Timor-Leste has topped a stunning rise among Asia-Pacific countries to make it to into the “top ten” countries in this year’s World Press Freedom Index that saw island nations improve their rankings.
The youngest nation in Southeast Asia — which gained independence from Indonesia in 2002 — jumped from 17th last year to 10th as the Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that this year’s survey demonstrated “enormous volatility” because of “growing animosity” towards journalists on social media and in the real world.
RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2023 launched today . . . tackling “polarisation and distrust.” Image: RSF
Timor-Leste’s success was hailed after the country had survived many challenges and threats to media freedom in the years following independence with Bob Howarth, a former newspaper executive in Papua New Guinea and editorial adviser and trainer in Dili, said it was partially thanks to a “vibrant media” scene.
The RSF report said that Timor-Leste was “one of this year’s surprises . . . a young democracy still under construction [entering] the Index’s top 10.” It previously had a track record of intimidating the media.
New Zealand, which had previously been a regular country in the top ten list slipped from 11th to 13th. Although the Index did not state why, it is believed that the hostile and threatening atmosphere against the media during last year’s anti-vaccination parliamentary protest contributed.
The Index describes NZ as a “regional press freedom model”.
Samoa rose dramatically 26 places to 19th to place it ahead of Australia. This was probably due to the change of government in the Pacific nation with the country’s first woman prime minister, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, and her FAST party having ousted the authoritarian HRPP government of Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and ushered in a more consultative relationship with the media.
Australia improves Australia also improved 12 places to 27th, also thanks to a more relaxed media environment coinciding with a change of government and some positive media freedom moves.
Fiji did even better, rising 13 places to 89th, but should expect to significantly improve on this next year after the new coalition government scrapped the draconian Fiji Media Industry Development Act last month. This hated law was originally a decree imposed after the 2006 military coup and “weaponised” by the FijiFirst government and other recent media freedom initiatives.
However, this step along with other promising media freedom developments happened after the Index cut-off assessment period. The autocratic FijiFirst government was ousted in an election last December.
“It is perhaps more significant than ever for journalists in Fiji now that we have the draconian piece of legislation, the MIDA Act repealed.”
Papua New Guinea rose three places to 59th in spite of the Index noting that direct political interference often “threatened editorial freedom at leading media outlets”. The report cited EMTV as an example, where the entire newsroom walked out in protest over the suspension of experienced news director Sincha Dimara in February 2022.
Sacked, the journalists started their own online media, Inside PNG, and covered the 2022 general election, which was marred by violence.
Tonga rose five places to 44th although the Index said some political leaders “did not hesitate to go after reporters who embarrass them”.
Flashback to earlier struggles for the Timor-Leste media . . . journalist José Belo wearing a gag at a media law seminar in Dili during 2014. Image: Jornal Independente/Pacific Scoop
Welcoming the elevation of Timor-Leste as an example to the Pacific region, media consultant Bob Howarth, a founding member of the Timorese journalists association AJTL, said there were several contributing factors.
Non-stop training
“The country has been running non-stop training for media with support from UNDP and several donor countries, a vibrant media scene including a huge community radio network and a government easily accessible for local journos — remember the Chinese minister [Wang Yi] who ignored media all over the Pacific but had to front in Dili?
“Plus they now host the Dili Dialogue, an annual gathering of Southeast Asian and some Pacific press councils.
“Not a single murder, assault or threat to local journos. And visiting reporters don’t need special visas like in Papua New Guinea.
“Plus Timor-Leste is free of religious or ethnic biases after 25 years of brutal occupation by Indonesia and it has a very active and united journalists’ association.”
In Paris, RSF noted how Norway had topped the Index for the seventh year running.
“But – unusually – a non-Nordic country is ranked second, namely Ireland (up 4 places at 2nd), ahead of Denmark (down 1 place at 3rd),” said the report.
The Netherlands had risen 22 places to 6th – “recovering the position it had in 2021, before [investigative crime reporter] Peter R. de Vries was murdered.”
Bottom of the scale
At the bottom of the scale, China – “the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and exporters of propaganda” – had dropped four places to 179th, just ahead of North Korea, unsurprisingly bottom at 180th.
According to Christophe Deloire, RSF’s secretary-general, “The World Press Freedom Index shows enormous volatility in situations, with major rises and falls and unprecedented changes, such as Brazil’s 18-place rise and Senegal’s 31-place fall.
“This instability is the result of increased aggressiveness on the part of the authorities in many countries and growing animosity towards journalists on social media and in the physical world.”
He also blamed the volatility on the “growth in the fake content industry, which produces and distributes disinformation and provides the tools for manufacturing it”.
Tahiti's president-to-be Moetai Brotherson . . . ensuring the transition to a younger Tavini Huira'atira generation to run the territory. Image: Polynésie 1ère TV screenshot APR
SPECIAL REPORT: By Ena Manuireva
Mā’ohi Nui’s blue wave of the pro-independence Tavini Huir’atira has won its bet — to be back in the helm of the country alone with this convincing victory.
With such a decisive result, the 57 parliamentary seats in the Territorial Assembly will be distributed as follow: 38 seats (including the majority premium of 19 seats) will be allocated to Oscar Temaru’s Tavini while the autonomist alliance of Tapura-Amuitahira’a will collect 16 seats and the last 3 seats go to A here ia Porinetia.
The second and final round had a participation of nearly 70 percent, higher than the 2018 elections which was around 67 percent. Tavini Huira’atira led its closest challenger by more than 8000 votes in the provisional results.
This win is a political tour de force with noticeable achievements that need to be mentioned.
Firstly, the Tavini Huira’atira has run alone in a voting system intentionally designed for an autonomist victory, and even the last-minute alliance between sworn enemies — the outgoing President Édouard Fritch and former President Gaston Flosse did not sway the electorate this time.
This comfortable majority of 38 seats will put an end to the political “nomadism” that saw previous parliamentarians cross the floor to join the opposition, triggering endless votes of no confidence.
This was the case in 2004 when the Tavini Huira’atira was in power with a coalition partner.
Opposition scaremongering
Secondly, Tavini Huira’atira has communicated during its campaign that the binary political argument instigated by the main opposing party that independence equals poverty while autonomy means more finance from France is pure scaremongering.
By staying away from that argument, Tavini Huira’atira was able to concentrate on its main message — to give back to the Mā’ohi people ownership of their land and the natural resources.
Thirdly, Tavini Huira’atira has well understood that this election was about coming first, whether by 1 vote or 1000 votes and organising relentless electoral campaigns throughout Mā’ohi Nui has paid dividends.
How the French Polynesian elections played out in the second and final round yesterday with a commanding win for Oscar Temaru’s pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira. Image: Polynésie 1ère TV screenshot APR
Once more Oscar Temaru, despite his age (78), has spearheaded those political meetings and rallies like he did during those antinuclear protests some 50 years ago.
Along with those political engagements, putting Moetai Brotherson forward as the new president has ensured the transition to a younger generation to run the country, but most of all a political figure with no condemnation, a quality upon which the Tavini has run its campaign.
In his final speech from his town hall of Faa’a, Oscar Temaru thanked all the trusted constituents who have shown their support for the past 50 years.
He also said that the good old days were over, signaling to the French administration that the dialogue would be under new terms as equal partners.
Many non-voters
There were more than 210,000 registered voters but only 144,000 actual votes which still shows a high rate of the population did not vote.
Le grand perdant de cette élection est donc le Tapura. Après presque deux mandats, Edouard Fritch retrouvera les bancs de l’Assemblée de la Polynésie. Le groupe est réduit de plus de la moitié. La stratégie de réconciliation avec Gaston… Tahiti Polynesie https://t.co/q4s14GilkMpic.twitter.com/2RCcNvAfox
As expected, a dejected Tapura-Amuitahira’a party and an ex-president-to-be Édouard Fritch said that this defeat was the price that the autonomist platform was paying for not being united and de facto handing the victory to the independence party.
He acknowledged himself that his alliance with Flosse could have given him around 42 percent of the ballots, but in the end the strategy did not work and they only got 38.5 percent.
Fritch bitterly acknowledged that the population — who he insists are a majority of autonomists — would carry the image of an independent country because Tavini would be in power at the Territorial Assembly.
He said that the future of this country was not independence; it needed to remain with their trusted partner within the French Republic.
His disappointment is without doubt aimed at the other autonomist party of A Here ia Porinetia, which decided to run alone and rejected any alliance with Fritch and Flosse.
Opened the door
Tavini can thank the two leaders of A here ia Porinetia, Nicole Sanquer and Nuihau Laurey, for opening the door to victory and running the country.
The new challenges for Fritch and Flosse will be to rebuild the autonomist platform and be an opposition party that will defeat the independence party in the next elections because Mā’ohi Nui is not ready to be independent.
A mea culpa for unpopular measures and actions that the outgoing government had carried out, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, did not feature as reasons for this defeat.
On the contrary, Fritch doubled down, insisting that the independence party had “lied” to the people regarding their ultimate objective — “get rid of France”.
As for Édouard Fritch’s ally, Gaston Flosse, when interviewed regarding the autonomist defeat, he branded the soon-to-be president Moetai Brotherson “a liar” along with Oscar Temaru, and the next president of the Assembly Antony Geros.
The situation prompted the interviewer to cut short the interview.
The newly created and alternative autonomist platform, A here ia Porinetia, has acknowledged their voters totalled around 25,000 and they will have three representatives in the Territorial Assembly.
Constructive, watchful opposition
They want to be a constructive and watchful opposition that will hold the new local government accountable. Nuihau Laurey has rejected an offer made by Moetai Brotherson to work in his government.
French Overseas Minister Gerald Darmanin has congratulated Oscar Temaru and Moetai Brotherson for their victory and stressed that “the Polynesians have voted for change and the French government is acknowledging this democratic choice”.
Here are the likely next steps following this election:
May 1 is Labour Day in Ma’ohi Nui but the official results of the election will be presented in a round press by the representative of the High Commissioner that will spell out the names of those who will sit in the Assembly from all three parties.
On the May 11 all the Assembly representatives will take their seats as members of Parliament. They will first elect a new president of the Territorial Assembly who is most likely to be Antony Geros, the mayor of Paea, a district that voted overwhelmingly blue.
The autonomist party might present a candidate from their ranks to stand against Antony Geros but this is very unlikely to happen as the opposition party do not have the numbers.
