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Category: PLAN

  • Hungary’s Orban Says Trump’s Plan To End Ukraine War Is To Cut Funding

    Ukraine and its regional allies on March 10 assailed reported comments by Pope Francis in which the pontiff suggested opening negotiations with Moscow and used the term “white flag,” while the Vatican later appeared to back off some of the remarks, saying Francis was not speaking about “capitulation.”

    Francis was quoted on March 9 in a partially released interview suggesting Ukraine, facing possible defeat, should have the “courage” to sit down with Russia for peace negotiations, saying there is no shame in waving the “white flag.”

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit out in a Telegram post and in his nightly video address, saying — without mentioning the pope — that “the church should be among the people. And not 2,500 kilometers away, somewhere, to mediate virtually between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

    Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reacted more directly on social media, saying, “When it comes to the ‘white flag,’ we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century.”

    Many historians have been critical of the Vatican during World War II, saying Pope Pius XII remained silent as the Holocaust raged. The Vatican has long argued that, at the time, it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities and therefore could not denounce them.

    Kuleba, in his social media post, wrote: “I urge the avoidance of repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives.

    “The strongest is the one who, in the battle between good and evil, stands on the side of good rather than attempting to put them on the same footing and call it ‘negotiations,’” Kuleba said.

    “Our flag is a yellow-and-blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” added Kuleba, who also thanked Francis for his “constant prayers for peace” and said he hoped the pontiff will visit Ukraine, home of some 1 million Catholics.

    Zelenskiy has remained firm in not speaking directly to Russia unless terms of his “peace formula” are reached.

    Ukraine’s terms call for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, restoring the country’s 1991 post-Soviet borders, and holding Russia accountable for its actions. The Kremlin has rejected such conditions.

    Following criticism of the pope’s reported comments, the head of the Vatican press service, Matteo Bruni, explained that with his words regarding Ukraine, Francis intended to “call for a cease-fire and restore the courage of negotiations,” but did not mean capitulation.

    “The pope uses the image of the white flag proposed by the interviewer to imply an end to hostilities, a truce that is achieved through the courage to begin negotiations,” Bruni said.

    “Elsewhere in the interview…referring to any situation of war, the pope clearly stated: ‘Negotiations are never capitulations,’” Bruni added.

    The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk, said Ukraine was “wounded but unconquered.”

    “Believe me, no one would think of giving up. Even where hostilities are taking place today; listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy! Because we know that if Ukraine, God forbid, was at least partially conquered, the line of death would spread,” Shevchuk said at St. George’s Church in New York.

    Andriy Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, told RAI News that “you don’t negotiate with terrorists, with those who are recognized as criminals,” referring to the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin. “No one tried to put Hitler at ease.”

    Ukraine’s regional allies also expressed anger about the pope’s remarks.

    “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on social media.

    Lithuanian President Edgars Rinkevichs wrote on social media: “My Sunday morning conclusion: You can’t capitulate to evil, you have to fight it and defeat it, so that evil raises the white flag and surrenders.”

    Alexandra Valkenburg, ambassador and head of the EU Delegation to the Holy See, wrote “Russia…can end this war immediately by respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. EU supports Ukraine and its peace plan.”

    With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Watching the Neighbours

    With political tension rising around the world, airborne special mission aircraft have arguably never been more important. Asia-Pacific states facing Chinese pressure on their South China Sea interests are continuing to enhance their air capabilities. This includes the acquisition of special mission aircraft whose various roles include airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), intelligence, surveillance […]

    The post Watching the Neighbours appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Chinese women unimpressed by government’s plan to make more babies

    As International Women’s Day coincides with the annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress, moves are afoot to look at ways to boost flagging birth rates and kick-start the shrinking population.

    But young women in today’s China are increasingly choosing not to marry or have kids, citing huge inequalities and patriarchal attitudes that still run through family life, not to mention the sheer economic cost of raising a family.

    Since ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping called on women to focus on raising families last October, delegates to the National People’s Congress have been working a slew of possible policy measures to encourage them to have more babies, including making it easier for women to freeze their eggs and delay motherhood, flexible working policies, insurance coverage for fertility treatment and extended maternity leave.

    But for many Chinese women, who grew up influenced by a feminist movement that has changed the character of social media debate despite ongoing censorship and persecution, the government’s attempts at “encouragement” are having little effect, according to leading feminists who spoke to RFA Mandarin recently.

    A woman pushing a baby carriage waits to cross a street in Beijing, July 10, 2023. (Wang Zhao/AFP)
    A woman pushing a baby carriage waits to cross a street in Beijing, July 10, 2023. (Wang Zhao/AFP)

    Feng Yuan, a veteran women’s rights activist who took part in the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, said the state has always sought to control women’s bodies, citing the forced sterilizations and late-term abortions of the decades-long “one-child policy,” which ended in 2016 amid concerns over a rapidly aging and shrinking population.

    “The one child policy was also about being under the control of the state,” she said. “Prior to the one-child policy, the state was encouraging child-bearing, and even praised women as heroic mothers if they had five or six kids.”

    Fertility is ‘a battlefield’

    Since the Communist Party took power in 1949, Chinese women have rarely had a sense of their bodily autonomy — their fertility “has always been a battlefield,” Feng said.

    Now, the government wants more babies again, but this time around, women are far more aware of their bodily autonomy.

    “We definitely have more autonomy than we used to, and we can see a lot of people choosing not to marry,” Feng said. “Voluntary infertility is also on the rise, which is another result of growing bodily autonomy.”

    Sociologist Xu Fang, who lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, said women are also much more highly focused on achieving their personal goals than they once were.

    “A lot of young women who have just graduated from college and who have gotten all kinds of recognition along the way must be thinking more about getting a good career … because this is what they know how to do,” Xu said.

    “[For them], marriage and children are too complicated.”

    The figures seem to support this analysis.

    The number of Chinese couples tying the knot for the first time has plummeted by nearly 56% over the past nine years, with such marriages numbering less than 11 million in 2022.

    A November 2023 poll on the social media platform Weibo found that while most of the 44,000 respondents said 25 to 28 are the best ages to marry, nearly 60% said they were delaying marriage due to work pressures, education or the need to buy property.

    And attitudes are strongly skewed by gender, too. A survey of 18-26 year-olds in October 2021 found that more than 40% of women were either choosing not to marry or unsure whether to marry, compared with just over 19% of men in the same age group.

    Out of touch

    The women surveyed cited lack of time, high financial costs and discrimination against working mothers, amid a broader background of rampant ageism in the workplace.

    Xu said China’s exclusively male senior leadership is also out of touch with the things that matter to women.

    “You can imagine that these men aren’t doing much housework, have no childcare experience, so their mentality doesn’t take the actual needs of women into account,” she said. “That’s why I don’t think the fertility rate will go up.”

    A family walks with Chinese flags as the country marks its 74th National Day in Hangzhou, China, Oct. 1, 2023. (Aaron Favila/AP)
    A family walks with Chinese flags as the country marks its 74th National Day in Hangzhou, China, Oct. 1, 2023. (Aaron Favila/AP)

    But even if women do exercise their bodily autonomy and resist the state’s attempts to turn them into “baby machines,” as some online comments have complained, that doesn’t mean they won’t face growing social pressure to conform, especially if the government is stepping up propaganda to force them into “traditional” roles, Feng said.

