Facebook has reportedly temporarily blocked posts published by an independent online news outlet in Solomon Islands after incorrectly labelling its content as “spam”.
In-Depth Solomons, a member centre of the non-profit OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), was informed by the platform that more than 80 posts had been removed from its official page.
According to OCCRP, the outlet believes opponents of independent journalism in the country could behind the “coordinated campaign”.
“The reporters in Solomon Islands became aware of the problem on Thursday afternoon, when the platform informed them it had hidden at least 86 posts, including stories and photos,” OCCRP reported yesterday.
“Defining its posts as spam resulted in the removal for several hours of what appeared to be everything the news organisation had posted on Facebook since March last year.”
It said the platform also blocked its users from posting content from the outlet’s website, indepthsolomons.com.sb, saying that such links went against the platform’s “community standards”.
In-Depth Solomons has received criticism for its reporting by the Solomon Islands government and its supporters, both online and in local media, OCCRP said.
Expose on PM’s unexplained wealth
In April, it published an expose into the unexplained wealth of the nation’s former prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare.
In-depth Solomons editor Ofani Eremae said the content removal “may have been the result of a coordinated campaign by critics of his newsroom to file false complaints to Facebook en masse”.
“We firmly believe we’ve been targeted for the journalism we are doing here in Solomon Islands,” he was quoted as saying.
One of the Meta post removal alerts for Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie over a human rights story on on 24 June 2024. Image: APR screenshot
“We don’t have any evidence at this stage on who did this to us, but we think people or organisations who do not want to see independent reporting in this country may be behind this.”
A spokesman for Meta, Ben Cheong, told OCCRP they needed more time to examine the issue.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and permission from ABC.
Pacific Media Watch reports that in other cases of Facebook and Meta blocked posts, Asia Pacific Reports the removal of Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua decolonisation stories and human rights reports over claimed violation of “community standards”.
APR has challenged this removal of posts, including in the case of its editor Dr David Robie. Some have been restored while others have remained “blocked”.
Other journalists have also reported the removal of news posts.
Violent attacks on three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north have reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 children, while several people were forced to flee after attackers set fire to their homes, the United Nations said.
“I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
The death toll could rise to more than 50 as PNG authorities search for missing people, Turk said.
Provincial Police Commander in East Sepik James Baugen said: “It was a very terrible thing, when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 men.”
He told the ABC that all the houses in the village were burned, and the remaining villagers were sheltering at a police station, too scared to name the perpetrators.
“Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed, there were heads chopped off,” he said.
“The men are in hiding, police have been deployed but there have been no arrests yet.”
Turk called on PNG authorities “to conduct prompt, impartial and transparent investigations and to ensure those responsible are held to account”.
Impunity for criminals Governor Allan Bird of East Sepik, where the murders occurred, said the violence in the country had been getting worse during the past 10 years.
“The lack of justice in PNG is a problem, and it is getting worse,” he told the ABC.
A front page report in PNG’s The National . . . the picture shows the devastation left from an attack at Angoram’s Tambari village, East Sepik. Image: The National
“Over the last 10 years or so, if a crime is committed, investigations hardly result in arrest. Even if they are arrested, it’s difficult to go to court and go to jail. That is giving law-breakers more courage to do the wrong thing,” he said.
Advocating for stronger police enforcement and stronger prosecution mechanisms, he said there would be a reduction in crime when people started going to jail.
He told the ABC that the police force had had a long-standing problem with command and control.
“The head of police here, for some reason, is constantly changing. It’s a three-year contract, but they keep changing every six months, 12 months,” he said.
“They removed our provincial police commander in January and there’s no replacement even today.”
Tribal warfare exacerbated Home to hundreds of tribes and languages, Papua New Guinea has a long history of tribal warfare.
But an influx of mercenaries and automatic weapons has inflamed the cycle of violence.
During the past decade, villagers swapped bows and arrows for military rifles and elections have deepened existing tribal divides.
At the same time, the country’s population has more than doubled since 1980, placing increasing strain on land and resources, and stoking deepening tribal rivalries.
Eight people were killed and 30 homes torched in fighting in the Enga province in May, while at least 26 men were killed in an ambush in the same region in February.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and permission from ABC.
A former Papua New Guinea army leader, Major-General Jerry Singirok, is furious after being arrested and charged under the Capital Markets Act.
He was a trustee of Melanesian Trustee Services Ltd, part of a superannuation agency with 20,000 unit holders, but its trustee licence was revoked last year.
General Singirok said the agency was already embroiled in legal action over that revocation and he said his arrest on Wednesday was aimed at undermining that action.
He said Task Force Shield, which he said had been set up by Trades Minister Richard Maru, had made a series of allegations about the degree of oversight at Melanesian Trustee Services Ltd.
“They said that we did not audit, [but] we got audited, annual audits for the past 10 years,” he said.
“They said we didn’t do that. [They claimed] we continued to function without consulting our unit holders, which is wrong.
“There is a list of complaints, and as I said, it is now going to be subjected to a court. What’s important is that they are using the Capital Markets Act to charge us.”
General Singirok said in a Facebook post that he had spent his entire life fighting for the rights of the ordinary people and he would clear his name after what he is calling a “witchhunt”.
He said he had been a member of the superannuation operator since 1989.
The French Ambassador to the Pacific says President Emmanuel Macron is yet to sign-off on a letter from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) requesting authorisation for a high-level Pacific mission to Kanaky New Caledonia.
Véronique Roger-Lacan told RNZ Pacific with the Paris Olympics kicking off this week, it could be tough propping up security in time.
Cook Islands Prime Minister and PIF chair Mark Brown said the Forum has a “responsibility to take care of our family in a time of need”.
He said PIF wants to support the de-escalation of the ongoing violence in New Caledonia through dialogue “to help all parties resolve this situation as peacefully and expeditiously as possible”.
In a statement, the Forum Secretariat said leaders recognise that any regional support to New Caledonia would require the agreement of the French government.
“The Pacific Islands Forum has requested the support of the French government and will work closely with officials to confirm the arrangements for the mission,” it said.
Leaders of Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga
The idea is to send a Forum Ministerial Committee made up of leaders from Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga.
However, Roger-Lacan said it was a big ask security wise to host three Pacific leaders while New Caledonia was in crisis mode.
On Tuesday, Franceinfo reported that Kanak politicians in France, Senator Robert Xowie and his deputy Emmanuel Tjibaou, said New Caledonia could not emerge from civil unrest until discussions resumed between the state and political parties.
“We cannot rebuild the country until discussions are held,” Xowie was quoted saying.
Tjibaou added.: “If we do not respond to the problems of the economic crisis, we risk finding ourselves in a humanitarian crisis, where politics will no longer have a place.”
Tjibaou, the first pro-independence New Caledonian candidate to win a National Assembly seat since 1986, has also asked the state for a “clear position” on the proposed electoral law reform bill.
The bill was suspended last month by Macron in light of the French snap election.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The French Ambassador to the Pacific says President Emmanuel Macron is yet to sign-off on a letter from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) requesting authorisation for a high-level Pacific mission to Kanaky New Caledonia.
Véronique Roger-Lacan told RNZ Pacific with the Paris Olympics kicking off this week, it could be tough propping up security in time.
Cook Islands Prime Minister and PIF chair Mark Brown said the Forum has a “responsibility to take care of our family in a time of need”.
He said PIF wants to support the de-escalation of the ongoing violence in New Caledonia through dialogue “to help all parties resolve this situation as peacefully and expeditiously as possible”.
In a statement, the Forum Secretariat said leaders recognise that any regional support to New Caledonia would require the agreement of the French government.
“The Pacific Islands Forum has requested the support of the French government and will work closely with officials to confirm the arrangements for the mission,” it said.
Leaders of Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga
The idea is to send a Forum Ministerial Committee made up of leaders from Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga.
However, Roger-Lacan said it was a big ask security wise to host three Pacific leaders while New Caledonia was in crisis mode.
On Tuesday, Franceinfo reported that Kanak politicians in France, Senator Robert Xowie and his deputy Emmanuel Tjibaou, said New Caledonia could not emerge from civil unrest until discussions resumed between the state and political parties.
“We cannot rebuild the country until discussions are held,” Xowie was quoted saying.
Tjibaou added.: “If we do not respond to the problems of the economic crisis, we risk finding ourselves in a humanitarian crisis, where politics will no longer have a place.”
Tjibaou, the first pro-independence New Caledonian candidate to win a National Assembly seat since 1986, has also asked the state for a “clear position” on the proposed electoral law reform bill.
The bill was suspended last month by Macron in light of the French snap election.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia and New Zealand’s populations must now wake up to the fact that our countries have been drawn into what ForeignPolicy.com called the knitting together of “the United States’ patchwork of different regional security systems into a global security architecture of networked alliances and partnerships”.
Hit pause right there.
Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn’t “NATO” moving into our region – it’s actually far bigger than that. America is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm).
It explains why, in the midst of committing genocide in Palestine, Israel still managed to send defence personnel to participate in RIMPAC 2024 naval exercises: they’re part of our team. It is taking the Military Industrial Complex to a global level. Where do you think it will lead us to?
New Zealand is about to sacrifice what it cannot afford to lose for something it doesn’t need: gambling we can keep the strength and security of our trading relationship with China while leaping into the US anti-China military alliance.
The Chinese have noticed. Writing in the South China Morning Post last week, Alex Lo gave an unvarnished Chinese perspective on this. In a piece titled “NATO barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gates of Asia,” he says: “Most regional countries want none of it, but four Trojan horses – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – are ready to let them in”.
“Has it crossed Blinken’s mind that most of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, don’t want NATO militarism to infect their parts of the world like the plague?”
Good luck with that if we join a hostile alliance. And since when has New Zealand declared that China was a strategic competitor? That’s an American position, surely not ours?
New Zealand could “add value” to its security relationships and be a “force multiplier for Australia and the US and other partners”, Luxon said while being hosted in Washington. New Zealand was also “very open” to participating in the second pillar of AUKUS.
“China not only poses no military threat to New Zealand, but it is also by a very substantial margin our biggest export market – more than twice as important as an export market for New Zealand as the US is.
“New Zealand has a huge stake in maintaining a cordial relationship with China. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain such a relationship if the Government continues to align its positioning with that of the United States.”
Prudent players, like most of the ASEAN countries, continue to play a more canny game. Former President of the United Nations Security Council, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore statesman with immense experience, offers a study in contrast to Luxon. He says the Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance.
“In the 30 years since the end of the Cold War, NATO has dropped several thousand bombs on many countries. By contrast, in the same period, no bombs have been dropped anywhere in East Asia.
“The biggest danger we face in NATO expanding its tentacles from the Atlantic to the Pacific: It could end up exporting its disastrous militaristic culture to the relatively peaceful environment we have developed in East Asia,” Mahbubani says.
Clark and Brash are right to sound the alarm: “These statements orient New Zealand towards being a full-fledged military ally of the United States, with the implication that New Zealand will increasingly be dragged into US-China competition, including militarily in the South China Sea.“
The National-led government is also ignoring calls by Pacific leaders to keep the Pacific peaceful. The danger is that a small group of officials in New Zealand’s increasingly militaristic and Americanised foreign affairs establishment are, along with a few politicians, sending the country into dangerous waters.
Glove puppet for Americans
Luxon’s comments are really so close to Pentagon positions and talking points that he is reducing himself to little more than a glove puppet for the Americans.
New Zealand needs to be a beacon of diplomacy, moderation, cooperation and de-escalation or one day we may find out what it’s like to lose both our security and our biggest trading partner.
Kiwis, like the Australians last year, may suddenly discover our paternalistic leaders have put us into AUKUS or some American Anglosophere-plus military alliance designed to maintain US global hegemony.
Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.
By Brooke Tindall, Queensland University of Technology
With more than 50 Fijian villages earmarked for potential relocation in the next five to 10 years due to the climate crisis, Fijian journalists are committing themselves to amplifying the voices of those who face the challenges of climate change in their everyday lives.
Vunidogoloa village on the island of Vanua Levu was home to 32 families who lived in 26 homes. As early as 2006, floods and erosion caused by both sea-level rise and increased rains started to reach homes and destroy crops that fed the community.
The situation worsened in the following years, with water progressively taking over the village. The mangroves that used to cover the coast where they lived were absorbed by the sea completely.
The Fijian government began the mission to relocate Vunidogoloa in 2014. Not only did people in the community walk away from their homes, they left the place where their traditions and stories were passed down. Since Vunidogoloa was relocated, five other Fijian villages have faced the same fate.
Several projects have been established in response to such pressing threats, with an aim to increase the amount of climate journalism in Fijian media.
University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator Associate Professor Shailendra Singh has previously expressed concern about the lack of specialisation in climate reporting in the Pacific and says the articles produced can often come from “privileged elite viewpoints”.
Dr Singh continues to harbour such concerns in 2024. He notes that Pacific news media organisations have small profit margins, so rather than face the expense of sending out teams to talk to everyday people, their stories tend to focus on presentations and speeches that are cheaper to cover.
“This refers to the plethora of meetings, conferences, and workshops where the experts do all the talking and presenting,” he says.
“Ordinary people in the face of climate change are suffering impacts and do not get as much coverage.”
Training journalists to specialise in climate reporting will give them an in-depth understanding of both talking to experts and ordinary people experiencing the effects of climate change, Dr Singh says.
Blessen Tom’s climate change ‘ghost’ village report on Vunidogoloa for Bearing Witness in 2016. Video: Pacific Media Centre
“It brings focus, consistency and knowledge if done on a regular basis. Science has its place, but let’s not forget that people dealing and living with the effects of climate change are experts in their own right.”
Up-and-coming journalists, USP students Brittany Nawaqatabu and Viliame Tawanakoro say they see it as a good journalists’ responsibility to prioritise climate stories.
“Journalism provides people with the opportunity to be the vessel of message to the world. We are the captain of the ship that delivers the message,” Viliame says.
Brittany criticises Western media that considers climate change as a “debatable” topic.
“You have to put yourself in the shoes of a Pacific Islander to know what it’s really like. You can’t be debating it because you’re not the one going through it,” she says.
It’s important for Fijian media to continue to put the climate crisis on the front page and not let the stories become lost in other news, she says.
“If we are not going to become strong advocates as Pacific islanders for climate change and what our island homes are going through, then it’s only going to go downhill.”
Brooke Tindall is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This is published as the first of a series under our Asia Pacific Journalism partnership with QUT Journalism.
The government was not backing it in any way, shape or form, he said.
The claimants are seeking billions of dollars in compensation from Rio Tinto which operated the Panguna copper and gold mine in the 1970s and 1980s before it was forced to shut by civil war.
The mine was at the heart of that war which brought death and devastation to Bougainville over a 10-year period until 1997.
They say Rio Tinto, which was the majority shareholder in Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) at the time, is responsible for the large scale environmental and social harm that resulted from what was one of the biggest mines in the world.
A former senior Bougainville political leader, Martin Miriori, who is the lead claimant of the class action, said the “large increase in claimants demonstrates the strength of feeling among local people that Rio Tinto and BCL must make amends for decades of environmental devastation”.
He said “this issue will not go away, as the legal action has attracted strong support, and reminded the world of the destruction caused by the mine operator’s reckless actions.”
A first court hearing is set for Port Moresby on 10 October 2024.
Panguna open pit copper mine in Bougainville. Image: 123rf/RNZ
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
By Stefan Armbruster, Harlyne Joku and Tria Dianti
No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.
Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.
Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape chat during their meeting in Bogor, West Java, earlier this month. Image: Muchlis Jr/Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.
“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.
“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”
Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.
The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians,” Rabuka said at the time. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific“We continue establishing a constructive engagement with the UN on the progress of human rights improvement in Indonesia,” Siti Ruhaini, senior advisor to the Indonesian Office of the President told BenarNews, including in “cases of the gross violation of human rights in the past that earned the appreciation from UN Human Rights Council”.
Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.
The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.
In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.
In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.
Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”
After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.
A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.
PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.
“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.
He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.
During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.
Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”
Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.
Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.
“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.
“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”
Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.
Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.
Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.
While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.
An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.
Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.
Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.
Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.
“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.
“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”
The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.
President Jokoki Widodo (center) in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape (left) and Prime Minister of Fiji Sitiveni Rabuka in San Francisco in November 2023. Image: Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.
“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.
By Stefan Armbruster, Harlyne Joku and Tria Dianti
No progress has been made in sending a UN human rights mission to Indonesia’s Papuan provinces despite the appointment of Fiji and Papua New Guinea’s prime ministers to negotiate the visit.
Pacific Island leaders have for more than a decade requested the UN’s involvement over reported abuses as the Indonesian military battles with the West Papua independence movement.
Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka and Papua New Guinea’s James Marape were appointed by the Melanesian Spearhead Group last year as special envoys to push for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ visit directly with Indonesia’s president but so far to no avail.
Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto (left) and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape chat during their meeting in Bogor, West Java, earlier this month. Image: Muchlis Jr/Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
“We have not been able to negotiate terms for an OHCHR visit to Papua,” Commissioner Volker Türk’s office in Geneva said in a statement to BenarNews.
“We remain very concerned about the situation in the region, with some reports indicating a significant increase in violent incidents and civilian casualties in 2023.
“We stress the importance of accountability for security forces and armed groups operating in Papua and the importance of addressing the underlying grievances and root causes of these conflicts.”
Formal invitation
Indonesia issued a formal invitation to the OHCHR in 2018 after Pacific leaders from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Tonga and Marshall Islands for years repeatedly called out the human rights abuses at the UN General Assembly and other international fora.
The Pacific Islands Forum — the regional intergovernmental organisation of 18 nations — has called on Indonesia since 2019 to allow the mission to go ahead.
West Papuan leader Benny Wenda (left) and Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in Suva in February 2023 . . . “We will support them [ULMWP] because they are Melanesians,” Rabuka said at the time. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific“We continue establishing a constructive engagement with the UN on the progress of human rights improvement in Indonesia,” Siti Ruhaini, senior advisor to the Indonesian Office of the President told BenarNews, including in “cases of the gross violation of human rights in the past that earned the appreciation from UN Human Rights Council”.
Indonesia’s military offered a rare apology in March after video emerged of soldiers repeatedly slashing a Papuan man with a bayonet while he was forced to stand in a water-filled drum.
The latest UN report highlights “systematic reports about the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or ill-treatment in places of detention, in particular on Indigenous Papuans” and limited access to information about investigations conducted, individuals prosecuted and sentences.
In recent months there have been several deadly clashes in the region with many thousands reportedly left displaced after fleeing the fighting.
In June Indonesia was accused of exploiting a visit to Papua by the MSG director general to portray the region as “stable and conducive”, undermining efforts to secure Türk’s visit.
Invitation ‘still standing’
Siti told BenarNews the invitation to the UN “is still standing” while attempts are made to find the “best time (to) suit both sides.”
After years of delays the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) — whose members are Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia’s Kanak independence movement — appointed the two prime ministers last November to negotiate directly.
A state visit by Marape to Indonesia last week left confusion over what discussions there were over human rights in the Papuan provinces or if the UN visit was raised.
PNG’s prime minister said last Friday that, on behalf of the MSG and his Fijian counterpart, he spoke with incumbent Indonesian President Joko Widodo and president-elect Parbowo Subianto and they were “very much sensitive to the issues of West Papua”.
“Basically we told him we’re concerned on human rights issues and (to) respect their culture, respect the people, respect their land rights,” Marape told a press conference on his return to Port Moresby in response to questions from BenarNews.
He said Prabowo indicated he would continue Jokowi’s policies towards the Papuan provinces and had hinted at “a moratorium or there will be an amnesty call out to those who still carry guns in West Papua”.
During Marape’s Indonesian visit, the neighbours acknowledged their respective sovereignty, celebrated the signing of several cross-border agreements and that the “relationship is standing in the right space”.
Human rights ‘not on agenda’
Siti from the Office of the President afterwards told BenarNews there were no discussions regarding the UN visit during the meeting between Marape and Jokowi and “human rights issues in Papua were not on the agenda.”
Further BenarNews enquiries with the President’s office about the conflicting accounts went unanswered.
Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG and the ULMWP has observer status. Neither have voting rights.
“That is part of the mandate from the leaders, that is the moral obligation to raise whether it is publicly or face-to-face because there are Papuans dying under the eyes of the Pacific leaders over the past 60 years,” president of the pro-independence United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda, told BenarNews.
“We are demanding full membership of the MSG so we can engage with Indonesia as equals and find solutions for peace.”
Decolonisation in the Pacific has been placed very firmly back on the international agenda after protests in the French territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in May turned violent leaving 10 people dead.
Kanaky New Caledonia riots
Riots erupted after indigenous Kanaks accused France of trying to dilute their voting bloc in New Caledonia after a disputed independence referendum process ended in 2021 leaving them in French hands.
Meeting in Japan late last week, MSG leaders called for a new referendum and the PIF secured agreement from France for a fact-finding mission to New Caledonia.
While in Tokyo for the meeting, Rabuka was reported by Islands Business as saying he would also visit Indonesia’s president with Marape “to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua”.
An independence struggle has simmered in Papua since the early 1960s when Indonesian forces invaded the region, which had remained under separate Dutch administration after Indonesia’s 1945 declaration of independence.
Indonesia argues it incorporated the comparatively sparsely populated and mineral rich territory under international law, as it was part of the Dutch East Indies empire that forms the basis for its modern borders.
Indonesian control was formalised in 1969 with a UN-supervised referendum in which little more than 1,000 Papuans were allowed to vote. Papuans say they were denied the right to decide their own future and are now marginalised in their own land.
Indonesia steps up ‘neutralising’ efforts
Indonesia in recent years has stepped up its efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the West Papuan independence movement, particularly among Melanesian nations that have ethnic and cultural links.
“Indonesia is increasingly engaging with the Pacific neighboring countries in a constructive way while respecting the sovereignty of each member,” Theofransus Litaay, senior advisor of the Executive Office of the President told BenarNews.
“Papua is always the priority and programme for Indonesia in the attempt to strengthen its position as the Pacific ‘veranda’ of Indonesia.”
The Fiji and PNG leaders previously met Jokowi, whose second five-year term finishes in October, on the sidelines of a global summit in San Francisco in November.
President Jokoki Widodo (center) in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea James Marape (left) and Prime Minister of Fiji Sitiveni Rabuka in San Francisco in November 2023. Image: Biro Pers Sekertariat Presiden/BenarNews
The two are due to report back on their progress at the annual MSG meeting scheduled for next month.
“If time permits, where we both can go back and see him on these issues, then we will go but I have many issues to attend to here,” Marape said in Port Moresby on Friday.
New Zealand should join others in calling New Caledonia’s third independence referendum invalid, one of the founders of the Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Network says.
In December 2021, the Kanak population boycotted the referendum to mourn their dead during the covid-19 pandemic, after their calls for the referendum to be delayed was ignored.
As a result, Peters said the referendum saw voter turnout collapse and almost 97 percent of voters who cast a ballot voted “No” to independence.
“Delegitimising the result, in the eyes of pro-independence forces and some neutral observers at least, was the low turnout of only 44 percent.”
Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity group’s David Small said Peters should have aligned with the Melanesian Spearhead Group which has called for a UN mission to New Caledonia.
