A new documentary film on the devastating “ecocide” happening in West Papua will be screened as a world premiere at a weekend solidarity forum in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau this weekend.
The 90min feature film, Pesta Babi (“Pig Feast”) — Colonialism In Our Time, produced by award-winning Papuan journalist Victor Mambor and directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono, tells a story about the impact of the Indonesian government and military on the lives of thousands of Papuans trying to protect their rainforests from destruction.
It also relates the plight of thousands of internal refugees in the Melanesian region.
The peaceful resistance of local communities is revealed in the documentary as they face up to 54,000 Indonesian troops and large corporate entities make big profits at the expense of an ancient culture.
Dorthea Wabiser of the environmental and human rights group Pusaka, will speak on the deforestation and displacement of communities in the south-eastern district of Merauke where Indonesia is destroying 2.5 million ha of rainforest for palm oil, sugar cane, biodiesel, rice and other crops.
Military force is deployed to silence any dissent from communities.
Pesta Babi (Pig Feast). Trailer: Jubi Media
“Kōrero with Victor Mambor” . . . media forum open to the public, Monday, March 9. Poster: APMN
Solidarity group hosts
The solidarity group West Papua Action Aotearoa with West Papua Action Tāmaki are hosting the two-day public forum on March 7 and 8 with the speakers from West Papua including environmental champions and filmmakers who operate in militarised zones at considerable risk to their personal safety.
Also, a media talanoa featuring Jubi Media founder Victor Mambor and others will be hosted by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub on March 9.
“The forum is an important event with a number of speakers and filmmakers from West Papua telling the hidden stories of the Indonesian occupation of their country,” said organiser Catherine Delahunty.
West Papuan journalist and filmmaker Victor Mambor. Image: APMN
The climate impact of their destruction was incredibly serious as was the use of the military to enforce an end to traditional life, food sources, and forests, she said in a statement.
“These people are our Pacific neighbours with a devastating story to tell that our government and others across the world have chosen to ignore,” she said.
“They have a right to come here and to be heard despite the media bans in Indonesia and the desire of successive New Zealand governments to ignore structural genocide in our region.
Other speakers at the forum include veteran activist and writer Maire Leadbeater, Green MP Teanau Tuiono, Hawai’an academic Dr Emalani Case, journalist and author Dr David Robie, Dr Arama Rata of Te Kuaka, and PNG academic Dr Nathan Rew.
Forum Day One (public sessons), Saturday, March 7: Old Choral Hall, University of Auckland, 7 Symonds St, 9am–4pm.
World Premiere of “Pesta Babi” (The Pig Feast) documentary with Q&A – The Academy Cinema, Lorne St, CBD (below the Auckland Public Library), March 7, 6-8.30pm.
Forum Day Two (solidarity development), Sunday, March 8: The Taro Patch, 9 Dunnotar Rd, Papatoetoe.
Media Talanoa, Monday, March 9: “Kōrero with Victor Mambor: West Papua: Journalism as Resistance” – Whānau Community Centre and Hub, 165 Stoddard Rd, Mt Roskill (Next to Harvey Norman), 6-8pm.
Further information: Catherine Delahunty, West Papua Action Tāmaki and West Papua Action Aotearoa. Tel: 021 2421967
It’s only Day Five of the war, but surely the epic stupidity of Australia so cravenly backing the US-Israeli invasion of Iran is evident by now. Michael WestMedia reports.
COMMENTARY:By Michael West
We are led by fools and sycophants. The illegal, unprovoked invasion of Iran is not just garden-variety stupidity. This is stupidity on a grandiose, stratospheric scale.
The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.
Instead of bringing freedom and democracy — “regime change” — we have brought chaos, possibly a world war, and definitely the destruction of the Middle East.
The world economy is being hit hard as we write; oil prices spiralling, energy prices about to soar, and the inexorable spectre of inflation and recession.
And it didn’t have to happen.
This was a war of choice. Even without the “Epstein Coalition” — as the Iranian media so aptly dubs their invaders — murdering 165 Iranian school girls on day one, “peace through strength” was never going to happen.
Graves of the murdered Iranian schoolgirls. Image: X/MWM
Quite the contrary. The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran has hardened the resolve of Iranians, who are massing in their hundreds of thousands across the country to mourn their dead and chant “Death to America”, to back their regime.
Where was the advice? The Epstein Coalition killed the Ayatollah, who was actually against nuclear power; he was a moderate.
Did Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong not seek advice from Foreign Affairs that attacking Iran was folly, that the anti-regime protesters were a minority, that the pre-invasion protests were a Mossad and CIA psyop, that Iran might attack US proxy states in the region, that invasion would be a Brobigdadgian mistake?
Or did they ignore the advice in favour of a Washington regime compromised by the Epstein pedophile scandal?
And now, we see the feeble, hypocritical whining by Israel and its supporters about Iran attacking the Gulf states. Is that our only moral defence?
Decades of supporting these regimes: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — US proxy states all — regimes now unravelling, the oil price is soaring, inflation and recession are beckoning globally.
Images are emerging from Bahrain of locals cheering on the Iranian missiles. Were DFAT and our politicians unaware of popular angst in the Gulf states against American imperialism?
And what did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat? Not blow up American bases and infrastructure while the US attacked them; after the US betrayed them at the very negotiating table when they were offering significant concessions on nuclear enrichment, all to avoid war? This war.
War drums over Tehran. Video: The West Report
Australia, the US flunkies Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.
“Operation Epstein Fury”, it was fast labelled. The soaring, craven stupidity is hard to grasp. Both major parties backing it.
Albo first, then Angus Taylor rushing to tow the Donald’s line. Then, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, too, who even congratulated and praised Netanyahu. We are led by fools and sycophants.
The flawed defence of atrocity To address the empty rhetoric of the pro-war lobby, criticism of this war does not equate to support for the regime in Iran. Defenders of the US-Israel atrocity are busy with their swarms of social media bots peddling the argument that “you are an Islamist terror supporter” if you criticise the invasion.
This is the 2026 version of “You are a Hamas supporter” if you argue against genocide in Gaza.
The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared, that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.
This is a war which has already been lost.
The obvious reality is that regime change wars are a demonstrable failure. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq — a million dead, irretrievable regional stability. In Afghanistan, 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, four US presidents, six Australian PMs — all to replace the Taliban . . . with the Taliban.
And here we are, the world’s busybodies, doing it again.
Countries bombed by the US since 1945. Graphic: World Visualised/MWM
Who would ever negotiate with the US in good faith again, or Israel for that matter? Iran did not want this war. Iran has not attacked another country in 300 years.
