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Category: Self Determination

  • ‘We want legitimate leaders’: Bougainvilleans head to the polls amid push for independence

    By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    Bougainvilleans went to the polls today, keen to elect a leader who will continue their fight for independence.

    “There’s a mood of excitement among the people here,” said Electoral Commissioner Desmond Tsianai.

    “It is important that this election is successful and credible, because we want legitimate leaders in the government, who will continue discussions with Papua New Guinea over independence,” he said.

    Tsianai said there were more than 239,000 registered voters in the autonomous PNG region and he expects a better turnout than the 67 percent during the 2020 election.

    “We anticipate voter turnout will increase due to the importance of this election in the political aspirations of Bougainville.”

    Tsianai said his office had been proactive, encouraging voters to enrol and reaching out through schools to first-time voters aged 18 and over.

    He is adamant Bougainville could achieve a one-day poll, despite the election being rescheduled at the last minute.

    Polling pushed back
    Polling was scheduled to begin on Thursday but was pushed back a day to allow time to dispatch ballot papers.

    In addition, he said, there were some quality control issues concerning serial numbers.

    “These are an important safeguard against fraud. We, therefore, took measures to ensure that these issues were rectified, so that electoral integrity was assured.”

    The final shipment of ballot papers, which was scheduled for delivery on August 23, finally arrived on September 2, he said.

    This did not allow enough time for packing and distribution to enable polling to take place on Thursday.

    “The printing of the ballot papers and the delay afterwards was out of our hands, however we’ve taken the necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the process.

    The polling period for the elections was from September 2-8, and the office had discretion to select any date within that period based on election planning, he said.

    “Rescheduling allowed sufficient time to resolve ballot delivery delays and to ensure that polling teams are ready to serve voters.”

    Preventing risk
    He said that the rescheduling was done in the interest of voters, candidates and stakeholders, to prevent any risk of disenfranchisement.

    “We remain fully committed to delivering a credible election and will continue to provide regular updates to maintain transparency and confidence in the electoral process,” he said.

    “We have taken the necessary steps and anticipated that some wards within constituencies have a larger voting population so extra teams had been allocated to those wards so polling can be conducted in a day.”

    The dominant issue going into the election remained the quest for independence.

    In 2020, there were strong expectations that the autonomous region would soon achieve that, given the result of an historic referendum.

    A 97.7 percent majority voted for independence in a referendum which began in November 2019.

    However, that has not happened yet, and Port Moresby has yet to concede much ground.

    Toroama not pressured
    Bougainville’s 544 polling stations will open from 8am to 4pm local time (9am-5pm NZT) in what is the first time the Autonomous Bougainville Government has planned a single day poll.

    Some 404 candidates are contesting for 46 seats in the Bougainville Parliament, including a record 34 women.

    Six men are challenging Ishmael Toroama for his job.

    Toroama recently told RNZ Pacific that he was not feeling any pressure as he sought a second five-year term in office.

    “I’m the kind of man that has process. They voted me for the last five years. And if the people wish to put me, the decision, the power to put people, it is democracy. They will vote for me.” he said.

    Counting will take place on September 9-21, and writs will be returned to the Speaker of the House the following day.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine

    Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies have come out with the expanded and revised second edition of their book War in Ukraine. Defying logic, the subtitle is Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.

    A blurb from professor Noam Chomsky calls it: “An invaluable guide.” I agree.

    Media analyst Norman Solomon calls the book a “concise primer … historical context with balance and compassion.” Benjamin and Davies are compassionate advocates for peace; this is laudable and undeniable. However, too often information that criticizes all sides in a conflict, more or less equally, is passed off as balanced. Yet, when the preponderance of blame lies with one side in a dispute, to criticize equally would be unbalanced. War in Ukraine often comes across as unbalanced, and that starts with the title.

    The authors give short shrift to the “Russian media narrative” notion of a “special military operation” (SMO, p 149) whereby Russia states that it is not conducting a war. The authors deal marginally with the distinction between SMO and war, (p 149) and it is left to the reader to just accept the authors’ assertion that it is a war and not a SMO. But what is a SMO? Basically, a SMO is a political-military concept used to downplay the severity and scope of a military action, while “war” is a broader, more objective term for a large-scale armed conflict. Thus, calling it a SMO versus war points to a semantic distinction aligning with a certain narrative.

    Putin says Russia’s hands were forced by the US-NATO to launch the SMO:

    They [US-NATO and Ukraine] did not leave us any other option for defending Russia and our people, other than the one we are forced to use today. In these circumstances, we have to take bold and immediate action. The people’s republics of Donbas have asked Russia for help.

    For the most part, War in Ukraine provides most of the requisite background leading to Russian invasion, inter alia:

    • NATO breaking its agreement to not move one inch eastward toward Russia.
    • The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 affirmed a commitment “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine,” and “obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine…”
    • The US was instrumental in fomenting the Maidan Coup/Revolution to overthrow the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych to install a US-preferred president.
    • The machinations of the US-NATO in the politics of Ukraine and the involvement of US-NATO in a proxy war.
    • Western Ukraine launched war on the eastern oblasts of Ukraine.
    • Kyiv failed to implement the Minsk Agreements to end the west versus east fighting in Ukraine.
    • Nazi ideologues constituted a major fighting force for Kyiv.
    • Western media played a biased role in its coverage.

    Questioning Balance

    The authors write, “… when Russia jumped on the might-makes-right bandwagon by tearing up the UN Charter and invading Ukraine.” (p 6) Thereby, “The people of Ukraine were unwittingly caught in a perfect storm, whipped up not only by brutal Russian aggression but also by astonishing Western hubris and stupidity.” (p 6) This dismisses or ignores that Putin launched the SMO “in accordance with Article 51 (Chapter VII) of the UN Charter, with permission of Russia’s Federation Council, and in execution of the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic…” War on Ukraine is somewhat taciturn about the killing and aggression preceding Russia sending its military into Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

    In mid-February 2014, the Maidan Coup (“coup” because an elected government was violently overthrown) resulted in the deaths of 107 civilians and 13 police officers. In the subsequent fighting, 14,000 people were killed, according to the estimates of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 14 April 2014 to 31 January 2022 in eastern Ukraine. In essence, if one posits a Russian aggression, then it seems it can also be posited that it was in response to Ukrainian aggression against Donbass with its sizeable proportion of ethnic Russians. In other words, the Russian aggression is to protect ethnic Russians from the initial aggression of Ukraine.

    Yet, Benjamin and Davies frame one question as: “And why did Russia decide to invade Ukraine?” (p 8) There was no question posed: “And why did western Ukraine decide to invade eastern Ukraine?” Why decide to invade Ukraine? (Balanced another way: Why did Russia feel forced to launch the SMO?) Putin stated,

    The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.

    Benjamin and Davies do speak to why the West backed the coup and post-coup governments in Ukraine thorough financing from the IMF: “The thrust of the IMF-mandated reforms was not to give Ukraine back to its people, but to open it up to Western capital and to partnerships between local oligarchs and Western ones with even deeper pockets.” (p 42)

    The authors quoted Putin from a presidential address in April 2021 warning:

    Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way that they have not regretted anything for a long time. (p 65)

    Yet War on Ukraine is decidedly lacking in presenting and analyzing the speeches Putin made in an attempt to end the warring in Ukraine and preclude Russia’s entry into the fighting.

    It is a fact that the US-NATO rejected the security agreement proffered by the government of Russia to end the fighting in Ukraine and provide for the security of all parties. Neither did the US-NATO come back with a counter proposal. Clearly, Russia was seeking to avoid military action. From the decision of the US-NATO that “summarily dismissed Russia’s proposals” (p 68) one might well surmise that the West was hoping to force Russia to take up arms, which Russia obliged.

    Benjamin and Davies focus on the illegality of Russia’s SMO. (p 72) There certainly are laws that one can cite to criticize Russia on the legality of its SMO. Even if legal arguments might find against Russia’s militarism, should extant law always be the final arbiter on right and wrong? Is the launching of military action to save lives and staunch further killing not morally warranted? Many have clamoured for military action to stop the genocide being wreaked against Palestinians. Should the courageous state of Yemen be legally condemned as a scofflaw state for coming to the aid of Palestine?

    Benjamin and Davies bring up “the allegations of serious Russian war crimes in Bucha and Mariupol.” (p 76) The authors do not consider that this might have been a false flag carried out by Ukraine. The Bucha allegation is forcefully refuted by former US Marine Scott Ritter who says “hundreds of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha … were slaughtered by Ukrainian security forces.” Ritter provides a narrative of what happened and avers, “The evidence of this crime was overwhelming.” That may be so, but what Ritter provided was a narrative and not evidence.

    The authors write that in the first phase of the Russian penetration into Ukraine that Russia failed to take Kyiv. (p 79) The authors are attributing Russian intentionality to take the Ukrainian capital. In stating that, Benjamin and Davies call into question the veracity of Putin who has stated: “It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.”

    Early in the Russian SMO, the authors cite Amnesty International reports of Russia’s “deliberate killings of civilians, rapes, torture, and inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.” (p 80) Is Amnesty International a credible source? Paul de Rooij has written a few articles highly critical of Amnesty International (“Amnesty International: Trumpeting for war… again,” “Amnesty International: The Case of a Rape Foretold,” “Where was Amnesty International during the Genocide in Gaza?” as have others; e.g., Khaled Amayreh, “Amnesty’s Scandalous Obliquity” and Binoy Kampmark “Finding the Unmentionable: Amnesty International, Israel and Genocide.”) One wonders what exactly is a report? Testimony given by people? That has validity if the testimony is verifiable or at least has genuine verisimilitude.

    Patrick Lancaster, an on-the-ground independent American journalist in Ukraine, for some reason not sourced by Benjamin and Davies, has spoken of several war crimes by Ukraine.

    The authors write that Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum. (p 101) This is true, but it shouldn’t be stated without context. The memorandum was to provide security guarantees for Ukraine. But security for one state was not meant to diminish the security of the Russian signatory and be to the detriment of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Certainly when Russia signed the memorandum it did not foresee that other signatories to the memorandum, the US and UK, would undermine democracy in Ukraine, weaponize and militarize Ukraine, and seek to draw it into NATO despite it being a Russian redline.

    Benjamin and Davies claim that Russia violated the UN Charter when it launched its SMO against Ukraine. (p 118-120, 128) What the authors do not discuss is the Responsibility to Protect, a global political commitment, endorsed by all member states of the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit. At R2P’s core is that sovereignty is not just a right but a responsibility. When Kyiv attacked eastern Ukraine it violated its responsibility for the security and welfare of all its citizens and opened the door for R2P to be invoked.

    Consider whether the authors are tendentious in the following depictions:

    As reporters got swept up in Zelenskyy’s calls for more Western military involvement, they often became purveyors of fake news. There were surely accurate stories of real Ukrainian heroism, but some turned out to be exaggerated, embellished, or even simply invented. (160)

    If there “surely are accurate stories of real Ukrainian heroism,” — and there must be — then why the need for the fake news? There are several admonitions about accepting the truth of statements when previous statements have been exposed as disinformation, from Aesop’s boy who cried wolf to “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me” and the Latin dictum: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

    There is credible evidence of summary executions, rapes, and torture carried out by Russian forces in Ukraine, and evidence of Ukrainian war crimes too. (p 162)

    There is evidence of Ukrainian war crimes, not credible evidence and the crimes are not spelled out as summary executions, rapes, and torture.

    And the question for this reader is: what is the evidence? Is it sufficient for a writer to merely state that there is evidence and that the evidence is credible? Would critical thinkers accept such an assurance?

    The authors write of “Russia’s annexation of Crimea.” (p 181)

    According to DeepSeek: “In international law, annexation is the forcible acquisition of territory by one state at the expense of another state. It involves the formal act of claiming sovereignty over territory that was previously under the control of another sovereign entity.” Much more context is required to just call it an annexation. This was a process whereby the people of Crimea, predominantly ethnic Russians, exercised their right under Article 1 of the UN Charter to self-determination, which they overwhelmingly voted for in a referendum. Also the historical context is relevant. Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev had formally transferred Crimea from the jurisdiction of Russia to Ukraine in 1954.

    *****

    Benjamin and Davies conclude:

    As with this war and the crisis that led up to it, Russia is accountable and responsible for its own actions, which have violated the most fundamental principles of international law. But our leaders in the West are also equally responsible for their actions and they too have acted irresponsibly and dangerously. (p 209)

    It is unassailable logic: that we are all responsible and accountable for our actions. Notable is that no violations of fundamental principles of international law are ascribed to the Western leaders. What about the casus belli; which entity provoked the war? Did Putin provoke the war? That would be a risible contention because Putin made overtures to US-NATO seeking security guarantees, but he was thoroughly rebuffed by the West. US-NATO was going to militarize and arm Ukraine and likeliest place missiles within Ukraine.

    Speaking of responsibility, is it not the responsibility of any country’s leadership to provide security for the country and its people? Putin has identified this as an existential threat to Russia.

    The intentions of the US in its proxy war against Russia have been made clear by several politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. For example, US senator Lindsay Graham, after meeting with President Zelenskyy Kyiv in August 2023, stated:

    “The Ukrainians are fighting to the last person, and we’re funding it. It’s a good deal for us.”

    “It’s the best money we’ve ever spent. Without a single American soldier dying, we can weaken the Russian military.”

    Several other US politicians have made the same argument. For example, Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader said,

    “The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals without having to put American soldiers at risk. We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The rest of the world is watching. This is a direct investment in cold, hard American interests.”

    Also, the West has a history of attacking Russia. Would Putin have been faithful to addressing the security situation of Russia if he had allowed NATO to deploy troops and missiles in Ukraine? It is often said that Putin does not bluff. What would his reputation have been if he did not stick to his redlines of no NATO in Georgia and Ukraine?

    Shouldn’t people devoted to peace be focused on arguing for the dismantling of NATO; adherence to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, thereby denuclearizing; and engaging in worldwide disarmament? This is what Benjamin and Davies do best.

    Benjamin and Davies acknowledge the insight offered by several persons for their book. (p 235-236) The absence of certain persons who speak more understandingly of Russia taking on US-NATO-Ukraine, for instance,  former Marine Scott Ritter, retired colonel Douglas Macgregor, and professor Jeffrey Sachs is suggestive of the authors’ leaning. Jeffrey Sachs wrote a recent essay that stands in contrast to many conclusions reached by Benjamin and Davies.

    War in Ukraine is very readable, and it is informative. It is a great primer. But as for any information proffered, by whatever source, demand the evidence, question the evidence, and scrutinize the analysis.

    The post Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Local journalists and fixers are dying at unprecedented rates in Gaza. Can anyone protect them?

    ANALYSIS: By Simon Levett, University of Technology Sydney

    Journalist Mariam Dagga was just 33 when she was brutally killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on August 25.

