radiofree.asia

Category: Pacific Report

  • Eugene Doyle: Venezuela and Trump’s war to save the Ancien Régime

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    “The Past is not dead; it is not even past.”

    William Faulkner was right: past events continue to inform and shape our world.  With powerful forces gathering to reassert US dominance over not just Venezuela but the entire Western hemisphere, the vexed issue of local elites, for example Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado and her backers, enlisting an imperial power in domestic broils, is again top of the agenda.

    Back in the 1980s I studied in France.  The most thrilling lecture of my university career was an outline of the significance of the Battle of Valmy, a crucial win for the young French Revolution.

    The lecture was given by the distinguished historian Antoine Casanova.

    One of the revolutionary generals that day in 1792 was a Venezuelan, Francisco de Miranda, who in time, returning to the Americas, would wrest power from imperial Spain and become leader of an independent Venezuela.

    Miranda knew Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and, of significance to this story, the father of the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe. Were he alive today he would again unsheathe his sword to fight King Donald Trump and all the forces of L’Ancien Régime.

    L’Ancien Régime — the “Old Order” — refers to the system of absolute monarchy, hereditary privilege, and rigid social hierarchy where a tiny elite owned everything while the masses owned little or nothing.

    In today’s world, given the concentration of power among the few in our countries, I extend the term Ancien Régime to capture the way the US, working in concert with local elites, is operating in ways that would be familiar to a Bourbon King or a British monarch.

    If they had such a thing as shame, the American elites should wince that their country, born out of an epic anti-colonial struggle, now plays the role of a Prussian army seeking to impose its will on another state.

    1792. La patrie en danger. The homeland is in peril.
    The monarchies of Europe had rallied their armies for an assault on France to destroy the Revolution that had swept from power not only King Louis XVI but the entire absolutist order of L’Ancien Régime.

    After a string of victories, the invaders swung their armies towards Paris, intent on snuffing out the revolution, to ensure the contagion did not infect the rest of Europe. Desperate, the French Assembly declared “La Patrie en danger” and called on patriotic citizens to rally to the flag.

    The two world orders clashed in a pivotal battle at Valmy, 200 km northeast of Paris on 20 September 1792.

    At Valmy, for the first time in history, the battle cry that General Miranda and others called out — and thousands of citizen soldiers answered — was “Vive la nation!”  “Long live the Nation! (not for a king, nor an emperor, nor a god).

    Confronting them on the field was the superpower of the day, the best armed, best drilled war machine in history: the Prussian Army, led by Prince Field Marshall Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand. As well as his Prussians, he commanded the army of the Holy Roman Empire and, significantly, L’Armée de Condé, led by King Louis XVI’s cousin and comprised of French royalist émigrés.

    To the citizen soldiers of France, this latter group were traitors to their country, men who put their privileges and their class ahead of the interests of their homeland. This is a theme relevant to discussions of Venezuela today.

    Things went badly for the republican French in the opening and the lines wavered.  The Venezuelan Miranda, history records, raced his charger up and down the lines, urging the troops to sing La Marseillaise, written earlier that year by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. We know it now as the French National Anthem. It is a stirring call to arms, a passionate appeal to fight the enemies of the nation.

    French First Republic
    Long story short, the French prevailed that day and France’s First Republic was declared in Paris two days later.  A witness to the battle was the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who, by way of consolation — I would have thought a little rashly —  told some dejected Prussian officers, “Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth.”

    Today Francisco Miranda’s name is among the 660 heroes of the Republic engraved on L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He has been called the “First Global Revolutionary”, having fought in the American War of Independence as well as his other exploits in Europe and Latin America.

    The first global revolutionary - Miranda
    The “first global revolutionary” . . . Miranda knew President James Monroe, father of the Monroe Doctrine. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

    Some of my fellow students at L’Université de Franche-Comté were South and Central Americans who had fled political persecution. Their stories were my first exposure to the concept of “death squads”.

    This was a time when El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua were drenched in blood as a pitiless struggle was waged by the US and the local military and financial elites on one side, and coalitions of workers, peasants, intellectuals, teachers and various progressives on the other.

    Repeated US interventions to support companies like United Fruit Company went hand in hand with brutal suppression of peasant workers. The CIA-backed coup that overthrew democratic progressive Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 led to a war — the Guatemalan Genocide or The Silent Genocide — in which 200,000 were killed and tens of thousands more “disappeared” over the succeeding three decades. Amnesty International estimated 83 percent of those killed were indigenous Maya people.

    In 1980, while I was in France, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down mid-service by a killer working for El Salvador’s military dictatorship. A quarter of a million people braved the junta to attend his funeral.

    Romero’s fate was sealed when he appealed to US President Jimmy Carter to end aid to El Salvador’s military dictatorship.

    Death squads follow
    Whether we look at the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan’s funding of the infamous Honduran Battalion 316 or any of dozens of such organisations, the pattern is clear: where the US wishes to assert control via elites, death squads follow. The State Department and CIA spent decades building and evolving El Salvador’s National Security Agency. They helped compile lists of leftists, intellectuals and all sorts of people who were then eliminated by the regime’s death squads.

    While I was getting an education in history, literature and politics, tens of thousands were killed in Argentina by the US-backed Junta during the “Dirty War”. Similarly in Chile, from the US-promoted military takeover forward, being a social worker, teacher or trade unionist could be a fatal occupation.

    Sadly, as most people my age know, one could go on and on and on about US covert activity to destroy democratic movements and foster alliances with the most vicious oligarchs on the continent.  That is why I fear for Venezuela and I have zero confidence in any political leader who calls for US direct military and paramilitary (via CIA) action in her own country.

    For these reasons and more, I shuddered when I heard Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado praising Donald Trump and urging him to continue his pressure campaign, saying only Trump can “save Venezuela”.

    “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause,” she wrote in a post on X.

    Praising a man who is indiscriminately killing your own citizens is not, in my estimation, a good look for either a Nobel Peace laureate or a patriot. Francisco Miranda would roll in his grave.

    The price of freedom from foreign powers is often counted in millions of lives and centuries of struggle; it should not be given away lightly.

    The Maduro government has its fans and its detractors; both can mount solid arguments.

    One thing I believe is firmly in its favour, however, is that, for its many faults, it is a national project that seeks to resist dominance from foreign interests, foremost the US.  I will give the last word to Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez de Espinoza (28 March 1750–14 July 1816):

    “I have never believed that anything solid or stable can be built in a country, if absolute independence is not first achieved.”

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Eugene Doyle: Venezuela and Trump’s war to save the Ancien Régime

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    “The Past is not dead; it is not even past.”

    William Faulkner was right: past events continue to inform and shape our world.  With powerful forces gathering to reassert US dominance over not just Venezuela but the entire Western hemisphere, the vexed issue of local elites, for example Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado and her backers, enlisting an imperial power in domestic broils, is again top of the agenda.

    Back in the 1980s I studied in France.  The most thrilling lecture of my university career was an outline of the significance of the Battle of Valmy, a crucial win for the young French Revolution.

    The lecture was given by the distinguished historian Antoine Casanova.

    One of the revolutionary generals that day in 1792 was a Venezuelan, Francisco de Miranda, who in time, returning to the Americas, would wrest power from imperial Spain and become leader of an independent Venezuela.

    Miranda knew Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and, of significance to this story, the father of the Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe. Were he alive today he would again unsheathe his sword to fight King Donald Trump and all the forces of L’Ancien Régime.

    L’Ancien Régime — the “Old Order” — refers to the system of absolute monarchy, hereditary privilege, and rigid social hierarchy where a tiny elite owned everything while the masses owned little or nothing.

    In today’s world, given the concentration of power among the few in our countries, I extend the term Ancien Régime to capture the way the US, working in concert with local elites, is operating in ways that would be familiar to a Bourbon King or a British monarch.

    If they had such a thing as shame, the American elites should wince that their country, born out of an epic anti-colonial struggle, now plays the role of a Prussian army seeking to impose its will on another state.

    1792. La patrie en danger. The homeland is in peril.
    The monarchies of Europe had rallied their armies for an assault on France to destroy the Revolution that had swept from power not only King Louis XVI but the entire absolutist order of L’Ancien Régime.

    After a string of victories, the invaders swung their armies towards Paris, intent on snuffing out the revolution, to ensure the contagion did not infect the rest of Europe. Desperate, the French Assembly declared “La Patrie en danger” and called on patriotic citizens to rally to the flag.

    The two world orders clashed in a pivotal battle at Valmy, 200 km northeast of Paris on 20 September 1792.

    At Valmy, for the first time in history, the battle cry that General Miranda and others called out — and thousands of citizen soldiers answered — was “Vive la nation!”  “Long live the Nation! (not for a king, nor an emperor, nor a god).

    Confronting them on the field was the superpower of the day, the best armed, best drilled war machine in history: the Prussian Army, led by Prince Field Marshall Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand. As well as his Prussians, he commanded the army of the Holy Roman Empire and, significantly, L’Armée de Condé, led by King Louis XVI’s cousin and comprised of French royalist émigrés.

    To the citizen soldiers of France, this latter group were traitors to their country, men who put their privileges and their class ahead of the interests of their homeland. This is a theme relevant to discussions of Venezuela today.

    Things went badly for the republican French in the opening and the lines wavered.  The Venezuelan Miranda, history records, raced his charger up and down the lines, urging the troops to sing La Marseillaise, written earlier that year by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. We know it now as the French National Anthem. It is a stirring call to arms, a passionate appeal to fight the enemies of the nation.

    French First Republic
    Long story short, the French prevailed that day and France’s First Republic was declared in Paris two days later.  A witness to the battle was the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who, by way of consolation — I would have thought a little rashly —  told some dejected Prussian officers, “Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth.”

    Today Francisco Miranda’s name is among the 660 heroes of the Republic engraved on L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He has been called the “First Global Revolutionary”, having fought in the American War of Independence as well as his other exploits in Europe and Latin America.

    The first global revolutionary - Miranda
    The “first global revolutionary” . . . Miranda knew President James Monroe, father of the Monroe Doctrine. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

    Some of my fellow students at L’Université de Franche-Comté were South and Central Americans who had fled political persecution. Their stories were my first exposure to the concept of “death squads”.

    This was a time when El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua were drenched in blood as a pitiless struggle was waged by the US and the local military and financial elites on one side, and coalitions of workers, peasants, intellectuals, teachers and various progressives on the other.

    Repeated US interventions to support companies like United Fruit Company went hand in hand with brutal suppression of peasant workers. The CIA-backed coup that overthrew democratic progressive Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 led to a war — the Guatemalan Genocide or The Silent Genocide — in which 200,000 were killed and tens of thousands more “disappeared” over the succeeding three decades. Amnesty International estimated 83 percent of those killed were indigenous Maya people.

    In 1980, while I was in France, Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down mid-service by a killer working for El Salvador’s military dictatorship. A quarter of a million people braved the junta to attend his funeral.

    Romero’s fate was sealed when he appealed to US President Jimmy Carter to end aid to El Salvador’s military dictatorship.

    Death squads follow
    Whether we look at the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan’s funding of the infamous Honduran Battalion 316 or any of dozens of such organisations, the pattern is clear: where the US wishes to assert control via elites, death squads follow. The State Department and CIA spent decades building and evolving El Salvador’s National Security Agency. They helped compile lists of leftists, intellectuals and all sorts of people who were then eliminated by the regime’s death squads.

    While I was getting an education in history, literature and politics, tens of thousands were killed in Argentina by the US-backed Junta during the “Dirty War”. Similarly in Chile, from the US-promoted military takeover forward, being a social worker, teacher or trade unionist could be a fatal occupation.

    Sadly, as most people my age know, one could go on and on and on about US covert activity to destroy democratic movements and foster alliances with the most vicious oligarchs on the continent.  That is why I fear for Venezuela and I have zero confidence in any political leader who calls for US direct military and paramilitary (via CIA) action in her own country.

    For these reasons and more, I shuddered when I heard Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Maria Corina Machado praising Donald Trump and urging him to continue his pressure campaign, saying only Trump can “save Venezuela”.

    “I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause,” she wrote in a post on X.

    Praising a man who is indiscriminately killing your own citizens is not, in my estimation, a good look for either a Nobel Peace laureate or a patriot. Francisco Miranda would roll in his grave.

    The price of freedom from foreign powers is often counted in millions of lives and centuries of struggle; it should not be given away lightly.

    The Maduro government has its fans and its detractors; both can mount solid arguments.

    One thing I believe is firmly in its favour, however, is that, for its many faults, it is a national project that seeks to resist dominance from foreign interests, foremost the US.  I will give the last word to Sebastián Francisco de Miranda y Rodríguez de Espinoza (28 March 1750–14 July 1816):

    “I have never believed that anything solid or stable can be built in a country, if absolute independence is not first achieved.”

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Not enough known about seafloor to begin mining, says Cook Is scientist

    By Caleb Fotheringham and Tiana Haxton, RNZ Pacific journalists

    Not enough is yet known about the seafloor to decide if deep sea mining can start in the Cook Islands, says an ocean scientist with the government authority in charge of seabed minerals.

    The Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority (SBMA) returned last week from a 21-day deep-sea research expedition on board the United States exploration vessel EV Nautilus.

    The trip was also funded by the United States and supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


    The Nautilus in the Cook Islands.             Video: RNZ Pacific

    High-resolution imagery and data were collected in a bid to better understand what lives on the seafloor.

    SBMA knowledge management officer Dr John Parianos said the findings would guide decisions about seabed mining.

    “One day someone will have to make a decision about what to do and it’s clear today we don’t know enough to make a decision,” Parianos said.

    On its return, EV Nautilus was confronted by a group of Greenpeace Pacific protest kayakers holding signs that read: “Don’t mine the moana”.

    One of the protesters, Louisa Castledine told RNZ Pacific she was conscious both NOAA and Nautilus had a reputation for being “environmentally friendly” but was concerned about research being “weaponised”.

    “This research is being used to help enable and guide decision making towards deep-sea mining,” said Castledine, who is the spokesperson for Ocean Ancestors.

    “It’s the guise in which this research is being used, and it’s who sent them is the challenge, because who sent them is quite clear on their intent in mining.

    In August, the US and the Cook Islands agreed to work closer in the area of seabed minerals to “advance scientific research and the responsible development of seabed mineral resources”.

