An Auckland University law academic says Samoa’s criminal libel law under which a prominent journalist has been charged should be repealed.
Lagi Keresoma, the first female president of the Journalists Association of Samoa (JAWS) and senior journalist of Talamua Online, was charged under the Crimes Act 2013 on Sunday after publishing an article about a former police officer, whom she asserted had sought the help of the Head of State to withdraw charges brought against him.
JAWS has already called for the criminal libel law to be scrapped and Auckland University academic Beatrice Tabangcoro told RNZ Pacific that the law was “unnecessary and impractical”.
“A person who commits a crime under this section is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding 175 penalty units or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months,” the Crimes Act states.
JAWS said this week that the law, specifically Section 117A of the Crimes Act, undermined media freedom, and any defamation issues could be dealt with in a civil court.
JAWS gender representative to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said Keresoma’s arrest “raises serious concerns about the misuse of legal tools to independent journalism” in the country.
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson called on the Samoan government “to urgently review and repeal criminal defamation laws that undermine democratic accountability and public trust in the justice system”.
Law removed and brought back
The law was removed by the Samoan government in 2013, but was brought back in 2017, ostensibly to deal with issues arising on social media.
Auckland University’s academic Beatrice Tabangcoro . . . reintroduction of the law was widely criticised at the time. Image: University of Auckland
Auckland University’s academic Beatrice Tabangcoro told RNZ Pacific that this reintroduction was widely criticised at the time for its potential impact on freedom of speech and media freedom.
She said that truth was a defence to the offence of false statement causing harm to reputation, but in the case of a journalist this could lead to them being compelled to reveal their sources.
The academic said that the law remained unnecessary and impractical, and she pointed to the Samoa Police Commissioner telling media in 2023 that the law should be repealed as it was used “as a tool for harassing the media and is a waste of police resources”.
Tonga and Vanuatu are two other Pacific nations with the criminal libel law on their books, and it is something the media in both those countries have raised concerns about.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Journalists in Papua New Guinea are likely to face legal threats as powerful individuals and companies use court actions to silence public interest reporting, warns Media Council of PNG president Neville Choi.
As co-chair of the second Community Coalition Against Corruption (CCAC) National Meeting, he said lawfare was likely because Parliament had passed no laws to protect reporters and individuals from such tactics.
Choi said journalists were being left unprotected against Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) — legal actions used by powerful individuals or corporations to silence criticism and reporting.
“In Papua New Guinea right now, we don’t have any law to stop SLAPPs,” Choi said.
“Big corporations or organisations with more money can use lawsuits to silence people, civil society and the media. That’s the reality.”
SLAPPs are lawsuits filed not to win on merit, but to drain resources, silence critics, and stop public debate.
In some other countries, anti-SLAPP laws exist to protect journalists and whistleblowers. But in PNG, no such legal shield exists.
Legal pressure for speaking out
“We’ve seen it happen,” Choi added, referring to ACTNOW PNG’s Eddie Tanago, a civil society advocate who has faced legal pressure for speaking out.
“He’s experienced it. And we know it can happen to journalists too.”
Participants in the second CCAC National Meeting in Port Moresby . . . journalists are being left unprotected from corporate lawfare. Image: PNG Post-Courier
Despite increasing threats, journalists do not have access to legal defence funds or institutional protection.
Choi confirmed that there was no system in place to defend reporters who were hit with defamation lawsuits or other forms of legal retaliation.
“Our advice to journalists is simple. Do your job well. The truth is the only protection we have,” he said.
“If you stick to facts, follow professional ethics and report responsibly, you reduce your risk. But if you make a mistake, you leave yourself open to lawsuits.”
The Media Council, in partnership with Transparency International under the CCAC, are discussing the idea of drafting an anti-SLAPP law but no formal proposal has been put forward yet.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
A West Papua independence leader says escalating violence is forcing indigenous Papuans to flee their ancestral lands.
It comes as the Indonesian military claims 18 members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) were killed in an hour-long operation in Intan Jaya on May 14.
In a statement, reported by Kompas, Indonesia’s military claimed its presence was “not to intimidate the people” but to protect them from violence.
“We will not allow the people of Papua to live in fear in their own land,” it said.
Indonesia’s military said it seized firearms, ammunition, bows and arrows. They also took Morning Star flags — used as a symbol for West Papuan independence — and communication equipment.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom, told RNZ Pacific that seven villages in Ilaga, Puncak Regency in Central Papua were now being attacked.
“The current military escalation in West Papua has now been building for months. Initially targeting Intan Jaya, the Indonesian military have since broadened their attacks into other highlands regencies, including Puncak,” he said.
Women, children forced to leave
Wenda said women and children were being forced to leave their villages because of escalating conflict, often from drone attacks or airstrikes.
ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda . . . “Indonesians look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Earlier this month, ULMWP claimed one civilian and another was seriously injured after being shot at from a helicopter.
Last week, ULMWP shared a video of a group of indigenous Papuans walking through mountains holding an Indonesian flag, which Wenda said was a symbol of surrender.
“They look at us as primitive and they look at us as subhuman,” Wenda said.
He said the increased military presence was driven by resources.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has a goal to be able to feed Indonesia’s population without imports as early as 2028.
Video rejects Indnesian plan
A video statement from tribes in Mappi regency in South Papua from about a month ago, translated to English, said they rejected Indonesia’s food project and asked companies to leave.
In the video, about a dozen Papuans stood while one said the clans in the region had existed on customary land for generations and that companies had surveyed land without consent.
“We firmly ask the local government, the regent, Mappi Regency to immediately review the permits and revoke the company’s permits,” the speaker said.
Wenda said the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) had also grown.
But he said many of the TPNPB were using bow and arrows against modern weapons.
“I call them home guard because there’s nowhere to go.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A forthcoming new edition of David Robie’s Eyes of Fire honours the ship’s final mission and the resilience of those affected by decades of radioactive fallout.
PACIFIC MORNINGS: By Aui’a Vaimaila Leatinu’u
The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow WarriorIII ship returns to Aotearoa this July, 40 years after the bombing of the original campaign ship, with a new edition of its landmark eyewitness account.
On 10 July 1985, two underwater bombs planted by French secret agents destroyed the Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, killing Portuguese-born Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and sparking global outrage.
The Rainbow Warrior was protesting nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, specifically targeting French atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.
The vessel drew international attention to the environmental devastation and human suffering caused by decades of radioactive fallout.
The 40th anniversary commemorations include a new edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior by journalist David Robie, who was on board the ship during its historic mission in the Marshall Islands.
The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage, Operation Exodus, helped evacuate the people of Rongelap after years of US nuclear fallout made their island uninhabitable.
The vessel arrived at Rongelap Atoll on 15 May 1985.
The 30th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire in 2015. Image: Little Island Press
Dr Robie, who joined the Rainbow Warrior in Hawai‘i as a journalist at the end of April 1985, says the mission was unlike any other.
“The fact that this was a humanitarian voyage, quite different in many ways from many of the earlier protest voyages by Greenpeace, to help the people of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands . . . it was going to be quite momentous,” Dr Robie says.
“A lot of people in the Marshall Islands suffered from those tests. Rongelap particularly wanted to move to a safer location. It is an incredible thing to do for an island community where the land is so much part of their existence, their spirituality and their ethos.”
PMN NEWS
He says the biggest tragedy of the bombing was the death of Pereira.
“He will never be forgotten and it was a miracle that night that more people were not killed in the bombing attack by French state terrorists.
“What the French secret agents were doing was outright terrorism, bombing a peaceful environmental ship under the cover of their government. It was an outrage”.
PMN News interview with Dr David Robie on 20 May 2025.
Russel Norman, executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, calls the 40th anniversary “a pivotal moment” in the global environmental struggle.
“Climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat,” Dr Norman says.
“As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
“Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French Government’s military programme and colonial power.”
As the only New Zealand journalist on board, Dr Robie documented the trauma of nuclear testing and the resilience of the Rongelapese people. He recalls their arrival in the village, where the locals dismantled their homes over three days.
“The only part that was left on the island was the church, the stone, white stone church. Everything else was disassembled and taken on the Rainbow Warrior for four voyages. I remember one older woman sitting on the deck among the remnants of their homes.”
Robie also recalls the inspiring impact of the ship’s banner for the region reading: “Nuclear Free Pacific”.
PMN News interview with Dr David Robie on 20 May 2025.
“That stands out because this was a humanitarian mission but it was for the whole region. It’s the whole of the Pacific, helping Pacific people but also standing up against the nuclear powers, US and France in particular, who carried out so many tests in the Pacific.”
Originally released in 1986, Eyes of Fire chronicled the relocation effort and the ship’s final weeks before the bombing. Robie says the new edition draws parallels between nuclear colonialism then and climate injustice now.
“This whole renewal of climate denialism, refusal by major states to realise that the solutions are incredibly urgent, and the United States up until recently was an important part of that whole process about facing up to the climate crisis.
Nuclear Exodus: The Rongelap Evacuation. Video: In association with TVNZ
“It’s even more important now for activism, and also for the smaller countries that are reasonably progressive, to take the lead. It looks at what’s happened in the last 10 years since the previous edition we did, and then a number of the people who were involved then.
“I hope the book helps to inspire others, especially younger people, to get out there and really take action. The future is in your hands.”
Aui’a Vaimaila Leatinu’u is a multimedia journalist at Pacific Media Network. Republished with permission.
Rongelap Islanders with their belongings board the Rainbow Warrior for their relocation to Mejatto island in May 1985 weeks before the ship was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland, New Zealand. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
We have been handed a long and protracted recession with few signs of growth and prosperity. Budget 2025 signals more of the same, writes Susan St John.
ANALYSIS:By Susan St John
With the coalition government’s second Budget being unveiled, we should question where New Zealand is heading.
The 2024 Budget laid out the strategy. Tax cuts and landlord subsidies were prioritised with a focus on cuts to social and infrastructure spending. Most of the tax package went to the well-off, while many low-income households got nothing, or very little.
Even the tiny bit of the tax package directed to low-income people fell flat. Family Boost has significantly helped only a handful of families, while the increase of $25 per week (In Work Tax Credit) was denied all families on benefits, affecting about 200,000 of the very poorest children.
In the recession, families that lost paid work also lost access to full Working for Families, an income cut for their children of about $100 per week.
No one worked out how the many spending cuts would be distributed, but they have hurt the poor the most. These changes are too numerous to itemise but include increased transport costs; the reintroduction of prescription charges; a disastrous school lunch system; rising rents, rates and insurance; fewer budget advisory services; cuts to foodbank funding and hardship grants; stripping away support programmes for the disabled; inadequately adjusted benefits and minimum wage; and reduced support for pay equity and the living wage.