    As a freelance photographer and videographer, she had captured the suffering in Gaza through indelible images of malnourished children and grief-stricken families. In her will, she told her colleagues not to cry and her 13-year-old son to make her proud.

    Dagga was killed alongside four other journalists — and 16 others — in an attack on a hospital that has drawn widespread condemnation and outrage.

    This attack followed the killings of six Al Jazeera journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in a tent housing journalists in Gaza City earlier on August 10. The dead included Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anas al-Sharif.

    A montage of killed Palestinian journalists
    A montage of killed Palestinian journalists . . . Shireen Abu Akleh (from left), Mariam Dagga, Hossam Shabat, Anas Al-Sharif and Yasser Murtaja. Image: Montage/The Conversation

    Israel’s nearly two-year war in Gaza is among the deadliest in modern times. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which has tracked journalist deaths globally since 1992, has counted a staggering 189 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since the war began. Two other counts more widely cited have ranged between 248 and 272

    Many of the journalists worked as freelancers for major news organisations since Israel has banned foreign correspondents from entering Gaza.

    In addition, the organisation has confirmed the killings of two Israeli journalists, along with six journalists killed in Israel’s strikes on Lebanon.

     

    ‘It was very traumatising for me’
    I went to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in Israel and Ramallah in the West Bank in 2019 to conduct part of my PhD research on the available protections for journalists in conflict zones.

    During that time, I interviewed journalists from major international outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, BBC and others, in addition to local Palestinian freelance journalists and fixers. I also interviewed a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera English, with whom I remained in contact until recently.

    I did not visit Gaza due to safety concerns. However, many of the journalists had reported from there and were familiar with the conditions, which were dangerous even before the war.

    Osama Hassan, a local journalist, told me about working in the West Bank:

    “There are no rules, there’s no safety. Sometimes, when settlers attack a village, for example, we go to cover, but Israeli soldiers don’t respect you, they don’t respect anything called Palestinian […] even if you are a journalist.”

    Nuha Musleh, a fixer in Jerusalem, described an incident that occurred after a stone was thrown towards IDF soldiers:

    “[…] they started shooting right and left – sound bombs, rubber bullets, one of which landed in my leg. I was taken to hospital. The correspondent also got injured. The Israeli cameraman also got injured. So all of us got injured, four of us.

    “It was very traumatising for me. I never thought that a sound bomb could be that harmful. I was in hospital for a good week. Lots of stitches.”

    Better protections for local journalists and fixers
    My research found there is very little support for local journalists and fixers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in terms of physical protection, and no support in terms of their mental health.

    International law mandates that journalists are protected as civilians in conflict zones under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols. However, these laws have not historically extended protections specific to the needs of journalists.

    Media organisations, media rights groups and governments have been unequivocal in their demands that Israel take greater precautions to protect journalists in Gaza and investigate strikes like the one that killed Mariam Dagga.

    London-based artist Nishita Jha (@NishSwish) illustrated this tribute to the slain Gaza journalist Mariam Dagga
    London-based artist Nishita Jha (@NishSwish) illustrated this tribute to the slain Gaza journalist Mariam Dagga. Image: The Fuller Project

    Sadly, there is seemingly little media organisations can do to help their freelance contributors in Gaza beyond issuing statements noting concern for their safety, lobbying Israel to allow evacuations, and demanding access for foreign reporters to enter the strip.

    International correspondents typically have training on reporting from war zones, in addition to safety equipment, insurance and risk assessment procedures. However, local journalists and fixers in Gaza do not generally have access to the same protections, despite bearing the brunt of the effects of war, which includes mass starvation.

    Despite the enormous difficulties, I believe media organisations must strive to meet their employment law obligations, to the best of their ability, when it comes to local journalists and fixers. This is part of their duty of care.

    For example, research shows fixers have long been the “most exploited and persecuted people” contributing to the production of international news. They are often thrust into precarious situations without hazardous environment training or medical insurance. And many times, they are paid very little for their work.

    Local journalists and fixers in Gaza must be paid properly by the media organisations hiring them. This should take into consideration not just the woeful conditions they are forced to work and live in, but the immense impact of their jobs on their mental health.

    As the global news director for Agence France-Presse said recently, paying local contributors is very difficult — they often bear huge transaction costs to access their money.

    “We try to compensate by paying more to cover that,” he said.

    But he did not address whether the agency would change its security protocols and training for conflict zones, given journalists themselves are being targeted in Gaza in their work.

    These local journalists are literally putting their lives on the line to show the world what’s happening in Gaza. They need greater protections.

    As Ammar Awad, a local photographer in the West Bank, told me:

    “The photographer does not care about himself. He cares about the pictures, how he can shoot good pictures, to film something good.

    “But he needs to be in a good place that is safe for him.”The Conversation

    Simon Levett is a PhD candidate in public international law, University of Technology Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Fijian PM Rabuka hints at ‘historic’ referendum after landmark court ruling

    By Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital/social lead

    Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has hinted that the country may “hold its first-ever referendum” following a landmark Supreme Court opinion aimed at amending the 2013 Constitution.

    On Friday, the nation’s highest court ruled that thresholds for constitutional amendments should be lowered — requiring only a two-thirds majority in parliament and a simple majority of voters in a referendum.

    The ruling followed a three-day hearing in August, after Rabuka’s Cabinet, in June, had sought clarification on making changes to parts of the Constitution.

    Submissions came from the State, seven political parties, the Fiji Law Society, and the Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission.

    Rabuka said that the Supreme Court’s opinion established a “clear and democratic pathway” for his government’s constitutional reform efforts.

    “This opinion provides clarity on matters of constitutional law and governance. It will now go before Cabinet for further deliberation, after which I, as Head of Government, will announce the way forward,” he said in a statement.

    Fiji's 2013 Constitution
    Fiji’s 2013 Constitution . . . the coalition’s “unwillingness to spell out the constitutional changes it was contemplating” has made Indo-Fijians “apprehensive”. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony

    However, the Fiji Labour Party, while welcoming the Supreme Court’s opinion, expressed concerns over the lowering of the current “75 percent double super majority requirement” to amend the constitution.

    Fijians of Indian descent make up just over 32 percent of Fiji’s total population.

    Indo-Fijians ‘particularly vulnerable’
    Labour leader and former Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry said that the Indo-Fijian community felt “particularly vulnerable” due to the nation’s race-based political tensions, which have resulted in four coups.

    He noted that the coalition’s “unwillingness to spell out the constitutional changes it was contemplating” had made Indo-Fijians “apprehensive”.

    “It is for this reason that Labour had submitted that constitutional changes should be left to political negotiations with a view to achieving consensus, and stability,” he added.

    Sitiveni Rabuka and Mahnedra Chaudhry embrace at the reconciliation church service on 14 May 2023.
    Fiji Labour Party’s Mahendra Chaudhry (facing camera) embraces Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka during a reconciliation church service in May 2023. Image: RNZ Pacific/Fiji govt

    But Rabuka dismissed Chaudhry’s concerns on Monday, saying that his “argument does not stand”.

    “In a referendum, every community is part of the decision. Indo-Fijians, like all other minority groups, vote as equal citizens,” he said.

    He said that any government wanting to change the constitution would need support from the whole nation.

    “This forces proposals to be fair, broad, and inclusive. Discriminatory ideas would never survive such a test.”

    ‘Generalised statements’ criticised
    Rabuka said Chaudhry should refrain from making “generalised statements”, adding that he does not have the mandate to speak for all Indo-Fijians.

    “Chaudhry says change should only come through political negotiations and consensus. But that usually means a few leaders making deals in closed rooms. That gives a small group of politicians’ veto power over the entire country, blocking needed changes and leaving Fiji stuck,” he said.

    “A referendum is the opposite of backroom politics. It is open, transparent, and gives the final say to the people themselves. That is real democracy. That is what the Coalition Government welcomes entirely.”

    While Rabuka’s People’s Alliance Party wanted the 2013 Constitution thrown out and replaced with the previous 1997 Constitution, he said the former Prime Minister should “move past the old style of politics and recognise that Fiji may now hold its first-ever referendum”.

    “That would be a historic step, one that strengthens democracy for every community, not weakens it.

    “As your Prime Minister, I give my assurance to all Fijians that this process belongs to you.”

    When Voreqe Bainimarama walked out of Parliament after his government lost by a single vote on Christmas Eve in December 2022, he told reporters who swarmed around him in the capital, Suva: “This is democracy and this is my legacy [the] 2013 Constitution.”

    Visibly shellshocked
    His most trusted ally Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, looking visibly shellshocked at FijiFirst’s loss of power, said at the time: “We hope that the new government will adhere to the rule of law.”

    Sayed-Khaiyum is widely viewed as the architect of the 2013 Constitution, although he disputes that claim.

    Critics of the document, which is the country’s fourth constitution, argue that it was imposed by the Bainimarama administration

    Meanwhile, the country’s chiefs want the 2013 Constitution gone. In May, the Great Council of Chiefs (GCC) unanimously rejected the document as “restricting a lot of work for the iTaukei (indigenous Fijians)”.

    Following the Supreme Court opinion, the head of of GCC told local media that the 2013 Constitution lacked cultural legitimacy and undermined Fiji’s democratic capacity.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Taiwan has right to be free, ‘preserve self-determination’ — U.S. senator | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Two state, deluded state – shuffling of the deck isn’t stopping Gaza genocide

    COMMENTARY: By Gordon Campbell

    Chances are, anyone whose family is dying of starvation would not be looking for New Zealand to have a prolonged debate over how they deserve to be defined.

    Yet a delay in making even the symbolic gestures seems to be all that we have to offer, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to be systematically starved to death by Israel.

    Could be wrong, but I doubt whether anyone in Gaza is waiting anxiously for news that New Zealand government has finally, finally come to the conclusion that Palestine deserves to be recognised as state.

    READ MORE:

    So far, 147 out of 193 UN member states reached that conclusion ahead of us. Some of the last holdouts — Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Australia — have already said they will do so next month.

    So far, none of that diplomatic shuffling of the deck has stopped the Gaza genocide. Only significant economic and diplomatic sanctions and an extensive arms embargo (one that includes military-related software) can force Israel to cease and desist.

    You don’t need to recognise statehood before taking those kind of steps. Last week, Germany — which does not recognise the state of Palestine — imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel that forbids sales of any weaponry that might be used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. Not much, but a start — given that (after the US) Germany has been the main foreign arms supplier to the IDF.

    Meanwhile, the Luxon government has yet to make up its mind on Palestinian statehood. Our government repeatedly insists that this recognition is “complex.” Really? By saying so, we are embarrassing ourselves on the world stage.

    Trying to appease Americans
    While we still furrow our brows about Palestinian statehood, 76 percent of the UN’s member nations have already figured it out. Surely, our hesitation can’t be because we are as mentally challenged as we are claiming to be.

    The more likely explanation is that we are trying to appease the Americans, in the hope of winning a trade concession. Our government must be gambling that an angry Donald Trump will punish Australia for its decision on Palestine, by lifting its tariff rate, thereby erasing the 5 percent advantage over us that Australian exporters currently enjoy.

    By keeping our heads down on Palestine, we seem to be hoping we will win brownie points with Trump, at the expense of our ANZAC mates.

    This isn’t mere conspiracy talk. Already, the Trump administration is putting pressure on France over its imminent decision to recognise Palestine statehood. A few days ago, Le Monde reported that the US ambassador to France, Charles Kushner — yes, Ivana Trump’s father-in-law — blundered into France’s domestic politics by writing a letter of complaint to French president Emmanuel Marcon.

    In it, Kushner claimed that France wasn’t doing enough to combat anti-Semitism:

    “Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France,” [Kushner] wrote.

    “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism – plain and simple.”

    Breaking every civilised rule
    Simple-minded is more like it. People who oppose the criminal atrocities being committed in Gaza (and on the West Bank) by the Zionist government of Israel are not doing so on the basis of racial prejudice. They’re doing so because Israel is breaking every rule of a civilised society.

    Any number of UN conventions and international laws forbid the targeting of civilian populations, homes, schools, ambulances and hospitals . . . not to mention the deliberate killing of hundreds of medical staff, journalists, aid workers etc.

    Not to mention imposing a famine on a captive population. Day after day, the genocide continues.

    For Kushner to claim the global revulsion at Israel’s actions in Gaza is motivated by racism is revealing. To Israel’s apologists within Israel, and in the US (and New Zealand) only Israeli lives really matter.

    Footnote: New Zealand continues to bang on about our support for the “two state” solution. Exactly where is the land on which Christopher Luxon thinks a viable Palestinian state can be built, and what makes him think Israel would ever allow it to happen?

    Thirty years ago, Israeli settlement expansion fatally undermined the Oslo framework for a Palestinian state situated alongside Israel.

    Since then, the fabled “two state solution” has become the tooth fairy of international politics. It gives politicians something to say when they have nothing to say.

    Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s Werewolf column in partnership with Scoop.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • There is a plot Mr Luxon: It’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians based on biblical justification

    COMMENTARY: By Ian Powell

    “Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘lost the plot’ and has condemned attacks on Gaza.

    “It is among the strongest language the New Zealand leader has used against Netanyahu and comes amid reports of intense aerial attacks on Gaza after Israel’s decision to launch a fresh military operation.”

    These are the opening two paragraphs of The New Zealand Herald coverage by political reporter Jamie Ensor of Prime Minister Luxon’s public declaration that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the plot.

    His comment was in the context of the Israeli government’ genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and their increasing persecution on the Israeli occupied West Bank (August 13): Netanyahu lost the plot says Luxon.

    Spectrum of NZ government’s response to genocide
    The New Zealand government’s response to this ethnic cleansing by genocide strategy in Gaza has ranged on a spectrum between pathetically weak to callous disregard.

    Previously I’ve described this spectrum as between limp and deplorable; both have their own validity.

    Consequently, the many New Zealanders who were appalled by this response might have been somewhat relieved by Luxon’s frankness.

    Perhaps a long overdue change of direction towards humanitarianism? In the interests of confusion avoidance this is a rhetorical question.

    However, there is a big problem with Luxon’s conclusion. Quite simply, he is wrong; there is a plot and it is based on a perverse biblical origin.

    Why NZ Prime Minister Luxon got it wrong.        Video: RNZ

    Just over three weeks from the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack across the border in the Israeli occupied former Palestinian land, Netanyahu made the following broadcast,  including on You Tube (October 30): Netanyahu’s biblical justification.

    The ‘”war criminal” is explicit that there is a plot behind the ethnic cleansing through genocide strategy in Gaza. It is a dogmatically blood thirsty and historically inaccurate biblical centred plot.