    “Pressure from family members, their husbands and their family, their own parents will all be supported by government policy and encouragement measures, which will increase the pressure on women,” Feng said.

    Currently, the government is paying out childcare subsidies worth between 300-1,200 yuan (US$42-167) a month to families with two or three kids. Yet birth rates fell from 13.57% in 2016, the year that the one-child policy ended, to just 6.39% in 2023.

    According to Feng, such measures aren’t enough to change the minds of young women concerned about getting trapped with an overwhelming workload — both inside and outside the home — that isn’t shared evenly with their husband.

    Many women are citing gender inequality within families as a key reason not to get involved, she said, adding that flexible working hours and egg-freezing are unlikely to do much to change that.

    Xu Fang said that Chinese families used to be much bigger, allowing people to share the burden of childcare across more family members. 

    Now, everyone of child-bearing age today was likely an only child, leaving two parents alone in caring for two or three kids, she said.

    She said the only way to encourage women to have more children would be to reduce the unequal burden that motherhood places on them.

    ‘Government policy was wrong’

    Veteran feminist and New York-based writer Lu Pin said the flip-flop from a hugely repressive one-child policy in 2016 to today’s demand for more babies has damaged the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s credibility.

    “This is tantamount to admitting that this flagship government policy was wrong,” she said. “The government … have had to pay a price in terms of their credibility for this.”

    She said a eugenicist policy allowing widespread abortions of any fetus not conceived in a heterosexual marriage, or with birth defects, has also contributed to the widespread use of abortion, which also runs counter to the government’s attempts to boost births.

    Figures on abortion are hard to find, but were estimated by a health and family planning researcher in 2015 at around 13 million a year, more than half of which were repeat abortions. The abortion rate was estimated at 62%, compared with around 11% in Western Europe.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stacy Hsu for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Investigative Journalist Says He Helped Plan Potential Navalny Prisoner Swap


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

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  • Israel’s plan is to “make Gaza uninhabitable”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • Israel’s plan to invade Rafah in Gaza


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  • Israeli military to prepare a plan to evacuate civilians from Gaza city of Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion – February 9, 2024

    Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

    Palestinian children displaced by Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a temporary tent camp near Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah, Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

    Palestinian children displaced by Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a temporary tent camp near Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah, Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

     

    The post Israeli military to prepare a plan to evacuate civilians from Gaza city of Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion – February 9, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.


    This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

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  • Long term plan needed for underlying PNG problems, says academic

    By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    Academic Andrew Anton Mako says the Papua New Guinea’s systemic dysfunction was plain to see in the rioting and looting throughout the country’s main cities two weeks ago.

    That rioting was sparked by a protest by police after unannounced deductions from their wages.

    It led to a riot causing the deaths of more than 20 people, widespread looting and hundreds of millions of dollars damage to businesses.

    Andrew Anton Mako of ANU
    Andrew Anton Mako of ANU . . . “the government and the policymakers really need to take a comprehensive approach.” Image: DevPolicy Blog

    The government, which declared a two-week long state of emergency, put the wage deductions down to a glitch in the system.

    Mako, who is a visiting lecturer and project coordinator for the ANU-UPNG Partnership with the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre, said that the rioting would not have happened if the system was working properly.

    “That information could have been transmitted through the system so that not only the police officers, but other public servants would have been assured that there was a glitch in the system, and then they would return the money in the next pay,” he said.

    Symptom of major problems
    “I think that information could have been made available to the officers quickly and the protests should not have happened.”

    He said it was not an isolated event but a symptom of major problems facing the country.

    “The government and the policymakers really need to take a comprehensive approach in addressing that,” Mako said.

    He said that in the administration there were entire areas where little development or reform had happened in a generation.

    The last attempt to look at the government machinery was more than 20 years, under Sir Mekere Morauta, but since then “there hasn’t been any sort of reforms to improve governance, improve public safety, efficiency, and all that.”

    Mako believes if the work of Sir Mekere had been continued the country would not be facing the problems it is at the moment.

    What reforms are needed
    Mako said the government needs to know it faces major issues that cannot be resolved quickly — they will need to think in terms of years before reforms can be bedded in.

    “It’s not going to be easy, they have to really work on it for a number of years. They will have to come up with a reform agenda work on it for the next four or five years.”

    Up to now, Mako said, politicians have just dealt with the symptoms, rather than addressing the underlying issues, such as unemployment.

    He sees the high crime rate as being closely linked to the lack of work opportunities, along with high inflation and the failure of wages to keep pace.

    “The focus has to be on the sectors that create jobs. So over the last few years, over the last decade or so, a lot of focus has really been on the resources sector, the mineral, petroleum and gas sector.

    “Those sectors are really called enclave sectors and they have really limited linkage with the broader sectors of the economy,” Mako said.

    “So the mineral sectors do not create a lot of jobs. A lot of the jobs [there] are done by either machines or highly skilled workers. So it is the sectors like agriculture, like fisheries, like tourism, forestry, those are the sectors really, really create jobs.”

    Mako added the government should be focussing on investing in, and developing policies, in these traditional sectors, enabling many of the unemployed, especially the young, to find work.

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


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Has the China Coast Guard Reached Its Limit?

    It appears that the China Coast Guard could have reached its limit in terms of size and utility. Within the space of a decade the China Coast Guard (CCG) has become the largest coast guard force in the world. It was created by unifying five different maritime constabulary forces and allocated a huge number of […]

    The post Has the China Coast Guard Reached Its Limit? appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Has the China Coast Guard Reached Its Limit?

    It appears that the China Coast Guard could have reached its limit in terms of size and utility. Within the space of a decade the China Coast Guard (CCG) has become the largest coast guard force in the world. It was created by unifying five different maritime constabulary forces and allocated a huge number of […]

    The post Has the China Coast Guard Reached Its Limit? appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Naval Sector Strong at Malaysia’s LIMA 23 Defence Show

    LIMA 23 made a welcome return to the international event circuit boasting a heavy naval presence. Malaysia is one of the nations in the Asia Pacific region that has an established plan to modernise its defence forces. According to the Defence White Paper published in 2020, there are different strands laid down to transform each […]

    The post Naval Sector Strong at Malaysia’s LIMA 23 Defence Show appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Submarines Resurgent

    Submarines are undergoing a renaissance in the Asia-Pacific region. Excluding mini-submarines, approximately 230 are in service. With a growing naval superpower present in the Asia-Pacific region, demand for submarines is expected to increase, as a ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) spokesperson explained, they have “…the capability to occupy large numbers of opposing forces through their mere […]

    The post Submarines Resurgent appeared first on Asian Military Review.

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  • Dual-use ports give PRC proximity to vital shipping lanes

    The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is building and acquiring interests in ports throughout the world with an eye toward using them for commercial and military purposes. The dual-use harbors increase the nation’s influence along vital sea routes and at maritime passages. The highest concentrations of these foreign ports are in the western Indian Ocean […]

    The post Dual-use ports give PRC proximity to vital shipping lanes appeared first on Asian Military Review.