The objective is to save money while ignoring the human cost. For example, a scathing report of the Auditor General confirms that Oranga Tamariki took a bulldozer to obeying the call for a 6.5 percent cut in existing social services with no regard to the extreme hurt caused to children and struggling parents.
Budget 2025 has already indicated that Working for Families will continue to go backwards with not even inflation adjustments. The 2025 child and youth strategy report shows that over the year to June 2024 the number of children in material poverty continued to increase, there were more avoidable hospitalisations, immunisation rates for babies declined, and there was more food insecurity.
Human costs all around us
We can see the human costs all around us in homelessness, food insecurity, and ill health. Already we know we rank at the bottom among developed countries for child wellbeing and suicide rates.
Abject distress existing alongside where homes sell for $20 million-$40 million is no longer uncommon, and neither are $6 million helicopters of the very rich.
Changes in suicide rates (three-year average), ages 15 to 19 from 2018 to 2022 (or most recent four-year period available). Source: WHO mortality database
At the start of the year, Helen Robinson, CEO of the Auckland City Mission, had a clear warning: “I am pleading with government for more support, otherwise what we and other food relief agencies in Auckland can provide, will dramatically decrease.
“This leaves more of Auckland hungry and those already there become more desperate. It is the total antithesis of a thriving city.”
The theory held by this government is that by reducing the role of government and taxes, the private sector will flourish, and secure well-paid jobs will be created. Instead, as basic economic theory would predict, we have been handed a long and protracted recession with few signs of growth and prosperity.
Budget 2025 signals more of the same.
It would be a mistake to wait for simplistic official inequality statistics before we act. Our current destination is a sharply divided country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty with an insecure middle class.
Underfunded social agencies
Underfunded and swamped social agencies cannot remove the relentless stress on the people who are invisible in the ‘fiscally responsible’ economic narrative. The fabricated bogeyman of outsized net government debt is at the core, as the government pursues balanced budgets and small government-size targets.
A stage one economics student would know the deficit increases automatically in a recession to cushion the decline and stop the economy spiralling into something that looks more like a depression. But our safety nets of social welfare are performing very badly.
Rising unemployment has exposed the inadequacy of social protections. Working for Families, for instance, provides a very poor cushion for children. Many “working” families do not have enough hours of work and face crippling poverty traps.
Future security is undermined as more KiwiSavers cash in for hardship reasons. A record number of the talented young we need to drive the recovery and repair the frayed social fabric have already fled the country.
The government is fond of comparing its Budget to that of a household. But what prudent household would deliberately undermine the earning capacity of family members?
The primary task for the Budget should be to look after people first, to allow them to meet their food, dental and health needs, education, housing and travel costs, to have a buffer of savings to cushion unexpected shocks and to prepare for old age.
A sore thumb standing
In the social security part of the Budget, NZ Super for all at 65, no matter how rich or whether still in full-time well-paid work, dominates (gross $25 billion). It’s a sore thumb standing out alongside much less generous, highly targeted benefits and working for families, paid parental leave, family boost, hardship provisions, accommodation supplement, winter energy and other payments and subsidies.
New Zealand has become a country of two halves whose paths rarely cross: a social time bomb with unimaginable consequences. It is a country beguiled by an egalitarian past that is no more.
Susan St John is an associate professor in the Pensions and Intergenerational Equity hub and Economic Policy Centre, Business School, University of Auckland. This article was first published by Newsroom before the 2025 Budget and is republished with permission.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has released a statement saying “the Israeli government cannot allow the suffering to continue” after the UN’s aid chief said thousands of babies were at risk of dying if they did not receive food immediately.
“Australia joins international partners in calling on Israel to allow a full and immediate resumption of aid to Gaza,” Wong said in a post on X.
“We condemn the abhorrent and outrageous comments made by members of the Netanyahu government about these people in crisis.”
Wong stopped short of outlining any measures Australia might take to encourage Israel to ensure enough aid reaches those in need, as the UK, France and Canada said they would do with “concrete measures” in a recent joint statement.
An agreement has been reached in a phone call between UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar, reports Al Jazeera.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAM, the aid would initially cater to the food needs of about 15,000 civilians in Gaza.
It will also include essential supplies for bakeries and critical items for infant care.
‘Permission’ for 100 trucks
Earlier yesterday, a spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Geneva said Israel had given permission for about 100 aid trucks to enter Gaza.
However, the UN also said no aid had been distributed in Gaza because of Israeli restrictions, despite a handful of aid trucks entering the territory.
“But what we mean here by allowed is that the trucks have received military clearance to access the Palestinian side,” reports Tareq Abu Azzoum from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.
“They have not made their journey into the enclave. They are still stuck at the border crossing. Only five trucks have made it in.”
Israel’s Gaza aid “smokescreen” showing the vast gulf between what the Israeli military have actually allowed in – five trucks only and none of the aid had been delivered at the time of this report. Image: Al Jazeera infographic/Creative Commons
The few aid trucks alowed into Gaza are nowhere near sufficient to meet Gaza’s vast needs, says the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.
Instead, the handful of trucks serve as a “a smokescreen” for Israel to “pretend the siege is over”.
“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving,” said Pascale Coissard, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Khan Younis.
How global power struggles are impacting in local communities, culture and sovereignty in Kanaky, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and Samoa.
In episode one, The Battlefield, broadcast today, tensions between the United States and China over the Pacific escalate, affecting the lives of Pacific Islanders.
Key figures like former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani and tour guide Maria Loweyo reveal how global power struggles impact on local communities, culture and sovereignty in the Solomon Islands and Samoa.
The episode intertwines these personal stories with the broader geopolitical dynamics, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of the Pacific’s role in global diplomacy.
Fight for the Pacific, a four-part series by Tuki Laumea and Cleo Fraser, showcases the Pacific’s critical transformation into a battleground of global power.
This series captures the high-stakes rivalry between the US and China as they vie for dominance in a region pivotal to global stability.
The series frames the Pacific not just as a battleground for superpowers but also as a region with its own unique challenges and aspirations.
New Caledonia and French Polynesia have sent strong delegations this week to the United Nations Pacific regional seminar on the implementation of the Fourth International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism in Timor-Leste.
The seminar opened in Dili today and ends on Friday.
As French Pacific non-self-governing territories, the two Pacific possessions will brief the UN on recent developments at the event, which is themed “Pathways to a sustainable future — advancing socioeconomic and cultural development of the Non-Self-Governing Territories”.
New Caledonia and French Polynesia are both in the UN’s list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised, respectively since 1986 and 2013.
Nouméa-based French Ambassador for the Pacific Véronique Roger-Lacan is also attending.
After the Dili meeting this week, the UN’s Fourth Commission is holding its formal meeting in New York in July and again in October in the margins of the UN General Assembly.
As New Caledonia marks the first anniversary this month of the civil unrest that killed 14 people and caused material damage to the tune of 2.2 billion euros last year (NZ$4.1 billion), the French Pacific territory’s political parties have been engaged for the past four months in political talks with France to define New Caledonia’s political future.
However, the talks have not yet managed to produce a consensual way forward between pro-France and pro-independence groups.
French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, at the end of the most recent session on May 8, put a project of “sovereignty with France” on the table which was met by strong opposition by the pro-France Loyalists (anti-independence) camp.
This year again, parties and groups from around the political spectrum are planning to travel to Dili to plead their respective cases.
New Caledonia territorial President Alcide Ponga . . . pro-France groups have become more aware of the need for them to be more vocal and present at regional and international fora. Image: Media pool/RNZ Pacific
Topping the list is New Caledonia’s government President Alcide Ponga, who chairs the pro-France Rassemblement party and came to power in January 2025.
Other represented institutions include New Caledonia’s customary (traditional) Senate, a kind of Great Council of Chiefs, which also sends participants to ensure the voice of indigenous Kanak people is heard.
Over the past two years, pro-France groups have become more aware of the need for them to be more vocal and present at regional and international fora.
French Polynesia back on the UN list since 2013 In French Polynesia, the pro-independence ruling Tavini Huiraatira party commemorated the 12th anniversary of re-inscription to the UN list of territories to be decolonised on 17 May 2013.
This week, Tavini also sent a strong delegation to Timor-Leste, which includes territorial Assembly President Antony Géros.
However, the pro-France parties, locally known as “pro-autonomy”, also want to ensure their views are taken into account.
One of them is Moerani Frébault, one of French Polynesia’s representatives at the French National Assembly.
“Contrary to what the pro-independence people are saying, we’re not dominated by the French Republic,” he told local media at a news conference at the weekend.
Frébault said the pro-autonomy parties now want to invite a UN delegation to French Polynesia “so they can see for themselves that we have all the tools we need for our development.
“This is the message we want to get across”.
Pro-autonomy Tapura Party leaders Tepuaraurii Teriitahi (from left), Edouard Fritch and Moerani Frébault, at a press conference in Papeete last week . . . . “We want to counter those who allege that the whole of [French] Polynesians are sharing this aspiration for independence.” Image: Radio 1/RNZ Pacific
Territorial Assembly member Tepuaraurii Teriitahi, from the pro-autonomy Tapura Huiraatira party, is also travelling to Dili.
“The majority of (French) Polynesians is not pro-independence. So when we travel to this kind of seminar, it is because we want to counter those who allege that the whole of (French) Polynesians is sharing this aspiration for independence,” she said.
‘Constitution of a Federated Republic of Ma’ohi Nui’
On the pro-independence side in Pape’ete, the official line is that it wants Paris to at least engage in talks with French Polynesia to “open the subject of decolonisation”.
For the same purpose, the Tavini Party, in April 2025, officially presented a draft for what could become a “Constitution of a Federated Republic of Ma’ohi Nui”.
The document is sometimes described as drawing inspirations from France and the United States, but is not yet regarded as fully matured.
Earlier this month, French Polynesia’s President Moetai Brotherson was in Paris for a series of meetings with several members of the French cabinet, including Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls and French Foreign Affairs Minister Yannick Neuder.
Valls is currently contemplating visiting French Polynesia early in July.
Brotherson came to power in May 2023. Since being elected to the top post, he has stressed that independence — although it remained a longterm goal — was not an immediate priority.
He also said many times that he wished relations with France to evolve, especially on the decolonisation.
“I think we should put those 10 years of misunderstanding, of denial of dialogue behind us,” he said.
In October 2023, for the first time since French Polynesia was re-inscribed on the UN list, France made representations at the UN Special Political and Decolonisation Committee (Fourth Committee), ending a 10-year empty chair hiatus .
