Over 30 years the French government tested 193 nuclear weapons in Māohi Nui and today Indigenous peoples still suffer the impacts through intergenerational cancers.
In 1975, France stopped atmospheric tests and moved to underground testing.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross was eight years old when the French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa stopped in 1996.
“After poisoning us for 30 years, after using us as guinea pigs for 30 years, France condemned us to pay for all the cost of those cancers,” Morgant-Cross said.
She is a mother of two boys and married to another Māohi in Mataiea, Tahiti, and says her biggest worry is what will be left for the next generation.
As a politician in the French Polynesian Assembly she sponsored a unanimously supported resolution in September 2023 supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
It called on France to join the treaty, as one of the original five global nuclear powers and one of the nuclear nine possessors of nuclear weapons today.
As a survivor of nuclear testing, Morgant-Cross has worked with hibakusha, which is the term used to describe the survivors of the US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
Together, as living examples of the consequences, they are trying to push governments to demilitarise and end the possession of nuclear arsenals.
Connections from Māohi Nui to Aotearoa Morgant-Cross spoke to Te Ao Māori News from Whāingaroa where she, along with other manuhiri of Hui Oranga, planted kowhangatara (spinifex) in the sand dunes for coastal restoration to build resilience against storms or tsunamis at a time of increased climate crises.
In the 1970s and 1980s, many of the anti-nuclear protests were in response to the tests in Māohi Nui, French Polynesia.
The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement began in Fiji in 1975 after the first Nuclear Free Pacific Conference, which was organised by Against French Testing in Moruroa (ATOM).
The Pacific Peoples’ Anti-Nuclear Action Committee was founded by Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and Grace Robertson, and in 1982 they hosted the first Hui Oranga which brought the movement for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific home to Aotearoa.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross as a baby with mother Valentina Cross, both of whom along with her great grandmother, grandmother, aunt and sister have been diagnosed with cancer. Image: HMC
Condemned to intergenerational cancer “We still have diseases from generation to generation,” she says.
Non-profit organisation Nuclear Information and Resources Services data shows radiation is more harmful to women with cancer rates and death 50 percent higher than among men.
In her family, Morgant-Cross’ great-grandmother, grandmother, aunt and sister have been diagnosed with thyroid or breast cancer.
A mother and lawyer at the time, Morgant-Cross was diagnosed with leukaemia at 25 years old.
Valentina Cross, her mother has continuing thyroid problems, needs to take pills for the rest of her life and, similarly, Hinamoeura has to take pills to keep the leukaemia dormant for the rest of her life.
Being told the nuclear tests were “clean”, Morgant-Cross didn’t learn about the legacy of the nuclear bombs until she was 30 years old when former French Polynesian President Oscar Temaru filed a complaint against France for alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the the nuclear tests.
She then saw a list of radiation-induced diseases, which included thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and leukaemia and she realised it wasn’t that her family had “bad genes”.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross who was breastfeeding during her electoral campaign . . . balancing motherhood, nuclear fights and her career. Image: HMC
Known impacts ‘buried’ by the French state Morgant-Cross says her people were victims of French propaganda as they were told there were no effects from the nuclear tests.
In 2021, more than two decades later, Princeton University’s Science and Global Security programme, the multimedia newsroom Disclose and research collective INTERPT released an investigation — The Moruroa Files — using declassified French defence documents.
“The state has tried hard to bury the toxic heritage of these tests,” Geoffrey Livolsi, Disclose’s editor-in-chief told The Guardian.
The report concluded about 110,000 people were exposed to ionising radiation. That number was almost the entire Polynesian population at the time.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross speaking at NukeEXPO Oslo, Norway, in April 2024. Image: HMC
In Māohi Nui, much of the taxes go towards managing high cancer rates and Morgant-Cross said they were not given compensation to cover the medical assistance they deserved.
In 2010, a compensation law was passed and between then and 2020, RNZ Pacific reported France had compensated French Polynesia with US$30 million. And in 2021, it was reported to have paid US$16.6 million within the year but only 46 percent of the compensation claims were accepted.
“During July 2024 France spent billions of dollars to clean up the river Seine in Paris [for the [Olympic Games] and I was so shocked,” Morgant-Cross said.
“You can’t help us on medical care, you can’t help us on cleaning your nuclear rubbish in the South Pacific, but you can put billions of dollars to clean a river that is still disgusting?”
As a politician and anti-nuclear activist, Morgant-Cross hopes for nuclear justice and a world of peace.
She has started a movement named the Māohi Youth Resiliency in hopes to raise awareness of the nuclear legacy by telling her story and also learning how to help Māohi in this century.
Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.
By Catrin Gardiner, Queensland University of Technology
In the middle of the Pacific, Fiji journalists are transforming their practice, as newsrooms around Suva are requiring journalists to become multimedia creators, shaping stories for the digital age.
A wave of multimedia journalists is surfacing in Fijian journalism culture, fostered during university education, and transitioning seamlessly into the professional field for junior journalists.
University of the South Pacific’s technical editor and digital communication officer Eliki Drugunalevu believes that multimedia journalism is on the rise for two reasons.
“The first is the fact that your phone is pretty much your newsroom on the go.”
With the right guidance and training in using mobile phone apps, “you can pretty much film your story from anywhere”, he says.
The second reason is that reliance on social media platforms gives “rise to mobile journalism and becoming a multimedia journalist”.
Drugunalevu says changes to university journalism curriculum are not “evolving fast enough” with the industry.
Need for ‘parallel learning’
“There needs to be parallel learning between what the industry is going through and what the students are being taught.”
Mobile journalism is growing increasingly around the world. In Fiji this is particularly evident, with large newsrooms entertaining the concept of a single reporter taking on multiple roles.
Fijian Media Association’s vice-president and Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley says one example of the changing landscape is that the Times is now providing all its journalists with mobile phones.
“While there is still a photography department, things are slowly moving towards multimedia journalists.”
Wesley says when no photographers are available to cover a story with a reporter, the journalists create their own images with their mobile phones.
Journalists working in the Fiji Times newsroom, which is among the last few remaining news organisations in Fiji to have a dedicated photography department. Image: Catrin Gardiner, Queensland University of Technology
The Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) also encourages journalists to take part in all types of media including, online, radio, and television, even advertising for multimedia journalists. This highlights the global shift of replacing two-person teams in newsrooms.
Nevertheless, the transition to multimedia journalists is not as positive as commonly thought. Complaints against multimedia journalism come from journalists who receive additional tasks, leading to an increase in workload.
FBC advertises for multimedia journalists, reflecting the new standard in newsrooms. Image: FBC TV/Facebook/QUT
Preference for print
Former print journalist turned multimedia journalist at FBC, Litia Cava says she prefers focusing on just print.
She worked a lot less when she was just working in a newspaper, she says.
“When I worked for the paper, I would start at one,” she says. “But here I start working when I walk in.”
Executives at major Fijian news companies, such as Fiji TV’s director of news, current affairs and sports, Felix Chaudhary, also complain about the lack of equipment in their newsrooms to support this wave of multimedia journalism.
“The biggest challenge is the lack of equipment and training,” Chaudhary says.
Fiji TV is doing everything it can to catch up to world standards and provide journalists with the best equipment and training to prepare them for the transition from traditional to multimedia journalism.
“We receive a lot of assistance from PACMAS and Internews,” Chaudhary says. “However, we are constantly looking for more training opportunities. The world is already moving towards that, and we just have to follow suit or get left behind.”
More confidence
Fortunately for young Fijian journalists, Islands Business managing editor Samantha Magick says a lot of younger journalists are more confident to go out and produce and write their own stories.
“It’s the education now,” she says. “All the journalists coming through are multimedia, so not as challenging for them.”
University of South Pacific student journalist Brittany Louise says the practical learning of all the different media in her journalism course will be beneficial for her future.
“I think that’s a major plus,” she says. “You already have some sort of skills so it helps you with whatever different equipment it may be.”
Catrin Gardiner was a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is published in a partnership of QUT with Asia Pacific Report, Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and The University of the South Pacific.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.
While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under Indian and Asian on the Stats NZ website.
“The ‘Fijian Indian’ ethnic group is currently classified under ‘Asian,’ in the subcategory ‘Indian’, along with other diasporic Indian ethnic groups,” Stats NZ told RNZ Pacific.
“This has been the case since 2005 and is in line with an ethnographic profile that includes people with a common language, customs, and traditions.
“Stats NZ is aware of concerns some have about this classification, and it is an ongoing point of discussion with stakeholders.”
The Fijian Indian community in Aotearoa has long opposed this and raised the issue again at a community event Rabuka attended in Auckland’s Māngere ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa last month.
“As far as Fiji is concerned, [Indo-Fijians] are Fijians,” he said.
‘A matter of sovereignty’
When asked what his message to New Zealand on the issue would be, he said: “I cannot; that is a matter of sovereignty, the sovereign decision by the government of New Zealand. What they call people is their sovereign right.
“As far as we are concerned, we hope that they will be treated as Fijians.”
More than 60,000 people were transferred from all parts of British India to work in Fiji between 1879 and 1916 as indentured labourers.
Today, they make up over 32 percent of the total population, according to Fiji Bureau of Statistics’ 2017 Population Census.
Sangam community NZ leader and former Nadi mayor Salesh Mudaliar . . . “If you do a DNA or do a blood test, we are more of Fijian than anything else. We are not Indian.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Now many, like Sangam community NZ leader and former Nadi Mayor Salesh Mudaliar, say they are more Fijian than Indian.
“If you do a DNA or do a blood test, we are more of Fijian than anything else. We are not Indian,” Mudaliar said.
The indentured labourers, who came to be known as the Girmitiyas, as they were bound by a girmit — a Hindi pronunciation of the English word “agreement”.
RNZ Pacific had approached the Viti Council e Aotearoa for their views on the issue. However, they refused to comment, saying that its chair “has opted out of this interview.”
“Topic itself is misleading bordering on disinformation [and] misinformation from an Indigenous Fijian perspective and overly sensitive plus short notice.”
‘Struggling for identity’ “We are Pacific Islanders. If you come from Tonga or Samoa, you are a Pacific Islander,” Mudaliar said.
“When [Indo-Fijians] come from Fiji, we are not. We are not a migrant to Fiji. We have been there for [over 140] years.”
“The community is still struggling for its identity here in New Zealand . . . we are still not [looked after].
He said they had tried to lobby the New Zealand government for their status but without success.
“Now it is the National government, and no one seems to be listening to us in understanding the situation.
“If we can have an open discussion on this, coming to the same table, and knowing what our problem is, then it would be really appreciated.”
Fijians of Indian descent with Prime Minister Rabuka at the community event in Auckland last month. Image: Facebook/Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka
Lifting quality of data Stats NZ said it was aware of the need to lift the quality of ethnicity data across the government data system.
“Public consultation in 2019 determined a need for an in-depth review of the Ethnicity Standard,” the data agency said.
In 2021, Stats NZ undertook a large scoping exercise with government agencies, researchers, iwi Māori, and community groups to help establish the scope of the review.
Stats NZ subsequently stood up an expert working group to progress the review.
“This review is still underway, and Stats NZ will be conducting further consultation, so we will have more to say in due course,” it said.
“Classifying ethnicity and ethnic identity is extremely complex, and it is important Stats NZ takes the time to consult extensively and ensure we get this right,” the agency added.
This week, Fijians celebrate the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. The nation observes a public holiday to mark the day, and Fijians of all backgrounds get involved.
Prime Minister Rabuka’s message is for all Fijians to be kind to each other.
“Act in accordance with the spirit of Diwali and show kindness to those who are going through difficulties,” he told local reporters outside Parliament yesterday.
“It is a good time for us to abstain from using bad language against each other on social media.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In December 2008, I visited the Abepura prison in Jayapura, West Papua, to verify a report sent to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture alleging abuses inside the jailhouse, as well as shortages of food and water.
After prison guards checked my bag, I passed through a metal detector into the prison hall, joining the Sunday service with about 30 prisoners. A man sat near me. He had a thick beard and wore a small Morning Star flag on his chest.
The flag, a symbol of independence for West Papua, is banned by the Indonesian authorities, so I was a little surprised to see it worn inside the prison.
I immediately recognised him. Karma was arrested in 2004 after giving a speech on West Papua nationalism, and had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for “treason”.
It was the beginning of my many interviews with Karma. And I began to understand what made him such a courageous leader.
Born in 1959 in Jayapura, Karma was raised in an elite, educated family.
Student-led protests
In 1998, when Karma returned after studying from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, he found Indonesia engulfed in student-led protests against the authoritarian rule of President Suharto.
On 2 July 1998, he led a ceremony to peacefully raise the Morning Star flag on Biak Island. It prompted a deadly attack by the Indonesian military that the authorities said killed at least eight Papuans, but Papuans recovered 32 bodies. Karma was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Karma gradually emerged as a leader who campaigned peacefully but tirelessly on behalf of the rights of Indigenous Papuans. He also worked as a civil servant, training new government employees.
He was invariably straightforward and precise. He provided detailed data, including names, dates, and actions about torture and other mistreatment at Abepura prison.
Human Rights Watch published these investigations in June 2009. It had quite an impact, prompting media pressure that forced the Ministry of Law and Human Rights to investigate the allegations.
In August 2009, Karma became seriously ill and was hospitalised at the Dok Dua hospital. The doctors examined him several times, and finally, in October, recommended that he be sent for surgery that could only be done in Jakarta.
But bureaucracy, either deliberately or through incompetence, kept delaying his treatment. “I used to be a bureaucrat myself,” Karma said. “But I have never experienced such [use of] red tape on a sick man.”
Papuan political prisoners Jefry Wandikbo (left) and Filep Karma (center) chat with the author Andreas Harsono at Abepura prison in Jayapura, Papua, in May 2015. They continued to campaign against arbitrary detention by the Indonesian authorities. Image: Ruth Ogetay/HRW
Health crowdfunding
His health problems, however, drew public attention. Papuan activists started collecting money to pay for the airfare and surgery in Jakarta. I helped write a crowdfunding proposal. People deposited the donations directly into his bank account.
I was surprised when I found out that the total donation, including from some churches, had almost reached IDR1 billion (US$700,000). It was enough to also pay for his mother, Eklefina Noriwari, an uncle, a cousin and an assistant to travel with him. They rented a guest house near the hospital.
Some wondered why he travelled with such a large entourage. The answer is that Indigenous Papuans distrust the Indonesian government. Many of their political leaders had mysteriously died while receiving medical treatment in Jakarta. They wanted to ensure that Filep Karma was safe.
When he was admitted to Cikini hospital, the ward had a small security cordon. I saw many Indonesian security people, including four prison guards, guarding his room, but also church delegates, visiting him.
Papuan students, mostly waiting in the inner yard, said they wanted to make sure, “Our leader is okay.”
After a two-hour surgery, Karma recovered quickly, inviting me and my wife to visit him. His mother and his two daughters, Audryn and Andrefina, also visited my Jakarta apartment. In July 2011, after 11 days in the hospital, he was considered fit enough to return to prison.
In May 2011, the Washington-based Freedom Now filed a petition with the UN Working Group on arbitrary detention on Karma’s behalf. Six months later, the Working Group determined that his detention violated international standards, saying that Indonesia’s courts “disproportionately” used the laws against treason, and called for his immediate release.
President refused to act
But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono refused to act, prompting criticism at the UN forum on the discrimination and abuses against Papuans.
I often visited Karma in prison. He took a correspondence course at Universitas Terbuka, studying police science. He read voraciously.