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  • NZ election 2023: Green Party pledges to double Best Start payment

    RNZ News

    New Zealand’s Green Party says it will double the Best Start payment from $69 a week to $140 — and it will also make it available for all children under three years.

    Greens co-leader Marama Davidson announced the policy today, saying it is part of a “fully costed plan” paid for with a fair tax system.

    “One in 10 children are growing up in poverty. For Māori, it is one in five. How is it possible that in a wealthy country like ours, there are thousands of children without enough to eat, a good bed, warm clothes, and decent shoes?,” she asked.

    “That is why the Green Party would ensure all families have what they need for these early years, by doubling Best Start from $69 a week, to $140, and make it universal for all children under three years.”

    Currently, families can receive the $69 weekly Best Start payment until their baby turns one, no matter the income.

    However, they do not get that payment while they are receiving the paid parental leave payment. After the first year, only families earning under $96,295 are eligible to receive the payment until their child turns three.

    The doubling of the Best Start payment is part of the Green Party’s Income Guarantee plan.

    “This universal payment for the first three years recognises that just like in our older years through superannuation, the very first years of a new baby’s life are a time when every family needs extra support,” Davidson said.

    Fairer Working for Families
    “Under this plan we’ll also reform Working for Families into a simpler, fairer system.

    “This will provide a payment of up to $215 every week for the first child, and $135 a week for every other child, in addition to the Best Start payments.

    “With the Green Party in government, we can take action to guarantee every whānau has enough to get by no matter what.

    “There is no reason for any child in Aotearoa to go hungry or to live in a damp, cold house. Poverty is a political choice.

    “Our plan will provide lasting solutions that will guarantee everyone has what they need to live a good life and cover the essentials — even when times are tough.”

    Since 2021, the Labour government has increased the Best Start payment from $60 to $69 a week.

    • Monday night’s Newshub-Reid Research poll gave the Greens a boost, rising to 14.2 percent, as the Labour Party dipped slightly to 26.5 percent.

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


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • WA govt begins work on 10-year science and tech plan

    The Western Australian government has kicked off work on a 10-year science and technology plan, as it continues efforts to diversify the state economy and become a global innovation hub. The plan, which will be published mid-2024, will build on last year’s 10-year innovation strategy and highlight key strengths in areas like space operations, remote technologies…

    The post WA govt begins work on 10-year science and tech plan appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • US again touts importance of Myanmar peace plan despite divisions within ASEAN

    Washington on Friday again urged countries to push Myanmar on a peace plan that has failed so far, although the regional bloc is divided over how to handle the Burmese crisis.

    Countries must persuade the Burmese military to follow through on the five-point plan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he met with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other countries in Jakarta on Friday.

    “In Myanmar, we must press the military regime to stop the violence, to implement ASEAN’s five-point consensus, to support a return to democratic governance,” Blinken said in a speech during a meeting with ASEAN ministers. 

    The bloc, of which Myanmar is a member, has sought to mediate a resolution to the situation in that country, where the military toppled an elected government in February 2021 and threw civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in prison. Nearly 3,800 people have been killed in post-coup violence, mostly by junta security forces.  

    On Thursday, ASEAN issued a joint statement of its foreign ministers, but that was delayed by a day following a meeting of the region’s top diplomats Tuesday and Wednesday. Reports said the delay arose because they could not agree on what their joint statement would say about Myanmar.

    The statement reflected the dissonance. 

    Thailand had last month held another meeting with Myanmar’s junta-appointed foreign minister, representatives of ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and India and China. The Burmese and Thai militaries are said to be close, and the outgoing Thai PM is a former army chief.

    ASEAN 2023 chair Indonesia did not take kindly to that meeting, which it skipped along with Singapore and Malaysia.

    And yet, the joint statement acknowledged that meeting, noting that “a number of ASEAN member states” viewed it “as a positive development.”

    The statement went on to note, however, that efforts to solve the Myanmar crisis must support the five-point consensus and efforts by ASEAN chair Indonesia.

    Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai defended the meeting, saying it was in line with an earlier ASEAN document that called for exploring other approaches for resolving the crisis.

    In another shocker for the rest of ASEAN, and indeed, everyone else, the Thai foreign minister announced on Wednesday that he had met secretly over the weekend with Myanmar’s imprisoned civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The Thai foreign ministry said that she and the junta had approved the meeting with Don.

    And not everyone is on board with the five-point consensus either, although they present a unified front, reports say.

    The previous foreign minister of Malaysia, Saifuddin Abdullah, was an exception. He had said last July that it was time to junk the peace plan and devise a new one on a deadline that included enforcement mechanisms. 

    ASEAN operates by consensus, which means any action it takes has to be approved by every member state. Divisions within the bloc have meant that not every member has approved of tougher action against Myanmar.

    Therefore, other than shutting out the Burmese junta from all high-level ASEAN meetings for reneging on the consensus, little else has happened since February 2021.

    Hunter Marston, a Southeast Asia researcher at the Australian National University, said the ASEAN top diplomats’ joint statement was largely in line with his expectations.

    He would have liked to see “ASEAN invite the NUG as a way of imposing costs on the junta, but that won’t receive consensus,” Marston told BenarNews, referring to the National Unity Government, which is the shadow civilian administration.

    He would have also liked to see “see a clearer acknowledgement of ASEAN’s frustration with the military junta.”

    And the statement “still left room for Thailand’s rogue … diplomacy,” Marston said. 

    Another analyst, Muhammad Waffaa Kharisma, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said he had expected a little better from the joint statement.

    “[N]ow I only hope that ASEAN does not accept back the junta without accountability,” he told BenarNews.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tria Dianti for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Mission Creep”: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Ukraine Joining NATO & U.S. Plan to Send Cluster Bombs


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • “Mission Creep”: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Ukraine’s Push to Join NATO & U.S. Plan to Send Cluster Bombs

    Seg2 katrina ukraine nato

    At today’s NATO summit in Lithuania, member countries are expected to debate Ukraine’s request to join the military alliance, which would provide additional military support for its war with Russia. Opponents to Ukrainian membership, however, warn that such a move would needlessly escalate what Russia sees as a proxy war with the United States against NATO encroachment on its western border. For more, we speak to journalist Katrina vanden Heuvel, whose recent piece for The Guardian, co-authored with James Carden, is headlined “Now is not the time for Ukraine to join NATO.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • Indonesia pushes to implement failed Myanmar peace plan ahead of ASEAN meetings

    ASEAN chair Indonesia said Friday it was increasing efforts to implement a five-point consensus to end instability in post-coup Myanmar, while Burmese civil society groups called for junking the “ineffective” plan amid divisions within the regional bloc.

    The crisis in Myanmar is expected to be one of the main topics at a series of ministerial-level meetings that Indonesia will host next week as the 2023 chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The talks will involve ASEAN members and other countries, including the United States, China and Russia.

    Jakarta has been communicating with all parties in Myanmar to persuade them to support implementing the consensus, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said. 

    “We have conducted 110 engagements, in the form of in-person meetings, virtual meetings, and phone calls, including my own face-to-face meetings with both the NUG and SAC foreign ministers on several occasions,” Retno told reporters, referring to the National Unity Government, the shadow civilian administration, and the junta, which calls itself the State Administration Council.