The US lured them to the negotiating table, then, without warning, murdered their leadership. This echoes last year’s 12-day war, where Israel and the US lured them in on the premise of good faith talks, then murdered them and now play the victim.
What did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat?
The record speaks for itself. The US is the biggest invader of other countries in history. Israel has, last year alone, attacked Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Malta, and Greece.
Countries the US has attacked in the 21st century . . . and the presidents who authorised the strikes. Image: X/MWM
Six illegal attacks of sovereign nations, as well as three illegal attacks in international waters equals nine all up. In one year.
And now they are invading Lebanon again, seizing more territory as their puppets, America, fight their campaign against Iran.
Albo, what are you doing? We know who the warmongers are. We are the warmongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.
Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.
For decades, the Iranian regime has been a destabilising force, through its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies, and brutal acts of violence and intimidation.
The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.
The nuclear furphy Then there is the age-old claim that Iran is about to produce nuclear weapons. The US and Israel’s nuclear risk claims have been so roundly discredited it’s a joke.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to instigate a war against Iran for 30 years — claiming Iran is days away, weeks away, months away from nuclear missiles.
And they were at the negotiating table again when the Epstein forces murdered them.
The propaganda We are now seeing mainstream media decry the “illegal attacks” on Israel and the Gulf states. Yet the ‘victim card” is tapped out.
Around the world, outside the legacy media propaganda, there is little sympathy for Israel having razed Gaza and slaughtered between 72,000 and 700,000 Palestinians while stealing more land in the West Bank daily.
It will continue. The media and political classes have failed so majestically that they can only try to salvage their authority with more propaganda.
The deplorable coverage of the murdered schoolgirls in Iran is a case in point. The “40 beheaded babies” and the “mass rapes” of Hamas filled the headlines in the West on October 8, 2023. Yet real murders — 165 murdered schoolgirls — have hardly rated a mention. Yes, a mention perhaps, but a side story, buried, no headlines of outrage.
Can’t handle the truth? Is the truth too hard to handle? Is it not evident to everybody except the most brainwashed advocate of the Epstein lobby that Israel — the government, the state — is the problem here?
Netanyahu has won his ambition to drag America into a war against Iran, and if you follow the money, while world stock markets teeter, the stock market in Tel Aviv is surging, replete with weapons companies as it is.
Meanwhile, the ASX is tanking, ergo our savings. Oil prices are surging, ergo higher energy prices and inflation. The Houthis, Iran’s allies, are shooting again in the Red Sea while, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, Iran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz, choking off a large chunk of the world’s oil supply.
Higher prices in India and China will mean higher prices for imports and inflation around the world.
The lessons of history have not been learnt; in fact, they have been discarded in spectacular fashion.
> 70 years ago, Iran looked just like any Western country.
> Short skirts, rock’n’roll, open universities.
> It’s 1953. Iran elects a secular socialist: Mohammad Mossadegh.
> He nationalizes oil. That pisses off BP.
> Cold War excuse.
> CIA and MI6 stage a coup. Operation Ajax.
>… pic.twitter.com/ZNWaLdBlCN
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.
The West is in turmoil over countries’ top legal minds declaring the US-Israel attack on Iran to be illegal, as China did.
But Israel-friendly Western politicians, including Starmer, von der Leyen, Albanese, and others are desperately blocking their ears as they try to justify actual war crimes.
1. The European Journal of International Law is very clear that “this use of force by the US and Israel is manifestly illegal. It is as plain a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as one could possibly have.”
2. Other top European bodies have agreed. “Trump’s strikes on Iran are an illegal war of choice—and Europeans should say so,” said a report published by the European Council of Foreign Relations.
It said leaders must “communicate clearly that this is a war of choice by America, in contravention of the same UN charter the Europeans have themselves invoked to condemn Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and insist on Greenland’s sovereignty.”
3. Arguably even more telling was a statement from the former legal chief at US Central Command, literally the people who are carrying out the bombings on Iran:
“Not only does this violate international law in numerous respects, it clearly violates the US Constitution and the War Powers Resolution,” said retired Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Rachel Van Landingham.
Her entire career has been about establishing the difference between legal and illegal attacks by US Centcom, the people doing the attacking.
4. “Trump and Netanyahu’s attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression” was the title of an essay by Kenneth Roth in the UK Guardian: “Their actions are no different from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine…”
This is interesting as Roth is best known as the former head of Human Rights Watch, a US foreign policy tool thinly disguised as an NGO (evidence for that is in a separate report).
5. The same argument, with arguably even more fire, is erupting in the UK. Unpopular Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, known for his pro-Trump and pro-Israel positions, is being taken to task by people speaking for the British people, who tend to be anti-war and are generally not fans of Trump.
“Peace and diplomacy was possible,” he added. “Instead, Israel and the United States chose war. This is the behaviour of rogue states — and they have jeopardised the safety of humankind around the world with this catastrophic act of aggression.”
War on Iran – how dangerous is this for Israel? Video: Al Jazeera
6. Even people on Starmer’s own team were clear. Labour MP Emily Thornberry, chairperson of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Press Association: “There is no legal basis for this attack.”
Israel loyalist Starmer pointedly chose not to repeat this point.
7. Patrick Harvie, Scottish parliamentarian, said: “It is part of a pattern of reckless and destructive behaviour from a White House that has shown total contempt for human rights, international law and negotiations… From arming Israel’s genocide against Palestinians to his illegal and immoral coup in Venezuela and his threats against Europe, Trump has acted like a gangster on the world stage.”
8. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a strong backer of the Israeli government, is also in trouble.
Legal experts in Australia have been pointing out the illegality of the attacks on Iran since last year. “Why the US strikes on Iran are illegal and can set a troubling precedent,” was the title of a report by Professor Donald Rothwell of the ANU College of Law, after earlier attacks on Iran.
Many Australians are anti-war, but prominent politicians and the media are pushing a strongly pro-war line.
9. “Israel said the strikes were ‘preventive’, meaning they were to prevent Iran from developing a capacity to be a threat. But preventive war has no legal basis under international law,” said a statement from two political specialists at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Shannon Brincat and Juan Zahir Naranjo Caceres.
“The American-Israeli Strikes on Iran are (Again) Manifestly Illegal,” writes EJIL analyst. Image: EJIL screenshot APR
Marko Milanovic, editor of the European Journal of International Law (mentioned above), made the same point. “Even if the broadest possible understanding of anticipatory self-defence was taken as correct, Israel’s use of force against Iran would be illegal,” he said.