Following the election of the Assembly president (Speaker in the Westminster system), the next most important election to take place will be that of the new President of the territory.
Good for democracy
In this presidential election, Édouard Fritch will likely present himself as the candidate to stand against Moetai Brotherson as it is good for democracy and decorum to have two opposing candidates.
The new President will be elected and will already have formed his new government. He will present the new ministers of his local administration to the public.
It is customary to present the new cabinet either at the actual Presidential Palace in Tarahoi or wherever the new president decides to take residence.
In 2004, Oscar Temaru refused to take residence in the Presidential Palace which he described as an “opulent house made for a dictator” and it was not the house of the people.
Moetai Brotherson has already given some names for his new government and is keen to keep the equality of gender parity but hinted at more women. He also mentioned being interested in taking on the Ministry of New Technologies.
Other likely posts:
Eliane Tevahitua will be Vice-President and who could inherit the Culture and Heritage ministry;
Vannina Ateo, who was general secretary for Tavini, will inherit the Civil Service ministry;
Rony Teriipaia, an academic and expert in the Tahitian language, will be Education Minister; and
Jordy Chan, who has an engineering background, will be Minister for Big Works and Equipment.
A lot of work awaits this new administration, but the Tavini team seems ready to run the country alone.
Ena Manuireva is an Aotearoa New Zealand-based Tahitian doctoral candidate at Auckland University of Technology and a commentator on French politics in Ma’ohi Nui and the Pacific. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report.
A fragment of the 1840 Tiriti o Waitangi . . . the Waitangi Tribunal was originally established as a commission of inquiry in 1975, given the power only to make recommendations to government. And so it remains. Image: The Conversation
ANALYSIS: By Michael Belgrave
Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent claim that Aotearoa New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has veto powers over Parliament was met with surprise in New Zealand, especially by the members of the tribunal itself.
That’s because it is just plain wrong.
As the debate around the Voice to Parliament ramps up, we can probably expect similar claims to be made ahead of this year’s referendum. But the issue is so important to Australia’s future that such misinformation should not go unchallenged.
From an Australian perspective, New Zealand may appear ahead of the game in recognising Indigenous voices constitutionally. But that has certainly not extended to granting a parliamentary power of veto to Māori.
The Waitangi Tribunal was originally established as a commission of inquiry in 1975, given the power only to make recommendations to government. And so it remains. The Crown alone appoints tribunal members and many are non-Māori.
As with all commissions of inquiry, it is up to the government of the day to make a political decision about whether or not to implement those recommendations.
Country Liberal Party’s Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price . . . her recent claim that New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has veto powers over Parliament is “just plain wrong”. Image: Senator Price’s FB
Deceptive and wrong Price’s claim echoed a February article and paper published by the Institute of Public Affairs, aimed at influencing the Voice referendum. Titled “The New Zealand Māori voice to Parliament and what we can expect from Australia”, it was written by the director of the institute’s legal rights program, John Storey.
The paper makes a number of assertions: the Waitangi Tribunal has a veto over the New Zealand parliament’s power to pass certain legislation; the Waitangi Tribunal was established to hear land claims but its brief has expanded to include all aspects of public policy; and the Waitangi Tribunal “shows the Voice will create new Indigenous rights”.
The last of the statements is deceptive and the others are completely wrong. The Waitangi Tribunal’s jurisdiction was largely set in stone by the New Zealand parliament in 1975 when it was established.
Far from investigating land claims, it initially wasn’t able to examine any claims dating from before 1975. Parliament changed the tribunal’s jurisdiction in 1985, giving it retrospective powers back to 1840 (when the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed).
The tribunal then started hearing land claims. But in its first decade, it focused on fisheries, planning issues, the loss of Māori language, government decisions being made at the time and general issues of public policy.
Honouring the Treaty: New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins at the 2023 Waitangi Day commemorations. Image: Getty Images
Historic grievances Over the past 38 years, the tribunal has focused on what are called “historical Treaty claims”, covering the period 1840 to 1992. In 1992 a major settlement of fishing claims began an era of negotiation and settlement of these claims, quite separate from the tribunal itself.
With the majority of significant historic claims now settled or in negotiation, that aspect of the tribunal’s work is coming to an end. It has returned to hearing claims about social issues and other more contemporary issues.
Far from expanding its jurisdiction, the tribunal’s powers have been steadily reduced in recent decades. In 1993, it lost the power to make recommendations involving private land — that is, land not owned by the Crown.
In 2008, it lost the power to investigate new historical claims, as the government looked to close off new claims that could undermine current settlements.
There is one area where the tribunal was given the power to force the Crown to return land. The 1984-1990 Labour government set a policy to rid itself of what were seen as surplus Crown assets.
A deal was struck between Māori claimants and the Crown to allow the tribunal to make binding recommendations to return land in very special cases.
This compromise was not created by the tribunal but through ambiguity in legislation, which was resolved in favour of Māori claimants in the Court of Appeal. The ability to return land has almost never been used and is being progressively repealed across the country as Treaty settlements are implemented in legislation.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price made the erroneous comments while appearing at a debate on the Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia. https://t.co/XGBfteJDaM
Wide political support Storey quotes a number of tribunal reports, which make findings about the Crown’s responsibilities, as if these findings are binding on the Crown or even on Parliament. This is not the case. The Waitangi Tribunal investigates claims that the Crown has acted contrary to the “principles of the Treaty”.
The Waitangi Tribunal establishes what those principles are, but they are binding on neither the courts nor Parliament. Having made findings, the tribunal makes recommendations — not to Parliament, as Storey suggests, but to ministers of the Crown.
Some recommendations are implemented, others are not.
Where there is a dispute between the Crown and Māori, the tribunal has often recommended negotiation rather than make specific recommendations for redress.
Storey has elsewhere referred to the tribunal as a “so-called advisory, now binding, Māori Voice to Parliament” that has “decreed” certain things. In the longer paper he does admit the “tribunal cannot dictate the exact form any redress offered by government must take”.
But he then falls back on the notion of a “moral veto” — that its status is so elevated that parliament is forced, however reluctantly, to do its bidding.
Yet not only does the Crown ignore tribunal recommendations as it chooses, it refuses even to be bound by the tribunal’s expert findings on history in negotiating settlements.
The Waitangi Tribunal will remain a permanent commission of inquiry because there is wide political support for its work. Nor can be it held solely responsible for increasing Māori assertiveness or political engagement with government, even if this was in any way a bad thing.
A larger social shift has taken place in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past few decades. No fiat from the Waitangi Tribunal has eliminated the cultural misappropriation of Māori faces and imagery — something Storey warns could mean “tea towels with a depiction of Uluru/Ayers Rock, or boomerang fridge magnets, would become problematic”.
The Waitangi Tribunal has often done no more than make Māori histories, Māori perspectives and Māori values accessible to a non-Māori majority. It has certainly had no power to control where debates on Indigenous issues fall.
A montage from Australian human rights advocate and author Jim Aubrey's website stressing the hypocrisy of Canberra's foreign policy. Image: Screenshot CP
Café Pacific
An author and human rights advocate for West Papuan self-determination today sent an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the federal parliament calling for act of “decency” to correct years of alleged failure in foreign policy.
Jim Aubrey, author of the 1998 book Free East Timor and editor of a pro-independence for West Papua website, claimed in his statement that Australia had supported “impunity for Indonesia’s litany of every universally known classification for crimes against humanity”.
Aubrey called on Canberra to press the United Nations to “rectify breaches” over West Papuan decolonisation.
He also called for a Royal Commission to “investigate the roles of consecutive Australian governments as accessories to Indonesia’s unlawful military occupation and annexation of West Papua” and Indonesia’s “six decades of crimes against humanity”.
Aubrey claimed there were deliberate acts of geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation “while a slaughterhouse of decades of crimes against humanity in both West Papua and East Timor were international public knowledge”.
Author and human rights advocate Jim Aubrey . . . a scathing condemnation of the Australian government over West Papua policy. Image: Jim Aubrey’s website
The consensus vote for Indonesian rule by 1250 handpicked Papuan elders purportedly under UN supervision has been challenged ever since by both peaceful Papuan activists and a war of liberation fought by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB-OPM) as not a genuine expression of self-determination by the Indigenous Papuans.
Aubrey’s open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the federal parliamentarians – attached to an image of two child victims of an atrocity in West Papua — states:
Dear Prime Minister and Parliament,
I cannot confirm for you if these young children are sleeping in exhaustion or sleeping in eternal peace after falling prey to your mates in Indonesia’s defence and security forces.
What I can confirm is that you, with your multiple predecessors, are responsible for failing in decency as a human being … the type of decency that is effortlessly evident in people who do not forsake principle for geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation of a vulnerable people who have the same right to freedom and nation-state sovereignty that we have.
What I can confirm is that your, and your predecessors, multiple acts of dissembling and wholesale lies over six decades of foreign policy treachery and deceit are the reason the average citizen despises politicians. Who can blame them – certainly not I!
What I can confirm is that one West Papuan warrior in their war of liberation has an understanding of elemental and existential values and spiritual belief and ancestral land that is genuine — whereby yours … all of yours, the poison of your can of worms … your delusional superiority … your identity crisis of ambitious self-importance … your inability to support the victims of Indonesia’s illegitimate landgrab and the subsequent six decades of multiple crimes against humanity … must be seen as a testimony of cowardice and deceit and treachery in governance that is anathema to what is stated every year on April 25 to be the noble Anzac tradition.
What I can confirm is that West Papua’s war of liberation will have the same conclusion as East Timor’s war of liberation and that you will be held accountable for upholding a foreign policy that protected Indonesia’s slaughterhouse in West Papua and that this protection provided an environment of impunity for Indonesia’s litany of every universally known classification for crimes against humanity … and that this heinous failure in leadership and duty of care is why Indonesia has got away with it, until now.
What I can confirm is that you and your predecessors have been wilful accessories to these crimes against humanity … wilful accessories to infanticide … by slaughter or by impoverishment where West Papua’s spectacular natural resources and mineral reserves have been plundered by the criminal occupiers and their collaborating governments – ours and many others.
This message is not to simply admonish you. It is to advise you that there are several actions you can undertake before you are overtaken by the events of liberation in West Papua that you and your predecessors have wilfully denied and even sabotaged. We do not need another pathetic fool so besotted with a mass murderer that he embraced him as his long-lost father (Keating to Suharto).