    ASEAN leaders agreed on the consensus during an emergency summit in April 2021, but the Southeast Asian bloc has since been heavily criticized for inaction in pressing ahead with the five-point plan. 

    It aims to reduce violence in Myanmar after the Burmese military toppled an elected government in February that year. The plan demands an immediate halt to violence, a constructive dialogue among all parties, the appointment of a special envoy, the delivery of humanitarian assistance and the visit of a delegation to Myanmar. 

    The junta agreed to this consensus but reneged on it, prompting ASEAN to exclude any representative from the Myanmar junta from its meetings, starting in October 2021.

    78769983-d507-40b0-bddc-6cae54d1bb1c.jpeg
    Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi speaks during a news conference in Jakarta, July 7, 2023. (Achmad Ibrahim/AP)

    ‘Most ASEAN states have no interest in democracy’

    Meanwhile, a network of Burmese civil society groups, which calls itself Myanmar Spring’s young revolutionaries, said the exclusion was a mirage, because Indonesia, through its office of the special envoy, was engaging with the junta.

    “[T]he Special Envoy’s official engagement with the illegal military junta is inconsistent with ASEAN’s decision and stance to exclude and ban members of the military junta from all high-level ASEAN meetings,” representatives of several civil society groups told Ngurah Swajaya, the head of the special envoy’s office, according to a statement issued Friday.

    The groups’ representatives had met with Ngurah on Monday.

    “[T]he representatives expressed their concern and frustration over the ineffectiveness and failure of ASEAN to stop the terrorist military junta’s violence and atrocities against Myanmar people over the past two years since the adoption of the Five-Point Consensus (5PC) on 24 April 2021,” the statement said.

    They also conveyed to Ngurah that “the ineffective 5PC will only embolden the terrorist junta to commit further crimes and exacerbate the plight of the people of Myanmar.”

    Indonesia’s president, too, acknowledged in May that there had been no progress in implementing the peace plan.

    All along, Myanmar’s junta has cracked down on mass protests, killed more than 3,000 people and arrested thousands more, according to human rights groups. The United Nations said more than 1.8 million people had been forced to flee their homes in Myanmar because of violence since the coup.

    And yet, ASEAN “continues to stick to a plan agreed in April 2021 that has palpably failed,” said CIVICUS Lens, a group that analyzes current events from a civil society perspective.

    “A major challenge is that most ASEAN states have no interest in democracy. Half of them are outright authoritarian regimes, and the other half could be characterized as democracies with flaws – sometimes serious flaws,” the group wrote in an article in late June.

    “Continuing emphasis on the 5PC as the baseline consensus, however, hasn’t masked divisions among ASEAN states. … But the fact that they’re formally sticking with it enables the wider international community to stand back and do little, on the basis of respecting regional leadership and giving the 5PC a chance.”

    Of ASEAN’s 10 members, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam are not democracies, and Thailand’s outgoing government first came to power much like the current Myanmar junta, via a military coup.

    CIVICUS Lens also noted Thailand’s decision to break ranks with ASEAN and engage in talks with the Myanmar military.

    Indonesia on Friday again dismissed the Thai meeting in June as not a formal one.

    “Regarding the informal meeting in Thailand, once again it was an informal meeting of ASEAN and only the foreign minister of Laos attended. The 5PC is the main track for resolving the Myanmar issue,” Foreign Minister Retno said.

    However, in addition to Thailand and Myanmar, representatives of ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines – as well as India and China – attended the meeting in Pattaya.

    Some experts say that ASEAN’s approach to Myanmar reflects its limitations as a consensus-based organization that prioritizes stability and non-interference in its members’ domestic affairs. 

    Additionally, while Jakarta should be praised for holding so many meetings with different stakeholders, it was impossible to assess the progress of its diplomatic engagements as they were confidential, said Hunter Marston, a researcher at the Australian National University. 

    “It’s also possible that the Indonesian government has underestimated the degree to which the current conflict is entrenched and the unwillingness of the warring sides to consider a peaceful settlement that does not include the complete eradication of the other side,” he told BenarNews.

    He said that the outcome of Indonesia’s efforts remained uncertain. 

    “If nothing materializes by the end of Indonesia’s chairmanship, however, then everyone will point and say, ‘See? There was never a chance of progress to begin with’,” he said. 

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tria Dianti for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • My Peace Plan

    Among the international communist and left movements, including their Russian branch, there has been, throughout the entire period of the war in Ukraine, three conflicting assessments of the situation: unconditional support for Ukraine, a cowardly position of “critical” support with “reservations,” and unequivocal condemnation. However, even the generally correct anti-imperialist position of rejection of militarism suffers greatly from “pacifism” in the worst sense of the word. That is, this point of view, by and large, comes down to only one thesis – the immediate cessation of hostilities, without a specific plan, explaining by what methods this will be achieved, by what means, under what conditions, at what borders, etc.

    And the social-chauvinists do not miss the opportunity to use this circumstance as an advantageous argument for themselves as justification for their conciliatory position: “And what do you propose? The war is already going on, this is a given, it is not possible to stop it, we must simply win and everything will end.”

    Moreover, absurd and groundless accusations of “pro-NATO” and “pro-American” rhetoric, and even of support for NATO’s crimes, are also flying at the communist internationalists.

    You think we don’t know about this!? We, whose senior comrades, and we ourselves, have consistently condemned the invasions of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia for so many years, held protests against the bombing and interference in the affairs of sovereign countries and rallies of solidarity with the peoples of these countries. Do you think we would hide and deny the role of the “alliance” in the destruction of the USSR and the socialist bloc, in the catastrophic results of these processes? Let’s leave these accusations against us to the conscience of these moralizers, if anything is left of that at all. Their position is all the more hypocritical because they themselves are well aware of the character of the current Russian government, which has started and continues the hostilities. It pursues a policy in its own interests, which by no means identical to the interests of the people, otherwise all this bloodshed would never have been started. So it was with almost all the conflicts of recent years in which this government participated: Chechnya, Syria, and now Ukraine. They have sold weapons surreptitiously, and they trampled on agreements, all to promote the interests of various oligarchs. It doesn’t happen otherwise.

    It is impossible to be against the government and at the same time support its policies; this is called “schizophrenia” or “split personality.” Let psychiatrists figure it out from there.

    At the same time, unilateral calls to stop deliveries of NATO weapons to Ukraine “here and now,” without preconditions or demands, no matter who they come from, are naïve and have a slight shade of hypocrisy and irresponsibility. After all, no similar requirements have been presented to the opposite side.

    In fact, the authors and heralds of this idea, perhaps unwittingly themselves, are playing along with only one of the parties in the conflict. In other words, if this requirement is implemented, the war will not stop but will continue, but only on terms more favorable to the Russian army. It will be temporarily suspended on the current “lines of contact” until Putin’s oligarchs gather strength for their new campaign, using the truce as a respite. And for the people of Russia, this automatically means the preservation of the political regime, the continuation of police repression, state terror, and the preparation of the authorities for a new, broader general mobilization. In other words, such a truce would be no less – or even greater – of a catastrophe for Russian society than a military defeat.

