Thousands of supporters were then welcomed at Takapūwāhia Marae, in Porirua, north of Wellington.
They will have a rest day in Porirua today before gathering at Wellington’s Waitangi Park on tomorrow morning, and converging on Parliament.
“There is likely to be some disruption to roads and highways,” the council said in a statement.
‘Plan ahead’ call
“Please plan ahead if travelling by road or rail on Tuesday, November 19, as delays are possible.”
The Hīkoi will start at 6am, travelling from Porirua to Waitangi Park, where it will arrive at 9am.
It will then depart the park at 10am, travelling along the Golden Mile to Parliament, where it will arrive at midday.
The Hīkoi will return to Waitangi Park at 4pm for a concert, karakia, and farewell.
State Highways 1 and 2 busier than normal.
Police said no significant issues had been reported as a result of the Hīkoi.
A traffic management plan would be in place for its arrival into Wellington, with heavier than usual traffic anticipated, particularly in the Hutt Valley early Tuesday morning, and on SH2 between Lower Hutt and Wellington city.
Anyone living or working in the city should plan accordingly, Wellington District Commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell said.
Police ‘working with Hikoī’
“Police have been working closely with iwi and Hīkoi organisers, and our engagement has been positive.
“The event as it has moved down the country has been conducted peacefully, and we have every reason to believe this will continue.
“In saying that, disruption is expected through the city centre as the hīkoi makes its way from Waitangi Park to Parliament.
“We’ve planned ahead with NZTA, Wellington City Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council, local schools, retailers and other stakeholders to mitigate this as best possible, but Wellingtonians should be prepared for Tuesday to look a little different.”
Riders on horseback have joined the Hīkoi along the route. Image: RNZ/Pokere Paewai
Wellington Station bus hub will be closed, with buses diverted to nearby locations.
Metlink has also added extra capacity to trains outside of peak times (9am-3pm).
Police said parking was expected to be extremely difficult on Tuesday, especially around the bus hub, Lambton Quay and Parliament grounds.
Wellingtonians were being to exercise patience, particularly on busy roads, Parnell said.
“We ask you to allow more time than normal to get where you are going. Plan ahead by looking at how road closures and public transport changes might affect you, and expect that there will be delays at some point throughout the day.”
PM: ‘We’ll wait and see’ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he was playing his approach to the Hīkoi “by ear”.
He has been at his first APEC meeting in Peru, but will arrive back in New Zealand today.
He said he was open to speaking with members of the Hīkoi on Tuesday, but no plans had been made as yet.
“We haven’t made a decision. We’ll wait and see, but I’m very open to meeting, in some form or another.
“It’s obviously building as it walks through the country and gets to Wellington, and we’ll just wait and see and take it as it comes.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A West Papuan advocacy group for self-determination for the colonised Melanesians has appealed to the United Kingdom government to cancel its planned reception for new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
“Prabowo is a blood-stained war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua,” claimed an exiled leader of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Benny Wenda.
He said he hoped the government would stand up for human rights and a “habitable planet” by cancelling its reception for Prabowo.
“Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land. He wants to destroy West Papua,” the UK-based Wenda said in a statement.
‘Ghost of Suharto’ returns
“For West Papuans, the ghost of Suharto has returned — the New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.
“It is gravely disappointing that the UK government has signed a ‘critical minerals’ deal with Indonesia, which will likely cover West Papua’s nickel reserves in Tabi and Raja Ampat.
“The UK must understand that there can be no real ‘green deal’ with Indonesia while they are destroying the third largest rainforest on earth.”
Wenda said he was glad to see five members of the House of Lords — Lords Harries, Purvis, Gold, Lexden, and Baroness Bennett — hold the government to account on the issues of self-determination, ecocide, and a long-delayed UN fact-finding visit.
“We need this kind of scrutiny from our parliamentary supporters more than ever now,” he said.
Prabowo is due to visit Oxford Library as part of his diplomatic visit.
“Why Oxford? The answer is clearly because the peaceful Free West Papua Campaign is based here; because the Town Hall flies our national flag every December 1st; and because I have been given Freedom of the City, along with other independence leaders like Nelson Mandela,” Wenda said.
This visit was not an isolated incident, he said. A recent cultural promotion had been held in Oxford Town Centre, addressed by the Indonesian ambassador in an Oxford United scarf.
The people of West Papua have spoken.
Just today (15/11/24), rallies against Indonesia’s settler-colonial Transmigration plan were held in:
Takeover of Oxford United
“There was the takeover of Oxford United by Anindya Bakrie, one of Indonesia’s richest men, and Erick Thohir, an Indonesian government minister.
“This is not about business — it is a targeted campaign to undermine West Papua’s international connections. The Indonesian Embassy has sponsored the Cowley Road Carnival and attempted to ban displays of the Morning Star, our national flag.
“They have called a bomb threat in on our office and lobbied to have my Freedom of the City award revoked. Indonesia is using every dirty trick they have in order to destroy my connection with this city.”
Wenda said Indonesia was a poor country, and he blamed the fact that West Papua was its poorest province on six decades of colonialism.
“There are giant slums in Jakarta, with homeless people sleeping under bridges. So why are they pouring money into Oxford, one of the wealthiest cities in Europe?” Wenda said.
“The UK has been my home ever since I escaped an Indonesian prison in the early 2000s. My family and I have been welcomed here, and it will continue to be our home until my country is free and we can return to West Papua.”
15/11/24 Jayapura, West Papua
Another angle showing that the rally against Transmigration was peaceful, but the police forcibly dispersed it.
A former New Zealand prime minister, Dame Jenny Shipley, has warned the ACT Party is “inviting civil war” with its attempt to define the principles of the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi in law.
National has said its MPs will vote against it at the second reading, after only backing it through the first as part of the coalition agreement with ACT.
Voting on the bill was interrupted when Te Pāti Māori’s Hauraki Waikato MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke tore up a copy of the bill and launched into a haka, inspiring other opposition MPs and members of the public gallery to join in.
Dame Jenny, who led the National Party from 1997 until 2001 and was prime minister for two of those years, threw her support behind Maipi-Clarke.
“The Treaty, when it’s come under pressure from either side, our voices have been raised,” she told RNZ’s Saturday Morning.
“I was young enough to remember Bastion Point, and look, the Treaty has helped us navigate. When people have had to raise their voice, it’s brought us back to what it’s been — an enduring relationship where people then try to find their way forward.
“And I thought the voices of this week were completely and utterly appropriate, and whether they breach standing orders, I’ll put that aside.
“The voice of Māori, that reminds us that this was an agreement, a contract — and you do not rip up a contract and then just say, ‘Well, I’m happy to rewrite it on my terms, but you don’t count.’
Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rāwhiti Maipa-Clarke led a haka in Parliament and tore up a copy of the Treaty Principles Bill at the first reading in Parliament on Thursday . . . . a haka is traditionally used as an indigenous show of challenge, support or sorrow. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone
“I would raise my voice. I’m proud that the National Party has said they will not be supporting this, because you cannot speak out of both sides of your mouth.
“And I think any voice that’s raised, and there are many people — pākeha and Māori who are not necessarily on this hikoi — who believe that a relationship is something you keep working at. You don’t just throw it in the bin and then try and rewrite it as it suits you.”
Her comments come after Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called the bill “simplistic” and “unhelpful”, and former Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson — who negotiated more settlements than any other — said letting it pass its first reading would do “great damage” to National’s relationship with Māori.
The Treaty Principles Bill reading vote. Video: RNZ News
Dame Jenny said past attempts to codify Treaty principles in law had failed.
“While there have been principles leaked into individual statutes, we have never attempted to — in a formal sense — put principles in or over top of the Treaty as a collective. And I caution New Zealand — the minute you put the Treaty into a political framework in its totality, you are inviting civil war.
“I would fight against it. Māori have every reason to fight against it.
“This is a relationship we committed to where we would try and find a way to govern forward. We would respect each other’s land and interests rights, and we would try and be citizens together — and actually, we are making outstanding progress, and this sort of malicious, politically motivated, fundraising-motivated attempt to politicise the Treaty in a new way should raise people’s voices, because it is not in New Zealand’s immediate interest.
“And you people should be careful what they wish for. If people polarise, we will finish up in a dangerous position. The Treaty is a gift to us to invite us to work together. And look, we’ve been highly successful in doing that, despite the odd ruction on the way.”
She said New Zealand could be proud of the redress it had made to Māori, “where we accepted we had just made a terrible mess on stolen land and misused the undertakings of the Treaty, and we as a people have tried to put that right”.
“I just despise people who want to use a treasure — which is what the Treaty is to me — and use it as a political tool that drives people to the left or the right, as opposed to inform us from our history and let it deliver a future that is actually who we are as New Zealanders . . . I condemn David Seymour for his using this, asking the public for money to fuel a campaign that I think really is going to divide New Zealand in a way that I haven’t lived through in my adult life. There’s been flashpoints, but I view this incredibly seriously.”
‘Equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights’ In response, David Seymour said the bill actually sought to “solve” the problem of “treating New Zealanders based on their ethnicity”.
“Te Pāti Māori acted in complete disregard for the democratic system of which they are a part during the first reading of the bill, causing disruption, and leading to suspension of the House.
“The Treaty Principles Bill commits to protecting the rights of everyone, including Māori, and upholding Treaty settlements. It commits to give equal enjoyment of the same fundamental human rights to every single New Zealander.
“The challenge for people who oppose this bill is to explain why they are so opposed to those basic principles.”
On Thursday, following the passing of the bill’s first reading, he said he was looking forward to seeing what New Zealanders had to say about it during the six-month select committee process.
“The select committee process will finally democratise the debate over the Treaty which has until this point been dominated by a small number of judges, senior public servants, academics, and politicians.
“Parliament introduced the concept of the Treaty principles into law in 1975 but did not define them. As a result, the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal have been able to develop principles that have been used to justify actions that are contrary to the principle of equal rights. Those actions include co-governance in the delivery of public services, ethnic quotas in public institutions, and consultation based on background.
“The principles of the Treaty are not going away. Either Parliament can define them, or the courts will continue to meddle in this area of critical political and constitutional importance.
“The purpose of the Treaty Principles Bill is for Parliament to define the principles of the Treaty, provide certainty and clarity, and promote a national conversation about their place in our constitutional arrangements.”
He said the bill in no way would alter or amend the Treaty itself.
“I believe all New Zealanders deserve tino rangatiratanga — the right to self-determination. That all human beings are alike in dignity. The Treaty Principles Bill would give all New Zealanders equality before the law, so that we can go forward as one people with one set of rights.”
The Hīkoi today was in Hastings, on its way to Wellington, where it is expected to arrive on Monday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Te Pāti Māori’s extraordinary display of protest — interrupting the first vote on the Treaty Principles Bill — has highlighted the tension in Aotearoa New Zealand between Māori tikanga, or customs, and the rules of Parliament.
When called on to cast Te Pāti Māori’s vote, its MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke instead launched into a haka, ripping a copy of the legislation in half.
She was joined by other opposition MPs and onlookers, prompting Speaker Gerry Brownlee to temporarily suspend Parliament and clear out the public gallery.
Brownlee subsequently censured Maipi-Clarke, describing her conduct as “appallingly disrespectful” and “grossly disorderly”.
Maipi-Clarke was named and suspended, barring her from voting or entering the debating chamber for a 24-hour period. She also had her pay docked.
Te Pāti Māori about to record their vote. Video: RNZ/Parliament
‘Ka mate, ka mate’ – when is it appropriate to perform haka?
The Ngāti Toa haka performed in Parliament was the well-known “Ka mate, Ka mate,” which tells the story of chief Te Rauparaha who was being chased by enemies and sought shelter where he hid. Once his enemies left he came out into the light.
Ngāti Toa chief executive and rangatira Helmut Modlik told RNZ the haka was relevant to the debate. He said the bill had put Māori self-determination at risk – “ka mate, ka mate” – and Māori were reclaiming that – “ka ora, ka ora”.
Haka was not governed by rules or regulation, Modlik said. It could be used as a show of challenge, support or sorrow.
“In the modern setting, all of these possibilities are there for the use of haka, but as an expression of cultural preferences, cultural power, world view, ideas, sounds, language – it’s rather compelling.”
Modlik acknowledged that Parliament operated according to its own conventions but said the “House and its rules only exist because our chiefs said it could be here”.
“If you’re going to negate . . . the constitutional and logical basis for your House being here . . . with your legislation, then that negates your right to claim it as your own to operate as you choose.”
He argued critics were being too sensitive, akin to “complaining about the grammar being used as people are crying that the house is on fire”.
“The firemen are complaining that they weren’t orderly enough,” Modlik said. “They didn’t use the right words.”
Robust response expected
Modlik said Seymour should expect a robust response to his own passionate performance and theatre: “That’s the Pandora’s Box he’s opening”.
Following the party’s protest yesterday, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi told reporters “everyone should be proud to see [the haka] in its true context.”
“We love it when the All Blacks do it, but what about when the ‘blackies’ do it?” he said.
Today, speaking to those gathered for the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in Rotorua, Waititi said the party used “every tool available to us to use in the debates in that House”.
“One of those tools are the Māori tools we take from our kete, which is haka, which is waiata, which is pōkeka — all of those things that our tīpuna have left us. Those are natural debating tools on the marae.”
What does Parliament’s rulebook have to say? Parliament is governed by its own set of rules known as Standing Orders and Speakers’ Rulings. They endow the Speaker with the power and responsibility to “maintain order and decorum” in the House.
The rules set out the procedures to be followed during a debate and subsequent vote. MPs are banned from using “offensive or disorderly words” or making a “personal reflection” against another member.
MPs can also be found in contempt of Parliament if they obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions.
Examples of contempt include assaulting, threatening or obstructing an MP, or “misconducting oneself” in the House.
Under Standing Orders, Parliament’s proceedings can be temporarily suspended “in the case of any grave disorder arising in committee”.
The Speaker may order any member “whose conduct is highly disorderly” to leave the chamber. For example, Brownlee ejected Labour MP Willie Jackson when he refused to apologise for calling Seymour a liar.
The Speaker may also “name” any member “whose conduct is grossly disorderly” and then call for MPs to vote on their suspension, as occurred in the case of Maipi-Clarke.
Members of the public gallery can also be required to leave if they interrupt proceedings or “disturb or disrupt the House”.
‘Abusing tikanga of Parliament’
Seymour has previously criticised Te Pāti Māori for abusing the “the tikanga of Parliament,” and on Thursday he called for further consequences.