    In his own words:

    “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible — and we do remember. And we are fighting — our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza, or around Gaza, and in all other regions in Israel, are joining this chain of Jewish heroes — a chain that started 3000 years ago, from Joshua until the heroes of the Six-Day War in 1948 [sic], the 1973 October War, and all other wars in this country.

    “Our heroic troops — they have only one supreme goal: to completely defeat the murderous enemy and to guarantee our existence in this country.”

    Netanyahu was referring to the Book of 1 Samuel (Chapter 15, Verse 3) which states:

    “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

    Samuel was a prophet through who the Jewish God Yahweh commanded one Saul to conduct a total war of annihilation against the Amalekites.

    The Amalekites were a biblical nation who, so biblical history goes, had attacked the Israelites during their “Exodus” from Egypt.

    From apartheid to ethnic cleansing to recognition of Palestine
    Previously I have published four posts on the Gaza genocide. The first (March 15) discussed it in the context of the apartheid in the South Africa of the past and apartheid as continuing defining feature in Israel since its creation in 1948: When apartheid met Zionism.

    The second (May 28) discussed what underpins the Zionist support for ethnic cleansing through genocide: Reasons for supporting ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

    This theme was followed through in the third (June 4) in the context of recognising the state of Palestine: Ethnic cleansing, genocide and Palestine recognition.

    From Netanyahu to Zelda
    In the context of the truer number of Palestinian deaths in Gaza, my fourth previous post (July 2) was more directly closer to the theme of this post: How to biblically justify 400,000 Palestinian deaths.

    I quoted a genocide supporter going by the name of “Zelda” justifying Israel’s war in similar vein to Bejamin Netanyahu:

    “Gaza belongs to Israel! This is not just a political claim; it is a sacred, unbreakable decree from Almighty God Himself. If any government from around the world recognises Palestine, the United States needs to declare it part of the Axis of Evil

    “The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness. No enemy, no terrorist, no foreign power can wrest it away. Those who reject this truth stand against God’s will and will face His judgment.

    “If Palestinians want aid and peace, they must recognise Israel’s God-given right and leave Gaza forever. Only under God’s blessing can this land flourish, and all who defy His plan will be cast down.”

    From Zelda to Alfred
    On July 4, I received the following email from a reader called Alfred. In his words (be warned, at the very least this is a mind-boggling read):

    “Accidentally I came across your blog on ‘How To Justify 400,000 Palestinian Deaths In Gaza: Ask ‘Zelda’ (Thursday, 3 July 2025). It was an interesting read.
    With all due respect, I would like to place before you my ‘two cents’
    Consider this history Mr Ian:
    1) Before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, Not a Palestinian state.
    2) Before the British mandate there was the Ottoman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    3) Before the Ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, Not a Palestinian state.
    4)Before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the Ayyubid dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. Godfrey of Bouillon conquered it in 1099.
    5) Before the Ayyubid dynasty there was the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, Not a Palestinian state.
    6) Before the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem there was the Fatimid caliphate, Not a Palestinian state.
    7) Before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, Not a Palestinian state. 8. Before the Byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    9) Before the Roman empire there was the Hasmonaean dynasty, Not a Palestinian state. 10) Before the Hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    11) Before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, Not a Palestinian state.
    12) Before the empire of Alexander, the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    13) Before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, Not a Palestinian state.
    14) Before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, Not a Palestinian state.
    15) Before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
    16) Before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, Not a Palestinian state.
    17) Before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, Not a Palestinian state.
    In fact, in that corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!
    Interesting history isn’t it?
    Yes, I agree with Zelda’s statement that …
    ‘The land was promised by divine covenant to the people of Israel, chosen by God to be His light in the darkness.’
    Mr Ian, if you go back to the Bible to read the Old Testament history, we see that God declares time and again that they (Israelites) are His chosen people, and He will bring them back to land of Israel. (Which has started to happen, as you observe world events). He also condemns His own chosen that if they turn away from Him, he will turn away His face. And that was what He did to the 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. They were wiped out. And the sort of genocide that we see today in Gaza, was prevalent in that time, when Gentile nations were even wiped out if they stood between the Israelites and the ‘promised land’ (Israel). Even the lives of His own chosen people were not valuable to Him, and was at stake (holocaust recently) when they turned away from Him, as those many of their enemies (or opponents)!

    8000-year-old history is repeating itself now in Gaza, I believe.
    Alfred

    Mapping the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

    The views of both Zelda and Alfred are not off the planet in terms of supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians through genocide.

    They are thoroughly consistent with Netanyahu’s well-thought out plot. Both are part of his “echo chamber”.

    Who has really lost the plot?
    The genocide towards Palestinians will not end in Gaza. All the evidence is that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are next.

    Gaza the precursor to West Bank Palestinians.

    There the ethnic cleansing is continuing in the form of persecution and repression, including imprisonment (hostage-taking by another name).

    But it is escalating and, unless there is a change in direction, it is only a matter of time before persecution and repression morph into genocide.

    Benjamin Netanyahu has not lost the plot. However, Christopher Luxon has. His criticism of Netanyahu is a flimsy attempt to avoid doing what a humanitarian government with a “plot” should do. This includes:

    1. Recognising the Palestinian Territories as an official independent state;
    2. Sanctioning Israeli Defence Force (IDF) visitors;
    3. Close the Israel Embassy;
    4. Impose trade and bilateral sanctions; and
    5. Suspend Israel from the United Nations.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • French Overseas Minister pushes ahead with Bougival deal despite FLNKS snub

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific Correspondent French Pacific desk

    French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls has ended an extended seven-day visit to New Caledonia with mixed feelings.

    On one hand, he said he was confident his “Bougival deal” for New Caledonia’s future is now “more advanced” after three sittings of a “drafting committee” made up of local politicians.

    On the other hand, despite his efforts and a three-hour meeting on Tuesday before he returned to Paris, he could not convince the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — the main component of the pro-independence camp — to join the “Bougival” process.

    The FLNKS recently warned against any attempt to “force” an agreement they were not part of, raising concerns about possible unrest similar to the riots that broke out in May 2024, causing 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (about NZ$3.8 billion) in material damage.

    The unrest has crystallised around a constitutional reform bill that sought to change the rules of eligibility for voters at local provincial elections. The bill prompted fears among the Kanak community that it was seeking to “dissolve” indigenous votes.

    But despite the FLNKS snub, all the other pro-independence and pro-France parties took part in the committee sessions, which are now believed to have produced a Constitutional Reform Bill.

    That bill is due to be tabled in both France’s parliament chambers (the National Assembly and the Senate) and later before a special meeting of both houses (a “Congress” — a joint meeting of both Houses of Parliament).

    Valls still upbeat
    Speaking to local reporters just before leaving the French Pacific territory on Tuesday, Valls remained upbeat and adamant that despite the FLNKS snub, the Bougival process is now “better seated”.

    “When I arrived in New Caledonia one week ago, many were wondering what would become of the Bougival accord we signed. Some said it was still-born. Today I’m going back with the feeling that the accord is comforted and that we have made considerable advances,” he said.

    "Gone" . . . the vanishing French and New Caledonian flags symbolising partnership on the New Caledonian driving licence
    “Gone” . . . the vanishing French and New Caledonian flags symbolising partnership on the New Caledonian driving licence. Image: NC 1ère TV

    He pointed out that non-political players, such as the Great Traditional Indigenous Chiefs Customary Senate and the Economic and Social Council, also joined some of the “drafting” sessions to convey their respective input.

    Valls hailed a “spirit of responsibility” and a “will to implement” the Bougival document, despite a more than three-hour meeting with a new delegation from FLNKS just hours before his departure on Tuesday.

    The FLNKS still opposes the Bougival text their negotiators had initially signed, that was later denounced following pressure from their militant base, invoking a profound “incompatibility” of the text with the movement’s “full sovereignty” and “decolonisation” goals.

    Also demands for this process to be completed before the next French Presidential elections, currently scheduled for April-May 2027.

    The Bougival deal signed on July 12 near Paris was initially agreed to by all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented at the local parliament, the Congress. However, it was later denounced and rejected “in block” by the FLNKS.

    Door ‘remains open’
    Valls consistently stressed that his door “remains open” to the FLNKS throughout his week-long stay in New Caledonia. This was his fourth trip to the territory since he was appointed to the post by French Prime Minister François Bayrou in December 2024.

    Manuel Valls (right) and his team meet FLNKS delegation on 26 August 2025 – PHOTO supplied
    Manuel Valls (right, standing) and his team met a FLNKS delegation on 26 August 2025. Image: RNZ Pacific

    He pointed out that non-political players, such as the (Great Traditional Indigenous Chiefs) Customary Senate and the Economic and Social Council, also had joined some of the “drafting” sessions to convey their input.

    In a statement after meeting with Valls, the FLNKS reiterated its categorical rejection” of the Bougival process while at the same time saying it was “ready to build an agreement on independence with all [political] partners”.

    “I will continue working with them and I also invite FLNKS to discuss with the other political parties. I don’t want to strike a deal without the FLNKS, or against the FLNKS,” he told local public broadcaster NC 1ère on Tuesday.

    He said the Bougival document was still in a “decolonisation process”.

    ‘Fresh talks’ in Paris
    Valls repeated his open-door policy and told local media that he did not rule out meeting FLNKS president Christian Téin in Paris for “fresh talks” in the “next few days”.

    Téin was released from jail mid-June 2025, but he remains barred from returning to New Caledonia as part of judicial controls imposed on him, pending his trial on criminal-related charges over the May 2024 riots.

    At the time, Téin was the leader of a CCAT (field action coordinating cell) to mount a protest campaign against a Constitutional reform bill that was eventually scrapped.

    The CCAT was set up late 2023 by one of the main components of the FLNKS, Union Calédonienne.

    While he was serving a pre-trial jail term, in August 2024, Téin was elected president in absentia of the FLNKS.

    As for FLNKS’s demand that they and no other party should be the sole representatives of the pro-independence movement, Valls said this was “impossible”.

    “New Caledonia’s society is not only [made up of] FLNKS. There still exists a space for discussion, the opportunity has to be seized because New Caledonia’s society is waiting for an agreement”.

    However, some political parties (including moderates such as Eveil Océanien (Pacific Islanders’ Awakening) and pro-France Calédonie Ensemble have expressed concern on the value of the Bougival process if it was to be pushed through despite the FLNKS non-participation.

    Other pro-independent parties, the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and the UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), have distanced themselves from the FLNKS coalition they used to belong to.

    They remain committed to their signature and are now working along the Bougival lines.

    ‘There won’t be another May 13’
    Valls said the the situation is different now because an agreement exists, adding that the Bougival deal “is a comprehensive accord, not just on the electoral rules”.

    On possible fresh unrest, the former prime minister said “this time, [the French State will not be taken by surprise. There won’t be another 13 May”.

    He stressed during his visit that some 20 units (over 2000) of law enforcement personnel (gendarmerie, police) remain posted in New Caledonia.

    “And there will be more if necessary”, Valls assured.

    When the May 2024 riots broke out, the law enforcement numbers were significantly lower and it took several days before reinforcements from Paris eventually arrived in New Caledonia to restore law and order.

    Very tight schedule
    The Constitutional Reform Bill would cover a large spectrum of issues, including the creation, for the first time in France, of a “State of New Caledonia”, as well as a dual France/New Caledonia citizenship, all within the French Constitutional framework.

    Two other documents — an organic law and a fundamental law (a de facto constitution) — are also being prepared for New Caledonia.

    The organic law could come into force some time mid-October, if approved, and it would effectively postpone New Caledonia’s crucial provincial election to June 2026.

    The plan was to have the freshly-produced text scrutinised by the French State Council, then approved by the French Cabinet on September 17.

    Before the end of 2025, it would then be tabled before the French National Assembly, then the Senate, then the French special Congress sitting.

    And before 28 February 2026, the same text would finally be put to the vote by way of a referendum for the people of New Caledonia.

    French government to fall again?
    Meanwhile, Valls is now facing another unfavourable political context: the announcement, on Monday, by his Prime Minister François Bayrou, to challenge France’s National Assembly MPs in a risky motion of confidence.

    This, he said, was in direct relation to his Appropriation Bill (budget), which contains planned sweeping cuts of about 44 billion euros (NZ$87.4 billion) to tackle the “danger” of France further plunging into “over-indebtment”.

    If the motion, tabled to be voted on September 8, reveals more defiance than confidence, then Bayrou and his cabinet (including Valls) fall.

    In the face of urgent initial plans to have New Caledonia’s texts urgently tabled before French Parliament, Bayrou’s confidence vote is highly likely to further complicate New Caledonia’s political negotiations.

    Pro-France leader and former French cabinet member Sonia Backès, who is also the leader of local pro-France Les Loyalistes party, however told local media she remained confident and that even if the Bayrou government fell on September 8, “there would still be a continuity”.

    “But if this was to be followed by a dissolution of Parliament and snap elections, then, very clearly, this would impact on the whole New Caledonian process”, she said.

    “The Bougival agreement will be implemented,” Valls said.

    “And those who think that the fall of the French government would entail delays on its implementation schedule are mistaken, notwithstanding my personal situation which is not very important.

    “I will keep a watch on New Caledonia’s interests.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Bougainville’s President Ishmael Toroama candid and relaxed a week out from polling

    By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    The President of Bougainville, Ishmael Toroama, says he is not feeling the pressure as he seeks a second five-year term in office.

    Bougainville goes to the polls next Thursday, September 4, with 404 candidates vying for 46 seats in the Parliament of the autonomous Papua New Guinea region.

    Toroama is being challenged by six others — all men.

    He spoke with RNZ Pacific as he continues campaigning in Central Bougainville.

    Ishamel Toroama in his younger days.
    Ishamel Toroama in his younger days. Image: FB/Ishmael Toroama/RNZ Pacific

    Don Wiseman: Last time you and I spoke before an election, you had just been ushering a rock band around Bougainville. It’s a very different situation for you this time round.

    Ishmael Toroama: Yes, indeed, it’s a totally different situation. But you know, principle never changes. Principles of everything, in terms of whatever we do, remain the same. But it changes as environment changes.

    DW: What are your key planks going into this election? What are the most important things that you’re telling people?

    ‘Political independence’
    IT:     It’s what my government has done in the last five years.

    I am telling them, firstly, of the political independence. Political independence has been agreed by the national constitution of Papua New Guinea, amendment on part 14, which gives the people of Bougainville the right to vote for independence referendum.

    As our leaders at that time, while they were negotiating with late Kabui [first Bougainville President Joseph Kabui], they told the Papua New Guinea government that if you cannot change your constitution, then we will no longer sign a peace agreement that creates that opportunity for Papua New Guinea and Bougainville.

    So what I’m telling them is it has been guaranteed by the national constitution, which created the amendment of part 14, the Organic Law on Peace Building, Bougainville Peace Agreement and the Constitution of the Autonomous Bougainville Government.

