Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says the need for Aotearoa New Zealand to impose sanctions against Israel has grown more urgent after airstrikes on Gaza resumed, killing more than 400 people.
Swarbrick lodged a member’s bill in December and said that with all opposition parties backing it, the support of just six backbench government MPs would mean it could skip the “biscuit tin” and be brought to Parliament for a first reading.
“I feel as though every other day there is something else which adds urgency, but yes — I think as a result of the most recent round of atrocities and particularly the public focus, attention, energy and effort that is being that has been put on them, that, yes, parliamentarians desperately need to act.
Swarbrick claimed there were government MPs who were keen to support her bill, saying it was why her party was publicly pushing the numbers needed to get it across the line.
“We have the most whipped Parliament in the Western world,” she said. “We would hope that parliamentarians would live up to all of those statements that they make about their values and principles when they do their bright-eyed and bushy-tailed maiden speeches.
“The time is now, people cannot hide behind party lines anymore.
“I know for a fact that there are government MPs that are keen to support this kaupapa.”
Standing order allowance
Standing Order 288 allows MPs who are not ministers or undersecretaries to indicate their support for a member’s bill.
If at least 61 MPs get behind it, the legislation skips the “biscuit tin” ballot.
If answered, Swarbrick’s call would be the first time this process is followed.
Labour confirmed its support for the bill last week.
A coalition spokesperson said the government’s policy position on the matter remained unchanged, including in response to Swarbrick’s bill.
New Zealand has consistently advocated for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.
Swarbrick pointed to New Zealand’s support — alongside 123 other countries — of a UN resolution calling for sanctions against those responsible for Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in relation to settler violence.
Conditional support
The government’s support for the resolution was conditional and included several caveats — including that the 12-month timeframe for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories was “unrealistic”, and noted the resolution went beyond what was initially proposed.
None of the other 123 countries which supported the resolution have yet brought sanctions against Israel.
“Unfortunately, in the several months following that resolution in September of last year, our government has done nothing to fulfil that commitment,” Swarbrick said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ permanent representative to the UN Carolyn Schwalger in September noted that the Resolution imposed no obligations on New Zealand beyond what already existed under international law, but “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council”.
NZ ambassador to the UN Carolyn Schwalger speaking at the UN General Assembly . . . “New Zealand stands ready to implement any measures adopted by the UN Security Council.” Image: Screenshot/UN General Assembly livestream/RNZ
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in December said the government had a long-standing position of travel bans on extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, and wanted to see a two-state solution developed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said its military pressure against Hamas was to secure the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack, and “this is just the beginning”.
Israel continues to deny accusations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
South African genocide case against Israel
However, South Africa has taken a case of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the trial remains ongoing with 14 countries having confirmed that they are intervening in support of South Africa.
UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a tweet he was “outraged” by the Israeli airstrikes.
“I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be re-established and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally,” he said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
I am outraged by the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
I strongly appeal for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be reestablished and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally.
The Israeli government vows to continue escalating these military attacks, claiming it is in response to Hamas’ refusal to extend the ceasefire, which has been in place since January 19.
But is this the real reason for pre-dawn attack? Or is there a much more cynical explanation — one tied to the political fate of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
This week, New Zealand journalist Mohamed Hassan, host of the Middle East Eye’s weekly Big Picture podcast, speaks to Daniel Levy, the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator.
Ceasefire broken: Netanyahu is exposed. Video: Middle East Eye
“It seems our foreign policy is up for grabs at the moment,” he said, citing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s seeming endorsement of India’s bid to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group despite New Zealand’s previous long-standing objection.
“I think these are bad moves for New Zealand. We should continue to be independent and principled in our foreign policy.”
It included a reference to India’s hopes of joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Indian PM Narendra Modi at the Sikh temple Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib . . . “both acknowledged the value of India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).” Image: RNZ
“Both leaders acknowledged the importance of upholding the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime and acknowledged the value of India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in context of predictability for India’s clean energy goals and its non-proliferation credentials,” the statement said, as reported by StratNews Global.
The NSG was set up in 1974 as the US response to India’s “peaceful nuclear test” that year. Comprising 48 countries, the aim was to ensure that nuclear trade for peaceful purposes does not contribute to the proliferation of atomic weapons, the report said.
India is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which is one of the pre-requisites of joining the NSG.
NZ objected to India
In the past New Zealand has objected to India joining the NSG because of concern access to those nuclear materials could be used for nuclear weapons.
“So it’s a principled stance New Zealand has taken. Christopher Luxon signed that away yesterday,” Hipkins said.
“He basically signed a memo that basically said that we supported India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group despite the fact that India has consistently refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
It was “a reversal” of previous policy, Hipkins said, and undermined New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance.
But a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters denied there had been a change.
“New Zealand’s position on the Nuclear Suppliers Group has not changed, contrary to what Mr Hipkins claims. The joint statements released by the New Zealand and Indian Prime Ministers in 2016 and 2025 make that abundantly clear,” he said.
“If Mr Hipkins or his predecessor Jacinda Ardern had travelled to India during their six years as Prime Minister, the Labour Party might understand this issue and the New Zealand-India relationship a bit better.”
Opposed to ‘selling out’
Peters was also Foreign Minister during the first three years of the Ardern government.
On a possible free trade deal with India, Hipkins said he did not want to see it achieved at the expense of “selling out large parts of New Zealand’s economy and potentially New Zealand’s principled foreign policy stance” which would not be good for this country.
“The endorsement of India joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group is a real departure.”
Comment has been requested from the Prime Minister’s office.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In the year since Hong Kong passed its “Article 23” legislation, national security police have hauled in the friends of a pro-democracy activist in Taiwan over comments he made on social media, and are increasingly monitoring people’s social media interactions.
Fu Tong, who now lives in democratic Taiwan, said police back home seem to be targeting online speech since the passing of a second national security law that includes a broader “sedition” offense than earlier legislation.
“It’s pretty serious now,” Fu told RFA in an interview on Monday. “Before, they would just read my posts. But since Article 23, they have even been monitoring my interactions with my friends.”
A friend of his was hauled in for questioning by national security police after Fu left a comment on their Facebook account, he said.
“Now, I daren’t leave comments on my friends’ Facebook [posts],” he said.
Images of activists Simon Cheng, Frances Hui, Joey Siu, Johnny Fok and Tony Choi are displayed during a press conference to issue arrest warrants in Hong Kong, Dec. 14, 2023.(Tyrone Siu/Reuters)
The Safeguarding National Security bill, commonly known as Article 23, was passed on March 23, 2024.
It came amid a crackdown on dissent that has used both the 2020 National Security Law and colonial-era sedition laws to prosecute and jail people for protest and political opposition in unprecedented numbers.
Chilling effect
The government said the legislation was needed to plug “loopholes” left by the 2020 National Security Law and claims it is needed to deal with clandestine activity by “foreign forces” in the city, which the ruling Communist Party blames for the 2019 mass protest movement that was sparked by plans to allow extradition to mainland China.
The law proposes sentences of up to life imprisonment for “treason,” “insurrection,” “sabotage” and “mutiny,” 20 years for espionage and 10 years for crimes linked to “state secrets” and “sedition.”
It also allows the authorities to revoke the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passports of anyone who flees overseas, and to target overseas activists with financial sanctions.
Human rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung is seen inside a vehicle after being detained in Hong Kong, Sept. 8, 2021.(Tyrone Siu/Reuters)
The concept of “collusion with foreign forces ” runs throughout the draft bill, and sentences are harsher where “foreign forces” are deemed to be involved.
Fu said Article 23 has had a chilling effect on Hong Kong-related activism, even overseas, with fewer exiled Hong Kongers turning out for protests and other events in Taiwan.
He said activists still plan to go ahead with a protest marking the first anniversary of the Article 23 legislation in Taipei on Sunday, however.
Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Center for Asian Law, Georgetown University, said there are other examples of the law being used to censor social media.
In May 2024, Hong Kong police arrested jailed human rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung and five other people — the first arrests to be made under the recently passed Article 23 security law — for making social media posts with “seditious intent” ahead of the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre.
Being watched
He said the government is using the legislation to bolster the feeling that ordinary people are being watched.
“Over the past year, the most common charge used to prosecute people under Article 23 has been sedition,” Lai said. “Sedition is kind of a catch-all offense, and the government is using it to target more ordinary Hong Kongers.”
“The point is to warn Hong Kongers that they’re not immune just because they’re not a political figure … and that ordinary people are also being monitored when they go online,” he said.
Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, is seen in an undated photo.(Tang Zheng/RFA)
The government hasn’t made public details of the number of prosecutions under the law to date, but Lai said that the cases that make the news may only be the tip of the iceberg.
He said the recent confiscation of exiled pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui’s assets only came to light because Hui himself spoke out about it.
He said the law grants sweeping powers of surveillance to the authorities, increasing the size of the police dragnet to include everyday comments and activities.
“The biggest difference between Article 23 and the 2020 National Security Law is that Article 23 provides more powers for the Hong Kong government to chip away at the system,” Lai said.
“The government can decide not to parole people if it judges them to be a threat to national security, and it can prevent defendants from seeing a lawyer, and hold them in police stations for longer than before,” he said.
He said it was significant that the Court of Appeal allowed an injunction against the banned 2019 protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong” after the Article 23 legislation was passed.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.
New Zealand’s National-led coalition government’s policy on Gaza seems caught between a desire for a two-state diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and closer alignment with the US, which supports a Netanyahu government strongly opposed to a Palestinian state
In the last 17 months, Gaza has been the scene of what Thomas Merton once called the unspeakable — human wrongdoing on a scale and a depth that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to adequately describe.
The latest Gaza conflict began with a horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that prompted a relentless Israel ground and air offensive in Gaza with full financial, logistical and diplomatic backing from the Biden administration.
During this period, around 50,000 people – 48,903 Palestinians and 1706 Israelis – have been reported killed in the Gaza conflict, according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics,and more than 224 humanitarian aid workers.
Moreover, a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, signed in mid-January, seems to be hanging by a thread.
Israel has resumed its blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza and cut off electricity after Hamas rejected an Israeli proposal to extend phase 1 of the ceasefire deal (to release more Israeli hostages) without any commitment to implement phase 2 (that envisaged ending the conflict in Gaza and Israel withdrawing its troops from the territory).
Hamas insists on negotiating phase 2 as signed by both parties in the January ceasefire agreement
Over the weekend, Israel reportedly launched air-strikes in Gaza and the Trump administration unleashed a wave of attacks on Houthi rebel positions in Yemen after the Houthis warned Israel not to restart the war in Gaza.
New Zealand and the Gaza conflict Although distant in geographic terms, the Gaza crisis represents a major moral and legal challenge to New Zealand’s self-image and its worldview based on the strengthening of an international rules-based order.
New Zealand’s founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, emphasised partnership and cooperation between indigenous Māori and European settlers in nation-building.
While the aspirations of the Treaty have yet to be fully realised, the credibility of its vision of reconciliation at home depends on New Zealand’s willingness to uphold respect for human rights and the rule of law in the international arena, particularly in states like Israel where tensions persist between the settler population and Palestinians in occupied territories like the West Bank.
New Zealand’s declaratory stance towards Gaza
In 2023 and 2024, New Zealand consistently backed calls in the UN General Assembly for humanitarian truces or ceasefires in Gaza. It also joined Australia and Canada in February and July last year to demand an end to hostilities.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, told the General Assembly in April 2024 that the Security Council had failed in its responsibility “to maintain international peace and security”.
He was right. The Biden administration used its UN Security Council veto four times to perpetuate this brutal onslaught in Gaza for nearly 15 months.
In addition, Peters has repeatedly said there can be no military resolution of a political problem in Gaza that can only be resolved through affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination within the framework of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
The limitations of New Zealand’s Gaza approach Despite considerable disagreement with Netanyahu’s policy of “mighty vengeance” in Gaza, the National-led coalition government had few qualms about sending a small Defence Force deployment to the Red Sea in January 2024 as part of a US-led coalition effort to counter Houthi rebel attacks on commercial shipping there.
While such attacks are clearly illegal, they are basically part of the fallout from a prolonged international failure to stop the US-enabled carnage in Gaza.
In particular, the NZDF’s Red Sea deployment did not sit comfortably with New Zealand’s acceptance in September 2024 of the ICJ’s ruling that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza) was “unlawful”.
At the same time, the National-led coalition government’s silence on US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to “own” Gaza, displace two million Palestinian residents and make the territory the “Riviera” of the Middle East was deafening.
Furthermore, while Wellington announced travel bans on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank in February 2024, it has had little to say publicly about the Netanyahu government’s plans to annex the West Bank in 2025. Such a development would gravely undermine the two-state solution, violate international law, and further fuel regional tensions.