‘Referendum delegitimised’
“He said that the third referendum was delegitimised in the eyes of some, and did not include New Zealand in that,” Small said.
“It would have been better if he had because that third referendum was indefensible.”
The group said Peters had mentioned the need for dialogue but failed to provide a clear pathway or goal.
“The Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Group is deeply disappointed by Peters’ insufficient support for the Kanak people’s struggle.
“His statement at PALM10 represents a missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples.”
Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . “missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples,” says Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity. Image: RNZ/Nick Monro
‘Fed by disinformation’, claims envoy However, the top French diplomat in the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, said she had reassured Pacific Islands Forum Leaders (PIF) that attended PALM10 that France’s actions during the third and final independence referendum were fair.
Roger-Lacan spoke to RNZ Pacific from Tokyo following talks with the leaders of Papua New Guinea and Tonga.
She said there was “so much disinformation” surrounding issues in New Caledonia and that Pacific leaders had only heard one side of the story.
“For example, Mark Brown sent a letter to President [Louis] Mapou but he did not try and contact France, kind of ignoring that New Caledonia until further notice is France,” she said.
“We tried to call them, but Mark Brown would not be there to pick up the phone.
“But luckily, the Prime Minister of Tonga, the incoming chair of the PIF and everyone else was there, so that everyone was very happy to hear the information that we were providing.
“We are going to provide full information in writing because it seems that everybody ignores . . . the substance of the matter, and everybody is totally fed by disinformation and propaganda” surrounding issues in New Caledonia.
Delegation to New Caledonia ‘decision has been made’ According to PIF’s outgoing chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister, Mark Brown, work is already in progress to send a high-level Pacific delegation to investigate the ongoing political crisis, which has resulted in 10 deaths and the economic costs totalling 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion).
“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said at a news conference at the PALM10 meeting in Tokyo.
A spokesperson for the New Caledonia President’s office, Charles Wea, has told RNZ Pacific that the high-level group was expected to be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
“The decision that has been made by the leaders during the meeting in Japan to send a mission to New Caledonia before the annual meeting over the of PIF around the second or third week of August,” he said.
“The objectives of the mission will be to come and listen and discuss with all parties in New Caledonia in order to [prepare] a report [for] the leaders meeting in Tonga.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
When Melbourne-born Helen Hill, an outstanding social activist, scholar and academic, died on 7 May 2024 at the age of 79, the Timorese government sent its Education Minister, Dulce de Jesus Soares, to deliver a moving eulogy at the funeral service at Church of All Nations in Carlton.
Helen will be remembered for many things, but above all for her 50 years of dedication to friendship with the people of Timor-Leste and solidarity in their struggle for independence.
At the funeral, Steve Bracks, chancellor of Victoria University and former premier of Victoria, also paid tribute to Helen’s lifetime commitment to social justice and to the independence and flourishing of Timor-Leste in particular.
Further testimonies were presented by Jean McLean (formerly a member of the Victorian Legislative Council), the Australia-East Timor Association, representatives of local Timorese groups and Helen’s family. Helen’s long-time friend, the Reverend Barbara Gayler, preached on the theme of solidarity.
Helen was born on 22 February 1945, the eldest of four children of Robert Hill and Jessie Scovell. Her sister Alison predeceased her, and she is survived by her sister Margaret and her brother Ian and their children and grandchildren.
Her father fought with the Australian army in New Guinea before working for the Commonwealth Bank and becoming a branch manager. Her mother was a social worker at the repatriation hospital.
The family were members of the Presbyterian Church in Blackburn, which fostered an attitude of caring for others.
Studied political science
Helen’s secondary schooling was at Presbyterian Ladies College, where she enjoyed communal activities such as choir. She began a science course at the University of Melbourne but transferred to Monash University to study sociology and political science, graduating with a BA (Hons) in 1970.
At Monash, Helen was an enthusiastic member of the Labor Club and the Student Christian Movement (SCM), where issues of social justice were regularly debated.
Opposition to the war in Vietnam was the main focus of concern during her time at Monash. In 1970, Helen was a member of the organising committee for the first moratorium demonstration in Melbourne and also a member of the executive committee of the Australian SCM (ASCM, the national body) which was based in Melbourne.
She edited Political Concern, an alternative information service, for ASCM. In 1971, Helen was a founding member of International Development Action. Helen was a great networker, always ready to see what she could learn from others.
Perhaps the most formative moment in Helen’s career was her appointment as a frontier intern, to work on the Southern Africa section of the Europe/Africa Project of the World Student Christian Federation, based in London (1971-1973). This project aimed to document how colonial powers had exploited the resources of their colonies, as well as the impact of apartheid in South Africa.
In those years, she also studied at the Institute d’Action Culturelle in Geneva, which was established by Paulo Freire, arguably her most significant teacher. The insights and contacts from this time of engagement with global issues of justice and education provided a strong foundation for Helen’s subsequent career.
In 1974, Helen embarked on a Master of Arts course supervised by the late Professor Herb Feith. Helen had met student leaders from the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola in the Europe/Africa project, who asked her about East Timor (“so close to Australia”).
East Timor thesis topic
Recognising that she, along with most Australians, knew very little about East Timor, Helen proposed East Timor as the focus of her master’s thesis. She began to learn Portuguese for this purpose.
Following the overthrow of the authoritarian regime in Portugal in April 1974 and the consequent opportunities for independence in the Portuguese colonies, she visited East Timor for three months in early 1975, where she was impressed by the programme and leadership of Fretilin, the main independence party.
Her plans were thwarted by the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975, and she was unable to revisit East Timor until after the achievement of independence in 2000. Her 1978 Master of Arts thesis included an account of the Fretilin plans rather than the Fretilin achievements.
Her 1976 book, The Timor Story, was a significant document of the desire of East Timorese people for independence and influenced the keeping of East Timor on the UN decolonisation list. She was a co-founder of the Australia-East Timor Association, which was founded in the initial days of the Indonesian invasion.
Helen was a founding member of the organisation Campaign Against Racial Exploitation in 1975. She was prolific in writing and speaking for these causes, not simply as an advocate, but also as a capable analyst of many situations of decolonisation. She was published regularly in Nation Review and also appeared in many other publications concerned with international affairs and development.
Helen was awarded a rare diploma of education (tertiary education method) from the University of Melbourne in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, she was a full-time doctoral student at Australian National University, culminating in a thesis about non-formal education and development in Fiji, New Caledonia and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (the islands of the north Pacific).
Helen participated in significant international conferences on education and development in these years and was involved in occasional teaching in the nations and territories of her thesis.
Teaching development studies
In 1991, she was appointed lecturer at Victoria University to teach development studies, which, among other things, attracted a steady stream of students from Timor-Leste. In 2000, she was able to return to Timor-Leste as part of her work for Victoria University.
An immediate fruit of her work in 2001 was a memorandum of understanding between Victoria University and the Dili Institute of Technology, followed in 2005 with another between Victoria University and the National University of Timor-Leste.
One outcome of this latter relationship has been biennial conferences on development, held in Dili. Also in 2005, she was a co-founder of the Timor-Leste Studies Association.
Helen stood for quality education and for high academic standards that can empower all students. In 2014, Helen was honoured by the government of Timor-Leste with the award of the Order of Timor-Leste (OT-L).
Retiring from Victoria University in 2014, Helen chose to live in Timor-Leste, while returning to Melbourne regularly. She continued to teach in Dili and was employed by the Timor-Leste Ministry of Education in 2014 and from 2018 until her death.
Helen came to Melbourne in late 2023, planning to return to Timor-Leste early in 2024, where further work awaited her.
A routine medical check-up unexpectedly found significant but symptom-free cancer, which developed rapidly, though it did not prevent her from attending public events days before her death on May 7. Friends and family are fulsome in their praise of Helen’s brother Ian, who took time off work to give her daily care during her last weeks.
Helen had a distinguished academic career, with significant teaching and research focusing on the links between development and education, particularly in the Pacific context, though with a fully global perspective.
Helen had an ever-expanding network of contacts and friends around the world, on whom she relied for critical enlightenment on issues of concern.
From Blackburn to Dili, inspired by sharp intelligence, compassion, Christian faith and a careful reading of the signs of the times, Helen lived by a vision of the common good and strove mightily to build a world of peace and justice.
Sandy Yule was general secretary of the Australian Student Christian Movement from 1970-75, where he first met Helen Hill, and is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. He wrote this tribute with help from Helen Hill’s family and friends. It was first published by The Age newspaper and is republished from the DevPolicy Blog at Australian National University.
An interview with former University of the South Pacific (USP) development studies professor Dr Vijay Naidu, a founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), has produced fresh insights into the legacy of Pacific nuclear-free and anti-colonialism activism.
The community storytelling group Talanoa TV, an affiliate of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub and linked to the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), has embarked on producing a series of short educational videos as oral histories of people involved in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) Movement to document and preserve this activist mahi and history.
The series, dubbed “Legends of NFIP”, are being timed for screening in 2025 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 and also with the 40th anniversary of the Rarotonga Treaty for a Nuclear-Free Pacific.
Legends of NFIP – Professor Vijay Naidu. Video: Talanoa TV
These videos are planned to “bring alive” the experiences and commitment of people involved in a Pacific-wide movement and will be suitable for schools as video podcasts and could be stored on open access platforms.
“This project is also expected to become an extremely useful resource for students and researchers,” says project convenor Nikhil Naidu, himself a former FANG and Coalition for Democracy (CDF) activist.
In this 14-minute interview, Professor Naidu talks about the origins of the NFIP Movement.
“At this time [1970s], there were the French nuclear tests that were actually atmospheric nuclear tests and people like Suliana Siwatibau and Graeme Bain started the ATOM movement (Against Nuclear Tests on Moruroa) in Tahiti in the 1970s at USP,” he says.
“And we began to understand the issues around nuclear testing and how it affected people — you know, the radiation. And drop-outs and pollution from it.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
We end today’s show in The Hague, where the International Court of Justice ruled last Friday that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, should come to an end — “as rapidly as possible”.
Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian Territories began in 1967, has since forcefully expanded, killing and displacing thousands of Palestinians. ICJ Presiding Judge Nawaf Salam read the nonbinding legal opinion, deeming Israel’s presence in the territories illegal.
JUDGE NAWAF SALAM: [translated] “Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity. Israel also has an obligation to repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation, including those which discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as all measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the territory.
“Israel is also under an obligation to provide full reparations for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned.”
AMY GOODMAN: The court also said other nations are obligated not to legally recognise Israel’s decades-long occupation of the territories and, “not to render aid or assistance,” to the occupation.
The 15-judge panel said Israel had no right to sovereignty of the territories and pointed to a number of Israeli actions, such as the construction and violent expansion of illegal Israeli settlements across West Bank and East Jerusalem, the forced permanent control over Palestinian lands, and discriminatory policies against Palestinians — all violations of international law.
The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, praised Friday’s ruling.
RIYAD AL-MALIKI: “All states and the UN are now under obligation not to recognise the legality of Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to do nothing to assist Israel in maintaining this illegal situation.
“They are directed by the court to bring Israel’s illegal occupation to an end.
“This means all states and the UN must immediately review their bilateral relations with Israel to ensure their policies do not aid in Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinian people, whether directly or indirectly. … “[translated] All states must now fulfill their clear obligations: no aid, no collusion, no money, no weapons, no trade, nothing with Israel.”
Democracy Now! on the ICJ Palestine ruling. Video: Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: In 2022, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution tasking the International Court of Justice with determining whether the Israeli occupation amounted to annexation. This all comes as the ICJ is also overseeing a [separate and] ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and as the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Despite mounting outcry over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed some 39,000 Palestinians — more than 16,000 of them children — Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington, DC, to address a joint session of Congress this Wednesday.