“The Speaker needs to make it clear that the people of New Zealand who elect people to this Parliament have a right for their representative to be heard, not drowned out by someone doing a haka or getting in their face making shooting gestures,” Seymour said.
Former Speaker Sir Lockwood Smith told RNZ the rules existed to allow rational and sensible debate on important matters.
“Parliament makes the laws that govern all our lives, and its performance and behaviour has to be commensurate with that responsibility.
“It is not just a stoush in a pub. It is the highest court in the land and its behaviour should reflect that.”
Sir Lockwood said he respected Māori custom, but there were ways that could be expressed within the rules. He said he was also saddened by “the venom directed personally” at Seymour.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An estimated 10,000 people have marched through Rotorua today as part of Hīkoi mō te Tiriti protesting against the controversial Treaty Principles Bill.
Due to the size of the group, Fenton Street was blocked temporarily as the Hīkoi went through, police said.
It is anticipated that this afternoon the main Hīkoi will travel via Taupō to Hastings, where participants will stay overnight.
Tuesday, November 19 will mark day 10 of the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti and kotahitanga o Ngā Iwi ki Waitangi Park — everyone will meet at Waitangi Park on Wellington’s waterfont before walking to the steps of the parliamentary Beehive.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Hīkoi treaty bill protest heads south from Rotorua. Video: RNZ News
With the protest hīkoi from the Far North moving through Rotorua on its way to Wellington, it might be said ACT leader David Seymour has been granted his wish of generating an “important national conversation about the place of the Treaty in our constitutional arrangements”.
Timed to coincide with the first reading of the contentious Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill yesterday — it passed with a vote of 68-55, the hīkoi and other similar protests are a response to what many perceive as a fundamental threat to New Zealand’s fragile constitutional framework.
With no upper house, nor a written constitution, important laws can be fast-tracked or repealed by a simple majority of Parliament.
As constitutional lawyer and former prime minister Geoffrey Palmer has argued about the current government’s legislative style and speed, the country “is in danger of lurching towards constitutional impropriety”.
Central to this ever-shifting and contested political ground is te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi. For decades it has been woven into the laws of the land in an effort to redress colonial wrongs and guarantee a degree of fairness and equity for Māori.
There is a significant risk the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill would undermine these achievements, as it attempts to negate recognised rights within the original document and curtail its application in a modern setting.
But while the bill is almost guaranteed to fail because of the other coalition parties’ refusal to support it beyond the select committee, there is another danger. Contained in an explanatory note within the bill is the following clause:
The Bill will come into force if a majority of electors voting in a referendum support it. The Bill will come into force 6 months after the date on which the official result of that referendum is declared.
Were David Seymour to argue his bill has been thwarted by the standard legislative process and must be advanced by a referendum, the consequences for social cohesion could be significant.
The referendum option While the bill would still need to become law for the referendum to take place, the option of putting it to the wider population — either as a condition of a future coalition agreement or orchestrated via a citizens-initiated referendum — should not be discounted.
One recent poll showed roughly equal support for and against a referendum on the subject, with around 30 percent undecided. And Seymour has had success in the past with his End of Life Choice Act referendum in 2020.
He will also have watched the recent example of Australia’s Voice referendum, which aimed to give a non-binding parliamentary voice to Indigenous communities but failed after a heated and divisive public debate.
The lobby group Hobson’s Pledge, which opposes affirmative action for Māori and is led by former ACT politician Don Brash, has already signalled its intention to push for a citizens-initiated referendum, arguing: “We need to deliver the kind of message that the Voice referendum in Australia delivered.”
The Treaty and the constitution ACT’s bill is not the first such attempt. In 2006, the NZ First Party — then part of a Labour-led coalition government — introduced the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Deletion Bill.
That bill failed, but the essential argument behind it was that entrenching Treaty principles in law was “undermining race relations in New Zealand”. However, ACT’s current bill does not seek to delete those principles, but rather to define and restrain them in law.
This would effectively begin to unpick decades of careful legislative work, threaded together from the deliberations of the Waitangi Tribunal, the Treaty settlements process, the courts and Parliament.
would reduce the constitutional status of the Treaty/te Tiriti, remove its effect in law as currently recognised in Treaty clauses, limit Māori rights and Crown obligations, hinder Māori access to justice, impact Treaty settlements, and undermine social cohesion.
If this Bill were to be enacted, it would be the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty/te Tiriti in modern times. If the Bill remained on the statute book for a considerable time or was never repealed, it could mean the end of the Treaty/te Tiriti.
Social cohesion at risk
Similar concerns have been raised by the Ministry of Justice in its advice to the government. In particular, the ministry noted the proposal in the bill may negate the rights articulated in Article II of the Treaty, which affirms the continuing exercise of tino rangatiratanga (self-determination):
Any law which fails to recognise the collective rights given by Article II calls into question the very purpose of the Treaty and its status in our constitutional arrangements.
The government has also been advised by the Ministry of Justice that the bill may lead to discriminatory outcomes inconsistent with New Zealand’s international legal obligations to eliminate discrimination and implement the rights of Indigenous peoples.
All of these issues will become heightened if a referendum, essentially about the the removal of rights guaranteed to Māori in 1840, is put to the vote.
Of course, citizens-initiated referendums are not binding on a government, but they carry much politically persuasive power nonetheless. And this is not to argue against their usefulness, even on difficult issues.
But the profound constitutional and wider democratic implications of the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill, and any potential referendum on it, should give everyone pause for thought at this pivotal moment.
Thousands of people are continuing their North Island hīkoi as the legislation they are protesting against, the Treaty Principles Bill, gets its first reading in Parliament today.
The hīkoi enters day four and headed off from Huntly, destined for Rotorua today, after it advanced through Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau yesterday.
Traffic was at a standstill in Kirikiriroa Hamilton and the hīkoi has filled the road from one side to the other.
Meanwhile, members of the King’s Counsel, some of New Zealand’s most senior legal minds, say the controversial bill “seeks to rewrite the Treaty itself” and are calling on the prime minister and the coalition government to “act responsibly now and abandon” it.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An exiled West Papuan leader has called on supporters globally to show their support by raising the Morning Star flag — banned by Indonesia — on December 1.
“Whether in your house, your workplace, the beach, the mountains or anywhere else, please raise our flag and send us a picture,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.
“By doing so, you give West Papuans strength and courage and show us we are not alone.”
The plea came in response to a dramatic step-up in military reinforcements for the Melanesian region by new President Prabowo Subianto, who was inaugurated last month, in an apparent signal for a new crackdown on colonised Papuans.
“The situation in occupied West Papua is on a knife edge,” said the UK-based Wenda in a statement on the ULMWP website.
He added that President Prabowo had announced the return of a “genocidal transmigration settlement policy”.
Indigenous people a minority
“From the 1970s, transmigration brought hundreds of thousands of Javanese settlers into West Papua, ultimately making the Indigenous people a minority in our own land,” Wenda said.
“At the same time, Prabowo [is sending] thousands of soldiers to Merauke to safeguard the destruction of our ancestral forest for a set of gigantic ecocidal developments.
“Five million hectares of Papuan forest are set to be ripped down for sugarcane and rice plantations.
“West Papuans are resisting Prabowo’s plan to wipe us out, but we need all our supporters to stand beside us as we battle this terrifying new threat.”
The Morning Star is illegal in West Papua and frequently protesters who have breached this law have faced heavy jail sentences.
“If we raise [the flag], paint it on our faces, draw it on a banner, or even wear its colours on a bracelet, we can face up to 15 or 20 years in prison.
“This is why we need people to fly the flag for us. As ever, we will be proudly flying the Morning Star above Oxford Town Hall. But we want to see our supporters hold flag raisings everywhere — on every continent.
‘Inhabiting our struggle’
“Whenever you raise the flag, you are inhabiting the spirit of our struggle.”
Wenda appealed to everyone in West Papua — “whether you are in the cities, the villages, or living as a refugee or fighter in the bush” — to make December 1 a day of prayer and reflection on the struggle.
“We remember our ancestors and those who have been killed by the Indonesian coloniser, and strengthen our resolve to carry on fighting for Merdeka — our independence.”
Wenda said the peaceful struggle was making “great strides forward” with a constitution, a cabinet operating on the ground, and a provisional government with a people’s mandate.
“We know that one day soon the Morning Star will fly freely in our West Papuan homeland,” he said.
“But for now, West Papuans risk arrest and imprisonment if we wave our national flag. We need our supporters around the world to fly it for us, as we look forward to a Free West Papua.”
Thousands of supporters of Aotearoa New Zealand’s hīkoi mō te Tiriti — a march traversing the length of Aotearoa in protest against the Treaty Principles Bill and government policies impacting on Māori — have crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
RNZ reporters with the march said it was swaying and rocking as the protesters descended on the Westhaven side of the bridge.
Earlier, Auckland commuters were advised to plan ahead as the hīkoi makes its way over the Harbour Bridge.
Waka Kotahi and police say the two outer northbound lanes closed from 8.30am on Wednesday and would not re-open until around 11am. Some other on- and off-ramps will also be closed until further notice.
The hīkoi begins the Harbour Bridge crossing. Video: RNZ News
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
From the misty peaks of Cape Reinga to the rain-soaked streets of Kawakawa, Aotearoa New Zealand’s national hīkoi mō Te Tiriti rolled through the north and arrived in Whangārei.
Since setting off this morning numbers have swelled from a couple of hundred to well over 1000 people, demonstrating their opposition to the coalition government’s controversial Treaty Principles Bill and other policies impacting on Māori.
Hundreds gathered for a misty covered dawn karakia at Te Rerenga Wairua, the very top of the North Island, after meeting at the nearby town of Te Kāo the night before.
Among them was veteran Māori rights activist and former MP Hone Harawira. He says the hīkoi is about protesting against a “blitzkreig of oppression” from the government and uplifting Māori.
Harawira praised organisers of the hīkoi and set out his own hopes for the march.
“It’s been a great start to the day . . . to come here to Te Rerenga Wairua with people from all around the country and just join together, have a karakia, have some waiata and start to move on. We’re ready to go and Wellington is waiting — we can’t keep them waiting.
“One of our kuia said it best last night. The last hīkoi built a party — the Māori Party — [but] let’s make this hīkoi build a nation. Let us focus on that,” Harawira said.
Margie Thomson and her partner James travelled from Auckland to join the hīkoi.
She said as a Pākeha, she was gutted by some of the government policies toward Māori and wanted to show support.
The national hīkoi passes through Kaitaia. Image: Peter de Graaf
“The spirit of the people here is really profound . . . if people could feel they would really see the reality of the kāupapa here — the togetherness. This is really something, there is a really strong Māori movement and you really feel it.”
By lunchtime the hīkoi had reached Kaiatia where numbers swelled to well over 1000 people. The main street had to be closed to traffic while supporters filled the streets with flags, waiata and haka.
Tahlia, 10, made sure she had the best view, as people lined the streets as Te Hīkoi mō te Tiriti drew closer to Kawakawa, on the first day, 11 November, 2024. Image: RNZ/Peter de Graaf
The hīkoi arrived in Whangārei this evening after covering a distance of around 280 km.
Kākā Porowini marae in central Whangārei was hosting some of the supporters and its chair, Taipari Munro, said they were prepared to care for the masses
“Hapu are able to pull those sorts of things together. But of course it will build as the hīkoi travels south.
“The various marae and places where people will be hosted, will all be under preparation now.”
Hirini Tau, Hirini Henare and Mori Rapana lead the hīkoi through Kawakawa today. Image: RNZ/Peter de Graaf
Three marae have been made available for people to stay at in Whangārei and some kai will also be provided, he said.
Meanwhile, the Māori Law Society has set up a phone number to provide free legal assistance to marchers taking part in the hīkoi.
Spokesperson Echo Haronga said Māori lawyers wanted to support the hīkoi in their own way.
“This helpline is a demonstration of our manaakitanga as Māori legal professionals wanting to tautoko those people who are on the hīkoi. If a question arises for them, they’re not quite sure how handle it during the hīkoi then they know they can call this number they can speak to a Māori lawyer.”
Ngāti Hine Health Trust staff and others wait to welcome Te Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, as it drew closer to Kawakawa today. Image: RNZ/Peter de Graaf
Haronga stressed that she did not anticipate any issues or disturbances with the police and the helpline was open to any questions or concerns not just police and criminal enquiries.
“It’s not actually limited to people causing a ruckus and being in trouble with the police, it also could be someone who has a question . . . and they wouldn’t know otherwise where to go to, you can also call us for that if it’s in relation to hīkoi business.”
Hīkoi supporters will stay in Whangārei for the night before travelling to Dargaville and Auckland’s North Shore tomorrow.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Toitū te Tiriti . . . the Māori activist group fighting for the treaty. Video: RNZ
On November 19, the hīkoi is planned to arrive on Parliament grounds, having gathered supporters from the very top and bottom of New Zealand through the nine-day journey.
Toitū te Tiriti organiser Eru Kapa-Kingi told RNZ the hīkoi was as much about Māori unity as it was opposition to government policy — in particular, the Treaty Principles Bill, which had been expected to be tabled at Parliament on November 18, the day before the hīkoi was set to arrive.
In a statement posted to the Toitū te Tiriti Instagram page, Kapa-Kingi said no changes would be made to the planned hīkoi.
“We always knew a shuffle like this would come along, this is not unexpected from this coalition, they have shown us who they are for the past year.
The hīkoi against the proposed Bill is going ahead as planned, despite the Bill’s earlier introduction to Parliament. Image: RNZ/Jessica Hopkins
“However this timing change does not matter, our kaupapa could never be, and will not be overshadowed. In fact, this just gives us more kaha (strength) to get on our whenua and march for our mokopuna.
“Bills come and go, but Te Tiriti is infinite, and so are we; our plans will not change. Kia kaha tātou.”
Disruptions likely on some roads – police Police have warned that some disruption is likely on roads and highways, as the hīkoi passes through.
Superintendent Kelly Ryan said police would keep Waka Kotahi and local councils updated about the roads, so drivers in each area could find updates. She recommended travellers “plan accordingly”.
Police have also been in contact with the hīkoi organisers, she said: “Our discussions with organisers to date have been positive and we expect the hīkoi to be conducted in a peaceful and lawful manner.
“We’ve planned for large numbers to join the hīkoi, with disruption likely to some roads, including highways and main streets along the route.”
NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi said it would also be monitoring the impact of the hīkoi on highways, and would provide real-time updates on any delays or disruptions.
A police Major Operations Centre has been set up at the Wellington national headquarters, to oversee the response to the hīkoi in each area, Ryan said.