    In all consultation, national constitution guarantees us to even the consultation, even through the definition of independence, which most Bougainvilleans have voted for, which has been defined by the national government, saying that it is a separate state apart from the state of Papua New Guinea.

    And the United Nations must also verify that, and that is the definition which national government has given to the people of Bougainville before the actual voting happened. If you closely look at all consultation, the Bougainville Peace Agreement says after the referendum vote made by the people, the two governments will consult over the result.

    What I’m telling my people is that as your fifth president in the fourth House of Representatives, we have made a consultation at Kokopo, Wabag, and in Moresby we signed the Era Kone Covenant. And latest is the Melanesian Relationship Agreement [signed at Burnham, New Zealand, in June this year].

    Constitutional guarantee
    Having said in order that constitutional guarantee as a guarantor guarantees the people’s right to vote for independence, that is what I’m telling them.

    DW: Yes but you’re not carrying Port Moresby with you on this. Are you? You guys are not very much closer to resolution of this problem than you were five years ago.

    IT: Well, that is in line with the consultation process. Whatever they say to me, I see that. It has been amended of the national constitution, then it gives us the opportunity whether the national government likes it or not.

    It is a national constitution guarantee or the framework of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, and that is how I’m saying to them, whether we come into consultation, we have different views.

    At least it is the constitutional guaranteed process censored by the National Constitution.

    A young Ishamel Toroama during his time as a member of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.
    A young Ishmael Toroama as a commander in the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). Image: FB/Ishmael Toroama/RNZ Pacific

    DW: There are people, including some running against you in this election, who are saying that your approach through these negotiations has been too strident, that you go into these meetings making bold statements beforehand and there’s no room to move, that you’re not giving room for negotiation.

    Defining result
    IT:     If you look at all the consultation that we have consulted. You will look at the consultation which I am saying we are consulting over the result. The Bougainville Peace Agreement says that the consultation should be over the result.

    And what is the result? It is the 97.7 percent and who has defined the 97.7 percent — it is the national government of Papua New Guinea.

    I understand where they’re coming from, because if you want to retain a political power, you can make all sorts of arguments trying to say that President Toroama has not left room, [made] political spaces available.

    But if you closely look at what the Bougainville Peace Agreement says, we are consulting over the result, whether these presidents or candidates are saying that I haven’t made a room.

    You just look at every space that we have gone into. And a consultation, as per the Bougainville Peace Agreement, is over the result.

    What is the result? It is the independence which people voted — 97.7 percent. We cannot deny the people’s power moving into the referendum saying that we want to govern ourselves. So yes, people’s power.

    DW: Except you’re overlooking that that referendum is a non-binding referendum?

    Where is it non-binding?
    IT: Can you specifically say to me, can you give me a clause within the Bougainville Peace Agreement that it says it is a non-binding.

    I’m asking you, you will not find any non-binding clause within the framework of the Peace Agreement. It has been cultivated in there by people that want to drive us away from the exact opposition of the people.

    There is no clause within the political peace agreement that says non-binding. There is no clause.

    DW: We’re here now, just a week out from the election. How will you go?

    IT: I’m the kind of man that has process. They voted me for the last five years. And if the people wish to put me [back], the decision, the power to put people, it is democracy. They will vote for me.

    If not, they can choose another president. I don’t get too much pressure, but because it has been described within the constitution of the autonomous government that a president can serve two terms, so that’s why I am running.

    But I’m not in a pressure mood. I am all right.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New Zealand challenged to vote for Israel’s suspension at UN

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has challenged the New Zealand government to support a move by Türkiye to vote to suspend Israeli membership of the United Nations.

    Türkiye Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has told the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh that Israel should be suspended from the crucial meeting of the UN General Assembly next month, for its “genocidal aggression”.

    PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters would have to take a stand on this issue.

    “Cabinet should give him clear instructions to vote against Israeli war crimes and support Palestinian rights,” he said.

    “Suspension of Israel will have a lot of backing from many countries horrified with the starvation and carnage in Gaza, and they want to do something effective, instead of just recognising Palestine as a state.

    “Even if the US vetoes such a move in the Security Council, there is a precedent going back to 1974 when South Africa was suspended from the General Assembly because it practised apartheid.

    “The General Assembly suspended a member then, and New Zealand should back such a move now.”

    Original condition
    Minto said Israel’s original condition in 1948 for joining the UN was that it allowed the 750,000 Palestinians it had expelled from Palestine to create Israel to return home.

    “Israel won’t even talk about its obligations to let Palestinians return, and certainly never had any intention of allowing them to go home. Israel should pay a price for that, along with punishment for its genocide,” he said.

    Minto said the escalation of the Israeli assault on Gaza called for immediate international action without waiting wait until the General Assembly debate next month.

    “The Israeli ambassador in Wellington should be told to leave right now, because his government is openly committing war crimes.”

    “We’ve just seen a famine declared in Gaza City. Aid is totally insufficient and deliberately so,” Minto said.

    “Israel has called up its military reservists for the major assault it’s conducting on Gaza City to drive nearly a million of its inhabitants out.

    “Israel’s latest dumping ground of choice is South Sudan, even though its government says it doesn’t want to have expelled Palestinians turn up there.”

    “And we’ve had the news that Israel has once again killed journalists, who work for international news agencies, such as Reuters, Al Jazeera and NBC.”

    “Netanyahu says it was a mistake. Who believes that?”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Photojournalist resigns from Reuters over its ‘betrayal of journalists’ in Gaza

    By Asiye Latife Yilmaz in Istanbul

    Canadian photojournalist Valerie Zink has resigned after eight years with Reuters, criticising the news agency’s stance on Gaza as a “betrayal of journalists” and accusing it of “justifying and enabling” the killing of 245 journalists in the Palestinian enclave.

    “At this point it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza,” Zink said today via the US social media company X.

    Zink said she worked as a Reuters stringer for eight years, with her photos published by many outlets, including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others worldwide.

    She criticised Reuters’ reporting after the killing of Anas al-Sharif and an Al Jazeera crew in Gaza on August 10, accusing the agency of amplifying Israel’s “entirely baseless claim” that al-Sharif was a Hamas operative, which was “one of countless lies that media outlets like Reuters have dutifully repeated and dignified,” she said.

    “I have valued the work that I brought to Reuters over the past eight years, but at this point I can’t conceive of wearing this press pass with anything but deep shame and grief,” Zink said.

    Zink also emphasised that the agency’s willingness to “perpetuate Israel’s propaganda” had not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide.

    “I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza, the bravest and best to ever live, but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind,” Zink highlighted, reflecting on the courage of Gaza’s journalists.

    “I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more,” she added.

    ‘Double tap’ strike
    Referring to the killing of six more journalists, including Reuters cameraman Hossam Al-Masri, in Israel’s Monday attack on the al-Nasser hospital in Gaza, Zink said: “It was what’s known as a ‘double tap’ strike, in which Israel bombs a civilian target like a school or hospital; waits for medics, rescue teams, and journalists to arrive; and then strikes again.”

    Zink underlined that Western media was directly culpable for creating the conditions for these events, quoting Jeremy Scahill of Drop Down News, who said major outlets — from The New York Times to Reuters — had served as “a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda,” sanitising war crimes, dehumanising victims, and abandoning both their colleagues and their commitment to true and ethical reporting.

    She said Western media outlets, by “repeating Israel’s genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility” and abandoning basic journalistic responsibility, have enabled the killing of more journalists in Gaza in two years than in major global conflicts combined, while also contributing to the suffering of the population.

    The new fatalities among the media personnel in Gaza brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 to 246.

    Israel has killed more than 62,700 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.

    Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

    Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.

    Republished from Anadolu Ajansi.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • French PM’s confidence vote hits New Caledonia’s political negotiations

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s surprise announcement yesterday that he will call for a parliamentary confidence vote in his government is set to further complicate protracted talks in New Caledonia on the French territory’s political future.

    The announcement comes as French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls has extended his stay in New Caledonia, where he has supervised a “drafting committee” to translate a “Bougival Accord” signed in July to set the path for major political reforms for New Caledonia.

    In a surprise and “risky” announcement yesterday, Bayrou said a confidence vote in his government would take place on September 8.

    He said this was in direct relation to his budget, which contains planned sweeping cuts of around 44 billion euros (NZ$87.6 billion) to tackle the “danger” of France plunging further into “over-indebtedness”.

    “Yes it’s risky, but it’s even riskier not to do anything,” he told a press conference.

    According to article 49.1 of the French Constitution, if a majority of parties votes in defiance, then Bayou and his minority government automatically fall.

    Reacting to the announcement, parties ranging from far right, far left to the Greens have already indicated they would express defiance towards Bayrou and his cabinet.

    ‘End of the government’
    Far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party chief Jordan Bardella said Bayrou, by calling for the vote, had effectively announced “the end of his government”.

    Radical left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) also said the vote would mark the end of the government.

    This will place the Socialist MPs, whose votes could make the difference, in a crucial position.

    Socialist party spokesman MP Arthur Delaporte, deplored Bayrou for remaining “deaf to the demands of the French” and appeared to remain “quite stubborn”.

    “I don’t see how we could vote the confidence,” Delaporte told reporters.

    To further compound the situation in France, a national “block everything” strike has been called on September 12, with the active support and backing from the far left parties and a number of trade unions.

    Valls is still in New Caledonia, after he extended his stay twice and is now set to fly back to Paris later today.

    Bid for FLNKS talks
    The extension was an attempt to resume talks with the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), which has attended none of the three sessions of the “drafting committee” on August 21, 23 and 35.

    Participants at New Caledonia’s drafting committee launched at the French High Commission.
    French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls . . . at New Caledonia’s drafting committee meeting launched at the French High Commission. Image: Photo: Haut-commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie/RNZ Pacific

    Talks within the committee were reported to be not only legal (with the help of a team of French high officials, including constitutionalists, but also highly political.

    Valls announced a last-ditch session today with FLNKS before he flies back to Paris.

    All of the other parties, both pro-independence and pro-France, took part in the committee sessions, which is now believed to have produced a Constitutional reform Bill that was to be tabled at both France’s Parliament chambers (the National Assembly and the Senate) and later before a special meeting of both houses (a “Congress”).

    The Constitutional Bill would cover a large spectrum of issues, including the creation, for the first time in France, of a “State of New Caledonia”, as well as a dual France/New Caledonia citizenship.

    Two other documents, an organic law and a fundamental law (a de facto constitution) are also being prepared for New Caledonia.

    The Bougival deal signed on July 12 near Paris was initially agreed to by all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented at the local Parliament, the Congress.

    Rejected ‘in block’
    But it was later denounced and rejected “in block” by the FLNKS.

    Valls has consistently stressed that his door “remains open” to the FLNKS.

    Several local parties across the political chessboard (including the Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien and moderate pro-France Calédonie Ensemble) have already expressed doubts as to whether the implementation of the Bougival deal could carry any value if they had taken place without the FLNKS.

    In the face of urgent initial plans to have New Caledonia’s texts urgently tabled before French Parliament, Bayrou’s confidence challenge is highly likely to further complicate New Caledonia’s political negotiations.

    The plan was to have the freshly-produced text scrutinised by the French State Council, then approved by the French Cabinet on September 17.

    Before the end of 2025, it would then be tabled before the French National Assembly, then the Senate, then the French special Congress sitting.

    And before 28 February 2026, the same text would finally be put to the vote by way of a referendum for the people of New Caledonia.

    Pro-France leader and former French cabinet member Sonia Backès however told local media she remained confident that even if the Bayrou government fell on September 8, “there would still be a continuity”.

    “But if this was to be followed by a dissolution of Parliament (and snap elections), then, very clearly, this would impact on the whole (New Caledonian) process,” she said.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Media analyst slams Israeli killing of four Gaza journalists – calls for Western outrage

    Pacific Media Watch

    A media studies analyst has condemned the latest deadly attack by Israel on journalists in Gaza and challenged Western media over the carnage, asking “where is the outrage” and international solidarity?

    Four journalists were reported to have been assassinated among 20 people killed in the air strike on the al-Nasser Medical Centre in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.

    The others killed were first responders and medical staff, said the Gaza Health Ministry.

    Dr Mohamad Elmasry, media studies professor at Qatar’s Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera in an interview he was “at a loss for words” over the latest attack.

    Earlier this month, four Al Jazeera journalists and two other media people were among seven killed on August 10 in what the Israeli military admitted was a targeted attack.

    “Israel has been at war with journalism and journalists from the very beginning of the war,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera. “They’re not hiding it. They’re very open about this.

    “But the question that I have is, where are the international journalists?

    ‘Where is Western media?’
    “Where is The New York Times? Where is CNN? Where are the major mainstream Western news outlets?

    “Because when Charlie Hebdo [a French satirical magazine based in Paris] journalists were killed in 2015, that caused global outrage for months.

    “It was a major story in every single Western news outlet. And I applauded journalists for coming to the aid of their colleagues. But now, where is the outrage?”

    The Gaza Media Office said the death toll of Palestinian journalists in Gaza had risen to 246 and identified latest casualties as:

    Hossam al-Masri – photojournalist with Reuters news agency
    Mohammed Salama – photojournalist with Al Jazeera
    Mariam Abu Daqa – journalist with several media outlets including The Independent Arabic and US news agency Associated Press
    Moaz Abu Taha – journalist with NBC network

    In a statement when announcing that the death toll from the al-Nasser hospital attack had risen to 20, the Gaza Health Ministry said:

    “The [Israeli] occupation forces’ targeting of the hospital today and the killing of medical personnel, journalists, and civil defence personnel is a continuation of the systematic destruction of the health system and the continuation of genocide.

    “It is a message of defiance to the entire world and to all values of humanity and justice.”

    ‘Killed in line of duty’
    The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, posted on X after the Israeli strikes killed the journalists and members of Gaza’s civil defence:

    “Rescuers killed in line of duty. Scenes like this unfold every moment in Gaza, often unseen, largely undocumented,” she wrote.

    “I beg states: how much more must be witnessed before you act to stop this carnage?

    “Break the blockade. Impose an arms embargo. Impose sanctions.”

    Her remarks came after she shared a video appearing to show a second Israeli air strike during a live broadcast on Al-Ghad TV — just minutes after the first attack on al-Nasser hospital.

    Albanese later gave an interview, renewing her call for sanctions on Israel.

    One of Al Jazeera’s reporters described working with hospitals as a base.

    Deprived of electricity, internet
    Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said: “I’m one of the Palestinian journalists reporting from hospitals.

    “We are in a two-year war where we have been deprived of electricity and internet, so Palestinian journalists are using these services at hospitals to continue reporting.

    “We are also following news of wounded Palestinians, funerals, and malnutrition cases, as these are always transferred to hospitals.