New Zealand’s low-key policy On balance, the National-led coalition government’s policy towards Gaza appears to be ambivalent and lacking moral and legal clarity in a context in which war crimes have been regularly committed since October 7.
Peters was absolutely correct to condemn the UNSC for failing to deliver the ceasefire that New Zealand and the overwhelming majority of states in the UN General Assembly had wanted from the first month of this crisis.
But the New Zealand government has had no words of criticism for the US, which used its power of veto in the UNSC for more than a year to thwart the prospect of a ceasefire and provided blanket support for an Israeli military campaign that killed huge numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
By cooperating with the Biden administration against Houthi rebels and adopting a quietly-quietly approach to Trump’s provocative comments on Gaza and his apparent willingness to do whatever it takes to help Israel “to get the job done’, New Zealand has revealed a selective approach to upholding international law and human rights in the desperate conditions facing Gaza
Professor Robert G. Patman is an Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and his research interests concern international relations, global security, US foreign policy, great powers, and the Horn of Africa. This article was first published by The Spinoff and is republished here with the author’s permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Freedom of the press — a bedrock principle of American democracy — is under threat in the United States.
Here at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism we are witnessing and experiencing an alarming chill. We write to affirm our commitment to supporting and exercising First Amendment rights for students, faculty, and staff on our campus — and, indeed, for all.
After Homeland Security seized and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of Public and International Affairs, without charging him with any crime, many of our international students have felt afraid to come to classes and to events on campus.
They are right to be worried. Some of our faculty members and students who have covered the protests over the Gaza war have been the object of smear campaigns and targeted on the same sites that were used to bring Khalil to the attention of Homeland Security.
President Trump has warned that the effort to deport Khalil is just the first of many.
These actions represent threats against political speech and the ability of the American press to do its essential job and are part of a larger design to silence voices that are out of favour with the current administration.
We have also seen reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is trying to deport the Palestinian poet and journalist Mosab Abu Toha, who has written extensively in the New Yorker about the condition of the residents of Gaza and warned of the mortal danger to Palestinian journalists.
There are 13 million legal foreign residents (green card holders) in the United States. If the administration can deport Khalil, it means those 13 million people must live in fear if they dare speak up or publish something that runs afoul of government views.
There are more than one million international students in the United States. They, too, may worry that they are no longer free to speak their mind. Punishing even one person for their speech is meant to intimidate others into self-censorship.
One does not have to agree with the political opinions of any particular individual to understand that these threats cut to the core of what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy. The use of deportation to suppress foreign critics runs parallel to an aggressive campaign to use libel laws in novel — even outlandish ways — to silence or intimidate the independent press.
The President has sued CBS for an interview with Kamala Harris which Trump found too favourable. He has sued the Pulitzer Prize committee for awarding prizes to stories critical of him.
He has even sued the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead at that point in the state.
Large corporations like Disney and Meta settled lawsuits most lawyers thought they could win because they did not want to risk the wrath of the Trump administration and jeopardize business they have with the federal government.
Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided that the paper’s editorial pages would limit themselves to pieces celebrating “free markets and individual liberties.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration insists on hand-picking the journalists who will be permitted to cover the White House and Pentagon, and it has banned the Associated Press from press briefings because the AP is following its own style book and refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
The Columbia Journalism School stands in defence of First Amendment principles of free speech and free press across the political spectrum. The actions we’ve outlined above jeopardise these principles and therefore the viability of our democracy. All who believe in these freedoms should steadfastly oppose the intimidation, harassment, and detention of individuals on the basis of their speech or their journalism.
Australia is caught in a jam, between an assertive American ally and a bold Chinese trading partner. America is accelerating its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, building up its fighting forces and expanding its military bases.
As Australia tries to navigate a pathway between America’s and Australia’s national interests, sometimes Australia’s national interest seems to submerge out of view.
Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Australia’s Defence Force, is steering this ship as China flexes its muscle sending a small warship flotilla south to circumnavigate the continent.
He has admitted that the first the Defence Force heard of a live-fire exercise by the three Chinese Navy ships sailing in the South Pacific east of Australia on February 21, was a phone call from the civilian Airservices Australia.
“The absence of any advance notice to Australian authorities was a concern, notably, that the limited notice provided by the PLA could have unnecessarily increased the risk to aircraft and vessels in the area,” Johnston told Senate Estimates .
Johnston was pressed to clarify how Defence first came to know of the live-fire drill: “Is it the case that Defence was only notified, via Virgin and Airservices Australia, 28 minutes [sic] after the firing window commenced?”
To this, Admiral Johnston replied: “Yes.”
If it happened as stated by the Admiral — that a live-fire exercise by the Chinese ships was undertaken and a warning notice was transmitted from the Chinese ships, all without being detected by Australian defence and surveillance assets — this is a defence failure of considerable significance.
Sources with knowledge of Defence spoken to by Declassified Australia say that this is either a failure of surveillance, or a failure of communication, or even more far-reaching, a failure of US alliance cooperation.
And from the very start the official facts became slippery.
Our latest investigation –
AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE: NAVIGATING US-CHINA TENSIONS
We investigate a significant intelligence failure to detect live-firing by Chinese warships near Australia, has exposed Defence weaknesses, and the fact that when it counts, we are all alone.
— Declassified Australia (@DeclassifiedAus) March 7, 2025
What did they know and when did they know it The first information passed on to Defence by Airservices Australia came from the pilot of a Virgin passenger jet passing overhead the flotilla in the Tasman Sea that had picked up the Chinese Navy VHF radio notification of an impending live-fire exercise.
The radio transmission had advised the window for the live-fire drill commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 3pm.
We know this from testimony given to Senate Estimates by the head of Airservices Australia. He said Airservices was notified at 9.58am by an aviation control tower informed by the Virgin pilot. Two minutes later Airservices issued a “hazard alert” to commercial airlines in the area.
The Headquarters of the Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command (HJOC), at Bungendore 30km east of Canberra, was then notified about the drill by Airservices at 10.08am, 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
When questioned a few days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to try to cover for Defence’s apparent failure to detect the live-fire drill or the advisory transmission.
“At around the same time, there were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing . .. the [Chinese] vessels in the area by both sea and air,” Albanese stated. “So that occurred and at the same time through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, Airservices got notified as well.”
But the New Zealand Defence Force had not notified Defence “at the same time”. In fact it was not until 11.01am that an alert was received by Defence from the New Zealand Defence Force — 53 minutes after Defence HQ was told by Airservices and an hour and a half after the drill window had begun.
The Chinese Navy’s stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, sailing south in the Coral Sea on February 15, 2025, in a photograph taken from a RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane. Image: Royal Australian Air Force/Declassified Australia
Defence Minister Richard Marles later in a round-about way admitted on ABC Radio that it wasn’t the New Zealanders who informed Australia first: “Well, to be clear, we weren’t notified by China. I mean, we became aware of this during the course of the day.
“What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing. By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”
Later the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told ABC that two live-fire training drills were carried out at sea on February 21 and 22, in accordance with international law and “after repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance”.
Eyes and ears on ‘every move’ It was expected the Chinese-navy flotilla would end its three week voyage around Australia on March 7, after a circumnavigation of the continent. That is not before finally passing at some distance the newly acquired US-UK nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the powerful US communications and surveillance base at North West Cape.
Just as Australia spies on China to develop intelligence and targeting for a potential US war, China responds in kind, collecting data on US military and intelligence bases and facilities in Australia, as future targets should hostilities commence.
The presence of the Chinese Navy ships that headed into the northern and eastern seas around Australia attracted the attention of the Defence Department ever since they first set off south through the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines and through the Indonesian archipelago from the South China Sea on February 3.
“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles stated in the week before the live-fire incident.
“Just as they have a right to be in international waters . . . we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”
Around 3500 km to the north, a week into the Chinese ships’ voyage, a spy flight by an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane on February 11, in a disputed area of the South China Sea south of China’s Hainan Island, was warned off by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Australian protests claiming the Australian aircraft “deliberately intruded” into China’s claimed territorial airspace around the Paracel Islands without China’s permission, thereby “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.
Australia criticised the Chinese manoeuvre, defending the Australian flight saying it was “exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace”.
Two days after the incident, the three Chinese ships on their way to Australian waters were taking different routes in beginning their own “right to freedom of navigation” in international waters off the Australian coast. The three ships formed up their mini flotilla in the Coral Sea as they turned south paralleling the Australian eastern coastline outside of territorial waters, and sometimes within Australia’s 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.
“Defence always monitors foreign military activity in proximity to Australia. This includes the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Task Group.” Admiral Johnston told Senate Estimates.
“We have been monitoring the movement of the Task Group through its transit through Southeast Asia and we have observed the Task Group as it has come south through that region.”
The Task Group was made up of a modern stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, the frigate Hengyang, and the Weishanhu, a 20,500 tonne supply ship carrying fuel, fresh water, cargo and ammunition. The Hengyang moved eastwards through the Torres Strait, while the Zunyi and Weishanhu passed south near Bougainville and Solomon Islands, meeting in the Coral Sea.
This map indicates the routes taken by the three Chinese Navy ships on their “right to freedom of navigation” voyage in international waters circumnavigating Australia, with dates of way points indicated — from 3 February till 6 March 2025. Distances and locations are approximate. Image: Weibo/Declassified Australia
As the Chinese ships moved near northern Australia and through the Coral Sea heading further south, the Defence Department deployed Navy and Air Force assets to watch over the ships. These included various RAN warships including the frigate HMAS Arunta and a RAAF P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane.
With unconfirmed reports a Chinese nuclear submarine may also be accompanying the surface ships, the monitoring may have also included one of the RAN’s Collins-class submarines, with their active range of sonar, radar and radio monitoring – however it is uncertain whether one was able to be made available from the fleet.
“From the point of time the first of the vessels entered into our more immediate region, we have been conducting active surveillance of their activities,” the Defence chief confirmed.
As the Chinese ships moved into the southern Tasman Sea, New Zealand navy ships joined in the monitoring alongside Australia’s Navy and Air Force.
The range of signals intelligence (SIGINT) that theoretically can be intercepted emanating from a naval ship at sea includes encrypted data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, aerial drone data and communications, as well as data of radar, gunnery, and weapon launches.
There are a number of surveillance facilities in Australia that would have been able to be directed at the Chinese ships.
Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Shoal Bay Receiving Station outside of Darwin, picks up transmissions and data emanating from radio signals and satellite communications from Australia’s near north region. ASD’s Cocos Islands receiving station in the mid-Indian ocean would have been available too.
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) over-the-horizon radar network, spread across northern Australia, is an early warning system that monitors aircraft and ship movements across Australia’s north-western, northern, and north-eastern ocean areas — but its range off the eastern coast is not thought to presently reach further south than the sea off Mackay on the Queensland coast.
Of land-based surveillance facilities, it is the American Pine Gap base that is believed to have the best capability of intercepting the ship’s radio communications in the Tasman Sea.
Enter, Pine Gap and the Americans The US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a US and Australian jointly-run satellite ground station. It is regarded as the most important such American satellite base outside of the USA.
The spy base – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG) – showing the north-eastern corner of the huge base with some 18 of the base’s now 45 satellite dishes and covered radomes visible. Image: Felicity Ruby/Declassified Australia
The role of ASD in supporting the extensive US surveillance mission against China is increasingly valued by Australia’s large Five Eyes alliance partner.
A Top Secret ‘Information Paper’, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia”, leaked from the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden and published by ABC’s Background Briefing, spells out the “close collaboration” between the NSA and ASD, in particular on China:
“Increased emphasis on China will not only help ensure the security of Australia, but also synergize with the U.S. in its renewed emphasis on Asia and the Pacific . . . Australia’s overall intelligence effort on China, as a target, is already significant and will increase.”
The Pine Gap base, as further revealed in 2023 by Declassified Australia, is being used to collect signals intelligence and other data from the Israeli battlefield of Gaza, and also Ukraine and other global hotspots within view of the US spy satellites.
It’s recently had a significant expansion (reported by this author in The Saturday Paper) which has seen its total of satellite dishes and radomes rapidly increase in just a few years from 35 to 45 to accommodate new heightened-capability surveillance satellites.
Pine Gap base collects an enormous range and quantity of intelligence and data from thermal imaging satellites, photographic reconnaissance satellites, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, as expert researchers Des Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute have detailed.
These SIGINT satellites intercept electronic communications and signals from ground-based sources, such as radio communications, telemetry, radar signals, satellite communications, microwave emissions, mobile phone signals, and geolocation data.
Alliance priorities The US’s SIGINT satellites have a capability to detect and receive signals from VHF radio transmissions on or near the earth’s surface, but they need to be tasked to do so and appropriately targeted on the source of the transmission.