    It came off the back of the Cook Islands signing a five-year agreement with China to cooperate in exploring and researching seabed minerals.

    In 2023, the first ever high resolution Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) footage was obtained for the nodule fields at the bottom of the Cook Islands seafloor. A ROV is a scientific/work platform that is lowered from a boat all the way to the seabed. There is no-one on board, which makes them very safe and simpler to operate, according to SBMA.
    In 2023, the first ever high resolution Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) footage was obtained for the nodule fields at the bottom of the Cook Islands seafloor. Image: Screengrab/YouTube/Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority/RNZ Pacific

    Jocelyn Trainer, a geopolitical analyst with Terra Global Insights, said both countries were interested in the metals to enhance military capabilities but it was not the primary market.

    “Volumes are greater for other industries such as the renewable energy sectors and in China there’s huge demand for electric vehicles.”

    Trainer said China was ahead of the US in obtaining critical minerals through land mining and mineral processing.

    “The US is seeming to choose to start with the supply side of things, get the minerals, and then perhaps work up the knowledge of production and refining.”

    Castledine said the region was in the middle of a “geopolitical storm” with the US and China vying for control over deep-sea minerals.

    “The USA is building their military might within the Pacific and this is one of those ways in which their reach is moving more into the Pacific and more specifically into Cook Islands waters.”

    The Nautilus expedition focused on discovery and the chance to test new deep-sea technology.

    Expedition lead Renato Kane said bad weather threatened the mission. However, it cleared up in time to send their ROVs down.

    “We’ve had six really successful dives to the sea floor. We’re diving these vehicles down to over 5000 meters depth and the length of these dives were on average, about 30 hours each.

    “So we’ve got a lot of high definition video footage for scientific observation on the sea floor.”

    Central to the expedition’s success was the testing of a new, ultra-high-resolution camera, the MxD SeaCam, designed for deep-sea research at depths of up to 7000 metres.

    The camera combines a compact broadcast camera with custom-built titanium housing to capture 4K images with remarkable clarity.

    A large Corallimorpharia. Although it looks like an anemone, there are closely related to corals.
    A large Corallimorpharia . . . although it looks like an anemone, it is closely related to corals. Image: Supplied/Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific

    Dr John Parianos said it was some of the best footage ever recorded several kilometres below the surface.

    He said footage would help create the Cook Islands first public catalogue of deep-sea life.

    “We’ve benefited from probably the highest resolution images ever taken at these depths in the whole world ever,” he said.

    “We need to make a catalogue of the types of life in the Cook Islands seabed so that researchers in the future can reference it. Having such high-quality images means that the catalogue will be even better quality than what exists internationally today.”

    Tanga Morris, who was responsible for logging data of both biological and geological discoveries on the expedition, said she was in awe of the various life forms they observed.

    “One of the main ones that’s quite dominant down in the deep sea would be deep-sea sponges. We’ve seen them in different species, morphotypes, and sizes, even a whole garden of them.”

    A glass sponge from class Hexactinellida on a stalked anemone.
    A glass sponge from class Hexactinellida on a stalked anemone. Image: Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific

    Other creatures found were sea stars, anemones, octopi and eels — some of which have possibly never been seen before.

    “A few people have asked questions like, ‘have you guys spotted any unidentified species?’ And I think we have come across a few, but then it will take a while to really be sure.

    “But if so, what a great milestone it is for us to acknowledge that within our Cook Island waters.”

    An unknown species of Casper octopus.
    An unknown species of Casper octopus. Image: Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific

    Dr Antony Vavia, a senior research fellow at Te Puna Vai Marama, the Cook Islands Centre for Research, said the opportunity to go onboard and study deep-sea organisms firsthand was an eye-opening experience.

    “Everything that I’ve seen down there has been a bit of a wow for me. [I’m] just amazed at how much life is down there. I was talking to my former supervisor, and he described us as the ‘astronauts of the sea’.”

    A notable feature of the EV Nautilus was its 24/7 online livestream.

    He said people from around the world tuned in during dives to see the deep-sea discoveries for themselves.

    “Being able to show what our ROV — what is ROV, the little Hercules, is seeing in real time, and so having the wholesome thought that we’re not on this exploration journey alone.

    “But the fact that we can broadcast it to anyone that is interested and invested in learning more about our deep sea environments is incredibly rewarding, because you feel like you’re pulling in others to be a part of this discovery.”

    Dr Vavia who is also a lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, said many schools and university groups had got involved, broadcasting the deep-sea right into their classrooms.

    “The opportunities to reach out to schools from a primary school level all the way up to university has been a great opportunity to showcase the science that we’re doing here, and hopefully to inspire younger generations and those that are already in the pursuit of careers in marine science or doing work on board research vessels such as the EV Nautilus.”

    The EV Nautilus crew said this element of the voyage helped to answer the public’s questions on what life is found on the seabed.

    A brisingid sea star resting on a rock.
    A brisingid sea star resting on a rock. Image: Ocean Exploration Trust/RNZ Pacific

    Crew member and journalist Madison Dapcevich said they hoped their passion inspired future scientists.

    “Something that’s really great about Nautilus is we do have this like childlike wonder. We do get really excited about sponges, which most people are not that excited about.

    “And then it’s also a great pathway for early career professionals. So we do have an internship and fellowship programme, and those applications are open right now through to the end of the year.”

    The teams findings that will form their first public catalogue of deep-sea life will be a foundation for future research and one day, the difficult decisions about what lies beneath.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Air New Zealand resumes Auckland-Nouméa flights after nearly 18-month suspension following riots

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    New Caledonia’s tourism industry is hopeful for a rebound as Air New Zealand resumed its flights over the weekend.

    To mark Air New Zealand’s return, on its social networks, Nouméa-La Tontouta international airport posted a vibrant “Welcome Back to New Caledonia Air New Zealand, we are happy to welcome you back on our tarmac”.

    The much-awaited resumption comes almost 18 months after the scheduled flights were interrupted following grave civil unrest that broke out mid-May 2024.

    Welcome Back Air New Zealand - 1 November 2025 - PHOTO Aéroport international de Nouméa-La Tontouta
    La Tontouta to Air New Zealand . . . “we are happy to welcome you back on our tarmac”. Image: Aéroport international de Nouméa-La Tontouta/RNZ Pacific

    Air New Zealand ceased flights between Auckland and Nouméa, the French territory’s capital, on 15 June 2024, at the height of violent civil unrest.

    It said at the time that regarding New Caledonia, the New Zealand government still recommended to “exercise increased caution” (Level 2 of 4) due to the “ongoing risk of civil unrest”.

    The riots resulted in 14 deaths, more than 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in damage, thousands of businesses and jobs destroyed and a sharp drop in the French Pacific territory’s GDP (-13.5 percent), bringing its economy to its knees.

    Tourism from its main regional source markets, namely Australia and New Zealand, also came to a standstill.

    Numbers collapsed
    On New Zealand arrivals, between the first quarters of 2024 and 2025, visitor numbers collapsed by 90 percent (from 1731 to 186).

    Latest statistics published by local institute ISEE confirmed the sharp drop, for the first quarter of 2025 — only 9670 arrivals, a record drop of 62 percent compared to the previous year.

    This is the worst volume observed for the past 30 years (not including the covid pandemic period).

    New Caledonia’s tourism stakeholders have welcomed the resumption of the service to and from New Zealand, saying this will allow the industry to launch fresh, targeted promotional campaigns on the New Zealand market.

    New Caledonia’s international carrier Air Calédonie International (Air Calin) is also operating two weekly flights to Auckland from the Nouméa-La Tontouta international airport, in code-sharing mode.

    Local authorities were also placing high hopes in the other key source market of the region — Australia. New Caledonia’s stakeholders are planning to launch significant promotional campaigns.

    “Air New Zealand is resuming its Auckland-Nouméa service starting 1 November 2025. Initially, flights will operate once a week on a Saturday. This follows the New Zealand government’s decision to update its safe travel advisory level for New Caledonia.

    “The resumption of services reflects our commitment to reconnecting New Zealand and New Caledonia, ensuring that travel is safe and reliable for our customers. We will continue to monitor this route closely.

    “Passengers are encouraged to check the latest safe travel advisory and Air New Zealand’s official channels for updates on flight schedules,” the company stated.

    “Political tensions and civil unrest may increase at short notice. Avoid all demonstrations, protests, and rallies as they have the potential to turn violent with little warning.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ is now in sphere of Israeli influence – we risk being seen as a ‘genocide ally’

    COMMENTARY: By Martyn Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog

    Why is Aotearoa New Zealand aiding Israel in any way shape or form with a liaison officer?

    NEWS ITEM:
    NZ Defence Force deploys liaison officer to Israel
    The NZ Defence Force has deployed a liaison officer to Israel, to help inform the government on next steps in the Gaza peace deal.

    Defence Minister Judith Collins says the liaison officer will work from a United States-led Civil Military Coordination Centre, initially for six weeks.

    She said it would act as a coordination hub for support to Gaza, monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, and support the implementation of the 20-Point Peace Plan to end the war in Gaza.

    “The deployment will improve New Zealand’s understanding of co-ordination efforts on the ground and enable us to better assess options for any potential future contributions to the centre or other initiatives in support of sustained peace in Gaza,” she said.

    She said this would improve New Zealand’s understanding of efforts on the ground and enable a better assessment of future contributions to the centre, or other initiatives to support peace in Gaza.

    Future deployments would be a decision for the government.

    Add this to our refusal to recognise Palestine.

    Add this to the realisation Rocket Lab has been putting up surveillance satellites for the Israelis with the Gen-3 BlackSky satellites.

    Add to this that the Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister, Sharren Haskel, visited NZ last weekend to thank evangelical Christian freaks who empower them and the Zionesik apologist groups who threaten everyone with anti-semitism for criticising Israel’s genocide and we are now in danger of being seen as an ally for war criminals.

    We are on the side of genocide because this New Zealand government has no morality whatsoever.

    Kiwis have cut their Jacinda off to spite their race to justify the way their post-covid bitterness has been manipulated into agreeing to this.

    For shame New Zealand.

    For shame.

    Editor’s note: Deputy Foreign Minister Haskel met the PNG, Fijian and Samoan prime ministers on her week-long drumming up Pacific support last week, but while she met rightwing Destiny Church leaders, she did not meet any cabinet ministers on her unofficial visit to New Zealand. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Britain’s act of ‘colonial arrogance’ created living injustice for Palestinians, says PSNA

    Asia Pacific Report

    Today marks 108 years since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and New Zealand pro-Palestinian protest groups have condemned this infamous date in rallies across the country.

    “Britain promised a land that wasn’t theirs to give,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair Maher Nazzal.

    “That single act of colonial arrogance set in motion more than a century of displacement, occupation, and suffering for the Palestinian people.

    “For Palestinians, the Balfour Declaration is not history; it’s a living injustice that continues today.

    “It’s time for truth and accountability,” Nazzal declared in a post today.

    “It’s time for the world, including Aotearoa New Zealand, to stand firmly for justice, equality, and the right of Palestinians to live free on their land.”

    Reporting on the Auckland rally and march yesterday, Bruce King said Janfrie Wakim, a longtime stalwart of pro-Palestine activism in Aotearoa New Zealand, had criticised the Balfour Declaration that had promised Palestine as a Jewish state.

    ‘Mendacious, deceitful’
    She quoted the late British journalist and Middle East expert Robert Fisk calling it “the most mendacious, deceitful and hypocritical document in British history”.

    Opposition Labour MP and shadow attorney-general Vanushi Walters outlined discussions over sanctions legislation against Israel in preparation for the party winning next year’s general election.

    The opposition Labour Party currently leads in most opinion polls.

    The Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917
    The infamous Balfour Declaration by Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in a letter to Lord Rothschild on 2 November 1917. Image: MN screenshot APR

    Greens MP Ricardo Menéndez protested against the NZ government having signed a free trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) earlier this year.

    This week, the rebel RSF (Rapid Support Forces) fighters that the UAE is accused of backing overran the city of El Fasher, capital of Darfur in Sudan, and carried out massacres of civilians, reports the United Nations.

    Al Jazeera reports the Balfour Declaration (Balfour’s “promise” in Arabic) turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there.

    The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and the brutality that the emerging Zionist state of Israel inflicted on the Palestinian people.

    It is regarded as one of the most controversial and criticised documents in the modern history of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for decades.

    Israel has waged a two-year war on the besieged enclave of Gaza killing more than 68,000 people, including 20,000 children. Israel has killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire began on October 10.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Parihaka the focus for global IPRA peace conference in Aotearoa

    By Heather Devere of Asia Pacific Media Network

    November 5 marks the day that has been set aside to acknowledge Parihaka and the courageous and peaceful resistance of the people against the armed militia that invaded their village in 1881.

    This year, Parihaka will be the focus of an international conference held in New Plymouth Ngā Motu on November 5 – 8.

    Entitled Peace, Resistance and Reconciliation Te Ronga i Tau, Te Riri i Tū, Te Ringa i Kotuia, this is 30th biannual conference of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) formed in 1964.

    THE 30TH BIENNIAL IPRA CONFERENCE 2025

    This is the first time that an IPRA conference has been held in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the first time it has had the theme of “Indigenous peacebuilding”.

    The conference will begin with a pōwhiri and hāngī at Ōwae Marae, the traditional home of the Te Atiawa iwi, one of the Taranaki tribes that has a close association with Parihaka.

    Tribal leaders such as Wharehoka Wano, Ruakere Hond, Puna-Wano Bryant, and Tonga Karena from Parihaka will be among the welcoming speakers at the marae.

    Other keynote speakers for the conference will include Rosa Moiwend, an independent researcher and human rights activist from West Papua; Professor Asmi Wood, who works on constitutional rights for Aboriginal people; Akilah Jaramoji, a Caribbean Human Rights Activist; Bettina Washington, a Wampanoag Elder working with Indigenous Sharing Circles; Vivian Camacho with her knowledge of ancestral Indigenous health practices in Boliva and Professor Kevin Clements from the Toda Institute.

    Throughout the five-day conference, academic papers will be presented related to both Indigenous and general issues on peace and conflict.