He studied Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King on non-violent movements and moral courage. He also drew, using pencil and charcoal. He surprised me with my portrait that he drew on a Jacob’s biscuit box.
His name began to appear globally. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei drew political prisoners, including Karma, in an exhibition at Alcatraz prison near San Francisco. Amnesty International produced a video about Karma.
Interestingly, he also read my 2011 book on journalism, “Agama” Saya Adalah Jurnalisme (My “Religion” Is Journalism), apparently inspiring him to write his own book. He used an audio recorder to express his thoughts, asking his friends to type and to print outside, which he then edited.
His 137-page book was published in November 2014, entitled, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We’re Half Animals: Indonesian Racism in West Papua). It became a very important book on racism against Indigenous Papuans in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government, under new President Joko Widodo, finally released Karma in November 2015, and after that gradually released more than 110 political prisoners from West Papua and the Maluku Islands.
Release from jail celebration
Hundreds of Papuan activists welcomed Karma, bringing him from the prison to a field to celebrate with dancing and singing. He called me that night, saying that he had that “strange feeling” of missing the Abepura prison, his many inmate friends, his vegetable garden, as well as the boxing club, which he managed. He had spent 11 years inside the Abepura prison.
“It’s nice to be back home though,” he said laughing.
He slowly rebuilt his activism, traveling to many university campuses throughout Indonesia, also overseas, and talking about human rights abuses, the environmental destruction in West Papua, as well as his advocacy for an independent West Papua.
Students often invited him to talk about his book.
In Jakarta, he rented a studio near my apartment as his stopping point. We met socially, and also attended public meetings together. I organised his birthday party in August 2018. He bought new gear for his scuba diving. My wife, Sapariah, herself a diving enthusiast, noted that Karma was an excellent diver: “He swims like a fish.”
Filep Karma (right) with his brother-in-law George Waromi at Base G beach, Jayapura, Papua, on 30 October 2022. Karma said he planned to go spearfishing alone. His body washed ashore two days later. Image: Larz Barnabas Waromi/HRW
The resistance of Papuans in Indonesia to discrimination took on a new phase following a 17 August 2019 attack by security forces on a Papuan student dormitory in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, in which the students were subjected to racial insults.
The attack renewed discussions on anti-Papuan racial discrimination and sovereignty for West Papua. Papuan students and others acting through a social media movement called Papuan Lives Matter, inspired by Black Lives Matter in the United States, took part in a wave of protests that broke out in many parts of Indonesia.
The new Human Rights Watch report “If It’s Not Racism, What Is It?”: Discrimination and Other Abuses Against Papuans in Indonesia. Image: HRW screenshot APR
Everyone reading Karma’s book
Everyone was reading Filep Karma’s book. Karma protested when these young activists, many of whom he personally knew, such as Sayang Mandabayan, Surya Anta Ginting and Victor Yeimo, were arrested and charged with treason.
“Protesting racism should not be considered treason,” he said.
The Indonesian government responded by detaining hundreds. Papuans Behind Bars, a nongovernmental organisation that monitors politically motivated arrests in West Papua, recorded 418 new cases from October 2020 to September 2021. At least 245 of them were charged, found guilty, and imprisoned for joining the protests, with 109 convicted of “treason”.
However, while in the past, Papuans charged with political offences typically were sentenced to years — in Karma’s case, 15 years — in the recent cases, perhaps because of international and domestic attention, the Indonesian courts handed down much shorter sentences, often time already served.
The coronavirus pandemic halted his activism in 2020-2022. He had plenty of time for scuba diving and spearfishing. Once he posted on Facebook that when a shark tried to steal his fish, he smacked it on the snout.
On 1 November 2022, my good friend Filep Karma was found dead on a Jayapura beach. He had apparently gone diving alone. He was wearing his scuba diving suit.
His mother, Eklefina Noriwari, called me that morning, telling me that her son had died. “I know you’re his close friend,” she told me. “Please don’t be sad. He died doing what he liked best . . . the sea, the swimming, the diving.”
West Papua was in shock. More than 30,000 people attended his funeral, flying the Morning Star flag, as their last act of respect for a courageous man. Mourners heard the speakers celebrating Filep Karma’s life, and then quietly went home.
It was peaceful. And this is exactly what Filep Karma’s message is about.
By Teagan Laszlo, Queensland University of Technology
For Samantha Magick, journalism isn’t just a job. It is a lifelong commitment to storytelling, advocacy, and empowering voices often overlooked in the Pacific.
As the managing editor and publisher at Islands Business, the Pacific Islands’ longest surviving news and business monthly magazine, Magick’s commitment to quality reporting and journalistic integrity has established her as a leading figure in the region’s news industry.
Magick’s passion for journalism began at a young age.
“I wanted to be a journalist when I was like 12,” Magick recalls. “When I left school, that’s all I wanted to study.”
She remembers her family’s disapproval when she would write stories as a child, as they thought she was “sharing secrets”. Despite that early condemnation, Magick’s thriving journalism career has taken her across continents and exposed her to diverse media landscapes.
After completing a Bachelor of Communications with a major in journalism at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia, Magick began her career at Communications Fiji Limited (CFL), a prominent Fijian commercial network.
She progressed over 11 years from a cadet to CFL’s news director.
Guidance of first boss
Magick attributes some of her early success to the guidance of her first boss and CFL’s founder, William Parkinson. She considers herself fortunate to have had a supportive mentor who led by example and dared to take risks early in life, such as founding a radio station in his 20s.
After leaving CFL, Magick’s career took her across the globe, including regional Pacific non-government organisations, news publications in Hawai’i and Indonesia, and even international legal organisations in Italy.
Magick, who is of both Fijian and Australian heritage, returned to Suva in 2018, where she began her current role as Islands Business’s managing editor.
“I’ve chosen to make my life in Fiji because I feel more myself here,” Magick says, reflecting on her deep connection to the island nation.
Magick’s vision for Islands Business focuses on delving into the deeper, underlying narratives often overshadowed by breaking news cycles and free, readily available news content.
“We need to be able to demonstrate the value of investigation, big picture reporting rather than the day-to-day stuff,” Magick says.
Magick prides herself on creating a diverse and inclusive newsroom that reflects the communities it serves.
Need for diverse newsroom
“You have to have a diverse newsroom,” she emphasises, recognising the importance of amplifying marginalised voices. “For example, there is a conscious effort to make sure our magazine is not full of photos of men shaking hands with other men.”
Magick also believes journalists have a responsibility to advocate for change, as demonstrated by Islands Business’s dedication to tackling pressing issues from climate change to media freedom.
“Why would I give a climate change denier space?” Magick questions when discussing the need to balance objectivity and advocacy. “Because it’s kind of going to sell magazines? Because it’s going to create a bit of a stir online? That’s not something we believe in.”
Despite her success, Magick’s career has not been without challenges. Magick worked through Fiji’s former draconian media restriction laws under the Media Industry Development Act 2010, while also navigating the shift to digital media.
Islands Business managing editor Samantha Magick (right) with Fiji Times reporter Rakesh Kumar and chief editor Fred Wesley (centre) celebrating the repeal of the draconian Fiji media law last year . . . ““Why would I give a climate change denier space?” Image: Lydia Lewis/RNZ Pacific
Magick emphasises the need to constantly upskill and re-evaluate strategies to ensure she and Islands Business can effectively navigate the constantly evolving media landscape.
From learning to capitalise on social media analytics to locating reputable information sources when many of them feared to speak to the journalists due to the risk of legal retribution, Magick believes flexibility and perseverance are crucial to staying ahead in media.
In her early career, Magick also faced sexism and misogyny in the media industry. “When I think back about the way I was treated as a young journalist, I feel sick,” Magick says as she reflects on how she and her female colleagues would warn each other against interviewing certain sources alone.
Supporting aspiring journalists
The challenges Magick has faced undoubtably contribute to her dedication to supporting aspiring journalists, as evident through Kite Pareti’s journey. Starting as a freelance writer with no newswriting experience in March 2022, Pareti has since progressed to one of two full-time reporters at Islands Business.
Pareti expresses gratitude for the opportunities she’s had while working at Islands Business, and for the mentorship of Magick, whom she describes as “family”.
“Samantha took a chance on me when I had zero knowledge on news writing,” Pareti says. “So I’m grateful to God for her life and for allowing me to experience this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Magick reciprocates this sentiment. “Recently, I am inspired by some of our younger reporters in the field, and their ability to embrace and leverage technology — they’re teaching me.”
Magick anticipates an exciting period ahead for Islands Business, as she aims to attract a younger, professionally driven, and regionally focused audience to their platforms.
When asked about her aspirations for journalism in the region, Magick says she hopes to see a future where Pacific voices remain at the centre, “telling their own stories in all their diversities”.
Teagan Laszlo was a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is published in a partnership of QUT with Asia Pacific Report, Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and The University of the South Pacific.
Footage of Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa swaying along to the siva dance as she sat beside Britain’s King Charles III encapsulated a palpable national pride, well deserved on delivering such a high-profile gathering.
Getting down to the business of dissecting the meeting outcomes — in the leaders’ statement and Samoa communiqué — there are several issues that are significant for the Pacific island members of this post-colonial club.
As expected, climate change features prominently in the text, with more than 30 mentions including three that refer to the “climate crisis”. This will resonate highly for Pacific members, as will the support for COP 31 in 2026 to be jointly hosted by Australia and the Pacific.
Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa opening CHOGM 2024. Video: Talamua Media
One of the glaring contradictions of this joint COP bid is illustrated by the lack of any call to end fossil fuel extraction in the final outcomes.
Tuvalu, Fiji and Vanuatu used the CHOGM to launch the latest Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report, with a focus on Australia’s coal and gas mining. This reflects the diversity of Commonwealth membership, which includes some states whose economies remain reliant on fossil fuel extractive industries.
As highlighted ahead of CHOGM, this multilateral gave the 56 members a chance to consider positions to take to COP 29 next month in Baku, Azerbaijan. The communiqué from the leaders highlights the importance of increased ambition when it comes to climate finance at COP 29, and particularly to address the needs of developing countries.
Another drawcard
That speaks to all the Pacific island nations and gives the region’s negotiators another drawcard on the international stage.
Then came the unexpected, Papua New Guinea made a surprise announcement that it will not attend the global conference in Baku next month. Speaking at the Commonwealth Ministerial Meeting on Small States, PNG’s Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko framed this decision as a stand on behalf of small island nations as a protest against “empty promises and inaction.”
As promised, a major output of this meeting was the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future. This is the first oceans-focused declaration by the Commonwealth of Nations, and is somewhat belated given 49 of its 56 member states have ocean borders.
The declaration has positions familiar to Pacific policymakers and activists, including the recognition of national maritime boundaries despite the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce emissions from global shipping. A noticeable omission is any reference to deep-sea mining, which is also a faultline within the Pacific collective.
The text relating to reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery required extensive negotiation among the leaders, Australia’s ABC reported. While this issue has been driven by African and Caribbean states, it is one that touches the Pacific as well.
‘Blackbirding’ reparative justice
South Sea Islander “blackbirding” is one of the colonial practices that will be considered within the context of reparative justice. During the period many tens-of-thousands of Pacific Islanders were indentured to Australia’s cane fields, Fiji’s coconut plantations and elsewhere.
The trade to Queensland and New South Wales lasted from 1847 to 1904, while those destinations were British colonies until 1901. Indeed, the so-called “sugar slaves” were a way of getting cheap labour once Britain officially abolished slavery in 1834.
The next secretary-general of the Commonwealth will be Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey. Questions have been raised about the quality of her predecessor Patricia Scotland’s leadership for some time and the change will hopefully go some way in alleviating concerns.
Notably, the CHOGM has selected another woman to lead its secretariat. This is an important endorsement of female leadership among member countries where women are often dramatically underrepresented at national levels.
While it received little or no fanfare, the Commonwealth has also released its revised Commonwealth Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Role of the Media in Good Governance. This is a welcome contribution, given the threats to media freedom in the Pacific and elsewhere. It reflects a longstanding commitment by the Commonwealth to supporting democratic resilience among its members.
These principles do not come with any enforcement mechanism behind them, and the most that can be done is to encourage or exhort adherence. However, they provide another potential buffer against attempts to curtail their remit for publishers, journalists, and bloggers in Commonwealth countries.
The outcomes reveal both progress and persistent challenges for Pacific island nations. While Apia’s Commonwealth Ocean Declaration emphasises oceanic issues, its lack of provisions on deep-sea mining exposes intra-Commonwealth tensions. The change in leadership offers a pivotal opportunity to prioritise equity and actionable commitments.
Ultimately, the success of this gathering will depend on translating discussions into concrete actions that address the urgent needs of Pacific communities facing an uncertain future.
But as the guests waved farewell, the question of what the Commonwealth really means for its Pacific members remains until leaders meet in two years time in Antigua and Barbuda, a small island state in the Caribbean.
Tess Newton Cain is a principal consultant at Sustineo P/L and adjunct associate professor at the Griffith Asia Institute. She is a former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and has more than 25 years of experience working in the Pacific Islands region. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is cautioning New Caledonia’s local government to “be reasonable” in its requests from Paris ahead of a Pacific fact-finding mission.
A much-anticipated high-level visit by Pacific leaders to the French territory is confirmed, after it was postponed by New Caledonia’s local government in August due to allegations France was pushing its own agenda.
President Louis Mapou has confirmed the Pacific leaders’ mission will take place from October 27-29.
Rabuka is one of the four Pacific leaders taking part in the so-called “Troika Plus” mission and confirmed he will be in Nouméa on Sunday.
He told RNZ Pacific during his visit to Aotearoa last week that as “an old hand in Pacific leadership”, listening was key.
“I’m hoping that they will be very, very reasonable about what they’re asking for,” the prime minister said.
“When they started, the Kanaky movement started during my time as Prime Minister. I told them, ‘look, don’t slap the hand that has fed you’.
‘Good disassociation arrangement’
“So have a good disassociation arrangement when you become independent, make sure you part as friends.”
This week, Rabuka told RNZ Pacific in Apia that he would be taking a back seat during the mission.
Veteran Pacific journalist Nick Maclellan, who is in New Caledonia, said there was “significant concern” that political leaders in France did not understand the depth of the crisis.
“This crisis is unresolved, and I think as Pacific leaders arrive this week, they’ll have to look beyond the surface calm to realise that there are many issues that still have to play out in the months to come,” he said.
He said there appeared to be “a tension” between the local government of New Caledonia and the French authorities about the purpose of Pacific leaders’ mission.
“In the past, French diplomats have suggested that the Forum is welcome to come, to condemn violence, to address the question of reconstruction and so on,” he said.
“But I sense a reluctance to address issues around France’s responsibility for decolonisation.
‘Important moment’
“The very fact that four prime ministers are coming, not diplomats, not ministers, not just officials, but four prime ministers of Forum member countries, shows that this is an important moment for regional engagement,” he added.
In a statement on Friday, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat said that the prime ministers of Tonga and the Cook Islands, along with Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs Minister, would join Rabuka to travel to New Caledonia.
Tongan PM Hu’akavameiliku will head the mission, which is expected to land in Nouméa after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa this week.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Indonesia will offer amnesty to West Papuans who have contested Jakarta’s sovereignty over the Melanesian region resulting in conflicts and clashes with law enforcement agencies, says Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape.
He arrived in Port Moresby on Monday night from Indonesia where he attended the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday.
During his bilateral discussions with the Indonesian President, Marape said Prabowo was “quite frank and open” about the West Papua independence issue.