For the Pine Gap base to intercept VHF radio signals from the Chinese Navy ships, the base would have needed to specifically realign one of those SIGINT satellites to provide coverage of the VHF signals in the Tasman Sea at the time of the Chinese ships’ passage. It is not known publicly if they did this, but they certainly have that capability.
However, it is not only the VHF radio transmission that would have carried information about the live-firing exercise.
Pine Gap would be able to monitor a range of other SIGINT transmissions from the Chinese ships. Details of the planning and preparations for the live-firing exercise would almost certainly have been transmitted over data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, and even in the data of radar and gunnery operations.
But it is here that there is another possibility for the failure.
The Pine Gap base was built and exists to serve the national interests of the United States. The tasking of the surveillance satellites in range of Pine Gap base is generally not set by Australia, but is directed by United States’ agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) together with the US Defense Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Australia has learnt over time that US priorities may not be the same as Australia’s.
Australian defence and intelligence services can request surveillance tasks to be added to the schedule, and would have been expected to have done so in order to target the southern leg of the Chinese Navy ships’ voyage, when the ships were out of the range of the JORN network.
The military demands for satellite time can be excessive in times of heightened global conflict, as is the case now.
Whether the Pine Gap base was devoting sufficient surveillance resources to monitoring the Chinese Navy ships, due to United States’ priorities in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, North Korea, and to our north in the South China Sea, is a relevant question.
It can only be answered now by a formal government inquiry into what went on — preferably held in public by a parliamentary committee or separately commissioned inquiry. The sovereign defence of Australia failed in this incident and lessons need to be learned.
Who knew and when did they know If the Pine Gap base had been monitoring the VHF radio band and heard the Chinese Navy live-fire alert, or had been monitoring other SIGINT transmissions to discover the live-fire drill, the normal procedure would be for the active surveillance team to inform a number of levels of senior officers, a former Defence official familiar with the process told Declassified Australia.
Inside an operations room at the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra. Image: ADF/Declassified Australia
Expected to be included in the information chain are the Australian Deputy-Chief of Facility at the US base, NSA liaison staff at the base, the Australian Signals Directorate head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra, the Defence Force’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, in Bungendore, and the Chief of the Defence Force. From there the Defence Minister’s office would need to have been informed.
As has been reported in media interviews and in testimony to the Senate Estimates hearings, it has been stated that Defence was not informed of the Chinese ships’ live-firing alert until a full 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.
The former Defence official told Declassified Australia it is vital the reason for the failure to detect the live-firing in a timely fashion is ascertained.
Either the Australian Defence Force and US Pine Gap base were not effectively actively monitoring the Chinese flotilla at this time — and the reasons for that need to be examined — or they were, but the information gathered was somewhere stalled and not passed on to correct channels.
If the evidence so far tendered by the Defence chief and the Minister is true, and it was not informed of the drill by any of its intelligence or surveillance assets before that phone call from Airservices Australia, the implications need to be seriously addressed.
A final word In just a couple of weeks the whole Defence environment for Australia has changed, for the worse.
The US military announces a drawdown in Europe and a new pivot to the Indo-Pacific. China shows Australia it can do tit-for-tat “navigational freedom” voyages close to the Australian coast. US intelligence support is withdrawn from Ukraine during the war. Australia discovers the AUKUS submarines’ arrival looks even more remote. The prime minister confuses the limited cover provided by the ANZUS treaty.
Meanwhile, the US militarisation of Australia’s north continues at pace. At the same time a senior Pentagon official pressures Australia to massively increase defence spending. And now, the country’s defence intelligence system has experienced an unexplained major failure.
Australia, it seems, is adrift in a sea of unpredictable global events and changing alliance priorities.
Peter Cronau is an award-winning, investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentary, The Base: Pine Gap’s Role in US Warfighting, was broadcast on Australian ABC Radio National and featured on ABC News. He produced and directed the documentary film Drawing the Line, revealing details of Australian spying in East Timor, on ABC TV’s premier investigative programme Four Corners. He won the Gold Walkley Award in 2007 for a report he produced on an outbreak of political violence in East Timor. This article was first published by Declassified Australia and is republished here with the author’s permission.
Debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified with its legislature due to vote on a non-binding resolution to become a US state amid mounting Pacific geostrategic tensions and expansionist declarations by the Trump administration.
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.
Local Senator William A. Parkinson introduced the resolution to the legislature last Wednesday and called for Guam to be fully integrated into the American union, possibly as the 51st state.
“We are standing in a moment of history where two great empires are standing face-to-face with each other, about to go to war,” Parkinson said at a press conference on Thursday.
“We have to be real about what’s going on in this part of the world. We are a tiny island but we are too strategically important to be left alone. Stay with America or do we let ourselves be absorbed by China?”
His resolution states the decision “must be built upon the informed consent of the people of Guam through a referendum”.
Trump’s expansionist policies
Parkinson’s resolution comes as US President Donald Trump advocates territorially expansionist policies, particularly towards the strategically located Danish-ruled autonomous territory of Greenland and America’s northern neighbour, Canada.
“This one moment in time, this one moment in history, the stars are aligning so that the geopolitics of the United States favour statehood for Guam,” Parkinson said. “This is an opportunity we cannot pass up.”
Guam Legislature Senator William A. Parkinson holds a press conference after introducing his resolution. BenarNews screenshot APR
As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power on the floor.
The US acquired Guam, along with Puerto Rico, in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and both remain unincorporated territories to this day.
Independence advocates and representatives from the Guam Commission on Decolonisation regularly testify at the UN’s Decolonisation Committee, where the island has been listed as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1946.
Commission on Decolonisation executive director Melvin Won Pat-Borja said he was not opposed to statehood but is concerned if any decision on Guam’s status was left to the US.
“Decolonisation is the right of the colonised,” he said while attending Parkinson’s press conference, the Pacific Daily News reported.
‘Hands of our coloniser’
“It’s counterintuitive to say that, ‘we’re seeking a path forward, a path out of this inequity,’ and then turn around and put it right back in the hands of our coloniser.
“No matter what status any of us prefer, ultimately that is not for any one of us to decide, but it is up to a collective decision that we have to come to, and the only way to do it is via referendum,” he said, reports Kuam News.
With the geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific, Guam has become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
The two US bases have seen Guam’s economy become heavily reliant on military investments and tourism.
The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate there from Japan’s Okinawa islands.
Governor Lou Leon Guerrero delivers her “State of the Island” address in Guam on Tuesday . . . “Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter . . .” Image: Office of the Governor of Guam/Benar News
Military presence leveraged
The island has in recent years leveraged the increased military presence to demand federal assistance and the territory’s treasury relies on at least US$0.5 billion in annual funding.
“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.
Parkinson’s proposed legislative resolution calls for an end to 125-plus years of US colonial uncertainty.
“The people of Guam, as the rightful stewards of their homeland, must assert their inalienable right to self-determination,” states the resolution, including that there be a “full examination of statehood or enhanced autonomous status for Guam.”
“Granting Guam equal political status would signal unequivocally that Guam is an integral part of the United States, deterring adversaries who might otherwise perceive Guam as a mere expendable outpost.”
If adopted by the Guam legislature, the non-binding resolution would be transmitted to the White House.
A local statute enacted in 2000 for a political status plebiscite on statehood, independence or free association has become bogged down in US courts.
‘Reject colonial status quo’
Neil Weare, a former Guam resident and co-director of Right to Democracy, said the self-determination process must be centred on what the people of Guam want, “not just what’s best for US national security”.
“Right to Democracy does not take a position on political status, other than to reject the undemocratic and colonial status quo,” Weare said on behalf of the nonprofit organisation that advocates for rights and self-determination in US territories.
“People can have different views on what is the best solution to this problem, but we should all be in agreement that the continued undemocratic rule of millions of people in US territories is wrong and needs to end.”
He said the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence next year can open a new venue for a conversation about key concepts — such as the “consent of the governed” — involving Guam and other US territories.
Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has recalled that 20 journalists were killed during the six-year Philippines presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, a regime marked by fierce repression of the press.
Former president Duterte was arrested earlier this week as part of an International Criminal Court investigation into crimes against humanity linked to his merciless war on drugs. He is now in The Hague awaiting trial.
The watchdog has called on the administration of current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom and combat impunity for the crimes against media committed by Duterte’s regime.
“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Rodrigo Duterte said in his inauguration speech on 30 June 2016, which set the tone for the rest of his mandate — unrestrained violence against journalists and total disregard for press freedom, said RSF in a statement.
During the Duterte regime’s rule, RSF recorded 20 cases of journalists killed while working.
Among them was Jesus Yutrago Malabanan, shot dead after covering Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war for Reuters.
Online harassment surged, particularly targeting women journalists.
Maria Ressa troll target
The most prominent victim was Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the news site Rappler, who faced an orchestrated hate campaign led by troll armies allied with the government in response to her commitment to exposing the then-president’s bloody war.
“The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte is good news for the Filipino journalism community, who were the direct targets of his campaign of terror,” said RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani.
RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director Cédric Alviani . . . “the Filipino journalism community were the direct targets of [former president Rodrigo Duterte]’s campaign of terror.” Image: RSF“President Marcos and his administration must immediately investigate Duterte’s past crimes and take strong measures to fully restore the country’s press freedom.”
The repression carried out during Duterte’s tenure continues to impact on Filipino journalism: investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has been languishing in prison since her arrest in 2020, still awaiting a verdict in her trial for “financing terrorism” and “illegal possession of firearms” — trumped-up charges that could see her sentenced to 40 years in prison.
With 147 journalists murdered since the restoration of democracy in 1986, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest countries for media workers.
A New Zealand-based Filipino solidarity network has welcomed the arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte by Interpol on charges of crimes against humanity on a warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“We congratulate the human rights activists — both from the Philippines and around the world — who held the line and relentlessly pursued justice for Filipino victims of the former Duterte regime,” said the Aotearoa-Philippines Solidarity (APS) in a statement.
“This arrest is a long time coming, with Duterte having been complicit in the extrajudicial killings of activists, trade unionists, indigenous peoples’ advocates, peasants and human rights lawyers since he was president back in 2016.
“His brutal and merciless so-called ‘war on drugs’ also led to the deaths of thousands of Filipinos — many of which were not involved in the drug trade at all or were merely drug addicts and low-level drug peddlers.
“Their only ‘crime’ was that they were poor, as documented by many human rights watchdogs that Duterte’s fake ‘drug war’ disproportionately targeted poor Filipinos.”
The APS statement said that Duterte had admitted to these crimes when he faced an inquiry before the Philippines’ House of Representatives in October last year.
“In that hearing, the former president admitted the existence of ‘death squads’ composed of ‘gang members’ and Philippine police personnel who would ‘neutralise’ drug suspects – both when he was president and as mayor of Davao City.
Police ordered to ‘goad suspects’
“He also [revealed] that he [had] instructed members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to goad suspects to fight back or attempt to escape so they would have a reason to kill them.”
The APS noted that all these actions constituted crimes against humanity, the very charge laid against him by the ICC. Since the initial charges were laid against Duterte in 2017 by human rights activists, many had anticipated the day he would finally face justice.
“This arrest is a historic step towards justice and a reminder to all that no one is above the law. The APS extends our best wishes to the bereaved families of those killed during Duterte’s unjust ‘war on drugs’ and also its survivors,” the statement said.
The APS said challenge now was to ensure that justice was meted out by the ICC and Duterte was punished for his crimes.
“Let us not allow this monumental victory slip from our hands and ensure that all evidence against Duterte is brought to light and he faces consequences for the human rights violations he committed against the Filipino people.”
The statement said that Duterte’s arrest also served as a “warning to the US-Marcos regime” that any abuse of their powers and attacks on human rights would not go unpunished.
The continuation of indiscriminate military operations which violated international humanitarian law would also lead to the downfall of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — who is the son of the 1970s dictator who declared martial law.
Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior has arrived back in the Marshall Islands yesterday for a six-week mission around the Pacific nation to support independent scientific research into the impact of decades-long nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
Forty years ago in May 1985, its namesake, the original Rainbow Warrior, took part in a humanitarian mission to evacuate Rongelap islanders from their atoll after toxic nuclear fallout in the 1950s.
The Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 before it was able to continue its planned protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia.
Escorted by traditional canoes, and welcomed by Marshallese singing and dancing, the arrival of the Rainbow Warrior 3 marked a significant moment in the shared history of Greenpeace and the Marshall Islands.
The ship was given a blessing by the Council of Iroij, the traditional chiefs of the islands with speeches from Senator Hilton Kendall (Rongelap atoll); Boaz Lamdik on behalf of the Mayor of Majuro; Farrend Zackious, vice-chairman Council of Iroij; and a keynote address from Minister Bremity Lakjohn, Minister Assistant to the President.