    Let’s try to imagine a real plan that would actually work to end the confrontation, and not simply to extend the Putin oligarchy. It could consist of four main points:

    1. Stop fighting on both sides;

    2. Cessation of any supply of foreign weapons and ammunition to both Ukraine and Russia;

    3. Abandonment by the Russian Armed Forces of the territory of Ukraine as of February 1, 2014 (“zero option”);

    4. The UN and its peacekeeping forces are temporarily introduced to the territories left by the RF Armed Forces.

    In fact, even some official propagandists are beginning to understand the need to move in this direction. For example, Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russia Today TV channel, proposed to hold referendums again (in other words, from the point of view of the authorities, she calls for a review of the new borders of the Russian Federation). It seems that in the fall of last year, the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, and the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics were entered into the Constitution of Russia. The Criminal Code even has a special article for such a case: “Art. 280.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Public calls for actions aimed at violations of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation.”

    If you believe the Kremlin propaganda, one of the mouthpieces of which is Simonyan herself, there have already been “referendums” in these regions, but now she is proposing to hold new ones. So then, you will admit that what happened before was a circus, and not a vote?

    But here a fundamental point emerges: it is necessary to stop the bloodshed not only to correct the previous injustices, but also to prevent new ones. It won’t be easy or simple. And in order to stop the escalation of violence and repression from any side, an appropriate policy is needed, which needs to be thought out today.

    In order to avoid clashes and outrages on both sides, it is proposed to create a “humanitarian corridor” in the territories left by the Russian troops for the unhindered exit of residents in both directions, and to temporarily deploy UN peacekeeping forces from among countries that are not directly or indirectly involved in the conflict.

    Failure to comply with at least one point entails the continuation of the war with innumerable victims and suffering for Ukrainian and Russian citizens, a war that claims hundreds and thousands of lives every day. So let’s find out, looking at the reactions to this program, what is actually more important to the elites and governments – is it land and territory, saving face (in fact, saving power and capital), or is it people’s lives? Bring out the hysterics to the slaughterhouse, who themselves are in no hurry to leave for the front, or send their children and relatives there!

    Everything has gone too far, Russian territory is being shelled (it was foolish to believe that this would not happen – usually in wars, in response to constant shelling, the other side also starts shooting back!), and threats of a nuclear apocalypse are heard. Yes, the chances of this scenario occurring are extremely small, but such rhetoric itself speaks of the seriousness of the current situation. Time does not wait!

    The peoples are tired of war, they want peace, and therefore a plan is needed that will stop the bloodshed and create conditions for the mutual laying down of arms, without fear of monstrous consequences for Ukrainians and Russians.

    The left must offer a program of an honest peace without territorial conquest or any further aggressive policy, with remuneration for all destruction, not from the pockets of the working people, but at the expense of those who unleashed this massacre. It cannot be ruled out that such a “peace plan” could bring the revolution in Russia closer, contribute to the awakening of class consciousness among the soldiers, to their desire for self-organization, and to an awareness of themselves as an independent force. The left is fundamentally in favor of finally saying its word to “His Majesty the Working Class,” the same class that is often thrown into a meat grinder against his will and desire. So that there are no “agreements” behind the back of the people, and at their expense, and the working people themselves ought to be the ones to stop the war. However, for the time being we have to be guided not by what we ultimately desire, but by the existing reality. And therefore, we need to take responsibility, take the first step, and begin the process that will lead to an end to the war, and lead the workers to victory in the struggle for their power, so that the defeat of the insane adventurist plans of the government of the Russian Federation does not turn into a defeat for the people and the country.

    Translated by Dan Erdman

    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Boris Kagarlitsky.

  • Is Japan’s plan to release Fukushima wastewater unscientific and unilateral?

    In Brief

    Many nations and environmental groups have questioned Japan’s decision to discharge nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese government is among the plan’s most vocal critics, with China’s foreign ministry recently issuing statements questioning the plan’s safety and declaring that the Japanese government is imposing a “unilateral decision” without considering less harmful disposal methods.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) found these claims to be unfounded. Japan’s planned release of water meets current international safety standards regarding wastewater discharge recommended by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as China’s own domestic safety standards. 

    The Chinese foreign ministry’s accusation that Japan is making a unilateral decision without sufficient evidence is also misleading. In the more than twelve years since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan has proposed a variety of disposal methods for consideration, with the IAEA and broader international community engaging in related research and evaluation several times.

    In Depth

    The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Japan’s Hakura Beach, is scheduled to begin discharging almost 400,000 of treated wastewater from the plant into the sea later this summer. 

    The impending deadline has brought international attention back to the more than 1.3 million cubic meters of wastewater currently stored in thousands of water storage tanks at the plant.

    TEPCO maintains that the controlled discharge of the wastewater follows a rigorous nuclear purification process using a pumping and filtration system known as ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) that is based on and meets the IAEA’s safety standards.

    A final IAEA assessment of the proposal is expected to be published at the end of June, with earlier IAEA reports indicating that the organization will likely support the plan. The reported decision has reopened domestic and international debate on the issue, and many groups have expressed their opposition, including the Japanese fishermen association, the international NGO Greenpeace and many in the marine ecology community.

    What are China’s main criticisms about Japan’s efforts to dispose of the wastewater? 

    China is one of the harshest critics of the plan. Chinese officials alleged that Japan’s plan lacks sufficient scientific evidence, that the ALPS treated water poses a “great harm” to the environment and that Japan has neither offered alternative plans nor consulted extensively with the international community – particularly neighboring countries who will be affected by the discharge. 

    Such allegations have been reiterated by top Chinese officials over the last three months, including by the Chinese Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao, China’s permanent representative to the IAEA Li Song and China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

    Chinese netizens on video sharing platforms such as Douyin and TikTok have widely circulated these officials’ comments, with many echoing their government’s rhetoric about the “great harm” posed by the wastewater. 

    “Fukushima’s nuclear wastewater contains more than 60 kinds of radioactive elements,” reads one comment. 

    “The half-life [of the radioactive elements] is up to 5,000 years,” says another netizen.

    Videos on Chinese social media comment on the dangers of Japan's proposed plan to discharge nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima disaster into the Pacific Ocean. Credit: Screenshots from Douyin user accounts.
    Videos on Chinese social media comment on the dangers of Japan’s proposed plan to discharge nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima disaster into the Pacific Ocean. Credit: Screenshots from Douyin user accounts.

    Will the ALPS treated water be a  “great harm” to the environment?

    No. 

    Discharging water into the ocean is a disposal method used by nuclear power plants around the world, including many of the 55 such plants in China. Despite this, Chinese officials have repeatedly claimed without further explanation that wastewater treated by ALPS is different from water discharged at other nuclear plants. 

    China’s assertions are incorrect, according to David Krofcheck, a professor of physics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He told AFCL that ALPS purified water is as safe as wastewater discharged from normal nuclear power plants, even going so far as to say he would eat fish caught in the discharged waters around Fukushima. 

    What radioactive elements will ALPS remove from the wastewater?

    ALPS will reduce 62 of the 63 radioactive substances currently in the wastewater to amounts that will have a negligible impact on the environment, according to the IAEA and Japanese officials. 