    “That is why Palestinian journalists are making hospitals their base and end up being attacked.”

    The Australian author of The Palestine Laboratory, Antony Loewenstein
    The Australian author of The Palestine Laboratory, Antony Loewenstein, being interviewed by Al Jazeera from Sydney. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • West Papuan media plea for Melanesian support against Indonesian media blackout

    By Andrew Mathieson

    Exiled West Papuan media are calling for Fiji — in a reflection of Melanesian solidarity — to hold the greater Pacific region to account and stand against Indonesia’s ongoing media blackout in addition to its human rights abuses.

    The leaders in their field which include two Papuans from Indonesia’s occupied provinces have visited the Pacific country to forge media partnerships, university collaboration and joint advocacy for West Papua self-determination.

    They were speaking after the screening of a new documentary film, Pepera 1969: A Democratic Integration, was screened at The University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

    The documentary is based on the controversial plebiscite 56 years ago when 1025 handpicked Papuan electors, which were directly chosen by the Indonesian military out of its 800,000 citizens, were claimed to have voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control of Western New Guinea.

    Victor Mambor — a co-founder of Jubi Media Papua — in West Papua; Yuliana Lantipo, one of its senior journalists and editor; and Dandhy Laksono, a Jakarta-based investigative filmmaker; shared their personal experiences of reporting from inside arguably the most heavily militarised and censored region in the Pacific.

    “We are here to build bridges with our brothers and sisters in the Pacific,” Mambor told the USP media audience.

    Their story of the Papuan territory comes after Dutch colonialists who had seized Western New Guinea, handed control of the East Indies back to the Indonesians in 1949 before The Netherlands eventually withdrew from Papuan territory in 1963.

    ‘Fraudulent’ UN vote
    The unrepresentative plebiscite which followed a fraudulent United Nations-supervised “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 allowed the Indonesian Parliament to grant its legitimacy to reign sovereignty over the West Papuans.

    That Indonesian authority has been heavily questioned and criticised over extinguishing independence movements and possible negotiations between both sides.

    Indonesia has silenced Papuan voices in the formerly-named Irian Jaya province through control and restrictions of the media.

    Mambor described the continued targeting of his Jubi Media staff, including attacks on its office and vehicles, as part of an escalating crackdown under Indonesia’s current President Prabowo Subianto, who took office less than 12 months ago.

    “If you report on deforestation [of West Papua] or our culture, maybe it’s allowed,” he said.

    “But if you report on human rights or the [Indonesian] military, there is no tolerance.”

    An Indonesian MP, Oleh Soleh, warned publicly this month that the state would push for a “new wave of repression” targeting West Papuan activists while also calling the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) – the West Papuan territory’s peak independence movement – as a “political criminal group”.

    ‘Don’t just listen to Jakarta’
    “Don’t just listen to what Jakarta says,” Mambor said.

    “Speak to Papuans, listen to our stories, raise our voices.

    “We want to bring West Papua back to the Pacific — not just geographically, but politically, culturally, and emotionally.”

    Press freedom in West Papua has become most dire more over the past 25 years, West Papuan journalists have said.

    Foreign journalists are barred entry into the territory and internet access for locals is often restricted, especially during periods of civil unrest.

    Indigenous reporters also risk arrest and/or violence for filing politically sensitive stories.

    Most trusted media
    Founded in 2001 by West Papuan civil society, Jubi Media Papua’s English-language publication, the West Papua Daily, has become arguably the most trusted, independent source of news in the territory that has survived over its fearless approach to journalism.

    “Our journalists are constantly intimidated,” Mambor said, “yet we continue to report the truth”.

    The word Jubi in one of the most popular Indigenous Papuan languages means to speak the truth.

    Mambor explained that the West Papua Daily remained a pillar of a vocal media movement to represent the wishes of the West Papuan people.

    The stories published are without journalists’ bylines (names on articles) out of fear against retribution from the Indonesian military.

    “We created a special section just to tell Pacific stories — to remind our people that we are not alone, and to reconnect West Papua with our Pacific identity,” Mambor said.

    Lantipo spoke about the daily trauma faced by the Papuan communities which are caught in between the Indonesian military and the West Papua national liberation army who act on behalf of the ULMWP to defend its ancestral homeland.

    ‘Reports of killings, displacement’
    “Every day, we receive reports: killings, displacement, families fleeing villages, children out of school, no access to healthcare,” Lantipo said.

    “Women and children are the most affected.”

    The journalists attending the seminar urged the Fijian, Melanesian and Pacific people to push for a greater awareness of the West Papuan conflict and its current situation, and to challenge dominant narratives propagated by the Indonesian government.

    Laksono, who is ethnically Indonesian but entrenched in ongoing Papuan independence struggles, has long worked to expose injustices in the region.

    “There is no hope from the Asian side,” Laksono said.

    “That’s why we are here, to reach out to the Pacific.

    “We need new audiences, new support, and new understanding.”

    Arrested over tweets
    Laksono was once arrested in September 2019 for publishing tweets about the violence from government forces against West Papua pro-independence activists.

    Despite the personal risks, the “enemy of the state” remains committed to highlighting the stories of the West Papuan people.

    “Much of Indonesia has been indoctrinated through school textbooks and [its] media into believing a false history,” he said.

    “Our film tries to change that by offering the truth, especially about the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969, which was neither free nor a genuine act of self-determination.”

    Andrew Mathieson writes for the National Indigenous Times.

    Melanesian supporters for West Papuan self-determination at USP
    Melanesian supporters for West Papuan self-determination at The University of the South Pacific. Image: USP/NIT

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PSNA condemns NZ ‘distraction’ over sanctions needed against Israel

    Asia Pacific Report

    The advocacy and protest group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has condemned New Zealand’s “deliberate distraction” over sanctions against Israel and has vowed more protests against Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ “failed policy” on Gaza.

    After the huge turnout of thousands in Palestine solidarity rallies across more than 20 locations in New Zealand last weekend, PSNA has announced it is joining an International Day of Action on September 6.

    Rallies next weekend will have a focus on Israel’s targeted killing of journalists in Gaza.

    PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement there was “an incredible show of marches and rallies throughout Aotearoa New Zealand for sanctions against Israel during the past weekend.”.

    “But with [Foreign Minister] Peters obstinately running the Foreign Ministry, the government will ignore all expressions of public support for Palestinian rights.

    “We’ll be back with even more people on the streets on the 6th.”

    “An opinion poll released by PSNA last week showed that of people who gave an opinion, 60 percent supported sanctions against Israel.”

    Shocking images
    Minto said that number would have risen significantly in the past few weeks as people were seeing the shocking images of Israel’s widespread use of starvation as a weapon of war, especially against the children of Gaza.

    “Around the world, governments are starting to respond to their people demanding sanctions on Israel to end the genocide.

    A family rugged up against the rain and cold expressing their disappointment with New Zealand's "weak" policy over the Gaza genocide
    A family rugged up against the rain and cold expressing their disappointment with New Zealand’s “weak” policy over the Gaza genocide last weekend. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    “Yet, Winston Peters is most reluctant to even criticise Israel, let alone take any action.”

    Minto said actions were vital otherwise Israel took no notice.

    “We’ve seen Israel’s arrogant impunity in increasingly violent action and showing off its military capacity and intentions,” he said.

    “Not a peep from our ministers over anything.

    “Just on the Occupied West Bank, there are settlers freely shooting and lynching Palestinians.

    New illegal settlement plans
    “Israel’s Parliament has just voted to annex the West Bank, as plans are also announced for [an illegal] new settlement strategically designed to sever it irreparably into two parts.

    “In Gaza, Israeli troops are reinvading Gaza City to ethnically cleanse a million people to the south and Israeli aircraft are still terror bombing a famine-devastated community.”

    Minto said Netanyahu had started talking about a Greater Israel again.

    “That would mean an invasion of all of its neighbours and the extinction of at least Lebanon and Jordan, which in Israeli government eyes have no right to exist.”

    The New Zealand government thought that it was “responding appropriately” by going through a process of considering recognition of a Palestinian state.

    “That can only be seen as a deliberate distraction from a focus on sanctions,” Minto said.

    “Back in 1947, New Zealand voted in the UN for a Palestinian state in part of Palestine.

    “Recognition is token now, and it was token then, because the world stood aside and let Israel conquer all of Palestine, expel most of its people and impose an apartheid regime on those who managed to stay.”

    Minto said the global movement in support of Palestinian rights would not be distracted.

    Comprehensive sanctions were the only way to force an end to Israel’s genocide.

    Australia slams Israeli PM
    Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reports that Australia has hit back at Netanyahu after the Israeli leader branded the country’s prime minister “weak”, with an Australian minister accusing the Israeli leader of conflating strength with killing people.

    In an interview with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke said that strength was not measured “by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”.

    Burke’s comments came after Netanyahu on Tuesday launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on social media, claiming he would be remembered by history as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.

    Speaking on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast programme, Burke characterised Netanyahu’s broadside as part of Israel’s “lashing out” at countries that have moved to recognise a Palestinian state.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Self-Determination for Eastern Ukraine?

    Completely absent in any of the governmental efforts for the last three and a half years to end the war in Ukraine is the issue of self-determination as it relates concretely to where the on-the-ground war and the huge percentage of casualties are primarily happening.

    The principle of nations having the right to make decisions about the form and nature of their governments goes back over 100 years and has long been upheld by the United Nations and most of the world’s governments.

    When it comes to the Russia/Ukraine war, this principle clearly applies to Ukraine’s efforts to defend its territory, economy, and form of government from Russia’s 2022 military invasion, intended to extinguish Ukraine as a self-determining country.

    But so far, neither the United Nations nor any other country has applied the concept of self-determination to the reality that it is in eastern Ukraine, the four provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, where the path to a just and peaceful end to this terrible war lies. Following a ceasefire and other necessary steps to prepare for them, there should be binding referendums under United Nations supervision so that each of these four provinces can decide whether they want to be part of Russia or part of Ukraine.

    It would be essential that these referendums be under the auspices of a neutral entity, which is why the United Nations is the logical choice.

    Is this point of view pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian? It seems to me it is neither. Neither side wants to risk losing territory it considers to be its own via a popular vote, which would put the stamp of political legitimacy on the results. Of course, the alternative seems to be a continuation for years, if not decades, of destructive and dangerous military conflict, tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars wasted, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of additional deaths.

    Would the implementation of such a deal set a precedent for situations elsewhere in the world where there is conflict over territory between more-or-less distinct peoples? It probably would, but is such a precedent a bad thing? In a world where democracy is under threat by fascists and authoritarians, a successful application of the democratic principle of self-determination would be a ray of light, a hopeful development.

    Is there an alternative that is more just, more likely to succeed, more likely to end this brutal, destructive, and dangerous war and allow for positive economic and social rebuilding? That must be the objective.

    The post Self-Determination for Eastern Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • NZ is trailing its allies over Palestinian statehood – but there’s still time to show leadership

    ANALYSIS: By Treasa Dunworth, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

    It’s now more than a week since Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced his government had begun to formally consider New Zealand’s position on the recognition of a Palestinian state.

    That leaves two weeks until the UN General Assembly convenes on September 9, where it is expected several key allies will change position and recognise Palestinian statehood.

    Already in a minority of UN member states which don’t recognise a Palestinian state, New Zealand risks becoming more of an outlier if and when Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom make good on their recent pledges.

    Luxon has said the decision is “complex”, but opposition parties certainly don’t see it that way. Labour leader Chris Hipkins says it’s “the right thing to do”, and Greens co-leader Chloë Swarbrick has called on government MPs to “grow a spine” (for which she was controversially ejected from the debating chamber).

    Former Labour prime minister Helen Clark has also criticised the government for trailing behind its allies, and for appearing to put trade relations with the United States ahead of taking a moral stand over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

    Certainly, those critics — including the many around the country who marched last weekend — are correct in implying New Zealand has missed several opportunities to show independent leadership on the issue.

    The distraction factor
    While it has been open to New Zealand to recognise it as a state since Palestine declared its independence in 1988, there was an opportunity available in May last year when the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian governments took the step.

    That month, New Zealand also joined 142 other states calling on the Security Council to admit Palestine as a full member of the UN. But in a subsequent statement, New Zealand said its vote should not be implied as recognising Palestinian statehood, a position I called “a kind of muddled, awkward fence-sitting”.

    It is still not too late, however, for New Zealand to take a lead. In particular, the government could make a more straightforward statement on Palestinian statehood than its close allies.

    The statements from Australia, Canada and the UK are filled with caveats, conditions and contingencies. None are straightforward expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian right of self-determination under international law.

    As such, they present political and legal problems New Zealand could avoid.

    Politically, this late wave of recognition by other countries risks becoming a distraction from the immediate starvation crisis in Gaza. As the independent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese have noted, these considered and careful diplomatic responses distract from the brutal truth on the ground.

    This was also Chloë Swarbrick’s point during the snap debate in Parliament last week. Her private members bill, she noted, offers a more concrete alternative, by imposing sanctions and a trade embargo on Israel. (At present, it seems unlikely the government would support this.)

    Beyond traditional allies
    Legally, the proposed recognitions of statehood are far from ideal because they place conditions on that recognition, including how a Palestinian state should be governed.

    The UK has made recognition conditional on Israel not agreeing to a ceasefire and continuing to block humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is extremely problematic, given recognition could presumably be withdrawn if Israel agreed to those demands.

    Such statements are not exercises in genuine solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, which is defined in UN Resolution 1514 (1960) as the right of peoples “to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

    Having taken more time to consider its position, New Zealand could now articulate a more genuine statement of recognition that fulfils the legal obligation to respect and promote self-determination under international law.

    A starting point would be to look beyond the small group of “traditional allies” to countries such as Ireland that have already formally recognised the State of Palestine. Importantly, Ireland acknowledged Palestinian “peaceful self-determination” (along with Israel’s), but did not express any other conditions or caveats.

    New Zealand could also show leadership by joining with that wider group of allies to shape the coming General Assembly debate. The aim would be to shift the language from conditional recognition of Palestine toward a politically and legally more tenable position.

    That would also sit comfortably with the country’s track record in other areas of international diplomacy — most notably the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, where New Zealand has also taken a different approach to its traditional allies.The Conversation

    Dr Treasa Dunworth is professor of law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • French Overseas Minister in New Caledonia in bid to ‘save’ Bougival deal

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls is once again in New Caledonia for a four-day visit aimed at maintaining dialogue, despite a strong rejection from a significant part of the pro-independence camp.

    He touched down at the Nouméa-La Tontouta Airport last night on his fourth trip to New Caledonia since he took office in late 2024.

    For the past eight months, he has made significant headway by managing to get all political parties to sit together again around the same table and discuss an inclusive, consensual way forward for the French Pacific territory, where deadly riots have erupted in May 2024, causing 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in material damage.