Of course, you can continue to be advised by DFAT’s morally and ethically bankrupt Indonesia desk, or you can straighten your spine and cross the Rubicon with the following meaningful measures:
Call upon the United Nations to rectify the many breaches of the UN Charter in regard to West Papua’s decolonisation process. This includes tabling whatever is required at the United Nations General Assembly to implement this process. There are several distinguished West Papuans and other distinguished academics who can advise you on this.
Reject out-of-hand any Indonesian claim to the western half of the island of New Guinea.
Declare Indonesia’s military occupation and annexation of West Papua unlawful.
Recognise West Papua’s nation-state sovereignty as declared by declaration of independence on 1st July, 1971, at the Victoria Headquarters in Jayapura where the OPM raised the Morning Star flag and unilaterally proclaimed West Papua as an independent democratic republic.
Suspend all bilateral defence and trade agreements with Indonesia until Indonesia has left West Papua and has coughed up a financial compensation package for the victims of its six decades of crimes against humanity and its unlawful military occupation and annexation of West Papua, and for the destruction and devastation of West Papua’s once pristine environment, and for the theft of the mineral and forestry and agricultural resources. (NOTE: A similar financial compensation package should be forthcoming from the Australian Government, and every armaments exporter to Indonesia, and every multinational corporation that put plunder before principle.)
Send a letter to your Indonesian counterpart stating that unless all the above measures are accepted by Indonesia, you will expel the Indonesian ambassador and close all Indonesian embassies and consulates within the Commonwealth of Australia.
Initiate a Royal Commission to investigate the roles of consecutive Australian governments as accessories to Indonesia’s unlawful military occupation and annexation of West Papua and as accessories to Indonesia’s six decades of crimes against humanity in West Papua.
Initiate a Royal Commission to investigate measures to complete the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia i.e., by providing chapters on governance of transparency and accountability and judicial measures where the expectations of honesty and integrity are befouled with deliberate acts of geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation while a slaughterhouse of decades of crimes against humanity in both West Papua and East Timor were international public knowledge. (I am happy to act in an advisory capacity for these “missing chapters” to the constitution.) (NOTE: The federal government workplace should have the same workplace standards of employment that exists across every other workplace in our so-called democracy. It should be remembered that you are employed by the Australian people and that the Australian people, as your employers, want transparency and accountability in governance.
Clean sweep all positions within DFAT that have contributed to the legally challengeable advice of protecting Indonesia’s criminal military occupation and annexation of West Papua.
Establish parliamentary governance based on constitutional accountability i.e., a constitution that will never allow the protection of crimes against humanity for geopolitical convenience and economic exploitation.
Prime Minister, I am sure I have missed some of the prerequisite mechanics for democratic and ethical governance, and for all matters on West Papua. Please don’t kid yourself that you can sidestep your political party’s perpetual failure on West Papua.
Innocent civilians, including children, are victims of Indonesia’s air and ground combat operations, systemic racism and apartheid, every week. Six decades of infanticide!
West Papua’s war of liberation is one of the longest ongoing wars of liberation since the end of the Second World War, a war where the Papuan people were our reliable and courageous allies. It is also, without any exaggeration, a miscarriage of justice unlike any other. High time to set things right and to be on the side of truth and justice.
Yours sincerely, Jim Aubrey
‘Callous betrayal’ of West Papuans
The TPNPB-OPM statement condemning Australia and New Zealand. Image: Screenshot APR
Later today, the TPNPB-OPM issued a statement supporting author Jim Aubrey’s call for a Royal Commission into Australian policy over West Papua and the consecutive Australian government’s alleged roles in Indonesia’s illegal military occupation and annexation of the region.
OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak said the West Papuan people had suffered “callous betrayal and abandonment” by the Australian government and he also criticised New Zealand.
“If somebody had told me our Second World War allies, Australia and New Zealand, would treat us as collateral damage to Canberra and Wellington’s criminal defence and trade collaboration with Indonesia to steal and plunder my country, and to avert their gaze to the rivers of our blood and guts, I would have found this impossible to believe.
“Unfortunately, the Australian and New Zealand governments are well versed in their own appalling history of crimes against indigenous First Nations people.”
Jim Aubrey is the editor-author of Free East Timor: Australia’s Culpability in East Timor’s Genocide (Random House, 1998). He campaigned in person on East Timor, West Papua, and Tibet in Washington, DC, in 1998 and 2003, as well as touring with an international photographic exhibition displaying the atrocities in East Timor in 1998. This exhibition was endorsed by the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
Part of the Fredstidningen PAX cover showing the alleged "spy" equipment. Image: Screenshot APR
By David Robie
When I first encountered Owen Wilkes it was at a range of 17,000 kilometres — the distance between Auckland, Aotearoa, and Stockholm, Sweden. He was already something of an extraordinary and increasingly well-known, although humble, celebrity in the final decade of the Cold War. As a researcher for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Owen had taken on the Scandinavian security establishment and challenged and embarrassed it in a quiet and unassuming way for a second time (after an earlier skirmish in Norway), and the powers that be were not going to let him get away with it.
The PAX edition cover, February 1982.
My attention was drawn to Owen Wilkes while I was back in Auckland freelancing after working for three years in Paris with the French news agency Agence France-Presse as an editor and correspondent. Before that I had spent several years editing newspapers and reporting on the African continent, mainly in Kenya and South Africa. In that time I had stumbled across an edition of the FredstidningenPAX, a Swedish magazine featuring sustainable peace and disarmament, in February 1982, which carried the intriguing headline ‘Spionutrustningen’ — ‘Spy gear’.(1)
It was a cover story devoted to the trials of Owen Wilkes. The cover illustration depicted the alleged ‘spy equipment’ belonging to Owen — a trusty bicycle, kitbag, small camera and pocket binoculars.
I contacted Owen to find out more about the back story and these enquiries led to an article and years of correspondence and debate, plus collaboration on two books — Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific (1989)(2) and Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific (1992)(3). We formed a long friendship that stretched to his final years in Kāwhia and his ‘retirement’ from the peace movement and ‘rebirth’ as an archaeologist and occasional community coastal tour guide.
My 1982 New Zealand Times account of the Swedish witch hunt against Owen opened with him questioning the supposed Swedish neutrality of the Cold War era:(4)
Bicycle Snoop Riles the Baltic Is Sweden breaching its long tradition of neutrality and secretly cooperating with Nato countries? Yes, believes controversial peace researcher Owen Wilkes.
If true, disclosure that the Swedish military really is cooperating with Western nations would be politically disastrous in Sweden. And Wilkes may have touched a panic button by his ‘snooping’ on the Swedish defence communications system.
‘The reason why I got into trouble on this case is simply that Sweden doesn’t want the public discussing the details of military policy the way it is happening in other countries, like Britain and West Germany,’ he says.
Wilkes, 41, a research worker with the highly reputable Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and an acknowledged expert on defence communications systems, is now out on bail awaiting the 27 April 1982 verdict on his appeal against a six-month prison sentence for allegedly endangering Swedish security by gathering information.
An important new witness for the defence will be Professor Gunnar Myrdal, winner of the 1974 Nobel Economics Prize, and Wilkes has completed his SIPRI duties to concentrate on gathering additional evidence. Both Wilkes and his lawyer, civil rights campaigner Hans-Goran Franck, are confident he will be acquitted in the traumatic affair which has been branded by Sweden’s peace fraternity and leading newspapers as a witchhunt.
‘A witchhunt and a legal disgrace,’ says the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, Sweden’s umbrella peace movement. It has called for a parliamentary inquiry.
In a stinging editorial headlined ‘Witchhunt’, the daily newspaper Aftonbladet declared the case had become out of all proportion and suggested Sweden’s defence was ‘run by fools’.
‘It is an over-exaggeration to assume a person on a routine cycle holiday in one of Sweden’s most visited areas, using for the most part only his eyes, can create an equal amount of damage as a renowned spy who sells military secrets,’ the paper said.
New Zealand peace movement campaigners have also reacted strongly. Wilkes has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Canterbury University sociology professor W E Wilmott in recognition of his 18 years of ‘selfless research on issues related to peace and war.’ And a national petition challenging the Swedish authorities on their handling of the case has been widely circulated.
Christchurch campaigner Larry Ross, chairman of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, has lambasted the case as a ‘total nonsense verdict’ and he is among many Australians, Americans and New Zealanders who have protested to Stockholm. ‘The Swedish government is covering itself in embarrassment,’ he says. ‘Owen Wilkes is not a spy.’
Petition organiser Christine Dann, Wellington researcher for the Clerical Workers Association and a member of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), says she has strong feelings for a fellow researcher in trouble. ‘Owen is a model of how effective you can be as a thorough researcher,’ she says. Dann believes Wilkes has been made a scapegoat amid crucial changes in Swedish politics.
Controversy has long been a fact of life for Wilkes. He believes the activities of the military in any country must be open to scrutiny. But his experiences in Scandinavia — two breach of security convictions in less than a year — have been sobering, and he plans to return to New Zealand as soon as possible…
Until 1981, he was unknown to most Scandinavians. But by the end of the year his bearded face was as familiar to Swedes as tennis ace Björn Borg. In May 1981, Wilkes travelled from Sweden to Oslo for the so-called ‘rabbit trial’, named after the book Onkel Sams kaniner (Uncle Sam’s Rabbits: Technical Intelligence in Norway) about US-funded technical intelligence stations in Norway.(5) Both Wilkes and Norwegian peace researcher Nils Petter Gleditsch, authors of the book, were convicted, given a six-month suspended sentence and fined 10,000 crowns ($2200) each for compiling and publishing information that Norwegian military authorities wanted kept secret.
They maintained that their work was based entirely on open sources, but the court held that the combination of open sources could be detrimental to national security.
They appealed but the Norwegian Supreme Court upheld the verdict in March 1982. Supporters began raising funds to pay the fines. Since 1978, Wilkes has been working with SIPRI, probably the most reputable peace research institute in the world. Its publications are regarded as impartial and accurate, and its research is carried out from ‘open’ sources — that is, information available to the public.
His job at SIPRI? ‘My work concerns a project on foreign military bases — for example, United States bases on foreign territory, which includes New Zealand, Soviet bases abroad, French bases in Africa, and so on. Sweden, a militarily non-aligned country, has no foreign bases on its territory.’ But it wasn’t this work that got Wilkes into hot water with the Swedish security authorities. In the northern summer, in June 1981, he went on a ten-day cycling tour of Gotland and Öland, historic Swedish islands off the southeast coast in the Baltic.