“This is the first time for me to see openness on West Papua and while it is an Indonesian sovereignty matter, my advice was to give respect to land and their [West Papuans] cultural heritage.
“I commend the offer on amnesty and Papua New Guinea will continue to respect Indonesia’s sovereignty,” Marape said.
“The President also offered a pledge for higher autonomy and a commitment to keep on working on the need for more economic activities and development that the former president [Joko Widodo] has started for West Papua.”
While emphasising that Papua New Guinea had no right to debate Indonesia’s internal sovereignty issues, Marape welcomed that country’s recognition of the West Papuan people, their culture and heritage.
Expanding trade, investment
Marape also reaffirmed his intention to work with Prabowo in expanding trade and investment, especially in business-to-business and people-to-people relations with Indonesia.
The exponential growth of Indonesia’s economy currently sits at nearly US$1.5 trillion (about K5 trillion), with the country aggressively pushing toward First World nation status by 2045.
Papua New Guinea was among nations allocated time for a bilateral meeting with President Subianto after the inauguration.
The Ocean Declaration that will be agreed upon at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) this week will be known as the Apia Ocean Declaration.
In an exclusive interview with the Samoa Observer, Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland said members were in a unique position to bring their voices together for the oceans, which have long been neglected.
“The Apia Ocean Declaration aims to address the rising threats to our ocean faces, especially from climate change and rising sea levels,” she said.
Commonwealth pushes for ocean protection with historic Apia Ocean Declaration. Video: Samoa Observer
Scotland, reflecting on her tenure as Secretary-General, noted the privilege of serving the Commonwealth, a diverse family of 56 countries comprising 2.7 billion people.
“I am very much the child of the Commonwealth. With 60 percent of our population under 30 years, we must prioritise their future.”
Scotland reflected that upon assuming her role, she recognised immediately that addressing climate change would be a key priority for the Commonwealth.
“Why? Because we have 33 small states, 25 small island states and we were the ones who were really suffering this badly,” she said.
Pacific a ‘big blue ocean state’
“We also knew in 2016 that nobody was looking at the oceans. Now, the Pacific is a big blue ocean state.
“But it’s one of the most under-resourced elements that we have. And yet, look at what was happening. The hurricanes and the cyclones were getting bigger and bigger.
“Why? Because our ocean had absorbed so much of the heat, so much of the carbon, and now it was starting to become saturated. So before, our ocean acted as a coolant. The cyclone would come, the hurricane would come, they’d pass over our cool blue water, and the heat would be drawn out.”
The Apia Ocean Declaration emerged from a pressing need to protect the oceans, especially given the devastating impact of climate change on coastal and island nations.
“We realised that while many discussions were happening globally, the oceans were often overlooked,” Scotland remarked.
“In 2016, we recognised the necessity for collective action. Our oceans absorb much of the carbon and heat, leading to increasingly severe hurricanes and cyclones.”
Scotland has spearheaded initiatives that brought together oceanographers, climatologists, and various stakeholders.
Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland . . . discussing this week’s planned Apia Ocean Declaration at CHOGM, highlighting the urgent need for global action to protect oceans. Image: Junior S. Ami/Samoa Observer
Worked in silos ‘for too long’
“We worked in silos for too long. It was time to unite our efforts for the ocean’s health.
“That’s when we realised that nobody had their eye on our oceans, but of the 56 Commonwealth members, many of us are island states, so our whole life is dependent on our ocean. And so that’s when the fight back happened.”
This collaboration resulted in the establishment of the Commonwealth Blue Charter, a significant framework focused on ocean conservation.
“Fiji’s presidency at the UN Oceans Conference was a turning point. Critics said it would take years to establish an ocean instrument, but we achieved it in less than ten months.”
“We are not just talking; we are implementing solutions.”
Scotland also addressed the financial challenges faced by many small island states, particularly regarding climate funding.
“In 2009, $100 billion was promised by those who had been primarily responsible for the climate crisis, to help those of us who contributed almost nothing to get over the hump.
Hard for finance applications
“But the money wasn’t coming. And in those days, many of our members found it so hard to put those applications together.”
To combat this issue, the Commonwealth established a Climate Finance Access Hub, facilitating over $365 million in funding for member states with another $500 million in the pipeline.
“But this has caused us to say we have to go further,” she added.
“We’re using geospatial data, we have to fill in the gaps for our members who don’t have the data, so we can look at what has happened in the past, what may happen in the future, and now we have AI to help us do the simulators.
“The Ocean Ministers’ Conference highlighted the importance of ensuring that countries at risk of disappearing under the waves can maintain their maritime jurisdiction,” Scotland asserted.
“The thing that we thought was so important is that those countries threatened with the rising of the sea, which could take away their whole island, don’t have certainty in terms of that jurisdiction. What will happen if our islands drop below the sea level?
“And we wanted our member states to be confident that if they had settled their marine boundaries, that jurisdiction would be set in perpetuity. Because that was the biggest guarantee; I may lose my land, but please don’t tell me I’m going to lose my ocean too.
Target an ocean declaration
“So that was the target for the Ocean Ministers’ Conference. And out of that came the idea that we would have an ocean declaration.
“It is that ocean declaration that we are bringing here to Samoa. And the whole poignancy of that is Samoa is the first small island state in the Pacific ever to host CHOGM. So wouldn’t it be beautiful if out of this big blue ocean state, this wonderful Pacific state, we could get an ocean declaration which could in the future be able to be known as the Apia Ocean Declaration? Because we would really mark what we’re doing here.
“What the Commonwealth has been determined to do throughout this whole period is not just talk, but take positive action to help our members not only just to survive, but to thrive.
“And if, which I hope we will, we get an agreement from our 56 states on this ocean declaration, it enables us to put the evidence before everyone, not only to secure what we need, but then to say 0.05 percent of the money is not enough to save our oceans.
“Oceans are the most underfunded area.
“I hope that all the work we’ve done on the Universal Vulnerability Index, on the nature of the vulnerability for our members, will be able to justify proper money, proper resources being put in.
“And you know what’s happening in this area; our fishermen are under threat.
“Our ability to use the oceans in the way we’ve used for millennia to feed our people, support our people, is really under threat. So this CHOGM is our fight back.”
As the meeting progresses, the emphasis remains on achieving consensus among the 56 member states regarding the Apia Ocean Declaration.
Republished from the Samoa Observer with permission.
Under Pope Francis’ leadership, many church traditions have been renewed. For example, he gives space to women to take some important leadership and managerial roles in Vatican.
Many believe that the movement of the smiling Pope in distributing roles to women and lay groups is a timely move. Besides, during his term as the head of the Vatican state, the Pope has changed the Vatican’s banking and financial system.
Now, it is more transparent and accountable.
Besides, the Holy Father bluntly acknowledges the darkness concealed by the church hierarchy for years and graciously apologises for the wrong committed by the church.
The Pope invites the clergy (shepherds) to live simply, mingling and uniting with the members of the congregation (sheep).
The former archbishop of Buenos Aires also encourages the church to open itself to accepting congregations who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT).
However, Papa Francis’ encouragement was flooded with protests from some members of the church. And it is still an ongoing spiritual battle that has not been fully delivered in Catholic Church.
Two encyclicals Pope Francis, the successor of Apostle Peter, is a humble and modest man. Under his papacy, the highest authority of the Catholic Church has issued four apostolic works, two in the form of encyclicals, namely Lumen Fidei (Light of Faith) and Laudato si’ (Praise Be to You) and two others in the form of apostolic exhortations, namely Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel) and Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love).
Of the four masterpieces of the Pope, the encyclical Laudato si’ seems to gain most attention globally.
The encyclical Laudato si’ is an invitation from the Holy Father to human beings to be responsible for the existence of the universe. He begs us human beings not to exploit and torture Mother Nature.
We should respect nature because it provides plants and cares for us like a mother does for her children. Therefore, caring for the environment or the universe is a calling that needs to be responded to genuinely.
This apostolic call is timely because the world is experiencing various threats of natural devastation that leads to natural disasters.
The irresponsible and greedy behaviour of human beings has destroyed the beauty and diversity of the flora and fauna. Other parts of the world have experienced and are experiencing adverse impacts.
This is also taking place in the Pacific region.
Sinking cities The World Economy Forum (2019) reports that it is estimated there will be eleven cities in the world that will “sink” by 2100. The cities listed include Jakarta (Indonesia), Lagos (Nigeria), Houston (Texas-US), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Virginia Beach (Virginia-US), Bangkok (Thailand), New Orleans (Louisiana-US), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Alexandra (Egypt), and Miami (Florida-US).
During the visit of the 266th Pope, he addressed the importance of securing and protecting our envirinment.
During the historic interfaith dialogue held at the Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque on September 5, the 87-year-old Pope said Indonesia was blessed with rainforest and rich in natural resources.
He indirectly referred to the Land of Papua — internationally known as West Papua. The message was not only addressed to the government of Indonesia, but also to Papua New Guinea.
The apostolic visit amazed people in Indonesia which is predominantly a Muslim nation. The humbleness and friendliness of Papa Francis touched the hearts of many, not only Christians, but also people with other religious backgrounds.
Witnessing the presence of the Pope in Jakarta firsthand, we could certainly testify that his presence has brought tremendous joy and will be remembered forever. Those who experienced joy were not only because of the direct encounter.
Some were inspired when watching the broadcast on the mainstream or social media.
The Pope humbly made himself available to be greeted by his people and blessed those who approached him. Those who received the greeting from the Holy Father also came from different age groups — starting from babies in the womb, toddlers and teenagers, young people, adults, the elderly and brothers and sisters with disabilities.
Pope brings inner comfort
An unforgettable experience of faith that the people of the four nations did not expect, but experienced, was that the presence of the Pope Francis brought inner comfort. It was tremendously significant given the social conditions of Indonesia, PNG and Timor-Leste are troubled politically and psychologically.
State policies that do not lift the people out of poverty, practices of injustice that are still rampant, corruption that seems endemic and systemic, the seizure of indigenous people’s customary land by giant companies with government permission, and an economic system that brings profits to a handful of people are some of the factors that have caused disturbed the inner peace of the people.
In Indonesia, soon after the inauguration on October 20 of the elected President and Vice-President, Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the people of Indonesia will welcome the election of governors and deputy governors, regents and deputy regents, mayors and deputy mayors.
This will include the six provinces in the Land of Papua. The simultaneous regional elections will be held on November 27.
The public will monitor the process of the regional election. Reflecting on the presidential election which allegedly involved the current President’s “interference”, in the collective memory of democracy lovers there is a possibility of interference from the government that will lead the nation.
Could that happen? Only time will tell. The task of all elements of society is to jointly maintain the values of honest, honest and open democracy.
Pope Francis in his book, Let Us Dream, the Path to the Future (2020) wrote:
“We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded, and the vulnerable that gives people a say in the decisions that impact their lives.”
Hope for people’s struggles
This message of Pope Francis has a deep meaning in the current context. What is common everywhere, politicians only make sweet promises or give fake hope to voters so that they are elected.
After being elected, the winning or elected candidate tends to be far from the people.
Therefore, a fragment of the Holy Father’s invitation in the book needs to be a shared concern. The written and implied meaning of the fragment above is not far from the democratic values adopted by Indonesia and other Pacific nations.
Pacific Islanders highly value the views of each person. But lately the noble values that were well-cultivated and inherited by the ancestors are increasingly diminishing.
Hopefully, the governments will deliver on the real needs and struggles of the people.
“Our greatest power is not in the respect that others have for us, but the service we can give others,” wrote Pope Francis.
Laurens Ikinia is a lecturer and researcher at the Institute of Pacific Studies, Indonesian Christian University, Jakarta, and is a member of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).
By Dominique Meehan, Queensland University of Technology
In the expansive landscape of Pacific journalism, one magazine stands for unwavering command and unfiltered truth. Islands Business, with its roots deep beneath Fijian soil, is unafraid to be a voice for the Pacific in delivering forward-thinking analysis of current issues.
Established in Fiji’s capital, Suva, Islands Business has carved out a niche position since the 1970s and is now the longest surviving monthly magazine for the region.
With Fiji’s restrictive Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) only repealed in April 2023 following a change in government, the magazine can now publish analytical reporting without the risks it previously faced.
With a greater chance for these stories to shine, communities have a greater chance that their voices will be heard and shared.
Islands Business general manager Samantha Magick notes the importance of digging below the surface of issues and uncovering injustices with her work.
“I feel like that time where you have to be objective and somehow live above the reality of the world is gone,” Samantha says.
“Quite often I can go into a story thinking one thing and come out saying, ‘I was completely wrong about that.’
‘Objective openness’
“Maybe it’s about going in with an objective openness to hear things, but then saying at some point ‘we as a publication, platform or nation should take a position on this.’”
Magick provides the example of the climate change issue.
“Our position from the start was that climate change is real. We need to be talking about this, we need to be holding these discussions in our space,” she says.
“As long as you declare that this is our position and where we stand on it, why would I give a climate denier space? Because it’s going to sell more magazines or create more of a stir online? That’s not something that we believe in.”
Islands Business magazine frequently highlights social justice issues, including coverage of meetings between Solove’s cane farmers and the Ministry of Sugar Industry to address land lease expirations, the effects of drought on crop production and other concerns. Image: Islands Business/Facebook
Despite the magazine’s dedication to probing coverage of business and social issues, new waves of digital journalism continue to affect its reach.
With an abundance of free news readily available online, media outlets around the world have seen a significant reduction in demand for paid content, recent research shows.
Despite this being a global phenomenon, the impact appears to be harsher on smaller outlets such as Islands Business compared to large media corporations.
‘Younger people expect to not pay’
“Younger people expect to not pay for their media content, due to having so much access to online content,” Magick says.
“We need to be able to demonstrate the value of investigative reporting, big picture sort of reporting, not the day-to-day stuff, and to be able to do that, we need to be able to pay high quality reporters and train them up in future writing.”
Islands Business’s newest recruit, Prerna Priyanka, agrees that this very style of reporting attracted her to work for the publication.
“Their in-depth writing style was something new for me compared to other media outlets, so learning and adapting as a rookie journalist was something that drew me to work with them,” Prerna says.
Prerna notes she has some say over the topics she can cover and strives to incorporate important issues in her work.
“I believe it’s essential to shed light on pressing issues like gender equality and environmental sustainability, and I actively seek out opportunities to do so in my work,” she says.
As Islands Business looks forward, Samantha Magick aims to ensure the diverse Pacific voices remain centred in every discourse and are an active part of the magazine’s raw, unfiltered storytelling.
Dominique Meehan is a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is republished by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), QUT and The University of the South Pacific.
Chamorro cultural historian and museum curator Dr Michael Bevacqua says Chamorro people in Guam have a complex relationship with the US — they consider themselves as Pacific islanders, who also happen to be American citizens.
Bevacqua says after liberation in July 1944, there was a strong desire and pressure among Chamorros to “Americanise”.
Chamorros stopped speaking their language to their children, as a result. They were also pressured to move to the US mainland so the US military could build their bases and thousands of families were displaced.
“There was this feeling that being Chamorro wasn’t worth anything. Give it up. Be American instead,” he says.
‘Fundamental moment’
For the Chamorros, he explains, attending the Festival of Pacific Arts in the 1970s and 1980s was a “very fundamental moment”.
It allowed them to see how other islanders were dealing with and navigating modernity, he adds.
“Chamorros saw that other islanders were proud to be Islanders. They weren’t trying to pretend they weren’t Islanders,” Dr Bevacqua said.