    On July 12, during a meeting in Bougival (west of Paris), some 19 delegates from parties across the political spectrum signed a 13-page document, the Bougival Accord, sketching what is supposed to pave the way for New Caledonia’s political future.

    The document, labelled a “project” and described as “historic”, envisages the creation of a “State” of New Caledonia, a dual New Caledonia-French citizenship and the transfer of key powers such as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia.

    The document also envisions a wide range of political reforms, more powers for each of the three provinces and enlarging the controversial list of eligible citizens allowed to vote at the crucial local provincial elections.

    When they signed the text in mid-July, all parties (represented by 18 politicians) at the time pledged to go along the new lines and defend the contents, based on the notion of a “bet on trust”.

    But since the deal was signed at the 11th hour in Bougival, after a solid 10 days of tense negotiations, one of the main components of the pro-independence camp, the FLNKS, has pronounced a “block rejection” of the deal.

    FLNKS said their delegates and negotiators (five politicians), even though they had signed the document, had no mandate to do so because it was incompatible with the pro-independence movement’s aims and struggle.

    Signatures on the last page of New Caledonia's new agreement
    Signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new agreement. Image: Philippe Dunoyer/RNZ Pacific

    FLNKS rejection of Bougival
    The FLNKS and its majority component, Union Calédonienne, said that from now on, while maintaining dialogue with France, they would refuse to talk further about the Bougival text or any related subject.

    They also claim they are the only pro-independence legitimate representative of the indigenous Kanak people.

    They maintain they will only accept their own timetable of negotiation, with France only (no longer including the pro-France parties) in “bilateral” mode to conclude before 24 September 2025.

    French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls
    French Overseas Minister Manuel Valls . . . not giving up on the Bougival project and his door remains open. Image: Outre-mer la Première

    Later on, the negotiations for a final independence should conclude before the next French Presidential elections (April-May 2027) with the transfer of all remaining powers back to New Caledonia.

    The FLNKS also demands that any further talks with France should take place in New Caledonia and under the supervision of its President.

    It warns against any move to try and force the implementation of the Bougival text, including planned reforms of the conditions of voter eligibility for local elections (since 2007, the local “special” electoral roll has been restricted to people living in New Caledonia before 1998).

    During his four-day visit this week (20-24 August), Valls said he would focus on pursuing talks, sometimes in bilateral mode with FLNKS.

    The minister, reacting to FLNKS’s move to reject the Accord, said several times since that he did not intend to give up and that his door remained open.

    ‘Explain and convince’
    He would also meet “as many New Caledonians as possible” to “explain and convince”.

    Apart from party officials, Valls also plans to meet New Caledonia’s “Customary (chiefly) Senate”, the mayors of New Caledonia, the presidents of New Caledonia’s three provinces and representatives of the economic and civil society.

    The May-July 2024 riots have strongly impacted on New Caledonia’s standard of living, with thousands of jobless people because of the destruction of hundreds of businesses.

    Health sector in crisis
    Valls also intends to devote a large part of his visit to meetings with public and private health workers, who also remain significantly affected by an acute shortage of staff, both in the capital Nouméa and rural areas.

    Tomorrow, Valls plans to implement one of the later stages of the Bougival signing — the inaugural session of a “drafting committee”, aimed at agreeing on how necessary documents for the implementation of the Bougival commitments should be formulated.

    These include working on writing a “fundamental law” for New Caledonia (a de facto constitution) and constitutional documents to make necessary amendments to the French Constitution.

    Elections again postponed to June 2026
    Steps to defer once again the provincial elections from November 2025 to May-June 2026 were also recently taken in Paris, at the Senate, Valls said earlier this week.

    A Bill has been tabled for debates in the Senate on 23 September 2025. In keeping with the Bougival commitments and timeline, it proposes a new deadline for provincial elections: no later than 28 June 2026.

    But FLNKS now demands that those elections be maintained for this year.

    On a tightrope again
    This week’s visit is perceived as particularly sensitive: as Valls’s trip is regarded as focusing on saving his Bougival deal, he is also walking on a tightrope.

    On one side, he wants to maintain contact and an “open-door” policy with the hard-line group of the FLNKS, even though they have now denounced his Bougival deal.

    On the other side, he has to pursue talks with all the other parties who have, since July 12, kept their word and upheld the document.

    If Valls was perceived to concede more ground to the FLNKS, following its recent claims and rejections, parts of the pro-Bougival leaders who have signed and kept their word and commitment could well, in turn, denounce some kind of betrayal, thus jeopardising the precarious equilibrium.

    The “pro-Bougival” signatories held numerous public meetings with their respective militant bases to explain the agreement and the “Bougival spirit”, as well as the reasons for why they had signed.

    This not only includes pro-France parties who oppose independence, but also two moderate pro-independence parties, the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and the UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), formed into a “UNI” platform (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), who have, since August 2024, distanced themselves from the FLNKS.

    At the same time, FLNKS took into its fold a whole new group of smaller parties, unions and pressure groups (including the Union Calédonienne-created CCAT –a  field action coordination group dedicated to organising political campaigns on the ground) and has since taken a more radical turn.

    Simultaneously, Christian Téin, head of CCAT, was also elected FLNKS president in absentia, while serving a pre-trial jail term in mainland France.

    His pre-trial judicial control conditions were loosened in June 2025 by a panel of three judges, but he is still not allowed to return to New Caledonia.

    One of the moderate UNI leaders, Jean-Pierre Djaïwé (PALIKA) told his supporters and local media last week that he believed through the Bougival way, it would remain possible for New Caledonia to eventually achieve full sovereignty, but not immediately.

    Ruffenach: No intention to ‘undo’ Bougival
    Several pro-France components have also reacted to the FLNKS rejection by saying they did not intend to “undo” the Bougival text, simply because it was the result of months of negotiations and concessions to reach a balance between opposing aspirations from the pro-independence and pro-France camps.

    “Let’s be reasonable. Let’s get real. Let’s come back to reality. Has this country ever built itself without compromise?,” pro-France Le Rassemblement-LR party leader Virginie Ruffenach told Radio Rythme Bleu yesterday.

    “We have made this effort at Bougival, to find a middle way which is installing concord between those two aspirations. We have made steps, the pro-independence have made steps. And this is what allowed this agreement to be struck with its signatures”.

    She said the FLNKS, in its “new” version, was “held hostage by . . .  radicalism”.

    “Violence will not take the future of New Caledonia and we will not give into this violence”.

    She said all parties should now take their responsibilities and live up to their commitment, instead of applying an “empty chair” policy.

    No credible alternative: Valls
    Earlier this week, Valls repeated that he did not wish to “force” the agreement but that, in his view, “there is no credible alternative. The Bougival agreement is an extraordinary and historic opportunity”.

    “I will not fall into the trap of words that hurt and lead to confrontation. I won’t give in to threats of violence or blockades,” he wrote on social networks.

    Last night, as Valls was already on his way to the Pacific, FLNKS political bureau and its president, Christian Téin, criticised the “rapport de force” seemingly established by France.

    He also deplored that, in the view of numerous reactions following the FLNKS rejection of the Bougival text, his political group was now being “stigmatised”.

    Ahead of the French minister’s visit, the FLNKS has launched a “peaceful” campaign revolving around the slogan “No to Bougival”.

    The FLNKS is scheduled to meet Valls today.

    The inaugural session of the “drafting committee” is supposed to take place the following day on Thursday.

    He is scheduled to leave New Caledonia on Saturday.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Saige England: Why I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop

    COMMENTARY: By Saige England

    I unequivocally support Irish author Sally Rooney with all my heart and soul. The author risks imprisonment for donating funds from her books and the TV series based on Normal People to a Palestinian group.

    Once again the United Kingdom tells Palestinians who they should support. Go figure.
    In her opinion piece in The Irish Times last Saturday she said that:

    “Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation.”

    Whenever the people resist or rebel they are deemed terrorists. That has been the case for indigenous people around the world from indigenous Americans to Indians in India to Aborigine and Māori, the Irish and the Scots, and the Welsh.

    I went from being a “born-again” starry-eyed kibbutznik who believed in Zionism to a journalist who researched the facts and the hidden truths.

    Those facts are revolting. Settler colonialism is revolting. Stealing homes is theft.

    I kept in touch with some of my US-based Zionist kibbutznik mates. When I asked them to stop calling Palestinians animals, when I asked them not to say they had tails, when I asked them to stop the de-humanisation — the same de-humanisation that happened during the Nazi regime, they dumped me.

    Zionism based on a myth
    Jews who support genocide are antisemitic. They are also selfish and greedy. Zionists are the bully kids at school who take other kids toys and don’t want to share. They don’t play fair.

    The notion of Zionism is based on a myth of the superiority of one group over another. It is religious nutterism and it is racism.

    Empire is greed. Capitalism is greed. Settler colonialism involves extermination for those who resist giving up their land. Would you or I accept someone taking our homes, forcing us to leave our uneaten dinner on the table? Would you or I accept our kids being stolen, put in jail, raped, tortured.

    Irish author Sally Rooney on why she supports Palestine
    Irish author Sally Rooney on why she supports Palestine Action and rejects the UK law banning this, and she argues that nation states have a duty not only to punish but also to prevent the commission of this “incomparably horrifying crime of genocide”. Image: Irish Times screenshot APR

    The country was weird when I visited in 1982. It had just invaded Lebanon. Later that year it committed a genocide.

    The Sabra and Shatila massacre was a mass murder of up to 3500 Palestinian refugees by Israel’s proxy militia, the Phalange, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The horrific slaughter prompted outrage and condemnation around the world, with the UN General Assembly condemning it as “an act of genocide”.

    I had been primed for sunshine and olives, but the country gave me a chill. The toymaker I worked with was a socialist and he told me I should feel sorry for the Palestinians.

    It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets. But you need to defend yourself when you steal.

    Paranoia from guilt
    Paranoia is a consequence of a persecutor who fails to recognise their guilt. It happens when you steal. The paranoia happens when you close doors. When you don’t welcome the other — whose home you stole.

    In 2014, soldiers of the IDF — a mercenary macho army — were charged with raping their own colleagues. Now footage of the rape of Palestinian men are celebrated on national television in Israel in front of live audiences. Any decent person would be disgusted by this.

    The army under this Zionist madness has committed — and continues to commit — the crimes it lied about Palestinians committing. And yes, the big fat liar has even admitted its own lies. The bully in the playground really doesn’t care now, it does not have to persuade the world it is right, because it is supported, it has the power.

    This isn’t the warped Wild West where puritans invented the scalping of women and children — the sins of colonisers are many — this is happening now. We can stand for the might of racism or we can stand against racist policies and regimes. We can stand against apartheid and genocide.

    Indigenous people must have the right to live in their homeland. Casting them onto designated land then invading that land is wrong.

    When Israelis are kidnapped they are called hostages. When Palestinians are kidnapped they are called prisoners. It’s racist. It’s cruel. It’s revolting that anyone would support this travesty.

    Far far more Palestinians were killed in the year leading up to October 7, 2023, than Israelis killed that day (and we know now that some of those Israelis were killed by their own army, Israel has admitted it lied over and again about the murder of babies and rapes).

    Ōtautahi author and journalist Saige England
    Ōtautahi author and journalist Saige England . . . “It isn’t normal for a country to be ruled by the militia. Gun-toting soldiers roamed the streets.” Image: Saige England

    Mercenary macho army
    So who does murder and rape? The IDF. The proud mercenary macho army.

    Once upon a time, a Palestinian kid who threw a stone got a bullet between the eyes. Now they get a bullet for carrying water, for going back to the homeground that has been bombed to smithereens. Snipers enjoy taking them down.

    Drones operated by human beings who have no conscience follow children, follow journalists, follow nurses, follow someone in a wheelchair, and blow them to dust.

    This is a game for the IDF. I’m sure some feel bad about it but they have to go along with it because they lose privileges if they do not. This sick army run by a sick state includes soldiers who hold dual US and Israeli citizenship.

    Earlier this year I met a couple of IDF soldiers on holidays from genocide, breezily ordering their lattes in a local cafe. I tried to engage with them, to garner some sense of compassion but they used “them” and “they” to talk about Palestinians.

    They lumped all Palestinians into a de-humanised mass worth killing. They blamed indigenous people who lived under a regime of apartheid and who are now being exterminated, for the genocide.

    The woman was even worse than the man. She loathed me the minute she saw my badge supporting the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aoteara. Hate spat from her eyes.

    Madness.

    De-brainwashing
    I saw that the only prospect for them to change might be a de-brainwashing programme. Show them the real facts they were never given, show them real Palestinians instead of figments of their imagination.

    It occurred to me that it really was very tempting to take them home and offer them a different narrative. I asked them if they would listen, and they said no. If I had forced them to come with me I would have been, you know, a hostage-taker.

    Israel is evidence that the victim can become the persecutor when they scapegoat indigenous people as the villain, when they hound them for crime of a holocaust they did not commit.

    And I get it, a little. My Irish and French Huguenot ancestors were persecuted. I have to face the sad horrid fact that those persecuted people took other people’s land in New Zealand. The victims became the persecutor.

    Oh they can say they did not know but they did know. They just did not look too hard at the dispossession of indigenous people.

    I wrote my book The Seasonwife at the ripe young age of 63 to reveal some of the suppressed truths about colonisation and about the greed of Empire — a system where the rich exploit the poor to help themselves. I will continue to write novels about suppressed truths.

    And I call down my Jewish ancestors who hid their Jewishness to avoid persecution. I have experienced antisemitism.

    Experienced cancelling
    But I have experienced cancelling, not by my publisher I hasten to add, but I know agencies and publishers in my country who tell authors to shut up about this genocide, who call those who speak up anti-semitic.

    I have been cancelled by Zionist authors. I don’t have a publisher like that but I know those who do, I know agencies who pressure authors to be silent.

    I call on other authors to follow Rooney’s example and for pity’s sake stop referencing Hamas. Learn the truth.

    Benjamin Netanyahu refused to deal with any other Palestinian representative. Palestinians have the right to choose their own representatives but they were denied that right.

    What is a terrorist army? The IDF which has created killing field after killing field. Not just this genocide, but the genocide in Lebanon in 1982.

    I have been protesting against the massacre of Palestinians since 2014 and I wish I had been more vocal earlier. I wish I had left the country when the Phalangists were killed. I did go back and report from the West Bank but I feel now, that I did not do enough. I was pressured — as Western writers are — to support the wrongdoer, the persecutor, not the victim.

    I will never do that again.

    Change with learning
    I do believe that with learning we can change, we can work towards a different, fairer system — a system based on fairness not exploitation.

    I stand alongside indigenous people everywhere.