‘Everybody had been telling me that Gotland was extraordinarily beautiful and that I must go and see it. So I did,’ he recalls.
While planning for the trip, he and his companion noted that the northern part of Gotland was a defence area, closed to all foreigners.
When they cycled onto Gotland, Wilkes observed antennae belonging to the Swedish defence system outside the closed area. Wilkes made notes, drew sketches and took four poor photographs — from public roads where there were no signs banning photography and with a cheap, short focal length camera.
The photographs showed no detail and he used pocket binoculars for making his notes. But Wilkes broke a cardinal SIPRI rule: No field work. Six weeks after his cycling holiday, on 17 August 1981, he was arrested. Wilkes believes SÄPO, Sweden’s security police had tapped his telephone and heard him discuss ‘secret’ documents from Denmark with a Washington colleague. (The documents had actually been declassified and released to the public.)
One August weekend, while Wilkes was spending a brief holiday in Finland, SÄPO broke into his office at SIPRI. On the Monday, August 17, security police seized him.
‘I had just come off the ferry from Finland that morning and came into town on a bus,’ he says. ‘A couple of minutes after I got off the bus this very ordinary car drove up beside me, stopped and a couple of guys jumped out. ‘It was a bit melodramatic — in the best Hollywood style. But it’s okay when you’ve got a clear conscience.’
At SÄPO headquarters, Wilkes was stripped, searched and interrogated on and off for four days. SÄPO and Sweden’s chief prosecutor, K G Svensson, publicly branded Wilkes as a ‘spy’, claiming he had been seen in suspicious circumstances close to Swedish defence installations.
Many newspapers similarly branded Wilkes. Yet when the charge of suspected espionage was later dropped and substituted by ‘gross unauthorised access to secret information’, some papers hardly bothered to print the news.
Aftonbladet was one newspaper that did, rebuking SÄPO for ‘another mistake’ following a case in which a man was jailed for six months before all charges were dropped.
Wilkes was sentenced on 22 January 1982 to six months’ jail after a trial partially conducted in secret. His lawyer, Hans-Göran Franck, says the case raises several important civil rights issues.
‘It’s mainly a question of how far can a peace researcher go and how much is he/she permitted to make field research,’ he says.
‘But another problem is the secrecy. There is too much secrecy throughout the world on the problem of military questions as well as armaments.’
Swedish authorities have been reluctant to be drawn on the significance of the case.
One aspect of the so-called ‘Wilkes affair’ which has particularly bothered Wilkes himself is the apparent undermining of the reputation of SIPRI. In fact, some of his supporters believe SÄPO was tipped off that Wilkes allegedly worked for an East German power by someone who wanted to ruin SIPRI’s reputation, or damage Wilkes’ SIPRI project.
Wilkes admits he could have happily done without the controversy. As soon as Wilkes is cleared — or serves his sentence — it will be back to a quiet life in New Zealand, probably on the West Coast doing a spot of part-time peace research again.
And what about the Nobel Peace Prize nomination — does he think he has a chance?
‘The Swedish papers made quite a thing of it. And while it hasn’t been taken too seriously, it certainly hasn’t been treated as any kind of joke.’
Research for this article, written from a distance, put me in touch with Owen and on track for a long friendship and several publication collaborations. However, it wasn’t until long after I had actually met Owen and had later conversations with him at his Kāwhia bach in the 2000s, when he seemed to have given up on the peace movement, that the full depth of this farcical witchhunt by the Scandinavian intelligence establishments became so much
clearer. Thanks to his Uncle Sam’s Rabbits co-author and friend, Nils Petter Gleditsch, I was able to reference Owen’s detailed notes and timeline in the aftermath. In an 11-page typescript by Owen entitled ‘Sweden’s roadside secrets’, dated March 1982,(6) which was an ‘account of the events and circumstances surrounding my arrest and trial’, he began with characteristic meticulous attention to detail:
In August 1981, I was arrested on a charge of espionage by the Swedish Security Police. This charge was quickly dropped but five months later I was convicted on a charge of ‘gross unauthorised dealing in secret information’ and sentenced to six months in jail. The allegedly secret information had been casually collected during the course of a 10-day cycle tour, and consisted of five small pages of notes about radar and other antennas, all observed from public roads.(7)
Peacemonger . . . the first full-length account of peace researcher Owen Wilkes’ life and work. Image: Raekaihau Press
The statement continued from the moment of his arrest on 17 August 1981:
I was arrested by SÄPO, the Swedish Security Police, and held in solitary confinement for four and a half days while under interrogation. The charge was espionage, that is, collecting information on behalf of a foreign power. In the course of my interrogation I was questioned about all my travels in Sweden, my contacts with foreign embassies, and my research project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Meanwhile, SÄPO spent three days ransacking my research files and interrogating several of my friends and colleagues. It soon became obvious that I was not a spy and I was released. A charge of ‘gross unauthorised dealing in secret information’ was substituted for that of espionage.(8)
What had he really done that caused all the fuss?
In the course of my tour of Gotland I began to notice that there were also a number of radar and other military electronic installations. Such installations were a subject of some interest to me because I had earlier written an article about the NATO air defence radar system called NADGE. [This] consists of a relatively limited number of large powerful radars often prominently located on mountain tops, in a chain stretching through the NATO lands from northern Norway to eastern Turkey. I had criticised this system because the radars were so powerful that some of them penetrated far into Warsaw Pact airspace and hence were useful for aggressive purposes; because the radars were so few and so prominent they were very vulnerable and hence not reliable for defence purposes. On the basis of what I had read I suggested that the equivalent Swedish system, called STRIL, was much better, consisting of numerous small radars of limited range. It was useless for aggression but well suited to defence. My description of STRIL had been criticised by a Swedish researcher, who claimed that STRIL had just the same disadvantages as NADGE.
What I began to notice in the course of my holiday confirmed my thesis: I could see with my own eyes that STRIL did include small and closely spaced radars. After covering a distance of some 70 km I had seen three such radars. Had this been NATO territory there would have been only one radar for the whole island. On the first day of my holiday I began to take notes. Since I was unsure what was and what was not part of STRIL, I made notes about every antenna I could remember having seen, and I continued making notes for the remainder of the trip. The notes filled five small notebook pages (A5) and totalled 363 words, describing 13 objects which I was later to be prosecuted for looking at (i.e. 28 words per object). I observed only such antennas as happened to be visible along our route, chosen on the basis of the tourist attractions described in the guidebook. We never left the public roads to go closer to any of these installations, although it would not have been illegal to have done so. Towards the end of the holiday I took four photographs of three of the installations with a small, cheap camera. The photographs showed no technical details, but merely the general appearance of the installations and how relatively inconspicuous they were in the landscape.(9)
About the trial, which began on 8 December 1981 in the Stockholm City Court (Tingsrätt), continuing from Owen’s notes:
[It] began in open session with the Prosecutor describing at some length how I had exposed military installations in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Norway and Denmark. He omitted to mention that what I had exposed in all these countries were foreign military installations. These were not related to the defence of the host countries mentioned; rather they served the military objectives of the USA. He then described at length my investigation of a Swedish electronic spying installation at Lövön, although according to the Prosecutor this was not secret and I was not being prosecuted for looking at it.
All the proceedings which dealt with the objects I was being prosecuted for looking at were held in closed, secret court sessions. All details about the 15 locations were kept secret. This served to give journalists and the general public the impression that the observations for which I was being prosecuted must have been more detailed than those I had made at Lövön, whereas in fact the reverse was true.
Two military witnesses were heard in closed session. An army major showed my field notes and the four photographs and described the 15 places I was alleged to have observed. The notes and photographs constituted the only evidence of my activities. Apparently SÄPO had not followed us on our holiday.
Evidence about the potential harm I had caused Swedish security was given by Admiral Schuback, second-in-command in the Swedish military hierarchy. He described how the sites I had looked at were involved in the ‘total defence’ of Sweden. He described how the kind of information which I collected, should it come into the hands of a foreign power, could be used to attack Sweden. If there had been any evidence that a foreign power had received this information, then the Defence Command would have to spend many million Swedish crowns (the actual figure is secret) on total replacement of the radars concerned.(10)
Owen’s defence case rested on the simplicity and low-key basis of his bicycle trip, whose route was planned in advance from a six-day ‘Cycle Package No 3’ of the Swedish Touring Association. He also denied that he had ‘formed a penetrating picture’. Since his arrest, he had discovered that a much more ‘penetrating’ picture could be obtained by reading the official and non-secret publications Flygvapennytt (Air Force News) and Marinnytt (Navy News).
I was quite ready to admit that I had observed 13 of the 15 sites. However, I denied having observed a particular depot, the location of which was not even revealed to the court. My field notes included only the general observation that there were many military depots on Gotland. I also denied having observed an important and secret site. My field notes had been misinterpreted to make it seem like I had seen this place, and the major gave false information about the antennas located at another site to make it seem that my field notes referred to the secret place. Because of the secrecy of the trial I cannot explain this more specifically…
All the other 12 sites could in no way be thought of as secret. All were easily visible from main roads or tourist routes, and some were so high that they could be seen from a distance of 10 kilometres. While preparing for the trial I found that eight of the 13 installations were marked on publicly available maps, usually as ‘telemasts’. At six sites the masts were so high that they are marked on aeronautical charts as navigation hazards, with their heights marked accurate to within one foot. This information is of far greater precision that I could have gathered on my trip. (These maps are published on behalf of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, of which the Soviet Union is a member). At least five of the sites have masts which are so prominent that they are shown in nautical charts as bearing red lights which can be used as landmarks by ships at sea. They are even marked on Soviet nautical charts.(11)
Owen wrote that they were obviously not ‘secret’ installations and he ridiculed the military view that they were.
Since all these installations were all easily visible and obviously not secret I could hardly ‘know’ they were secret when I observed them, as the prosecution alleged. They certainly did not look secret. Some were painted in distinctly military colours, one was painted in alternating red and white to make it more visible. None were located in such a way as to reduce their visibility or hide their function. My interpretation of the word ‘secret’ is along the lines of the definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary: ‘kept private, not made known or exposed to view.’ However, the military view, as expressed in the court, is that anything they wish to be secret is secret by definition even if it is visible to passers-by, to reconnaissance satellites, to people who use topographic maps, and so on. At only one place did I come close enough to read a sign which said: ‘Photography, etc … is forbidden’, and here I took no photographs, although I did make notes and a sketch later.