“We will continue to co-ordinate with iwi leaders and our partners across government to ensure public safety and minimal disruption to people going about their daily routine.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Anger and fear have greeted the return to power of former US strongman Donald Trump, a corrupt far-white extremist coup plotter who is also a convicted felon and rapist, following this week’s shock presidential election result.
Ethnic tensions have been on the rise with members of the historically oppressed minority Black ethnic group reporting receiving threatening text messages, warning of a return to an era of enslavement.
In a startling editorial, the tension-wracked country’s paper of record, The New York Times, declared that the country had made “a perilous choice” and that its fragile democracy was now on “a precarious course”.
President-elect Trump’s victory marks the second time in eight years the extremist leader, who is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of using campaign funds to pay off a porn star he had cheated on his wife with, has defeated a female opponent from the ruling Democratic Party.
Women continue to struggle to reach the highest office in the deeply conservative nation where their rights are increasingly under attack and child marriage is widespread.
This has prompted traumatised supporters of Vice-President Kamala Harris, who had been handpicked to replace the unpopular, ageing incumbent, Joe Biden, to accuse American voters of racism to sexism.
“It’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from Black . . . who do not want a woman leading them,” insisted one TV anchor, adding that there “might be race issues with Hispanics that don’t want a Black woman as president of the United States.”
Hateful tribal rhetoric
The hateful tribal rhetoric has also included social media posts calling for any people of mixed race who failed to vote for Harris to be deported and for intensification of the genocide in Gaza due to Arab-American rejection of Harris over her support for the continued provision of weapons to the brutal apartheid state committing it.
“Victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan,” goes the saying popularised by former US President John F Kennedy, who was shot 61 years ago this month.
The reluctance to attribute the loss to the grave and gratuitous missteps made by the Harris campaign has mystified America-watchers around the world.
Harris and her supporters had tried to counter that by claiming that Trump would also be genocidal and that she would ameliorate the pain of bereaved families in the US by lowering the price of groceries.
However, the election results showed that this was not a message voters appreciated. “Genocide is bad politics,” said one Arab-American activist.
Worried over democracy
As the scale of the extremists’ electoral win becomes increasingly clear, having taken control of not just the presidency but the upper house of Congress as well, many are worried about the prospects for democracy in the US which is still struggling to emerge from Trump’s first term.
Despite conceding defeat, Harris has pledged to continue to “wage this fight” even as pro-democracy protests have broken out in several cities, raising fears of violence and political uncertainty in the gun-strewn country.
This could imperil stability in North America and sub-Scandinavian Europe where a Caucasian Spring democratic revolution has failed to take hold, and a plethora of white-wing authoritarian populists have instead come to power across the region.
However, there is a silver lining. The elections themselves were a massive improvement over the chaotic and shambolic, disputed November 2020 presidential polls which paved the way for a failed putsch two months later.
This time, the voting was largely peaceful and there was relatively little delay in releasing results, a remarkable achievement for the numeracy-challenged nation where conspiracy theorists remain suspicious about the Islamic origins of mathematics, seeing it is as a ploy by the terror group “Al Jibra” to introduce Sharia Law to the US.
In the coming months and years, there will be a need for the international community to stay engaged with the US and assist the country to try and undertake much-needed reforms to its electoral and governance systems, including changes to its constitution.
During the campaigns, Harris loyalists warned that a win by Trump could lead to the complete gutting of its weak democratic systems, an outcome the world must work hard to avoid.
However, figuring out how to support reform in the US and engage with a Trump regime while not being seen to legitimise the election of a man convicted of serious crimes, will be a tricky challenge for the globe’s mature Third-World democracies.
Many may be forced to limit direct contact with him. “Choices have consequences,” as a US diplomat eloquently put it 11 years ago.
Patrick Gathara is a Kenyan journalist, cartoonist, blogger and author. He is also senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian. This article was first published by Al Jazeera and is republished under Creative Commons.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at Donald Trump’s return to the White House, we turn now to look at what it means for the world, from Israel’s war on Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During his victory speech, Trump vowed that he was going to “stop wars”.
But what will Trump’s foreign policy actually look like?
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Fatima Bhutto, award-winning author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Runaways, New Kings of the World. She is co-editing a book along with Sonia Faleiro titled Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, due out next year. She writes a monthly column for Zeteo.
Start off by just responding to Trump’s runaway victory across the United States, Fatima.
Fatima Bhutto on the Kamala Harris “support for genocide”. Video: Democracy Now!
FATIMA BHUTTO: Well, Amy, I don’t think it’s an aberration that he won. I think it’s an aberration that he lost in 2020. And I think anyone looking at the American elections for the last year, even longer, could see very clearly that the Democrats were speaking to — I’m not sure who, to a hall of mirrors.
They ran an incredibly weak and actually macabre campaign, to see Kamala Harris describe her politics as one of joy as she promised the most lethal military in the world, talking about women’s rights in America, essentially focusing those rights on the right to termination, while the rest of the world has watched women slaughtered in Gaza for 13 months straight.
You know, it’s very curious to think that they thought a winning strategy was Beyoncé and that Taylor Swift was somehow a political winning strategy that was going to defeat — who? — Trump, who was speaking to people, who was speaking against wars. You know, whether we believe him or not, it was a marked difference from what Kamala Harris was saying and was not saying.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Fatima, you wrote a piece for Zeteo earlier this year titled “Gaza Has Exposed the Shameful Hypocrisy of Western Feminism.” So, you just mentioned the irony of Kamala Harris as, you know, the second presidential candidate who is a woman, where so much of the campaign was about women, and the fact that — you know, of what’s been unfolding on women, against women and children in Gaza for the last year. If you could elaborate?
FATIMA BHUTTO: Yeah, we’ve seen, Nermeen, over the last year, you know, 70 percent of those slaughtered in Gaza by Israel and, let’s also be clear, by America, because it’s American bombs and American diplomatic cover that allows this slaughter to continue unabated — 70 percent of those victims are women and children.
We have watched children with their heads blown off. We have watched children with no surviving family members find themselves in hospital with limbs missing. Gaza has the largest cohort of child amputees in the world. And we have seen newborns left to die as Israel switches off electricity and fuel of hospitals.
So, for Kamala Harris to come out and talk repeatedly about abortion, and I say this as someone who is pro-choice, who has always been pro-choice, was not just macabre, but it’s obscene. It’s an absolute betrayal of feminism, because feminism is about liberation. It’s not about termination.
And it’s about protecting women at their most vulnerable and at their most frightened. And there was no sign of that. You know, we also saw Kamala Harris bring out celebrities. I mean, the utter vacuousness of bringing out Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé and others to talk about being a mother, while mothers are being widowed, are being orphaned in Gaza, it was not just tone deaf, it seemed to have a certain hostility, a certain contempt for the suffering that the rest of us have been watching.
I’d also like to add a point about toxic masculinity. There was so much toxicity in Kamala Harris’s campaign. You know, I watched her laugh with Oprah as she spoke about shooting someone who might enter her house with a gun, and giggling and saying her PR team may not like that, but she would kill them.
You don’t need to be a man to practice toxic masculinity, and you don’t need to be white to practice white supremacy, as we’ve seen very clearly from this election cycle.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, Fatima Bhutto, if you look at what Trump represented, and certainly the Muslim American community, the Arab American community, Jewish progressives, young people, African-Americans certainly understood what Trump’s policy was when he was president.
And it’s rare, you know, a president comes back to serve again after a term away. It’s only happened once before in history.
But you have, for example, Trump moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. You have an illegal settlement named after Trump in the West Bank. The whole question of Netanyahu and his right-wing allies in Israel pushing for annexation of the West Bank, where Trump would stand on this.
And, of course, you have the Abraham Accords, which many Palestinians felt left them out completely. If you can talk about this? These were put forward by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who, when the massive Gaza destruction was at its height, talked about Gaza as waterfront real estate.
FATIMA BHUTTO: Absolutely. There’s no question that Trump has been a malign force, not just when it concerns Palestinians, but, frankly, out in the world. But I would argue there’s not very much difference between what these two administrations or parties do. The difference is that Trump doesn’t have the gloss and the charisma of an Obama or — I mean, I can’t even say that Biden has charisma, but certainly the gloss.
Trump says it. They do it. The difference — I can’t really tell the difference anymore.
We saw the Biden administration send over 500 shipments of arms to Israel, betraying America’s own laws, the fact that they are not allowed to export weapons of war to a country committing gross violations of human rights. We saw Bill Clinton trotted out in Michigan to tell Muslims that, actually, they should stop killing Israelis and that Jews were there before them.
I mean, it was an utterly contemptuous speech. So, what is the difference exactly?
We saw Bernie Sanders, who was mentioned earlier, write an op-ed in The Guardian in the days before the election, warning people that if they were not to vote for Kamala Harris, if Donald Trump was to get in, think about the climate crisis. Well, we have watched Israel’s emissions in the first five months of their deadly attack on Gaza release more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations release in a year.
So, I don’t quite see that there’s a difference between what Democrats allow and what Trump brags about. I think it’s just a question of crudeness and decorum and politeness. One has it, and one doesn’t. In a sense, Trump is much clearer for the rest of the world, because he says what he’s going to do, and, you know, you take him at his word, whereas we have been gaslit and lied to by Antony Blinken on a daily basis now since October 7th.
Every time that AOC or Kamala Harris spoke about fighting desperately for a ceasefire, we saw more carnage, more massacres and Israel committing crimes with total impunity. You know, it wasn’t under Trump that Israel has killed more journalists than have ever been killed in any recorded conflict. It’s under Biden that Israel has killed more UN workers than have ever been killed in the UN’s history. So, I’m not sure there’s a difference.
And, you know, we’ll have to wait to see in the months ahead. But I don’t think anyone is bracing for an upturn. Certainly, people didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. I’m not sure they voted for Trump. We know that she lost 14 million votes from Biden’s win in 2020. And we know that those votes just didn’t come out for the Democrats. Some may have migrated to Trump. Some may have gone to third parties. But 14 million just didn’t go anywhere.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Fatima, if you could, you know, tell us what do you think the reasons are for that? I mean, the kind of — as you said, because it is really horrifying, what has unfolded in Gaza in the last 13 months. You’ve written about this. You now have an edited anthology that you’re editing, co-editing. You know, what do you think accounts for this, the sheer disregard for the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza?
FATIMA BHUTTO: It’s a total racism on the part not just of America, but I’m speaking of the West here. This has been betrayed over the last year, the fact that Ukraine is spoken about with an admiration, you know, Zelensky is spoken about with a sort of hero worship, Ukrainian resisters to Russia’s invasion are valorised.
You know, Nancy Pelosi wore a bracelet of bullets used by the Ukrainian resistance against Trump [sic]. But Palestinians are painted as terrorists, are dehumanised to such an extent. You know, we saw that dehumanisation from the mouths of Bill Clinton no less, from the mouths of Kamala Harris, who interrupted somebody speaking out against the genocide, and saying, “I am speaking.”
What is more toxically masculine than that?
We’ve also seen a concerted crackdown in universities across the United States on college students. I’m speaking also here of my own alma mater of Columbia University, of Barnard College, that called the NYPD, who fired live ammunition at the students. You know, this didn’t happen — this extreme response didn’t happen in protests against apartheid. It didn’t happen in protests against Vietnam in quite the same way.
And all I can think is, America and the West, who have been fighting Muslim countries for the last 25, 30 years, see that as acceptable to do so. Our deaths are acceptable to them, and genocide is not a red line.
And, you know, to go back to what what was mentioned earlier about the working class, that is absolutely ignored in America — and I would make the argument across the West, too — they have watched administration after, you know, president and congressmen give billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine, while they have no relief at home.
They have no relief from debt. They have no relief from student debt. They have no medical care, no coverage. They’re struggling to survive. And this is across the board. And after Ukraine, they saw billions go to Israel in the same way, while they get, frankly, nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: Fatima Bhutto, we want to thank you so much for being with us, award-winning author of a number of works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Runaways and New Kings of the World, co-editing a book called Gaza: The Story of a Genocide, due out next year, writes a monthly column for Zeteo.
Coming up, we look at Trump’s vow to deport as many as 20 million immigrants and JD Vance saying, yes, US children born of immigrant parents could also be deported.
Despite being appalled at my government, I winced as a New Zealander to hear my country described as part of the “Axis of Genocide”. With increasing frequency I hear commentators on West Asia/Middle East news sites hold the collective West responsible for the genocide.
It’s a big come-down from the Global Labrador Puppy status New Zealand enjoyed recently.
Australia too has a record of being viewed as a country with soft-power influence, albeit while a stalwart deputy to the US in this part of the world. That is over.
Professor Mohammad Seyed Marandi talks to Piers Morgan Uncensored. Video: Middle East Eye
Regrettably, Australia and New Zealand have sent troops to support US-Israel in the Red Sea (killing Yemeni people), failed to join the International Court of Justice (ICJ) case against Israel, shared intelligence with the Israelis, trained with their forces, provided R&R to soldiers fresh from the killing fields of Gaza while blocking Palestinian refugees, and extended valuable diplomatic support to Israel at the UN.
British planes overfly Gaza to provide data, a German freighter arrived in Alexandria this week laden with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of explosives to kill yet more Palestinian civilians.
Genocide is a collective effort of the Collective West.
Australia and New Zealand, along with the rest of the West, “will stand by the Israeli regime until they exterminate the last Palestinian”, says Professor Mohammad Seyed Marandi, an American-Iranian academic. What our governments do is at best “light condemnation” he says, but when it counts they will be silent.
‘They will allow extermination’
“They will allow the extermination of the people of Gaza. And then if the Israelis go after the West Bank, they will allow for that to happen as well. Under no circumstances do I see the West blocking extermination,” Marandi says.
Looking at our performance over the past seven decades and what is happening today, it is an assessment I would not argue against.
But why should we listen to someone from the Islamic Republic of Iran, you might ask. Who are they to preach at us?
I see things differently. In our dystopian, tightly-curated mainstream mediascape it is rare to hear an Iranian voice. We need to listen to more people, not fewer.
I’m definitely not a cheerleader for Iran or any state and I most certainly don’t agree with everything Professor Marandi says but he gives me richer insights than me just drowning in the endless propaganda of Tier One war criminals like Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu, Antony Blinken and their spokespeople.
Dr Marandi, professor of English literature and orientalism at the University of Tehran, is a former member of Iran’s negotiating team that brokered the break-through JCPOA nuclear agreement (later reneged on by the Trump and Biden administrations).