10. The point is echoed by multiple experts. “The possibility of acting in self-defence in view of an attack that might be coming is illegal in international law and we’re all very, very clear about that,” said Maria Gavouneli, a professor of international law at Athens University, in an interview with Al Jazeera.
11. Even in the US, lawmakers on both sides have criticised the attack on Iran as being against the law. Senator Ed Markey called the actions “illegal and unconstitutional”.
12. Former US Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes declared the attack to be an illegal war, ‘A war that has no domestic or international legal basis. A war that Americans do not support. A war in response to no imminent threat. A pointless war,’ he wrote on X.
Conclusion Immediately after the US-Israel attack began, China’s Foreign Ministry said it was “a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security”.
Legal experts across the Western nations agree.
There is no doubt that the US-Israel attacks on Iran are illegal, as numerous voices from around the world are saying.
Equally, there is also no doubt that the pro-Israel Western elite, who dominate politics and the media, will try to cover up this fact: Trump, von der Leyen, Starmer, Merz, and others.
Trouble is brewing in the West, as people realise just how controlled their rulers are.
Nury Vittachi is a Sri Lankan-born author based in Hong Kong and an independent writer. This article was first published on his X page.
Minab school "The terrible news that the Americans and Israelis had killed more than 165 children this week in an elementary school in Minab in Southern Iran took me back to a wonderful day I spent in Isfahan in 2018." Image: Eugene Doyle
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle
When I heard the terrible news that the Americans and Israelis had killed more than 165 children this week in an elementary school in Minab in Southern Iran it took me back to a wonderful day I spent in Isfahan in 2018.
I met lots of Iranian school children and their teachers that day. They were keen to practise their English and ask lots of questions. I want to share that day with you because it was filled with hope, with promise for a better world.
My wife and I were visiting Iran, both for the second time.
Right at the end of our time there we spent a day in Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan. It is a massive square that could enclose a dozen football fields.
Built by Shah Abbas I in the 17th Century, during the Safavid period, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site with markets, palaces and other cultural sites framing its four sides. At one end is the magnificent Imam Mosque where a string of memorable moments happened to me.
I even saw a most astonishing one-woman demonstration.
We were just approaching the Imam Mosque when I noticed a young woman removing her head scarf. A mass of black hair fell down to her waist and then she began dancing.
‘Is this a protest?’
Rhythmically she swirled her upper body in a circular motion that sent her hair out horizontally around her. I was gob-smacked.
After a minute or two she stopped and started talking to her male companion who had been photographing her. I approached.
“Is this a protest?” I asked, somewhat gormlessly. Yes, against the clothing restrictions.
Today the courage and determination of such people has, to a degree, paid off. Those restrictions, particularly in the cities, have effectively been lightened. I have seen lots of footage of Iranian women without any head covering.
I salute their courage and determination and know their struggle will continue.
“I also salute the courage and determination of the millions of Iranians who have turned out this week to support their government against the violent assault on the sovereignty of Iran.” Image: Eugene Doyle/Solidarity
I also salute the courage and determination of the millions of Iranians who have turned out this week to support their government against the violent assault on the sovereignty of Iran by the racist, fascist genocidal Israeli state and its powerful vassal the USA.
Following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I saw remarkable footage of that same vast square in Isfahan filled to the four corners with what must have been hundreds of thousands of people. As with millions around the country, they were defying the missiles to protest the violation of their sovereignty.
The inconvenient truth
The scale of the pro-government demonstrations is virtually never shown in the Western media but to understand the contested political landscape that is Iran you need to understand that inconvenient truth.
Iranian politics in the Western view has been reduced to a cartoon, to a Manichean world of black and white — which partly explains why Westerners, most particularly the leaders, fail to grasp the fierce nationalism that has seen millions of Iranians rally round their government as their state comes under an existential threat.
That day in 2018 in that square I chatted with pro-government and anti-government people; all incredibly nice and open and welcoming. Everyone was keen to discuss Iran and the wider world.
“Iranians are remarkably hospitable, cultured and kind. For me, they are the finest people in the Middle East.” Image: Eugene Doyle/Solidarity
There were lots of school parties and both the teachers and their students were keen to speak with us. It was an unalloyed pleasure for us. Iranians are remarkably hospitable, cultured and kind. For me, they are the finest people in the Middle East.
The Western empire has a long history of killing children. I recently referenced Madeleine Albright’s infamous comment on the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children being “a price worth paying”.
This is just standard modus operandi for the West.
Protected by Mossad
Israeli football hooligans travel through Europe chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? Because there are no kids left!” They are protected by Mossad, local police and politicians like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Australian PM Anthony Albanese recently welcomed Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, who in October 2023 said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”
This is as clear a statement of genocidal intent as you could get and Israel made good on it.
Israel, the killer of tens of thousands of school kids, presents itself as a liberator for Iran? You don’t have to be an A-grade student to spot that lie.
Many people around the Western world want to commit the children of Iran into the hands of the President of the United States.
According to US Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), Vice-Chair of the House Democratic Caucus: “In the Epstein files, there’s highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.”
Lieu, one of the architects of the Epstein Files Transparency Act is also one of those legislators who has had access to some of the files still kept out of the public record.
Iranian children have as much right to grow up in safety as our own children.
“Iranian children have as much right to grow up in safety as our own children.” Image: Eugene/Doyle
infamous bro-talk
We should all also recall Trump’s infamous bro-talk with the vile radio host Howard Stern. Stern asked if he could refer to Ivanka Trump as a “piece of ass,” and Donald Trump salivated back at him: “Yeah.”
While they were joking about this “piece of ass”, Trump said he would try to date Ivanka if she wasn’t his daughter. It is a relevant anecdote because we live in the age of American Geopolitical Epsteinism — a world of predators seeking to violate those weaker than them.
You don’t have to like the Iranian government to support the UN Charter and the insistence on the sovereign equality of nations.
Nothing in the Charter says it is okay for powerful white countries to attack other countries. The West needs to bring its leaders to justice for the crime of genocide not launch yet another war on innocents.
Hands off Iran, Netanyahu. Hands off the children of Iran, Trump.
Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity on 2 March 2026.
Speakers at a pro-Palestine rally in central Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today were highly critical of the erosion of New Zealand’s once proud nuclear-free and independent foreign policy.
They also warned against being tied into a United States that is pivoting a hostile policy towards China, New Zealand’s major trading partner.
Ironically, just hours after the rally ended news broke of the unprovoked and illegal attack by Israel and the US against Iran barely eight months after a 12-day war last year.