    Some of those deal with resistance by women through the music of steelpan in Trinidad and Tobago; collaborative Indigenous research from Turtle Island and the Philippines towards building peace; disarmament and peace education in Aotearoa; cultural violence experienced by minority women in Thailand; permaculture and peace in Myanmar; resistance and peacebuilding of Kankaumo Indigenous people in Colombia; intercultural dialogue for peace in Nigeria; Aboriginal Australian and Tsalagi principles of balance and harmony; the resistance of Roma people through art; auto-ethnographical poetry by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities around the world; and community-led peacebuilding in Melanesia.

    Plenary panels include nuclear justice and African negotiations of peace and social justice through non-violent pathways.

    Professor Kelli Te Maihāroa (Waitaha, Ngāti Rārua Ātiawa, Taranaki, Tainui Waikato) of the Otago Polytechnic Te Kura Matatini ki Ōtakou, is the co-general secretariate for Asia Pacific Peace Research Association and co-chair of the IPRA conference, along with Professor Matt Mayer who is co-secretary-general of IPRA.

    Dr Heather Devere is chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and one of the organisers of the IPRA conference.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Weaponising media – National Press Club and its arms industry sponsors

    More than a quarter of Australia’s National Press Club sponsors are part of the global arms industry or working on its behalf. Michelle Fahy reports.

    ANALYSIS: By Michelle Fahy

    The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website. Of those, 10 are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations, and another eleven provide services to the arms industry, including consultants KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY.

    They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos — all of which are in the global top 20.

    BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.

    In 2023, those five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter of total weapons sales ($973 billion) by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.

    Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces.

    The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel.

    None has done so.

    Another of the club’s sponsors, Thales, is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.

    Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.

    Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.

    Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about . . . proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”

    National Press Club
    The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.

    The club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.

    The other board members are current and former mainstream media journalists, as well as at least two board members who have jobs that involve lobbying.

    Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra.

    SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.

    Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey, and, before that, for media outlets The Financial Review and Bloomberg.

    Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and, in 2017, appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it.

    The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.

    Conflicts of interest
    Undue Influence asked Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”

    Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff. Reilly responded:

    “The club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.”

    MWM is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article.

    Selling access
    While Reilly declined to disclose the club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.

    The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:

    “(Westpac) . . .  gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese . . .  Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.

    “Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…

    “Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.”

    Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 a year, with a few paying extra as partners in the club’s journalism awards.

    The 21 arms industry and related sponsors, therefore, contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers. This is 23 percent of the $2.26 million revenue it earns from “membership, sponsorship and broadcasting”, the club’s largest revenue line for the 2024 financial year.

    “The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the club’s website.

    Sponsors’ right to speak?
    In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges, Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt, sponsors do not receive any rights to speak at the club, nor are they able to influence decisions on speakers.”

    "Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have disappeared"
    Acclaimed journalist and Middle East expert Chris Hedges  . . . the National Press Club cancelled a planned speech by him, reportedly under pressure.  Image: The Chris Hedges Report

    Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.

    When the club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on September 10, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.

    Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors — Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group), who gave an address on September 7; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on October 15. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.

    The club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.

    The club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses.

    Profiting from genocide
    In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.

    Albanese highlighted Lockheed Martin and the F-35 programme, which has 1650 companies worldwide in its supply chain. More than 75 of those companies are Australian.

    Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.

    Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms — all of which have arms industry corporations as clients — are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.

    EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) — a Press Club sponsor until 2024 — has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.

    Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.

    Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel’s military capability.

    In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.

    Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contained Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.

    Michelle Fahy is an independent Australian writer and researcher, specialising in the examination of connections between the weapons industry and government. She writes for various independent publications and on Substack on Undueinfluence.substack.com  This article was first published on Undueinfluence and Michael West Media and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Weaponising media – National Press Club and its arms industry sponsors

    More than a quarter of Australia’s National Press Club sponsors are part of the global arms industry or working on its behalf. Michelle Fahy reports.

    ANALYSIS: By Michelle Fahy

    The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website. Of those, 10 are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations, and another eleven provide services to the arms industry, including consultants KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY.

    They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos — all of which are in the global top 20.

    BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.

    In 2023, those five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter of total weapons sales ($973 billion) by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.

    Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces.

    The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel.

    None has done so.

    Another of the club’s sponsors, Thales, is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.

    Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.

    Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.

    Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about . . . proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”

    National Press Club
    The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.

    The club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.

    The other board members are current and former mainstream media journalists, as well as at least two board members who have jobs that involve lobbying.

    Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra.

    SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.

    Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey, and, before that, for media outlets The Financial Review and Bloomberg.

    Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and, in 2017, appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it.

    The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.

    Conflicts of interest
    Undue Influence asked Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”

    Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff. Reilly responded:

    “The club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.”

    MWM is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article.

    Selling access
    While Reilly declined to disclose the club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.

    The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:

    “(Westpac) . . .  gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese . . .  Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.

    “Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…

    “Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.”

    Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 a year, with a few paying extra as partners in the club’s journalism awards.

    The 21 arms industry and related sponsors, therefore, contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers. This is 23 percent of the $2.26 million revenue it earns from “membership, sponsorship and broadcasting”, the club’s largest revenue line for the 2024 financial year.

    “The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the club’s website.

    Sponsors’ right to speak?
    In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges, Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt, sponsors do not receive any rights to speak at the club, nor are they able to influence decisions on speakers.”

    "Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have disappeared"
    Acclaimed journalist and Middle East expert Chris Hedges  . . . the National Press Club cancelled a planned speech by him, reportedly under pressure.  Image: The Chris Hedges Report

    Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.

    When the club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on September 10, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.

    Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors — Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group), who gave an address on September 7; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on October 15. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.

    The club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.

    The club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses.

    Profiting from genocide
    In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.

    Albanese highlighted Lockheed Martin and the F-35 programme, which has 1650 companies worldwide in its supply chain. More than 75 of those companies are Australian.

    Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.

    Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms — all of which have arms industry corporations as clients — are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.

    EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) — a Press Club sponsor until 2024 — has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.

    Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.

    Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel’s military capability.

    In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.

    Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contained Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.

    Michelle Fahy is an independent Australian writer and researcher, specialising in the examination of connections between the weapons industry and government. She writes for various independent publications and on Substack on Undueinfluence.substack.com  This article was first published on Undueinfluence and Michael West Media and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • USP student journalist wins Vision Pasifika media award for plastic pollution report

    Pacific Media Watch

    A feature story authored by a student journalist highlighting the harm plastic pollution poses to human health in Fiji — with risks expected to rise significantly if robust action is not taken soon — has won the Online category of the 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards — Cleaner Pacific.

    Riya Bhagwan, a Fiji national studying journalism at The University of the South Pacific (USP), won the prize with her Wansolwara story, titled Behind the stalled progress in Fiji’s plastic pollution battle, reports the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).

    USP student journalists won two out of four categories in the awards.

    Launched during the 7th Pacific Media Summit by Niue’s Prime Minister, Dalton Tagelagi, the awards celebrate excellence in environmental news reporting across the Pacific Island region.

    The theme, Cleaner Pacific, spotlights the urgent need to tackle plastic pollution, one of the triple planetary crises threatening the planet, alongside climate change and biodiversity loss.

    A story titled Managing Solid Waste in Gizo, a tough task, by award-winning Solomon Islands journalist, Moffat Mamu, of the Solomon Star, and also a USP graduate, won the Print category.

    Coverage of the Vatuwaqa Rugby Club’s efforts to keep their community clean, by Fijian journalist Joeli Tikomaimaleya of Fiji TV, picked up the Television category.

    Student award winner
    The Student Journalism Award was won by Niko Ratumaimuri, of USP, for his story in Wansolwara highlighting a call by young Fijians to keep the country plastic free.

    Wansolwara's Niko Ratumaimuri
    Wansolwara’s Niko Ratumaimuri . . . winner of the Student category of the Vision Pasifika Media Awards.

    The 2024 Vision Pasifika Media Awards is a partnership facilitated by SPREP with the Australian government through support for Pacific engagement in the INC on plastic pollution and the Pacific Ocean Litter Project (POLP), Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC) and the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA).

    SPREP Director-General Sefanaia Nawadra said: “We are drowning under a sea of waste! The Pacific media is critical in ensuring we in the Pacific understand the challenges of waste and pollution and share ways we can work towards its effective management.

    “Many of our waste issues originate from outside our region and our Pacific media must help our countries advocate for global action on waste especially plastic.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tonga election: What are the main issues ahead of the upcoming polls?

    By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    With just three weeks to go before Tongans head to the polls, the debate over election issues is heating up.

    Under the spotlight are the role of the palace in the country’s democratic process and calls for voting rights for overseas-based Tongans. The state of the economy and access to health care are also being examined.

    Tongan political scientist Dr Malakai Koloamatangi said for many Tongans, bread-and-butter election issues remained important.

    “People are just wanting to get on with life, and they want the best conditions . . .  for them to get a job, put their kids through school, a roof over their heads, vehicles and to meet their obligations around social [and] cultural [customs].”

    Dr Koloamatangi, who is the registrar at the Tonga National University, believed voters wanted to see policies that addressed increasing living costs and fuel shortages, which have caused significant disruptions to daily life.

    “We’re not seeing abject poverty in Tonga but things like wages need to be raised in order to meet the rising cost of the standard of living.

    “And we’re still having issues with petrol and oil not arriving on time. So big queues at the gas stations and so on.”

    Scrutiny over palace role
    A former political adviser, Lopeti Senituli, said the role of the palace and its noble representatives in Parliament was under increasing scrutiny.

    The Tonga Parliament is made up of noble and people’s representatives. On polling day, regular voters cast ballots to elect 17 people’s representatives to Parliament, while the kingdom’s nobles vote for nine noble representatives.

    Senituli said King Tupou IV’s displeasure over the behaviour of previous noble representatives to Parliament was well known.

    “Some of them have not performed like a noble, have not acted like a noble. Some of them, for example, have been investigated for being involved in drug smuggling from America,” he said.

    He said candidates would be acutely aware of the power dynamic between the palace and Parliament, particularly since former Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni resigned in December last year ahead of a vote-of-no confidence.

    Hu’akavameiliku reportedly clashed with King Tupou VI over key ministerial portfolios that were traditionally held by the monarchy.

    “The King is, to put it mildly, not happy with the noble representatives in cabinet in previous governments. And of course, he was not happy with the previous prime minister.”

    Top job not guaranteed
    Senituli said, while Hu’akavameiliku’s successor, incumbent Prime Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke enjoyed the support of the king, he was not guaranteed the top job again.

    “Winning his actual electoral electorate is guaranteed in my view, but whether or not he can pull together a cabinet made up of 12 supporters from the nine members of nobility and 16 people’s reps is another matter.”

    Both Senituli and Dr Koloamatangi believe the provision in Tonga’s Constitution, which states the Prime Minister can nominate up to four cabinet ministers who were not elected representatives, added another layer of complexity to Tonga’s governing processes.

    Crown Prince Tupoutoʻa ʻUlukalala was appointed to his cabinet position in Dr Eke’s government through this mechanism. He holds both the foreign affairs and defence force portfolios.

    Senituli believed that overlap in power between the palace and executive needed to be addressed as Tonga worked towards becoming a mature democracy.

    However, Dr Koloamatangi disagreed, saying it was a long-standing tradition for future monarchs to hold cabinet positions.

    “Most of the kings of Tonga, the monarchs, were trained in that way,” Dr Koloamatangi said.

    ‘Good training ground’
    “While their fathers were still on the throne, they were given the responsibilities in government. So I think it’s a good training ground for the Crown Prince.”

    Meanwhile, overseas-based Tongans are also keeping tabs on developments, with many calling for voting rights in their home nation. Under current rules, only those who live in Tonga are eligible to vote.

    Kennedy Fakanaanaaki-Fualu, secretary for the Auckland Tongan Community organisation, said members of the diaspora like him contributed significantly to Tonga.

    “If it wasn’t for the remittances [sent from overseas-based Tongans], Tonga would be in deep, deep trouble,” he said.

    “We should be given the right to vote, especially if you’re a Tongan citizen.”

    Tonga’s polling day is set for November 20.

    About 65,000 people will be eligible to vote. Those casting ballots must do it in person, with no provisions for overseas or absentee voting.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tonga election: What are the main issues ahead of the upcoming polls?

    By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    With just three weeks to go before Tongans head to the polls, the debate over election issues is heating up.

    Under the spotlight are the role of the palace in the country’s democratic process and calls for voting rights for overseas-based Tongans. The state of the economy and access to health care are also being examined.

    Tongan political scientist Dr Malakai Koloamatangi said for many Tongans, bread-and-butter election issues remained important.

    “People are just wanting to get on with life, and they want the best conditions . . .  for them to get a job, put their kids through school, a roof over their heads, vehicles and to meet their obligations around social [and] cultural [customs].”

    Dr Koloamatangi, who is the registrar at the Tonga National University, believed voters wanted to see policies that addressed increasing living costs and fuel shortages, which have caused significant disruptions to daily life.

    “We’re not seeing abject poverty in Tonga but things like wages need to be raised in order to meet the rising cost of the standard of living.

    “And we’re still having issues with petrol and oil not arriving on time. So big queues at the gas stations and so on.”

    Scrutiny over palace role
    A former political adviser, Lopeti Senituli, said the role of the palace and its noble representatives in Parliament was under increasing scrutiny.

    The Tonga Parliament is made up of noble and people’s representatives. On polling day, regular voters cast ballots to elect 17 people’s representatives to Parliament, while the kingdom’s nobles vote for nine noble representatives.

    Senituli said King Tupou IV’s displeasure over the behaviour of previous noble representatives to Parliament was well known.

    “Some of them have not performed like a noble, have not acted like a noble. Some of them, for example, have been investigated for being involved in drug smuggling from America,” he said.

    He said candidates would be acutely aware of the power dynamic between the palace and Parliament, particularly since former Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni resigned in December last year ahead of a vote-of-no confidence.

    Hu’akavameiliku reportedly clashed with King Tupou VI over key ministerial portfolios that were traditionally held by the monarchy.

    “The King is, to put it mildly, not happy with the noble representatives in cabinet in previous governments. And of course, he was not happy with the previous prime minister.”

    Top job not guaranteed
    Senituli said, while Hu’akavameiliku’s successor, incumbent Prime Minister Dr ‘Aisake Eke enjoyed the support of the king, he was not guaranteed the top job again.