But the message delivered by the French Ambassador to the UN, Nicolas De Rivière, was unambiguous.
He said French Polynesia “has no place” on the UN list of non-autonomous territories because “French Polynesia’s history is not the history of New Caledonia”.
He also voiced France’s wish to have French Polynesia withdrawn from the UN list.
The UN list of non-self-governing territories currently includes 17 territories worldwide and six of those are located in the Pacific — American Samoa, Guam, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Pitcairn Islands and Tokelau.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Since last Thursday, intensified Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed more than 500 Palestinians, and a prolonged Israeli aid blockade has led to widespread starvation among the territory’s two million residents.
Meanwhile, the IDF is intensifying its air and ground attacks on the civilian population and on the few remaining health services. Al Jazeera is also reporting that the IDF has issued “a forward displacement order” for the entirety of Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza.
The escalation of the Israeli onslaught has been condemned by UN human rights chief Volker Türk, who has likened the IDF campaign as an exercise in ethnic cleansing:
“This latest barrage of bombs … and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline that there appears to be a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing,” he said.
If the West so wished, it could be putting more economic pressure on Israel to cease committing its litany of atrocities. Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war has been sparking mass demonstrations across Europe.
In the Netherlands at the weekend, a massive demonstration culminated in calls for the Netherlands government to formally ask the EU to suspend its free trade agreement with Israel.
Until now, the world’s relative indifference to the genocide in Gaza has been mirrored by Palestine’s Arab neighbours. As Gaza burned yet again, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates were lavishly entertaining US President Donald Trump — Israel’s chief enabler — and showering him with gifts.
In all, economic joint ventures worth hundreds of billions of dollars were signed and sealed last week between the US and the Middle East region, despite the misery being inflicted right next door.
Footnote: Directly and indirectly, Big Tech firms such as Microsoft and Intel continue to enable and enhance the IDF war machine’s actions in Gaza. This is an extension of the long time support given to Israel by Silicon Valley firms via the supply of digital infrastructure, advanced chips, software and cloud computing facilities.
The extinction of hope
As the Ha’aretz newspaper reported this week, “The three pillars of hope for the Palestinians have collapsed: armed struggle has lost legitimacy, state negotiations have stalled, and faith in the international community has faded. Now, they face one question: ‘Where do we go from here?’
As Ha’aretz concluded, the Palestinians seem to have vanished into a diplomatic Bermuda Triangle. What would it take, one wonders, for the New Zealand government — and Foreign Minister Winston Peters — to wake up from their moral slumber?
Whenever the Luxon government does talk about this conflict, it still calls for a “two state solution” even though, as a leading Israeli journalist Gideon Levy says, this ceased to be a viable option more than 25 years ago.
“We crossed the point of no return a long time ago. We crossed the point at which there was any room for a Palestinian state, with 700,000 settlers who will not be evacuated, because nobody will have the political power to do so. The West Bank is practically annexed for many, many years . . . Nobody can take this discourse seriously anymore. But, you know, those who want to believe in it, believe in it.”
Conveniently, the two state waffle does provide Peters and Luxon with cover for their reluctance to — for example — call in, or expel the Israeli ambassador. Or impose a symbolic trade boycott. Or impose targeted sanctions on the extremists within the Netanyahu Cabinet who are driving Israeli policy.
Instead of those options, the “negotiated two state” fantasy has been encouraged to take on a life of its own. Yet do we really think that Israel would entertain for a moment the expulsion of the hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers illegally occupying the land on the West Bank required for a viable Palestinian state?
The Netanyahu government has long had plans to double that number, with the settler influx growing at a reported rate of about 12,000 a year.
The backlash Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon is finally creating a backlash, in Europe at least. The public outrage being expressed in demonstrations in the UK, France and Germany finally seems to be making some governments feel a need to be seen to be doing more.
Not before time. At the drop of a hat, Western nations — New Zealand included — will bang on endlessly about the importance of upholding the norms of international law. So you have to ask . . . why have we/they chosen to remain all but mute about the repeated violations of human rights law and the Geneva Conventions being carried out by the IDF in Gaza on a daily basis?
“In [Khan Younis’] Nasser Hospital, Safaa Al-Najjar, her face stained with blood, wept as the shroud-wrapped bodies of two of her children were brought to her: [18 month old] Motaz Al-Bayyok and [six weeks old] Moaz Al-Bayyok.
“The family was caught in the overnight airstrikes. All five of Al-Najjar’s other children, ranging in ages from 3 to 12, were injured, while her husband was in intensive care. One of her sons, 11-year-old Yusuf, his head heavily bandaged, screamed in grief as the shroud of his younger sibling was parted to show his face.
Ultimately, Israel’s moral decline will be for its own citizens to reckon with, in future. For now, New Zealand is standing around watching in silence, while a blood-soaked campaign of ethnic cleansing unmatched in recent history is being carried out.
Reading an NBC News report a couple of days ago about a Trump administration plan to relocate 1 million Gazans to Libya reminded me of a conversation between the legendary Warsaw Ghetto leader Marek Edelman and fellow fighter and survivor Simcha Rotem that took place more than quarter of a century ago.
In the conversation, first reported in Haaretz in 2023, Rotem said the Jews who walked into the gas chambers without a fight did so only because they were hungry.
Edelman disagreed, but Rotem insisted. “Listen, man. Marek, I’m surprised by your attitude. They only went because they were hungry. Even if they’d known what awaited them they would have walked into the gas chambers. You and I would have done the same.”
Edelman cut him off. “You would never have gone” [to the gas chamber.] Rotem replied, “I’m not so sure. I was never that hungry.”
Edelman agreed, saying: “I also wasn’t that hungry,” to which Rotem said, “That’s why you didn’t go.”
The NBC report claims that Israeli officials are aware of the plan and talks have been held with the Libyan leadership about taking in 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians.. The carrot being offered is the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Libya’s own money seized by the US more than a decade ago.
The Arabic word Sumud — or steadfastness — is synonymous with the Palestinian people. The idea that 1 million Gazans would agree to walk off the 1.4 percent of historic Palestine that is Gaza is inconceivable.
Equally incomprehensible
But then the idea that my great grandmother and other relatives walked into the gas chambers is equally incomprehensible. But we’ve never been that hungry.
The people of Gaza are. No food has entered Gaza for 76 days. Half a million Gazans are facing starvation and the rest of the population (more than 1.5 million people) are suffering from high levels of acute food insecurity, according to the UN.
Last year, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was widely condemned when he suggested starving Gaza might be “justified and moral”.
The lack of outrage and urgency being expressed by world leaders — particularly Western leaders — after nearly 11 weeks of Israel actually starving the inhabitants of what retired IDF general Giora Eiland has called a giant concentration camp — is an outrage.
As far as I’m aware there’s been no talk of cutting off diplomatic relations, trade embargos or even cultural boycotts.
Israel — which last time I looked wasn’t in Europe — just placed second in Eurovision. “I’m happy,” an Israeli friend messaged me, “that my old genocidal homeland (Austria) won and not my current genocidal nation.”
A third generation Israeli, she’s one of a tiny minority protesting the war crimes being committed less than 100km from her apartment.
Sanchez had declared Israel a genocidal state and said Spain won’t do business with such a nation.
And peaking at a national famine commemoration held over the weekend Higgens said the UN Security Council had failed again and again by not dealing with famines and the current “forced starvation of the people of Gaza”.
He cited UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying “as aid dries up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field — and civilians are in an endless death loop.”
Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen argued in his 1981 book Poverty and Famines that famines are man-made and not natural disasters.
Unlike Gaza, the famines he wrote about were caused by either callous disregard by the ruling elites for the populations left to starve or the disastrous results of following the whims of an all-powerful leader like Chairman Mao.
He argued that a famine had never occurred in a functioning democracy.
A horrifying fact
It’s a horrifying fact that a self-described democracy, funded and abetted by the world’s most powerful democracy, has been allowed by the international community to starve two million people with no let-up in its bombing of barely functioning hospitals and killing of more than 2000 Gazans since the ban on food entering the strip was put in place. (Many more will have died due to a lack of medicine, food, and access to clean water.)
After more than two months of denying any food or medicine to enter Gaza Israel is now saying it will allow limited amounts of food in to avoid a full-scale famine.
“Due to the need to expand the fighting, we will introduce a basic amount of food to the residents of Gaza to ensure no famine occurs,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained.
“A famine might jeopardise the continuation of Operation Gideon’s Chariots aimed at eliminating Hamas.”
If 19-months of indiscriminate bombardment, the razing to the ground of whole cities, the displacement of virtually the entire population, and more than 50,000 recorded deaths (the Lancet estimated the true figure is likely to be four times that) hasn’t destroyed Hamas to Israel’s satisfaction it’s hard to conceive of what will.
But accepting that that is the real aim of the ongoing genocide would be naïve.
Shamefully indifferent Western world
In the first cabinet meeting following the Six Day War, long before Hamas came into existence, ridding Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants was top of the agenda.
“If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places . . . we can annex Gaza without a problem,” Defence Minister Moshe Dayan said.
The population of Gaza was 400,000 at the time.
“We should take them to the East Bank [Jordan] by the scruff of their necks and throw them there,” Minister Yosef Sapir said.
Fifty-eight years later the possible destinations may have changed but the aim remains the same. And a shamefully indifferent Western world combined with a malnourished and desperate population may be paving the way to a mass expulsion.
If the US, Europe and their allies demanded that Israel stop, the killing would end tomorrow.
Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack.
In February 2025, Dr Diana Sarfati resigned, not unexpectedly, as Director-General of Health after only two years into her five-year term.
As a medical specialist, and in her role as developing the successful cancer control agency, she had extensive experience in New Zealand’s health system.
However, she did not conform to the privately expressed view of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon: That the problem with the health system is that it is led by health.
Responsibility for the appointment of public service chief executives rests with the Public Service Commissioner.
In carrying out this function, Brian Roche had two choices for the process of selecting Sarfati’s replacement — run a contestable hiring process (the usual method) or appoint someone without this process.
With the required approval of Attorney-General Judith Collins and Health Minister Simeon Brown, Roche opted for the exception rather than the rule.
This suggests a degree of pre-determination to appoint someone without the “hindrance” of health system experience, consistent with Luxon’s view.
An appointment from outside health Consequently, on April 1, Audrey Sonerson was appointed the new Director-General of Health for a five-year term.
She had been the Ministry of Transport chief executive (including when Brown was transport minister). She also had senior positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and in the Police and Treasury.