According to the prosecution evidence seven of the sites had no such signs, and six of them were not enclosed by any kind of fence. If the military authorities build antennas on hilltops along public roads, can they really expect me to ride past without looking at them? It is especially hard to ignore something which might help to confirm a theory which has been under criticism.
Neither the technology nor the function of these installations were secret. All the equipment I saw is either illustrated and described in publications such as
Flygvapennytt and Jane’s Weapons Systems or is of an easily recognised common type – such as microwave dishes for radio relay. Flygvapennytt pictures show more detail about the radars than I could observe in the field, and give far more detail than any photograph which I took.(12)
Owen wrote these notes when he was preparing for an appeal after being convicted on 22 January 1982 with a 17-page verdict and a three-page ‘secret appendix’ that largely accepted the prosecution ‘evidence’ and ignored all evidence showing that the information gathered was not secret. He was sentenced to six months’ jail followed by permanent deportation. Only the ‘jail sentence was significant to me’ as he was returning to New Zealand anyway and his SIPRI contract had expired at the end of 1981. The appeal case was scheduled to begin on 27 April 1982 — to be ‘reheard in its entirety’ in the
Stockholm Court of Appeal (Svea Hovrätt).
He noted that at the time he was being held in Sweden against his will and without income, residence permit or work permit. ‘The police hold my passport, I can travel outside Stockholm only with the permission of the prosecutor, and I must report to the police once a week. Although I have no income, I am expected to pay all the costs of my defence apart from those of my lawyer who is paid by the state. If I cannot pay the travel expenses of my witnesses, for example, then I must do without them.’(13)
At the conclusion of the appeal hearing, Owen’s original six-month jail sentence was suspended and he was ordered to leave Sweden and not return for 10 years. Although pleased about not actually being jailed, Owen was still unhappy with the ‘guilty’ verdict and initially wanted to take the appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court. ‘It’s very rarely that appeals are accepted by the Supreme Court but, according to my lawyer, there are strong grounds for this case. It’s very unusual to deport someone for 10 years,’ he explained to the New Zealand Press Association correspondent in London.(14)
One of the Appeal Court senior judges said in a dissenting opinion that Owen should not be deported, but fined instead. ‘I’m pleased with the decision insofar as it’s moving in the right direction, but I’m dissatisfied with it in that they’re still saying the information I gathered was secret and a danger to Swedish security, which I deny.’(15) According to Owen, a Swedish magazine had sent a reporter over the same route he had cycled with his Swedish girlfriend in June 1981 and published pictures and information about the installations, but had not been prosecuted. Not long before the appeal hearing, about 70 people had travelled around the route taking pictures of the installations and police had told them
they were not doing anything wrong.
So why was there so much hysteria at the time in Sweden over the false allegations against Owen? In his case notes, Owen refers to trial by media and the ‘atrocious’ newspaper coverage of the entire affair. ‘On the first day after my arrest newspapers carried headlines such as “New Spy Seized”. There were no sub judice courtesies such as use of the words “accused” and “alleged”.
‘Newspapers reported, wrongly, that I had already been convicted for espionage in Norway, and they continued to call me a spy long after the espionage charge had officially been dropped. It was reported that I had been spying at several places that I have been to, in a car which was later traced to my ownership. I have no car, no driving licence, and do not drive.’(16)
Out of all the Swedish news media coverage, Owen wrote off the Stockholm conservative morning daily Svenska Dagbladet as ‘the worst’.(17) He admits that initially the newspaper concentrated its attacks on him personally, but that it ‘became apparent that this was just a build-up for a more general offensive against SIPRI.’ The daily had been ‘hostile to SIPRI’ long before it took an interest in Owen and his case. At first, Svenska Dagbladet ‘characterised me as wildly pro-Soviet, now it finds that SIPRI as a whole is pro-Soviet, and suggests that SIPRI is actually being controlled from Moscow.’ Owen concluded:
Basically, I believe that this whole affair is a product of the need of the prosecutor and the military to have a spy. This has been backed up by the desire of Svenska Dagbladet and the people it represents to destroy SIPRI, or at least tilt it decisively toward the West and destroy whatever objectivity there has been until now in its publications.(18)
In September 1982 Owen put the Swedish saga behind him and arrived back in New Zealand. Three weeks later he gave a public lecture at Auckland University, declaring a nuclear-free Pacific would help lower global tensions and slow the nuclear arms race. He told the Auckland Star that ‘most people are only aware of the French tests in the Pacific and do not realise that America and Russia carried out extensive nuclear missile testing there. It is these more accurate missiles that increase the threat of nuclear war.’(19)
Referring to the ‘arrest in Sweden for spying’, the Star’s reporter described
Owen characteristically:
Toting a knapsack bulging with books and papers, he has travelled from Dunedin, stopping to give talks on his ‘legal adventures’ in Sweden, his work with the Swedish International Peace Research Institute and the nuclear arms race. One of his main topics will be the implications of the new nuclear missiles and what New Zealanders can do to stop their development. New Zealanders must oppose the Black Birch astronomical telescope the United States Navy wants to install in the hills behind Blenheim.(20)
Owen himself explained: ‘It would be manned by civilians measuring the positions of the stars, which does not seem sinister, but the important thing is that the United States wants this data to improve the accuracy of the new nuclear missiles.’ Missiles such as the Trident and new laser weapons which vaporise enemy missiles would be even more accurate if guided by the stars. ‘That is why we must oppose Black Birch, not because it is a nuclear target, but because it is contributing to the accuracy and perfection of nuclear missiles.’(21)
Reporting for NZ Geographic magazine about the revival of the observatory at the turn of the century, after the Americans had handed over the installation, which had passed its use-by date, to Operation Deep Freeze in Christchurch during 1996, Louise Thomas wrote: ‘The observatory made detailed sky photographs and also collected very precise positional information on stars. Speculation was rife that the survey provided data for targeting tactical nuclear weapons — in short, that the observatory’s purpose was to set up a guidance system for Tomahawk missiles, thus tying New Zealand to the nuclear arms
race.’(22)
Owen revealed in that Auckland Star interview that he wouldn’t return to Sweden for the appeal against the questionable conviction for ‘endangering Sweden’s security’ and his sentence. ‘Basically, I have achieved what I wanted to in Sweden,’ he admitted. ‘Swedes can now cycle around the countryside with their eyes open.’(23)
Owen Wilkes investigates the Cook Islands submarine affair.
The next time that I wrote about Owen for the New Zealand Times (by then it was titled the Dominion Sunday Times, which even later became the Sunday Star-Times) was when I wrote about his claims that a mystery submarine sighted in Cook Islands waters during February 1986 was ‘on an American covert operation aimed at scuttling New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy — but it misfired’.(24) Owen had alerted me to his forthcoming publication in NZ Monthly Review about his accusations that the Cook Islands and NZ governments and the military were covering up the real identity of the submarine.(25) His account said the facts pointed to a special operations submarine deployed by the US Navy: ‘The entire submarine affair has all the hallmarks of a United States covert action. A covert action that went wrong.’
My article continued:
Among the spotters of the submarine’s conning tower was a Tahitian policeman who had done military service. He was out fishing with a Tahitian colleague about five kilometres offshore near Ngatangiia, southwest of Rarotonga, and they reported to the Cook Islands police [that] the submarine came to within 30 metres of them, almost bumping into their boat. They sketched a silhouette of the conning tower and gave a detailed description. Two RNZ Air Force Orions searched the area and identified the submarine with sonar buoys, but the identity was not made public. American and Soviet officials denied that the submarine belonged to either country more than a month after the sightings.
However, Wilkes cites a Cook Islands government source as saying Prime Minister Sir Thomas Davis’s office was advised by New Zealand the submarine was ‘probably American’. Opposition Leader Geoffrey Henry and rebel Democrat leader Vincent Ingram were both told the submarine was American.