With a theme posing the question “Is New Zealand a peace loving nation or a cog in the US war machine,” the speakers concluded at Te Komititanga Square that indeed the Pacific country was a “US war machine cog”.
Physicist Dr Peter Wills, a long-time activist and advocate for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, focused on New Zealand’s role in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.
He said the Five Eyes relationship has superseded ANZUS “or anything else”, saying while the pact formalised in 1946 used to be intelligence, now it was the name of a five-nation military grouping.
“That’s the Anglo-Saxon countries,” he said. “Us good English-speaking people, you know, the white imperialists and colonialists of the world – the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and little old New Zealand.
“We’re all a part of it.
Eavesdropping on countries
“It used to be an intelligence agreement because they would talk about what they have listened to with other countries by eavesdropping on their radio communications and so on.
“But now everything has become so integrated, they have become the centre of war fighting.”
An Auckland protester with a “fake ceasefire” banner criticising the almost daily violations by Israel in Gaza. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Explaining further, Dr Wills said: “And so they have this thing that they call C-5, which is command control for communications, computers and cyber.”
He said a top priority project was to make up a globally integrated “all domain” command and control system, which was hoped to be in place for next year.
The project had been discussed in Portsmouth, UK, in May 2024. Its purpose was to track friendly and enemy forces and send orders for attack.
“All domains – navy, land, air and space forces,” said Dr Wills, an honorary professor.
Globally integrated intelligence and military actions could be launched and directed anywhere in the world.
Protesters at today’s pro-Palestine rally in Te Komititanga Square. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Countering China
It was electronic infrastructure for a superpower confrontation – to “develop a credible and effective combined all-domain command and control capability for operations to counter China”.
For Five Eyes officers overseeing these new digital and AI war-fighting systems at the Portsmouth meeting, a key objective was building the capability for confrontation with China.
“This means NZ following the US into military conflict with China,” Dr Wills said.
“And we will align with whatever is chosen by Five Eyes, either British or American.”
From an American point of view, said Dr Wills, New Zealand was a US ally, eager to play a role, “however small we are, to supporting the US around the globe”.
They also wanted NZ to get rid of its anti-nuclear legislation and return to ANZUS. This was the view of senior military officers and senior foreign affairs and intelligence officials.
What is the Five Eyes alliance? Video: Business Standard
US ‘instability and bullying’
However, the majority of New Zealanders saw the US as a “source of instability and bullying” of New Zealand over its nuclear stand.
Dr Wills said New Zealand was influenced by the Anglo-American alliance today on many fronts, such as:
NZ Navy ships transiting “provocatively” through the South China Sea;
Being pressured to double military spending,;
Being pressured to join the “anti-China” AUKUS alliance;
The recent opening of a US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office in Wellington; and
New Zealand playing an increasing role in space warfare.
But Dr Wills warned people “don’t give up – they haven’t won, not even with their arguments”.
He also called on people to become better informed, such as reading Nicky Hager’s 2011 book Other People’s Wars.
Polynesian Panther Tigilau Ness and his mokopuna (saxophone) . . . their rendition of “We Are All Palestinians” was dedicated to activist and Kia Ora Gaza co-founder Roger Fowler who died last Saturday. Image: Asia Pacific Report
NZ’s nuclear-free stance
Other speakers included nuclear-free New Zealand historian and activist Maire Leadbeater, who outlined the early trajectory of the country’s opposition to French nuclear tests in the Pacific by dispatching a frigate to Moruroa, and the campaign to declare New Zealand nuclear-free.
She said New Zealand had led the way in the 1970s and 1980s and could take a principled independent foreign policy stand again.
The rally also invoked the spirit of Kia Ora Gaza co-founder and campaigner Roger Fowler, who died last Saturday and who was farewelled at a “celebration of life” ceremony at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre in Mangere East on Wednesday.
Veteran Polynesian Panther Tigilau Ness and his grandson on the saxophone played a rousing rendition of the popular song “We Are All Palestinians”, created by Fowler, and South African-born activist Achmat Esau read out his poem, “Roger, I Did Not Know” in tribute.
Roger Norman Fowler: 12 September 1948 – 21 February 2026
Roger Fowler, an activist legend of social justice solidarity movements from Bastion Point to resisting apartheid and racist rugby tours and freedom for Palestine, has died after a long illness. He was 77.
Described by some as a “true Tāne Toa”, his protest warrior courage and his commitment to a bicultural and cross-cultural vision for Aotearoa New Zealand, was perhaps best represented by his “Songs of Struggle and Solidarity” vinyl album launched last year.
The first of 14 tracks on the album produced by Banana Boat Records, was “We Are All Palestinians”, which has become an anthem for the Gaza solidarity movement for the past 124 weeks of protest against the Israeli genocide.
Activist, community strategist and musician Roger Fowler . . . with a tee-shirt marking the Ponsonby People’s Union campaigns 1972-79. Image: Hone Fowler
Ironically, this was sung yet again by a group in Te Komititanga Square yesterday within hours of his death.
It was written by Fowler after the Viva Palestina solidarity convoy from London to Gaza in 2010.
Roger Fowler and his wife, Dr Lyn Doherty, with whānau and friends at a community concert in honour of the “power couple” in November 2025. Image: Hone Fowler
Polynesian Panther Tigilau Ness and Roger Fowler at the launch of his album in September 2025. Ness recorded his rendition of “We Are All Palestinians” here. Image: APR
Fowler led the Kia Ora Gaza team of six Kiwis who drove three of 135 aid-packed ambulances – funded by New Zealand donations — into the besieged enclave. This was followed later by two other land convoys and three Gaza Freedom Flotillas.
In April 2026, a massive new siege-breaking Sumud Flotilla to Gaza with 100 boats and carrying some 1000 activists is being planned.
Gaza solidarity rallies
In spite of failing health in recent months, Fowler was frequently seen at Gaza rallies, speaking and singing in his rousing voice.
Close comrade and friend, John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), paid tribute to his contribution in a statement today.
“Roger has been a legend of the solidarity movement for many decades as the founder and co-cordinator of Kia Ora Gaza which delivered aid to the besieged Gaza strip by land and by sea,” he said.
“He was a man of great integrity and character with passion for justice. He will remain a guiding light for the solidarity movement here.”
The Palestinian community presenting Roger Fowler an award at the launch of his album in September 2025. Image: APR
Co-chair Maher Nazzal presented Fowler an award for his contribution to Palestinian solidarity last September.
Another comrade from the 1990s onwards, Tony Fala, recalls his “dauntless courage, tireless optimism, boundless energy, and vast strategic capacity was profoundly inspiring.”