Though she had been part of the Treasury’s health team and has a master’s in health economics, her only health system experience was in the brief hiatus between Sarfati’s resignation when acting director-general and becoming the confirmed replacement.
‘For a minister with no experience of the complexity of health care delivery to choose a director-general who herself has no health experience is extremely concerning.’
— Dr David Galler, former intensive care specialist
This is unprecedented for the director-general position. Sonerson is the 18th person to hold this position. The first 10 had been medical doctors. In 1992, the first non-doctor holder was appointed (a Canadian with some health management experience).
The subsequent six appointees all had extensive health system experience. Three were medical doctors (two in population health), two had been district health board chief executives, and one had been the director-general in Scotland and a medical geographer.
Dr David Galler is well-placed to comment on the significance of this extraordinary change of direction. He is a retired intensive care specialist and former President of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists.
He held the unique position of principal medical adviser to the health minister, the ‘eyes and ears’ of the health system for three health ministers in the mid to late 2000s. He also worked closely with two director-generals.
Drawing on this experience, Galler observes that: “Director-generals of health must be respected, influential, knowledgeable, connected and trusted, to ensure that good policy goes into practice and good practice informs policy . . . For a minister with no experience of the complexity of health care delivery to choose a director-general who herself has no health experience is extremely concerning.”
Breadth of the health system As the director-general heads up the Health Ministry, she is responsible for being the “steward” of our health system. In this context she is the lead adviser to the government on health. In the context of seeking to improve and protect the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders, the organisation Sonerson now leads is responsible for:
the stewardship and leadership of the health system; and
advising her minister and government on health and disability matters.
These responsibilities have to be considered in the context of how extensive the health system is beginning with its complexity, highly specialised range of health professional occupational groups, and its breadth.
This breadth ranges from community healthcare (predominantly general practices), local 24/7 acute hospitals, tertiary hospitals (lower volume, high complexity) and quaternary care services (national services for very uncommon or highly complex even lower volume procedures and treatments, including experimental medicine, uncommon surgical procedures, and advanced trauma care).
Another way of looking at this breadth is that it ranges in treatment from medical to surgical to mental health to diagnostic. And then there is population health such as epidemiology.
Population health and the Health Act However, responsibility extends further to specific obligations under the Health Act 1956, many of which are operational. Although it is nearly 60 years old, this act has been updated by legislative amendments many times and as recently as 2022 with the passing of the Pae Ora Act that disestablished district health boards and established Health New Zealand.
The Health Act gives Sonerson’s health ministry the function of improving, promoting and protecting public health (as distinct from personal diagnostic and treatment health). Public health is legislatively defined as meaning either the health of all New Zealanders or a population group, community, or section of people within New Zealand.
A critical part of this role is the responsibility for ensuring that local government authorities improve, promote, and protect public health within their districts in appointing key positions (such as medical officers of health, environmental health officers and health protection officers); food and water safety; regular inspections for any nuisances, or any conditions likely to be injurious to health or offensive and, where necessary, secure their abatement or removal; make bylaws for the protection of public health; and provide reports on diseases and sanitary conditions within each district.
The population function under the Health Act of improving, promoting, and protecting public health means that how well the health ministry under Sonerson’s leadership performs directly affects the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders.
This is an immense responsibility that cannot be minimised.
Understanding universal health systems Universal health systems such as ours are characterised by being highly complex, adaptive and labour intensive and innovative (innovation primarily comes from its workforce). They provide a public good (rather than commodities) and their breadth is considerable.
But, despite appearances to the contrary, the different parts of this breadth don’t function separately from each other. They are not just interconnected; they are interdependent.
As a result, each part makes up a highly integrated system. Consequently, relationships are critical. The more relational the culture, the better the system will perform; the more contractual the culture, the poorer it will perform.
Galler’s experience-based above-mentioned observation needs to be seen in the context of the challenging nature of universal health systems.
In a wider discussion on health system leadership, Auckland surgeon Dr Erica Whineray Kelly got to the core of the issue very well: “You’d never have a conductor of an orchestra who’d never played an instrument.”
Audrey Sonerson comes into the director-general position with a deficit. It will help her performance if she first recognises that there are many unknowns for her and then proceeds to listen to those within the system who possess the experience of knowing well these unknowns.
It might go some way to alleviating the legitimate concerns of Galler and Whineray Kelly and many others.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes. This article was first published by Newsroom and is republished with permission.
Israel has been accused of “manipulation” and “cynical” circumvention of global decisions calling for unrestricted humanitarian aid access to the besieged Gaza enclave.
“In a clear act of defiance against international humanitarian obligations, the occupying state has permitted only nine aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip — covering both the devastated north and south,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.
“This paltry number of trucks represents a deliberate and cynical attempt to circumvent global decisions calling for unrestricted humanitarian access,” he said in a statement as Britain, France and Canada threatened Israel with sanctions and 22 other countries — including New Zealand — jointly condemned Israel over its siege.
“Under the guise of permitting aid, this token gesture is being used to claim compliance while continuing to suffocate more than two million Palestinians trapped under siege.
“It is a tactic designed to deflect international criticism and ease diplomatic pressure without meaningfully alleviating the catastrophic conditions faced by civilians.
“This is not aid — it is manipulation.”
Nazzal said the humanitarian crisis in Gaza demanded immediate, full, and unhindered access to food, water, medical supplies, and shelter for all areas of the Strip.
“The international community must see through these performative measures and act decisively,” he said.
“We call on governments, humanitarian agencies, and civil society around the world to intensify public and political pressure on the occupying state.
“It is imperative that world leaders hold it accountable for its ongoing violations and demand an end to the blockade, the siege, and these deceptive, life-threatening tactics.”
Every minute of delay cost lives, Nazzal said.
“Nine trucks are not enough. Gaza needs justice, not crumbs.”
UK, France and Canada threaten Israel with sanctions. Video: Al Jazeera
Time to expel ambassador
Letters to the editor in New Zealand newspapers have become increasingly critical of Israel’s war conduct and “atrocities”.
“The daily average number of those Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza is 90 plus, and the United Nations states that 70 percent are women and children,” she wrote.
“After 16 months of brutal onslaught, now including starvation, inside a walled enclave, isn’t it about time our government spoke up regarding this great atrocity of our time? At the very least, by demanding a ceasefire, applying sanctions and expelling the Israeli ambassador?
“That is the obvious route for a last-ditch attempt to be on ‘the right side of history’.”
In another letter, headed Standing by Helpless, Allan Bell or Torbay wrote:
“Countries stand by helpless as the Israelis bomb and shell Palestinians at will in Gaza.
“Rather than negotiate the peaceful return of the hostages, Israel has cynically used them to justify this slaughter.
“The use of starvation and destruction amounts to eradication and annihilation.
“We have protested through the United Nations (an organisation long ignored by the Israelis) to no effect. It’s time to send their ambassador home and close their embassy. A token gesture maybe, but at least we can say we did something.”
New Zealand has joined 22 other countries and the European Union in calling for Israel to allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza immediately.
The partners also said Israel must enable the United Nations and humanitarian organisations to work independently and impartially “to save lives, reduce suffering, and maintain dignity.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said yesterday New Zealand wanted the conflict finished “a long, long time ago”, and the situation was getting worse.
“We believe the excuse that Israel’s got has long since evaporated away, given the suffering that’s going on. Many countries share our view — that’s why overnight we put out the statement,” he said.
“As humanitarian donors, we have two straightforward messages for the government of Israel — allow a full resumption of aid into Gaza immediately, and enable the UN and humanitarian organisations to work independently and impartially to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters . . . “We believe the excuse that Israel’s got has long since evaporated.” Image: RNZ/ Reece Baker
The statement acknowledged a “limited restart” of aid, but said the UN and humanitarian partners did not support Israel’s proposed new model for delivering aid into Gaza.
“The UN has raised concerns that the proposed model cannot deliver aid effectively, at the speed and scale required. It places beneficiaries and aid workers at risk, undermines the role and independence of the UN and our trusted partners, and links humanitarian aid to political and military objectives.”
The statement also called for an immediate return to a ceasefire, and work towards the implementation of a two-state solution.
The partners reiterated a call for Hamas to immediately release all remaining hostages and allow humanitarian assistance to be distributed “without interference”.
The statement was signed by the foreign ministers of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
It was also signed by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, the EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management and the EU Commissioner for the Mediterranean.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the May 19, 2000, coup led by renegade businessman George Speight.
The deposed Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, says Speight’s motive had less to do with indigenous rights and a lot more to do with power, greed, and access to the millions likely to accrue from Fiji’s mahogany plantation.
On this day 25 years ago, the elected government was held hostage at the barrel of the gun, the Parliament complex started filling up with rebels supporting the takeover, Suva City and other areas in Fiji were looted and burnt, and innocent people were attacked just because of their race.
Chaudhry said indigenous emotions were “deliberately ignited to beat up support for the treasonous actions of the terrorists”.
He said the coup threw the nation into chaos from which it had not fully recovered even to this day.
Chaudhry said using George Speight as a frontman, the “real perpetrators” of the coup, assisted by a group of armed rebels from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), held Chaudhry and members of his government hostage for 56 days as they plundered, looted and terrorised the Indo-Fijian community in various parts of the country.
The Fiji Labour Party leader said that, as with current Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the first two coups in 1987, so with Speight in May 2000, that the given reason for the treason and the mayhem that followed was to “protect the rights and interests of the indigenous community”.
Chaudhry said today that it was widely acknowledged that the rights of the indigenous community was not endangered either in 1987 or in 2000.
He added that they were simply used to pursue personal and political agendas.
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka with former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry . . . apology accepted during the Girmit Day Thanksgiving and National Reconciliation church service at the Vodafone Arena in Suva. Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times
The FLP leader said those who benefitted were the elite in Fijian society, not ordinary people.
Chaudhry said this was obvious from current statistics which showed that currently the iTaukei surveyed made up 75 percent of those living in poverty.
He said poverty reports in the early 1990s showed practically a balance in the number of Fijians and Indo-Fijians living in poverty.
Prisoner George Speight speaking to inmates in 2011 . . . he and his rogue gunmen seized then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage in a 2000 crisis that lasted for 56 days. Image: Fijivillage News/YouTube screenshot
The former prime minister says it was obvious that the coups had done nothing to improve the quality of life of the ordinary indigenous iTaukei.
Instead, he said the coups had had a devastating impact on the entire socio-economic fabric of Fiji’s society, putting the nation decades behind in terms of development.
Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali reflects on the 2000 coup.