Also on board for the ceremony was New Zealander Bunny McDiarmid and partner Henk Haazen, who were both crew members on the Rainbow Warrior during the 1985 voyage to the Marshall Islands.
Bearing witness “We’re extremely grateful and humbled to be welcomed back by the Marshallese government and community with such kindness and generosity of spirit,” said Greenpeace Pacific spokesperson Shiva Gounden.
“Over the coming weeks, we’ll travel around this beautiful country, bearing witness to the impacts of nuclear weapons testing and the climate crisis, and listening to the lived experiences of Marshallese communities fighting for justice.”
Gounden said that for decades Marshallese communities had been sacrificing their lands, health, and cultures for “the greed of those seeking profits and power”.
However, the Marshallese people had been some of the loudest voices calling for justice, accountability, and ambitious solutions to some of the major issues facing the world.
“Greenpeace is proud to stand alongside the Marshallese people in their demands for nuclear justice and reparations, and the fight against colonial exploitation which continues to this day. Justice – Jimwe im Maron.“
During the six-week mission, the Rainbow Warrior will travel to Mejatto, Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap, and Wotje atolls, undertaking much-needed independent radiation research for the Marshallese people now also facing further harm and displacement from the climate crisis, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining in the Pacific.
“Marshallese culture has endured many hardships over the generations,” said Jobod Silk, a climate activist from Jo-Jikum, a youth organisation responding to climate change.
‘Colonial powers left mark’
“Colonial powers have each left their mark on our livelihoods — introducing foreign diseases, influencing our language with unfamiliar syllables, and inducing mass displacement ‘for the good of mankind’.
“Yet, our people continue to show resilience. Liok tut bok: as the roots of the Pandanus bury deep into the soil, so must we be firm in our love for our culture.
“Today’s generation now battles a new threat. Once our provider, the ocean now knocks at our doors, and once again, displacement is imminent.
“Our crusade for nuclear justice intertwines with our fight against the tides. We were forced to be refugees, and we refuse to be labeled as such again.
“As the sea rises, so do the youth. The return of the Rainbow Warrior instills hope for the youth in their quest to secure a safe future.”
Supporting legal proceedings
Dr Rianne Teule, senior radiation protection adviser at Greenpeace International, said: “It is an honour and a privilege to be able to support the Marshallese government and people in conducting independent scientific research to investigate, measure, and document the long term effects of US nuclear testing across the country.
“As a result of the US government’s actions, the Marshallese people have suffered the direct and ongoing effects of nuclear fallout, including on their health, cultures, and lands. We hope that our research will support legal proceedings currently underway and the Marshall Islands government’s ongoing calls for reparations.”
The Rainbow Warrior’s arrival in the Marshall Islands also marks the 14th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.
While some residents have returned to the disaster area, there are many places that remain too contaminated for people to safely live.
Paolo* was just 15 years old when he witnessed the Philippine National Police (PNP) mercilessly kill his father in 2016.
Nearly nine years later, the scales are shifting as Rodrigo Duterte, the man who unleashed death upon his family and thousands of others, now faces the weight of justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“Finally, naaresto din, [pero] dapat isama si [Senator Ronald dela Rosa], dapat silang panagutin sa dami ng pamilyang inulila nila. (Finally, he’s arrested but Dela Rosa should’ve been with him, they should be held accountable for how many families they left in mourning),” he said.
Paolo, then a minor, was also accosted and tortured by Caloocan police — from the same city police who would kill 17-year-old Kian delos Santos less than a year later.
He was threatened not to do anything else or else end up like his father. Paolo carried the threats and the fear over the years, even as he hoped for justice.
This hanging on for hope in the face of devastation was not for nothing.
The ICC has been investigating the killings under Duterte’s flagship campaign, which led to at least 6252 deaths in police operations alone by May 2022. The number reached between 27,000 to 30,000, including those killed vigilante-style.
Duterte was presented by the Philippine government’s Prosecutor-General with the ICC notification of an arrest over crimes against humanity upon his arrival from Hong Kong on this morning.
Slow but sure step to justice Paolo is not the only one rejoicing over Duterte’s arrest. Many families, including those from drug war hot spot Caloocan City, see this as the long-awaited step toward the justice they have been denied for years.
When the news broke, Ana* was overcome with joy and thanked God for giving families the strength and unwavering faith to keep fighting for justice. She knew the weight of loss all too well.
In 2017, police stormed into their home in Caloocan City and brutally killed her husband and father-in-law in a single night.
Ana, who was five months pregnant at that time, was caught in the violence and was hit by a stray bullet. She and other victims have since been supported by the In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity Movement.
“Sa wakas, unti-unti nang nakakamit ang hustisya para sa lahat ng biktima (At last, justice is slowly being achieved for all the victims),” she recalled thinking when she read that Duterte had been arrested.
But Ana is wishing for more than just imprisonment for Duterte, even as she welcomed the long-awaited accountability from the former president and his allies.
“Sana din ay aminin niya lahat ng kamalian at humingi siya ng kapatawaran sa lahat ng tao na biktima para matahimik din ang mga kaluluwa ng mga namatay (I hope he also admits to all his wrongdoings and asks for forgiveness from every victim, so that the souls of those who were killed may finally find peace),” she said.
Brutality they endured
For the families, the ICC’s move and the government’s action are an acknowledgment of the brutality they endured. The latest development is also a validation of their grief and provides a glimmer of hope that accountability is finally within reach. After years of being silenced and dismissed, they see this moment as the start of a reckoning they feared would never come.
Celina, whose husband was shot dead in a drug war operation, feels overwhelming joy but is wary that the arrest is just part of a long process at the ICC.
“Ang sabi nga po, mahaba-habang laban ito kaya hindi po sa pag-aresto natatapos ito, bagkus ito ay simula pa lamang ng aming mga laban [at] naniniwala kami at aasa sa kakayahan at suporta na ibinibigay sa amin ng ICC [na] sa huli, mananagot ang dapat managot, maparusahan ang may mga sala,” she said.
(As they say, this is a long battle, so it does not end with the arrest. Rather, this is only the beginning of our fight. We believe in and will rely on the ICC’s capability and support, knowing that in the end, those who must be held accountable will face justice, and the guilty will be punished.)
‘Duterte should feel our pain’ The wounds left behind by the drug war killings remain deep. The families’ losses are irreversible, yes, but they see this arrest as a long-awaited step toward the justice they have fought for years to achieve.
It is a stark contrast to the reality they have lived following the deaths of their loved ones. They were constantly under threat from the police who pulled the trigger. Many families had to flee to faraway places, leaving behind their own communities and source of livelihood.
“Nakakaiyak ako, hindi ko alam ang dapat kong maramdaman na sa ilang taon naming ipinaglalaban ay nakamit din namin ang hustisyang aming minimithi (I’m in tears — I don’t know what to feel. After years of fighting, we have finally achieved the justice we have long been yearning for),“ said Betty, whose 44-year-old son and 22-year-old grandson were killed under Duterte’s drug war.
For Jane Lee, the arrest only underscores the glaring disparity between the powerful and the powerless.
“Mabuti pa siya, inaresto ng mga kapulisan. Ang aming mga kaanak, pinatay agad,” she said. “Napakalaki ng pagkakaiba sa pagitan ng makapangyarihan at ordinaryong taong tulad namin.”
(At least he was arrested by the police. Our loved ones were killed on the spot. The difference between the powerful and ordinary people like us is enormous.)
Lee’s husband, Michael, was gunned down by unidentified men in May 2017, leaving her to raise their three children alone. Since then, she has volunteered for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, a group composed mostly of widows and mothers who remain steadfast in demanding justice for drug war victims.
Collective rage
Families from Rise Up in Cebu also voiced their collective rage against Duterte who ordered killings from the presidential pulpit for six years. They hope that Duterte will feel the same pain they felt when their loved ones were forcibly taken away from them.
This afternoon, Duterte condemned the alleged violation of due process following his arrest. His allies are also echoing this messaging, calling the arrest unlawful.
His longtime aide, Senator Bong Go, Go, tried to access Duterte in Villamor Air Base, asking the guards to let him deliver pizza since they hadn’t eaten yet.
“Katiting lang iyan sa ginawa mo sa amin na sinira mo ang aming buhay at hanapbuhay dahil sa iyong pekeng war on drugs,” the families of drug war victims in Cebu said. “Wala kang karapatan na kumuha ng buhay ng iba [kasi] Diyos lang may karapatan kaya sa ginawa mo, maniningil ang taumbayan lalo na kaming mga pamilya ng mga naging biktima.”
(That is nothing compared to what you did to us. You destroyed our lives and livelihood because of your fake war on drugs. You have no right to take another person’s life; only God has that right. Because of what you have done, the people will demand justice, especially we, the families of the victims.)
There is still no clear information on what comes next, whether Duterte will be immediately transferred to the International Criminal Court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, or if legal battles will delay the process.
But Mila*, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed by police in Quezon City in 2018, hopes for one thing if the former president finds himself in a detention cell soon: “Sana huwag na siya lumaya (I hope he is never set free).”
A series of violent incidents and confrontations over the weekend in New Caledonia’s capital Nouméa and its surroundings, causing clashes with law enforcement agencies and several injuries.
On Saturday night, in a bar and night-club in downtown Nouméa, a “Ladies Night” event dedicated to International Women’s Day degenerated into an all-out brawl, involving mostly young customers.
The event was scheduled to end at 2am, but bar owners decided to close at 1am, prompting violent reactions from the young patrons, who started to throw glasses at the DJ, then ransacked the bar.
The incident was recorded and later broadcast on social networks.
“We should have closed at 2am, but shortly after midnight, we felt the pressure was mounting and most of the people were already quite inebriated”, the 1881 establishment owner told local media.
“So we decided to close earlier to avoid people getting more drunk. We stopped the music, that’s when they started to throw glasses to the bar”.
The brawl involved 300-400 youths in a bar and night-club in downtown Nouméa on Saturday night. Image: RNZ Pacific/FB
Public brawl outside Outside, in a parking lot, an estimated “300 to 400 hundred” customers began a public brawl.
Law enforcement units were called and later described themselves as finding “a dangerous situation” — confronted with “hostile” individuals, and having to resort to teargas and stun-balls.
The French High Commission reported during a press conference yesterday that seven people had been injured, including one gendarme and a police officer, in the face of people throwing “bottles, stones and even concrete blocks”.
The situation came back under control at around 2:30 am, officials said.
The High Commission said that at this stage no one had been arrested, but an investigation was underway that could lead to the bar and night club being closed down.
“This is a serious incident . . . but we are not back to the insurrection situation last year”, the French High Commission’s chief-of-staff, Anaïs Aït Mansour, told reporters.
She said a meeting had been called with all of Nouméa’s bar and nightclub owners and managers.
After months of prohibition on the sale of alcoholic beverages, following the violent unrest that started in May 2024, the restrictions were finally lifted only a few weeks ago.
A re-introduction of the restrictive measure was now “under consideration”, Aït Mansour said.
The incident has also prompted political reactions as parties were preparing for the return of French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls in less than two weeks to try to bring political talks to another level on New Caledonia’s political future.
Politicians warned not to amalgamate The incidents, widely condemned by the pro-France political groups, were also labelled as “unacceptable” by the major pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC)-FLNKS party.
In a media statement, UC said these “acts of vandalism and violence committed by inebriated youths” had “nothing to do with the political claims from 13 May 2024, or with the Kanak people’s struggle”.
However, the pro-independence party warned against any attempt to “turn these youths into scapegoats for all of our society’s harms”.
UC said this behaviour could be explained by “a profound ill-being” among “a certain part” of the young Kanak population who felt disenfranchised.
Violent clashes on highway The weekend was also marred by another violent confrontation with law enforcement services on the territorial road RT1 between the capital Nouméa and the La Tontouta International Airport where motorists were targeted by people throwing stones at them.
The incidents took place early Sunday morning near the Saint-Laurent village, in an area usually referred to as Col de La Pirogue, close to the small town of Païta.
The Gendarmerie Commander, General Nicolas Matthéos, said those actions were from a group of up to 30 individuals under the influence of alcohol.
He said his services were now attempting to talk to traditional chiefs in the area so they could persuade those responsible for these “very aggressive” acts to surrender and be “brought to justice”.
He said four gendarmes had been slightly injured after being hit by stones.
“We had to use stun grenades and during those operations we had to stop all traffic on the RT1″,” he said.
Traffic was interrupted for almost one hour and a squadron of gendarmes remained in place to secure the area.
A judicial inquiry is also underway.
Sandalwood oil factory goes up in flames Also at the weekend, a sandalwood oil factory went up in flames late on Sunday evening on the island of Maré in the Loyalty Islands group.
