific region.
The cover of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review. Image: PJR
Among contributing writers, Jonathan Cook, examines the consequences of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) legal cases over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and Assange’s last-ditch appeal to prevent the United States extraditing him so that he could be locked away for the rest of his life.
Both cases pose globe-spanning threats to basic freedoms, writes Cook.
New Zealand writer Jeremy Rose offers a “Kiwi journalist’s response” to Israel’s war on journalism, noting that while global reports have tended to focus on the “horrendous and rapid” climb of civilian casualties to more than 38,000 — especially women and children — Gaza has also claimed the “worst death rate of journalists” in any war.
The journalist death toll has topped 158.
Independent journalist Mick Hall offers a compelling research indictment of the role of Western legacy media institutions, arguing that they too are in the metaphorical dock along with Israel in South Africa’s genocide case in the ICC.
PJR designer Del Abcede with Rosa Moiwend at the PJR celebrations. Image: David Robie/APMN
He also cites evidence of the wider credibility implications for mainstream media in the Oceania region.
Among other articles in this edition of PJR, a team led by RMIT’s Dr Alexandra Wake, president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (Jeraa), has critiqued the use of fact check systems, arguing these are vital tool boxes for journalists.
The edition also includes articles about the Kanaky New Caledonia decolonisation crisis reportage, three USP Frontline case study reports on political journalism, the social media ecology of an influencer group in Fiji, and a photo essay by Del Abcede on Palestinian protests and media in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
Book reviews include the Reuters Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2024, Journalists and Confidential Sources,The Palestine Laboratory and Return to Volcano Town.
The PJR began publication at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994.
Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review with a birthday cake . . . Professor Vijay Naidu (from left), Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad, founding PJR editor Dr David Robie, PNG Communications Minister Timothy Masiu, conference convenor and PJR editorial board member Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, and current PJR editor Dr Philip Cass. Image: Joe Yaya/Islands Business
The Philippines’ military chief on Thursday demanded that China pay 60 million pesos (US$1 million) in damages incurred during a violent confrontation between its coast guard and Filipino troops in the South China Sea last month.
China Coast Guard personnel, armed with pikes and machetes, punctured Philippine boats and seized firearms in the June 17 incident near Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin and called Ren’ai Jiao by Beijing.
One Filipino sailor lost a finger in the clash, the third such encounter this year in which Philippine personnel have been hurt on missions to rotate and resupply troops stationed at Second Thomas Shoal.
“I demanded the return of seven firearms that were taken by the Chinese coast guard,” said Gen. Romeo Brawner at a press conference. “They destroyed our equipment and when we estimated the cost of the damage it’s 60 million pesos.”
The compensation does not include the cost of surgery for the Filipino soldier who lost a finger, said Brawner, who outlined his demand for compensation in a letter to Beijing.
Brawner made the comments after a command conference between military officials and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in which security challenges and threats facing the Southeast Asian nation were discussed.
Marcos called for de-escalation of tension with China in the South China Sea, the Philippine military chief said. However, rotation and resupply missions to the BRP Sierra Madre would continue, Brawner added.
On Tuesday, Manila and Beijing agreed to reduce hostilities “without prejudice to their respective positions” at a regular bilateral meeting.
China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade passes each year, putting it at odds with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and Taiwan.
In 2016, an international tribunal refuted the legal basis for nearly all of China’s expansive maritime and territorial claims in the waterway. It said that Beijing’s insistence on holding “historic rights” to the waters were inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS.
Beijing has never recognized the 2016 arbitration or its outcome.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jason Gutierrez for BenarNews.
A major conference on the state and future of Pacific media is taking place this week in Fiji.
Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of Asia Pacific Media Network, joins #PacificMornings to discuss the event and reflect on his work covering Asia-Pacific current affairs and research for more than four decades.
Pacific Journalism Review, which Dr Robie founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994, celebrated 30 years of publishing at the conference tonight.
Other Pacific Mornings items on 4 July 2024: The health sector is reporting frustration at unchanging mortality rates for babies and mothers in New Zealand. PMMRC chairperson John Tait joined #PacificMornings to discuss further.
Labour Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni joined #PacificMornings to discuss the political news of the week.
We are one week into a month of military training exercises held in Hawai’i, known as RIMPAC.
Twenty-nine countries and 25,000 personnel are taking part, including New Zealand. Hawai’ian academic and Pacific studies lecturer Emalani Case joined #PacificMornings to discuss further.
Republished with from Pacific Media Network’s Radio 531pi.
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