“They were navigating the 20th century in a completely different way. Other islanders were picking and choosing more, they were they were not completely trying to replace, they were not throwing everything away, they trying to adapt and blend.”
Being part of the largest gathering of indigenous people, is what is believed to have led to several different cultural practitioners, many of whom are cultural masters in the Chamorros community today, to try to investigate how their people expressed themselves through traditional forms.
“And this helped lead to the Chamorro renaissance, which manifested in terms of Chamorros starting to carve jewellery again, tried to speak their language again, it led to movements for indigenous rights again.
“A lot of it was tied to just recognise seeing other Pacific Islanders and realising that they’re proud to be who they are. We don’t have to trade in our indigenous identity for a colonial identity.
“We can enjoy the comforts of American life and be Chamorro. Let’s celebrate who we are.”
Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture 2016 . . . Chamorro “celebrating who they are”. Image: FestPac 2016 Documentary Photographers/Manny Crisostomo
Inafa’ maolek Guam’s population is estimated to be under 170,000, and just over 32 percent of those are Chamorro.
Dr Bevaqua says respect and reciprocity are key values for the Chamorro people.
If someone helps a Chamorro person, then they need to make sure that they reciprocate, he adds.
“And these are relationships which sometimes extend back generations, that families help each other, going back to before World War II, and you always have to keep up with them.
“In the past, sometimes people would write them down in little books and nowadays, people keep them in their notes app on their phones.”
But he says the most important value for Chamorros now is the concept of inafa’ maolek.
Inafa’ maolek describes the Chamorru concept of restoring harmony or order and translated literally is “to make” (inafa’) “good” (maolek).
Relationship with community
“This is sort of this larger interdependence and inafa’ maolek the most fundamental principle of Chamorru life. It could extend between sort of people, but it can also extend as well to your relationship with nature, [and] your relationship to your larger community.”
Guam coastline . . . “Chamorro people are always held back because as a territory, Guam does not have an international voice”. Image: Michael Hemmingsen-Guam 2/RNZ
He says the idea is that everyone is connected to each other and must find a way to work together, and to take care of each other.
He believes the Chamorro people are always held back because as a territory, Guam does not have an international voice.
“The United States speaks for you; you can yell, shout, and scream. But as a as a territory, you’re not supposed,to you’re not supposed to count, you’re not supposed to matter.”
He adds: “That’s why for me decolonisation is essential, because if you have particular needs, if you are an island in the western Pacific, and there are challenges that you face, that somebody in West Virginia, Ohio, Utah, Arizona and California may not care about it in the same way, and may be caught up in all different types of politics.
“You have to have the ability to do something about the challenges that are affecting you. How do you do that if 350 million people, 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away have your voice and most of them don’t even know that they hold your voice. It sucks.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) began life three decades ago in Papua New Guinea and recently celebrated a remarkable milestone in Fiji with its 30th anniversary edition and its 47th issue.
Remarkable because it is the longest surviving Antipodean media, journalism and development journal published in the Global South. It is also remarkable because at its birthday event held in early July at the Pacific International Media Conference, no fewer than two cabinet ministers were present — from Fiji and Papua New Guinea — in spite of the journal’s long track record of truth-to-power criticism.
Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad, a former economics professor at The University of the South Pacific (USP) and a champion of free media, singled out the journal for praise at the event, which was also the occasion of the launch of a landmark new book. As co-editor of Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific with Shailendra Singh and Amit Sarwal, Prasad says the book aimed to analyse recent developments in the Pacific because if sustainable peace and stability remain elusive in the region then long-term development is impeded.
Papua New Guinea’s Information and Communication Technologies Minister Timothy Masiu, who has faced criticism over a controversial draft media policy (now in its fifth version), joined the discussion, expressing concerns about geopolitical agendas impacting on the media and arguing in favour of “a way forward for a truly independent and authentic Pacific media”.
Since its establishment in 1994, the PJR has been far more than a research journal. As an independent publication, it has given strong support to Asia-Pacific investigative journalism, socio-political journalism, political-economy perspectives on the media, photojournalism and political cartooning in its three decades of publication. Its ethos declared:
While one objective of Pacific Journalism Review is research into Pacific journalism theory and practice, the journal has also expanding its interest into new areas of research and inquiry that reflect the broader impact of contemporary media practice and education.
A particular focus is on the cultural politics of the media, including the following issues: new media and social movements, indigenous cultures in the age of globalisation, the politics of tourism and development, the role of the media and the formation of national identity and the cultural influence of Aotearoa New Zealand as a branch of the global economy within the Pacific region.
It also has a special interest in climate change, environmental and development studies in the media and communication and vernacular media in the region.
PJR has also been an advocate of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as demonstrated especially in its Frontline section, initiated by one of the mentoring co-editors, former University of Technology Sydney professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon, and also developed by retired Monash University Professor Chris Nash. Five of the current editorial board members were at the 30th birthday event: Griffith University’s Professor Mark Pearson; USP’s Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, the conference convenor; Auckland University of Technology’s Khairiah Abdul Rahman; designer Del Abcede; and current editor Dr Philip Cass.
The cover of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review. Image: PJR
As the founding editor of PJR, I must acknowledge the Australian Journalism Review which is almost double the age of PJR, because this is where I first got the inspiration for establishing the journal. While I was head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1993, I was really frustrated at the lack of quality Pacific-specific media and journalism literature and research to draw on as resources for both critical studies and practice-led education.
So I looked longingly at AJR, and also contributed to it. I turned to the London-based Index on Censorship as another publication to emulate. And I thought, why not? We can do that in the Pacific and so I persuaded the University of Papua New Guinea Press to come on board and published the first edition at the derelict campus printer in Waigani in 1994.
We published there until 1998 when PJR moved to USP for five years. Then it was published for 18 years at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), mostly through the Pacific Media Centre, which closed in 2020. Since then it has been published by the nonprofit NGO Asia Pacific Media Network.
When celebrating the 20th anniversary of the journal at AUT in 2014, then AJR editor professor Ian Richards noted the journal’s “dogged perseverance” and contribution to Oceania research declaring:
Today, PJR plays a vital role publishing research from and about this part of the world. This is important for a number of reasons, not least because most academics ground their work in situations with which they are most familiar, and this frequently produces articles which are extremely local. If “local” means London or Paris or New York, then it’s much easier to present your work as “international” than if you live in Port Vila of Pago Pago, Auckland or Adelaide.
Also in 2014, analyst Dr Lee Duffield highlighted the critical role of PJR during the years of military rule and “blatant military censorship” in Fiji, which has eased since the repeal of its draconian Media Industry Development Act in 2023. He remarked:
The same is true of PJR’s agenda-setting in regard to crises elsewhere: jailing of journalists in Tonga, threatened or actual media controls in Tahiti or PNG, bashing of an editor in Vanuatu by a senior government politician, threats also against the media in Solomon Islands, and reporting restrictions in Samoa.
Fiji’s Deputy PM Professor Biman Prasad (sixth from left) and PNG’s Communications Minister Timothy Masiu (third from right) at the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of PJR in Suva, Fiji. Image: Khairiah Rahman/APMN
At the 30th anniversary launch, USP’s Adjunct Professor in development studies and governance Dr Vijay Naidu complimented the journal on the wide range of topics covered by its more than 1,100 research articles. He said the journal had established itself as a critical conscience with respect to Asia-Pacific socio-political and development dilemmas, and looked forward to the journal meeting future challenges.
I outlined many of those future challenges in a recent interview with Global Voices correspondent Mong Palatino. Issues that have become more pressing for the journal include responding to the changing geopolitical realities in the Pacific and collaborating even more creatively and closely on development, the climate crisis, and unresolved decolonisation issues with the region’s journalists, educators and advocates. To address these challenges, the PJR team have been working on an innovative new publishing strategy over the past few months.
View the latest Pacific Journalism Review: Gaza, genocide and media – PJR 30 years on, special double edition. The journal is indexed by global research databases such as Informit and Ebsco, but it is also available via open access for a Pacific audience here.
This article is republished from ANU’s Devpolicy Blog. Dr David Robie is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, former director of the Pacific Media Centre, and previously a head of journalism at both the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORT:By Aubrey Belford of the OCCRP
High in the forested mountains of Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island lies an abandoned, kilometer-wide crater cut deep into the earth.
Formerly one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, the open pit now serves as an unsightly monument to the environmental and social chaos that underground riches can create.
Run for years by a subsidiary of Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto, the Panguna mine earned millions for Papua New Guinea (PNG) and helped bankroll its newfound independence. But it also poured waste into local waterways and fuelled anger among locals who felt robbed of the profits.
When an armed uprising ultimately shuttered the mine in 1989, the impoverished island was left reeling.
Nearly three decades later, in late 2022, human rights activists, the local government, and the mine’s former operators joined forces to produce a definitive assessment of the mine’s toxic legacy.
Their report, due to be released later this month, will become the basis for negotiations aimed at getting the mining companies to finally clean up the mess and compensate affected communities.
But its supporters now worry their efforts will be undermined by a class-action lawsuit launched in May against the mine’s erstwhile operators. The legal effort is being championed by former rebel leaders — and backed by anonymous offshore investors who stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars if it succeeds.
Worldwide litigation boom
The lawsuit is part of a worldwide boom in litigation financing that seeks to take multinational companies to task for ecological or social damage while potentially reaping a fortune for lawyers and funders.
Critics in Bougainville worry the lawsuit will reopen old wounds at a time when the island is making a push to break free of Papua New Guinea and become the world’s newest sovereign nation. Many Bougainvilleans are hoping to reopen the mine, using its wealth to fund their own independence this time around.
The region’s government and many local leaders believe the class action could put the mine’s revival at risk. There are also concerns the lawsuit would leave many Bougainvilleans empty handed, while the anonymous foreign investors would walk away with a significant share of the payout.
Unlike the official assessment, which seeks to identify everyone who needs to be compensated, the class action will only share its winnings — which could potentially be in the billions of dollars — with the locals who have signed on. Others will get nothing.
“There’s already fragmentation in the community and families are already divided,” said Theonila Roka Matbob, who represents the area around Panguna in the local Parliament and has helped lead the government-backed assessment process as a minister in the Autonomous Bougainville government.
She speaks from personal experience. The chief litigant in the class-action lawsuit, Martin Miriori, is her uncle. The two are no longer on speaking terms.
A losing deal Gouged from Bougainville’s lush volcanic heart, the Panguna mine in its heyday supplied as much as 45 percent of PNG’s export revenue, providing it with the financial means to achieve independence from Australia in 1975.
The windfall, however, did not extend to Bougainvilleans themselves. Ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of PNG’s population, they saw Panguna as a symbol of external domination.
The mine delivered only a miserly 2-percent share of its profits to their island — along with years of environmental havoc.
Locals walk by buildings left abandoned by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto at the Panguna mine site. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
During the 17 years of Panguna’s operation — from 1972 to 1989 — over a billion metric tons of toxic mine waste and electric blue copper runoff flooded rivers that flowed downstream towards communities of subsistence farmers. The result was poisoned drinking water, infertile land, and children who were drowned or injured trying to cross engorged waterways.
In 1989, enraged Bougainville locals launched an armed rebellion against the PNG government. The mine was shut down, closing off a vital source of revenue for the national government in Port Moresby.
A brutal civil war raged on for nearly a decade, leaving more than 15,000 people dead, while a naval blockade by PNG’s military obliterated the island’s economy.
A peace deal in 2000 granted Bougainville substantial autonomy. But nearly a quarter-century later, the legacy of Panguna and the war it provoked is still deeply felt.
Few paved roads, bridges
There are few paved roads and bridges in the island’s interior. Residents earn a modest living through cocoa and coconut farming, or by unregulated artisanal mining in and around the abandoned Panguna crater.
Rivers polluted by years of runoff are still an otherworldly shade of milky blue.
At least 300,000 people are estimated to live on Bougainville, including as many as 15,000 who live downstream of the mine. Of those, some 4500 have joined Miriori — Roka’s estranged uncle and a tribal leader whose brother, Joseph Kabui, served as the first president of autonomous Bougainville — in seeking restitution through the class-action suit.
“We’ve got to make people happy,” Miriori said. “They’ve lost their land forever, environment forever. Their hunting grounds. Their spiritual, sacred grounds.”
Martin Miriori, the primary litigant in the class action lawsuit. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
‘Alert to opportunities’ Miriori took many by surprise when he became the public face of the suit filed in PNG’s National Court in May against Rio Tinto and its former local subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Limited.
While the tribal leader and former rebel is a well-known figure in Bougainville, the funders of the lawsuit are not. They have managed to keep their identities secret in part because the company behind the suit, Panguna Mine Action LLC, is registered on Nevis, a small Caribbean island that does not require companies to publicly disclose their shareholders and directors.
Miriori declined to comment on who was behind the company, saying, “I will not tell you where the funding is based … you can source that from our people down there [in Australia].”
James Sing, an Australian based in New York, is Panguna Mine Action’s chief public representative. He initially agreed to an interview, but later referred reporters back to a London-based public relations agency, Sans Frontières Associates.
The agency declined to reveal Panguna Mine Action’s investors.
Litigation funding documents obtained by OCCRP, however, shed some light on the history of the case. The documents show that Panguna Mine Action began to investigate the possibility of a class-action suit as early as July 2021.
The Bougainvillean claimants, led by Miriori, were formally brought into an agreement with the company and its Australian and PNG lawyers in November 2022. The suit was publicly announced this May.
Handsome profit
The lawsuit’s investors stand to profit handsomely from any eventual settlement: Panguna Mine Action is poised to receive a cut of 20 to 40 percent of any payout resulting from the suit, with the percentage increasing the longer the process takes, the funding documents show.
In interviews and statements, both Miriori and Panguna Mine Action have put the potential value of any award in the billions of dollars.
The lawsuit’s financiers defend their substantial share of the potential benefits as standard practice.
“The costs of launching and running the class action against a global miner are significant, and almost certainly could not be met from within Bougainville without funding from an external party,” the company said in its statement.
Panguna Mine Action added it would bear sole responsibility for costs if the lawsuit is unsuccessful.
According to Michael Russell, a Sydney-based class action defence lawyer, such funding arrangements are typical in the burgeoning world of litigation finance, where investors seek out cases that promote virtuous social causes while offering huge potential payoffs.
A similar case is unfolding in Latin America, where more than 720,000 Brazilians are seeking $46.5 billion as part of a gargantuan class action against mining giant BHP and its local subsidiary for their role in a 2015 dam collapse.
In such cases, funders can justify walking away with significant cuts of any winnings because of the substantial risk they face of losing their investment if a case fails, Russell said.
Such cases were rarely initiated at the grassroots level by the victims themselves, he added.
“Most of the time, either the plaintiff firms or the funders will be the catalyst for a claim,” he said. “They are very alert to opportunities.”
Rival restitution plans
Government officials including Miriori’s niece, Roka, say the class-action case, which is due to hold opening arguments in October, threatens to derail the ongoing impact assessment aimed at calculating the full cost of the mine’s environmental impact and developing recommendations for addressing the damage.
The assessment, which counts community members among its stakeholders and bills itself as an independent review, is supported by Australia’s Human Rights Law Centre, which has hailed the project as “an important step” towards rectifying the mine’s devastating impact on thousands of Bougainvilleans.
However, while Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper are both funding the project, they have not yet committed to paying for any compensation or cleanup. Roka said she was concerned the lawsuit could reduce the company’s willingness to engage with the process, since it could view the assessment as a tool that could be used against them in the courtroom.
Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama backs the impact assessment and has lambasted the class action suit as the work of “faceless investors . . . taking advantage of vulnerable groups.” (His office did not respond to an interview request.)
He also expressed concern that the court proceedings threaten to “disrupt” his government’s efforts to reopen the mine, which still holds an estimated $60 billion in untapped deposits.
Bougainville’s leaders see the mine as key to securing the island’s economic future as it sets out to form an independent state — a dream that drew overwhelming public support in a 2019 referendum.
Exploration licence
Earlier this year Toroama’s government granted Bougainville Copper a five-year exploration licence for the Panguna site.
The lack of media and polling in Bougainville make it hard to measure public opinion on plans to reactivate the mine, but many locals appear to support reopening it under local control as an essential tool for achieving independence.
Bougainville Copper’s brand is still toxically associated with Rio Tinto and its past abuses, despite the fact that the international mining giant gave away its majority stake for no money in 2016.
The publicly traded company is now majority co-owned by the governments of PNG and Bougainville, and Port Moresby has pledged to hand over all its shares to the autonomous region in the near future.
Panguna Mine Action acknowledges that its effort could stand in the way of the mine’s reopening — but the company says that is a good thing.
“It is our understanding that the people of Bougainville do not wish mining to be recommenced under any circumstances or, alternatively, unless Rio Tinto and Bougainville Copper acknowledge the past, pay compensation and remediate the rivers and surrounding valley,” the company said in a statement.
Rio Tinto declined to comment. Mel Togolo, the chairman of Bougainville Copper, told OCCRP that the lawsuit was the work of “a foreign funder who no doubt is seeking a return on an investment.”
View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
View of the tailings located downstream of the Panguna mine. Photo: OCCRP / Aubrey Belford
‘Only those who have signed will benefit’ The fight over Panguna adds even more uncertainty to long-running anxiety over Bougainville’s future.
With global copper prices soaring on high demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles, the Panguna mine would be an attractive prize for both Western mining companies and firms from China, which is dramatically expanding its influence in the South Pacific.
Since a future Bougainvillean state would be economically dependent on the mine’s revenue, some have raised concerns that control of the mine could become a proxy battle for geopolitical influence in the broader region.
For his part, Miriori expressed little concern that a multibillion-dollar payout might stir resentment by reaching only a fraction of the people affected by the mine’s environmental destruction.
“Only those who signed will benefit,” he said, adding that the opportunity was made “very clear to people” through awareness campaigns.
“Those who have not signed, it’s their freedom of choice.”
An aerial view of the abandoned Panguna mine pit. Image: OCCRP/Aubrey Belford
Among those who did not sign is Wendy Bowara, 48, who lives in Dapera, a bleak settlement built on a hill of mine waste. Bowara said she is looking to the government-backed assessment, not the lawsuit, to deliver compensation and clean up Panguna’s toxic legacy.
“We are living on top of chemicals,” she said. “Copper concentration is high. I don’t know if the food is good to eat or if it’s healthy to drink the water.”
But while it may seem odd given her grim surroundings, Borawa says she strongly supports reopening the mine.
“It funded the independence of Papua New Guinea,” Bowara said. “Why can’t we use it to fund our own independence?”
Allan Gioni contributed reporting.
Aubrey Belford is the Pacific editor for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting project (OCCRP). Republished with permission.
A Kanak great chief has announced his resignation from New Caledonia’s customary Senate.
Hippolyte Sinewami Htamumu once presided over the 16-member traditional Senate of chiefs, which was set up as part of the implementation of the Nouméa Accord signed in 1998.
Sinewami, in announcing his resignation, said he wanted to denounce what he termed “inefficiency” and the “politicisation” of the Senate.
The institution is presented as being dedicated to New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanaks issues, including affairs related to customs, land and identity.
But Sinewami said one of the motivations leading to his resignation was that the Senate was not representative of all of New Caledonia’s chiefly areas; and that it was also too dependent on New Caledonia’s government and its Congress (Parliament).
“So now, more or less, it is as if it was just a government department because we’re depending on the government,” he told public broadcaster NC la Première TV.
The 47-year-old chief also said the institution had remained “silent” since violent unrest and riots broke out in the French Pacific archipelago and were still ongoing since May 13.
Sinewami, himself a great chief of the La Roche district (on Maré island, part of the Loyalty Islands group, north-east of New Caledonia’s main island) is also the leader of an alternate chiefly assembly, the Inaat ne Kanaky (Kanaky Great Council of Chiefs), which he set up in late 2022.
He also said many in the indigenous Kanak community believed that “the trust is no longer there, whether at the level of the customary institutions or at the level of our politicians”.
Widening Senate rift “I didn’t see myself pursuing the work I have started with the youths while still being a member of such an institution,” he said, putting emphaisis on what is locally described as a widening rift within the customary Senate.
He called for New Caledonia’s institutions to ensure decisions made on the traditional level were “taken into account”, including in future political talks on New Caledonia’s long-term future.
A “Kanak people’s general assembly” is scheduled to be held on September 24, which, symbolically, is also the date in 1853 when France officially “took possession” of the territory.
Future talks: challenging politicians and France Sinewami told local media that in view of the September meeting, his Inaat Ne Kanaky movement was now working to “reaffirm and reappropriate” Kanak rights.
“So September 24 is the declaration of sovereignty of the chiefdoms . . . This includes challenging the [French] state and even our elected politicians here, so that there is a place for our traditional people in future discussions.
“It is important that our voice is represented.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Climate justice and gender equality cannot be achieved separately, a Pacific women’s conference heard this week.
Marshall Islands President Dr Hilda Heine said the climate crisis faced in the region and the world would make gender equality more difficult to attain.
“For example, we know that we cannot have gender equality without climate justice, and vice versa,” Dr Heine told delegates at the the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women gathered in the Northern Pacific for the first time in 40 years.
“We have convened on Majuro because of one of those aspirations is the empowerment of Pacific women and girls in all their diversities and ultimately to reach gender parity in our region.”
President Heine said that for gender parity to be achieved, every Pacific woman’s ability, talent dreams would need to be harnessed.
“We must draw on the resourcefulness of Pacific women, rich in our diverse cultures and traditions, to map a way forward for us, tapping into our region’s diversity and creativity to find solutions that are embedded in our Pacific philosophies and world views,” she said.
“We know that the climate crisis will make achieving gender equality even harder — and that we cannot solve the climate crisis without gender equality.”
Women hit fastest, hardest
Heine said women were often hit fastest and hardest by climate impacts.
“They are the first responders of the family, responsible for ensuring that the family is taken care of and healthy,” she said.
“As climate change brings droughts, they are charged with securing water; when children or the elderly are affected by extreme heat, it is women who are the primary caregivers.
Marshall Islands President Dr Hilda Heine … women among strongest voices for climate ambition. Image: PresidentOfficeRMI
“In the Marshalls, where women often participate in the informal economy through the production of handicrafts, for example, we know that the material used for those handicrafts are at risk as sea levels rise and salt water inundates our arable land.
“Women are also central to the solutions to the climate crisis.”
Dr Heine said Pacific women had been some of the strongest voices for climate ambition at the international level while at home they were caretakers for solar panels, providing communities with clean energy.
She described them as being at the heart of securing climate justice.
Women’s health, gender-based violence, and climate justice are key challenges Pacific women continue to face. Image: RNZI/Giff Johnson
‘Gains are far from consistent’ Two regional meetings took place on Majuro Atoll this week — the 8th Ministers for Women meeting and the 3rd PIF Women Leaders Meeting.
Political commentators said this showed that regional leaders recognised the importance of gender equality and the meetings provided opportunities to collectively discuss how to advance their commitments to the issue at national, regional and international levels.
President Heine acknowledged that the Pacific had made what she described as remarkable progress on women’s rights on many fronts in recent decades.
“But these gains are far from consistent and much more remains to be done,” she warned.
Women’s health, gender-based violence, and climate justice were the themes for discussion during the conferences and highlight some of the key challenges Pacific women continue to face.
Dr Heine said all these issues aggravated the impacts of inequalities faced by women and girls as a result of existing social norms and structures.
She said the triennial conference and the Pacific Ministers for Women meeting were important platforms at which to unpack these and other barriers to gender equality.
Netani Rikais an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.
Pacific leaders have been called on to innovative and be bold to create gender equality and respond to gaps which exist in their efforts to bridge differences.
Marshall Islands President Dr Hilda Heine said gender could not be addressed in isolation.
“We must think also of how it intersects with our other challenges and opportunities and develop our policies and approaches with gender equality in mind,” Heine said at the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women in Majuro this week.
“Our gender equality journey calls on Pacific leadership to be intentional, innovative and bold in our responses to the gaps that we see in our efforts.
“We must take risks, create new partnerships, and be unwavering in our commitment to bring about substantive gender equality for the region.”
The triennial is the latest in a series which was first proposed in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1974. Representatives from governments throughout the region are represented at the event which is followed by a meeting of Pacific ministers for women.
“We have come a long way in terms of advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women in the Pacific,” Heine said.
Forces that shape women
“Almost 50 years ago in 1975, 80 women from across the Pacific convened in Suva to talk about forces that shape women in society. ”
The initial meeting of 80 women identified family, culture and traditions, religion, education, media, law and politics as thematic areas which deserved attention and discussion.
Heine challenged Pacific women to extend their role as mothers who nurture and weave society towards nation building.
“A mother helps to nurture and weaves the society, therefore building a nation. That is our role. That is what we do. It is in our DNA,” Heine said.
“Current women leaders stand on the shoulders of those women who came before us, many had no clue about the PPA or what feminism is all about; yet their roles called for them to be involved and to push the boundaries; similarly, it is the responsibility of current women leaders to nurture and to mentor the next generation of women leaders, the leaders of tomorrow.”
Engage men and boys A study across 31 countries has found that 60 percent of males aged 16-24 years believe that women’s equality discriminates against men.
“This finding is troubling and while the study did not include countries in the Pacific, it is important we take note of it and continue to look at ways to better engage men and boys in gender equality efforts in our part of the world,” Pacific Community’s Miles Young said.
Young said men and boys must be involved on a journey of understanding that gender equality benefited everyone.
“Noting the continuing relatively low representation of women across our national parliaments and at the highest levels of decision-making in the private sector, there may be an opportunity this week to discuss revitalising the conversation around affirmative action — or what some term temporary special measures,” he said.
He noted the presence of Tuvalu Prime Minister, Feleti Teo, Marshallese Women’s Minister, Jess Gasper, and United Nations Women Senior Adviser, Asger Rhyl, and “the many other men who are committed to gender equality”.
“There may be an opportunity for discussions around how to more effectively engage men and boys in progressing gender equality,” Young said.
Women make up 8.8 percent of parliamentarians (54 MPs) in the Pacific, up from 4.7 per cent (26 MPs) in 2013.
Young said the Pacific Community stood ready to collaborate with women representatives and development partners to support decisions and the outcomes of the meeting.
“This commitment reflects the highest priority which SPC attaches to supporting gender equality in the region.”
Netani Rikais an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.
Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused devastation on the people and environment of the Marshall Islands.
And, as Pacific women gathered on Majuro this week to discuss ways to end gender-based violence, they heard from local counterparts about a battle for justice older than many of the delegates.
Ariana Kilma, chair of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission and descendant of survivors of weapons testing, shared a story of survival, setting the backdrop for the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.
“I am here to share with you our story. This is a story not only of suffering and loss, but also of strength, unity, and unwavering commitment to justice,” Kilner told delegates from across the region.
“The conference theme ‘an pilinlin koba komman lometo’(a collection of droplets creates an ocean)” reflects the efforts of the many Marshallese women before me, and together, we call on you, our Pacific sisters and brothers, to stand united in our commitment to justice, healing, and a brighter future for the Pacific.”
The triennial will focus on three specific areas – climate change, gender-based violence, and the health of women and girls.
The current story of Marshallese women began in the aftermath of World War II when the group of atolls in the Northern Pacific was selected as ground zero for a nuclear weapon testing programme. Image: RNZ Pacific
Marshall Islands President, Dr Hilda Heine, acknowledged that nothing less than a collective, regional effort was needed to effectively address the three issues at the centre of the regional conference.
“Our gender equality journey calls on Pacific leadership to be intentional, innovative and bold in our responses to the gaps that we see in our efforts,” Heine said.
‘We must take risks’
“We must take risks, create new partnerships, and be unwavering in our commitment to bring about substantive gender equality for the region.”
In the area of gender equality, young Marshallese women like Kilner are forging pathways to ensure that justice is done, even if the battle for restitution takes another 70 years. In a bold, innovative move, women of the Marshall Islands have taken their cry to the World Council of Churches and the United Nations.
“Marshallese women have shown remarkable resilience and leadership,” Kilma said.
“From the early days of testing, they raised their voices against the injustices inflicted upon our people. They documented health issues, collected evidence, and demanded accountability.”
The current story of Marshallese women began in the aftermath of World War II when the group of atolls in the Northern Pacific was selected as ground zero for a nuclear weapon testing programme.
This was the beginning of a profound and painful chapter which continues today.
“The people of Bikini and later Enewetak were displaced from their home islands in order for the tests to commence,” Kilner said.
Infamous Bravo test
“For a period of 12 years, between 1946 and 1958, 67 nuclear tests were conducted in our islands, including the infamous Bravo test on Bikini Atoll in 1954. Despite a petition from the Marshallese to cease the experiments, the testing continued for another four years with 55 more detonations.”
Containment of nuclear waste in the Marshall Islands. Image: RNZ Pacific
Immediately after the Bravo test, people fell ill — their skin itching and peeling, eyes hurting, stomachs churning with pain, heads split by migraines and fingernails changing colour because of nuclear fallout.
It was not long before women gave birth to what have been described jellyfish babies.
“So deformed, [were our] babies sometimes born resembling the features of an octopus or the intestines of a turtle, in some instances, a bunch of grapes or a strange looking animal,” Kilner told delegates at the regional forum this week.
“The term jellyfish babies was coined after the birth of many babies who were born without limbs or a head, whose skin was so transparent their mothers saw their tiny hearts beating within.
“We were told by those scientists that our babies were a result of incest.”
Despite a 2004 study by the United States National Cancer Institute which concluded that the Marshallese could expect an estimated 530 “excess” cancers, half of which had yet to be detected, the US has made no move towards reparation for the islanders.
The study showed that the fallout resulted in elevated cancer risks, with women being disproportionately affected.
Twenty years after the study, the Marshall Islands continues to fight for justice, women at the forefront of the struggle, just as they have been since 1 March 1954.
If anyone has the resilience to fight for justice, it is the Marshallese women.
Netani Rikais an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women. Published with the author’s permission.
An interview with former University of the South Pacific (USP) development studies professor Dr Vijay Naidu, a founding president of the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG), has produced fresh insights into the legacy of Pacific nuclear-free and anti-colonialism activism.
The community storytelling group Talanoa TV, an affiliate of the Whānau Community Centre and Hub and linked to the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), has embarked on producing a series of short educational videos as oral histories of people involved in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) Movement to document and preserve this activist mahi and history.
The series, dubbed “Legends of NFIP”, are being timed for screening in 2025 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 and also with the 40th anniversary of the Rarotonga Treaty for a Nuclear-Free Pacific.
Legends of NFIP – Professor Vijay Naidu. Video: Talanoa TV
These videos are planned to “bring alive” the experiences and commitment of people involved in a Pacific-wide movement and will be suitable for schools as video podcasts and could be stored on open access platforms.