For more, we go to Brussels, Belgium, where we’re joined by Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney and former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Thank you so much for being with us. Diana, first respond to this court ruling. Since it is non-binding, what is the significance of it?
DIANA BUTTU: Even though it’s nonbinding, Amy, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any weight. It simply means that Israel is going to ignore it. But what it does, is it sets out the legal precedent for other countries, and those other countries [that] do have to respect the opinion of the highest court, the highest international court.
And so, what we see with this decision is that it’s a very important and a very necessary one, because we see the court makes it clear not only that Israel’s occupation is illegal, but it also says that all countries around the world have an obligation to make sure that Israel doesn’t get away with it, that they have an obligation to make sure that this occupation comes to an end.
This is very important, because over the years, and in particular over the past 30 years, we’ve seen a shift in international diplomacy to try to push Palestinians to somehow give up their rights. And here we have the highest international court saying that that isn’t the case and that, in fact, it’s up to Israel to end its military occupation, and it’s up to the international community to make sure that Israel does that.
AMY GOODMAN: And exactly what is the extended decision when it comes to how other countries should deal with Israel at this point?
DIANA BUTTU: Well, there are some very interesting elements to this case. The first is that the court comes out very clearly and not just says that the occupation is illegal, but they also say that the settlements have to go and the settlers have to go.
They also say that Palestinians have a right to return. Now, we’re talking about over 300,000 Palestinians who were expelled in 1967, and now there are probably about 200,000 Palestinians who have never been able to return back — we’re just talking about the West Bank and Gaza Strip — because of Israel’s discriminatory measures.
The other thing that the court says is that it’s not just the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are occupied, but also Gaza, as well. And this is a very important ruling, because for so many years Israel has tried to blur the lines and make it seem as though they’re not in occupation of Gaza, which they are.
And so, what this requires is that the international community not only not recognise the occupation, but that they take into account measures or they take measures to make sure that Israel stops its occupation.
That means everything from arms embargo to sanctions on Israel — anything that is necessary that can be done to make sure that Israel’s occupation finally comes to an end. And this is where we now see that instead of the world telling Palestinians that they just have to negotiate a resolution with their occupier, with their abuser, that the ball is now in their court.
It’s up to the international community now to put sanctions on Israel to end this military occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what’s happening right now in Gaza. You’ve got the deaths at — it’s expected to be well over 39,000. But you also have this new report by Oxfam that finds Israel has used water as a weapon of war, with Gaza’s water supplies plummeting 94 percent since October 7 and the nonstop Israeli bombardment.
Even before, their access was extremely limited. And then you have this catastrophic situation where you have, because of the destruction of Gaza’s water treatment plants, forcing people to resort to sewage-contaminated water containing pathogens that lead to diarrhoea, especially deadly for kids, diseases like cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army has started to vaccinate the Israeli soldiers after Palestinian health authorities said a high concentration of the poliovirus has been found in sewage samples from Gaza. It’s taking place, the vaccination programme of soldiers, across Israel in the coming weeks. The significance of this, Diana?
DIANA BUTTU: This is precisely what we’ve been talking about, which is that Israel is carrying out genocide, they know that they’re carrying out genocide, and we don’t see that anybody is stopping Israel in carrying out this genocide.
So, here now we have yet another International Court of Justice ruling. This one — the previous ones are actually binding, saying that Israel has to take all measures to stop this genocide. And yet we just simply don’t see that the world has put into place measures to sanction Israel, to isolate Israel, to punish Israel.
Instead, it gets to do whatever it wants.
But there is something very important, as well, which is that Israel somehow believes that it’s going to be immune, that somehow this polio or all of these diseases aren’t going to boomerang back into Israeli society. They will.
And the issue here now is whether we are going to see some very robust action on the part of the international community, now that we have a number of decisions from the ICJ saying to Israel that it’s got to stop and that this genocide must come to end. Israel must pay a price for continuing this genocide.
Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered. pic.twitter.com/2id5cpOa58
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I wanted to end by asking you about Benjamin Netanyahu coming here to the US. The Center for Constitutional Rights tweeted, “Before @netanyahu lands in DC, we demand @TheJusticeDept investigate him for genocide, war crimes & torture in Gaza. Nearly 40k killed, including more than 14k children, 90k injured, 2 million displaced, & an entire population subject to starvation. This cannot go unanswered.”
If you can talk about the significance of Netanyahu addressing a joint session of Congress?
Also, it’s expected that the person who President Joe Biden has said he is supporting, as he steps aside, to run for president, Vice-President Kamala Harris, is expected to be meeting with Netanyahu. And what you would like to see happen here?
DIANA BUTTU: You know, it’s repugnant to me to be hearing that a war criminal, a person who has flattened Gaza, who said that he was going to flatten Gaza, who has issued orders to kill more than 40,000, upwards of 190,000 Palestinians — we still don’t know the numbers — who has made life in Gaza unlivable, who’s using Palestinians as human pinballs, telling them to move from one area to the next, who’s presiding over a genocide, and unabashedly so — it’s going to be shocking to see the number of applause and rounds of applause and the standing ovations that this man is going to be receiving.
It very much signals exactly where the United States is, which is complicit in this genocide.
And Palestinians know this. If anything, he should have not had received an invitation. He should simply be getting a warrant for his arrest, not be receiving applause and accolades in Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Diana Buttu, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, joining us from Brussels, Belgium.
Port Moresby residents who have missed out on the Papua New Guinea’s national census counting have been urged to call the census call center on 1801676 to have themselves counted as part of the 2024 census “mop-up” exercise in NCD.
While the counting of the residents in the National Capital District (NCD) is almost complete, there have been complaints from most individuals that they have not yet been visited by enumerators.
With the census mop-up exercise to be concluded this week, the census team told Post-Courier Online that they had not been “getting a good response from the public”.
The National Statistical Office, which responded to the progress of the mop-up phase of the count in NCD, said that many residents had phoned in to the census call center for counting.
“We are receiving some calls from good citizens from our call center,” a spokesperson said.
“NCD rushed the enumeration. Therefore, a few houses were missed.”
Census Call Center Agents are required to collect the following information as part of the mop-up exercise in NCD:
Name of Household head,
Caller’s address,
Contact number, and
Whether or not visited by the census enumerators.
This information will be compiled and passed to the Regional Census Coordinator for the mop-up exercise.
Bramo Tingkeois a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
In the West Bank, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.
SPECIAL REPORT: Samidoun
On Friday, July 5, France announced the continued provisional detention on mainland France of 5 Kanak defendants, out of seven pro-independence “leaders” who had been deported from Kanaky New Caledonia on June 23.
The subsequent announcements of the arrest of 11 pro-independence activists, including 9 provisional detentions (including Joël Tjibaou and Gilles Jorédié, incarcerated in Camp Est) and 7 incarcerations in mainland France (Christian Tein, Frédérique Muliava, Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, Dimitri Tein Qenegei, Guillaume Vama, Steve Unë and Yewa Waethane), more than 17,000 kilometres from their homeland, revived the mobilisations that had begun a month earlier as part of the fight against the plan to “unfreeze” the Kanaky electoral body.
Suspended after President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, this project actually aims to reverse the achievements of the Nouméa Accords signed in 1998.
It is part of the strategy of strengthening French colonialism in Kanaky by extending the ability to vote on local matters, including independence referandums, to an even greater number of settlers, making the indigenous Kanaks a de facto minority at the ballot box.
On July 11, 10 Centaur armoured vehicles, 15 fire trucks, a dozen all-terrain military armoured vehicles and numerous army trucks were landed by ship in Kanaky, where the population remains under curfew.
This entire sequence bears witness to the manner in which France, through its colonial administration, deploys a repressive security arsenal that on the one hand protects the settlers on the land and their reactionary militias, and on the other, attempts to destroy the country’s Kanak independence movement.
Imprisonment and incarceration are a weapon of choice in this overall colonial strategy.
Imprisonment is one of the key weapons of choice in colonial strategies to try to stifle independence and national liberation struggles, from the Zionist regime in Palestine to allied imperialist countries and colonial empires such as France.
While the figures are incomparable due to differences between the populations and conditions, in the West Bank, according to Stéphanie Latte Abdallah, one in three Palestinians has experienced one or more incarcerations during their life since 1967, or 35 percent of the population, while in Kanaky, the Nouméa prison, known as Camp Est, is populated by 95 percent Kanaks, while they represent only 39 to 43 percent of the Caledonian population.
Camp Est Prison in Nouville, on the outskirts of Nouméa. Image: Samidoun
Nicknamed “the island of oblivion” by the prisoners, the Camp Est prison locks up many young Kanaks excluded from the economic, educational and health systems, and symbolises the French colonial continuum, especially as the building partly occupies the space of the former French penal colony imposed there.
Silence of sociologists
Few studies exist of this over-incarceration of the Kanak population, and as Hamid Mokadem reminds us:
“The silence of sociologists and demographers on ethno-cultural inequalities is inversely proportional to the chatter of anthropologists on Kanak customs and culture.”
The incarceration rate is significantly higher than in mainland France, so much so that a new prison has been built.
The Koné detention center, and a project to replace Camp Est was announced in February 2024 by the Minister of Justice. He promised a 600-bed facility (compared to the 230 cells available at Camp Est) that would emerge after a construction project estimated at 500 million euros (NZ$908 million).
This is the largest investment by the French state on Kanak soil, a deadly promise that at the same time reaffirms France’s imperialist project in the Pacific, driven by its financial and geopolitical interests to retain its colonial properties there.
While waiting for this large-scale prison project, new cells have been fitted out in containers on which a double mesh roof has been installed, many without windows, and where the conditions of incarceration are even harsher than in the other sections of the prison, including those for men, women and minors, pre-trial detainees and those who have been convicted and sentenced.
The over-representation of the Kanak population has only increased, since incarceration has been one of the mechanisms through which the French government attempts to stem the movement against the plan to “unfreeze” and expand the electoral body, with 1139 arrests since mid-May.
The penalty of deportation
Local detention was supplemented by another penalty directly inherited from the Code de l’Indigénat: the penalty of deportation.
On June 23, after the announcement of the arrest of 7 Kanak independence activists in metropolitan France, the population learned that they were going to be deported 17,000 km from their homes.
A plane was waiting to transfer them to metropolitan France during their pretrial detention, all seven of them dispersed across the prisons of Dijon, Mulhouse, Bourges, Blois, Nevers, Villefranche and Riom.
This deportation of activists in the context of pre-trial detention directly recalls the events of 1988, and more broadly the way in which prison and removal were used in a colonial context.
From the 19th century and the deportation of Toussaint Louverture of Haiti to France, thousands of Algerians arrested during the uprisings against the French colonisation of Algeria at the same time as the detention of the prisoners of the Paris Commune in 1871, the Vietnamese of Hanoi in 1913, were deported to Kanaky or other colonies such as Guyana.
More recently, the Algerian revolutionaries, were massively incarcerated in metropolitan colonial prisons. From a principle inherited from the indigénat, and although today we have moved from an administrative decision to a judicial decision, the practice of deportation remains the same.
Particularly used in the context of anti-colonial resistance movements, the deportation of Kanak prisoners to metropolitan colonial prisons has been used on this scale since 1988 in Kanaky.
Ouvéa cave massacre
After the massacre of 19 Kanak independence fighters who had taken police officers prisoner in the Ouvéa cave, activists still alive were imprisoned, then deported, then released as part of the Matignon-Oudinot Accords.
Twenty six Kanak prisoners came to populate the prisons of the Paris region while they were still in preventive detention — while awaiting their trials and therefore presumed innocent, as is the case today for the CCAT activists currently incarcerated.
