The Committee to Protect Journalists has made a statement today that it is appalled to learn of the killing of an Al Jazeera media crew of five, including journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The journalists were killed in an attack on a tent used by media near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during a targeted Israeli bombardment, according to Al Jazeera which has described the killings as “murders”.
In a statement announcing the killing of Al-Sharif, Israel’s military accused the journalist of heading a Hamas cell and of “advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and [Israeli] troops”.
Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof.
“Israel’s pattern of labeling journalists as militants without providing credible evidence raises serious questions about its intent and respect for press freedom,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.
“Journalists are civilians and must never be targeted. Those responsible for these killings must be held accountable.”
Al-Sharif had been one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters in Gaza since the start of the war and one of several journalists whom Israel had previously alleged were members of Hamas without providing evidence.
Reported on starvation
Most recently, Al-Sharif had reported on the starvation that he and his colleagues were experiencing because of Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient food aid into Gaza.
In a July 24 video, Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defence Forces spokesperson, accused Al-Sharif of having been a member of Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam, since 2013 and working during the war “for the most criminal and offensive channel”, apparently referring to Al Jazeera Arabic.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
Al-Sharif told CPJ in July: “Adraee’s campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction — it is a real-life threat.”
He said: “All of this is happening because my coverage of the crimes of the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip harms them and damages their image in the world.
“They accuse me of being a terrorist because the occupation wants to assassinate me morally.”
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Irene Khan, said she was “deeply alarmed by repeated threats and accusations of the Israeli army” against al-Sharif.
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented 186 journalists having been killed. At least 178 of those journalists are Palestinians killed by Israel.
Pacific affairs and media commentator Dr David Robie reflected on the 1985 Rainbow Warrior mission to Rongelap atoll to help US nuclear refugees and the bombing of the Greenpeace campaign ship by French secret agents in a kōrero hosted by the NZ Fabian Society.
His analysis is that far from the sabotage being an isolated incident, it was part of a cynical and sordid colonial policy that impacts on the Pacific until today.
He also spoke on wide-ranging issues ranging from decolonisation in Kanaky New Zealand and Palestine to climate crisis and opposition to AUKUS in the livestreamed event on Friday evening.
The Fabian Society and Just Defence spokeperson Mike Smith introducing journalist and author David Robie at the kōrero on Friday.
Former professor David Robie has a passion for the Asia-Pacific region and he founded the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology in 2007 which ran until 2020 when he retired from academic life.
A journalist for more than 60 years, David has reported on postcolonial coups, indigenous struggles for independence and environmental and developmental issues in the Asia-Pacific.
On Saturday, he participated in the Nagasaki Day / Aro Valley Peace Talks where he and former RNZ journalist Jeremy Rose were in conversation analysing Pacific geopolitics and media coverage and challenges of the future.
Journalist and author Dr David Robie speaking to the Fabian Society about environmental activism, decolonisation and Pacific geopolitics. Image: Del Abcede.APR
Greenpeace says moves to weaken ocean protection through dodgy fisheries “reforms” will be met with strong opposition, as Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announces he wants to proceed with a raft of proposed changes to fisheries laws.
The controversial changes are some of the largest in decades, and would restrict public access to cameras on boats footage, remove the requirement for fishers to land all their catch, and stop legal challenges to catch limits that have been successful in protecting species in recent years.
The reforms will also give the minister the ability to set catch limits for five years.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Ellie Hooper said these proposals would give the industry carte blanche on ocean destruction, weaken transparency and block the public from having input into fisheries decisions.
“These changes spell disaster for the already struggling ocean around us,” she said.
“Championed by the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, the changes green light ocean destruction and remove the already minimal checks and balances designed to keep the fishing industry accountable.
“It is yet another example of how this government is pandering to the fishing industry while ignoring the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who want more ocean protection, not less.
“New Zealanders want a healthy, thriving ocean where fish are plentiful and ecosystems are thriving.
‘More destruction’
“These reforms will mean more destruction, more decline in fish populations, and will allow the industry to go back to operating in the dark — hiding the impact they have.”
One of the proposed reforms is to restrict access to footage from cameras on boats to industry and government only.
“This is not how it should work,” said Hooper.
“There are far more people in this country than just the commercial fishing industry who have a right to know how the ocean is being impacted, and have a say on what happens about protecting it.”
Hooper also warns that setting catch limits for five years could spell disaster for fish numbers, noting the recent collapse of the Chatham Rise Orange Roughy fishery, which has been so mismanaged it could now be at 8 percent of its original size.
“Greenpeace, backed by thousands of New Zealanders, stands for defending nature and ocean health. We are calling for an urgent end to destructive bottom trawling on seamounts and other vulnerable features, and for all footage from cameras on boats to be made accessible via the OIA (Offical Information Act),” she said.
“During a biodiversity and ocean crisis, we will strongly oppose moves to expedite destruction at the hands of the commercial fishing industry, as will the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who also back ocean protection.”
The prime minister has announced a new High Commission building in Papua New Guinea and an economic support package, as his trip to the country concludes on Wednesday.
Christopher Luxon arrived on Monday for the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties, and flew out of Port Moresby yesterday afternoon.
The economic support package included funding assistance for the polio epidemic and the creation of fisheries scholarships.
“I am delighted to be here to mark this important milestone,” Luxon said.
New Zealand announces a new PNG package Video: RNZ News
“I talked with Prime Minister [James] Marape and his Cabinet ministers about the next 50 years of our partnership, increasing our engagement on issues of regional importance, and continuing to strengthen our proud legacy of supporting Papua New Guinea’s development.
“Papua New Guinea is a country with big aspirations, with plans to expand its economy and play a bigger role in the Indo-Pacific. We are committed to supporting Papua New Guinea to achieve its goals.
“Contributing to a more stable and prosperous Papua New Guinea benefits everyone in the Pacific — including New Zealand.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Cook Islands has no intention of leaving its special relationship with New Zealand, says Prime Minister Mark Brown.
The Cook Islands marked 60 years of self-governance in free association with New Zealand on August 4.
“The value of our relationship with New Zealand cannot be overstated,” Brown said at the national auditorium in Rarotonga on Monday. His remarks were met with a round of applause.
“I would like to emphasise that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a strategic shift by the Cook Islands government or our peoples to reject the value and responsibilities of our relationship of free-association with New Zealand.”
The Cook Islands marked 60 years of self-governance in free association with New Zealand on August 4. Image: Caleb Fotheringham/RNZ Pacific
The celebration was filled with dancing, singing, food and a 45-minute speech by Brown on where the nation has come from and where it’s going.
“Every island holds a piece of our future, let us stand with conviction on the global stage. Our people span oceans. Our voice carries across borders. And our contribution continues to grow,” Brown said.
Notably absent from the four Pacific leaders attending was New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is in Papua New Guinea. Foreign Minister Winston Peters was also absent.
Reflection needed
Brown said like any relationship, there will be moments that needed reflection.
“There are times when we must pause and consider whether the conventions and evolved understandings between our freely associated states remain aligned, we find ourselves in such a moment.
“I see our relationship as one grounded in enduring kinship, like members of a family who continue to care deeply for one another, even as each has grown and charted their own path.”
Brown called the current issues a bump in the road. He said they had been through far worse, like natural disasters and the covid-19 pandemic.
“[The relationship] is too well entrenched and too strong, like steel, that nothing will break it, it is too strong that even disagreeing governments will not break it.”
Representing New Zealand was Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro, who also talked of the long-standing relationship, stemming back hundreds of years to voyaging ancestors.
“That bond of deep friendship between our two peoples, that will transcend all else as we continue to face the challenges, and celebrate the joys of the future, together.”
Massive cakes at the Cook Islands 60th celebrations of free association with New Zealand. Image: Caleb Fotheringham/RNZ Pacific
Sharing their thoughts
After the official ceremony, there was a big kai kai. Those attending shared their thoughts on what they wanted for the future of their country.
“To see our future generations grow up in our own paradise instead of them going overseas,” one woman said.
Another said she wanted the Cook Islands to remain a Christian nation and to keep their culture strong.
One nurse said medical was always on the go and wanted more investment, “the resources we have are very limited, so I want to see a bigger improvement within our medical side of things”.
A dentist wanted the Cook Islands to be “a modern nation” and “to be a leader in economic wealth.”
Another man wanted to remain in free association with New Zealand but wanted the country “to make its own decisions and stand on its own two feet”.
A primary school principal said he wanted more young people to learn Cook Islands Māori.
“This is our identity, our language.”
More economic independence
He also wanted the country to be more independent economically.
“I think we as a nation need to look at how we can support other countries .. . I don’t like that we’re still asking for money from New Zealand, from Australia, at some point in the future I would like us as a nation to help other nations.”
A big kai kai was part of the celebrations. Image: Caleb Fotheringham/RNZ Pacific
New Zealand paused close to $20 million in development funding in June, citing a lack of consultation on agreements signed between the Cook Islands and China earlier in the year.
China’s ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong, was attending the event.
RNZ Pacific approached him, but the ambassador said he was unable to comment because he had to leave the event.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The words and pictures documenting the famine in the Gaza strip are horrifying.
The coverage has led to acrimonious and often misguided debates about whether there is famine, and who is to blame for it — most recently exemplified by the controversy surrounding a picture published by The New York Times of an emaciated child who is also suffering from a preexisting health condition.
While pictures and words may mislead, numbers usually don’t.
The Nobel prize-winning Indian economist Amartya Sen observed some decades ago that famines are always political and economic events, and that the most direct way to analyse them is to look at food quantities and prices.
This has led to decades of research on past famines. One observation is that dramatic increases in food prices always mean there is a famine, even though not every famine is accompanied by rising food costs.
The price increases we have seen in Gaza are unprecedented.
The economic historian Yannai Spitzer observed in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that staple food prices during the Irish Potato Famine showed a three- to five-fold increase, while there was a ten-fold rise during the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. In the North Korean famine of the 1990s, the price of rice rose by a factor of 12.
At least a million people died of hunger in each of these events.
Now, The New York Times has reported the price of flour in Gaza has increased by a factor of 30 and potatoes cost 50 times more.
Israel’s food blockade As was the case for the UK government in Ireland in the 1840s and Bengal in the 1940s, Israel is responsible for this famine because it controls almost all the Gaza strip and its borders. But Israel has also created the conditions for the famine.