“Roger was one of the humblest and kindest people I have ever met. He could build coalitions and strengthen community bonds with ease. He sought what brought people together, not what kept them apart.
Belief in ordinary people
“He believed in ordinary people and possessed a deep, instinctive understanding of justice. He was strong yet carried no ego.”
Fala praised Fowler’s commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Te Ao Māori community life, describing him as a “born oral historian”.
“He gave selflessly to every cause he committed himself to and would move mountains to achieve victory for the struggles he served.”
“We Are All Palestinians.” Video: Banana Boat Records
In the weeks before his death, he and his whanau were working hard to complete a history of the socialist Ponsonby People’s Union, “Struggle and Solidarity”, due to be published soon. Fowler met his future wife, Dr Lyn Doherty (Ngati Porou and Ngāpuhi), then while they were activists campaigning to stop landlords evicting tenants.
Based in the working-class suburb of Ponsonby, the union activists campaigned alongside the Polynesian Panthers and ACORD (Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination) to defend civil liberties, fight slum landlord evictions, and oppose the Dawn Raids against Pacific Islands overstayers.
Fowler had seen the last proofs of the collaborative book before he died and was very happy.
Activist author Dean Parker once described Fowler as “the Great Helmsman of the legendary Ponsonby People’s Union, brave hero of so many struggles”.
Fowler had lived for almost four decades in Mangere East, a multicultural quarter of South Auckland.
He was manager of the Mangere East Community Learning Centre and an executive member of Out of School Care Network.
Impressive community tribute
In 1999, he was a recipient of the Queen’s Service Medal for his “public services” and the people of Mangere East paid an impressive tribute to him with a daytime concert last November.
One of his best remembered local campaigns was the community coalition in 2010 that saved Mangere East’s Postshop.
A one-time bus driver, Fowler strongly campaigned for public transport.
He was also involved with amateur theatre for several decades, including Auckland Light Opera, “The Aunties” children’s theatre and Manukau Performing Arts.
Fowler was a founding member of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in the 1970s and he was part of the anti-apartheid movement for 15 years.
In 1969, along with a large group of activists — including Alan Robson, Pat Bolster and Graeme Whimp — he opened the first Resistance Bookshop in Queen Street and he was co-director for a time.
“The bookshop became a focus for radical political actors in Auckland in 1969 and the early 70s,” recalls Robson, now an academic at the University of Papua New Guinea.
‘He gave us hope’
Activist Del Abcede, a supporter of Kia Ora Gaza and the Palestine movement, recalls: “Roger did so much for social justice and humanity and yet he was so humble, gentle, kind and unassuming — one of a kind.
“I’ll always remember with fondness snippets of short but meaningful conversations with him.
“Memories of him will live forever — like a light at the end of the tunnel. He gave us hope.”
In fact, the whole whānau have inspired hope — his wife Dr Lyn Doherty (they were married at the Bastion Point protest), tamariki Tawera Fowler, Hone Fowler, Maia McGregor, Kahutia Fowler, and their mokopuna.
During his lifelong protests, Fowler was arrested and jailed four times and with colleagues he set up a free prison visiting service in 1972 for Paremoremo and Waikeria.
The last track on Fowler’s album is titled “The Final Song” but his music will be long remembered as the hallmark of the legacy and life of an extraordinary community and social justice activist.
Roger Fowler’s life will be celebrated at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre, 255 Buckland Road, Mangere, 10-2pm, Wednesday, February 25.
Asia Pacific Report’s David Robie and Del Abcede with Roger Fowler in November 2025. Image: Tony Fala
Two Extinction Rebellion activists joined the speakers today at an Auckland protest over Israel’s genocide and ecocide in Gaza and occupied Palestine, condemning the “apocalyptic” assault on both people and their living environment.
Caril Cowan, a de facto coordinator of Extinction Rebellion Tāmaki Makaurau, spoke of the climate crisis this month in Aotearoa New Zealand to provide an insight into the Gaza emergency.
“One of our climate scientists, says this is normal – get used to it. We are going to have killing storms over, and over, and over …
The “Blood on your hands” protest at the US Consulate at Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“As we are saying, ‘We are all Palestine’, I just think of the people of South America, I think of the people of Africa, I think of Europe, where people are dying now because of the climate.
“They are dying of heat exhaustion, they are dying from floods, they are dying from landslides, like we have been having, not just a few. It’s happening. It is here now.”
After the rally, the protesters marched around the corner from Te Komititanga Square to the US Consulate in Auckland for a “Blood on your hands “ protest over the US role in funding and enabling Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
Cowan was among those protesters who symbolically raised blood on their hands over the “shameful” US role under President Donald Trump and previous presidents.
Extension Rebellion speaker Caril Cowan . . . “people are dying now because of the climate crisis.” Image: APR
US pays part UN dues
This week in Washington, a UN spokesperson said the United States had paid about US$160 million (NZ$268 million) of the more than US$4 billion it owes to the UN, just as Trump hosted the first meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace” initiative over Gaza that critics say could undermine the United Nations.
The US is the biggest contributor to the UN budget, but news reports say that under the Trump administration it has refused to make mandatory payments to regular and peacekeeping budgets, and slashed voluntary funding to UN agencies with their own budgets.
Washington has also withdrawn from dozens of UN agencies.
Another speaker at today’s rally, Adam Jordan, from both Extinction Rebellion and the Palestinian movement, talked about the “connection” between the Gaza genocide and anthropogenic climate breakdown.
“As is so often the case with colonialism, and the capitalist system more generally, ecological destruction has always been inherent to the Zionist, settler-colonial project,” Jordan said.
Extension Rebellion’s Adam Jordan . . . the destruction in Gaza has reached such “apocalyptic proportions that the damage is visible from space”. Image: APR
“From contaminated soil and groundwater to decimated farmland and burning down centuries old olive groves that had been lovingly tended by countless generations of Palestinians.
“Rather than ‘making the desert bloom’ as they often claim, the colonisers are engaged in a process of ‘desertification’ — transforming once fertile and active farmland into an area devoid of both vegetation and biodiversity.”
Damage visible from space
Jordan said that destruction of both people and the land itself in Gaza had reached such “apocalyptic proportions that the damage is visible from space”.
“The people who have not yet been killed by the bunker buster bombs, the forced starvation, disease, sniper fire and autonomous killer drones live in a wasteland of undrinkable water, unexploded munitions, overflowing landfills, contaminated soil and toxic debris, with orchards and fields reduced to dust in which life itself is being rendered impossible for the long term,” he said.