In the 1980s, French prisons were shaken by major revolts, particularly against the racism of the guards, who were mostly affiliated with the then-nascent Front National (FN), and more broadly against the penal policy of the Mitterrand left and the massively expanding length of sentences imposed at the time.
In 1988, as former prisoners wrote afterwards, some made a point of showing their solidarity with the Kanaks by sharing their clothes and food with them.
Because many of the activists were transferred in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, in trying conditions, with their hands cuffed during the 24-hour journey, underhand repression techniques of the Prison Administration that are still in force.
Similar deportation conditions were described by Christian Téin, spokesperson for the CCAT incarcerated in the isolation wing of the Mulhouse-Lutterbach Penitentiary Center. The shock of incarceration is all the more violent.
CCAT leader Christian Téin, organiser of a series of marches and protests, mainly peaceful . . . he was deported and transferred to prison in Mulhouse, north-eastern France, to await trial. Image: NZ La 1ère TV screenshot APR
Added to this is the pain of the forced separation of parents and children, which is found not only in the current situation in metropolitan France but also in Palestine. Also there is great difficulty in finding loved ones, in attempting to find out which prisons they are in, or even if they are currently detained, continually encountering administrative violence, with the absence of information and the cruelty of official figures.
Orchestrated psychological impact
All this is orchestrated so that the psychological impact, in the long term, aims to induce the prisoners and also their families to stop fighting.
At the time of the events in Ouvéa, the uprooting of independence activists from their lands to lock them up in mainland France was commonplace, and the Kanak detainees joined those from the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance such as Luc Reinette and Georges Faisans, incarcerated in Île-de-France during the 1980s alongside Corsican and Basque prisoners.
Since then, this had only happened once, in the context of the uprisings in Guadeloup in 2021, where several local figures, mostly community activists, had been deported and then incarcerated in mainland France and Martinique in an attempt to stifle the revolts in which a large number of Guadeloupean youth were mobilised.
Here again, we could draw a parallel with Palestine. As Assia Zaino points out, since the 2000s, the incarceration of Palestinians has systematically been synonymous with being torn away from their families and loved ones.
Zionist prisons, located within the Palestinian territories colonised in 1948, “are integrated into the civil prison system [. . . ] and entry bans on Israeli soil are frequently imposed on the families of detainees for security reasons,” which in fact aims to attack the relatives of detainees and destabilise the national liberation struggle.
Ahmad Saadat, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh and their comrades in detention – date and location unknown. Image: Samidoun
From prison, the struggle continues This mass incarceration is confronted by the powerful presence of prisoners as symbols of courage and resistance.
We know that in Palestine, as during the Algerian war of national liberation, incarceration is an opportunity to learn from one’s people, to forge national revolutionary consciousness but also to continue the struggle, very concretely, by mobilising against incarceration.
Because the Palestinian prisoners’ movement has transformed the colonial prison into a school of revolution: each political party has a prison branch whose political bureau or leadership is made up of imprisoned leaders.
These branches have real weight in the decisions taken outside the walls, and they are the ones responsible for leading the struggle in the colonial prisons, in particular by declaring collective hunger strikes and developing alliances of struggle that can mobilise several thousand prisoners, but also for organising the daily life of revolutionaries in prison.
It was this movement of prisoners that played a major role in driving the Palestinian resistance groups to unite under a unified command with the total liberation of historic Palestine as their compass, and to overcome internal contradictions.
Historically, the prisoners also constituted a significant part the most radical elements of the Palestinian revolution, notably by massively refusing any negotiation with the Zionist state at the time when the disastrous Oslo Accords were being prepared.
Resistance in colonial prisons can also take cultural forms, as illustrated by the very rich Palestinian prison literature, composed of literary works written in secret and smuggled out by prisoners to bear witness to the outside world of the vitality of their ideals, their struggle and the conditions of detention.
Courage of the children
An example is Walid Daqqah, a renowned writer and one of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners, who was martyred on 7 April 2024 during his 38th year of detention in colonial prisons.
In short, from the children and adolescents who wear courageous smiles as they leave their trials surrounded by soldiers, to the women of Damon prison who heroically stand up to their jailers, to the resistance of the prisoners who fight by putting their lives and health at risk while having a central role in the Resistance outside, it is the daily struggle of the prisoners’ movement that makes detention a place where resistance to the colonial regime is organised, continuing even inside detention.
As Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s international coordinator, said:
“Despite the intention to use political imprisonment to suppress Palestinian resistance and derail the Palestinian liberation movement, Palestinian prisoners have remained political leaders and symbols of steadfastness for the struggle as a whole.”
In Kanaky, it was the announcement of the incarceration of CCAT activists on June 23 that relaunched the movement, who became the driving forces behind this new round of mobilisation.
On May 13, while the population was setting up roadblocks on the main roads of Nouméa, a mutiny broke out in the Camp Est prison in reaction to the plan to unfreeze the electoral body.
The prison was therefore directly part of the mobilisation, and three guards were taken hostage on this first day of struggle. They were quickly released after the RAID (French national police tactical unit) intervened.
But during the night of May 14-15, another revolt took place in the prison, rendering no fewer than 80 cells unusable.
It is therefore in this context of uprising and intifada throughout Kanaky, both in prisons and outside, that the announcement of the deportation of the 7 Kanak leaders took place.
In addition to these highly publicised deportations, there were also dozens of similar cases of transfers from Camp Est.
Completely ignored by the government, these took place both before May 23 and during the month of July, including participants in the prison uprisings as well as long-term prisoners transferred to relieve congestion in the Kanak prison.
Silence which masks the scale of these colonial deportations only intends to make the task of the families and political supporters of the Kanaks even more difficult in their attempt to show solidarity with the prisoners.
Furthermore, upon their arrival in mainland France, the CCAT activists were separated into 7 different prisons, directly recalling the policy of dispersion already at work in Spain at the end of the 1980s against ETA prisoners, in reaction to the effectiveness of their prison organising.
Today as yesterday, the colonial power dispatches prisoners throughout the mainland to prevent a collective counter-offensive. The prisoners’ connections with one another, but also with the outside, are consequently largely hampered.
This isolation directly aims to break the movement by tearing off its “head” and preventing any form of common struggle against this confinement. We therefore know that the momentum of struggle outside seems to respond to a hardening of detention conditions inside prisons, as evidenced by the isolation in which the CCAT activists are kept.
Likewise in Palestine, where since last October 7, mass arrests have escalated to the development of military concentration camps characterised by inhumane conditions of incarceration where severe torture is a daily, routine occurrence.
Currently, both for the more than 9300 Palestinian prisoners detained in the 19 Zionist colonial prisons, and for the thousands of prisoners from Gaza arrested during the genocidal offensive of the occupying forces on the Strip incarcerated in military camps, the conditions of detention have deteriorated significantly.
If in the colonial prisons Palestinian prisoners suffer hunger, collective isolation, overcrowding, violence and physical and psychological torture, conditions which have led to the martyrdom of at least 18 prisoners since October 7, in the military detention camps the situation is even more extreme.
The thousands of prisoners from Gaza held there are handcuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day, forced to kneel on the ground, motionless for most of the day, raped and sexually assaulted and tortured daily, which leaves the released prisoners with enormous trauma.
Sick prisoners are crammed in naked, equipped with diapers, on beds without mattresses or blankets, in military airplane hangars and warehouses and without any medical care.
In all cases, isolation reigns, in prisons as in military detention centers, and the Zionist regime aims to cut off the Palestinian prisoners — and their collective movement — from the outside world.
A “Freedom Brigade” Palestinian prison escape poster. Image: Samidoun
Stories of prison escapes Beyond the heroic prison uprisings, many stories of escapes from colonial prisons also fuel resistance and demonstrate the resilience of prisoners.
In Palestine, to cite a recent example, we recall the “Freedom Tunnel” operation, where six Palestinian prisoners freed themselves from the Zionist-occupied Gilboa high-security prison by digging a tunnel using a spoon.
The six Palestinians — Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yaqoub Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubaidi — became Palestinian, Arab and international symbols of Palestinian resistance and the will for freedom.
While they were all rearrested, their escape exposed the weaknesses under the colonial myth of “impenetrable Israeli security”, plunging the occupation’s prison system into an internal crisis.
In France, the CRAs (Administrative Detention Centres) represent an ultra-violent manifestation of racism and the management of exiles. People are locked up in terrible and therefore deadly conditions.
Thus, faced with colonial management of populations, particularly from former French colonies, resistance is being organised.
For example, on the night of Friday, June 21 to Saturday, June 22, 14 people held at the CRA in Vincennes managed to escape (only one person has been re-arrested since).
This follows the escape of 11 detainees in December from this same place of confinement. However, these detention centres are often recent and very well equipped.
From Palestine to the Hegaxone and the colonial prisons in Kanaky, the resistance fighters fight day by day within the prison system itself, and the escapes and uprisings in the prisons are events that weaken the colonial propaganda and its myth of invincibility and total superiority.
A “Freedom for the Kanaky CCAT comrades” banner. Image: Image: Samidoun
Resistance continues
Despite the tightening of detention conditions and the security arsenal that is deployed against liberation movements, it is clear that the resistance is not stopping and that, on the contrary, organizing is becoming even more vigorous.
In Kanaky, new blockades in solidarity with the prisoners have spread well beyond Nouméa since June 23, demanding their immediate release and repatriation to Kanaky, since “touching one of them is touching everyone”.
In mainland France, numerous gatherings have also taken place since Monday at the call of the MKF (Kanak Movement in France), and among others led by the Collectif Solidarité Kanaky in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, and also in front of the prisons where the activists are still incarcerated.
Their prison numbers have been made public so that it is possible to write to them and so that broad and massive support can be communicated to them in order to provide them with the strength necessary for this fight from metropolitan France.
From now on, tributes to the Kanak martyrs who fell under the bullets of the colonial militias and the French State are joined by banners for the freedom of the prisoners.
Marah Bakir, a representative of Palestinian women prisoners, arrested at the age of 15 by the colonial army and imprisoned for 8 years, made these comments during her first interview given upon her release on 24 November 2023:
“It is very difficult to feel freedom and to be liberated in exchange for the blood of the martyrs of Gaza and the great sacrifices of our people in the Gaza Strip.”
The Kanaky ‘martyrs’:
Stéphanie Nassaie Doouka, 17, and Chrétien Neregote, 36, shot in the head on May 20 by a business manager.
Djibril Saïko Salo, 19, shot in the back on May 15 by loyalist settlers at a roadblock.
Dany Tidjite, 48, killed by an off-duty police officer who tried to impose a roadblock.
Joseph Poulawa, 34, killed on May 28 by two bullets in the chest and shoulder by the GIGN (the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France)
Lionel Païta, 26, killed on June 3 by a bullet to the head by a police officer at a roadblock.
Victorin Rock Wamytan, known as “Banane”, 38 years old, father of two children, killed on July 10 by a shot in the chest by the GIGN on customary lands
In Kanaky, the names of these martyrs, just like the 19 of the Ouvéa cave, will remain forever in the memory of the activists and people, and as one could read on another banner in Noumea: “The fight must not cease for lack of a leader or fighters, this direction remains forever. Kanaky”
This article, by Samidoun Paris Banlieue, was published first in French at: https://samidoun.net/fr/2024/07/la-question-carcerale-dans-la-colonisation-de-la-kanaky-a-la-palestine/. During the protests in Kanaky in May and ongoing, French military forces targeted demonstrators, imposed a countrywide ban on TikTok, and have seized multiple political prisoners from the Kanak independence movement. This article is republished from Samidoun.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has “hung . . . out to dry” Fiji’s suspended New Zealand Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who wrote to him seeking assistance, a former Fiji government advisor-cum-critic says.