He is no shrinking violet. He has that fierceness of someone who has been shot at multiple times. A veteran of the Iran-Iraq War, Marandi was wounded four times, including twice with chemical weapons, key components of which were likely supplied by the US to their erstwhile ally Saddam Hussein.
Killed people he knew
Dr Marandi was in South Beirut a few weeks ago when the US-Israelis dropped dozens of bombs on residential buildings killing hundreds of civilians to get at the leader of Hezbollah (a textbook war crime that will never be prosecuted). It killed people he knew. To a BBC reporter who said, yes, but they were targeting Hezbollah, he replied:
“That’s like saying of 7/7 [the terror bombings in London]: ‘They bombed a British regime stronghold.’ How would that sound to people in the UK?”
Part of what people find discomforting about Dr Marandi is that he tears down the thin curtain that separates the centres of power from the major news outlets that repeat their talking points (“Israel has a legitimate right to self-defence” etc).
The more our leaders and media prattle on about Israel’s right to defend itself, the more we sound like the Germany that terrorised Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And the rest of the world has noticed.
As TS Eliot said: “Nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself.”
Not a man to mince words when it comes to war crimes.
Masterful over pointing out racism
Dr Marandi has been masterful at pointing out the racism inherent in the Western worldview, the chauvinism that allows Western minds to treasure white lives but discount as worthless hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives taken in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere.
“There is no reason to expect that a declining and desperate empire will conduct itself in a civilised manner. Iran is prepared for the worst,” he says.
“In this great moral struggle, in the world that we live in today — meaning the holocaust in Gaza — who is defending the people of Gaza and who is supporting the holocaust? Iran with its small group of allies is alone against the West,” he told Nima Alkhorshid from Dialogue Works recently.
The Collective West shares collective responsibility.
Dr Marandi draws a sharp distinction between our governments and our populations. He is entirely right in pointing out that the younger people are, in countries like Australia and New Zealand, the more likely they are to oppose the genocide — as do growing numbers of young Jewish Americans who have rejected the Zionist project.
“All people within the whole of Palestine must be equal — Jews, Muslims and Christians. The Islamic Republic of Iran will not allow the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Zionist regime to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza.”
I heard Mohammad Seyed Marandi extend an interesting invitation to us all in a recent interview. He said the “Axis of Resistance” should be thought of as open to all people who oppose the genocide in Gaza and who are opposed to continued Western militarism in West Asia.
I would never sign up to the policies of Iran, especially on issues like women’s rights, but I do find the invitation to a broad coalition clarifying: the Axis of Genocide versus The Axis of Resistance. Whose side are you on?
Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.
Over 30 years the French government tested 193 nuclear weapons in Māohi Nui and today Indigenous peoples still suffer the impacts through intergenerational cancers.
In 1975, France stopped atmospheric tests and moved to underground testing.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross was eight years old when the French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa stopped in 1996.
“After poisoning us for 30 years, after using us as guinea pigs for 30 years, France condemned us to pay for all the cost of those cancers,” Morgant-Cross said.
She is a mother of two boys and married to another Māohi in Mataiea, Tahiti, and says her biggest worry is what will be left for the next generation.
As a politician in the French Polynesian Assembly she sponsored a unanimously supported resolution in September 2023 supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
It called on France to join the treaty, as one of the original five global nuclear powers and one of the nuclear nine possessors of nuclear weapons today.
As a survivor of nuclear testing, Morgant-Cross has worked with hibakusha, which is the term used to describe the survivors of the US atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
Together, as living examples of the consequences, they are trying to push governments to demilitarise and end the possession of nuclear arsenals.
Connections from Māohi Nui to Aotearoa Morgant-Cross spoke to Te Ao Māori News from Whāingaroa where she, along with other manuhiri of Hui Oranga, planted kowhangatara (spinifex) in the sand dunes for coastal restoration to build resilience against storms or tsunamis at a time of increased climate crises.
In the 1970s and 1980s, many of the anti-nuclear protests were in response to the tests in Māohi Nui, French Polynesia.
The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement began in Fiji in 1975 after the first Nuclear Free Pacific Conference, which was organised by Against French Testing in Moruroa (ATOM).
The Pacific Peoples’ Anti-Nuclear Action Committee was founded by Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and Grace Robertson, and in 1982 they hosted the first Hui Oranga which brought the movement for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific home to Aotearoa.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross as a baby with mother Valentina Cross, both of whom along with her great grandmother, grandmother, aunt and sister have been diagnosed with cancer. Image: HMC
Condemned to intergenerational cancer “We still have diseases from generation to generation,” she says.
Non-profit organisation Nuclear Information and Resources Services data shows radiation is more harmful to women with cancer rates and death 50 percent higher than among men.
In her family, Morgant-Cross’ great-grandmother, grandmother, aunt and sister have been diagnosed with thyroid or breast cancer.
A mother and lawyer at the time, Morgant-Cross was diagnosed with leukaemia at 25 years old.
Valentina Cross, her mother has continuing thyroid problems, needs to take pills for the rest of her life and, similarly, Hinamoeura has to take pills to keep the leukaemia dormant for the rest of her life.
Being told the nuclear tests were “clean”, Morgant-Cross didn’t learn about the legacy of the nuclear bombs until she was 30 years old when former French Polynesian President Oscar Temaru filed a complaint against France for alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the the nuclear tests.
She then saw a list of radiation-induced diseases, which included thyroid cancer, breast cancer, and leukaemia and she realised it wasn’t that her family had “bad genes”.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross who was breastfeeding during her electoral campaign . . . balancing motherhood, nuclear fights and her career. Image: HMC
Known impacts ‘buried’ by the French state Morgant-Cross says her people were victims of French propaganda as they were told there were no effects from the nuclear tests.
In 2021, more than two decades later, Princeton University’s Science and Global Security programme, the multimedia newsroom Disclose and research collective INTERPT released an investigation — The Moruroa Files — using declassified French defence documents.
“The state has tried hard to bury the toxic heritage of these tests,” Geoffrey Livolsi, Disclose’s editor-in-chief told The Guardian.
The report concluded about 110,000 people were exposed to ionising radiation. That number was almost the entire Polynesian population at the time.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross speaking at NukeEXPO Oslo, Norway, in April 2024. Image: HMC
In Māohi Nui, much of the taxes go towards managing high cancer rates and Morgant-Cross said they were not given compensation to cover the medical assistance they deserved.
In 2010, a compensation law was passed and between then and 2020, RNZ Pacific reported France had compensated French Polynesia with US$30 million. And in 2021, it was reported to have paid US$16.6 million within the year but only 46 percent of the compensation claims were accepted.
“During July 2024 France spent billions of dollars to clean up the river Seine in Paris [for the [Olympic Games] and I was so shocked,” Morgant-Cross said.
“You can’t help us on medical care, you can’t help us on cleaning your nuclear rubbish in the South Pacific, but you can put billions of dollars to clean a river that is still disgusting?”
As a politician and anti-nuclear activist, Morgant-Cross hopes for nuclear justice and a world of peace.
She has started a movement named the Māohi Youth Resiliency in hopes to raise awareness of the nuclear legacy by telling her story and also learning how to help Māohi in this century.
Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.
By Catrin Gardiner, Queensland University of Technology
In the middle of the Pacific, Fiji journalists are transforming their practice, as newsrooms around Suva are requiring journalists to become multimedia creators, shaping stories for the digital age.
A wave of multimedia journalists is surfacing in Fijian journalism culture, fostered during university education, and transitioning seamlessly into the professional field for junior journalists.
University of the South Pacific’s technical editor and digital communication officer Eliki Drugunalevu believes that multimedia journalism is on the rise for two reasons.
“The first is the fact that your phone is pretty much your newsroom on the go.”
With the right guidance and training in using mobile phone apps, “you can pretty much film your story from anywhere”, he says.
The second reason is that reliance on social media platforms gives “rise to mobile journalism and becoming a multimedia journalist”.
Drugunalevu says changes to university journalism curriculum are not “evolving fast enough” with the industry.
Need for ‘parallel learning’
“There needs to be parallel learning between what the industry is going through and what the students are being taught.”
Mobile journalism is growing increasingly around the world. In Fiji this is particularly evident, with large newsrooms entertaining the concept of a single reporter taking on multiple roles.
Fijian Media Association’s vice-president and Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley says one example of the changing landscape is that the Times is now providing all its journalists with mobile phones.
“While there is still a photography department, things are slowly moving towards multimedia journalists.”
Wesley says when no photographers are available to cover a story with a reporter, the journalists create their own images with their mobile phones.
Journalists working in the Fiji Times newsroom, which is among the last few remaining news organisations in Fiji to have a dedicated photography department. Image: Catrin Gardiner, Queensland University of Technology
The Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) also encourages journalists to take part in all types of media including, online, radio, and television, even advertising for multimedia journalists. This highlights the global shift of replacing two-person teams in newsrooms.
Nevertheless, the transition to multimedia journalists is not as positive as commonly thought. Complaints against multimedia journalism come from journalists who receive additional tasks, leading to an increase in workload.
FBC advertises for multimedia journalists, reflecting the new standard in newsrooms. Image: FBC TV/Facebook/QUT
Preference for print
Former print journalist turned multimedia journalist at FBC, Litia Cava says she prefers focusing on just print.
She worked a lot less when she was just working in a newspaper, she says.
“When I worked for the paper, I would start at one,” she says. “But here I start working when I walk in.”
Executives at major Fijian news companies, such as Fiji TV’s director of news, current affairs and sports, Felix Chaudhary, also complain about the lack of equipment in their newsrooms to support this wave of multimedia journalism.
“The biggest challenge is the lack of equipment and training,” Chaudhary says.
Fiji TV is doing everything it can to catch up to world standards and provide journalists with the best equipment and training to prepare them for the transition from traditional to multimedia journalism.
“We receive a lot of assistance from PACMAS and Internews,” Chaudhary says. “However, we are constantly looking for more training opportunities. The world is already moving towards that, and we just have to follow suit or get left behind.”
More confidence
Fortunately for young Fijian journalists, Islands Business managing editor Samantha Magick says a lot of younger journalists are more confident to go out and produce and write their own stories.
“It’s the education now,” she says. “All the journalists coming through are multimedia, so not as challenging for them.”
University of South Pacific student journalist Brittany Louise says the practical learning of all the different media in her journalism course will be beneficial for her future.
“I think that’s a major plus,” she says. “You already have some sort of skills so it helps you with whatever different equipment it may be.”
Catrin Gardiner was a student journalist from the Queensland University of Technology who travelled to Fiji with the support of the Australian government’s New Colombo Plan Mobility Programme. This article is published in a partnership of QUT with Asia Pacific Report, Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) and The University of the South Pacific.
Just one day after President Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration, a minister announced plans to resume the transmigration programme in eastern Indonesia, particularly in Papua, saying it was needed for enhancing unity and providing locals with welfare.
Transmigration is the process of moving people from densely populated regions to less densely populated ones in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous country with 285 million people.
The ministry intends to revitalise 10 zones in Papua, potentially using local relocation rather than bringing in outsiders.
The programme will resume after it was officially paused in Papua 23 years ago.
“We want Papua to be fully united as part of Indonesia in terms of welfare, national unity and beyond,” Muhammad Iftitah Sulaiman Suryanagara, the Minister of Transmigration, said during a handover ceremony on October 21.
Iftitah promised strict evaluations focusing on community welfare rather than on relocation numbers. Despite the minister’s promises, the plan drew an outcry from indigenous Papuans who cited social and economic concerns.
Papua, a remote and resource-rich region, has long been a flashpoint for conflict, with its people enduring decades of military abuse and human rights violations under Indonesian rule.
Human rights abuses
Prabowo, a former army general, was accused of human rights abuses in his military career, including in East Timor (Timor-Leste) during a pro-independence insurgency against Jakarta rule.
Simon Balagaize, a young Papuan leader from Merauke, highlighted the negative impacts of transmigration efforts in Papua under dictator Suharto’s New Order during the 1960s.
“Customary land was taken, forests were cut down, and the indigenous Malind people now speak Javanese better than their native language,” he told BenarNews.
The Papuan Church Council stressed that locals desperately needed services, but could do without more transmigration.
“Papuans need education, health services and welfare – not transmigration that only further marginalises landowners,” Reverend Dorman Wandikbo, a member of the council, told BenarNews.
Transmigration into Papua has sparked protests over concerns about reduced job opportunities for indigenous people, along with broader political and economic impacts.
Apei Tarami, who joined a recent demonstration in South Sorong, Southwest Papua province, warned of consequences, stating that “this policy affects both political and economic aspects of Papua.”
We firmly reject Indonesia’s new transmigration policy to relocate Indonesians to West Papua, along with the world’s biggest deforestation project in Merauke, as it threatens the survival of West Papuans.
— Free West Papua Campaign (Nederland) (@FreeWestPapuaNL) November 4, 2024
Human rights ignored
Meanwhile, human rights advocate Theo Hasegem criticised the government’s plans, arguing that human rights issues are ignored and non-Papuans could be endangered because pro-independence groups often target newcomers.
“Do the president and vice-president guarantee the safety of those relocated from Java,” Hasegem told BenarNews.
The programme, which dates to 1905, has continued through various administrations under the guise of promoting development and unity.
Indonesia’s policy resumed post-independence on December 12, 1950, under President Sukarno, who sought to foster prosperity and equitable development.
It also aimed to promote social unity by relocating citizens across regions.
Transmigration involving 78,000 families occurred in Papua from 1964 to 1999, according to statistics from the Papua provincial government. That would equal between 312,000 and 390,000 people settling in Papua from other parts of the country, assuming the average Indonesian family has 4 to 5 people.
The programme paused in 2001 after a Special Autonomy Law required regional regulations to be followed.
Students hold a rally at Abepura Circle in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesia’s Papua Province, yesterday to protest against Indonesia’s plan to resume a transmigration programme, Image: Victor Mambor/BenarNews
Legality questioned
Papuan legislator John N.R. Gobay questioned the role of Papua’s six new autonomous regional governments in the transmigration process. He cited Article 61 of the law, which mandates that transmigration proceed only with gubernatorial consent and regulatory backing.
Without these clear regional regulations, he warned, transmigration lacks a strong legal foundation and could conflict with special autonomy rules.
He also pointed to a 2008 Papuan regulation stating that transmigration should proceed only after the Indigenous Papuan population reaches 20 million. In 2023, the population across six provinces of Papua was about 6.25 million, according to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS).
Gobay suggested prioritising local transmigration to better support indigenous development in their own region.