Chaudhry said the sorry state of Fiji today — “the suffering of our people and continued high rate of poverty, deteriorating health and education services, the failing infrastructure and weakened state of our economy” — were all indicators of how post-coup governments had failed to deliver on the expectations of the people.
He said: “It is time for us to rise above discredited notions of racism and fundamentalism and embrace progressive, liberal thinking.”
Chaudhry added that leaders needed to be judged on their vision and performance and not on their colour and creed.
Republished with permission from FijiVillage News.
2000 attempted coup leader George Speight with a bodyguard and supporters during the siege drama in May 2000. Image: Fijivillage News
Ali Kazak: born Haifa, 1947; died May 17 2025, Thailand
By Helen Musa in Canberra
Former Palestinian diplomat and long-time Canberra identity Ali Kazak died on Saturday en route to Palestine.
Sources at the Canberra Islamic Centre report that he was recovering from heart surgery and died during a stopover in Thailand.
Kazak was born in Haifa in 1947 and grew up in Syria as a Palestinian refugee. He and his mother were separated from his father when Israel was created in 1948 and Kazak was only reunited with his father in 1993.
In 1968, while at Damascus University, Kazak had been invited to join the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fateh) and joined its political wing.
He migrated to Australia in 1970 where he became the founder, publisher and co-editor of the Australian newspaper, Free Palestine, also authoring among many books, The Jerusalem Question and Australia and the Arabs.
Kazak was the driving force behind the establishment in 1981 of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and was appointed by the PLO executive committee as the PLO’s representative to Australia, NZ and the Pacific region.
In 1982, he established the Palestine Information Office, which was recognised by the Australian government in 1989 as the office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and then further recognised in 1994 as the General Palestinian Delegation.
As Palestinian Ambassador, Kazak initiated the establishment of the NSW State and Australian Federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, as well as the Victorian, South Australian and NZ Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.
Always a passionate advocate, in 1986 he became the first person to call for adjudication by the Australian Press Council of stereotyped reporting of Palestinians.
After retiring from diplomacy, he became the managing director of the consultancy company Southern Link International, but continued to comment on Palestinian affairs and Gaza.
American film star celebrity John Cusack, who describes himself on his x-page bio as an “apocalyptic shit-disturber”, has posted an open letter to the world denouncing the Israeli “mass murder” in Gaza and calling for “your outrage”.
While warning the public to “don’t stop talking about Palestine/Gaza”, he says that the “hollow ‘both sides’ rhetoric is complicity with power”.
“This is not a debate with two sides that can be normalised — and all the hired bullshit in print and on tv will never change the narrative,” he said.
Palestinian freelance photojournalist Fatma Hassouna . . . murdered in an Israeli air strike on after it was announced about her film on Gaza being screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Image: Fatma Hassouna
His statement comes as hundreds of directors, writers, actors have denounced Israeli genocide in Gaza and the film industry’s “silence,” “indifference” and “passivity” coinciding with the Cannes Film Festival.
More than 350 prominent directors, writers and actors signed an open letter condemning the genocide and the “official inaction” of the film industry in regard to the mass suffering.
The industry open letter was published on the first day of the Cannes festival. It began by calling attention to the fate of 25-year-old Fatma Hassouna, a Palestinian freelance photojournalist, who was murdered in an Israeli air strike on April 16.
She was assassinated after it was announced that Iranian director Sepideh Farsi’s film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, in which she Hassouna was the star, had been selected in the ACID parallel, independent film section of the festival.
“There is a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. Not a metaphor, not a tragedy in the abstract — a genocide. Carried out in real time, in front of satellites, smartphones, and sanitized press conferences. And what has the so-called “land of the free” done? Applauded. Armed. Rationalised. Looked away.
London protest: ‘No to another Nakba” Video: Al Jazeera
“The blood in Gaza does not just stain the hands of those launching the missiles. It stains every hand that signs off on the bombs, every hand that wrings itself in liberal anguish but does nothing, and every hand that beats its chest in right-wing bloodlust cheering it all on.
“The American far right sees in this mass killing a projection of its own fantasies — walls, camps, and the unrelenting dehumanisation of the “other.” No surprise there. And where are the liberals? Their silence is violence. Their hollow “both sides” rhetoric is complicity with power. And mass murder. And the machine of empire—greased with our taxes, shielded by our media, and excused by our moral debauchery . How’s everybody at the Met gala doing tonight ?
American actor John Cusack . . . “If you claim to care about justice – if you ever marched, ever lit a candle for any cause – then your voice should be raised now.” Image: Wikipedia
“If you claim to care about justice — if you ever marched, ever lit a candle for any cause — then your voice should be raised now. Or it means nothing. The children of Gaza do not need your sorrow. They need your outrage. Your pressure. Your courage.
“End the siege. End the weapons shipments. End the lies. Call this what it is: a genocide.
“And if your politics cannot confront that—then your politics are worthless.
“In furious solidarity
“John Cusack”
Here’s a template –
To Whom It May Still Concern,
There is a genocide unfolding before our eyes in Gaza. Not a metaphor, not a tragedy in the abstract—a genocide. Carried out in real time, in front of satellites, smartphones, and sanitized press conferences. And what has the…
Environmentalists in the Cook Islands have criticised former Prime Minister and Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) head Henry Puna for joining the board of a deep sea mining company.
Puna, who finished his term as PIF secretary-general in May last year, played a pivotal part in the creation of multi-use marine park, Marae Moana, in 2017.
The marine protected area extends over the entire country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), covering an area roughly the size of Mexico.
It prohibits large-scale commercial fishing and seabed mining within 50 nautical miles of each of the 15 islands.
Puna has now joined the board of deep sea mining company Cobalt Seabed Resources (CSR) — a joint venture between the Cook Islands government and the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources.
CSR is currently undertaking exploration in the Cook Islands EEZ, along with two other companies. It also has an exploration licence in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, located in the high seas in the central Pacific Ocean.
Environmental advocates say Puna’s new role conflicts with his conservation work.
Simultaneously pushing for Marae Moana The Te Ipukarea Society said Puna was interested in the deep sea mining industry while simultaneously pushing for the creation of Marae Moana during his time as Prime Minister.
“It is something to be wary about with his new role and maybe how he will go about green washing how the deep sea mining company operates within our waters and their actions,” the environmental charity’s director Alana Smith said.
While in Parliament, Puna was an MP for the Northern Group atoll Manihiki.
Manihiki resident Jean-Marie Williams said Puna was a good man
However, Williams believes the benefits of deep sea mining will not be seen on his island.
“We could make money out of it,” he said. “But who’s going to make money out of it? Definitely not the people of Manihiki.
“The corporat[ions] will make money out of it.”
‘First to know’
However, William Numanga, who previously worked for Puna as a policy analyst, does not view it like that.
“Remember, Henry lives on an atoll, up north, so if there is any effect on the environment, he would be first to know,” Numanga said.
“I do not think he will be putting aside a lot of the environmental concerns or challenges. He will be making sure that those environmental concerns are factored into this development process,” he added.
Henry Puna ended his term as the PIF secretary general in May 2024 . . . a “passion for environmental protection”. Image: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon
He believes Puna’s “passion for environmental protection”, coupled with his desire for economic development, makes him a good fit for the role.
Auckland doctoral student Liam Koka’ua said the company, which has the aim of extracting valuable minerals from the seabed, went against the purpose of Marae Moana.
“If you truly believe Marae Moana is a place that must be protected at all costs and protected for our sustained livelihood and future and be protected for generations to come, then I don’t think rushing into an experimental industry that could potentially have huge impacts is aligned with those intentions,” Koka’ua said.
RNZ Pacific has made multiple attempts to reach Puna for comment, but has yet to receive a response.
However, in a statement, he said CSR was “uniquely placed to make advances for the people of the Cook Islands”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This story discusses graphic details of slavery, sexual abuse and violence
Pacific children as young as six are being adopted overseas and being made to work as house slaves, suffering threats, beatings and rape.
Kris Teikamata — a social worker at a community agency — spoke about the harrowing cases she encountered in her work, from 2019 to 2024, with children who had escaped their abusers in Auckland and Wellington.
“They’re incredibly traumatised because it’s years and years and years of physical abuse, physical labour and and a lot of the time, sexual abuse, either by the siblings or other family members,” she said.
“They were definitely threatened, they were definitely coerced and they had no freedom.
“When I met each girl, [by then] 17, 18, 19 years old, it was like meeting a 50-year-old. The light had gone out of their eyes. They were just really withdrawn and shut down.”
In one case a church minister raped his adopted daughter and got her pregnant.
Teikamata and her team helped 10 Samoan teenagers who had managed to escape their homes, and slavery — two boys and eight girls — with health, housing and counselling. She fears they are the tip of the iceberg, and that many remain under lock and key.
“They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t — they had promised them a better life over here, an education and citizenship.
Social worker Kris Teikamata . . . “They were brought over as a child or a teenager, sometimes they knew the family in Samoa, sometimes they didn’t .” Image: RNZ Pacific
“When they arrived they would generally always be put into slavery. They would have to get up at 5, 6 in the morning, start cleaning, start breakfast, do the washing, then go to school and then after school again do cleaning and dinner and the chores — and do that everyday until a certain age, until they were workable.
“Then they were sent out to factories in Auckland or Wellington and their bank account was taken away from them and their Eftpos card. They were given $20 a week.
“From the age of 16 they were put to work. And they were also not allowed to have a phone — most of them had no contact with family back in Samoa.”
‘A thousand kids a year… and it’s still going on’ Nothing stopped the abusive families from being able to adopt again and they did, she said.
A recent briefing to ministers reiterated that New Zealanders with criminal histories or significant child welfare records have used overseas courts to approve adoptions, which were recognised under New Zealand law without further checks.
“When I delved more into it, I just found out that it was a very easy process to adopt from Samoa,” she said.
“There’s no checks, it’s a very easy process. So about a thousand kids [a year] are today being adopted from Samoa. It’s such a high number — whereas other countries have checks or very robust systems. And it’s still going on.”
As children, they could not play with friends and all of their movements were controlled.
Oranga Tamariki uplifted younger children, who were sometimes siblings of older children who had escaped.
“The ones that I met had escaped and found a friend or were homeless or had reached out to the police.”
Loving families
When they were reunited with their birth parents on video calls, it was clear they came from loving families who had been deceived, she said.
While some adoptive parents faced court for assault, only one has been prosecuted for trafficking.
Government, police and Oranga Tamariki were aware and in talks with the Samoan government, she said.
Adoption Action member and researcher Anne Else said several opportunities to overhaul the 70-year-old Adoption Act had been thwarted, and the whole legislation needed ripping up.