“The sudden cessation of my salary at the eleventh hour whilst I am in the middle of instructing legal counsel in Fiji to defend myself against charges brought by the Fijian government is a denial of natural justice that has left me with little choice but to seek your assistance,” Pryde said in a five-page letter to the minister.
A spokesperson from Peters’ office told RNZ Pacific today: “This is a matter between Mr Pryde and the government of Fiji. It is not a matter for the minister to comment on.”
However, according to the Fiji Sun, Peters — in an exclusive interview with the newspaper — said that “he was not happy” with the New Zealander’s “approach to seek assistance from him”.
“He (Pryde) wrote to everybody and sent me a copy,” he was quoted as saying in a frontpage news story with the headline ‘Winston slams Pryde’s email action for help’.
“He sent me a copy? He wrote me a letter and sent it to everyone else at the same time!. What do you think about somebody that wrote to you — asking for help and then sent it to everyone else at the same time? What would you think?,” the newspaper reported.
‘Bereft of principle’
The Deputy Prime Minsiter’s comments reported in the Fijian daily have been labelled by a former Fiji government communications advisor and Grubsheet blog publisher, Graham Davis, as “highhanded and bereft of principle”.
“Winston Peters has clearly hung Christopher Pryde out to dry,” Davis said.
“His dismissive attitude to suspended DPP Pryde now being unable to defend himself against a false charge of misbehaviour because his salary has been severed is . . . highhanded and bereft of principle.
“And it sends an ominous message to every New Zealander working in the Pacific or contemplating doing so that if they fall foul of their host governments, Winston [Peters] will cut them loose. They are on their own.”
NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters . . . told the Fiji Sun he was “not happy” with Pryde’s letter to him appealing for NZ help. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told local media that Pryde was entitled to receive all salaries until he was removed from office.
The Kiwi lawyer was suspended 15 months ago after he allegedly “spent about 30 to 45 minutes conversing alone” with former Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum at a public event hosted by the Japanese Embassy in the capital Suva.
In April last year, Rabuka said people in high office needed to be “very aware of who is watching what we do”.
‘Fraternising’ with person under investigation
“For the DPP [Pryde] to be seen to be fraternising with high profile person under investigation would not be the right thing for the DPP to [have] done.”
Pryde, who has held the top prosecutor’s role since 2011, warned other New Zealand citizens who have taken up positions in Fiji’s criminal justice system “may potentially be adversely impacted if the Fijian government is permitted to ignore due process and the rule of law”.
“The NZ government provides substantial aid to Fiji in support of the rule of law which is being undermined,” he wrote to Peters.
The Fiji Law Society and the New Zealand Law Society (NZLS) have expressed concerns on the issue.
NZLS president Frazer Barton has encouraged “respect for and compliance . .. of the rule of law”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Papua New Guinea’s Chuave District Development Authority is condemning an attack on a priest and his team in Chimbu province.
Father Ryszard Wajda (SVD), three nurses, two doctors from Mingende hospital, and two Catholic education officers returned on a four-day foot patrol to Kiari in Nomane sub-district when they were attacked at Dulai village by villagers from Nomane.
The few villagers who fixed a damaged section of the Nomane feeder road demanded K1000 (NZ$425) from Father Wajda and his team and attacked them after alleging that they had missed out on disaster money given by Prime Minister James Marape to the province.
Father Wajda, who is the parish priest of Wangoi in Chuave district, said that his team gave K200 (NZ$85) but the Dulai villagers refused this.
“The villagers directed violent abusive language to me and more to my team members,” he said.
He said that one of the education officers was punched several times, and others were violently pulled out of my parish vehicle.
“I stayed in the car, and nobody touched me physically,” he said.
Teacher intervened
Father Wajda said that they were allowed to travel after a teacher from the area intervened and assured the villagers that he would pay K1000 when he received his fortnightly pay.
He said that he had helped the local teacher last Friday to pay K1000 demanded by the villagers.
“It took us one day to walk and cross Waghi to visit my new Catholic community in remote Kiari at their request and spend four days with them addressing different issues,” he said.
Father Wajda said the nurses and doctors treated 200 patients during the three days working from 8am-11am every morning. He said the two education officers inspected the education institution.
“It took us 12 hours to walk back to Dulai and another village a few kilometres further up when my parish vehicle waited and picked us up,” he said.
He said that that the attack was unfortunate and local community leaders were negotiated fr a peace reconciliation.
Chief executive officer Francis Aiwa of Chuave District Development Authority (CDDA) said the attack on Father Wajda’s group was “uncalled for”.
He said that the perpetrators must be arrested and put behind bars.
The Catholic Church played an important role in the lives of everyone and such attack and killing of a priest are uncalled for and must not be repeated, Aiwa said.
Republished from the Post-Courier with permission.
Family members keep silent on the issue of violence in Fiji and individuals continue to be the victims, according to Jonathan Veitch, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative to the South Pacific.
While raising his concern on the issue at Nasinu Gospel Primary School on Friday, he said 83 percent of children in Fiji had reported some level of violence, either in their family or in school over the past six months.
“This 83 percent rate is far too high, and it’s not acceptable,” he said.
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”
Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victim to deal with the trauma.
Speaking during a student-led press conference at Nasinu Gospel Primary School, Veitch expressed his concern about the alarming rate of violence against women and children in Fiji, whether physical or sexual.
“You (Fiji) do have high rates of violence against children,” Veitch said.
“This (83 percent rate) is far too high, and it’s not acceptable.
‘Curtain of silence’
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”
He said it was common in Fiji for family members to keep silent on the issue of violence while individuals continued to be victimised.
“If that particular person has to be stopped, we have to deal with it in our village.
“So, it’s not just UNICEF and the Government; it’s also the village itself.”
Veitch said significant pillars of communities must be involved in key conversations.
“We really need to talk about it in our churches on Sundays; we have to have an honest conversation about it.
“These kids shouldn’t be hurt; they shouldn’t be punished physically.”
Multifaceted approach
He said the issue should be dealt with through a multifaceted approach.
Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell expressed similar concerns and called for a change in norms.
“It requires government leadership and good laws,” she said.
“It requires the government to come together and say that this is a priority where violence against children is unacceptable.”
She said conversations regarding the matter needed to focus on changing the norms of what was acceptable and unacceptable in a community.
“A lot of times this issue is kept in the dark and not talked about, and I think it’s very important to have those conversations.”
She said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victims to deal with the trauma.
She added that society played a role in condemning violence against women and ensuring they were safe in their homes and in their communities.
Russell said while most cases were directed at men, there was a need to train the mindset of young boys to change their perspective of using violence as a solving mechanism.
Sainimili Magimagiis a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
French Polynesia’s veteran politician, 93-year-old Gaston Flosse, announced last week he is stepping down from his position as president of his Amuitahiraa o te Nunaa Maohi party.
Flosse, known locally as “the old lion”, has been President of French Polynesia on several occasions over a span of more than 30 years.
Once known as the strongman of the French Pacific territory, he was also a member of the French government with the portfolio of Minister of State in charge of overseas territories, during the second half of the 1980s under then Prime Minister Jacques Chirac.
He was also the President of French Polynesia when, once elected President, Chirac resumed nuclear testing at the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa (until 1996).
The resumption triggered riots at the time in the capital Pape’ete.
With his party, then known as the Tahuiraa Huiraatia, he was a strong advocate of French Polynesia remaining a part of France, under an “autonomy” status, but over the past few years became in favour of France obtaining a new status in “association” with France.
Flosse said he was stepping down for health reasons, but he still believes he is fit to keep contributing to his party.
“Now health is the priority. The doctor had already told me to stop at least 4 days a week, now he tells me I must stop completely,” he told journalists.
“But apart from that, I feel very good, physically and intellectually.”
The date of September 28 has been earmarked for the election of a new party president. One of the candidates is his wife, Pascale Haiti-Flosse.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A brutal killing of three Papuan civilians in Puncak Jaya reveals that occupied West Papua is a ticking time bomb under Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto, claims the leader of an advocacy group.
And United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) Benny Wenda says the Melanesian region risks becoming “another East Timor”.
The victims have been named as Tonda Wanimbo, 33; Dominus Enumbi, and Murib Government.
Their killings were followed by riots in Puncak Jaya as angry indigenous residents protested in front of the local police station and set fire to police cars, said Wenda in a statement.
“This incident is merely the most recent example of Indonesia’s military and business strategy in West Papua,” he said.
“Indonesia deliberately creates escalations to justify deploying more troops, particularly in mineral-rich areas, causing our people to scatter and allowing international corporations to exploit the empty land – starting the cycle of bloodshed all over again.”
According to the ULMWP, 4500 Indonesian troops have recently been deployed to Paniai, one of the centres of West Papuan resistance.
An estimated 100,000 West Papuans have been displaced since 2018, while recent figures show more than 76,000 Papuans remain internally displaced — “living as refugees in the bush”.
Indonesia ‘wants our land’
“Indonesia wants our land and our resources, not our people,” Wenda said.
The Indonesian military claimed that the three men were members of the resistance movement TPNPB (West Papua National Liberation Army), but this has been denied.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Candra Kurniawan claimed one of the men had been sought by security forces for six years for alleged shootings of civilians and security personnel.
“This is the same lie they told about Enius Tabuni and the five Papuan teenagers murdered in Yahukimo in September 2023,” Wenda said.
“The military line was quickly refuted by a community leader in Puncak Jaya, who clarified that the three men were all civilians.”
Concern over Warinussy
Wenda said he was also “profoundly concerned” over the shooting of lawyer and human rights defender Christian Warinussy.
Warinussy has spent his career defending indigenous Papuans who have expelled from their ancestral land to make way for oil palm plantations and industrial mines.
“Although we don’t know who shot him, his shooting acts as a clear warning to any Papuans who stand up for their customary land rights or investigates Indonesia’s crimes,” Wenda said.
Indonesia’s latest violence is taking place “in the shadow of Prabowo Subianto”, who is due to take office as President on October 20.
The Pacific Islands Forum hopes to send a high-level delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia to investigate the current political crisis in the French territory before the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga in August.
According to Pacnews, Forum Chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown confirmed this during an interview with journalists in Tokyo after the conclusion of the PALM10 meeting.
He said while it was a work in progress, there had been a request from the territorial government of New Caledonia for a high-level Pacific delegation.
Brown said the next step was to write a letter which would then need support from France.
“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the Government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said.
“We do have similar concerns. The third referendum was boycotted by the Kanak population because of the impacts of covid-19 and the respect for the mourning period. Therefore, the outcome of that referendum is not valuable,” he said.
The adviser to New Caledonia’s President Charles Wea, who is in Japan for talks on the sidelines of the PALM10 meeting, told RNZ Pacific the high level group would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
New Caledonia government adviser Charles Wea . . . mission to New Caledonia would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Fiji’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka announced he would lead the Forum’s fact-finding mission in New Caledonia.
“I have also been asked by many Pacific leaders to lead a group to conduct a fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing,” he said during a talanoa session with the Fijian diaspora in Tokyo.
Fiji Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . leading a “fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing”. Image: RNZ/Giles Dexter
“Additionally, I will accompany Prime Minister James Marape to visit the President of Indonesia to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua.”
By Shailendra Bahadur Singh and Amit Sarwal in Suva
Given the intensifying situation, journalists, academics and experts joined to state the need for the Pacific, including its media, to re-assert itself and chart its own path, rooted in its unique cultural, economic and environmental context.
The tone for the discussions was set by Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Information and Communications Technology Timothy Masiu, chief guest at the official dinner of the Suva conference.
The conference heard that the Pacific media sector is small and under-resourced, so its abilities to carry out its public interest role is limited, even in a free media environment.