    “Winning his actual electoral electorate is guaranteed in my view, but whether or not he can pull together a cabinet made up of 12 supporters from the nine members of nobility and 16 people’s reps is another matter.”

    Both Senituli and Dr Koloamatangi believe the provision in Tonga’s Constitution, which states the Prime Minister can nominate up to four cabinet ministers who were not elected representatives, added another layer of complexity to Tonga’s governing processes.

    Crown Prince Tupoutoʻa ʻUlukalala was appointed to his cabinet position in Dr Eke’s government through this mechanism. He holds both the foreign affairs and defence force portfolios.

    Senituli believed that overlap in power between the palace and executive needed to be addressed as Tonga worked towards becoming a mature democracy.

    However, Dr Koloamatangi disagreed, saying it was a long-standing tradition for future monarchs to hold cabinet positions.

    “Most of the kings of Tonga, the monarchs, were trained in that way,” Dr Koloamatangi said.

    ‘Good training ground’
    “While their fathers were still on the throne, they were given the responsibilities in government. So I think it’s a good training ground for the Crown Prince.”

    Meanwhile, overseas-based Tongans are also keeping tabs on developments, with many calling for voting rights in their home nation. Under current rules, only those who live in Tonga are eligible to vote.

    Kennedy Fakanaanaaki-Fualu, secretary for the Auckland Tongan Community organisation, said members of the diaspora like him contributed significantly to Tonga.

    “If it wasn’t for the remittances [sent from overseas-based Tongans], Tonga would be in deep, deep trouble,” he said.

    “We should be given the right to vote, especially if you’re a Tongan citizen.”

    Tonga’s polling day is set for November 20.

    About 65,000 people will be eligible to vote. Those casting ballots must do it in person, with no provisions for overseas or absentee voting.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PSNA accuses NZ of giving ‘political cover’ to genocidal Israel over Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    A national pro-Palestinian advocacy group has accused the New Zealand government of providing political cover and rewarding the Israeli genocide by deploying a “liaison officer” to the US-brokered peace plan for the besieged enclave.

    “It’s a knee-jerk reaction for New Zealand to send in the troops to the Middle East to back Israel and the US,” said Maher Nazzal, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    “A liaison officer deployment is political cover to assist and reward Israel for its
    genocide in Gaza. The US makes bombs and bullets for Israel to fire.

    “It’s a shameful betrayal of Palestine and the Palestinian steadfastness in the face of unbelievable depravity and cruelty,” Nazzal said in a statement.

    He said it was ominous that the liaison officer would be based inside a US military office in Israel.

    “Instead, we should be working with the United Nations in the region. Trump plans to perpetuate the Israeli occupation under a figleaf of it being multinational. That is what we are supporting.”

    “This is more of the same complicity with the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he said.

    ‘Joined at hip’
    Nazzal said that for two years Foreign Minister Winston Peters had joined New Zealand “at the hip” to a country whose Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

    “There have been no sanctions on Israel, but we frequently impose new sanctions on Russia and Iran,” he said.

    “The NZDF was there in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government sent the army up to the Red Sea to fight with the Americans early last year to keep Israeli sea lanes open.”

    Nazzal said the government should focus on aid, ensuring Palestinians’ rights and representation, and fact-finding.

    “There should be a cross-party Parliamentary fact-finding mission assembled urgently, which could get into Gaza safely before Israel ramps up its murderous assault again.”he said.

    “MPs should see for themselves, instead of signing off on a soldier whose job it is to ‘implement’ the Trump plan.”

    Jordan rejects US plan
    The King of Jordan had recently rejected the US proposal to join in patrolling Gaza to implement Trump’s vision.

    “Palestinians have no say in the Trump plan. Trump decides who is going to
    implement it. He’s picked Tony Blair,” Nazzal said.

    “When he was British Prime Minister, Blair, and US President Bush, invaded Iraq to destroy the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. More than a million Iraqis died.

    “In Gaza, more than 20,000 children have now been murdered by Israel in
    indiscriminate killing across Gaza.”

    “The New Zealand people stand with Palestine – the government stands with Israel.”

    Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Palestinians in Gaza say they are losing hope in the ceasefire after Israel’s deadliest violation yet killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, on Wednesday.

    Israel’s military carried out another deadly attack in northern Gaza last night, killing two people, despite claiming to resume the fragile ceasefire, which had already been teetering from a wave of deadly bombardment it waged the night before.

    US President Donald Trump said the ceasefire was “still strong” while mediator Qatar expressed frustration but said the mediators were looking forward to the next phase of the truce.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • French MPs vote to postpone New Caledonia’s elections to June 2026

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    French MPs narrowly endorsed the postponement of New Caledonia’s provincial elections to no later than 28 June 2026 in a crucial vote in Paris this week.

    It comes as newly appointed Overseas Minister Naïma Moutchou prepares to visit the French Pacific territory for more talks on its political future.

    The vote took place in the Lower House, the National Assembly, on Tuesday in a climate of division between national parties.

    It was a narrow score, with 279 MPs backing the postponement and 247 voting against the “Constitutional organic” Bill.

    A final vote (298 for and 39 against) in the other chamber, the Senate (Upper House), on Wednesday in a relatively less adverserial environment, was regarded as a sheer formality.

    After this, the French Constitutional Council is to deliver its ruling on the conformity of the text.

    New Caledonia’s provincial elections have already been postponed several times: originally set for May 2024, they had to be delayed due to the riots that took place, then were further delayed from December 2024 to November 2025.

    As part of an emergency parliamentary procedure, a bipartisan committee earlier this week also modified the small text (which contains only three paragraphs), mainly to delete any reference to an agreement project signed in July 2025 in Bougival (near Paris).

    The text was supposed to serve as the blueprint for New Caledonia’s future status. It contained plans to make New Caledonia a “State” within France’s realm and to provide a new “nationality”, as well as transferring powers from Paris to Nouméa (including foreign affairs).

    The “agreement project” was initially signed by all of New Caledonia’s political parties, but one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) later said it withdrew its negotiators’ signatures.

    The FLNKS said this was because the agreement was not in line with its aim of full sovereignty and was merely a “lure of independence”.

    The party has since reaffirmed that it did not want to have anything to do with the Bougival text.

    No more mention of Bougival
    The bipartisan committee modified the Bill’s title accordingly, introducing, in the new version, “to allow the pursuit of consensual discussions on New Caledonia’s institutional future”.

    The modifications to the Bill have been described as a way of allowing discussions and, even though no longer specifically mentioned, to use the Bougival accord as a base for further talks, mainly with the FLNKS.

    “This is a political message to the FLNKS, Bill rapporteur Philippe Gosselin (Les Républicains -centre right) said this week

    One of the FLNKS key representatives at the National Assembly, pro-independence Emmanuel Tjibaou (who also chairs the Union Calédonienne party, the main component of FLNKS), however maintained his opposition to the modified text.

    The postponement was also said to be designed to “give more time” to possible discussions.

    The other National Assembly MP for New Caledonia, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf, said even though the name Bougival was eventually removed, “everyone knows we will continue to talk from the basis of Bougival, because these are the most advanced bases in the negotiations”.

    Tjibaou said the slight change can be regarded as “an essential detail” and mark “a new sequence” in future political talks.

    “We’re still in the negotiating phase,” he said.

    ‘Denial of democracy’
    However, he maintained his stance against the postponement of the local polls, saying this was a “denial of democracy”.

    “The bill was originally designed to postpone provincial elections to allow Bougival’s implementation. Then they remove any mention of Bougival and then they say ‘we vote for the postponement’. What are we talking about? It just doesn’t make sense”, he said.

    Tjibaou’s FLNKS has called for a peaceful march on Friday, 31 October 2025, to voice its opposition to the postponement of local elections.

    Newly-appointed French Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou is expected to arrive in New Caledonia on Saturday.

    Since she was appointed earlier this month in the second cabinet of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu (who was also Minister for Overseas between 2000 and 2022), Moutchou has repeated that her door remained open to further talks with FLNKS and that “nothing can be done” without the FLNKS as long as FLNKS “does not want to do things without the (other parties)”.

    In New Caledonia, she said she would “meet all of the partners to examine how an agreement can be implemented”.

    Ahead of her trip that will be her baptism of fire, Moutchou also spent hours in video conference talks with New Caledonia’s key politicians earlier this week.

    ‘Dialogue and respect’
    “My approach will be based on dialogue, consistency and respect. Nothing should be rushed. It’s all about refining and clarifying certain points”.

    Under the Bougival text, several key aspects of New Caledonia’s future remain highly sensitive. This includes a “comprehensive” agreement that would lift restrictions to the list of people entitled to vote at local provincial elections.

    Since 2007, until now, under the existing Nouméa Accord (signed in 1998), only people who were born or resided in New Caledonia before 1998 are entitle to cast their votes for the local polls.

    Under the Bougival roadmap, the “special” electoral roll would be “unfrozen” to allow French citizens to vote, provided they have resided for 15 (and a later stage 10) uninterrupted years, as well as those who were born in New Caledonia after 1998.

    The change would mean the inclusion of about 15,000 “natives” and up to 25,000 long-term residents, according to conservative estimates.

    The sensitive subject was regarded as the main trigger for civil unrest that started in May 2024 and caused 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$4 billion) in damage and a drop of 13.5 percent of New Caledonia’s gross domestic product (GDP).

    MP Arthur Delaporte (Socialist party), who backed the modifications on October 27 at the bipartisan committee, assured his party would not support any constitutional reform that would not have been the result of a consensus or could be regarded as a “passage en force”.

    The warning is especially meaningful on a backdrop of persistent instability in the French Parliament.

    Lecornu is leading his second cabinet since he was appointed early September 2025 — his first was short-lived and only lasted 14 hours.

    He has since narrowly survived two motions of no-confidence.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PSNA condemns Collins for ‘can’t be trusted’ stance on Gaza over satellites

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has challenged Defence Minister Judith Collins over her “can’t be trusted” backing for controversial BlackSky Technology satellite launches and called on the Prime Minister to withdraw approval.

    National co-chair John Minto today wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon — who is currently in Korea for the APEC meeting — in response to what he described as a “shocking” TVNZ 1News interview with Collins last Friday that revealed the satellite launches could be used by Israel in its genocidal attacks on the besieged enclave of Gaza.

    Minto asked Luxon to “overrule” Collins and end the BlackSky satellite launches

    He said PSNA had requested the Prime Minister direct Collins to withdraw approval for forthcoming Rocket Lab satellite launches for BlackSky Technology from Mahia, which could be used by Israel in Gaza.

    Collins “can’t be trusted to uphold New Zealanders’ values”, Minto said in a statement.

    “She went for any excuse to justify approving the launches, and the Prime Minister must rein her in.”

    ‘Free hand’ claim
    Collins had said in the 1News report that the UN Security Council did not encourage sanctions, so she believed New Zealand had a “free hand to be militarily complicit” in Israel’s resumed genocide in Gaza, PSNA said as the ceasefire remained shaky today with Israel’s renewed attacks on the enclave.

    “But New Zealand has complained for decades about the veto powers of one country in the Security Council,” Minto said.

    “Then, our government uses the very same US veto — which it opposes — to justify licensing the launch of spy satellites to target Gaza.”

    Defence Minister Judith Collins warned over satellites, reports TVNZ's 1News
    Defence Minister Judith Collins warned over satellites, TVNZ’s 1News reported last Friday. Image: 1News screenshot APR

    Minto said New Zealand government was ignoring the International Court of Justice(ICJ), which has directed countries to do what they could to prevent Israel’s illegal occupation from continuing.

    “Signing off on delivering the technology, which the IDF [Israeli military] uses for its bombing runs on a civilian population, can hardly be interpreted as helping Israel end its occupation of Gaza.”

    Minto said Collins’ alternative excuse was that New Zealand was “not at war with Israel, so can’t sanction it” was “equally nonsensical”.

    “It may come as news to the Defence Minister, but New Zealand is not at war with Iran or Russia either,” Minto said.

    “Yet the government routinely imposes sanctions on both of these countries, with putting new sanctions on Iran just a few days ago.”

    Israel kills 91 people
    Meanwhile, Israeli forces have killed at least 91 people in Gaza overnight, including at least 24 children, according to medical sources, in violation of the US-brokered ceasefire.

    Al Jazeera reports that US President Donald Trump said Israel had “hit back” after a soldier was “taken out” but he claimed “nothing was going to jeopardise” the ceasefire, Al Jazeera reports.

    Trump also said Hamas had “to behave”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pacific lawmakers call for creation of human rights commissions to fight nuclear testing legacy

    By Mark Rabago, RNZ Pacific Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas correspondent

    A Marshall Islands lawmaker has called on Pacific legislatures to establish and strengthen their national human rights commissions to help address the region’s nuclear testing legacy.

    “Our people in the Marshall Islands carry voices of our lives that are shaped by this nuclear legacy,” Senator David Anitok said during the second day of the Association of Pacific Island Legislatures (APIL) general assembly in Saipan this week.

    “Decades later, our people still endure many consequences, such as cancer, displacement, environmental contamination, and the Micronesian families seeking safety and care abroad. Recent studies and lived experience [have shown] what our elders have always known-the harm is deeper, broader, and longer lasting than what the world once believed.”

    Anitok said that once established, these human rights commissions must be independent, inclusive, and empowered to tackle not only the nuclear testing legacy but also issues of injustice, displacement, environmental degradation, and governance.

    “Let’s stand together and build a migration network of human rights institutions that will protect our people, our lands, our oceans, our cultures, our heritages, and future generations,” he said.

    “Furthermore, we call upon all of you to engage more actively with international human rights mechanisms. Together, it will help shape a future broadened in human rights, peace, and dignity.”

    Marshall Islands Senator David Anitok
    Marshall Islands Senator David Anitok . . . “Let’s stand together and build a migration network of human rights institutions that will protect our people . . . and future generations.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Mark Rabago

    To demonstrate the Marshall Islands’ leadership on human rights, Anitok noted that the country has been elected to the UN Human Rights Council twice under President Dr Hilda Heine — an honour shared in the Pacific only once each by Australia and Tahiti.

    Pohnpei Senator Shelten Neth echoed Anitok’s call, demanding justice for the Pacific’s nuclear testing victims.