‘Entrenched inequality’ British MP Alex Sobel, chair of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, expressed concern over the programme, noting its role in drastic demographic shifts and structural discrimination in education, land rights and employment.
“Transmigration has entrenched inequality rather than promoting prosperity,” Sobel told BenarNews, adding that it had contributed to Papua remaining Indonesia’s poorest regions.
Pramono Suharjono, who transmigrated to Papua, Indonesia, in 1986, harvests oranges on his land in Arso II in Keerom regency last week. Image: Victor Mambor/BenarNews]
Pramono Suharjono, a resident of Arso II in Keerom, Papua, welcomed the idea of restarting the programme, viewing it as positive for the region’s growth.
“This supports national development, not colonisation,” he told BenarNews.
A former transmigrant who has served as a local representative, Pramono said transmigration had increased local knowledge in agriculture, craftsmanship and trade.
However, research has shown that longstanding social issues, including tensions from cultural differences, have marginalised indigenous Papuans and fostered resentment toward non-locals, said La Pona, a lecturer at Cenderawasih University.
Papua also faces a humanitarian crisis because of conflicts between Indonesian forces and pro-independence groups. United Nations data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 Papuans were displaced between and 2022.
As of September 2024, human rights advocates estimate 79,000 Papuans remain displaced even as Indonesia denies UN officials access to the region.
Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this report. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.
The national chair of one of New Zealand’s leading pro-Palestine advocacy groups has condemned New Zealand over remaining “totally silent” over Israeli military and diplomatic attacks on the United Nations, blaming this on a “refusal to offend” Tel Aviv.
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) chair John Minto said he was appalled at the New Zealand response to the Israeli parliamentary vote last week to ban UNRWA operations in Israel and East Jerusalem.
The Israeli government followed up on this today by cancelling the UNRWA agreement, effectively closing down the major Palestinian refugee aid organisation’s desperately needed work in the Gaza Strip.
“UNRWA was set up by the United Nations to assist the hundreds of thousands Palestinian refugees expelled by Israel in 1948, pending their right of return — which Israel refuses to recognise,” Minto said in a statement.
“Israel sees UNRWA as an unwelcome reminder of Palestinian national rights and has always aimed to get rid of it. Support for banning UNRWA came from the Zionist New Zealand Jewish Council earlier this year.”
Israel has also recently shelled United Nations peacekeeping positions in Lebanon and has killed an estimated 230 UNRWA workers in Gaza.
“Our government has previously stated how important UNRWA relief work is for Palestinian refugees in Gaza. The US government says the UNRWA supply of food, water and medicine is ‘irreplaceable’,” Minto said.
NZ role ‘shallow, non-existent’
“Yet, under no doubt as a result of Israeli lobbying, our commitment to the UN and its work is increasingly exposed as somewhere between shallow and non-existent.”
Israel cancels agreement with UNRWA. Video: Al Jazeera
Minto said other Western governments had been critical of the UNRWA ban and the recent Israeli refusal to allow the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to enter Israel.
Despite New Zealand having UN peacekeepers in the Lebanon border areas, it failed to join more than 40 countries which condemned the military attacks on a number of UNIFIL bases in south Lebanon last month.
“Our government refuses to offend Israel in any way. Even major arms suppliers to Israel, particularly the US, France and the UK, have been sometimes critical of what is a genocide by Israel in Gaza,” Minto said.
“In contrast, the New Zealand government blames Hamas for all the killing and destruction committed by Israel, though it also finds space to condemn Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran.”
Previous New Zealand governments have formally rebuked Israel for its violence, most recently former Foreign Minister Murry McCully in 2010 and former Prime Minister John Key in 2014 — “both by summoning in the Israeli ambassador”.
“This time, when Israeli attacks on Gaza are becoming even more savage and sadistic by the day, our Foreign Minister and his government remains inactive and silent,” Minto said.
Israeli ethnic cleansing
He said the Israeli war crimes in Gaza now clearly included ethnic cleansing.
“Reports of what is called the Israeli ‘General’s Plan’ are now widespread in our news media,” Minto said.
“The General’s Plan is a vile combination of military assault, starvation and exclusion of both aid workers and news media, to hide and facilitate the ‘death march’ of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from north of the Netzarim Corridor.
“This is to prepare for a resumption of illegal Israeli colonisation in northern Gaza.”
“What is not welcome is for New Zealand to then stand by when genocidal Israel carries out ethnic cleansing on a massive scale to once again spit on the UN and increase its occupation of Palestinian lands.”
Western publics are being subjected to a campaign of psychological warfare, where genocide is classed as ‘self-defence’ and opposition to it ‘terrorism’. Jonathan Cook reports as the world marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists at the weekend.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.
They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.
Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.
For a year, the networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.
That is why Western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on October 7, 2023, as intensely as they have a year of greater horrors in Gaza — in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.
That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis — civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive — as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.
That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.
Western media’s human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net
While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one — in the greatest massacre of journalists in history.
Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On the night of October 24, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.
In an indication of how deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters last month, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.
Israel wants no one reporting its final push to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.
These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide — from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.
Sympathy for Israel Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached last month in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.
In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable — but sadly was all too predictable — CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.
Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.
In its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims — even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.
One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.
What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli Parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.
CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”
Doubtless some Nazi concentration camp guards committed suicide in the 1940s after witnessing the horrors there — because they were responsible for them. Only in some weird parallel news universe, would their “psychological burden” be the story.
After a huge online backlash, CNN amended an editor’s note at the start of the article that originally read: “This story includes details about suicide that some readers may find upsetting.”
Readers, it was assumed, would find the suicide of Israeli soldiers upsetting, but apparently not the revelation that those soldiers were routinely driving over Palestinians so that, as Zaken explained, “everything squirts out”.
Banned from Gaza Finally, a year into Israel’s genocidal war, now rapidly spreading into Lebanon, some voices are being raised very belatedly to demand the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.
This week — in a move presumably designed, as November’s elections loom, to ingratiate themselves with voters angry at the party’s complicity in genocide — dozens of Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden asking him to pressure Israel to give journalists “unimpeded access” to the enclave.
Don’t hold your breath.
Western media have done very little themselves to protest their exclusion from Gaza over the past year — for a number of reasons.
Given the utterly indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, major outlets have not wanted their journalists getting hit by a 2000lb bomb for being in the wrong place.
That may in part be out of concern for their welfare. But there are likely to be more cynical concerns.
Having foreign journalists in Gaza blown up or executed by snipers would drag media organisations into direct confrontation with Israel and its well-oiled lobby machine.
The response would be entirely predictable, insinuating that the journalists died because they were colluding with “the terrorists” or that they were being used as “human shields” — the excuse Israel has rolled out time and again to justify its targeting of doctors in Gaza and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
But there’s a bigger problem. The establishment media have not wanted to be in a position where their journalists are so close to the “action” that they are in danger of providing a clearer picture of Israel’s war crimes and its genocide.
The media’s current distance from the crime scene offers them plausible deniability as they both-sides every Israeli atrocity.
In previous conflicts, western reporters have served as witnesses, assisting in the prosecution of foreign leaders for war crimes. That happened in the wars that attended the break-up of Yugoslavia, and will doubtless happen once again if Russian President Valdimir Putin is ever delivered to The Hague.
But those journalistic testimonies were harnessed to put the West’s enemies behind bars, not its closest ally.
The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.
After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate Western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.
The Western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.
Censoring Palestinians Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations — including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian — are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.
An investigation by Novara Media recently revealed mounting unhappiness in parts of The Guardian newsroom at its double standards on Israel and Palestine.
Its editors recently censored a commentary by preeminent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa after she insisted on being allowed to refer to the slaughter in Gaza as “the holocaust of our times”.
Senior Guardian columnists such as Jonathan Freedland made much during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour party that Jews, and Jews alone, had the right to define and name their own oppression.
That right, however, does not appear to extend to Palestinians.
As staff who spoke to Novara noted, The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, had no problem opening its pages to British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson to smear as a “blood libel” any reporting of the provable fact that Israel has killed many, many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.
One veteran journalist there said: “Is The Guardian more worried about the reaction to what is said about Israel than Palestine? Absolutely.”
Another staff member admitted it would be inconceivable for the paper to be seen censoring a Jewish writer. But censoring a Palestinian one is fine, it seems.
Other journalists report being under “suffocating control” from senior editors, and say this pressure exists “only if you’re publishing something critical of Israel”.
According to staff there, the word “genocide” is all but banned in the paper except in coverage of the International Court of Justice, whose judges ruled nine months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocide. Things have got far worse since.
Whistleblowing journalists Similarly, “Sara”, a whistleblower who recently resigned from the BBC newsroom and spoke of her experiences to Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, said Palestinians and their supporters were routinely kept off air or subjected to humiliating and insensitive lines of questioning.
Some producers have reportedly grown increasingly reluctant to bring on air vulnerable Palestinians, some of whom have lost family members in Gaza, because of concerns about the effect on their mental health from the aggressive interrogations they were being subjected to from anchors.
According to Sara, BBC vetting of potential guests overwhelmingly targets Palestinians, as well as those sympathetic to their cause and human rights organisations. Background checks are rarely done of Israelis or Jewish guests.
She added that a search showing that a guest had used the word “Zionism” — Israel’s state ideology — in a social media post could be enough to get them disqualified from a programme.
Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.
Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.
An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last February to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, warned that the corporation’s coverage risked “aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.
Upside-down values These biases have been only too evident in the BBC’s coverage, first of Gaza and now, as media interest wanes in the genocide, of Lebanon.
Headlines — the mood music of journalism, and the only part of a story many of the audience read — have been uniformly dire.
For example, Netanyahu’s threats of a Gaza-style genocide against the Lebanese people last month if they did not overthrow their leaders were soft-soaped by the BBC headline: “Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut.”
Reasonable readers would have wrongly inferred both that Netanyahu was trying to do the Lebanese people a favour (by preparing to murder them), and that they were being ungrateful in not taking up his offer.
It has been the same story everywhere in the establishment media. In another extraordinary, revealing moment, Kay Burley of Sky News announced last month the deaths of four Israeli soldiers from a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base inside Israel.
With a solemnity usually reserved for the passing of a member of the British royal family, she slowly named the four soldiers, with a photo of each shown on screen. She stressed twice that all four were only 19 years old.
Sky News seemed not to understand that these were not British soldiers, and that there was no reason for a British audience to be especially disturbed by their deaths. Soldiers are killed in wars all the time — it is an occupational hazard.
And further, if Israel considered them old enough to fight in Gaza and Lebanon, then they were old enough to die too without their age being treated as particularly noteworthy.
But more significantly still, Israel’s Golani Brigade to which these soldiers belonged has been centrally involved in the slaughter of Palestinians over the past year. Its troops have been responsible for many of the tens of thousands of children killed and maimed in Gaza.
Each of the four soldiers was far, far less deserving of Burley’s sympathy and concern than the thousands of children who have been slaughtered at the hands of their brigade. Those children are almost never named and their pictures are rarely shown, not least because their injuries are usually too horrifying to be seen.
It was yet more evidence of the upside-down world the establishment media has been trying to normalise for its audiences.
It is why statistics from the United States, where the coverage of Gaza and Lebanon may be even more unhinged, show faith in the media is at rock bottom. Fewer than one in three respondents — 31 percent — said they still had a “great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media”.
Crushing dissent Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its Western patrons in crushing dissent at home.
Last week, a British investigative journalist, Asa Winstanley, an outspoken critic of Israel and its lobbyists in the UK, had his home in London raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police.
Though the police have not arrested or charged him — at least not yet — they snatched his electronic devices. He was warned that he is being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism” in his social media posts.
Police told Middle East Eye that his devices had been seized as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of “support for a proscribed organisation” and “dissemination of terrorist documents”.
The police can act only because of Britain’s draconian, anti-speech Terrorism Act.
Section 12, for example, makes the expression of an opinion that could be interpreted as sympathetic to armed Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation — a right enshrined in international law but sweepingly dismissed as “terrorism” in the West — itself a terrorism offence.
Those journalists who haven’t been house-trained in the establishment media, as well as solidarity activists, must now chart a treacherous path across intentionally ill-defined legal terrain when talking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Winstanley is not the first journalist to be accused of falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In recent weeks, Richard Medhurst, a freelance journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport on his return from a trip abroad. Another journalist-activist, Sarah Wilkinson, was briefly arrested after her home was ransacked by police.
Their electronic devices were seized too.
Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, which seeks to disrupt the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel’s genocide, has been charged over speeches he has made against the genocide.
It now appears that all these actions are part of a specific police campaign targeting journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists: “Operation Incessantness”.
The message this clumsy title is presumably supposed to convey is that the British state is coming after anyone who speaks out too loudly against the British government’s continuing arming and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Notably, the establishment media have failed to cover this latest assault on journalism and the role of a free press — supposedly the very things they are there to protect.
The raid on Winstanley’s home and the arrests are intended to intimidate others, including independent journalists, into silence for fear of the consequences of speaking up.
This has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it is terrorism by the British state.
Once again the world is being turned upside down.
Echoes from history The West is waging a campaign of psychological warfare on its populations: it is gaslighting and disorientating them, classing genocide as “self-defence” and opposition to it a form of “terrorism”.
This is an expansion of the persecution suffered by Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who spent years locked up in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison.
His unprecedented journalism — revealing the darkest secrets of Western states — was redefined as espionage. His “offence” was revealing that Britain and the US had committed systematic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, on the back of that precedent, the British state is coming after journalists simply for embarrassing it.
Late last month I attended a meeting in Bristol against the genocide in Gaza at which the main speaker was physically absent after the British state failed to issue him an entry visa.
The missing guest — he had to join us by zoom — was Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was locked up for decades as a terrorist before becoming the first leader of post-apartheid South Africa and a feted, international statesman.
Mandla Mandela was until recently a member of the South African Parliament.
A Home Office spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the UK only issued visas “to those who we want to welcome to our country”.
Media reports suggest Britain was determined to exclude Mandela because, like his grandfather, he views the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid as intimately linked to the earlier struggle against South Africa’s apartheid.
The echoes from history are apparently entirely lost on officials: the UK is once again associating the Mandela family with terrorism. Before it was to protect South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now it is to protect Israel’s even worse apartheid and genocidal regime.
The world is indeed turned on its head. And the West’s supposedly “free media” is playing a critical role in trying to make our upside-down world seem normal.
That can only be achieved by failing to report the Gaza genocide as a genocide. Instead, Western journalists are serving as little more than stenographers. Their job: to take dictation from Israel.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has returned from New Caledonia saying it is not a simple “black and white situation”.