Following a deliberate policy in March of stopping food from coming in, it resumed deliveries of food in May through a very limited set of “stations” it established through a new US-backed organisation (the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation), in a system that seemed designed to fail.
Before Israel’s decision in March to stop food from coming in, the price of flour in Gaza was roughly back to its prewar levels (having previously peaked in 2024 in another round of border closures). Since March, food prices have gone up by an annualised inflation rate of more than 5000 percent.
The excuse the Israeli government gives for its starvation policy is that Hamas controls the population by restricting food supplies. It blames Hamas for any shortage of food.
However, if you want to disarm an enemy of its ability to wield food supplies as a weapon by rationing them, the obvious way to do so is the opposite: you would increase the food supply dramatically and hence lower its price.
Restricting supplies and increasing their value is primarily immoral and criminal, but it is also counterproductive for Israel’s stated aims. Indeed, flooding Gaza with food would have achieved much more in weakening Hamas than the starvation policy the Israeli government has chosen.
The UN’s top humanitarian aid official has described Israel’s decision to halt humanitarian assistance to put pressure on Hamas as “cruel collective punishment” — something forbidden under international humanitarian law.
The long-term aftermath of famines Cormac Ó Gráda, the Irish economic historian of famines, quotes a Kashmiri proverb which says “famine goes, but the stains remain”.
The current famine in Gaza will leave long-lasting pain for Gazans and an enduring moral stain on Israel — for many generations.
Ó Gráda points out two main ways in which the consequences of famines endure. Most obvious is the persistent memory of it; second are the direct effects on the long-term wellbeing of exposed populations and their descendants.
The Irish and the Indians have not forgotten the famines that affected them. They still resent the British government for its actions. The memory of these famines still influences relations between Ireland, India and the UK, just as Ukraine’s famine of the early 1930s is still a background to the Ukraine-Russia war.
The generational impact is also significant. Several studies in China find children conceived during China’s Great Leap Forward famine of 1959–1960 (which also killed millions) are less healthy, face more mental health challenges and have lower cognitive abilities than those conceived either before or after the famine.
Other researchers found similar evidence from famines in Ireland and the Netherlands, supporting what is known as the “foetal origins” hypothesis, which proposes that the period of gestation has significant impacts on health in adulthood. Even more worryingly, recent research shows these harmful effects can be transmitted to later generations through epigenetic channels.
Each day without available and accessible food supplies means more serious ongoing effects for the people of Gaza and the Israeli civilian hostages still held by Hamas — as well as later generations. Failure to prevent the famine will persist in collective memory as a moral stain on the international community, but primarily on Israel. Only immediate flooding of the strip with food aid can help now.
Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.
This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.
Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.
President Surangel Whipps Jr . . . diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Richard Brooks/RNZ Pacific
China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.
“I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”
Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”
She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.
Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo . . . also has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Ludovic Marin/RNZ Pacific:
“There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.
Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”
The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”
Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.
This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.
Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.
President Surangel Whipps Jr . . . diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Richard Brooks/RNZ Pacific
China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.
“I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”
Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”
She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.
Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo . . . also has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Ludovic Marin/RNZ Pacific:
“There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.
Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”
The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”
The world’s most important hostage — must be released. The powerful Western countries have signalled that in the face of the genocide they may recognise the state of Palestine.
States need leaders. That’s why Marwan Barghouti – often dubbed the Palestinian Mandela — must be freed.
A former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Ephraim Halevy, agrees with calls by leaders from across the Middle East for Barghouti’s release: “Barghouti is popular with his people, he has a clear position, he speaks Hebrew well and can negotiate; all of which qualifies him to lead a new path.
“We have to be creative in dealing with the future in the West Bank as well and the rest of the territories, as there are millions of Palestinians, and transferring two million Palestinians from Gaza is unrealistic,” Halevy told Middle East Monitor.
States need leaders The UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a baker’s dozen of Western-aligned states have signalled they may finally join humanity and recognise the right of Palestine to exist as a state.
They are doing so at a moment when the physical existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine is in peril due to the US-Israeli genocide.
If this is not simply another hollow, performative gesture, real things must happen: first and foremost the lifting of the siege and the ending of the man-made famine.
Simultaneously, Palestine needs a credible leadership to negotiate its future. Why call for recognition of a state when hundreds of the top leadership of that future state are held in cruel captivity?
These hostages seldom receive any attention — in contrast to the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas and other groups.
Who decides who represents Palestine? In typical Western fashion the announcement of potentially recognising the Palestinian state comes with a swag of conditions — foremost that Hamas, the most popular movement in Palestine, the winner of the last free and fair elections in both the West Bank and Gaza, must not be part of any government.
OK, so, if the Palestinians bow to that condition, who will be the leaders of this state? Who has the standing with all the factions of the Palestinian polity?
Marwan Barghouti could be such a man. The geriatric and thoroughly discredited Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, is largely seen as a tool of the US and Israel.
More than 90 percent of Palestinians want him gone. In contrast, Barghouti is a revered figure, respected by all Palestinian organisations. He consistently polls as the most popular leader.
The Israelis have murdered many of the Palestinian leaders (along with targeted assassinations of hundreds of writers, professors, lawyers, doctors and other people crucial to state-building). They even killed the lead negotiator in the hostage release process.
It is vital that the West ensures Barghouti is protected from further mistreatment. It is also worth dismissing the lie that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with; Barghouti has the will and the attributes.
The blockage is actually Western complicity in ethnic cleansing, land stealing and the overall Greater Israel Project.
Barghouti: the most important political prisoner During the past 23 years in Israeli prisons Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken, as documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation.
As I wrote in 2024:
“Barghouti, the terrorist, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as ‘a man of the street’. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords. Barghouti, the 15 year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat.
“Barghouti, once a member of parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.
“Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.”
Marwan is the most famous Palestinian prisoner but it should never be forgotten that the entire Palestinian people have been held in bondage for generations.
The West should force the Israelis to release Barghouti — and thousands of other hostages held by Israel. To do so publicly and successfully would be a powerful statement of future intentions.
The release of one man cannot, however, change the world: it will take a genuine course correction by the West to use their collective power to force the Israelis to abandon the endless killings, starvation, land thieving and other lawlessness in the Palestinian lands.
The West must stop posturing and start acting If the Western states fail to quickly move to change facts on the ground, it will suggest that the whole exercise was only intended to achieve political cover for the pro-genocidal forces of the US and the other enablers like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Netanyahu is driving both the Palestinians and Israel to destruction.
Ironically, the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti could save Israel from moral death and, simultaneously, the Palestinians from further physical destruction. He is a leader that the West and the Israelis, if they chose, could negotiate with.
As Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, said a couple of years ago: Barghouti is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”
One final point: negotiating with ‘terrorists’ The West has made it clear they believe Hamas are too monstrous, too terroristic to be involved in a peace process.
But the West is entirely comfortable with the racist, fascist, genocidal leaders of Israel remaining at the helm of their country. There is a reason for this and one the West needs to front up to: racism and contempt for the Palestinians as a people.
Barghouti and hundrds of other leaders have endured torture and worse without our side raising even an eyebrow. The recent skite videos posted by IDF soldiers committing rape-murder inside Sde Temein prison says it all — they rightly assumed their depraved criminality would be sanctioned by the state and silently tolerated by the West.
War crimes are fine and no barrier to leadership if these crimes are committed by regimes that we are deeply committed to. After all, as our leaders repeatedly tell us: we share values with the Israelis.
I’ll give the last word to Marwan Barghouti.
“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”
It is time to change that and to stand with humanity. Free Marwan Barghouti!
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. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
New Zealand’s foreign minister says Cook Islanders are free to choose whether their country continues in free association with New Zealand.
Winston Peters made the comment at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the constitution of the Cook Islands in Auckland today.
Peters attended the community event hosted by the Upokina Taoro (East Cook Island Community Group) as part of an official contingent of MPs. Minister for Pacific Peoples Shane Reti and Labour Party deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni also attended.
“We may not be perfect, but we’ve never wavered from our responsibilities wherever they lay,” Peters said.
“For six decades, we have stood by ready to support the Cook Islands economic and social development, while never losing sight of the fact that our financial support comes from the taxes of hard working New Zealanders,”
This week’s anniversary comes at a time of increasing tension between the two nations.
At the heart of that are four agreements between the Cook Islands and China, which Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown signed in February.
NZ funding halted
The New Zealand government said it should have been consulted over the agreements, but Brown disagreed.
The diplomatic disagreement has resulted in New Zealand halting $18.2 million in funding to the Cook Islands, which is a realm country of New Zealand.
Under that arrangement — implemented in 1965 — the country governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides some assistance with foreign affairs, disaster relief and defence.
Peters today said the “beating heart” of the Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship was the “right to choose”.
“Cook Islanders are free to choose where to live, how to live, and to worship whichever God they wish.”
After his formal address, Peters was asked by media about the rift between the governments of the Cooks Islands and New Zealand.
‘Carefully crafted’
He referred back to his “carefully crafted” speech which he said showed “precisely what the New Zealand position is now”.
Brown has previously said that if New Zealand could not afford to fund the country’s national infrastructure investment plan – billed at $650 million — the Cook Islands would need to look elsewhere.
Brown also said in at the time that funding the development needs of the Cook Islands was a major motivator in signing the agreements with China.
Discussions between officials from both countries regarding the diplomatic disagreement were ongoing.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
COMMENTARY:By Clancy Overell, editor of The Betoota Advocate
After years of sitting on the fence and looking the other way, the Australian media is today reckoning with the fact that showing basic sympathy towards the starving and war-weary people of Gaza is actually a very mainstream sentiment.
This explosive moment of self-reflection has rocked newsrooms all over the country, from the talk back radio stations to the increasingly gun-shy ABC.
This comes as the tens of thousands of everyday Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in solidarity in protest against the abhorrent war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.
This existential media feeling of extreme detachment from the general public is only amplified by the undeniable fact this crowd actually isn’t even that representative of the actual number of people who are horrified by the events taking place on the Gaza Strip — as the extreme weather conditions clearly shrank the overall number of people who would have otherwise attended this record-breaking protest.
The crowd that did make it there is still one of the biggest to ever march the Harbour Bridge, many who braved heavy winds and rain to join the chants “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine”.