Gaza pollution environmental threats Video: Al Jazeera
“Ecocide here fuses with genocide in a manner never seen before.”
But where was the real connection between Palestine and the climate crisis?
“Despite all the rhetoric from governments and corporations about how they’re taking climate change seriously, the 2020s have so far seen an accelerated expansion of fossil fuel production, just when it had to be reined in and inverted into a sustained dismantling — for the world to avoid a warming of more than 2°C, and ideally no more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial baseline.
“Currently we’re at 1.6°C above that baseline, and this is already proving to be absolutely catastrophic. In fact it’s proving again and again to be deadly,” Jordan said.
“The destruction of Gaza is of course executed by tanks and fighter jets, sending their projectiles that turn everything into rubble — but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right path.
“All these military vehicles run on oil. As do the supply flights from the US, UK and Germany.”
A young protester with a Palestinian flag at the Auckland rally today. Image: APR
Emissions burden
One study had estimated that from October 2023 to January 2025 the emission burden of the Gaza genocide by Israel and the West to be 32 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
“That’s more than the annual emissions of many countries,” Jordan said.
“It has generated more than 36 million metric tonnes of debris from buildings being either severely damaged or completely destroyed. It would take as long as four decades to remove and process all of this debris.”
Jordan said what was happening in Gaza was not just a transnational effort, but “a stain on the so called ‘international law’ that cannot be washed clean”.
“For over two years now we have watched as the corrupt corporate media has dehumanised the victims and attempted to humanise those committing this genocide,” he said.
“We have watched as academic institutions, politicians and governments all over the world have denied or justified the unspeakable horrors taking place in Gaza, just as they deny the severity and the consequences of the climate crisis and justify the continuation of business as usual, no matter how destructive it is to our environmental life support systems.
“But this is just business, this is just how the capitalist system works. Both people and the environment are seen as expendable, here only for the purposes of wealth extraction by the ultra wealthy ruling class — or as I prefer to call them, ‘The Epstein class’.”
New flotilla plans
Among other speakers, Rana Hamida spoke about the new Global Sumud Flotilla plans to break the military siege of Gaza in April.
The flotilla has announced plans to send more than 100 boats carrying up 1000 activists, including medics and war crimes investigators, to the besieged enclave.
Hamida appealed for more volunteers from New Zealand to join the fleet.
"Compulsory training in any particular ideology -- Zionism, fascism, liberalism -- is a body blow against university independence." Image: Michael West Media
From curbing protests to controlling what can be said in Australia, state and Federal Labor governments are becoming authoritarian. Next in line is the thought police entering campus. Nick Riemer reports for Michael West Media.
ANALYSIS: By Nick Riemer
In December 2025, the NSW Labor government gave itself the power to ban street marches for an indefinite period. We saw what that meant on February 9 as violent police charged, maced, beat and arrested protesters against Herzog’s visit.
In January, the federal ALP introduced new hate speech laws, which confer unprecedented discretion on the government to criminalise speech and groups to which it objects.
Now, in a further stride down its authoritarian road, the federal government is reported to be proceeding with plans for “political training” for Australian university staff.
Academic and unionist Nick Riemer . . . “The reforms threaten to fundamentally alter the character of Australian society, which will become more autocratic, more racist, less rational and less free.” Image: MWM
According to several recentreports, the federal government has agreed that “antisemitism training” will be a “key” area in which universities’ response to antisemitism will be assessed.
University employees will, apparently, be required to undergo indoctrination in the ideology of the pro-Israel lobby, which identifies Zionism and Judaism and treats critics of Israel as likely antisemites.
The training will involve “understanding of Jewish peoplehood, their attachment to Israel and identity beyond faith” — the characteristically unclear phrasing of the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who is responsible for the “Antisemitism report card” plan.
The thought police Compulsory training in a political ideology befits a police state, not a notional democracy — a status that NSW Premier Chris Minns, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the rest of the political establishment are undermining like none before them.
Amidst the uproar over Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit, the move has not had the discussion it deserves. Requiring university staff to undergo “training” in the ideology of Israeli apartheid is as unacceptable as it would have been to require training in that of South African apartheid or Hindu supremacism.
Compulsory training in any particular ideology — Zionism, fascism, liberalism — is a body blow against university independence.
Segal’s plan has been roundly criticised by the progressive side of politics, including by Jewish organisations, but has the support of the entire Zionist establishment and the major parties.
Stopping free inquiry The plan was originally devised in mid-2025, but was put on hold after Segal was discredited by revelations of her family’s connections, through generous donations, with the far-right, anti-immigrant group Advance.
Now, the ALP appears to be implementing it. Under the obligatory cover of combating antisemitism, the training is clearly intended to further attack genocide opponents in higher education.
The measure shows a flagrant contempt for the basic role of universities in a supposedly liberal society — the necessary cliché that the campus is a place where controversial ideas can be expressed and discussed, no matter what powerful political actors they alienate.
Academic freedom is an ideal, not a reality, but it is still an essential principle of true intellectual work.
The extent to which it is observed is an indicator of the overall state of democracy in a country.
Little is currently known about how the antisemitism training will work in practice. Segal’s blueprint is — no doubt intentionally — extremely vague.
Regardless of the form it takes, the training is designed to elevate anti-Jewish hate above all other kinds of racism as especially deserving of redress — what other form of racism has its own training? — and to enforce Zionists’ chauvinistic insistence that they are the only Jews worthy of the name.
Both intentions are profoundly racist.
How the training will be assessed is also unclear. We have no knowledge of what the consequences would be for the many university staff who will refuse to participate in Zionist indoctrination. We also have no inkling of the size of the financial penalties against non-compliant universities that Segal, in full Trumpian mode, wants to apply.
To the right of Trump The current US administration has already mandated widespread student training designed to vilify Palestine solidarity as antisemitic. The Australian proposal of something similar for university staff puts Albanese and his government to the right of Trump.
The government has appointed Greg Craven, the former VC of the Australian Catholic University, as the political commissar responsible for the training and other elements of Segal’s “report card” process.
Craven has pooh-poohed the idea that cracking down on anti-Zionist speech could constitute any threat to civil liberties. The issue, he writes, is fundamentally one of “national defence”.
Albanese’s new hate speech laws, for example, are needed because our current legal and constitutional arrangements
are based on the assumption that our commonwealth faces no deadly external or internal threats.
Read that again. We are, Craven thinks, essentially at war. This means that we have to be the ones to suspend the basic democratic norms we love so much, because otherwise the jihadists will do it for us.
He sees pro-Palestinian critics of the hate speech laws as spreading “morally bankrupt intellectual effluent”.