Brown returned from a three-day Pacific fact-finding mission in the French Pacific territory alongside the Prime Ministers of Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji.
New Caledonia has been going through a period of turmoil with violence and arson since May, resulting in 13 deaths and the destruction of many businesses.
“There’s no doubt there is a call and a need for the easing of tensions in the country,” Brown said.
“This would enable more dialogue to take place between the various vested groups to find a pathway forward for New Caledonia.”
Brown said Kanaky New Caledonia’s population was diverse, made up of indigenous Kanak, French, and Pacific diaspora.
Almost all of these groups want greater autonomy from France with some also wanting full independence or to remain a French territory, he said.
“But you have quite a large group between those two extremes that want a way forward that enables New Caledonians, all of them, to be able to determine their own future.”
Pacific policing France ‘may wish to consider’ Brown said Australia’s newly proposed regional policing initiative is “an option that New Caledonians may wish to consider”.
“At the moment that’s being done by the state government through France through its gendarmes and police force.”
The last time regional policing was used was in Solomon Islands after ethnic unrest in the 2000s, he said.
When asked whether France had “militarised” New Caledonia, Brown said France sent a lot of support “to help maintain law and order” but the focus now was on the reduction of tensions and dialogue.
France’s Ambassador to the Pacific Véronique told the ABC she doubted French authorities would see the need for Pacific police to be deployed to New Caledonia.
Brown said the other issue was the need for an urgent financial package.
“Unlike most other Pacific countries in cases of disaster whether they be natural disaster or other sorts, Pacific countries have the likes of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, development partners that would support and assist.
Relying solely on France
“In the case of New Caledonia, it doesn’t have the association with any of those financial institutions and would rely solely on France for its support.”
There needed to first be a reduction of tensions so that any rebuild would not be under threat from more civil unrest, he said.
Brown said Pacific nations had taken different decolonisation paths — with the exception of Tonga which had never been colonised.
Fiji became a republic after a number of coups and Cook Islands is self-governing in free association with New Zealand.
“Each of us took a different path to where we are today to gain our autonomy and our sovereignty and it’s something that we were able to share with New Caledonia.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Another Palestinian journalist, Bilal Rajab, of al-Quds al-Youm TV channel, has been killed in an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, confirms the Gaza Media Office.
Al Jazeera Arabic earlier reported that a strike in the vicinity of the Firas market in Gaza City had killed three people, among whom local sources said was Rajab.
The office said the total number of journalists and media workers who have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, now stands at 183.
Photojournalist Bilal Rajab of al-Quds al-Youm TV . . . killed in a strike near Gaza’s popular Firas market. Image: Palestinian Information Centre
It called on the international community to intervene to stop the killing of Palestinian journalists reporting on the war in Gaza, which is the deadliest conflict for media workers.
“In his message for the day, the secretary-general underscores that a free press is fundamental to human rights, to democracy and to the rule of law,” Dujarric said.
‘Alarming rate of fatalities’
“Recent years have seen an alarming rate of fatalities in conflict zones, particularly in Gaza, which has seen the highest number of killings of journalists and media workers in a war in decades.
“In his message, he warned that journalists in Gaza have been killed at a level unseen by any conflict in modern times.
“The ongoing ban preventing international journalists from Gaza suffocates the truth even further,” he said.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says that as far as Fiji is concerned, Fijians of Indian descent are Fijian.
While Fiji is part of the Pacific, Indo-Fijians are not classified as Pacific peoples in New Zealand; instead, they are listed under Indian and Asian on the Stats NZ website.
“The ‘Fijian Indian’ ethnic group is currently classified under ‘Asian,’ in the subcategory ‘Indian’, along with other diasporic Indian ethnic groups,” Stats NZ told RNZ Pacific.
“This has been the case since 2005 and is in line with an ethnographic profile that includes people with a common language, customs, and traditions.
“Stats NZ is aware of concerns some have about this classification, and it is an ongoing point of discussion with stakeholders.”
The Fijian Indian community in Aotearoa has long opposed this and raised the issue again at a community event Rabuka attended in Auckland’s Māngere ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa last month.
“As far as Fiji is concerned, [Indo-Fijians] are Fijians,” he said.
‘A matter of sovereignty’
When asked what his message to New Zealand on the issue would be, he said: “I cannot; that is a matter of sovereignty, the sovereign decision by the government of New Zealand. What they call people is their sovereign right.
“As far as we are concerned, we hope that they will be treated as Fijians.”
More than 60,000 people were transferred from all parts of British India to work in Fiji between 1879 and 1916 as indentured labourers.
Today, they make up over 32 percent of the total population, according to Fiji Bureau of Statistics’ 2017 Population Census.
Sangam community NZ leader and former Nadi mayor Salesh Mudaliar . . . “If you do a DNA or do a blood test, we are more of Fijian than anything else. We are not Indian.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis
Now many, like Sangam community NZ leader and former Nadi Mayor Salesh Mudaliar, say they are more Fijian than Indian.
“If you do a DNA or do a blood test, we are more of Fijian than anything else. We are not Indian,” Mudaliar said.
The indentured labourers, who came to be known as the Girmitiyas, as they were bound by a girmit — a Hindi pronunciation of the English word “agreement”.
RNZ Pacific had approached the Viti Council e Aotearoa for their views on the issue. However, they refused to comment, saying that its chair “has opted out of this interview.”
“Topic itself is misleading bordering on disinformation [and] misinformation from an Indigenous Fijian perspective and overly sensitive plus short notice.”
‘Struggling for identity’ “We are Pacific Islanders. If you come from Tonga or Samoa, you are a Pacific Islander,” Mudaliar said.
“When [Indo-Fijians] come from Fiji, we are not. We are not a migrant to Fiji. We have been there for [over 140] years.”
“The community is still struggling for its identity here in New Zealand . . . we are still not [looked after].
He said they had tried to lobby the New Zealand government for their status but without success.
“Now it is the National government, and no one seems to be listening to us in understanding the situation.
“If we can have an open discussion on this, coming to the same table, and knowing what our problem is, then it would be really appreciated.”
Fijians of Indian descent with Prime Minister Rabuka at the community event in Auckland last month. Image: Facebook/Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka
Lifting quality of data Stats NZ said it was aware of the need to lift the quality of ethnicity data across the government data system.
“Public consultation in 2019 determined a need for an in-depth review of the Ethnicity Standard,” the data agency said.
In 2021, Stats NZ undertook a large scoping exercise with government agencies, researchers, iwi Māori, and community groups to help establish the scope of the review.
Stats NZ subsequently stood up an expert working group to progress the review.
“This review is still underway, and Stats NZ will be conducting further consultation, so we will have more to say in due course,” it said.
“Classifying ethnicity and ethnic identity is extremely complex, and it is important Stats NZ takes the time to consult extensively and ensure we get this right,” the agency added.
This week, Fijians celebrate the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali. The nation observes a public holiday to mark the day, and Fijians of all backgrounds get involved.
Prime Minister Rabuka’s message is for all Fijians to be kind to each other.
“Act in accordance with the spirit of Diwali and show kindness to those who are going through difficulties,” he told local reporters outside Parliament yesterday.
“It is a good time for us to abstain from using bad language against each other on social media.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In December 2008, I visited the Abepura prison in Jayapura, West Papua, to verify a report sent to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture alleging abuses inside the jailhouse, as well as shortages of food and water.
After prison guards checked my bag, I passed through a metal detector into the prison hall, joining the Sunday service with about 30 prisoners. A man sat near me. He had a thick beard and wore a small Morning Star flag on his chest.
The flag, a symbol of independence for West Papua, is banned by the Indonesian authorities, so I was a little surprised to see it worn inside the prison.
I immediately recognised him. Karma was arrested in 2004 after giving a speech on West Papua nationalism, and had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for “treason”.
It was the beginning of my many interviews with Karma. And I began to understand what made him such a courageous leader.
Born in 1959 in Jayapura, Karma was raised in an elite, educated family.
Student-led protests
In 1998, when Karma returned after studying from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, he found Indonesia engulfed in student-led protests against the authoritarian rule of President Suharto.
On 2 July 1998, he led a ceremony to peacefully raise the Morning Star flag on Biak Island. It prompted a deadly attack by the Indonesian military that the authorities said killed at least eight Papuans, but Papuans recovered 32 bodies. Karma was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Karma gradually emerged as a leader who campaigned peacefully but tirelessly on behalf of the rights of Indigenous Papuans. He also worked as a civil servant, training new government employees.
He was invariably straightforward and precise. He provided detailed data, including names, dates, and actions about torture and other mistreatment at Abepura prison.
Human Rights Watch published these investigations in June 2009. It had quite an impact, prompting media pressure that forced the Ministry of Law and Human Rights to investigate the allegations.
In August 2009, Karma became seriously ill and was hospitalised at the Dok Dua hospital. The doctors examined him several times, and finally, in October, recommended that he be sent for surgery that could only be done in Jakarta.
But bureaucracy, either deliberately or through incompetence, kept delaying his treatment. “I used to be a bureaucrat myself,” Karma said. “But I have never experienced such [use of] red tape on a sick man.”
Papuan political prisoners Jefry Wandikbo (left) and Filep Karma (center) chat with the author Andreas Harsono at Abepura prison in Jayapura, Papua, in May 2015. They continued to campaign against arbitrary detention by the Indonesian authorities. Image: Ruth Ogetay/HRW
Health crowdfunding
His health problems, however, drew public attention. Papuan activists started collecting money to pay for the airfare and surgery in Jakarta. I helped write a crowdfunding proposal. People deposited the donations directly into his bank account.
I was surprised when I found out that the total donation, including from some churches, had almost reached IDR1 billion (US$700,000). It was enough to also pay for his mother, Eklefina Noriwari, an uncle, a cousin and an assistant to travel with him. They rented a guest house near the hospital.
Some wondered why he travelled with such a large entourage. The answer is that Indigenous Papuans distrust the Indonesian government. Many of their political leaders had mysteriously died while receiving medical treatment in Jakarta. They wanted to ensure that Filep Karma was safe.
When he was admitted to Cikini hospital, the ward had a small security cordon. I saw many Indonesian security people, including four prison guards, guarding his room, but also church delegates, visiting him.
Papuan students, mostly waiting in the inner yard, said they wanted to make sure, “Our leader is okay.”
After a two-hour surgery, Karma recovered quickly, inviting me and my wife to visit him. His mother and his two daughters, Audryn and Andrefina, also visited my Jakarta apartment. In July 2011, after 11 days in the hospital, he was considered fit enough to return to prison.
In May 2011, the Washington-based Freedom Now filed a petition with the UN Working Group on arbitrary detention on Karma’s behalf. Six months later, the Working Group determined that his detention violated international standards, saying that Indonesia’s courts “disproportionately” used the laws against treason, and called for his immediate release.
President refused to act
But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono refused to act, prompting criticism at the UN forum on the discrimination and abuses against Papuans.
I often visited Karma in prison. He took a correspondence course at Universitas Terbuka, studying police science. He read voraciously.
He studied Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King on non-violent movements and moral courage. He also drew, using pencil and charcoal. He surprised me with my portrait that he drew on a Jacob’s biscuit box.
His name began to appear globally. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei drew political prisoners, including Karma, in an exhibition at Alcatraz prison near San Francisco. Amnesty International produced a video about Karma.
Interestingly, he also read my 2011 book on journalism, “Agama” Saya Adalah Jurnalisme (My “Religion” Is Journalism), apparently inspiring him to write his own book. He used an audio recorder to express his thoughts, asking his friends to type and to print outside, which he then edited.
His 137-page book was published in November 2014, entitled, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We’re Half Animals: Indonesian Racism in West Papua). It became a very important book on racism against Indigenous Papuans in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government, under new President Joko Widodo, finally released Karma in November 2015, and after that gradually released more than 110 political prisoners from West Papua and the Maluku Islands.
Release from jail celebration
Hundreds of Papuan activists welcomed Karma, bringing him from the prison to a field to celebrate with dancing and singing. He called me that night, saying that he had that “strange feeling” of missing the Abepura prison, his many inmate friends, his vegetable garden, as well as the boxing club, which he managed. He had spent 11 years inside the Abepura prison.
“It’s nice to be back home though,” he said laughing.
He slowly rebuilt his activism, traveling to many university campuses throughout Indonesia, also overseas, and talking about human rights abuses, the environmental destruction in West Papua, as well as his advocacy for an independent West Papua.
Students often invited him to talk about his book.
In Jakarta, he rented a studio near my apartment as his stopping point. We met socially, and also attended public meetings together. I organised his birthday party in August 2018. He bought new gear for his scuba diving. My wife, Sapariah, herself a diving enthusiast, noted that Karma was an excellent diver: “He swims like a fish.”
Filep Karma (right) with his brother-in-law George Waromi at Base G beach, Jayapura, Papua, on 30 October 2022. Karma said he planned to go spearfishing alone. His body washed ashore two days later. Image: Larz Barnabas Waromi/HRW
The resistance of Papuans in Indonesia to discrimination took on a new phase following a 17 August 2019 attack by security forces on a Papuan student dormitory in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, in which the students were subjected to racial insults.
The attack renewed discussions on anti-Papuan racial discrimination and sovereignty for West Papua. Papuan students and others acting through a social media movement called Papuan Lives Matter, inspired by Black Lives Matter in the United States, took part in a wave of protests that broke out in many parts of Indonesia.
The new Human Rights Watch report “If It’s Not Racism, What Is It?”: Discrimination and Other Abuses Against Papuans in Indonesia. Image: HRW screenshot APR
Everyone reading Karma’s book
Everyone was reading Filep Karma’s book. Karma protested when these young activists, many of whom he personally knew, such as Sayang Mandabayan, Surya Anta Ginting and Victor Yeimo, were arrested and charged with treason.
“Protesting racism should not be considered treason,” he said.
The Indonesian government responded by detaining hundreds. Papuans Behind Bars, a nongovernmental organisation that monitors politically motivated arrests in West Papua, recorded 418 new cases from October 2020 to September 2021. At least 245 of them were charged, found guilty, and imprisoned for joining the protests, with 109 convicted of “treason”.
However, while in the past, Papuans charged with political offences typically were sentenced to years — in Karma’s case, 15 years — in the recent cases, perhaps because of international and domestic attention, the Indonesian courts handed down much shorter sentences, often time already served.
The coronavirus pandemic halted his activism in 2020-2022. He had plenty of time for scuba diving and spearfishing. Once he posted on Facebook that when a shark tried to steal his fish, he smacked it on the snout.