“This project is also expected to become an extremely useful resource for students and researchers,” says project convenor Nikhil Naidu, himself a former FANG and Coalition for Democracy (CDF) activist.
In this 14-minute interview, Professor Naidu talks about the origins of the NFIP Movement.
“At this time [1970s], there were the French nuclear tests that were actually atmospheric nuclear tests and people like Suliana Siwatibau and Graeme Bain started the ATOM movement (Against Nuclear Tests on Moruroa) in Tahiti in the 1970s at USP,” he says.
“And we began to understand the issues around nuclear testing and how it affected people — you know, the radiation. And drop-outs and pollution from it.”
The PANG media team at this month’s Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji caught up with independent journalist, author and educator Dr David Robie and questioned him on his views about decolonisation in the Pacific.
Dr Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), a co-organiser of the conference, shared his experience on reporting on Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua’s fight for freedom.
He speaks from his 40 years of journalism in the Pacific saying the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum need to step up pressure on France and Indonesia to decolonise.
The leaders of the subregional bloc — from Fiji, FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front of New Caledonia), Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu — met in Tokyo on the sidelines of the 10th Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM10), to specifically talk about New Caledonia.
They included Fiji’s Sitiveni Rabuka, PNG’s James Marape, Solomon Islands’ Jeremiah Manele, and Vanuatu’s Charlot Salwai.
In his interview with PANG (Pacific Network on Globalisation), Dr Robie also draws parallels with the liberation struggle in Palestine, which he says has become a global symbol for justice and freedom everywhere.
Asia Pacific Media Report’s Dr David Robie . . . The people see the flags of Kanaky, West Papua and Palestine as symbolic of the struggles against repression and injustice all over the world.
“I should mention Palestine as well because essentially it’s settler colonisation.
“What we’ve seen in the massive protests over the last nine months and so on there has been a huge realisation in many countries around the world that colonisation is still here after thinking, or assuming, that had gone some years ago.
“So you’ll see in a lot of protests — we have protests across Aotearoa New Zealand every week — that the flags of Kanaky, West Papua and Palestine fly together.
“The people see these as symbolic of the repression and injustice all over the world.”
PANG Media talk to Dr David Robie on decolonisation. Video: PANG Media
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Despite the many challenges faced by Pacific journalists in recent years, the recent Pacific International Media Conference highlighted the incredible strength and courage of the region’s reporters.
The three-day event in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month co-hosted by the University of South Pacific, Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), was the first of its kind for Fiji in the last 20 years, marking the newfound freedom media professionals have been experiencing in the nation.
The conference included speakers from many of the main newsrooms in the Pacific, as well as Emmy award-winning American journalist Professor Emily Drew and Pulitzer-nominated investigative journalist Irene Jay Liu, as well as New Zealand’s Indira Stewart, Dr David Robie of APMN and Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor of RNZ Pacific.
The launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalist Review. Professor Vijay Naidu (from left), Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Dr Biman Prasad, founding PJR editor Dr David Robie, Papua New Guinea Minister for Communications and Information Technology Timothy Masiu, Associate Professor Shailendra Bahadur Singh and current PJR editor Dr Philip Cass. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Given Fiji’s change of government in 2022, and the ensuing repeal of media laws which threatened jail time for reporters and editors who published stories that weren’t in the “national interest”, many spoke of the extreme challenges they faced under the previous regime.
And two of Fiji’s deputy prime ministers, Manoa Kamikamica and Professor Biman Prasad, also gave keynote speeches detailing how the country’s newly established press freedom is playing a vital role in strengthening the country’s democracy.
Dr Robie has worked in the Pacific for several decades and was a member of the conference’s organising committee.
He said this conference has come at “critical time given the geopolitics in the background”.
Survival of media
“I’ve been to many conferences over the years, and this one has been quite unique and it’s been really good,” he said.
“We’ve addressed the really pressing issues regarding the survival of media and it’s also highlighted how resilient news organisations are across the Pacific.”
Dr David Robie spoke at the conference on how critical journalism can survive against the odds. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Dr David Robie talks to PMN News on the opening day. Audio/video:PMN Pacific Mornings
The conference coincided with the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, which is the only academic journal in the region that publishes research specifically focused on Pacific media.
As founder of PJR, Robie says it is heartening to see it recognised at a place — the University of the South Pacific — where it was also based for a number of years.
“It began its life at the University of Papua New Guinea, but then it was at USP for five years, so it was very appropriate to have our birthday here. It’s published over 1100 articles over its 30 years, so we were really celebrating all that’s been published over that time.”
RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor has been running journalism workshops in the region over many years. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Climate change solutions
RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepla-Taylor spoke on a panel about how to cover climate change with a solutions lens.
She says the topic of sexual harassment was a particularly important discussion that came up and it highlighted the extra hurdles Pacific female journalists face.
“It’s a reminder for me as a journalist from New Zealand and something I will reinforce with my own team about the privilege we have to be able to do a story, jump in your car and go home, without being tailed by the police or being taken into barracks to be questioned,” she says.
“It’s a good reminder to us and it gives a really good perspective about what it’s like to be a journalist in the region and the challenges too.”
Another particular challenge Tuilaepa-Taylor highlighted was the increase in international journalists coming into the region reporting on the Pacific.
“The issue I have is that it leads to taking away a Pacific lens on a story which is vitally important,” she said.
“There are stories that can be covered by non-Pacific journalists but there are really important cultural stories that need to have that Pacific lens on it so it’s more authentic and give audiences a sense of connection.”
But Dr Robie says that while problems facing the Pacific are clear, the conference also highlighted why there is also cause for optimism.
“Journalists in the region work very hard and under very difficult conditions and they carry a lot of responsibilities for their communities, so I think it’s a real credit to our industry … [given] their responses to the challenges and their resilience shows there can be a lot of hope for the future of journalism in the region.”
Justin Latifis news editor of Pacific Media Network. Republished with permission.
Of the 42 respondents in the survey, the youngest was 22, and the oldest was 51, with an average age of 33.2 years. The average amount of work experience was 8.3 years.
Most respondents (80.5 percent) worked in print, with the others choosing online and/or broadcasting. Most respondents answered that they were aware of sexual harassment occurring.
Researchers Laisa Bulatale (left) and Nalini Singh of the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM). . . most respondents answered that they were aware of sexual harassment occurring. Image: RNZ Pacific
The ABC’s Fiji reporter, Lice Monovo is an experienced journalist who has worked for RNZ Pacific and The Guardian.
She said she was not surprised by the findings and such incidents were familiar to her.
“There were things I had encountered, and some close friends had, and they were things I had seen but what I did also feel was shock that it was still happening and shock that it was more widespread.”
After reading the preliminary results of the report, she realised that although women did take steps, including reporting harassment and approaching their employers or asking for help, still not enough was being done to protect female journalists.
Panel discussion on “Prevalence and Impact of Sexual Harassment on Female Journalists”. Panelists were Laisa Bulatale, Georgina Kekea, Jacqui Berrell, Lice Movono, Dr Shailendra Bahadur Singh. The moderator was Nalini Singh. Image: Stefan Armbruster/RNZ Pacific
“Their concerns and worries, and the things they went through were invalidated, they were told to ‘suck it up’, they were told to put it behind them.”
Movono added that often the burden and responsibility for the harassment were shifted to them, the victims.
“So no, I don’t think enough was done,” she said.
Fiji Women’s Rights Movement’s Laisa Bulatale said many of the women in the research experienced verbal, physical, gestural, and online harassment at work. She said it was not only confined to the workplace.
“A lot of the harassment was also experienced when they went and did assignments or when they had to do interviews with high-ranking officials in government, MPs, even rugby personalities or people in the sports industry,” she said.
She said they were justifiably hesitant to report these problems.
“They [female reporters] feared victim blaming and a lot of shame so a lot of the female journalists that we spoke to in the survey said they carried that with them, and they didn’t feel they knew enough to be able to report the incident.
“And if they did, they were not confident enough that the complaint processes or the referral pathways for them within the organisations they were working in would hear the case or address it.”
Georgina Kekea is an experienced Solomon Islands journalist and editor of Tavali News. She completed a survey of female reporters in the Solomon Islands’ newsroom.
“When I got the responses back, I guess for someone working in the industry, it just validated also what you have been through in your career. What all of us are going through as female journalists,”
Kekea said that there was not much support coming from the superiors in the newsroom.
“Mostly because I think we have males who are leading the team, not understanding issues which women face, and of course, being a Melanesian society, the culture plays a big part, and also obstacles men face when it comes to addressing women’s issues,” Kekea said.
Alex Rheeney is former editor of both PNG’s Post-Courier and the Samoa Observer.
He said he was not surprised by the panel’s discussion.
“Our female colleagues, female reporters, female broadcasters, they go through some very, very huge challenges that those of us who were working in the newsroom as a reporter before didn’t go through simply because of the fact we were male, and it’s unacceptable.”
“Why do we have to have those challenges today?”
He said that newsrooms should develop policies to look after the welfare and safety of female reporters.
“We just have to look at the findings from the survey that was done in Fiji.”
He was positive that the Fijian survey had been done but queried what the follow-up steps should be in terms of putting in place mechanisms to protect female reporters.
“I can only think back to the time when I was the editor of the Post-Courier, I had to drive one of my female reporters to the Boroka police station to get a restraining order against her husband.
“I got personally involved because I knew that it was already affecting her, her children and her family.”
Rheeney said that the media industry needed to do more.
The personal intervention he had undertaken, was a response to an individual problem. However, the industry needed to be able to do more, as harassment and violence against female journalists were in a state of crisis.
“We can’t afford to sit back and just wait for it to happen; we need to be proactive.”
Rheeney believed that the media industry across the Pacific needed to put more measures in place to protect female journalists and staff both in the newsroom and when out on assignment.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Many platitudes about media freedom and democracy laced last week’s Pacific International Media Conference in the Fijian capital of Suva. There was a mood of euphoria at the impressive event, especially from politicians who talked about journalism being the “oxygen of democracy”.
The dumping of the draconian and widely hated Fiji Media Industry Development Act that had started life as a military decree in 2010, four years after former military commander Voreqe Bainimarama seized power, and was then enacted in the first post-coup elections in 2014, was seen as having restored media freedom for the first time in almost two decades.
As a result, Fiji had bounced back 45 places to 44th on this year’s Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index – by far the biggest climb of any nation in Oceania, where most countries, including Australia and New Zealand, have been sliding downhill.
One of Fiji’s three deputy Prime Ministers, Professor Biman Prasad, a former University of the South Pacific economist and long a champion of academic and media freedom, told the conference the new Coalition government headed by the original 1987 coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka had reintroduced media self-regulation and “we can actually feel the freedom everywhere, including in Parliament”.
The same theme had been offered at the conference opening ceremony by another deputy PM, Manoa Kamikamica, who declared:
“We pride ourselves on a government that tries to listen, and hopefully we can try and chart a way forward in terms of media freedom and journalism in the Pacific, and most importantly, Fiji.
“They say that journalism is the oxygen of democracy, and that could be no truer than in the case of Fiji.”
Happy over media law repeal
Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Information and Communication Technology Timothy Masiu echoed the theme. Speaking at the conference launch of a new book, Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific (co-edited by Professor Prasad, conference chair Associate Professor Shailendra Singh and Dr Amit Sarwal), he said: “We support and are happy with this government of Fiji for repealing the media laws that went against media freedom in Fiji in the recent past.”
Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica . . . speaking about the “oxygen of democracy” at the opening of the Pacific International Media Conference in Suva on 4 July 2024. Image: Asia Pacific Media Network
But therein lies an irony. While Masiu supports the repeal of a dictatorial media law in Fiji, he is a at the centre of controversy back home over a draft media law (now in its fifth version) that he is spearheading that many believe will severely curtail the traditional PNG media freedom guaranteed under the constitution.
He defends his policies, saying that in PNG, “given our very diverse society with over 1000 tribes and over 800 languages and huge geography, correct and factful information is also very, very critical.”
Masiu says that what drives him is a “pertinent question”:
“How is the media being developed and used as a tool to protect and preserve our Pacific identity?”
PNG Minister for Information and Communications Technology Timothy Masiu (third from right) at the conference pre-dinner book launchings at Holiday Inn, Suva, on July 4. The celebrants are holding the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review. Image: Wansolwara
Another issue over the conference was the hypocrisy over debating media freedom in downtown Suva while a few streets away Fijian freedom of speech advocates and political activists were being gagged about speaking out on critical decolonisation and human rights issues such as Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua freedom.
In the front garden of the Gordon Street compound of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC), the independence flags of Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua flutter in the breeze. Placards and signs daub the walls of the centre declaring messages such as “Stop the genocide”, “Resistance is justified! When people are occupied!”, “Free Kanaky – Justice for Kanaky”, “Ceasefire, stop genocide”, “Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world” and “We need rainbows not Rambos”.
The West Papuan Morning Star and Palestinian flags for decolonisation fluttering high in downtown Suva. Image: APMN
‘Thursdays in Black’
While most of the 100 conference participants from 11 countries were gathered at the venue to launch the peace journalism book Waves of Change and the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review, about 30 activists were gathered at the same time on July 4 in the centre’s carpark for their weekly “Thursdays in Black” protest.
But they were barred from stepping onto the footpath in public or risk arrest. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly Fiji-style.
Protesters at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre compound in downtown Suva in the weekly “Thursdays in Black” solidarity rally with Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua on July 4. Image: APMN
Surprisingly, the protest organisers were informed on the same day that they could stage a “pre-Bastllle Day” protest about Kanaky and West Papua on July 12, but were banned from raising Israeli’s genocidal war on Palestine.
The protest march was staged on Friday but in spite of the Palestine ban some placards surfaced and also Palestinian symbols such as keffiyehs and watermelons.
The “pre-Bastille Day” march in Suva in solidarity for decolonisation. Image: FWCC
The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji and their allies have been hosting vigils at FWCC compound for Palestine, West Papua and Kanaky every Thursday over the last eight months, calling on the Fiji government and Pacific leaders to support the ceasefire in Gaza, and protect the rights of Palestinians, West Papuans and Kanaks.
“The struggles of Palestinians are no different to West Papua, Kanaky New Caledonia — these are struggles of self-determination, and their human rights must be upheld,” said FWCC coordinator and the NGO coalition chair Shamima Ali.
Solidarity for Kanaky in the “pre-Bastille Day” march in Suva on Friday. Image: FWCC
Media silence noticed
Outside the conference, Pacific commentators also noticed the media hypocrisy and the extraordinary silence.
Canberra-based West Papuan diplomacy-trained activist and musician Ronny Kareni complained in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “While media personnel, journos and academia in journalism gathered [in Suva] to talk about media freedom, media network and media as the oxygen of democracy etc., why Papuan journos can’t attend, yet Indon[esian] ambassador to Fiji @SimamoraDupito can??? Just curious.”
Ronny Kareni’s X post about the Indonesian Ambassador to Fiji Dupito D. Simamora. Image: @ronnykareni X screenshot APR
At the conference itself, some speakers did raise the Palestine and decolonisation issue.
Speaker Khairiah A Rahman (from left) of the Asia Pacific Media Network and colleagues Pacific Journalism Review designer Del Abcede, PJR editor Dr Philip Cass, Dr Adam Brown, PJR founder Dr David Robie, and Rach Mario (Whānau Community Hub). Image: APMN
Khairiah A. Rahman, of the Asia Pacific Media Network, one of the partner organisers along with the host University of the South Pacific and Pacific Islands News Association, spoke on the “Media, Community, Social Cohesion and Conflict Prevention” panel following Hong Kong Professor Cherian George’s compelling keynote address about “Cracks in the Mirror: When Media Representations Sharpen Social Divisions”.