Local firemen could not stop the destruction of the small factory’ production and refinery unit.
Another investigation is now underway from Nouméa-based gendarmerie investigators to determine the cause of the fire and whether it was accidental or criminal.
The locally-managed unit was created in 2010.
It is believed to be the world’s third largest producer of high-quality sandalwood essential oil, with international perfume and cosmetics clients such as Dior, Guerlain and Chanel.
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.
Women from Aotearoa, Philippines, Palestine and South Africa today called for justice and peace for the people of Gaza and the West Bank, currently under a genocidal siege and attacks being waged by Israel for the past 16 months.
Marking International Women’s Day, the rally highlighted the theme: “For all women and girls – Rights, equality and empowerment.”
Speakers outlined how women are the “backbone of families and communities” and how they have borne the brunt of the crimes against humanity in occupied Palestine with the “Israeli war machine” having killed more than 50,000 people, mostly women and children, since 7 October 2023.
The speakers included Del Abcede and Lorri Mackness of the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Gabriela’s Eugene Velasco, and retired law professor Jane Kelsey.
IWD 1: A West Papua flag on display at the International Women’s Day rally for peace and justice in Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 2: “Women unite to eliminate violence and war.” Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 3: Peace and justice for Gaza in Auckland’s “Palestine Square”.
IWD 4: WILPF’s Del Abcede speaking at the Palestine rally. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 5: Gabriela’s Eugene Velasco speaking at the Palestine rally. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 6: WILPF’s Lorri Mackness and Del Abcede, speakers at the Palestine rally. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 7: The International Women’s Alliance (of the Philippines) at the Palestine rally. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 8: Retired law professor Jane Kelsey speaking at the Palestine rally. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 9: The Gabriela group from the Philippines in solidarity with Palestinians. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 10: Duet singers for Palestine. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 11: “Israel’s war against Palestine didn’t start on 7 October 2023” – it began with the Nakba (“catastrophe”) in 1948, and even earlier. Image: David Robie/APR
IWD 12: International Women’s Day protesters for solidarity with Palestine and a cruise ship backdrop. Image: David Robie/APR
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
‘To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!’
These were not the words of some far-right provocateur lurking in a dark corner of the internet. They were not shouted by an unhinged warlord seeking vengeance.
No, these were the words of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world. A man who with a signature, a speech or a single phrase can shape the fate of entire nations.
And yet, with all this power, all this influence, his words to the people of Gaza were not of peace, not of diplomacy, not of relief — but of death.
Because I know exactly who he is speaking to. He is speaking to my family. To my parents, who lost relatives and their home.
To my siblings, who no longer have a place to return to. To the starving children in Gaza, who have done nothing but be born to a people the world has deemed unworthy of existence.
To the grieving mothers who have buried their children. To the fathers who can do nothing but watch their babies die in their arms.
To the people who have lost everything and yet are still expected to endure more.
No future left
Trump speaks of a “beautiful future” for the people of Gaza. But there is no future left where homes are gone, where whole families have been erased, where children have been massacred.
I read these words and I ask: What kind of a world do we live in?
President Trump’s “words are criminal. They are a direct endorsement of genocide. The people of Gaza are not responsible for what is happening. They are not holding hostages.” Image: NYT screenshot/APR/X@@xandrerodriguez
A world where the leader of the so-called “free world” can issue a blanket death sentence to an entire population — two million people, most of whom are displaced, starving and barely clinging to life.
A world where a man who commands the most powerful military can sit in his office, insulated from the screams, the blood, the unbearable stench of death, and declare that if the people of Gaza do not comply with his demand — if they do not somehow magically find and free hostages they have no control over — then they are simply “dead”.
A world where genocide survivors are given an ultimatum of mass death by a man who claims to stand for peace.
This is not just absurd. It is evil.
Trump’s words are criminal. They are a direct endorsement of genocide. The people of Gaza are not responsible for what is happening. They are not holding hostages.
Trapped by an Israeli war machine
They are the hostages – trapped by an Israeli war machine that has stolen everything from them. Hostages to a brutal siege that has starved them, bombed them, displaced them, left them with nowhere to go.
And now, they have become hostages to the most powerful man on Earth, who threatens them with more suffering, more death, unless they meet a demand they are incapable of fulfilling.
Most cynically, Trump knows his words will not be met with any meaningful pushback. Who in the American political establishment will hold him accountable for threatening genocide?
The Democratic Party, which enabled Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza? Congress, which overwhelmingly supports sending US military aid to Israel with no conditions? The mainstream media, which have systematically erased Palestinian suffering?
There is no political cost for Trump to make such statements. If anything, they bolster his position.
This is the world we live in. A world where Palestinian lives are so disposable that the President of the United States can threaten mass death without fear of any consequences.
I write this because I refuse to let this be just another outrageous Trump statement that people laugh off, that the media turns into a spectacle, that the world forgets.
“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am… pic.twitter.com/88EjVAyWAe
My heart. My everything
I write this because Gaza is not a talking point. It is not a headline. It is my home. My family. My history. My heart. My everything.
And I refuse to accept that the President of the United States can issue death threats to my people with impunity.
The people of Gaza do not control their own fate. They have never had that luxury. Their fate has always been dictated by the bombs that fall on them, by the siege that starves them, by the governments that abandon them.
And now, their fate is being dictated by a man in Washington, DC, who sees no issue with threatening the annihilation of an entire population.
So I ask again: What kind of world do we live in?
And how long will we allow it to remain this way?
Ahmed Najar is a Palestinian political analyst and a playwright. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
The Aotearoa New Zealand union representing many of NZME’s journalists says it is “deeply worried” by a billionaire’s plans to take over its board.
Auckland-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon is leading a move to dump the board of media company NZME, owners of The New Zealand Herald and NewsTalk ZB.
He has told the company’s board he wants to remove most of the current directors, replace them with himself and three others, and choose one existing director to stay on.
He took a nearly 10 percent stake in the business earlier in the week.
Michael Wood, negotiation specialist at E tū, the union that represents NZME’s journalists, said he had grave concerns.
“We see a pattern that has been incredibly unhealthy in other countries, of billionaire oligarchs moving into media ownership roles to be able to promote their own particular view of the word,” he said.
“Secondly, we have a situation here where when Mr Grenon purchased holdings in NZME he was at pains to make it sound like an innocent manoeuvre with no broader agenda . . . within a few days he is aggressively pursuing board positions.”
What unsaid agendas?
Wood said Grenon had a track record of trying to influence media discourse in New Zealand.
“We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”
Canadian billionaire James Grenon . . . track record of trying to influence media discourse in New Zealand. Image: TOM Capital Management/RNZ
“We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”
He said it would be important for New Zealand not to follow the example of the US, where media outlets had become “the mouthpiece for the rich and powerful”.
E tū would consult its national delegate committee of journalists, he said.
Grenon has been linked with alternative news sites, including The Centrist, serving as the company’s director up to August 2023.
The Centrist claims to present under-served perspectives and reason-based analysis, “even if it might be too hot for the mainstream media to handle”.
Grenon has been approached for comment by RNZ.
Preoccupations with trans rights, treaty issues
Duncan Greive, founder of The Spinoff and media commentator, said he was a reader of Grenon’s site The Centrist.
“The main thing we know about him is that publication,” Greive said.
“It’s largely news aggregation but it has very specific preoccupations around trans rights, treaty issues and particularly vaccine injury and efficacy.
“A lot of the time it’s aggregating from mainstream news sites but there’s a definite feel that things are under-covered or under-emphasised at mainstream news organisations.
“If he is looking to gain greater control and exert influence on the publishing and editorial aspects of the business, you’ve got to think there is a belief that those things are under-covered and the editorial direction of The Herald isn’t what he would like it to be.”
The Spinoff founder and media commentator Duncan Greive . . . Investors “would be excited about the sale of OneRoof”. Image: RNZ News
Greive said the move could be connected to the NZME announcement in its annual results that it was exploring options for the sale of its real estate platform OneRoof.
“There are a lot of investors who believe OneRoof is being held back by proximity to the ‘legacy media’ assets of NZME and if it could be pulled out of there the two businesses would be more valuable separate than together.
“If you look at the shareholder book of NZME, you don’t image a lot of these institutional investors who hold the bulk of the shares are going to be as excited about editorial direction and issues as Grenon would be . . . but they would be excited about the sale of OneRoof.”
Wanting the publishing side
Greive said he could imagine a scenario where Grenon told shareholders he wanted the publishing side, at a reduced value, and the OneRoof business could be separated off.
“From a pure value realisation, maximisation of shareholder value point of view, that makes sense to me.”
Greive said attention would now go on the 37 percent of shareholders whom Grenon said had been consulted in confidence about his plans.
“It will become clear pretty quickly and they will be under pressure to say why they are involved in this and it will become clear pretty quickly whether my theory is correct.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Markela Panegyres and Jonathan Strauss in Sydney
The new Universities Australia (UA) definition of antisemitism, endorsed last month for adoption by 39 Australian universities, is an ugly attempt to quash the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and to silence academics, university workers and students who critique Israel and Zionism.
While the Scott Morrison Coalition government first proposed tightening the definition, and a recent joint Labor-Coalition parliamentary committee recommended the same, it is yet another example of the Labor government’s overreach.
It seeks to mould discussion in universities to one that suits its pro-US and pro-Zionist imperialist agenda, while shielding Israel from accountability.
The UA definition comes in the context of a war against Palestinian activism on campuses.
The false claim that antisemitism is “rampant” across universities has been weaponised to subdue the Palestinian solidarity movement within higher education and, particularly, to snuff out any repeat of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments, which sprung up on campuses across the country last year.
Some students and staff who have been protesting against the genocide since October 2023 have come under attack by university managements.
Some students have been threatened with suspension and many universities are giving themselves, through new policies, more powers to liaise with police and surveil students and staff.
Palestinian, Arab and Muslim academics, as well as other anti-racist scholars, have been silenced and disciplined, or face legal action on false counts of antisemitism, merely for criticising Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.
Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example, has become the target of a Zionist smear campaign that has successfully managed to strip her of Australian Research Council funding.
Intensify repression The UA definition will further intensify the ongoing repression of people’s rights on campuses to discuss racism, apartheid and occupation in historic Palestine.
By its own admission, UA acknowledges that its definition is informed by the antisemitism taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and New York University, which have meted out draconian and violent repression of pro-Palestine activism.
It should be noted that the controversial IHRA definition has been opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for its serious challenge to academic freedom.
As many leading academics and university workers, including Jewish academics, have repeatedly stressed, criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is not antisemitic.
UA’s definition is arguably more detrimental to freedom of speech and pro-Palestine activism and scholarship than the IHRA definition.
In the vague IHRA definition, a number of examples of antisemitism are given that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but not the main text itself.
By contrast, the new UA definition overtly equates criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and claims Zionist ideology is a component part of Jewish identity.
The definition states that “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic . . . when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.
Dangerously, anyone advocating for a single bi-national democratic state in historic Palestine will be labelled antisemitic under this new definition.
Anyone who justifiably questions the right of the ethnonationalist, apartheid and genocidal state of Israel to exist will be accused of antisemitism.
Sweeping claims The UA definition also makes the sweeping claim that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.
But, as the JCA points out, Zionism is a national political ideology and is not a core part of Jewish identity historically or today, since many Jews do not support Zionism. The JCA warns that the UA definition “risks fomenting harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way”.
Moreover, JCA said, Jewish identities are already “a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel are not”.
Like other aspects of politics, political ideologies, such as Zionism, and political stances, such as support for Israel, should be able to be discussed critically.
According to the UA definition, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic “when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”.
While it would be wrong for any individual or community, because they are Jewish, to be held responsible for Israel’s actions, it is a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But under the UA definition, since Netanyahu and Gallant are Jewish, would holding them responsible be considered antisemitic?
The implication of the definition for universities, which teach law and jurisprudence, is that international law should not be applied to the Israeli state, because it is antisemitic to do so.
The UA’s definition is vague enough to have a chilling effect on any academic who wants to teach about genocide, apartheid and settler-colonialism. It states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.
What these are is not defined.
Anti-racism challenge Within the academy, there is a strong tradition of anti-racism and decolonial scholarship, particularly the concept of settler colonialism, which, by definition, calls into question the very notion of “statehood”.
With this new definition of antisemitism, will academics be prevented from teaching students the works of Chelsea Watego, Patrick Wolfe or Edward Said?
The definition will have serious and damaging repercussions for decolonial scholars and severely impinges the rights of scholars, in particular First Nations scholars and students, to critique empire and colonisation.
UA is the “peak body” for higher education in Australia, and represents and lobbies for capitalist class interests in higher education.
It is therefore not surprising that it has developed this particular definition, given its strong bilateral relations with Israeli higher education, including signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Association of University Heads, Israel.