With a large number of high-profile household names such as Julian Assange and former NSW Premier Bob Carr making their presence known, it’s now very difficult for the media to now write these protesters off as “terrorist sympathisers”.
It’s also clear that the plight of the Palestinians is something that ripples far beyond the university lawns and instagram timelines that have since been dismissed as the musings of “detached inner-city elites” and “brazen antisemites”.
Sydney’s “Rainy Sunday” march also comes as a blow to both the Federal and State Labor governments, which have worked tirelessly to squash these protests using police powers and anti-free speech laws.
The Betoota Advocateis an Australian satirical news website that takes its name from the deserted regional western Queensland town of Betoota but is actually published in Sydney.
“Here in the homeland, we’re complacent,” he told RNZ Pacific.
“People have stopped using it in their everyday lives. Even my children, I must admit, don’t speak Cook Islands Māori. They understand it, thankfully, but they can’t speak it.”
Kairua said he thinks Cook Islands Māori is stronger in Aotearoa because that is where a lot of the language teachers are living.
“We haven’t done a welfare audit of the language in Aotearoa [but] I would imagine that it’s a lot stronger, purely because a lot of our teachers, a lot of our orators, are living in Aotearoa.
“I guess being away from the source, being away from home, there is a feeling of homesickness, so that you do tend to grab onto to what you’re missing.”
Critical to ‘wake up’
He said it was “critical” that Cook Islanders “wake up and appreciate the importance of our language and make sure that it’s not a dying part of our identity”.
“A race without a language – they don’t have an identity. So as Cook Islanders, either first, second or third generation, we need to hold on to this.”
Ministry of Pacific Peoples Secretary Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone said there was power in the language — it anchored identity and built belonging.
The theme of the week, ”Ātui’ia au ki te vaka o tōku matakeinanga”, translates to “connect me to the offerings of my people”.
The Cook Islands Māori community is the third-largest Pacific group in Aotearoa New Zealand.
UNESCO lists te reo Māori Kūki ‘Airani as one of the most endangered Pacific languages supported through the Pacific Language Week series.
Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, says Australian protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.
Loewenstein, who also spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged enclave.
“A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”
Asked about opinions within Israel, Loewenstein, who is an Australian-German and Jewish, condemned what he called a prevailing climate of “genocide mania” and also criticised the role of the mainstream media in not reporting accurate coverage of the reality in Gaza.
Organisers of the Palestine Action Group Sydney-led march across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge have said at least 100,000 people — and perhaps as many as 300,000 — took part in the biggest pro-Palestinian held in Australia. Police say more than 90,000.
Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park before the march, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.
The horrifying images of Gazans being deliberately starved is adding to the pressure on Western governments which have been enthusiastic supporters of Israel’s genocide, reports the Sydney-based Green-Left magazine.
Former US President Barack Obama has started to push for an end to Israel’s military operations. Sections of Israeli society, including five human rights organisations, now agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Media corporations, such as BBC, AFP, AP and Reuters, which have been complicit in manufacturing consent for “Israel has a right to defend itself” line, are now condemning the killing of Palestinian journalists.
These shifts reflect the scale of the horror, but also the success of the global Palestine solidarity movement.
With the exception of Ireland and Spain, Western governments have refused to describe Israel’s war as an act of genocide.
.@antloewenstein on the huge pro Palestinian Sydney Harbour bridge march and what it tells us about where people around the world are at. He goes on to draw parallels with the attitude towards apartheid South Africa in the 1980s and notes that that regime ended in 1994. pic.twitter.com/jvCsr8ZgOV
Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
COMMENTARY:By Peter Murphy
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.
I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.
The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.
Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.
They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.
The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.
Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.
Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.
And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.
This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.
But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.
We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.
Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.
The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.
The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.
The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.
The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.
AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.
It is imperial madness writ large.
The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.
Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.
We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.
So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.
This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was among the tens of thousands of protesters in Australia staging a “humanitarians for Gaza” march today across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The transparency media campaigner and activist, who moved back to his native Australia last year, after reaching a plea deal with the US government to avoid possible life imprisonment for publishing classified anti-war government information, was not expected to speak at the protest.
The bridge was closed for Australia’s biggest pro-Palestine march.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Sydney Harbour Bridge humanitarian protest for Gaza today. Image: X/@EllaCoo55777104
Protesters marched across the bridge this afternoon after the Supreme Court of New South Wales refused an application by police to ban the demonstration.
Police had raised concerns about public safety and the potential for a “crowd crush”, but Justice Belinda Rigg sided with the organisers, finding that they had convincingly explained the reasons why they believed the Israeli genocide in Gaza demanded an urgent response.
Palestine Action Group Sydney, the organiser of the march, said before the protest that it expected 50,000 people to attend. However, heavy rain was a dampener but thousands still marched onto the bridge with estimates being put at 25,000.
The activist group said it wanted to highlight what the United Nations has described as worsening famine conditions in Gaza.
News media reported that the Israeli military had killed at least 62 people in Gaza yesterday, including 38 people desperately seeking food aid.
A 17-year-old Palestinian was reported to have died of starvation, one of at least seven Palestinians who died of malnutrition within the past 24 hours across Gaza, report medical sources.
The death toll from Israel’s 22-month war on the besieged enclave has reached at least 61,709, including including 17,492 children.
While the Israeli government claims it is backing “clans” in Gaza to counter the resistance movement Hamas, the groups it supports more closely resemble criminal gangs, says a British-based security specialist.
Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, international security lecturer at King’s College London, says: “These are criminal gangs. Many were in prison before October 7 for drug offences, not for being political dissidents.
“They rob Palestinians on the streets. They feed off and contribute to the chaos and disorder,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Many of these people, like Yasser Abu Shabab, are outcasts from their clans. Israel has basically chosen the least popular people in Gaza to arm and equip.
“It’s not trying to create a viable political alternative to Hamas, it’s identifying people who thrive off chaos and encouraging them to further that chaos.”
Dr Pinfold said Israel appeared to be intentionally sowing chaos in Gaza to make the territory “unlivable”.
“It used to look like this chaos in Gaza was the product of Israel not having a day-after plan,” he said. “But I think it is now evident that this chaos is . . . part of the day-after plan, which is a grander strategy to make Gaza unlivable in the long term.”
Arming criminal gangs
To accomplish this, Israel is arming the criminal gangs that “thrive off chaos” and funnelling the little aid coming in through the dysfunctional and violence-ridden GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] system.
From Israel’s perspective, “I actually think this is working very well”, he said, “because its undeclared aims are to create chaos and ensure Gaza becomes unlivable”.
“Unfortunately, so far, that is proving to be a very successful strategy.”
Earlier this week it was announced that the death toll had topped 60,430 people (not including the tens of thousands buried under the rubble, or missing and believed dead). This number of dead included more than 18,000 children.
Also, 148,722 wounded were wounded.
Already there have been 162 deaths from starvation in Gaza, 92 of them children and the predictions are dire.
Also, more than 1300 Palestinians have been killed near the GHF aid depots.
A former senior UN aid official has condemned the bloodshed at the notorious US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid food depots, describing the distribition system as having turned into a “catastrophe”.
The number of aid seekers killed continues to climb daily beyond 1000.
Martin Griffiths, director of Mediation Group International and the former Under Secretary General of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, said: “I think when many of us saw the first plans of the GHF to launch this operation in Gaza, we were immediately appalled by the way they were proposing to manage it.”
“It was clearly militarised. They’d have their own security contractors,” he told Al Jazeera.
“They’d have [Israeli military] camps placed right beside them. We know now that they are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military].
“All of this is a crime. All of this is a deep betrayal of humanitarian values.
“But what I at least did not sufficiently anticipate was the killing and was the absolutely critical result of this operation, this sole humanitarian operation allowed by Israel in Gaza,” Griffiths added.
“The 1000 killed are an incredible statistic. I had no idea it would go that high and it’s going on daily. It’s not stopping.
“I think it’s a catastrophe more than a disappointment,” he said. “I think it’s a great sin. I think it’s a great crime.”
Humanitarian aid advocate Martin Griffiths . . . We know now that [GHF] are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military]. All of this is a crime.” Image: WikipediaCommenting about US envoy Steve Witkoff and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s planned visit to GHF-run aid distribution sites in Gaza, he said this was “likely to be choreographed”.
However, he acknowledged it was still an “important form of witness”.
“I’m glad that they’re going,” Griffiths said.
“Maybe they will see things that are unexpected. I can’t imagine because we’ve seen so much. But I don’t see it leading to a major change.
“If I was one of the two million Gazans starving to death, this is a day I would like to go to an aid distribution point,” Griffiths added.
“There’s slightly less risk probably than any other day.”
A former New Caledonia Congress president says there are “not enough” benefits for Kanaks in a new “draft” agreement he signed alongside pro and anti-independence stakeholders in France last month.
Roch Wamytan said that, after 10 days of deadlock discussions in Paris, he failed to secure the pro-independence mandate.
He told RNZ Pacific that he refused to sign a “final agreement”.
Instead, he said, he opted for a “draft” agreement, which is what he signed. It has been hailed as “historic” by all parties involved.
While France maintains its “neutrality”, Wamytan said that at the negotiating table it was two (France and New Caledonia’s pro-France bloc) against one (pro-Kanaky).
A main point of tension was the electoral law changes, which sparked last year’s civil unrest.
“We call on France to respect the provisions of international law, which remains our main protective shield until the process of decolonisation and emancipation is completed. Hence, our incessant interventions during negotiations on this subject [electoral law changes],” Wamytan told RNZ Pacific.
He said it was difficult to understand whether France wanted to decolonise New Caledonia or not.
Concrete measures
“We have a lot of concrete measures in this proposed agreement, but the main question is a political question. Where are you [France] going with this? Independence or integration with France?”
The document, signed in the city of Bougival, involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” as well as dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.
But this week, New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), officially rejected the political agreement signed in Paris.
However, Sonia Backès, the leader of the Caledonian Republicans Party and the president of the Provincial Assembly of Southern Province, says the agreement signed in France is “final”.
“Roch Wamytan and the pro-independence delegation signed an agreement in Bougival. Since their return to New Caledonia, their political supports have been fiercely critical of the agreement,” her office said via a statement.
“As a result, radical pro-independence leaders like Roch Wamytan have chosen to renege on their commitment and withdraw their signature. This agreement is final; there is no other viable political balance outside of it.”