Masiu asked how Pacific media was being developed and used as a tool to protect and preserve Pacific identities in the light of “outside influences on our media in the region”. He said the Pacific was “increasingly being used as the backyard” for geopolitics, with regional media “targeted by the more developed nations as a tool to drive their geopolitical agenda”.
Masiu is the latest to draw attention to the widespread impacts of the global contest on the Pacific, with his focus on the media sector, and potential implications for editorial independence.
In some ways, Pacific media have benefitted from the geopolitical contest with the increased injection of foreign funds into the sector, prompting some at the Suva conference to ponder whether “too much of a good thing could turn out to be bad”.
Experts echoed Masiu’s concerns about island nations’ increased wariness of being mere pawns in a larger game.
Fiji a compelling example
Fiji offers a compelling example of a nation navigating this complex landscape with a balanced approach. Fiji has sought to diversify its diplomatic relations, strengthening ties with China and India, without a wholesale pivot away from traditional partners Australia and New Zealand.
Some Pacific Island leaders espouse the “friends to all, enemies to none” doctrine in the face of concerns about getting caught in the crossfire of any military conflict.
A media crush at the recent Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji. Image: Asia Pacific Media Network
This is manifest in Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s incessant calls for a “zone of peace” during both the Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ meeting in Port Vila in August, and the United Nations General Assembly debate in New York in September.
Rabuka expressed fears about growing geopolitical rivalry contributing to escalating tensions, stating that “we must consider the Pacific a zone of peace”.
Papua New Guinea, rich in natural resources, has similarly navigated its relationships with major powers. While Chinese investments in infrastructure and mining have surged, PNG has also actively engaged with Australia, its closest neighbour and long-time partner.
“Don’t get me wrong – we welcome and appreciate the support of our development partners – but we must be free to navigate our own destiny,” Masiu told the Suva conference.
Masiu’s proposed media policy for PNG was also discussed at the Suva conference, with former PNG newspaper editor Alex Rheeney stating that the media fraternity saw it as a threat, although the minister spoke positively about it in his address.
Criticism and praise
In 2019, Solomon Islands shifted diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, a move that was met with both criticism and praise. While this opened the door to increased Chinese investment in infrastructure, it also highlighted an effort to balance existing ties to Australia and other Western partners.
Samoa and Tonga too have taken significant strides in using environmental diplomacy as a cornerstone of their international engagement.
One of the outcomes of the debates at the Suva conference was that media freedom in the Pacific is a critical factor in shaping an independent and pragmatic global outlook.
Fiji has seen fluctuations in media freedom following political upheavals, with periods of restrictive press laws. However, with the repeal of the draconian media act last year, there is a growing recognition that a free and vibrant media landscape is essential for transparent governance and informed decision-making.
But the conference also heard that the Pacific media sector is small and under-resourced, so its ability to carry out its public interest role is limited, even in a free media environment.
Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific. Image: Kula Press
Vulnerability worsened
The Pacific media sector’s vulnerability had worsened due to the financial damage from the digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic. It underscored the need to address the financial side of the equation if media organisations are to remain viable.
For the Pacific, the path forward lies in pragmatism and self-reliance, as argued in the book of collected essays Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, edited by Shailendra Bahadur Singh, Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad and Amit Sarwal, launched at the Suva conference by Masiu.
No doubt, as was commonly expressed at the Suva media conference, the world is watching as the Pacific charts its own course.
As the renowned Pacific writer Epeli Hau’ofa once envisioned, the Pacific Islands are not small and isolated, but a “sea of islands” with deep connections and vast potential to contribute in the global order.
As they continue to engage with the world, the Pacific nations will need to carve out a path that reflects their unique traditional wisdom, values and aspirations.
Dr Shailendra Bahadur Singh is head of journalism at The University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva, Fiji, and chair of the recent Pacific International Media Conference. Dr Amit Sarwal is an Indian-origin academic, translator, and journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. He is formerly a senior lecturer and deputy head of school (research) at the USP. This article was first published by The Interpreter and is republished with permission.
The ICJ in the Hague found in a landmark but non-binding advisory ruling on Friday that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”.
The court said that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states had an obligation not to recognise the occupation as legal and not to give aid or support toward Israel in maintaining it.
The ICJ ruling confirmed what the UN Security Council found in passing resolution 2334 in 2016.
This resolution was co-sponsored by New Zealand, which had a place on the Security Council at the time under a National-led government.
The United Nations Security Council stated that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”.
It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.
ICJ-Israel Occupied territories resolution. Video: Al Jazeera
The ICJ ruling reinforced the UN resolution and the need for government action, the PSNA statement said.
“New Zealand, which co-sponsored the UN resolution in 2016 should lead the way on this,” said PSNA national chair John Minto.
“We need to put our money where our mouth is — especially since the current far-right Israeli government has said its ‘top priority’ is to push ahead with more illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land”.
New Zealanders have been holding national rallies in protest over Israel’s war on Gaza for nine months and protesters were expected to be out in their thousands this weekend to demand government action.
The University of the South Pacific staff associations are up in arms about the sacking of a union leader and academic by the university’s chief executive.
In a joint press release, the Association of the University of the South Pacific (AUSPS) and the USP Staff Union (USPSU), this week claimed that USP vice-chancellor and president Pal Ahluwalia had “launched a vicious attack on the staff unions and freedom of speech” after he terminated the employment contract AUSPS president Dr Tamara Osborne-Naikatini on July 9.
They said Ahluwalia sacked Dr Osborne-Naikatini because she spoke to the media about the “flawed process” through which he was offered a renewal to his contract to lead the institution.
“The university’s claim of ‘gross misconduct’ stems from information Dr Osborne-Naikatini allegedly shared, as AUSP President, in an Islands Business interview reported in the March 2024 edition that revealed a flawed process in the review of the performance of Ahluwalia that subsequently led to a two-year renewal of contract,” they said in the release.
Dr Osborne-Naikatini was the staff representative on the the chief academic authority — the USP Senate — to the review committee, they added.
“Dr Osborne-Naikatini stood for the staff of USP and fought for good governance which ultimately led to her termination,” they said.
The staff unions say that by sacking the biology lecturer, Ahluwalia has “launched a vicious attack on the staff unions and freedom of speech” and are demanding her reinstatement.
RNZ Pacific had put these claims to the university.
Staff contracts ‘confidential’
“Please note that all staff contracts, including terminations, are confidential. The university is not at liberty to discuss staff information with third parties,” the USP said in an email statement.
The USP, the premier institution of higher learning for the region, has had to deal with a series of crisis in relation to the good governance practices and staff-management issues since the vice-chancellor first took the job in 2018.
Professor Pal Ahluwalia . . . deported from Fiji in 2019, but based in Nauru then Samoa. Image: RNZ Pacific
In 2019, Ahluwalia was deported from Fiji in a midnight raid carried out Fijian police and immigration officials, after he fell out of favour with the previous Bainimarama administration, for exposing allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement at the university under the leadership of his predecessor.
He led USP from exile, for some time from Nauru, before relocating to Samoa in 2021. In May this year, the USP Council voted for him to relocate back to Suva.
The staff unions reminded Ahluwalia of the 2019 saga in their joint statement, saying they “stood steadfast with him when he was victimised as the whistleblower. He seemed to have a short-lived memory”.
Earlier this year, the unions were at loggerheads with the management over salary disputes.
They had threatened to take strike action if the executive team failed to meet their demands, which they claimed has been neglected by Ahluwalia.
However, both sides reached an agreement last month, and the unions withdrew their strike action.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Pacific Island Forum could serve as a “constructive force” to find a “path forward” in Kanaky New Caledonia, New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says.
“The situation has reached an impasse, and one not easily navigated given the violence that broke out — the democratic injuries that have reopened old wounds and created new ones.”
Peters is in Japan representing New Zealand at the 10th Japan-Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM10) hosted by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo.
He delivered a speech titled “Pacific Futures”, pointing to increasing challenges in the Indo-Pacific as context.
The speech was an opportunity to outline New Zealand’s foreign policy shift, and the minister made renewed calls for “more diplomacy, more engagement, more compromise”, particularly in New Caledonia.
Peters also raised questions around the legitimacy of the 2021 referendum on independence due to a “vastly reduced, and therefore different, sample of voters” and the “obvious democratic injury”.
Among the reasons
“Those two decisions were among the reasons, alongside growing inequalities and lack of prospects for the indigenous Kanak population, especially their youth, that led to the precarious situation that exploded into unrest in May.”
Though, he also understood the 25,000 potential voters may also feel “democratic injury” due to disenfranchisement.
NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ full speech. Video: NZ Embassy, Tokyo
“We raise this crisis here because the situation in New Caledonia is a test of the effectiveness of our regional architecture in dealing with crisis response,” he said.
“It also creates a chance for the Pacific Islands Forum to serve as a constructive force, helping to bring the parties together for an essential democratic dialogue and the path forward.
“In this role, the Pacific Islands Forum needs to find an appropriate mechanism and the best person or people to help facilitate dialogue, engagement or mediation as a path forward between the different actors in New Caledonia.”
He pointed to recent discussions between President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on New Caledonia on what role the Forum might play.
“Pacific Islands Forum countries by virtue of our locations and histories understand the large indigenous minority population’s desire for self-determination.
‘Deeply respect France’s role’
“We also deeply respect and appreciate France’s role in the region and understand France’s desire to walk together with New Caledonians towards a prosperous and secure future.”
The discussions come at a time where wider geopolitical implications are affecting the Pacific.
He said “Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine”, the “utter catastrophe still unfolding in Gaza”, and the risk of greater escalation in the Middle East were creating a more destabilised global security situation.
Peters said decision-makers should have their “eyes-wide open” to their country’s challenges, but also be “alert to opportunities that materially advance the prosperity and security of our citizens”.
“The call for renewed and vigorous diplomatic engagement provides the context for New Zealand’s foreign policy reset. The security environment has deteriorated sharply during the three years since last being foreign minister, accentuating an even longer-term deterioration of the rules-based order.”
Peters said New Zealand’s foreign policy reset is a response to “three big shifts underpinning the multi-faceted and complex challenges facing the international order” which he outlines:
From rules to power, a shift towards a multipolar world that is characterised by more contested rules and where relative power between states assumes a greater role in shaping international affairs;
From economics to security, a shift in which economic relationships are reassessed in light of increased military competition in a more securitised and less stable world; and
From efficiency to resilience, a shift in the drivers of economic behaviour, and where building greater resilience and addressing pressing social and sustainability issues become more prominent.
New Zealand foreign minister calls for ‘more compromise’ on New Caledonia https://t.co/uwLAXokXAd
Southeast Asian focus
In response, Peters said the New Zealand government was “significantly increasing our focus and resources” to Southeast and North Asia, including Japan.
The government is also renewing engagement with “traditional like-minded partnerships” and supporting new groupings that “advance and defend our interests and capabilities”.
He mentions the IP4 and NATO as examples.
“We also knew we needed to give more energy, more urgency, and a sharper focus to three inter-connected lines of diplomatic effort: investing in our relationships, growing our prosperity, and strengthening our security.”
Peters will return to New Zealand on Saturday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The PANG media team at this month’s Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji caught up with independent journalist, author and educator Dr David Robie and questioned him on his views about decolonisation in the Pacific.
Dr Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), a co-organiser of the conference, shared his experience on reporting on Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua’s fight for freedom.
He speaks from his 40 years of journalism in the Pacific saying the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum need to step up pressure on France and Indonesia to decolonise.
The leaders of the subregional bloc — from Fiji, FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front of New Caledonia), Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu — met in Tokyo on the sidelines of the 10th Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM10), to specifically talk about New Caledonia.