    “Enough is enough. Let’s stop talking the talk and let’s put our efforts together — united we stand and walk the talk.

    “Spreading of the nuclear waste is not only confined to the Marshall Islands, and I’m a living witness. I can talk about this from the scientific research already completed, but many don’t want to release it to the general public.

    “The contamination is spreading fast. [It’s in] Guam already, and the other nations that are closer to the RMI,” Neth said.

    He then urged the United States to accept full responsibility for its nuclear testing programme in the Pacific.

    “I [want to tell] Uncle Sam to honestly attend to the accountability of their wrongdoing. Inhuman, unethical, unorthodox, what you did to RMI. The nuclear testing is an injustice!” Neth declared.

    Anitok and Neth’s remarks followed a presentation by Diego Valadares Vasconcelos Neto, human rights officer for Micronesia under the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who discussed how UN human rights mechanisms can support economic development, health, and welfare in the region.

    Neto underscored the UN’s 80-year partnership with the Pacific and its continuing commitment to peace, human rights, and sustainable development in the wake of the Second World War and the nuclear era.

    He highlighted key human rights relevant to the Pacific context:

    • Right to development — Economic progress must go beyond GDP growth to include social, cultural, and political inclusion;
    • Right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment — Ensuring access to information, public participation, and justice in environmental matters; and
    • Political and civil rights — Upholding participation in governance, freedom of expression and association, equality, and self-determination.

    Based in Pohnpei and representing OHCHR’s regional office in Suva, Fiji, Neto outlined UN tools available to assist Pacific legislatures, including the Universal Periodic Review, special procedures (such as thematic experts on water, sanitation, and climate justice), and treaty bodies monitoring state compliance with human rights conventions.

    He also urged Pacific parliaments to form permanent human rights committees, ratify more international treaties, and strengthen legislative oversight on human rights implementation.

    Neto concluded by citing ongoing UN collaboration in the Marshall Islands-particularly in addressing the human rights impacts of nuclear testing and climate change-and expressed hope for continued dialogue between Pacific lawmakers and the UN Human Rights Office.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Former MP Anae calls for ‘Pacific justice’ over immigration in petition

    Asia Pacific Report

    A former National MP has launched a petition calling for “equality and respect” in New Zealand’s immigration visa treatment of Pacific Islanders, saying “many are shocked when they learn the truth”.

    In a full page advertisement in The New Zealand Herald newspaper today, Anae Arthur Anae condemned the New Zealand government’s visa settings that discriminated against Pacific peoples visiting the country and recalled the “dark days of the Dawn Raids“.

    The petition calls on the government to allow Pacific people to enter New Zealand on a three-month visitor visa issued on arrival.

    “While 90 percent of New Zealanders value and respect the contribution that Pacific peoples have made to this beautiful nation, most are unaware of the unfair treatment we continue to face,” Anae declared.

    “Many are shocked when they learn the truth.”

    “Currently, citizens from 60 countries aroundn the world — representing a combined population of 1.65 billion peopole — can arrive at any New Zealand airport and receive a three-month visitor visa arrival, free of charge,” he said.

    “In contrast, the 16 Pacific Island Forum nations, with a total population of fewer than 16 million, are denied this privilege.

    ‘Lengthy, expensive’ process
    Anae, who recently discussed his proposal on Radio Samoa, said that instead Pacific people needed to go through a “lengthy and expensive” visa application process — “preventing many from attending family funerals, emergencies, graduations and other important family events”.

    Until recently, he said, New Zealand’s Immigration Office in Samoa had been open for just an hour a day, “serving over 200,000 people with deep family and historical ties to New Zealand”.

    Anae said this lack of accessibility was “unacceptable for nations bound to New Zealand through treaties of friendship and shared sacrifice”.


    Former MP Anae Arthur Anae discusses his petition with Radio Samoa.

    “Let us reflect: Is this how we treat nations who have stood beside New Zealand through war, loss and shared history?” he said.

    The "Pacific Justice:" advertisement in the New Zealand Herald
    The “Pacific Justice:” advertisement in today’s New Zealand Herald. Image: NZH screenshot APR

    “We have shown loyalty, worked hard to build this country since the 1940s, and contributed immensely to its growth. Yet, we were once hunted in the dark days of the Dawn Raids, a shameful chapter that should never be repeated.

    “Pacific peoples have proven time and again that, when given the opportunity, we can achieve and contribute equally to anyone else.”

    The petition has received at least 24,000 signatures and closes on November 7.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Political chaos’ – Fiji PM Rabuka confirms Biman Prasad’s resignation

    RNZ Pacific

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has confirmed that his Finance Minister — and one of three deputies — has resigned after being charged by the country’s anti-corruption watchdog.

    Local media first reported that Professor Biman Prasad, the man in charge of government finances, had been charged with corruption-related offences under Fiji’s political party laws and was expected to resign.

    According to local media reports, Dr Prasad was charged with allegedly failing to declare his directorship in hotel ventures as required under the Political Parties Act.

    The development came less than a week after the resignation of co-Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica, who is also facing corruption charges.

    “Today, I received Biman Prasad’s formal notification of his resignation from Cabinet and as Deputy Prime Minister. He will remain a member of Parliament and caucus. His resignation follows the formal charges being laid against him by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC),” Rabuka said in a video statement released by the Fiji government yesterday afternoon.

    Dr Prasad, who is the leader of the National Federation Party, has served as a cabinet member since 24 December 2022. He was responsible for finance, strategic planning, national development and statistics portfolios.

    Rabuka told fijivillage.com that he believed the cases against his two deputies would not be resolved quickly, and that “it may take some portfolio management and reshuffling”.

    ‘Shortest possible time’
    However, in a statement last evening, Dr Prasad said he intended to “deal with this charge in the shortest possible time and in accordance with proper legal process”.

    “My lawyers are dealing with this expeditiously,” he said.

    He said Rabuka had “assured me of his personal support while I do so”.

    “One thing I have learned in 11 years of political leadership is that it involves many challenges, often from unexpected places,” he said.

    “This is just one more of those challenges to be dealt with calmly, patiently, and as swiftly as possible.”

    Rabuka has appointed an MP from his ruling People’s Alliance Party to take over the ministerial portfolios that Dr Prasad and Kamikamica had been overseeing.

    Manoa Kamikamica, left, and Sitiveni Rabuka.
    Manoa Kamikamica (left) and Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . the resigned deputy PM is charged with perjury and giving false information to a public servant. Image: Facebook / Manoa Kamikamica DPM

    Kamikamica is being charged with perjury and giving false information to a public servant, while the details of the charges against Dr Prasad have yet to be made public by FICAC.

    ‘Political and institutional chaos’ – Labour Party
    The Fiji Labour Party says the latest developments is a sign of “a total breakdown of leadership” under Rabuka.

    “Fiji Labour Party notes with deep concern the ongoing political and institutional chaos gripping the coalition government,” it said in a statement.

    “Instead of confronting the crisis head-on, the Prime Minister has chosen to downplay the gravity of the situation, pretending that everything remains ‘under control’.

    “The truth is quite the opposite — the coalition is collapsing under the weight of its own hypocrisy, infighting, and betrayal,” it said.

    The party added the government is “in free fall” and the country needs “renewal, not recycled politics”.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Political chaos’ – Fiji PM Rabuka confirms Biman Prasad’s resignation

    RNZ Pacific

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has confirmed that his Finance Minister — and one of three deputies — has resigned after being charged by the country’s anti-corruption watchdog.

    Local media first reported that Professor Biman Prasad, the man in charge of government finances, had been charged with corruption-related offences under Fiji’s political party laws and was expected to resign.

    According to local media reports, Dr Prasad was charged with allegedly failing to declare his directorship in hotel ventures as required under the Political Parties Act.

    The development came less than a week after the resignation of co-Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica, who is also facing corruption charges.

    “Today, I received Biman Prasad’s formal notification of his resignation from Cabinet and as Deputy Prime Minister. He will remain a member of Parliament and caucus. His resignation follows the formal charges being laid against him by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC),” Rabuka said in a video statement released by the Fiji government yesterday afternoon.

    Dr Prasad, who is the leader of the National Federation Party, has served as a cabinet member since 24 December 2022. He was responsible for finance, strategic planning, national development and statistics portfolios.

    Rabuka told fijivillage.com that he believed the cases against his two deputies would not be resolved quickly, and that “it may take some portfolio management and reshuffling”.

    ‘Shortest possible time’
    However, in a statement last evening, Dr Prasad said he intended to “deal with this charge in the shortest possible time and in accordance with proper legal process”.

    “My lawyers are dealing with this expeditiously,” he said.

    He said Rabuka had “assured me of his personal support while I do so”.

    “One thing I have learned in 11 years of political leadership is that it involves many challenges, often from unexpected places,” he said.

    “This is just one more of those challenges to be dealt with calmly, patiently, and as swiftly as possible.”

    Rabuka has appointed an MP from his ruling People’s Alliance Party to take over the ministerial portfolios that Dr Prasad and Kamikamica had been overseeing.

    Manoa Kamikamica, left, and Sitiveni Rabuka.
    Manoa Kamikamica (left) and Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . the resigned deputy PM is charged with perjury and giving false information to a public servant. Image: Facebook / Manoa Kamikamica DPM

    Kamikamica is being charged with perjury and giving false information to a public servant, while the details of the charges against Dr Prasad have yet to be made public by FICAC.

    ‘Political and institutional chaos’ – Labour Party
    The Fiji Labour Party says the latest developments is a sign of “a total breakdown of leadership” under Rabuka.

    “Fiji Labour Party notes with deep concern the ongoing political and institutional chaos gripping the coalition government,” it said in a statement.

    “Instead of confronting the crisis head-on, the Prime Minister has chosen to downplay the gravity of the situation, pretending that everything remains ‘under control’.

    “The truth is quite the opposite — the coalition is collapsing under the weight of its own hypocrisy, infighting, and betrayal,” it said.

    The party added the government is “in free fall” and the country needs “renewal, not recycled politics”.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Blue Pacific’s unfinished business – West Papua and regional integrity

    ANALYSIS: By Ali Mirin

    When the Pacific Islands Forum concluded in Honiara last month, leaders pledged regional unity under the motto “Iumi Tugeda” — “We are Together”.

    Eighteen Pacific heads of government reached agreements on climate resilience and nuclear-free oceans.

    They signed the Pacific Resilience Facility treaty and endorsed Australia’s proposal to jointly host the 2026 COP31 climate summit.

    However, the region’s most urgent crisis was once again given only formulaic attention. West Papua, where Indonesian military operations continue to displace and replace tens of thousands of Papuans, was given just one predictable paragraph in the final communiqué.

    This reaffirmed Indonesia’s sovereignty, recalled an invitation made six years ago for the UN High Commissioner to visit, and vaguely mentioned a possible leaders’ mission in 2026.

    For the Papuan people, who have been waiting for more than half a century to exercise their right to self-determination, this represented no progress. It confirmed a decades-long pattern of acknowledging Jakarta’s tight grip, expressing polite concern and postponing action.

    A stolen independence
    The crisis in West Papua stems from its unique place in Pacific history. In 1961, the West Papuans established the New Guinea Council, adopted a national anthem and raised the Morning Star flag — years before Samoa gained independence in 1962 and Fiji in 1970.

    Papuan delegates had also helped to launch the South Pacific Conference in 1950, which would become the Pacific Islands Forum.

    However, this path was abruptly reversed. Under pressure from Cold War currents, the Netherlands transferred administration to Indonesia.

    The promised plebiscite was replaced by the 1969 Act of Free Choice, in which 1026 hand-picked Papuans were forced to vote for integration under military coercion.

    Despite protests, the UN endorsed the result. West Papua was the first Pacific nation to have its recognised independence reversed during decolonisation.

    Systematic blockade
    Since the early 1990s, UN officials have been seeking access to West Papua. However, the Indonesians have imposed a complete block on any international institutions and news media entering.

    Between 2012 and 2022, multiple UN high commissioners and special rapporteurs requested visits. All were denied.

    More than 100 UN member states have publicly supported these requests. It has never occurred. Regional organisations ranging from the Pacific Islands Forum to the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States have made identical demands. Jakarta ignores them all.

    International media outlets face the same barriers. Despite former Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s 2015 declaration that foreign journalists could enter Papua freely, visa restrictions and surveillance have kept the province as among the world’s least reported conflicts.

    During the protests in 2019, Indonesia shut down internet access across the territory.
    Indonesia calculates that it can ignore international opinion because key partners treat West Papua as a low priority.

    Australia and New Zealand balance occasional concern with deeper trade ties. The US and China prioritise strategic interests.

    Even during his recent visit to Papua New Guinea, UN Secretary-General António Guterres made no mention of West Papua, despite the conflict lying just across the border.

    Bougainville vs West Papua
    The Pacific’s inaction is particularly striking when compared to Bougainville. Like West Papua, Bougainville endured a brutal conflict.

    Unlike West Papua, however, Bougainville received genuine international support for self-determination. Under UN oversight, Bougainville’s 2019 referendum allowed free voting, with 98 per cent choosing independence.

    Today, Bougainville and Papua New Guinea are negotiating a peaceful transition to sovereignty.

    West Papua has been denied even this initial step. There is no credible mediation. There is no international accompaniment. There is no timetable for a political solution.

    The price of hypocrisy
    Pacific leaders are confronted with a fundamental contradiction. They demand bold global action on climate justice, yet turn a blind eye to political injustice on their doorstep.

    The ban on raising the Morning Star flag in Honiara, reportedly under pressure from Indonesia, has highlighted this hypocrisy.

    The flag symbolises the right of West Papuans to exist as a nation. Prohibiting it at a meeting celebrating regional solidarity revealed the extent of external influence in Pacific decision-making.

    This selective solidarity comes at a high cost. It undermines the Pacific’s credibility as a global conscience on climate change and decolonisation.

    It leaves Papuans trapped in what they describe as a “slow-motion genocide”. Between 2018 and 2022, an estimated 60,000 to 100,000 people were displaced by Indonesian military operations.

    In 2024, Human Rights Watch reported that violence had reached levels unseen in decades.

    Breaking the pattern
    The Forum could end this cycle by taking practical steps. For example, it could set a deadline of 12 months for an Indonesia-UN agreement on unrestricted access to West Papua.