On 1 November 2022, my good friend Filep Karma was found dead on a Jayapura beach. He had apparently gone diving alone. He was wearing his scuba diving suit.
His mother, Eklefina Noriwari, called me that morning, telling me that her son had died. “I know you’re his close friend,” she told me. “Please don’t be sad. He died doing what he liked best . . . the sea, the swimming, the diving.”
West Papua was in shock. More than 30,000 people attended his funeral, flying the Morning Star flag, as their last act of respect for a courageous man. Mourners heard the speakers celebrating Filep Karma’s life, and then quietly went home.
It was peaceful. And this is exactly what Filep Karma’s message is about.
As a three-day fact-finding mission from a group of Pacific leaders drew to a close in New Caledonia, and with the outcomes report not expected before next year, the visit to the riot-hit French Pacific territory seems to have triggered a new sense of awareness locally about the values of Pacific regional mechanisms of “talanoa” embodied by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).
Local President Louis Mapou stressed on several occasions during the visit that New Caledonia’s situation was the “subject of much attention” in the Pacific region.
He suggested that one of the reasons for this could be because of a potential “spillover” effect that could “jeopardise cohesion in the Pacific”.
However, Mapou also stressed that he had received the message conveyed by the PIF “Troika-Plus” group that “they’re ready to take part in [New Caledonia’s] reconstruction”.
‘New Caledonia’s regional integration in its region’
Mapou said that one of the recurrent themes during the PIF visit was “New Caledonia’s regional integration in its region”.
“Whatever might be said, in many ways, New Caledonia does not know its [Pacific] region very well. Because it has this affiliation relationship to Europe and France that has prevailed over all these years,” he told local media.
“So, in a certain way, we’re just discovering our region. And in this process, the Pacific Islands Forum could bring a sort of leverage,” he said.
Kanaky New Caledonia, as well as French Polynesia — both French Pacific entities — became full members of the Pacific Islands Forum in 2016, after several years of “associate members” status.
Mapou said New Caledonia’s current status vis-à-vis France was mentioned during talks with the PIF mission.
“I spoke with them about obstacles that should be removed, that are directly related to our current status. This is part of topics on which we should be working in future,” he said.
“They’re very open-minded, they don’t have any preconceived ideas, they’re happy to talk equally about the concepts of independence, just as they are for keeping [New Caledonia] within the French Republic,” he revealed.
One of the unexpected outcomes, beyond the specific fact-finding mission that brought this PIF “Troika-Plus” leaders’ delegation to New Caledonia, seems to have underlined the values of regionalism, as well as New Caledonia’s long-awaited and genuine integration in its “regional environment”.
These values seem to have been recognised by all sides of New Caledonia’s political spectrum, as well as all walks of life within the civil, economic, educational and religious society.
PIF’s “Troika-Plus” leaders meet with Southern Province President Sonia Backès (third from left) at SPC headquarters last Monday. Image: PIF/RNZ Pacific
Pacific diversity in status During the past few days, informal exchanges with the Pacific leaders have also allowed New Caledonia’s authorities to share and compare possible ways forward regarding the territory’s political status.
“They readily exchanged their own experiences with our government. The Cook Islands, which is a self-governing state in ‘free association’ with New Zealand; Tonga, which has never been colonised; and the Solomon Islands, who have also undergone inter-ethnic conflicts and where the young population was also involved. And Fiji, which obtained independence (in 1970), had decided to withdraw from the Commonwealth and is finally re-discussing its link with Great Britain,” Mapou briefed local media on Tuesday.
The leaders spent three days (October 27-29) in the French Pacific territory to gather information on the ground, after destructive riots broke out in May, resulting in 13 deaths and extensive economic damage estimated at €2.2 billion.
During the three days, the PIF leaders met a wide range of political, business, religious, and civil society leaders to get a first-hand account of the situation.
On Tuesday, the “plus” component of the troika, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, reiterated the mission’s assigned mantra in a manner of conclusion to their mission.
“We were here to understand and make recommendations. We have heard many extremely different attitudes. We hope it will be possible to find a solution for the people and the government,” Rabuka told religious leaders.
Bitterness from civil society The long series of talks, within a particularly tight schedule, also allowed groups within New Caledonia’s civil society — including traditional chiefs, youth, human rights activists, educationists, mayors and women — to express their views directly during the Pacific leaders’ visit.
Some of these groups also took the opportunity to point out that they were not always listened to in other circumstances.
“Today, peace has just been through a rough episode. And we, women, are being asked to help. But when was the last time we were heard?
“We’ve already said women should be part of all levels of decision-making, including on matters of dealing with violence and access for women to economic empowerment.
“We were ignored. And then, when fire breaks out, we’re being asked for help because this is the foundation of Pacific values,” said Sonia Tonga, the president of the Oceania Union of Francophone Women, which groups women’s groups from New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Wallis-and-Futuna and Vanuatu.
Talking about the youth, she said there was an “ill-being”, “they don’t recognise themselves in this system, including for education. We’re trying to fit an Oceanian society into a framework that has not been designed for them.
“When will we be heard in our country?”.
As part of talks with church leaders, it was also pointed out that there were benefits from sharing experiences with Pacific leaders.
“I’ve been many times in Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and other Pacific islands. They too have had their hard times.
“And they too are familiar with the experience of violence which is difficult to bring back to a path of dialogue,” said 80-year-old Nouméa Catholic Archbishop Michel-Marie Calvet, a respected figure.
In terms of earlier crises in the Pacific region, among PIF member island states, in the early 2000s, civil unrest occurred in both Fiji and the Solomon Islands, with shops being targeted and looted.
Under Pacific Islands Forum mechanisms, especially the declaration of Biketawa, this prompted in 2003 the setting up of “RAMSI” (Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands), with mostly Australia and New Zealand military and police as its main contributors, with additional input from other Pacific island countries.
In Fiji, the mission to defuse the crisis, associated with an attempted coup and a MPs hostage situation within Parliament buildings in May 2000, was mainly achieved by the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) through protracted negotiations and without violence.
Forum “Troika-Plus” leaders in New Caledonia conducting a fact-finding mission to assess the situation on ground. Image: X /@ForumSEC/RNZ Pacific
Supporting Pacific dialogue
In the political sphere, there was a recognition of the benefits of a Pacific perspective.
“There is a Pacific tradition of dialogue and talanoa. So, I think [the PIF leaders] can invite pro-independence parties to come to the [negotiating] table,” said New Caledonia’s Mayors’ Association president Pascal Vittori.
“We’re actually expecting PIF will back this notion of dialogue — that’s what’s important now,” he told local media.
Sonia Backès, one of the staunchest defenders of New Caledonia remaining part of France, told reporters on Monday: “We didn’t ask for this [mission]. Now we’re waiting for this (troika) report based on their observing mission.
“We all know that there are biased views on the part of some, one way or the other.
“So we hope the final report will be as fair and neutral as possible so as not to add fuel to the fire.”
Following their visit to New Caledonia and based on the information gathered, the Forum “Troika-Plus” leaders are expected to compile a “comprehensive report” to be submitted to the next annual Forum Leaders’ Summit in the Solomon Islands in 2025.
“The terms of reference of this mission were discussed beforehand between the government of New Caledonia, the Pacific Islands Forum and the (French) State. We all agreed that what was most important was to have an assessment of the situation.
“There is a need to provide information to the public so that it is an informed opinion leader. It’s important in those times of misinformation and manipulation from one side or the other,” French ambassador for the Pacific Véronique Roger-Lacan told public broadcaster NC la 1ère TV on Tuesday evening.
Business sector now needs Pacific market overtures Even the business sector now seems to believe that, as a result of the widespread destruction caused by the riots, which has left more than 800 companies burnt down and looted, as well as thousands jobless, the wider Pacific region has now become a new potentially attractive market.
“Our local market has just shrunk considerably and so we will need to find new openings for our products. In that perspective, our cooperation with the Pacific is very, very strategic”, said business leaders association MEDEF-NC president Mimsy Daly.
She had once again presented a detailed view of the widespread devastation caused by the recent riots and those who took part.
“‘Were they aware of what they were doing?’ is one of the questions I was asked,” she wrote on social networks after her encounter with the “Troika-Plus”.
“A logical question when you know that what has been destroyed equals about 70 percent of the GDP of the Cook Islands, 100 percent of the GDP of the Solomon Islands and 40 percent of the GDP of Fiji.”
But she admitted the response to this complex question was “primordial” and “every light will have to be shed on the matter”.
In a wrap-up of the three days, President Mapou held a final meeting with the group on Tuesday.
Wide circle of ‘concertation’ needed French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc, after a final meeting with the delegation, said: “They have come here to seek the profound causes of what happened on May 13. They have been listening very closely.
“I understand their view is that a wide circle of concertation [cooperation] will be required to reach an agreement,” he said.
He elaborated, saying that the Pacific Forum leaders seemed to place a lot of hope in the notions of “trust”, the “necessity of living together” and the PIF’s “will to help, while saying that, at the same time, the solution lies in the hands of New Caledonia”.
French President Macron (right) with New Caledonia’s President Louis Mapou (left) and former New Caledonia Congress President Roch Wamytan (centre) earlier this year. Image: RNZ Pacific
Next: another ‘concertation and dialogue’ mission Following the PIF “Troika-Plus” mission, another visit is expected in New Caledonia in the next few days — this time coming from Paris.
This new high-level visit will be headed by the presidents of both houses of Parliament in France (Senate and National Assembly), respectively Gérard Larcher and Yaël Braun-Pivet, from November 9-14.
They will lead what is described as a “mission of concertation and dialogue”.
The dates come as a top-level meeting took place last week, presided by French Head of State Emmanuel Macron and attended by French minister for Overseas François-Noël Buffet (who had just returned from New Caledonia), French PM Barnier, Larcher and Braun-Pivet.
The objective, once again, was to reinforce the signal that the time had come to resume political dialogue.
Macron indicated earlier that he still intended to host a meeting in Paris sometime in November.
Buffet was also in New Caledonia earlier this month for four days to assess the situation and try to restore a path to dialogue between all political stakeholders, both pro-independence and pro-France.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A three-day fact-finding mission, headed by three Pacific leaders, has wrapped up in Nouméa, and New Caledonia’s President Louis Mapou says the French territory is at a “turning point”.
The semi-autonomous Pacific territory has been riddled with violent unrest since May.
While tensions have reportedly eased for now, the main political decision-making body for the Pacific region has been in Nouméa this week on a “strictly observational” but “critical mission”.
New Caledonia’s President Louis Mapou . . . “They willingly shared their own history.” Image: 1ère TV
Territorial President Louis Mapou told reporters why the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) “troika -plus” visit was so important.
“They have a shared intention with government members, drawing on their own experience in the region: the Cook Islands, which are in free association with New Zealand; Tonga, a country that was never colonised; and the Solomon Islands, which have experienced interethnic conflicts in the northern part, where youth played a significant role,” he said.
“And finally, Fiji, which gained independence, decided to withdraw from the Commonwealth, and is now re-evaluating its connection with the British Crown. So, they willingly shared their own history.
“They pointed out that in each of these histories, it was often the internal decisions of the populations involved that ultimately shaped the choices made about their country’s future.”
Hope and perspective
Local government spokesperson Charles Wea said the visit brought hope and perspective.
“It is important that that people from New Caledonia can arrive to express their views, and also the political perspectives, in terms of political future,” he said.
“The process of decolonisation, for example, which is quite a major subject topic that will be in the discussion with a mission”
Tongan Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni led the PPIF troika-plus delegation — Rabuka was the “plus” factor.
“We are not there to judge you or to tell them what to do right now. It is a preliminary visit. So, basically, we just want to listen.”
While it is a fact-finding mission, there are some indisputable facts, such as New Caledonia being on the United Nations Decolonisation List.
Tuvalu MP Simon Kofe has expressed his thoughts on this.
Pacific ‘needs to support decolonisation’
“My position is for independence, we need to continue supporting the decolonisation of the Pacific,” Kofe told RNZ Pacific.
Hu’akavameiliku’s views were somewhat more diplomatic.
“I do believe that there is a way of having some sovereignty and control of your country. There are various models in the Pacific. You have Niue and Cook Islands. Then you have American Samoa.
“We are not the ones who will tell [New Caledonia] what is working and what is not. We respect their sovereignty.”
But amid the politicking, a Kanak leader from the Protestant Church of Kanaky New Caledonia, Billy Wetewea, said people were struggling.
In particular, the indigenous population, who were battling inequities in education, employment and health, he said.
“The destruction that the youth have made since May, was a kind of expression of the frustration towards all of these social injustices,” he said.
“We are fighting for our humanity. So, it’s for the dignity of our humanity, and our humanity is the humanity of everyone.”
‘Neither marginalised nor mistreated’ The pro-France loyalists, however, have a different perspective.
“Contrary to what some separatists suggest, the Kanak people are neither marginalised nor mistreated,” they said in a statement.
“On the contrary, [Kanaky people are] one of the most advantaged in our Oceanian region.”
Wea said the Pacific leaders had the chance to hear from all sides involved in the unrest.
The findings will be presented to the 18 Pacific leaders at next year’s leaders meeting.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The United Nations and countries across the globe have denounced Israel after its Parliament — the Knesset — overwhelmingly passed two laws that brands the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as a “terror” group and bans the humanitarian organisation from operating on Israeli soil.
The legislation, approved yesterday, would — if implemented — take effect in three months, preventing UNRWA from providing life-saving support to Palestinians across Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank.
Reaction ranged from “intolerable”, “dangerous precedent”, “outrageous” and appeared to be setting Tel Aviv on a collision course with the United Nations and the foundation 1945 UN Charter itself.
Australia was among states condemning the legislation, calling on Israel “to comply with the binding orders of the [International Court of Justice] to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza”. There was no immediate response from New Zealand.
The condemnation came as an Israeli air strike destroyed a five-storey residential building sheltering displaced families in Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, killing at least 65 Palestinians and wounding dozens.
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said dozens of wounded people had arrived at the facility and urged all surgeons to return there to treat them.
Many of the wounded may die because of the lack of resources at the hospital, he told Al Jazeera.
World ‘must take action’
“The world must take action and not just watch the genocide in the Gaza Strip,” he added.
“We call on the world to send specialised medical delegations to treat dozens of wounded people in the hospital.”
A Middle East affairs analyst warned that the “significant starvation and death” in northern Gaza was because the the international community had been unable “to put pressure on the Israelis”.