So why did Wamytan sign? When asked why he signed the draft agreement when he did not agree with it, he said: “After the 10 days they obliged us to sign something.”
“We told them that we [didn’t have] the mandate of our parties to sign an agreement, but only a ‘project’ or ‘draft’.
“It was important for us to return with a paper and to show, to explain, to present, to debate, for the debate of our political party. This is the stage where we are at now, but for the moment, we do not agree with that.
“We [tried] to explain to [France and pro-France bloc] that we have a problem [with electoral law change being included].
“This is our problem. So we signed only for one reason . . . that we have to return back home and to explain where we are now, after 10 days of negotiation. [Did we] achieve the objectives, the mandate given by our political parties?”
He said one thing he wanted to make clear was that what he had signed was not definitive and was now up for negotiation.
An FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) Congress meeting is set down for this weekend with the Union Calédonienne Congress meeting held a weekend prior.
Wamytan said that it was now up to the FLNKS members to have their say and decide where to next.
“They will decide if we accept this draft agreement or we reject,” he said.
“We have two options: we accept with certain conditions, for example, on the question of the right to vote on the electoral rule. Or for the question of the trajectory from here to independence, through a referendum or the framework proposed by President Macron.”
“This is an important element to discuss with France, but after this round of discussions.”
He expected further meetings with France after community consultations.
Communication problem Wamytan admitted that the pro-independence negotiators did not communicate clearly about the agreement to their supporters.
He said after signing the document, President Macron and the pro-France signatories were quick to communicate to the media and their supporters — and the messages filtered to his supporters resulting in anger and frustrations.
He said the anger has mostly been around the signing itself, with people mistaking the draft proposal as final.
“The political, pro-Kanaky party were very, very, very angry against us. We did not communicate and this I think is our problem.”
Bribery allegations Wamytan has also dismissed unconfirmed reports that negotiators were bribed to sign a historic deal in Paris.
He said he was aware of people “chucking accusations of bribery” around, but said they were false.
“It has never been in the minds of Kanak independence leaders doing such practices,” he said.
“After the signature of the Matignon Accord 37 years ago, with [FLNKS leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou] and with us after the signature of Nouméa accord in 1998, we heard about the same allegation and some rumours like this.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The sisters running Auckland’s first authentic Polynesian show for tourists say it’s not just for visitors, but also to help uplift Pacific people.
Louisa Tipene Opetaia and Ama Mosese’s Glorious Tours was pooled as one of 10 new “Treasures of Tāmaki Makaurau”: a go-to guide by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited (TAU) for local Māori tourism.
Their tour tells the story of how Auckland became the biggest Polynesian city in the world, and often starts with a drop in at a Pacific or Māori-owned cafe, a guided hīkoi up the Māngere mountain, hangi lunch, a haka show at the museum, then end with a kava-drinking experience.
The tour, which has been running for a year, aims to give visitors an Auckland experience through local eyes, with Māori-led journeys and dining events.
Opetaia said before they started their tour, tourists were travelling to Rotorua for a Pacific cultural experience.
The only other regular Polynesian show for tourists in Auckland was at Auckland Museum, where there was a daily haka show.
“We have rich culture gold in south Auckland,” she said.
“All tourists fly here, in our backyard and we wanted to offer them something right here.”
The sisters, who are of Māori and Samoan heritage, call themselves “cultural connectors”.
‘The space was lacking’
“We’ve been working for these other companies for some time, some of them not even New Zealand-owned. And we felt we were the face of these companies but behind the scenes it wasn’t a local or Māori or indigenous business.
“We decided to step into this space that we saw was lacking, and offer authentic indigenous cultural experiences here in Tāmaki Makaurau — the biggest Polynesian city in the world.”
Glorious Tours is based out of Naumi Hotel, near the Auckland Airport in Māngere.
“We tailor it to what they want, so if they like shopping we take them to places where they can buy authentic Pacific goods, or we take them to our local gallery in Māngere.
This month, the sisters will launch a Polynesian dinner and dance show in Māngere, featuring local schools.
“It’s not just for the tourists, it’s for our own people. Our kaupapa is to uplift our local people, especially our rangatahi.”
TAU director of Māori outcomes Helen Te Hira said Treasures of Tāmaki Makaurau plays a vital role in ensuring Māori culture, businesses and leadership are central to the way Tāmaki Makaurau is experienced by visitors.
“Every business on this platform brings something unique — a sense of purpose, cultural depth and creative excellence.”
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a partner.
New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), has officially rejected a political agreement on the Pacific territory’s political future signed in Paris last month.
The text, bearing the signatures of all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented in the local Congress — a total of 18 leaders, both pro-France and pro-independence — is described as a “project” for an agreement that would shape politics.
Since it was signed in the city of Bougival, west of Paris, on July 12, after 10 days of intense negotiations, it has been dubbed a “bet on trust” and has been described by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls as a commitment from all signing parties to report to their respective bases and explain its contents.
The Bougival document involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” which could become empowered with its own international relations and foreign affairs, provided they do not contradict France’s key interests.
It also envisages dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.
It also describes a future devolution of stronger powers for each of the three provinces (North, South and Loyalty Islands), especially in terms of tax collection.
Since it was published, the document, bearing a commitment to defend the text “as is”, was hailed as “innovative” and “historic”.
New Caledonia’s leaders have started to hold regular meetings — sometimes daily — and sessions with their respective supporters and militants, mostly to explain the contents of what they have signed.
The meetings were held by most pro-France parties and within the pro-independence camp, the two main moderate parties, UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) and PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party).
Over the past two weeks, all of these parties have strived to defend the agreement, which is sometimes described as a Memorandum of Agreement or a roadmap for future changes in New Caledonia.
Most of the leaders who have inked the text have also held lengthy interviews with local media.
Parties who have unreservedly pledged their support to and signed the Bougival document are:
Pro-France side: Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble
Pro-independence: UNI-FLNKS (which comprises UPM and PALIKA).
But one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — as its main pillar — the Union Calédonienne, has held a series of meetings indicating their resentment at their negotiators for having signed the contested document.
UC held its executive committee on July 21, its steering committee on July 26, and FLNKS convened its political bureau on July 23.
A ‘lure of sovereignty’ All of these meetings concluded with an increasingly clear rejection of the Bougival document.
Speaking at a news conference in Nouméa yesterday, UC leaders made it clear that they “formally reject” the agreement because they regard it as a “lure of sovereignty” and does not guarantee either real sovereignty or political balance.
FLNKS chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou, who is also UC’s chair, told local reporters he understood his signature on the document meant a commitment to return to New Caledonia, explain the text and obtain the approval of the political base.
“I didn’t have a mandate to sign a political agreement, my mandate was to register the talks and bring them back to our people so that a decision can be made . . . it didn’t mean an acceptance on our part,” he said, mentioning it was a “temporary” document subject to further discussions.
Tjibaou said some amendments his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text.
Union Calédonienne chair and chief FLNKS negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou . .. some amendments that his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text. Image: RNZ Pacific
‘Bougival, it’s over’ “As far as we’re concerned, Bougival, it’s over”, UC vice-president Mickaël Forrest said.
He said it was now time to move onto a “post-Bougival phase”.
Meanwhile, the FLNKS also consulted its own “constitutionalists” to obtain legal advice and interpretation of the document.
In a release about yesterday’s media conference, UC stated that the Bougival text could not be regarded as a balance between two “visions” for Kanaky New Caledonia, but rather a way of “maintaining New Caledonia as French”.
The text, UC said, had led the political dialogue into a “new impasse” and it left several questions unanswered.
“With the denomination of a ‘State’, a fundamental law (a de facto Constitution), the capacity to self-organise, and international recognition, this document is perceived as a project for an agreement to integrate (New Caledonia) into France under the guise of a decolonisation”.
“The FLNKS has never accepted a status of autonomy within France, but an external decolonisation by means of accession to full sovereignty [which] grants us the right to choose our inter-dependencies,” the media release stated.
The pro-independence party also criticised plans to enlarge the list of people entitled to vote at New Caledonia’s local elections — the very issue that triggered deadly and destructive riots in May 2024.
It is also critical of a proposed mechanism that would require a vote at the Congress with a minimum majority of 64 percent (two thirds) before any future powers can be requested for transfer from France to New Caledonia.
Assuming that current population trends and a fresh system of representation at the Congress will allow more representatives from the Southern province (about three quarters of New Caledonia’s population), UC said “in other words, it would be the non-independence [camp] who will have the power to authorise us — or not — to ask for our sovereignty”.
They party confirmed that it had “formally rejected the Bougival project of agreement as it stands” following a decision made by its steering committee on July 26 “since the fundamentals of our struggle and the principles of decolonisation are not there”.
Negotiators no longer mandated The decision also means that every member of its negotiating team who signed the document on July 12 is now de facto demoted and no longer mandated by the party until a new negotiating team is appointed, if required.
“Union Calédonienne remains mobilised to arrive at a political agreement that takes into account the achievement of a trajectory towards full sovereignty”.
On Tuesday, FLNKS president Christian Téin, as an invited guest of Corsica’s “Nazione” pro-independence movement, told French media he declared himself “individually against” the Bougival document, adding this was “far from being akin to full sovereignty”.
Téin said that during the days that led to the signing of the document in Bougival “the pressure” exerted on negotiators was “terrible”.
He said the result was that due to “excessive force” applied by “France’s representatives”, the final text’s content “looks like it is the French State and right-wing people who will decide the (indigenous) Kanak people’s future”.
Facing crime-related charges, Téin is awaiting his trial, but was released from jail, under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia.
The leader of a CCAT (field action coordinating cell) created by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against a proposed French Constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections, was jailed for one year in mainland France. However, he was elected president of FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.
CCAT, meanwhile, was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS.
In a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS, UPM and PALIKA, at the same time, distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform, opening a rift within the pro-independence umbrella.
The FLNKS is scheduled to hold an extraordinary meeting on August 9 (it was initially scheduled to be held on August 2), to “highlight the prospects of the pursuit of dialogue through a repositioning of the pro-independence movement’s political orientations”.
French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls (centre) shows signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new Bougival agreement earlier this month . . . “If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question” Image: FB/RNZ Pacific
Valls: ‘I’m not giving up’ Reacting to the latest UC statements, Valls told French media he called on UC to have “a great sense of responsibility”.