Wilkes claimed Cook Islanders were supposed to sight the submarine, presume it to be Soviet and trigger off a Russian scare in New Zealand which could have dramatically influenced public submissions for New Zealand’s Defence Review.(26)
Owen wrote in his Monthly Review article:
The submarine had shown itself on February 17 and though it was reported in the Cook Islands News, nothing more happened and so the submarine showed itself again on February 21. What the United States did not allow for was that this time there was a New Zealand Orion in the islands. The Orion not only detected the submarine, which would have been fine from the United States viewpoint, and may have even been in the script, but also identified it correctly, which was definitely not in the script.(27)
In another article about the submarine affair, in the Canadian Ploughshares Monitor, headed ‘Russian Submarine: a scare in the South Pacific seems to backfire’, Owen detailed how the whole affair appeared to have ‘come unstuck’:
Whatever the New Zealand air force found, it was obviously embarrassing for them. The search was immediately called off and no further press statements were made … A ‘Soviet submarine’ scare just now in the South Pacific would have been useful from a US viewpoint. It would help panic New Zealanders into welcoming US nuclear warships back into their ports, and to undermine the establishment of a South Pacific nuclear-free zone under the treaty signed last August in Rarotonga.(28)
Over the next few years Owen and I collaborated a lot, with his expertise contributing to my books on nationalist struggles and environmental campaigns in the Pacific and a collection of essays on social and political change in the region. While preparing my book Blood on their Banner(29) on nationalist struggles, which incidentally was translated and published in Sweden (Wiken Books)(30) in advance of the English edition (Zed Books), Owen had lots of pithy background, reflections and insights. I am sure the Swedish edition of my book was published thanks to Owen’s connection and also through Bengt Danielsson, the Tahiti-based Swedish adventurer and researcher of Kon Tiki raft voyage fame(31) and longtime nuclear-free campaigner.(32)
Among Owen’s letters to me in our correspondence exchange was his assessment on why France wanted to retain its hold in the Pacific:
1. To preserve access to their nuclear test centre [in French Polynesia]. 2. To keep New Caledonia as one of their biggest remaining colonies (in the sense of a settlement of French people) — as a kind of jewel in the French imperial crown. (And for the nickel? But probably they know they will have little problem keeping control of the nickel even after independence — compare their access to uranium in Upper Volta [now Burkina Faso, where another coup took place in January 2022], phosphate in Mauritania etc. 3. To keep access to the world’s second-largest aggregate 200 mile economic zone (EEZ). This is a unique part of French foreign policy — no other nation so jealously guards its EEZ. Note the French Foreign Legion garrison on Matthew Island [the disputed Matthew and Hunter islands near Vanuatu]; Kerguelen, with its garrison, the biggest in the subantarctic (despite all the Latin American squabbling in their sector; the sinking of the Southern
Raider; their illegal occupation of islands in the Madagascar channel; and the Mayotte secession [it voted to remain a French department in 2011 in defiance of the rest of the Comoros that opted for independence]. 4. As part of a grand imperial design — keeping their girdle of French possessions intact right around the globe for reasons or pride, prestige, vainglory etc. Also, of practical military significance — as I keep pointing out France is number two in distribution of military bases globally after the US. They are stretched like military stepping stones around the globe — from France to Djibouti to Mayotte to Reunion to New Caledonia to Tahiti to Martinique (Caribbean) to Senegal and back to France. Plus oddities like Saint Pierre and Miquelon [off the Newfoundland coast, Canada]. 5. The difference between France and the US is that the US is much more ideological — they really see themselves as a kind of ideological police force. They are determined to hold onto any bit of dirt they can possibly get to allow for a total military control of the globe, while France is more fine-tuned, more practical, more into defending their own more clearly defined self-interest.(33)
Before I left for the Pacific in 1993, living for a decade in Papua New Guinea and then Fiji, Owen, Fijian academic professor Steven Ratuva, now director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies at Canterbury University, and I collaborated with a group of 18 authors, journalists and activists to produce Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific.(34) It was an activists’ take on contemporary upheaval in the Pacific — ‘growing poverty, nuclear testing, independence struggles, militarisation and massive social dislocation’ — and was ironically funded by the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust, a fund set up in New Zealand with compensation money from the French government for the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985. As we reflected in the introduction to the book, although in global terms the Pacific is relatively peaceful, it is also highly militarised. Owen and Steve examined this militarisation in their chapter from two perspectives — Owen regionally and globally, and Steve through the then-emerging ‘coup culture’ in Fiji.(35)
Owen outlined an overall picture of military activity and military infrastructure in the Pacific. In general it fitted into four categories. Some of the military activity, at time of publication, was concerned with the global standoff between the US and the Soviet Union, which collapsed on 25 December 1991 with the end of the Gorbachev presidency. These were the installations and activities that served for global nuclear war. Much of it was military activity that was ‘too dangerous, too secret or too unpopular to do in North America or Europe — with French nuclear testing as a prime example’.(36) As Owen explained, ‘Johnston Atoll is a microcosm of the backside-of-the-earth syndrome. Here to an extreme degree the US military does anything which is too secret to do elsewhere in the Pacific.’(37)
Then there was the military activity located in the Pacific because the Pacific was the ocean separating North America from East Asia — if North America wanted to wage war against Asia, or vice versa, then such bases as those in the Philippines and Northern Marianas would be central to such a war. The fourth and final category of militarisation was the multitude of local, ‘parochial’ or indigenous reasons for military presence and warfare — exemplified by the counter-insurgency forces of France in Kanaky New Caledonia, by indigenous forces such as the Tongan Defence Force, and by the armed components of Pacific liberation movements. Of the four categories, only the last can be seen as possibly relevant to defending Pacific interests. Discussing the Pacific as a ‘war theatre’, Owen outlined the case against the enormous military bases in the Philippines (Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Field).
The Subic Bay base, at 680 square kilometres about the size of Singapore, was, after the closure of Clark Air Field in 1991, the largest US military installation overseas. When the vast naval base was finally shut by the US the following year, the Philippine government turned it into the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. The sheer scale of the US military operations in the Pacific were demonstrated by Owen’s description in the chapter:
The Pacific is the location of the world’s largest military empire, that of the US Commander-in-Chief (CINCPAC) in Hawai’i, covering half of the earth’s surface and 60 percent of the world’s population. It includes most of the Pacific basin and Pacific rim, together with about two-thirds of the Indian Ocean. CINCPAC, who is always a US Navy admiral, may also be the most powerful man on the earth: certainly, as far as nuclear megatonnage is concerned, in peacetime he has more power at his fingertips than does the president of the United States. It is like comparing the power of the old British Raj with that of the British monarch.(38)
At the other end of the scale, Owen noted the contrast with what was ‘probably the world’s smallest self-contained military force — the Tonga Defence Force, numbering about 200’ which seemed to ‘have little role other than discharging a big gun on occasion as a salute’ to the King of Tonga…
As Michael Szabo noted in his 1991 history Making Waves: The Greenpeace New Zealand Story, it seemed initially that the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior would set back the Pacific campaign by several years, but in fact ironically ‘the French saboteurs had massively boosted the organisation’s international reputation.’(39) Owen, who had carried out research project reports with Greenpeace, observed, ‘The New Zealand government is beginning to treat Greenpeace almost like another government’. However, that wasn’t quite the experience of the Greenpeace Aotearoa staff . I also recall Owen saying, ‘Everybody thinks we have this brilliant Labour government which is dedicated to pacifism. But it isn’t,
the government simply responded to public opinion, whereas in other countries where there have been similar big percentages against nuclear weapons, governments haven’t reacted.’(30)
In June 1986, to revive the Pacific Peace Voyage that had been cruelly interrupted by the 1985 bombing, the yacht Vega was deployed on a nuclear-free and environmental educational voyage to the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu to meet a wide range of Pacific people, including peace, trade union, women’s, church and political groups. On board, for the Cook Islands leg, was Owen Wilkes. Greenpeace coordinator Elaine Shaw flew ahead to Rarotonga with Māori activist Augie Riini to take Owen’s place for the rest of
the Vega voyage. Augie ‘was a good diplomat — always out until late with the locals and more adept at making friends than we Pākehā,’ Owen reflected.(41) Owen’s research work on the Philippine bases Subic Bay and Clark Air Field in particular, and other Asia-Pacific bases generally, along with his general knowledge, wisdom and humility, made him very popular in activist circles in the Philippines. As the national chair of the Nuclear-Free-Philippines Coalition (NFPC), Roland Simbulan, a former vice-chancellor and professor
in development studies at the University of the Philippines, put it, Owen’s work, both published and unpublished, on foreign military bases and facilities, especially when he was with SIPRI, had been of vital importance to peace advocates and organisers of the peace movement all over the world. In that sense, he had ‘an important role in ending the Cold War’. Added Simbulan, ‘In the Philippines, Owen’s work inspired me and others to do more serious peace research in support of peace advocacy and organising.’(42)
Simbulan, detained and tortured for peace advocacy while a student by the Marcos dictatorship, recalled how he had first met Owen in 1981 at an international peace conference in Tokyo, Japan. They were both speakers at that large conference of about 800 participants, and Owen at the time was a senior researcher at SIPRI:
Owen immediately impressed me as SIPRI’s highly knowledgeable technical expert on foreign military bases and facilities, specifically as a specialist on communications and signals intelligence (SIGINT). He could look at photographs of any kind of logistics/communications facilities and interpret what they were used for. He knew by just looking at the set-up of foreign military bases and facilities, or the configuration of naval and air force vessels and determine whether they were nuclear-armed and nuclear-capable.(43)
The professor admitted, ‘I was glad he was on our side, a veritable walking think tank for the international peace movement.’ However, Simbulan also stressed how Owen ‘was so modest, so full of humility and had a good sense of humour — a humour that was in itself so sharp.’
Simbulan recalled how on one occasion Owen had remarked to him that he was unsure of the ‘shooting effectiveness’ of the élite US Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) because ‘they too, as human beings, would be suffering from jet lag after an eight-to-ten hour trip through different time zones.’ And when Simbulan once asked Owen why he always wore shorts and sandals, even in the very formal international peace conferences in Japan, ‘he just smiled and said, “this is me.’”
The professor saw Owen ‘so vigorously full of zest and fulfilment during the Beyond ANZUS Conference in New Zealand in 1984, on the eve of the Labour Party’s election victory that [brought David Lange to power as Prime Minister] and eventually made New Zealand nuclear free’.(45) Owen had returned from Europe to work full-time for the peace movement. During Simbulan’s lecture tour in Australia and New Zealand, where he also addressed the Beyond ANZUS Conference at Wellington, he invited Owen to visit the Philippines. In the late 1980s Owen finally did visit the Philippines, and checked out the vast and then still active US military bases and facilities, especially at Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Base. Owen’s technical expertise helped the Filipino peace movement interpret the bases’ role in the context of the American global nuclear infrastructure.
‘I had my disagreements with him though, especially on the particular nature and placement of the facilities, their counter-insurgency role,’ admits Simbulan, ‘but our discussions were very productive, constructive as well as instructive.’ He said that the technical information about the US bases and facilities that Owen had shared with them — especially in the light of the nuclear weapons-free 1987 Philippine Constitution — ‘helped in no small way in the Philippine Senate’s decision to reject the proposed bases treaty of renewal, thus ending 470 years of foreign military bases in the Philippines.’(46)
At Owen’s funeral I, too, reflected on his life and achievements and what it
meant for us:(47)
For me, Owen Wilkes was a truly brilliant researcher and original critical thinker. He was a down-to-earth Kiwi and no-nonsense innovator who had no time for the rampant political correctness engulfing us today. But he was also a very warm-hearted, amusing and generous friend. I personally found him an inspiration and he was a vital source of encouragement, especially when working in the tough environment of freelance journalism in the 1980s. He was enormously respected throughout the peace and progressive movements and in the media. This respect continued even when he eventually spurned peace activism and moved to Hamilton to share his life with dedicated former Peacelink editor May Bass away from the political limelight.
I sometimes felt the respect was even greater abroad. In the Philippines, activists and journalists described him in awe as the ‘walking encyclopaedia.’ In the Pacific, his word on military and strategic issues was gospel. While most activists and the media focused on conventional military bases, Owen was busy exposing the worldwide network of American surveillance and communication bases. His exposés of Tangimoana and Waihopai are well known, but in 1989 he also exposed a little known Bukidnon spy base in the Philippines, more significant in realpolitik terms than the Subic Bay and Clark military bases. His work inspired me to join the post-Marcos International Peace Brigade and carry out an investigation into a New Zealand aid project in Mindanao with a series of media articles, such as in the Listener.(48)
In our last encounter together, about a year before he took his life, we shared some drinks and reflections one evening while he stayed with Del and me at our home in Grey Lynn. He revealed some of his cynical mood amid the laughs when he turned to me and said, ‘David, we’re just two old farts.’ Owen was referring to defensive responses from some quarters about our unpopular criticisms of aspects of the Nuclear Free and Independent (NFIP) movement in the Pacific, and the waning progressive struggle in the Philippines [which he partially blamed on ‘over-population’ and the conservatism of the Catholic church in a
country of 107 million that in May 2022 elected ‘Bongbong’, the only son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, as president].