They included Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka, PNG’s James Marape, Solomon Islands’ Jeremiah Manele, and Vanuatu’s Charlot Salwai.
In his interview with PANG (Pacific Network on Globalisation), Dr Robie also draws parallels with the liberation struggle in Palestine, which he says has become a global symbol for justice and freedom everywhere.
Asia Pacific Media Report’s Dr David Robie . . . The people see the flags of Kanaky, West Papua and Palestine as symbolic of the struggles against repression and injustice all over the world.
“I should mention Palestine as well because essentially it’s settler colonisation.
“What we’ve seen in the massive protests over the last nine months and so on there has been a huge realisation in many countries around the world that colonisation is still here after thinking, or assuming, that had gone some years ago.
“So you’ll see in a lot of protests — we have protests across Aotearoa New Zealand every week — that the flags of Kanaky, West Papua and Palestine fly together.
“The people see these as symbolic of the repression and injustice all over the world.”
PANG Media talk to Dr David Robie on decolonisation. Video: PANG Media
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
A Kanak political commentator in Aotearoa New Zealand says calls to separate New Caledonia into pro- and anti-independence provinces would worsen racial inequality in the Pacific territory.
Unrest continues in the capital Nouméa, with the nephew of New Caledonia Congress pro-independence president shot and killed at Saint Louis, and more armoured vehicles arriving from France.
Calls to divide the territory’s provinces are being pushed by loyalist and the French territory’s Southern Province President Sonia Backes.
Speaking at the weekend, Backes said the project of a New Caledonia institutionally united and based on living together with each other was “over”.
AFP news agency reported Backes had said that when two opposing forces were convinced they were legitimately defending their values, they were faced with a choice of fighting each other to the death or separating so they could live.
Political uncertainty in Paris is delaying the possibility of any kind of resolution in the troubled territory, which is also fraught with internal divisions among both the pro- and anti-independence camps.
Pockets of inequality
Auckland lawyer Joseph Xulue told RNZ Pacific “separatist ideology” would create pockets of inequality.
“The support in the region, particularly, support in respect of economic resources, administrative resources would almost certainly be pumped into the Southern Province if this were to eventuate because France would understand that those are the people who are loyal to them,” he said.
Xulue said Backes’ ideas went against the spirit of the Nouméa Accord.
Joseph Xulue is the first person of Kanak heritage to graduate from Harvard Law School . . . a loyalist “separatist” proposal is against the spirit of the Nouméa Accord. Image: Joseph Xulue/RNZ Pacific
“It was agreed to and formed on the basis that we would not have this kind of separatist ideology. It helps to assent the actual Accord’s document . . . [there’s a] stipulation that this would not happen.
“If Kanaky New Caledonia is going to advance beyond the actual Accord’s process.”
He added that Backes’ ideas would only worsen racial inequality in the archipelago.
‘Political reverberations’ Islands Business correspondent Nic Maclellan, who has been covering the French territory for decades, told RNZ Pacific the area where the latest death had been recorded had a long colonial history.
Maclellan said that in 1878 there was a revolt in the north and centre of the country, then in the 19th century, as the French military moved in attacking villages, many people fled to the outskirts of the capital.
He said nowadays Saint Louis was one of the areas where survivors from past conflicts had fled too.
“It has always been a hotspot, there has always been a level of criminal activity around people of St Louis. It is a strong community, largely Kanak,” he said.
“Police reports which is still under investigations suggest that a group of Kanaks were firing at a police drone. There was a exchange of gunfire between the Kanak activist and the members of the GIGN paramilitary unit and in that case a GIGN police officer shot and killed Rock [Victorin] Wamytan.”
Maclellan said the name of the dead man was symbolic in New Caledonia.
“[He] is nephew of Rock Wamytan, the current President of the Congress of New Caledonia who is a high chief of Saint Louis. So, beyond the allegations of criminal activity by this, this group of activists, it has also got political reverberations.”
French snap elections unhelpful He said the French snap elections results both in mainland France and New Caledonia would continue to reverberate in months to come.
While the polls were predicting that the extreme right led by Marine Le Pen would win the largest bloc, and possibly a majority in the government, those polls turned out to be wrong.
Instead, a left alliance, known as the New Popular Front — an alliance of parties including the Greens, the Socialists, the Communist Party, and a large group led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France Unbowed, (LFI), have got the largest bloc.
However, Maclellan said no one had the absolute majority required to have the ruling numbers in the 577-seat French legislature in Paris.
“All in all, it is very complex, a fast-moving situation in Paris. We will see what happens.
“But the real problem for the Pacific is this level of uncertainty creates ongoing political, cultural, economic chaos that cannot be helpful at a time when New Caledonia’s economy has been very badly damaged by weeks of rioting and clashes between police and protesters,” he added.
New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has said the Pacific as a whole should be concerned about ongoing unrest in New Caledonia.
Peters said he hoped a plan was in place ahead of the Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Nuku’alofa next month.
“The long term Pacific future is all of our business. We have to hope that before we get to Tonga that there has been some sort of guideline of how we might go forward,” he said.
“Our view is that we have to ensure that there is a solution where we can help — help to rebuild if we can.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Despite the many challenges faced by Pacific journalists in recent years, the recent Pacific International Media Conference highlighted the incredible strength and courage of the region’s reporters.
The three-day event in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month co-hosted by the University of South Pacific, Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), was the first of its kind for Fiji in the last 20 years, marking the newfound freedom media professionals have been experiencing in the nation.
The conference included speakers from many of the main newsrooms in the Pacific, as well as Emmy award-winning American journalist Professor Emily Drew and Pulitzer-nominated investigative journalist Irene Jay Liu, as well as New Zealand’s Indira Stewart, Dr David Robie of APMN and Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor of RNZ Pacific.
The launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalist Review. Professor Vijay Naidu (from left), Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Dr Biman Prasad, founding PJR editor Dr David Robie, Papua New Guinea Minister for Communications and Information Technology Timothy Masiu, Associate Professor Shailendra Bahadur Singh and current PJR editor Dr Philip Cass. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Given Fiji’s change of government in 2022, and the ensuing repeal of media laws which threatened jail time for reporters and editors who published stories that weren’t in the “national interest”, many spoke of the extreme challenges they faced under the previous regime.
And two of Fiji’s deputy prime ministers, Manoa Kamikamica and Professor Biman Prasad, also gave keynote speeches detailing how the country’s newly established press freedom is playing a vital role in strengthening the country’s democracy.
Dr Robie has worked in the Pacific for several decades and was a member of the conference’s organising committee.
He said this conference has come at “critical time given the geopolitics in the background”.
Survival of media
“I’ve been to many conferences over the years, and this one has been quite unique and it’s been really good,” he said.
“We’ve addressed the really pressing issues regarding the survival of media and it’s also highlighted how resilient news organisations are across the Pacific.”
Dr David Robie spoke at the conference on how critical journalism can survive against the odds. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Dr David Robie talks to PMN News on the opening day. Audio/video:PMN Pacific Mornings
The conference coincided with the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, which is the only academic journal in the region that publishes research specifically focused on Pacific media.
As founder of PJR, Robie says it is heartening to see it recognised at a place — the University of the South Pacific — where it was also based for a number of years.
“It began its life at the University of Papua New Guinea, but then it was at USP for five years, so it was very appropriate to have our birthday here. It’s published over 1100 articles over its 30 years, so we were really celebrating all that’s been published over that time.”
RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor has been running journalism workshops in the region over many years. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Climate change solutions
RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepla-Taylor spoke on a panel about how to cover climate change with a solutions lens.
She says the topic of sexual harassment was a particularly important discussion that came up and it highlighted the extra hurdles Pacific female journalists face.
“It’s a reminder for me as a journalist from New Zealand and something I will reinforce with my own team about the privilege we have to be able to do a story, jump in your car and go home, without being tailed by the police or being taken into barracks to be questioned,” she says.
“It’s a good reminder to us and it gives a really good perspective about what it’s like to be a journalist in the region and the challenges too.”
Another particular challenge Tuilaepa-Taylor highlighted was the increase in international journalists coming into the region reporting on the Pacific.
“The issue I have is that it leads to taking away a Pacific lens on a story which is vitally important,” she said.
“There are stories that can be covered by non-Pacific journalists but there are really important cultural stories that need to have that Pacific lens on it so it’s more authentic and give audiences a sense of connection.”
But Dr Robie says that while problems facing the Pacific are clear, the conference also highlighted why there is also cause for optimism.
“Journalists in the region work very hard and under very difficult conditions and they carry a lot of responsibilities for their communities, so I think it’s a real credit to our industry … [given] their responses to the challenges and their resilience shows there can be a lot of hope for the future of journalism in the region.”
Justin Latifis news editor of Pacific Media Network. Republished with permission.
Papua New Guinea will face a grim reality of a ban on its shipping of oil and hydrocarbons in international waters if it continues to ignore the implementation of a domestic waste oil policy that is 28 years overdue.
The Conservation and Environment Protection Authority’s Director for Renewable Brendan Trawen made this stark revelation in response to queries posed by Post-Courier Online.
In the backdrop of investment projects proposed in the resource space, the issue of waste oil and its disposal has incurred hefty fines and reputational damage to the nation, and could seriously impact the shipments of one of the country’s lucrative exports in oil and LNG.
“International partners are most protective of their waterways. Therefore, PNG has already been issued with a warning on implementation of a ban of oil and hydrocarbon shipments, including LNG from PNG through Indonesian water,” he said.
In addition, the issuing of a complete ban on all hydrocarbon exports from Singapore through Indonesian waters to PNG.
“In light of growing international concern about the need for stringent control of transboundary movement of hazardous waste oil, and of the need as far as possible to reduce such movement to a minimum, and the concern about the problem of illegal transboundary traffic in hazardous wastes oil, CEPA is compelled to take immediate steps in accordance with Article 10 of the Basel Convention Framework,” Trawen said.
He indicated CEPA had limited capabilities of PNG State through to manage hazardous wastes and other wastes.
Safeguarding PNG’s international standing
The government of PNG had been “rightfully seeking cooperation with Singaporean authorities since 2020” to safeguard PNG’s international standing with the aim to improve and achieve environmentally sound management of hazardous waste oil.
“Through the NEC Decision No. 12/2021, respective authorities from PNG and Singapore deliberated and facilitated the alternative arrangement to reach an agreement with Hachiko Efficiency Services (HES) towards the establishment of a transit and treatment centre in PNG.
“In due process, HES have the required permits to allow transit of the waste oils in Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea for recycling.”
Minister of Environment, Conservation and Climate Change Simon Kilepa acknowledged that major repercussions were expected to take effect with the potential implementation ban of all hydrocarbons and oil shipments through Indonesian waters.
Political, economic and security risks emerged without doubt owing to GoPNG through CEPA’s negligence in the past resolving Basel Convention’s outstanding matters.
“It is in fact that the framework and policy for the Waste Oil Project exists under the International Basel Convention inclusive of the approved methods of handling and shipping waste oils. What PNG has been lacking is the regulation and this program provides that through,” he said.
“CEPA will progress its waste oil programme by engaging Hachiko Efficiency Services to develop and manage the domestic transit facility.
“This will include the export of waste oil operating under the Basel and Waigani agreements dependent upon the final destination.”
CEPA will proceed with the Hazardous Waste Oil Management Programme immediately to comply with the long outstanding implementation of the Basel Convention requirements on the management of Hazardous waste oil.
A media announcement and publicity would be made with issuance of Express of Interest (EOI) to shippers and local waste companies
A presentation would be made to NEC Cabinet and a NEC decision before the sitting of Parliament.
Matthew Variis a senior journalist and former editor of the PNG Post-Courier. Republished with permission.
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