“If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question. Investment, including for the nickel mining industry, would no longer be possible.”
“I’m not giving up. Union Calédonienne has chosen to reject, as it stands, the Bougival accord project. I take note of this, but I profoundly regret this position.
“An institutional void would be a disaster for [New Caledonia]. It would be a prolonged uncertainty, the risk of further instability, the return of violence,” he said.
“But my door is not closed and I remain available for dialogue at all times. Impasse is not an option.”
Valls said the Bougival document was “‘neither someone’s victory on another one, nor an imposed text: it was built day after day with partners around the table following months of long discussions.”
In a recent letter specifically sent to Union Calédonienne, the French former Prime Minister suggested the creation of an editorial committee to start drafting future-shaping documents for New Caledonia, such as its “fundamental law”, akin to a Constitution for New Caledonia.
Valls also stressed France’s financial assistance to New Caledonia, which last year totalled around 3 billion euros because of the costs associated to the May 2024 riots.
The riots caused 14 dead, hundreds of injured and an estimated financial cost of more than 2 billion euros (NZ$5.8 billion) in damage.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.
“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.
“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”
Elders call for recognition
“The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.
Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.
“That is no longer tenable,” she said.
“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”
Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.
Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.
“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.
“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”
Surprised over Peters
Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.
On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.
However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.
“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.
Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.
Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.
“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.
“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Protesters demonstrated outside several major US media outlets in Washington this week condemning their coverage of the genocide in Gaza, claiming they were to blame over misinformation and the worsening catastrophe.
Banging pots and pans to spotlight the starvation crisis, they accused the media of “complicity in genocide”.
Banners and placards proclaimed “Stop media complicity in genocide” and “US media manufactures consent for Israel’s crimes”, as the protesters demonstrated outside media offices that included NBC News and Fox News.
But the irony was that while the protests appeared to have been ignored or overlooked by national media in the US – and certainly in New Zealand, they were strongly reported by at least one global news agency, Turkey’s Anadolu Agensi.
The protests echoed a series of statements by various news media organisations, such as Agence France-Presse concerned about the safety of their journalists from both under fire and the risk of starvation, and media freedom advocacy groups.
The Doha-based global television news network Al Jazeera, that has been producing arguably the best and most honest news coverage of Gaza and the occupied West Bank – which earned it being banned last year by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority from reporting inside their territory — called for global action to protect Gaza’s journalists.
It said in a statement that Isael’s forced starvation of the besieged enclave that threatened Gaza’s entire population, including those “risking their lives to shed light on Israel’s atrocities”.
Death toll passes 60,000
On Tuesday this week, the world noted a grim milestone in Gaza, with the Health Ministry announcing that the death toll had surpassed 60,000 (this does not include the tens of thousands of people buried under the rubble and missing, presumed dead).
Put in perspective, that is one in every 36 people in Gaza killed, and more than 90 people on average slaughtered every day.
Also, 1157 people have been killed near the notorious Israel and US-backed Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation food depots condemned as “death traps”, while 154 people have died from starvation, 89 of them children with the numbers rising.
Israel’s genocide – ‘Everyone in Gaza is starving’ Video: Al Jazeera
An episode of the weekly media watch programme, The Listening Post, took up the theme as well, criticising the failure of many high profile Western news services from adequately reporting the horror of Israel’s devastating and cruel policies.
“When trying to stave off starvation becomes part of the job. What it means to be a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. The stories they are determined to tell, the incredible risks they are prepared to take,” said host Richard Gizbert when introducing the programme. He wasted no time firing a few caustic shots.
Metropolitan police on watch for the pro-Palestinian protesters outside Fox News offices in Washington DC this week. Image: AA screenshot APR
“What is unfolding in Gaza now has the appearance of a final solution, orchestrated by Israel and the United States, Israel’s other ally: The transformation of parts of the Gaza strip into starvation and concentration camps, a place where famine has been turned into a weapon of war,” he said.
“Reporting on the reality of this genocide can amount to a death sentence. Palestinian journalists can easily identify with the suffering they are documenting since they too are going hungry.
“They have been targeted because for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, like other genocidal leaders before him, starving a population is much easier to do when no one is watching.
An Al Jazeera reporter ducks for cover as bombs hit a building behind her in a live broadcast from Gaza . . . featured in The Listening Post’s starvation report. Image: AA screenshot APR
Perpetrator ‘left out’
“Across Western mainstream media, news outlets have been unable to ignore this story of mass starvation in Gaza. But in report after report, they have made a habit of leaving out a key detail – naming the perpetrators of the famine, Israel.
“The missing actors, the sanitised language, the use of the passive grammatical voice, it is all part of the playbook for far too many international news outlets and that is exactly what the few Palestinian journalists still standing are out to tell the world.”
Gizbert explained that “journalists in Gaza already have the world’s toughest assignment”:
“Job one for almost 22 months now has been survival; job two, telling heartbreaking stories; documenting a genocide while under fire.”
Hossam Shabat reports on his colleague Anas al-Sharif’s experience at Al Shifa hospital and the starvation of babies in Gaza. Image: Instagram/@hossam_shbat
Like, for example, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif who was reporting live from outside Al Shifa medical complex when a woman behind him collapsed at the hospital’s gate.
Al-Sharif, who had reported on the genocide of his own people for more than 650 days without rest or complaint, through Israeli occupation airstrikes, drone attacks, and countless “scenes resembling hell”, suddenly could not take it anymore.
He broke down: “People are falling to the ground from the severity of hunger,” al-Sharif said through his tears. “They need one sip of water. They need one loaf of bread.”
Al-Sharif has also been threatened by the Israeli military, accusing him of being a “Hamas militant”, an accusation strongly denied by Al Jazeera, denouncing what it called Tel Aviv’s “campaign of incitement” against its reporters in the Gaza Strip.
Discredited for bias
Many Western mainstream media – including BBC, CNN, Sky, ITN, and Australia’s public broadcaster ABC — have been repeatedly discredited for their “pro-Israel bias” by scores of journalists who have acted as whistleblowers about the actions of their own news organisations.
According to a Declassified UK report, for example, the journalists working for a range of outlets from across the political spectrum have “painted a consistent picture of the obstacles faced by reporters who want to humanise Palestinians or scrutinise Israeli government narratives”. The US media is also under attack and has been putting up a lame defence.
Last week, more than 100 aid groups warned of “mass starvation” throughout Gaza — predictably denied by Israeli government in the face of overwhelming evidence — with their staff severely impacted by shortages and serious implications for journalists already being threatened with targeting by the Israeli military.
Israel faces growing global pressure over the enclave’s dire humanitarian crisis, where more than two million people have endured 22 months of war. UN Security Council member France has led a group of countries announcing that they plan to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN in September, with United Kingdom, Canada, Malta and Finland among those following with the total number now almost 150 of the 193 UN member states.
A statement with 111 signatories, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away”. The groups called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossings and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported from Amman that the Israeli government had accused the UK of supporting the establishment of a “jihadi” state and of derailing efforts to reach a ceasefire.
“But really,” she said, “the Israeli media, for example, is describing this as a political tsunami, a realisation of how significant the tide is, and how improbable it is to turn it back to countries withholding recognition because Israel said it doesn’t want it.”
Calling for sanctions
She also noted how 31 high-profile Israelis, including the former speaker of the Knesset, a former attorney general, and several recipients of Israel’s highest cultural award, were calling on world governments to impose crippling sanctions on Israel to stop the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and their expulsion
“This was taboo just a few days ago and has never really been done before, certainly not at this level of prominence of the signatories,” Odeh added.
“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence,” says the CPJ. Image: CPJ screenshot APR
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) added its voice to the appeal by aid agencies to call for an end to Israel’s starvation of journalists and other civilians in Gaza, backing the plea for states to “save lives before there are none left to save.”
In a statement on its website, the CPJ accused Israel of “starving journalists into silence”.
“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence. They are not just reporters, they are frontline witnesses, abandoned as international media were pulled out and denied entry,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.
“The world must act now: protect them, feed them, and allow them to recover while other journalists step in to help report. Our response to their courageous 650 plus-days of war reporting cannot simply be to let them starve to death.”
As Israel partially eased its 11-week total blockade of Gaza that began in May, CPJ published the testimony of six journalists who described how “starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness” had threatened their ability to report.
Among highlights cited by the CPJ:
• On June 20, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif — the journalist cited earlier in this article — posted online: “I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment . . . Gaza is dying. And we die with it.” • Sally Thabet, correspondent for Al-Kofiya satellite channel, told CPJ that she fainted consciousness after doing a live broadcast on July 20 because she had not eaten all day. She regained consciousness in Al-Shifa hospital, where doctors gave her an intravenous drip for rehydration and nutrition. In an online video, she described how she and her three daughters were starving. • Another Palestinian journalist, Shuruq As’ad said Thabet had been the third journalist to collapse on air from starvation that week, and posted a photograph of Thabet with the drip in her hand. • During a live broadcast on July 20, Al-Araby TV correspondent Saleh Al-Natour said: “We have no choice but to write and speak; otherwise, we will all die.”
Little of this horrendous state of affairs has made it onto the pages of newspapers, websites of the television screens in the New Zealand mainstream media which seems to have a pro-Israel slant and rarely interviews Palestinian journalists or analysts for balance.
“Stop media complicity in genocide” says the protest banner in Washington DC. Image: AA screenshot APR
Pacific countries have emerged relatively unscathed from a restless night punctuated by tsunami warning sirens.
The tsunami waves, caused by a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia, have now rolled on southeastward toward South America.
According to the US Geological Survey, there have been around 80 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher around the area, and there is a 59 percent chance of a magnitude 7 or higher shock within the next week.
“It is most likely that 0 to 5 of these will occur,” it stated.
This video grab from a drone handout footage, released by Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences on July 30, shows tsunami-hit Severo-Kurilsk on Paramushir island of Russia’s northern Kuril islands. Image: Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences
The Guardianreported that a 6.4-magnitude quake struck around 320 km southwest of the epicenter yesterday about 11am local time (ET).
Metservice said that waves as high as 3 metres were still possible along some coasts of the northwestern Hawai’ian islands.
Waves between 1 and 3 metres tall were possible along the rest of Hawai’i, as well as as French Polynesia, Kiribati, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.