    The one substance still remaining in significant amounts following purification and dilution is an isotope known as tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that exists in trace amounts in nature and which can combine with oxygen to form a radioactive water known as T2O or tritiated water . 

    In light of international concerns and following suggestions by the IAEA, Japan has agreed to dilute the tritiated water one further time following its initial purification by ALPS before discharging it into the sea.

    Official diagram of the wastewater discharge plan and its anticipated impact. Credit: Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
    Official diagram of the wastewater discharge plan and its anticipated impact. Credit: Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

    How much tritium in water is considered normal? 

    Radioactivity is typically measured by the international unit becquerel. 

    The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends that drinking water contain no more than 10,000 becquerels of tritium per liter, Krofcheck says.

    The purified wastewater Japan plans to discharge contains 1,500 becquerels per liter, or about one-seventh of the WHO recommended amount, he says. 

    In comparison, China’s government allows a nuclear power plant in the coastal town of Qinshan to discharge wastewater containing up to 3700 becquerels of radioactive elements per liter. 

    In 2022 alone, the plant itself disclosed that it discharged 201 megabecquerels (201,000,000 becquerels) of liquid tritium, about one-fourth of its government stipulated annual cap of 800 megabecquerels. This figure is over nine times higher than Japan’s estimated 22 megabecquerels of annual tritium which will result from the Fukushima discharge. 

    Has Japan provided alternative plans of disposal for consideration?

    Yes. 

    Japan proposed five different ways to dispose of ALPS treated water in 2016 before finally settling on discharging the water into the ocean as of April 2021.

    Has Japan coordinated the discharge with the IAEA? 

    Yes.

    Since 2011, the Japanese government has regularly submitted progress reports to the IAEA concerning the response to the Fukushima accident. Japan has also asked the IAEA to participate in the creation and oversight of the entire discharge plan, with the UN nuclear agency forming a task force composed of scientists from 11 different countries, including China. 

    The international task force created by the IAEA has spent the past two years surveying the situation in Fukushima, holding dozens of meetings and publishing six reports offering specific recommendations to improve Japan’s final discharge efforts.

    The Task Force made its final trip to Fukushima at the end May 2023 and is currently preparing to publish its final report on the matter. 

    Has Japan communicated with its neighbors and the broader international community in planning the wastewater discharge? 

    Yes. 

    The IAEA task force further worked with independent third-party laboratories in Austria, Switzerland, France, South Korea and the U.S. to confirm that Japan’s ALPS treated water can meet all international safety standards regarding radioactive harm to the environment and humans. 

    In addition to the task force, the Embassy of Japan in China says that Japan sends monthly briefings on the discharge plan to all foreign embassies in Tokyo, including China’s mission. 

    TEPCO has set up websites in Japanese and English to explain the progress of the process while also publishing web pages in Chinese and Korean that explain the ALPS treatment process. In addition, the company regularly publishes monitoring data on the Fukushima nuclear plant every month.

    TEPCO's official explanatory chart. Credit: TEPCO official website.
    TEPCO’s official explanatory chart. Credit: TEPCO official website.

    The IAEA has not responded to AFCL’s inquiries about the conclusions of the Task Force as of the time this report was published.

    There’s no perfect plan, but experts think discharging the wastewater into the sea is “the least bad option.” According to Krofcheck, many of these criticisms are connected to TEPCO’s slow response to the initial crisis in 2011. 

    Krofcheck notes that to just leave the more than 1,000 tanks of treated water in Fukushima – a region where another earthquake will likely occur within the next 30 to 40 years – potentially sets the stage for an even graver nuclear energy-related crisis down the line. 

    Conclusion

    China’s criticism and resistance towards Japanese plans is part of the larger international controversy surrounding how to best deal with the wastewater left over from the Fukushima nuclear accident. However, statements on Chinese social media about the treated water’s “great harm” are misinformed and the assertion by the Chinese foreign ministry that Japan is unilaterally deciding on a plan that lacks ample scientific evidence is simply untrue. 

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) is a new branch of RFA established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of public issues.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Rita Cheng.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Japan’s Fukushima wastewater plan is safe, says expert on Pacific islands panel

    Fish that swim in treated wastewater from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear plant would be safe to eat, according to an expert who is part of the Pacific islands scientific panel that criticized Japan’s plan to discharge the water into the ocean.

    The plan to release Fukushima water over four decades into the Pacific has been a source of concern about possible environmental and health risks for nearby countries such as South Korea and China, as well as Pacific island nations. 

    However, some scientists say the worries are based on misinformation. A few Pacific leaders now back Japan’s plan after briefings from Japanese officials on the process for removing radioactivity.

    “We are talking much, much, much less [radioactivity] than is allowed in drinking water around the world. Would I eat the fish? Yes I would,” Tony Hooker, director of the Centre for Radiation Research at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said at a briefing on Wednesday.

    Water used to cool the nuclear reactors damaged in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami is stored in hundreds of large tanks at the coastal Fukushima plant, and its operator Tokyo Electric Power Company has said room is fast running out. Treatment and discharge of the water is part of a decades-long plan to decommission the plant.

    Japan is likely to carry out its first release of the wastewater during its summer, according to Hooker, who spoke at an online panel organized by New Zealand’s government-funded Science Media Centre. Tokyo Electric has been carrying out tests this month, using uncontaminated water, of equipment to dilute and pipe the wastewater out to sea. 

    hooker (1).png
    Tony Hooker, director of the Centre for Radiation Research at the University of Adelaide, is pictured in this video screengrab from a New Zealand Science Media Centre panel on June 21, 2023. Credit: BenarNews/Science Media Centre

    Hooker said he would stop short of drinking the treated water, but not because it’s dangerous. 

    “Would I drink the water? No, because it’s sea water,” he said. 

    Hooker is a member of an expert panel appointed in March by the Pacific Islands Forum, a regional organization of island nations, to review Japan’s plan and provide technical advice. 

    The forum’s chairman, Henry Puna, said in January that release of the water could “damage our livelihoods, our fisheries livelihoods, our livelihood as people who are very much dependent and connected to the ocean.” 

    The panel criticized the quality of data it had received from Tokyo Electric on the water in the tanks and expressed doubts about how well the purification process works. It called for an alternative storage method for the waste water such as making concrete with it. 

    Hooker was not representing the panel at the online briefing. 

    Japan’s decontamination plan for the water involves putting it through a purification process known as the Advanced Liquid Processing System, which it says will reduce radioactive elements except tritium to below regulatory levels. The nuclear waste produced by that process will be stored by Japan. 

    The treated water would then be diluted by more than 100 times to reduce the level of tritium–radioactive hydrogen used to create glow-in-the-dark lighting that’s at the mild end of the radioactive spectrum.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency has said the Fukushima process is technically feasible and in line with international practice. 

    AP23163266575399.jpg
    South Korean fishermen stage a rally against the planned release of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant in front of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 12, 2023. Credit: AP Photo

    David Krofcheck, a nuclear physicist at the University of Auckland, said removal of the “nasty” products of nuclear fission such as strontium and cesium is the more crucial issue versus naturally occuring tritium. 