She raised the Palestine crisis as a critical global issue and also a media challenge.
“Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world” poster at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre compound. Image: APMN
In his keynote address, “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism Can Survive Against the Odds”, Professor David Robie, also of APMN, spoke of the common decolonisation threads between Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua.
He also critiquing declining trust in mainstream media – that left some “feeling anxious and powerless” — and how they were being fragmented by independent start-ups that were perceived by many people as addressing universal truths such as the genocide in Palestine.
“Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists – do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes?
“The answer is simple surely . . .
“And it is about saving journalism, our credibility, and our humanity as journalists.”
Professor David Robie’s keynote speech at Pacific Media 2023. Video: The Australia Today
At the end of his address, Dr Robie called for a minute’s silence in a tribute to the 158 Palestinian journalists who had been killed so far in the ninth-month war on Gaza. The Gazan journalists were awarded this year’s UNESCO Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Prize for their “courage and commitment to freedom of expression”.
Undoubtedly the two most popular panels in the conference were the “Pacific Editors’ Forum” when eight editors from around the region “spoke their minds”, and a panel on sexual harassment on the media workplace and on the job.
Little or no action
According to speakers in “Gender and Media in the Pacific: Examining violence that women Face” panel introduced and moderated by Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM) executive director Nalini Singh, female journalists continue to experience inequalities and harassment in their workplaces and on assignment — with little or no action taken against their perpetrators.
Fiji journalist Lice Movono speaking on a panel discussion about “Prevalence and Impact of sexual harassment on female journalists” at the Pacific International Media Conference in Fiji. Image: Stefan Armbruster/Benar News
The speakers included FWRM programme director Laisa Bulatale, experienced Pacific journalists Lice Movono and Georgina Kekea, strategic communications specialist Jacqui Berell and USP’s Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor and the conference chair.
“As 18 and 19 year old (journalists), what we experienced 25 years ago in the industry is still the same situation — and maybe even worse now for young female journalists,” Movono said.
She shared “unfortunate and horrifying” accounts of experiences of sexual harassment by local journalists and the lack of space to discuss these issues.
These accounts included online bullying coupled with threats against journalists and their loved ones and families. stalking of female journalists, always being told to “suck it up” by bosses and other colleagues, the fear and stigma of reporting sexual harassment experiences, feeling as if no one would listen or care, the lack of capacity/urgency to provide psychological social support and many more examples.
“They do the work and they go home, but they take home with them, trauma,” Movono said.
And Kekea added: “Women journalists hardly engage in spaces to have their issues heard, they are often always called upon to take pictures and ‘cover’.”
Technology harassment
Berell talked about Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV) — a grab bag term to cover the many forms of harassment of women through online violence and bullying.
The FWRM also shared statistics on the combined research with USP’s School of Journalism on the “Prevalence and Impact of Sexual Harassment on Female Journalists” and data on sexual harassment in the workplace undertaken by the team.
Speaking from the floor, New Zealand Pacific investigative television journalist Indira Stewart also rounded off the panel with some shocking examples from Aotearoa New Zealand.
In spite of the criticisms over hypocrisy and silence over global media freedom and decolonisation challenges, participants generally concluded this was the best Pacific media conference in many years.
Asia Pacific Media Network’s Nik Naidu (right) with Maggie Boyle and Professor Emily Drew. Image: Del Abcede/APMN
This conference, the first of its kind in 20 years, served as a crucial platform to address the pressing challenges and core issues faced by Pacific media.
Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, the convenor of the conference and co-editor of the new book, emphasised the conference’s primary goals — to stimulate research, discussion, and debate on Pacific media, and to foster a deeper understanding of its challenges.
“Our region hasn’t escaped the calamitous impacts of the two biggest events that have shaken the media sector — digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
“Both events have posed significant challenges for news media organisations and journalists, to the point of being an existential threat to the industry as we know it. This isn’t very well known or understood outside the news media industry.”
Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, authored by Dr Singh, Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad, and Dr Amit Sarwal, offers a comprehensive collection of interdisciplinary research, insights, and analyses at the intersection of media, conflict, peacebuilding, and development in the Pacific – a region experiencing rapid and profound change.
Dr Singh noted that media issues had grown increasingly complex due to heightened poverty, underdevelopment, corruption, and political instability.
“Media and communication play vital roles in the framing of conflict, security, and development in public and political discourses, ultimately influencing progression or regression in peace and stability. This is particularly true in the era of digital media,” Dr Singh said.
Launching the Waves of Change book . . . contributor Dr David Robie (from left), co-editor Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad, PNG Minister of Information and Communication Technology Timothy Masiu, co-editor Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, and co-editor Dr Amit Sarwal. Image: The Australia Today
Dr Amit Sarwal said that the primary aim of the new book was to address and revisit critical questions linking media, peacebuilding, and development in the Pacific. He expressed a desire to bridge gaps in training, publishing, and enhance practical applications in these vital areas particularly amongst young journalists in the Pacific.
Winds of Change . . . shedding light on the intricate relationship between media, peace, and development in the Pacific. Image: APMN
Professor Biman Prasad is hopeful that this collection will shed light on the intricate relationship between media, peace, and development in the Pacific. He stressed the importance of prioritising planning, strategising, and funding in this sector.
“By harnessing the potential of media for peacebuilding, stakeholders in the Pacific can work towards a more peaceful and prosperous future for all,” Professor Prasad added.
Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific has been published under a joint collaboration of Australia’s Kula Press and India’s Shhalaj Publishing House.
The book features nine chapters authored by passionate researchers and academics, including David Robie, John Rabuogi Ahere, Sanjay Ramesh, Kalinga Seneviratne, Kylie Navuku, Narayan Gopalkrishnan, Hurriyet Babacan, Usha Sundar Harris, and Asha Chand.
Dr Robie is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, which also celebrated 30 years of publishing at the book launch.
The 2024 Pacific International Media Conference was organised in partnership with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).
Here is the livestream of Dr David Robie’s keynote address “Frontline Media Faultlines: How Critical Journalism Can Survive Against the Odds” at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month.
Asia Pacific Media Network deputy chair Dr David Robie . . . giving his keynote address at the 2024 Pacific Media Conference. Image: TOT screenshot/Café Pacific
Professor Vijay Naidu’s speech celebrating the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review at the Pacific International Media Conference in Suva, Fiji, on 4 July 2024. Dr Naidu is adjunct professor in the disciplines of development studies and governance in the School of Law and Social Sciences at the University of the South Pacific.
I join our chief quests and others to commend and congratulate Dr Shailendra Singh, the head of USP Journalism, and his team for the organisation of the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference.
This evening, we are also gathered to celebrate the 30th birthday of Pacific Journalism Review/Te Koakoa.
PACIFIC MEDIA CONFERENCE 4-6 JULY 2024
At the outset, I would like to warmly congratulate and thank PJR designer Del Abcede for the cover design of 30th anniversary issue as well as the striking photoessay she has done with David Robie.
Hearty congratulations too to founding editor Dr David Robie and current editor Dr Philip Cass for compiling the edition.
The publicity blurb about the launch states:
“USP Journalism is proud to celebrate this milestone with a journal that has been a beacon of media excellence and a crucial partner in fostering journalistic integrity in the Pacific.”
This is a most apt description of the journal, and what it has fostered over three decades.
Dr Lee Duffield and others have written comprehensively on the editorials and articles covered by the Pacific Journalism Review.
The 30th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review edition. Image: PJR
The editorial in the 30th anniversary double edition manifests this focus — “Will journalism survive?”, by David Robie
The launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalist Review. . . . Professor Vijay Naidu (from left), Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Dr Biman Prasad, founding PJR editor Dr David Robie, Papua New Guinea Minister for Communications and Information Technology Timothy Masiu, Associate Professor Shailendra Bahadur Singh and current PJR editor Dr Philip Cass. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Unfolding genocide
Mainstream media, except for Al Jazeera, have collectively failed to provide honest accounts of the unfolding genocide in Gaza, as well as settler violence, and killings in the West Bank. International media stand condemned for its complicity in the gross human rights violations in Palestine.
The media have been caught out by the scores of reports directly sent from Gaza of the bombings, maiming and murder of mainly women, children and babies, and the turning into rubble of the world’s largest open-air prison.
Pacific Journalism Review designer Del Abcede . . praised over her design work. Image: Khairiah A. Rahman/APMN
The widespread protests the world over by ordinary citizens and university students clearly show that the media is not trusted.
Can the media survive? Indeed!
These are not the best of times for the media.
“At the time when we celebrated the second decade of the journal’s critical inquiry at Auckland University of Technology with a conference in 2014, our theme was ‘Political journalism in the Asia Pacific’, and our mood about the mediascape in the region was far more positive than it is today,” writes David.
“Three years later, we marked the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre, with a conference and a rather gloomier ‘Journalism under duress’ slogan.”
The editorial continues:
“Gaza has become not just a metaphor for a terrible state of dystopia in parts of in the world, it has also become an existential test for journalists — do we stand up for peace and justice and the right of a people to survive under the threat of ethnic cleansing and against genocide, or do we do nothing and remain silent in the face of genocide being carried out with impunity in front of our very eyes? The answer is simple surely.
“And it is about saving journalism, our credibility and our humanity as journalists.” (emphasis added).
USP’s Professor Vijay Naidu and Dr Claire Slatter, chair of DAWN . . . launching the 30th edition of PJR. Image: Del Abcede/APMN
Contemporary issues
Besides the editorial, the 30th anniversary edition continues the PJR tradition of addressing contemporary issues head on with 11 research articles, 2 commentaries, 7 book reviews, a photo-essay, 2 obituaries of Australia’s John Pilger and West Papua’s Arnold Ap, and 4 frontline pieces. A truly substantial double issue of the journal.
The USP notice on this 30th anniversary launch says “30 years and going strong”. Sounds like the Johnny Walker whisky advertisement, “still going strong”. This is an admirable achievement as well as in PJR’s future.
It is in contrast to the NZ Journalism Review (University of Canterbury), for example, which survived only for nine years.
Founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994 by David Robie, PJR was published there for four years and at the University of the South Pacific for a further four years, then at Auckland University of Technology for 18 years before finally being hosted since 2021 at its present home, Asia Pacific Media Network.
According to Dr Robie, Pacific Journalism Review has received many good wishes for its birthday. Some of these are published in this journal. For a final message in the editorial, he recalled AUT’s senior journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell who wrote in 2020:
“‘Many Aotearoa New Zealand researchers found their publishing feet because PJR was dedicated to the region and interested in their work. PJR is central to journalism studies, and so to journalism and journalism education, in this country and further abroad. Long may that continue’.
“In answer to our editorial title: Yes, journalism will survive, and it will thrive through new and innovative niche forms, if democracy is to survive.
“Ra whānau Pacific Journalism Review!
“Pacific Journalism Review . . . 30 years going strong” – the birthday cake at Pacfic Media 2024. Image: Del Abcede/APMN
Steadfast commitment
I have two quick remaining things to do: Professor Wadan Narsey’s congratulatory message, and a book presentation.
Professor Narsey pays tribute to David Robie for his steadfast commitment to Pacific journalism and congratulates him for the New Zealand honour bestowed on him in the King’s Birthday honours. He is very thankful that David published 37 of his articles on a range of issues during the dark days of censorship in Fiji under the Bainimarama and Sayeed-Khaiyum dictatorship.
I wish to present a copy of the recently published Epeli Hau’ofa: His Life and Legacy to Professor David Robie and Del Abcede to express Claire Slatter and my profound appreciation of the massive amount of work they have done to keep PJR alive and well.
It is my pleasure to launch the 30th anniversary edition of PJR.
‘Far more than a research journal’
In response, Dr Robie noted that PJR had published more than 1100 research articles over its three decades and it was the largest single Pacific media research repository but it had always been “far more than a research journal”.
“As an independent publication, it has given strong support to investigative journalism, sociopolitical journalism, political economy of the media, photojournalism and political cartooning — they have all been strongly reflected in the character of the journal,” he said.
“It has also been a champion of journalism practice-as-research methodologies and strategies, as reflected especially in its Frontline section, pioneered by retired Australian professor and investigative journalist Wendy Bacon.
“Keeping to our tradition of cutting edge and contemporary content, this anniversary edition raises several challenging issues such as Julian Assange and Gaza.”
He thanked current editor Philip Cass for his efforts — “he was among the earliest contributors when we began in Papua New Guinea” — and the current team, assistant editor Khairiah A. Rahman, Nicole Gooch, extraordinary mentors Wendy Bacon and Chris Nash, APMN chair Heather Devere, Adam Brown, Nik Naidu and Gavin Ellis.
Griffith University’s Professor Mark Pearson, a former editor of Australian Journalism Review and long a PJR board member . . . presented on media law at the conference. Image: Screenshot Del Abcede/APMN
He also paid tribute to many who have contributed to the journal through peer reviewing and the editorial board over many years — such as Dr Lee Duffield and professor Mark Pearson of Griffith University, who was also editor of Australian Journalism Review for many years and was an inspiration to PJR — “and he is right here with us at the conference.”
Among others have been the Fiji conference convenor, USP’s associate professor Shailendra Singh, and professor Trevor Cullen of Edith Cowan University, who is chair of next year’s World Journalism Education Association conference in Perth.
Dr Robie also singled out designer Del Abcede for special tribute for her hard work carrying the load of producing the journal for many years “and keeping me sane — the question is am I keeping her sane? Anyway, neither I nor Philip would be standing here without her input.”
The Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) team at Pacific Media 2024 . . . PJR assistant editor Khairiah A. Rahman, PJR designer Del Abcede, PJR editor Dr Philip Cass, Dr Adam Brown, PJR founding editor Dr David Robie, and Whanau Community Hub co-coordinator Rach Mario. Whānau Hub’s Nik Naidu was also at the conference but is not in the photo. Image: Khairiah A. Rahman/APMN
Here is the speech by Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Timothy Masiu, at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference dinner at the Holiday Inn, Suva, on July 4:
I thank the School of Journalism of the University of the South Pacific (USP) for the invitation to address this august gathering.
Commendations also to the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) for jointly hosting this conference – the first of its kind in our region in two decades!
It is also worth noting that this conference has attracted an Emmy Award-winning television news producer from the United States, an award-winning journalism academic and author based in Hong Kong, a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, a finalist in the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, and a renowned investigative journalist from New Zealand.
Mix this with our own blend of regional journalists, scholars and like-minded professionals, this is truly an international event.
Commendation to our local organisers and the regional and international stakeholders for putting together what promises to be three days of robust and exciting interactions and discussions on the status of media in our region.
This will also go a long way in proposing practical and tangible improvements for the industry.
My good friend and the Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji, the Honourable Manoa Kamikamica, has already set the tone for our conference with his powerful speech at this morning’s opening ceremony. (In fact, we can claim the DPM to also be Papua New Guinean as he spent time there before entering politics!).
We support and are happy with this government of Fiji for repealing the media laws that went against media freedom in Fiji in the recent past.
In PNG, given our very diverse society with over 1000 tribes and over 800 languages and huge geography, correct and factful information is also very, very critical.
Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad and Timothy Masiu, PNG’s Minister for Information and Communications Technology, at the conference dinner. Image: Wansolwara
Our theme “Navigating Challenges and Shaping Futures in Pacific Media Research and Practice” couldn’t be more appropriate at this time.