Owen Wilkes was an extraordinary peace researcher without peer, and a defiant liberal nationalist. He stubbornly defended his intellectual and moral integrity, and enriched all who crossed paths with him.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Nils Petter Gleditsch, who read an early draft of this chapter and provided a copy
of Owen’s 1982 unpublished ‘roadside secrets’ paper; Del Abcede, for her reflections, amusing anecdotes and advice; Mark Derby, for Owen’s copies of our correspondence; and May Bass for her vision to turn this book into reality and our shared good times with Owen.
Endnotes
1 Fredstidningen PAX. No 1, February, 1982. https://www.svenskafreds.se/om-oss/pax/
2 David Robie, (1989), Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, London, United Kingdom: Zed Books.
3 David Robie (Ed.) (1992), Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books.
4 David Robie (21 March 1982), ‘Bicycle snoop riles the Baltic’, New Zealand Times.
5 Nils Petter Gleditsch & Owen Wilkes (1981). Onkel Sams kaniner. Teknisk etterretning i Norge [Uncle Sam’s Rabbits. Technical Intelligence in Norway]. Oslo, Norway: PAX.
6 Owen Wilkes (March 1982). Sweden’s road-side secrets. Unpublished paper.
7 Wilkes (1982), p. 1.
8 Wilkes (1982). p. 1.
9 Wilkes (1982). p. 2
10 Wilkes (1982). p. 2
11 Wilkes (1982). p. 4
12 Wilkes (1982). p. 4
13 Wilkes (1982). p. 4
14 NZPA. NZ man ordered to leave, Auckland Star, 8 June 1982.
15 Ibid.
16 Wilkes (1982). p. 9.
17 Wilkes (1982). p. 10.
18 Wilkes (1982), p. 10.
19 N-free Pacific ‘way to peace’, Auckland Star, 24 September 1982.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Louise Thomas, Black Birch resurrected. New Zealand Geographic, April-June 1999. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/black-birchresurrected/
23 N-free Pacific ‘way to peace’, Auckland Star, 24 September 1982.
24 David Robie, Submarine from US, says Wilkes. Dominion Sunday Times, 19 October 1986.
25 Owen Wilkes, Owen Wilkes investigates the Cook Islands submarine affair, NZ Monthly Review, October 1986, pp. 7-16.
26 David Robie, Submarine from US, says Wilkes. Dominion Sunday Times, 19 October 1986.
27 Owen Wilkes, NZ Monthly Review, op. cit., pp. 7-16.
28 Owen Wilkes, ‘Russian Submarine: A Scare in the South Pacific seems to backfire’, Ploughshares Monitor, June 1986.
29 David Robie, Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, London,
United Kingdom: Zed Books, 1989.
30 David Robie (1989). Och Världen Blundar … (And The World Closed its Eyes …). Wiken Books, Höganäs, Sweden, 1989.
31 Bengt Emmerik Danielsson was a Swedish anthropologist, writer and crew member on the Kon Tiki raft expedition from South America to Tahiti in 1947. He made ‘French’ Polynesia his home, married Marie-Thérèse and was a staunch environmental and anti-nuclear campaigner until he died in 1997.
32 Bengt Danielsson and Marie-Thérèse Danielsson, Moruroa, Mon Amour: The French nuclear tests in the Pacific. Penguin Books, Melbourne, VIC., 1977.
33 Owen Wilkes, personal letter to David Robie, 29 March 1988.
34 David Robie (ed.), Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific. Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1992, pp. 53-69.
35 Owen Wilkes and Sitiveni Ratuva, ‘Militarism in the Pacific and the Case of Fiji’, in
David Robie (ed.), Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, pp. 53-69.
36 David Robie, Tu Galala, op. cit., p. 17.
37 Owen Wilkes and Sitiveni Ratuva, op. cit., p. 54.
38 Ibid., p. 53.
39 Michael Szabo, Making Waves: The Greenpeace New Zealand Story. Reed, Auckland, 1991,p. 149.
40 David Robie, ‘Challenging Goliath’ in New Internationalist, September 1986, Retrieved https://asiapacificreport.nz/2017/06/11/flashback-to-nzs-nuclear-free-law-1987-challenging-goliath/
41 Szabo, op. cit., p. 150.
42 Roland Simbulan, Tributes to Owen Wilkes: In memory of Owen. Roland
G. Simbulan, Philippines. 12 May 2005. http://www.apc.org.nz/pma/owentr.htm
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 David Robie, Tribute for Owen Wilkes, Hamilton, 17 May 2005. https://bit.ly/3uMyHPY
48 David Robie, A cloud over Bukidnon, in Robie, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, Little Island Press, Auckland, pp. 174-183.
McDonalds Fiji managing director Marc McElrath . . . “The issue is that we have 16 nightclubs with six police officers [in Nadi] -- the police are overwhelmed, there are drunk people and then fights.” Image: Jonacani Lalakobau
By Arieta Vakasukawaqa in Suva
Drunkards urinating in public, people fighting and nightclub goers passed out on the streets are usually the first things tourists arriving in Fiji through Nadi International Airport see while being taken to their hotels.
McDonalds Fiji managing director Marc McElrath highlighted this while sharing his views at a consultation for the review of the opening of nightclub hours at Suvavou House in Suva this week.
“There are 16 nightclubs in Nadi and that is a big number for a small town,” McElrath said.
He said every day around 4am, drunkards were often scattered along the streets when nightclubs closed for business.
McElrath said they had raised the issue with the police many times.
“Tourists arriving from the USA — or wherever they come from — at 6am, when they come through Martintar, it looks like they’re driving through Beirut,” he said.
“There are people knocked out on the footpaths, drunkards fighting, people punching each other, and they urinate all over the place.
‘Doesn’t look good for tourists’
“It really doesn’t look good for our tourists.
“The issue we face in Nadi is the fact that a lot of people who come out of nightclubs at around 4am to 5am are drunk and it spills out onto the streets.”
He said the police did not have the manpower to control the issue of early morning drunkards in Nadi.
“The issue is that we have 16 nightclubs with six police officers — the police are overwhelmed, there are drunk people and then fights.”
McElrath called on the authorities to consider the safety of people while reviewing the opening hours for nightclubs.
“I understand there are special zones, and I am not an expert on these hours.
“I think the hours need to be reduced in certain areas where police can’t control the overwhelming numbers.”
Arieta Vakasukawaqais a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission from Asia Pacific Report and The Fiji Times.
The Porgera "killing fields" front page in the PNG Post-Courier yesterday . . . An attempted hijacking at gunpoint of a truck laden with market produce near Kalik airport. Inset: Barrick Gold CEO Dr Mark Bristow. Image: PNG Post-Courier screenshot APR
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby
The successful restart of Papua New Guinea’s New Porgera Limited gold mine is currently at high risk due to the security crisis in the valley.
Twenty one people have died since March 6 as Porgera, Enga Province, has turned into a “killing field” amid tensions between two ethnic groups, the Nomali and Aiyala.
Barrick Gold chief executive and president Dr Mark Bristow responded to questions raised by the Post-Courier saying that “a safe and stable operating environment is critical for the restart of Porgera Mine.
“Therefore, we see a need for an immediate intervention to address the lawlessness in Porgera as the current conditions put in jeopardy the restart of mining operations.
“Safety is paramount at the Porgera mine site. Our primary concern is the welfare of our local employees who reside in Porgera and commute to and from the site.
“As with the rest of the community, we rely on the police and other law enforcement agencies to provide law and order.
“Our local employees are directly impacted [on] by the ongoing violence and the resulting closure of vital government services, including schools and hospitals.
Support for special police operation
“We support the community’s calls for a special police operation and sustainable security solutions to the many social issues that have grown since the mine was placed into care and maintenance, including tribal violence and murder, kidnapping, hijacking, vandalism, and the widespread proliferation of high-powered firearms.”
Losses from illegal mining and theft are estimated at K100 million (NZ$46 million) a year and K200 million (NZ$92 million) from Hides Tower Lines sabotage — not including sizeable PJV security costs and the substantial ongoing costs for constant repair of fences, buildings, vehicles and other equipment and infrastructure.
Speaking to the Post-Courier, Police Commissioner David Manning said that the focus of security personnel would be to secure the surrounding communities of the mine site.
Commissioner Manning also confirmed the deployment of an extra 100 Special Services Division (SSD) officers to assist in curbing the rise in crime and to help restore normality.
“We are ready to assist, and I have had briefings with the local leaders and we will be working closely with the district development authority (DDA) to ensure we have the support but also work together in bringing back peace to Porgera,” he said.
A security brief released on Wednesday has shown that the high number of killings are in the town area.
As of Wednesday, critical community services such as the BSP Bank, Paiam Hospital and local schools are closed again indefinitely.
Law and order crisis
The law and order crisis applies to the whole Porgera Valley and not just the mine site and its infrastructure — this also extends to other operational footprints (Hides Power Station, HTL Corridor, Riverine, and Highlands Highway).
Law and order is at the lowest point ever since the opening of the mine and this is affecting the operation of the mine, landowners, and the communities.
A security update from the district has reported:
Continued deterioration of security (law and order) in the Porgera valley;
Firearms sightings and discharges within SML/LMP continue to increase;
Multiple instances of armed holdups and theft from employees and contractors. Since January 2023 a number of supply trucks and passenger buses have been ambushed and looted between Laigam and Kairik Airport;
Security incidents involving the kidnapping of women and children have increased,
Effectiveness of MS and PNG Defence Force personnel on the ground is limited due to the absence of necessary resources and specific orders; and
Tribal fighting throughout the valley and at Hides continues, with ongoing fatalities and widespread property destruction.
The Post-Courier understands that local police numbers are down, firearms are used regularly within the valley and intrusions into restricted areas continue with armed men entering the mine site.