“The entire law needs to be redone, it dates back to 1955 for goodness sake,” she said.
“But there’s a big difference between understanding how badly and urgently the law needs changing and actually getting it done.
“Oranga Tamariki are trying, I know, to work with for example Tonga to try and make sure that their law is a bit more conformant with ours, and ensure there are more checks done to avoid these exploitative cases.”
Sold for adoption
Children from other countries had been sold for adoption, she said, and the adoption rules depended on which country they came from. Even the Hague Convention, which is supposed to provide safeguards between countries, was no guarantee.
Immigration minister Erica Stanford said other ministers were looking at what could be done to crack down on trafficking through international adoption.
“If there are non-genuine adoptions and and potential trafficking, we need to get on top of that,” she sad.
“It falls outside of the legislation that I am responsible for, but there are other ministers who have it on their radars because we’re all worried about it. I’ve read a recent report on it and it was pretty horrifying. So it is being looked at.”
A meeting was held between New Zealand and Samoan authorities in March. A summary of discussions said it focused on aligning policies, information sharing, and “culturally grounded frameworks” that uphold the rights, identity, and wellbeing of children, following earlier work in 2018 and 2021.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia has launched the world’s first UN Police Peacekeeping Training course tailored specifically for the Pacific region.
The five-week programme, hosted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), is underway at the state-of-the-art Pacific Policing Development and Coordination Hub in Pinkenba, Brisbane.
AFP said “a landmark step” was developed in partnership with the United Nations, and brings together 100 police officers for training.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Lesa Gale said the programme was the result of a long-standing, productive relationship between Australia and the United Nations.
Gale said it was launched in response to growing regional ambitions to contribute more actively to international peacekeeping efforts.
Participating nations are Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
“This course supports your enduring contribution and commitment to UN missions in supporting global peace and security efforts,” AFP Northern Command acting assistant commissioner Caroline Taylor said.
Pacific Command commander Phillippa Connel said the AFP had been in peacekeeping for more than four decades “and it is wonderful to be asked to undertake what is a first for the United Nations”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
About 2000 New Zealand protesters marched through the heart of Auckland city today chanting “no justice, no peace” and many other calls as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli atrocities in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis with the Strip on the brink of a devastating famine.
Israel’s attacks killed more than 150 and wounded 450 in a day in a new barrage of attacks that aid workers described as “Gaza is bleeding before our eyes”.
in Auckland, several Palestinian and other speakers spoke of the anguish and distress of the global Gaza community in the face of Western indifference to the suffering in a rally before the march marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the “Palestinian catastrophe”.
“There are cracks opening up all around the world that haven’t been there for 77 years,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto in an inspired speech to the protesters.
“We’ve got politicians in Britain speaking out for the first time. Some conservative politician got standing up the other day saying, ‘I supported Israel right or wrong for 20 years, and I was wrong.’
‘The world is coming right’
“Yet a lot of the world has been wrong for 77 years, but the world is coming right. We are on the right side of history, give us a big round of applause.”
Minto was highly critical of the public broadcasters, Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand, saying they relied too heavily on a narrow range of Western sources whose credibility had been challenged and eroded over the past 19 months.
PSNA co-chair John Minto . . . .capturing an image of the march up Auckland’s Queen Street in protest over the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Image: APR
He also condemned their “proximity” news value, blaming it for news editors’ lapse of judgment on news values because Israelis “spoke English”.
Minto told the crowd that that they should be monitoring Al Jazeera for a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the war on Palestine.
His comments echoed a similar theme of a speech at the Fickling Centre in Three Kings on Thursday night and protesters followed up by picketing the NZ Voyager Media Awards last night with a light show of killed Gazan journalists beamed on the hotel venue.
Protesters at the NZ Voyager Media Awards protesting last night against unbalanced media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Image: Achmat Eesau/PSNA
About 230 Gazan journalists have been killed in the war so far, many of them allegedly targeted by the Israeli forces.
Minto said he could not remember a previous time when a New Zealand government had remained silent in the face of industrial-scale killing of civilians anywhere in the world.
“We have livestreamed genocide happening and we have our government refusing to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes,” he said.
NZ ‘refusing to condemn war crimes’
“Yet we’ve got everybody in the leadership of this government having condemned every act of Palestinian resistance yet refused to condemn the war crimes, refused to condemn the bombing of civilians, and refused to condemn the mass starvation of 2.3 million people.
“What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them.”
Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha . . . “Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit.” A golden key symbolising the right of return for Palestinians is in the background. Image: APR
Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha spoke of the 1948 Nakba and the injustices against his people.
“Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit. The only rights you have are the ones you take,” he said.
“So today we won’t stand here to plead, we are here to remind you of what happened to us. We are here to take what is ours. Today, and every day, we fight for a free Palestine.”
Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki . . . a harrowing story about a massacre village. Image: Bruce King survivor
and he told a harrowing story from his homeland. As a 14-year-old boy, he and his family were driven out of Palestine during the Nakba.
He described “waking up to to the smell of gunpowder” — his home was close to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when Zionist militias attacked the village killing 107 people, including women and children.
‘Palestine will be free – and so will we’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “What we stand for is truth, justice, peace and love.
“Palestine will be free and, in turn, so will we.”
Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the integrated food security agency IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September, reports Al Jazeera.
The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.
Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.
“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.
“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.
“This horror must stop.”
“The coloniser lied” . . . a placard in today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: APR
Famine worst level of hunger
Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.
According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:
At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages;
More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and
At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.
Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.
“Stop Genocide in Gaza” . . . the start of the rally with PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal on the right. Image: APR
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Fiji’s coalition government are “detached from the values that Fijians hold dear”, says the NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR).
The rights coalition has expressed deep concern over Rabuka’s ongoing engagements with Indonesia.
“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment. We must not stay silent when Pacific people are being occupied and killed,” said NGOCHR chair Shamima Ali.
“Is Fiji’s continuing silence on West Papua yet another example of being muzzled by purse strings?”
“As members of the Melanesian and Pacific family, bound by shared ancestry and identity, the acceptance of financial and any other benefit from Indonesia—while remaining silent on the plight of West Papua—is a betrayal of our family member and of regional solidarity.”
“True leadership must be rooted in solidarity, justice, and accountability,” Ali said.
“It is imperative that Pacific leaders not only advocate for peace and cooperation in the region but also continue to hold Indonesia to account on ongoing human rights violations in West Papua.”
At this year’s May graduation ceremony, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University’s Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban, was awarded an honorary doctorate in recognition for her contribution to education.
Although she has now stepped down from the role, Luamanuvao served as the university’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor, Pasifika, for 14 years. In that time has worked tirelessly to raise Pasifika students’ achievement.
“It’s really important that they [Pasifika students] make the most of the opportunities that education has to offer,” she said.
“Secondly, education teaches you how to write, to research, to critique, but more importantly, become an informed voice and considering what’s happening in society now with AI and also technology and social media, it’s really important that we can tell our stories and share our values, and we counter that by receiving a good education and applying ourselves to do well.”
When asked about the importance of service, Luamanuvao explained “there’s a saying in Samoan, ‘o le ala i le pule o le tautua’ so the road to authority and leadership is through service”.
“And we’ve always been taught how important it is not to indulge in our own individual success, but to always become a voice and support our brothers and sisters, and our families and in our communities who are especially struggling.”
Juliana Faataualofa Lafaialii, Samoa’s Deputy Head of Mission/Counsellor to NZ (from left); Philippa Toleafoa; Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban; Afamasaga Faamatalaupu Toleafoa, Samoa’s High Commissioner to NZ; and Labour MP Pesetatamalelagi Barbara Edmonds . Image: Pesetatamalelagi Barbara Edmonds/RNZ Pacific
As she accepted her honorary doctorate, she spoke about the importance of women taking on leadership roles.
‘Our powerful women’
“Yes, many Pacific people will know how powerful our women are, especially our mothers, our grandmothers, and great grandmothers. We actually come from cultures of very powerful and very strong women . . . it’s not centered in the individual women. It’s centered on the well-being of our families, and our communities. And that’s what women leadership is all about in the Pacific.”
She did not expect the honourary doctorate from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University because “I’ve always been aspirational for others. And we Pacific people have been brought up that we are the people of the ‘we’ and not the me.”
The number of Pasifika students enrolled at the University, during Luamanuvao’s time as Assistant Vice-Chancellor, increased from 4.70 percent in 2010 to 6.64 pecent in 2024. She said she “would have loved to have doubled that number” so that it was more in line with the number of Pasifika people living in New Zealand.
Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban and supporters during an International Women’s day event in Wellington. Image: RNZ Pacific
Two of the initiatives she started, during her time at the University, was the Pasifika Roadshow taking information about university life out to the wider community and the Improving Pasifika Legal Education Project.
Helping Pasifika Law students succeed was very important to her. While Pasifika make up make up only 3 percent of Lawyers, they are overrepresented in the legal system, comprising 12 percent of the prison population.
Another passion of hers was encouraging Pasifika to enter academia. “I think we’ve had an increase in Pacific academics in some areas. For example, with the Faculty of Law, we’ve got two senior Pacific women in lecturer positions . . . We’ve also got four associate professors, and now I’ve finished, there’s also a vacancy for another.”
Prior to her work in education Luamanuvao was the first Pasifika woman to enter New Zealand politics, in 1999.
First Pacific woman MP
“I was fortunate that when I ran for Parliament, I ran first as a list MP, and as you know, within the parties, they have selection process that are quite robust, and so I became the first Pacific woman MP.”
“What motivated me was the car parts factory that closed in Wainuiomata, and most of the workers were men, but they were also Pacific, Māori and palagi, who basically arrived at work one morning and were told the factory was closing.”
“But what really hit me, and hurt me, that these were not the values of Aotearoa. They’re not the values of our Pacific region. These are human beings, and for many men, particularly, to have a job, it’s about providing for your family. It’s about status.
“So, if factories were going to close down, where was the planning to upskill them so they could continue in employment? None of them wanted to go for the unemployment benefit.
“They wanted to continue in paid work. So it’s those milestones that I make it worthwhile. It’s just a pity, because election cycles are three years, and as you know, people will vote how they want to vote, and if there’s a change, all the hard work you’ve put in gets reversed and but fundamentally, I believe that New Zealand and Pacific people have wonderful values that all of us try to live by, and that will continue to feed the light and ensure that people have a choice.”
Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban PhD and her husband Dr Peter Swain. Image: Trudy Logologo/RNZ Pacific
Although she first entered Parliament as a list MP, she subsequently won the Mana electorate seat. She retained the seat ,for the Labour party, from 2002 until she stepped away from politics in 2010.