    So I say again, that I support Sally Rooney and any author who has the guts to stand up to the pressure of oppressive regimes that deny the rights of people to resist oppression.

    I have spent a decade proudly standing with Palestinians and I will never stop. I believe they will be granted the right to return to their land. It is not anyone else’s right to grant that, really, the right of return for those who were forced out, and their descendants, is long overdue.

    And their forced exile is recent. Biblical myths don’t stack up. Far too often they are stacked to make other people fall down.

    Perhaps if we had all stood up more than 100,000 Palestinians would still be alive, a third of those children, would still be running around, their voices like bells instead of death calls.

    I support Palestinians with all my heart and soul.

    Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • When journalists like Anas al-Sharif are killed we lose access to truth in Gaza

    Journalists like Anas al-Sharif who report the truth in Gaza to the world and are targeted by Israel deserve protection, not just sympathy.

    COMMENTARY: By Sara Qudah

    During the past 22 months in Gaza, the pattern has become unbearable yet tragically predictable: A journalist reports about civilians; killed or starved, shares footage of a hospital corridor, shelters bombed out, schools and homes destroyed, and then they are silenced.

    Killed.

    At the Committee to Protect Journalists we documented that 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists, with an unprecedented number of those killed by Israel reporting from Gaza while covering Israel’s military operations.

    That trend did not end; it continued instead in 2025, making this war by far the deadliest for the press in history.

    When a journalist is killed in a besieged war city, the loss is no longer personal. It is institutional, it is the loss of eyes and ears on the ground: a loss of verification, context, and witness.

    Journalists are the ones who turn statistics into stories. They give names to numbers and faces to headlines. They make distant realities real for the rest of the world, and provide windows into the truth and doors into other worlds.

    That is why the killing of Anas al-Sharif last week reverberates so loudly, not just as a tragic loss of one life, but as a silencing of many stories that will now never be told.

    Not just reporting
    Anas al-Sharif was not just reporting from Gaza, he was filling a vital void. When international journalists couldn’t access the Strip, his work for Al Jazeera helped the world understand what was happening.

    On August 10, 2025, an airstrike hit a tent near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City where journalists had gathered. Al-Sharif and several of his colleagues were killed.

    The strike — its method, its targets, and its aftermath – wasn’t isolated. It fits a pattern CPJ and other press freedom organisations have tracked for months: in Gaza, journalists are facing not just the incidental risks of war, but repeated, targeted threats.

    And so far, there has been no accountability.

    The Israeli military framed its action differently: officials alleged that al-Sharif was affiliated with Hamas and that the attack was aimed at a legitimate threat. But so far, the evidence presented publicly failed to meet the test of independent witnesses; no public evidence has met the basic standard of independent verification.

    UN experts and press freedom groups have called for transparent investigations, warning of the danger in labelling journalists as combatants without clear, verifiable proof.

    In the turmoil of war, there’s a dangerous tendency to accept official narratives too quickly, too uncritically. That’s exactly how truth gets lost.

    Immediate chilling effect
    The repercussions of silencing reporters in a besieged territory are far-reaching. There is the immediate chilling effect: journalists who stay risk death; those who leave — if they even can — leave behind untold stories.

    Second, when local journalists are killed, international media have no choice but to rely increasingly on official statements or third-party briefings for coverage, many with obvious biases and blind spots.

    And third, the families of victims and the communities they represented are denied both justice and memory.

    Al-Sharif’s camera recorded funerals and destroyed homes, bore witness to lives cut short. His death leaves those images without a voice, pointing now only into silence.

    We also need to name the power dynamics at play. When an enormously powerful state with overwhelming military capability acts inside a densely populated area, the vast majority of casualties will be civilians — those who cannot leave — and local reporters, who cannot shelter.

    This is not a neutral law of physics; it is the to-be-anticipated result of how this war waged in a space where journalists will not be able to go into shelter.

    We have repeatedly documented that journalists killed in this war are Palestinian — not international correspondents. The most vulnerable witnesses, those most essential to documenting it, are also the most vulnerable to being killed.

    So what should the international community and the world leaders do beyond offering condolences?

    Demand independent investigation
    For starters, they must demand an immediate, independent investigation. Not just routine military reviews, but real accountability — gathering evidence, preserving witness testimony, and treating each death with the seriousness it deserves.

    Accountability cannot be a diplomatic nicety; it must be a forensic process with witnesses and evidence.

    Additionally, journalists must be protected as civilians. That’s not optional. Under international law, reporters who aren’t taking part in the fighting are civilians — period.

    That is an obligation not a choice. And when safety isn’t possible, we must get them out. Evacuate them. Save their lives. And in doing so, allow others in — international reporters who can continue telling the story.

    We are past the time for neutrality. The use of language like “conflict”, “collateral damage”, or “civilian casualties” cannot be used to deflect responsibility, especially when the victims are people whose only “crime” was documenting human suffering.

    When the world loses journalists like Anas al-Sharif, it loses more than just one voice. We lose a crucial balance of power and access to truth; it fails to maintain the ability to understand what’s happening on the ground. And future generations lose the memory — the record — of what took place here.

    Stand up for facts
    The international press community, human rights organisations, and diplomatic actors need to stand up. Not just for investigations, but for facts. Families in Gaza deserve more than empty statements. They deserve the truth about who was killed, and why. So does every person reading this from afar.

    And the journalists still risking everything to report from inside Gaza deserve more than sympathy. They deserve protection.

    The killing of journalists — like those from Al Jazeera — isn’t just devastating on a human level. It’s a direct attack on journalism itself. When a state can murder reporters without consequence, it sends a message to the entire world: telling the truth might cost you your life.

    I write this as someone who believes that journalism is, above all, a moral act. It’s about bearing witness. It’s about insisting that lives under siege are still lives that matter, still worth seeing.

    Silencing a journalist doesn’t just stop a story — it erases a lifetime of effort to bring others into view.

    The murder of al-Sharif isn’t just another tragedy. It’s an assault on truth itself, in a place where truth is desperately needed. If we let this keep happening, we’re not just losing lives — we’re losing the last honest witnesses in a world ruled by force.

    And that’s something we can’t afford to give up.

    Sara Qudah is the regional director for Middle East and North Africa of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sara on LinkedIn: Sara Qudah

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rewarding knowingly illegal conduct – some might say, Israeli terrorism

    Why the recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia is an important development. Meanwhile, New Zealand still dithers. This article unpacks the hypocrisy in the debate.

    ANALYSIS: By Paul Heywood-Smith

    The recognition of the State of Palestine by Australia, leading, it is hoped, to full UN member state status, is an important development.

    What has followed is a remarkable demonstration of ignorance and/or submission to the Zionist lobby.

    Rewarding Hamas
    Let us consider aspects of the response. One aspect is that recognising Palestine is rewarding the resistance organisation Hamas.

    There are a number of issues involved here. The first issue is that Hamas is branded as a “terrorist organisation”. So much is said, apparently, by eight nations compared to the overwhelming majority of UN recognised states which do not so regard it.

    May I suggest that Hamas is not a terrorist organisation: refer P&I, October 23, 2022, Australia must overturn its listing of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist political party which chose to fight apartheid by calling for one state.

    That was Hamas’s objective when it fought the election against Fatah in 2006.

    As an aside, it now results in the lie that it is ridiculous that the Albanese government would recognise Palestine as part of a two-state solution when Hamas rejects a two-state solution. This is just yet another attempt to demonise Hamas.

    Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they would accept a two-state solution. It has only recently done so again.

    On 23 July last, when Hamas responded to a US draft ceasefire framework the Hamas official, Basem Naim, affirmed Hamas’s publicly stated pledge that it would give up power in Gaza and support a two-state solution on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine.

    These are the very borders stipulated by international law — see hereunder.

    The Palestinians constituting Hamas are residents of an illegally occupied territory. International law affords to them the right to resist: Geneva Conventions I-IV, 1949.

    The hypocrisy associated with the demonisation of Hamas is massive. Much is made of hostages having been taken on 7 October 2023 — a war crime according to international law. Those militants who took the hostages might be forgiven for thinking that it was minimal compared with the seven years of non-compliance with Security Council Resolution (SCR) 2334 calling for the end of occupation and removal of settlements.

    The second issue is that Hamas commenced the events in Gaza by its horrific, unprovoked, attack on 7 October 2023. As to October 7 being unprovoked, see P&I, October 9, 2023 Palestinians, pushed beyond endurance, defend their homeland against violent apartheid.

    The events of October 7 are, in any event, shrouded in doubt. This follows from Israel’s suppression of evidence concerning what happened. What we do know is that the Israel Defence Force (IDF) received orders to shell Israeli homes and even their own bases on October 7.

    In addition, the Hannibal Directive justified IDF slaughter of Israelis potentially being taken as hostages. It is also accepted that allegations of rape and beheading of babies by Hamas militants were false. The disinformation put out by Israel, and Israel’s refusal to allow journalists on site, or to interview participants, make it impossible to form any clear or credible understanding of what happened on October 7.

    It is accepted that Hamas militants attacked three Israeli military bases, no doubt with the intention that those bases should withdraw from their positions relative to Gazan territory. Such action can be understood as consistent with an occupied citizenry resisting such illegal occupation.

    Compounding the uncertainty over October 7 is the continuing conjecture, leakage, of information suggesting that the IDF had advance warning of the proposed Hamas attack but chose, for other purposes, to take no action. These uncertainties are never adverted to by our press which repeatedly attributes responsibility for all Israeli deaths on the day to the actions of Hamas militants, which actions are presented as an “abomination, barbarity”. Refer generally to P&I, November 5, 2023 (Stuart Rees) Expose and dismiss the domination Israeli narrative; P&I, January 4, 2024 Israeli general killed Israelis on 7 October and then lied about it.

    The third issue, the major hypocrisy, is that Hamas is being rewarded. Consider the position of Israel. Israel is, and has been, illegally occupying Palestinian territory since 1967. This is undisputed according to international law as articulated in the following instruments:

    • 1967 – SCR 242;
    • 2004 – the ICJ decision concerning The Wall;
    • Dec. 2016 – SCR 2334, not vetoed by Obama, recognising the illegal occupation and calling for its end; and
    • 2024 – the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ of 19 July.

    Israel has done nothing to comply with any of these instruments. It is set on a programme of gradual acquisition.

    The result is that now there are illegal settlements all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. When Israel is told: the West Bank and East Jerusalem are to be part of a Palestinian state, it will scream, “But large parts are occupied by Jewish Israelis!” These are “facts on the ground”.

    Supporters of Israel ignore the fact that occupation by settlers occurred in the full knowledge that international law branded such occupation as illegal. If the settlements are considered as a “done deal”, that would be rewarding knowingly illegal conduct — some might say, Israeli terrorism.

    So that there can be no doubt about the import of the position it is appropriate to specify the critical parts of SCR 2334:

    The Security Council

    1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
    2. Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
    3. Underlines that it will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;
    4. Stresses that the cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperilling the two-State solution;.

    Following the ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 19, the UN General Assembly in adopting the same set 17 September 2025 as the deadline for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territory.

    Negotiated settlement
    And when Israel now says, “Recognition now is going to prevent a negotiated settlement”, it is ignoring the fact that in the six, 12, 20 months, two, three, four years until such negotiated settlement occurs, many more settlements would have been commenced, which of course, are more “facts on the ground”.

    Then we have the response of the Coalition, which demonstrates how irrelevant the Opposition is in today’s Australia. That response is that the recognition will inhibit a negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestinians.

    The Coalition, however, says nothing about the fact that the Israeli government has repeatedly stated that there will never be a Palestinian State. Indeed, Israel has legislated to that effect and is moreover periodically purporting to annex Palestinian land.

    So how does the Coalition believe that a negotiated settlement will come about? Well, one way, over which Israel may have no say, is for Palestine to become a full member State of the UN. One UN member state cannot occupy the land of another.

    Failure of our press to ask any question of pro-Israel interviewees about the end of occupation is a disgrace.

    Next challenge
    Now for the next challenge — to bring about the end of occupation. Israel will not accede readily. Sanctions must be the first step. Such sanctions must be immediate, concrete and crippling.

    They must result in the immediate suspension of trade. That can be the first step.

    Watch this space.

    Paul Heywood-Smith is an Adelaide SC (senior counsel) of some 20 years. He was the initial chairperson of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, an incorporated association registered in South Australia in 2004. He is the author of The Case for Palestine, The Perspective of an Australian Observer (Wakefield Press, 2014). This article was first published by Pearls & Irritations and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Call for legal shield for Fiji National Provident Fund in review hearing

    By Elena Vucukula in Suva

    The main problem in for Fiji retirement is that there is no law to protect the Fiji National Provident Fund, claims a leading trade unionist.

    Fiji Trades Union Congress national executive board member and National Union of Hospitality Catering and Tourism Industries Employees general secretary Daniel Urai has told the FNPF 2011 Act review committee in Lautoka that a law needed to be put in place to ensure that the FNPF and its members are protected.

    “Whenever something happens, a new government comes in — they will tell FNPF to remove all their investments abroad,” Urai said at the hearing on Friday.

    “And that has an effect on the FNPF investment. So, I hope you will find a way to put in a law that no one just comes and directs FNPF to remove all its investments, and that has happened in the past.

    “And I hope you can look at ways to ensure that it does not happen.

    “Because every time that happens, FNPF loses, and the returns are not what is expected.”

    Fiji Trades Union Congress national secretary and FNPF 2011 Act review committee member Felix Anthony claimed the government had interfered with FNPF’s overseas investments in 2007.

    Withdrew investments abroad
    “Soon after the coup, the government, actually through the Reserve Bank of Fiji (RBF), suggested that FNPF withdraw all its investments abroad,” Anthony said.

    “Just so that they keep the Fijian dollar afloat, and that actually affected FNPF income and had some financial ratification on the FNPF bottom line.

    “There was some consideration given whether the RBF itself should compensate FNPF for that directive, and nothing eventuated, of course, because the government had a stronghold at that time.”

    The Fiji National Provident Fund is conducting a comprehensive review of the FNPF Act 2011 to ensure the law is modern, effective, and continues to meet the retirement needs of Fijians.

    The public consultation continued at the Labasa Civic Centre today and will be in Suva tomorrow.

    Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Bulletin On Domestic Militarism And Repression

    The strategy is clear, as well as the desperation. Domestic repression in the U.S. colonial/capitalist core is imperative to support the aggressive militarism abroad, the periphery, in the form of wars of aggression, political subversion, economic sanctions, and genocide that have become the consciously and intentionally chosen tools of a rapacious U.S. based global ruling class—a ruling class that is unable to rule in the old way. Yet, it’s more than willing to blow up the world and sacrifice millions of people to maintain the predatory material basis for its white supremacist class rule.