All university students and staff committed to anti-racism, academic freedom and freedom of speech should join the campaign against the UA definition.
Local NTEU branches and student groups are discussing and passing motions rejecting the new definition and NTEU for Palestine has called a National Day of Action for March 26 with that as one of its key demands.
We will not be silenced on Palestine.
Jonathan Strauss and Markela Panegyres are members of the National Tertiary Education Union and the Socialist Alliance. Republished from Green Left with permission.
The Marshall Islands marked 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tests ever conducted were unleashed over the weekend.
The Micronesian nation experienced 67 known atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.
The country’s President Hilda Heine says her people continue to face the impacts of US nuclear weapons testing seven decades after the last bomb was detonated.
The Pacific Islands have a complex history of nuclear weapons testing, but the impacts are very much a present-day challenge, Heine said at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Tonga last year.
She said that the consequences of nuclear weapons testing “in our own home” are “expensive” and “cross-cutting”.
“When I was just a young girl, our islands were turned into a big laboratory to test the capabilities of weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare agents, and unexploded ordinance,” she said.
“The impacts are not just historical facts, but contemporary challenges,” she added, noting that “the health consequences for the Marshallese people are severe and persistent through generations.”
“We are now working to reshape the narrative from that of being victims to one of active agencies in helping to shape our own future and that of the world around us,” she told Pacific leaders, where the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres was a special guest.
President Hilda Heine and UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, in August 2024 Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
She said the displacement of communities from ancestral lands has resulted in grave cultural impacts, hindering traditional knowledge from being passed down to younger generations.
“As well as certain traditional practices, customs, ceremonies and even a navigational school once defining our very identity and become a distant memory, memorialised through chance and storytelling,” President Heine said.
“The environmental legacy is contamination and destruction: craters, radiation, toxic remnants, and a dome containing radioactive waste with a half-life of 24,000 years have rendered significant areas uninhabitable.
“Key ecosystems, once full of life and providing sustenance to our people, are now compromised.”
Heine said cancer and thyroid diseases were among a list of presumed radiation-induced medical conditions that were particularly prevalent in the Marshallese community.
Displacement, loss of land, and psychological trauma were also contributing factors to high rates of non-communicable diseases, she said.
Runit Dome, also known as “The Tomb”, in the Marshall Islands . . , controversial nuclear waste storage. Image: RNZ Pacific
“Despite these immense challenges, the Marshallese people have shown remarkable resilience and strength. Our journey has been one of survival, advocacy, and an unyielding pursuit of justice.
“We have fought tirelessly to have our voices heard on the international stage, seeking recognition.”
In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address testing impacts.
“We are a unique and important moral compass in the global movement for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” Heine said.
Kurt Campbell at the Pacific Islands Forum . . . “I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration Kurt Cambell said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damage and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.
“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he said.
“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment,” he told reporters in Nuku’alofa.
A shared nuclear legacy The National Nuclear Commission chairperson Ariana Tibon-Kilma, a direct descendant of survivors of the nuclear weapons testing programme Project 4.1 — which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies — told RNZ Pacific that what occured in Marshall Islands should not happen to any country.
“This programme was conducted without consent from any of the Marshallese people,” she said.
“For a number of years, they were studied and monitored, and sometimes even flown out to the US and displayed as a showcase.
“The history and trauma associated with what happened to my family, as well as many other families in the Marshall Islands, was barely spoken of.
“What happened to the Marshallese people is something that we would not wish upon any other Pacific island country or any other person in humanity.”
She said the nuclear legacy was a shared one.
“We all share one Pacific Ocean and what happened to the Marshall Islands, I am, sure resonates throughout the Pacific,” Tibon-Kilma said.
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head Heike Alefsen at the Pacific Islands Forum . . . “I think compensation for survivors is key.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Billions in compensation The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head, Heike Alefsen, told RNZ Pacific in Nuku’alofa that “we understand that there are communities that have been displaced for a long time to other islands”.
“I think compensation for survivors is key,” she said.
“It is part of a transitional justice approach. I can’t really speak to the breadth and the depth of the compensation that would need to be provided, but it is certainly an ongoing issue for discussion.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Gaza’s remaining journalists, who had survived 15 months of intensive bombardment, continued to face immense challenges despite the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect on 19 January 2025 with the first stage expiring last weekend.
Humanitarian aid, filtered by the Israeli authorities, is merely trickling into the blockaded territory, and Israel continues to deny entry access to foreign journalists, forbidding independent outlets from covering the aftermath of the war and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.
Exiled Palestinian journalists are also prevented from returning to the Gaza Strip.
“We urgently call for the blockade that is suffocating the press in Gaza to be lifted,” said RSF editorial director Anne Bocandé.
“Reporters need multimedia and security equipment, internet and electricity.
“Foreign reporters need access to the territory, and exiled Palestinian journalists need to be able to return.
“While the ceasefire in Gaza has put an end to an unprecedented massacre of journalists, media infrastructure remains devastated.
“RSF continues to campaign for justice and provide all necessary support to these journalists, to defend a free, pluralist and independent press in Palestine.”
Reporters face the shock of a humanitarian catastrophe
Working amid the rubble
“The scale of the destruction is immense, terrifying,” said Islam al-Zaanoun of Palestine TV.
“Life seems to have disappeared. The streets have become open-air rubbish dumps. With no place to work, no internet or electricity, I was forced to stop working for several days.”
Journalists must also contend with a severe fuel shortage, making travel within the country difficult and expensive. Like the rest of Gaza’s population, reporters have to spend long hours in queues every day to obtain water and food.
Israeli fire despite the ceasefire
“Entire areas are unreachable,” Al Jazeera correspondent Hani al-Shaer told RSF.
“The situation remains dangerous. We came under Israeli fire in Rafah.”
The journalist explained that due to an unrelenting series of crises, he was forced to choose which stories he covered.
“The destroyed infrastructure? The humanitarian crisis? Abandoned orphans?” he wondered.
Witnesses and targets: the double trauma of reporters
With at least 180 media professionals killed by the Israeli army in the course of 15 months of war, including at least 42 killed on the job, according to RSF figures, surviving journalists must face their trauma while continuing their news mission.
Gaza media sources put the journalist death toll at more than 200.
“We covered this tragedy, but we were also part of it. Often, we were the target,” stressed Islam al-Zaanoun.
“We still can’t rest or sleep. We’re still terrified that the war will start again,” adds Hani al-Shaer.
The suspended lives of exiled journalists
From Egypt to Qatar, journalists who managed to escape the horror continue to live with the consequences, unable to return to their loved ones and homes.
“My greatest hope is to return home and see my loved ones again. But the border is closed and my house is destroyed, like those of most journalists,” lamented Ola al-Zaanoun, RSF Gaza correspondent, now based in Egypt.
The Gaza bureau chief of The New Arab, Diaa al-Kahlout is one of many who watched the Israeli Army destroy his house.
“When they arrested me, they bombed and set fire to my house and car. I’ve lost everything I’ve earned in my career as a journalist, and I’m starting all over again,” he told RSF.
A refugee in Doha, Qatar, he is still haunted by the abuse inflicted by Israeli forces during his month-long detention in December 2023, following his arbitrary arrest at his home in Beit Lahya, a city in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“No matter how many times I tell myself that I’m safe here, that I’m lucky enough to have my wife and children with me, I have trouble sleeping, working, making decisions,” confided the journalist, whose brother was killed in the war.
The Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land won an Oscar for best documentary feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
The film — recently screened in New Zealand at the Rialto and other cinemas — follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amid home demolitions by the Israeli military and violent attacks by Jewish settlers aimed at expelling them.
The film was made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, including the Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, both of whom are prominently featured in the film.
AMY GOODMAN:And the Oscars were held Sunday evening. History was made in the best documentary category.
SAMUEL L. JACKSON: And the Oscar goes to ‘No Other Land’.
AMY GOODMAN:The Palestinian-Israeli film No Other Land won for best documentary. The film follows the struggles of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta to stay on their land amidst violent attacks by Israeli settlers aimed at expelling them. The film was made by a team of Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers, including the Palestinian journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham.
Both filmmakers — Palestinian activist and journalist Basel Adra, who lives in Masafer Yatta, and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham — spoke at the ceremony. Adra became the first Palestinian filmmaker to win an Oscar.
BASEL ADRA: Thank you to the Academy for the award. It’s such a big honor for the four of us and everybody who supported us for this documentary.
About two months ago, I became a father. And my hope to my daughter, that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing — always — always fearing settlers’ violence, home demolitions and forceful displacements that my community, Masafer Yatta, is living and facing every day under the Israeli occupation.
‘No Other Land’ reflects the harsh reality that we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.
YUVAL ABRAHAM: We made this — we made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger.
We see each other — the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end; the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.
When I look at Basel, I see my brother. But we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.
There is a different path: a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here: The foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.
And, you know, why? Can’t you see that we are intertwined, that my people can be truly safe if Basel’s people are truly free and safe? There is another way.
It’s not too late for life, for the living. There is no other way. Thank you.
Israeli and Palestinian documentary ‘No Other Land’ wins Oscar. Video: Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the occupied West Bank, where Israel is reportedly planning to build nearly a thousand new settler homes in the Efrat settlement near Jerusalem. The Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.
The group Shalom Achshav, Peace Now, condemned the move, saying the Netanyahu government is trying “to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise”.
This comes as Israel’s ongoing military operations in the West Bank have displaced at least 45,000 Palestinians — the most since the ’67 War.
Today, the Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Basel Adra shared video from the occupied West Bank of Israeli forces storming and demolishing four houses in Masafer Yatta.
Earlier this month, Basel Adra himself filmed armed and masked Israeli settlers attacking his community of Masafer Yatta. The settlers threw stones, smashed vehicles, slashed tires, punctured a water tank.
Israeli soldiers on the scene did not intervene to halt the crimes.
Palestinian film maker Basil Adra, co-director of No Other Land, speaking at the Oscars . . . “Stop the ethnic cleansing!” Image: AMPAS 2025/Democracy Now! screenshot APR
Basel Adra’s Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land is about Israel’s mass expulsion of Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta.
In another post last week, Basel wrote: “Anyone who cared about No Other Land should care about what is actually happening on the ground: Today our water tanks, 9 homes and 3 ancient caves were destroyed. Masafer Yatta is disappearing in front of my eyes.
Only one name for these actions: ethnic cleansing,” he said.
In a minute, Basel Adra will join us for an update. But first, we want to play the trailer from his Oscar-nominated documentary, No Other Land.
No Other Land trailer. Video: Watermelon Films
BASEL ADRA: [translated] You think they’ll come to our home?
MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 1: [translated] Is the army down there?
NEWS ANCHOR: A thousand Palestinians face one of the single biggest expulsion decisions since the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began.
YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] Basel, come here! Come fast!
BASEL ADRA: [translated] This is a story about power.
My name is Basel. I grew up in a small community called Masafer Yatta. I started to film when we started to end.
They have bulldozers?
I’m filming you.
MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I need air. Oh my God!
BASEL ADRA: [translated] We have to raise our voices, not being silent as if — as if no human beings live here.
YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] What? The army is here?
BASEL ADRA: This is what’s happening in my village now. Soldiers are everywhere.
IDF SOLDIER: [translated] Who do you think you’re filming, you son of a whore?
YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] It would be so nice with stability one day. Then you’ll come visit me, not always me visiting you. Right?
BASEL ADRA: [translated] Maybe. What do you think? If you were in my place, what would you do?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for the Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land, co-directed by the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and our next guest, Basel Adra, Palestinian activist and journalist who writes for +972 Magazine, his most recent piece headlined “Our film is going to the Oscars. But here in Masafer Yatta, we’re still being erased.”
Basel has spent years documenting Israeli efforts to evict Palestinians living in his community, Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
Basel, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about your film and also what’s happening right now? This is not a film about history. It’s on the ground now. You recently were barricaded in your house filming what was going on, what the Israeli settlers were doing.
Palestinian film maker Basel Adra talks to Democracy Now! Video: Democracy Now!
BASEL ADRA: Thank you for having me.
Yeah, our movie, we worked on it for the last five years. We are four people — two Israelis and two Palestinians, me, myself, Yuval and Rachel and Hamdan, who’s my friend and living in Masafer Yatta. We’re just activists and journalists.
And me and my friend Hamdan spent years in the field, running after bulldozers, soldiers and settlers, and in our communities and communities around us, filming the destruction, the home destructions, the school destructions, the cutting of our water pipes and the bulldozing of our roads and our own schools, and trying to raise awareness from the international community on what’s going on, to get political impact to try to stop this from happening and to protect our community.