Assessing the damage In Fiji, an advisory was put in place until 10:15pm local time, though the National Disaster Risk Management Office (NDMO) reminded citizens to remain alert and continue to follow official updates.
The office said people should take this as an opportunity to update their family emergency plans and evacuation routes.
The NDMO also called on citizens to refrain from spreading false or unverified information in the wake of the cancellation.
Advisory notices were cancelled in the early hours of the morning across Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia and the American Territories. Samoa was the last to rescind theirs, at around 4am local time.
No damage or major incidents have been reported.
In the Cook Islands, the Meteorological Service warned residents to anchor their boats and tie down their washing lines.
“A big boss high-pressure system chilling way down southwest is flexing hard — sending savage southerly swells and grumpy southeast winds across the group like it owns the reef,” it said.
“A sassy low-pressure trough is making a dramatic entrance tomorrow, rolling in with clouds, showers, and random thunderclaps like it’s auditioning for a Cook Islands soap opera.”
Evacuation order
In Hawai’i, an evacuation was ordered after 12pm local time along the coast of Oahu, including in parts of Honolulu, before waves began to arrive after 7pm.
As local media reported, intense traffic jams formed across Oahu as authorities evacuated people in coastal communities, and a sense of panic stirred.
Lauren Vinnel, an emergency management specialist at Massey University, told RNZ Pacific that the ideal scenario would have been for people to leave on foot.
“We know that this is where public education and practising tsunami evacuation is really important,” she said.
“We know that if people have identified their evacuation route and have practised it, it’s much easier for them to calmly and safely evacuate when a real event does occur.”
The advisory notice was lifted across Hawai’i at 8:58am local time.
Tonga’s tsunami trauma Meanwhile, tsunami sirens sounded on and off overnight in Tonga until authorities cancelled the warning for the kingdom at around midnight local time.
Siaosi Sovaleni, Prime Minister of Tonga, during the 2022 volcano eruption and subsequent tsunami, said he was pleased the country’s emergency alert systems were working.
“The population is better informed this time around than the last time. I think it was much more scary [in 2022] . . . nobody knew what’s happening. The communication was down.”
‘We have to be prepared’ Vinnel said that she was satisfied overall with how Aotearoa responded.
“Obviously, it’s not ideal that initially we didn’t think there was a tsunami threat based on the initial assessment of the magnitude of the earthquake. But these things do happen. I’m not sure that there was anything that could have been done differently.”
John Townend, a geophysics professor at Victoria University of Wellington, told RNZ Pacific that these happen frequently around the world,”but one of this size doesn’t really happen more often than about once every decade.”
The last time an earthquake surpassed the magnitude 8 level was the 2011 Tōhoku disaster in Japan, which clocked out at 9.1.
But Townend said that the characteristics of the “subduction zone earthquake,” were largely in line with expectations for it’s kind, a “subduction zone earthquake”.
“They have happened repeatedly in the past along this portion of the Kamchatka Peninsula . . . these things happen in this part of the world.
“In a New Zealand context, this earthquake was about one magnitude unit bigger than the Kaikoura earthquake and it released about 30 times more energy.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The University of the South Pacific (USP) is at the heart of a global legal victory with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivering a historic opinion last week affirming that states have binding legal obligations to protect the environment from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
The case, hailed as a triumph for climate justice, was driven by a student-led movement that began within USP’s own regional classrooms.
In 2021, the government of Vanuatu took a bold step by announcing its intention to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on climate change. But what many may not have realised is that the inspiration behind this unprecedented move came from a group of determined young Pacific Islanders — students from USP who formed the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).
According to the United Nations background information, these USP students led the charge, campaigning for years to bring the voices of vulnerable island nations to the highest court in the world.
Their call for accountability resonated across the globe, eventually leading to the adoption of a UN resolution in March 2023 that asked the ICJ two critical legal questions:
What obligations do states have under international law to protect the environment?
What are the legal consequences when they fail?
Students from the University of the South Pacific who formed the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC). Image: Wansolwara News
The result A sweeping opinion from the ICJ affirming that climate change treaties place binding duties on countries to prevent environmental harm.
As the ICJ President, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, stated in the official delivery the court was: “Unanimously of the opinion that the climate change treaties set forth binding obligations for States parties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”
USP alumni lead the celebration USP alumna Cynthia Houniuhi, president of the PISFCC, shared her pride in a statement to USP’s official news that this landmark opinion must guide not only courtrooms but also global climate negotiations and policy decisions and it’s a call to action.
“The law is on our side. I’m proud to be on the right side of history.”
Her words reflect the essence of USP’s regional identity, a university built not just to educate, but to empower Pacific Islanders to lead solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges.
Why is the ICJ’s climate ruling such a big deal? Video: Almost
Students in action, backed by global leaders UN Secretary-General Antόnio Guterres, in a video message released by the UN, gave credit where it was due.
“This is a victory for our planet, for climate change and for the power of young people to make a difference. Young Pacific Islanders initiated this call for humanity to the world, and the world must respond.”
Vishal Prasad, director of PISFCC, in a video reel of the SPC (Secretariat of the Pacific Community), also credited youth activism rooted in the Pacific education system as six years ago young people from the Pacific decided to take climate change to the highest court and today the ICJ has responded.
“The ICJ has made it clear, it cemented the consensus on the science of climate change and formed the heart of all the arguments that many Pacific Island States made.”
USP’s influence is evident in the regional unity that drove this case forward showing that youth educated in the Pacific are capable of reshaping global narratives.
Residents wade through flooding caused by high ocean tides in low-lying parts of Majuro Atoll, the capital of the Marshall Islands. In 2011, the Marshall Islands warned that the clock was ticking on climate change and the world needed to act urgently to stop low-lying Pacific nations disappearing beneath the waves. Image: PHYS ORG/Wansolwara
A win for the Pacific From coastal erosion and rising sea levels to the legacy of nuclear testing, the Pacific lives with the frontline effects of climate change daily.
Coral Pasisi, SPC Director of Climate Change & Sustainability, highlighted in a video message, the long-term importance of the ruling:
“Climate change is already impacting them (Pacific people) and every increment that happens is creating more and more harm, not just for the generations now but those into the future. I think this marks a real moment for our kids.”
Additionally, as Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change, noted to SPC, science was the cornerstone of the court’s reasoning.
“The opinion really used that science as the basis for its definitions of accountability, responsibility, and duty.”
Among the proud USP student voices is Siosiua Veikune, who told Tonga’s national broadcaster that this is not only a win for the students but for the Pacific islands also.
What now? With 91 written statements and 97 countries participating in oral proceedings, this was the largest case ever seen by the ICJ and it all began with a movement sparked at USP.
Now, the challenge moves from the courtroom to the global stage and will see how nations implement this legal opinion.
Though advisory, the ICJ ruling carries immense moral and legal weight. It will likely shape global climate negotiations, strengthen lawsuits against polluting states, and empower developing nations especially vulnerable Pacific Islands to demand justice on the international stage.
For the students who dreamed it into motion, it’s only the beginning.
“Now, we have to make sure this ruling leads to real action — in parliaments, at climate summits, and in every space where our future is at stake,” said Veikune.
Vahefonua Tupola is a second-year student journalist at University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus. Republshed from Wansolwara News, the USP student journalism newspaper and website in partnership with Asia Pacific Report.
New Caledonia’s population has shrunk to 264,596 over the past six years, the latest census, conducted in April and May 2025, has revealed.
This compares to the previous census, conducted in 2019, which recorded a population of 271,400 in the French Pacific territory.
To explain the population drop of almost seven thousand (6811), Jean Philippe Grouthier, Census Chef de Mission at the French national statistical institute INSEE, said that even though the population natural balance (the difference between births and deaths during the period) was more than 11,000, the net migration balance showed a deficit of 18,000.
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In terms of permanent departures and arrivals, earlier informal studies (based on the international Nouméa-La Tontouta airport traffic figures) already hinted at a sharp increase in residents leaving New Caledonia for good, after the destructive and deadly riots that erupted in May 2014, causing 14 dead and over 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in damages.
The census was originally scheduled to take place in 2024, but had to be postponed due to the civil unrest.
“New Caledonia is probably less attractive than it could have been in the 2000s and 2010s years,” Grouthier told local media yesterday.
However, he stressed that the downward trend was already there at the previous 2019 census.
‘Not entirely due to riots’
During the 2014-2019 period, a net balance of around then 1000 residents had already left New Caledonia.
“It’s not as if it was something that would be entirely due to the May 2024 riots,” he said.
At the provincial level, New Caledonia’s most populated region (194,978), the Southern Province, which makes up three quarters of the population, has registered the sharpest drop (about four percent).
Meanwhile, the other two provinces (North, Loyalty Islands) have slightly gained in population over the same period, respectively +2.1 (50,947) and +1.7 percent (18,671).
The preliminary figures released yesterday are now to be processed and analysed in detail, before public release, ISEE said.
The latest population statistics are regarded as essential in order to serve as the basis for further calculation for the three provinces’ share in public aid as well as planning for upgrades or building of public infrastructure.
The latest count will also be used to organise upcoming elections, starting with municipal elections (March 2026) and provincial elections later that year.
As we’ve watched from afar the tragedy unfolding in Gaza over the past 22 months, it’s worth remembering the part New Zealand troops played in setting in motion the cycle of violence that continues today in Palestine and Israel.
HISTORY:By Scott Hamilton
The man in the photo walks down the deserted street, over rubble. On both sides of the street buildings have lost their roofs and walls. A pockmarked minaret totters over the wrecked townscape. The photo is captioned “Ruins of Gaza at the Time of the Great Attack”.
The photo I’m describing wasn’t taken in 2025, but in 1917. Today Gaza is being destroyed by the armies of Israel and Hamas. In 1917 the British and Ottoman empires wrecked the city. New Zealanders played an important role in the destruction.
In 1917 most Gazans lived in village-suburbs interspersed with gardens and orchards. Their houses were made with mud bricks. The highest building in their town was the Great Mosque, whose foundations dated from the 7th century.
The Ottomans had made Gaza into a fortress, and had connected it by rail and road to a series of redoubts further east. These guarded the southern border of the province of Palestine, and were manned by German and Austrian as well as Ottoman troops.