During that time she was Minister of Pacific Peoples, 2007-2008, and even though Labour was defeated in the 2008 election, she continued to hold the Mana seat by a comfortable margin.
Mentoring many MPs
Although she has left political life, Luamanuvao has also been involved in mentoring many Pasifika Members of Parliament, and helping them cope with the challenges and opportunities that go with the role.
One of the primary motivators in her life has been the struggles of her parents, who left Samoa in 1954 to build a better future for their children, in New Zealand. She acknowledged that all of her successes can be attributed to her parents and the sacrifices they made.
“Yes, well, I think everybody can look at a genealogy of history of families leaving their homeland to come to Aotearoa, why, to build a better life and opportunities, including education for their children.
“And I often remind our generation of young people now that your parents left their home, for you. And I’ve often reflected because my parents have passed away on the pain of leaving their parents, but there was always this loving generosity in that both my parents were the eldest of huge families.
“They left everything for them, and actually arrived in New Zealand with very little. But there was this determination to succeed.
“Secondly, they are a minority in a country where they’re not the majority, or they are the indigenous people of their country. So also, overcoming those barriers, their hard work, their dreams, but more importantly, the huge love for our communities and fairness and justice was installed in Ken and I my brother, from a very young age, about serving and about giving and about reciprocity.”
Although she has left her role in tertiary education Luamanuvao vows to continue working to support the next generation of Pasifika leaders, in New Zealand and around the Pacific region.
Sadly, this highlights RNZ’s failure to report the genocide from the perspective of the very real victims — more journalists killed in Gaza than the whole of World War Two, aid workers murdered and buried, 17,000 children, including babies, who will never ever grow.
I respect so many RNZ journalists and have always supported this important national broadcaster but it is time for it to pull up its pants, ditch the propaganda and report from the field of truth.
I carry my Jewish ancestors in standing against genocide and calling for reports that show the truth of the travesty.
For reporting on protests I have been pepper sprayed by thugged-up police donning US-style gloves and glasses (illegally carrying pepper spray and tasers).
I was banned from my own town hall when I tried — with my E Tu press card — to attend the deputy leader Winston Peters’ media conference.
This government does not want the truth reported, it seems.
I have reported from the fields of invasion and conflict. I’ve taught journalism and communications. Good journalists remember journalism ethics. Reports from the point of view of the oppressor support the oppressor.
Humanitarianism means not reporting from the perspective of a mercenary army — an army that has been enforcing apartheid for decades, and which is invoking a policy of extermination for expansion.
Please read this media review and think of how you would feel if someone demanded that you leave your home. Palestinians have faced oppression and apartheid and “unhoming” for decades.
Think of the intolerable weight of grief you would carry if a sniper put a bullet between the eyes of a child you love and know.
Report on the victims. And stop subscribing to propaganda.
Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). She is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This was first published as a social media post.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
West Papuans in Merauke claim the Indonesian government is stealing land to build its global “food barn” and feed its population of 280 million.
Indonesia denies this and says all transactions are lawful.
President Prabowo Subianto’s administration wants Indonesia to be able to feed its population without imports as early as 2028, with the greater goal of exporting food.
To get there, Indonesia plans to convert millions of hectares into farmland.
Wensi Fatubun, from Merauke in Indonesian-occupied Papua close to Papua New Guinea’s border, said forests where he grew up were being cleared.
“[The] Indonesian government took the land for the [food] security project, it was not consulted with or consented to by Indigenous Papuans,” Fatubun said.
Prabowo’s goal is a continuation of his predecessors.
National food estate project
In 2020, President Joko Widodo announced the establishment of a national food estate project which aimed at opening up new areas of farmland outside the Java main island,
It is similar to the failed Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate, spearheaded by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2010.
About 1.3 million hectares were set aside in Merauke for it — half for food crops, 30 percent sugar cane, and 20 percent for palm.
A report from the US Department of Agriculture said it encountered resistance from locals and legal challenges.
“Approximately 90 percent of the targeted areas were forest, which provided a source of livelihood for many locals. Accordingly, the development plans became a flashpoint for local activists concerned about environmental and biodiversity impacts,” the report said.
Probowo’s government has a more ambitious goal of opening up 3 million ha of agricultural land in Merauke — two million for rice and one million for sugarcane.
Human Rights Watch Indonesia researcher Andreas Harsono said President Prabowo had elevated the “so-called food security issue”.
“[The President] wants Merauke in West Papua to be the so-called national food barn. This deforestation land grabbing is much more deeper in Merauke than in the past.”
Conflict has escalated
Harsono said conflict had escalated in West Papua and was now on par with some of the most violent periods in the past 60 years, but he was not sure if it was connected to the President’s focus on food security.
BenarNews reported that about 2000 troops had been deployed late last year in Merauke to provide security at a 2 million ha food plantation.
Rosa Moiwend, from Merauke, said the soldiers worked alongside farmers.
“They are expected to teach local farmers how to use mechanical agriculture equipment,” Moiwend said.
“But as West Papuan people, the presence of the military in the middle of the community, watching communities activities, people’s movement when they travel from one place to another, actually creates fear among the people in Merauke.”
Like Harsono and Fatubun, Moiwend said “land grabs” were happening.
However, she said it still involved a land broker, which created a facade of a fair procedure.
‘We do not sell land’
“Indigenous Merauke, indigenous Marind people like myself and my people, we do not sell land because land belongs to the community. It is communal land.”
However, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s Embassy in Wellington said all processes and steps involving land sales had been lawful, “always respecting the inclinations of local tribes”.
“Its development always involving local authorities, especially chief tribes for the consent of their ulayat (traditional land),” they said.
“There is no land grab without consent, and the government also working on the biodiversity conservation and forestry production to create space harmonisation model with Conservation International, Medco Group, and couple of other independent organisations.”
Former Green Party MP now West Papuan campaigner Catherine Delahunty . . . New Zealand and Australia are failing the citizens of West Papua. Image: Johnny Blades/VNP
‘They are stripping communities’ – campaigner West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty, formerly a Green Party MP, said the region was part of the lungs of the Pacific, which was now being destroyed.
“The plan has been around for a long time but it seems to have escalated under Prabowo,” Delahunty said.
“They are stripping those lands and stripping those communities who live there from their traditional foods such as the sago palm to turn the whole of Merauke into sugar cane, rice and palm plantations.
“The effects have been massive and they’re just getting worse.”
She said New Zealand and Australia — the two “most powerful” governments in the South Pacific — were failing in their obligations to the citizens of West Papua.
“You could almost justify, because it’s a long way away from other parts of the world, that Europe and the northern hemisphere don’t really understand West Papua but there’s no excuse for us.
“These people are in our region but they’re not white people. I think there’s a huge element of racism towards Papuans and towards Pacific nations who aren’t perceived as important in the Western worldview.”
She said there was willingness to trade with Indonesia as a regional powerhouse, and New Zealand did not want to rock the boat.
That coupled with a media blackout made it easy for Indonesia to act with impunity, Delahunty said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Media Council of Papua New Guinea (MCPNG) has called on Prime Minister James Marape to stop Telikom PNG silencing and suppressing media personnel.
Telikom PNG, which is 100 percent government-owned, has two key outlets: FM100 radio and EMTV.
Recently, it sacked FM100 talkback host Culligan Tanda after he featured opposition East Sepik Governor Allan Bird on his show, following the most recent vote of no confidence.
Local media report that Tanda was initially suspended for three weeks without pay on April 22, and subsequently terminated.
MCPNG president Neville Choi said this was just the latest example of media suppression by Telikom PNG going back to 2018.
He said that he himself was sacked in 2019 after EMTV had run a story quoting the former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying she would not be riding in one of the PNG government’s luxury Maseratis during an APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting in Port Moresby.
Choi said the story, though correct, was perceived as painting the government of the day in a “negative light”.
‘Free, robust media essential’
He said a “free, robust, and independent media is an essential pillar of democracy”.
“It is the cornerstone of allowing freedom of speech, and freedom of expression.
“Being in a position of power and authority gives no one, especially brown-nosing public servants wanting to score brownie points with the sitting government administration, the right to suppress media workers who are only doing their jobs, and doing it well,” he said.
The council also reminded the management’s of state-owned media organisations, that the Organic Law on the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) defined corrupt conduct by public officials and the dishonest exercising and abuse of official functions.
According to a PNG Haus Bung report, Marape has directed his chief of staff to get to the bottom of the issue.
The iconic Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warriorwill return to Aotearoa this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original campaign ship at Marsden Wharf in Auckland by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
The return to Aotearoa comes at a pivotal moment — when the fight to protect our planet’s fragile life-support systems has never been as urgent, or more critical.
Here in Aotearoa, the Luxon government is waging an all-out war on nature, and on a planetary scale, climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Dr Russel Norman . . . “Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective.” Image: Greenpeace
As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French government’s military programme and colonial power.
It’s also critical to remember that they failed to stop us. They failed to intimidate us, and they failed to silence us. Greenpeace only grew stronger and continued the successful campaign against nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Forty years later, it’s the oil industry that’s trying to stop us. This time, not with bombs but with a legal attack that threatens the existence of Greenpeace in the US and beyond.
We will not be intimidated
But just like in 1985 when the French bombed our ship, now too in 2025, we will not be intimidated, we will not back down, and we will not be silenced.
We cannot be silenced because we are a movement of people committed to peace and to protecting Earth’s ability to sustain life, protecting the blue oceans, the forests and the life we share this planet with,” says Norman.
In the 40 years since, the Rainbow Warrior has sailed on the front lines of our campaigns around the world to protect nature and promote peace. In the fight to end oil exploration, turn the tide of plastic production, stop the destruction of ancient forests and protect the ocean, the Rainbow Warrior has been there to this day.
Right now the Rainbow Warrior is preparing to sail through the Tasman Sea to expose the damage being done to ocean life, continuing a decades-long tradition of defending ocean health.
This follows the Rainbow Warrior spending six weeks in the Marshall Islands where the original ship carried out Operation Exodus, in which the Greenpeace crew evacuated the people of Rongelap from their home island that had been made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
In Auckland this year, several events will be held on and around the ship to mark the anniversary, including open days with tours of the ship for the public.
The iconic Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warriorwill return to Aotearoa this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original campaign ship at Marsden Wharf in Auckland by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
The return to Aotearoa comes at a pivotal moment — when the fight to protect our planet’s fragile life-support systems has never been as urgent, or more critical.