And five years ago, Yuval and Rachel joined, as Israeli journalists, to write about what’s happening. And then we decided together that we will start working on No Other Land as a documentary that showed the whole political story through personal, individual stories of people who lost their life and homes and school and properties on this, like in the last years and also in the decades of the occupation.
We released the movie in the Berlinale 2024, last year, at the festival. And so far, we’ve been, like, screening and showing, like, in many festivals around the world.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Basel, your film has received an Oscar nomination, but you haven’t been able to find a distributor in the US What do you know about this refusal of any company to pick up your film to distribute it? And also, can it be seen in the West Bank or in Israel itself?
BASEL ADRA: It’s sad that we haven’t found a US distributor. Our goal from making this documentary, it’s not the award. It’s not the awards itself, but the people and the audience and to get to the people’s hearts, because we want people to see the reality, to see what’s going on in my community, Masafer Yatta, but in all the West Bank, to the Palestinians and how the life, the daily life under this brutal occupation.
People should be aware of this, because they are — somehow, they have a responsibility. In the US, it’s the tax money that the people are paying there. It has something to do with the home destruction that we are facing, the settlers’ violence, the building of the settlements on our land that does not stop every day.
And we, as a collective, made this movie. We faced so many risks in the field, on the ground. Like, my home was invaded, and the cameras were confiscated from my home by Israeli soldiers.
I was physically attacked in the field when I’m going around and filming these crimes, I mean, to show to the people and to let the people know about what’s going on.
But it’s sad that the distributors in the US so far do not want to take a little bit of risk, political risk, and to show this documentary to the audience. I am really sad about it, that there is no big distributors taking No Other Land and showing it to the American people.
It’s very important to reach to the Americans, I believe. And so far, we are doing it independently on the cinemas.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your co-director is Israeli. Have you come under criticism for working with Israelis on the film?
BASEL ADRA: So far, I’m not receiving any criticism for working with Israelis. Like, working together is because we share somehow the same values, that we reject the injustice and the occupation and the apartheid and what’s going on, and we want to work pro-solution and pro-justice and to end these, like, settlements and for a better future.
AMY GOODMAN: Basel, the Oscars are soon, in a few weeks. Can you get a visa to come into the United States? Will you attend the Oscars?
BASEL ADRA: So, I have a visa because I’ve been in the US participating in festivals for our movie. But my family and the other Palestinian co-director doesn’t have one yet, and they will try to apply soon.
And hopefully, they will get it, and they will be able to join us at the Oscars.
AMY GOODMAN: So, since it’s so difficult to see your film here in the United States, I want to go to another clip of No Other Land. Again, this is our guest, Basel Adra, and his co-director, Yuval Abraham, filming the eviction of a Palestinian family.
BASEL ADRA: [translated] A lot of army is here.
YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] They plan a big demolition?
BASEL ADRA: [translated] We don’t know. They’re driving towards one of my neighbors.
Now the soldiers arrived here.
MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 1: [translated] Aren’t you ashamed to do this? Aren’t you afraid of God?
ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Go back! Move back now! Get back! I’ll push you all the way back!
YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] I speak Hebrew. Don’t shout.
MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I hope that bulldozer falls on your head. Why are you taking our homes?
MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 3: [translated] Why destroy the bathroom?
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Israeli bulldozers destroying a bathroom. This is another clip from No Other Land, in which you, Basel, are attacked by Israeli forces even as you try to show them you have media credentials.
BASEL ADRA: [translated] I’m filming you. I’m filming you! You’re just like criminals.
ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] If he gets closer, arrest him.
BASEL ADRA: [translated] You’re expelling us. Arrest me! On what grounds?
ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Grab him.
BASEL ADRA: [translated] On what grounds? I have a journalist card. I have a journalist card!
ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Shut up!
BASEL’S FATHER: [translated] Don’t hit my son! Leave our village! Go away! Leave, you [bleep]! Shoot.
AMY GOODMAN: Basel, that is you. Your mother is hanging onto you as you’re being dragged, your father. What do you want the world to know about Masafer Yatta, about your community in this film?
BASEL ADRA: I want the world to really act seriously. The international community should take measures and act seriously to end this, like, demolitions and ethnic cleansing that is happening everywhere in Gaza, in the West Bank, through different policies and different, like, reasons that the Israelis try to separate out, which is all lies.
It’s all about land, that they want to steal more and more of our land. That’s very clear on the ground, because every Palestinian community being erased, there is settlements growing in the same place.
This is happening right there, in the South Hebron Hills, everywhere around the West Bank, in Area C. And now they are entering camps, since January until now, by demolishing, like, destroying the camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, and forcing people to leave their homes, to go away.
And the world just keeps watching and not taking serious action. And the opposite, actually.
The Israelis keep receiving all. Like, this amount of violations of the international law, the human rights laws, it’s very clear that it’s violated every day by the Israelis. But nobody cares. The opposite, they keep receiving weapons and money and relationships and —
AMY GOODMAN: Basel —
BASEL ADRA: — and diplomatic cover. Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I thank you so much, look forward to interviewing you and Yuval in the United States. Basel Adra, co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land.
The Green Party has called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to rule out Aotearoa New Zealand joining the AUKUS military technical pact in any capacity following the row over Ukraine in the White House over the weekend.
President Donald Trump’s “appalling treatment” of his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a “clear warning that we must avoid AUKUS at all costs”, said Green Party foreign affairs and Pacific issues spokesperson Teanau Tuiono.
“Aotearoa must stand on an independent and principled approach to foreign affairs and use that as a platform to promote peace.”
US President Donald Trump has paused all military aid for Ukraine after the “disastrous” Oval Office meeting with President Zelenskyy in another unpopular foreign affairs move that has been widely condemned by European leaders.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, declared that Trump appeared to be trying to push Kyiv to capitulate on Russia’s terms.
He was quoted as saying that the aid pause was worse than the 1938 Munich Agreement that allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.
‘Danger of Trump leadership’
Tuiono, who is the Green Party’s first tagata moana MP, said: “What we saw in the White House at the weekend laid bare the volatility and danger of the Trump leadership — nothing good can come from deepening our links to this administration.
“Christopher Luxon should read the room and rule out joining any part of the AUKUS framework.”
Tuiono said New Zealand should steer clear of AUKUS regardless of who was in the White House “but Trump’s transactional and hyper-aggressive foreign policy makes the case to stay out stronger than ever”.
“Our country must not join a campaign that is escalating tensions in the Pacific and talking up the prospects of a war which the people of our region firmly oppose.
“Advocating for, and working towards, peaceful solutions to the world’s conflicts must be an absolute priority for our country,” Tuiono said.
Five Eyes network ‘out of control’
Meanwhile, in the 1News weekly television current affairs programme Q&A, former Prime Minister Helen Clark challenged New Zealand’s continued involvement in the Five Eyes intelligence network, describing it as “out of control”.
Her comments reflected growing concern by traditional allies and partners of the US over President Trump’s handling of long-standing relationships.
Clark said the Five Eyes had strayed beyond its original brief of being merely a coordinating group for intelligence agencies in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
“There’s been some talk in the media that Trump might want to evict Canada from it . . . Please could we follow?” she said.
“I mean, really, the problem with Five Eyes now has become a basis for policy positioning on all sorts of things.
“And to see it now as the basis for joint statements, finance minister meetings, this has got a bit out of control.”
“Israel is trying to weasel its way out of the agreement because it doesn’t want to negotiate stage two which requires it to withdraw its troops from Gaza,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-national chair John Minto.
“Israel signed the ceasefire agreement and it must be forced to follow it through,” he said in a statement today.
“Cutting off humanitarian aid is a blatant war crime and New Zealand must say so without equivocation.
“Our government has been complicit with Israeli war crimes for the past 16 months and has previously refused to condemn Israel’s use of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war.
“It’s time we got off our knees and stood up for international law and United Nations resolutions.”
Violation of Geneva Conventions
Meanwhile, a Democrat senator, Peter Welch (vermont), yesterday joined the global condemnation of the Israeli “weaponisation” of humanitarian aid.
In a brief post on X, responding to Israel blocking the entry of all goods and supplies into Gaza, Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont, simply said:
In a brief message on X, Senator Welch said: “This is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.”
In a statement, Guterres said the world must end this terrible war and lay the foundations for lasting peace, “one that ensures security for Israel, dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people, and stability for the entire region”.
This required a clear political framework for Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction, he said.
“It requires immediate and irreversible steps towards a two-State solution — with Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, unified under a legitimate Palestinian authority, accepted and supported by the Palestinian people.
“And it requires putting an end to occupation, settlement expansion and threats of annexation.”
The arrests, announced by Police Commissioner David Manning, follow a two-week investigation supported by forensic experts from the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
Margaret Gabriel, 32, was abducted from her home at Port Moresby’s Watermark Estate by more than 20 armed men. She was was later raped and murdered.
The attack sparked nationwide outrage, with calls for stronger protections for women and faster justice in gender-based violence cases.
Commissioner Manning confirmed the suspects were apprehended on February 27 and subjected to DNA and fingerprint testing.
“DNA evidence and fingerprints are conclusive forensic evidence and afford irrefutable evidence to ensure convictions in a court of law,” he said.
The nine men join three others already in custody, though police have not clarified their specific roles in the crime.
Forensic analysis
AFP forensic specialists from Canberra assisted PNG’s Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) in analysing evidence.
Manning praised the collaboration, saying it underscored the integration of these advanced investigative techniques into PNG’s investigations is strengthening the cases put before the court.
Gender-based violence remains pervasive in PNG, with a 2023 UN report noting that more than two-thirds of women experience physical or sexual abuse in their lifetimes.
Limited forensic resources and slow judicial processes have historically hampered prosecutions.
Police increasingly rely on international partnerships, including a longstanding forensics programme with Australia, to address these gaps.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas has accused Israel of “blackmail” over aid and urged the US government to act more like a neutral mediator in the ceasefire process.
“We call on the US administration to stop its bias and alignment with the fascist plans of the war criminal Netanyahu, which target our people and their existence on their land,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We affirm that all projects and plans that bypass our people and their established rights on their land, self-determination, and liberation from occupation are destined for failure and defeat.
“We reaffirm our commitment to implementing the signed agreement in its three stages, and we have repeatedly announced our readiness to start negotiations on the second stage of the agreement,” it said.
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that Israel sought a dramatic change to the terms of the ceasefire agreement with a demand that Hamas release five living captives and 10 bodies of dead captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and increased aid to the Gaza Strip.
It also sought to extend the first phase of the ceasefire by a week.
Hamas informed the mediators that it rejected the Israeli proposal and considered it a violation of what was agreed upon in the ceasefire.
Israel suspends humanitarian aid
In response, Israel suspended the entry of humanitarian aid until further notice and Hamas claimed Tel Aviv “bears responsibility” for the fate of the 59 Israelis still held in the Gaza Strip.
Reports said Israeli attacks in Gaza on Sunday have killed at least four people and injured five people, according to medical sources.
“The occupation [Israel] bears responsibility for the consequences of its decision on the population of the Strip and for the fate of its prisoners,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in a statement.
Hamas denounces blackmail headline on Al Jazeera news. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Under the agreed ceasefire, the second phase of the truce was intended to see the release of the remaining captives, the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a final end to the war.
However, the talks on how to carry out the second phase never began, and Israel said all its captives must be returned for fighting to stop.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, an analyst said that although the fragile ceasefire seemed on the brink of collapse, it was unlikely that US President Donald Trump would allow it to fail.
“I think the larger picture here is Trump is not interested in the resumption of war,” said Sami al-Arian, professor of public affairs at Istanbul Zaim University.
“He has a very long agenda domestically and internationally and if it is going to be dragged by Netanyahu and his fascist partners into another war of genocide with no strategic end, he knows this is going to be a no-win for him.
“And for one thing, Trump hates to lose.”
No game plan
In another interview, Israeli political commentator Ori Goldberg told Al Jazeera that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was caught between seeing the Gaza ceasefire through and resorting to a costly all-out war that may prove unpopular at home.
“I’m not sure Netanyahu has a game plan,” Goldberg said.
“The reason he hasn’t made a decision is because . . . Israel is not equipped to go to war right now. Resilience is at an all-time low. Resources are at an all-time low.”
War crimes . . . a poster at a New Zealand pro-Palestinian rally in Auckland on Saturday. Image: Asia Pacific Report
In December, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees reported that more than 19,000 children had been hospitalised for acute malnutrition in four months.
In the first full year of the war — ending in October 2024 — 37 children died from malnutrition or dehydration.
Last September 21, The International Criminal Court (ICC) said there was reason to believe Israel was using “starvation as a method of warfare” when it issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
On Feb. 11, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s de-facto ruler, claimed that the authorities had weeks ago uncovered a plot to kill him at his provincial mansion using drones.
One person was apparently arrested, Hun Sen said, but others may still be at large.