    Even though outside laboratories can verify Japan’s efforts, diplomatically it could benefit from more collaboration with neighboring countries, Krofcheck said. 

    “There is a lot of trust that has been lost from early on [in the Fukushima disaster] that the Japanese scientists are doing this correctly,” he said. 

    “It would be nice if there was some kind of international collaboration from people in the neighborhood like Korea, Taiwan, China perhaps,” Krofcheck said. “I think that would smooth some of the hard feelings.” 

    Chau-Ron Wu, a North Pacific ocean currents expert at Taiwan research institute Academia Sinica, provided modeling for the online briefing that suggested tritium released from Fukushima would take a year to reach Taiwan’s coastal waters and two to three years to reach the west coast of North America.

    Tritium occurs naturally in the environment due to the sun’s energy hitting the earth and is also emitted by the world’s nuclear power plants. Some remains from atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. 

    The Pacific Ocean contains about 8.4 kilograms of tritium and Japan’s plan would add less than 0.1 gram a year, according to a statement from Nigel Marks, a nuclear materials scientist at Australia’s Curtin University. 

    He said there is more radiation in a banana than would be absorbed by fish from treated Fukushima water. 

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Samoa’s plan for Chinese visitors stumbles on minister’s ties to tour company

    Samoa has severed ties with a Hong Kong tour company contracted to market the Pacific island country in China after criticism of a cabinet minister’s links to the business – the latest transparency scandal for the government of Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa.

    Fiame acknowledged in Samoa’s parliament on Tuesday that Samoa Royal Tours, which has been operating as the local agent for Travel Focus Hong Kong Ltd. despite lack of experience in the tourism industry, is owned by children of agriculture and fisheries minister Laauli Leuatea Schmidt (also known as Laauli Leuatea Polataivao Fosi).

    “It was evident from a statement released by Travel Focus Hong Kong Limited that Minister Laauli Leuatea Schmidt was involved with this company,” she said, calling for cabinet ministers to abide by principles of good governance and transparency.

    In May, Minister for Communications and Information Technology Toelupe Poumulinuku Onesemo was criticized for attempting to get customs clearance for a relative’s vessel that arrived in Samoa from neighboring American Samoa without the necessary approvals. Samoa’s media association said he had attempted to intimidate a reporter who investigated the issue.

    Separately, Samoa’s government last week released a statement denying any endorsement of a reportedly Hong Kong-based initiative to launch a Samoa stock exchange, a Samoa cryptocurrency exchange and a special economic zone.

    The tourism industry in Samoa, home to some 200,000 people, has mainly relied on visitors from Australia and New Zealand and the country’s tourism authority has been keen to tap the vast China market. 

    Samoa Tourism Authority said in March that it had appointed Travel Focus Hong Kong to market Samoa as a destination in mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong, according to travel industry trade journal TTG Asia. 

    The Hong Kong company organized weekly direct charter flights to Samoa’s capital Apia from Haikou in China’s Hainan province, starting last month, bringing dozens of Chinese tourists to the island country. However the attempt to boost the number of Chinese visitors was beset by problems. 

    Established tour agents in Samoa complained that Royal Samoa Tours, as a new company, lacked the capacity to carry out tours. 

    Fiame told parliament that the venture also appeared ignorant of aviation rules. Charter flights from China were postponed because necessary permits weren’t secured far enough in advance including for a return flight to China, she said.

    A passenger ferry service between Samoa’s two largest islands also was disrupted, Fiame said, with passengers forced to wait four hours until a Chinese tour group arrived. 

    AP23136281638171.jpg
    Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa attends the 79th session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific at the U.N. regional office in Bangkok, Thailand on May 15, 2023. Credit: Sakchai Lalit/AP

    Fiame became Samoa’s first female prime minister in 2021 after voters narrowly rejected a ruling party in power for nearly three decades. She is the only woman head of government in the Pacific.

    The statement issued by Fiame’s office last week about Samoa Stock Exchange, a Samoa Digital Asset Exchange and an Oceania Special Economic Zone said the government had received proposals and was reviewing them but “has not given any endorsement or approval” despite speculation on social media to the contrary.

    The Samoa Observer newspaper reported that the three ventures have been registered as private companies with Samoa’s business registry. 

    The government said it welcomed new investments that would improve Samoa’s economy and benefit its people but it must ensure such initiatives are “safe, sound and feasible.”

    “Proposals of this nature require proper frameworks to regulate the exchange platform and protect market users and investors,” the statement said.

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Joyetter Feagaimaali’i for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Public hearing in American Samoa underscores opposition to marine sanctuary plan

    A public hearing in American Samoa about U.S. plans to expand a Pacific marine sanctuary has failed to assuage fears of tuna cannery job losses and further economic decline in the territory, according to workers, business owners and political leaders.

    After a decade of lobbying by the Hawaii-based Pacific Remote Islands Coalition, the U.S. government earlier this year said it could double the size of the protected area around uninhabited U.S. islands in the Pacific Ocean, making more ocean area off-limits to fishing fleets.

    But the proposal has been greeted with dismay in American Samoa, where residents fear a heavy blow to the economically crucial tuna industry. Dozens of placard-wielding employees of the StarKist cannery in American Samoa protested outside a recent hearing held in Pago Pago by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees protected marine and coastal areas.

    “I have seven children between the ages of two and 17, they are all in school, and I have been supporting my family working for StarKist Samoa,” Tanielu Malae, the sole breadwinner for his family, said at the May 25 hearing. “Do the people in Hawaii that made this proposal know what it is like for people like us that did not have proper education if we lose our jobs.”

    starkist01.jpg
    Employees of the StarKist cannery in American Samoa are fearful about losing their jobs if the marine sanctuary plan goes ahead. Credit: Joyetter Feagaimaali’i/BenarNews

    American Samoa’s Lieutenant Governor, Talauega Eleasalo Ale, who said he was at the hearing as a resident rather than representing the territory’s government, made an emotional appeal to “brothers and sisters” in Hawaii. 

    “What you are doing is unnecessary and it is painful and mean because you are not gaining anything extra by this proposition, but you are hurting us and cannery workers in this room that live off this land and rely on the fish that is coming from those islands,” he said. “If you really believe that we are your brothers and sisters you have to let this go.” 

    American Samoa’s governor and other politicians have voiced their opposition to the sanctuary expansion and criticized lack of consultation with the territory.

    ‘Fight against biodiversity loss’

    The total area of the expanded sanctuary would be 2 million square kilometers (770,000 square miles), larger than the Gulf of Mexico, compared with about 1.3 million square kilometers (495,000 square miles) now. 

    It encompasses waters around several islands, atolls and reefs that the oceanic administration says are “home to some of the most diverse and remarkable tropical marine life on the planet.” 

    The tropical waters are also ideal for skipjack tuna which travel the equator in search of schools of small fish to feed on.

    Tuna fishing provides about 5,000 jobs in American Samoa – where the South Korean-owned StarKist tuna cannery is the territory’s largest business – but the industry has been in decline. The American Samoan islands, located to the south of the marine sanctuary, are home to less than 50,000 people after suffering a shrinking population for at least the past decade. 