It is alleged there is a lack of support from the district, province and the national government for more security forces at Porgera.
The lack of leadership and support from community leaders and landowners have seen criminal elements protected and served by the clan and communities.
Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.
"View Information" Indonesian "troll" page . . . some of the memes attacking West Papuan self-determination advocates as "extremists". Image: APR screenshot
By David Robie
As part of an Indonesian-backed disinformation and troll campaign against West Papuan pro-independence advocates, a Facebook page has emerged making bitter and slanderous attacks on campaigners, Papuan exiles and media people in the Pacific region.
Among the targets for this page — dubbed “View Information”, purportedly based in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila — are Pacific Council of Churches general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan over a “false campaign” on Papua, and Australian-based Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman who is accused of being “an imposter”.
Other targets include London-based United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda for allegedly “masterminding the Wamena riots” in 2019, Canberra-based youth advocate and activist Ronny Kareni for “cultural mockery” and New Zealand academic and journalist David Robie.
I am accused of “continuously meeting” Benny Wenda to discuss issues relating to Papua and of “ignorance and prejudice”.
True, I did meet Benny when we hosted him at the Pacific Media Centre during his New Zealand visits in 2013 and 2017 and our team interviewed him at the time. Indeed, he was interviewed by several journalists and appeared on a number of programmes such as RNZ Pacific.
Benny Wenda (centre) visits the Pacific Media Centre in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2017. Image: Del Abcede/PMC Toktok
He does an extremely impressive job as a tireless and impassioned advocate for his indigenous people and independence.
One of the regular themes of the View Information page is the plight of the New Zealand pilot, Philip Mehrtens, being held hostage since February 7 by pro-independence fighters of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB-OPM).
Broker negotiations
Originally the fighters wanted New Zealand to broker negotiations with the Indonesian government in Jakarta, but the military and political authorities have refused to talk, endangering the life of the Susi Air pilot.
“Philip Mark Mehrtens is a human being and deserve[s] medical attentions [sic] as we do not know under what conditions he is living in. This sepratist [sic] are abusing his freedom and holding him against his consent and will,” says View Information.
“Isn’t this an abuse of human rights?
ULMWP president Benny Wenda pictured with journalist Dr David Robie (in an “open access” for West Papua journalists tee-shirt) during the exiled Papuan advocate’s NZ visit in 2017. Image: “View Information” screenshot CP
“[These] separatists are abusing his right to freedom from being held as a captive for unreasonable grounds. He is treated as some kind of product in a grocery store.”
About the Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC), View Information page claims: “PCC considers Papuans as [a] product or commodity in grocery stores.” That phrase again!
“PCC has become a parody conquistador for the religious groups in the Pacific and a sign of betrayal to the Papuans.
“Papuans are this cheap that the PCC has to sell them for money.
“Say no to PCC before it is too late.”
Riots ‘mastermind’
About the 2019 rioting in Wamena and across the region characterised by advocates of an independent West Papua as the “Papuan Rising” and likened to the Arab Spring: “The Papua Extremist Group (ULMWP) led by Benny Wenda is the mastermind behind the West Papua riots.
“They were designed a riot exactly one day before the UN General Assembly (24/9) began with student access campaign.”
Like most of the other claims on this FB page, there is not a single source given in any attempt to back up the hostile statements. Genuine information about the ULMWP is available here.
About the United Nations, View Information claims: “The UN has never declared there is genocide taking place in Papua or West Papua. It has addressed issues of civilians being killed by the armed separatists in Nduga Regency.”
A feature of this anonymous propaganda page is the wild and sweeping statements and allegations without a shred of evidence. No information about the “publishers” or “writers” is divulged, although it claims to provide “factual, balanced, quality and fair reporting”.
Jakarta causing confusion
Jakarta’s misinformation campaign that has been causing confusion throughout the world has been stepped up in recent months.
“Indonesian intelligence has allocated considerable funds globally, especially in Oceania, to target and discredit any person or institution sharing information about the genocide in West Papua,” says Yamin Kogoya, a regular contributor and commentator for Asia Pacific Report.
“The same thing is happening inside West Papua – the spreading of fake, false information often under the names of OPM, ULMWP and other groups advocating for a free West Papua.
“The internationalisation of West Papua’s issue has been Jakarta’s primary concern, knowing how they stole it — West Papua’s sovereignty — 60 years ago.”
Earlier this year the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) wrote to all the Doc Edge festival sponsors urging them to ensure the 2023 festival was an “apartheid-free zone”.
We told them it would be highly provocative for the festival to receive money from the Israeli Embassy particularly given the strident anti-Palestinian policies of the new far-right Israeli leadership.
SAVE THE DATES: The 18th Doc Edge International Documentary Film Festival & its associated events will be held from 24 May to 9 July 2023.
Auckland: 24 May – 5 June at The Capitol Cinema
Wellington: 7-18 June @RoxyCinemaNZ
Nationwide: 19 June – 9 July at @Docedge Virtual Cinema pic.twitter.com/pTvZTQWn1T
It seems Doc Edge is following the policy of the Sydney Festival which was thrown into turmoil in January last year over its sponsorship by the Israeli Embassy.
Sydney has since abandoned foreign sponsorship and Doc Edge has done the same this year.
Doc Edge claimed last year that it was “apolitical” but this is untrue.
Festival organisers tweeted in support of the people of Ukraine under Russian invasion and occupation but have never tweeted in support of Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation.
Just as this country campaigned to help end apartheid in South Africa through boycotts, we are doing the same to help end Israel’s apartheid policies.
We will remain vigilant.
John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article is republished with the author’s permission.
Disappearing Palestine . . . How Palestinian land has shrunk since 1947 due to illegal action by the Israeli military and authorities. Image: Palestine Awareness Coalition
NZ hostage pilot Philip Mehrtens . . . captured by West Papuan pro-independence fighters and held for 80 days so far. Image: TPNPB/Jubi News
Jubi News in Jayapura
Captured pilot Philip Mehrtens has called on the Indonesian government to stop military operations in the Nduga highlands in a bid to rescue him while his West Papuan rebel captors have condemned New Zealand for alleged “collusion” with Jakarta.
According to Mehrtens, a New Zealander, last weekend the Indonesian military (TNI) dropped bombs on an area where he was being held along with other Nduga residents.
“Indonesia dropped bombs on this [Nduga] area last weekend, and it was unnecessary because it was dangerous for me and the people here,” Mehrtens said via a video recording made on Monday and received by Jubi yesterday.
In the 1min 38sec video, Mehrtens was seen wearing a black t-shirt and shorts. He was sitting flanked by two men, allegedly West Papuan National Liberation Army (TPNPB) members. He also said he was in good health.
“Today, April 24, 2023, it has been almost three months since the TPNPB captured me in Paro.
“I am alive and well. I live with the people here, sit together, walk together, rest together, there is no problem with me,” Mehrtens said in the poor quality video, alternating between two languages, Bahasa Indonesian and English.
In a written statement, TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sambom urged President Joko Widodo to immediately stop military operations in Nduga and asked Indonesia to open negotiations.
‘Negotiations, not military operations’
“We emphasise that the release of Philip Mark Mehrtens must be through negotiations, not through military operations. Therefore, Indonesian President Joko Widodo must stop military operations in Nduga immediately, otherwise they only jeopardise the pilot’s life,” Sambom said.
TPNPB-OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak . . . “Your [Australian and New Zealand] governments helped Indonesia to steal the land that has never been theirs.” Image: SBS screenshot APR
In a separate statement received today by Asia Pacific Report from the Free Papua Movement (OPM) leader, Jeffrey Bomanak, the pro-independence fighters called on New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins to “resign” over a failure to press the Indonesian government for a negotiated solution.In the statement dated April 28 and addressed to the New Zealand and Australian parliaments, Bomanak said:
“My people have been in a war of liberation from Indonesia’s illegal invasion and annexation for six decades. Our fallen number hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.
The Free Papua Movement-OPM statement today. Image: OPM
“Your governments helped Indonesia to steal the land that has never been theirs. You call it ‘Cold War geopolitics’. We call it collusion and complicity in six decades of Indonesia’s crimes against humanity.
“You call it ‘national interest”. We call it being a wilful accessory to allow you to plunder a vulnerable people … an accessory in the manipulation of events for the economic rape of our ancestral lands.
“You call it ‘foreign policy’. We call it treachery and deceit of the same people who were your friends and allies during the Second World War.
‘Why are you afraid of Indonesia?’ “Our rights to freedom and nation-state sovereignty are no different to yours … no different to the valiant Ukrainian people, whom you have no problem supporting.
“Why are you so afraid of Indonesia? Why can East Timor be liberated and not West Papua?”
There was no immediate NZ government response to the OPM statement.
Earlier, Sambom said the video containing the Mehrtens testimony was also addressed to the New Zealand government and Mehrtens’ family.
“We initially made a video showing Mehrtens in good health for the New Zealand government and the pilot’s family in New Zealand. However, because Indonesia is bombing the Nduga Region, we want the people to know,” he said.
Mehrtens has been held hostage by the TPNPB for 79 days since he was arrested on February 7.
The Indonesian government so far has increased the status of military operations.
Indonesian military (TNI) commander Admiral Yudo Margono announces that the operation to free the Susi Air pilot in Papua has become a “land combat alert” operation during a media conference at Yohanis Kapiyau Airbase, Timika, Central Papua on Tuesday. Image: Rabin Yarangga/Jubi News
‘Land combat alert’
On April 18 in Timika, TNI commander Admiral Yudo Margono upgraded operations in Papua to a “land combat alert”.
Admiral Margono said the operation was upgraded after the TPNPB attacked TNI troops on April 15.The casualties were unconfirmed as the military admitted one soldier had been killed while the rebels claimed up to 13 dead and several captured.
He said the increase in the status of this operation aimed to awaken the combat instincts of TNI soldiers.
“The land combat alert means the operation is increased,” Admiral Margono said at the time at Yohanis Kapiyau Air Base in Central Papua’s Timika.
A military observer from the Institute For Security and Strategic Studies (ISSES), Khairul Fahmi, said the combat alert in Papua meant that all troops were ready to fire.
“’Combat alert’ is the term for the condition of the troops ready for battle. This means that soldiers are allowed to shoot their weapons at any time whenever the threat is present,” Fahmi said.
“The troops no longer need to hesitate to open fire if there is an obstacle or attack.”