If anything, it reminds us all of the critical role that the media continues to play in shaping public discourse and catalysing action on issues affecting our Pacific.
We are also reminded of the power of the media to inform, educate, and mobilize community participation in our development agenda.
IT is in the context that I pause to ask this pertinent question: How is the media being developed and used as a tool to protect and preserve our Pacific Identity?
I ask this question because of outside influences on our media in the region.
I should know, as I have somewhat traversed this journey already – from being a broadcaster and journalist myself – to being a member of the board of the largest public broadcaster in the region (National Broadcasting Corporation) – to being the Minister for ICT for PNG.
From where I sit right now, I am observing our Pacific region increasingly being used as the backyard for geopolitical reasons.
It is quite disturbing for me to see our regional media being targeted by the more developed nations as a tool to drive their geopolitical agenda.
As a result, I see a steady influence on our culture, our way of life, and ultimately the gradual erosion of our Pacific values and systems.
In the media industry, some of these geopolitical influences are being redesigned and re-cultured through elaborate and attractive funding themes like improving “transparency” and “accountability”.
This is not the way forward for a truly independent and authentic Pacific media.
The way we as a Pacific develop our media industry must reflect our original and authentic value systems.
Just like our forefathers navigated the unchartered seas – relying mostly on hard-gained knowledge and skills – we too must chart our own course in our media development.
Our media objectives and practices should reflect all levels of our unique Pacific Way of life, focusing on issues like climate change, environmental preservation, the protection and preservation of our fast-fading languages and traditions, and our political landscape.
We must not let our authentic ways be lost or overshadowed by outside influences or agendas. We must control WHAT we write, HOW we write it, and WHY we write.
Don’t get me wrong – we welcome and appreciate the support of our development partners – but we must be free to navigate our own destiny.
If anything, I compel you to give your media funding to build our regional capabilities and capacities to address climate change issues, early warning systems, and support us to fight misinformation, disinformation, and fake news on social media.
I don’t know how the other Pacific Island countries are faring but my Department of ICT has built a social media management desk to monitor these ever-increasing menaces on Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram and other online platforms.
This is another area of concern for me, especially for my future generations.
Draft National Media Development Policy of PNG Please allow me to make a few remarks on the Draft National Media Development Policy of PNG that my ministry has initiated.
As its name entails, it is a homegrown policy that aims to properly address many glaring media issues in our country.
In its current fifth draft version, the draft policy aims to promote media self-regulation; improve government media capacity; roll-out media infrastructure for all; and diversify content and quota usage for national interest.
These policy objectives were derived from an extensive nationwide consultation process of online surveys, workshops and one-on-one interviews with government agencies and media industry stakeholders and the public.
To elevate media professionalism in PNG, the policy calls for the development of media self-regulation in the country without direct government intervention.
The draft policy also intend to strike a balance between the media’s ongoing role on transparency and accountability on the one hand, and the dissemination of developmental information, on the other hand.
It is not in any way an attempt by the Marape/Rosso government to restrict the media in PNG. Nothing can be further from the truth.
In fact, the media in PNG presently enjoys unprecedented freedom and ability to report as they deem appropriate.
Our leaders are constantly being put on the spotlight, and while we don’t necessarily agree with many of their daily reports, we will not suddenly move to restrict the media in PNG in any form.
Rather, we are more interested in having information on health, education, agriculture, law and order, and other societal and economic information, reaching more of our local and remote communities across the country.
It is in this context that specific provision within the draft policy calls for the mobilisation – particularly the government media – to disseminate more developmental information that is targeted towards our population at the rural and district levels.
I have brought a bigger team to Suva to also listen and gauge the views of our Pacific colleagues on this draft policy.
The fifth version is publicly available on our Department of ICT website and we will certainly welcome any critique or feedback from you all.
Before I conclude, let me also briefly highlight another intervention I made late last year as part of my Ministry’s overall “Smart Pacific; One Voice” initiative.
After an absence for several years, I invited our Pacific ICT Ministers to a meeting in Port Moresby in late 2023.
At the end of this defining summit, we signed the Pacific ICT Ministers’ Lagatoi Declaration.
For a first-time regional ICT Ministers’ meeting, it was well-attended. Deputy Prime Minister Manoa also graced us with his presence with other Pacific Ministers, including Australia and New Zealand.
This declaration is a call-to-arms for our regional ministers to meet regularly to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by the all-important ICT sector.
Our next meeting is in New Caledonia in 2025.
In much the same vein, I was appointed the special envoy to the Pacific by the Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) in Mauritius in 2023.
Since then, I have continuously advocated for the Pacific to be more coordinated and unified, so we can be better heard.
I have been quite bemused by the fact that the Pacific does not have its own regional offices for such well-meaning agencies like AIBD to promote our own unique media issues.
More often than not, we are either thrown into the “Asia-Pacific’ or “Oceania” groupings and as result, our media and wider ICT interests and aspirations get drowned by our more influential friends and donors.
We must dictate what our broadcasting (and wider media) development agenda should be. We live in our Region and better understand the “Our Pacific Way” of doing things.
Let me conclude by reiterating my firm belief that the Pacific needs a hard reset of our media strategies.
This means re-discovering our original values to guide our methods and practices within the media industry.
We must be unified in our efforts navigate the challenges ahead, and to reshape the future of media in the Pacific.
We must ensure it reflects our authentic ways and serves the needs of our Pacific people.
Global Voices interviews veteran author, journalist and educator David Robie who discussed the state of Pacific media, journalism education, and the role of the press in addressing decolonisation and the climate crisis.
INTERVIEW:By Mong Palatino in Manila
Professor David Robie is among this year’s New Zealand Order of Merit awardees and was on the King’s Birthday Honours list earlier this month for his “services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education.”
His career in journalism has spanned five decades. He was the founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review journal in 1994 and in 1996 he established the Pacific Media Watch, a media rights watchdog group.
He was head of the journalism department at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1993–1997 and at the University of the South Pacific from 1998–2002. While teaching at Auckland University of Technology, he founded the Pacific Media Centre in 2007.
In 2015, he was given the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) Asian Communication Award in Dubai. Global Voices interviewed him about the challenges faced by journalists in the Pacific and his career. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MONG PALATINO (MP): What are the main challenges faced by the media in the region?
DAVID ROBIE (DR): Corruption, viability, and credibility — the corruption among politicians and influence on journalists, the viability of weak business models and small media enterprises, and weakening credibility. After many years of developing a reasonably independent Pacific media in many countries in the region with courageous and independent journalists in leadership roles, many media groups are becoming susceptible to growing geopolitical rivalry between powerful players in the region, particularly China, which is steadily increasing its influence on the region’s media — especially in Solomon Islands — not just in development aid.
However, the United States, Australia and France are also stepping up their Pacific media and journalism training influences in the region as part of “Indo-Pacific” strategies that are really all about countering Chinese influence.
Indonesia is also becoming an influence in the media in the region, for other reasons. Jakarta is in the middle of a massive “hearts and minds” strategy in the Pacific, mainly through the media and diplomacy, in an attempt to blunt the widespread “people’s” sentiment in support of West Papuan aspirations for self-determination and eventual independence.
MP: What should be prioritised in improving journalism education in the region?
DR: The university-based journalism schools, such as at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, are best placed to improve foundation journalism skills and education, and also to encourage life-long learning for journalists. More funding would be more beneficial channelled through the universities for more advanced courses, and not just through short-course industry training. I can say that because I have been through the mill both ways — 50 years as a journalist starting off in the “school of hard knocks” in many countries, including almost 30 years running journalism courses and pioneering several award-winning student journalist publications. However, it is important to retain media independence and not allow funding NGOs to dictate policies.
MP: How can Pacific journalists best fulfill their role in highlighting Pacific stories, especially the impact of the climate crisis?
DR: The best strategy is collaboration with international partners that have resources and expertise in climate crisis, such as the Earth Journalism Network to give a global stage for their issues and concerns. When I was still running the Pacific Media Centre, we had a high profile Pacific climate journalism Bearing Witness project where students made many successful multimedia reports and award-winning commentaries. An example is this one on YouTube: Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival
MP: What should the international community focus on when reporting about the Pacific?
DR: It is important for media to monitor the Indo-Pacific rivalries, but to also keep them in perspective — so-called ”security” is nowhere as important to Pacific countries as it is to its Western neighbours and China. It is important for the international community to keep an eye on the ball about what is important to the Pacific, which is ‘development’ and ‘climate crisis’ and why China has an edge in some countries at the moment.
Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand have dropped the ball in recent years, and are tying to regain lost ground, but concentrating too much on “security”. Listen to the Pacific voices.
There should be more international reporting about the “hidden stories” of the Pacific such as the unresolved decolonisation issues — Kanaky New Caledonia, “French” Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), both from France; and West Papua from Indonesia. West Papua, in particular, is virtually ignored by Western media in spite of the ongoing serious human rights violations. This is unconscionable.
Mong Palatino is regional editor of Global Voices for Southeast Asia. An activist and former two-term member of the Philippine House of Representatives, he has been blogging since 2004 at mongster’s nest. @mongsterRepublished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
A New Zealand politician and human rights activist with a strong connection to Tonga’s Democracy movement and other Pacific activism has been farewelled after dying last week aged 80.
Keith Locke served as a former Green MP from 1999 to 2011.
While in Parliament, he was a notable critic of New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and advocated for refugee rights.
He was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to human rights advocacy in 2021, received NZ Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender award in 2012, and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand’s Harmony Award in 2013.
Locke was often a voice for the Pacific in the New Zealand Parliament.
In 2000, he spoke out on the plight of overstayers who were facing deportation under the National Party government.
As the Green Party’s then immigration spokesperson, he supported calls for a review of the overstayer legislation.
Links to Pohiva
“We are a Polynesian nation, and we increasingly celebrate the Samoan and Tongan part of our national identity,” Locke said at the time.
“How can we claim as our own the Jonah Lomus and Beatrice Faumuinas while we are prepared to toss their relations out of the country at a moment’s notice?”
Locke had links to Tonga through his relationship with Democracy campaigner and later Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who died in 2019.
The late Tongan Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pōhiva … defended by Keith Locke in 1996 when Pohiva and two colleagues had been jailed for comments in their pro-democracy newspaper Kele’a. Image: Kalino Lātū/Kaniva News
He criticised the New Zealand government for keeping silent about what he described as a “gross abuse of human rights.”
In 2004, Locke called on the New Zealand government to speak out about what he called the suppression of the press in Tonga.
Locke, who was then the Greens foreign affairs spokesman, said several publications had been denied licences, including an offshoot of the New Zealand-produced Taimi ‘o Tonga newspaper.
Vale #KeithLocke, tireless and fearless campaigner for peace, justice and a sustainable future for a green planet … I’ll also remember him for friendship and commitment to independent truth publishing and OneWorld progressive bookshop. – @DavidRobie, editor, #AsiaPacificReportpic.twitter.com/SC0obJzfOA
Tribute by Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie.
‘Speak out as Pacific neighbour’
“We owe it to the Tongan people to support them in their hour of need. We should speak out as a Pacific neighbour,” he said.
In 2007, ‘Akilisi was again charged with sedition, along with four other pro-democracy MPs, for allegedly being responsible for the rioting that took place following a mass pro-democracy march in Nuku’alofa.
Flags of the countries of some of the many causes Keith Locke supported at the memorial service in Mount Eden this week. Image: David Robie/APR
“As the Greens’ foreign affairs spokesperson I went up to Tonga to support ‘Akilisi and his colleagues fight these trumped-up charges. I was shocked to find that the New Zealand government was going along with these sedition charges against five sitting MPs,” Locke said in an interview.
“I was in Tonga not long before the 2010 elections with a cross-party group of New Zealand MPs. We were helping Tongan candidates understand the intricacies of a parliamentary system.
“At the time I remember ‘Akilisi being worried that the block of nine ‘noble’ MPs could frustrate the desires of what were to be 17 directly-elected MPs. And so it turned out.
“Despite winning 12 of the popularly-elected 17 seats in 2010, the pro-democracy MPs were outvoted 14 to 12 when the votes of the nine nobles MPs were put into the equation.
“However, in the two subsequent elections (2014 and 2017) the Democrats predominated and ‘Akilisi took over as Prime Minister. I am not qualified to judge his record on domestic issues, except to say it couldn’t have been an easy job because of the fractious nature of Tongan politics.
“And ‘Akilisi has been in poor health.
Political tee-shirts and mementoes from Keith Locke’s campaign issues at the memorial service in Mount Eden this week. Image: Del Abcede/APR
‘Admirable stand’
“As Prime Minister he took an admirable stand on some important international issues, such as climate change. At the Pacific Island Forum he criticised those countries which stayed silent on the plight of the West Papuans.”
Locke said that Tonga may not yet be fully democratic, but that great progress had been made under Pohiva’s “humble and self-sacrificing leadership.”
Keith Locke was also an outspoken advocate for democracy and independence causes in Fiji, Kanaky New Caledonia, Palestine, Philippines, Tahiti, Tibet, Timor-Leste and West Papua and in many other countries.
His remembrance service was held with whānau and supporters at a packed Mount Eden War memorial Hall on Tuesday.
Philip Cass is an editorial adviser for Kaniva Tonga. Republished as a collaboration between KT and Asia Pacific Report.
An exhibition from Tara Arts International has been brought to The University of the South Pacific as part of the Pacific International Media Conference next week.
In the first exhibition of its kind, Connecting Diaspora: Pacific Prana provides an alternative narrative to the dominant story of the Indian diaspora to the Pacific.
The epic altar “Pacific Prana” has been assembled in the gallery of USP’s Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies by installation artist Tiffany Singh in collaboration with journalistic film artist Mandrika Rupa and dancer and film artist Mandi Rupa Reid.
A colourful exhibit of Indian classical dance costumes are on display in a deconstructed arrangement, to illustrate the evolution of Bharatanatyam for connecting the diaspora.
Presented as a gift to the global diaspora, this is a collaborative, artistic, immersive, installation experience, of altar, flora, ritual, mineral, scent and sound.
It combines documentary film journalism providing political and social commentary, also expressed through ancient dance mudra performance.
The 120-year history of the people of the diaspora is explored, beginning in India and crossing the waters to the South Pacific by way of Fiji, then on to Aotearoa New Zealand and other islands of the Pacific.
This is also the history of the ancestors of the three artists of Tara International who immigrated from India to the Pacific, and identifies their links to Fiji.
expressed through ancient dance mudra performance.
The 120-year history of the people of the diaspora is explored, beginning in India and crossing the waters to the South Pacific by way of Fiji, then on to Aotearoa New Zealand and other islands of the Pacific.
Tiffany Singh (from left), Mandrika Rupa and Mandi Rupa-Reid . . . offering their collective voice and novel perspective of the diasporic journey of their ancestors through the epic installation and films. Image: Tara Arts International
Support partners are Asia Pacific Media Network and The University of the South Pacific.
The exhibition poster . . . opening at USP’s Arts Centre on July 2. Image: Tara Arts International
A journal article on documentary making in the Indian diaspora by Mandrika Rupa is also being published in the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review to be launched at the Pacific Media Conference dinner on July 4.
Exhibition space for Tara Arts International has been provided at the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies at USP.
The exhibition opening is next Tuesday, and will open to the public the next day and remain open until Wednesday, August 28.
The gallery will be open from 10am to 4pm and is free.
Published in collaboration with the USP Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies.