    If no agreement is reached, the Forum could conduct its own investigation with the Melanesian Spearhead Group. It could also make regional programmes contingent on human rights benchmarks, including ensuring humanitarian access and ending internet shutdowns.

    Such measures would not breach the Forum’s charter. They would align Pacific diplomacy with the proclaimed values of dignity and solidarity. They would demonstrate that regional unity extends beyond mere rhetoric.

    The test of history
    The people of West Papua were among the first in Oceania to resist colonial expansion and to form a modern government. They were also the first to experience the reversal of recognised sovereignty.

    Until Pacific leaders find the courage to confront Indonesian obstruction and insist on genuine West Papuan self-determination, “Iumi Tugeda” will remain a beautiful slogan shadowed by betrayal.

    The region’s moral authority does not depend on eloquence regarding the climate fund, but on whether it confronts its deepest wound.

    Any claim to a unified Blue Pacific identity will remain incomplete until the issue of West Papua’s denied independence is finally addressed.

    Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic and writer from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He holds a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University – Australia.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Labour’s capital gains NZ tax gamble – from leak to launch

    COMMENTARY: By Craig McCulloch, RNZ News acting political editor

    It was hardly a dream debut for Labour’s long-awaited, much-argued-over tax package for Aotearoa New Zealand.

    What was meant to be a carefully choreographed reveal of a capital gains tax (CGT) later this week instead arrived early — leaked to RNZ over the long weekend and hastily confirmed by Chris Hipkins this morning.

    In his media conference at Parliament, Labour’s leader downplayed the premature release, saying the details had been circulated widely and could have come from anywhere.

    He delivered a stern warning to any leaker, but also said he was not interested in pursuing any sort of investigation.

    That is sensible. History shows such hunts usually end badly. Just ask National about Jami-Lee Ross.

    Still, the leak will be of some concern to Hipkins.

    The party’s internal debate over whether to pursue a wealth tax or CGT has been long and bruising, with strong feelings on both sides.

    RNZ understands the caucus vote for a CGT plan was near unanimous – but not quite. And the party’s ruling council and policy council were more divided again.

    Hipkins needs those proponents of a wealth tax to now fall in behind the selected proposal.

    Unity will be crucial if Labour is to sell yet another version of a policy it has repeatedly failed to convince voters to support.

    Containing the risk
    Labour knows the political peril of talking tax. It’s been burned before — in 2011, 2014, and 2017.

    This time, the party has chosen the smallest possible target: a cautious CGT applying only to property sales, excluding the family home and farms.

    The rate would be set at 28 percent, in line with company tax, and would apply to profits made after 1 July 2027.

    National disputes the description of “narrow” but compared to the other options on offer, it meets the definition. This does not cover shares, KiwiSaver, inheritances, or personal assets, like classic cars or artwork.

    In many respects, it’s little more than an expanded bright-line test — closely resembling the minority view of the 2019 Tax Working Group.

    The strategy is clear: keep it simple and sellable.

    Labour believes a modest CGT will be more palatable to the public than the more novel and ambitious wealth tax. Capital gains taxes are familiar overseas and no longer as frightening a concept as they once were.

    Definition complications
    But even the narrowest design can have complications. For example, look to the definition of “family home”.

    Labour is using the definition used currently by the brightline test which requires a person to be currently living in that house “most of the time”.

    It means that a person who owns just one house, but lives in a rental property elsewhere, would still be taxed if they sold that property.

    Keeping the scope tight also limits revenue.

    Labour’s own policy paper concedes the returns will be “small relative to GDP and total tax revenue” – roughly $700 million a year.

    And almost all of that will go straight into Labour’s accompanying health policy.

    The sweetener: A ‘Medicard’ for GP visits
    In a bid to soften any political blow, Labour has paired the tax with a tangible benefit — a “Medicard” giving every New Zealander three free GP visits a year.

    By tying its CGT to the health system, Labour hopes to frame it not so much as punishment for property owners, but more as a pragmatic way to fund something people actually want.

    It’s no mistake that the policy touches the two issues named most important by voters in polling: the cost-of-living and healthcare.

    Labour has also intentionally made the entitlement universal to ensure the widest possible appeal — even if critics argue the money would be better targeted to those most in need.

    Speaking of the critics, government MPs were practically salivating today, having eagerly awaited this announcement as a potential turning point in the polls.

    Labour’s rise in popularity has come despite having little in the way of a policy platform and the coalition hopes the tide will turn as voters look more sceptically at the alternative.

    Finance Minister Nicola Willis branded the proposal a “terrible idea”, warning it would hit small businesses that own property.

    ‘Tall-poppy politics’
    Act’s David Seymour called it divisive “tall-poppy politics”, while New Zealand First declared the rollout “a trainwreck”.

    NZ First’s post on social media included a noteworthy kicker, describing the CGT as merely “a foot in the door” for the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

    Hipkins today tried to shut down that attack, claiming that Labour’s tax plan would be the next government’s tax plan.

    But he received no assistance from his purported partners, with the Greens insisting they would not be relinquishing their advocacy for a wealth tax.

    Expect more heat on that front as the election approaches.

    RNZ’s latest Reid Research poll shows the task ahead for Labour: 43 percent in support of a CGT, 36 percent opposed, and 22 percent undecided.

    That’s not exactly a decisive mandate – but it’s not dismal either.

    After months of indecision, Labour is finally in the policy game.

    This may not be how it had hoped to roll out its flagship policy, but the real test will be how well it can sell it over the coming months.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Alarming gaps’ – WHO warns NZ to urgently close measles vaccination gap among Māori and Pacific communities

    By Coco Lance, RNZ Pacific digital journalist

    The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned Aotearoa New Zealand to urgently close the “alarming” gaps in measles immunisation, particularly among Māori and Pacific communities.

    A WHO review last year found measles vaccination rates were at their lowest since 2012, and said the country was at risk of another large outbreak if those gaps were not filled.

    Aotearoa eliminated measles in 2017, but saw a major outbreak in 2019 that infected more than 2000 people and hospitalised 700, many of them young children.

    There are now 10 confirmed cases across Manawatū, Nelson, Northland, Taranaki, Wellington and Auckland, raising fears of wider community spread.

    Only 72 percent of Māori under five years old are vaccinated, compared with 82 percent across the general population. To stop outbreaks, at least 95 percent coverage is needed.

    Public Health Director Dr Corina Grey said the Ministry of Health shared WHO’s concerns.

    “We know Māori and Pacific children are still missing out — that’s something we have to fix,” she said.

    Serious risk
    Pacific health researcher Chris Puliuvea said there is serious risk, specifically for Pacific communities.

    “There is a 95 percent level where we need to be [with immunisation]. I believe we may even be behind the general population. For example, in the Bay of Plenty, vaccination rates are well behind other ethnic groups in that region,” Dr Puliueva said.

    Dr Puli’uvea warned that measles can be easily spread.

    “There is a serious concern at the moment. One infected person could affect up to 18 other people. The virus lingers in the air for several hours, which encourages spread. It’s far more infectious than COVID-19, and that’s a concern for our Māori and Pacific communities,” Puli’uvea said.

    “I think what makes it also difficult is that you can be infected with the virus at very early stages and not show symptoms until four days later, so you could be infectious and you could be spreading it.

    “Obviously it will take time to report that incident. So I think there is a serious concern at the moment, and the reason why I have this concern is why the vaccination rates are not where [they’re] meant to be,” he added.

    Dr Puli’uvea said the lower vaccination rates among Māori and Pacific communities was a complex issue, although there are several reasons.

    Key covid lessons
    “It’s a difficult question . . .  key lessons from covid-19 showed us the importance of engaging with communities, particularly the faith community, and addressing misinformation and disinformation.

    “That’s one of the inequalities.

    “Other inequities are just excess people not being able to find time to go and get vaccinated over because they’re at work, or just lots of other things, finding the time to go and get vaccinated is one of them.

    “The other thing that I’ve found is some people are not sure if they are immunised, particularly for those born in the 1990s onward,” he said.

    Dr Puli’uvea encouraged families to vaccinate even if they were unsure about their vaccination status.

    “With MMR, I simply encourage people to go and get vaccinated. There’s no harm in getting the full course again. It protects not only the individual but also prevents spreading the virus,” Dr Puli’uvea said.

    The Ministry of Health has expanded vaccination access through pharmacies, GPs, and health centres, and offered incentives for on-time childhood immunisations.

    “Every child vaccinated helps protect the whole community,” Dr Grey said.

    They also explained that people can check records and get free MMR vaccinations from their GP, pharmacy, or local clinic.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Dark political clouds forming in Fiji – expect more lightning strikes after two DPMs charged

    COMMENTARY: By Stanley Simpson, director of Mai TV

    You can wake up one morning in Fiji and feel like you’re living in a totally different country.

    Overnight we have lost two of our three Deputy Prime Ministers — by many accounts these were the two who were perhaps among the most influential and pivotal in the running of this government.|

    Just like that. No longer in cabinet.

    For days news of Biman’s impending arrest was being posted about in advance — clearly leaked by people inside Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC). So it did not come as a total surprise.

    But reading the reactions on social media — what has surprised, unnerved and confused many — especially government supporters, is how and why does a government charge their own when many in the previous government they wanted to be held accountable continue to walk free?

    Why did charges against the two DPM’s take priority?

    Is that a sign of how divided they are — or how upright and full of integrity they are?

    Charges seem small
    The charges brought against the two DPM’s seem small when compared to the significant impact of their removal from cabinet. PM Sitiveni Rabuka, when he was SODELPA leader in 2018, was charged with more or less the similar offence DPM Biman is being charged with — inaccurate declaration of assets and liabilities under the Political Parties Act.

    Rabuka was acquitted on the eve of the 2018 election.

    Many thought then the whole charge was nothing more than the former Bainimarama government trying to take out its main competitor ahead of the 2018 elections. There was a strong anti-FICAC sentiment then by those now in power.

    The main gripe of the coalition parties coming in was that FICAC was being used by those in power for their political agenda — and needed to be disbanded and come under the Police Force.

    Rabuka said as much to me in a 2022 interview.

    Inevitably, many are now openly wondering if the same thing FijiFirst was accused of doing is happening here, and if this is a machiavellian political strategy for power. To take out a potential internal challenger and clear out a coalition partner so PAP can fight the next elections on its own and focus on winning it outright.

    With the support of some former FijiFirst MP’s — PAP has more than enough numbers — and not as reliant on NFP and SODELPA any more.

    Coalition has been great
    The coalition has been great — but it has been a headache keeping everyone together and managing everyone’s competing interests.

    However, the PM has grounds to argue that he is just following the process and maintaining the integrity of FICAC’s fight against corruption — that was severely compromised with the appointment of Barbara Malimali as per the Commission of Inquiry report.

    That all he is practising are the principles of transparency, accountability and good governance. Nothing more, nothing less.

    That matter is being heard in court with the ruling to be delivered by 23 January 2026 — three months away.

    Rabuka has stated that “no one is above the law” and seems confident of weathering any political storm.

    But the dark political clouds are forming. Expect more thunder and lightning strikes as more influential people in key positions are expected to be arrested, putting the political and judicial landscape in turmoil.

    Forecast is uncertain.

    Many storms before
    Rabuka has been through many storms like this before. He says he continues to have the support of everyone on his side, including the two DPM’s recently charged.

    For now he remains firmly in charge.

    But what was once just whispers of internal dissent and division that many of us once dismissed as rumours is starting to grow, as politicians weigh their options.

    Whether it turns into a split or full on rebellion, or everyone realise they have no choice but to fall in line, we shall wait and see.

    Could we see a repeat of 1994 when Rabuka’s government was brought down from within but he managed to win enough in the elections and form a coalition with the GVP to remain in power?

    As of now many in politics are trying to work out which way the wind will blow.

    Stanley Simpson is director of Mai TV, general secretary of the Fiji Media Association (FMA) and a media commentator. This is an independent commentary first published on his Facebook page and republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ health minister unethical over medical ethics – ‘look in the mirror’

    COMMENTARY: By Ian Powell

    On October 17, I received a brief email from a former Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) vice-president: “Can’t wait for your blog covering the reception of Simeon Brown at conference yesterday!!”

    The context was the aggressive address of Minister of Health Simeon Brown to the ASMS annual conference.

    As reported by Radio New Zealand’s Ruth Hill (October 16), Brown accused senior doctors of crossing an “ethical line” by taking strike action involving non-acute care.

    Health Minister Simeon Brown
    Health Minister Simeon Brown . . . his ‘unethical’ accusation against doctors. Image: RNZ screenshot APR

    His accusation was made in the lead up to the “mega strike” of around 100,000 senior doctors, nurses, teachers and public servants on October 23.

    It included misleadingly Brown claiming that patients were paying the price for the strike action and that ASMS had walked “away from negotiations”.

    Further, he added, “Patients should never be collateral damage in disputes between management and unions.” He urged ASMS to call off the strike action and return to negotiations (conveniently ignoring that it never left them).

    Clicking my heels – but how?
    As the ASMS executive director until 31 December 2019, what could I do but click my heels and obey the former vice-president. But this left me with a problem of what to focus on in a short blog.

    The Health Minister had raised several options.

    Judith Collins
    Attack dog Judith Collins published a strident and inaccurate open letter. Image: otaihangasecondopinion.wordpress.com

    One was the fact that his address, reinforced by Public Services Minister Judith Collins’ stridently inaccurate “attack dog open letter” attack on the health and education unions (October 19) is the most aggressive and hardline government approach towards health unions, at least, since I first became involved with the newly formed ASMS in 1989.

    Another was the deliberate use of misleading claims such as Brown accusing ASMS of not being prepared to negotiate while, at the same time, Health New Zealand was refusing to meet ASMS to discuss negotiations. Also deliberately misleading was his false claim about senior doctors’ average salaries.

    Eventually I landed on the accusation that triggered much of the media interest and most of the criticisms from ASMS conference delegates — Brown’s claim that senior doctors were crossing an ethical line.

    Understanding medical ethics
    As Ruth Hill reported there were “audible cries of disbelief” from the delegates. Also see Stuff journalist Bridie Witton’s coverage (October 16).

    Let’s get back to basics. Ethics is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.

    Following on, medical ethics is the disciplined study of morality in medicine and concerns the obligations of doctors and healthcare organisations to patients as well as the obligations of patients.

    Hippocrates
    Hippocrates developed the oath that formed the original basis of medical ethics. Image: otaihangasecondopinion

    Medical ethics starts with the Hippocratic Oath beginning with its first principle of ‘first do no harm’.

    As part of an earlier post on the ancient Oath and this principle (5 February 2022) I argued that not only were they still relevant today, but that they should be applied to the whole of our health system, including its leadership.

    Who really crossed the ethical line?
    Dr Elizabeth Fenton is a lecturer in bioethics at Otago University. On October 22 she had an article published in The Conversation that shone a penetrating analytical light on Simeon Brown’s ethical line crossing claim.

    Her observations included:

    Bioethics lecturer Dr Elizabeth Fenton
    Bioethics lecturer Dr Elizabeth Fenton gets to the core of whether striking senior doctors are crossing an ethical line. Image: otaihangasecondopinion

    “Striking is an option of last resort. In healthcare, it causes disruption and inconvenience for patients, whānau and the health system – but it is ethically justified.

    “Arguably, it is ethically required when poor working conditions associated with staff shortages, inadequate infrastructure and underfunding threaten the wellbeing of patients and the long-term sustainability of public health services.

    ” . . . The real ethical issue is successive governments’ failure to address these conditions and their impact on patient care.”

    In response to the health minister’s implication that striking doctors are failing to meet their ethical obligations to provide healthcare, she noted that:

    “These are the same doctors who, alongside nurses, carers and allied health professionals, kept New Zealand’s health system functioning during the COVID pandemic in the face of heightened personal risk, often inadequate protections and substantial additional burdens.

    “While the duty of care is of primary ethical importance, codes of ethics also recognise doctors’ duties to all patients, and responsibilities to advocate for adequate resourcing in the health system. These duties may justify compromising care to individual patients under the circumstances in which industrial action is considered.”

    Further, doctors:

    “. . . are striking because their ability to meet these obligations [to provide high quality care] is routinely compromised by working conditions that contribute to burnout and moral injury – the impact of having to work under circumstances that violate core moral values.

    “A key goal of the industrial action is to demand better conditions for clinical care, such as safe staffing levels, that will benefit patients and staff and improve the health system for everyone.”

    The penultimate final word
    In the context of Dr Fenton’s incisive analysis, as reported by Ruth Hill in her above-mentioned RNZ item it is appropriate to leave the penultimate final word to the response of senior doctors at the ASMS annual conference to Simeon Brown’s ethical line crossing accusation. These comments were made in among their boos and groans.

    Dr Katie Ben
    Dr Katie Ben . . . operating lists routinely being cancelled. Image: The Press

    ASMS president and Nelson Hospital anaesthetist Dr Katie Ben said:

    “We have now taken to putting the number of times the patient has been cancelled on the operating list to ensure the patient doesn’t get cancelled for the fourth, fifth or sixth time. Non-clinical managers were cancelling planned care because they could not fill rosters.”

    Waikato Hospital rheumatologist Dr Alan Doube said many people (with crippling chronic conditions) did not even get a first specialist appointment (FSA).

    “In Waikato, we decline regularly 50 percent of our FSA so we can provide some kind of sensible ongoing care.”

    Emergency medicine specialist Dr Tom Morton at Nelson Hospital added:

    “Our ED waiting time have blown out with more than doubling of patients leaving without being seen, which I think is a significant marker of unmet need that’s not being recorded or reported on officially.”

    The ultimate final word: nailing who crossed an ethical line
    In a subsequent RNZ item (October 17), the Health Minister threatened a law change to remove senior doctors’ right to strike: Right to strike threatened.

    Malcolm Mulholland
    Patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland . . . nailing who crossed an ethical line. Image: otaihangasecondopinion

    The reported response of leading patient advocate Malcolm Mulholland nailed who was crossing the ethical line. Describing Simeon Brown’s threat as “pathetic”, he added:

    “I think the reason why our doctors and our nurses are striking is because there’s just simply not enough staff. I don’t know how many times they have to tell him until they are blue in the face.

    “You know, all this talk about crossing an ethical line, I would say, ‘take a look in the mirror, minister’.”

    Indeed Health Minister — look in the mirror! It is the striking doctors who are acting in accordance with the Hippocratic Oath and adhering to the principle of “first do no harm”. It is the Health Minister who is not.

    Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Mediawatch: Talley’s vs TVNZ in defamation confrontation

    MEDIAWATCH: By RNZ Mediawatch presenter Colin Peacock

    Successive New Zealand governments have dodged the issue of how the news media should be held to account, leaving us with outdated and fragmented systems for standards and complaints.

    But the issue erupted recently when the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) advised The Platform it could consider public complaints about its online output.

    That sparked calls to roll back the Authority’s authority — and one MP drafted a bill to scrap it.

    Talley's logo.
    Talley’s . . . sued TVNZ over six 1News reports in 2021 and 2022. Image: Screenshot

    Those who reckon we don’t need an official broadcasting watchdog point out we already have laws protecting privacy, copyright and other things — and criminalising harassment and bullying.

    And if someone on air — or online — lowers your reputation in the minds of right-thinking New Zealanders without good reason, you can sue them for defamation if you think you can prove it.

    News organisations don’t often end up in court for that, but when they do it’s big news. Reputations are at stake — and possibly lots of money too in damages.

    Thirty years ago the country’s largest-ever payment followed scurrilous claims in Metro magazine’s gossip column — all about a journalist at a rival publication.

    Ten years ago, foreign affairs reporter Jon Stephenson sued the chief of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) for statements that wrongly cast doubt on his reporting about New Zealand soldiers in Afghanistan. After a full jury trial, a second was about to begin when the NZDF settled for an undisclosed sum and a statement of “regret”.

    Last week, another defamation case concluded, but this time the plaintiff was not a person — and was not seeking damages.

    The result may not be known for months, but it could change the way controversial claims about big companies are handled by newsrooms, and — depending on the outcome — how defamation law is deployed by those on the end of investigative reporting.

    ‘See you in court’
    Over five weeks, lawyers for food giant Talley’s went toe-to-toe in the High Court with TVNZ and its lawyers, led by Davey Salmon KC, who also acted for Stephenson 10 years ago.

    Talley’s sued TVNZ over six 1News reports in 2021 and 2022 — and also, unusually, sued Christchurch-based reporter Thomas Mead individually as well.

    The series alleged problems with hygiene, health and safety at two Talley’s plants.

    “To the public, the company presents a spotless image of staff producing frozen vegetables with a smile on their face, but 1News can now pull back the curtain of a different side to its Ashburton factory,” Mead told viewers in July 2021.

    Whistleblowers — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity — told 1News about problems at two plants and shared photos of dirty equipment and apparent hazards.

    Other reports investigated workers’ injuries and allegations that workers’ claims had been mismanaged by the company.

    TVNZ also reported a leaked email telling Talley’s staff not to talk about an incident where emergency services were called to free a worker’s hand trapped in a machine.

    Mead also told viewers an invitation to tour one factory was withdrawn at the last minute. Instead, senior Talley’s staff urged TVNZ not to air the allegations and the images.

    “Discussion turned to intimidation,” Mead reported.

    Anonymity and privacy
    Before the trial, Talley’s went to court to try — unsuccessfully — to force TVNZ to reveal the identity of some of its sources and further details of their allegations. It said this would have allowed it to assess whether the sources had sufficient understanding of the safety issues that concerned them.

    “I made them a promise, and I have kept it,” Thomas Mead told the court, insisting TVNZ protected their identities because they feared retaliation from Talley’s.

    In court, Talley’s lawyer Brian Dickey KC said TVNZ could not produce any evidence that any workers had faced any actual retaliation. He alleged the anonymous sources were wrong and one had tried to extort the company.

    Dickey even called one report by Mead “a hit piece”, and said TVNZ’s presentation was overly emotional and its reports displayed “animus” against the company.

    TVNZ insisted the reports were accurate, verified and — crucially — in the public interest, and losing the case would set a dangerous precedent for journalism.

    Talley’s told the court it did not want damages, just an acknowledgement that it had been defamed and had suffered losses because of the reports.

    In this case, the lawyers were not seeking to sway members of a jury — only Judge Pheroze Jagose. He said his decision may not be released until Easter next year.

    “It was probably best that it was just a judge-alone (trial) because it’s mind-numbingly complex when you get into the depth of detail and the layers of what’s being argued,” Tim Murphy, Newsroom co-editor, told Mediawatch.

    Pecuniary loss
    To win the case, Talley’s must show it suffered pecuniary loss.

    “This adds a level because they have to show their business has been affected in a way that has cost them money,” said Murphy, who watched the trial from the press bench.

    “They need to show that not only has there been loss immediately after or in the time frame of these pieces in 2021 and 2022 — but also that the particular statements in each story that they’re suing about — called ‘imputations’ in defamation law — then led to the loss.

    “They said it couldn’t be specified to a dollar figure — but in their view it was obvious and inarguable that the TVNZ coverage had cost them financially.”

    Talley’s said contracts with Countdown (now Woolworths) and Hello Fresh were affected.

    “They also had the cost of an independent inquiry by former Police Commissioner Mike Bush, and the cost of a PR firm to handle all of this — and then costs of their management time diverted from their factories and so on,” Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy told Mediawatch.

    “They also said they had opprobrium for their staff in the community, and they said that was a cost because it can affect morale and productivity.”

    What are the stakes?
    “From past defamation cases that went a long way — even if they didn’t get to trial — both parties will have spent millions in legal costs to this point,” Murphy told Mediawatch.

    “Talley’s have also gone for ‘indemnity costs’ so there could still be a substantial amount [to pay] for TVNZ should it lose.”

    “Both parties (in court) painted this case as having a very big impact should it go the other way.”

    “TVNZ’s view was that if . . .  a company can succeed with that level of loss, then it will open it up to all sorts of companies. Davey Salmon, their KC, said that it would be inviting Defamation Act cases from corporations who have effectively suffered no loss.

    “Talley’s were of the view that if TVNZ won this, then it was open season on companies and corporations… and that no company would be able to withstand reporting that is in error or biased.”

    Murphy’s predecessor as New Zealand Herald editor, Dr Gavin Ellis, appeared as an expert witness for TVNZ. Dr Ellis told the court TVNZ appeared to have verified sources and cross-checked key claims and sought independent views. He also believed Talley’s was given a reasonable amount of time to respond to allegations.

    He also backed TVNZ’s decision not to surrender notes — or even redacted versions of transcripts from interviews with anonymous sources to protect their confidentiality.

    “There were pretty good levels of both cross-referencing and validating. There are other aspects of the case with vulnerabilities and some of those were from at least one of the anonymous sources,” Murphy told Mediawatch.

    “The need to be able to offer and guarantee anonymity and protection of identity in all respects is vital for that public interest function that journalists have.”

    TVNZ argued that in the Court of Appeal, and won the right to continue that protection of those sources.

    But TVNZ recently had to change its own policy after revealing too much of a vulnerable source itself in a recent documentary.

    The jeopardy of brevity
    Editors and reporters elsewhere were watching what Murphy described as a journalistic investigation, investigated.

    The planning, decision-making and personal communications at TVNZ was scrutinised closely in court, as well as the reporting seen by the public.

    One 1News broadcast in 2021 kicked off with host Simon Dallow saying: “a whistleblower tells 1News” Talley’s Ashburton plant was an “accident waiting to happen”.

    In court it emerged that the anonymous source in question had not used those precise words, though Mead himself had put those words to the source during a conversation.

    “[TVNZ] made claims that — when they were examined in microscopic detail — didn’t match what the story itself said. This is what lawyers do if they get this chance. They examine to that level and nuance,” Murphy said.

    “Often in journalism if you get a clear affirmative to a question like that, then it’s fair to paraphrase it and say the person agreed it was ‘an accident waiting to happen’. But in this case the answer . . .  was very discursive.”

    Talley’s also said some of TVNZ’s presentation was inappropriately emotive and Brian Dickey KC seized on individual words and phrases to allege TVNZ and Mead had taken against Talley’s.

    Murphy noted Talley’s objected to reports that would “present anonymous source allegations, give Talley’s response and then end with a ‘but’. The company questioned why his summaries never raised a qualification like ‘but’ about the claims made by a source.”

    “It alleged the technique undercut what Talley’s had said – and that there was a sort of default over-weighting of the critical view of them,” Murphy said.

    Salmon claimed Talley’s was over-analysing the reports’ wording and amplifying their importance.

    “News does not need to be presented in the austere form of a court judgment to be responsible. If it was, it would not be read or watched and it would not inform,” he told the court.

    Will this change the way big stories are done?
    Summarising complex things to make them easily understood in a three-minute TV news bulletin — or shorter — is a challenge.

    Could this case prompt a move away from paraphrasing to make stories more engaging and comprehensible — and towards a drier, longer and a little less simplified style on television?

    “In the quiet moments, all of those involved at TVNZ will see that there needs to be a tighter, clearer, more precise and weighted use of language and words — and images as well — in the bringing-together and presentation of these kinds of stories,” Murphy told Mediawatch.

    “It’s no bad thing in a way for all the media to be given a sharp reminder that precision extends to every element of an investigative story and its presentation. The captions, the summary, the pull-quotes, the scripts, the promos of stories are all subject to this sort of scrutiny.”

    Chilling effect?
    Bryce Edwards of the pro-transparency Integrity Institute said this was an example of “the rich and powerful [using] these laws as legal weapons to silence critics, discourage investigative journalism, and shield themselves from scrutiny”.

    “It put the very right of the media to hold power to account in the dock,” Edwards said.

    Murphy said: “I think it was quite clear through the whole case that there was sort of a power play.

    “The power of a big corporation with rich-lister family backers drawing a line in the sand and saying: ‘We’ve had power of the media thrown at us unfairly — so we’re going to exert some power back other way.’”

    And while the media do not end up in court often defending defamation claims, we do not often know if media might be swayed by threats of defamation action from those with financial and legal clout. Or if they are deterred from publishing stories that could result in the kind of lengthy and potentially costly court case TVNZ has just faced.