    “There are roughly 5,000 indirect and direct jobs that will be impacted,” said Taotasi Archie Soliai, Director of Marine Wildlife Resources in the territory.

    “Think about that number,” he said at last week’s hearing. “These are underserved marginalized stricken disenfranchised minorities and indigenous communities that will continue to suffer because of these types of Federal policies driven by people who do not care.” 

    AP18277080045790.jpg
    This October 2018 photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows birds at Johnston Atoll within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/AP

    Advocates of marine sanctuaries say they are crucial for the survival of endangered species and the health of the oceans. 

    The Pacific Remote Islands Coalition, which includes activists, scientists and nonprofit organizations, said that expanding the Pacific marine sanctuary will “meaningfully protect” the interconnected land, reef, sea and deep ocean environments. 

    The coalition also wants to rename the sanctuary “through a culturally appropriate process that honors the cultural, historic, and ancestral significance of the region.”

    “Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. Intact natural ecosystems such as the Pacific remote islands are more resilient to the effects of climate change and can help in the fight against biodiversity loss,” the group said in its 250-page submission to the U.S. government.

    Questionable benefits for tuna stocks

    For tuna, which have large ranges, it’s unclear if protected areas can produce an increase in their numbers. 

    Research published in January in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science predicted “weak to non-existent” benefits for skipjack and bigeye tuna numbers from marine protected areas. The study’s modeling was based on Kiribati’s Phoenix Islands Protected Area and hypothetical sanctuaries making up about one third of the western and central Pacific Ocean.

    Businessman Vince Haleck, who owns three long-line fishing vessels, told the Pago Pago hearing that an expanded marine sanctuary is meaningless without proper policing of American Samoa’s own waters to prevent unregulated fishing by China-flagged vessels.

    “Literally thousands of vessels, my boats, our boats see them all the time, catching our fish and selling it to us,” he said.

    Despite talk of U.S. Coast Guard assistance, “nothing has happened,” he said. “The Chinese will continue to fish in our waters, and we can’t seem to have the political will from Washington to be able to address this issue.” 

    Haleck said a possible consequence of the expanded sanctuary is that purse seiner vessels, which trail vast nets to scoop fish from the ocean, will find it more economic to take their catch to Mexico than American Samoa.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also held public hearings last month in Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Joyetter Feagaimaali’i for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Public hearing in American Samoa underscores opposition to marine sanctuary plan

    A public hearing in American Samoa about U.S. plans to expand a Pacific marine sanctuary has failed to assuage fears of tuna cannery job losses and further economic decline in the territory, according to workers, business owners and political leaders.

    After a decade of lobbying by the Hawaii-based Pacific Remote Islands Coalition, the U.S. government earlier this year said it could double the size of the protected area around uninhabited U.S. islands in the Pacific Ocean, making more ocean area off-limits to fishing fleets.

    But the proposal has been greeted with dismay in American Samoa, where residents fear a heavy blow to the economically crucial tuna industry. Dozens of placard-wielding employees of the StarKist cannery in American Samoa protested outside a recent hearing held in Pago Pago by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees protected marine and coastal areas.

    “I have seven children between the ages of two and 17, they are all in school, and I have been supporting my family working for StarKist Samoa,” Tanielu Malae, the sole breadwinner for his family, said at the May 25 hearing. “Do the people in Hawaii that made this proposal know what it is like for people like us that did not have proper education if we lose our jobs.”

    starkist01.jpg
    Employees of the StarKist cannery in American Samoa are fearful about losing their jobs if the marine sanctuary plan goes ahead. Credit: Joyetter Feagaimaali’i/BenarNews

    American Samoa’s Lieutenant Governor, Talauega Eleasalo Ale, who said he was at the hearing as a resident rather than representing the territory’s government, made an emotional appeal to “brothers and sisters” in Hawaii. 

    “What you are doing is unnecessary and it is painful and mean because you are not gaining anything extra by this proposition, but you are hurting us and cannery workers in this room that live off this land and rely on the fish that is coming from those islands,” he said. “If you really believe that we are your brothers and sisters you have to let this go.” 

    American Samoa’s governor and other politicians have voiced their opposition to the sanctuary expansion and criticized lack of consultation with the territory.

    ‘Fight against biodiversity loss’

    The total area of the expanded sanctuary would be 2 million square kilometers (770,000 square miles), larger than the Gulf of Mexico, compared with about 1.3 million square kilometers (495,000 square miles) now. 

    It encompasses waters around several islands, atolls and reefs that the oceanic administration says are “home to some of the most diverse and remarkable tropical marine life on the planet.” 

    The tropical waters are also ideal for skipjack tuna which travel the equator in search of schools of small fish to feed on.

    Tuna fishing provides about 5,000 jobs in American Samoa – where the South Korean-owned StarKist tuna cannery is the territory’s largest business – but the industry has been in decline. The American Samoan islands, located to the south of the marine sanctuary, are home to less than 50,000 people after suffering a shrinking population for at least the past decade. 

    “There are roughly 5,000 indirect and direct jobs that will be impacted,” said Taotasi Archie Soliai, Director of Marine Wildlife Resources in the territory.

    “Think about that number,” he said at last week’s hearing. “These are underserved marginalized stricken disenfranchised minorities and indigenous communities that will continue to suffer because of these types of Federal policies driven by people who do not care.” 

    AP18277080045790.jpg
    This October 2018 photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows birds at Johnston Atoll within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/AP

    Advocates of marine sanctuaries say they are crucial for the survival of endangered species and the health of the oceans. 

    The Pacific Remote Islands Coalition, which includes activists, scientists and nonprofit organizations, said that expanding the Pacific marine sanctuary will “meaningfully protect” the interconnected land, reef, sea and deep ocean environments. 

    The coalition also wants to rename the sanctuary “through a culturally appropriate process that honors the cultural, historic, and ancestral significance of the region.”

    “Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history. Intact natural ecosystems such as the Pacific remote islands are more resilient to the effects of climate change and can help in the fight against biodiversity loss,” the group said in its 250-page submission to the U.S. government.

    Questionable benefits for tuna stocks

    For tuna, which have large ranges, it’s unclear if protected areas can produce an increase in their numbers. 

    Research published in January in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science predicted “weak to non-existent” benefits for skipjack and bigeye tuna numbers from marine protected areas. The study’s modeling was based on Kiribati’s Phoenix Islands Protected Area and hypothetical sanctuaries making up about one third of the western and central Pacific Ocean.

    Businessman Vince Haleck, who owns three long-line fishing vessels, told the Pago Pago hearing that an expanded marine sanctuary is meaningless without proper policing of American Samoa’s own waters to prevent unregulated fishing by China-flagged vessels.

    “Literally thousands of vessels, my boats, our boats see them all the time, catching our fish and selling it to us,” he said.

    Despite talk of U.S. Coast Guard assistance, “nothing has happened,” he said. “The Chinese will continue to fish in our waters, and we can’t seem to have the political will from Washington to be able to address this issue.” 

    Haleck said a possible consequence of the expanded sanctuary is that purse seiner vessels, which trail vast nets to scoop fish from the ocean, will find it more economic to take their catch to Mexico than American Samoa.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also held public hearings last month in Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

    BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Joyetter Feagaimaali’i for BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

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