Britain’s new prime minister David Lloyd George was desperate to capture Palestine, in the hope a victory there would shift public attention from the disaster on the western front, where tens of thousands of Britons had died fighting over mud.
The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which crossed the Sinai desert to attack Gaza and Palestine, was made up of British, Anzacs, South Africans, West Indians, a volunteer Jewish Legion and Indians.
The Anzac Mounted Division was an essential part of the EEF. Its men rode to battles but fought on foot. Many of them had learned to ride on the farms of their homelands. Some were survivors of Gallipoli, where they had battled without their horses; others had arrived in Egypt after that catastrophe.
Farmland confiscated
Gaza’s suffering began before the British attack. Its defenders confiscated farmland for trenches, and demolished houses to give artillerymen better sight lines. The Great Mosque was seized and turned into an ammunition dump.
Captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”, this photo was likely taken by New Zealander Private Robert Kerr of the Anzac Mounted Rifle Division. Image: NZ Army Museum
It took the British empire three battles to capture Gaza. A photo taken before the second assault shows New Zealanders trying on gas masks. It is captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”. The attackers fired 4000 canisters of asphyxiating gas towards the city. No Gazan had a gas mask.
Before the final assault the city was bombarded for four days by naval guns, artillery and planes. When they finally captured Gaza, the New Zealanders found it empty. Almost the entire population had fled the bombardment; the Ottomans had followed them.
On the day its troops entered Gaza the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which committed it to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1917, though, Jews made up less than a tenth of Palestine’s population.
And Britain had made contradictory promises to Arabs, promising them independence if they rose up against Ottoman rule, and funding an Arab army that had advanced to the edge of Palestine.
There was still another group that wanted Palestine. When the Auckland Mounted Rifles had passed the stone pillar that marked the border between Sinai and Palestine, Henry Mackesy had stopped his men, and prayed to thank god for delivering the “Holy Land” to Britain.
Like New Zealand’s wartime prime minister William Massey, Mackesy was a British Israelite, who believed that Anglo-Saxons were a lost tribe of Israel, and that the British empire was god’s kingdom on earth. For Mackesy and many other Anzacs, Palestine belonged rightfully to Britons, not Jews or Arabs.
Conquerors warned
So many Anzacs wanted to settle in Palestine that Kia ora Coo-ee, their official magazine, had to run an article warning them that conquerors could not legally take locals’ land.
For most Anzacs, the inhabitants of Palestine — the Arabs of the villages and towns, the nomadic Bedouin of the deserts, the small and ancient Jewish communities in towns like Jerusalem — were at best an inconvenience, and at worst a reminder of the decadence and evil condemned in the Old Testament.
New Zealander Alexander McNeur summed up a widespread feeling when he wrote “no wonder the old inhabitants of Palestine had to be destroyed . . . many a chap is disgusted by the people”. (The only Palestinians the Anzacs really liked were the settlers in Zionist colonies, who looked, spoke and acted like Europeans.)
The Anzacs complained about the dirtiness and dishonesty of Palestinians. Many complained they had been cheated by Arab or Jewish traders; others said that Bedouins dug up soldiers’ graves and plundered them.
But the Anzacs themselves had a reputation for taking whatever they could from Palestinians, as well as from Ottoman soldiers. In 1988, Australian veteran Ted O’Brien gave an interview in which he confessed to killing a wounded Ottoman so that he could steal the man’s possessions. Robbing the dead was routine, O’Brien said.
O’Brien added that he and his comrades would immediately kill any Bedouins they found in the desert. Edwin McKay, a member of the Otago section of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, said that theft was a “two-way thing”, with Anzacs and Palestinians preying on each other.
After its defeat of Gaza the Ottoman army began to disintegrate, but as the EEF advanced through Palestine and into Jordan and Syria, it did not always bring peace. Arabs who fought alongside the British imperial forces, hoping for independence, became possessive about the areas they had captured.
Pushed off land
Ottoman deserters became bandits. Bedouins who had been pushed off their land by war raided EEF camps in search of loot. The Jewish Legion clashed with Arabs so often that the EEF commander General Allenby asked the War Office not to send him any more Jews.
The Anzacs’ contempt towards Arabs grew even greater after a calamitous attempt to capture Amman near the end of the war. Rain, cold and tougher-than-expected Ottoman resistance sent the mounted riflemen away with heavy losses.
As they rode towards safety, the Wellington Mounted Rifles entered Ain es Sir, a small village set amid hills and ravines. Villagers opened fire from houses and from nearby ledges, and seven Wellingtonians died. The Anzacs counterattacked Ain es Sir ferociously, shelling the village and killing 38 of its inhabitants. They took no prisoners.
Two members of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles – their exact identities haven’t been established – are flogging Egyptians charged with rioting. Egyptian police are holding the victim down, and other Egyptians are waiting, often in states of undress. 1919. Image: NZ Army Museum
The attack on Amman had made been made in partnership with an Arab force, and the Anzacs seem to have believed that the ambush at Ain es Sir was an act of treachery by their supposed allies.
They do not seem to have known, or cared, that Ain es Sir was not an Arab village. Its inhabitants were Circassians, a Caucasian group that migrated to the Middle East centuries ago.
On the night of December 10, more than a month after the end of the war, the Anzacs’ hatred of Arabs erupted. Hundreds of them were camped outside a village named Surafend, waiting impatiently for a ship to take them home. On the night of December 9 a man entered the tent of a New Zealand soldier named Leslie Lowry. Lowry had been using his kitbag as a pillow. The intruder grabbed it and fled.
Lowry chased the thief across the dunes that separated the Anzac camp from Surafend. The thief turned and fired a pistol. Lowry died three hours later. The next morning Anzacs found Lowry’s blood in the sand. Footprints led from the stain towards Surafend.
Surafend attacked
On December 10, up to 200 Anzacs and a few Scots smashed through the fence that surrounded Surafend. They beat and stabbed scores of male inhabitants of the village, leaving between 40 and 120 dead and many more wounded, then set fire to the Arabs’ homes.
A nearby Bedouin encampment was also set ablaze. Ted O’Brien was one of the raiders. He and his comrades had “done their blocks”. They “all went for” the Arabs with “the bayonet”. “It was a godawful thing,” O’Brien remembered.
New Zealander Ted Andrews explained that the massacre was not just about Lowry’s murder. “The treacherous ambush at Ain es Sir was still fresh in the minds of New Zealand troops,” he wrote, ignoring the fact that the men of Surafend had nothing to do with that village.
Andrews said that victims at Surafend were castrated. Some historians have dismissed this claim, but American scholar Edward Woodfin has shown that castration and humiliation of the dead were being practised in 1918 by the Indian members of the Egypt Expeditionary Force, with whom the Anzacs were friendly.
Most historians say that children, women and old men were removed from Surafend before the slaughter, but they ignore the testimony of Australian John Doran, who was at the Anzacs’ medical station the night of the massacre. Doran said that women and children appeared there with burns and bullet wounds.
The Jewish soldier Roman Freulich said that Australians had fired a machine gun at the Bedouin encampment on the night of December 10. Freulich also reported that the members of the Jewish Legion were excited by the massacre — they hated Arabs even more than the Anzacs — and that they used what he called “the Australian method” on a group of Bedouin civilians shortly after. Freulich said that he and his comrades sealed off a Bedouin camp and stabbed the men with bayonets.
Caption reads “ruins of Gaza at the time of the Great Attack”. Image: Library of Congress
No one prosecuted
Although the Anzacs’ commander General Allenby condemned the attackers, calling them “cowards and murderers”, no one was ever prosecuted for the massacre at Surafend. In 2009, the New Zealand television programme Sunday ran a story on the massacre.
Sunday’s team visited the site of Surafend, which has now been covered by an Israeli town, interviewed an old man who remembered the massacre, and asked why New Zealand had never apologised for the crime. The question is just as pertinent now.
When we look back from 2025 to the destruction of Gaza and the rest of the Palestine campaign, we can see that New Zealand troops played a part in setting in motion the cycle of violence that continues today in Palestine and Israel.
Scott Hamilton is the author of two great modern works of sociology and place, Ghost South Road (Titus Books, 2018), and Searching for Ata’a (Bridget Williams, 2017). He writes the blog Reading the Maps and is currently working on a book about sorcery and sorcery-related violence in Melanesia as part of his ongoing exploration of Pasifika arts and colonial Pākehā histories. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished with the author’s permission.
The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji has sharply criticised the Fiji government’s stance over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, saying it “starkly contrasts” with the United Nations and international community’s condemnation as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace.
In a statement today, the NGO Coalition said that the way the government was responding to the genocide and war crimes in Gaza would set a precedent for how it would deal with crises and conflict in future.
It would be a marker for human rights responses both at home and the rest of the world.
“We are now seeing whether our country will be a force that works to uphold human rights and international law, or one that tramples on them whenever convenient,” the statement said.
“Fiji’s position on the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestinians starkly contrasts with the values of justice, freedom, and international law that the Fijian people hold dear.
“The genocide and colonial occupation have been widely recognised by the international community, including the United Nations, as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace and the self-determination of the Palestinian people.”
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would formally recognise the state of Palestine — the first of G7 countries to do so — at the UN general Assembly in September.
142 countries recognise Palestine
At least 142 countries out of the 193 members of the UN currently recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state, including European Union members Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia.
However, several powerful Western countries have refused to do so, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.
At the UN this week, Saudi Arabia and France opened a three-day conference with the goal of recognising Palestinian statehood as part of a peaceful settlement to end the war in Gaza.
Last year, Fiji’s coalition government submitted a written statement in support of the Israeli genocidal occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, noted the NGO coalition.
Last month, Fiji’s coalition government again voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Also recently, the Fiji government approved the allocation of $1.12 million to establish an embassy “in the genocidal terror state of Israel as Fijians grapple with urgent issues, including poverty, violence against women and girls, deteriorating water and health infrastructure, drug use, high rates of HIV, poor educational outcomes, climate change, and unfair wages for workers”.
Met with ‘indifference’
The NGO coalition said that it had made repeated requests to the Fiji government to “do the bare minimum and enforce the basic tenets of international law on Israel”.
“We have been calling upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes,” the statement said.
“We campaigned, we lobbied, we engaged, and we explained. We showed the evidence, pointed to the law, and asked our leaders to do the right thing.