    “While there are many times where lawyers’ letters — or even perhaps injunctions to delay material being aired or published — occur, there are also many times where media companies have ploughed,” Murphy said.

    “I don’t think the balance in the defamation setup we have is as yet favouring organisations or companies or the wealthy as much as elsewhere. We do have a defence of responsible publication in the public interest. But the key word there is ‘responsible’.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Hedges slams hostile Australian interview, unpacks Press Club and Western media betraying Gaza

    Pacific Media Watch

    Pulitzer Prize–winning US journalist Chris Hedges joins Antoinette Lattouf on We Used To Be Journos to unpack his time in Australia, including some fraught interactions with sections of the Australian media.

    The pair also discuss what he flew all this way to talk about — how Western journalists are betraying their colleagues in Gaza.

    Hedges also offers some honest advice for young people who still want to tell stories and speak truth to power.


    The We Used To Be Journos interview.                     Video: ETTE Media

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ minister warned on possible risk over Israeli use of satellites

    Pacific Media Watch

    New Zealand’s Space Minister Judith Collins was warned just two months into Israel’s war on Gaza that new BlackSky satellites being launched from NZ could be used by that country’s military, reports Television New Zealand’s 1News.

    According to a network news item on Friday, government documents showed officials had recommended the launches go ahead in spite of risks, saying there were no restrictions on trade with Israel.

    Minister Collins gave the green light and RocketLab began launching the the Gen-3 BlackSky satellites from Mahia Peninsula earlier this year.

    In the documents, obtained by 1News political reporter Benedict Collins under the Official Information Act, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials said while there were risks, the positives outweighed the negatives.

    The officials’ advice on the satellite launches stated: “While it poses risks, there is a net good associated with commercially available remote sensing due to the wide range of applications,” 1News said.

    One risk they identified related to Israel, but they said there were mitigating factors.

    “There are no United Nations Security Council sanctions on Israel, and New Zealand does not implement autonomous sanctions outside the context of the conflict in Ukraine,” they advised the minister.

    “There are also no policy restrictions on New Zealand’s trading relationship with Israel.”

    World court warnings
    However, over the two years of war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, several nonbinding legal opinions by the world’s highest court and UN agencies have warned Israel about its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and also warned countries and companies about complicity with the pariah Zionist state.

    In the latest ruling this week, the International Court of Justice said Israel was obliged to ease the passage of aid into Gaza, stressing it had to provide Palestinians with “basic needs” essential to survival.

    The wide-ranging ICJ ruling came as aid groups were scrambling to scale up much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza, seizing upon a fragile ceasefire agreed earlier this month.

    ICJ judges are also weighing accusations, brought by South Africa, that Israel has broken the 1948 UN Genocide Convention with its actions in Gaza.

    Another court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    According to 1News, the NZ documents also show that when MBIE officials recommended the application be approved they were aware experts at the UN were warning a possible genocide could unfold in Gaza and that schools and hospitals were being bombed.

    ‘Appalling’ decision
    The officials’ advice came in December 2023, two months after the Hamas attacks on Israel which left 1200 people dead. Israel in response launched a retaliatory offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 68,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

    Minister Collins said this week the decision had been the right one.

    “We don’t have sanctions on Israel, we’re not at war with Israel, Israel is not our enemy,” she said.

    But Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said it was an “appalling” decision that could fuel human rights abuses, reports 1News.

    Officials at New Zealand’s space agency declined to be interviewed by 1News about Blacksky and RocketLab did not respond to a request for an interview with its founder Sir Peter Beck.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • US rejects Hamas, UNRWA roles in Gaza as Israeli aid siege persists

    Pacific Media Watch

    United States top diplomat Marco Rubio says the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) “is not going to play any role” in aid delivery in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.

    He also rejected the possibility of Hamas being involved in any future governance of the besieged enclave.

    Speaking during a news conference while on a visit to Israel yesterday, the US Secretary of State claimed UNRWA had become “a subsidiary of Hamas”, echoing an Israeli government line that has been discredited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

    In response, UNRWA insisted that its presence “remains vital to meeting urgent humanitarian needs” across the bombarded and starved enclave, where a deadly Israeli offensive has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians in two years.

    In a statement posted on X, the agency also highlighted that the ICJ had recognised that “no organisation can replace the UNRWA’s role in supporting the people of Gaza”.

    Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, also dismissed Rubio’s characterisation.

    “You’ve already heard us talk about how UNRWA is not linked to Hamas,” he told reporters at the UN. “UNRWA is the backbone of our humanitarian operations in Gaza.”

    Israel banned the agency from operating after accusing some of its staff of taking part in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack without providing evidence.

    Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the proclamation by Rubio that UNRWA was a Hamas “subsidiary” was “quite shocking” and “devastating” for UNRWA and all who were involved in Gaza.

    UNRWA exonerated by ICJ
    UNRWA was not only exonerated by the ICJ and two separate commissions of inquiry, but also had the largest, most extensive aid mechanism in Gaza, Odeh said.

    “It has thousands of employees, it has the data to distribute aid to Palestinians with dignity and in an orderly fashion,” she said.

    “Nobody has that kind of infrastructure and history in Gaza.”

    Despite a US-mediated ceasefire that took effect earlier this month, Israel has continued launching attacks across Gaza. At least two people were killed in shelling east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza yesterday, a source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic.

    Israel has also kept the Rafah crossing near Egypt sealed, blocking large-scale aid deliveries that were stipulated in the truce agreement.

    In his remarks on Friday, Rubio voiced hope of soon putting together an international security force to police the ceasefire in Gaza and said Israel, which opposes including Turkiye, could veto participants.

    In Suva, The Fiji Times reports that Israel says Fiji’s “neutral and highly skilled military” could play a valuable role in future peacekeeping efforts once negotiations on Gaza’s next phase were complete.

    The indication came as Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel said discussions between Israel, the United States and Arab nations would determine the structure and participants of any peacekeeping arrangement.

    “I have to say that we do trust the Fijian forces,” Haskel said during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka before she left for her controversial visit to New Zealand.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fiji’s stance on Israel and new embassy stirs revived condemnation

    Asia Pacific Report

    Fiji opening an embassy in Jerusalem last month in defiance of United Nations resolutions on Occupied Palestine and hosting a visit by a senior Israeli minister from the paraiah state this week has revived condemnation by Pacific human rights groups and Palestinian advocates.

    Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel visited the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Fiji — where she welcomed a possible “peacekeeping” role — in a week-long Pacific friendship mission.

    She also faced controversy in New Zealand over the trip.

    Both Fiji and Papua New Guinea have opened controversial embassies in Jerusalem, recognised as the capital of Palestine when statehood is granted.

    The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji has condemned Fiji’s coalition government for “callously ignoring the unfolding famine and mass starvation in Gaza”, saying it was being “deliberately orchestrated” by Israel in a statement.

    The statement was issued before the opening of the embassy and the declaration of a Gaza ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump and three mediating Middle East countries.

    While Israel has violated the fragile ceasefire several times in the past two weeks, killing at least 100 Palestinians, the International Court of Justice has made a nonbinding ruling that Israel must support UN relief efforts in Gaza, including those conducted by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

    Embassy entourage
    The NGOCHR statement by chair Shamima Ali, dated September 9, criticised widespread reports in Fiji media that Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka would take “an entourage of 17 government officials and spouses” to officially establish the residential Fijian embassy.

    “The coalition government appears to be callously ignoring the unfolding famine and mass starvation in Gaza that is being deliberately orchestrated by the state of Israel,” she said.

    “This very same Fiji government previously defended the destruction, killing, and maiming of scores of thousands of innocent civilians — 70 percent of them women and children — by Israel at the International Court of Justice [in an earlier and ongoing case on genocide].”

    Shamima Ali highlighted the visit in August by two World Elders — Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) and Helen Clark (former Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand and former Head of UNDP) — to the Rafah crossing into Gaza from Egypt.

    They had witnessed how Israel was preventing the flow of food, water, and medicine to the suffering people of Gaza, and declared it as an “unfolding genocide” — “this is not the chaos of war, nor the result of an environmental disaster. It is intentional.”

    Ali said Prime Minster Rabuka, and ministers Lynda Tabuya and Pio Tikoduadua had made “rather unconvincing arguments” about opening of the Fijian embassy in Jerusalem on September 18 amid the unfolding genocide in Gaza.

    “Whether they like it or not, in the eyes of the world, Fiji will be seen as a country that supports the apartheid and pariah state of Israel, and its genocide in Gaza,” the statement said.

    ‘Not in our name’
    Ali said the NGOCHR reiterated its “Not in our name” opposition to Fiji’s defence of Israel at the ICJ in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide.

    It also declared its strongest “Not in our name” opposition to the establishment of the Fiji Embassy in Jerusalem.

    “Neither action reflects the wishes of all citizens of Fiji. It does not reflect well on Fiji for the present coalition government to be effectively supporting Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”

    Members of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights are Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Program, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji.

    Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Oceania voices’ – Indigenous climate adaptation network launches in Ōtautahi

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News

    Māori and Pasifika leaders are leading climate adaptation, guided by ancestral knowledge and Indigenous principles to build resilience and shape global solutions.

    Last week, they played a key role in launching a new Indigenous climate adaptation network at a wānanga ahead of Adaptation Futures 2025, held on October 13-16 in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

    The network aims to build a global movement grounded in Indigenous knowledge, centred on decolonising systems and financial mechanisms, and ensuring Indigenous peoples have direct access to climate finance, the funding that supports actions to address and adapt to climate change.

    Kaiwhakahaere Lisa Tumahai says Ngāi Tahu are in the midst of 'the challenge of our lifetime' - climate change.
    Kaiwhakahaere Lisa Tumahai . . . Ngāi Tahu are in the midst of “the challenge of our lifetime” — climate change. Image: Te Ao Māori News

    The wānanga was led by Lisa Tumahai (Ngāi Tahu), New Zealand patron for Adaptation Futures 2025 and deputy chair of the NZ Climate Commission, and Tagaloa Cooper (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Niue), director of the Climate Change Resilience Programme at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in Apia, Samoa.

    “The Indigenous Forum came from what we learnt at the previous two adaptation conferences. The recommendations from Indigenous peoples were to step it up a bit at this conference and create an intentional day and space for Indigenous voices,” says Tumahai.

    “For the first time, people are really seeing the commonalities we share with other Indigenous populations, whether they’re from Canada, Africa, or the Amazon.”

    Tagaloa Cooper
    Tagaloa Cooper . . . encouraging Pacific rangatahi to take charge of their stories and lead discussions on what loss and damage mean for their communities. Image: Women in Climate Change Network

    Kotahitanga across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa
    Cooper said many of the Pasifika in attendance felt “at home” in Aotearoa and welcomed the opportunity to have a major conference hosted in the region, as international events are often inaccessible due to high costs.

    “I’d like to have more of these types of conversations with our cousins in New Zealand where we can exchange knowledge, learn from each other, and also be innovative about how we do adapt,” she says.

    She added that, in speaking with Pacific participants, there was a strong call for deeper engagement with iwi across Aotearoa, particularly in rural communities facing similar challenges to small island nations, to create more opportunities for sharing and exchanging traditional knowledge.

    Cynthia Houniuhi
    Cynthia Houniuhi from the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change presented at the United Nations Adaptation Futures Conference. Image: Te Ao Māori News

    The value of Indigenous knowledge
    Cooper emphasised that Indigenous peoples hold a vast body of knowledge that has long been marginalised.

    “Science now is telling us what we’ve always known as Indigenous people,” Cooper says.

    “We must remember our ancestors navigated the vast oceans to get here and then grew nations in very difficult places. There is a lot to learn from our people because we have adapted to live in new lands and we’re still here.”

    As Indigenous observer for the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, lawyer Taumata Toki (Ngāti Rehua) says this is a growing area that deserves attention, given the value Indigenous peoples bring and how their knowledge can strengthen climate adaptation projects.

    Taumata Toki
    Taumata Toki at the UN headquarters for the 24th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). Image: LinkedIn/Te Ao Māori News

    He says he is continually inspired by Indigenous leaders around the world who are not only experts in Western knowledge systems but also grounded in Indigenous principles that are transforming how climate change is addressed.

    Toki says the guiding aim of tikanga is balance, a core concept that aligns with many other Indigenous worldviews and shapes how they approach climate change and sustainability.

    Barriers to climate finance
    Indigenous peoples globally have often had limited access to UN climate change negotiation spaces.

    Tumahai said barriers include accreditation requirements or registered body status to access climate finance.

    Cooper added that smaller nations and small administrations often lack the capacity, time, and personnel to develop complex project proposals, causing delays and frustration in the flow of funds.

    The devastation from Cyclone Gabrielle
    The devastation from Cyclone Gabrielle has prompted iwi to focus on preparing for future weather events, as climate change is expected to increase their frequency and intensity. Image: Hawkes Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle/Te Ao Māori News

    When asked whether Māori face additional barriers to accessing climate adaptation funding as Indigenous peoples within a developed nation, Toki says that, on a global scale, Māori are at the forefront of sovereignty over what development looks like.

    However, he acknowledges that when this is set against the wider context of what is happening in Aotearoa, “it doesn’t look the best,” pointing to the ongoing challenges Māori face at home despite their strong global standing.

    Māori-led adaptation and succession planning
    “When it comes to Māori-led adaptation, it needs to start in our court,” he says. “We need to have our own really thought-out discussion in terms of how we develop these projects to be both tikanga-aligned, but also wider Indigenous peoples’ principles aligned.”

    Iwi adaptation conference
    When asked about an iwi adaptation conference in Aotearoa, Tumahai say it is a great idea and could be driven forward by national iwi. Image: Phil Walter/Getty Images/Te Ao Māori News

    Once internal cohesion across iwi is established, state support will play an important role.

    Despite the challenges, Toki says the potential ahead is immense, both economically and environmentally, and Aotearoa has the opportunity to be world-leading in this space.

    Tumahai agrees that the work has to start at home, and her passion, which she has long championed, is succession planning to bring rangatahi into the work.

    “And with that succession planning, it’s not to be dismissive of the pakeke or kaumatua who are really that korowai and the knowledge holders,” she says.

    “We have our own systems that ensure the conversations are held and led where the knowledge is sitting.”

    Te Aniwaniwa is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News and contributes to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by Te Ao Māori News and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.