“A couple of decades’ house arrest for Louise Adler,” he writes, is “appealing”. This is kind of right-wing trolling that, in 2026, equips someone to be entrusted by the ALP with the future of academic freedom in Australia.
University leaders can’t be trusted Mass defiance of the training is the only feasible response. University authorities certainly cannot be trusted to push back. They have made it clear that they are perfectly willing to turn their institutions into Zionist propaganda mills.
Universities Australia welcomed Segal’s recommendations when they were first made in July; the supine Group of Eight has not raised a peep of protest against the political training proposal.
The training will, however, pose serious headaches for university managers. But, far from protesting, they might even welcome the opportunity to discipline Palestine-supporting staff, who are usually also at the forefront of union and other progressive campus activism.
Last year’s gratuitous purge of academics at Macquarie University disproportionately targeted Palestine supporters, union activists and women.
As decades of their imposition of cuts and austerity in the sector show, many vice-chancellors and their deputies are more than ready to sacrifice higher education wholesale, at any price. Their rewards are the prestige and salary that come with a career in senior university management.
In this year’s Australia Day honours, Professor Annamarie Jagose, the provost of the University of Sydney, was rewarded with an Order of Australia medal for “service to tertiary education”. She was far from the only university executive to get a gong.
Awarding this honour, at this moment, to the second-highest office holder at Sydney, which has led the way in its repression of anti-genocide activism, is not anodyne, and it is hard not to read it as a federal
reward for the university’s readiness to politically and ideologically serve the cause of genocide.
Police state on campus
Not content with feting Israel’s bomb-signing terrorist-in-chief, Albanese is also destroying the notional independence of the university system, imposing a political standard to which teaching and administrative staff must conform, and delivering campuses into the hands of a far-right lobby that is milking the 2025 atrocity at Bondi for all it is worth.
After Bondi, no authoritarian bridge seems too far for the ALP and Coalition. Crossing dangerous new frontiers in political repression will be the principal legacy of Anthony Albanese and his Labor colleagues.
Their reforms threaten to fundamentally alter the character of society, which will become more autocratic, more racist, less rational and less free.
Everyone who supports the reckless and bankrupt Labor Party is accountable.
During the genocide, universities have played the role of being a testing ground for repressive policies that were soon rolled out more widely.
Before the NSW government restricted street protests, Australian vice-chancellors restricted them on campus. The federal government’s hate speech laws were prefigured by crackdowns on anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian expression in universities.
Under their supposedly “liberal” leadership, campuses have consistently trialled the next features of the Australian police state. Once Zionist political training has become established in universities,
there is nothing to stop it from being rolled out more widely.
Nick Riemer is a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and academic vice-president of the university’s National Tertiary Education Union branch. A long-time Palestine activist, he is the author of Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine. Available here. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.
US Empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school Western colonialism.
During a Monday press conference in Tel Aviv after a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Graham said that “I’ve been coming here every two weeks whether I need to or not.”
Why is a South Carolina senator traveling to Israel every two weeks, rain or shine? The bloodthirsty warmonger answers this question in short order.
“The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel,” Graham said. “Because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel.”
Sometimes, Senator Graham just puts it out in the plainest language:
Graham salivated about the possibility of a US war with Iran, acknowledging that such a war could absolutely result in American troops in the region being struck by Iranian missiles but saying the US should go to war anyway.
“Could our soldiers be hit in the region? Absolutely, they could. Can Iran respond if we have an all-out attack? Absolutely, they can,” Graham said, arguing that “the risk associated with that is far less than the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the people as you promised.”
During a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the mask all the way off in an unsettling rant about the need to return to the good old days when Western powers dominated the Global South without pretence or apology.
“For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Rubio said.
“But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”
This is insane.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio just gave one of the most explicitly pro-colonialist speeches I have seen in the 21st century.
The US empire wants Europe to help it recolonize the Global South.
Rubio, a notoriously anti-communist gusano, is here admitting that socialism played a leading role in pushing back against the abusive colonialism and empire-building of the Western world in recent decades. A normal person would take this as a strong argument in favour of socialism, but Rubio says it like it’s a bad thing.
Rubio urged Europeans to join their white Christian brethren in the United States in re-conquering the brown-skinned communists and heathens who have been insisting upon their own sovereignty and the advancement of their own interests:
“Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past.
“And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.
“For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.
“We are part of one civilisation — Western civilisation. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilisation to which we have fallen heir.”
MARCO RUBIO CALLS FOR RETURN OF COLONIALISM
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave one of the most overtly colonial speeches at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday, 14th February, where he reminisced about 500 years of Western colonialism and how it expanded to… pic.twitter.com/uZqC5Y4pwS
It takes a special kind of psychopath to look back with fondness upon five centuries of unchecked Western colonialism and imperialism and then advocate a return to those horrific days. Mass genocides across entire continents. The African slave trade. The violent subjugation and enslavement of entire populations.
That is what Rubio is looking back on and sighing with nostalgia.
And this is of course to say nothing of the savagery his beloved “Western civilisation” is perpetrating in the present day. This is the civilisation of the Gaza holocaust. The civilisation that cannot exist without constant war, exploitation and extraction. The civilisation that is presently strangling Cuba to death and preparing for war with Iran. The civilisation that still to this day violently subjugates and robs the Global South. The civilisation of ecocide. The civilisation of Epstein.
Western civilisation is the most depraved and abusive civilisation that has ever existed. It doesn’t need a return to its prime, it needs to be stopped in its tracks and made healthy. This is obvious from a glance at the deranged empire managers this civilisation has been elevating to positions of leadership.
Police brutality at the protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Sydney on February 9 . . . "Accountability for this disaster must start at the very top and run through to the police on the ground." Image: AJ+ screenshot APR
Israel’s President Herzog has departed Australia, leaving less “social cohesion”, while politicians, justices and NSW police have many questions to answer. Wendy Bacon reports for Michael West Media.
ANALYSIS: By Wendy Bacon
Many who witnessed the horrific police violence in Sydney’s CBS on the evening of February 9 say they had never seen anything like it before.
After a week of broadcasts of police “kettling”, viciously assaulting and pepper spraying peaceful protesters, the NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) announced an independent investigation into the police conduct.
It will examine the policing operation as well as individual cases of unlawful policing.
Police brutality at the protest against Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Sydney on February 9 . . . “Accountability for this disaster must start at the very top and run through to the police on the ground.” Image: AJ+ screenshot APR
One of the matters LECC should investigate is which politicians and senior police were involved in organising a massive increase in available police powers shortly before Herzog’s arrival, and what instructions were given to police on the ground about those powers.