Who knows whether it is true or not?
Some people suspect it’s a conceit by Hun Sen, the former prime minister who handed power to his eldest son in 2023, to justify his incoming law that will brandish political opponents as “terrorists”, in an attempt to deter foreigners from aiding the exiled opposition movement.
Cambodia’s Senate President Hun Sen at a ceremony marking the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, in Phnom Penh on Jan. 7, 2025.(Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)
Speaking about the alleged plot on his life, Hun Sen connected the two: “This is an act of terrorism, and I’d like to urge foreigners to be cautious, refraining from supporting terrorist activities.”
Such skepticism led one commentator, in an interview with Radio Free Asia, to claim that “ordinary citizens do not have the ability” to hit his heavily guarded Takhmao home.
In fact, they do.
Cheap drones for Myanmar opposition
Myanmar’s four-year-old civil war has shown just how much drones have revolutionized not just warfare but the balance of power between the state and the individual.
A long-range modified and armed drone costs Myanmar’s rebels around US$1,500.
By comparison, the International Crisis Group reckons second-hand AK-47s or M-16s cost US$3,000 each.
Myanmar’s military recently took delivery of six Su-30SMEs fighter jets from Russia, for which it paid $400 million — excluding the weaponry.
As one commentator put it last year: “In an asymmetric conflict, the drone is helping to equalize the battlescape.”
Members of the Mandalay People’s Defense Force prepare to release a drone amid clashes with Myanmar’s military in northern Shan state, Dec. 11, 2023.(AFP)
Junta forces are catching up, for sure. AFP reported a few weeks ago that “the military is adopting the equipment of the anti-coup fighters, using drones to drop mortars or guide artillery strikes and bombing runs by its Chinese and Russian-built air force.”
However, the revolutionary importance of drones isn’t that a superior force will never adopt the same technology. It’s that drones — now an irreplaceable weapon in modern warfare — cannot be monopolized by a state.
Not for almost two centuries has there been such a technological leap in the balance of power. Not for at least the past 100 years has a dominant weapon been as cheap and available to the masses.
‘History of weapons’
In October 1945, George Orwell published a short essay that’s best known for popularizing the term “Cold War”.
“You And The Atom Bomb” also offered a take on the weapons that’s rarely reflected on these days.
Had the nuclear bomb been as cheap and easy as a bicycle to produce, Orwell reasoned, it might have “plunged us back into barbarism.”
But because the bomb is a rare and costly thing to make, it might “complete the process [of] robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt.”
Mutually Assured Destruction would keep the peace between the nuclear states, but it meant that existing dictatorship could become permanent, Orwell feared.
How would a band of rag-tag rebels fair against a despot or imperialist prepared to quell any rebellion with a nuclear explosion?
Would the dictator who happily drops biological weapons on their own people not as easily reach for tactical nuclear bombs if they could?
A cruise missile that North Korea has implied has nuclear capabilities nears its target during a test flight off the coast of the Korean peninsula, Feb. 26, 2025.(KCNA via Reuters)
Would the North Korean regime not prefer to go down in a nuclear blaze if the masses were ever to rise up?
Orwell noted that “the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons.”
Students of history are taught that gunpowder made possible a proper rebellion against feudal power; that the musket, cheap and easy to use, replaced the cannon and made possible the American and French revolutions.
Its successor, the breech-loading rifle, was slightly more complex, yet “even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another,” Orwell noted.
State arsenals only
The early 20th century, however, saw the invention of weapons only available to the state and only the most industrialized states—the tank, the aircraft, the submarine and, foremost, the nuclear bomb.
Vietnamese communists, by some accounts, were peasant volunteers who battled with nothing but smuggled guns, punji traps and a clear sense of what they were fighting for, but they were able to defeat the industrialized armies of France and the United States.
In reality, the communists were well supplied with non-rudimentary weaponry by Beijing and Moscow.
East Timorese pro-independence FALINTIL rebels set off on patrol Oct. 3, 1999.(John Feder/News Ltd. via AFP)
More representative of rag-tag guerrilla success were the East Timorese rebels, who had no patrons and only the most basic weapons to battle against Indonesian imperialism and its vastly superior forces.
Their stunning achievement was simply keeping their struggle alive for so long.
But the East Timorese were never going to secure independence in the jungles and hills; their victory depended on staying in the fight until international opinion turned in their favor.
Had it not, Timor-Leste would still be a province of Indonesia, as West Papuans know all too well.
Perhaps drone warfare won’t bring victory to Myanmar’s revolutionaries.
Fighting alone doesn’t win wars. Alliances, superior industrial production, international opinion and quite a bit of luck — all are as important.
Yet without drone warfare, the junta would arguably have won this battle a lot sooner.
It probably hasn’t been lost on the Thai military that another coup might not be accepted as meekly as in earlier military takeovers by a populace which has closely observed events in neighboring Myanmar.
Cambodian soldiers attend celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the country’s independence, in Phnom Penh, Nov. 9, 2018.(Samrang Pring/Reuters)
Intentional or not, Hun Sen’s revelation that someone apparently tried to kill him using drones has imbued him and his impregnable regime with a rare sense of vulnerability.
His family rules over a 100,000-strong military that he has instructed to “destroy… revolutions that attempt to topple” his regime, plus a loyal National Police and an elite private bodyguard unit.
One son is head of military intelligence. Another son, Prime Minister Hun Manet, was previously the army chief.
But, as despots are now realizing, all that now means a lot less in the age of the drone.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by commentator David Hutt.
With international media’s attention on the Israeli and Palestinian captives exchange, Israel’s military and settlers have been forcibly displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, says Al Jazeera’s Listening Post media programme.
The European Union has condemned Israel’s military operation in West Bank, attacking and killing refugees, and destroying refugee camps while the Western media has been barely reporting this.
It has also criticised the violence by settlers in illegal West Bank villages.
Israel’s military operation in the occupied territory has been ongoing for more than 40 days and has resulted in dozens of casualties, the displacement of about 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
“The EU calls on Israel, in addressing its security concerns in the occupied West Bank, to comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law by ensuring the protection of all civilians in military operations and allow the safe return of displaced persons to their homes,” the statement read.
“At the same time, extremist settler violence continues throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Israel ‘has duty to protect’
“The EU recalls that Israel, as the occupying power, has the duty to protect civilians and to hold perpetrators accountable.”
The bloc also condemned Israel’s policy of expanding settlements in the West Bank, and urged that demolitions “including of EU and EU member states-funded structures, must stop”.
“As we enter the holy month of Ramadan, we call on all parties to exercise restraint to allow for peaceful celebrations,” the EU said.
Meanwhile, Israeli journalists are parroting military talking points of security operations.
Israel invades the West Bank. Video: AJ: The Listening Post
Contributors:
Abdaljawad Omar – Assistant professor, Birzeit University
Jehad Abusalim – Co-editor, Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
Ori Goldberg – Academic and political commentator
Samira Mohyeddin – Founder, On the Line Media
On the Listening Post radar: This week, the return of the Bibas family bodies dominated Israeli media coverage.
Tariq Nafi reports on how their deaths have been used for “hasbara” — propaganda — after the family accused Netanyahu’s government of exploiting their grief for political purposes.
The Kenyan ‘manosphere’ Populated by loudmouths, shock artists and unapologetic chauvinists, the Kenyan “manosphere” is promoting an influential — and at times dangerous — take on modern masculinity.
Featuring:
Audrey Mugeni – Co-founder, Femicide Count Kenya
Awino Okech – Professor of feminist and security studies, SOAS
Onyango Otieno – Mental health coach and writer
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
The State of Palestine has submitted a written plea to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) asking it for an advisory opinion regarding Israel’s obligations not to obstruct humanitarian and development assistance in the territories it occupies, Al Jazeera reports.
In the submission, Palestinian officials affirmed the responsibility of Israel, as an occupying power, to not obstruct the work of the UN, international organisations, and third states so they can provide essential services, humanitarian aid, and development assistance to the Palestinian people.
Many states, as well as international groups, have submitted written pleas to the ICJ ahead of oral proceedings set to start next month.
Last July, the ICJ issued a historic advisory opinion determining Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.
Widespread ‘torture’ of Gaza medics in Israeli custody In a separate report, the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights accused the Israeli military of detaining more than 250 medical personnel and support staff since the beginning of the war on Gaza in October 2023.
More than 180 remained in detention without a clear indication of when or if they would be released, the physicians’ report said.
“Detainees endure physical, psychological and sexual abuse as well as starvation and medical neglect amounting to torture,” the report said, denouncing a “deeply ingrained policy”.
Healthcare workers were beaten, threatened, and forced to sign documents in Hebrew during their detention, according to the report based on 20 testimonies collected in prison.
“Medical personnel were primarily questioned about the Israeli hostages, tunnels, hospital structures and Hamas’s activity,” it said.
“They were rarely asked questions linking them to any criminal activity, nor were they presented with substantive charges.”
New Zealand protesters calling for the continuation of the Gaza ceasefire and for peace and justice in Palestine in a march along the Auckland waterfront today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Where does Trump stand on the Gaza ceasefire? With phase one of the ceasefire due to end today and negotiations barely started on phase two, serious fears are being raised over the viability of the ceasefire.
President Donald Trump took credit for the truce that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff helped push across the finish line after a year of negotiations led by the Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar, reports Al Jazeera.
Advocate Maher Nazzal at today’s New Zealand rally for Gaza in Auckland . . . he was elected co-leader of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa last weekend. Image: Asia Pacific Report
However, Trump has since sent mixed signals about the deal.
Earlier last month, he set a firm deadline for Hamas to release all the captives, warning “all hell is going to break out” if it didn’t.
But he said it was ultimately up to Israel, and the deadline came and went.
Trump sowed further confusion by proposing that Gaza’s population of about 2.3 million be relocated to other countries and for the US to take over the territory and develop it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the idea, but it was universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, including close US allies. Human rights groups said it could violate international law.
Trump stood by the plan in a Fox News interview over the weekend but said he was “not forcing it”.
Responding to DAWN’s referral of Biden, Blinken & Austin to the ICC for investigation for aiding Israeli war crimes, @alhaq_org‘s @SJabaren says:
“Finally, we see an effort to hold” accountable “US officials who have armed, financed and politically defended Israeli atrocities.” pic.twitter.com/yCpRaogE2I
‘Finally’ an effort to hold the US accountable, says Al-Haq director
Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin has welcomed a plea by the US-based rights group DAWN for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Joe Biden and senior US officials for aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
In a video posted by DAWN, Jabarin, director of the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said the effort was long overdue.
“For decades we have called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, but time and again, the US has used its power and influence to block that accountability, to shield Israel from consequences and to ensure that it can continue its crimes with impunity,” Jabarin said.
“Now, finally, we see an effort to hold not just Israeli officials accountable but also those who have made these crimes possible: US officials who have armed, financed, and politically defended Israeli atrocities.”
A father piggybacks his sleepy child during the New Zealand solidarity protest for Palestine in Auckland’s Viaduct today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
As concerns continue to emerge over China’s “unusual” naval exercises in the Tasman Sea, raising eyebrows from New Zealand and Australia, the Cook Islands government was questioned for an update in Parliament.
This follows the newly established bilateral relations between the Cook Islands and China through a five-year agreement and Prime Minister Mark Brown’s accusations of the New Zealand media and experts looking down on the Cook Islands.
A Chinese Navy convoy held two live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand on Friday and Saturday, prompting passenger planes to change course mid-flight and pressuring officials in both countries.
Akaoa MP Robert Heather queried the Prime Minister whether the government had spoken to Chinese embassy officials in New Zealand for a response in this breach of Australian waters?
“One thing I do know is that just in the recent weeks, New Zealand navy was part of an exercise with the Australians and Americans conducting naval exercises in the South China Sea and perhaps that’s why China decided to exercise naval exercises in the international waters off the coast of Australia,” he said.
“And I also know that in the last two weeks, the government of Australia and China signed a security treaty between the two countries.
“However in due course, we may be informed more about these naval exercises that these countries conduct in international waters off each other’s coasts.”
According to Brown, he had not been briefed by any government whether it’s New Zealand, Australia, or China about these developments.
Asking for an update
He added that while the Minister of Foreign Affairs Elikana was currently in the Solomon Islands attending a forum on fisheries together with other ministers of the Pacific Region, he would ask him about whether he could make any inquiries to find out whether the government could be updated or briefed on this issue.
Meanwhile, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said after a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing, that lack of sufficient warning from China about the live-fire exercises was a “failure” in the New Zealand-China relationship.
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defence, Wu Qian explained that China’s actions were entirely in accordance with international law and established practices and would not impact on aviation safety.
He added that the live-fire training was conducted with repeated safety notices that had been issued in advance.
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