Here in Aotearoa, the Luxon government is waging an all-out war on nature, and on a planetary scale, climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Dr Russel Norman . . . “Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective.” Image: Greenpeace
As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French government’s military programme and colonial power.
It’s also critical to remember that they failed to stop us. They failed to intimidate us, and they failed to silence us. Greenpeace only grew stronger and continued the successful campaign against nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Forty years later, it’s the oil industry that’s trying to stop us. This time, not with bombs but with a legal attack that threatens the existence of Greenpeace in the US and beyond.
We will not be intimidated
But just like in 1985 when the French bombed our ship, now too in 2025, we will not be intimidated, we will not back down, and we will not be silenced.
We cannot be silenced because we are a movement of people committed to peace and to protecting Earth’s ability to sustain life, protecting the blue oceans, the forests and the life we share this planet with,” says Norman.
In the 40 years since, the Rainbow Warrior has sailed on the front lines of our campaigns around the world to protect nature and promote peace. In the fight to end oil exploration, turn the tide of plastic production, stop the destruction of ancient forests and protect the ocean, the Rainbow Warrior has been there to this day.
Right now the Rainbow Warrior is preparing to sail through the Tasman Sea to expose the damage being done to ocean life, continuing a decades-long tradition of defending ocean health.
This follows the Rainbow Warrior spending six weeks in the Marshall Islands where the original ship carried out Operation Exodus, in which the Greenpeace crew evacuated the people of Rongelap from their home island that had been made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
In Auckland this year, several events will be held on and around the ship to mark the anniversary, including open days with tours of the ship for the public.
That date in 1987 is also the date of the first military coup in Fiji.
More than 60,000 men, women and children were brought to Fiji under an oppressive system of bonded labour between 1879 and 1916.
Today, Indo-Fijians make up 33 percent of the population.
While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under “Indian” and “Asian” on the Stats NZ website.
Lasting impact on Fiji
The Fiji Centre’s Nik Naidu, who is also a co-founder of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, said that he understood Fiji was the only country in the Pacific where the British implemented the indentured system.
“It is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery,” he said.
“The positive was that the Fiji Indian community made a lasting impact on Fiji.
“They continue to be around 30 percent of the population in Fiji, and I think significantly in Aotearoa, through the migration, the numbers are, according to the community, over 100,000 in New Zealand.”
Fiji Centre co-founder Nikhil Naidu . . . Girmit Day “is also a sad legacy and a sad story because it was basically slavery.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“His basic argument was, well, ethnographically, Fijian Indians do not fit the profile of Pacific Islanders,” he said.
Then-minister Aupito William Sio said in 2021 that, while he understood the group’s concerns, the classification for Fijian Indians was in line with an ethnographic profile which included people with a common language, customs and traditions.
Aupito said that profile was different from indigenous Pacific peoples.
StatsNZ and ethnicity
“StatsNZ recognises ethnicity as the ethnic group or groups a person self-identifies with or has a sense of belonging to,” Aupito said in a letter at the time.
It is not the same as race, ancestry, nationality, citizenship or even place of birth, he said.
“They have identified themselves now that the system of government has not acknowledged them.
“Those conversations have to be ongoing to figure out how do we capture the data of who they are as Fijian Indians or to develop policies around that to support their aspirations.”
Girmitiyas – Indentured labourers – in Fiji . . . shedding light on the harsh colonial past in Fiji. Image: RNZ Pacific/Fiji Girmit Foundation
Naidu believes the ethnographic argument was a misunderstanding of the request.
“The request is not to say, like Chinese in Samoa, they are not indigenous to Samoa, but they are Samoans, and they are Pacific Chinese.
“So there is the same thing with Fijian Indians. They are not wanting to be indigenous.
Different from mainland Indians
“They do want to be recognised as separate Indians in the Pacific because they are very different from the mainland Indians.
“In fact, most probably 99 percent of Fijian Indians have never been to India and have no affiliations to India because during the Girmit they lost all connections with their families.”
However, Naidu told Pacific Waves the community was not giving up.
“There was a human rights complaint made — again that did not progress in the favour of the Fijian Indians.
“Currently from . . . Fiji Centre’s perspective, we are still pursuing that.
“We have also had a discussion with Stats NZ about the numbers and trying to ascertain just why they have not managed to put a separate category, so that we can look at the number of Fijian Indians and also relative to Pacific Islanders.”
Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told RNZ Pacific that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.
In a statement, his office said: “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is undertaking ongoing policy work to better understand this issue.”
Meanwhile, the University of Fiji’s vice-chancellor is asking the Australian and British governments to consider paying reparation for the exploitation of the indentured labourers more than a century ago.
Professor Shaista Shameem told the ABC that they endured harsh conditions, with long hours, social restrictions and low wages.
She said the Australian government and the Colonial Sugar Refinery of Australia benefitted the most financially and it was time the descendants were compensated.
While some community leaders have been calling for reparation, Naidu said there were other issues that needed attention.
He said it had been an ongoing discussion for many decades.
“It is a very challenging one, because where do you draw the line? And it is a global problem, the indenture system. It is not just unique to Fiji.
“Personally, yes, I think that is a great idea. Practically, I am not sure if it is feasible and possible.”
Focus on what unites, says Rabuka Fiji is on a path for reconciliation, with leaders from across the political spectrum signing a Forward Fiji Declaration in 2023, hoping to usher in a new era of understanding between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians.
Rabuka announced a public holiday to commemorate Girmit Day in 2023.
In his Girmit Day message this year, Rabuka said his government was dedicated to bringing unity and reconciliation between all races living in Fiji.
“We all know that Fiji has had a troubled past, as it was natural that conflicts would arise when a new group of people would come into another’s space,” he said.
“This is precisely what transpired when the Indians began to live or decided to live as permanent citizens.
“There was distrust as the two groups were not used to living together during the colonial days. Indigenous Fijians did not have a say in why, and how many should come and how they should be settled here. Fiji was not given a time to transit.
“The policy of indenture labour system was dumped on us. Naturally this led to tensions and misunderstandings, reasons that fuelled conflicts that followed after Fiji gained independence.”
He said 146 years later, Fijians should focus on what unites rather than what divides them.
“We have together long enough to know that unity and peace will lead us to a good future.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An escape of a 13-year-old girl from a hostage crisis on the border of Papua New Guinea’s Western and Hela provinces has boosted hopes for the rescue of her fellow captives.
The group of 10 people was taken captive early on Monday morning at Adujmari.
PNG Police Commissioner David Manning has called the perpetrators “domestic terrorists” and warned that officers were able to use lethal force if needed to secure the release of the hostages.
This year’s theme is, ‘Åf’ạkia ma rak’ạkia ‘os fäega ma ag fak Rotuma – tēfakhanisit Gagaja nā se ‘äe ma’, which translates to, ‘Treasure & teach our Rotuman language and culture — A gift given to you and I by God’.
With fewer than 1000 residents identifying as Rotuman, it is the younger generation stepping up to preserve their endangered language.
Two young people, who migrated to New Zealand from Rotuma Island, are using dance to stay connected with their culture from the tiny island almost 500km northwest of Fiji’s capital, Suva, which they proudly call home.
Kapieri Samisoni and Tristan Petueli, both born in Fiji and raised on Rotuma, now reside in Auckland.
Cultural guardians
They are leading a new wave of cultural guardians who use dance, music, and storytelling to stay rooted in their heritage and to pass it on to future generations.
“A lot of people get confused that they think Rotuma is in Fiji but Rotuma is just outside of Fiji,” Samisoni told RNZ Pacific Waves.
Rotuman Language Week. Video: RNZ Pacific
“We have our own culture, our own tradition, our own language.”
“When I moved to New Zealand, I would always say I am Fijian because that was easier for people to understand. But nowadays, I say I am Rotuman.
“A lot of people are starting to understand and realise . . . they know what Rotuma is and where Rotuma is, so it is nice saying that I am Rotuman,” he said.
Samisoni moved to New Zealand in 2007 when he was 11 years old with his parents and siblings.
He said dancing has become a powerful way to express his identity and honour the traditions of his homeland.
Learning more
“Moving away from Fiji and being so far away from the language, I think I took it for granted. But now that I am here in New Zealand, I want to learn more about my culture.
“With dance and music, that is the way of for me to keep the culture alive. It is also a good way to learn the language as well.”
For Petueli, the connection runs deep through performance and rhythm after having moved here in 2019, just before the covid-19 pandemic.
“It is quite difficult living in Aotearoa, where I cannot use the language as much in my day to day life,” Petueli said.
“The only time I get to do that is when I am on the phone with my parents back home, or when I am reading the Rotuman Bible and that kind of keeps me connected to my culture,” he said.
He added he definitely felt connected whenever he was dancing.
“Growing up, I learnt our traditional dances at a very young age.
Blessed and grateful
“My parents were always involved in the culture. They were also purotu, which is the choreographers and composers for our traditional dances. So, I was blessed and grateful to have that with me growing up, and I still have that with me today,” he said.
Celebrations of Rotuman Language Week first began as grassroots efforts in 2018, led by groups like the Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group Inc before receiving official support from the Ministry for Pacific Peoples in 2020.
Interview with Fesaitu Solomone. Video: RNZ Pacific
The Centre for Pacific Languages chief executive Fesaitu Solomone said young people played a critical role in this movement — but they don’t have to do it alone.
“Be not afraid to speak the language even if you make mistakes,” she said.
“Get together [and] look for people who can support you in terms of the language. We have our knowledge holders, your community, your church, your family.
“Reach out to anyone you know who can support you and create a safe environment for you to learn our Pasifika languages.”
Loved music and dance
She said one of the things that young people loved was music and dance and the centre wanted to make sure that they continued to learn language through that avenue.
“It is great pathway and we recognise that a lot of our people may not want to learn language in a classroom setting or in a face to face environment,” she said.
Fesaitu said for these young leaders, the bridge was already being crossed — one dance, one chant, and one proud declaration at a time.
“And that is the work that we try and do here, is to look at ways that our young people can engage, but also be able to empower them, and give them an opportunity to be part of it.”
Petueli hopes other countries follow the example being set in Aotearoa to preserve and celebrate Pacific languages.
“I do not think any other country, even in Fiji, is doing anything like this, like the Pacific languages [weeks], and pushing for it.
“I think we are doing a great job here, and I hope that we will everywhere else can see and follow through with it.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group seminar on “decolonisation” organised last night on Rotuman Day as part of the fellowship’s Rotuman Language Week programme at the Whānau Community Centre . . . facilitated by Ara Simmons (right) with speakers Cherie Nepia (from left), Rachael Mario and Joanna Bourke. Image: APR
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