    The irreconcilable contradictions of the neoliberal order that produced the dramatic swing to the right represented by the warmongering of the Obama administration and later succeeded by Donald Trump and Joe Biden, confirmed for the Black Alliance for Peace that its analysis that predicted an inevitable dependency on force and violence by the U.S. rulers domestically and globally was essentially correct.

    The post Bulletin On Domestic Militarism And Repression appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Washington DC Wakes Up Packed With Federal Agents And National Guard

    Since Wednesday night, hundreds of federal agents and National Guard members have been patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., after President Donald Trump placed the city’s police under federal control.

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set up checkpoints in several areas of the city and increased patrols in shifts covering 24 hours a day.

    On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said 19 agencies were part of a task force created by Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

    The post Washington DC Wakes Up Packed With Federal Agents And National Guard appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Peruvian People Reject Neocolonial Boluarte Coup Regime

    On July 28th, Perú celebrated its 204th anniversary of the independence of Peru from Spanish colonial rule. Inside Congress, the most unpopular president in the world, Dina Boluarte, gave a five-hour-long speech in which she claimed, among other things, to launch an array of infrastructural projects to boost the economy.  The scenes outside were a vastly different world. Protestors, delegations of farmworkers and families of martyrs and victims from the south, organizations representing neighborhood unions and others gathered in the center of the city to hear the message of ousted President Pedro Castillo, from the Penal Barbadillo prison, where he is a political prisoner held under pre-trial detention since December 7, 2022. 

    The post Peruvian People Reject Neocolonial Boluarte Coup Regime appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • United Kingdom Endorses Moroccan Control Of Western Sahara

    In June, just weeks before home secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group, the UK government reversed longstanding policy by endorsing Morocco’s autonomy plan over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that has been under illegal occupation for 50 years.

    In a joint communique signed by foreign secretary David Lammy and his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, the UK said the 2007 autonomy plan – which gives the indigenous Sahrawis self-governance under Moroccan sovereignty – was “the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis” to end the years-long conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, the political-military movement representing the Sahrawi people.

    The post United Kingdom Endorses Moroccan Control Of Western Sahara appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Gordon Campbell: The lack of spine in New Zealand’s foreign policy on Gaza

    ANALYSIS: By Gordon Campbell

    The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.

    As a result, Israel is isolating itself as a pariah state on the world stage. This week alone has seen Israel target and kill four Al Jazeera journalists, just as it had executed eight Red Crescent medical staff and seven other first responders back in March, and then dumped their bodies in a mass grave.

    Overall 186 journalists have died at the hands of the IDF since October 7, 2023, and at least 1400 medical staff as of May 2025.

    On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?

    At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.

    What can we do? Some options:

    1. Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
    2. Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
    3. Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
    4. Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
    5. Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
    6. Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
    7. Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
    8. Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of  trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
    9. We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
    10. Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
    11. Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
    12. Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.

    Here’s a bare bones timeline of the main historical events.

    This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:

    Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.

    This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.

    Conditional justice
    The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.

    There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.

    The West did nothing, said little.  As the New York Times recently pointed out:

    In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.

    This double standard persists:

    This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.

    That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.

    When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?

    Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes  is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”

    It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.

    Meanwhile, Israel has announced its plans to expand the war, even though 600 Israeli ex-officials (some of them from Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent to the SIS) have publicly said that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.

    As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?

    Two state fantasy, one state reality
    At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.

    Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

    Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.

    Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?

    One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?

    Talking of which . . .  are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.

    Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:

    A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here.  Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.

    What is the point?
    You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.

    That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.

    New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.

    Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.

    UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.

    These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.

    So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.

    There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.

    Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.

    As the NYT also says:

    After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres”  since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.

    In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution.  Faint chance:

    “For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.

    Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?

    Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.

    Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.

    Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule.  Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.

    We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.

    Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.

    At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘I believe I can’: Elizabeth Palin runs for Bougainville North women’s seat

    By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    Elizabeth Tako Palin is one of five women contesting the Bougainville North women’s reserved seat next month.

    It was previously held by Amanda Masono, who has chosen to contest the open Atolls seat, which was once held by her father.

    The autonomous Papua New Guinea region is holding a single-day poll on 4 September to elect a new 46-member House.

    A record 34 women are standing, including 14 in the three seats reserved for women.

    Former teacher Palin ran in 2020 and has wide political experience at the local level.

    She spoke with RNZ Pacific.

    (This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

    Elizabeth Palin: I was a former chair lady in the local level government, community government, and I just resigned to contest the seat. I served in the community government and at the ward assembly system for 10 years. But prior to that I was a teacher by profession,

    Don Wiseman: Being in the local level government. Is that a full time activity, is it for you?

    EP: It is, yes.

    DW: What does it involve?

    EP: It involves chairing the local level government at the community base level, and also taking care of the five wards within the respective community government that I’m heading.

    And, formally, in the first establishment of the first House of Assembly, I was the vice-chair lady. So as one of the ward members in the five wards under the urban council, urban community government. I contested the fourth House and I came second. I came back to be with the community, and then I worked with the people.

    I went contested [a second election] and I became the ward member and also lobbied for the chair position, and I became the chairperson.

    DW: So you want to be in the ABG [Autonomous Bougainville Government]. What is it you want to achieve there?

    EP: Being in the local level government, I have experienced a lot where we do not see the link. We do not really see that link from the top level of leadership down to the local level. We do not really feel it in some sense.

    Therefore, I decided that maybe I can be able to contest and get that leadership, and in experiencing my leadership at the ward level and community government level, I believe that I can be able to take that leadership and build that link from the top down to the ward assembly level, which includes the community government and vice versa, from the community government up to the top.

    This is what I experienced, and that is the main reason why I am contesting the seat. Also, I believe in my leadership because I have been with the local level government, and I believe I can perform at a much higher level as well.

    DW: Yes, well, you will have been campaigning now for weeks, because it’s such a long period of campaigning, isn’t it? How are people reacting to you?

    EP: Oh, I have been receiving positive responses from the people, from the voters, in terms of the way I present my campaign strategy, my platform, especially.

    I have so far received very positive response from the general public and the voters in the region, and from all the locations that I have conducted my campaign.

    DW: Yes, I wouldn’t expect a politician to say anything else going into an election. Independence for Bougainville is, it would seem, very close. How important is it to you that it’s sorted sooner rather than later?

    EP: Being a leader, a woman leader in having gone through my people’s experience in terms of fighting for their rights and for their independence, this coming independence, and what we we have been standing for as our political agenda is very, very crucial to me as with the general population of Bougainville.

    I cannot say no to that. I do understand a lot of work to do in terms of getting us prepared, in terms of demonstrating the indications and so forth, that we are able to get independence and we are independently ready. But based on the fights of our forefathers and our people and having lost the 20,000 lives, I stand for that.

    I believe that such a person like me, a woman with a strong voice at the political scene, in the political scene and level, I can be able to work as a team with the other leaders of Bougainville to get that independence.

    But having said that, it does not really mean that that is it. We are ready. As leaders, on the ground and at the different levels of governance, we need to work, and we have this how many years that have been given within the time frame for us to work in order to show that we’re able to be an independent, sovereign state, and that is what I believe in.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • End The Colonial Occupation Of Washington D.C

    President Donald Trump’s recent announcement to deploy the National Guard to Washington, DC, framed as a crackdown on crime, marks a dangerous escalation in the federal government’s militarization of one of the spaces of the Black/African internal colony. On August 11, Trump declared, “We’re taking our capital back,” while signaling an unprecedented federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department. This move, under the pretext of public safety, follows his March 2025 executive order establishing the “Safe and Beautiful” task force, led by Stephen Miller, an architect of white nationalist immigration policies. The initiative has accelerated mass surveillance, aggressive policing, and the criminalization of Black/African and working-class communities, particularly in Southeast DC.  

    The post End The Colonial Occupation Of Washington D.C appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • ‘Full sovereignty and independence’: FLNKS rejects France’s Bougival project

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    New Caledonia’s pro-independence front, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), has formally confirmed its “block rejection” of the French-sponsored Bougival project, signed last month.

    The pact has been presented as an agreement between all parties to serve as a guide for the French Pacific territory’s political future.

    This follows the FLNKS’s extraordinary congress held at the weekend in Mont-Dore, near Nouméa.

    Statements made yesterday confirmed the pro-independence umbrella’s unanimous rejection of the document.

    At the weekend congress, FLNKS president Christian Téin (speaking via telephone from mainland France), had called on FLNKS to “clearly and unequivocally” reject the Bougival document.

    He said the document demonstrated “the administrating power’s [France] contempt towards our struggle for recognition as the colonised people”.

    However, he called on the FLNKS to “remain open to dialogue”, but only focusing on ways to obtain “full sovereignty” after bilateral talks only with the French State, and no longer with the opposing local political parties (who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France).

    He mentioned deadlines such as 24 September 2025 and eventually before the end of President Macron’s mandate in April 2027, when French presidential elections are scheduled to take place.

    Téin was also part of the August 13 media conference, joining via videoconference, to confirm the FLNKS resolutions made at the weekend.

    Apart from reiterating its calendar of events, the FLNKS, in its final document, endorsed the “total and unambiguous rejection” of the French-sponsored document because it was “incompatible” with the right to self-determination and bore a “logic of recolonisation” on the part of France.

    The document, labelled “motion of general policy”, also demands that as a result of the rejection of the Bougival document, and since the previous 1998 Nouméa Accord remains in force, provincial elections previously scheduled for no later than November 2025 should now be maintained.

    Under the Bougival format, the provincial elections were to be postponed once again to mid-2026.

    “This will be a good opportunity to verify the legitimacy of those people who want to discuss the future of the country,” FLNKS member Sylvain Pabouty (head of Dynamique Unitaire Sud-DUS) told reporters.

    Signatures on the last page of New Caledonia's new agreement
    Signatures on the last page of the now rejected Bougival project for New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Philippe Dunoyer/RNZ

    Five FLNKS negotiators demoted
    As for the five negotiators who initially put their signatures on the document on behalf of FLNKS (including chief negotiator and Union Calédonienne chair Emmanuel Tjibaou), they have been de-missioned and their mandate withdrawn.

    “Let this be clear to everyone. This is a block rejection of all that is related to the Bougival project,” FLNKS political bureau member and leader of the Labour party Marie-Pierre Goyetche told local reporters.

    “Bougival is behind us, end of the story. The fundamental aim is for our country to access full sovereignty and independence through a decolonisation process within the framework of international law, including the right of the peoples for self-determination.”

    She said that the FLNKS would refuse to engage in any aspect of the Bougival document.

    Part of this further Bougival engagement is a “drafting committee” suggested by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls aimed at coordinating all documents (including necessary bills, legal and constitutional texts) related to the general agreement signed in July.

    Anticipating the FLNKS decision, Minister Valls has already announced he will travel to New Caledonia next week to pursue talks and further “clarify” the spirit of the negotiations that led to the signing.

    He said he would not give up and that a failure to go along with the agreed document would be “everyone’s failure”.

    The Bougival document envisages a path to more autonomy for New Caledonia, including transferring more powers (such as foreign affairs) from France.

    It also proposes to augment its status by creating a “state” of New Caledonia and creating dual French/New Caledonia citizenship.

    Still want to talk, but with France only
    The FLNKS stressed it still wanted to talk to Valls, albeit on their own terms, especially when Valls visits New Caledonia next week.

    However, according to the FLNKS motion, this would mean only on one-to-one format (no longer inclusively with the local pro-France parties), with United Nations “technical assistance” and “under the supervision” of the FLNKS president.

    The only discussion subjects would then be related to a path to “full sovereignty” and further talks would only take place in New Caledonia.

    As for the timeline, the FLNKS motion states that a “Kanaky Agreement” should be signed before September 24, which would open a transitional period to full sovereignty not later than April 2027, in other words “before [French] presidential elections”.

    Goyetche also stressed that the FLNKS motion was warning France against “any new attempt to force its way”, as was the case in the days preceding 13 May 2024.

    This is when a vote in Parliament to amend the French constitution and change the rules of eligibility for voters at New Caledonia’s local provincial elections triggered deadly and destructive riots that killed 14 people and caused damage worth more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) due to arson and looting.

    “It seems as if the French government wants to go through the same hardships again”, Téin was heard saying through his telephone call at the Wednesday conference.

    “Don’t make the same mistake again,” Pabouty warned Valls.

    In his message posted on social networks on Sunday (August 10), the French minister had blamed those who “refuse the agreement” and who “choose confrontation and let the situation rot”.

    Reactivate the mobilisation
    At the same media conference yesterday, FLNKS officials also called on “all of pro-independence forces to do all in their power to peacefully stop the [French] state’s agenda as agreed in Bougival”.

    The FLNKS text, as released yesterday, also “reaffirms that FLNKS remains the only legitimate representative of the Kanak people, to carry its inalienable right to self-determination”.

    FLNKS recent changes
    Téin is the leader of the CCAT (field action coordinating cell), a group set up by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against the proposed French constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections.

    The protests mainly stemmed from the perception that if the new rules were to come into force, the indigenous Kanaks would find themselves a minority in their own country.

    Téin was arrested in June 2024 and was charged for a number of crime-related offences, as well as his alleged involvement in the May 2024 riots.

    He was released from jail mid-June 2025 pending his trial and under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia for the time being.

    However, from his prison cell in Mulhouse (northeastern France), Téin was elected president of the FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.

    At the same time, CCAT was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS, just like a number of other organisations such as the trade union USTKE, the Labour party, and other smaller pro-independence movement groups.

    Some groups have joined, others have left
    Also late August 2024, in a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS — UPM and PALIKA — distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform.

    They asked their supporters to stay away from the riot-related violence, which destroyed hundreds of local businesses and cost thousands of jobs.

    UPM and PALIKA did not take part in the latest FLNKS meeting at the weekend.

    The two moderate pro-independence parties are part of the political groups who also signed the Bougival document and pledged to uphold it, as it is formulated, and keep the “Bougival spirit” in further talks.

    The other groups, apart from UPM and PALIKA, are pro-France (Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Calédonie Ensemble, and the Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien.

    The FLNKS, even though five of their negotiators had also signed the document, has since denounced them and said their representatives had “no mandate” to do sign up.

    Reaction from two main pro-France parties
    Pro-France parties had carefully chosen not to comment on the latest FLNKS moves until they were made public. However, the formal rejection was met by a joint communiqué from Les Loyalistes and Rassemblement-LR.

    In a long-winded text, the two outspoken pro-France parties “deplored” what they termed “yet another betrayal”.

    They confirmed they would meet Valls along Bougival lines when he visits next week and are now calling on a “bipartisan” committee of those supporting the Bougival text, including parties from all sides, as well as members of the civil society and “experts”.

    They maintain that the Bougival document is “the only viable way to pull New Caledonia out of the critical situation in which it finds itself” and the “political balances” it contains “cannot be put into question”.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.