Israel’s latest latest strike on a residential building in Beit Lahiya in Gaza being described as a “massacre”. Image: AJ screenshot
“The Israelis have been left to their own devices and are pursuing this campaign of ethnic cleansing [including] starvation — there’s no clean water, even this building that was bombed right now the medics are not allowed to go and save people . . . this is by design collective punishment,” said Adel Abdel Ghafar, of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
Ghafar told Al Jazeera in an interview that Israeli tactics were also designed to push out the population in northern Gaza and create “some sort of military buffer zone”.
On the UNRWA ban, Ghafar said that to Israel, the UN agency “perpetuates Palestinians staying [in Gaza] because it provides food, education, facilities . . . the Israelis have had UNRWA in their targets from day one”.
39 strikes on Gaza shelters
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said Israel’s military had attacked shelter centres in the Gaza Strip 39 times so far this month in a bid to “displace Palestinians and empty Gaza”.
The assaults have killed 188 people and wounded hundreds more, it said.
The Geneva-based group said Israel had targeted schools, hospitals, clinics and shelter centres in Gaza 65 times since the beginning of August.
Why is Israel really trying to close a UN agency that feeds Palestinians? (And what even is UNRWA?) pic.twitter.com/69vm6JtLqQ
The Palestinian presidency rejected the move, saying the vote of the Knesset reflected Israel’s transformation into “a fascist state”.
Hamas said it considered the bill a “part of the Zionist war and aggression against our people”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called UNRWA’s work “indispensable” and said there was “no alternative” to the agency.
Chinese envoy to the UN, Fu Cong, called the Israeli move “outrageous”, adding that his country was “firmly opposed to this decision”.
Russia described Israel’s UNRWA ban as “terrible” and said it worsened the situation in Gaza.
The UK expressed grave concern and said the Israeli legislation “risks making UNRWA’s essential work for Palestinians impossible”.
Jordan said it “strongly condemns” the Israeli move, describing it as a “flagrant violation of international law and the obligations of Israel as the occupying power”.
Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Spain — all four countries have recognised the Palestinan state — said the move set a “very serious precedent for the work of the UN” and for all organisations in the multilateral system.
Australia said UNRWA does life-saving work and Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in an X posting her government opposed the Israeli decision to “severely restrict” the agency’s operations. She called on Israel “to comply with the binding orders of the [International Court of Justice] to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza”.
Switzerland said it was “concerned about the humanitarian, political and legal implications” of the Israeli laws banning cooperation with UNRWA.
An exiled West Papuan leader has praised Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape for his “brave ambush” in questioning new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto over West Papua.
Prabowo offered an “amnesty” for West Papuan pro-independence activists during Marape’s revent meeting with Prabowo on the fringes of the inauguration, the PNG leader revealed.
Wenda, a London-based officer of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), said in a statement that he wanted to thank Marape on behalf of the people of West Papua for directly raising the issue of West Papua in his meeting with President Prabowo.
“This was a brave move on behalf of his brothers and sisters in West Papua,” Wenda said.
“The offer of amnesty for West Papuans by Prabowo is a direct result of him being ambushed by PM Marape on West Papua.
“But what does amnesty mean? All West Papuans support Merdeka, independence; all West Papuans want to raise the [banned flag] Morning Star; all West Papuans want to be free from colonial rule.”
Wenda said pro-independence actions of any kind were illegal in West Papua.
‘Beaten, arrested or jailed’
“If we raise our flag or call for self-determination, we are beaten, arrested or jailed. If the offer of amnesty is real, it must involve releasing all West Papuan political prisoners.
“It must involve allowing us to peacefully struggle for our freedom without the threat of imprisonment.”
Wenda said that in the history of the occupation, it was very rare for Melanesian leaders to openly confront the Indonesian President about West Papua.
“Marape can become like Moses for West Papua, going to Pharoah and demanding ‘let my people go!’.
“West Papua and Papua New Guinea are the same people, divided only by an arbitrary colonial line. One day the border between us will fall like the Berlin Wall and we will finally be able celebrate the full liberation of New Guinea together, from Sorong to Samarai.
“By raising West Papua at Prabowo’s inauguration, Marape is inhabiting the spirit of Melanesian brotherhood and solidarity,” Wenda said.
Vanuatu Prime Minister and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) chair Charlot Salwai and Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele were also there as a Melanesian delegation.
“To Prabowo, I say this: A true amnesty means giving West Papua our land back by withdrawing your military, and allowing the self-determination referendum we have been denied since the 1960s.”
Mariam Shahin . . . revisiting the Gaza people and lives the film maker has met over the years. Image: MS
But by 2009, war had badly damaged its infrastructure, neighbourhoods, businesses and communities — and that optimism had evaporated.
Now, in the wake of the even more destructive war that began on 7 October 2023, Shahin seeks out the people she has met in Gaza over the years.
She reflects on the wasted potential and devastated lives after 16 years of blockade and a year of one of the most destructive wars in Middle East history.
Echoes of a Lost Gaza: 2005-2024. Video: Al Jazeera
The troika plus format involves the PIF’s previous, current and future chairs.
They are mission leader Tonga Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, and representative of the Forum’s future chair, Solomon Islands Minister for Foreign Affairs and External Trade Peter-Shanel Agovaka (who takes part in place of Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele).
Fiji PM Sitiveni Rabuka is the “plus” component of the mission.
While Brown landed in Nouméa on Saturday, the rest of the PIF leaders touched down yesterday and were welcomed by New Caledonia’s highest officials, including local government President Louis Mapou, French High Commissioner Louis Le Franc and French Ambassador for the Pacific Véronique Roger-Lacan.
The regional leaders were also granted a full state protocol with a guard of honour, local media reported.
Charles Wéa, New Caledonia President Mapou’s adviser for international relations, told public broadcaster NC la 1ère at the weekend: “New Caledonia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and therefore is involved in everything that happens in the Pacific.”
“This mission comes in solidarity, to listen and see what are the possible ways to accompany our territory towards political and economic prospects.”
Upon return from their visit, the leaders are expected to prepare and submit a report to the next 54th Pacific Island Forum leaders’ summit, to be held in Solomon Islands from 8-12 September 2025.
Sunday programme: politics, economy, hospital On Sunday, the Pacific leaders started their mission in earnest, going to the site of one of Nouméa’s large commercial centres, Kenu-Inn, near Nouméa, which was largely destroyed and looted during the May riots.
They also met there a delegation of business leaders who explained the heavy impact of the destruction, arson and looting, and its consequences on the local economy.
Local Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) leader David Guyenne told local media: “We, economic leaders, really wanted them to see for themselves what did happen, and this is beyond imagination in terms of devastation.”
“There has been a moment of shock of cataclysmic proportions for business owners, employees, families who have all suffered the consequences.”
He said he believed the PIF mission could bring a constructive contribution if they do not have “an ideological vision of what happened in New Caledonia . . . to really understand that what took place is an economic and social issue”.
“We will build again with time, a pragmatic approach without mixing politics, ideology and what happened,” he said.
Cook Islands PM Mark Brown welcomed at Nouméa-La Tontouta international airport on Saturday. Image: NC la 1ère TV
GDP decline — ’20 years backwards’ Guyenne also said he had conveyed to the Pacific leaders the hard figures from the crisis.
“We are talking about [losing] 20 percent of New Caledonia’s gross domestic product (GDP); this has taken us 20 years backwards.
“This is the reality for people and companies.”
Earlier in the day, the leaders also held talks with Le Franc and Roger-Lacan.
They also went to New Caledonia’s main hospital, Médipôle, to hear about how the crucial centre was affected by riots and the impact this had on the public health system.
Later in the day, political talks went on at New Caledonia’s Congress, where they held talks with its President Veylma Falaéo.
“I am happy to see that each one of them came to bring their encouragement in these difficult times for us and in our current efforts for dialogue and reconciliation,” Falaéo said.
“I don’t think they were here to tell us what to do. They believe the solution can only come from us and to encourage us to pursue the way to unity, peace and dialogue.”
Political talks, meetings
Today, the leaders ares scheduled to pursue its mission with political talks and meetings with a wide panel of political parties from both the pro-independence and pro-France (loyalist) movements.
The high-level mission is being described as “strictly observational” and “in line with the request of the New Caledonia government, will follow the terms of reference, agreed by the French state, the government of New Caledonia and endorsed by the Forum Leaders”.
The mission followed a request from President Mapou following the breakout of riots on May 13.
The PIF mission was initially scheduled to take place before the Pacific Islands Forum annual leaders’ summit in Nuku’alofa in late August, but was postponed, due to what was described at the time as differences between New Caledonia’s government and its administrative power, France, on the mission’s terms of reference.
The Forum leaders group is supported by PIF Secretary-General Baron Waqa and senior officials “with the guidance of the French state and New Caledonia government”, the Forum stated.
The Pacific region’s top political organisation said the troika-plus would tour Nouméa and meet stakeholders impacted by the recent unrest, including a wide spectrum of “New Caledonian political parties, youth”, and the “impacted communities from the private, health, and education sectors”.
“This mission to New Caledonia comes at a pivotal time, as it navigates complex political dynamics and seeks to address ongoing social and economic challenges in New Caledonia.
“By understanding local perspectives, the Forum can better support ongoing dialogue about New Caledonia’s future, all while respecting its current status.”
The sensitive terms of reference were finally agreed to during the PIF leaders’ summit in Tonga at the end of August.
In their final communiqué on August 30, PIF leaders mentioned the issue of New Caledonia in two paragraphs].
They “noted the update on the situation in New Caledonia by the President of the government of New Caledonia, Mapou, and reaffirmed their continued call for order and stability to prevail as well as their continued commitment to provide support as necessary to New Caledonia”.
They also “reaffirmed the commitment to deploy the high-level Forum troika plus mission to New Caledonia in line with the request of New Caledonia’s government and noted the agreement of the French State and the Government of New Caledonia on the Terms of Reference for the Forum Troika Mission”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
France has been criticised for the “alarming” death toll in New Caledonia during recent protests and its “cold shower” approach to decolonisation by experts of the UN Human Rights Committee.
The UN committee met this week in Geneva for France’s five-yearly human rights review with a focus on its Pacific territory, after peaceful protests over electoral changes turned violent leaving 13 people dead since May.
French delegates at the hearing defended the country’s actions and rejected the jurisdiction of the UN decolonisation process, saying the country “no longer has any international obligations”.
Almost 7000 security personnel with armoured vehicles have been deployed from France to New Caledonia to quell further unrest.
“The means used and the intensity of their response and the gravity of the violence reported, as well as the amount of dead and wounded, are particularly alarming,” said committee member Jose Santo Pais, assistant Prosecutor-General of the Portuguese Constitutional Court.
“There have been numerous allegations regarding an excessive use of force and that would have led to numerous deaths among the Kanak people and law enforcement,” the committee’s vice-chair said on Wednesday.
Months of protests
Violence erupted after months of protests over a unilateral attempt by President Emmanuel Macron to “unfreeze” the territory’s electoral roll. Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their voting power and any chance of success at another independence referendum.
Eleven Kanaks and two French police have died. The committee heard 169 people were wounded and 2658 arrested in the past five months.
New Caledonia’s economy is in ruins with hundreds of businesses destroyed, tens-of-thousands left jobless and the local government seeking 4 billion euros (US$4.33 billion) in recovery funds from France.
Santos Pais questioned France’s commitment to the UN Declaration on Indigenous People and the “sufficient dialogue” required under the Nouméa Accord, a peace agreement signed in 1998 to politically empower Kanak people, that enabled the decolonisation process.
“It would seem that current violence in the territory is linked to the lack of progress in decolonisation,” said Santos Pais.
Last week, the new French Prime Minister announced controversial electoral changes that sparked the protests had been abandoned. Local elections, due to be held this year, will now take place at the end of 2025.
Pacific mission
Tomorrow, Tonga’s prime minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni will lead a Pacific “observational” mission to New Caledonia of fellow leaders from Cook Islands, Fiji and Solomon Islands Minister for Foreign Affairs, together known as the “Troika-Plus”.
The PIF leaders’ three-day visit to the capital Nouméa will see them meet with local political parties, youth and community groups, private sector and public service providers.
“Our thoughts have always been with the people of New Caledonia since the unrest earlier this year, and we continue to offer our support,” Sovaleni said in a statement on Friday.
The UN committee is a treaty body composed of 18 experts that regularly reviews compliance by 173 member states with their human rights obligations and is separate from the Human Rights Council, a political body composed of states.
Serbian committee member Tijana Surlan asked France for an update on investigations into injuries and fatalities “related to alleged excessive use of force” in New Caledonia. She asked if police firearms use would be reviewed “to strike a better balance with the principles of absolute necessity and strict proportionality.”
France’s delegation responded saying it was “committed to renewing dialogue” in New Caledonia and to striking a balance between the right to demonstrate and protecting people and property with the “principle of proportionality.”
Alleged intimidation by French authorities of at least five journalists covering the unrest in New Caledonia was highlighted by committee member Kobauyah Tchamdja Kapatcha from Togo. France responded saying it guarantees freedom of the press.
French Ambassador for Human Rights Isabelle Rome addresses the UN Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva, pictured on 23 October 2024. Image: UNTV
France rejects ‘obligations’
The French delegation led by Ambassador for Human Rights Isabelle Rome added it “no longer administers a non-self-governing territory.”
France “no longer has any international obligations in this regard linked to its membership in the United Nations”, she told the committee on Thursday.
New Caledonia voted by modest majorities to remain part of France in referendums held in 2018 and 2020 under a UN-mandated decolonisation process. Three referendums were part of the Nouméa Accord to increase Kanaks’ political power following deadly violence in the 1980s.
A contentious final referendum in 2021 was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing with the status quo. Supporters of independence rejected its legitimacy due to a very low turnout — it was boycotted by Kanak political parties — and because it was held during a serious phase of the covid-19 pandemic, which restricted campaigning.
“France, through the referendum of September [2021], has therefore completed the process of decolonisation of its former colonies,” ambassador Rome said. She added that New Caledonia was one of the most advanced examples of the French government recognising indigenous rights, with a shared governance framework.
Another of its Pacific territories — French Polynesia — was re-inscribed on the UN decolonisation list in 2013 but France refuses to recognise its jurisdiction.
No change in policy
After a decade, France began attending General Assembly Decolonisation Committee meetings in 2023 to “promote dialogue” and that it was not a “change in [policy] direction”, Rome said.
“There is no process between the French state and the Polynesian territory that reserves a role for the United Nations,” she added.
Santos Pais responded saying, “what a cold shower”.
“The General Assembly will certainly have a completely different view from the one that was presented to us,” he said.