“We’ve been met with nothing but indifference.”
Instead, said the NGO statement, Fiji leaders had met with Israeli government representatives and declared support for a country “committing the most heinous crimes” recognised in international law.
“Fijian leaders and the Fiji government should not be supporting Israel or setting up an embassy in Israel while Israel continues to bomb refugee tents, kill journalists and medics, and block the delivery of humanitarian aid to a population under relentless siege.
“No politician in Fiji can claim ignorance of what is happening.”
“Many more have been maimed, traumatised, and displaced. Starvation is being used by Israel as weapon to kill babies and children.
“Hospitals, churches, mosques,, refugee camps, schools, universities, residential neighbourhoods, water and food facilities have been destroyed.
“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment.
“Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of always standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.”
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 Programme, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji.
Also, Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.
The NGO coalition said it stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.
“Silence is not an option,” it added.
Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network said it supported this NGO coalition statement.
International trade expert Steven Okun has warned that the “era of uncertainty” in global trade set in motion by US President Donald Trump’s tariff policies is likely to be prolonged as there is no certainty now of a US return to pre-Trump trade policy era
He has advised small economies like Fiji and Pacific countries to band together and try to negotiate a collective trade agreement with the US.
“We’re in a transitional phase and this transitional phase is going to take years,” Okun said in an interview with The Fiji Times during his visit to Fiji earlier this month.
“This isn’t months, this is going to be years and after Donald Trump is no longer president, the question is going to be who replaces him. And we just have no idea.
“If the replacement for Donald Trump is a Democrat, is that Democrat going to be more like Joe Biden — work with partners and allies — or is he going to be more progressive like Bernie Sanders, and he or she is going to have a different approach to trade.
“We don’t know which way the Democrats are going to go.
“We don’t know which way the Republicans are going to go. Either the successor is going to be somebody more of a traditional Republican, somebody like the Governor of Georgia or the Governor of New Hampshire who are both more establishment-type Republicans, or is the next president going to be Donald Trump Jr or JD Vance.
‘Upended’ system
“If it’s going to be one of those two, it’s going to be very similar presumably to what we have right now, which means we’re not going to get certainty any time soon.”
Okun, founder and chief executive officer of Singapore-based business advisory firm APAC Advisors and a former Clinton Administration official, said the United States under President Trump had upended the global multilateral trading system that the world had been operating on for the last 80 years.
The shifting dynamics in response to that had seen countries gravitating towards regional trading blocs, something that Pacific countries, including Fiji, should seriously consider, he said.
“We see from the US perspective the desire to have bilateral trade and we see other countries creating plurilateral systems or regional trading blocs . . . ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) would be one, CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) is such an agreement, RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) is another plurilateral system.
“That’s something that I think a country like Fiji should be looking at, same as a country in Southeast Asia — are there blocs that we can be part of and can the Pacific nations come together and collectively get a better agreement with the United States?”
The Fiji Cabinet revealed last week that negotiations were ongoing with the US for a potential US-Fiji Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART).
Okun, who came to Fiji at the invitation of the Fiji-USA Business Council, was also sceptical about the August 1 deadline set by President Trump in April for the activation of reciprocal tariffs against about 90 countries, which would mean Fijian exporters of goods into the US would pay 32 percent duty at the border.
For the past few years, governments across the world have paid close attention to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. There, it is said, we see the first glimpses of what warfare of the future will look like, not just in terms of weaponry, but also in terms of new technologies and tactics.
Most recently, the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran demonstrated not just new strategies of drone deployment and infiltration but also new vulnerabilities. During the 12-day conflict, Iran and vessels in the waters of the Gulf experienced repeated disruptions of GPS signal.
This clearly worried the Iranian authorities who, after the end of the war, began to look for alternatives.
“At times, disruptions are created on this [GPS] system by internal systems, and this very issue has pushed us toward alternative options like BeiDou,” Ehsan Chitsaz, deputy communications minister, told Iranian media in mid-July. He added that the government was developing a plan to switch transportation, agriculture and the internet from GPS to BeiDou.
Iran’s decision to explore adopting China’s navigation satellite system may appear at first glance to be merely a tactical manoeuvre. Yet, its implications are far more profound. This move is yet another indication of a major global realignment.
For decades, the West, and the US in particular, have dominated the world’s technological infrastructure from computer operating systems and the internet to telecommunications and satellite networks.
This has left much of the world dependent on an infrastructure it cannot match or challenge. This dependency can easily become vulnerability. Since 2013, whistleblowers and media investigations have revealed how various Western technologies and schemes have enabled illicit surveillance and data gathering on a global scale — something that has worried governments around the world.
Clear message
Iran’s possible shift to BeiDou sends a clear message to other nations grappling with the delicate balance between technological convenience and strategic self-defence: The era of blind, naive dependence on US-controlled infrastructure is rapidly coming to an end. Nations can no longer afford to have their military capabilities and vital digital sovereignty tied to the satellite grid of a superpower they cannot trust.
This sentiment is one of the driving forces behind the creation of national or regional satellite navigation systems, from Europe’s Galileo to Russia’s GLONASS, each vying for a share of the global positioning market and offering a perceived guarantee of sovereign control.
GPS was not the only vulnerability Iran encountered during the US-Israeli attacks. The Israeli army was able to assassinate a number of nuclear scientists and senior commanders in the Iranian security and military forces. The fact that Israel was able to obtain their exact locations raised fears that it was able to infiltrate telecommunications and trace people via their phones.
On June 17 as the conflict was still raging, the Iranian authorities urged the Iranian people to stop using the messaging app WhatsApp and delete it from their phones, saying it was gathering user information to send to Israel.
Whether this appeal was linked to the assassinations of the senior officials is unclear, but Iranian mistrust of the app run by US-based corporation Meta is not without merit.
Cybersecurity experts have long been sceptical about the security of the app. Recently, media reports have revealed that the artificial intelligence software Israel uses to target Palestinians in Gaza is reportedly fed data from social media.
Furthermore, shortly after the end of the attacks on Iran, the US House of Representatives moved to ban WhatsApp from official devices.
Western platforms not trusted
For Iran and other countries around the world, the implications are clear: Western platforms can no longer be trusted as mere conduits for communication; they are now seen as tools in a broader digital intelligence war.
Tehran has already been developing its own intranet system, the National Information Network, which gives more control over internet use to state authorities. Moving forward, Iran will likely expand this process and possibly try to emulate China’s Great Firewall.
By seeking to break with Western-dominated infrastructure, Tehran is definitively aligning itself with a growing sphere of influence that fundamentally challenges Western dominance. This partnership transcends simple transactional exchanges as China offers Iran tools essential for genuine digital and strategic independence.
The broader context for this is China’s colossal Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While often framed as an infrastructure and trade project, BRI has always been about much more than roads and ports. It is an ambitious blueprint for building an alternative global order.
Iran — strategically positioned and a key energy supplier — is becoming an increasingly important partner in this expansive vision.
What we are witnessing is the emergence of a new powerful tech bloc — one that inextricably unites digital infrastructure with a shared sense of political defiance. Countries weary of the West’s double standards, unilateral sanctions and overwhelming digital hegemony will increasingly find both comfort and significant leverage in Beijing’s expanding clout.
This accelerating shift heralds the dawn of a new “tech cold war”, a low-temperature confrontation in which nations will increasingly choose their critical infrastructure, from navigation and communications to data flows and financial payment systems, not primarily based on technological superiority or comprehensive global coverage but increasingly on political allegiance and perceived security.
As more and more countries follow suit, the Western technological advantage will begin to shrink in real time, resulting in redesigned international power dynamics.
Jasim Al-Azzawi is an analyst, news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor. He has presented a weekly show called Inside Iraq.
United States military veterans in the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau received increased attention during the Biden Administration after years of neglect by the US Veterans Administration.
That progress came to a halt with the incoming Trump Administration in Washington in January, when the new Veterans Administration put many programmes on hold.
Marshall Islands Foreign Minister and US military veteran Kalani Kaneko said he is hopeful of resuming the momentum for veterans living in the freely associated states.
Two key actions during the Biden administration helped to elevate interest in veterans living in the freely associated states:
The administration’s appointment of a Compact of Free Association (COFA) Committee that included the ambassadors to Washington from the three nations, including Marshall Islands Ambassador Charles Paul, and US Cabinet-level officials.
The US Congress passed legislation establishing an advisory committee for the Veterans Administration for Compact veterans.
Kalani Kaneko was appointed as chairman to a three-year term, which expires in September.
Kaneko said he submitted a report to the Veterans Administration recently on its activities and needs.
The Foreign Minister said it is now up to the current administration of the Veterans Administration to take next steps to reappoint members of the advisory committee or to name a new group.
Virtually non-existent
Kaneko pointed out that in contrast to its virtually non-existent programme in the Marshall Islands, FSM and Palau, the VA’s programme for veterans is “robust” in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Citizens of the three compact nations enlist in the US military at higher rates per capita than Americans.
But when they leave the service and return home to their islands, they have historically received none of the benefits accorded to US veterans living in the United States.
Kaneko and island leaders have been trying to change this by getting the Veterans Administration to provide on-island services and to pay for medical referrals of veterans when locally available medical services are not available.
Kaneko said the 134-page report submitted in June contained five major recommendations for improved services for veterans from the US-affiliated islands:
Establish a VA clinic in Majuro with an accredited doctor and nurse.
Authorise use of the Marshall Islands zip code for US pharmacies to mail medicines to veterans here (a practice that is currently prohibited).
If the level of healthcare in Marshall Islands cannot provide a service needed by a veteran, they should be able to be referred to hospitals in other countries.
Due to the delays in obtaining appointments at VA hospitals in the US, the report recommends allowing veterans to use the Marshall Islands referral system to the Philippines to access the US Veterans Administration clinic in Manila.
Support and prioritise the access of veterans to US Department of Agriculture Rural Development housing loans and grants.
Kaneko said he is hopeful of engagement by high-level Veterans Administration officials at an upcoming meeting to review the report and other reports related to services for Compact nation veterans.
But, he cautioned, because there was nothing about compact veterans in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” passed recently by the US Congress, it means fiscal year 2027 — starting October 1, 2026 — would be the earliest to see any developments for veterans in the islands.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
LIVE: Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al Sharif was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City. https://t.co/f5TlGRMjIH