The legislation that was used is a little-known act called the Major Events Act 2009, under which the NSW Minister for Tourism, Stephen Kamper, approved a new regulation which transformed Herzog’s visit into a “major event”.
Independent journalist Wendy Bacon . . . “Accountability for this disaster must start at the very top and run through to the police on the ground.” Image: MWM
Major Events Act The objects of the Act are to bring “benefits” to spectators and enhance NSW’s reputation for holding events. The Act grants special powers to plan and regulate major events, including shutting off access to areas, searching people, and using “reasonable force” to compel citizens to comply with directions.
It relieves the state of most liability for damage caused in the exercise of these powers.
The powers have the potential to severely impact the exercise of citizens’ political rights, which is probably why the Act includes a section that a political protest must not be declared a major event. The Act is designed to cover events of a “sporting, cultural or other nature”.
These police powers triggered the lack of restraint witnessed last Monday. This does not mean that police actions were lawful, but that these were the powers under which they thought they were acting.
As one constable who was part of two lines blocking protesters from entering Town Hall Square said when questioned, “I heard something about a major event.”
Court challenge failed The new regulation was announced on Saturday, February 7, just 48 hours before Herzog arrived.
The Palestinian Action Group (PAG), represented by Hanna Legal, had 24 hours to challenge the regulation.
PAG’s case was that the regulation was “unreasonable”, “disproportionate” and was created for an improper purpose of suppressing protests. Within an hour of NSW Supreme Court Justice Robertson Wright dismissing the challenge, NSW Police were already using the Major Event powers.
Before dismissing the Palestinian Action Group challenge on Monday, Justice Wright said that he found both sides’ arguments persuasive and that it was difficult to decide. But there was no hint of uncertainty in his judgment, which adopted almost all of the NSW government’s case.
The judge, who is near retirement, was described on his appointment as “a soldier, a historian and a gentleman”. His reasons were not published until two days later.
By that time, protesters had been violently flung to the ground while praying, and hundreds had been trapped and assaulted in Town Hall Square. People were blinded or choked with pepper spray. Others had been hospitalised with broken limbs or bleeding wounds.
Journalist and filmmaker James Ricketson, 76, had been injured in an assault by six officers and held in a cell for five hours without water before being released without charge. Videos of NSW police punching people had gone viral around the world.
Premier Chris Minns, Minister for Police Yasmin Catley and Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon defended the police actions as “reasonable” in the circumstances.
Not a political event?
Few would disagree that Herzog’s visit to Australia was the key political event of last week. Yet key to the judgment was Wright’s determination that the Herzog visit wasn’t.
Before he arrived, Herzog defined the purpose of his visit as rebuilding Australia’s relationship with Israel. He brought a top-level delegation from Jewish national institutions with him. This was in evidence before the judge.
Also in evidence was the fact that Chris Sidoti, who had sat on a UN Commission of Inquiry that found Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and that Herzog had incited it, had called for his arrest in Australia.
But Justice Wright found that politics was not a “defining” or “dominant” purpose for the visit and that it was a “cultural event”.
Herzog’s tour did have cultural aspects, such as a trip to Bondi to meet victims of the December massacre and visits to a synagogue and school. But Herzog and Zionist leaders also consistently stressed that an important purpose was to encourage the Australian government to stand with Israel.
The act has never been used for a foreign dignitary visit before or at such short notice.
Until last week, no one would have imagined that this law would be used to enable police violence to be unleashed on peaceful citizens protesting against a controversial visit by a foreign head of state.
But a bright idea by the NSW Police changed this.
Police concerns As public opposition to Herzog’s visit grew and likewise support for a peaceful march from Town Hall to Parliament House during Herzog’s visit, senior police became concerned that the new anti-protest law passed on December 23 might not be sufficient to stop a big march in Sydney.
The ban over most of the CBD and the Eastern Suburbs was extended on February 2. On the same day, according to evidence tendered in last week’s court case, NSW police advised the government that the Major Events Act, with its extensive powers, could help avoid any risks to Herzog during the visit, advising “Police will be empowered to address any behaviour which poses a security threat or risk to the Presidential Visit.”
It is worth noting that nothing was ever planned at the protest related to a security threat or risk to Herzog. That was also in evidence.
The Cabinet office then prepared a minute setting out arguments, including ones for and against protests, for the Minister for Tourism Kamper to consider before making his decision. He was then told to sign but not date his recommendation, which was agreed to by the NSW Executive Council and gazetted on Friday, February 6.
In arguing that the regulation had been declared for the improper purpose of suppressing protests, PAG’s barrister Felicity Graham relied on the timing of events and material in the Cabinet minute. She also relied on Premier Chris Minns’ media conference on Saturday, February 7, in which he announced the “Major Event”.
Minns talked about 3500 police, fines of more than $5500 for disobeying directions and needing to prevent “the clash of mourners and protesters”. The latter seemed to be an idea of Minns’ own making because there was never any plan for protesters to be near mourners.
Suppressing protests to keep us safe Justice Wright agreed that it would be improper for the purpose of the regulation to be the suppression of protests. But he found that protests could be suppressed if it was consistent with the goal of facilitating “safety and crowd control” and that there was no intention on the part of the Minister or any other relevant person to “adversely affect any protest or right to protest except to the extent reasonably appropriate to facilitate the conduct of the visit”.
He agreed that there was no evidence that the protest would interfere with the President, but found that it did not matter.
When PAG’s barrister Felicity Graham argued that the powers in the Regulation could lead to unjust treatment of citizens, even those who were not protesters, the judge appeared mildly exasperated.
He assumed that officers act “reasonably”.
That turned out to be wildly optimistic. If the purpose was to keep us all safe, it had the opposite effect.
PAG is considering an appeal. The event is over, but there are many potential cases against the police, and the Act restricts liability and compensation. It might also be possible to raise implications of the Major Events Act on “freedom of expression”, which was not attempted in the short one-day hearing.
A protest was held near Parliament on Friday evening with a speech delivered from her hospital bed by a woman who suffered broken vertebrae: “We will not be silent. He [MInns] needs to take full responsibility for this and the laws that were passed. The police who did it need to take responsibility.”
If the Major Events Act can validly be used in protests, it needs reform. Imagine if the UN decided to hold a major climate conference backed by fossil fuel interests in Sydney? The whole city could be shut down to protesters.
Accountability for this disaster must start at the very top and run through to the police on the ground.
Wendy Bacon is an Australian investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS movement and the Greens. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission
